by Brindi Quinn
I stopped struggling and focused my energy internally. I had been walking on eggshells in fear of the darkness finding me again. Now, I sought it out, opening my ears to the swell of echoes that had been clamoring to get in.
“Merrin?”
I closed my eyes and found myself floating in darkness. I could feel Albie’s arms around me, hear the distant sounds of Rafe and Windley’s battle with the blood beasts, but those things were secondary to:
“MeRRin.”
“mErriN.”
“MErrIn.”
“MERRIN!”
“I need your help.” I told the darkness, and the darkness answered with a swarm of hands winding around me, even more than before, hundreds it seemed. But I fought my fear of them this time because I needed them, and I needed that malice. I let them encompass me.
Unlike last time, the emotion of the darkness was mild. Still soft from our last encounter, it pressed into me only weakly.
“They aren’t so bad. Let them live. We will let them live for now.”
“No!” I told it. “Some are bad. Some deserve to be punished!” I gave it the full force of my intention.
“All are bad!” It swelled. “We will rip them asunder! We will tear the earth!”
Too much!
“Not ALL,” I said. “Only those ones.” With everything in me, I implored the darkness that some were okay to kill. Some would kill unless killed.
“The red-eyed creatures. Send them back to hell. They have no merit.”
“Yes!” I said. “They have no merit!”
I fed the darkness and the darkness flourished.
“They deserve to die. Take us to them!”
With a burst of strength, I pushed out from Albie’s hold and began racing back the way we had come, tearing over stone and log and emerald shrubbery. Albie was falling behind, shouting for me, but I tuned him out, eyes dead ahead on the decaying glade. Rafe was heaving deep breaths, both hands on the hilt of his sword, stance unyielding as one of the creatures moved toward him. Meanwhile, Windley was on the ground, battered and bloody, rolling out of the way of the second.
“They have no merit!” the echoes shrieked. “Unleash our wrath!”
“End them!” This time, I was speaking in the physical realm, catching the attention of both guards and stags, and as I did, a torrent of wind swept forth from behind me, plowing down the waist-high grass and billowing toward the red-eyed monsters. I say wind, but it wasn’t wind, it was darkness in motion. I threw forward my hands to send it at our enemies and felt the hands of the forest sliding down my arms and throwing the darkness through me. It gusted into the glade, and when it dispersed, both fiends lay motionless, the life drained from them and eyes turned from red to white.
Windley and Rafe were also motionless, but it wasn’t for lack of life.
As I said before, being awestruck for real is a rare thing.
I didn’t think about what I was doing. I only let my legs hurtle me into the dell that was already turning from cursed to emerald, as though the forest had been waiting to lay siege on the decaying patch. I slid to Windley, who was on the ground, taking his shoulders in my hands. “Are you okay?”
His cheek was cut and dripping blood, his shirt dirty and torn. He didn’t answer at first, only stared at me with wide eyes and a swallow, until eventually nodding. “Yes. How did you…?”
I finally returned that grin.
I turned to the other wounded guard. “Rafe?”
“…I’m fine?” Though he said it like more of a question, doubting what he had just seen.
There were none more awestruck than Albie, though. He raced into the glade behind me, coming to an inspired halt as he beheld what had transpired.
“You’ve bested them? Well done, lad!”
Lad?
He doubled over, hands to his knees in relief. “Didn’t know your moon-power could do that!”
Unlike the others, Albie hadn’t seen the source of the darkness, only its impact, and he assumed it had come from the only magician in his midst.
“No—” Rafe started, only to be cut off by Windley:
“Seems the chap’s been holding out on us.”
Rafe furrowed his brow and touched glance first with Windley, then with me. I shook my head at him just enough.
“I… can’t use it often,” he said, playing along, however hesitant.
“I should think not,” said Albie. “That was more powerful than any spell I’ve ever seen.”
Windley’s gaze flickered to mine. “It certainly was.”
My adrenaline was shaking, throbbing, coursing through me as the darkness’s hands released their hold, slithering back up my arms the way they had come.
I think this was the moment I first realized why the echoes wanted to destroy everything.
Destruction felt good.
Chapter 17
Feeding the Monster
“Come. Hither.” Speaking of deep and dangerous stares, the deepest, most dangerous stare had set me as its target.
I had been dreading this moment. The moment Albie would leave me alone with the hounds and I would have to explain what had happened both to them and myself. We had found one of those glistening forest pools to camp beside. Two pools, actually, one feeding into the other via miniature falls that sang a trickling song. The water was clear and shallow and dotted with those same luminescent rocks found in the forest springs. Around the mere, fragrant flowers bloomed—an apothecary’s dream.
Windley and Rafe were tending to their wounds near to the fire while Albie went off to scout the area and look for our missing stags. They shouldn’t be far. Ruck was a bit of a coward and would come wandering back eventually. The others would do so out of loyalty.
“You dare summon a queen so casually?” I said, high-and-mighty like.
“Don’t give me that,” Windley said with a torn bit of cloth between his teeth. His hair looked to be shifting to black. “What in goddess’s name was that back there?”
“I can tell you one thing—” Rafe folded his arms. “It wasn’t me.”
Both of them waited for me to speak, giving off judgy, expectant airs.
“Did you tell him about the echoes yet?” I asked Windley.
“What kind of secret-keeper would I be if I had?” he retorted.
The wavy-haired magician gave off an impatient sigh. “I covered for you. You have to tell me.”
He was right.
“I’m sorry, Rafe. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to worry.” In one long string of rambles, I admitted that Beau had lost her echoes and that I had found them. I admitted what had happened when I fainted in the forest, my time in the other world—the voices, the hands, the upset darkness.
After I was finished, Rafe put his hand to his jaw, contemplating. “That’s why she couldn’t heal me, and you can,” he said slowly, processing the chain of events. He seemed to be taking it rather well. At least he hadn’t thrown himself on the ground again. “Then she might have been taken because she lost her abilities,” he speculated.
“I’ve considered that,” I said.
“Or someone may have removed her abilities in preparation for taking her,” he said.
That, I hadn’t considered.
Beau had never displayed the sort of power I had, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable. Maybe whoever took her knew the true power of the echoes and found a way to rid her of them for the sake of abducting her easier. But who would want to take a powerless Beau? She was valuable because of her power.
“What I’d still like to know,” Windley said, overly pleasant, “is what the fuck that was back there. Please, don’t keep us in suspense, Your Highness.”
I gave him a charming smile in return. “Only because you groveled.” Then, in one breath, I continued: “You know how Beau injects her own intentions into the intentions of the forest in order to intervene on behalf of humanity and subside nature’s fury?” I waited for them to acknow
ledge it. “I kind of told it to do the opposite. I convinced it that those blood stags deserved to die.”
There was a pause. “So, you’re telling us you can convince nature to kill anyone or anything you so choose?” Windley said through forced smile.
“Perhaps. I’ve only tried it the once.”
“Well, if that doesn’t curdle the blood.” Windley folded his arms.
“I didn’t know that was possible,” Rafe considered. “Beau never mentioned she had a power like that.”
“Not to me either,” I said. “I could see why she would keep it secret, though. A queen who can keep nature peaceful is a treasure. A queen who can bend it to her will is a threat.”
I could hear them even now—those distant voices were riled up after tasting blood. I would have to spend some time with them later to calm them.
I caught myself thinking so and realized I was already becoming more in tune to them, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
“No one in my clan has power that strong. Not even the elders,” said Rafe. “Be careful, Your Majesty. Magic can be fickle.”
“Thank you, Rafe. And thank you for your discretion. I’m not ready for Albie to know.” I hit him hard with my deep and dangerous stare.
He bowed to avoid it. “Understood, Your Majesty.”
So it was true. He thought it too intense to bear.
Amused, I stood from them and started for the opposite side of the pool. “I’ll make some salve for your wounds. I saw some tweedberry over there. It will help you both heal faster.”
But a hand on my shoulder stopped me. “You and I have more to discuss.” A familiar flutter landed on the back of my neck, for Windley had just lifted my hair and spoken into my ear. After, he looped his arm through mine, saying louder, “Mind if I come with you, Queen Merrin?”
The battle with the blood stags had been a much-needed distraction, but as the scarlet-haired guard pulled me away from the campsite, body next to mine, last night’s reveries came flooding back.
His eyes.
His breath.
His lips.
‘I’ve wondered what you taste like for so damn long. You taste better than I ever could have imagined.’
We had looped arms many times. Never had my pulse pounded so.
“This should do.” He brought me to the opposite side of the site and up a hill—near the smaller pond that fed the larger one—to a plot of wildflowers where we had a vantage view of camp and the glimmering water below. “There’s vera weed up here,” he said, setting me free. “I think you need that for your concoction or whatever, don’t you?”
He was right. I had told him about the vera plant long ago during one of our stays at the forest fortress, but I didn’t think he was listening closely at the time.
“Your cheek is cut.” I turned my back to him. “This will dull the pain.” I busied myself with the vera, a thick plant with spikes on the edges, the inside of which held a mucus that was the foundation of many of the Crag’s topical remedies.
Windley watched me from the edge of the loch. “You were incredible, you know,” he said quietly so that it was barely heard over the falling water. “I thought we were done for and then there you were, bursting in like the raging sea. Beautiful and terrifying.”
Beautiful and terrifying. A shiver ran up my back, settling at the warm nape of my neck.
“What brought it on?” he said. “You didn’t know it would work, but you came back anyway. Not very queenly to put yourself into danger’s way.”
Who was to say what was ‘queenly’ and what wasn’t?
“I never wanted to be the kind of queen that was stuffed into gowns and locked away in castles,” I said, breaking off pieces of sticky vera. “If I expected you to fight without doing so myself, then I wouldn’t think myself worthy of anyone’s fealty.”
Whatever expression he wore, I didn’t see it. “It’s unfortunate you’re a royal,” he said after a moment. “You would have made one hell of a guard.”
“It did feel good to fight,” I said. “I was afraid of the echoes before, but now, after they helped save you, I crave wielding them again.” I glanced at him over my shoulder, finally meeting his face. “Want to spar?”
“I don’t go into fights I know I’ll lose, thank you.”
We were grinning in unison.
It felt good. And normal.
Until Windley let out an uncomfortable sigh. “Okay, here goes.”
The moment he said those words, something felt off, deep in the reaches of my stomach.
“What I did to you last night… it was wrong.”
Oh, that was the pit. The pit of my stomach is what felt off. It was sinking low because of the lack of mischief in his voice, lack of gleam in his eye, lack of jester’s smile across his face.
“I thought you’d fear me when you saw my true nature, but you didn’t, and… I got overly excited. But I know I went too far.”
It was as if the world were slowly turning gray.
“It’s easy for me to forget who you are, Queen Merrin. Too easy. I may not act it, but I know you’re a royal. I know I had no right.” He threw his head in Rafe’s direction. “I’m not a bounder like that one down there.”
Oh no.
This isn’t what I wanted.
Suddenly, I knew the answer to the question I had been struggling with all day—which version of myself I would let be dominant. I liked playing with him. I always had. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to feed the monster we had created. It was hungry, ravenous, out for the kill.
“I’m sorry for disrespecting you,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”
This wasn’t like him. When had he ever said a word like ‘disrespect’?
I hated it.
“Stop,” I commanded, catching him off guard and making him stiffen. “The reason I like you is because you easily forget who I am, dumbass. Why do you think I always bring Rafe and Saxon to the forest? It’s because they don’t fawn like the others. Few people in my life are themselves around me—pretty much only you and Beau, and Beau had this whole other side she was hiding. If you turn apologetic now, it ruins everything. I’ll have no one real left.”
How long, I wondered, had I had these feelings for him?
I couldn’t allow them to mature, but maybe I could let them remain as they were? Small and unassuming.
Let’s call it a crush.
“But you’ve been acting so distant,” he said, cautious, “I thought…”
I came and sat next to him in a cluster of soft grass and dainty yellow flowers. “I mean, what do you expect? Call it what you like, but your power is basically a power of seduction, isn’t it? I know it was all for show, but I don’t have a lot of experience being seduced. I needed time to recover.”
All for show? And what about this part:
‘I’ve wondered what you taste like for so damn long.’
Though it was a half-truth, relief washed over Windley. “Thank goddess.” He buried his face in his hands. “I’ve been in turmoil, lion queen. I thought I broke you.”
Somewhere inside of my chest, a cord was plucked.
“I-I do have a question, though,” I said to divert it. “Lifeforce doesn’t mean days off my life, does it? Like I didn’t lose two days to see your hair turn red, did I?”
Rashly, he unburied his face. “I would never have done that to you if it did! A human’s lifeforce is like blood. It replenishes on its own.”
Of course. He might be flippant, but he wasn’t irresponsible.
“Speaking of blood—” I pushed my finger inside a broken-off piece of vera. “I still need to mix a curative, but this alone will help seal the wound.” I brushed my finger along the cut on his cheek.
I was near to him, concentrating on his cut but could see him watching me from the corner of my eye. I took longer than necessary to apply the coating, being liberal with holding the back of his head in one hand while touching him softly with the other. I wa
s aware of the rise and fall of his chest, the bob of his adam’s apple, the tense of his jaw. When I was finished, he cupped his hand over mine and swallowed. “Merrin?”
Uh-oh.
“There’s something else I need to tell you.” The tone of him was serious, his hand warm over mine. “I—”
“My Queen?”
The moment shattered, and I never heard what he was about to say, for Albie had returned from his scouting with three of the four stags and was calling to me from below. Rafe was being a good sport and trying to shield Albie’s view of us. Windley’s throat released a gurgle.
I shot up from the flowers. “Be right down! We’re gathering supplies to make salve!” Then quietly to Windley, “Those red berries over there are the tweedberries. Grab some?”
As I pulled away from him, I felt his hand coil loosely around my fingers as though grasping for a kite string that was floating away.
The monster was happy. I was treading dangerously.
“No Ruck yet?” I said, patting Albie’s stag as the other two helped themselves to the watering hole. Day was beginning to shift to eve as the sun rolled across the heavens. It was nice to see the sky after spending hours under the thick cover of trees.
Albie unloaded his pack. “Your coward stag will sniff us out, My Queen.” He paused. “There are many more suitable ones out there. I don’t know why you insist on him.”
Albie meant Ruckus, but for a split second, I almost thought he meant…
‘You taste better than I ever could have imagined.’
“Ruckus is simply my favorite. I like his will and defiance,” I said.
Albie chuckled to himself. “If you say so, My Queen.”
Rafe looked up from the fire. “Do we need to be concerned about more blood stags, Sir Albie?”
“I didn’t see any other nests in our perimeter.” Albie motioned to the open sky that allowed the sinking sun to paint the lake in—wait for it—every color. “This area should give you a clear view of the moon,” he said. “Get a full charge, just in case.”
Rafe’s eyes connected with mine. “Sure thing,” he said, reluctant to take credit for the spell.
As Windley came down from the hill to join us, tweedberries in hand, I busied myself with the curative. I set the chunk of vera into one of Rafe’s serving bowls and began to pestle it. Now, all I needed was a handful of the berries—which Windley plopped into my palm without a word—and some lavender extract from my pack. I always liked the gritty sound made by the grind of a pestle against mortar. It was second only to the gritty sound of Albie’s well-aged voice.
