I know this feeling.
“Roue.” I step in to support her, lending her my strength. Together, we straighten, leaning on each other. “It’s the Dark Faerie hearthstone, isn’t it?”
Roue nods, her eyes wide and worried. She looks up at Castle Knockma, her dread seeping down the bond. “First, I can’t snickle-step and now…the hearthstone’s acting up.”
“Yea—aaahhh!” Now it’s my turn to double over as the pain from the vorpal wound flares from dull ache to sharp stab. “Gosh, we’re a pair!” I try to laugh it off, but every movement feels like shattered glass stabbing me.
I’ve been cut by a vorpal blade that is literally draining my blood like a vampire, and now Roue’s being tortured by her connection to the hearthstone.
This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so awful.
“Come on, princess.” She puts one arm around me and hangs onto her violin and bow with the other. The two of us hold each other up, limping toward the castle.
Total comedy of errors here.
“We should check on the hearthstone first.” I don’t want her to be in pain.
Roue looks at my side pointedly.
“Hey.” I force a smile. “The hearthstone’s the source of all Dark Faerie’s power. If it fails, the whole realm collapses, so…we should make sure it’s all right.”
She nods, but I hear the unspoken words down the bond.
It’s not all right. And neither are we.
I fold my fingers into hers, caressing the pads of her fingers where the calluses from her violin are the toughest. I love the smooth-scrape of her skin against mine. “I’ll survive. I promise.”
“You better.”
The vorpal wound stabs me again. Stabbity, stab, stab, stab.
I suck in a sharp breath. “Yup. No prob.”
I’m in Dark Faerie, a land designed to kill me. I’ve got a mortal—no, a vorpal—wound.
Plus, all our optimism aside, Roue’s dad is probably the one trying to kill me.
Survival’s about all I can handle right now.
Chapter Seven
Rouen
We are of one blood
Father, daughter
House and Horde
One blood but never one mind
“One Blood,” Euphoria
Ever since my father promised me the crown, I’ve felt caught between my people and my girl. My heart split in two, I always knew it would come down to a choice.
Now it’s happening for real. I’m caught between saving Syl and saving the hearthstone.
Syl’s vorpal wound is worsening, and the hearthstone... Who knows what’s gone wrong with it this time? Syl and I healed it, but as powerful as they are, hearthstones exist in a delicate balance with the ruler of its realm. If a king pulls on its magic too little, the excess energy can build up and become dangerous to the realm. If he pulls on it too much, the hearthstone can crack.
While the painful pulse doesn’t come again, it’s the sudden quiet that fills me with dread. As if the hearthstone screamed out but was suddenly silenced.
Syl. The hearthstone. Which do I take care of first?
“The hearthstone.” Syl decides for me, tugging me toward the castle.
“All right, princess.” Hand in hand, we windwarp to the top of the wall, bathed in the jagged shadows cast down from the towers. I reach out, dowsing for the hearthstone.
The slightest pulse beats back.
But something’s different.
“It’s not in the hearthstone chamber.” The logic is sound, considering the beating the chamber took when Syl and I fought Fiann and woke my people.
Even so, a chill snakes down my spine. It’s him, Roue. He’s using the hearthstone for his wicked schemes again, my dark self taunts, threatening to tear my hope apart.
I don’t rise to the bait.
Syl and I have decided my father’s innocent until proven guilty. As much as I don’t want to pour all my hope into that idea, I can’t stop seeing the man he was—the Adamant King, proud, powerful, just.
A father I loved. A father I longed to be like.
When I dowse again, I sense the faint pulse deep in the heart of the castle, in the Adamant Hall. “It’s in the throne room.”
Syl smiles despite her chattering teeth. “Well, at least we’ll get to kill two birds with one stone. We can check on the hearthstone and get your dad’s blood for the cure.”
“Yes.” My hands are suddenly shaking. Either way, I’ll have my answers.
Whether I want them or not.
Syl squeezes my hand in support, but just then, a glint on the battlements snares my attention. Dozens of guards patrol the parapets. They look different, not at all like the royal Adamant Guard. Heavy black armor, heavy crossbows. They man the catapults and scorpions on the walls, surveying the icy landscape as if waiting for an attack.
Shock jolts through my heart. These are battle patrols. “My father’s gearing up for war.”
But against who—the fair Fae? And shouldn’t that be my call as queen?
My hand tightens on my violin. “We need to stay hidden,” I send to Syl, and she nods gravely.
Inside my soul, my dark self snickers wickedly. If you’re the rightful queen, why sneak into your own throne room?
The irony’s not lost on me.
I tell myself it pays to be cautious. Syl’s still a fair Fae, and I’m not queen yet. I can’t fully protect her. Plus, Etana could have spies anywhere.
Yeah, I decide to go with that.
“Now,” I send as the guards turn a blind corner. Syl and I leap to the next tower, rounding the ice-covered spiral minaret like two dancers perfectly in sync. We wait a beat for the guards to get ahead, then leap tower to tower, trailing the guards, staying just enough behind to avoid being seen.
Fast as an eyeblink, we speed through jagged shadow and then leap up, up, up to the royal wing. Heavy buttresses and turrets loom over us, casting moonlit shadows across ice and snow. From here, I can see all of Knockma, a dark, knotty spine sprawling outward in spirals, over frozen cobblestones daggered with ice and dotted with crystalline winter blooms.
The throne room, our target, is in the heart of the castle.
Syl and I duck inside the castle through an open niche. We windwarp past guardian statues shaped like rooks and knights. UnderHollow shapes itself according to the will of the sovereign. My father loves battle chess, and so everything here is chess-themed.
I still remember my childhood, him mocking me as he won.
Every time.
After Mother died, he taught by taunting. He became a cruel teacher.
What if he’s become a cruel king, too?
Every pulse of the hearthstone draws me deeper into the darkness. We turn the final corner to the throne room. I jerk to a stop, ducking back behind the corner and pulling Syl with me.
Blast and bloody bones!
Arrayed before the throne room are the Adamant Guard, black armor and wintersteel weapons pluming with ice, gleaming in the gloom. The seven most powerful dark Fae in all the realm, they serve the rightful ruler of Dark Faerie.
Seven…but I count only four. Morudain the Whisper, tall and forbidding; Harkariel of the Crystal Fist, shining; Aimsir, one of the Darkling Twins, an angular bookend lost without his partner; Digitalis, the Winter’s Bite, lazily twirling his icy double daggers.
Where are the other three?
The light scrape of a boot behind me scrawls shivers down my back.
Hells and Harrowing! I pull Syl close to my side. Slowly, we turn…
The tip of a twilit sword brushes my throat. Behind it, Liriel’s face is grim, unreadable. “Princess.” At her side stands Alystin, the second Darkling Twin, her frosty glaive unwavering, and Vao Virago, the Day’s Death, double wintersteel scimitars wafting with cold.
We’re caught.
“You will come with us now.” Alystin’s voice is steel and ice, and before we can so much as twitch, all the Adamant Guard surround
us, wintersteel weapons bristling.
“Roue…” Syl’s fear rises with my own, but I stand tall.
Rebellious to the end.
“Stay close.” I reassure Syl down the bond, and she nods, grey eyes darting from Guard to Guard to Guard.
Head held high, I walk toward the Adamant Hall, Syl by my side.
We’re caught, but I’ll face my father with dignity.
As we enter, our footsteps ring across the threshold, echoing the wild pounding of my heart. The throne room is dark, lit only by bruised-purple fae-fire torches. Weirdly, the light leaps onto the walls, casting long shadows across the jagged edges of the Adamant Throne.
The throne is empty, but the chamber is not.
Three of the seven arch-Eld are arrayed on a raised semicircle lining the near wall and facing the massive Adamant Throne. They sit in their grand chairs and look down on me standing on the cold floor below—the hunchbacked bog-hag Mag Mucklemouth with her seaweed scraggly hair; stately Vanya Visya, the rakshasi tigress, golden clawed, her orange-and-white striped fur perfectly accented by her silk sari and choli. Quiet, serene Mizumichi, the water drake in his human form, hands folded on his katana, the koi and dragon tattoos on his forearms swimming placidly through their waves.
The eldest among us, the most powerful, their personal gramarye limitless. They are judge and jury of our people.
Only one could sentence me to death for bringing a fair Fae here.
I take Syl’s hand, folding my fingers into hers. “If we’re to be damned, let’s be damned for who we are.”
“Yes.” She leans in to me, all her support flowing down the soul-bond.
Liriel shatters the tension by stepping forward. “Behold.” She gestures to the far end of the Hall, to the obsidian dais. Upon it sits the Adamant Throne sits, a dark jewel forged of a hulking slab of adamant, obsidian, and hematite carved in the likeness of a black dragon—scales, spines, wings, claws and fangs tipped in wintersteel.
“One day.” Liriel’s voice echoes like prophecy. “One day, this will be your throne, Princess Rouen.”
My heart is suddenly slamming against my ribs, but my voice comes out steady. “On the Lunar New Year. When my father cedes the throne to me that day, as he swore he would.”
Murmurs of unrest ripple through the arch-Eld. I can’t blame them.
The throne’s been my father’s ever since Faerie split in two. I thought he would rule forever.
The Adamant King.
He was everything Dark Faerie could ever want in a ruler—powerful, capable and cunning, merciless in battle but just in judgment after.
“One day,” Alystin echoes Liriel, “you will return Dark Faerie to its former glory.”
But is it true? Could I even compare to my father at his greatest?
Do I even want to try?
Syl nudges me, sending her love and support. “You’ll make an amazing queen, Roue.”
On the raised semicircle, the arch-Eld stir restlessly, murmurs and whispers rippling through their ranks. Tension shimmers in the air as their eyes come to rest on me.
As if I’m their last and only hope.
I try not to squirm inside my skin. There’s more happening here than meets the eye.
“We need you, Princess Rouen.” Anxiety bleeds through Alystin’s composure. She looks to Liriel, who wrinkles her nose at Syl, none too pleased at a fair Fae being here, with me.
Still, she echoes Alystin’s sentiment. “All of Dark Faerie needs you.”
I sense the desperation in them, see the way they steal looks at one another, as if they are keeping a dark secret from me.
Do they know about Etana’s plot to undermine my rule?
Before I can ask, a clattering of boots echoes as seven dark Fae armed and armored in purest ebonsteel burst into the Adamant Hall. In their wake, the four other arch-Eld sweep in to take their seats.
With them comes Etana, the fiery, seductive Irish liannan sidhe, arch-Eld of all the Lamiae. Including the redcaps. As always, she’s a vision of beauty, her dark green and black gown complementing her flaming-red hair, her dagged sleeves draped just so.
Fury freezes my veins, but a tiny flame of hope kindles, too. This is the woman who sent the redcaps to hurt Syl. This is the woman I’m hanging all my hopes on.
Please let this all be her doing.
I open my mouth to call her out— “You!” —but heavy footsteps drown me out.
Oozing confidence and power, my father enters the throne room. He’s dressed in leather breeches and a black doublet trimmed in silver. The Adamant Crown rises from his brow, a single piece of carved black adamantine.
The instant I see him, all my conflicted feelings rise up, churning sickly inside me. I remember the just and powerful king, but I also remember the monster he became after my mother died, filled with rage and vengeance, lashing out in cruelty as he fell deeper and deeper to his dark self.
Which version of him will I face today?
“Rouen.” He stops a safe distance away. “You’re early.” His voice carries a hint of the judgment I remember from my childhood. This is the father I remember, the man who taught me to fight, to be cunning, to win at all costs.
The Adamant King of Old.
My first instinct is to beg forgiveness.
But no. I’m determined to control my emotions. I won’t run to him for approval, nor will I cower. I’m no longer a child. “I’ve come for the vorpal cure, Father.”
His expression is unreadable, but he penetrates my first defense by coming forward and taking my arm amiably, pulling me away from Syl. “Let us speak, daughter.” Whoosh! With his icy windwarp, he takes us to the top of the Throne’s dais. “You wish to take the crown, to rule?”
“Yes.” Such a simple word, but it conveys so much. Just being at my father’s side, raised above the rest of my people is intoxicating.
All my life I’ve struggled for his approval.
Now, the Adamant Throne is so close I could reach out and touch its cold surface. Its nearness sends reality crashing down upon me like a fifty-foot wave. I’m going to be queen. He’s going to crown me now. I just know it. Syl and I will be together. She’ll be safe. Maybe he’ll even bequeath me the vorpal blade, then I can use my own blood to cure her.
My mind’s going so wild I’m tongue-tied.
“Nothing more to say, daughter?” Suddenly, Father’s voice is edged with a taunt. He caresses the Throne’s black dragon spines, his eyes hooded. “Don’t you wish to even tell me why you need my blood?”
There’s something dangerous in his voice, in his eyes, but I can’t grasp it. Instead, I fall back on my Etana theory. “Etana stole your vorpal blade. One of her redcaps attacked Syl with it. She’s hurt.”
“I see.”
But does he? I try again. “You have a traitor in your midst, Father.”
“I know.” His eyes flash to mine, piercing.
Everything in me shouts a warning.
“You…know?” Chills shiver through my frame. I look to Syl. She’s surrounded in a sea of black, the Ebon Knights forming up around her, pikes glinting cruelly. I edge away from him, “Father, I…just came for the cure.”
He flicks his wrist. A rush of ice plumes down his forearm, coalescing into a massive wintersteel blade.
Now I know. It’s me. I’m the traitor in his midst.
He’s not going to give me the Throne. And he’s not going to let us leave.
“Seize her.” His command hits the air, and the Ebon Guard grab Syl, pinning her arms down. Blades press against her throat. She can’t move, can’t fight. One wrong twitch, and—
“No! Father!” I lunge toward Syl, but he drags me back. I’m no match for his strength. He rips my violin and bow from my hands. They clatter uselessly to the polished floor.
“Now. Sit.” His eyes are dark pools as he forces me down in the massive adamant chair.
I don’t sit like a queen on a throne. I’m a naughty child being put in a time-
out.
Shame rushes through me, and on the heels of it comes fury, cold, seething winds ripping through me. I fight against him, but it’s useless.
The Adamant King has never met his equal.
With ease, he holds me there on the throne. “Child, you don’t know what’s good for you. Being with a fair Fae…” He tsks, every inch of him the disappointed father. “You should have slaughtered her for her blood long ago.”
“I’d never hurt Syl!” I bare my fangs at him.
I can hear her now, her thoughts and emotions a bright jumble stabbing into my mind. I want to reassure her, but with the soul-bond, lies are impossible.
“I know you wouldn’t.” Father’s expression softens, though vengeance and hatred burn cold in his eyes. “That’s why I’m going to make the hard decision for you.”
“So it was you?” My Etana theory crumbles. Even now, she stands uncomfortably with the other arch-Eld, her gaze on her wringing hands. My heart breaks. I can barely get the words out. “It was you, Father. You…you sent the redcap.”
“It was. And I did.” He’s proud of it, the bastard. “You’re all I have left of your mother, Rouen. I won’t stand by while you play the rebel and defy my wishes.”
Pain rips at my heart like it’s being torn from my chest. Where is the father I remember? The one who protected me from my childhood fears, who taught me the sword and how to wield power like a royal?
I can’t believe there’s nothing left of him.
Still, Syl’s in danger. Even now, she’s surrounded by Ebon Knights, shivering from cold and the pain of her vorpal wound.
My father or my girl?
I’m trapped again, but there’s no contest.
I tap into my gramarye, feeling the electric zing of lightning opening up inside me. In my mind, I ready the notes I need—the most powerful of my power chords.
Father’s leaning over me, reveling in my pain, in Syl’s pain. “In the end, Rouen, you will do as I want.”
“The hells I will.” I take a deep breath and attack, screaming out my agony in vocals and violet lightning.
Chapter Eight
Syl
Only the ruler of a Faerie realm
Dethroned_An Inimical Prequel Novella Page 5
