Queene of Light

by Jennifer Armintrout

  He did not say anything for a long while, taking the time to straighten his robes and smooth his hair. When he finally did speak, he did not sound angry or disappointed, as Ayla expected. “I will not speak for you. If he does not know that I am to return him to the Darkworld, I will not take him, and you will have to deal with the consequences.”

  For a moment, she was tempted to reprimand him for talking so to his Queene, but it would have been ridiculous, when that was what she relied on him to do. “I will go to him tonight. I will try to prepare him.” Pain lanced through her heart. “He will be angry.”

  “He will have cause to be angry,” Cedric said quietly, and then, in the silence that hung between them, “I am sorry, Your Majesty, it was not my place.”

  “It was not,” Ayla agreed, but in her heart she knew he was right. “Do not apologize. I have made my choice, and I will, as you say, have to deal with the consequences on my own.”

  She only wished those consequences did not include sending Malachi away from her forever.

  Twenty-Three

  T he fire had nearly gone out when she came to him.

  “I had almost given up hope,” he said in the darkness, watching her move through the shadows in her bare feet. She was dressed for bed, had probably already gone through the ritual of climbing in and being covered by her handmaidens. She’d described to him the ridiculous lengths the servants of the Queene went to in order to care for her. Ayla could only sneak away when they were certain she was unconscious and would have no further needs until morning.

  “But you did not,” she said softly, coming to kneel beside the bed in the cloud of her white nightgown. “I am sorry. I returned late from a training session.”

  “Training? Learning to be Queene?” He reached to touch the soft tendrils of her hair, brushed to gleaming by the patient hands of her servants. “You would let someone teach you?”

  She looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap, and a sinking began deep in his guts. He pushed it aside to concentrate on her words. “It was not…it was training for combat.”

  “Fighting?” He laughed despite the trepidation he felt and tucked some of the fiery length behind her ear. “Do you still have use for that as a Queene? Do you not have guards to fight for you?”

  “Of course I do.” She pushed his hand away. She would say something now, something he did not want to hear. His stomach clenched when she looked up at him. “I must tell you something, and you must listen to me and obey me as Queene, no matter how you might think of me after.”

  There was no denying it, no matter how he might try to keep the conversation between them light, no matter how he might playfully touch her. He nodded, his tongue too thick for words.

  “You must go back to the Darkworld.”

  He found his voice then, and in good time, for there were many things in his brain clamoring to get free. “You will go with me.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot. I am…banishing you. For your own safety.”

  “You are the Queene! Who poses a threat to me so long as you desire to have me with you?” The anger rose in him far too quickly. Mortals were too quick to feel everything, like the panic in his chest, the pain that burned his lungs. “I will not leave here without you.”

  “You must. Cedric, my advisor, will accompany you back to Keller’s workshop. You may live there, or go somewhere else.” Her voice broke, and though she recovered it, her bottom lip trembled. “It does not make a difference to me where you will go.”

  “It does not make a difference,” he repeated, disbelieving. “You risked your life to come to me. You risked your life again to save me from your Garret.”

  “And I am saving your life now, sending you away.” She took a deep breath and looked back to her hands, worrying the hem of her gown. “Garret will meet me tomorrow morning, in Sanctuary. That is a place that we have, a sacred place. He will meet me, and we will fight.”

  She said they would fight, but the word held so much more, such a sinister connotation. “He is coming to kill you.”

  She nodded. “He is a stronger fighter than I am. Centuries older. He trained me. It is likely I will fall.”

  “Then do not fight!” He pounded his fists on his bent knees. “Come with me, tonight. We will leave here and you can forget that you were ever Queene.”

  “I cannot.” A tear slid down her face, and he knew at once that it was not her vanity that kept her in the Lightworld. “I am Garret’s mate. I will always be the Queene, and he will hunt me until he finds me and kills me. I must face him.”

  “So, you would die now, instead of later? What if he never found you?” What if Malachi found him, first? He would destroy the Faery. The torture he’d inflicted on Malachi would seem slight compared to the pain he would endure.

  She shook her head. “He will find me. Vengeance seems to be his lifeblood.”

  “And yet you laid down with this creature? You professed love for him?” It was a cruel thing to taunt her with. It did not ease the hurt in Malachi, but it did satisfy him, somehow.

  “I did not know!” Her tears came freely now. “I did not know that I could love until I woke to find that you had followed me here!”

  His frustration overwhelmed him. “You did not know that you could love, but you loved Garret!”

  “I did not love him! He represented to me all that I could have asked for with my low birth.” Her eyes searched the darkness, as though something there would make him understand. “You do not understand because you do not know what life I lived before you!”

  “You killed the creatures of the Darkworld, I know that. I do not believe that whatever your life might have been, Garret was the answer to your happiness!”

  “I was not happy!” She screamed this, and the scream died on a sob. “I never sought happiness with him. I only wished for safety, for a life better than what I could achieve on my own!”

  She tore at her nightgown until she could pull it free from her body, to pool at her feet. Her wings unfurled behind her. “Do you see this? I am a monster among my own kind! I am half-Human! I did not know that I could feel the things a Human can feel. I did not know that I would not be as cold and unfeeling as a Faery. I wish to the Gods that I were! It would not hurt half as much to turn you away if I did not have love for you in my heart.”

  To see her stripped bare, chest hitching under the force of her tears, her small body shivering in the cold of the room, killed his anger. His arms ached to hold her, to offer her the comfort Garret could not have. But he stayed where he was, hands clenched in fists. “Why do you not let me stay and fight for you? For our…” His voice caught. “For our child?”

  The word hung between them. Ayla looked away, ashamed, though it was clear she did not wish to show it. She pulled her gown back up, held it together in front of her as though it were a shield.

  “You would fight and die with our child inside of you?” If the child were a reality, if she showed any outward sign of carrying it within her, it would be more terrible.

  She made no excuses. “If I do not fight him and he overthrows me, the babe will die with me then.”

  His mind made terrible grasps at anything that might stop her, but it did not take long to realize it was useless. “And so you will send me away where I cannot protect you.”

  “Where you cannot be hurt,” she corrected, her voice dripping ice.

  “The very act of sending me away hurts me!” He stood, unable to remain still any longer, and paced to the dying embers of the fire. If he lifted one in his bare hand, he would not be scorched half as badly as her words burned him. “You have kept me here, a prisoner despite your intention, for my safety. And now, you send me away for my safety. At least here, in this horrible, lonely place, I can see you and touch you and know that you are alive! To send me to the Darkworld…How will I know if you survive this fight? How will I know if I can return to your side?”

  “You cannot return.” She met his eyes now, and hers
shone with tears. “Even if I survive. You cannot return to me.”

  This was, perhaps, the worst blow of all. She did not wish for him to return to her? “You risked your life to save me.”

  “It was a mistake,” she said, her voice trembling so that she could not have really believed what she said to him. “I broke my geis. I broke my vow to my race. It is terrible enough that I have mortal blood in me. But even if I kill Garret and keep my throne, I will not be safe to keep you. You are an enemy of my world, accidental or not. And you will never be accepted by the Court as my consort.”

  “I do not wish to be accepted by your Court. I wish to be accepted by you!” He’d believed she felt for him the way he felt for her, the same desperate need to be with him the way he needed her. That she clearly did not wounded far more than his heart. He’d been foolish in believing she loved him, and now he wished he had not.

  “You cannot be with me, Malachi!” She stood, moving faster than any creature he’d ever seen. In the blink of an eye, she was at the door.

  “Wait!” He ran at her, caught the hem of her gown as she slipped into the hallway. She halted and turned, then gripped the fabric and jerked it back.

  “Do not leave,” he begged, knowing he sounded as foolish as he felt. “You will banish me. I can do nothing but obey. You are the Queene. But stay until morning. Do not leave me like this.”

  “How should I leave you?” Her voice sounded thick and painful as it bent around her words. “If I could, I would keep you here with me. You do not believe that it is impossible. No matter how or when I leave you, you will hate me.”

  She feared he would hate her? The very thought of it was absurd. Certainly he felt anger toward her. So much anger that he did not trust himself to touch her. But no matter how her decision pained him, he could not hate her.

  Perhaps that was reason enough to begin hating her. The very fact that for the rest of his days, short though they might be in his mortal form, he would be unable to stop feeling the love that crushed his chest with each breath.

  Without another word, she turned and left him. He let her go. She was right. Even if he held her there with him, even if he swore never to let her go, he would have to. And when he did, it would pain him more than anything he’d felt in his mortal life.

  Ayla returned to her chambers through the secret passage, careful not to be observed. She worried at Garret’s commitment to the morning’s fight. It would be easy enough to send an Assassin after her in the night. She would not lead one to her bed.

  Once inside her chambers, she climbed onto the bed and pulled the blankets up. Why her servants thought she was incapable of doing this herself, she did not know. It seemed that the more powerful one became, the more one’s ability to do simple things was doubted.

  Simple things like killing the one person who’d helped her become what she was.

  Though she knew she needed rest to face Garret, sleep would not come. Over and over, she played out every memory of sparring with him in the training room, working out his weaknesses. There were none. He’d been fighting for centuries. What could her meager five years in the Guild have taught her that would help her now?

  She tossed and turned in her bed until she could no longer stand it, then rose and went to Mabb’s dressing table. Her things still lay exactly as she had left them. It was a like a tomb, and Ayla felt the ghost of the former Queene as though she stood over her shoulder.

  And then, seated before the mirror, Mabb’s shade did appear behind Ayla’s reflection.

  Ayla did not turn. If she had, the image would disappear, for no immortal’s shade would tolerate being looked at directly.

  In death, Mabb’s entire being was as icy-blue as her eyes had been in life, the twisted stumps where her body’s branches had withered fading into nothing. Her expression was not kind, nor was it cruel. She did not blame the new Queene.

  There was nothing Ayla could say to Mabb now. There had been no love in her heart for the Queene, and her death changed little. But she would not show her disrespect by ignoring her presence or banishing her from the room that had so recently belonged to her. The room that she had lived in in the hopes of being restored to her rightful kingdom aboveground. The room where she had died, beneath the cold ground. Her Palace had become her burial cairn.

  “I will kill your brother tomorrow.” She said it simply. Whether Mabb feared for her flesh and blood beyond the grave was to be seen. Whether she believed Ayla would succeed, she did not say. But the shade motioned, as if it still had a hand with which to point, to an urn on the dressing table. Hair ornaments, the sort that Mabb had worn the night Ayla had come to see her in her chambers, jutted from the top. Ayla reached for one and withdrew it. The handle, two coiled serpents, each swallowing the tail of the other, flashed bronze with emerald eyes above two long dagger blades. As it gleamed in the darkness, a drop fell from the blade and hissed against the top of the vanity.

  “Poison,” Ayla whispered.

  Mabb’s ghost nodded, then withdrew into the shadows.

  When Ayla turned, the shade was gone.

  Hands trembling, Ayla returned the dripping knife to its urn. She lifted the vessel carefully, and the sound of liquid movement testified to the fullness of its contents.

  Pulling on her robe, she hurried to her chamber door. At the other end of the hall on the opposite side, two maidservants slept, propped up against each others’ wings.

  “Wake up,” Ayla called, and the two startled to alertness. “Summon Flidais. And bring me my sword.”

  The hour had not come that would assure her victory, but a hopeful moment, at least, had arrived.

  Twenty-Four

  A Faery came in the early hours to rouse Malachi. Not one of Ayla’s guards, nor Ayla herself. A Faery taller than any of the others Malachi had seen, though still not as tall as himself, with pale hair and eyes, who looked substantially stronger than the others of his race.

  When he had stepped through the door, Malachi had woken from a fitful sleep, certain for a moment that it was Ayla returning to him, to recant all that she’d told him the night before. The disappointment he’d felt was not as terrible, in hindsight, as it should have been. Perhaps he had truly accepted their separation.

  “So, you are here to take me away,” he’d said as he’d begun dressing.

  Though he’d not expected the creature to understand, the Faery had responded in Malachi’s language, so convincingly that he’d not betrayed even a hint of the strange accent that colored Ayla’s speech. “She has sent you this,” he said, slinging a pack off of his back. “It has clothes, some money and a weapon.”

  “I do not know how to use weapons.” He pulled on his tattered shirt. “And the clothes I have are fine.” But he took the pack, anyway, and put it over his back. “You speak like a mortal.”

  “As do you.” It was the only reply the Faery seemed inclined to give him. “We must go now.”

  They moved out of the Palace quickly. The halls were deserted.

  “Where is everyone?” Malachi remembered throngs of people gathered to watch a Darkling dragged into prison by Garret’s guards.

  “Run off. They do not wish to be seen as traitors should Garret win the fight.” The Faery did not look at him as he spoke, but kept his gaze straight ahead.

  Malachi made a noise of disgust. “I thought they would assemble to watch. Your kind seem far too interested in the blood and death of others. Why are you not running?”

  The statement was intended to insult the Faery, but instead, he threw back his head and laughed. “You have a far higher opinion of our race than I.” Then the mirth disappeared from his expression. “I will not abandon the Queene when she needs my support.”

  They walked on for some time, the Faery’s words echoing through Malachi’s head. Did he believe that Malachi abandoned Ayla? That was unbearable, to be seen as a coward as he suffered for the loss of her.

  As if he’d read his thoughts as Keller would have, the
Faery spoke. “I know you do not wish to leave her, but she will have it no other way. It is a tragedy, the kind a bard could not craft half so convincingly, that she cannot accept the love of her people to forgive her such a slight sin as keeping a Darkling hidden in her chambers.”

  “I am not just a Darkling.” For the first time, this term bristled Malachi. Perhaps because Ayla always referred to him that way, that it stung him now to hear it used so casually by another. “Your kind labels all who dwell outside of your world as evil or inferior. I have made the acquaintance of a Human who was twice as good as any I’ve met in your world. Possibly even your Queene.”

  Again, the Faery took his words mildly. “Well, you will be free to return to this Human, once you are quit of our kind.”

  “Your kind killed him,” Malachi spat back, his hand fisting around the strap of the pack.

  The Faery nodded. “I am sorry.”

  They were out of the Palace, into the tunnels of the Lightworld before the Faery spoke again. “I, too, have known the Humans, long before we found ourselves below the ground. They were a good people, lawful. But you must understand that the ways of the Fae cannot be judged by man. They are too foreign, too ancient for a mortal mind to understand.”

  “I understand that Ayla loves me, that she grieves for me, but that she wishes never to see me,” Malachi said quietly. “But I cannot understand why. Perhaps your ways are not so strange because they are ancient, but because they are wrong.”

  The Faery seemed to think on this for a while, his antennae twitching the way Ayla’s did when she thought. When he spoke, it was not in defense of his race’s incomprehensible ways. “She does love you. Of that I am certain. And it is that love that drives her away from you.”

  “Because she wishes to protect me,” Malachi said wearily, the phrase repeated so often by Ayla that it had burned a groove into his mind. “She has already told me so.”