The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  “You can look at me, lad,” said Vell, not unkindly. “I’m not going to turn you into a pillar of ice.”

  “Aye, Majesty,” he said, swallowing hard as he raised his eyes.

  “How is the Princess Andraste?” the High Queen asked.

  “She sleeps, mostly,” replied Sayre. “In my humble opinion, that is not unusual as she has endured a great shock.”

  “Finding out she was an instrument of the Enemy for centuries must be a great burden,” said Vell, her eyes glittering.

  “Yes,” said Sayre. “And she remembers some things. Some from when she was…an instrument of the Enemy, and some from more recent days when her sister, the Queen, kept her imprisoned in her cell.”

  “And what else has she said about her sister, the Queen?” Vell asked softly.

  “She has not said much,” Sayre confessed. He glanced at Finnead and then back at the Vyldretning. “She has asked after Knight Finnead several times.”

  Vell looked at Finnead.

  “If you wish for me to see her, I will,” Finnead said guilelessly. “But I have no bonds of affection from which I can draw any comfort for her. It might upset her, in fact.”

  “I think that she believes she dreamed it when you did not recognize her,” said Sayre tentatively.

  “If I must see her again to prove to her that I am nothing but a Knight in the service of the Vyldgard, then I will.” Finnead nodded.

  “Wouldn’t that be cruel?” Calliea said quietly.

  “It would be crueler to let her continue on in her illusion,” said Vell with a practical air. “Is she injured physically?”

  Sayre shook his head. “No, Majesty. Healer Maeve examined her while she slept. Nothing but scars.”

  “Then it seems the Unseelie have an heir of sound body, if not sound mind quite yet,” said Vell. She nodded at Sayre. “Thank you. You may go.”

  He bowed again, and as he turned to leave he caught Calliea’s eye and gave her a hesitant smile. She returned it and he headed back toward his vigil by the bedside of the Unseelie Princess.

  “He’s good-hearted, that one,” said Vell as Liam took his seat next to her again. He put his boots up on the table and grinned at her when she raised her eyebrows.

  “Only proving the point that it is not the whole of the Unseelie Court who should be punished for Mab’s actions,” said Finnead.

  Vell eyed Liam’s dusty boots and moved the pot of khal out of danger. “Which brings us to the purpose of this council.” She slid her mug over to the other side of the table for good measure. “If Mab is amassing forces, we must be prepared. But if it comes down to it, I will strike the blow at Mab myself.”

  Liam pulled his boots from the table abruptly and sat up in his chair. Finnead went very still, his eyes stormy and inscrutable as the depths of the ocean. Calliea felt the breath leave her body.

  “And I mean that,” continued Vell. “Just me. Not you. Me.”

  “You will challenge her to single combat?” said Finnead in a low voice.

  “We have already lost too many of our brothers and sisters in war,” said Vell. “I refuse to put the warriors of the Vyldgard onto the battlefield against a madwoman when I can take up that responsibility myself.”

  “She won’t fight fair,” said Liam. “She’ll draw power from her whole Court. She’d kill them all before she’d let you kill her.”

  “She’s not going to let me do anything,” replied Vell. “I am the High Queen. I will give her a fair chance to abdicate her throne. If she does not, I will destroy her.”

  “And then?” Calliea heard herself ask. She felt a strange sense of disorientation again, just as she had after Gray’s death, just as she had after waking up that morning and remembering that she was one of the High Queen’s Three.

  “And then either Princess Andraste will take up her sister’s crown, or we will come to another solution,” said Vell.

  “What if…what if she…” For the first time, Calliea saw laid-back Liam struggling for words.

  “What if she kills me?” Vell arched an eyebrow and then grinned wolfishly. “Your lack of confidence in me would wound a lesser woman, but I am herravaldyr.” She tilted her head to one side. “I am volta and I am herravaldyr. When Beryk chose me as his partner, there were some who said that a woman could not lead as herravaldyr. There had been a few, in the distant reaches of our people’s memory, but not in any recent days.” She looked at each of them in turn. “I have always had to train harder, fight harder, and be tougher than anyone else.” Her teeth glinted as she grinned again. “Mab will be no different.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Liam looked at Vell like he wanted to say something else, but he unhappily kept his thoughts to himself. Finnead watched the scene inscrutably. Calliea felt as though she was trying to keep up in a race where the other runners had started well before her. The curve of her whip at her belt grounded her.

  “We will have the funeral pyres tonight,” said Vell.

  “We have begun preparing on the plaza in front of the cathedral,” said Liam.

  Vell pressed her lips together. “I would rather be at the edge of the City near the forest.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, given the circumstances,” replied Liam.

  “We will already have additional patrols and Valkyrie in the sky tonight,” said Calliea in agreement.

  “Here is where we are strongest.” Finnead nodded.

  “Very well. I don’t like it, but I’ll yield to the collective opinion of my Three,” said Vell.

  “Mark this occasion. It doesn’t happen often,” said Finnead in an undertone to Calliea.

  Before Vell replied, they all felt the equivalent of a knock at the small door set above the main rafter of the room, crafted especially for Glasidhe.

  “Enter,” Vell said.

  A Glasidhe messenger shot like an arrow down from the ceiling, landing neatly on the table directly in front of the Vyldretning.

  “My lady High Queen,” said the messenger with a bow and a flourish.

  “Farin,” said Vell. “Were you not with the Bearer in Doendhtalam?”

  “Yes indeed I was, Majesty, and she sent me, the Lady Bearer that is, as a messenger,” said Farin, her multihued wings flickering with excitement. “Through the Lesser Gate guarded by the golden Seelie, and now I am here to tell you of the bone sorcerer’s apprentice!”

  Vell leaned forward in interest. “By all means, Farin, do tell.”

  “Majesty, the fendhionne Molly accepted an offer from the Exiled woman Corsica to join forces,” said Farin, clearly trying not to speak too fast but still nearly stumbling over her words in her exhilaration. “With the river-stone stolen from the Bearer and Corsica’s help, Molly has become more powerful than he.” She fluttered her wings with such force that she lifted herself from the table.

  “And why does the Bearer send a messenger to tell me this?” said Vell.

  “Because, Majesty High Queen, my lady, because the bone sorcerer’s apprentice desires the destruction of Mab,” replied Farin breathlessly. Her aura sparked. “She wishes to destroy the mad queen in revenge for her torture and treatment. And the Bearer wishes to tell you that she will allow Molly to pass through the Gate, to set her against the mad queen.”

  Calliea drew in a breath, watching Vell closely even as a strange hope bloomed in her chest. She felt the same surge of anticipation from Liam and Finnead.

  “My brother went to speak to the Bright Queen, my lady,” Farin said. “And the Bearer asked that if you disagreed with this plan, to send me back directly, so that she may face the bone sorcerer’s apprentice before she steps through the Gate into Faeortalam.”

  Farin hovered before the High Queen, waiting while she thought. Finally, Vell nodded.

  “We will see what this bone sorcerer’s apprentice can do against Mab.”

  Calliea let out her breath in a slow stream of relief. Perhaps the Vyldgard would not have to watch their Queen step into
the arena against Mab after all.

  “Tell me everything,” Vell said to Farin.

  The fierce little Glasidhe warrior grinned, her pointed teeth sharpened by the light of the fire, and began to tell the Vyldretning of all that had happened in the mortal world.

  Chapter 49

  The rumble of her stomach woke Vivian. She shifted, peeling her face back from the drool-damp pillow and pawing at the strands of hair plastered to her cheek. With a low growl of annoyance at her unruly hair, she blinked and wiped her mouth as her thoughts reassembled. She froze as memory of the feather-light touch of Tyr’s lips upon her own floated to the front of her mind. For a moment, she debated whether it had been a dream, and just as she decided it wasn’t, her stomach grumbled again. She pulled the elastic band from her hair, scraped her wayward curls back into a ponytail, and stretched.

  The golden light of late afternoon outlined the drawn curtains, painting a few stripes across the floor though most of the room remained in shadow. A little shiver ran through Vivian’s body as her eyes reached Tyr, sitting in the corner across from her bed as though he hadn’t moved since she laid her head on the pillow. She felt glad that she hadn’t bothered to change into proper pajamas; anything less than the t-shirt, sports bra and shorts she wore now would have made her feel even more self-conscious. Which was silly, really, because Tyr had been sleeping in her room for weeks now and it hadn’t ever been strange or awkward.

  Not until he kissed you, whispered a wicked little part of her mind. Or you kissed him, whichever way you want to look at it, it added gleefully.

  Vivian cleared her throat and swung her feet down from the bed. Tyr stirred. She wasn’t sure if he’d been sleeping or just in his still, contemplative state that she equated to meditation. Their connection rippled a little, crackling with awareness now that they both were awake.

  “How’s your leg?” Vivian asked. She resisted the urge to fidget as he fixed her with those silvery eyes, luminous in the shadows.

  Better, he replied finally.

  “Good,” she managed. Her stomach complained yet again and she sighed. “I’ve gotta go fill up the tank…so to speak.” She glanced at her sword leaning against her headboard and thought about strapping it around her waist, running shorts be damned.

  The house is sufficiently warded to hold for at least five minutes against even the bone sorcerer and his apprentice, said Tyr. He gracefully unfolded himself from the floor. A curl of heat ignited in Vivian’s stomach somewhere in its emptiness, intertwining the demand for food with a different kind of hunger.

  I guess I don’t need my rune-stick stuck in the waistband of my shorts, she replied, raising her eyebrows.

  Tyr smiled. That is not a sufficiently secure storage place for such an important tool of your trade.

  Tool of your trade. The words sent a thrill through her. He sparked so many different sensations within her, it was hard to sort through them. She cleared her throat again and nodded. Good point. Pausing before putting her hand on the doorknob, she asked, Are you hungry?

  You should eat first, Tyr said, padding over to her desk and picking up one of the books. He’d borrowed and read nearly a dozen of her novels by this point, asking her permission before each one until she’d finally just told him to read whatever he wanted, so long as he didn’t dog-ear the pages and he put them back where he found them. His voracious appetite for books was a habit that she’d come to find particularly endearing, maybe because she was, admittedly, a bookworm.

  She brought her focus back to the present. Right. I’ll be back in a few minutes.

  He didn’t reply, a thick paperback already splayed open in his pale long-fingered hands. She ducked her head to read the title.

  “Tolkien. You’ll like that one. You haven’t read him before?”

  When they were first published, he admitted, settling down onto his nest of blankets.

  “Right,” Vivian said, reminded yet again that he was hundreds of years old. She opened the door and slid into the hallway. She must seem like such a child to him. But then why would he say he wanted her? Had he just been yearning for something, anything to make him feel beyond the stream of hurt and despair that she’d felt when he’d opened their bond? Was she anything more than a casual amusement to him?

  At first, she tried to suppress her whirling thoughts. Then, when that didn’t work, she resorted to twisting the valve of their connection closed, so that Tyr wouldn’t overhear her questioning mind or feel her prickling insecurity. It was all the emotion of a new, fresh relationship, all the feeling of being knocked off balance and out of breath with a relentless desire to do it all again. But that was stupid, because this wasn’t a relationship. She scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Be professional, she chastised herself firmly. Just be professional. He’s one of your teachers.

  You had a crush on your art professor freshman year, the little voice in her head said merrily.

  “Shut up,” she muttered. “I already have Tyr in my head. I don’t need anyone else.”

  The voice said something bawdy about her wanting Tyr in places other than her head, but Vivian ignored it. Or tried to, with middling results. Her mood instantly brightened when she rounded the corner into the kitchen. “Sandwiches,” she said rapturously.

  “Hurry an’ get the last one before Niall snags it,” advised Duke at the table. “An’ yes, these are certified gour-met sandwiches made by yours truly.”

  “What, they’re gourmet just because a man made them instead of a woman?” asked Vivian as she took his suggestion and claimed the last two halves on the plate.

  “I’m a gentleman,” said Niall, feigning offense. “It wounds me to think that you deem me capable of denying a lady sustenance.”

  “Not a lady,” corrected Vivian emphatically through a mouthful of bread and meat, pointing at him severely with the remaining half of her sandwich.

  Niall chuckled. “As Farin pointed out, Tess is no lady, she is the Bearer. I think the same applies to you. You are no lady, you are the First Paladin.”

  Vivian swallowed and said in the pause between bites, “I still don’t know if I agree with that ‘First’ title. I mean, there’ve been others. Ergo, I’m technically not the first.”

  “Very well. You are no lady, you are a Paladin.”

  She nodded. “Better.”

  “I think you set the land speed record for eating a whole sandwich,” said Duke, respect in his voice as he watched Vivian polish off the last bite.

  “I was hungry,” said Vivian. “Paladin stuff leaves me starving.” She walked over to the fridge and pulled it open, surveying its contents. Glancing over the fridge door at Duke, she asked, “Where is everyone?”

  “Tess just came in from sending Forin and Farin through the Gate,” said Duke. He nodded toward the study. “She’s in there with Luca, talkin’ to Ramel. Ross is on the phone with the station, tryin’ to figure out if they can cover her shift.”

  Vivian poured herself a glass of milk. “I mean, she’s not coming with us, right? It could honestly be business as usual.”

  “Nothin’s gonna be business as usual for a while around here,” replied Duke.

  “Other than the whole ‘fiancé coming back from the dead’ thing,” she allowed.

  “There’s a lot more that’s changed than that,” said Ross, coming out of her bedroom.

  “I mean, I’m a Paladin,” agreed Vivian with solemn dignity.

  “You have a milk moustache, Paladin,” Ross replied dryly.

  Duke chuckled and Niall turned back to the table to hide his smile. Vivian squinted and pretended she hadn’t heard Ross.

  “What was that you said? I am the most noble and stately Paladin ever to take up a rune-stick?” She struck what she imagined was a heroic pose, really just taken from a rum commercial, and then she lost her balance from holding one leg up.

  Ross snorted in laughter. “Noble and stately, that’s exactly what I said.”

  Duke had his
head down on the table, his shoulders shaking in mirth. Vivian grinned and wiped her lip with the back of one hand.

  “I don’t know what’s worse, milk moustaches or drooling when I sleep,” she commented.

  Duke put up his hand in surrender as he tried to breathe. Ross bit her lip and crossed her arms over her chest, resisting the infectious laughter.

  “It wasn’t that funny, but I’m glad to provide the excuse,” Vivian told Duke.

  He sat back in his chair and wiped at his eyes. “Ah, man, I needed that.”

  “You’re punch-drunk,” Ross said accusingly.

  “Well, I can’t be whiskey-drunk right now, so I guess that’s gonna have to do,” replied Duke, his eyes crinkling as he staved off another round of laughter.

  “You’re impossible,” said Ross with a note of affection in her voice.

  Vivian rinsed her cup and placed it on the drying rack. “So why did Tess send Forin and Farin through the Gate?”

  “To send messages to Titania and Vell,” replied Niall.

  “Okay…what messages?” Vivian leaned against the kitchen counter. “What’s the plan? Are we going after Molly? Is Luca going to behead the bone sorcerer in righteous vengeance?”

  “White Wolf willing, I will do just that,” said Luca as he and Tess emerged from the study. Ramel followed close behind them.

  “Oh, good, everyone knows their entrance cues.” Vivian grinned. “I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.” She tilted her head as Luca regarded her with his wolfish gaze. She wondered briefly if his lupine abilities allowed him to sense that she and Tyr had kissed, but that was ridiculous. Even if he was bonded to a wolf, he was still a man. A huge, blonde Viking god of a man, but still, don’t be ridiculous, she told herself.

  “I concur with the plan,” said Ramel, the late afternoon light gilding his copper hair with red sparks.

  “What plan?” repeated Vivian, looking at Ramel, back at Niall and then at Tess.