by Shae Ford
“They don’t listen, for one thing. When they’re not giggling, they’re asking ridiculous questions. And they touch my hands.”
“How awful of them,” D’Mere said dryly.
He glared at her. “It is awful. I don’t like to be touched. How in Kingdom’s name am I supposed to teach them anything if I can’t move my fingers? It’s an absolute waste of my time.”
“Perhaps it’s not the piano they’re interested in.”
She sounded exactly like Lysander. He swore up and down that Thelred had a way with women — and if that were true, he would gladly give it up. “They’re far more trouble than they’re worth, always mooning over everything or crying about something. They’re too noisy.” He tapped the piano’s keys. “This is the only sound I enjoy. Why is that so difficult for everybody to understand?”
D’Mere shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll find someone who enjoys it as much as you do.”
“Oh? Have you ever found someone who enjoys killing as much as you?” Thelred snapped. Had he not been so exhausted, he might’ve thought to regret his words. But he didn’t — and it wasn’t as if his fate could get any worse.
D’Mere laughed before she turned to him and whispered coldly: “No, I haven’t.”
Thelred tried to lean away from her … but she followed. Something glanced across her eyes as she came closer, an authority that froze him to the bench. Her hand slid beneath his chin and her thumb brushed against his wound — the mark her dagger had left behind.
Her lips were warmer than he thought they would be. He’d been expecting them to feel scaly and cold, like a serpent’s flesh. But they moved against him softly. Her touch was gentle, her presence completely changed. For the moment she kissed him, it was easy to forget she was D’Mere.
For a single, heart-pounding moment, she felt like … someone else.
“What was that for?” he said when she released him.
D’Mere’s eyes tightened at their bottoms; the ice returned. “Nothing. You reminded me of someone, is all.”
“Someone you loved?”
“No,” she laughed again, “I wouldn’t say I loved him. I wouldn’t cheapen it like that. But he was the only person I ever met who was truly good. Not everyone is content with what they are,” she added with a distant look. “Some of us long for what we wish to be … for what we can’t be.”
For the first time in days, Thelred didn’t notice the crashing of the boulders or the thudding of the ram. The world fell quiet as he tried to understand her. “What happened to him?”
She didn’t answer. She stared at the walls as if she could see through them.
“D’Mere?”
“He died, of course. All good men die. And how many times have I got to tell you to call me Olivia?” she growled. “Countess D’Mere is gone.”
Thelred was about to ask her what she meant. But in the moment he paused, he realized something … strange. He wasn’t just imagining things: the world really had gone quiet. The ram didn’t beat and the floor stopped shaking.
The guards dragged themselves up and stared down the hall — as if they expected to hear the keep doors rattle again at any moment. But they didn’t.
“Go,” Thelred said when they turned to him. “Get closer and see if you can hear what’s happening.”
No sooner had they gone than the twins appeared. Left had his sword drawn and Right wore a quiver across his back. There was a bow gripped in his hand. His fingers traced the fletching of a nocked arrow — one that had a drenched piece of rag tied around its head.
They didn’t speak a word, but D’Mere must’ve been able to read them. “They’re here? Good,” she said when they nodded. “Remember, there’s no guarantee that he’s crossed with them. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky. So don’t fire unless you’re certain you see him — and I mean it,” she barked at Right. “Killing his army won’t do us any good. He’ll just raise another one. We’ve got to stop him.”
Right grabbed her arm, brows tight above his eyes.
She jerked from his grasp. “If his army takes me, you’ll just have to follow. Don’t try to fight them and whatever you do, don’t let him see you. Your moment will come.” She turned to Left. “I need you to lock me inside the chancellor’s office — make it look convincing. Then you’ve got to find someplace to hide …”
Thelred didn’t have time to wonder what she had planned. If Greyson was about to break through the doors, he had to warn the guards.
He limped for the hallway — only to be nearly flattened when someone else charged out the other side.
“Thelred!” the guard gasped, righting him before he could fall backwards. “You —”
“No, don’t worry about me. Get everybody away from the doors. Midlan is about to break through!”
“I don’t think so, sir. I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Midlan’s screaming,” he whispered, his eyes ringed starkly. “They sound like a monster’s just washed into the harbor.”
Thelred couldn’t contain his grin. He couldn’t believe he’d ever doubted. If Midlan was screaming, it was because the pirates had set upon them. They’d be free by evening. “Wake everybody — have them ready to fight. We’ll push back from our side.”
The guards did as they were told. When they reached the doors, Thelred heard the screams for himself. There was the thudding of panicked footsteps across the bridge, the screech of steel against armor — the occasional splash as a body tumbled over the rails. But beneath all that rose a noise that stopped his heart.
It was a sound he recognized: a mash of roars, grunts, and gurgling cries drawn sharply against the dawn. They were sounds no man in his right mind could make — the call of monsters with deadened eyes. He’d heard them once before, back in Gilderick’s castle.
Not even the agony of his severed leg had been able to dull the horror of their maddened shrieks. They’d filled the floors to their mortar and the walls to their seams. Thelred lay frozen upon a musty bed while Lysander watched through a cracked door.
“I’ve never heard a giant make a sound like that,” he’d whispered.
It was only after the battle was won that Kael told them about the Fallows — Gilderick’s army of soulless men who obeyed every fleeting thought his mind possessed. They’d carried him off into Whitebone, that day. The giants hadn’t been able to stop him.
And now, it seemed that he’d returned.
“Get away from the gates!” Thelred cried, just as the world beyond went still.
There was a half-moment when the guards froze and the shrieking fell silent — when Thelred’s breath sounded as if it could fill the entire castle. Then all at once, Gilderick struck the gates.
It was a single, resounding boom — the noise of his entire army throwing itself against the door at once. Cracks bloomed from the marks the ram had left behind. They raced from the gate’s bottom to its top, splitting wider with every passing second.
Bones crunched against the wood; red oozed from between the cracks. The hinges groaned in agony and the great plank that held the doors sealed began to moan.
“Get back!” Thelred said again, shoving the nearest guard towards the hall. “Get back!”
His yelling seemed to startle them from their shock. They tore away and began sprinting for the main room. Thelred followed at a hop, bellowing orders over the top of the gate’s protests:
“Get to the upper levels! Barricade yourselves in and don’t come ou —”
Boom!
The doors gave way and Thelred watched, horrified, as an army of soulless men tumbled inside. The ones closest to the gates had been crushed to death beneath the force of the others’ push: a bloody mash of giants, desert folk and forest men. A wave of gold-tinged soldiers poured in behind them. But though they still bore the King’s crest, these soldiers were no longer a part of Midlan.
They stomped over the top of their companions’ shattered bodies — their stark white eyes peeled open, their lungs filled wit
h shrieks.
Thelred didn’t remember starting to run. He forgot to be careful with his leg and tore for the stairs. The last of the guards had just made it around the corner. If he fought, they might have time to hide.
He spun at the foot of the stairs and drew his cutlass. A desert man lurched at him. Festering wounds marred his features. He bared his teeth like a wolf, his overgrown nails stretched for Thelred’s face.
He didn’t seem to notice when the cutlass bit through his middle. In fact, he pulled the blade in deeper — clawing for Thelred’s throat. The sword was lodged between the Fallows’ ribs. He had no choice but to try to kick him away.
In the second it took him to force the desert man off his sword, his wooden leg bore the full weight of his body — and it was too much. The wood cracked again, and Thelred stumbled to the side. A giant swiped him away as if he was no more a threat than a gnat.
The wind left his lungs and the world shook when the cobblestones bit his head. More footsteps thumped towards him. He knew if he didn’t move, he would be trampled. Thelred dragged himself beneath the stairs — digging his fingers into the mortar lines, trying to blink through the blood that ran into his eyes.
Pain seared his ribs, a fire that burned down his side and stabbed him with every breath. Black smudges swelled across his vision and tried to drag him into the darkness. But he fought them away.
The Fallows were searching for something. They slung the tables aside and ripped the chairs apart. Thelred bit down hard upon his lip when they reached the piano. Had his ribs not been screaming, he might’ve been sick at its cries for mercy. He might’ve groaned along with its final notes.
It wasn’t long before Gilderick’s army found the guards. He heard the shattering of a door above him and the Fallows’ excited shrieks. His lungs burst when the guards cried out. From his throat erupted an inhuman sound. His fury swelled so mercilessly against his ribs that the black spots overtook him.
For a moment, he was blind — a sightless creature, its limbs twisted about its body in pain. His ears felt as if they’d been poured full of some warm liquid. Something churned within them and forced all noise into a high-pitched ringing. He thought the liquid might be his soul trying to claw its way out, the sound of its final cries. And his fear jolted him back into the present.
Someone gripped his hair. His vision was blurry at first but sharpened quickly upon a set of deadened eyes.
The eyes belonged to Greyson. All of the taunt was gone from his features. His mouth hung open and his tongue lolled as he twisted Thelred’s head by the roots of his hair. The stark orbs pitted inside his skull sloshed from one side to the next — as if he could only see from their edges.
“No,” a calm, slimy voice hissed from just beyond the reach of Thelred’s vision. “This one’s maimed. He isn’t worth the trouble. Find the Countess!” the voice cried suddenly. “Drag her from whatever hole she’s hiding and bring her to me!”
His command shocked the Fallows into frenzy. They burst in every direction and trampled anything that got in their way. Greyson shoved Thelred down, and his head struck the cobblestone with a hollow thud.
“She’s here — she must be here!”
Thelred tried to be calm. He twisted his head ever so slightly and saw a giant crouched beside him. The giant’s skin was so filthy that it’d become the color of dirt. His white mat of hair had yellowed. The few teeth left inside his gaping mouth were rotted — little more than blackened chips clinging to swollen gums.
But the most frightening thing about him was the creature he held in his arms.
A pair of emaciated legs hung from the crook of one elbow, and a greasy mop of lank hair draped down from the other. The hair clung limply to the sides of a man’s face — a man so thin, and with eyes so dark and glistening that it could have been none other than Lord Gilderick, himself.
“Find her!” he shrieked again, stoking the Fallows into a rage. “Tear the castle apart, if you have to. Do not stop until she’s found.”
All at once, the noise in the hallway burst into a roar. Every Fallow spun from his work and tore off towards the chancellor’s office. Some leapt from the balcony: Thelred’s stomach swam when he heard the sickening crunch of their legs snapping and their ankles giving way. But they lurched on with bones sticking out of their flesh, their deadened eyes fixed upon the hallway.
It wasn’t long before they found D’Mere. There was the sound of another door bursting loose, some excited shrieks. Then Thelred’s blood chilled at her scream: “No! I told you to hide, you foolish child! I told you to hide!”
But Left must not have listened.
Thelred grit his teeth against the frenzied shrieks and the noise of steel biting flesh. Left must’ve fought hard: when the Fallows returned, many of them bore the marks of his sword. One staggered under the loss of blood before his body crumpled, dead, in the middle of the floor.
They dragged D’Mere in by her arms, but Left never returned … and Thelred had a feeling he never would.
Though D’Mere looked uninjured, her face was like stone.
“Yes, bring her to me,” Gilderick said, reaching out with a set of spidery fingers. “Bring her —”
“No!” D’Mere cried.
Her eyes shot to the balcony and she screamed for him to turn back, but Right didn’t listen. He flung his bow and arrow aside, drew his sword and leapt from the rails. He landed atop one of the men who held D’Mere, snapping his neck. His teeth were bared and his eyes shone with fury as he sliced through the man who held her other arm.
“Kill him! Don’t let the Countess escape!”
Right had D’Mere around the waist. He managed to sprint a few steps before the Fallows descended upon him. He swung until he lost his sword in the body of a giant, and then he swung his fists. He kept himself between the Fallows and D’Mere — snapping necks, breaking teeth, shattering bones. He fought like a wild animal for a few gut-wrenching seconds before the army overtook him.
“No!” D’Mere cried again as they dragged him down. Though she snarled, her eyes shone like glass. Thelred watched her lips twist to form the words: You fool … you fool.
The Fallows raised their fists, balled like hammers above their heads, and brought them down in a deadly rhythm. They seemed to pound for an eternity. Thelred couldn’t close his eyes, he couldn’t cover his ears. The wet noise of flesh meeting stone overtook every other sound in the hall; the dark red puddle that seeped from between the flailing bodies engulfed his vision.
When Right’s boots stopped twitching, Gilderick waved the Fallows aside. “Enough. That whelp won’t trouble us again. Now …” his black eyes slid to where D’Mere had collapsed, “bring me the Countess.”
Thelred didn’t know what was about to happen, but he knew he could do nothing to stop it. His wooden leg was shattered and useless. He would be dashed to bits the second he rose. He was trapped once again, forced to watch while Gilderick carried out whatever horrible torture he had planned.
D’Mere, for her part, didn’t look the least bit concerned. She stared Gilderick down as the Fallows dragged her closer, her eyes burning and her fists clenched to white. There was anger on her face, perhaps even hatred. But one thing he’d expected to see wasn’t there at all:
There was no surprise.
All at once, Thelred realized what was happening. Her words twisted inside his head and the truth spilled out before him. D’Mere wasn’t surprised because she’d known that the Fallows were coming. Gilderick was the him they had to stop. And after seeing the way he’d devoured Greyson’s army, Thelred understood why.
If Gilderick escaped the island, his rule would be worse than any Duke or King: he would consume the entire realm with his madness.
Thelred sank back, his heart pounding. He knew he had to lie still. He couldn’t catch Gilderick’s attention. No matter what happened, he had to stay conscious. He had to survive just a little while longer. The Kingdom had to be warned.
But when the Fallows dragged D’Mere into Gilderick’s reach, it was all he could do to stay calm.
One of them shoved D’Mere onto her knees, while another wrenched her head up by the roots of her golden-brown hair.
“Open your eyes, Countess,” Gilderick hissed. “Open them!”
She didn’t flinch under his screams. If anything, her shoulders straightened.
“Fine.” Gilderick’s voice went deadly quiet. “If you won’t open them, then I’ll peel them open myself. Bring me closer.”
The giant who cradled him leaned forward. One of Gilderick’s spidery hands reached out —
“Gah!”
It happened so fast Thelred almost didn’t see it: D’Mere ripped a dagger from beneath her collar and lunged for Gilderick. The Fallows shrieked at his cry and clutched their arms. The one who held D’Mere struck her hard in the side of the head.
Thelred had to bite his lip when her body fell limply to the floor. He choked on his screams, let his fury pound inside his skull. Don’t move, he thought to himself. Don’t move, don’t —
“Don’t kill her, you fools!” Gilderick moaned. The spidery hand shook as it reached out, stained with red. “She missed — I’m barely scratched. Now get her up, get her up quickly! Hurry, before her light fades.”
A desert man pulled D’Mere up by her hair and brought her face to Gilderick’s. Her features were hidden — drowned in a dark, sticky red. Thelred watched her hand for any small movement, any twitch of life.
But he saw none.
After a second of gazing into her eyes, Gilderick laughed. “That’s it? That’s all it is? Well then, that should be simple enough.”
D’Mere moaned softly. Thelred couldn’t hear what she said, but it made Gilderick’s lips twist into a horrifying grin.
“No, Countess. That whelp destroyed me — he stole everything from me. While I was lost inside the desert, rotting beneath the sun, there was only one thought that kept me alive: that I would either have his mind, or have him dead. Your marvelous poison will make all of that possible. Once my army wields the mindrot, it won’t be stopped. I couldn’t have done it without you.” His hand reached out and brushed down her darkened lips, mixing her blood with his own. “I didn’t want to kill you, dear Olivia. It’s a shame you chose to fight me … then again, you’ve always been a bit too soft for my tastes.”
