by Eva Chase
I pleaded with my nerves, but I couldn’t convince a single twitch of a muscle.
The Darkest One spun around with a sweeping gesture. All of the hedges between us and her throne crumbled away. Bodies lay scattered on the ground between the ruined brambles. Most of them were human forms. The dark fae edged closer, watching eagerly.
The Darkest One waved her arm again, without even looking at us. Her magic propelled our frozen bodies forward. We drifted along behind her as she stalked back to her throne. She stopped us with a sharp gesture when she was standing in front of it. Then she turned, her fathomless eyes glittering amid the shadows that formed her face.
“Watch and know how useless you are, little wizard,” she sneered. She stepped right up to Darton. My heart wrenched so hard it might as well have burst out of my chest. The Darkest One raised her hands—
And another wave of static electricity shot across the hedge garden.
The spell binding us shivered apart. I leapt at the Darkest One, my muscles coiled, the branch clutched in my hand. Darton brandished his sword. I whipped my arm around, ready to dredge up every shred of magic I could find in my body. But my hand jerked toward Darton.
In my panic, I’d forgotten the oath. The itch of it surged up through my arms and clawed over my tongue. Kill him, kill him before she takes him. A spell sputtered over my lips. My fingers clenched tighter around the branch as they jabbed it at his chest.
I closed my eyes and jammed my teeth down into my tongue. My feet tangled under me. The taste of blood, sharp and metallic, flooded my mouth. My body kept hurtling toward my king—until the Darkest One smacked her fist into my skull.
I staggered backward, reeling from the blow. Pain filled with dark sparks of magic radiated through my head. The oath dulled, but so did my mind.
The Darkest One loomed over Darton again. He backed up, holding Excalibur between them. She flicked the tip of the sword’s blade with fingers trailing shadow and laughed.
“You think too highly of your halfling abomination’s work, soon-to-be-fallen king. Do you really think this little sword can hurt me?”
Darton hefted the sword over his head. Just as he had all those centuries ago when he’d faced our greatest enemy for the first time. When I’d given him that memory through my eyes a week ago, he’d commented that the angle had looked odd. Now, seeing it as I struggled to set my thoughts back in order, the shape of his stance suddenly made sense. Oh. No. No.
I opened my mouth to form that protest out loud, to throw whatever spell my addled mind could produce between the two of them. But right then Darton glanced at me. My king’s soul shone back at me through his eyes. The way he’d looked at me yesterday when he’d told me he’d loved me. Utterly.
Always.
I stopped, understanding washing over me. This was his battle. I’d tried so hard to fight it for him, but he’d seen the full picture for what it was.
Darton shifted his gaze back to the Darkest One. “No, I don’t,” he said. “But the sword isn’t for you. It’s for me. Me and my dragon.”
Confusion stuttered across the Darkest One’s expression. Then her eyes widened.
My king heaved his sword in a downward arc and plunged it into his chest.
The Darkest One shrieked. She snatched at Darton’s body as it crumpled, as if she thought she could catch his life before it left him. And maybe she could have, if all my king had meant to do was end that life.
But it wasn’t. A shadow plumed around the blade where it protruded from his chest. The wind whipped up over the dais, shoving me back. It whirled the shadow larger, faster, wings spreading, claws extending.
The dragon swelled over the entire hedge garden, casting its darkness across the lake and field as well. The icy chill of its presence pierced my skin. The audience around the platform scattered. Screams and frantic babbling filled the air.
The Darkest One threw her hands toward her creation. “You are mine,” she hollered. “Mine! You will obey my commands. Destroy them!”
She pointed at the field, but the dragon born of my king’s sacrifice swung its massive head toward her. Its eyes glowed like hot coals in its vicious face as they fixed on the fae woman who had once been its master. Its jaws yawned open, revealing a row of gleaming fangs.
The shadows clinging to the Darkest One shuddered with what looked like panic, but she refused to believe she’d lost even that close to her end. Words in the dark fae tongue spilled over her lips. She whipped her arm, and a wave of shadow careened from her into the beast. The power of it rasped frigid over my skin.
The dark magic washed right through the dragon’s enormous form without so much as a quiver. The beast flapped its wings with a gush of cold wind and slammed its jaws down over its creator.
The Darkest One’s last screech vanished with her into the beast’s mouth. Nothing but a few wisps of shadow remained, settling like dust on the dais.
The dragon roared, a thundering sound that reverberated right through to my bones. It swept around toward the Darkest One’s underlings, who were standing around us motionless and gaping. As it dove toward them, they snapped out of their daze. The dark fae rushed away in its wake. But the dragon was too fast and huge to outrun. It snatched up one here, two there, in its fanged maw.
I heaved myself toward Darton. My king lay slumped on his side, blood pooling beneath him. I clutched his shirt, tears burning in my eyes. Not a hint of breath stirred his chest. Grief surged up from my gut to my throat, choking me.
“You stupid sodding idiot,” I told him. The tears spilled out, streaking down my cheeks. I moved to bury my face against his body, but a sudden heightening of the screams across the park made me raise my head instead.
The dragon had finished with the dark fae in the hedge garden. With no more of our enemies left to devour, it appeared to have reverted back to the Darkest One’s whims. It was soaring toward the stage and the fleeing crowd beyond it. Smoke streamed from its nostrils. A flap of its enormous wings shook the walls of the stage.
My work here wasn’t done. I swallowed down my grief and shoved myself to my feet. I had to finish what my king had started. It hadn’t been only my battle, but it wasn’t only his either.
I picked up the branch I’d dropped in the chaos. It wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Gripping it with both hands, I reached inside me to the thrum of life energy flowing through my veins. All of it, all of it, if I needed to. What did it matter if I lost decades? I’d been granted plenty of life already. The people the dragon meant to consume had barely gotten one.
“Creature of darkness!” I called out. The energy I was gathering inside me pitched my voice high and hard. It split the air.
The dragon veered toward me. A quiver of recognition rolled off of it. Of course it knew me. We’d met more than once in Darton’s soul. We might as well be old friends.
“Darkness must be consumed,” I said. “The only darkness that remains here is you. Swallow yourself, swallow it all. Fulfill the purpose you were tasked with.”
With those words, I flung all the magic I could gather toward the beast. It tore from my limbs and chest like an uprooted tree. Pain lanced down the center of my body. I staggered, barely able to breathe. Yeah, that had been at least a couple decades right there.
The spell hit the dragon. It shuddered and lashed its tail. As I sagged to my knees beside my king, my gut clenched. Had my effort been enough? I reached down into myself again, right to the core, ready to pour every last shred into my next casting.
The dragon whipped its tail back and forth again—and caught the tip in its jaws.
My own jaw went slack as I watched the creature chomp down. It tugged and snapped, pulling even more of its own body into its maw. The wind whirled around it, pulling tighter. Its glowing eyes flared. It started to spin with the wind, coiling in on itself. Its mouth opened and caught its hind legs with its fangs.
It wrenched itself even more sharply around, until it looked like little more tha
n a blurred ball of shadow. I lost sight of its limbs and wings in the haze. Its body undulated and contracted. It whirled faster and faster, shrinking so fast now that the air shrieked. Then, with an awful sucking sound and a wallop of wind that made my ears pop, it was gone.
I sagged over Darton’s body, all my strength having fled my own. His face was still warm under my hand. I gazed dizzily down at the wound on his chest, the blood streaking the blade I’d enchanted fifteen hundred years past. One thought broke through the roar in my head.
He wasn’t the only one who could be a stupid sodding idiot. I’d sworn I’d save him, and damn it, I would, with whatever life I had left.
I wrapped my arms around his still form and kissed his cheek. “I love you,” I murmured in the first language we’d ever spoken to each other, the first language I should have said those words to him in. But there wasn’t any time left to regret that. I closed my fingers around Excalibur’s hilt and dragged it from Darton’s chest, wincing at the renewed gush of blood. Then I rolled him onto his back and pressed my lips to his self-inflicted wound.
“Live long and well,” I ordered him. With the last bit of energy in my limbs, I pushed myself to the edge of the dais. The lake’s water lapped the shore beneath me.
“For my king,” I said, and tipped myself over the edge.
My body plunged into the frigid water. Some distant part of my brain woke up with an urge to save myself, but my body was already too exhausted to fight.
The water closed over me. My vision hazed. As the liquid seeped into my lungs, my awareness drifted away from me to the body still lying on the dais. To flesh knitting and sealing. To a breath rasping down Darton’s throat. I’d given my sacrifice, and the light had accepted it for my king. A smile crossed my face.
Then the blackness took me.
Chapter Thirty
Pain. Hard and heavy, slamming through my chest. Air choking my throat.
My lungs heaved. Water spewed out of them, searing up my throat and over my tongue. I coughed in short, hacking bursts, and wretched again.
Everything hurt. My muscles ached. My rib cage throbbed around my still-stuttering lungs. A sharp jab of a headache needled my temples.
My eyes blinked open of their own accord. A face loomed over mine, blurring and then coming into focus. Darton’s. Flushed with exertion, his shoulders tensed. Blue sky above him. My fingers clenched and found soft grass between them. The breeze shifted, and a shiver rippled over me. Wet fabric clung to my chilled skin from shoulders to feet.
“Where’s that blanket?” Darton said, his hand jerking toward someone behind him. His blue eyes never left mine. A second later, he was spreading a stretch of knitted wool someone must have handed him over my shaking body.
“Em,” he said, touching my cheek. “Em, can you talk to me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I dragged in a shudder of a breath. My lungs protested at being put to use, but the fog in my head cleared slightly. “Yes.” My voice seemed to scrape my already raw throat. I winced and tried again. “What happened?”
Another face appeared beyond Darton’s. Jagger. He was holding his arm at an unnatural angle, his expression tight with pain, but he was alive. “What happened is Darton dragged you out of the lake and gave you the most impressive performance of CPR I’ve ever seen. How you ended up in the lake in the first place, I’m not so sure.”
CPR. “He has a badge for that,” I said inanely. “Boy Scouts.” Jagger just gave me a puzzled look, but a smile flickered across Darton’s face.
“If you remember that, you mustn’t have been too far gone.”
“Enough to make sure you weren’t a goner,” I muttered. I squirmed but failed to maneuver my body well enough to push myself upright. Darton eased his arm around me and helped me sit up.
People were milling around the field in apparent confusion. As you’d expect when a massive magic dragon had just terrorized a major city park and then eaten itself. A few of the other fae hunters were standing nearby, patching up wounds and eyeing Darton and I cautiously.
I was alive. The fact of it hit me out of the blue, as if it hadn’t already been obvious. I’d sacrificed my life for my king, and he’d brought me back in turn, in his own way.
“You know,” I said, tugging the blanket tighter around me, “I’m pretty sure we can only get away with something like this the once. No second chances.”
“I think I’m okay with that,” Darton said. “As long as there aren’t any other hugely powerful fae enemies you’ve just forgotten to tell me about.”
“Enemies, no. People I’ve generally irritated... Let’s not start counting.”
Darton chuckled, with an abruptness that seemed to surprise him. He snapped his mouth shut, but his smile remained. He traced his fingers over my forehead, brushing damp strands of hair back from my face. His gaze softened.
“You know,” he said, “when your hair’s wet, you really do look like him—like you. The first you.”
When he’d made that observation before, it hadn’t led to quite the reaction I’d been looking for. But the same question tumbled from my mouth anyway.
“Do you like that?”
Darton’s smile tightened. My pulse skittered in a sudden panic. Then I saw him blink his eyes, hard. It wasn’t a lack of emotion that was making him pause. It was too much of it.
“I do,” he said roughly. “I like you every way you could possibly look. As long as you’re looking back at me.”
The tension seeped out of me. In that moment, I’d have been perfectly happy to snuggle into his warmth for the rest of the day. But I had the feeling this wasn’t quite the place for it. Still, I could sneak in a quick cuddle before we had to haul ass back toward home.
I leaned into him, nestling my head against his shoulder. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. You’re my king, and I’m your wizard. You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Three months later
My saber glanced off my sparring partner’s blade. He parried it to the side and jabbed his saber toward me. I dodged the blow, distracted him with a quick feint, and landed a tap in the middle of his chest.
“Point!”
He chuckled. “You’re too fast for me.”
“Hmm. Maybe you just got too used to having a magical sword that did half the work for you.”
Darton pulled off his fencing mask with a grin. “I suppose that’s possible. You’ll just have to beat proper discipline back into me. Some other day. Lucky for me, practice is pretty much over.”
I rolled my eyes at him, and then lifted my own mask and did it again so he could see me this time. The gesture didn’t stop Darton from stepping closer and leaning in for a kiss. The brush of his mouth against mine sent a rush of heat through me, still as potent as the first time we’d locked lips last fall.
Coach cleared his throat. Darton pulled back with a sheepish smile that provoked just as much of a flutter in my chest as his cocky grin before. Seeing Coach’s expression, I decided not to give in to the urge to kiss that smile too. We had plenty of time for kissing—and whatever else we felt like getting up to—outside of practice.
Darton caught my hand to squeeze it, and we parted ways to our respective change rooms.
When I emerged from mine a few minutes later after a hasty change into street clothes, I found Keevan and Izzy waiting in the hall. They were talking to each other, their heads leaned close in conversation.
Izzy gave me a little wave when she saw me. Her hand stayed tucked around Keevan’s elbow. He beamed at me. He’d been beaming at pretty much everyone and everything since they’d gone on their first date back in December.
“What’s up?” I said as they strolled over.
“Oh, I borrowed a book from Darton that he said he needed back for some assignment.” Keevan held up the book in question, which from the title was some sort of legal text. “Figured I’d stop by now. Ah, there’s
the man I’m looking for.”
“Hey!” Darton said, coming out of the change room. Keevan gave a little bow as he handed over the book, and Darton accepted it with a grimace. “Don’t you start.”
“Just giving you the respect you’re due, Your Highness,” Keevan said with a wink. I had a feeling it was going to be years before he ran out of king-related humor.
“We were going to grab some dinner at that new Italian place just off campus,” Izzy said. “Did you two want to come with?”
“Not tonight,” Darton said. “Priya’s coming over so she and Em can have their weekly cooking extravaganza.”
“And I’ve got about a million assignments to get through.” I made a face. “I’m still getting back in my professors’ good graces after skipping out for all those weeks. Maybe we can hang out sometime this weekend?”
“Definitely,” Izzy said. “I’ll text you.”
Keevan slung his arm around Izzy’s waist as they ambled away. Darton and I set off in the opposite direction. He shook his head. “I’ve got to say, I never saw that coming. The two of them getting together, I mean.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “It took you fifteen hundred years to figure out your own feelings. I’m going to have to say picking up on chemistry is maybe not your forte.”
Darton made a non-committal grumbling sound and took my hand, twining his fingers through mine. “I figured it out in the end. That’s got to count for something. I just don’t see why he told you and not me.”
“Ah, well, that’s where you have to realize that he didn’t so much tell me as I dragged it out of him. But it wasn’t that hard to see.”
As we crossed the courtyard, my gaze caught on a scrap of floating darkness that would be hard to see, for anyone on campus except me with my fae-touched sight. I tugged Darton to a halt and palmed one of the few twigs I tucked into my pockets every morning.
The dark fae had left us alone since we’d bested the Darkest One. Now that the dragon was gone from my king, Darton wasn’t useful to them as a tool. Without their mistress urging them on, I suspected they valued keeping their own lives over seeking possible vengeance. Few of them had lived long enough to have met her more than a couple days before her demise anyway. And since the spell that had bound her to our lives was broken, the glooms didn’t have any interest in Arthur’s soul either.
