by Eva Chase
She drifted forward, reaching out her hand. Every ounce of my being screamed to pull away from her, but her spell held my host’s body and my soul fast. The Darkest One’s fingers grazed my host’s thick bangs and settled against the fae woman’s forehead. She murmured a few words under her breath.
A pinching sensation ran through my spirit. I’d have flinched if I could move. The Darkest One massaged her fingertips against my host’s forehead as if drawing something loose from the skin.
I felt, with a shiver of understanding, what she was doing. She was tracing the thin cord of belonging that kept my soul connected to my body even at this distance, the one that would have pulled me back to it if I’d been able to let it.
After a moment, the Darkest One stepped back. Her shadows coiled around her gauzy limbs. She looked at the two fae who’d brought me to her, who were now standing nearly as motionless as my host in their shock.
“I need you to retrieve something for me,” she said, and rattled off an address that I had no doubt was that of one of the buildings I’d parked the blue sports car in between. “Find the body, bring it here quickly. I want it alive.”
The fae nodded with nervous jerks of their heads and swept off into the shadows around the hedges. The Darkest One turned back to me. We were alone now—well, the two of us and the dark fae woman whose soul was as frozen as mine.
“You do seem to have some sort of obsession with trying to be what you’re not, halfling,” she said, waggling a filmy finger. “It’ll never lead you to anything good.”
I’d done all right with that approach for fifteen hundred years before now, but I couldn’t open my host’s mouth to point that out.
“Uncomfortable, isn’t it?” she went on, her near-black eyes peering into my host’s as if she could see the shimmer of my spirit through them. “Being trapped, unable to move, unable to speak, cut off from the world and from your magic? It’s only been a few minutes, and you’re already hating it. Imagine spending fifteen centuries in that state, little wizard. Imagine how much you’d hate the one who did that to you by the end of it.”
Her voice had stayed cool, but a crackle like breaking ice crept into the last sentence. Oh, light save me. I could imagine, and whatever she felt was probably a hundred times worse even than that. And now she was going to take it out not just on me, but as many living things as she could.
She had me. I couldn’t see any way out of this. I had no magic without a voice, without the ability to even move. My enemy wasn’t likely to accidentally let me out of these bindings. What could I even hope for?
“So I think I’ll keep you in this state for a good long while,” the Darkest One said. “You might as well get to witness my greatest work, which I’ll be putting on even greater display now that there are so many more humans in such a small space.” She grinned. Placing a chilly hand on my host’s shoulder, she turned us toward the other end of the dais where it ended at a grassy field. A temporary stage had already been set up at the far end of the broad lawn.
“That’s where so many of this world’s human leaders will be gathering tomorrow,” she said. “And all the other humans who wish to catch a glimpse. I’ll crack open your king and watch all those mortals swallowed up, and you will watch it too. What a triumph. And it’ll only be the beginning.”
She’d given herself a front row seat with that throne. But she wouldn’t get my king. That was the best I could hope for. The fae hunters would keep him far away from here... long enough for her attention to waver and for me to get another chance?
I wasn’t sure that would happen in another fifteen hundred years.
The Darkest One stood gazing over the field in silence for what felt like a long time. The wind stirred the shadows so they rippled around her. That horrible grin stayed on her face. Was she picturing her triumph, playing it out in her head?
Fabric hissed against the ground behind me. The Darkest One shifted my host’s body as she moved to meet the arriving fae.
The two she’d sent after my body had returned victorious. They were dragging my limp figure by the arms. One of them had bound my left wrist with a strip of cloth. Drying blood stained the hand below it. But not enough. Not enough to have transformed my life’s energy into a killing blow.
“Excellent,” the Darkest One said. She motioned for them to prop my body against the nearest hedge. My head lolled. She jerked it upright and spoke a few magic-tinged words to freeze it in place the way she had my host’s.
“All right, halfling. Time for you to take your proper place.”
She spat out a phrase and whipped her hand between my host’s body and my own. With a lurch, my soul shot back into its home. The world outside swam before my eyes as the sensations of my body came into focus. Stiffened limbs, thumping heart. The acid taste of panic in my mouth. An ache on my wrist. I was just as frozen as before.
“Free,” the Darkest One said, and the fae woman I’d been riding jerked back to life like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly grabbed. She stumbled and caught her balance. Then she dropped to her knees in front of her lady.
“Greatest one, I fought her, I stopped her. I—”
“You let her take your body and use it as a weapon against me,” the Darkest One snapped.
Her hands shot out, so quickly I couldn’t tell whether they actually touched the fae woman or merely cast magic around her. The woman’s head wrenched sideways with a sickening crack of her neck. Her body tumbled over like it had when I’d flung my spell at her—except not. Because this time she wasn’t waking up.
The Darkest One swept her arm through the air. The wind rushed over the fae woman’s body and flung it over the edge of the dais into the lake. My stomach roiled.
The Darkest One wiped her hands together. “That’s done now. All we have left to do is wait. I’ve gotten a lot of practice at that. You couldn’t stop me, could you, Merlin? Not forever. Every delay comes to an end. Light fades, and darkness remains.”
No, I wanted to scream at her. My voice was locked in my throat. Was this what my efforts to protect the world from her darkness would come to? It might have been better for everyone if I’d let her draw forth her dragon all those centuries ago. One ruler destroyed, one country in chaos, instead of dozens.
But she couldn’t know the outcome for sure. The light hadn’t faded yet. She didn’t have my king.
As if she could read my thoughts, the dark fae chuckled. “Do you doubt me? Don’t you worry, halfling. The king you’ve made a fool of yourself over is coming. He’s already on his way.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The sun rose unbearably slowly, and yet far too fast. With its first gleam over the horizon on the lake, it woke me from the uneasy doze I’d managed to fall into. As its beams stretched across the park, spectators spilled into the field around the stage where the World Peace Summit would open its series of talks. The Darkest One lounged on her throne, watching them with a languid smile.
Darton hadn’t come. She didn’t look concerned, but that might be a front. Or maybe it didn’t matter to her that much when exactly she dealt out her wave of destruction.
I could hope that she’d been bluffing when she’d said he was on his way. She’d wanted to torment me, of course. She’d known that was the best way.
Or she’d been telling the truth, and he just hadn’t gotten here quite yet.
If I could have stretched my awareness beyond my body, I might have been able to determine the answer. But the spell that kept my body frozen also made a prison for my mind. I couldn’t feel anything with my fae senses beyond the boundaries of my skin.
Posh black cars started to park along the road beside the park, down near the stage. Presidents and prime ministers followed a path marked through the swelling crowd, flanked by security officers. Cameras flashed. The murmurs rose.
No one in the audience paid any mind to the swarm of dark fae just a couple hundred feet away from them. The Darkest One’s magic and their excite
ment for the event were working together to keep them distracted. She probably could have been setting off fireworks over here and they’d barely have heard a sound.
When all of the seats on the stage had been filled, the World Peace Summit’s host stepped up to its edge with a microphone. His cheerful voice rang across the field, totally at odds with the apprehension that filled my body. He grinned at the crowd, said something about appreciating their enthusiasm despite the chilly weather, stirred up a few laughs. Then he presented the first topic of conversation, and the various national leaders started to say their bit one by one.
The audience pressed closer to the stage as more people trickled into the park to join them. No Darton. No triumph. The sun shone bright and clear in the stark blue sky. Cold as I was, its beams managed to bring me a small warmth. Just for a minute, the dread that was twisted inside me began to relax.
Then the Darkest One stood up. Her head turned away from the stage, toward the downtown buildings visible over the hedges behind me. I’d have followed her gaze, but my head was still locked by her spell. All I knew was that the smile that curled her thin lips squeezed the air from my lungs.
A few of her underlings hustled over to consult with her in low voices. Their lady never stopped smiling. She motioned them away with a flick of her shadowy hand.
“Let them try. They cannot enter. When you see the one I need, bring him to me. We will keep this neat and tidy.”
A neat and tidy reign of destruction. How typically dark fae.
Every nerve urged me to move, to leap at her, to race to find my king, but of course I couldn’t move so much as the tip of my finger. The Darkest One turned her smirk on me.
“And now you see exactly what your king is made of, halfling. Or should I say, what I have made inside him. I expect all those centuries of stewing have only made it more—”
The air seemed to hiccup. A shock of electricity smacked into me with the zap of a static charge. Yelps and grunts burst out all through the hedge garden. The Darkest One merely twitched, her lips pursing. My body flinched.
It flinched—it moved! I didn’t know where that electric jolt had come from, but it had shocked me free from the dark magic that had bound me. The Darkest One’s gaze jerked to me. Before she could spit out the words to renew her spell, I threw myself down the path between the hedges.
The muscles in my legs ached from holding the same position for hours. The dark fae amid the hedges were running this way and that. I staggered among them, snatching at the sides of the hedge. The brambles bit into my hands, but twigs snapped off in my grasp.
The air had filled with a familiar hiss and crackle. The fae hunters’ weapons. They were somewhere to my right—they’d managed to launch an attack.
And Darton had to be over there with them. That thought filled my entire mind. I had to get to him before the Darkest One did.
One of the frantic dark fae noticed me running past. He hurled a bolt of dark magic at me. I dodged it, stumbling into the hedge. The chill of it seared past my temple. Ears ringing, I ducked and shouted a spell back at him. One of my twigs crumbled into a blast of light. It sent the fae reeling backward, and I dashed onward.
The sweep of electricity through the hedge garden must have dissolved the spells warding people away too. Human voices carried over the hedges. A fae hunter I recognize but couldn’t name charged into my view, zapping the dark fae in front of her with an electro-gun.
Another fae sprang at her from behind. She whirled around, only just managing to catch the spell he was whipping at her before it caught her with full force. It shattered around the stream of electricity, but the shadowy shards cut across her face. She cried out.
The three fae around her closed in. “Darkness begone!” I yelled, grasping another handful of twigs. A wave of light rocked the fae, giving the hunter time to whirl with her gun. I couldn’t stay to make sure she could keep holding her own. My king needed me more. Wishing her luck and speed, I scrambled down the next path.
Voices were hollering all around me now, human and fae mingling together. Another wave of expelled static electricity rushed over us, leaving my nerves jittering and the fae flinching backward. But it wasn’t enough to stop them. I darted around another bend in the path to see a fae hunter sprawled on the ground, his eyes deathly wide, a clot of shadow clogging his mouth.
My stomach turned. I had to find Darton. Where the hell was my king?
As if in answer, the warble of a sword singing through the air—the song of a blade in harmony with the soul that held it—reached my ears. Excalibur. And it would only sound like that when one specific person wielded it.
A cluster of dark fae appeared behind me. They propelled a surge of dark energy my way. I plunged my hands into the hedge. “Let me fly!”
My magic tossed me up and over the brambles. I landed on my hands and knees, the swing of a gleaming blade bouncing sunlight into my eyes. Darton was standing some ten feet down the path, Jagger at his left and Yasmin at his right. A stunned dark fae lay at my kings feet, but more pressed close to them.
Darton slashed out with his sword while Jagger blasted their attackers with flames and Yasmin sent out a bolt of electricity. It wasn’t quite enough. One of the dark fae’s spells smacked Jagger in the head. He squeezed the trigger of his flamethrower for one last spurt of fire, but he was already staggering backward.
I threw myself forward. “Shield him, save him,” I said, my fingers closing around my handful of twigs. A flare of light arced over Jagger’s falling body. He crumpled—unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell—but the next bolt of darkness aimed at him shattered against the shield. The bubble of light wavered. It wouldn’t hold very long against a dark fae onslaught.
“Em!” Darton dodged one spell and smashed another with a swipe of his sword. He sidestepped closer to me. “You’re all right.”
“Only relatively speaking,” I muttered, and barked out another flash of light to fend off a dark fae’s attack. “You won’t be. You’re not supposed to be here. I told them—”
I had to stop talking to cast up another temporary shield of light. Darton jabbed at a dark fae who pushed too close, and the fae flinched away, clutching her chest.
“I’m the only one who’s supposed to be here,” he said, breathless from the exertion. “I remembered—I know what I need to do. This is my battle, Merlin. It always was.”
What in light’s name was he talking about? “You don’t understand,” I said. “You can’t fight her. You have no idea how much power she holds.”
Darton let out a raw chuckle. “But I do. I’ve got it inside me. Where is she?”
“No. You’re not doing this. I’m getting you out of here.”
I reached for him, ready to pull him to me and shout the words to apparate us away like I had before. Darton pushed me back, gently but firmly. “No. I refuse. I have to do this, Em.”
“You can’t—”
Another electric sizzle washed over us and rattled the words from my mouth. Thankfully, it rattled the dark fae that were rushing at us even more. They faltered, and Yasmin took the opportunity to blast them with a much more concentrated jolt.
I gripped Darton’s arm as he swung Excalibur. My magic sent a scythe of light spiraling through the air in the wake of his attack. It smacked into the dark fae and tossed them over the hedge.
“What is that electric pulse thing?” I said, rubbing my arms. The hairs were standing up all over them.
“That thing that just hit us?” Darton whirled to face a few fae that were springing at us from the other side of the path. “Howard came up with that. It takes a while to generate enough power for the electrical field to hit the whole area even briefly. Otherwise he’d just keep it going the whole time. But it’s handy, isn’t it?”
“It might be the only reason we’re not already dead.” I snatched up more twigs and called my magic into Darton’s next strike of his blade. I couldn’t give him enough power. The dark fae stumbled
backward, but they were already shouting out more spells. I shoved my hand deep into the hedge, clasping my fingers around one of the thicker branches.
“We’ve got to hit them with everything we have,” I said. If we could knock out all the lesser dark fae, maybe I could get Darton out of here before the Darkest One descended on us. I didn’t want to abandon the fae hunters to be slaughtered. But if he could see we had a real opening to escape—
“Ready,” Darton said, bracing himself with his sword raised. I clamped my other hand onto his shoulder. I opened my mouth.
And a wave of darkness burst over us with a shuddering force. The shadow’s thrust wrenched me away from the hedge and from Darton. He tripped, clutching Excalibur as he caught his balance.
The hedges in front of us crumbled into ash as the Darkest One drifted down to stand before us.
“Halt,” she said. Her magic snapped into place around me again, holding my body rigid. Darton froze too. The Darkest One smiled and stepped toward him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Oh, ambitious human king,” the Darkest One cooed. “I’ve waited so long for this moment. And you’ve so kindly come right to me. Did you really think you stood a chance? Look at you and your wizard. You’ve got nothing that’s a match for my power.”
It was difficult to argue with that while her magic bound us, helpless, but Darton somehow managed to glare. The Darkest One snickered, amused by his anger. My lungs seized as she brushed her shadow-laced hand over his gold-blond hair in a gesture that could almost have passed for affectionate. Affection for the monster she’d grown inside him, maybe.
When her magic had thrown me away from the hedge, the branch I’d been gripping had snapped off with me. I still had it clenched in my rigid hand. Its green pulse of living energy tingled against my palm. If I could just break free long enough to say a few words of a spell...
I pleaded with my nerves, but I couldn’t convince a single twitch of a muscle.
