You Bet Your Banshee

by Danica Avet

  “Your guards are allies. You only have to worry about Pollard and Melosia. I can’t touch her,” he thought with an inward sneer. “She put a geas on me when I first came to her court, preventing me from doing her harm. But the rest of the guards and any supporters in the crowd are mine and our allies’.”

  “…believe she thought she could defeat me! Look at her. She’s a pathetic excuse for a banshee.” Melosia was on a roll, her voice climbing higher and higher until she was screeching. Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth, but never once did she let go of Ryvan’s hand. “A banshee who strips!” She threw her head back, laughing. “Like the whore she is, she took her clothes off for money. My Ryvan tells me you have a very special talent, Magda. I want to see this talent. Make her show me, my love.”

  My love? A nauseating thought occurred and I thought, “You didn’t—”

  “Gods, no!”

  “Tell her, Ryvan! Tell her who your queen is! Make her show my court her…trick,” Melosia demanded.

  Ryvan bowed, his perfectly composed face giving no hint at the disgusted thoughts in his mind. “I only have one queen.” He turned to me. “Queen Melosia wants you to show her the trick you learned in the club.”

  He had to be kidding. “Fuck no.”

  “I can’t believe you told her about that!”

  “My sweet, what you have is a life-changing talent.”

  Melosia, too delusional to realize Ryvan hadn’t actually said she was his queen, screamed at my refusal, “This is the female who’s supposed to take my throne? The female who takes her clothes off for money? You’re pathetic, Magda O’Quinn, and there’s no way you’ll ever defeat me! You have no powers worthy of a queen.” Her scoffing laugh echoed around the eerily quiet throne room.

  You could have heard a pin drop in the heavy silence, but I only heard a very familiar sounding mreow!

  Startled, my eyes darted around the throne room looking for my Breeze. I didn’t see him anywhere, but I knew that meow. He’d been one of my only friends for so long, I’d recognize it anywhere. Hope soared.

  “They’re in place,” Ryvan told me in an urgent tone. When I glanced at him as unobtrusively as possible, I saw his black eyes flicker to blue and back again. “Be careful, my queen.”

  * * * *

  I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but one minute I was bound in shackles and in the next, they fell open. I didn’t bother to look around for whatever benevolent soul had freed me. I leapt to my feet using the element of surprise to relieve Pollard of his sword. I shoved him to the side, trusting Ryvan to watch my back as I went for Melosia.

  With vengeance and righteous fury on my side, I leapt to the dais. Melosia’s piggy eyes widened in shock and her grip on Ryvan’s hand tightened.

  “Stop her!” she demanded of someone, anyone.

  No one moved except for Pollard. I could hear him cursing at the Red Caps, but I paid him no mind. I focused on the bitch queen who’d nearly destroyed an entire race. Ryvan stepped away from her, ignoring her grasping hands and the hurt astonishment on her face. We passed each other on the platform, our shoulders brushing. Our eyes conveyed everything we didn’t have time to say out loud.

  She must have seen something of my feelings in my face because she shrieked at me, her face a mask of hatred and madness. “Mine,” she snarled leaping to her feet faster than I would’ve given her credit for. “You whore! You think to take my throne and my male?”

  Why did I suddenly feel like I was on Jerry Springer? I gaped at the queen as she launched herself at me, claws bared. I’d been expecting more of a battle to the death by sword kind of fight, but it looked as though she wanted to claw my eyes out.

  I hesitated a moment, not sure if I should go for the win or honor, but that was all it took for her to bat the sword from my hand. She hit me like a freight train, all of her weight behind her as she took me to the ground. The breath whooshed from my abused lungs as she landed on top of me.

  What the fuck was it with people trying to suffocate me? Honestly, it was like my breathing bothered them. I expected Melosia to go for the kill immediately, to slash my throat with her claws, but she was too maddened to use the battle skills she’d gathered over the centuries. No, she grabbed my hair and started banging my head against the floor.

  I bucked beneath her trying to dislodge her, but she stuck to me like white on rice. Claws out, I grabbed the first thing I could find with my eyes filling with tears. It just so happened to be her cheeks. She seemed intent on tearing my hair out by the roots, so I dug into her face with my claws, feeling her skin curl underneath them and blood spilling down her face to drip on me.

  Her scream threatened to burst my eardrums, but I held on, reminded of Breeze with Gideon. Her hold on my hair tightened as she tried to drill my head through the marble of the dais. I already knew I’d have a concussion from this, but if I didn’t stop her, she’d flat out kill me with a lucky blow.

  My legs were still free and I tried a move I’d learned, but never mastered during my training. Years of using my lower body to keep my hold on a steel pole had only honed the strength in my legs and I used that to my advantage now. I swung my legs up, wrapping them around Melosia’s torso and put all my power behind them as I pulled her back.

  The bitch kept her grip on my hair, pulling me up as she went back, but since it left me on top of her, I didn’t care. Can we say yay for stripper poles? She couldn’t bash my head into the floor now. As soon as she realized it, she shrieked, her hands latching around my throat. Again with the strangling? These people needed to learn new murdering methods.

  I let go of her face and started punching her with all of my strength. My feet and legs, pinned beneath her substantial weight, started going to sleep, but I only concentrated on putting her down. She tightened her hands, the strength in her body evident in the way my vision started going dark.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks, splashing onto her face. She shrieked even louder, punching me in the jaw and sending me flying away from her. I landed at the base of the throne, my head cracking against an ornate leg and my back catching the edge of the marble pedestal the throne sat upon.

  I stayed down, my head throbbing from the beating it’d taken and my lungs working overtime to get oxygen. I was hyperaware of chaos taking over the court. Bodies moved and writhed in battle. The scent of blood and desperation was thick in the air, nearly choking me all over again. They were scents I remembered well from my time at court, smells I’d hoped never to breathe in again.

  “I’ll kill you,” Melosia breathed from somewhere nearby.

  I glanced through watering eyes to see her face blistered where my tears had landed. Added to the blisters were great, gaping rips in her cheeks where I’d clawed her. If I died today, Melosia would live with a constant reminder of the banshee she’d thought couldn’t cry. Savage satisfaction filled me. I’d marked the bitch for all time.

  She lumbered to her feet, her pink dress looking out of place with her bruised and bloodied face. She picked up the sword she’d made me drop, starting for me with my death in her eyes. I couldn’t move. I’d known this as soon as my body hit the pedestal. I don’t know if she broke my back, or if I was just stunned, but there would be no getting away from her until I healed, which didn’t seem likely in the next couple of minutes.

  “You think I spent centuries culling the weak from my court just to hand it over to a deformed bitch like you?” She had to shout to be heard over the raucous battle coming from the main floor. “I should have had you drowned at birth just like I had done to my children. You’re worthless as a banshee, weak and deformed. I thought for sure you’d die during your training. I prayed for it.” She neared warily, the sword held in her expert grip. “When you left this court, I knew I should have had you tracked and put down like the disgusting animal you are, just like I had your mother put down, and your grandmother when she tried to go after you.”

  My heart hurt hearing those words. I hadn’
t known Aideen had tried to come after me. No wonder I hadn’t seen her in court. I didn’t know if she’d been coming to kill me, or help me, but knowing she’d died because of this crazy bitch made me want to tear her limb from fucking lim—

  Something ominous creaked in the heart of the Wailing Court. Pressed to the floor as I was, I could hear what sounded like something massive crashing through the palace. Screams sounded below and the whole palace shook as though in the midst of an earthquake.

  “What is that?” Melosia demanded, her crazed gaze never leaving me.

  The floor beneath us shifted and she had to hold her arms wide to keep her balance. Her face was shocked. I knew the feeling because whatever was coming had to be the size of a dinosaur to move the pillars and marble floors that’d withstood thousands of years of abuse.

  “What is happening to my palace?”

  A crack formed in the dais between her feet. It split the court in two, ripping the marble open like a piece of paper. I stared, my mouth hanging open in shock. I’d never seen anything like it before in my life.

  And then I saw a leaf appear. Bright, green, and tiny, it popped up from the depths of the crack. I blinked. Okay. I didn’t understand why a leaf had found its way into the Wailing Court or how it’d cracked the marble, but it wasn’t exactly something to write home about.

  Melosia’s breaths became pants and she took another step toward me. “You did this,” she hissed, eyes sparking with hatred. “I don’t know how, but this is your fault and you’re going to pay.”

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Magda!” Ryvan shouted from somewhere in the mass of people who’d stopped fighting to watch the drama unfold on the dais.

  There was no way I was taking my eyes off the bitch who stalked ever closer to me. She reminded me of stories I’d heard as a child of berserkers, mindless with rage and filled to the brim with strength. Every step she took rattled the ground beneath us. The crack in the marble hadn’t reached this far, but I feared it would grow the closer she got to me.

  I opened my mouth, but the ground chose that moment to open up. Melosia screamed as she fought to keep her balance, the sword flew out of her hand. The crack split further the marble peeling back as though by a giant hand. Another leaf appeared and another, quickly followed by twigs. I’d never seen anything like it, but it looked like a tree was growing in the very center of the Wailing Court.

  The tree screams for blood…

  I shook my head, ignoring the way my vision swam from the sudden movement. This was impossible. Maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought and I was actually in a coma because no sooner did the twigs clear the opening than a tree pushed its way through.

  The tree surged through the crack with a groan. It was the biggest fucking tree I’d ever seen in my life. It sprouted skyward, reaching for the now-broken glass ceiling of the throne room. Shards of glass tinkled as it rained down on the people below.

  I covered my face with my arm and heard Melosia scream a loud, wailing sound of pain and complete agony. Peering beneath my arm, I saw her feet kicking sporadically until the sound of her scream died away.

  The tree gave one last loud groan and went still. Dust swirled in the air of the throne room, obscuring most of the people I knew were standing on the other side of it. I glanced up to see Melosia impaled on one of its mighty branches, her blood dripping down the branch without a single drop falling to the ground below.

  You must feed it. Gods, Crystal hadn’t been delusional.

  The leaves were the most beautiful color, a light, almost glowing green. Like Phineas’s eyes had been. I gaped at the tree, recognizing the color of the bark as similar to his skin. But that was impossible! He was dead, killed by the Host and…No, I shook my head again. It was impossible.

  I was still staring at the tree in shock when big arms scooped me off the ground, pulling me up against a chest as hard as rock.

  “Magda,” he breathed against my hair. “Gods, I thought you were…”

  “Does that tree look familiar to you?” I asked, ignoring his freak-out for now. I planned to suck it up much later, like when I wasn’t one big, aching bruise and could move again.

  “What?”

  “It’s Phineas,” Sable said as she landed next to us in a flap of wings. She glared at Ryvan. “I should kill you, you motherfucker.”

  That was sufficient to drag my attention away from the tree. I frowned at my friend whose face was bruised. Blood streaked her hands and her clothes, but she looked fine otherwise.

  “Why?”

  She poked a finger in Ryvan’s direction. “I nearly killed myself trying to catch that damn cat, not to mention what the little bastard did to me on the flight to Fairworld.” That’s when I noticed all the scratches on her arms. “Then I hauled ass to the Fairy Court to report a rogue elf who helped kidnap a banshee only to learn it was part of a plan.”

  “I couldn’t tell you otherwise Melosia would have suspected,” Ryvan stated calmly without a hint of apology. “I did what I had to for my queen.”

  The kiss he pressed to my temple told everyone within listening distance who his queen really was. Warmth invaded me at the sweet words and gesture. I supposed I could forgive him for nearly getting me killed, especially since I’d won. With the help of a tree that had somehow grown from a splinter?

  I frowned at the tree. “How did it get here?”

  We all stared at the massive trunk covered with both bright and dark green vines. It really was one of the most beautiful trees I’d ever seen.

  “Where is your tear?” Ryvan suddenly asked.

  Still staring at the tree, I shrugged. “I broke it in the dungeon in case you’d told Melosia about me crying. I thought it would buy me time if I didn’t have proof of what I could do.”

  “I do believe this is proof enough,” a musical voice called out from the crack where the tree had grown.

  A tiny hand gripped the edge of the marble. Seconds later a tall, lithe figure vaulted from the crack to stand before us. Yeah, my jaw dropped. I’d never seen anyone like her before. I knew it was Queen Tamsyn because of the power she exuded, but she didn’t look anything like I thought the Fairy Queen would look.

  She had a cap of jet black hair cut close in a boy crop that hugged her skull and an almost-feline cast to her sharp features. Instead of wearing a gossamer thin gown to go with her butterfly wings, she wore a pair of khaki hiking shorts, hiking boots with thick white socks, and a T-shirt that read “I Plant Green Things.”

  “Queen Magda, nice to meet you,” she said, holding her hand out for me to shake.

  This was the first time anyone had addressed me as queen—Ryvan didn’t count—and I didn’t know what to do, or how to act. I’d never trained to be a damned queen. I was a stripping banshee with a fat cat and a gorgeous…consort.

  “Shake her hand. She doesn’t bite, I promise.” Ryvan gave me a gentle squeeze of encouragement.

  Tamsyn’s pixie-like nose wrinkled. “Of course I don’t bite. I might shear or rake you to death, but I don’t bite. Meat isn’t really my thing.”

  Wishing I was clean and at least standing on my own two feet, I shook the fairy queen’s hand noting the calluses on her palms and fingers. Those calluses made me feel better. This wasn’t some figurehead queen who expected everyone to bow and scrape to her. She seemed…normal, for a fairy that is.

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you at last, Queen Tamsyn.”

  She smiled making her brown eyes sparkle. “Cucumber! We’ll have lunch one day.”

  She turned back to look at the tree, pressing her hand to the trunk. Puffing males climbed out of the hole, their faces red and sweaty, but their uniforms declared them as Queen Tamsyn’s guard. They carefully set up a perimeter around the tree, watching everyone in the throne room.

  “Cucumber?” I asked Ryvan because I wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

  He nuzzled the side of my neck with a chuckle. “She refuses to use
human slang and comes up with her own sayings. It means cool.”

  “Right.”

  Queen Tamsyn turned back to us, dusting off her hands. “You shouldn’t have any problem being acknowledged as queen. Besides killing Melosia, your tear grew this tree,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What?” I breathed staring at it in awe.

  I sensed banshees and Red Caps nearing us, their eyes watchful and cautious. They weren’t sure what to believe. I hadn’t killed Melosia, the tree had, but I’d fought her and if this tree was mine, then…it proved my right to the throne.

  Tamsyn nodded. Her voice rose so everyone could hear her. “I checked this tree out from the root system up. It came from a single sliver of wood. The size, breadth, and rapidity of growth all point to magic. You crushed your tear over that sliver of wood and buried it beneath the dirt. Given the amount of time it took to grow, I’d say you’re exponentially the strongest banshee I’ve ever met.”

  Ryvan gently closed my jaw, his happiness and smug, masculine amusement burning through me like a fire. I’d grown a tree from a splinter and it’d killed the evil witch, I mean queen. Ding dong, the bitch is dead.

  I didn’t know what to say, but Tamsyn’s knowing smile told me I didn’t have to say anything. She understood. “I will be available to you whenever you have need of me,” she promised in a soft whisper.

  She spun on her heel with a snap of her fingers. “Let’s go, I’ve got some honey to collect.”

  The Fairy Queen, surrounded by guards, strolled out of the throne room, leaving behind a confused, yet hopeful, silence. Ryvan placed me on the throne, holding onto me until I managed to find a comfortable spot. I didn’t really want to sit in this chair, not after it’d been tainted by Melosia, but I understood the symbolism.

  I cupped his cheek before he moved away and pulled him closer to place a soft, promising kiss to his lips. I couldn’t thank him enough for this, for helping me realize my potential and helping me achieve it.

  I felt a wave of love waft through me, filling me to the brim. I opened my heart to him, allowing that love to spread throughout my body and I returned it to him. We were bound for eternity. I knew he’d always keep me safe just as he knew I’d always drive him crazy.