by Olivia Hart
Only two were crushed as they continued to move in and out like wolves. Over and over again, they cut into the massive creature. Then, instead of stomping, he gripped a building by the roof and pulled the entire thing over. It crushed his toes, but it also crushed all of the men who’d been attacking him.
In a second, my entire group of soldiers was dead, and the giant gave one more bellow before stepping out of the rubble of the building. I took cover as he passed, shocked by what had just happened.
When the giant had passed, I glanced at the place where my men had died. I saw limbs sticking out from under boulder-sized pieces of stone. Bloodied and still, my men were dead.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for just a moment as I tried to calm down. This was war. This was what Sebastian and that Frank Russo had tried to explain. The thing that you couldn’t train. Even after being a soldier for most of my life, I’d never seen anything like this.
Explosions continued to fill the air. Screams of pain. Screams of anger. The clang of metal on metal. The sounds of war were nothing like training. I’d killed men. I’d seen men die. I’d thought that I’d been prepared, but this was nothing like what I knew. This was a slaughter.
Those men, my men… They’d been doing everything right. They’d been doing everything they’d been trained to do. And it hadn’t done any good. They were still dead. In a second, a hundred men had died, their lives snuffed out like candles in a heavy wind.
But the battle wasn’t over. I still had to take the palace. I still had to find a way to support Queen Rose. If Rose could defeat Seraphina, then she would take the field and support the troops. That would end the battle. I’d seen what she had done against the entire assassin’s guild before she even understood her powers.
When I opened my eyes, I began to run. I needed to find more men. We needed to make sure that this road was clear all the way to the palace.
Chapter 38
Rose
The screams could be heard even in the very center of the palace. Hundreds and thousands of people were dying, and none of it mattered. The only battle that truly mattered was what would happen here in this place. Me and Seraphina. That’s why I wasn’t out there supporting our soldiers. If I spent my power on that instead of Seraphina, we could still lose. Only the fairies could do anything against her, and she would burn them all to win.
The goblins immediately moved to the doors without making a sound. Mist covered our boots silencing our footsteps. Both goblins nodded, and they opened the doors. “Which way?” Sebastian asked.
Embrys let out a bit of smoke. He’d vowed that he wouldn’t fight, but he could still help. I tapped into the smoke and saw my mother’s bedroom. She was leaning against the door, her hand on her heart with tears streaming from her eyes.
A loud boom shook the palace, and I wondered for just a moment what it could have been, but then we were moving. As we approached the door to my mother’s suite of rooms, the goblins held up their hands silently.
They pushed us backward, and I knew now what had happened. She wasn’t in her room anymore. Somehow, she had realized we were here. Silently, I pushed the goblins behind me. Embrys moved out of the way.
Shadows rose around all of us except Embrys. Shields that would move with us. I didn’t know how much good it would do, but maybe it would dampen her magic.
Then I heard a noise. Not my mother. Someone younger. Someone crying. I turned to look behind me at the door that led towards my old room. My attention was immediately drawn back to the door to my mother’s rooms when Sebastian snarled.
Queen Seraphina walked out of the hallway leading to her rooms wearing the same clothes she had worn two weeks ago. Blood still clung to them. Her blood from where I’d cut her with my dagger. Her hair hadn’t been brushed in days, and the once beautifully straight icy blonde hair was tangled into knots so terrible that she would have to cut them out.
Tears still streamed down her cheeks making channels in the dirt that covered her unwashed face. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and her nails were ripped and torn, many of them bleeding as well. She didn’t notice the injuries, and so her magic hadn’t healed them.
She grimaced as she walked into the Throne Room, but as soon as she saw me, she began to cackle. Her voice was gravelly as though she hadn’t had any water in days, and there was no question now. She was truly insane.
“The Dark Queen comes again,” she said with a sneer. “Decided to save me the trouble of finding you and your abomination of a husband?”
“Yes. It’s time that we ended this once and for all,” I said with a snarl. Shadows expanded out from me, wreathing everything in darkness.
I felt a tap on my elbow, but I pushed backward. I didn’t have time for whatever the goblin wanted. All of my focus needed to be on my mother.
“I nearly killed you last time. What do you think will be different this time?” she asked casually, her face twisting as though she were in pain.
My daggers appeared in my hands, forming from shadows. “I didn’t know you were as strong as you are. Now I do.”
She smiled and raised her hand, electricity jumping towards Sebastian and me, but we weren’t there anymore. A goblin took a lightning bolt to the chest, and he fell to the floor barely breathing. I couldn’t think about them. “Get away. You can’t help,” I said as I rolled, dodging another bolt.
Sebastian vanished as the goblins raced away, dragging their fallen companion with them. I threw my dagger, and it stuck in her chest. She didn’t seem to notice it, though.
I knew that it was draining her, but how fast? Sebastian reappeared behind her and threw his dagger. It connected with her shoulder. She closed her eyes, and her shield began to expand, something I’d never seen her do before. Sebastian vanished as the wall of lightning came closer.
I focused all my power on creating a wedge of shadow in front of me. Then, just as I had done to make shields before, I turned it to stone and hid in the alcove. The lightning passed me, and I turned the alcove to shadow as I charged my mother.
Instead of becoming afraid, she began to laugh as she lifted her hand. I rolled across the floor as Sebastian appeared behind her. His dagger came down, driving into the back of her head. That would have killed any fairy. Even me.
But, instead, she reached behind her and gripped Sebastian’s wrist just outside the shadow shield. He began to scream as his body shook, lightning pouring through him. Smoke rose from him, and if he’d been anyone else, I would have thought that he was dead.
In a flash, I leaped towards my mother and stabbed her through the eye. She stared at me with the other one as her lips grew into an even wider grin. She grabbed my arm as well, and as I stared into one insane eye and one gory hole, I realized that there was nothing we could ever have done.
She had pulled so much power into herself that even the obsidian daggers would never be able to kill her. No matter how many times we stabbed her or drained her, she wouldn’t die.
She had become a god.
And we were merely Fae. I felt the electricity begin to course through my body. Pain. Pure, unadulterated pain ran through my body. All the iron in the world couldn’t compare to the fire that raged inside me as it burned me from the inside out.
I could smell my flesh burning, and I was sure that at any moment, I would catch fire. In that moment, I knew that I was going to die. Tears fell from my eyes as I looked into the horror that had become my mother’s face, the sadistic smile warped into a grimace.
And then I felt Risna inside me, giving me strength. “Be strong. All is not lost,” the voice whispered in my mind.
I reached out my hand, trying to will the blade stuck in my mother’s chest to appear in my hand, but it wouldn’t. I couldn’t focus enough. Agonizingly slowly, I reached up to the dagger still stuck in her eye and ripped it free.
With all the strength left in me, I swung the dagger at her wrist, and the pain stopped as I fell to the floor, the dagger cutting throu
gh flesh and bone, separating it from her and sending it across the room.
All the pain was still there, but it was healing. Slower than I’d have liked, but it was happening. I watched as my mother’s eye healed in front of me, rebuilding itself from pure magic. When it healed, all that told the story of her wound was the trail of blood that ran down her face like crimson tears.
Then, her hand began to grow back. She let go of Sebastian who slumped to the floor unconscious. My mother looked down at me and began to twitch, her hand rubbing her breast as she grimaced.
Whatever happened to take her focus off me ended, and she raised both of her hands towards me once again. Risna was wrong. I couldn’t move. I could barely think.
No, there was nothing that I could do to stop my mother from killing me and Sebastian and causing the death of the entire Immortal Realm. I felt the tears continue to fall, but they weren’t for the thousands that would die. They weren’t even for me or Sebastian.
My hand went to my stomach and I closed my eyes. I pictured my baby as I always had before. A little girl playing at the cabin I’d grown up in. Long brown hair like me, covered in leaves and grass as Sebastian and I chased her. She was screaming in excitement as he caught her and tossed her into the air. A beautiful scene. One I would never get to experience. Then, I said the only thing that mattered.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough to keep you safe. I love you, and I wish I could have seen your face. I wish I could have shown you the world, to have shown you the love I have for you. I’ll always love you though. Even when the void takes us, I hope we never have to be apart.”
Chapter 39
Talek
Pain shot through my leg as a crossbow bolt struck my hamstring. I snorted and continued to run, spear and shield in hand towards the last remaining line of soldiers blocking the way to the palace.
My rider was dead, killed by a fairy. The fairy had died almost immediately afterward, clawed to death by a harpy. I glanced to my sides and saw the grim look on the last of my centaur battalion. We would not survive this charge.
The dwarves behind us would, though. That was what mattered. They would clear the path to the palace and secure it. Then the fairies would do what they could to help Rose against Seraphina.
But the dwarves would never break the line the elves had made without us. I took a breath and silently thanked Rose for not allowing Kasia to come with me into the battle. My foals needed a mother. I thanked Rose for letting me live these few months with my mate, for letting me see my foals, for letting me remember that there were still things worth fighting for.
Still things worth dying for.
I held my shield out as I’d been taught so many years ago. Just enough so that when I hit the elf with it, that there would be a cushion. I looked into their eyes and saw fear. They knew that they were going to die. Just as we did.
The world seemed to slow down just as we were about to collide, and I gripped the spear tighter. I had said my prayers. Now it was time for blood and death and tears.
Everything happened in an instant. My shield connected with the elf in front of me. My spear went through the neck of the one behind him. A pike struck my hindquarter, but it wasn’t hard enough to break through the plate barding I wore, and it glanced off.
Another pike struck me in the chest, and I felt the air get sucked out of me. I knew it had punctured my lung, but I continued to run. This was what I was made to do. From birth, I’d known that I would die running into a mass of enemies. I hadn’t known it would be here, and I hadn’t known it would be now, but I’d known what the scene would be.
As I struck out with my spear, again and again, I felt myself tiring. Pike and sword hit my shield as I continued to run, forcing the elves in front of me out of the way. I couldn’t breathe, but I pushed on.
Pain filled me, but the pain was nothing. As my vision began to blur, my spear continued to strike into the mass of troops. My legs didn’t stop moving, crushing limbs under me.
But my mind lost track of the battle. Everything was instinctual, and time slowed once more as the color of the world faded. A strike to my front legs slid between the barding and connected with my leg.
I fell, crashing into the troops below me, and I stopped. Finally, after years of suffering, after years of training, I could finally stop. The pain faded, and I closed my eyes as the battle raged on above me. I pictured my mate on the day I saw her again after our year apart. Kasia, looking more fierce and beautiful than I could remember.
Her silver hair streaming in the wind as she ran to me. My beautiful children running behind her. The way she had felt when the dream had come true. Like everything in the world was perfect.
I would never see them again, but I had done what I could for them. I hadn’t fought for Rose. I hadn’t even fought for the Dark Realm. I’d fought for them. I’d fought so that my children would have a world to grow up in. I would always fight for them.
And now I could go to the void and run in the fields with no end while I waited. I would see my mate again, and we would never have to sacrifice again. We would never have to hurt again.
We could find peace finally. I would wait for her there.
Chapter 40
Rose
Lightning left my mother’s hands, and I waited to feel the fire burn through me before I cut my bond to the Dark Realm. I would not burn the Dark Realm’s magic in a fight I could never win.
But I didn’t feel the fire course through my body. Instead, I heard a roar like never before. My eyes snapped open, and I saw Embrys standing in front of me. Lighting striking him continuously.
“Rose.” The word came from a voice that couldn’t be there. A voice from a ghost. I turned to the doorway that led into my old suite of rooms and saw her.
Amra. Covered in burns.
“The Dark One,” she said, weaker than I could ever imagine her. She was only able to stand because two goblins held her up. I immediately thought that we could teleport out of here. Then we could retreat. I shook my head. No. We would never be able to get this close again.
I looked up at Embrys. Even he couldn’t take this attack for much longer. “I’m sorry, Amra,” I said.
“No. The Dark One. She said to use my gift and her gifts. Bring him here.”
Then the voice that had haunted me filled my mind. Let me talk to your mother, Rose. Please.
Risna had died, and she had come back. She could go to the void. I closed my eyes as Embrys roared once more. Risna was here already. I reached out, connecting to Risna and Amra with silver threads, and I knew what to do.
Holding up my hand, smoke rather than shadow crawled up my arm. Slowly, it spun, creating a vortex. Then I felt him. A man I thought I would never see again. I smelled him. That beautiful scent of a campfire.
The vortex opened up revealing a blackness, and my father stepped out of it. He looked just as I remembered him. Wild black hair that was cut short. Dark eyes. A smile that I saw on Sebastian when I poked him hard enough.
And he spoke, “Thank you, Rose. I’m so sorry for everything. It’s time that your mother and I talked.”
My mother, Queen Seraphina, saw my father and immediately stopped attacking Embrys. Her hand went to her breast, broken nails scratching at herself as she began to scream. She fell to her knees, her eyes never leaving him.
Risna appeared beside her, and I witnessed her do something that I had only seen her do in visions. She put her hand on my mother’s shoulder, and I knew that my mother was feeling all of her emotions stronger than ever before.
Then my father approached her. The only man she had ever loved. The only man who had ever warmed the frozen heart of hers. He kneeled down, and he took her hand in his. She immediately stopped screaming, her eyes opening wide.
“Nicolai,” she whispered.
Chapter 41
Seraphina
I stared into his eyes, and I knew them. Not as a torturous voice or a vision that caused only pain
. I knew him from before. From his touch. The touch that had thawed my heart.
All of the memories flooded me as though I’d never given them up. The day we had met. The night we’d bound ourselves together. The day we’d fled the Immortal Realm. The day we’d held Rose.
The day he’d died.
“You can’t be here,” I whispered. “You died. I saw it. I felt your soul ripped from mine.”
“Yes, my love. I died. I died so that Rose could be the woman she was meant to be. I died so that the Dark Realm could live. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t take you with me.”
It took only seconds for me to realize what had happened, how I’d become that terrible person I’d been before I’d met him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I looked at Rose. As I looked at my daughter and realized everything that I’d done to her.
“But you’re here now,” I said with a smile. The tears of pain became tears of joy as I looked into the eyes of the man that I’d missed so much for so long. “We can be happy again. Me and you. Forever.”
But he frowned. I saw tears well up in his eyes, but they weren’t tears of joy. “I can’t stay here, Sera. I died, and the dead can’t come back.” He turned to the portal that Rose had created. “That can’t stay open, Sera, and it won’t close until I walk back through it.”
“But, my love, I can’t live without you. Look at me. I’ve done everything wrong. The pain is too much. Please don’t make me live with that pain forever.”
He shook his head, and he leaned towards me, one hand going to my cheek. Then he pressed his lips against mine. It felt so right. So perfect. Just like all those years ago.
