The guards piled in, a line of eight all wielding crossbows trained on me and Ailish, who hovered to our left. The witch studied them, half her face curious.
I’d forgotten something or left something behind, hadn’t I? I had my whip in my hand, so it wasn’t that. The guards noticed and rattled off various warnings.
“Drop the whip.”
“Get on your knees.”
Yadda yadda yadda…
Something was definitely off here. My gaze snagged on the roses, their petals engorged and weeping sweet nectar.
Emotion. I should have cared about everything happening around me, but I didn’t. The roses had taken all my emotional baggage and left me streamlined and focused. I was a blade, cold and lean. Good.
Eledan brushed dust and dirt from his tattered clothes and frowned at his disheveled state. “Well, this will not do at all.”
He gracefully swept a hand down himself, erasing the bedraggled mess of a prince and replacing it with a leather jerkin over a cotton shirt, woven with the same electric blue thread as his eyes. Not kingly, but certainly courtly. It was all illusion, a thin veneer of flawless glamour. He would fool them all…
“Ah.” He tapped a finger to his temple, and a silvery rowan crown wove itself atop his head, interlacing with his dark hair, which also wove itself into numerous braids. “Better. Now, has anyone seen my brother?”
The guards blinked.
“Lord Eledan…?” one of them finally spoke.
Eledan rolled his eyes and walked through their number, parting them without a word. “Never mind, I’ll find him myself. He couldn’t have gotten far, trapped in this glass prison.”
I followed, knowing that the only thing keeping me alive was the presence of the Mad Prince and the guards’ confusion.
“You, Wraithmaker, do not move!”
The crossbows rattled, their sights locked on my middle. I closed my hand around my whip.
“Oh.” Eledan had stopped in the doorway. “Something you should all know. I’m not your lord. I am your king. And the Wraithmaker will soon be your queen. So do lower your weapons, unless you want to test my patience and hers.”
Queen?
Alarmed, the chatty guard stuttered, “S-sire, you have been… absent for some time. The Wraithmaker’s crimes are many. It is Faerie’s wish that she be executed—”
Eledan turned and made his way between the guards once more, absorbing their slack-jawed shock like the performer he was. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder…” he sung gently.
The guards glanced at one another, their trigger fingers twitching.
He would not have control of this situation for long. I let my whip’s tails drop to the floor, where they fizzled and crackled, the tek coming to life.
“Odd, then,” Eledan said as he stopped in front of the guards’ spokesperson, “that my heart has not grown fonder of Faerie. The opposite, in fact.”
I only saw Eledan move because I’d been watching for it. He snatched the bolt from the guard’s crossbow mechanism, spun it in his hand, and plunged the arrowhead into the guard’s right eye. Blood spurted over Eledan’s face and clothes and splattered my cheek.
Ailish’s laughter bubbled around us, growing louder and louder. Half the guards ran. Those would be the ones who lived. The rest lunged for Eledan. It was the last mistake they’d ever make.
He moved with Talen’s razor-sharp swiftness and Kellee’s brutal force. The four guards fell, and I hadn’t seen how, only result. Blood and carnage lay before the prince. The short blade in Eledan’s hand, stolen during the mêlée, now dripped fae blood, but not his. He’d killed them in a blink.
Eledan turned his head. The rest of him remained still. Scarlet blood splatters stained his cheek and lips. “She killed a queen and made a king. But a god? She could not stop him.”
The words poured ice through my veins. “We had a deal,” I reminded him. “I free you, and you free Arran and the saru.”
He tossed the bloody dagger into the air, caught it handle first, and tucked it into his belt. “I have not forgotten.”
Ailish sailed ahead. “My prince, I assume you also have not forgotten your oath to the Wild Ones?”
“Of course not. Go and bid the Wild Ones to come to me. Change is here. They should see this.” He spread his arms. “All should see this.” And strode from the room.
Ailish ghosted away, her outline dissolving into mist and vanishing.
The roar of the crowd sounded down the palace corridors and grew louder with every step. Eledan’s casual pace ate up the distance until we emerged inside a receiving room and into the palace’s sharp light. Saru saw us passing, and their murmurs rose around us, and still we walked on, my heart beating fast. Now was the moment. Now was the time. The Messenger and the Prince of Dreams. We could do this. We could stop Oberon, free the saru, and change things for good.
More fae had gathered in the courtyard. Their numbers pushed at the walls and into doorways. Eledan scowled at the impenetrable wall of bodies and then diverted his attention to a spiral staircase that led to balconies overlooking the scene in the courtyard.
I followed fast in his wake, climbing the staircase up several floors. Eledan stormed through a private room and onto a balcony, needing only to snarl at its fae occupants for them to move aside. They took one look at me and my whip, recognized who I was, and fled, almost colliding with the saru who had followed us. Those saru watched us from a distance. They knew I had told the Dreamweaver to leave them be, and they knew I had saved a saru family from Oberon’s wrath. Eledan had been seeding me into their dreams for days or perhaps longer, if his words of me being his queen could be taken seriously. An understanding passed between the saru and me. I would protect them, no matter what. I bowed my head, and they touched their fingers to their foreheads.
Change.
It was so close. Victory was almost in hand.
Eledan leaned against the balustrade. The wind whipped his braids around his face, and below, fae bayed for blood and violence and justice.
Moving to his side, I saw the full spectacle unfolding. Sirius and Arran, both kneeling on the rock dais, were bound with strangling vines as a line of fae archers readied their arrows. Oberon stood to the side, looking every part the proud king wrapped in royal blues and silver thread.
“I assume the guardian is yours also,” Eledan said.
I remembered Oberon’s words and how he had known Sirius would always keep me safe. I thought of his embrace when he’d pulled me away from the window and all those times he had carried me, broken, from the hidden dungeon. I could not let Oberon kill him.
“He is mine.” I gripped the balustrade with one hand, and in my other, I still clutched the whip. Nobody saw us. All eyes were on the imminent execution.
“Ready,” Oberon bellowed, silencing the crowd.
The archers nocked their arrows.
“Draw.”
Their strings creaked, arrows poised to fly.
My heart thudded.
Arran’s pale face spoke of acceptance. He had died many times before, and perhaps there was a peace in knowing this time he would not be brought back. Sirius stared into the line of archers, into his fate. Perhaps he thought I’d abandoned him. He wouldn’t be the first to think that.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” I hissed, “do it now!”
Eledan’s living smile tilted sideways. “Brother!” His voice sailed above the countless fae.
Oberon’s head snapped up. His gaze locked on us and unguarded fury distorted his expression, twisting his handsome face into an ugly mask.
“Archers!” Oberon pointed at Eledan.
The crowd turned as one and released collective gasps at the sight of the Messenger and the Mad Prince on a balcony above them.
Eledan spread his arms. “My, my, what a wonderful sight this is. My kind salivating over the deaths of a single saru and a royal guardian. Of course, this cannot be real. No fae would be so foolish as to s
lay Faerie’s guardian. And how has a saru come to hold such power over you all?”
“Draw!” Oberon bellowed.
His archers obeyed, strings creaking for a second time.
“So, if this isn’t real, I must ask myself, what else isn’t real?” Eledan leaned over the railing. “You, Serren”—he pointed into the crowd at a fae dressed all in white—“cannot be here. Winterlands would never so much as raise an eyebrow at such foolish goings-on. And you”—he singled out another—“Dezias, why… you were always far more interested in feasts than murder, because murder is what Oberon would have you partake here. Arran, the saru, has done nothing worse than obey his masters. He did not kill the fae on Calicto.” He thumbed at me. “She did.”
Silence.
Eledan laughed into that silence, greedily swallowing the quiet. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. We all knew it. But my brother would have you think that this poor saru was the monster. He knows who slaughtered the fae at Calicto. He stopped caring when he ordered his Wraithmaker to kill our mother.”
“Fire!” Oberon barked.
The archers didn’t move.
“Fire!”
“He is Prince Eledan, sire—” an archer stammered.
“I know who he is!” Oberon snatched the bow from the archer, drew the arrow back, and let it fly. The silver streak blurred toward Eledan. I lashed my whip’s tails over my head and struck with a loud crack, knocking the arrow out of the air. It twanged against the palace’s glass wall and tumbled into the crowd below.
Through it all, Eledan hadn’t moved, hadn’t flinched, but the humor in his eyes had sharpened with deadly intent. “Afraid, brother?” he asked. “You should be. How long did you think you could hide behind your mistakes?”
“Guards.” Oberon gestured to the many guards among the crowd. “Retrieve the Mad Prince. He’s not thinking clearly and must be detained.”
The guards fought through the crowd, heading for the doorways. They would climb the stairs and be on us in minutes.
Eledan’s eyebrow ticked as he watched them pushing through the courtyard. “Did you think it would end with my convenient death?” he shouted over the rising murmurs. “It might have, had you not tricked the Darkness into silence. You and I both know the Dark always finds a voice.”
His words stirred the crowd, setting their mood back on its collision course with Oberon. The king sensed it too. He stole a second arrow from the archer nearest him and let it fly once more toward Eledan. The arrow sailed too far right. The king’s aim trembled.
“Whatever happens next, stay out of the courtyard,” Eledan murmured. Then he gripped the railing and leaped over the balcony, landing in a perfect crouch. I watched the fae part ahead of him, opening a direct path to the king.
Oberon threw the bow to the ground, took a blade from his boot, knelt behind Sirius, and cut the guardian’s ties.
“Stop him,” the king ordered Sirius.
Sirius rubbed his wrist, his tek arm glinting in the faelights. From his position on his knees, he regarded Oberon and then Prince Eledan marching closer.
Oberon backed away. “Do as I command!”
Sirius merely looked on.
“You are a Royal Guardian. You are my Royal Guardian. You will stop my brother or suffer my wrath.”
Sirius caught my gaze and climbed to his feet. “I serve Faerie, not its pretender king.”
Oberon drew his arm back, the dagger poised to sink into Sirius’s back, but Eledan blurred between them. He caught his brother’s wrist and held it, locking them together, eye to eye. Eledan said something too softly for me to hear, and shock widened Oberon’s eyes.
“I did it for you,” the king said. “For all of you!” he bellowed to his people. “You sniveling, wretched fools. While you enjoyed the spoils of my reign, I suffered for you all! Eledan is the true monster here!”
Suffered what, exactly? I leaned forward, watching my king crumble apart in front of his people, and that’s when I heard it, a distant thundering, like hooves beating against the earth or drums. More of a feeling than a sound, it rumbled through my chest and bones. It rumbled above the noise of the restless crowd and the clatter of the guards entering the balcony. I’d heard the same sound before and felt the same icy fear sink into my veins.
No, it wasn’t possible.
“Hold,” the guards barked.
I looked up, searching Night’s blanket of stars. My grip on the whip shifted, my palm wet with perspiration. The whip wouldn’t save me now. Or would it? Tek sparked along its coils.
The rumbling turned louder, as though the earth were waking from a thousand-year slumber. I stepped away from the balcony edge. I understood now why Eledan hadn’t wanted me in the courtyard. Sirius stood beside the two princes, but he wasn’t watching them. He looked up, searching the sky just like I had, because he knew what was coming.
The breeze died. The sound stopped. Pixies darted into hiding. Wisps still dallied, dancing blobs of light, and then one by one, their lights blinked out, and the shadows crept into the courtyard.
A guard snatched my arm. It didn’t matter. All this color, this fae pantomime, was about to end.
“If you know what’s good for you, get down and don’t look,” I told the guard.
He frowned as though my words were foolish.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The roar came like an enormous beast. The glass floor and walls groaned and cracked. And the roar crashed up, over the parapet walls, and fell upon us like an enormous wave of everything dark, of hungry emptiness, a destructive thing, a mad thing. My saru mind could barely piece it all together, but I knew it was a thing of great violence and thirst and want, and it was here for Oberon.
The wave of darkness pulled the fae’s screams into itself and wove them among its howling rage. The saru in me wanted to drop to my knees and hide from this terrible force like I had as a child, but I was empty and had no fear to rule me.
Shaking off the petrified guard, I leaped over the balustrade and landed among the panicked crowd. The wind tore at my hair, my clothes, my face… but it wasn’t the wind, not really. It was hands. Hundreds of reaching, clawing hands pulled me back, trying to consume me.
But I knew another thing too.
I knew the Dreamweaver.
And I knew none of this was real.
I pushed through the maelstrom to the platform. Eledan had Oberon on his knees, his smile cruel and victorious. Why wasn’t he killing him? This illusion wouldn’t frighten the fae much longer.
I charged the whip, flicked it into motion, and launched its tails at Oberon’s neck, feeling a slice of glee break through my emotionless armor.
Eledan threw his arm up, and my whip snagged him instead. The Mad Prince tugged, pulling me off balance.
“Kill him!” I pulled back, reeled myself in toward them and jumped onto the platform. “If you let him live, all of this will have been for nothing!”
Around and around us the nightmare howled.
Eledan held my glare. One hand locked on his brother’s arm, holding the dagger, the other trapped inside my whip’s coils. “He cannot be killed.”
“Watch me.”
“No.” He jerked his arm forward, the one not wrapped up in my whip, showing me his forearm. What was I supposed to see?
“The marks!” he snapped. “They hold in the dark.”
Oberon laughed, not sounding like the king I knew. He lifted his head, and his beautiful blue eyes flooded black. “You think you can contain it, brother? You think it won’t consume you as it has consumed me? It whispers… always whispers. Kill me! Make it end!” He snatched for the dagger in Oberon’s grip, but Eledan got to it first, ripped it from his brother’s fingers, and tossed it into the chaotic crowd.
Oberon’s manic laughter twisted my insides.
Eledan shook off my whip and punched his brother clean in the face. Oberon rocked, grinned, and laughed some more. The second punch sent him sprawling on
to his back.
Eledan huffed at his brother’s sprawled, motionless body and narrowed his eyes, then whirled and lifted his arms. “Oh, watch you run, dear things. How tragic that they have all forgotten the real meaning of the Wild Hunt.” He jumped down, and like a maestro directing his orchestra, he waved his hands in the air, swirling illusions to life beside him. I saw visions of beasts like those on Hapters, screaming banshees, and horrific creatures that could turn minds inside out. He had them all dancing among the courtly fae, and he started laughing along with his monsters. The fae weren’t laughing. They scattered, fleeing their Mad Prince.
“Calla…” Sirius’s metal fingers gently found mine. “Calla, come away… before he turns his machinations on you.”
I heard his monsters call out their needs and desires. Like the unseelie at the docks, Eledan’s illusions teased and tormented, luring weak minds into his games. His dreams could walk you to your death, one that would never end.
“Kesh, it’s illusion,” Sirius said. “Just illusion. Quickly, we need to leave while he’s distracted.”
He was a master of illusion, no more. He was a god…
“I will carry you if I must, but neither of us wants that.”
I lifted my head and looked into Sirius’s dazzling eyes. Had he always been so spellbinding to look at?
“Look at me and only at me,” he said. “The prince’s illusion is a good one. I do not know what it will do to a saru mind.”
I touched Sirius’s pale cheek, poking it like the little girl had. “You’re here?”
He brushed my hand away. “Unfortunately, I am the only one here who can pull you from his thrall.”
He took my hand and pulled, breaking the illusion’s hold and pulling me into motion.
“Arran?”
“Already outside.”
We passed beneath crumbling glass walls. Shards cracked under my boots. Was that an illusion too, or was the glass palace really tumbling to the ground? From Sirius’s grim expression, I guessed it was real. Saru fled out of the gates, running alongside the fae. Even if Oberon survived this, his reign as king would not. Eledan was in control now.
Prince of Dreams (Messenger Chronicles Book 4) Page 27
