The Monster Ball Year 2

by Heather Hildenbrand

  She tried to scream, only to find her voice gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  The O’Brien

  Aoibheall hit the bed, hard, the male crowding over her. Just before an opaque screen sealed the small room shut, a female darted off a nearby circular chair and joined them in the space.

  Aoibheall tried to scramble back, but her limbs went soft, useless. Her vision blurred into glassiness. She could no longer hear music, let alone the party’s deafening chatter. It was painfully intimate in the room.

  “Everything go as planned?” a female asked.

  Aoibheall couldn’t focus on the interloper’s features. Dark spots stole what little coherence she had left.

  “Easy as pie,” the male replied. “I didn’t even have to intercede downstairs.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” the female chided. “Not until it’s all finished.”

  “But you like my cock, my sweet Cordelia,” was his singsong reply.

  Tinkling laughter reminiscent of glass rose. “Focus, Vic.”

  “Your loss.” The bed creaked.

  Distantly, Aoibheall felt her arm lift and then crash down on the mattress.

  “How much did you give her?” Cordelia exclaimed. “Please tell me it wasn’t the whole vial.”

  “It wasn’t the whole vial?” Vic laughed.

  A smack sounded, flesh against flesh, ringing more crisply than anything else in the quiet cube. Aoibheall fought to focus.

  The male drugged her. On purpose.

  “The dosing is everything, you prat!” Cordelia shouted. “I wanted her sedated, but still functional. He must believe that she will survive for this to work. If not, he’ll kill us without a second thought.”

  He. He, who?

  “Funny how even a banshee can die,” Vic mused. “I want to watch as she goes. I want to know she’s in pain.”

  Another smack. “Everything can die, you fool. Including you and me.”

  Oh, Vic would perish, Aoibheall thought wildly. Did he even know he was an O’Brien? His thread was frayed and timeworn, tinged with magic and supernatural blood, but he was still an O’Brien, and the string was close to breaking. She, as the family banshee, would refuse to sing him a gentle farewell song. When she got the chance, she would scream until her throat was raw and his ears bled. And then she’d turn her focus to this Cordelia.

  “Naw,” Vic was drawling. “He ain’t killed me yet, and he has the chance every single year.”

  A huff. “Only because he doesn’t know about the curse and what we’ve done! If it gets out before we make our demands, we’ll lose. I don’t have to remind you what’s at stake, do I?”

  Aoibheall mentally pushed the puzzle pieces around. These two knew about . . . her curse? Did they—they had something to do with it? With the box? Her sister?

  “I’m not scared of him,” Vic snarled.

  “You should be, considering he continually beats your arse into a bloody pulp year after year!” Cordelia cried. “If you were a better fighter that first time, we wouldn’t have had to resort to the curse and waiting for it to mature. Annwn would have been ours ages ago.”

  Annwn. Which meant . . . Gwyn. Was he part of this?

  The bed shifted so sharply, Aoibheall nearly rolled off. Vic growled, “You shouldn’t have asked permission. The old bastard was dying, but you were stupid and asked for that windbag’s approval rather than taking what you wanted. Why you were surprised that he decreed we couldn’t wed until I could beat Gwyn in combat is beyond me. If you had listened to me and we’d done it right away, none of this would have had to happen.”

  “At the time, neither of us,” Cordelia ground out, “was powerful enough to take on Gwyn. And if he had married this bitch, they would have been unstoppable!”

  “He didn’t, though,” Vic retorted. “We made sure of that when we magicked her into believing she was talking to Nudd Llaw Ereint, and that those servants were her beloved Gwyn fucking someone other than her. Why are you whinging? The curse worked.” He nudged Aoibheall, hard. “She’s a banshee now, a nothing. So is her sister, so there’ll be no retaliation. This one,” another painful nudge to her ribs, “despises the arsehole and won’t give him an inch, just as we planned. And Gwyn believed our letter, hook, line, and sinker. Still believes she left him for someone else and was laughing at him behind his back for being so idiotic to actually fall in love. And he’s too much of a heartbroken pussy to do anything about it, babbling on about respecting her wishes and other stupid shite. Goes to prove what a crap ruler he is. No self-respecting male would ever act like that.” A pause. “Don’t fall apart on me now, babe, with just hours to go until the finish line. The crown will finally be ours.”

  Curse. Sister. Gwyn. Deception. Heartbreak.

  Magic.

  Though her vision was rubbish and she was swimming through sludge, fighting off impending darkness, Aoibheall suddenly understood it all too well.

  She’d blamed her sister and her gift for ages: for their changing fates, for becoming banshees. And Clíodhna took the blistering tirades and eventual icing out with grace, never giving up on her. Never ceasing to stay close to her, not even when Aoibheall continually rebuffed her.

  Her sister was innocent. Gwyn . . . he hadn’t cheated on her. He believed the same of her that she’d thought of him, but it’d all been a con. They’d been made fools of by these two.

  Who were they?

  Indignation flared throughout Aoibheall’s chest, wild and unchecked, burning a clear path down her veins and into her limbs. She was no longer a goddess, true, but she still had a few tricks up her sleeves.

  “I’m sorry,” Cordelia admitted after a long moment. “Sometimes, it feels impossible to hold it all in. Especially tonight. I can feel the cracks threatening to break me apart. We need to pay the curse’s price by noon! If we don’t, we’re dead, too.”

  “It will work,” Vic soothed. “Trust in the plan. Gwyn will cave and hand over power. Even though he thinks the washed-up queen played him, he’ll still do whatever we tell him to try to save her and won’t be able to do jack when she dies right before his very eyes. By sunset, Annwn will finally be ours, and the curse will have its price of life for power.”

  Aoibheall willed the pace of her breathing to detach from the thundering of her heartbeat. Each inhalation, each exhale brought her further away from the lulling velvet of obscurity.

  “I’m so tired,” Cordelia whispered. “Will I even be able to repair the magic’s damage to my body? Will you still want me, looking the way I do?”

  A pause. “All this pain we’ve gone through will be worth it, though. You’ll see.”

  “Easy for you to say when I’m the one who has been eating the magic,” Cordelia murmured.

  “You know that it had to be like that,” Vic said, and to Aoibheall, it was more a matter of fact than comforting. “Royalty, be it fae or human, can hold magic easier than normal fae.”

  Royalty? Think, Aoibheall. Who is this female?

  Outside of the rustling of fabric, it was quiet for several long seconds. Aoibheall’s vision darkened then sharpened. Next to her were a male and female, upon their knees, entwined in an embrace.

  “All these years,” Cordelia said, voice muffled against the male’s black leather coat. “I can’t believe it’s finally time.” Silvery, plaited hair draped the female’s shoulder.

  And then, Aoibheall knew. Of course, she knew. Her nightmares never allowed her to forget.

  Lustrous, pearl-hued hair, spread across a silken pillow, Gwyn’s sandy strands blocking out his lover’s face as he bent over the lissome, nude lady.

  Not Cordelia.

  Creiddylad. Gwyn’s fated mate. And she, Aoibheall, was now to be used as a weapon against him. This was a power play, and she’d spent centuries as an ignorant pawn.

  Her fingers strained to curl into claws and draw blood.

  The male cradled Creiddylad’s face between his large hands. “We’ve got him exactly where we
want him, baby.”

  “He should have known better.” Creiddylad laid her hands over Vic’s. To Aoibheall’s horror, cracks, like glazed porcelain ravaged by time, splintered across the female’s pale flesh. “Love can and will only ever be used against a fae.”

  “Good thing we only bow to power instead of love,” Vic laughed. And then his mouth slammed against Creiddylad’s.

  Seams tore and clothes scattered as the pair crashed down upon the bed. Aoibheall glanced up at the glowing ceiling, gritting her teeth. She tested her toes then her fingers and shoulders.

  If the drug Vic had given her was still present in her bloodstream, it wasn’t as influential anymore. That was the beauty of wrath, she supposed. Rage could eat away at the sturdiest of poisons and loves.

  She slowly breathed in as the couple began to rut like pigs as if she weren’t there. As if she didn’t matter.

  The ancient string tying her to the O’Brien tugged sharply.

  They made her banshee. She’d gladly play the role.

  Aoibheall unleashed the strongest, most potent, keening howl in her existence, shattering the walls buffering the room’s secrets.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pawn

  Aoibheall quickly rolled off the bed as Creiddylad and Vic tore apart. She bolted past the nearest wall’s boundary line, heels crunching shards, knees as shaky as any newborn lamb’s. Vic swore.

  Creiddylad shouted while tugging her dress back on, “Don’t let her get away!”

  The arsehole’s meaty hand clamped around Aoibheall’s bicep just as a tall, horned shadow materialized in front of them.

  Creiddylad, muttering a spell, barely made it out of the cube as a frowning, elegant woman, brow crooked, hands waving, seamlessly reformed the cube’s walls. The Proprietress, the crowd whispered as the female disappeared. As Aoibheall struggled to strip away Vic’s grip, Gwyn’s fated mate opened wide her mouth. A gleaming dagger slipped out, tripling in size as it flashed through the air toward Vic. The male caught the blade, swinging it up until it met the tender flesh of Aoibheall’s neck.

  Creiddylad’s smooth facial skin erupted in fault line cracks.

  Gwyn ap Nudd stepped into the light, his face cold and hard as his attention swung from Aoibheall to the pair with her.

  “Let her go, unharmed,” he growled, soft and barely contained, “and I’ll make your deaths clean. Refuse, and the agony will be so great you’ll wish you’d taken my offer with every remaining breath.”

  Vic did no such thing, yanking Aoibheall closer to a set of rainbow-hued stairs. The blade pierced her skin; blood trickled down the length of her neck.

  Several nearby partygoers swiveled toward them, nostrils twitching, red eyes glowing with interest. Whispers of sweet, fae blood swarmed around her.

  “Stay back,” Vic shouted when an alarmingly swift guest crossed the length of the loft in less than a second.

  The female hissed but stayed where she was. A handful of patrons gathered with her, greedy eyes comprehensive as whispered gossip took flight across the floor.

  Creiddylad darted between Gwyn and Aoibheall and Vic.

  Something hard pressed against her back, reminding Aoibheall that Vic was still pantsless. Bile surged up her throat. Would the night’s ignominies never cease? She reared her head back, desperate to catch the swine off guard, praying to hear the cracking of bone or cartilage, only for the base of her skull to bounce off of Vic’s muscular chest. Begrudging her shortness, she switched tactics, lashing out at his shins with her sharp, sparkling heels. Although they were lovely, she didn’t mind if his blood decorated them.

  The male didn’t have grace enough to pretend her struggles made a difference. Laughter rumbled in his chest.

  Her breath came in hard bursts as she continued to struggle against him. Her knees trembled. Harps and wails, she’d misjudged her condition. She must still have more of the drug in her than she’d believed. Her blistering keening, while wholly satisfying, had sapped most of her reclaimed strength.

  She refused to give up, though. Not now, not when she’d learned the truth.

  Gwyn converged on Creiddylad. The area’s temperature dropped significantly.

  “You can’t kill us here,” Creiddylad cried, arms extended, palms out. As if that would stop him, Aoibheall viciously thought. “Our hostess’ spells have ensured that!”

  The smile that ripped across Gwyn’s face erased Vic’s laughter.

  “You think there’s a spell that could prevent me,” Gwyn drawled, “the Lord of the Dead and the Hunt, from fulfilling my purpose?”

  Creiddylad shrank back until she collided with Aoibheall—who was more than happy to switch targets and lash out at the female.

  Creiddylad stumbled. Vic slammed his forehead against Aoibheall’s crown, eliciting stars.

  “Not one being at this fete,” Gwyn was saying, “not even The Proprietress could stop me. Not if it’s what I wish.” His gaze swung past Creiddylad’s shoulder, to Aoibheall, to Vic.

  “She’ll die,” Creiddylad blurted, “if you harm us. We’re her sole hope for survival.”

  Gwyn cocked his head, his eyes eerily glossy black as he regarded Aoibheall. Her pulse skipped and then stuttered.

  She should have been terrified, facing near imminent death, yet she wasn’t. All of these long years, she’d believed the worst of Gwyn, nursing a broken heart that could never heal. And he’d been tricked into believing she’d done the same to him. He was here, though, heartbroken yet ready to defend her and make a scene.

  She’d been so very wrong about him, about everything. And he needed to know that even if they only had seconds to talk before she died and fulfilled the curse’s payment.

  “It’s a lie,” she blurted, voice raw as Marmite thinly scraped across toast. “I’ll die no matter what today. Don’t bargain with them!”

  The tip of the blade dug further into her tender flesh as Vic grumbled a warning, and laughter bubbled out of her. She would not bow to this male, this deceiver. If Aoibheall were to die, it would be on her terms. She lifted her chin, daring him to finish the bloody necklace.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying!” Creiddylad yelled. “Relinquish control of Annwn to me, and you can have the banshee. I’ll save her. You two can live out the rest of your days in Éire.”

  “Liar!” Aoibheall began, but Vic quickly shifted his other arm, effectively cutting off her oxygen flow.

  She took advantage of his repositioning, kicking and whipping about, wholly committed to using the last of her energy if need be. These—these arseholes had found a way to strip her crown and divinity away. Her sister’s. They made her believe Gwyn’s feelings for her were false and did the same to him.

  She would be damned if she allowed Gwyn to lose his crown because of her.

  His eyes met hers, and she sent him a message, hoping he understood: Don’t you dare give in.

  A tick beneath his eye twitched; the line of his jaw tightened. She knew him well enough that, while unhappy, he would do as she asked.

  Aoibheall nearly sagged in relief.

  He turned to Creiddylad. “Is this your idea?” he asked the female. He lifted his chin toward Vic. “Or Gwythyr’s?”

  Gwythyr? Gwee-thir, Aoibheall thought wildly. Welsh for Victor. Vic.

  Gwyn cut Creiddylad off before she could utter a single word. “It doesn’t matter. You two have been a dark stain on Annwn since you met. A reckoning has come for breaking the treaty between Annwn and the lady Aoibheall.”

  Behind her, Vic—no, Gwythyr stiffened. Creiddylad’s hands balled into fists. “I am a daughter of Nudd Llaw Ereint! I am above the law!”

  Wait, Aoibheall thought, wheezing what little bit she could. Daughter?

  “Oh, now he’s your father? You spat on him as he died, declaring yourself free of familial bonds,” Gwyn snapped. “After he took you in and graced you with power you weren’t born with.”

  “I am his daughter!” Creiddylad howled.


  “You were a human, born after two accidental drops of Nudd Llaw Ereint’s blood spilled upon your mother’s finger,” Gwyn countered. “You were no true daughter. Still, he brought you into the fae fold, gave you a place at court. Welcomed you into the family. And that wasn’t good enough, was it? You had to have everything. You were cruel to servants and our subjects, demanding more and refusing to give back. No wonder you and Gwythyr make the perfect pair.”

  Aoibheall gasped. Family? What was going on?

  “The only reason I didn’t kill Gwythyr outright was due to misplaced affection for you,” Gwyn continued, rounding on Creiddylad. “The stars only know that Nudd Llaw Ereint wanted me to end the male. Year after year, I’ve allowed the challenge for your hand. No more.”

  “You bastard,” Gwythyr snarled, tearing the dagger away from Aoibheall’s neck to angle it toward Gwyn. “I don’t need your fucking permission to take what’s mine. I’ll kill you!”

  And then Gwythyr shoved her away, just like that. Creiddylad shouted at the male to reclaim her, but Aoibheall took the opening, bolting for the safety of the growing, nearby crowd.

  “Gwyn, they are the reason I am a banshee!” she screamed. Several partygoers drew her behind them, erecting a barrier between her and her former captors. “They are behind the curse. They broke us up! Be careful of their dark magic!”

  She had no idea if he’d heard her in the chaos. Creiddylad threw herself at Gwyn, only to find herself sprawled across the floor several feet away. Fresh cracks splintered her arms, her neck. Her very skin leached of all color, turning her into a living china doll.

  Several onlookers shrieked when they saw her.

  Gwyn easily dodged Gwythyr’s wild stabbing attempts, taking less than five seconds to grab his opponent by the throat and drag him upward until the tips of his toes dangled above the floor.

  “Spare my life, my lord,” Gwythyr gurgled, “and I will tell you everything—”