by Lily Archer
“Captain?” One approaches, a bloody slash on his face.
I tap on my sword, the pain immediately showing in Tavaran’s gasp. “All soldiers must leave my lands immediately.”
“Go! Retreat, I said!” Tavaran leans his forehead against his ice prison.
“But, Captain—”
I turn to him. “You only live because I allow it. Would you like me to change my mind?”
His face pales. “I—No. We will await your orders beyond the barrier, Captain.” He turns tail, leaving Tavaran to his fate.
“Look upon your death!” Grayhail rides up on his mount, his warhammer held high. Valen follows close behind.
Ravella rolls her eyes and stows her blades before seeing to the nearest wounded.
Gray jumps down and rushes toward the last of the summer realm soldiers.
“Gray, they’ve retreated.” I send a harsh wind that pushes the stragglers through the shimmering barrier.
He turns to me, disappointment in every corner of his deep frown. “I didn’t get to slay anyone.” Glancing past me, his glower lightens. “But you’ve got one left. One for me.” He strides up, and Tavaran’s brows rise high as he takes in Gray’s hulking body and thick warhammer.
“Valen, help the wounded.” I gesture toward the fallen winter realm guards.
“On it.” He kneels and begins to pull healing magic from inside him that casts a green glow on the muddied snow.
“Now, Tavaran.” I cross my arms over my chest. “You’re going to tell me what this is about in very specific terms.”
He spits blood onto the ice. “You killed our noble and stole the changeling. I’ve come to retrieve her.”
“Queen Aurentia sent you for Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“You spoke with her?”
“No.”
“Who told you to attack us?”
He cuts his gaze to Gray who is doing some practice swings behind me. One hit with his warhammer, and the ice and Tavaran would be nothing more than pulp.
“We received a message from Byrn Varyndr. It was from the queen.”
“Tell me what it said.”
He pauses for a moment, but another test swing by Gray loosens his lips. “It said the changeling stole a stone from the royal treasury. A soulstone she wears around her neck. And …”
“And what?” I twist my sword. “I tire of your withholding. Spit it out, Tavaran.”
“And the queen had a vision that if I allowed the changeling to reach the winter realm, the summer and winter realms would fall.”
I don’t like the sound of any of this. What does Taylor have to do with the realms falling? “What else?”
“Nothing else. That was it. When I learned she’d already crossed, I came to try and retrieve her. Not to start a war.”
I shake my head. “Invading my lands—for whatever reason—was going to start a war. You’re a military captain. You know that.”
“It was that or let both our realms fall.” He grunts in pain.
Unease settles in my gut, the same odd sensation I had only moments before, but stronger this time. I send out a feeler to Taylor, running a piece of my consciousness down the bond between us. But instead of sensing her on the other end, I feel nothing, as if the link has been cut. My heart goes dark, a howl echoing in my mind. My mate.
“Gray, keep Tavaran prisoner. Valen, heal him. Thorn, guard the crossing.” I pull my sword free of Tavaran and lift off the ground on the winter wind. “Ravella, I need you back at the camp.”
Gray laughs at Tavaran’s agonized groan, then asks, “Where are you going?”
“My mate. Something’s wrong.” I don’t have time to explain. Every second is precious where Taylor is concerned. The wind rushes me over the dark trees and snowy landscape as I try to reach her, to feel her beating heart and clever mind. But I can’t. Please, Ancestors, don’t take her away from me. Not now.
The camp appears just ahead, the fire down to embers and foreboding on the air. The scent of fresh blood hits me, and I howl, the feral strong within me.
“Where is she?” I yell before my feet hit the snow. Para’s head lies on the ground, her body nearby, and Beth sits with Gareth cradled in her lap, his blood seeping out and staining his tunic. Worry turns into terror, filling my heart with fear for both my mate and my best friend.
Beth sobs. “He took her. Cenet. And Para stabbed Gareth in the back. He won’t wake up.”
Ravella appears beside me. “What the—”
“Get Valen. Now.” I kneel next to Gareth and inspect his waxen face, then the wound that cuts through his gut. Ravella sends Gareth a worried look before disappearing again.
I press my hand over the bloody rip in his skin.
“Save him.” Beth turns her teary eyes on me. “Use your magic. Please, save him.”
“I can’t.” I keep pressure on the wound, using a little chill to try and slow the blood. “I don’t have the gift of healing. Never have.” My eyes sting as I stare down at the greatest friend I’ve ever had. We’ve been through so much. I can’t let him pass to the Ancestors, not like this, not from a traitorous blade through the back.
“Someone has to save him.” She strokes his white cheeks, her tears dropping like rain onto his dark hair. “Please.”
“Where did Cenet go?”
She shakes her head. “He put Taylor to sleep, then carried her off.” She juts her chin to the side. “That way. But he said something when he took her. He said that her father wants to see her.”
“Her father? That’s impossible. Her father is dead. She said he died when she was a small child.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice crackles as more tears well. “That’s what he said. Her father. I don’t know any more than that. Except.” She blinks the tears free so they roll down her cheeks. “Except I saw him. Without the Vundi scarf. And he had a symbol on his neck. It was a—”
“Twisted tree?” I grit my teeth.
“Yes.” She sniffles. “How did you know?”
I lean my head back and roar to the rising sun, my despair and anger mingling into one vicious sound that shakes the trees and promises swift vengeance on the king beyond the mountain.
3
Taylor
The scary fae doesn’t release his grip on my arm as I stumble into the pitch blackness at the back of the cave. Leading me through an arch, he turns to the right and winds deeper into the rock.
“You’re the king beyond the mountain.” My words barely make it into sound, and my hands and feet are like ice.
“I’m the king. Yes.” His tone is even, his voice deep but silky.
“I’m not your daughter,” I blurt.
He laughs. My skin crawls.
“Come now, Taylor. Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Taunting and ugly, the words wrap around my throat, constricting it. “Of course I’m your father. That mating mark on your shoulder doesn’t change anything. The pretender on the winter throne doesn’t have a claim on you. Not like I do. We’re blood, after all. Besides, don’t you like being a princess?”
“My father died.” I cringe when his wing brushes against my back. “And I’m not a princess.”
“You had a human on earth who thought he was your father.” He leads me into another cavern, this one decorated like a swank house that’s fallen into disrepair. Guards stand along the walls, but there’s something wrong with them. I look at the nearest one, but he doesn’t look back. He can’t. His eyes are white, covered over with some sort of cataract. Where there should be a nose, there’s only a gaping hole, and I can see his yellow teeth through his cheek. When his head turns toward me, I jerk back.
“Dead.” I clutch the stone at my throat as I look down the row of guards, each one rotting and grotesque. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“The dead can be quite useful.” The black fae leads me deeper into the room even though everything inside me is screaming that I should run. A huge fire burns to the right, t
he jumping flames a deep purple. He leads me up wide, stone stairs. A white throne comes into view at the top. No, not simply white.
I stop. “Is that bone?” Delantis’s words bubble up in my mind. “On wings of death, the child will glide to sit on her throne of bone.”
“You like it?” He smiles though there is no joy in it. “It’s a favorite of mine, something that is as unique as it is effective.”
“Yeah, it really ties the room together.” I force myself to climb, because I’m afraid he’ll drag me if I don’t.
“Was that humor?” His dark eyes cut to me.
“N-no?” I don’t know what answer the monster wants, but I’m almost certain humor isn’t allowed here.
“I’m not devoid of amusement, daughter.” He tsks. “When you get to know me, I think you’ll find I can be quite humorous. Though I admit, my sense of humor might be a bit … dark.” He smiles with his fangs showing. They’re crimson at the tips. Stained. From blood?
My steps falter, and I cry out for Leander again. As I feared, the dark fae wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me up the rest of the way.
A large black pillow rests at the foot of the throne. He sits on the bones, a set of skulls lined up behind his head, and points at the pillow. “Sit, my child, and I’ll tell you a story.”
I glance around, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this. At least, not one that doesn’t involve zombie guards, a host of warriors, and a pissed off, scary father-fae person.
“Sit.” His voice has an edge this time, as if he isn’t accustomed to asking twice.
I lower myself to the pillow, tucking my legs under me and trying my best to keep one eye on him and another on the creepy guards.
When his fingers sift through my hair, I bite back a scream.
“Long ago, there was a great king.” His tone verges on dreamy. “He ruled his realm with a firm, but fair hand. The kingdom prospered. It became so great that its neighbor grew jealous. This neighbor, you see, believed theirs was the better realm. Warm, fertile, filled with prattling, simpering nobles who doused themselves in jewels and pretended they were gods.”
“The summer realm,” I offer.
His jaw ticks. “Do not interrupt me.”
Sorry, psycho.
“This realm of foolishness thought they were better. They roused their citizens against the good king with words like ‘unseelie’ and ‘dark magic’ and ‘evil.’ So, the king went to war for his people. He fought with honor and bravery.” He grasps my hair tighter, twining it between his fingers until my eyes water. “But there was a traitor in his midst. A fae who thought he could be king. The traitor raised a rebellion and challenged the good king for his throne. Through treachery and deceit, the pretender slayed the king and left his body on the battlefield.”
He’s talking about Leander. Has to be. Leander killed Shathinor, the former king.
“But the pretender didn’t know everything.” A smile cracks across his lips, ugly and smug. “And he should never have left the body of a necromancer to rot.” He pulls open his black shirt.
I pin my lips together to hold in the scream. His guards aren’t the only undead in this place. The scary fae is disintegrating, his rib bones exposed and his heart beating beneath a layer of damaged white flesh.
“Shathinor. You’re him.” When I try to scoot away, he takes a fistful of my hair. “Let me go.” I grip his wrist but pull my hand away quickly. Something moved beneath his skin when I touched him. No, it slithered.
“I’m not done with my story.” His tone is as gentle as his touch is brutal. “Before I was betrayed, I carried on an affair with a summer realm noble. She fed me information to aid my war efforts, and I promised to make her queen of the summer realm.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have, of course. Callandra was far too weak, proven by the fact that the great fool Tyrios was her mate.”
His story has familiar threads that weave a tapestry of my memories. “Tyrios—Cecile’s father.”
“Yes. I hear the pretender to my throne slew him.” He loosens his grip and strokes my hair again. “But you already know that, don’t you, dear heart?”
I cringe at the term of endearment. “Yes,” I answer quietly. “I was there.”
“What I didn’t know, because that whore Callandra never told me, was that she bore a child during the long war. My child. And hid her away in the summer realm.”
Prickles race up my back like a thousand needle sticks. I don’t want him to go on. The promise of doom grows as he speaks, and I don’t know if I can handle what else he has to say. I turn to my mate, the only one who was able to defeat the evil creature that now holds me captive. Leander, please! I’m in a cave on a mountain. Shathinor is alive. Please, come get me! I scream in my mind, but it’s like speaking underwater; the sound doesn’t go anywhere, and I feel like I’m on the verge of drowning.
Shathinor’s gaze slides to my throat. “This child was protected by a soulstone, one that Callandra stole from Queen Aurentia’s treasury. A powerful artifact, the soulstone kept the child alive, but asleep, and hidden in the summer realm. There you slumbered, just as I slumbered under the muck of a battlefield, the worms my company as I slowly rebuilt the shards of my soul.”
I shake my head. “I was born in Indiana. I have a whole life—”
“You have nothing but me, my child.” His sharp snarl echoes off the barren walls. “You and I are everlasting, and we will always be together from this day forth.” His tone softens, and something verging on actual warmth seeps into his words and multiplies my goosebumps. “I would have found you sooner, but Callandra sent you to earth as an exchange. I don’t know why she chose to do so twenty-one years ago. Perhaps you were fading? Perhaps it was because Cecile came of age during that time?” He shrugs and continues running his cold fingers along my scalp. “Callandra went to the Ancestors soon after. I didn’t know about you until you returned to Arin. Callandra hid you too well. The soulstone you bear, it disguised you from everyone but me. Blood calls to blood.”
“That’s not true.” I clasp the stone in my hand. “I have a mother and father on earth—”
“Every changeling does,” he chides. “And you were no different, but then again, you were completely different, weren’t you? No friends, a distant mother, no other family, no one to care about, and no one who cared about you.”
“I had friends.” My protest is admittedly weak.
“And then you came home,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t understand the why of your return until I questioned Cecile and the human version of you. Cecile wouldn’t tell me at first. I must admit I had a good laugh when she cried as I tortured her friend.” His tone turns teacherly. “Because humans are pets, my dear one. Not friends. Certainly not equals. But Cecile is a tender-hearted fool like her mother. Or, I suppose I should also say, like your mother.”
“My mother.” I can’t contain the confusion, the utter shock that rocks through my mind like aftershocks that don’t seem to end. “If Callandra is my mother, that would make Cecile my sister?”
He taps the tip of my nose. “Correct. Cecile didn’t realize you were sisters. She only knew her mother instructed her to come to earth and find you once you’d aged twenty years. I suppose Callandra believed you two would hit it off. But her blood doesn’t call to you, not like mine. You are a child of darkness and cold winter winds. When Cecile sent you to Arin so she could have her human pet with her on earth? I felt you arrive. Finally, an heir of worth.” He strokes my cheek, and I have to fight my gag reflex. “My only daughter.”
None of this is true. Is it? It can’t be. My breathing comes too quickly, my lungs aching. I want to run as far and as fast as I can, but I’m frozen to this spot, locked to this impossible story told by the scariest creature I’ve ever encountered. “I’m human,” I say weakly and tug on my ears. “I don’t have fangs, my ears are normal, and I don’t have magic.”
“You don’t?” He leans forward his
black eyes almost level with mine. “You killed, did you not? In the Red Plains? I felt it.”
I swallow hard, my mouth going dry. “I had to. Vanara was trying to kill me. It was self-defense. Anyone would have done the same.”
“Is that so?” A sneer creeps across his lips, the crimson-tipped fangs far too long. “Can just anyone kill with merely a touch?”
The blood drains from my face. “How do you know about that?”
“Did you feel anything then?” He runs his long finger under my chin and forces me to hold his gaze. “When you took her life? You felt it.” His mouth widens in a grin. “The surge of power. Her bits of magic and life adding to yours, making you stronger.”
“I-I don’t know.” I wrap my arms around my middle.
“Yes, you do.” He sits back, eyeing me contentedly. “You know exactly what I mean. You have my power, my blood, my dark heart. You are the heir I’ve awaited.”
Footsteps on the stairs behind me have me whirling to see what’s coming.
“She’s the one you’ve been waiting for?” Cenet gains the top step, and levels me with a malevolent stare. I cringe away until I hit the throne, the bones digging into my back.
Shathinor grips my shoulder as if reassuring me. I pull my knees up and hug myself.
“This sniveling child is your heir?” Cenet’s forked tongue darts out and wets his lips as he lifts his gaze to Shathinor. “Did you forget about me, father?”
4
Leander
Gareth sleeps, the color still drained from his face, his breathing labored as he lies on a table in one of the rough border cabins. I sit next to him as the wind howls through the trees, my rampaging thoughts creating the snowy din outside. Valen had already drained himself at the skirmish, and only had enough to bring Gareth back from the brink of death. But he struggles, his life like a fraying thread.
Beth sits across from me, Gareth’s hand in hers as she stares into the flames. She hasn’t said much since I found her, her usual saucy banter buried under a mantle of dismay.
