69. Chapter 69
Chapter 69
Kat
The last thing I expect to find awaiting us on the border of Harbright is an army.
Armed soldiers are arrayed in three directions, surrounding us completely. I freeze, stepping backward against Rahk’s chest. His hands come up, closing around my arms. His grip tightens, then he moves me behind him.
Agatha has already started running straight toward the army, shrieking for help at the top of her lungs.
“Agatha!” I cry, suddenly afraid she will be struck down.
But she makes it to the edge of the army. It swallows her up. Presumably without killing her.
“What is going on?” I whisper to Rahk.
“They might have been waiting for me in case I came back,” he replies grimly. “Queen Vivienne requires my head now that I have kidnapped her son. No matter how brief or necessary the kidnapping, or how unharmed he was.”
“I’m fine, Lord Oliver! Really—ahh!”
I turn toward Mary just as she crumples. Oliver, worn and ragged as he is, has never looked more determined than when he ignores her stubborn protests and scoops her up into his arms. “With all respect, my lady,” he tells her, “quit being an idiot.” He turns toward Rahk and I. “I can take her up the hill, right? They won’t harm us?”
“You should all be fine,” I reply. “Take Becky. I think Rahk, Pavi, and I are the only ones at risk.”
Oliver nods, sweat streaking through the dirt caked across his face. He looks down at Mary in his arms, her red hair splayed across his shoulder. Becky scuttles to his side and he gives her a smile. “Ready to go home?”
“Are you alright, Mary?” I ask, before they leave. “I am so sorry that you got tangled up in this.”
Mary’s face is tight, but she offers me a smile. “I’m fine. I’m sure the leg is very treatable. I have a renewed respect for what you do. Also, I never would have let you go into Faerieland if I knew what you faced there. Oh yes, and I won’t be letting you go back. Ever.”
I give a mirthless chuckle. “Fair enough.”
The three of them leave and safely make it to the army after picking their way across abandoned magicked farmland.
“What do we do?” Pavi asks.
“Do you think I can convince them to not kill you?” I ask Rahk, holding onto his broad elbow.
He studies the force against us. “I don’t know, Kat. I do not want to risk anything happening to you.”
“Last I checked, the queen still liked me. It is our only chance. I will approach and explain what happened. Maybe I can convince them to take you captive instead of killing you. Then I can meet with the queen and try to convince her to pardon you.”
Suddenly, a pummeling force from behind us—from the Wood—drives all three of us to our knees in an instant. My hair blasts in my face, preventing me from seeing anything. The magic enhanced crops are swept away. Even the army buckles, retreating from the force of the rush. Screaming begins.
It is Rahk’s voice that cuts through the din. “Get back! Get back!”
Somehow, I manage to turn around.
The giant form of Lady Nothril rises above the treetops of Caphryl Wood. Screaming from all around the valley reaches a crescendo. I fall backward in my attempt to scramble away. My heart nearly stops right then and there.
Lady Nothril is a fluid form that only seems to grow greater, more terrible, as she leans over the valley.
“Give back my daughter!” she screams in an unearthly voice that shakes the world at its foundations. “Or else I will destroy these lands!”
Blindly, I grab Pavi and drag her as fast as I can away from her reach.
Rahk draws his two swords, long and bloodied in each hand, as he braces against the wind and bellows: “No fae ruler may cross this border!”
Pavi and I scramble further back. Rahk, who has always looked like a mountain to me, now looks miniscule, standing as the lone figure between my entire world and a roaring fae queen filling the sky.
“You have a choice, son of mine,” roars Lady Nothril. “Give me back my daughter, and I will spare your wife. If you do not, you will be forever banished from all of Faerieland.”
Rahk stands his ground.
Lady Nothril drags one taloned hand through the trees and screams: “You will never see your homeland again. You will never see your friend the High King again. You will lose your throne. You will lose your long life. Would you give up a thousand more years for a mere hundred?”
Rahk grits his teeth against the force barreling into him. “You cannot set foot in this realm!”
“Will you give up everything—for that?” Lady Nothril’s massive eyeballs swivel to me, pinning me in place. “A tiny, puny creature who will live a few more decades, at most?”
Rahk’s answer carries over the wind. “Yes.”
My hair whips across my face. A dagger stabs into my heart. I don’t want him to give up everything for me. I don’t want him to give up his only friend, his long life, his throne, his chance to do good in Faerieland.
Rahk looks back at me, holding my gaze as he repeats, “Yes.”
I stop breathing. There is no regret in his gaze. Not a single piece of resentment.
He wants to spend the rest of his life with me. Here, in the human lands. No matter what it costs him.
Over everything, he chooses me.
Torn between laughing and crying and also running for my life from Lady Nothril, I end up just standing there stupidly, my mouth gaping open.
Lady Nothril’s expression contorts in genuine shock, and I almost pity her. Her fingers curl into a fist that she smashes into the ground. Even on the other side of the border, the entire valley shudders. Then she plunges forward.
“Rahk!” I scream.
Lady Nothril’s attention latches onto Pavi. “My daughter! Come back to me!” Her hand whips out—to reach across the border and grab Pavi.
A soul-splitting scream almost seems to tear the worlds in half. I crumple to the ground in a fetal position, covering my ears from the searing pain. When I look up, Lady Nothril waves a burning hand in the air, clutching her wrist and shrieking.
“You cannot come into this land!” Rahk yells back.
“Pavi!” screams Lady Nothril.
Tears stream down Pavi’s face. She whips back and forth between looking at Rahk and her mother. That is when I realize it.
Pavi still does not know the monster that Lady Nothril is. She thinks that because Lady Nothril protected her from Lord Nothril, it means that she is less evil.
Rahk sends me a panicked look as he realizes the same thing. Then he looks at his sister. I watch the shift come over his expression. My lungs tighten.
He beckons Pavi to his side. She goes at once. He gets down on one knee before her, taking her hands in his.
“You are safe here in the human lands,” he tells her. “You are not safe in Nothril, and you are not safe with Lady Nothril. But you are old enough to choose what you want. You can stay with me and Kat. Or you can go back.” He draws a deep breath. “You must choose for yourself.”
She looks up at him, looks at me, and then back at the towering visage of her terrifying mother. Her brow hardens. Her voice is quiet, but the swirling wind carries her answer to my ears. “I do not want to leave Nothril like this.”
Rahk’s eyes shutter. He tightens his grip on her hands. “You know that I cannot protect you if you go back. I will not see you again.”
Tears well up in her eyes. She throws her arms around his neck, and he holds her tightly.
“I love you, Pavi,” he chokes. “Do not let Nothril change your sweet heart.”
She nods, clinging harder as she sobs. Then she pushes back and starts toward the Wood.
I block her path with my arm. “Not yet.”
I step closer to where Lady Nothril towers over the Wood. I lift my voice and cry: “We will return your daughter in exchange for the release of every human slave in all of Nothril. Only then can you have her back.”
Lady Nothril sneers down at me, my ripped dress flying around my ankles, my hair in my face. Then she dives back into the Wood.
The wind goes still.
The whole world goes still.
I glance at the rise to see the tops of soldier helmets peering over the edge. Then I turn back to the border. Rahk steps to my side, lacing his fingers with mine.
Neither of us breathes in that moment.
Then a lone figure emerges from the Wood. A human. I recognize him immediately as one of the slaves I encountered during the raid. Several more people begin stumbling out after him. Bewilderment casts across their face as they look upon the human world.
They keep coming. Dozens—hundreds. Men, women, even young children.
Lady Nothril let them go.
It is the first man who finally releases a great, “Hurrah! We are free!”
I watch them come, tears leaking out of my eyes. “Jacob, if you could only see this.”
It starts as a whisper but ends in a flood.
A squeeze on my hand tears my attention away. Pavi smiles at me, and though there is fear in her gaze, there is also a steely determination. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“For what?”
She just smiles and lets go. She runs to Rahk one more time, hugging him desperately. He kisses the top of her head. Then she releases him and walks toward the Wood.
Rahk watches her go. She stops at the border. Turns around one last time. Waves.
Then she vanishes.
The wind whips Rahk’s white hair around his face. He releases a great sigh. I watch his lips move briefly. Then he turns away.
Forever letting his little sister go.
Suddenly, a cry goes up.
“Hail Lord Protector of Harbright!”
I look around, confused, until I realize they are referring to Rahk. He also doesn’t seem to realize they are calling to him. He has come to my side, but looks up in bewilderment. Then his eyes go wide as he hears what the soldiers and the rescued slaves alike are crying out to him. They surround him, falling to their knees to thank him.
For a fae prince, he doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do with all of this praise.
“What are you—?” he demands, stumbling backward, only to be met with more warriors thanking him for protecting Harbright. My tears turn to laughter.
Rahk looks over the heads of the people surrounding him. He searches the crowd, his eyes scanning fast, his face twisted in concern—until his gaze lands on me. He visibly sags in relief.
Then he shoves aside the people coming to him. He breaks into a run, and I’ve hardly a moment to breathe before he’s caught me up in his arms, holding the back of my head and kissing me desperately. I grab hold of the top of his breastplate, pulling him deeper into the kiss and pouring every piece of my heart into his lips.
“There are no more secrets,” I gasp between kisses. “I promise, I promise, I promise.”
He smiles and kisses my nose. “I know.”
“One benefit to having your mother nearly invade our land,” I add with a gesture toward the empty fields, “is that I doubt people will have any interest in farming carriage-sized pumpkins.”
He laughs. That beautiful laugh that only I have been able to earn. It makes me happy as he replies, “I daresay your assessment will prove correct.”