Fae Champion (Royals of Embermere #2)

2. Sacred My Ass. Who’s the Stupid Imbecilic Bitch Now, Huh?

2. SACRED MY ASS. WHO’S THE STUPID IMBECILIC BITCH NOW, HUH?

The floating ear must relay whatever it heard directly to the queen. Though she remained standing on the balcony at one end of the arena, her jaw ground so furiously that I could make it out.

“Don’t. Say. Another. Word,” Azariah grit out through clenched teeth and a brittle smile. He flicked a skittish glance up at the queen, swallowing loudly when he noticed the extent of her fury.

“She’ll skin you alive,” hissed one of the fairies so softly the ear might not register it.

“Shhhhh,” another immediately scolded. “Don’t be an idiot. She’ll skin you alive for being involved. Shut it and just keep blowing on that blood.”

“I don’t see you jumping.”

“Only because there’s no more blood to get out of ‘im.”

“There’s always more blood to squeeze out.”

“Shhhhh. Both of you,” a third tiny fairy snapped .

Azariah leaned his weight into three of his legs, then switched directions. “Ah. Um. My queen? What will you have me do?” he asked of the ear.

Righteous indignation bubbled through me, fizzing into my extremities, while I looked from the queen to the ear, wondering if she’d somehow answer through it.

She forced her jaw to release and to spread into a smile, like a reptile or a hungry cat.

“In moments, Azariah will announce the next match,” the queen called out, her voice steady as it effortlessly circled her audience thanks to Ivar’s magic.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Azariah told the ear with a deferent nod. His bowed horn, a majestic knob of twisted ivory, marked his subservience. I wanted to lead him over to her—who was still a living woman after all, even if everyone treated her as if she wielded the power of a god—steer his head, and gore her with that beautiful spike.

“I’ve brought you several more days of fighting for you to enjoy,” she continued. “We’re beholden to the magic of the Fae Heir Trials, but there’s no reason we can’t take pleasure in the spectacle. As the matches march on, each fight will become more competitive, more fierce … and more bloody! ”

The spectators roared in response. It was what she’d expected. Her smile turned genuine and somehow even more wicked.

“Our secret surprise competitor Lady Elowyn will have to face the toughest of our warriors, those who’ve trained all their lives just to meet this challenge and claim the honor of fighting in this sacred arena.”

I snorted. “Sacred my ass.”

The queen’s smile faltered for an instant, but she otherwise ignored me.

“To all the contestants who remain in the trials, may your ancestors cheer you on from the Etherlands, and may you draw first blood!”

On cue, her subjects bellowed their approval once more.

Azariah cleared his throat and walked in front of me.

I shook my head and stepped up beside him.

“Oh no,” one of the fairies breathed. I ignored them and the panicked look the unisus shot my way.

“Fellow fae,” I yelled as loudly as I could. Without an enchantment to project my voice, not everyone would hear me, but my reach would be sufficient.

Movement around the queen caught my eye. Ivar jumped to his feet to shoot his disapproval my way while tugging on the vest of his trim, sharp suit, then fingered the handle of his cutlas. Braque’s dark blond curls bounced out of sight behind the thrones as he presumably raced off to obey his monarch’s rushed commands.

“Your queen lies to you,” I shouted, and her guards, dressed in blue tunics, rushed out onto the field of flowers.

I wiped at the blood clinging to my cheek and committed to the path I’d chosen, largely without forethought, borne from the pit of injustice brewing in my gut.

“I’ve been forced to be here and to fight against my will, because the queen threatens others to get me to obey.”

The guards ran toward me faster. I had seconds before they’d reach me.

“On her command, Lennox stabbed me before my fight?—”

An industrious guard slammed into me at a full run, tackling me, so that he and I landed on top of Russet. My skull cracked against Russet’s shin. My thoughts became fuzzy while the guard pinned me down, the others catching up to surround me. The little fairies were no longer anywhere in sight.

The ear zipped around us, keeping just out of reach of the guards, who didn’t seem to notice it, or if they did, they were so used to the queen spying on them that the fact no longer warranted attention.

The guard pressed a hand to my cheek and smushed me into the dead man’s legs.

Though the resistance made me dizzy, and the stab wound to pang, I bucked against him. He settled his full weight onto mine, crushing me against the corpse. He had to be nearly twice as heavy as I, most of the mass muscle. Even so, I thrashed some more.

The man chuckled darkly. “Fight me all you want, woman. It only turns me on.”

I stilled. My resistance was futile anyway. There’d never been any winning with this display in the first place, a conclusion I would have reached had I not just scarcely evaded death.

“Let her go,” someone hollered from up in the stands, a hopeless and likely dangerous gesture.

From my vantage point close to the ground, I spied shiny, pointy black shoes and sky-blue stockings running our way. When they reached the horde of guards circling us, Braque’s voice snarled, “Move, you morons.”

The guards’ legs swept out of the way as quickly as if the queen herself had ordered them. Everyone had to know Braque was her mouthpiece.

Those stupid shiny shoes stopped an inch from my nose. “Let her go,” Braque said. “I’ve got her now.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, milord,” advised the beastly guard who was making every one of my breaths a struggle. “She’s a feisty one.”

“Obviously,” Braque quipped. I could picture his puckered lips and dark, high-and-mighty eyes. “ Move .”

The moment the guard released me, I shot to sitting, sucking in deep breaths. My world spun before I could get to my feet, and I braced myself against the earth.

Braque was already pulling potion bottles from the satchel that was a constant strapped across his round belly.

“Lord Braque,” Azariah asked from behind me. “What shall Her Majesty have me do? Should I entertain the crowd?”

Without looking up from the examination of his purse’s contents, he answered, “Yes. Announce the next fights. Be verbose about it. That should be easy for you. You rarely shut up.”

“Yes, Lord Braque,” answered the magnificent creature who shouldn’t be beholden to someone like this prissy lackey.

Azariah separated himself from the tumult with a steady beating of his hooves before he cleared his throat and began calling out the next contestants to enter the ring—and possibly not leave it alive.

“Everyone, cover your ears,” Braque commanded brusquely to those nearest us, and guards slapped their hands to their ears. Those who’d drawn weapons in anticipation of subduing me sheathed them hurriedly before doing the same.

I got to my feet, glad to find myself steady enough, and looked down on Braque. His entire face was flushed with the run over here.

“What are you planning on doing to me now? Your spell controlling what I say isn’t working anymore.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he snarled, making me wonder if the queen would punish him for his failures even though he kissed her ass at every opportunity and was a distant descendant of her bloodline, one evidently unworthy of becoming an heir.

He clutched two slim vials while rummaging in his bag for another. Their contents swirled inside the thin walls of glass in cloud white and the dark of a moonless night. “My spell should’ve held. No one should be able to break it. ”

I smirked, though it was mostly to irritate and unsettle him. “Obviously your spell wasn’t as strong as you think it was if I was able to break it.”

How, I still wasn’t certain.

“You might have the king’s blood in you,” he commented, distracted as his bottom lip waggled as he deliberated between the contents of two vials. “But that’s not enough to break any of my spells.”

“Then it seems to me like I’d be a fool to allow you to cast another one on me.”

In the end, he pulled out both of the tubes he’d been considering, clutching all four of them in his stubby fingers, before fully registering what I’d said. He jerked his stare up to me.

Whatever intentions he read on my face, he brought the first bottle up to his mouth to wrap those puckered lips of his around the stopper.

Before he had the chance, I drew one of my daggers and sliced the straps of his purse. As the bag slid along his body to plunk to the ground, I spun until I pressed my chest to his shoulders, the point of my blade to his bobbing throat.

The guards, all now in motion toward me, stopped moving. The one who’d tackled me earlier aimed a sword at my side.

Using Braque as a shield, I turned us until the queen’s alchemist stood fully between me and the most threatening of the guards.

Azariah had stopped speaking mid-sentence. The stadium was awash with excitement. Cries rose above the sudden chatter, but I distinguished none of them as I snapped my gaze back and forth between my many threats.

“Drop the vials,” I ordered Braque with a calm I was surprised I felt.

“I can’t. They’ll?—”

“ Drop them .”

He tossed them softly so they landed on top of his bag at his feet. None of them broke. He sighed in relief despite the knife at his neck.

“How dare you?” The queen’s voice vibrated with a rage I felt to my very bones, Ivar once more bowed before her, giving her his power. “Release him at once.”

I didn’t even look her way. After another scan of the guards, and a skittish Azariah behind them, I glanced toward the dugout. Rush, along with Ryder, Link, Hiroshi, and Roan, lined the edge of the arena. Their expressions were somber, their fingers twitchy around their weapons belts. Roan leaned into the handle of his ax. They were considering interfering, that much was clear from their ready stances. But nothing told me whether they intended to help or stop me. The flare of passion Rush and I’d shared the previous night didn’t guarantee his loyalty. He hadn’t hidden his allegiance to the queen, nor the fact that he followed her orders when it came to me.

The five of them were probably waiting for her command to join the royal guard in taking me down—this time perhaps permanently. It wasn’t as if the king would lift a finger to interfere.

“You shouldn’t have to live in constant fear of your queen’s cruelty,” I called out as loudly as I was capable, causing Braque to wince at the volume. “Her job should be to protect you.”

“Silence her,” the queen yelled.

The guards surged toward me but again hesitated as I pressed my blade against Braque’s pale skin and a bead of blood blossomed before slowly tracking downward.

“You stupid, imbecilic bitch,” Braque said.

The ear flew to hover a foot away from our faces.

“My queen will murder you for this,” he seethed. “She’ll make it endlessly painful and slow. You’ll beg her to kill you before you draw your last breath. And then she’ll kill everyone you’ve ever known. She’ll wipe out every single dragon in the Nightguard Mountains and build a new palace with their bones.”

“Guards, kill her,” the queen commanded, and a few lone voices among the spectators cried out in alarm.

One of the guards turned toward the balcony and yelled, “What of Braque?”

She gritted her teeth and growled. “Kill her or you’re next. No one betrays their queen and lives.”

Behind her, the king stood. But he said nothing to protect his daughter.

If I died, at least the queen would have no reason to kill anyone else to punish me. Her threats should end with me.

“Now!” the queen bellowed .

The guards rushed me.

I pulled Braque flush against my body and stomped hard on his bag and all his vials. Glass shattered beneath my boots, releasing tendril after tendril of colored mist.

“No,” Braque whispered after a ragged gasp. “What have you done?”