4. My Beloved Enemy, Her Precious Pet
4. MY BELOVED ENEMY, HER PRECIOUS PET
“Elowyn, wait,” Rush called.
Though I had no idea where my purposeful steps would lead me, I didn’t slow or turn.
“Wait,” he repeated. Then more softly, “El, please.”
Despite my intentions to flee the coliseum as rapidly as possible, I found my steps faltering. The chatter of the mob wafted from the open arena like a cloying scent, threatening to drag me back to its brutal violence.
At least the odd creatures that appeared to be horses cloaked in dragon scales were behind us. After sighing in resignation, I halted and turned to face the man I knew was directly behind me. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but at some point I’d begun to sense his proximity, as if I were suffering from cold and he were my only source of heat.
My gaze went first to his friends. West, Ryder, and Hiroshi stood far enough away that they wouldn’t easily hear what Rush said to me. I wondered why.
When I met Rush’s waiting stare, his eyes flashed for a moment—a blast of moody moonlight. They ran up and down my body before resting on my face. His forehead bunched in concern. “Are you all right?”
For several breaths I simply looked back at him. Then I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” he bristled. “Based on what I saw today, there’s nothing to laugh at.”
“Oh, trust me, I know.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
Dark as night, I chuckled again. “Because what’s my alternative?”
His forehead smoothed and he took a step toward me. If he reached out, he could touch me.
He didn’t. “You know you don’t have to pretend to be okay. You don’t need to be strong all the time.”
I snorted. “Don’t I though? Just today the queen’s tried to kill me twice already, and I have no idea what was going on when I touched the ground.”
His forehead was back to scrunching.
“I’ve been taken by force from my home,” I continued, even if I was no longer certain Nightguard qualified as such, “…shot with arrows, slapped by a major prick, threatened, and when all that didn’t work as well as Her Majesty hoped”—unlike how others spoke the queen’s official title, I made sure to fill it with all the disdain I held for the woman—“she took my friends. She’s holding them somewhere in this cursed place, and as if it weren’t enough to tell me she’ll kill them, she’s also threatened a hundred goblins just so I can live with that hanging over my head too. She’s making me fight in this ridiculous tournament just for show because she’s trying to kill me at every turn.”
I flung my hands into the air, unable to contain my mounting frustration. “She couldn’t wait for Russet to do the job. She had that slimebucket ass turd, Lennox, stab me in secret. That’s the kind of stand-up lady she is.” I grinned fakely, bitterly. “She had her lackey magic me into looking like someone else, forced me to lie or I’d sound like a squealing pig, and I still have no idea what I’m really doing here. Why couldn’t the king’ve left me alone? It’s not like he acts as if he wants me here.”
My agitation was building to a crescendo, for all the good it would do me. “And the almighty bitch wants to stick me in a dungeon? Seriously? It’s not enough for her that I’m coated in blood and probably traumatized enough to last me my entire lifetime, she has to threaten you guys now too? What, by the time she’s done is she gonna threaten to murder every one of her subjects to get me to do what she wants? Why does she even care? She could easily send me back home and be done with me.”
My chest rose and fell as if I’d run from her as fast and as far as I could—something I should probably be doing right this very moment, actually.
Rush’s eyes were wells of understanding, and I thought within their depths I saw shared my wish that things might be so very different.
They held me glued in place.
“So you were Zinnia this whole time, huh?” he eventually said.
“Pretty messed up, right?”
“For sure.”
“I tried to tell you so many times. But then you probably would’ve gone and tattled on me to the queen if I’d managed to let you know what was going on.”
“It’s not like that.”
“No? How isn’t it like that?”
He didn’t answer, though he waggled his already hard jaw back and forth a few times.
“Exactly.” I glanced at his friends, still there, still waiting, presumably for me to follow the queen’s commands and be on my merry way to the dungeons.
Fat chance.
“I’m going,” I told him, though I didn’t owe him a thing.
“Where?” With his brawn and skill with weapons, he could have easily tried to make me stay. But his stance remained at ease, sad even. Defeated, maybe.
“Anywhere but here.”
He nodded somberly, his eyes still on me but seeming to gaze elsewhere, somewhere far off in the distance. “I don’t blame you. I’d go too if I could.”
Without good reason, stupid hope fluttered in my chest, the whispering touch of butterfly wings. Before I could think it through, before I could stop myself from sounding as eager as the maiden he saw me for, I blurted, “Come with me, then. We can leave together, go somewhere far, far away. Maybe even to Nightguard. It’s cold as the queen’s dead heart there, but the dragons are magnificent. I think you’d love them.”
His smile was dejected. “I bet I would.”
“But you’re not coming with me.”
“No, Elowyn, I’m not. But I really wish I could. You have no idea how much…”
I chortled. “Apparently not enough.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stiffened so quickly that some of my weapons rattled. “Then enlighten me.”
Instead of rising to my challenge, he gazed away, staring across rolling hills so verdant and bright it had to be magic. The sun was shining overhead, warming me from the inside out. The road lined with dragon heads was out of sight, so that it was almost plausible to believe I could really leave, just walk until the memories of my time with the royals of Embermere were nothing more than a nightmare that might eventually fade.
I gave the man who’d wormed his way into my heart in a short time a final glance, attempting to memorize his every feature. In all my life, I already understood I’d never find another face as beautiful as his, eyes that lured me in as if it was their sole purpose. A body I desired more than reason.
My beloved enemy…
I nodded at him, already absently, allowing myself to believe this dream where I was the master of my free will. Where no one would get their heads lopped off for my leaving.
“See ya, Rush.”
His smile appeared again, this time, even sadder. “See ya, El.”
I turned and continued walking, forcing myself not to think, not to feel. I failed as my thoughts raced ahead of me. Maybe the most responsible action was to leave. I could head to Nightguard, gather the dragons, and return to free Saffron and Xeno. If my rage at the dragons’ treatment was overwhelming, there’d be no limit to the Dragon Mother’s fury. The vengeance she’d exact on the queen would be legendary. The wicked woman would no longer have to worry about selecting an heir to her throne. The Dragon Mother would ensure there was no throne left to occupy. The queen’s entire bloodline would be incinerated to ash.
The collateral damage would be enormous.
The Dragon Mother would see only those who’d done their best to kill off the rest of her kind. And the dragon shifters she commanded would be no better.
My steps became leaden.
If I left now, I’d be condemning Saffron and Xeno to the queen’s wrath, and I knew it full well. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that the queen was a reasonable woman who wouldn’t use her leverage when it would no longer sway me, that was as much a lie as my being Zinnia, champion of the fae commoners.
It was why the queen had sent Rush, West, Ryder, and Hiroshi to escort me to the dungeons. She knew I wouldn’t escape. There was nowhere I could go that her cruelty wouldn’t eventually reach.
“That’s the problem with having a fucking heart,” I muttered to myself before looking over my shoulder.
Rush hadn’t followed, but the other three drakes had caught up with him. The four men were having a heated discussion. From the gestures, Ryder, West, and Hiroshi were banded together to convince Rush of … something.
“Dammit,” I exclaimed loudly, drawing their attention.
Ryder started walking toward me across the grass. “Elowyn, you can’t go,” he began. “You?—”
“I know.”
“If you leave—wait, what’d you say?”
“I know. I’m not leaving. But I’m not going to the dungeons. Bad enough that I’m a prisoner of my own rooms.”
Ryder looked back at the others.
Hiroshi approached. “I’m sorry, Elowyn. But you have to.”
Exasperated, I growled. “And why would I do that? The queen’s not actually going to follow through on killing you guys.”
They exchanged looks again.
I scratched at the blood that had caked on my cheek and neck, on my palm. Suddenly, I was desperate to wash Russet off me. “She’s not going to do anything to Rush. He’s her precious pet.”
I phrased it that way thinking one of the others, fond of ribbing Rush, would chuckle. None of them did.
“Don’t call me that,” Rush snarled.
“Why not? It’s true.”
“I’m as much a prisoner as you are, and I don’t think you’d appreciate being called Her Majesty’s plaything.”
“That’s because I’m not,” I snapped.
His eyes flashed. “Neither am I.”
“Then why? Why do you let her control you?”
Rush’s jaw was back to waggling.
“Tell her, Rush,” West said.
Rush whipped his head around to glower at his friend so fast that his silver hair trailed behind him in a silken wave. “No.”
“But—”
“ No .”
It wasn’t as if he owed me anything, and nor did he disguise his allegiances anymore. Regardless, something that had been buoyant inside my chest deflated.
When Rush faced me again, none of the remorse or apology I’d hoped to see was there.
“You need to come with us,” he said, cold now.
I harrumphed. “You were literally just about to let me go.”
“That’s before I thought better of it.”
“Well, good for you, but that doesn’t matter. I decide what I do. Not you.”
If only it were true and I did get to decide my fate. So long as I was within this cursed mirror world, I feared it would never be the case.
“If you don’t come with us,” Hiroshi jumped in, “she really might kill Rush if she thinks you care about him.”
“Hmmph. Well, I don’t care about him, so he’s safe.”
“Good,” Rush said. “’Cause I don’t care about you either.”
West rolled his eyes, but it was Ryder who said, “It doesn’t matter what either of you two say. If she thinks you care, she’ll do her best to hurt one of you by hurting the other.”
West looked between us both. “But that’s not the main reason for you not to go. Or I guess it kind of is, but not because we’re fond of the big brute.”
I snorted a laugh, though Rush was as much a brute as I was a delicate fairy princess.
West lowered his head so we were eye to eye; his stare turned intent. “One of us has to become the next crown prince heir. The future of the entire mirror world depends on one of us turning the dark tides around.”
“What about Roan?”
“Roan too, but the queen doesn’t watch him as closely as she does us.”
“Why not?”
Hiroshi grunted in disapproval. “Because he’s a dwarf.”
“So? ”
“So,” West said, “she thinks he’s not worthy of the throne because the next prince should be of the line of the noble elves, tall and strong as an oak.”
“Which he is,” Ryder added, “except for the tall part. He’s as capable as we are of banishing the legacy of King Erasmus the Bloody.”
“You’ve seen firsthand what Lennox and the others are like,” West said. “It has to be one of us, like, for real. This is life or death, not just for us, but for everyone. Every single fae in the mirror world.”
The three of them nodded somberly. Rush simply stared at me, his gaze a constant heat on my skin.
“Does the queen know all this?” I asked.
West shrugged. “She’s not stupid.”
“Then why’s she want Rush to be prince heir? I’d guess she’s fond of her reign of terror, so why favor him?”
It was Rush who answered. “Because she thinks she’ll be able to control me even while I’m on the throne, and she knows the fae will support me as her choice.”
I stared at him; he returned the examining look.
“This is much bigger than Xeno and Saffron,” he said.
“How do you know their names?”
“It’s my job to know things.”
“A good reminder, thank you,” I retorted bitterly. “What else do you know about me that I haven’t told you?”
His eyes blazed in response, and he trailed them languorously up and down my body. I flushed and hurried to look away.
This part of the palace grounds was so pretty. Filled with magical meadows like those in the fairy tales Zako had shared with me. It was at times difficult to remember that evil ran through these lands, no matter their appearance otherwise.
While still gazing off into the distance, I asked, “What about the next princess heir? Who does she need to be?”
“She doesn’t matter,” Rush answered. “We’ll marry whomever we need to marry so long as we can bring the mirror world back to what it’s supposed to be.”
After a long exhale, I faced him. “How do you know it’s not too late?”
“Because it can’t be. I won’t let it be.” His fists bunched at his sides with determination.
The others flanked him as if already in a fight for the future of their upside-down world.
“And why should I care about all this?” I asked meekly, already resigned. “This isn’t even my home. I was abducted from mine and forced to leave it behind.”
Rush was shaking his head. “No, El. This land’s in your blood. What just happened back there proves that. You’re as much a part of it as we are.”
“Maybe more,” West interjected.
“What … what did happen back there?” I asked.
Rush pursed his lips as Hiroshi replied, “We’re still figuring that out.”
“Will you tell me once you do?”
“Of course,” Ryder said, his face a mask of earnestness.
I scoffed. “Liar.”
Ryder smiled, shrugging. “There’s a bigger game at stake here. We’re just players.”
“And I’m a player too,” I muttered.
“Yes,” West said.
“So why can’t Hiroshi give the queen chicken lips and we call it a day?”
Three of them chuckled, I assumed at the memory of Braque flabbergasted by his new look. Rush didn’t.
Hiroshi said, “If only it were that easy. The queen’s impervious to most magic. The farther up the royal line you go, the closer to the pureblood elves of the Golden Forest you are, the less others’ powers can affect you.”
“It’s a bummer you’re not the queen’s relative instead of the king’s,” West said. “Then you might have a chance.”
I scanned their visages, all of them handsome in different ways, all of them sincere when it came to this grand purpose of theirs. I wondered if they’d been the ones to choose it, or if they’d been forced into the role of savior much as they were doing to me right now.
“Help us, Elowyn,” Ryder said. “We promise, it’s a worthy cause.”
I couldn’t believe the words were about to spill out of my mouth, but they did anyway. “Fine,” I snapped, irritated at the turn of events. At how my hands were bound by invisible ropes held tight by my conscience, a burden the wretched queen didn’t share. “Take me to the dungeons, but only if you’re sure the queen can’t have me killed in there.”
Eyes wide and eager, West said, “She can’t. Not so long as you don’t threaten her life or the king’s or that of any of her subjects, and not so long as you’re still part of the Fae Heir Trials.”
“Then what about Lennox? He sure as dragonshit did his best to kill me.”
West rubbed at the scruff on his face and looked to Rush. “He shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
“No, he shouldn’t have.” For a few breaths, his nostrils flaring, Rush appeared murderous. “I’ll make sure he pays for what he did.”
“Us too,” Ryder said.
“For sure,” Hiroshi added.
“So you’re going to lock me in the dungeons where no one can supposedly get to me, but ya know, maybe they still can.”
Rush ground his teeth together so hard they squeaked. “We’re not going to leave you unprotected.” He pinned a look on his friends. “And she’s going in the human dungeon, not the fae one.”
“Rush, no, she can’t—” West protested.
“The queen’ll—” Ryder also urged.
Rush sliced through all their complaints and warnings. “It’s that or nothing. No matter what, I’m not putting her in the fae dungeon. End of discussion. If Her Majesty has a problem with that, she can take it out on me.”
I almost told him I didn’t need him fighting my battles for me, but that was absurd. I needed all the help I could get.
When Rush turned and stalked off in the opposite direction—toward the “human dungeon,” whatever all that distinction entailed—I followed.