31. The Only Enemy I See Here Is You
31. THE ONLY ENEMY I SEE HERE IS YOU
ELOWYN
So many things happened next and in such quick succession that they distilled into simple points of action, assaulting me from all sides so that I couldn’t properly digest any one of them.
Dragons surged up through the floor of the Hall of Mirrors, cracking open the dense glass that imprisoned hundreds of squirming snakes.
Zafi squealed. The guys grunted. Pru began muttering a frantic chorus of it’ll be off with our heads, off with our heads, off with our heads— and after how far she’d come too. My friends and I carved out space between us and them, backing away.
Einar—or perhaps thunder from the storm Talisa conjured—shook the walls and their mirrors without ceasing. One nearby mirror cracked a jagged line across its surface. Plaster dust rained down on our heads, making me cough .
More dragons squeezed through the floor. One punched up directly beneath West, toppling him over so that he was left scrambling to regain his feet. Dragons roared, so freaking loud in the enclosed space that my ears hurt. Mirrors vibrated with a steady, audible hum.
I backed up and spun in place. There were so many dragons, in so many colors, I couldn’t count them. They hissed and gnashed their teeth and thumped their barbed tails, overturning or crushing delicate tables pushed against a wall waiting for the next fancy party. Around shadow manacles, their claws scratched deep gouges into what remained of the glass floor.
At their center, Talisa stood tall, her crown perfect, as if she hadn’t just died, or almost died. The enchantment that normally protected her from becoming soiled was evidently absent. Blood stained the corners of her mouth, her neck, bare shoulders and arms, dripping down onto her long, elegant black dress and encrusting her red ruby rings.
Her hideously macabre spies—dismembered ears and eyes—zipped into the room to bob above me as if she didn’t want to miss a single one of my reactions—to her truly fucking mind-blowing immortality, presumably.
Anticipating her order to attack us, her guards were closing in behind her, casting wary glances at the dragons, who were rumored to be people eaters and currently making the cavernous room feel cramped .
Zafi, still invisible—the smart little MISO—whispered next to my ear, “Ivar says if he can touch one of the dragons’ shadow-chains, he might be able to undo the magic that controls all of the chains, even the ones on the dragons in the dungeons.”
I was still reeling from my almost-murder of Talisa—I’d come so close, dammit! My attention was being pulled in too many directions. It took me several beats of the surrounding chaos to absorb the news.
Careful not to expose Zafi’s presence, I mumbled back, “I’ll distract her and buy him time. But he’s got to move fast. We need all the help we can get.”
What an understatement.
At last, here was a bit of unexpected fortune. If Ivar would have had to still travel to the bowels of the palace to disengage the dragons Talisa was draining of their power, we’d be doomed.
Einar roared—it was unmistakably him this time, his bellow sparking with immeasurable fury. Though he wasn’t in the great hall with us, its walls, ceiling, and floor rattled. The cracks in the glass floor spread and widened. More plaster showered upon our heads and shoulders. I coughed again. Several more mirrors split in their gilt frames.
Snakes—big, massive, powerful snakes, and even smaller, lethal-looking ones—slithered across my boots, tasting the air with forked tongues. I held utterly still until they passed.
Heavy, lumbering footfalls reverberated from beyond the open double doors. The shouts of a crowd grew close— friends or foes? I wondered in a surge of panic.
Dragons roared and hissed while they crouched onto their haunches, rooted to their upended points of entry. Every one of them was chained with identical links of shadow magic. They scanned the hall, before focusing on me. The sapphire-blue she-dragon once more hovered around the throne at the back of the room. I tried to make eye contact with the creature—she’d proven to be an ally before—but her attention swung back and forth—the only dragon to skip over me.
Half the snakes wound their way for the double doors; the other half lingered. I couldn’t tell if any of them might be changelings. As snakes escaped into the hallway beyond the exit, screams from the approaching crowd punctuated the mounting chaos.
“The king’s here,” Rush informed me.
I turned to watch my father, clad in a nightshirt even though it was mid-morning, storm through the doors. Dashiell stalked at his side, keeping close, the hand nearest the king splayed as if prepared to catch him if he were to stumble on the uneven surface. The cacophony masked the signature tinkling of Dashiell’s bells that capped his braids.
In their wake, dozens of aristos streamed through the entrance only to skid to a sudden stop when they spotted the dragons. Overcome by stark panic and morbid curiosity, they piled up along the walls to gawk. Plain faces I’d only ever seen concealed behind garish makeup made them difficult to identify. Many wore nightdresses as the king did, as if they too were only just waking.
Half a dozen guards garbed in my father’s forest-green parted a path between the bystanders and marched behind him as he advanced.
“What is the meaning of this?” the king demanded in an imperious tone only slightly undermined by the askance tilt to his crown. In silk bed slippers, he picked his way through snakes, dragons, warriors, and holes in the floor with no more than an initial wary glance. Dashiell, however, shadowed his steps with panicked glances that roved in all directions. His mouth was a line of grim determination, his mismatched eyes alight with pinpointed focus.
A snake that was as thick as my thigh reared to hiss at my father. While the king merely pointed a condemning glower at it, which caused his crown to tip farther, Dashiell stepped between them and sliced off the snake’s head in a clean arc of his blade. Neither male flinched as the snake’s head and body fell in opposite directions, gore spilling from both open ends to splatter on a dragon’s tail and the leg of Ivar’s breeches. The dragon and Ivar growled in affront.
My every muscle was vibrating with controlled tension. Did the dragons wait for Talisa’s command? Would I have the chance to connect with them before they attacked? Would Ivar have time to free them from their shackles? Would the snakes realize we’d stand with them against their jailor? Would Talisa close the distance between us more quickly than we could track and take out one of the many fae I could no longer live without? I inched farther in front of Rush and Xeno, hoping they’d remain behind me. They only moved to my either side with the same look of determination Dashiell wore.
The two fuerin are free from the prisons of their flesh, Einar said into my mind, startling me.
Rush and Xeno, blades aloft, closed ranks around me, scanning the room for what had made me jump.
“I’m fine, guys,” I said quickly and quietly before Talisa could suspect. “Give me some space.”
They gave me only the slightest room, keeping their bodies between me and danger.
What about the undead fae? I asked Einar.
Still contained by the stable boy.
Can you free them too? He didn’t respond. Einar?
Finally, he said, We fuerin can do a great many things. It is not about what I can do but what I shall do.
May the Dragon Mother grant me patience… Will you please free them from the shadow’s magic and release them from this life?
They are no longer alive.
Dragons and snakes sissed, the floor rumbled and shook, and plaster rained down. Yes, I know. Please release their essences so they may move on to the Etherlands. When again he didn’t answer right away— as if I were just sitting in a pretty meadow whittling away time—I pressed, Can you do that?
He snorted along our connection. What have I told you, little one? We fuerin are creatures of great power.
Then please help the fae who at least deserve peace after they die. Okay. Gotta go. Keep Saffron safe.
I am fuerin, he replied in affront. That was reassurance enough, I supposed.
Raising her voice to be heard over another shake of Einar-instigated thunder, Talisa called from the other side of the long room, “This doesn’t concern you, Oren. Return to your chambers. I’ll come for you once I’m finished.”
The king picked his way across the hall. Dashiell swept his sword back and forth in a wide arc, clearing a path of dragons and serpents, who bobbed their heads atop their long necks but didn’t strike.
“You’ll come for me once you’re finished…” he deadpanned, incredulous. Since I’d been absent from court, apparently my father had grown a set. “No, Talisa, you won’t. I am the king of Embermere and your husband. You’ll tell me what’s happening right this instant.”
He’d never sounded so much the king before.
“Why are you covered in blood?” he asked once he drew closer.
“ Your daughter tried to kill me. ”
The king whirled around to gape at me. “You did what ?”
The nobles who were crowded along the walls gasped in unison, sharply reminding me my true heritage had still been a secret for most. Their eager whispers buzzed loudly as they clutched each other, greedily hanging on every word.
Talisa scowled, as if she had forgotten she’d told her nobles I was some distant cousin of the king.
I smiled at Talisa’s irritation—such an insignificant win—before spinning back on the king. “Don’t act so surprised, Father .” I had no patience left for any of them and more than enough terror to take its place. “She’s had it coming for a long time,” I said loudly enough that the gentry would hear. “She’s been murdering her subjects and blaming others for their deaths. She’s been feeding off them and bringing the dead back to life with blood magic to keep taking their power for herself.” Or something like that, anyway. “She’s been sucking the land dry of its magic, keeping it all for herself instead of using it to support the fae. Her darkness has poisoned the whole of the Mirror World until it’s all dying.
“But then, you already know all this. Don’t you, Father ?”
His jaw ticced. Dashiell’s own jaw clenched.
“Talisa—” I said.
“I am your queen , and you will refer to me as such,” Talisa interjected with a commanding snap .
Braque backed her up with an obsequious, “That’s right, my queen.”
Pointedly, I held my stare steady on my father. “ Talisa stole my mother from me, made everyone believe she went mad, that she was incapable of claiming her role as queen of Embermere. Talisa kept her captive and fed off her for decades. Decades. She”—my voice hitched as I recalled Edsel telling me Odelia was beyond saving, a scant echo of the female she’d once been. “Odelia was supposed to be the queen. She was supposed to be my mom .”
The hum of whispered gossip grew until it was as loud as the snakes’ hissing.
“Do you have any idea how many people and creatures she’s tortured and fed off of? Do you know there’s an entire dungeon underneath this place where she raises dragons just to experiment on them and hurt them?”
More gasps swept along the crowd, extending even to some of the guards. The dragons in the room with us stilled entirely.
“Someone has to stop her,” I continued. “You weren’t going to.”
“Odelia was supposed to be my wife,” the king said so softly that the courtiers might not have caught it. His shoulders buckled. Dashiell sidled closer, as if ready to carry his weight should the king break.
Surely Talisa had heard him, but she pretended not to, addressing me instead. “Only, you didn’t kill me, now did you?” Talisa’s wickedly triumphant grin was back, made all the more frightening by the blood spattering her ordinarily pristine face. I couldn’t help but note the striking resemblance between us. How blind I’d been not to recognize the family resemblance the very first time I laid eyes on her.
I still gripped my useless sais. I’d failed everyone I loved and the fae of the Mirror World who were depending on me, whether or not they were aware of today’s battle. I’d failed the land itself, the dragons who believed in me. Every warrior and those who were willing to become soldiers to back my claim to the throne.
I failed . The admission slid across my tongue but I held it back, though my torment surely swirled across my face. I wanted to look at Rush, to take in the extent of his masculine beauty one final time, but I didn’t dare deliver Talisa’s attention to him.
“And now you’ll all die,” Talisa announced as clear as a bell’s cheerful peal. “Every single one of you.” Talisa beamed as if this were the result of a long-nurtured dream of hers.
“Not all of us, Your Majesty. Right?” Braque asked. “Only those who’ve been disloyal to you?” His certainty faltered.
She frowned, not even looking at him. “Yes, Braque,” she said as if bored of his ridiculous antics. “Only those who’ve been disloyal to me. But of those, there are a great many.”
“Now, Talisa,” the king said in a rare tone of reason as he stepped closer. Dashiell pressed to his side as firmly as Azariah did to Bertram’s. “Despite your misdeeds, there’s no need for such extreme measures. These are still our subjects.”
She scrutinized me for several long beats, during which time even the snakes mostly silenced. Eventually she dragged that hard stare over to the king. “My ‘misdeeds?’ You forget your place, Oren, king consort . You don’t tell me what to do. I’m the bloodline monarch, not you.”
“Clearly, I must remind you, yet again, that your father, King Erasmus himself, chose me as your husband. To rule alongside you as your king.”
She chortled. “My king? You’ve never been my anything, Oren. You’ve only ever been Odelia’s.”
The strength was back to his shoulders. “Finally, you speak the truth.”
She sneered, resembling the snakes around her. Nothing remained of the two deep slices I’d drawn across her neck but fine lines of dried blood, and even those were shrinking. Even her loose hair shone free of the blood that had clumped it. The skin of her face was brightening.
“Did you kill our son?” The king’s question echoed in the sudden silence that accompanied it.
Zafi’s wings tickled the shell of my ear as she breathed, “Ivar has succeeded. All the dragons in the palace are free of their shadow chains.”
I didn’t dare do anything to confirm I’d registered the news, not even glance at the dragons lest I highlight their newfound freedom .
“I asked you a question, Talisa,” the king said. “Did you kill Saturn?”
She snapped a furious glower at him. Her dark brows slashed across her face. “How dare you ask such a question of me?”
His voice softened. “Did you do it?”
Her hands fluttered to her bosom. The large rubies on her fingers flashed red in the mirrors, catching the many lumoons that continually illuminated the hall. She fluttered dark eyelashes. “How could you think that of me, Oren?”
I held my breath as I waited for my father to fall for her blatant manipulations yet again.
But sorrow and disappointment tugged at the corners of his mouth. “What you did to all your sisters?—”
Talisa’s brows jumped.
“Oh yes, I know about them too. What you did to Odelia … and to Zelia, Inaya, and Nazira … was worse than death. Who’s to say you didn’t do the same to our son? To your father?”
“I didn’t kill Papa ,” she protested immediately.
“And Saturn?”
Talisa stared at him, the flirtation slipping from her face.
He sucked in a sharp breath and stepped in front of the protective barrier that was Dashiell. “You did, didn’t you?” He shook his head, his crown sliding another fraction of an inch. Soon, it would fall.
Talisa blinked rapidly. An actual sheen coated her eyes, making their sky-blue shine. “I had to,” she said in a thick voice, reaching for Oren.
He took a step back, into Dashiell.
“He didn’t understand. He was trying to take power from me, and if he’d succeeded Embermere would have fallen to our enemies.”
“What enemies?” Oren’s voice was broken. “The only enemy I see here is you.”
She reached for him another time. He jerked back. With one arm, Dashiell held him to his chest. The king sank into it.
“That’s not true,” Talisa insisted, sounding concerned with what he might think of her. “I loved Saturn as much as you did.”
The king shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“I did, Oren, of course I did. But Saturn, our boy?—”
“And you dared to tell me not to use his name! You dared to make me feel guilty for bringing Elowyn here!”
“I didn’t make you feel anything,” she snapped, blinking away the evidence of her weakness. “Saturn was playing with powers he didn’t understand. He was going to ruin everything my ancestors have been working toward practically since Prince Borromeo was banished here. I tried to talk reason with him. I tried to get him to see.”
“She did, Your Highness,” Braque interjected, taking a couple of small steps closer. “I had to erase his memories so many times. ”
Talisa tsked and glared at him over her shoulder. He snapped his trap shut.
With steely eyes, Talisa told Oren, “There’s been a plan in motion for three thousand years. And I’m going to be the one to bring it to fruition.”
Oren frowned. “What plan?”
“A magnificent one. But I can’t tell you about it here. It’s not meant for the ears of any but the queen and king.”
“I thought I wasn’t a king.”
Talisa smiled, a tight stretch of her painted lips. “Oh, Oren, I didn’t mean it. You know me.”
“Puh-lease,” I exclaimed. “ Oren , you can’t actually be falling for her shit again. I mean, come on !”
Talisa’s stare whipped toward me so fast it was unnatural. “Shut up, you stupid, idiotic girl,” she hissed. “You ruin everything.”
“No, you crazy bitch. You ruin everything. You all but killed my mother and my aunts. You obviously killed Saturn, my brother. You’ve tortured pretty much everyone in the Mirror World. And you treat my father like he’s your feeble-minded pet. I won’t stand for it.”
“Aye,” shouted Rush. “We won’t stand for it any longer.”
I flinched, wishing he could fade into the walls like the goblins did so he might be safe.
Talisa’s eyes narrowed to serpentine slits, taking me in, then him, before locking on to the king again.
The king was standing on his own, with Dashiell hovering behind him. His chin tilted up, his crown sliding a bit more. “I will ask you only one more time. Did you kill our son? ”
Talisa stared at him, blinked, took in her audience, and eventually scowled. “Yes, Oren, of course I did. The needs of Embermere come even before those of our own family.”
Oren’s legs buckled. He fell back into Dashiell, who struggled to sheathe his sword and hold him up with one arm.
“How could you?” Oren rasped so quietly that the courtiers, whose numbers had grown, barely breathed so as to absorb the unfolding drama. “He was our boy. Our sweet boy.”
Talisa tutted. “He wasn’t a boy, and he wasn’t sweet, not anymore he wasn’t. He was about to destroy everything.”
“How … how could you even do it? The magic doesn’t allow you to kill me. It shouldn’t allow you to kill your own flesh-and-blood son either.”
“Oh, Oren … the rules don’t apply to me. They haven’t for a long time. Haven’t you realized that?” Her face suddenly blank, she studied him. “You should have gone back to your room like I told you to.”
So fast I struggled to register what was happening, her eyes surged an incandescent red. Like flames, the crimson glow swiftly spread across the entirety of her body, burning away her clothing and heels. She stood wholly naked but for her diadem and the rubies on her hands .
She extended her glowing fingers in the direction of her husband. With a quick slash of her hands, Oren gasped, then gurgled. His crown toppled from his head to bounce along the floor with a tinkling clank , clink , clank , cludd . A second later, his head slid from his neck, tumbled, and propped itself on a ragged crest of glass, which protruded through his cranium from ear to chin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Are We Going to Stand around Gossiping and Sharpening Our Blades, or Are We Going to Use Them?
~ Rush ~
Dashiell keened until his legs collapsed, and slunk to the floor with the decapitated body of his king pressed to his chest, blood arcing in spurts from Oren’s severed neck up onto his gaping mouth. His different colored eyes were bright and savage as they looked from his king’s head to Talisa’s satisfied grin. I suspected Dashiell was fantasizing about ripping it from her face with his bare hands.
The stunned silence shattered.
Crying out their own horror, many courtiers fled, openly disregarding the false queen’s standing order that none were to leave her presence without her express permission. Their heels clacked loudly as they skimmed the mirrored walls, their hands squeaking against the gleaming glass, to avoid the dragons, who were crouched menacingly toward the center. They’d been taught to fear and revile the beasts as fae-eating monsters.
Unlike the dozen or so dragons, the snakes were everywhere, slithering across upturned, shatterproof glass—which obviously wasn’t dragonproof—and panicked nobles alike. Aristocrats from all levels of the ladder gasped and shrieked while the serpents, agitated by all the commotion, lunged and struck.
A minor lord of Leantos stumbled and fell. One of the largest snakes I’d ever seen slid over his body, bared its fangs, and buried them in his neck. The male’s screams strangled into wheezes before fading into squeaky silence.
The unfortunate lord was too far away for me to reach in time to help. Besides, I had Elowyn to protect—and she was more important than all of us put together. Talisa hadn’t physically touched Oren to kill him, cutting off his head from several feet away, unveiling a power I hadn’t known she possessed. The instinct to flee with Elowyn and not stop until we arrived at the far reaches of the Sorumbra and then the coast was a tangible impulse beating through my veins. I angled farther in front of her, exchanging a look with Xeno when I discovered him doing the same from her opposite side.
The changeling’s jaw was as hard as the stone of ancient mountains. No doubt he was also warring with the urge to whisk El somewhere secure. Only that was the problem, wasn’t it? There would be nowhere safe for Elowyn so long as Talisa lived. Even if I were to quickly locate a fae with the capacity to open a portal to Nightguard, there was no place in any of the magical or human realms that would remain beyond her reach—save for Faerie, and we couldn’t voyage there any more than she could.
The only viable option was to stay and end it—end her.
And she’s fucking immortal …
“We fight,” Xeno said, his tone as stern as his jutting jaw. “No matter what, Wyn lives.”
Finally, something easy to agree on with the man who made no secret of his desire for my mate. “No matter what, El lives.”
I glanced behind us at Ry and West. Their faces were steeled with determination, constantly sweeping our surroundings for immediate danger. They understood what was at stake as well as I. They’d fight to defend Elowyn despite the personal cost to themselves. Their eyes met mine and held.
“About that,” El said from between Xeno and me. “Any idea how we actually kill the bitch now that we’ve proven she really can’t, you know, die?” My mate’s eyes vibrated with some untold, intense emotion as they darted to the two parts of her father’s corpse and Dashiell, still slumped over the king’s body, caressing his shoulders, as if he were fighting not to break into pieces himself.
My frown was deep enough to ignite my tattoos in a flash of flaring, distressed light. Whatever Talisa was, whatever she’d become, she wasn’t a normal fae. There were no others like her. No known way to end someone who could survive a slit throat—Elowyn had cut so deeply no one should have been able to survive.
A dragon roared so loudly that my internal organs jumped. I crouched into a fighting stance as more courtiers screamed. One wailed until her voice cracked. Ferocious thunder rumbled beyond the walls, and more of them tripped, stumbled, and staggered out the doors, some holding each other up, dragging loved ones to safety, shoving anyone who stood in their way.
Despite the fleeing courtiers, at least half of them remained rooted to the spot, pressed to the mirrored walls, unwilling, I presumed, to draw the attention of the s?ngmortarán queen who so openly hunted us. This predator enjoyed pursuing her prey. She’d made it well known how cruelly she would punish those who defied her. Even now, in a hall filled with varied murderous creatures, they feared the s?ngmortarán queen more.
Elowyn began to shake, the only warning before she ran for her father. I reached for her a moment before Xeno did, hugging her to my chest.
“My … my father,” she muttered as if only just now being hit by the full impact of the horror we’d witnessed. “My father … he’s dead.”
By the Ethers, was he ever.
“Shhhh,” I cooed instinctively as I’d done with Larissa so many times when she was a little girl and I her older, protective brother. It’s gonna be alright , I almost told El as I had Lari; only now it wouldn’t be. So I simply held El tightly, unsure of any better comfort to offer when we couldn’t lower our guard.
“She killed him,” El said, sounding distant despite the warmth of her in my embrace. She gripped her sais at her sides. The curved blades were stained with the s?ngmortarán queen’s blood—for all the good it had done us.
“I know,” I answered softly, certain there must be something better to say.
“She just … killed him. She wasn’t supposed to be able to kill him. The royal magic should’ve protected him.”
“You’re right. It should have.”
“When it didn’t, I should have stopped her.” A stifled sob undulated along her spine.
The queen had retreated to her throne, where she perched, openly nude for all to see. At least she’d crossed one long leg over the other. She licked her lips at the sign of my mate’s sorrow across the room and attempted to catch my stare.
“No, El, you shouldn’t have,” I said with the kind of steel I hoped the warrior in her would respond to. “He was okay with Talisa killing you , remember?” I pursed my lips at the unwelcome recollection that accompanied that one: minutes later, I’d myself stabbed my mate in the heart in a desperate attempt to save her. I plowed on before the memory of the betrayal on El’s face could hook its claws into me.
“You have a purpose far greater than saving a male who had no qualms over throwing his own daughter to the ravenous dragons.” Was it the right thing to say? I had no idea. Regardless, I persevered, lowering my voice to murmur against her ear so no one else would hear above the tumult. “The dragons are free. We still have a chance. Maybe they can kill her.”
El went rigid in my arms. She breathed a few times, her gaze steady on Oren’s severed head, now gurgling a slow trickle of blood from the neck, then nodded.
Gently, I released her. Unable to resist the opportunity, I pressed a firm kiss to her temple, her dark hair plaited in pretty rows along her scalp to keep it out of her way for fighting. She’d joined me and others in smearing the inky, black-violet juice of the wild morand berry beneath her eyes and along the straight ridge of her nose as our ancestors had long done before heading into battle. Her many scratches, cuts, and deeper injuries were now largely healed, but she looked no less fierce, no less of a survivor. Each of her striking features that I’d grown to love was tight with a stoic strength.
By the blessed peace of the Etherlands, my mate was sexy.
In a vicious scrape of sound that pulled me from my admiration, Xeno asked, “What would Zako say?”
El laughed bitterly, darkly. “He’d say, ‘Death isn’t for warriors to mourn, little cub. Grief is a luxury reserved for the victors. Fight first. Live to lick your wounds later.’”
“Yup,” Xeno said, before adding in an affected, melodic lilt I assumed was meant to imitate Zako. “ Now, are we going to stand around gossiping and sharpening our blades, or are we going to use them?”
“Oh, we’re gonna fuckin’ use them, alright,” El said in a rumbled growl.
She stepped forward to stare ferociously at the closest dragon, who was about a dozen feet away. Nostrils flaring wide, he stared back at her, dark, pupil-less eyes blazing with defiance. She stared harder—long moments passed while nerves twitched all across my body; that dragon alone could eat El, Xeno, and me before he was full—until finally the dragon lowered his eyes for a quick moment that I understood as agreement: he wouldn’t attack us. El bowed her head in reverent thanks before spinning her sais in her grip with the kind of fluidity of someone who knew the weapon nearly as well as her own limbs.
Clutching the curved blades, she scanned the panicked and cowering nobles, the guards who awaited orders, the serpents and other dragons, the many fae who had crowded into the hall to see what was going on when their peers had scattered in the opposite direction, the shuddering mirrored walls that scarcely ceased trembling, and, finally, our allies. West and Ry flanked Ivar, as if they didn’t fully trust the male who would have once stood at Talisa’s side as surely as Braque did. I didn’t know where Pru, Edsel, and Zafi had gone; and we’d left Hiro, Roan, and the others fighting off the last of the pygmy ogres and remaining guards.
El shouted, “You witnessed the supposed queen kill the king.” A surge in conversation suggested some of the late arrivals hadn’t yet realized what kind of scene they’d walked in on. “She’s been killing her supposed subjects and allies for as long as she’s ruled and then blamed others for her actions. And she’s done much, much worse, more hideous fates than ordinary death.”
“What could be worse than death?” a male’s dismayed voice asked from the crowd.
“Stick around and you’ll probably see,” Ryder muttered grimly.
El continued as if they hadn’t spoken: “If you stand in my way of killing this false queen?—”
Talisa’s hands slapped the armrests of her throne with matching crack s that silenced even the snakes and their continuous hissing. She catapulted up from her throne. “I am no false queen .” Her voice was a guttural, animalistic denial. The red glow was back, enveloping the stretches of her bare skin. Her neck was long, the tendons straining against the smooth skin that no longer held any sign of El’s strike.
El ignored her interruption too. “If any of you interfere … if that’s the path you choose, well, it’s the fucking wrong one, and that’s the pure truth. But if you choose it regardless, I suggest you leave now and in a hurry. If you want to join us in the fight to take her down, and that’s definitely the right choice, welcome to our army. We might be small, but we’re fucking mighty. It’s time to return the light to the Mirror World. It’s time to banish the darkness from its borders. It’s time to become the true mirror of Faerie this land was always intended to be! ”
Several shouts rose to agree. Hope dared to flutter in my chest. I searched for those new allies as eagerly as Talisa did. Her eyes were sharp, like those of a raptor soaring through the skies, selecting its next meal.
When my attention skirted across Lennox Heath and some of his cronies, Selwin Hewett, Breccan, and Junius, all of them dressed for battle with weapons at their belts, I called out, “Your rank will not protect you. We fight as one whole, for the entirety of faekind. We are all equals.”
Lennox, Selwin, Breccan, and Junius scowled in unison, appearing more similar than usual with their varying skin, hair, and eye colors.
I added, “Whether we’re small as a parvnit or large as a dragon, we are all part of this land. We all deserve a land of peace and light. You’re looking at the true queen of Embermere and the Mirror World.” I glanced at El. “The land itself has chosen her. The dragons have chosen her. And if you stand against her, you stand against all of us. Every one of us inside this hall. Everyone attacking the palace’s exterior. Everyone who has the courage in their hearts to do the right thing and stand with us.”
Ryder glared at Lennox and his bully friends. “Just give us reason to kill you. Any will do.”
“Yeah,” West said, pointing with his sword at Breccan. “ Please come at me. I beg you.” Breccan was the one who cut off Hiroshi’s arm in the Gladius Probatio.
Talisa scoffed, but before she could respond, a scream ripped from Dashiell that seemed to tear from his very essence. His eyes red and glazed, he cradled the body of his king, rocking it. The bells that capped his braids tinkled with a melancholy song of the deepest loss.
“You were the one to poison my king, weren’t you?” he accused in a sharp, ragged cry. “It was no noble from court. The flare of your magic, the darkening of the sky, that was all a show, a distraction. You were never upset. It was you all along. What were you up to? Why put my king through so much pain?”
When Talisa didn’t immediately reply, he added with a sibilant hiss, “You’ve always been a sssnake .”
“Hey!” protested a female who must be a serpunta , a snake changeling.
Dashiell was unapologetic. “I warned my king, many times, I did. But he saw the best in you at first, and then you held him in your thrall. Didn’t you? Didn’t you? ” he shouted in hysterics. “You’ve been using your magic against him from the start. He had no chance, not even when he tried to love you, before he realized he truly couldn’t. You’re nothing like Odelia Catalina Corisande. Nothing .”
“You forget your place, attendant ,” she snapped. “You overreach. You may not question me.”
“It is because of you that my king mourned his son. Because of you that Zako had to leave me to protect our king’s daughter. Now my king lies dead in my arms when he was a fae a thousand times more honorable and better than you ever stand a chance of being. Every single action you take is for your own interest, not that of the fae of?—”
Before Dashiell could finish his justified tirade, Talisa’s hands flashed red. In a blur of glowing crimson, her index fingers sliced the air in front of her?—
With a final chiming of his bells, Dashiell’s head toppled from his own shoulders to land morbidly in the lap of the king he hadn’t finished grieving. The bells that capped his braids silenced.
My breath stalled in my lungs. It had happened too fast and too far away.
In tacit agreement, Xeno and I urgently pushed Elowyn behind us and backed her up toward the doors. This fight wasn’t over, but if Talisa could kill so easily and with so little notice, this wasn’t the approach we needed to take.
Shuddering cries and hiccupping gasps merged with the disquieted hissing that buzzed through the hall. More thunder rolled outside, so violent it felt as if it might pierce the walls to shake us.
For once sparing us her theatrics, Talisa yelled, “Dragons! Snakes! Serpuntas, sneakles, and feethles! Guards!” She growled. “Where are my pygmy ogres and dead?” she demanded on a frown, then tsked and shook her head as if they had failed her instead of the other way around. “Great and minor nobles of the court of Embermere! It is time to fulfill your vows to me. My servants too, you are to use your powers in my defense. You are to defend my honor and my crown, as is your duty. You are to aid me in crushing these underhanded usurpers. It is I who is the rightful ruler of this land, chosen by its very magic, by the bloodline of King Spiro the Second of the royal elves of Faerie and his son, Prince Borromeo, founder of this realm. It is I—and only I—who have the right to wear this crown.” She tapped the pristine golden diadem that wrapped her temples. “The throne is mine and mine alone.”
My tattoos flared brightly. I begged them to retreat around my face at least so I could see properly. They obeyed instantly, receding.
The red that enveloped Talisa glowed more softly, pulsing rhythmically as if in beat with her heart. “Well?” she growled with a baring of bright teeth. “What are you waiting for? If you’re worried about them killing you, know that not only will I kill you if you betray me, but I’ll bring you back to life to serve me for as long as I live.” She grinned, those teeth appearing sharp as my blades. “And I will live forever.”
Several of our audience wheezed and choked on their breaths.
Nude but for her jewels, crown, and glow, she stalked toward us. Everyone in this damned Hall of Mirrors but she, Elowyn, Xeno, my brothers, and I seemed frozen by shock or indecision or maybe just pure, undiluted terror.
Talisa sissed louder than any snake under her command, the tendons bulging in her neck. Her steps unnaturally sinuous, she cried out as she prowled, “My defenders: may your ancestors cheer you on from the Etherlands, and may you draw first— and last—blood.”
“Run,” I barked at El as Talisa drew closer. “Run!”
But a wall of guards, mixed with a couple of pygmy ogres, stretched across the exit. And Lennox and his buddies stood in front of them, smiles cruel and taunting.
I pressed El to my back while Xeno spun to scan our circumstances. When he glanced at me, his mouth was a grim, desperate line. He shook his head and then kicked off his boots.
The fight to the death I’d been dreading had already arrived.