35. The Fae of the Mirror World Are Ready for Peace
35. THE FAE OF THE MIRROR WORLD ARE READY FOR PEACE
RUSH
With El’s hand clutching my arm, careful of the bare sword it held, I positioned myself in front of her. Immediately she sidestepped me so that half her body was exposed to … what, exactly?
What looked like skittering bugs skimmed the floor between Talisa’s body and Braque’s without leaving tracks or smears of blood, which was everywhere. As if they were solid, the insect-like things scrambled over chunks of glass and sliced-up parts of several dead snakes. Their edges, however, were undefined. Despite their dark color, they were translucent.
They were made up of shadow— fucking shadow. It shouldn’t be possible.
My glare bored into the portly alchemist who’d clearly lost what little good sense he’d possessed. Over my shoulder, I told El, “ Please stay behind me. It’s dark magic.” It had to be. And it was spewing from Talisa, who’d been darker than anyone, far worse in the end than her father, King Erasmus the Bloody, whose legacy was one of devastation and the near extermination of dragonkind.
My El had battled the most powerful dark magic wielder this land had ever seen, and won—she’d kicked Talisa’s motherfucking nasty ass. My core was still shaken from the sight of Elowyn and Talisa locked in a ferocious battle of magical powers, when Talisa had spent her life mastering her abilities and stealing those of others, and my El was so new to the ways of the fae. There were a few times there when Talisa had come much too close to robbing me of my mate, a loss I didn’t think I’d be able to bear—my love for El was an integral part of my existence, my very essence.
“What … the fuck…?” Ryder muttered under his breath from where he’d appeared at my other side, pulling me from a lingering terror that served no good purpose. El had succeeded where none had before. That was all that mattered now.
Ry chewed the inside of his cheek as he joined me in staring at Braque and the little shadows squirming into his mouth, open in welcome. “That’s some nasty, crazy shit, bro. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”
“No.” My lips pressed together as the last of the not-bugs disappeared into Braque’s mouth. It had taken at most only a minute or two for whatever darkness had possessed Talisa to consume him.
The many fae gathered around gaped, glowered, or growled deep in their throats in a mixture of disbelief, disgust, and fright. Our blades, claws, and teeth were lowered as we examined the unanticipated threat in our midst. The way of the fae was one of magic, aye, and great magic at that. But not this. Whatever darkness this was, it felt foreign, wrong. We’d been taught no defense against its ilk.
“By the Ethers, Braque,” Hiroshi exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Braque’s lips sealed the shadow inside him. He turned toward my brother, who stood next to Ryder, between him and West.
Braque’s eyes, which I remembered as an unfriendly, unremarkable dark hue, darkened until the black of a deep, moonless night consumed the whites of his eyes, and what looked out from behind them was pure menace. The male I’d so disliked—but much preferred to this persona—was gone.
Holding her close, Edsel embraced Pru, who trembled in the aftermath of her dispatching her abuser. The wizened goblin granddoody called out loudly, “My gran’gobbler”—his voice hitched with evident pride—“only just finished off the evil queen. What are ye doin’ now, takin’ up her fight? Don’t ye got better sense than that? Surely ye musta been frightened of her much as the rest of us.”
“Exactly,” said a visdrake of Potesantos. His hair, usually pulled back in sleek, perfect plaits, stood here and there in tangles around his head; he’d joined the fight. “Allow the terror to end, already, Lord Braque. The fae of the Mirror World are ready for peace. ”
“Peace,” Braque repeated in a voice that was too unfeeling. His lips pressed into a smug, cold sneer. “There will be no peacccce ,” he hissed, sounding so much like the many snakes in the hall that, had my eyes been closed, I might have mistaken him for one of them.
“Don’t do this,” I begged of whatever controlled him. “We want the hurting and the killing to be over?—”
Several aye s confirmed the sentiment.
“—but that doesn’t mean we won’t fight you to the death if we must.”
“Aye!” someone yelled.
He grinned, and from between his teeth, shadow writhed. “I am death,” he said in that voice so cold, so impassive, that I believed him.
Ivar stalked around a dragon, whose keen stare followed each of the advisor’s steps. He adjusted his grip on his cutlasses, which I’d returned to him, and spread his legs shoulder-width apart. Blood spattered one side of his face, and his sandy-blond hair was several shades darker and flat from the gore.
“Braque,” he called.
Braque spun to face the male who’d been his partner in complete adoration of the false queen.
“Stop this,” Ivar said.
I felt El turn, and followed her gaze to a sudden buzz of commotion near Pru and her granddoody. Several parvnits hovered around Zafi, whose little face was slack, her tiny eyes wide. The parvnits were squealing quietly—not to draw Braque’s attention, I guessed—hugging her, and sharing hurried, urgent whispers that sounded like the buzz of bees. Their faces were smudged with plaster and gore. Tears streaked tracks through the grime like sparkling diamonds catching the light.
Before I could make sense of the scene, especially why Zafi had begun sobbing into the arms of a parvnit who was alternating between patting her acorn hat and her back, Ivar added a menacing, “Or I will make you.”
El and I faced the two males once more. Ry and West seemed to lean forward slightly, as if drawn to the tension between them, a fight none of us would have seen coming just a mere week before.
Braque scoffed. “You won’t make me do anything. I was always the more powerful one.”
Ah, so at the very least Braque’s hubris remained inside there.
“We are both descended from the same bloodline,” Ivar answered.
Braque’s dark eyes glittered. “The original bloodline of the royal elves from Faerie.”
“Aye. We have a duty to that bloodline.”
Again, Braque scoffed. “Duty! What duty? The elves abandoned us here. They forced us to live like scum when we deserved to live like kings!”
Several spectators shook their heads in outrage.
A goblin garbed in a tunic and breeches, which had been tattered to mere threads long before today’s skirmish, hollered, “You did live like a king! You wore the finest garments, ate till you grew fat as a coddled boar, and never had to raise a single plump finger to do anything for yerself.” The goblin’s long nose quivered as he trailed dark, accusing eyes along Braque’s body and the many signs of the easier life he’d led than any of them. “We goblins did everything for ye.”
“Or us,” interjected a parvnit. “Or the numenits.”
“Or the humans,” Elowyn added from beside me.
Braque’s head swiveled toward the goblin while his body remained rooted where he stood; not even his shoulders shifted.
Braque harrumphed haughtily and tipped his nose up into the air. “You dare address me? I’m your new king! My servants shall not address me unless I speak to them directly, or it will be your heads on a platter, and I shall eat you up for dinner.”
“For fuck’s sake,” West muttered. “Didn’t El just kill one like him?”
“Seriously,” Ry agreed.
Ivar sighed. As he took in Braque’s foolishness, I wondered if he recognized any of his own from his many decades in unwavering service to the false queen. “You are not the new king, Braque. You are a fool.”
Upon stiff, unmoving shoulders, Braque’s head spun around to glare menace at Ivar. “You dare address me that way?”
“Aye, I do.” Ivar spun his cutlasses by the grips before clutching them even more tightly than before.
“Then I shall kill you too.”
Ivar’s knees bent slightly, and he tipped to the balls of his feet. “Go ahead and try. ”
Braque’s nose rose impossibly higher, and though Ivar was taller than he, the alchemist somehow managed to stare down at him. “Then I shall. You will regret your betrayal.”
“I owe you no loyalty.”
“You owed our queen loyalty, and you betrayed her. I am her successor. She chose me. She promised me she’d reward my service, and now she has.”
“Not from where we’re looking at you,” I muttered.
“She didn’t choose you,” Ivar said. “You opened yourself to a darkness that had nowhere else to go.”
“It’s her power.”
“And look what came of it. Of her.” Ivar cast a pointed look at Talisa’s head.
Braque narrowed those consuming dark eyes at Elowyn. “That shouldn’t have happened. She did it. She ruined everything my queen had planned.”
Ivar stilled like a predator not wanting to alert his prey that he’d sighted it. “Talisa always shared her plans with you, didn’t she?”
Braque preened, revealing that much of his personality remained. “She did. Of course she did. She trusted me above all others.” He sneered smugly. “Certainly above you.”
“So you knew everything she did?”
“Of course. She confided in me always. I was a part of everything she ever did.”
“I’m gonna kill him,” El rumbled with sudden and surprising ferocity.
I glanced down at her .
“He was there when she hurt you. When she took from you what you never should’ve had to give.”
I smiled with a sorrowful regret I felt deep in my bones.
“I’ll make him suffer as you did,” El growled, and each of my brothers were quick to agree once El had pointed out what exactly he’d been complicit in, what he’d stood by and let happen. What he’d probably even encouraged.
“El should fucking kill him now,” Ryder said loudly enough that a few others took up the call.
“The dragon queen should kill Braque like she did the dark queen!”
At that, Braque crouched and turned on them, scanning the crowd of beasts, creatures, and people. From the mirrors that remained intact, monsters with an appearance of molten metal watched attentively.
“I am your new king,” Braque said. “Relent now or I will kill you all.” He glanced back at El. “But I’ll kill her firssst,” he hissed. “She’s earned my full attention.”
I moved fully in front of my mate while a dragon Xeno stomped closer, Hiro, Ry, West, Roan, and Reed flanking us.
“Over my dead body,” I snarled.
Braque smiled and giggled that stupidly irritating trill he’d loved unleashing in Talisa’s presence. “Of course, my drake. As you wish.”
Braque opened his mouth wide. Shadows peeked out, nipping at the air around his teeth.
“Wait,” Ivar called .
Braque glanced his way.
“Did you know that Talisa poisoned my sister Lisbeth until we believed she was going to die and that you and your potions were her only chance at survival?”
Braque didn’t respond.
“Did you know that Lisbeth survived when Talisa told me you hadn’t been able to save her? That Talisa feigned her death and instead imprisoned my sister all these years, draining her of her power?”
Braque’s black eyes glittered some more.
“Well?” Ivar barked aggressively enough to cause a couple of the goblins to jump. “Did you or did you not?”
Braque opened his mouth, only this time neither shadow nor sound emerged.
“You just finished boasting how the queen shared everything with you,” Ivar pressed. “How you were her most trusted confidante. Did she tell you about Lisbeth or was that the one and only secret she kept to herself?”
Braque still hesitated.
“It can only be one or the other, Braque. Either she trusted you with everything or she didn’t. Either you were her favorite or you weren’t.” After a pause, Ivar added, “The one she promised she’d reward or not.”
A scoff eventually burst from the alchemist. “Of course I knew! I knew from the very start. She trusted me with Lisbeth.” He looked down upon Ivar. “And with you. You were part of her plan all along.”
“Why? ”
“Like you said, you’re descended from the elven bloodline. Better to keep your enemies close than opposing you.”
Braque canted his head to one side and shifted the strap of his potions satchel to hook under a bulge of chest skin. “If you serve me now as your king, I will reward you as my queen has rewarded me. Well, perhaps not this exactly. But I will reward you.”
“Not a chance, you simpering”—Ivar took a step toward him—“conniving”—another step—“disgusting”—step—“unbearably irritating”—step—“wheedling”—step—“lying fool.”
Ivar stopped close enough that if he lunged he’d skim Braque’s brocaded tunic, pristine despite all the bloodshed.
The alchemist retreated a couple of his small steps before bumping into a dragon’s big, strong legs, and its hooked, lethal claws. It was Xeno; he’d positioned himself between Elowyn and Braque.
Ivar leapt over Talisa’s legs, snake parts, an amputated hand—still gripping half of a broken bow, a charred thumb, and a pair of severed ears that must have been some of the spies El had described, drawing both arms back in mid-air.
Braque, who’d been glancing up at Xeno’s dragon, looked in time to see Ivar eating up the distance between them.
Braque yanked open his mouth. Shadow streamed from between his lips like a flock of startled bats escaping a hungry dragon’s lair, zooming toward the walls as if said dragon were in pursuit, fast on their wings.
Ivar scissored with both cutlasses in a rapid sheeeek, sheeeeek of sharp, flashing metal that caught the light of the lumoons.
A line of crimson red ringed around Braque’s neck. His eyes froze wide in shock.
Braque’s body crumpled to the floor before his head fell.
His body landed on top of Talisa’s.
His severed head rolled into a gap in the broken glass floor and landed, neck first, with a squelching slap that bonded it to the intact, inner glass flooring of the snakes’ prison.
“Fuck! The mirrors!” West shouted as alarmed cries rose all over the hall.
Pressing El to my body, my sword aloft, I looked at the walls that enclosed the great hall.
Hordes of monsters spilled from them. They had neither eyes nor ears, but wide mouths that kept opening and closing as if intent on consuming. Their shapes were roughly pygmy-ogre like, the surface of their bodies a constantly swirling, shimmering silver.
Dozens had already emerged, stepping out of the glass with a ripple as if it were water. Dozens more piled up behind them. More still appeared at their backs in the mirrors, eager to break through.
Those monsters who’d already escaped the mirrors to invade the hall—in precise, eerie unison—stretched their maws so wide they encompassed most of their heads, and loosed a shrill, curdling shriek that couldn’t be of the fae, the Sorumbra, or of the living. It hurt my ears, but I would have had to let go of El or my sword to cover them. I pressed my arms to either side of El’s head, muffling her hearing.
Finally their screams ceased, leaving my ears ringing sharply and me wincing.
The mirror monsters swept their unseeing faces in all directions until they seemed to choose their prey—us.