Chapter 39
Horror swept over me. I reached a hand towards Drustan. “An illusion,” I gasped past my acid-stung throat.
His eyes widened, but he was still paralyzed. I sent magic into his neck to heal him, but before I’d finished weaving the severed nerves back together, a force hit me from behind, knocking me to the ground. My head struck the stone, and my vision briefly blackened.
Caedo howled, racing around and around my wrist. Destroy them, hurt them, punish them…
My ears rang from the impact. Through blurred eyes, I saw a Light soldier crouch over me. One of the event guards, wearing flexible leather armor over a white tunic. He grabbed my left wrist and secured a cuff around it.
The metal burned my skin, and pain stabbed through my skull as the magic was sucked out of me. Caedo went silent and still.
Iron.
Panicked, I lashed out with my free hand, but the guard blocked it with a leather-gauntleted forearm.
He punched the side of my head, and while I was blinking away the sparks, he locked the second cuff around my right wrist, just below where Caedo curled as a bracelet.
I yanked, but the short chain between the manacles held strong. The iron stung my skin like nettles.
Caedo , I thought desperately, but the dagger didn’t reply.
The soldier was still crouched over me, gripping the chain between my cuffs in one gloved hand. I lurched up, cracking his nose with my skull, and he shouted and toppled backwards.
“An illusion,” I yelled, struggling to my feet. “Ulric showed me an illusion—”
No one heard me, because Torin’s announcement had sent the crowd into a frenzy. A roar of sound battered my ears as faeries screamed and shouted, expressions burning with rage and fear. Their mouths formed accusations, and their fingers pointed at me.
No, no, no , I thought, sick with terror. Imogen had told me Torin was eager to end the Accord early so he could start on the butchery, and Ulric had clearly agreed. And I was the weapon they had used.
The guard was on his feet again, running for me. “Please listen!” I shouted, trying to shove through the crowd. “He poisoned me, it was an illusion to make me attack Drustan—”
A faerie in a lavender mask bared his teeth and gripped my forearm, hauling his other fist back like he intended to punch me. Then he went pale and collapsed.
Caedo. Unable to move or speak without our connection, but still able to drink, like it had been in the bog.
The soldier grabbed me by the hair. I spun, swinging my bound fists into his neck. The bracelet hit his throat, and he died, too.
“The chain!” someone shouted. A soldier tackled me, and another bent to hook a longer chain to the one between my manacles.
A leash, so they wouldn’t have to touch me.
He yanked me upright, then tugged again, forcing me to stumble forward.
Two more soldiers fell in behind, and I cried out as one jabbed the tip of her spear into my back. “Move,” she ordered.
Torin was marching ahead of us, clearing the path to the dais, calling out damning words as he went. “Blood House has broken the Accord! Princess Kenna has broken the Accord!”
The gauntlet of faeries shouted and hissed. A gob of spit struck my cheek, and someone threw a glass at my head. It shattered, spraying me with sticky wine that was quickly joined by blood running from a cut on my skull.
I shouted explanations, but it was no use.
Faeries from different houses were already turning on one another, shoving and yelling.
It was a silvered event, so only the guards carried swords, but as we passed a Fire faerie fumbling with the ceremonial peace knot securing his dagger, it was clear this was about to get much worse.
The soldiers threw me to the ground before the dais. Imogen stood at the edge, looking shocked. She’d been so certain Torin answered to her.
Torin mounted the stairs, and Rowena emerged from the crowd to join him. “Princess Kenna attacked Prince Drustan,” Torin called out. “She turned on him after making a deal with Prince Hector.”
“No!” I cried, pushing to my knees. “It was a trick, Ulric cast—” One of the guards backhanded me before I could finish the sentence. Pain exploded over my cheek as blood flooded my mouth.
“This is what comes of trusting a human with power!” Torin shouted. “She violates our sacred traditions. She violates the sanctity of our houses. And now she betrays her own allies. Princess Kenna has declared war!”
The drunken crowd roared and roiled. Someone lunged in my direction, only to be knocked back by a member of Imogen’s personal guard.
Other guards positioned themselves in a ring around the dais, spears angled outward, but there were too few of them compared to the growing riot.
A gap appeared between bodies, and I finally saw Kallen in the distance shoving his way towards me with a determined look.
I reached for him with my bound hands. “I’m sorry,” I gasped.
The crowd pressed together again, blocking him from my sight.
“Order, order!” Imogen shouted from the dais, hands raised. “Let Princess Kenna face her crimes at trial, as is just. There is no need to abandon the Accord—”
No one was listening. She’d drowned the crowd in alcohol, and everything was spiraling out of control.
Behind Imogen, Torin and Rowena exchanged a look. Torin nodded, then pulled a dagger out of an inside pocket of his tunic and plunged it into Imogen’s side.
Imogen screamed. Torin stabbed her again and again, and she collapsed in a heap of puffed pink skirts. The crown fell off her head, landing on the dais with a loud clang. Torin pulled a pair of cuffs out of a pouch at his belt, then snapped them around her wrists.
The nearest onlookers stopped their shoving to gape. My mouth hung open with matching shock.
Torin straightened, holding the bloody knife high. “Princess Kenna started this war,” he called out. “I will finish it.”
A banging sound at the edge of the room was accompanied by a flash of light and a swirl of thick gray smoke.
Through the haze, I saw the door in one of the unicorn heads had been thrown open, and Sun Soldiers in golden armor and white cloaks were pouring through.
One of them gutted a Fire faerie with a brutal thrust of his sword.
The room erupted into violence.
The clash of metal was echoed by screams, and flashes of light mingled with waves of darkness and bursts of flame as the most powerful Fae unleashed their abilities.
The guard in front of me fell beneath someone’s dagger, and a tide of raging faeries swept over him.
A boot hit my ribs, cracking them. Someone else kicked from the other side, sending me sprawling.
I tried to push myself upright and was instantly knocked back down.
The war had begun, and it was all my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped as blows rained down on me. “I’m so sorry.”
Now that the disorienting poison was gone, I saw my failures in excruciating detail.
I should have run somewhere to vomit up the toxin rather than looking for Kallen to save me.
I should have tried to sense heartbeats rather than believing that vision.
I should have known Drustan would never make himself a villain in front of everyone, no matter how much he hated Kallen.
But I hadn’t done any of that, and now I was the villain.
My skull cracked against the floor, and blood spilled over my temple.
A faerie stomped on my fractured ribs, but I managed to press Caedo against his ankle, and he collapsed beside me.
His corpse took the impact of the next kick, and I was able to get my feet under me.
I shot upright, swinging my bound wrists into the side of an attacker.
As Caedo turned him into a husk, his fingers loosened, and the knife in his fist clattered to the floor.
I scooped it up, needing every weapon I could get.
My broken body screamed in agony, but terror kept me on my feet. Kallen—where was Kallen?
I saw a flash of black in my peripheral vision.
He was twenty feet away, mask gone and teeth bared as he battled towards me.
He’d untied his daggers and was stabbing his way through anyone blocking him, but there were too many of them, and they turned on him eagerly.
He summoned two spots of darkness and ripped a faerie in half, then staggered back when a blinding light burst before him.
Someone threw a dagger, and Kallen wisped into shadow an instant before it spun through the air where he’d been standing.
That shadow swirled through the crowd as Kallen raced towards me. A Sun Soldier flung a shining metal net into his path, and Kallen solidified beneath it. He grimaced as he ripped the iron net away, and I saw pink lines marking his face.
He’d just lost his magic.
The Sun Soldier who had thrown the net lunged for Kallen, sword raised. The crowd surged between us again, obscuring him.
I screamed in rage and staggered forward, feeling the hot, spiking agony of fractured bones.
My magic couldn’t fix the wounds, but my Fae body would heal soon enough, and I had to get to Kallen.
I stabbed a faerie in the gut, ripping the blade out so roughly that a glistening slide of intestines followed.
The long chain attached to my manacles tangled around my feet, and I kicked it aside.
Drunken, poorly armed faeries were no match for the Sun Soldiers, and the battle was turning into a mass retreat as faeries ran for the exits.
Fleeing bodies buffeted me. Some Illusion faeries had joined those from Fire, Void, Earth, and Blood in their retreat, but others had fallen in beside the Sun Soldiers.
Ulric was in the midst of them shouting orders.