Chapter 44
forty-four
Hands around my arms. Fur against my leg. Chaos around us, screams and shouts.
Lyall was giving orders, and Hessa was behind me, trying to drag me back, but I refused. Jerked her away.
“No—I am not going anywhere—let go!”
I actually said that out loud when I thought I wouldn’t be able to even whisper it.
“He’s going to kill you!” Hessa shouted, and Maera’s wolf howled. Lyall pointed his finger at me as his soldiers moved toward the people, pushing them back.
All that magic that I’d sucked back inside me clicked into place, like it layered over my bones, found its home again.
I screamed, “Stop!” at the top of my voice, half my focus on holding back my magic now, and Lyall did.
The shimmer in the air was gone, but the cold of all that energy lingered in the air still.
The people watched, mouths wide open, terrified of what would happen next. They were okay—I hadn’t hurt them. Thank God, I hadn’t hurt them.
And now I realized there was no other way around this but through. Right through Lyall.
“You and me,” I said, and my voice shook because even if I had all this power now, this was Lyall. He’d had the same power for much longer—and I couldn’t kill him, when he would try to kill me. It would not be fair by any means but… “You and me, we fight. I win, you leave. You win…”
He’d kill me. There was no need to put it into words.
“Nilah, no!” Hessa called from behind me, and she had another arrow ready and aimed at his face, right there over my shoulder.
Maera continued to growl and to try to push me back, too, but nothing else was going to work. A fight with Lyall, one I most likely wouldn’t survive—but it still had to happen. So, I put my hand over the head of the arrow just near my shoulder, and pushed it down.
“He can’t die, Hessa,” I said, eyes locked on Lyall, who was smiling, of course. “None of the heirs can die, or the curse that has been plaguing the faelands will spread, and Verenthia will eventually be no more. The stars have said it themselves.” I spoke as if I’d heard them with my own ears.
The people didn’t believe me, of course. How could I expect them to when one of their own, a real fae king, had already infected them with his lies?
“But I will fight you, Lyall. And for the sake of all of us, including you, I hope I win.” Because I was going to fight until my dying breath.
A grin full of mischief. “Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any better,” he whispered and stepped forward.
Maera tried to push me back again. Hessa tried to whisper in my ear about how he was going to kill me in front of all these people, how he was stronger than me, how he had years and years of practice, how his magic was superior simply because he’d had it much longer than me—but I had to try, didn’t I?
Because I wasn’t going to let him just come up here and take this throne for himself, and I wasn’t going to try to force these people into accepting me as their ruler.
Not after everything we’d had to go through to get here. No way in hell.
If fighting him was what it took, then so be it.
“Let me show the good people of the Frozen Court why they will love having me as their king…”
With his hands raised, Lyall showed me the magic burning in his palms, spreading up his knuckles, all the way to his wrists.
I raised mine, too, and pretended they weren’t shaking. Pretended he couldn’t see them. Pretended I knew exactly what I was doing.
“I will kill you in front of all of them,” Lyall whispered, barely moved his lips, but I read the words just fine. He was right in front of me. “And I will be cheered for it.”
Fucking hell, I believed him.
And I still couldn’t find it in me to wish that Lyall had found anybody else in that forest all those years ago.
A scream wanted to rip out of me as the magic inside me built up, and I was thinking about shields and attacks, and slowing him down like I did everyone just now, covering him in that white shimmer until he couldn’t move an inch.
That’s all I had—these thoughts in my head, these ideas, nothing more.
His light became brighter and brighter, so warm I felt it against my skin. No match, whispered a voice in my ear, but I pushed it down again because I was doing this one way or the other.
My mouth opened to scream.
The magic tore itself from my soul.
The people gasped and sucked in air as they waited, and…
Then came the horses.
Yes, horses.
For possibly the tenth time that morning, I stopped in my tracks—not just I, but everyone.
The entire crowd turned their heads as the sound grew louder and louder, and it was easy to spot the horses, the soldiers riding them.
Easy—because they were tall, and they were white, the horses, and the soldiers wore silver armor, and their blue eyes shone, even though they had helmets on.
They were soldiers of the Frozen Court, and there were a lot of them.
The people moved. They climbed up the wall of shards just like Hessa had done, and they were making way for the horses to come through.
What the hell is happening?! I had no answer, but my heart all but burst right out of my chest anyway because this couldn’t possibly be good. Things rarely were good for me.
Lyall’s cold laughter rang in my ears. Five lines of Ice fae soldiers riding their horses marched in unison, every single step precise, their heads up, their shoulders back. More came through the open gates as the people backed farther away to make way—so much more.
“What is this?” Lyall screeched, and the sound of his voice pulled me out of my trance.
“Stand still, will you?!” Hessa hissed from my side—and she was talking to Maera’s wolf, on the back of whom she was standing.
Yes, Hessa had climbed on the back of Maera, and she was trying to rise on her tiptoes, too, as she looked ahead at the gates, and…
Then she jumped.
Hessa gasped, turned to me, cheeks pale and eyes wide. “There’s a sea of them out there…”
A shape moved toward me so fast, and had it not been for Maera jumping in front of me and growling, Lyall would have managed to grab me by the throat.
His eyes were bloodshot as he looked down at me and demanded, “What did you do?!”
Except I hadn’t done anything, had I?
What in the world could I do to get those soldiers to come here like this, riding on those horses?
I wouldn’t even know where to find them.
Even now, the best I could do was watch as they came almost all the way to the stairs of the Ice Palace, their movements so precise they could have been damn robots.
Fear and panic crashed inside my chest. The soldiers stopped, and they formed a fucking bridge of bodies all the way to the gates. More people were all over the wall of shards, and we could all see a lot more of those silver helmets glistening under the sunlight in the distance.
A sea of them, Hessa said, and she hadn’t been kidding.
That’s when it finally hit me: Hessa is here. And the fact that she was here…
Once again, my heart stopped altogether. Lyall asked me what I’d done another two times, and the people looked so fucking confused, and I had no words to say, no clear thoughts to cling to, until…
“Apologies for the delay, Your Highness.”
Those two words.
That voice.
I was tempted to think I’d made it up because what were the odds that Rune was here right now and that he was talking to me?
I couldn’t move if I tried. I couldn’t think, I could hardly breathe, but my eyes still followed the only movement in the crowd to a head full of black hair, and a shirt on those wide shoulders I would know anywhere in the world.
Rune was in the crowd, and he was making his way toward us from somewhere in the middle, and once the people noticed him, they made way for him, too, as the whispers erupted.
Meanwhile, Lyall was moving back slowly, and I saw it through the corner of my eye. The Seelie soldiers standing on the other side of the Ice ones had their weapons drawn and ready—but I couldn’t focus on them for longer than a second.
Because Rune was here for real, with his eyes that spoke to me without the need for a single sound, with that half smile curling one corner of his lips like God had designed it especially for me—and he was coming. He was getting closer.
If only I could move my body, I’d have run and jumped in his arms the moment he stepped away from the crowd.
If only I could move, I’d have had his hand in mine by now.
Instead, all I could do was stand there and watch like a damn fool, frozen, not by my magic, but by all the feelings rushing through me so violently.
Fear and relief and excitement and panic.
His undivided attention was on me until he was just in front of the first stair to the palace—and he bowed.
Rune bowed to me with a hand in front of him, and for a good, long moment.
The whispers grew louder.
“What…” Voice came out of me, which was surprising, but I still couldn’t bring myself to speak a full sentence. “What are you…what…”
He stood up, smiled. My heart melted.
“Please allow me, on behalf of the Midnight Court and the Midnight Queen, to present to you a token of good faith—the Key of Command to your army.” Again, Rune bowed his head and raised his hand, his fist closed.
Noise in the background, but I couldn’t be bothered with anything else as I tried to make sense of his words but couldn’t.
Again, the best I could do was look at his fingers as they opened slowly to reveal to me a piece of crystal in the shape of a diamond.
Inside it, in the very center, burned a silver light.
“This token was created and given to King Helem by the Ice Queen. We offer it back to you. The Frozen army belongs to its queen.” My hand was moving—why is my hand moving?
! I couldn’t really control it, but it was moving because there was something about that diamond, and every fiber in me wanted me to grab it. Now.
So, I did.
I took the diamond from his hands, and it was vibrating worse than the rest of my body.