Chapter 26
VALANCE
In the name of Danu, I’d never known a headache such as this. A head full of landslides. My eyes didn’t want to open and see what awaited beyond the blissful dark, happy to linger in the dark.
However, my eyelids were traitors and tentatively opened to moonlight and blurred figures. I groaned, blinking away the haze. The last thing I remembered was waiting and watching the village, then pain in my head.
Struck from behind?
As the haze cleared, I felt his presence. Kormac. Comfortingly close. I lifted my head to see his boots, his stolen golden leather, his blue eyes twinkling in the moonlight from his position on a log.
He fell to his knees, his hands on me. Inspecting, sliding up to cup my face. He leaned in closer. Too close, his breath washing over me.
I went to reach out for him, thought better of it. Such a desire was a trick of magic.
Second by second, my senses tuned into my surroundings. A clearing with a camp set up, my cheek resting against cool grass. The injured side. Men and women moved silently, paused to stare at me, then walked away.
Hold on a moment. They were… I slowly sat up, head protesting, everything protesting. The cuts in my hands flared. Invisible hands connected to me tried to shove me back down to rest. I fought them, pushed myself to a sitting position with my legs stretched out in front of me.
“Kor…” I couldn’t get his name out.
He brought a water skin to my lips and tipped the magnificent liquid. I drank my fill, some of it spilling down my neck.
I required more than water. A bath, a decent bed, and plenty of potions to remove the pain.
My instincts told me no pain relief would come. Only more of it.
These men and women were either human or Fomorian. Red eyes stared at me, whispers filled the air. Kormac, whether intentionally or not, had brought me into the heart of the enemy. Sealing my doom.
There was one who stood out more than the others. A woman. Fomorian. Copper-skinned with a hard face, sharp cheekbones, and raven black hair tied into many plaits. She was lean and muscled and clearly a force to be reckoned with by her physique alone.
“Lasair…”
She stood a few feet away, her arms folded, no hint of amusement on her face. The leader of the unseelie court was devoid of any joy—only a hard expression to match the rest of her demeanor.
“Your Highness,” she said. “At last, we meet face to face.”
Over the years, we’d all sent letters by bird out to her—me, Daire, my mother, and father. Never my sister. Received them back. Full of threats, promises, plenty of violence.
Rather than stand on ceremony, I said, “So this is the end.”
“It is.”
Kormac’s body language indicated other ideas.
Lasair noticed this. “My human soldier here has explained the predicament you both face. This strange magic joining you together. There is no need to concern yourself with it from now on.”
Because she was about to kill me.
I sucked in air, the pain in my head not letting up. “I gather you will not be explaining any details of your plans to me.”
She dropped her arms. “Again, no need. It’s over for you.”
With a snap of her fingers, I was being hustled. Goodness, it set off every port of pain worse than they already screamed. They gagged me against screaming, bound my ankles and wrists again with rope. I managed to catch Kormac being held down, also gagged. He struggled, I tried, needing him closer.
If anything, death meant freedom from these two curses.
The tears flowed once again. Free and hot, my grief a stronger agony than anything else.
Let them take me. What did I have left but questions and Kormac?
Not enough to rebuild a life—which would be a life spent running.
I didn’t want that. I wanted there to be such a thing as a spell to reverse time out of this horror and give me back my friends and father.
With my knowledge of this intact. To stop me from going into the forest, to have never set my eyes on the human and the shadow sorcerer. To have killed them.
A foolish dream.
Danu, I pray to you. I beg of you. Please take me into your embrace and guide me to those I have lost.
Pathetic to pray in the face of death, to want and expect so much in return for a life empty of much prayer.
They carried me around the other side of the tents, my legs kicking out. Waiting there was an execution block. So, that was the method of execution, was it? Beheading. At least it would be a quick death.
No. No. No. No. No. Kormac will protect me. I’m not dying today. He needs me. I need him.
We need to be together.
A potent mix of emotions weighed me down. Weakness and fear and desire to live. Sorrow. Goodness, this was at once too much and incredible. This pull and push and crush.
A Fomorian forced my head down onto the cold stone block. Did they carry this around with them? A portable execution device? My position was corrected into the proper stance of a marked man, providing plenty of neck for a blade.
I closed my eyes, head a chorus of nasty bells. I struggled to breathe, tried to spot my killer.
Lasair walked into my eyeline.
My blood flooded with ice.
“Prince Valance,” she said, “I condemn you to die. For many reasons, really, but the main being your existence. Long has your family name choked the lands of Faerie. I believe that makes my point.” She lifted a finger, holding it.
I heard the raising of a weapon.
Calling upon my magic failed me again. I tried to summon the earthly surroundings to do my bidding.
I called to the trees, to the grass, but I struggled.
They wanted to help, but my many layers of pain hindered my efforts.
Emotional balance and magic went hand in hand.
In this moment, I was far from balanced, which seemed like a cruel joke.
It was now I needed all the help my magic could give me.
I watched Lasair’s finger, wondering about my rage. At the slaughters. Could it be I was somehow infected with berserker rage? The idea hit me in these final moments. Certainly a dreadful possibility I also needed to lend a hand.
The sound of squeaking wheels and rustling branches caught Lasair’s attention. “Hold,” she said, drawing one of her swords.
“A cart?” a Fomorian behind me whispered.
Lasair moved out of view. Movement across the grass behind me, weapons drawn. The squeaking of the cart slowed down.
I tried my restraints. Too tight.
A grunt, a clash of metal, a bone-crunching whack. A body thumping the ground, those same sounds repeating. Wet sounds followed, a sickening gargling. Feet hurried to me, and Kormac stood there with blood splattered across his gold armor.
He didn’t linger in cutting me loose. Warmth like hearty soup hugged me. The human was near and here again. Setting me free. He removed the rope and helped me to my feet.
He’d killed the two holding him with one of their swords.
Someone cried out from the trees, “Spiders!”
Lasair burst from the trees, heading back this way. She called, “Run! They’re poisonous!”
Then she froze as she saw the dead bodies and me leaning on Kormac for support.
“Kormac?” she said.
He answered with a groan, opening his mouth to try to speak. I could feel his heart racing against me, even through the armor.
“Put him down,” she said calmly.
He didn’t.
“Do it,” she said, other Fomorians fanning around her. Completely rattled by these apparent spiders. Constantly glancing at the ground and at the trees.
I didn’t hear the cart squeak again.
“I got bit,” one of them said.
“Me too,” said another.
“Trust in me,” Lasair added, ignoring them. “Let me take him, Kormac. Let me help you.”
“By the gods! They’re coming!”
I saw them, a swarm of red marching out of the trees. Large tarantulas, bigger than the one I’d almost let bite Kormac. Moving quickly.
A woman behind Lasair bent and grabbed her stomach. She collapsed to her knees and vomited. A man did the same—the two of them the ones who’d been bitten.
Lasair didn’t take her eyes off me. As if the spiders weren’t there anymore.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “Kormac. Take your sword and kill him now. Before his curse takes over and kills us all.”
“I’d never hurt him!” I blurted out.
That set her off. Her face flushed as scarlet as her eyes, and she stepped forward.
“You did hurt him, though. You had his tongue cut out. You dangled him above your garden. You tried to make him your slave. I heard it all. If you have any sense of decency, you’ll let him go.
You’ll take the sword and do it yourself.
” She took another step forward. “Go on, Prince Valance. Die. Set him free. Set yourself free.”
She was speaking as if I were betrothed to him, as if I loved him and must set him free to let him flourish. I didn’t care about his freedom from the magic, only mine. And his magical problems weren’t as complicated as mine.
Rather than spar with her, I waited for the spiders to inch closer.
They were almost on her now. Stubbornness didn’t move her, neither did the panic of her fellow Fomorians.
Good. Let her take the venom into her blood.
Let her be like those two on the ground, vomiting and being bitten again by more the eight-legged things.
Goodness, the spiders were aggressive tonight.
“We have to run,” I whispered to Kormac.
“What was that?” Lasair questioned.
Kormac backed off, taking me with him.
“Don’t you dare try to run,” Lasair warned. “Take another step, and I’ll kill you both. There’s nowhere to run.”
Much to my annoyance, I noticed we had Fomorians at our backs.
Fighting our way out of this gave us an instant disadvantage.
Namely, me. My hands hurt too much to be any good with a weapon.
The whip was gone. I’d try to fight but trying didn’t mean success.
Without a weapon, I wasn’t the best in combat.
I wanted to improve, but I simply fought better with something to slice with. Much to my family’s irritation.
Curse them!
“Bastards,” I muttered, eyeing the three behind us.
Where was this apparent berserker rage, or whatever it was? Where could I find it to send me into a violent spin and slaughter them all? Fae who actually deserved to die, not like Maeve or… or my father, I suppose.
No rage. No magic.
Useless.
“It’s—” Lasair said.
“The spiders are gone,” a woman interrupted her.
There was no sign of the eight-legged creatures.
“Good,” Lasair responded. “Kormac? I want you to—”
“Lasair!” a man roared, bursting out of the forest. He was covered in swollen bites, blood leaking from his eyes. Large orange ants clung to him, sat on his head. He tried to bat them off. Where some fell, more crawled up him until he gave in and collapsed, screaming as they smothered him.
What was going on here? More magic driving the forest into this insane frenzy?
“Time to go,” I said. “Now. I can walk.” Terrible headache and limb ache be damned. I wasn’t dying under a swarm of ants.
The three behind us were overwhelmed themselves, an army of ants quickly bringing them down as they poured out of every inch of forest.
I panicked, pushing myself into Kormac like a coward. He put a protective arm around me. Lasair finally reacted to the situation beyond me and the human again, the ants drawing her attention as they should.
Kormac grabbed my arm and hurried me away, past the screaming Fomorians that’d been behind us, now mounds of ant-smothered horror. We were trapped in the clearing. Danu! They were everywhere, guarding every inch, every potential exit.
“Fucking kill them!” Lasair roared.
Us or the ants?
The ants parted like a curtain, opening a path for us.
Without any pondering of the display, Kormac and I hurried down it.
I watched the insects, dangerously close to our feet, move in unison.
The ant curtain closed behind us, keeping open ahead, allowing us to head deeper into the forest and away from Lasair’s booming declarations I was sure seelie soldiers on patrols would hear.
“You’re dead men! I won’t forget this!” she cried.
Neither will I…