Chapter 7
The moment that the first round of the Tournament of Leaves began, Lorelei found herself swept away from the open playing field and confined, alone, within a dark, freezing cavern with no breaks in the damp walls around her and no sign of her reluctant partner anywhere.
Luckily, she was confident that she could find her way out of this trap—within a minute at the most!
—if only she could keep her racing mind on the challenge …
and away from that terrible, treacherous moment when she’d nearly lost her head over a man for the first time in years.
Not just any man, either: It had been the godsdamned Golden Beacon, of all the worst possible choices!
What would her fellow Queens of Villainy say if they ever found out about that mortifying misstep?
At least Lorelei had had some excuse to be surprised by betrayal when it had come from her first two lovers. Back then she’d been young, lonely, and naive, and both of them had sworn loyalty to her on their knees.
Stiff-necked, stubborn Gerard de Moireul saved all of his loyalty for the emperor who wanted to march heartless armies across the continent and turn Lorelei’s beautiful, unique Balravia into one more flat and soulless Imperial archduchy covered in iron rails like a cage.
Every magically gifted human would be forced into the regimented Gilded Wizards, and not a single wild fae influence would be left at all.
… And for all she knew, Gerard might be trapped in a nest of venomous flying serpents now, surrounded and overwhelmed without her magical help, while she fluttered about this absurd cave fretting about unimportant feelings.
Curse it!
She had not expected to be separated from her partner in the very first challenge that was set. Still, if Oberon thought he could throw her off her game, he was very much mistaken.
Drawing a deep breath, Lorelei tipped her head back and purposefully set aside every years-old memory of burning poison and humiliation … and the even more dangerous heat that had scorched the air between her and the Golden Beacon when he’d finally snapped his leash for a single, breathless moment.
He’d come so close to kissing her…!
Lock it away. Breathing deeply and evenly, she turned in place and reached out with all her senses to absorb the illusion that enclosed her.
Formed by some of the most ancient fae in her mother’s kingdom, it was of unmatched quality; in other circumstances, she would have dearly loved to study its effect.
From the irritating drip—drip—drip of a distant fall of water, coming from deep in the shadows of the cavern, to the overwhelming smells of moss and damp and the chill of slick stone ground against the bare soles of her feet, every detail felt unassailably real, solid and true.
Somewhere in the near distance, the fae audience must be watching, chatting and cheering, sharing snacks and laying bets with their friends and enemies over how long it would take her to find her way out.
All that Lorelei could hear, though, was the endless drip that nagged at her ears as the cold, moist air pressed in against her bare arms, trying to force her to shrink into herself.
It wouldn’t work—and the fact that he’d chosen it proved that Oberon didn’t know her as well as he’d thought.
All across the continent, in the mortal and fae realms alike, ignorant followers of her escapades might agree that this must be her nightmare: to be trapped on her own, far from any glittering parties, handsome lovers, or adoring crowds.
If she were truly the paper creature of their imaginings, she would panic at her solitude and discomfort and use herself up far too soon, rashly flinging all of her power at the illusion to shatter it in a full-blown attack.
But Lorelei had learned decades ago how to function alone behind her sparkling public image—and every battle or assassination attempt that she’d survived since then had helped teach her the exact limits of her magic.
So, instead of bracing herself to battle with magic, she closed her eyes and reached out—not with her fallible physical senses this time, but with something far deeper and more true: her ingrained link with the earth itself and all that grew from it.
I’m back, darlings, she called out in a silent, musical lure. Why don’t you come find me? It’s been far too long.
According to tales her mother’s attendants had told, flowers had shot out from the ground to curl around her crib in blessing before she was even old enough to notice them.
When she’d been expelled into the mortal realm to stake her claim at her father’s court, that move had cut her off from every leaf and bloom in the fae realm, and the loss had felt like an amputation.
Now, she let her whole body relax, sinking into the damp chill of the stony ground without any apparent care in the world.
She was clearly no threat to this illusion.
It didn’t have to fight to hold her. She wasn’t even struggling against it!
She was just being herself, silly and pretty and thoughtless, certainly not worth worrying about …
And as she felt the first soft, questing tendrils of vegetation slip across her toes, a dull roar began in the distance.
It thundered into raucously approving cheers all around her as the fresh air warmed her skin once again.
Lorelei tipped her head back to feel the true sunlight on her face, and the welcome scent of fresh green life filled her senses, that dank, chilly illusion shattered by a force far more powerful than any individual fae: the land that sheltered all of them as Sylvana’s gift.
Thank you, Lorelei whispered with deep sincerity.
Then she sprang to her feet to rescue her infuriating prisoner.
At first, all she could see was the green field spread around her—far vaster, now, than the original clearing that had been crossed by every fae visitor before this tournament began.
Now that the official games had started, that green area had been magically stretched and tugged in every direction until it spread, from each partnership’s point of view, all the way to each horizon, while the spectators looked down upon it with a telescopic focus from their distant, newly erected stands of living willow.
Lorelei’s first challenge had kept her trapped in one small section of that field; now, as she narrowed her eyes and looked again, more carefully, across that vast, seemingly empty area, her gaze snagged on a telltale blur of air only fifty feet away.
There!
She leapt forward, aiming herself at the spot where that translucent patch of air rippled above the grass so gently that she’d missed it in her first scan. Something was hidden behind that illusion—no, someone: Gerard, facing off against who-knew-what and fighting for his life without her.
Unacceptable. Lorelei wished with sudden, burning intensity that she had the wings of some of her mother’s other subjects—or that she’d at least thought to bring her gorgeous riding gryphon, Bluebell, to speed her way through the tournament.
As it was, all she could do was sprint across the soft grass, powered by fury and an irrational, growing panic.
No one was allowed to kill the Golden Beacon on her watch!
… No one apart from her, obviously. But that was different.
This time, she didn’t pause to think through clever strategies or worry about magical conservation. She simply flung herself forward through that resistant magical barrier, refusing to allow it to stop her—
And as she broke through with a sparkling explosion of magic that blinded her for an instant, Gerard’s voice rapped out:
“Close your eyes!”
That dungeon-deep voice, in that tone of command, could have sent an armed battalion to its knees. Lorelei shut her eyes in immediate, uncharacteristic obedience.
An inhuman screech of rage sounded only two feet away. Gritting her teeth, she didn’t flinch. The sound was muffled an instant later, followed by a physical collision so close, it shifted the air against her skin.
Lorelei held perfectly still, with every muscle braced and every sense but her own cruelly denied vision flaring with agonizing awareness. Harsh pants of breath mingled nearby with thumps and snarls and something that sounded like a human grunt of pain.
Damn it, if he didn’t release that high-handed injunction soon…!
“Very well.” Gerard’s voice was ragged with breathlessness, but his tone was matter-of-fact. “You may open your eyes.”
“How very generous of you.” Dryly, she echoed his earlier words.
However, they took on a different meaning as her eyelashes lifted and she finally absorbed the sight before her.
“Oh, my.” Blinking, she fluttered a cloud of glitter into the air, hoping to distract him from the expression on her face.
Her strategy backfired as specks of rainbow glitter landed on one bare, muscled shoulder.
Lorelei choked back an involuntary whimper. Sylvana, save me!
This simply would not do. She was a scandalous rake of a queen, not some innocent to be gobsmacked. She’d seen plenty of handsome men’s naked bodies in her time …
And yet, to see General Gerard de Moireul himself—always so very proper and correct—standing unexpectedly shirtless before her now, gleaming with sweat, his lightly furred, broad chest rising and falling from his exertions above his belt-free woolen trousers, so tantalizingly close that she could easily—
No! Just in time, she yanked back her right hand, which had begun to lift of its own traitorous accord. Leave the pretty alone. Danger!
Gathering her wits, Lorelei raised one disdainful eyebrow and prayed he hadn’t noticed her gaping at him like a lovestruck fool.
“Goodness, this really is my lucky day. Did you find it just too, too unbearably hot to remain clothed? It might earn us extra points in our challenge, but I should remind you, before you go any further with this delightful disrobing, that we do have an audience.”
The look he gave her in return was distinctly unimpressed. “Perhaps, Your Majesty, if you look down by your feet, you might spot the answer to your question.”
Ah. Yes, there was still a whole world around them, wasn’t there? Embarrassingly enough, she hadn’t noticed anything but him since her eyes had reopened. Now, she finally looked past that overwhelming, destabilizing, half-unwrapped temptation of a man …
And both of her eyebrows shot up as she took in the whole scene around them, from the narrow ravine that closed them between two tall and rocky cliff faces to the piled and curled-up mass of scaly brown-and-red muscle that lay sulking on the ground beside her, its big, lethal head covered in Gerard’s missing shirt, which was firmly secured there by his belt.
“A basilisk?” No wonder he’d warned her to close her eyes! Meeting that reptilian gaze would have frozen her into permanent stone. But …
Her gaze dropped to the sword he’d abandoned on the ground behind him. “You didn’t want to finish by slicing off its head?” Basilisks were vanishingly rare nowadays, so their decapitated heads raised staggering sums at auction when offered up by swaggering hunters.
His strong shoulders lifted in a deeply distracting shrug.
“Now that it can’t make eye contact, it can offer us no further harm.
I doubt it chose to participate in this tournament of its own accord; I could hardly fault it for attempting to defend itself.
And as you said I was allowed to use any weapon I’d brought with me into the tournament… ”
“You chose your shirt rather than your sword.” Lorelei swallowed down a groan of pure despair.
“Of course you did.” Gerard might be the soulless Emperor’s most favored general and devoid of magic, but he was no callous brute, no matter how hard she’d tried to believe that over the years.
Damn it. “You’ve done your research, again. ”
For once, her praise was sincere—but his eyebrows lowered into a frown of unmistakable discomfort. “There was an excellent library at my military school. It was only sensible to make use of it while there.”
“Hmm.” Based on the stories she’d heard of others’ military school exploits, most of his fellow officers-in-training hadn’t felt the same.
But then … his parents had been notorious for some scandal or other, hadn’t they?
Perhaps, after that, the other students had stopped inviting him to join their more sociable activities.
Regardless of the reason, he’d clearly found his way into that library, studied all of the magical creatures Imperial soldiers were meant to hate, and grown into a man capable of commanding tens of thousands …
but still soft-hearted enough to spare the universally reviled creature that had just tried to kill him.
As Lorelei met his clear amber gaze, something inside her chest twisted in one final act of resistance … and then subsided in defeat.
He truly was a good man, despite his misguided allegiance. And she …
Well. Fortunately, Lorelei was utterly heartless. Everyone knew that, and she thanked Sylvana now for that blessing …
Because if she hadn’t been, right now, she would be in desperate trouble.