27. The Kingdom of Embermere Requires Many Sacrifices
27. THE KINGDOM OF EMBERMERE REQUIRES MANY SACRIFICES
In luminous chains that I presumed must nullify their powers, whatever the full extent of them might be, Hiroshi, West, and Ryder shuffled through a slim, side doorway into the throne room. Though I’d seen them all just yesterday, their faces had somehow grown gaunt since then.
Their stares lingered on me first before swinging over to Rush. They were laden with apology, especially West, whose amber flecks were bright in his otherwise brown eyes with all he seemed to wish to say but didn’t.
“No,” Rush uttered, disbelief thick in that lone word—surely not that the queen would stoop so low, but perhaps that it had come to this.
The queen merely chuckled before … something thick and blubbery began squeezing itself through the same threshold. At the squelching and grunting, the queen glanced toward the door and rolled her eyes before sharing a look with Ivar and Braque. She ob viously considered them her confidants, and this was just another day they’d gossip and snicker about later.
The creature eventually pushed its way through the doorway.
Flesh .
There was a whole lot of it on display—supple, dewy, and faintly pink. A male, I realized, based on the knobby, hangy bits hardly contained behind a dingy-looking loin cloth. The creature was as tall as Rush but maybe three times wider even with all of Rush’s muscles. Roll after roll of skin cascaded down his squat body as if he were a baby who gorged himself on his mother’s milk. His head was bald, round, and shiny, just like the rest of him. Too-large eyes scanned the space quickly before resting on the queen, a goofy smile raising his jowls.
“They’re here, queenie. I brung ‘em.”
The queen’s answering smile wasn’t nearly as proud or pleasant. “Yes, I can see that.” Then, as if an afterthought, “Good job, Bandel.”
The pygmy ogre—that’s what he had to be—preened under her stingy praise, exposing blunt, dull teeth that looked like they gnawed on large bones at every meal.
More flab filled the doorway, and another beast began grunting and squeezing through the hole much too small for it.
A second pygmy ogre made his way through the opening with a cringe-worthy pop , lumbered next to the first, setting his many rolls and dangly parts oscillating, and grinned toward the throne.
“I’m here, queenie!” he sang.
The queen’s responding smile was blatantly reluctant.
Neither pygmy ogre seemed to notice as they pushed out their ample bellies. One swung a club the size of my thigh, the other leaned into his as I’d seen Roan do with his ax dozens of times.
On the dais beside the queen, Ivar sniffed the air loudly, his upper lip curling.
I had to resist the urge to rise to the defense of the pygmy ogres—they were obviously big, dumb brutes who couldn’t help that they smelled like pig slop. But they were also all but sparkling with their admiration of “queenie.” I kept my mouth shut.
Despite their somewhat dopey appearances, they must be fearsome to keep Hiroshi, Ryder, and West from resisting. Yes, those glowing chains that bound their wrists and ankles together had to be interfering with their powers, but the three men were warriors and drakes, used to commanding entire clans. They were fit, strong, fast, and lethal; I’d seen them fight, whether sparring or in the Gladius Probatio. Brutish oafs alone wouldn’t be enough to secure them.
I scanned the two pygmy ogres, searching for answers, but found none beyond an insistent curiosity as to whether they ever bathed or if their stench were caused by a lifetime of filth.
“Yes, that’s good, Sundo,” the queen eventually answered the second ogre, as if every word pained her.
She then turned the brightness of those sky-blue eyes, which should have been warm but wasn’t, back on Rush.
“Kill Elowyn, or your friends die.”
Rush’s jaw worked, his nostrils wide, his eyes narrowed as Hiroshi, Ryder, and West all erupted at once.
“Don’t you do it,” seethed West.
Hiroshi echoed him: “You can’t!”
Ryder swore. “I’d rather die.”
The queen laughed, her glee painting her in the unforgiving light of an artist given over to fevered madness. Even her eyes appeared glazed, as if she were only partially experiencing the reality everyone else was.
“One young, inexperienced, bastard girl compared to the lives of three fine, virile drakes who command the respect of their clans…” She scoffed. “It’s not even a competition, and you know how fond I am of those.”
My own protests—that I wasn’t entirely inexperienced despite the fact that I was a fraction of any of their ages, my upbringing had been too harsh for that—faded on my tongue as Rush glared at the queen so intently that the twining tattoos that wrapped his shoulders crept up his neck, peeking out above the high collar of his tunic. Bright as Pru’s orbs of light, they slunk along his throat, his jaw; they wrapped his cheeks and shone, his eyes blazing like the embers of a thriving fire, though silver and deadly.
“Now, now, Rush,” the queen crooned as if she were his mother and he her petulant child. “You know you’ll regret using that sword at your back, for all the good it’ll do you against me.”
Rush didn’t look like he was thinking of using any of his weapons against her, but that he was picturing himself wringing her final breath from her body with his bare hands.
“Rush, it’s okay,” Hiroshi offered softly. His usually bright lavender hair hung limply around his shoulders.
“Like dragonfire it is,” Rush barked, moonlight eyes burning into the queen.
“Kill her and this will all be over,” she said. “You’ll forget about Elowyn and it will be like she never was. Our plans will continue.”
She had the gall to smile at him as if they were fast friends and she weren’t a mega-psychotic bitch.
Rush’s jaw clenched, the light of his tattoos pulsing, as he seemed to consider and dismiss the many things he wanted to say. Finally, “This isn’t what I agreed to.”
The queen’s friendly mask shattered; her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Yes, well, you weren’t supposed to”—she stuck the tip of her tongue between her lips as if trying to rid herself of a foul taste—“think you’d fallen in love with the girl . Your promises to me come before her, before everything.”
Rush’s shoulders clenched as he raised his chin and met her stare unwaveringly. “I never promised you anything by choice.”
The queen leaned back in her throne, waving a hand in the air before her, dismissing that nitpick. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re like my dear Saturn. Sometimes you need a helping hand in understanding what’s best for you.”
“Is that what happened to Saturn?” Rush asked. “You gave him a ‘helping hand?’”
If Rush had been trying to enrage the crazy woman with more power than sanity, he succeeded. The blue of her eyes ignited like a ball of arctic flame. I half expected rays of ice to shoot from them.
“You’re not to mention Saturn ever again. No one is.” Each of her words cut as sharp as any blade. “He’s mine , no one else’s. I’m the only one who ever understood him.”
The man who was currently displaying more beauty and brawn than brains pressed: “He was my friend.”
At least Rush hadn’t said Saturn’s name. I sucked in a shaky breath, the air dense as if it, too, were anticipating the queen’s next reaction.
“Then show his mother some damn respect and do as she orders,” she hissed.
Rush breathed in, out. “I won’t kill Elowyn. And I won’t stand by and watch you kill my friends either.”
“Well.” Her smile was lupine, her stare fixed on her prey. “It’s an either-or situation. I thought you were smart enough to figure that out, but maybe I overestimated you. You don’t get to say no, not to me you don’t. It’s one silly, stupid girl, or it’s three of your friends, those who’re capable enough to make a real difference in this mirror world of ours. Your future generals or a foolish girl who knows nothing of our ways—your choice.”
“But she isn’t a ‘foolish girl,’ is she? The land’s magic doesn’t think so. I don’t think so.”
“I don’t care what you think,” the queen snapped, causing Braque and Ivar to draw nearer to flank her protectively—as if they intended to defend her tender feelings from us. “And the land’s … confused.”
“The land’s … confused,” Rush echoed evenly.
I’d figured out his plan: he was going to avoid the choice between killing me or his friends by angering the queen enough that she’d lash out, murder him, and spare him from the moral dilemma.
“Yesssss,” she hissed, her features morphing, terrible and serpentine. “The land’s power needs guidance, which I will give it.”
“Your Majesty,” Rush said, further proving that I was on to his plan. “She glowed . The land brought her back to life.”
“She wasn’t dead, you fool.” An admonishment as swift and harsh as the snap of a bow. “And she’s fae. All fae have some magic or other, at least a little. It’s nothing. Her glowing means nothing .”
“Then let me go,” I said before I realized I would.
She turned just to sneer at me before glaring at Rush some more while she addressed me. “You’ve been a thorn in my side since my”—she tsked, her eyes screwing up in distaste—“husband decided to bring you here. I’ll not set you loose out there to fester and become an even bigger thorn in my side later. Rush, kill her now or so help me…”
“No,” said Rush, West, Ryder, and Hiroshi in unison.
The queen frowned. “Ever the heroes. Fine. Have it your way. Sundo…”
Sundo tottered heavily toward the guys. Hiroshi’s usually bright gray eyes vibrated with what I realized starkly was fear, though his body didn’t otherwise betray his distress.
West and Ryder strained against their chains while Sundo bypassed them for Hiroshi, his steps shaking the floor. When he snatched Hiroshi’s left arm, the one that had only just finished regrowing, I sucked in a breath and didn’t let it go.
Sundo dragged up the sleeve of Hiroshi’s tunic, grimy from just one night in the fae dungeon, and brought the drake’s appendage up to his mouth. He paused. “All of it, queenie?”
The queen’s smile was predatory, vicious, cruel. It was one of the worst things I’d ever seen in my life, and I’d been raised around the most fearsome dragons in all existence—I’d looked upon the great Dragon Mother of legend.
“All of it, Sundo, including the bone, up to the shoulder.”
Sundo wet his thick lips that reminded me of caterpillars and let his club drop, clutching Hiroshi’s arm with both hands. “Yummmmmmmmm. Yum, yummmm, yum in my tum.”
He brought Hiroshi’s forearm to his mouth and purred against Hiroshi’s shaking flesh. “Yuuuuummmmm, yum, yum, yum-yum-yummm.” Then he licked it, still muttering his enthusiasm for the devouring that was to come.
Ryder and West thrashed against their bindings, which only continued to glow that steady, black light when Rush’s mouth opened. But before he could protest, I yelled, “No, stop this! Right now, stop this.”
His maw settling against Hiroshi’s skin, Sundo halted and glanced at the queen.
“Go ahead, Sundo,” she said. “You have your orders.”
His tongue flicked between his lips before he opened his mouth wider, revealing those bone-crushing teeth.
“No,” I repeated with as much command as anything the queen had ever said. “Sundo, you will not eat my friend.”
Sundo tilted his head to one side, eyes dazed and mouth drooping in confusion. “Queenie?”
“Eat Hiroshi now ,” she all but roared, and Sundo snapped into action, taking a bite out of Hiroshi that encompassed a good third of his forearm.
Only a small whimper slipped from Hiroshi’s lips, pressed shut so hard they paled. Ryder slammed to the floor trying to break his chains; West ran to save Hiroshi, but Bandel tugged on his leash and yanked him back, his feet slipping out from under him.
Rush drew his sword and prowled several steps toward the throne, causing Braque to unlatch the top flap of his new potions satchel and Ivar to go rigid and draw his cutlass.
Sundo chewed with his mouth open, flecks of spit, blood, and gore splattering Hiroshi, whose eyes were distant, as if he’d fled his body until it was all over.
“Good, Sundo,” the queen said, her grin entirely wicked as she took in the pain etched across Hiroshi, Ryder, West, and Rush’s faces.
“No, bad Sundo ,” I said, injecting full command into my voice. It was like talking to Saffron, if the dragonling were several times larger and ugly as a hairy, filthy butt crack.
“Sundo, very bad,” I continued as if reprimanding someone for eating my friend were the most normal thing in the world.
He paused mid-chew.
“Would Sundo enjoy being eaten?” I insisted, and the pygmy ogre tilted his head in consideration, swallowing part of his bite loudly.
I cringed. “No, Sundo wouldn’t. Sundo wouldn’t like it at all. Sundo would be very sad. Sad, sad, sad.”
Sundo swallowed the last of his mouthful, his face crumpling as if he were picturing himself being the one eaten.
“Sundo shouldn’t do what Sundo doesn’t want done to him. ”
“Nonsense,” the queen snarled. “Sundo, ignore her and eat his arm.”
But the pygmy ogre hesitated, looking from me to the queen. Even Bandel watched the back and forth as if he, too, were in the throes of indecision.
“The land doesn’t want Sundo to eat anyone,” I urged, unsure whether this was true or not. If the queen channeled the land’s power, maybe it was as dark as she was. “The land says stop .”
Sundo dropped Hiroshi’s arm but remained beside him.
Rush pressed the tip of his sword to Sundo’s fat neck.
And Ivar stalked forward to point his cutlass at Rush.
Mouth agape, Bandel looked on.
“Oh, for Ether’s sake,” the queen muttered, rising but standing by her throne. “The land isn’t saying anything about Hiroshi’s arm.”
I didn’t know if I could do it on command—I’d tried to access my magic before and failed—but I willed whatever had made me glow before to surge forward now.
Based on how Sundo and Bandel’s eyes widened, I guessed it worked. A glimpse at my hands confirmed it.
Willing my voice steady and all-powerful when I was practically quaking inside, I boomed, “The land’s magic says that Sundo and Bandel should be good, or…” Did pygmy ogres care about the promise of the Etherlands like the rest of the fae seemed to? I had no idea, but: “…or Sundo and Bandel won’t be allowed into the Etherlands when they die. They’ll be told they were … bad boys and won’t ever be allowed in. They’ll float adrift and alone forever, sad, sad, sad.”
Sundo blinked repeatedly and sniffed, rubbing at his bulbous nose and smearing Hiroshi’s blood across it. Bandel’s shoulders shook as he gazed forlornly at his bare, chubby feet.
Sundo crouched down, nearly crushing Rush’s legs as he and Ivar scattered to get out of his way. Like a fat, stalky, old tree, the pygmy ogre crashed to the floor, where he sprawled, bawling, “Sundo good boy. Sundo go to Etherlands. Sundo no eat arms. Sundo gooooood boy.” He wailed.
Bandel was relatively quiet as he watched his fellow ogre.
But his lip quivered and he blurted, “No, queenie, Bandel good. Good boy, good boy, good boy.” He continued chanting the phrase, whether to convince her or himself of it, I couldn’t tell. He backed up against the wall, still muttering.
The queen’s nostrils flared and relaxed, flared and relaxed. She slammed back down onto her throne, her fingers clutching its sides, the rubies on her fingers too much like blood as the life-giving liquid dripped from Hiroshi’s arm onto the floor, where it had already begun to pool.
If he could regrow the entire limb, I assured myself, he could repair the enormous chunk missing from his arm. But that assurance did nothing to appease the agony glistening in his now flat gray eyes.
“Ivar,” the queen said, too quietly over all the fuss Sundo and Bandel continued to make. “End them. They’re giving me a headache.”
She rubbed at her temples, those rubies catching the light as she did so.
Ivar ducked and whirled, cutlass first, and sliced Sundo’s head clean off.
The pygmy ogre’s blubbering still seemed to echo through the cavernous throne room when Ivar stalked over to Bandel, who backed farther against the wall instead of defending himself from the man who was perhaps a fourth as wide as him. Even Bandel’s club hung uselessly at his side when Ivar brought up his cutlass once more and swung.
Bandel’s head thumped to the floor in a moist thud, the ogre’s eyes still large with shock, his mouth open as if he’d meant to object.
My glow wavered and faded. They’d been terrifyingly hideous and lethal, clearly, but they’d also seemed almost like malleable children, who’d been misguided, manipulated, and misled. They shouldn’t have to suffer because of her !
“What nonsense,” the queen muttered before training her glare on me with the intensity of a hunting falcon. “Their deaths are on you. I couldn’t even hear myself think. Fools, absolute fools,” she added, though I couldn’t decide whom exactly she meant by that, if it might be all of us left standing .
“Last chance, Rush,” she said, looking impassively at the headless pygmy ogres and the growing puddles of blood forming at either end of their severed bodies. “Kill Elowyn.”
Rush took a long time, but he finally looked up from where he’d stared at the damage Sundo had done to Hiroshi. His eyes were already haunted. “Or what?”
“Or your friends die, you die, and Elowyn still dies.”
As if he were a shell of the warrior I’d seen in the arena, he gritted his teeth. “I cannot kill the woman I love. But I will kill myself for you if it will spare her and my friends.”
The queen scowled. “Enough with the idiocy, already. If I wanted you dead, I’d kill you myself.”
“Braque, fetch that scum Xeno and the … dragonling.” She sucked on her lips, forming a web of fine lines around them on her usually flawless skin.
“Shall I also get someone to dispose of the bodies?” Braque asked.
“No, leave them.” She grinned, showing teeth. “We’ll do the cleanup all at once.” Her meaning was loud: she wasn’t finished murdering yet.
My heart thundered in my chest, but my statement was soft and passing as my hope. “I thought … I thought you said they were dead.”
“I thought … I thought…” the queen mocked before tsking . “I had no reason to eliminate my leverage.”
“But … then you lied,” I said before thinking, As if that were the worst of her offenses…
“I didn’t lie . It’s politics, girl, something you know nothing about. Running a kingdom like Embermere’s more complex than you’ll ever grasp. It requires many sacrifices.”
Braque had disappeared through the side doorway.
“Holster your weapon,” the queen growled at Rush, “or I’ll be tempted to kill you all and save myself the trouble.”
A wary Rush, gaze darting everywhere at once, backed up so that he stood near me and sheathed his sword.
Mere moments later, suggesting the queen had them on hand predicting she’d need them, Braque entered leading a bound and gagged Xeno and Saffron, with two new pygmy ogres squeezing in behind them.