2. The Most Putrid, Rotten, Sludgy Cesspool Ever
2. THE MOST PUTRID, ROTTEN, SLUDGY CESSPOOL EVER
~ RUSH ~
Hers a face that was so similar to Elowyn’s and yet lacking all that I loved about my mate, the queen winked at me coquettishly from across the Hall of Mirrors before throwing her head back in laughter that had to be fake. Surrounded by eager courtiers, she sat atop her throne at yet another party in what seemed like an endless line of them.
There was nothing to celebrate, yet the queen assigned one nonsensical theme or another to her vacuous festivities. Tonight we honored the birthday of her father. The Mighty King Erasmus, Our Kingdom’s Savior , she called him. To everyone else with a mind of their own, he was Erasmus the Bloody, responsible for extinguishing the dragons from the mirror world and plunging our land into a consuming darkness it hadn’t yet escaped.
More than ever, the queen needed to distract her subjects. The Nuptialis Probatio should have begun and finished by now, and yet ... as one of its two champions wasn’t here, the magic of the Fae Heir Trials forbade it. No matter how much the queen threatened the skittish pegicorn Azariah to launch the next stage of the trials, he couldn’t.
While the queen distracted her court from the fact that the Nuptialis Probatio should have followed just three days after the Gladius Probatio, I was busy trying to distract her from arriving at the inescapable reason why the magic of the trials refused to continue—the source of both my buoyant elation and my bone-chilling terror…
The mate bond between Elowyn and me had engaged on her end in time.
The love I’d been waiting for all my life had survived.
She lived .
If the queen discovered it was why I’d insisted on such specific terms to our agreement, she’d hunt Elowyn to the ends of the mirror world and beyond. And if she found out that I’d sent Elowyn away with a group of protectors to the Wilds instead of Nightguard as I’d told her, then not even the terrible and ancient creatures that roamed its shadowed depths would be sufficient to keep her forces away.
I had to defend Elowyn at all costs. But any action on my part, or message I might attempt to send, could betray the very secrecy that was paramount I protect.
I sensed the queen’s icy blue stare on me again before realizing I’d zoned out, lost to my troubles as I so often had been over the last several weeks. Blinking to clear thoughts of Elowyn lest she read them across my features, I dragged my lips upward, pushing them until they might pass as a genuine smile. To allay the suspicion I could all but feel blooming on her own face, I winked back at her.
She held my gaze for a beat, discerning, examining, likely observing too much, before laughing breathily at some comment by the Dowager Countess Dayana Tempest. When both women glanced at me, I understood it must be about Dayana’s daughter, Natania, and the dowager countess’ endless scheming to marry her off to me.
With Dayana as her rapt audience, along with dozens of other courtiers who followed the game of court life as astutely as circling birds of prey, I grinned rakishly at the queen, openly suggesting the amorous liaison she kept threatening me with.
Her painted blood-red lips stretched with delight as she flicked a passing look at the empty throne beside and, as usual, slightly behind hers. After Elowyn’s “death,” the king had used his convalescence from his poisoning as a reason for his absence from the queen’s events.
She hadn’t once bothered to pretend she missed him.
Subtly, when little the queen ever did was that, she nodded in my direction before pinning her attention on Dayana and the many other courtiers jockeying for her favor.
Ryder ducked his head toward mine from one side of me. Ever aware of the many spies invisible in our midst who tracked our every move, he tucked a loose strand of pale hair behind an ear and whispered, “I don’t know how you do it, man. Just looking at her gives me the runs lately.” His pale eyes were earnest as they bore into mine.
“You know it’s not ’cause he wants to,” answered West from my left, frowning. “It’s ’cause he’s got no choice.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ryder said. “But still.” He shuddered and looked at me. “Better hope she doesn’t crook a finger at you and make you”—he stepped even closer until, along with Hiroshi, we were a tight huddle—“come into her bed chambers.”
In unison, the three of them gulped loudly enough that my eyes were drawn to their bobbing throats above the constant hum of chatter and background music. The queen hadn’t yet deemed it time for dancing.
West flicked a glance from me to her and back again, his brown eyes burdened. “What’ll you do if she asks you to ... you know?”
Hiroshi shook his head sharply, the overhead orbs skimming his lavender hair with their light, making it glint. “Don’t even go there, West.”
“Why not?” West ran both hands through his short hair, leaving it standing up in the front before remembering to pat it down. “Rush’s gonna have to be prepared so he doesn’t”—another searching inspection of our surroundings, where any of the severed eyeballs, ears, or mouths Elowyn had mentioned might hide—“freak out on her. If he does...” West shook his head grimly.
“If he does, she’ll know he’s been faking it all this time, even more than she probably suspects, and Rush is fucked,” Ryder supplied. “We’re all fucked. Everything’s fucked.”
“Wow, asshole, way to be a downer and make things even harder on him,” West admonished.
Ryder snorted. “ I’m not the one making anything harder. I’m just trying to help.”
“We all are,” Hiroshi interjected. “We’re trying to make a good situation out of?—”
“The most putrid, rotten, sludgy cesspool ever,” I completed, surprising myself by somehow sounding calm and collected. Since I’d been forced to stab Elowyn, I hardly felt anything at all.
“Exactly,” Hiroshi said.
“Yeah,” Ryder added to West, “and don’t forget you’re the one who gave you-know-who a hard time just for loving on our man here.”
Whenever we were within range of the queen’s spies, which was pretty much always unless we found an excuse to leave palace grounds, we purposefully didn’t mention Elowyn’s name in case it might be a trigger for her invisible observers.
West, usually the first to rise to Ryder’s ribbing, huffed instead, somber. “I know. I know, dammit. Don’t you think if I’d known that was their last chance together I’d’ve shut the fuck up?”
“Hey, West,” I said. “It’s all right, man. Don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s no need.”
“But there is.” He ran another hand through his hair, this time unconcerned that it stood straight up while we were at court. “I was a dick to her.”
“She probably hardly remembers,” Hiroshi offered on a soft chuckle. “She was much more focused on Rush’s dick.”
The three men snickered, but Hiroshi’s attempt to lighten the mood fell flat, and their laughter petered out rapidly.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Ryder grunted. “We’ve gotta do something.”
“But what?” West asked. “Anything we do might make things worse.”
“Not sure how things could get any worse,” Ryder said.
“She could have died.” I scarcely breathed, unwilling to give this alternative fuel. “I could’ve killed her.” My fear bounced along with chiming laughter and the steady tempo of mandolins, like the light touch of fairies skimming water as they flew over it.
Hiroshi shook his head and rubbed his forearm as if he still felt the pain of losing the limb he’d later regrown. “That definitely would’ve been worse.”
Hiroshi was the steadiest of us all, the calmest in a crisis. His gray eyes now shone with the apprehension I had to work during every one of my waking hours to erase from my countenance, lest the queen suspect the nature of my true intentions.
He said, “Tell me you’ve got a plan, Rush. ’Cause I don’t know if I can stand by and watch you end up with someone else. Not when you’ve got a ... you know.”
A mate . I’d never forget it so long as I lived. I’d never stop feeling Elowyn as if she were still in my arms—at least, I hoped I never would.
As a group, the four of us studied the queen, who was now surrounded by Natania, Coretta, Eliana, Malina, and several other women who aspired to become the next crown princess—and my wife. Their hairdos towered far above their heads in colors so bright they resembled a flower garden—except that they were the wasps instead of pretty petals.
Even as my every impulse yearned for Elowyn, I forced myself to hitch up my chin and straighten my shoulders. “I have no choice. I’ll do what must be done.”
“By dragons’ veins, I hope that doesn’t mean they’re what you have to do,” Ryder uttered, accompanied by another shudder.
“She’s ... enough that she might want you to do all of them at once,” West said, and I registered the “sick and twisted” sentiment he purposefully omitted in reference to the queen. “I’d bet on you taking down an entire legion of skilled soldiers on your own over surviving those odds. They look like they could break you, then eat you alive.”
As if the women possessed preternatural hearing and could pick out our conversation on the other end of the busy hall, all of them looked our way in unison. No, not “our way,” my way.
My ass clenched all on its own.
A few tight breaths later, during which my friends and I stood frozen in their focus, my hand reached for my sword on impulse, where it pressed to its hilt, waiting.
Soft, silky fur slunk along the knees of my britches. Silver beneath the cool lights of the overhead orbs, the fur shifted to an ash blond I recognized instantly. My fingers curled around my sword though I surely wouldn’t be able to draw it against the queen’s newest favorite pet.
In a flash too fast, the feethle transformed into a woman I’d hate if not that the queen alone had claim to that title.
Millicent of Potesantos dragged a finger along my shoulders before stopping with her lips too close to my ear. “Her Majesty Our Great Queen demands your presence, Drake Rush Vega.”
She drew out each of her words so that they scraped along my skin like a rough fingernail. “Better hurry, Rushy. Her Majesty doesn’t like to be kept waiting, and she’s in the mood for the more ... sensual delights you can offer her. You don’t want her ... impatient.”
Then she trailed her fingers down my arm and across my waist, where she came too close to my crotch. I growled a warning at her that the creature in her would understand, but she only chuckled, a barking hoarse purr, and sauntered away, the skirt of her dress swaying exaggeratedly.
“ Fuck , man,” Ryder said for all of us.
Before I could receive any more sympathy or useless though well-intended offers to help, I patted my sword on my hip and strode toward the dais.
This was the cost I’d agreed to pay in order to be the one to kill Elowyn and send her body away—and thus spare her life.
So long as Elowyn lived, it was a price I could bear.
I took another step toward the throne and the cruel queen who sat on it, indulging in a recurring fantasy where I had sliced my blade into her heart and not my beloved’s.
Her blood, not Elowyn’s.
Her death ... it was coming.