9. That’s Not How the Queen Does It
9. THAT’S NOT HOW THE QUEEN DOES IT
~ ELOWYN ~
I didn’t pass out, though once it became clear the disgusting, tentacled monsters weren’t attacking us anymore, a part of me wished I had. I was forced to lie on the mucky ground, covered in shuddering creature parts and slick gore, to wait until my body processed their poison so I could move again.
My eyelids still too heavy to lift, my heart thundered as the beasts’ hissing ceased but their chittering continued, syncing up. Their cyclical ch-ch-ch-chhh , all of them at once, revealed just how many of them hid in the darkness. My chest was flat to the ground, and the constant chirring vibrated against my breast, igniting an agony along the wound in my heart.
When my fingers had been unable to clutch my weapons, the torch had fallen somewhere beyond my sight. I’d held on to my dagger the longest, but it rested flush against my thigh, gathering slop, where my stiff fingers couldn’t even reassure myself with its presence. Not that any of our weapons had done much to protect us against the dangers of the Sorumbra...
It had once more been a mysterious power that had spared me—and this time my friends—from the clutches of imminent death.
A birthright I didn’t fully understand had granted me the desperate wish for our survival.
With agonizing slowness, the heaviness that weighed down my body eventually began to lighten. My fingers, toes, and nose twitched, and I managed to blink open my eyes.
As I suspected, my skin was glowing. Unable to move my limbs to properly examine the effect, all I could make out was the diffuse light wafting off my face that prevented my eyes from focusing well beyond it.
My throat bobbed, and I sucked in a deep breath, filling my lungs as best I could, pulling in the tangy scent of blood and the acrid stench of ... I didn’t know what exactly, other than that I hoped I’d never smell the beasts’ putrid flesh again. Their bitterness coated the air, conjuring images of deep, murky, stagnant bogs, where the living went to die and rot.
“Everyone okay?” Reed asked, his usually friendly voice now a croak like it was dragging itself across hot coals to reach us. He’d been the first to fall prey to the poison, so also the first to shake its hold.
For another long minute, no one answered. I tried, but my lips flopped against each other without sound.
Finally, Finnian replied, “The goblin, dragonling, and I will live.”
Experimentally, I cleared my throat. “Xeno? Roan?” My voice strained and cut out.
From somewhere nearby, the dwarf grunted.
But then there was only the eerie chittering, snaking across my skin, making me clench with the need to swat at it, to push it away, to flee from the reminder that we were so very far from safe.
As the seconds ticked by, the ch-ch-ing seemed to solidify in the night air, until it was one with my mounting panic.
“Xeno?” I repeated weakly.
When he still didn’t answer, I pushed up onto my hands, partially collapsed into one shoulder, splashing my face with inky gunk as my arm slapped the ground, then rasped, “Xeno!”
My lungs squeezed as all at once I seemed to recall every instance in Nightguard when he’d been the only one to smile at me, how he’d sparred with me when no one else would after Zako’s death. How he’d laughed with me even when there wasn’t much reason for it, and how he’d been the only one to fight for me when Dougal had abducted me. He’d taken an arrow to the heart for his efforts. The ghost of his kisses tingled across my lips—he’d wanted to be more than friends.
If after all he’d done for me, after he’d finally escaped the queen, he’d gone and died ... I was going to murder every last one of the horrid, tittering monsters. I was going to?—
A bellow, like those I’d heard thousands of times echoing down the Nightguard Mountains to our camp, erupted into the night but faded quickly.
A relieved sigh morphed into a hysterical laugh when Saffron whined in response to Xeno’s dragon call.
“Is Saffron really okay?” I asked in what I hoped was still Pru’s general direction.
“He’s scared, Mistress, very scared.” Pru’s voice was back to its usual rough squeak. “But wherever he’s hurt, he’ll heal.”
A growl rumbled through my chest. The urge to decimate the entire monster population was strong.
I rolled my neck and pushed up onto a hip, blinking down at the golden glow that seeped off my bare forearms and hands. It blurred my view as it beamed off the tip of my nose.
“How long will the protection last?” We were in the midst of our enemies, who were as utterly black as the nighttime forest, too many shiny eyes blinking blankly in my direction.
“No idea, lassie,” Roan said. “But glad for it just the same, that I am.” He groaned and flopped his squat legs out in front of him, his muddy boots coming into view. “Woulda been a fuckin’ awful way to go, that. One of ‘em barbs was tryin’ to wrap all ‘round my bollocks.”
Reed bent to retrieve his blades and dragged himself up onto a log. With a rip of his flesh that made me grimace, he unfastened a tentacle from where it had suctioned to his hand. Then he leaned toward the sputtering fire, which was little more than embers now, and blew on it while poking at the brightest of the coals, dragging them near unburned kindling.
The fire might not have protected us from the squid-like monsters, but they were far from the only things in the Wilds that wanted to kill us.
When I cracked my neck, my ear on one side touched something slimy and still warm. Reluctantly, I slid my fingers to grip the piece of creature arm where it had latched on to my skin, and before giving myself time to dread it I yanked the barbs out at an angle that would minimize damage. Already, I had more cuts and lashes than I wanted to count, most beneath a layer of grime that wouldn’t be fun to scrub off.
“Whatever you’re doing, Elowyn, keep it up,” Reed said as he coaxed a small flame to life.
“I’m not doing anything. Not anymore. You heard what I did. That was it.”
“We’d better move soon,” Finnian said, standing and brushing himself off as if also taking stock of his injuries.
“Did the horses make it?” I asked, needing to know but fearful of what the answer might be.
Reed sighed and strained to see off into the forest, beyond where the dim glow of the burgeoning fire reached. “Can’t make out,” he said. “But they’d better’ve. Those horses are finer company than most people I know.”
“When the people you know are at the queen’s court, that’s a pretty low standard.”
“No doubt,” he said as Roan rolled to his feet with a pained moan.
The dwarf whistled sharply. “Rompa-Romp,” he called into the night, loudly enough to slice through the incessant ch-ch-ing I wanted never to hear again in my entire life. When no creature responded, he whistled again. “Come on, boy, answer me.”
Only the constant chirring accompanied the now crackling fire as it grew.
“No, not Rompa-Romp,” Roan cried. “I raised that pony from the time he was wee.”
“I’m so sorry, Roan,” I said, assuming Bolt was gone too. No reassuring whinnies or neighs arrived to deliver hope. The wound through my heart ached more.
Roan nodded stiffly, his mouth a tight line behind his bushy mustache and beard.
Testing my legs, I clamped on to a portion of a fallen log that wasn’t coated in monster entrails and dragged myself up. Once I was certain my legs would hold, I skirted the fire to reach Pru and Saffron. Before I was close enough, the dragonling jumped off the goblin’s back, the momentum pushing her down, fluttered his wings just enough so he wouldn’t plummet, and then scrabbled into my arms, uncaring that I was still glowing and covered in cuts.
Pressing my lips together to keep the yelps of pain from slipping out, I cradled him against my chest and wrapped my arms around his back. In response, his wings curled over my torso, clutching me with heart-breaking desperation.
Though the monsters that surrounded us didn’t seem capable of remorse, I glared at them for scaring Saffron when the little guy was already a shadow of his former, mischievous self.
“Stay still,” I commanded them, wondering if it were smart to end them all while they were sitting targets, or if that would make me no better than the queen. “Don’t move a single damn arm or I’ll kill every single one of you.”
Their grating call continued undisturbed.
Her big eyes studying our many enemies, Pru took a tentative step toward me.
I scanned her small, slender body. Her gangly limbs and drab frock were covered in dark gook, and her black dragon feet all but disappeared in the thick gunk she stood in, but she otherwise appeared unharmed.
I raised my brow in silent question when I spotted none of her green blood anywhere.
She shrugged. “I told you, Mistress ... Elowyn, we goblins have our secrets.”
“Now seems like a great time to share some of them.” Mindful of the direction of his scales, I rubbed a soothing hand down Saffron’s spine, between his trembling wings, over and again.
“I’m more interested in your secrets right now,” Finnian said as he tore off the hem of his tunic to wrap around a thigh. His britches were torn, and a raw, angry slice of red flesh peeked out from the grime that coated the rest of his skin. “They’re what’s keeping us safe right now.”
He tightened the tourniquet and gasped. Fresh blood pumped from the gash for several pulses before the flow stemmed.
The monsters closest to him stirred and hissed.
“I command you to stay,” I told them as sternly as I could, but my glow was already diminishing.
Turning in place, I found Roan clutching his ax and Reed tightening the strap of his quiver across his chest. So I sidestepped the pile of creatures ahead of me, careful not to crush any of their many outstretched, oscillating tentacles solely so as not to set off any retaliation, and stalked beyond the reach of the fire in the direction Xeno had last been, between us and the horses. The menace of the holding—and watching—wall of inky horrors followed me.
My glow dimmed further. “I’m the rightful heir of the royal magic,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. “I command the land.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it like that, lassie,” Roan piped up in his usual gruff rumble. “Ya can choose to command power and magic, but never the land itself. Only if she wants ya to.”
Dragging his dirty sleeves across his face to clear his eyes, nose, and mouth of the black gunk, Reed added, “Think of the land as you would yourself. She’ll want respect and partnership, not to be told what to do. She helps only when she wants to.” He spat dark spit onto the ground. “Or so I’ve heard.”
Narrowing my eyes to see beyond my remaining glow, I scoffed. “I’m sure that’s not how the queen does it.”
“No, she surely doesn’t,” Roan said on a huff.
Please keep us all safe , I thought instead, before calling out, “Xeno? Where are you?”
A dragonly groan rose from my left. It was too soft, too muffled.
My heart sped up again, and I jogged toward the pained grunt, no longer mindful of what I stepped on.
“Xeno,” I said again, hearing the squelching footfalls of the others behind me. Saffron whined close to my ear, and I instinctively cooed at him. “Xeno!”
He moaned, and I whirled toward sharp movement within the sea of trees. Towering over a clump of fallen horses, Xeno’s large silver dragon caught the faint glint of the moon for an instant before he wobbled.
In the moment it took him to crash to the ground, he flared his magnificent wings wide.
They were shredded to tatters.