15. Such a Horribly Cruel Place, I’ll Kill the Queen an Extra Time for This
15. SUCH A HORRIBLY CRUEL PLACE, I’LL KILL THE QUEEN AN EXTRA TIME FOR THIS
~ RUSH ~
Feethles were similar to wild foxes, but as changelings their magic made them fiercer and stronger—faster too. Their teeth were pointier and deadlier, all the better to shred their prey with and then quench their thirst for blood, a predilection I suspected the queen herself had encouraged or perhaps even bred into them. Plus, while in their creature forms, they retained much of their person’s cunning, which made some of them unreasonably shrewd.
At least a dozen of them crowded the enclosed stairway, balanced across several steps, blocking our exit. They snarled and gnashed their spindly teeth while their eyes glowed an unnerving crimson.
That part was new. Another sign of the queen’s influence, I guessed.
For every bit the feethles were sharp, the pygmy ogres were dull. Even so, with the racket the feethles were making, it wouldn’t take long for the ogres to realize something was amiss. Then we’d be trapped with enemies bookending us on both sides, with a beast of some sort that was capable of bringing down the entire palace adding risk of unquantifiable measure.
If we were lucky, we had a couple of minutes before the lumbering brutes figured out the obvious clues. If we weren’t, we had seconds. Even among the ogres, some of them were brighter than others, if not by much.
Standing between me and the feethles, Hiroshi, Ryder, and West had pressed their backs to the walls of the stairway to at least secure that one point of attack. Their blades were out and aimed at the feethles, our greater enemy for now.
Since the ogres were still going on with their disturbing yum-yum-yummy act, I whispered to the changelings, “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“Speak for yourself,” West amended quietly. “If they so much as twitch, I’m gonna murder every last one of them.”
Feethles had helped hunt down Ramana for the queen. If not for them, my sister might have lasted longer. But I doubted she’d be alive today.
The feethles only snarled, their thin lips vibrating, exposing blackened gums and yellowed teeth. They entirely lacked the beauty of their wild brethren. Darkness had consumed them, robbing them of their innate, internal harmony.
Very well, then .
“Hiro…” I uttered under my breath, in case the feethles should understand what I meant. Though we’d tried to keep our individual skills secret, thanks to the queen and her efforts to dismantle our every advantage since she first summoned us to live at court, they were widely known. “…start right, three up. Ry, don’t. Back Hiro up. West, with me. I’ll do first left, then turn.”
Ever so slightly, West edged closer to me.
It wasn’t exactly a subtle code, but it would help. My brothers were as skilled as I was with a blade and also in strategy. Still, moving forward as one unit always made our efforts smoother.
The pair of feethles closest to us growled ferociously, then leapt at Hiroshi and Ryder. I caught the stare of the one on the left in front.
You will lay limp and not attack.
In mid-air, the creature retracted its legs, pulling them in tightly against its body. Ryder stepped out of its way, slicing at the one next to it, and it landed with a loud smack across several steps, where it then lay unmoving.
Ryder pulled his sword free of the other feethle, and the animal, still snarling, fell across the limp one.
By then, Hiroshi had turned the one on the right, the largest of them all, into a fluffy white bunny, who took one glance at what it could see of its new form and bounded back up the stairs.
Several feethles scented the air and followed in frenzied pursuit, smacking into some of the others to get at the bunny.
Instead of attempting an illusion to confuse the feethles, which would alert the queen, Ryder sliced and stabbed while Hiroshi created two more bunny rabbits, to similar effect.
Meanwhile, the pygmy ogres’ yum-yum fest had silenced, and the beast, whatever it was, had begun rumbling.
West and I hurried to round the final bend?—
I halted suddenly, and he piled up behind me, peering over my shoulder to gape at the same sight that had me transfixed.
Five pygmy ogres turned to face us, also gawping, as if they couldn’t comprehend how we might have ended up here, a sight as unexpected as what stood behind them, wrapped in massive, heavy chains.
“Well,” West said, “I guess now we know. That’s definitely a fucking dragon.”
There was no denying it. The beast was magnificent .
Beyond Saffron, I’d never seen another live one, and the dragonling had been beaten and battered by his time as the queen’s prisoner, his will broken.
This dragon, too, had been punished. Weeping lacerations and angry red welts crisscrossed its body. Gashes across its legs were wide enough for the raw flesh to hang open. The creature’s wings were shredded, and a smattering of bloodied teeth the size of my hand lay scattered among what appeared to be the parts of other deceased dragons, the lustrous nature of their scales faded. Large, clawed feet, eyeless heads, barbed tails, tattered wings, and other odd bits decomposed around the pit that was vast enough that I couldn’t distinguish its edges, concealed by deep shadows.
Despite all that, the live dragon retained its dignity, its strength. Its spirit was far from broken. I could tell by the way it regarded me with shiny, dark eyes, taking care to determine whether we were friends or foes. Or perhaps none of that deliberation was taking place and it was simply a matter of the creature preserving its energy to attack all of us at once to best effect.
“Queenie don’t want you here,” one of the pygmy ogres said, while another vapidly added, “Queenie, queenie, queenie!”
“We’ll eat you up,” contributed a third as his thick, meaty hand clutched the handle of a long whip. It was made of leather studded with wicked, metal barbs. Chunks of flesh, shiny scales of varied hues, and blood clung to its length.
All five ogres turned their backs to the far greater adversary in their midst, loosening the grip on whatever control they wielded over it.
I sensed what was going to happen a moment before it did. Had I been born a dragon, it’s what I would have done.
The beast sucked in an inhale through its huge nostrils significant enough to drag backward the sparse strands of hair that clung to the ogres’ large, misshapen heads. In the moment before its exhale, West and I sprinted back around the wall and barreled into Ryder and Hiroshi, who’d been headed our way. Several feethles lay unmoving, dead or dying at their feet. The others must have left to give chase to the bunnies.
The pygmy ogres’ screams arrived before the two streams of fire blew past the opening we huddled behind. Even tucked against cool, damp stone, its heat drew out beads of sweat across my face and scalp, beneath my arms.
“What the fuck is it?” Ryder barked, though he’d probably already guessed. Even in the magical lands of Faerie, and our distorted mirror of it, there weren’t many beasts capable of breathing fucking fire .
“The biggest, baddest motherfucking dragon I’ve ever seen,” West supplied while the ogres’ cries continued.
The air, damp and musty so deep beneath the earth, filled with the scent of charred flesh. The twin streams of fire burned long after the final cry gargled and faded, and the last body crashed to the ground, scorched with the evidence of their cruelty, learned by the master of it herself. If the pygmy ogres were capable of love in their happy-to-torture hearts, then they loved their queenie .
When the fire finally died down, I peeked around the wall. The brutes were little more than lumps of bone and ash. Of the whip, only the metal spikes survived. Even some of the dead dragon parts had been dissolved into ash, sparing us from at least some of the gruesome sight.
“Is it safe?” West asked.
I snorted and pointed my words behind me, into the tunnel. “You saw the same thing I did. What do you think?”
“Right. Good point.”
I tucked away my sword and took a step forward. Hiroshi’s hand gripped me hard.
I glanced back at my friend.
“Rush, it’s too dangerous.”
“I know it is.” Thinking of Elowyn and how much she admired the magical creatures, I dodged Hiroshi’s hold, shot up both hands, and rounded the wall.
Immediately, the dragon’s stare landed on me. The beast huffed, and a cloud of smoke, barely visible in the near dark, drifted lazily from its nostrils. With the ogres dead, the lumoons, apparently bespelled to them, had vanished.
Unsure whether or not it was wise, I pushed mine into being, directing it to float slightly off to the side, where it wouldn’t cast my face in shadows the dragon might interpret as menacing.
Newly illuminated, those of its scales that were unmangled revealed themselves to be a shiny, rich, burnt orange, like leaves changing colors to welcome autumn.
“I don’t know if you can understand me, but I won’t harm you. I promise you, I won’t. Neither will my friends.”
Hiroshi, Ryder, and West, their weapons also holstered, walked over to stand beside me but didn’t cast a lumoon.
“Hooo-ly shit,” uttered Hiroshi, the only one of us to rarely curse. “By the Ethers, this creature’s absolutely incredible!”
The change was slight, but the dragon tipped up its head a bit and went to stretch out its wings—puffing more smoke, as if Hiroshi’s praise had made it forget its current circumstances for an instant.
“Okay,” I said. “So either you understand exactly what we’re saying or you picked up on Hiro’s tone. Either way, you’re obviously highly intelligent.”
Another upward jerk of its head. If the dragon had been a person, I’d have expected them to perhaps hmmph in an air of haughtiness.
I wanted to smile but held back as I studied the raw power of the beast before me and the many injuries it had sustained. Even chained as it was, it could sizzle us all to a crisp. I was all but bouncing on my toes. At the slightest significant inhale on its part, we were bolting.
Raising my hands even higher, I took another step toward it. Even slumped beneath the shackles, the dragon’s core was the size of several prime stallions merged together. With its wings spread? It might be as large as this entire pit.
I inched another step closer.
“What the fuck are you doing, Rush?” West hissed.
The dragon pushed out a rough grumble, slight but still enough to shake the floor.
“Watch it, West,” I said without turning. “I think it’s responding to tone.”
“Okay. But what the fuck? Don’t get closer!” Incongruously, West slotted the words into a happy tune.
The dragon relaxed by a fraction.
I tiptoed toward it but stopped when I reached the edge of where I needed to be to escape its fire breath. “I want to help you, but you can’t hurt me either. I’ll unchain you?—”
“No, you can’t,” Ryder interjected. “What if?—?”
“I have to,” I interrupted.
“What about Larissa?” West asked. “For her sake if not yours, you can’t endanger yourself like this.”
“That’s right,” Ryder said, agreeing with West in what was probably one of only a handful of instances in the previous decade. “She’ll murder us if she finds out we let you do this without stopping you.”
“Larissa wouldn’t murder a fly,” I said, without moving my eyes from the dragon’s. Dark and pupil-less, they reflected my light orb.
Another step forward and I was past the safety zone. The dragon eyed me and my upheld hands.
Pausing, I asked, “Will you hurt me if I help you?”
West scoffed and sang, “You can’t be serious right now.”
He and the others weren’t following. Good . They didn’t need to endanger themselves. If this went badly, at least one of them could become king and have a chance at fixing this bloody realm.
“Rush, wait,” West insisted. “Come back. Let’s think this through. We can come up with a plan and then return to free it.”
“This is probably our only chance down here and you know it,” I said. “Already, we’ll be lucky if she doesn’t figure out it was us.”
“Some feethles survived,” Ryder said. “She’ll know.”
“Then it’s definitely our only chance, and I’m not leaving anyone down here chained up like this.”
“You left Gadiel,” West pointed out in a sharp barb.
“I did.”
“ We did,” Ryder corrected.
“Yes, well,” I said, “I’m going back for him. But it’ll be easier to get into the fae dungeon than here.”
“At this rate, we’ll end up in the fae dungeon, right next to Gadiel,” West said, his tone a mixture of sullenness and desperation. He wasn’t altering his tone anymore.
I inched closer, and West added, “Their kind ravaged the mirror world, killing fae left and right. It’s why Erasmus hunted them down. They’re ferocious and have a taste for fae.”
“Hmm, that’s what we were taught, yes,” Hiroshi said. “But consider the source, West.”
“And El,” I added. “She grew up around them. Hell, she fought to save Saffron, wouldn’t leave without him.” Or the dragon shifter either, but I didn’t want to think too hard on Xeno or how he, instead of me, now got to share the rest of Elowyn’s life with her.
“I’m going to free you of these chains, okay?” I told the dragon, a part of me wondering if I’d lost my mind along with my heart, and if I were moments from my death.
“I’ll help,” Hiroshi said, his voice too close.
I didn’t turn, didn’t make any sudden movements. “Hiro, no. Don’t take the risk.”
But Hiroshi appeared next to me, his hands also in the air. “There are some things worth taking risks for, and I’m looking at one of them right now.”
Beatific, as only Hiroshi could be, he smiled up at the beast, who now studied my friend.
My gut twisted uncomfortably. These men might not be my brothers by blood, but I loved each of them as if they were. I couldn’t stand to lose any of them.
“I see a bolt there,” Hiroshi said, pointing with his chin, “and there. You get that one, I’ll get this one.”
Before I could decide how hypocritical I was willing to be, Hiroshi hedged around the dragon. When he crouched beside its front leg, I joined the others in holding my breath.
But all that happened was Hiroshi unhooked several unwieldy chains.
“Right,” I muttered, then dipped beneath the dragon’s other haunch and released the bindings.
“We’ve gotta throw the chains across its back,” Hiroshi said.
“Don’t—” West started, but Ryder was the one to stop him this time.
“Just let them do it. But fucking hurry it up, will ya, guys? I’m gonna have the runs for a week after this.”
“You out of the way?” Hiroshi asked me.
I shuffled to stand in front of the dragon, where it could keep an eye on me—an advantage I hoped would keep it at ease.
The first chain sailed across the creature’s back and landed with a thunk. I sauntered over, grabbed it, and slid it beneath its massive belly toward Hiroshi. While ducked low, I couldn’t help but notice how blood oozed from several wounds, and how scars were carved into its softer flesh.
I was going to kill the queen an extra time for this. Murderous or not, whether the stories about the dragons were truth or lies, no animal deserved this kind of abuse.
Over and again, Hiroshi and I looped the chains around the creature until, finally, I yanked on the last one and dragged it under its belly, before tossing it a few feet to the side. It was too heavy to throw farther without real effort.
The very moment it was free, the dragon rose from its squat and pushed open its wings. They stretched wide above and far beyond me, where my lumoon snagged on how their membranes might be destroyed beyond even the legendary healing skills of the fae.
“Get out of the way,” West warned unnecessarily.
Hiroshi and I cleared its wingspan and jogged back to the front, where we all moved within fleeing range.
The dragon wagged its neck this way and that as if stretching, attempted to do the same with its legs but only whined as I imagined it tugged on the many awful cuts along them, then breathed in roughly.
“Run,” Ryder yelled.
All of us were already in motion. We barreled into the tunnel, and nearly just as fast, whipped back around to peek beyond the edge of the protective stone wall.
The dragon was pointing its fire away from us and toward the shadowed depths of the pit.
There, the furious twin streams of flame illuminated what the gloom hid: like the prison for fae, cell after barred cell contained dragons— so many dragons .
“We need Elowyn,” I uttered before I realized I would. “ They need her.”
In truth, in that moment, it was I more than anything and anyone else who needed the comfort of my mate to soften the knowledge that this world could be such a horribly cruel place.