18. The Shadowy Pall That Followed Us Wherever We Went
18. THE SHADOWY PALL THAT FOLLOWED US WHEREVER WE WENT
ELOWYN
I released Ivar’s head with a jerk that snapped his chin to his chest, drawing the hissing attention of the snakes that writhed from his insides—weird shit, that—before stalking hurriedly to Edsel’s side. I peered down at the fae male, who was no longer seizing against the force that had been stealing his life. His veins were unnaturally dark as they bulged beneath his skin and trailed from the corners of his eyes to fade out along his temples and cheeks. His flesh was eerily pale, as if death had taken him long before now. I laid a hand on his—icy cold.
With grim determination and a craggy scowl, Edsel leaned over the fae’s chest, searching for a pulse he might have missed, a breath … hope.
“Anything?” I asked.
He plopped back onto his butt, shaking his head. “Damn the queen,” he muttered quietly yet viciously. “Damn her. ”
I sighed and glanced over my shoulder. Rush’s tattoos were as bright as starlight, his lips pressed into a fierce line as he gripped a dagger and what looked like Ivar’s cutlass. Ryder, Hiroshi, and Roan wore similar murderous expressions. And Xeno looked upon Ivar and his snakes with narrowed eyes, an expression I’d seen many times before. Xeno might not wait for me to ask before scorching the idiotic advisor.
I didn’t know what magic caused serpents to occupy Ivar’s body, but right then I was glad for the gruesome sight. Ivar could have stopped this fae’s death. He chose to let the man die. How did that make him all that different from the cold-hearted queen bitch?
“This is wrong,” spat a steely voice I hardly recognized because it was normally so gentle. Larissa knelt beside the dead man, studying him as her hands shook—from anger or grief, I couldn’t tell. She peered over at Ramana and West, who clutched his mate with white knuckles, naked fear glistening in his fevered eyes, as if the might of his will alone could keep his mate clinging to life as she was.
“She can’t do this,” Larissa continued, referring as we always did to the shadowy pall that followed us wherever we went.
Edsel grimaced. “If only she couldn’t.” He stretched his wompa legs out in front of him with a sigh that sounded too much like defeat.
Pru sat next to her granddoody and petted Saffron, who pinned me in his sights, struggling to break free of her embrace. “ Shhhh , silly little dragon boy. You’re fine with Pru. Elowyn isn’t finished yet.”
“I’m not?” I asked. The inside of my chest felt hollow.
“Well, Mistress Elowyn, are you ?”
I had already opened my mouth to ask her what in sunshine she meant by that when West gurgled in shock.
“By a dragon’s horns … she opened her eyes,” he breathed, barely seeming to believe it as he stared down at her. Rush and Larissa ran toward him and their sister when West winced. “They’re … by the Ethers, her eyes … I can’t get used to them like this.”
Like this meant her irises were red, glowing that same bloody crimson, dark veins snaking along her eyeballs.
“By the Ethers,” Larissa breathed as she gaped at their sister. “How could the queen do this to them?”
Scarlet eyes vacant, Ramana’s mouth began to move. The voice that emerged from her dry, cracked lips wasn’t hers.
“So there you are,” purred the queen.
Zafi, who’d been flying close by, vanished even though the queen wasn’t physically there. Saffron leapt from Pru’s lap, scurried the few feet separating him from me, and jumped into my arms. I received his weight with a muted oof .
“I’ve been hoping one of them would die sooner rather than later so I could find you. Since you commandeered Azariah, you’ve been remarkably difficult to locate.”
My entire spine was rigid as Saffron scrabbled up my torso as if I could save him from the specter he couldn’t see. Rush drew to my side.
“What, no answer? Who’s there?”
I looked at Rush. What the sunshine were we supposed to say? Should we answer her at all, or would it somehow give us away? His tattoos dimmed and pulsed, dimmed and pulsed, his eyes a swirl of stormy moonlight.
I sense a disturbance, Einar said into my mind.
The queen’s using the body of one of the fae she’s been draining to talk.
The shadow is here? he asked sharply.
I don’t know. She only speaks for now, and her questions indicate she doesn’t know who’s here, so I don’t think she can see through the female’s eyes.
Mayhap it is a ruse. Do not trust her. She deceives.
Yes, thank you. I need to focus on what she’s saying.
Huuuuh . His multi-purpose grunt was wary. I shall listen as well.
“Who’s there?” the queen snapped. “Answer me!”
“It is I, Ivar, and—” replied the kiss-ass advisor before Xeno slapped a meaty hand over his mouth.
“Ah, Ivar. Good. Who else is there with you?” Then, as if an afterthought, she added, “I’ve been so worried for you. ”
“Yeah, right,” Ryder muttered under his breath.
“Who is that?” she commanded. “Tell me this instant or you will pay.”
Rush sighed, ran a hand along his face. “What do you want?”
The queen was silent for a moment, Ramana’s lips falling limply closed until she asked, “Rush, is that you?”
“Yes.” The monosyllable was flat but his eyes churned.
She laughed a flirtatious trill. “I’d recognize your voice anywhere. After all, we do know each other quite … intimately, don’t we, Rush?”
The veins bulged in Rush’s neck. That was nothing to the rage that swept through me as if my blood were on fire. Ryder, Hiroshi, and Roan wore similar hard expressions, their stares blazing with mutual fury, and for the first time practically since we found her, West looked up from Ramana to his friend. If expressions could kill, West’s would reach through the female he loved to strangle the life from our tormentor.
“Release the prisoners,” Rush told her. “All of them.”
“And why would I do that?” asked the queen, in a weave of sugary sweetness I ached to throttle from her. Then the sugar disappeared, replaced by a sharp steel blade: “No, Rush, they serve me well. As should you be doing.”
“Ivar,” she called, “tell me what’s going on.”
Ivar thrashed against Xeno’s hand. Hiro glowered at him; the snakes lunged to snap at his throat. Ivar stilled.
“Ivar’s a bit busy at the moment,” Rush said while Azariah clopped and Bertram hopped close.
Clutching a pair of dead spotted armacoons and his bow, Reed emerged from the woods. After absorbing the scene, he dropped our future dinner to the ground and stalked toward Rush and me, still gripping his bow.
“Don’t dare hurt Ivar,” the queen snarled, curling Ramana’s upper lip.
Above Xeno’s hand, Ivar’s eyes glittered, with pleasure, perhaps. If not, maybe gratification.
“We’ll have no reason to hurt him if you tell us how to save the fae you’ve been draining of their power,” Rush said. “That is what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?”
“As astute as you are pretty, aren’t you, Rush? They are my subjects. Anything I need from them is rightfully mine.”
“That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to protect them.”
“No, Rush,” she snapped. “I am supposed to rule . What is best for me is best for everyone. I command the Mirror World.”
The air had been still, noticeably so. Now the wind whipped and rustled.
“You don’t command the Mirror World,” I objected, the words spilling from me as if directed by the land itself. “A connection to the land’s magic is an honor and privilege you have not respected.” I was no longer certain if the thoughts were mine or not. All I knew was that they were undoubtedly true.
The queen tsked . “Silly, stupid girl. Why will you not die already?”
Rush and Xeno—and to my surprise, also Einar, Pru, Roan, Reed, and Edsel—growled.
“Because I’m not going anywhere, not unless I kill you first,” I hissed. “Tell me how to disconnect you from the fae you’ve been draining.”
“Or what?” she taunted.
“Or…” I looked around, pinning Ivar in an empty stare. “Or I’ll kill Ivar.”
I didn’t even bother approaching him. Ivar’s eyes didn’t blaze with fear. He saw my bluff for what it was. So long as the queen didn’t…
“Fine. Kill him,” the queen said.
When a full minute passed and I added nothing, she laughed, a cold and wicked rattle. “You don’t have the guts to do what it takes to beat me. I will find you and I will kill you. I won’t give you the chance to grow strong enough to become a threat. I’ll kill my pets myself.”
“No,” I yelled, and I wasn’t the only one.
She laughed again—like a frozen, dead branch scraping against the hard snow of a barren tundra landscape. “Don’t worry about me, my pretties. There will always be more willing subjects. But there will be none for you to steal power from. I’ll find you soon.”
“No, tell us…” I trailed off. Ramana’s body had once more gone limp in West’s arms. Her eyes were closed, her lips sealed.
The queen, however she’d come, was gone.
Every fae she’d drained who was still alive began to tremble violently. Their extremities straightened rigidly. Their eyes clenched shut against the force spearing through them to end whatever life the queen hadn’t yet stolen from them.