34. Torment to the Dark Queen!
34. TORMENT TO THE DARK QUEEN!
ELOWYN
The enthusiastic murmurs of lords and ladies escalated into a buzz.
Speaking over it, I said, “The dragons have already punished her?—”
“How?” West asked loudly.
I explained. More questions were called out, and people talked among themselves. Beyond these walls, I imagined the cacophony was similar.
West said, “No matter how long the dragons made her suffer, it isn’t enough. Not for all she’s done.”
The agreement that came next was swift and insistent. There were several aye s and that’s right s.
Even with Ivar’s magical augmentation, I had to yell to be heard. “Is it more important to make her suffer? Or to end her and any risk she might pose to the fae?”
“Ye said she was no danger,” a turtle with an armored shell shouted .
So the giant turtles could speak too. Okay! “What I said…” I didn’t actually remember all I said; my words sounded far away even to my own ears. “…was that she’s no longer powerful.”
I glanced at Rush, who smiled at me in encouragement. His eyes and tattoos swirled with muted light. Blood smeared his hands, face, and neck around his fighting leathers.
“I said that the darkness in her has been eradicated.” At least fancier words were coming out for whatever it was I was spewing.
More raised voices interrupted.
I yelled, “So long as she lives, we’ll never be absolutely certain, beyond every doubt, that we’re safe. So I ask again, is it worth the risk to let her live?”
“To make her pay, really pay?” a parvnit said in a voice much bigger than his hummingbird size. “Yes! Absolutely.”
“Aye, we should all get a turn,” another parvnit yelled, her voice high like tinkling glass.
From the mirrors that remained intact along the walls, the monsters watching us groaned. I shuddered and hurried on. “What if?—?”
“We should all get to take turns with ’er,” a goblin bit out.
That suggestion received actual applause.
“How many deals might she have made?” I shouted above Ivar’s cupped, projecting hands. “What if she’s got some magic we or the dragons don’t know about yet? ”
“The dragons know everything,” someone said.
Einar grumbled an approving, Huuuuh , into my mind.
“Torment to the dark queen,” another called out.
The shout was picked up. “Torment to the dark queen! Torment the dark queen! Torment the dark queen!” The chant rang out in a unified chorus.
“Hey. Everyone,” I tried but soon trailed off.
“YOU SHALL BE SILENT,” Rush roared. Even without Ivar’s amplification, his voice was so powerful that everyone instantly obeyed.
Well, not exactly everyone…
“Off with your head, off with your head,” grunted a voice I’d recognize anywhere.
I wheeled around, searching.
“Hurry, or it’ll be off with your head,” the voice muttered again. “Always, hurry, hurry, hurry, even when we’re going faster than we should.”
I stalked to Dragon-Xeno’s other side to better see Talisa. Once I did, my face drooped. I couldn’t get my lips to close, not even at the reminder that I was supposed to be a queen now and queens probably didn’t openly gawp.
And openly gawp I did.
“It’s always, ‘Off with your head.’ But goblins have need of their heads. You’re not right to take them from us.”
I felt Rush appear at my side. Lots of fae surrounding me, and yet I couldn’t look away, not even to ensure no snakes were getting any ideas to attack .
“You hurt us. You hurt us badly,” Pru told Talisa as she held a sword nearly as tall as she was in both hands. It appeared far too heavy for her to wield, but she grimaced and brought the blade down on Talisa’s neck with a wet squelch. Already a deep line of raw flesh ringed Talisa’s throat anew.
If anyone else said anything, I didn’t hear them.
Pru grimaced as she struggled to release the sword from Talisa’s neck. She raised it halfway up, wobbled, hitched the pommel against her hip, then swung it over her shoulder.
Any fae in her way ducked or sidestepped her swing. Pru didn’t seem to notice. She seemed unaware she was drawing a crowd.
Her big, dark eyes were fixed only on Talisa, whose own eyes were trained on Pru in apparent horror.
“Not … you,” Talisa gurgled, but didn’t otherwise move. Perhaps she’d registered the thirst for revenge from her supposed subjects and opted for immediate death.
“Yes, Pru,” my friend said, letting the sword fall heavily upon Talisa’s neck with a sloppy thwack.
I inhaled sharply as blood spurted onto Pru’s dingy frock and she stumbled. Starkly, I remembered how she’d told me she wanted to wear breeches but Talisa wouldn’t allow it. Talisa wouldn’t allow goblins their magic or their freedom or their safety. She only allowed them to do as she told them when she told them and how she told them—or it was, indeed, off with their heads .
Pru pressed her thin lips together as she struggled to heft the sword another time. “Yes, a goblin. We’re important too. Even if you don’t let us be seen. Even if we’re not allowed to rest. Our bones ache when we never get to rest.” She hacked at Talisa’s neck again. “For Pru’s granddoody. You hurt him horribly.” Her voice caught. “He’s a good goblin, a really good granddoody, and you hurt him till he wanted to die. Pru begged him to stay. He lived only for Pru.”
Talisa’s mouth opened but no words flowed past her moving lips. Blood slid along their seams, pooling beneath the side of her face that rested against the floor.
Pru chopped again. The sword sliced halfway through Talisa’s neck. Her eyes glazed over as Pru muttered, “For Prince Saturn. He was a good prince and a good male. You killed him because he tried to do the right thing.”
A tiny, yet hugely ferocious, roar sliced through the stunned silences between Pru’s accusations and blows. My goblin friend didn’t even glance up as Zafi, now fully visible, zoomed toward Talisa.
The MISO landed with a purposeful jab of both diminutive feet upon Talisa’s up-facing cheekbone, drew back an arm that gripped a sword the size of a toothpick, and jammed it into Talisa’s eyeball. I’d believed it to be unseeing until it blinked to dislodge the little weapon and failed. Zafi sneered like a deranged, swarming hornet and held on to her sword as a curtain of thick lashes fought against it.
“For my ma. For my family,” Zafi snarled, pushing her sword farther in. “For every parvnit you hurt. And for hurting Elowyn.”
Tears moistened my eyes. I blinked them back as they blurred the sight of Pru, again raising what must have been the discarded sword of a Rush-sized warrior. Zafi abandoned her own little sword in Talisa’s eyeball and zipped out of Pru’s way just as the goblin brought the blade down with a blunt thud against Talisa’s neck again. The sword missed the original slice and gouged out a new one.
“For Elowyn,” Pru also said, and the tears broke free to spill down my cheeks. “She’s a good fae. She’ll be a good queen. She’s Pru’s friend. Pru isn’t a slave, she’s a friend . You hurt my only friend. Off with your head!”
The sword swung down, missed the main cut another time. Pru gritted her teeth, hiked the blade high, and bit out, “For little Saffron”—when the dragonling was larger than she was … this goblin with a heart bigger than this entire room. “For all of them.”
Swing, hack, squelch .
“So everyone can feel safe.”
Swing, hack, squelch .
“So no one else has to cry themselves to sleep.”
Swing, hack, squelch .
“So Pru can keep her head. We want our heads. We need our heads. Pru can’t see another head roll but this one.”
Pru swung her borrowed sword one final time—and it was indeed off with Talisa’ s head.
Eyes frozen forever wide with her shock, one stuck with a tiny sword, the head rolled once. Twice. Until the long, silky hair that was now matted with blood caught on an edge of glass and bumped into the face-down body of a dead fae. The former queen’s head rolled to a stop against the male’s boot.
Pru dropped the sword with a booming clatter that rattled the stunned quiet that blanketed the hall. She sank to her bum. Her large eyes blinked dazedly several times before they seemed to focus on the rest of us, all staring at her, utterly, completely agog. Pru’s ashen face flushed. Her cheeks warmed a forest green, the color of goblin blood. Seconds drew out while Pru panted from her efforts.
Eventually Rush said, “Well, I suppose that’s the end of the dark queen, alright.”
People and creatures alike cheered in whatever way they could. Nobles applauded. Pru’s blush crept down her neck.
It was indeed the end of the dark, false, blood queen.
The end of her head.
The end of her reign of darkness.
The end of an era.
“Pru,” I stammered, starting toward her.
Braque cut me off with a shrill, “No!”
He stumbled forward, shoving others brusquely out of his way. He fell to his knees beside Talisa’s head. Blood seeped into the fabric of his breeches.
“No, no, no,” he repeated. “You promised me.” He gripped her head in both hands, raised it to face him, and shook it hard. “I was loyal to you and you promised.”
Braque yanked Zafi’s sword from her eyeball, tossed it aside, and slammed her forehead against his. Blood dripped from her neck to his shoes and their polished buckles. Staring into her now-definitely blank eyes, he shrieked, “You promised me!”
Then he lowered his lips and kissed her. Amid the ew s and other disgusted protests, it took me several moments to realize that he wasn’t actually kissing her. With his lips pressed to hers, he was chanting.
He was casting a spell, or activating one already cast!
By the time Rush and I were running toward Braque, he’d dropped Talisa’s head with a thud.
He grinned a dark, victorious smile that chilled my very blood.
Blindly, I gripped Rush’s arm.
Myriad small … chunks of dense shadow scurried from Talisa’s open mouth and severed neck. They skittered and wriggled like bugs, covered the distance between the former queen and her royal alchemist in a too-fast stream. Then they were climbing up his stupid, pompous shoes, up his bulging, stockinged calves, the damp bloody knees of his breeches, over his bulging potions satchel and along his bloated belly, chest, and jowls?—
To stream in through his parted mouth, his lips smiling around them.