35. The Brink of War – Elias
The Brink of War
ELIAS
My steel gray gaze locked onto my brother’s. Our pasts flashing behind just that look. All the horrors we had witnessed, the abuse we’d both faced at our mother’s hands, and the hope we’d thought lost forever. It was always going to come to this.
Briar, Darius, and I made our way through the last of the forest, running the last several feet between the Everland Forest and the dilapidated wall running the perimeter of the main unseelie village.
Vines encroached the entire length of dark bricks, which provided each of us with plenty of handholds to climb.
The entire line of waiting soldiers had been pulled away by Briar’s seelie army. That would be a distraction all right.
Darius offered his bent knee for Briar to step up onto, but she scoffed at his offer, pulling herself up the vines with little effort.
Briar, unlike the rest of us, had been suspended in time, unchanging still on the cusp of youth, making her as strong as the day she had been cursed.
The nearest houses seemed rundown and out of use.
Their windows shattered, their doors boarded up, and no light flickering within their depths.
Aside from the sound of distant battle, everything sat eerily silent, and I ran my fingers through my hair, tucking the longer strands behind my pointed ears.
I needed to be hyper aware of our surroundings now.
Hints of dimmed light brightened houses closer to the castle gate, but we didn’t need to go that far into town to get to where we needed to go.
My nose wrinkled at the stench permeating the air as we turned down an alleyway, heading toward the massive iron grate leading to the tunnels.
In the early days of the unseelie court, these tunnels had been erected as secret escape tunnels.
Over the years, they were repurposed for refuse, and as I neared the gated entrance, I tugged the hem of my tunic up to cover my nose.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” Briar complained, her pale skin a sickly shade of green.
“Breathe through your mouth, my love,” Darius said to her, his fingers wrapping around the grate. He tugged it open, and it screeched on its hinges as he held it open for Briar to duck into.
I followed them in, rubbing my hands together and using the energy created to hang a floating ball of light around our heads. The light was dim, though I doubted any of my mother’s soldiers patrolled this deeply into the tunnels.
Briar gagged. “I’m not sure that’s much better. Now, I can taste it!”
I shouldered past her, my brow furrowed.
“Don’t think about it. We don’t have time to worry about your delicate sensibilities when Rosemary is in trouble.
She faced the risks of the dark enchanted forest, a wild dance gathering of pixies, and a pack of bloodthirsty wolf shifters to save you. Surely, you can handle a bad odor.”
Her boots squelched in the grime, and she groaned. “I beg your pardon,” she snapped at my back. I glanced over my shoulder, noticing how similar she looked to Rosemary with her chin tilted up stubbornly like that. “I want to get her as much as you do!”
“Then suck it up and keep moving.”
I didn’t care that she growled at my back.
Maybe that anger would propel her forward faster.
My only focus was getting to Rosemary. I ignored my brother’s whispered reassurances, his smooth words of comfort.
Instead, I marched forward, slowing down at every bend to peer around the edge with as little light as possible before deeming the way clear enough for us to continue.
Darius’s shoulder nudged mine as I paused, checking the fork that yawned open before us. “You’re being a little harsh on her, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps,” I replied, checking the darkness for any sign of movement, sound, anything. “She can chew me out about it later… after we get her sister back.”
Darius pulled me aside, his hand closing around my shoulder until I lowered my gaze to meet his. “She really means that much to you?”
With a heavy, annoyed sigh, I answered, “You both missed a century of time where Rosemary and I both lived, struggled, and survived. You look at me as if I am the same as you, as if Rosemary is the same as Briar, but we are not the same. There is strength in Rosemary, resiliency. Trust me, if my princess were here, she would be the first to tell you to shut up and move.”
My brother dropped his hand from my shoulder and looked away.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said, “I was aware of every moment that passed while I was trapped in my crow form. I was there with her; with your princess, and with mine.” He held his hand out to Briar, helping her step from one large stone onto another, avoiding the green slime of liquid settling along the center of the tunnel.
“I spent the last forty years watching over them both. What took you so long to find them, Elias?”
To find us, he didn’t add as hurt flickered across his features.
My jaw clenched, but I loosened it. “You want to know where I was, brother? I was slowly dying because I didn’t know any of you still lived.
I wished for death a thousand times but was too much a coward to take myself out.
Instead, I took the greatest risks and gambled with my life.
Mother told me everyone had perished in her curses, and when faced with an endless existence with only Mother left, I fled into the shadows. ”
I stormed ahead. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
I held so much shame and regret, it was the driving force behind why I thought it would be better to break Rosemary’s heart and drive her away from me rather than shackle her to me for eternity.
I shuddered at my stupidity. I just wanted to find Rosemary.
Needed to find her. The stench faded, or perhaps my nose just became blind to it, but as we traversed the tunnels, I knew we weren’t far from the massive door that led into the castle.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, little brother,” Darius said, his footsteps steady behind me. I didn’t glance back at him though. I couldn’t. A lump formed in the center of my throat, and I swallowed it back. Now was not the time for weakness.
When I could speak, I only said, “You were right where you needed to be, Darius. I do not fault you for that. I understand, even. If our roles had been reversed, I imagine I would have been there too.”
“I know, but I hate that you were alone for all that. I hate that you had the desire to destroy yourself and then to have been given hope recently just to have that taken away again. What was it like seeing her again?” Darius asked softly.
The only sound as we travelled through the tunnels were our gentle footfalls and our whispered conversation. We seemed completely alone down here, and Briar trailed along silently, letting us have this brotherly moment after so long without one.
“It felt like a gift that I didn’t deserve.
My initial reaction was to destroy it,” I confessed, leading our way ever forward.
“But gods, Darius, I was so wrong. I thought that if I could make her fall in love with me to break the curse, that I could betray that love and leave her. I thought it would be better for her if I left. I know I’ll never deserve an ounce of her light, but damn it all to hell, Darius, I don’t care.
She knew all of this and still broke the curse. She loved me anyway.”
My fingertips brushed away the dampness as it slid down my cheek.
Since the beginning, I’d sabotaged our love.
All the endless teasing, the incessant need to untangle her braids, everything.
I was still stuck in that damn fountain, drowning over and over even after she saved me again and again.
I would never feel good enough for her because she was utterly perfect.
I was nothing more than an underserving unseelie prince who gave up and fell into despair. Letting it twist me into something that didn’t even deserve to be in her presence. It was too much. I'd almost ruined everything.
Darius stopped then, pulling me into his chest as I cried. Briar waited several feet away, lightly touching the stone walls then wrinkling her nose as she inspected the grime that came away on her fingers. I wrapped my arms around my brother, holding him to me as I let my tears fall.
“Brother,” he said, “I understand that feeling of unworthiness. The need to push others away before they get too close, to hurt them so they don’t get to know you because you don’t want to let them down.
” His emerald gaze filled with such love then as he glanced toward Briar, and a stupid grin split across his face.
“Our mother made us that way. All those years ago, Briar and I hid our relationship for a few reasons, and while one of those reasons was our mother, it wasn’t the only reason.
The two of us actually fought against the relationship for quite some time before we gave in to it.
There was no fighting it, no denying what was between us. ”
He held me at arm’s length, staring into my tearstained eyes. “You didn’t betray her, Elias. You found her, and you found yourself. Now, let’s go save her, shall we?”
Nodding, I breathed in deeply. Then instantly regretted it, coughing and sputtering.
Briar tapped my shoulder on her way past, not even bothering to hide her grin on her way by as she said, “I guess you better suck it up, hey crow boy?”
I gave my head a disappointed shake, but my lips twitched in response.