Chapter 40 #2
I glanced at Ferris, eyeing her amulets as she looked at mine.
We were at a tie for holding the most spirits, and perhaps that meant either one of us could demand the boon once we reached the Great Elm.
We might end up racing to get there first and the thought left me uncomfortable.
I needed this, but so did she. And the truth was, I was going to have to steal it from her even if it wrecked me to do so.
Princess Drava struck the stone door with her dagger, carving a line into it but it didn’t budge.
“How in the spirits am I meant to gain access?” she hissed to herself, stalking back and forth in front of the door, ignoring the presence of the humans entirely.
“It seems you weren’t lying about the key after all,” Ferris muttered.
“A liar? Me?” I smirked but she didn’t smile back, instead tutting under her breath and looking away. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you, lightwing.”
“You can’t call me lightwing when you’re being a smug dick.”
“But you will always be my lightwing. My good luck charm. Even when I am smug dick.”
She cracked a grin at last. “Did it ever occur to you that I’m my own good luck charm and you just came along for the ride?”
“Yes, actually,” I sniggered and her smile grew.
“Come then. Let me see this key.” She arched a brow at me, holding out her hand.
“As if I would hand it over so willingly.” I stood up lazily, pushing my shoulders back and sauntering down the path with little to no care of how the Champions were going to react to my arrival.
Drava turned, her body stiffening as she took me in and I offered her a nod of greeting, knowing it was a mockery of what we were to each other now.
Drava was not my immediate aunt. She was my great grandfather’s sister. She hadn’t been there the day my family died, but when I’d tried to reach out to her after escaping Rivenspire, she had not replied. She had cut us off in our hour of need and I held no warmth in my heart for her any longer.
“Bane Crownthief,” Drava gasped, her throat bobbing as her eyes trailed over my face. She grew pale, mystified horror spreading across her features, her disbelief at my presence making her retreat one step, then two.
It was unusual to see a Fae of her strength unsettled in such a way and I rather liked watching her cower.
She wasn’t an active member among the Coterie, her attendance at their gatherings brief.
Perhaps she even held a distaste for their activities.
But her inaction was a statement of her true character.
“Crownthief?” Helga murmured, sharing a look with Devlan before both of them raised weapons between us. They seemed to be waiting for me to confirm the title offered to me and I held no qualms over keeping it a secret anymore.
“Hello, Aunt,” I drawled, smiling at Drava coldly to unnerve her. “You need a key for that door.” I gestured to it, hearing Ferris closing in on me from behind but I held the Hollows at bay among the trees, hidden out of sight and waiting for my summons.
“Is that the waif who followed us around for days?” Helga hissed, jerking her head at Ferris. “What the fuck happened to her hair?”
I rounded on the offending Helga who had cast those words against my lightwing, my gaze setting coldly upon her and making her raise her sword all the higher. “If you call Ferris Creed a waif again I shall summon my Hollows to crack and shatter your bones one by one.”
“Stay away from me,” Helga growled, grabbing the amulet at her throat as if she was considering setting the Boar on me.
“Who says you’re even the Necromancer?” Devlan chimed in, his dagger pointed at me as if he planned to hurl it at my head.
“This could be a trick of the trees,” Drava whispered, nodding hopefully and glancing up at the canopy as the wind stirred the leaves.
“You want proof?” I purred and they all shifted foot to foot, but Helga called out to demand it.
I drew upon my dark connection to death and the Hollows crept from the trees, just close enough to show their presence.
My will over them was not absolute, but when they were this close it was always easier to direct them.
Though the longer I wielded this dark power the closer I came to losing myself in its grip and already I could feel the dark veins crawling across my skin, mostly hidden beneath my clothes for now but soon they would be noticeable around them.
Devlan cursed, wheeling around to raise his sword to defend himself from the dead lurking among the trees.
“Monster,” Helga spat at me, her eyes wild with fear as she turned her gaze on the approaching dead.
Ferris was watching me closely, a flicker of caution to her eyes like she thought I might turn this dangerous side of me on her at any moment. But surely she knew better.
“You should never have come here,” Drava growled, backing up again. “You are not welcome.”
“Ever arrogant, I see. You do not own this forest, Drava, though I am sure you believe that every scrap of earth within your sights could one day be yours. Providence is not coming to choose you.” I gave her a mocking look then turned to the door as she started spewing curses at me.
Ferris moved to my side, waiting expectantly for me to produce a key. But instead I took a short knife from a sheath at my hip and slashed a shallow cut across my palm, making her inhale sharply in surprise.
The blood oozed as I pressed it to the stone door, speaking of the secret the Hag had offered me, loud enough for all to hear – for what was the point in hiding it now?
“I met with a Hag before I came to the cursed forest,” I said. “She spoke to me of fate and of this very door too. And she told me how to open it.”
“What did she say?” Ferris asked, a yearning need building in her voice for the answer.
“That the blood of the imperial shall unlock the labyrinth’s door.”
“Is that so?” a deep voice rent the air in two and a sneer pulled at my lips as I rounded on Islasees who was stepping out of the trees with Jadina and Benson either side of him.
The Hollows stirred around him as if sensing my desire for this male’s death alongside those of his vile companions and vitriol spilled through my gut.
“And why would a Hag offer you such information, Bane Crownthief?” Islasees hissed, glancing around at my Hollows warily with tension lining his shoulders.
The use of that name made my ire rise and I pointed my bloodied knife at him as I answered.
“I traded for knowledge of the Taking Trees and she gave it well. It seems royal blood will open this door. I paid her the gift of my flesh as the price. She took over my body, wearing it as her own for one full month and did the most heinous of things with me for that time. But the price was paid and she was true to her word.”
“And yet the door remains closed,” Islasees commented and I let my Hollows creep closer to him, making his two Fae cronies shift uncomfortably, but they didn’t strike at them.
Not while we assessed each other, predators eye to eye.
They took stock of my amulets while I took stock of Islasees and readied for an attack.
I glanced back at the door, finding Ferris examining it and looking to me with an urgent frown.
“Why isn’t it opening?” she hissed.
“Let us not do anything foolish,” Drava stepped in, glancing at the Hollows then to Islasees and me. “We have all come to rid Rathian of the forest’s curse. What were the words she used? ‘Blood of the…”
“Imperial,” I finished for her. “Imperial means royal. My blood should open it.”
“But you’re an outcast, aren’t you? Perhaps that means you’re no longer royal,” Devlan piped up and I shot him a glare that made him tense.
“He has a point, Necromancer,” Drava said, walking cautiously past me, her dagger gripped tightly in her hand but she didn’t raise it at me.
The rips in her clothes and stains of blood upon her told of what she had been through to get here.
Not even meeting me between the trees was going to sway her from getting to the Great Elm.
And time was waning. The sun was drifting out of sight and all colour was draining from the day.
Drava cut her arm with her dagger and smeared it across the stone door.
We waited. Bated breaths were held around us and the song of the Lost Children started up in the trees once more.
It was a faster tune this time, threaded with notes of terror that set a hum of dread through the remaining group of Champions.
“Pray for life.
Death is coming.
She is singing.
She is hungry.
She is ready to devour.
She will feast upon the hour.”
“For the love of the spirits, it’s not opening,” Drava growled in anger, striking her fist against the door.
Islasees walked toward us, his gaze driving into mine, daring me to make a move against him as he brushed past me to examine the labyrinth’s entrance for himself. Hatred bled through me, my need for his death rising like a winter storm and begging for retribution.
His back was to me. I could strike at him, drive my knife between his shoulder blades and sink it into his heart.
But then Ferris touched my hand, just enough to bring rationale back to the surface of my mind. If I killed Islasees I could not take his amulets and the boon would never be mine. But he might just set his bloodhounds on me to take my own.
I fixed my gaze on Benson and Jadina instead, noting how they had drawn a little closer, a tension to their shoulders telling me they were confident of taking down the Necromancer. But more fool them if they truly believed that.
“Try more blood,” Islasees urged Drava and I glanced back to find her making a deeper cut on her other arm, letting it bleed onto the stone door where it dripped down to the rock at its base.
“Sweet Elm, how she cries,
How she’s waiting for her prize.
She is ready, she is waiting,
-it’s not good to keep her waiting!”
“Shut up!” Benson barked at the trees as the Lost Children gathered above us to watch, but their song only grew in volume.
“We’re running out of time,” Jadina said anxiously. “Can’t we break through it? Or perhaps there’s another way in.”
“Bane,” Ferris breathed and I looked down at her, seeing the desperation in her gaze. “It’s not working.”
“More,” Islasees commanded, losing his patience and grabbing Drava’s arm to drag it across the stone and squeeze more blood onto it.
“Run, run, run to the Great Elm beyond the door!
Run, run, run, she can wait for you no more!”
“You’re hurting me, let go,” Drava snarled, but Islasees only squeezed tighter, pushing Drava against the wall. “Stop!” She lifted her dagger but Islasees was quicker, a concealed blade in his hand sweeping out and slitting her throat in one deep slash.
Shock jarred through me.
Drava couldn’t scream, only grasp at the gaping wound as blood poured from her neck and Islasees caught a fistful of her clothes and shoved her roughly against the door.
I snarled as I shoved Ferris behind me, lurching forward to break up this hysteria and swinging my knife for Islasees’s back before he could turn his violence upon my lightwing.
He wheeled around before I could land the blow, his sword drawn in a heartbeat, rising up to clash with my knife.
The force he used sent my blade skittering across the ground but I threw my fist instead and it slammed into his face, sending him stumbling sideways.
In my periphery I saw Devlan run in and snatch the Phoenix and Stag amulets from Drava’s slumped form, clasping them around his own neck and snatching a victory from her demise. Though there was still no sign of a Champion sporting the Serpent amulet so none of us were victorious yet.
“Bane, watch out!” Ferris warned.
Islasees’s two lackies ran at me together and I unsheathed my sword, parrying blows from both sides and calling upon the darkness within me.
It answered my plea, the potent, wrathful magic crawling through me and promising death, puddling around my feet to wither the grass at my boots.
The flood of blazing chaos filled me to the brim, my need to protect Ferris burning through me and spurring it on.
With a crash of thundering footfalls, the Hollows came rushing to my aid, one latching its arm around Benson’s neck and two more throwing Jadina to the ground.
Islasees swung his sword for my head as he tried to push me toward his bloodthirsty comrades – but they were too distracted by the Hollows who had come to rip them limb from limb to be of any help to him now.
We fought to get the upper hand with a desperate vehemence and among the havoc, I found a smile dancing upon my lips.
Because it had been a long damn time since I’d fought with the fury of my kin humming in my veins.
And if this day was about to be my last, then I may as well revel in the thrill of the fight.