Chapter 11
In the goblin city, I was still king, and the goblins were more than happy to escort me to the gateway that led to the dark fae. Of course, they weren’t the ones who had to convince my mother not to kill me and in fact help me find the woman I loved—who was not fae.
“Your highness, are you going to let them out? Are we finally going to take the human world by storm? We almost had them at the fort. If not for those demons, we would have won!” Teemu was a goblin who still dreamed of bloodshed on an epic scale. Other than that, he was good at keeping things under control when I wasn’t in the city. A real organized type A character. The blood thirst was something I could do without, but it was part of the culture.
“No Teemu, I need to speak to someone,” I said.
“Ah. Well, that’s a pity. I was so looking forward to battle!” He grinned up at me, bat ears flopping and big eyes wide and hopeful. He remained behind as I made my way the last hundred feet or so to the pathway I sought.
The gates were wrapped in my own chains, sealed off from the goblin city and the faerie realm. For the protection of this realm and the humans, but to keep those that lived in the dark lands safe.
Like Teemu, fae warriors tended to lean toward bloodshed first. Negotiations later.
I touched the chains, pressing my palm against the cold steel, and they slithered off, clinking to the ground. The massive gates slid open, grinding against the stone pathway, dust floating up around the edges. Darkness and the smell of a forest I knew all too well rolled out of the now open doors.
I didn’t look back at my honor guard of goblins as I stepped onto the pathway. With a flick of my hand, my magic pulled the big doors shut behind me.
The darkness inside was absolute, the way it would be in a cave, but I knew these pathways like the back of my hand—I’d spent my childhood exploring them. I set my right hand to the wall and followed the path down until I reached the open field that was the first true portion of the realm of the dark fae.
There were no monsters waiting for me—they were ordered to attack only those whose blood did not resonate with the dark fae.
Starlight lit up the sky, a world within a world that was all I’d known in childhood. The field of blue and green grass stretching out in front of me waved in a breeze that was ever constant here. A wind that never eased. It tugged at my hair, as if reacquainting itself with me.
Only for Bree would I do this, only for her would I take the chance that the Elder Mare was correct.
When I stepped out into the field, it didn’t take long for the first guard to find me.
“Who are you?” his voice rumbled from low in the grass, where he lay hidden and ready to attack.
“Prince Carag.” My childhood name…dark fae for Crash…left my lips for the first time in a very long time—a century at least. “I’m here to speak with my mother.”
“You wish to speak with the queen?” His head popped up, long dark hair tied back from his angular, pointed face. Deep blue eyes stared hard at me. “Really? I thought you were smarter than that, Prince Carag. I figured you’d never come back after the fight you two had. Didn’t she say she would kill you?”
I didn’t bother to answer him. I didn’t have to. That was a perk of being a prince of this realm. When I remained silent, he shrugged. “It is your life and terrible death, I suppose. Come on.”
He stood and led me through the field. I saw other dark fae as we moved along. Some scurried away in fear, and others were bolder and stared hard at me.
Fewer yet bowed as I passed. Those I acknowledged, if only by tipping my head in their direction.
Very few would recognize me, or so I thought. The deeper we went, though, the more dark fae came to see me pass by, more and more of them bowing. Holding their hands out to me, as if I could bless them.
That was…strange.
Slowly, the fields gave way to a forest with tall, skeletal trees dotted with tiny spots of color, like stars set into the bark. Like the humans’ Christmas lights.
It had been so long since I’d willingly been here, I saw the place through new eyes. And it was beautiful. Heartbreakingly so. Bree would have been awestruck by the scene in front of me.
My first guard paused. “I leave you here.”
A second guard stepped out from behind one of the skeletal trees, his body not much thicker than the branches, as if he’d not been eating. He bowed at the waist.
“Prince Carag. I will lead you from here.”
I motioned for him to continue on, keeping my tongue still.
“We’d heard you died,” my guide said after some time had passed. “Your mother was not pleased by that news.”
I grunted again, keeping my responses to myself. I did not have to explain anything to this one.
“Do you think she would not grieve? You are her only child left alive. Or were. Are, I suppose.”
My jaw ticked, the words I wished to speak caught in my throat before they could spill out of me. My death had happened here, in my mother’s realm. A blade had spilled my blood in these very lands. There had been no help from her, no care that I was dying on her damn doorstep.
But that was between me and the queen.
Though I did not need a guide through the forest, he stayed with me. I still knew this land, and knew it well. Which was why seeing the castle in near ruins caught me by surprise as we emerged from the forest. It was exactly as the Elder Mare had shown me. I’d thought her imagery had been something metaphorical—not real.
“Ah, I see you finally have a reaction. Well, good luck with your mother.” The guard gave me another bow and slipped away, back into the forest.
The castle that stood—barely—did not resemble any of my memories. The tall spires that had been shingled in sheets of thin obsidian had crumbled to the ground. Blocks of dark granite that encapsulated tiny pieces of glowing starlight had been crushed. The main gate was open, the twelve-foot doors hanging loose on their hinges as if they’d been partially blasted off.
I found myself moving toward my childhood home, not sure of the feelings that ran rampant through me.
Face the past.
Shock was at the forefront of my mind, but buried beneath it I sensed a deep sorrow that I didn’t want to feel. This place held so many memories. So much of the pain in my childhood.
At the main gates, a guard stood on either side. I recognized one of them.
“Lorz.” I dipped my head in the direction of the deeply wrinkled, gray-haired guard on the right. His beard reached nearly to his belt now, though I remembered it being only just past his jaw line.
His eyes widened. “You’ve come back, Prince Carag! We were told you were dead. Thank the goddess, that wasn’t true. Perhaps there is time yet.”
My jaw tightened. But like with my escorts to the castle, I kept my questions and thoughts to myself. A ruler never reveals how little they know or what they wish they knew. The rules that had applied to me when I was young were with me still.
They didn’t need to know why I had come.
The two guards bowed as I passed them and stepped into the first courtyard.
All around me were broken walls, shattered windows…I didn’t understand what had happened to make this place of power, the heart of the dark fae, look like this. Because there were no signs of war, no bodies, no weapons on the ground.
“That’s the Scourge’s influence for sure,” Nancy said. “You can smell it.”
I agreed with him. Again, I’d thought what the Elder Mare had shown had been imagery, not reality.
Weaving my way through the rubble, noting the plants that had overgrown the fallen pieces of what had been a mighty palace, I found an opening that led into what remained of the throne room.
“Ah, so you finally decided to return, from the dead no less.” My mother stepped out of the shadows of the room, moving around her broken throne. “Let me guess, you need something? Come to bargain with me?”
I bowed from the waist. “Mother.”
“Don’t ‘mother’ me. You abandoned us for that snot-nosed little fae with the golden hair, believing that she was a better queen than I! Then I hear you died, but that was obviously a trick.” She sniffed and plunked herself down on the throne, as if she were still holding court. Yet her hair was in tangles, chunks of it missing. Her skirts were filthy, shredded in places and patched in others. Even her skin, normally glowing with life and vigor was sallow with…age, or perhaps sickness.
But fae did not grow old or get sick.
“I left to be with my wife, yes,” I said. “That was a long time ago. And I did die, but I was brought back by a sentinel. The one who guards Savannah.”
She heard only the parts she wanted to. “I forbade you from marrying her. You did it anyway. It’s as if you loved her more than me! It is a pity it took you so long to cut her head off!”
I kept my own head down, knowing I had to play this right—use the right words. The right offerings. If I failed to provide them, I would get nothing from my mother. “Your majesty, you are queen for a reason.”
“And what reason would that be?” Her tone was dangerously smooth, like silk running across the blade of a razor.
Careful, careful. “Because you know things that others could not. You were correct, Karissa was…not what I thought. I should have listened to the wisdom you offered me.”
I lifted my head in time to see a flash of a smile. “Ah, so you can still be the charmer, can you? So like your father. Mind you, when he tried to run from me, I took his head.”
She patted the arm rest on her left side, made up of the bones of my father. Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes, you really can’t go home. But for Bree…for her, I would do what I had to do.
“The Elder Mare has spoken for you…” I said and let my voice trail off.
“Has she? Not for centuries has she given me a prophecy. Why now?”
I shrugged as if it were of no consequence. If my mother knew of the importance of Bree to the world, or worse, of Bree to my heart, she would not give me what I needed.
“I stumbled on her, when I was checking my boundaries?—”
“Grand king of all.” She snorted. “Checking boundaries. As if the land of the fae or the city of goblins holds any light to this palace!” She swung her hand up, and a shower of light erupted above us, a tiny display of what had once been a grand power. A grand palace.
All the light did now was illuminate a creature of utter darkness latched into the darkness of the ceiling. A creature with a hundred red eyes watching the play below it.
I jerked my eyes from the being above us, quite certain that it was the Scourge. “Of course, but as I was saying the Elder Mare was there with her keeper. She spoke to me…of you. I felt it prudent to bring you the message.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “Of me?”
I nodded again. “A prophecy that is coming to pass…one of great…power.”
Her eyes glittered and she leaned forward. “I can no longer tell when you are lying to me, Carag. That is interesting.”
I held up both hands as if in surrender to her, doing all I could to keep my heart and emotions steady and calm. “To you, I would not lie.”
“Then speak the prophecy, if it pertains to me. I assume she sent you to me?”
I lowered my hands. “She did. I did not want to come. Our history is rife with tension, would you not agree?”
My mother leaned back in her chair. Staring into her eyes was like looking into a mirror, right down to the silver flecks. “You are a disobedient son, Carag. All the tension that has occurred between us…is your fault. Would not you agree?”
I tipped my head in her direction so she would not see the anger flare in my eyes. “I would agree. I was headstrong when I was younger.”
I would say anything to get to Bree. Even agreeing with my power-mad mother. My father’s unrepentant murderer.
“Then give me my prophecy, Carag. Tell me what the Elder Mare deemed necessary for you to pass on to me.”
I had been mulling over just what I could say to give my mother the desire to find Bree. To secure her help in finding the place I sought. All without tipping my hand to Bree’s importance to my heart.
I tucked both hands behind my back, like a proper courtier.
“The vampire empress will raise an army and wipe the land of every fae, enslaving even the queen of all.”
That is what my mother liked to call herself—the queen of all.
She leaned back in her chair. “That is the entire prophecy?”
I shook my head, playing my hand as carefully as I could. “The remainder did not make sense to me; I am not even sure of its meaning. The Elder Mare is old, and at times dotty?—”
She slapped the bones of my father. “Again, you show your incompetence. You think you know better than the Elder Mare? All of what she said, speak it. Now.” The command in her tone was sharp, and it stung my skin with the magic it carried. A thrashing of her magic was not something I’d ever thought I’d have to endure again.
“Of course, mother. As you wish.” I cleared my throat. “The hidden castle, at the ocean’s edge, find the empress and end her nights.”
I’d almost said end her days, but realized that would tip my mother off that I was the one creating a prophecy. Because the vampire had no days, only nights left to her.
Drumming her fingers on the length of my father’s thigh bone, my mother stared into nothing. “A vampire who claims to be an empress. And she wishes to…what? Take over the world? I remember that spell was spoken of not long ago.”
“Not long ago as far as the humans remember,” I agreed.
“But the Elder Mare believes that she could take our home? That she could conquer me?” My mother stood and her power crackled around her. Darkness and flames kissed the edge of her dress, and then they faded, the room dimmed, and she slumped onto her throne.
Eyes dull. All emotion gone.
“Your highness?” I took a step toward her, then another. “Mother?”
“Carag is gone,” she whispered. “He was to be the heir, but he left and now…our world is fading. I…drove him away.”
I made myself crouch in front of her, dared to put a hand on her knee. This was what the Elder Mare had warned me of. A past that was breaking, a past that was no longer what it had once been.
“Mother. The Elder Mare said that you have the sight to find those lost?”
“I always can see.” She stared up into the ceiling. “They can see. We all see.”
I slowly tipped my head so that I was staring up into the ceiling rafters with her. All those eyes, they stared back. A low rumbling hiss flowed across the structure, bodies moving together in a writhing mass. Claws and scales, a thousand eyes…this was not good.
I lowered my eyes, and this close to my mother, I could see the scratches on her pale skin, the scars that had healed and been re-opened a thousand times. How long had she been battling the Scourge? She was still battling it.
There was no love left in me for the woman who’d given me life. That was the only good thing she’d done for me. The scars she’d left on my body were deep, and the ones on my heart and mind were only a little less deep.
But…if the Scourge took over the keep, the dark fae would be killed. And while they were not always the kindest fae, they were my people. They were the warriors, the fighters, and they had always protected the land of faerie when the time came for war.
Was this any different? Were we not at war with Evangeline?
“Mother, walk with me outside.” I had to move her. “Let us talk where the light is a little better.”
I made myself take her by the hand and help her stand. But the Scourge…well…it was not about to let its prize go so easily.