60. He Did What?
60
He Did What?
Aliza
I knew that rasping voice. It haunted my nightmares, promising a brutal, unthinkable end. In my haste to spin, my feet tangled together, forcing me to stagger away from the withered old man and…
“Bryn?” Idris’ voice was laced with the same panic that surged through my veins like poison, but it was doubt that crept down the bond.
A fae male knelt at the hem of Maelgwyn’s sweeping robes, his hands braced on the floor, his arms trembling as blood dripped steadily from the mutilated hole on the side of his head, where a pointed ear should have been. He heaved a wet cough, and blood splattered over the shiny wood floor.
Slowly, as though every movement cost him a century of his life, Bryn raised his head. Tears streaked through the blood coating his face. “I’m sorry.”
Idris’ voice was strangled as he said, “You lied to us.”
The spy attempted to shake his head, but abandoned the gesture with an agonised whimper. “No,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Never. ”
Maelgwyn aimed a kick—surprisingly swift and sure, considering his outward appearance of great age—at Bryn’s ribs, and the male crumpled, twitching and bleeding, making no move to rise.
Idris lurched beside me, as though he’d run to him. Anwir seized his arm, holding him back, and hissed, “Don’t be a fool.”
Maelgwyn surveyed the twins with mild interest, before sliding his watery eyes to me. “We meet again, my dear. Thank you for making this endeavour frightfully easy.”
I will hunt down your prince. There will be no mercy this time.
The promise he had made shortly before burning me alive sent ice slaking down my spine. Had I delivered Idris to his death? Had I saved them both from the curse, only to ensure a worse fate?
My blood simmered with magic, and I slid sideways, placing myself between Maelgwyn and his nephews.
“Aliza, no—”
“What do you want?” To my dismay, fear made my voice shrill. “Where are my parents?”
A tight band of terror crushed my ribs inwards, refusing to let them expand.
“Not in the observatory, to dear Lord Gadran’s misfortune.” Another kick had Bryn whimpering like a dying dog. My heart lurched to my throat. Whatever the species, I knew that sound. Knew what it meant. “I must confess, of all my advisors, his loyalty seemed surest. His betrayal is a disappointing turn of events, though not without its merits. As to what I want… the same thing I sought last time we met. You.”
Idris’ brutal snarl peppered my skin, raising my hackles, but it was the truth of the situation that had my guts roiling. I’d led my friends to their deaths. I’d known this was a trap, but I’d thought I was smarter than a king who’d won a throne he had no right to and ruled without challenge for centuries. I’d been an idiot, and now my friends would die for my stupidity.
My lungs wouldn’t work, wouldn’t draw a breath deep enough to supply my brain with much-needed oxygen. There had to be a way out, if only I could think straight. If only I had time.
I shook my head, making my skull hurt. No clever words came to mind, no brilliant solution. We were fucked. My magic knew it; heat roared inside me, but if I let it out, everyone but me would burn. I knew all too well how that felt. I would sooner die all over again than subject them to such an end.
“No?” Maelgwyn tutted, snapping his gnarled fingers.
The densest shadows at the edges of the room flickered, swirled and rose like smoke taking humanoid form. Glowing white eyes sparked to life. Shades. Lots of unkillable shades. Maelgwyn’s monstrous cronies swept toward us from every shadow. My muscles tensed, bracing for them to grab me and spirit me away to some depthless pit of misfortune and suffering, as they had done to countless others. Nobody encountered a shade and lived to tell of what came next.
Blinding, blue-white light exploded into being with a crack that set the tower quaking. As the floor rumbled beneath my feet, lightning surged around us, lacing and skittering overhead in a webbed dome, a smaller, deadlier version of the one overhead.
Through the dazzling, shifting wall of light, I glimpsed a lattice of new fractures in the glass. Any more magic, and the whole thing might shatter over our heads, but lightning was the only weapon capable of harming shades. Light was the only thing that could hold them at bay. Idris had already expended much of his power, providing the cloud cover for us to fly right into the waiting jaws of Maelgwyn’s trap, and now he was all that stood between us and them.
I fell back a step from the crackling orb of electricity, colliding with a wall of muscle. Idris’ hand enveloped mine, his grip tight. A sharp pop of static jolted through me at the contact, but I squeezed back. Pansy trembled at my side. She’d drawn her sword. I reached blindly for the dagger at my hip, for all the good it would do against those monsters of darkness if Idris’ power fell.
“Sage,” Anwir snapped close behind me. “The crystal. Get us out of here.”
“Leaving so soon?” Maelgwyn crooned, his frail form little more than another rippling shadow beyond the glaring light. “I had hoped for a chance to reminisce with my dear nephews.”
“ Now ,” Anwir hissed.
Jostling at my back told me Sage was removing the warp crystal from her pocket. My heart leapt to my throat, choking my shallow breaths. Mum and Dad were still here, somewhere in the castle. I’d failed them. I’d come close enough to be under the same roof, but it wasn’t enough. They would die, or worse, and Bryn. Poor Bryn. He was on the wrong side of Idris’ magic, beyond our reach, but not beyond Maelgwyn’s. He’d tried to help us, and now… Tears flooded my eyes, blinding me.
What more could we do?
Sage began to mutter her incantation, the words in a language I couldn’t understand.
“Of course, you would be in a hurry to leave, Anwir. I’m surprised you had the gall to show your face at all, all things considered. ”
“Hurry!”
“And you, Idris. Brother or not, some might take such depths of forgiveness as weakness. Anwir did you a favour. You would have made a spineless king.”
A hollow thrum announced the opening of Sage’s portal at my back, but Idris made no attempt to move. His fingers slackened around mine. “What?”
“Don’t listen to him, Idris. Let’s go.” Anwir seized Idris by the elbow, dragging him to the portal, but Idris never turned as he stumbled backwards, his eyes fixed on his uncle.
“Oh, you don’t know?” Maelgwyn crooned. “I’ll let you tell the story, Anwir. You are the author of this sorry tale, after all.”
I turned in tandem with Idris, clinging to his hand as we faced Anwir. The prince’s face was bloodless, stark against the swirling black void of Sage’s portal. His white-ringed eyes stared back at us, or rather, at Idris. The minute shake of his head was all the response he seemed able to muster.
“Tell him,” Maelgwyn hissed, his musical glee vanishing. “Tell him who begged me to curse the true heir. Tell him who is responsible for Taryn’s death.”
My stomach plummeted the many levels to the ground far, far below, even as my body froze to ice. A lie. It had to be a lie. But Anwir made no fervent denial, only stared at his brother with that rigid, white-eyed horror.
“Anwir,” Sage breathed, horrified disbelief shattering her haughty mask, “you didn’t… you couldn’t… did you? ”
“No.” Idris’ single word came from deep within, grinding free of a place of agonised darkness. I knew what it cost him, felt ruthless talons cleave it from the pit of my own chest.
“Idris, please. I never intended—”
Idris ragged his hand from my grasp and launched himself at his twin. The shield of lightning guttered and died.