Chapter 20 Tate #3
“Because you are mine. You belong to me. Do you think babies just grow on trees?” He laughed darkly, cocking his head, giving Tate a sarcastic, sardonic smile, a look Tate knew he himself had given the assembled orcs at the Pixie more than a hundred million times.
“Do you think every time one of you snivelling elves drops a coin in a fountain, wishing for a baby, we just pluck them from a rose and leave them in the garden? You were a payment due. A debt collected. Nothing more. Worthless orc or not. I didn’t take anything that wasn’t already mine.
If you don’t want to owe a debt to something else, you should be careful what you wish for. You belong to me.”
“Why not my mother instead?” He hated the thought as soon as he gave it voice, but that it had always been there was undeniable.
Cadoc’s smile was lethal, his laughter like a pitch-black purr. “Because I wasn’t instructed to bring a replacement for her.”
Tate could hear someone screaming now, something wet moving through the underbrush, not far away. Was this the plan? To deliver him to the hunt as a late addition to the game? Silva’s coin would be lost to him and he would never see her again.
“Where are you taking me?”
Cadoc’s grin was terrible. “To the door. I’m letting you go.”
Something began to ring in his ears and sizzle in his veins as he was released, stumbling again.
This wasn’t the patch of forest he knew.
This wasn’t the outer edge of Autumn. This was where he had come in, the path still straight, marching along, doing what it could to trip him up, but not bending around trees and down hillsides.
The doorway must be just ahead. You’re only going to get one shot at him, lad.
Fate had a strange way of unfurling her plans.
“Give me back her coin. And you’ll never have to suffer me again.”
The stretch of teeth he was given in response was gruesome. Tate could feel the pull from within those jaws, could hear the screaming emptiness that awaited within.
“That’s not going to happen. That’s called leverage, beloved. And it’s not yours to demand. Again . . . payment due.”
A red mist settled over his eyes. This was Cadoc’s plan.
Put off the inevitable another day, push his unwanted obligation back through a doorway until he was forced to collect him once more on the whims of his Queen, at some point in the endless future, forever tethered to this bastard, as long as he lived.
The Queen and her consort would continue to circle each other forever, untrusting, each waiting for the other to strike.
His life had been ruined over a petty relationship spat.
Over nothing. And it ended tonight. He would not allow Silva to be reaped for Autumn’s harvest.
The baying of hounds split the air, and he could hear hooves thundering up the pathway somewhere to their left.
Something shot through the underbrush. Tate coiled himself, the plan forming before him spontaneously, just as he’d been hoping for.
His grandsire should have known better. Plans went sideways in Faerie, the very air itself loving chaos too much to allow anything to go to plan. Tate was counting on it.
Cadoc was unprepared when Tate headbutted him, slamming his thick Orcish skull into that fine sloped forehead with every bit of force he had, sending his grandsire sprawling, ebony antlers rolling away.
He was an orc. That was all they saw. He was taller and broader and stronger.
And it was well past time they remembered that.
Planning kept one rigid, while Faerie valued fluidity. But an agenda was something altogether different. Get her coin, kill the cunt, find a door.
The blade was the first thing he snatched, flinging it wildly into the underbrush, in the direction he’d heard the animal running.
Perhaps one of the quarry might find it, might form their own fluid plan.
Keeping the weapon to use would be folly.
His grandsire wielded it like a deadly extension of his hand, and Tate had no doubt that if the blade made it back to him, which it inevitably would, he would slice Tate’s throat immediately.
He was able to sink one punch into the side of that long jaw before Cadoc was driving a knee up into his ribs, hard enough to make him wheeze.
Cadoc rolled onto his feet faster than Tate would have liked, but it made no difference.
He had spent his entire childhood in one fight after the next.
He knew how to outlast. This was something he’d learned young.
Tate was half expecting the graceful precision he’d witnessed from the fae before him all his life, watching hunt after hunt.
Instead, Cadoc lunged, moving with brutal intent, slamming into Tate with enough force to drive them both backward into a tree.
Bark scraped roughly against his skin, the branches shuddering overhead, dropping blood red leaves down on them like raindrops.
That mailed fist connected with Tate’s jaw, stars bursting across his vision.
He tasted blood immediately, sharp and coppery, an echo of the coin that was still pressed to the wrong body.
It was his turn to twist away, using both his height and the tree for leverage, rounding back and driving his elbow into the other man’s ribs. Unprotected, for he liked to ride light. Once, twice, Tate heard the crack on the third, forcing them both against the tree once more.
He had spent his entire life daydreaming about the day he might escape the Bonfire Court for good.
Imagined how he might kill the fae who’d stolen him from his family, had killed him a million times in his dreams with disembowelment, defenestration, a poisoned pint of gat.
A fistfight had never figured into his imagination.
Tate considered that perhaps the quality of his dreams was simply lacking.
Cadoc hissed, more in anger than in pain, pushing off the trunk and sending them both tumbling to the ground. He rounded with a terrifying speed, up on his feet again, bringing the heel of his boot down on Tate’s ribs over and over until he felt them snap, repaying the favor.
The forest rushed in all at once, leaves tearing and branches snapping, the earth going ice cold and unyielding beneath them.
His hands scrabbled against the dirt for something he could use, but the rocks and roots had made themselves scarce for his seeking fingertips.
He was the outsider here. He always had been.
“Look at this way, beloved.” Cadoc’s voice was harsh and dark, already trembling with the black void within, golden pupils shot wide, his jaw already popping. “Love is a terrible affliction. Learn from my mistakes. I’m saving you from its ruin.”
Tate wheezed as he pulled himself back to his feet, swinging again before he’d even managed to suck in a painful breath, his fist connecting into the ribs he’d already broken.
They clashed, over and over, elbows and knees, nails tearing at skin, fists sinking into sides and jaws, brutal kicks, every blow aiming to inflict the most hurt, the most visceral fight of his life.
The talon tip found its aim over and over, and he knew he’d made the right call disarming the cunt first.
It was telling that neither of them had opened their jaws.
They weren’t fighting with teeth, not yet.
This was too personal. They had each ruined each other’s lives, Tate realized, driving an elbow up into his grandsire’s throat.
Each wanted to make the other hurt first, and ending things with their jaws would have been too convenient.
That hooked talon-tip had already punctured a hole beneath his eye, already beginning to swell.
There was blood running down his face, nearly blinding him, when a branch shifted, catching him under the arm, preventing him from twisting away from another side attack.
Tate found himself pinned, his legs kicked out, sliding down the tree until Cadoc’s arm settled around his neck.
Now came the teeth. He had failed. All he’d managed to do was guarantee that Silva would die slowly, as the screaming black void from between those jaws bore down over him.
Tate felt his airway close, arm tightening around his neck, tightening, tightening, the forest before him going spotty. Tick, tick, tick.
“You know, it’s almost a shame,” that dark voice rasped at his temple, breath coming hard. “This is the most interesting you’ve ever been, beloved. I’ll be sure to take good care of her for you. After all, watching was so instructive.”
His heel dug into the ground as he struggled, sinking deeper and deeper until it stopped, finding purchase against something hard. Everything in this forest belonged to the Queen. The trees, the animals, the moss and the rocks. Everything but the bones.
Tate pushed against it, finding leverage at last. Pushed up again, wheezing for air, breaking the chokehold as Cadoc’s jaws stretched.
Pushed up, his permanently-fucked back cracking as he arched, pushing back against that bone in the earth as his own jaw popped, mouth spreading, the pull of that black void only assisting him.
Pushing back until his own jaws snapped, closing around the throat above him.
Tate turned like an adder, ripping out Cadoc’s throat in a spray of blood, shining like rubies, lost amongst those blood red leaves on the forest floor.
The trees screamed. That grotesque, heavy moon tipped, cracking.
Somewhere, the hounds were baying, the horses pounding, an animal was racing away.
His jaws didn’t close again until he felt his teeth clacking, scraping against spine, finding nothing but the torn esophagus, the body around him falling slack.
The horns sounded. He could hear them running still, the hunt still moving forward, still to their left. But not moving this way.