Chapter 17
H er appearance in the pool at the Unseelie Court should have prepared me, but seeing her standing in a graveyard of her own making still shakes me. How long did this woman live beside us, offering advice, pretending to share in our struggles to fix the court, when all the while she was the one hurting it? She stood there and looked us in the eyes while she plotted to destroy everything. I glance at Ruskin, glad that he doesn’t remember her betrayal. It will help him keep his head clear, something I need to attempt too, I remind myself.
Ruskin might not know Evanthe, but he’s seen her in action, and his lip curls in disgust at the sight of her. She meets his gaze and then mine, her eyes lingering on my face, all while holding her ground, making no move to retreat from the Unseelie army now only yards away from her. She knows they’d struggle to go any further with so much iron. Some of them can already feel the effects, I think, as I scan the faces of the soldiers around me and notice some going pale.
“You’ve already brought them to me,” Evanthe says, her voice echoing around the square as she addresses Lisinder. “Now all you have to do is hand them over, and this matter between our people can be done with.”
Lisinder sits straighter on his horse and growls.
“There will be no end to this until you are rotting in the ground, Evanthe. You saw to that when you murdered my niece, invaded my kingdom, and butchered my citizens.”
“All means to an end,” Evanthe replies, sounding impatient with the discussion. The thud of marching feet rises up from the streets on the opposite side of the square, and I can see movement in between the buildings. Her army is close. In response, there’s the rustle of weapons being drawn and arrows nocked by the Unseelie behind me.
“But I see you’ve made your choice,” she continues. “I only hope that you can one day understand that I am doing what is best.”
“And I am only glad that my brother never lived to see his bride betray everything she once believed in,” says Lisinder.
His words achieve what he intended, I think, as for just a moment she seems genuinely taken aback. I’ve known Evanthe to cry out for her husband Lucan in her most vulnerable moments—when she first woke up, when she undertook her trial with the founding stone—and her face betrays a flash of sorrow now. Even in her madness, his memory holds sway.
But then her expression twists into anger, and she curls her hands into fists. The iron that litters the square comes alive, the spikes snaking upwards, evolving into the shoots I’m now so familiar with. The shadows remain with them, twisting around the iron like ribbons of night, carrying the shoots towards us.
I urge Parsley to the front line just as Evanthe’s army charges into view, armored rows of them filing into the square. Most of them wear thick helmets and I don’t have time to work out if I can recognize anyone. I have to focus my magic on the first wave of iron twisting towards us. I throw my hands and begin forcing it back beneath the ground before it can reach our front line. The metal bucks and fights me every step of the way, and I notice the shadows are working to help them resist me. They make the iron “slippery” to my magic—like something coated in oil—and I have to go slowly so the shoots don’t wiggle.
I’m single-minded, entirely locked into my task, so it’s only when I’m sure I’m making headway, the first wave of iron tendrils nearly buried underground, that I risk glancing up at the Seelie soldiers. They’re positioned across the opposite side of the square now, advancing slowly towards us as the Seelie and Unseelie exchange a volley of arrows. The weapons whistle through the air in a blur of speed, followed by the thud of the projectiles hitting shields of metal and magic. One arrow shot by an Unseelie archer falls short of the Seelie front line, disappearing into the swirling shadows at their feet. I frown, because that doesn’t make sense—the shadows are attached to the cold iron, and the Seelie shouldn’t be able to get so close to it without it affecting them. In fact, the only thing that I’ve found that offers protection against it is?—
I fix my eyes on their armor. It’s dark and heavy looking, and not dissimilar to the pieces I had made up for Hadeus’s miners when they were excavating iron in the palace. It’s all made of lead. They stole my idea to make armor out of the magic-warding metal, and now they’re using it to advance past Evanthe’s iron without so much as flinching.
At least the volley of arrows is doing some good, I think, watching one get past their defenses and easily pierce through a soldier’s shoulder plate. Normally, lead is considered too soft for armor. The Seelie have sacrificed physical protection for the magical kind, and it’s a choice that might work to our advantage now.
That is, if I can stop the iron. It’s still coming thick and fast. I’ve gotten better at fighting it than I used to be…but Evanthe’s gotten better at casting it, too. Not to mention the boost she’s gotten from Interra and its shadows. With every line of snaking metal I push beneath the cracked paving stones and churned up earth, another is behind it. And with every moment I spend fighting the metal, it crawls closer. Evanthe has barely moved from her spot in the middle of the square, allowing her magic to work for her as she’s overtaken by her soldiers, disappearing behind a wall of advancing lead.
“Stop trying to dispose of it,” Ruskin calls to me from my left. His eyes are on a handful of soldiers across the way who are currently being strangled by some aggressive tree roots he’s conjured. I can’t help but wonder if he’d know which of his subjects they are, if he had his memories.
“What?” I shout, trying to maintain my own concentration over the shouts and screams, mingling with stomping boots and grinding metal.
“Just focus on getting it away from us .”
I take his point. I don’t need to remove the iron from the town, just from this side of the square—at least to start with. I pull together my magic for a new push, feeling it build inside me like a freshly stoked fire.
When I release it, my magic expands as it leaves me, spreading wide in a huge blanket that catches up the iron and throws it backwards. The shoots turn in on themselves, pushed in the opposite direction, and collide hard with the front row of Seelie fae. The metal easily punctures their lead armor, and they crumple like toy soldiers in a horrible spray of crimson.
I blink, then stare down at my hands. I’m amazed by how well that worked. By how easy it was to use my gift as a murder weapon. Surely, it shouldn’t be that easy. I look up again I see the bodies of the Seelie joining those of Evanthe’s victims on the ground. It was so fast—I snuffed their lives out in just an instant—and I’m reminded of the speed with which Evanthe snapped Pyromey’s neck.
“Thorn!” shouts Elias above the noise. He’s to my right, a crossbow at his shoulder. “Do that again!”
I’m hit with the urge to refuse, to deny visiting more brutal death on the square, but the iron is still gaining on us. It hits an Unseelie who’s strayed too far from the front line, running him through. As long as the iron keeps coming, fae will fall to it. At this point, it’s just a question of which side bears the blows. I lift my hands up, pushing the iron away once more.
This time I meet more resistance, an opposing force pressing against my magic. When I look up I immediately meet Evanthe’s triumphant gaze. She’s fighting me harder, but what she doesn’t realize is she’s easing my conscience a little. Her pushing back allows me to slow down. The tide of iron still turns, only with more precision this time. I see Evanthe’s smug look drop as her tendrils continue to curl back on themselves. This time they only creep towards the Seelie, rather than surging at them. It means they have enough of a warning: some of them dodge the tendrils, ducking aside as the metal crawls past them like a snake in search of prey. Others simply turn and run from them. It means the front line of Seelie falls back, leaving shadows swirling behind them as Evanthe’s soldiers start to retreat from the square. For a single, hopeful moment, I think they might be leaving Evanthe behind, abandoning their queen to save themselves. If she could be captured, maybe this could end tonight. But then darkness rises up like a wall of night, obscuring her from view for a moment, and when it drops back down, Evanthe has disappeared into the throng of soldiers, impossible to see.
Lisinder shouts, like the bellow of a great animal, calling for us to advance. Ruskin’s horse shoulders its way back up beside Parsley—we’d gotten jostled apart in the action—and he nods to the iron I’m sending rolling across the square.
“They need you to make a path, Elias just told me. We’re going to chase them down.”
“Can you do that?” asks Destan. I’m relieved to hear his voice, though when I turn towards him I see that something has sliced right through the fabric of his shirt, the thin sliver showing between his shoulder plate and the protective rerebrace on his forearm. There’s a smattering of blood there, but nothing severe. Still, the image of Halima lying pale and unmoving flashes in my mind.
“Be careful, Des, for star’s sake,” I say, even as I call on my magic, focusing on redirecting my energy. “Don’t you know by now you and arrows don’t mix?”
He grimaces. “I’ll try to remember that.”
I put my full focus into my power, aware that blindly pushing won’t work anymore—I need to be intentional. I use the trick of visualization Ruskin taught me, imagining a square clear of iron shoots even as I look out across the mangle of writhing metal still polluting the ground.
I split it down the middle, parting it and chasing the iron out of the square, left and right, down the side streets. With Evanthe gone, the flow of my power intensifies again, and the iron bends to my will easily, scrambling its way out of the square like it’s fleeing a predator. In no time, I’ve cleared an aisle right through the center of the square, but it leaves a pathway of churned up earth, paving stones, and trampled bodies I don’t want to look too closely at.
“They’re not mounted,” calls Elias across our section of soldiers. “Catch them on the outskirts and run them down.”
What follows is the collective battle cry of the Unseelie, a roar that rings through my ears and rattles the ribs in my chest with the force of it, as they charge across the square and through the town. Several of the riders pull ahead of me—Parsley will never be the fastest—and I see a blur of black fur whip by me, recognizing the tail of Jasand’s wolfish form. I press my toes into Parsley’s thick flank, urging him onwards, not wanting to get left behind. Ruskin’s Calasian is still at my left shoulder, and he bends down towards me.
“Stay close to me,” he calls over the thunder of hundreds of hooves and paws.
I shake my head, noticing the buildings already starting to thin out around us.
“We can’t. It’s not safe.” He gives me a questioning look. “She needs to capture us both,” I explain. “If we stick together we’re an easier target.”
His jaw tightens. I can tell he doesn’t like the idea of us splitting up, but he also knows I’m right. He gives a tight nod as the town suddenly opens out into grassland, where a battle is already taking place between the Seelie and Unseelie. Ruskin reaches across from his horse to squeeze my hand, and then he peels away in the opposite direction.
I see that most of the Seelie have had time to mount—they must have left their horses behind to navigate Evanthe’s iron and the town’s narrow streets more easily, but here out in the open they can fight rider to rider. Still, even the biggest Calasians are at a disadvantage facing the ursinians. The bears unleash throaty roars as they swipe at the horses, leaving deep gashes across their shining flanks, and the air around me echoes with a terrible chorus of equine screams and the clash of weapons. The horses aren’t completely helpless, however—I watch one rear up and then come down on top of an ursinian with a deadly stomp of its huge hoof. It strikes the bear in the head, cracking its skull clean open. The ursinian goes down like a ton of bricks.
I scan the battlefield, searching for Evanthe. Wherever she is is where I’m inevitably needed.
There—beyond the throng of animals and armored figures colliding, the flash of cold, gray metal and a small tide of Unseelie fleeing in its wake.
So of course I ride straight for it.
She must have spent time building up the iron in the square, because there’s nowhere near as many tendrils here. She’s gone for size over number, I notice, as three shoots the size of tree trunks gouge furrows into the earth in opposite directions, sweeping away everything in their wake. One takes down the horse of an Unseelie I recognize—Lady Flardryn, the female with the scarred arm from court—and she falls, disappearing beneath the wall of iron. Meanwhile, a group of Seelie soldiers ride across the ditches the tendrils leave behind, unbothered by their proximity to the deadly metal.
I throw my magic out, attempting to lasso the shoots and wrestle them under control. But the moment my power touches them, there’s a shift in energy. The shadows swirl and congregate, and Evanthe materializes from behind them, her eyes blazing and fixed firmly on me. I knew there was a chance the shoots were bait, I just thought I’d have more time to stop them before I had to worry about a counterattack. No such luck.
Evanthe lifts her hand and points at me, calling to the soldiers riding behind the iron.
“Target Eleanor Thorn!” she shrieks. “Take her alive!”
Dozens of thick lead helmets turn towards me, and the Seelie raise their weapons. There might be small comfort in knowing they’re not attacking to kill. But then, in a world where healers are as good as the fae’s, there’s a lot they can do to me and still keep me alive.
I back Parsley up, wondering which to tackle first—the iron or their weapons. I’m just thinking I can maybe kill two birds with one stone when there’s a howl behind me, then a deep, bovine lowing.
Wistal, in his huge bull’s form, barrels up on my right side, as Jasand’s wolf takes position on my left. They’ve come to defend me, I realize with a surge of gratitude. The panic clears from my head, and I understand where my priorities lie. They can take care of the Seelie soldiers in their soft lead armor, but only if I protect them from the iron.
I lash my magic once again to the advancing tendrils, lifting them up and snapping them against the ground so that they recoil back a few yards, striking some of the soldiers hiding behind them. It allows Jasand and Wistal to reach the first row of my own personal Seelie attack squad. Wistal lowers his horns and bowls through a row of four horses with such force it’s like they’ve been hit with a battering ram. Their bones crunch and their riders are thrown, while Jasand snaps and rips at the heels of the other riders. It’s too much for the Calasians, who I doubt have ever been faced with any predators so large and fierce. Several of them bolt, but not before Jasand manages to rip a rider from his saddle by the leg, enclosing his head in his wolf jaws with an awful cracking noise.
Three yards—six—I push the iron back as quickly as I can, removing the Seelie’s protection. I can see Evanthe behind the fray, still hanging back from the action. The expression on her face is one of barefaced loathing. I take a moment to smile at her from across the field, though it turns into a snarl as I grit my teeth, trying to sustain my momentum as the iron creeps back ever so slowly. I can feel her fighting me, but I’m practiced at this by now. A Seelie soldier makes the mistake of backing up beside her, trying to avoid the iron that’s doubling back on them, and she turns her rageful gaze on him. She screeches—I don’t know if there’s words in it or just a pure scream of anger—and shoves the Seelie into the path of the iron. He stumbles and falls, quickly crushed under the passing tendril.
I absorb the scene in horror, realizing that it’s not just my strength that’s helping me here. Evanthe has lost her mind, and the manic aggression she’s carried back from Interra is scattering her focus, even as her actual control of the iron has become more precise.
Interra gives and it takes, I suppose.
Unfortunately, even Wistal and Jasand can’t stop every Seelie soldier coming after me. A rider closes in on my right, raising a sword as they approach. I have to pause my focus on the iron to turn, catching a flash of crimson hair beneath the helmet as they swing at me. It has to be Lady Rivera, my mind supplies uselessly, as I scramble for my own sword to block her.
Parsley growls and goes for her horse’s legs. It’s enough to send the first swipe of her blade wide.
“This is for Cebba!” she shouts, her sword coming round a second time.
I throw my own sword out to meet hers, the force of the collisions sending vibrations down my arm. The parry gives me enough time to marshal my magic so that I can yank the sword from her hand before she swings again, sending it flying across the grass. Rivera’s horse kicks out at Parsley, sending the bear growling and lumbering backwards, and Rivera lifts her hands—to conjure some magic. I think.
The spell never materializes. She jerks, making a gurgling noise, and her face goes blank. I look down to see a blade protruding from her chest. As it slides out of her, she slumps forward on her horse, revealing Ruskin holding his blood-stained sword aloft.
“An old friend of ours?” he asks.
I start to answer, but at that moment all the air is driven out of me by what feels like an almighty punch to my gut. As if time has slowed down, I see Ruskin’s eyes widen, the blood draining from his face as the force of the strike shoves me backwards, out of my saddle.
I hit the grass—sparing a moment to be vaguely glad that Parsley is fairly low to the ground—and then all I can think about is the pain, radiating outwards from my left side. It envelops me for a moment, throbbing so strongly I feel like I can see it, hear it, beating a rhythm of agony through my veins.
But then the piercing heights of it subside just a fraction, then a little more. My hearing returns, and I hear Ruskin shouting my name. My vision returns, showing me the cloudy Unseelie sky.
“Ella! Ella!” Strong hands scoop me up, and I realize he’s lifting me onto his horse. I look down to see a crossbow bolt buried in my side, spilling blood down my pant leg. It hurts— stars, it hurts—but my mind starts to become my own again, and I grab Ruskin’s hands where he’s trying to strap me to his saddle.
“Put me back on Parsley,” I say, my words hitching slightly.
He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Ella, we have to get you to a healer?—”
“I can keep going, trust me. Just help me get back on Parsley.”
Somehow, I know I can fight through this—long enough to do what’s needed, at least. It’s like on the bastet field. My body is damaged and wracked with pain, but it still feels strong underneath that. I know my muscles will do what I tell them to, and enough of my mind remains undistracted for me to keep conjuring. This stamina probably won’t last long, but it’s here with me now, and I need to use it.
Ruskin keeps doing the buckles, clearly having decided to ignore my instructions. I let my voice go hard, showing him I’m still alert and steady.
“Ruskin, I’m the only one who can stop the iron. Let me finish this.”
“No.”
“ Solskir ,” I say, using his true name. It won’t force his hand, not until I pair with instructions, but I’m hoping the use of it will shake him out of his stubbornness.
He freezes at the word, absorbing.
“You don’t fight fair.” He sighs. He looks and sounds angry, but he’s already relenting, unfastening me from the saddle.
“No words will do justice to my rage, Eleanor Thorn, if that crossbow bolt kills you,” he growls. I believe him, and stay tactfully silent as he lifts me down and helps me limp over to my waiting steed.
Wistal and Jasand are still running interference around us as best they can, but the iron has advanced again. I try to hide my wince as Ruskin perches me back in the saddle, telling myself to focus on the tendrils, but when I look around, Evanthe is gone from where she stood before. I scan the field, but there’s no sign of her.
She has to be nearby, though—the shoots are proof. That kind of magic can’t be worked from a distance.
“Watch my back,” I say to Ruskin, though I know it’s like telling grass to be green. “I’m going to need all my concentration for this.”
I pour every ounce of my focus into the strands, and under the uninterrupted pressure of my magic, the iron is forced to start giving way, sinking down into the earth like massive, gray worms.
I watch the rest of the battle play out like a drama on the stage, unable to do anything but the task I know falls to me. As the iron clears from the field, the Unseelie press their advantage and the Seelie start losing momentum. Without Evanthe they fall back, their horses scrabbling away with ursinians and transformed Unseelie snapping at their heels.
Ruskin grabs hold of Parsley’s reins and begins leading him forward.
“Come with me,” he says, just as the iron stops fighting me, sliding beneath the earth with a final, grinding screech.
“She’s gone,” I say, though I still look around me, feeling the need to be ready since she might pop up at any moment. But I notice the shadows from the iron disappearing southwards also, retreating beneath the earth rather than gathering above ground. “There’s no source for them to return to,” I say, pointing it out to Ruskin. “Her magic’s not here anymore.”
“Then we succeeded,” Ruskin says. We climb the hill, joining the Unseelie forces gathered at the top. They stand there, watching the Seelie ride out across the plains.
“We’re not going after them?” I ask no one in particular.
“This is the border,” Elias answers, pulling his horse up beside us. “The king wanted them off our land, but we’re not ready to retaliate…yet.”
“And Evanthe?” I ask.
Elias pulls a face. “She got nervous when her soldiers started turning tail and you got back up from that crossbow hit.” He gawks at the bolt still protruding from my side, but I can’t look at it. If I do, I know there’s a very real chance I might pass out. “She found a well by one of the buildings and portalled herself away. I saw it, but didn’t get to her in time. She could be anywhere by now.” He scrunches up his bushy, red eyebrows. “How are you still upright, anyway?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully, the words coming out in a gasp. I get the feeling I might not be vertical for much longer.
Ruskin squeezes my hand. “Hold on,” he says, and a warm balm seeps through me, easing my suffering. It’s the bond, I realize. Ruskin is using it to help me. “Not much longer, and then you can rest. Just wait here, my love.”
He dismounts from his horse, and it’s then that I realize he’s bleeding, his forearm laid open in a long, deep gash.
“Ruskin,” I gasp. I’ve been too overwhelmed by my own pain to notice his, through the bond or otherwise.
“I’m fine,” he says, striding through the animals towards Lisinder, who still sits proudly atop his black stallion, watching his enemy retreat. Ruskin steps up to him, exchanging a few words, and Lisinder bows his head.
I can feel the curiosity spark in the Unseelie around me, watching them share looks as Ruskin moves across the plain, stopping fifty yards from us. I’m curious, even with the pain gripping me. He must be across the border now, in Seelie territory. My suspicions are confirmed when he draws his sword and plants it in the ground, closing his eyes.
He’s a striking sight—dressed in his black leathers and armor, Unseelie features out and blood splashed across his arm, standing alone on the Seelie plains.
There’s a rumbling sound, and even from where I am, I can feel the ground shake. A few of the Unseelie instinctively put their hands to their weapons as a mass of branches explodes from the ground where Ruskin’s sword touches the grass. It climbs outwards in a long line, spreading and thickening across the length of the border.
He’s building a barrier, I realize, a dense thicket that will make it harder for the Seelie to cross the border again. I hear the Unseelie murmur around me at the extent of Ruskin’s power, and even I’m impressed, despite knowing that he can properly draw on his High King magic while standing on Seelie ground. As the branches springing from the earth begin to slow, I look either way along the border and find I can’t see their end. The barricade must stretch for miles, and when it at last stops growing, Ruskin steps away, sealing up the gap behind him.
I want to feel relief, and pride and joy that we came through this, but all I can feel in that moment is pain. Suddenly, my injury is too much to ignore, and my brain feels soupy. I can’t quite hold my body up, aware that I’m starting to slip to one side on Parsley. He shifts and lows, feeling me lose my grip, but I can only meet Ruskin’s gaze as I fall. Then half a dozen Unseelie hands reach out and catch me.