31. Quill
Quill
Thaddeus’s laughter died in his throat like someone had reached in and strangled it.
For half a second, nobody moved. The chandelier light flickered off the wreckage of the door, dust still swirling where Atlas’s massive shoulders had shoved through the frame, and I stood frozen with my empty hand still outstretched from throwing the vial, feeling every eye in the room shift away from me and toward the newcomers.
My humiliation into something more hopeful, except I didn’t trust hope anymore.
Hope was what had gotten me thrown down into that basement in the first place.
“Wilderain,” Thaddeus said, recovering himself easily. “How resourceful of you. Though I confess I’m curious how you found your way past my wards.”
“Please.” Wild flicked a bit of splintered wood off his shoulder like it personally offended him. “Your wards are older than my grandmother’s dentures and twice as loose. The moment they flickered so you could pass through, Elias cut a door without you noticing.”
Elias didn’t smile. His dark eyes swept the room once, cataloguing everything, the chains, the undead, Morgana’s mask, the crystal floating high above us, and the blood still crusted on Aeron’s foreleg. Then his gaze lifted to me and I saw the puzzle pieces all click into place.
“Are you alright, Quill?” he called. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“I… I’m fine,” I managed to stammer out.
“How touching,” Morgana said as she stepped forward, green magic snapping to life around her fingers. “A rescue party. Truly, Wilderain, you never do know when to stop getting in the way.”
“Yeah, well.” Wild rolled his neck, the bones cracking loudly as his form shifted into that of a true fae. “Turns out I’ve got a thing about my mother trying to murder people. Let’s call it a character flaw.”
Atlas let out a growl that vibrated in my chest even from thirty feet away, and I saw two of the witches near the wall actually step backward, their courage failing them in real time.
Caden’s hands were already glowing white-hot, vines and roots pushing up through the floor around him.
For the first time since I’d been dragged into this foyer, I let myself believe, just a little, that maybe we weren’t all going to die here.
Then Thaddeus moved.
He didn’t go for Wild, or Elias, or any of the people who’d come to actually fight him. He turned, fast enough that his tail cracked against the marble like a whip, and grabbed me by the throat.
“Ah, ah,” he said, lifting me clean off my feet as my hands scrabbled uselessly against his golden claws. “Let’s not be hasty. I still have a use for this one.”
The room tilted. Black spots bloomed at the edges of my vision as his grip tightened, just enough to make breathing difficult and my head swim. Somewhere below me, chained to the floor, I heard Aeron roar, the sound raw and wild and filled with anger.
“Let him go,” Elias said, and his voice had dropped into something low and guttural that I’d never heard from him before. Magic gathered around his hands, crackling with energy. “Last warning, Thaddeus.”
“Or what?” Thaddeus’s grip on my throat tightened another fraction, just enough that stars burst behind my eyes. “You’ll do a spell on me? Please. I have killed witches far more talented than you with a flick of my wrist.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. All I could do was hang there, my vision swimming, watching Wild’s face shift from cocky amusement into worry.
Thaddeus had the upper hand, even I knew that.
He was using me as a pawn to control them.
For a moment, I wished I’d just used the poison on myself, that way they could rescue Aeron without worrying about me.
But the potion just lay on the floor, shimmering and useless, just like my magic.
Thaddeus took a few steps back, carrying me with him. At the same time, the dead and the Purity Front pressed in on all sides, creating a circle of protection around him. Morgana took point on the other side of the room, the pair of them trying to trap our rescuers between them.
“The Elder Council already knows what you’re up to, Thaddeus,” Wild called, not giving the undead a second glance. His focus was entirely on the dragon holding me by the neck. “The truth is out, and your plans are ruined. Let the boys go.”
“I already killed five of the Elder Council,” Thaddeus growled back. “I’ll kill the rest of them too, including you. Then I’ll rebuild this world exactly the way it should be.”
My throat burned where his claws dug in, and black spots kept swimming across my vision, but I forced my eyes to stay open. I needed to see this. I needed to know what was happening even if I couldn’t do anything about it.
“You already lost, old man,” Wild said, a mocking tone in his voice. “You just don’t know it yet.”
“Bold words from a fae who’s about to watch his little friends die.”
Elias didn’t wait for permission. His hands snapped forward, and threads of magic lashed out toward Thaddeus.
But the dragon twisted at the last second, using me as a shield.
Elias managed to redirect the spell at the last moment.
It veered off, exploding against one of the undead instead, disintegrating it into ash and bone fragments that scattered across the marble.
“Careful,” Thaddeus laughed, tightening his grip on my throat again. “Wouldn’t want to hit your little witch friend by accident.”
I clawed uselessly at his wrist, my nails scraping ineffectually against scales harder than steel. Somewhere below and to my left, I heard Aeron straining against his chains again, the metal groaning under the force of his desperation.
“Let him go,” Aeron’s voice was barely recognizable, distorted with rage and grief and the metal crushing his jaw. “Grandfather, please—”
“Don’t call me that.” Thaddeus’s voice went cold, colder than I’d heard it yet. “You lost the right to call me that the moment you decided a witch was worth more to you than your own bloodline.”
Atlas moved then, a blur of fur and muscle, closing the distance faster than I thought something that large should be able to move.
He went for the undead first, tearing through them like they were made of wet paper, clearing a path toward Thaddeus with brutal efficiency.
Black ichor sprayed across his fur, but he didn’t slow down.
Caden’s vines erupted from the floor all around Morgana, wrapping around her ankles, her wrists, trying to bind her the way she’d bound Aeron.
She screamed in fury, her green magic flaring bright enough to sear through the plant matter, but it bought precious seconds.
Seconds where I watched Wild’s eyes flick toward the shattered vial still lying on the floor, its opalescent contents pooling uselessly against the marble.
“That was a nice try,” Wild said, and I realized with a jolt that he was talking to me now, his green eyes finding mine even through the chaos. “Whatever you made. I can feel the magic in it from here. It’s just missing something.”
“What?” I croaked out, the single word costing me more air than I could spare.
“A trigger,” Wild said, already moving, already drawing something bright and gold from the air around him like he was pulling thread from an invisible spool. “Someone to set it off.”
Instead of his magic wrapping around Thaddeus like I expected, it grabbed one of the nearby undead.
The corpse was lifted off the ground in spectacular fashion and then slammed against the marble with enough force to cause its body to practically shatter.
Bits of rotten flesh, bone, and ichor splattered across the floor, covering the broken glass and shimmering potion.
But just as quickly as it was torn apart, the undead began to pull itself back together.
Sickly purple magic pulled at the tendons and muscles, trying to draw the body back into its original form.
I watched in horror as in the span of a few seconds, the body reconstructed itself enough to stand up once more, the bones cracking ominously.
“You can’t destroy my undead,” Thaddeus laughed. “They feel no pain. They know no hardship. They are indestructible.”
But I wasn’t paying attention to Thaddeus anymore, and neither was Wild.
Both of us were staring at the recently reconstructed corpse.
It had frozen in place, its body straining against something neither of us could see.
At least, not until the fungal filaments began to streak across the surface of its body.
The fingers froze up first, then the arms and legs.
Soon there were little mushrooms pushing out of its mouth, ears, eyes, and nostrils.
They bloomed and died with incredible speed until the body began to collapse beneath them.
In just a matter of seconds, the corpse went from fleshy and wet and upright to being a heap of steaming humus on the ground.
The only thing left in its wake was the scent of fresh soil and a cloud of mushroom spores filling the air.
As soon as it was gone, another undead took its place, completely unperturbed about its fallen comrade.
On the other side of the room, Morgan cried out and cut through all of Caden’s plants, turning them to ash.
The undead continued to swarm Atlas, making his advance impossible.
“Pathetic,” Thaddeus hissed. “All that to kill one single undead? And here I thought you were going to be a challenge.”
“One wasn’t the point,” Wild snapped back, and I heard the calm in his voice now. “You should really have learned more about herbalism and chemistry, old man.”
Another undead lurched forward, drawn into the cloud of spores, and the same thing happened.
Mushrooms bursting from every orifice, flesh collapsing into soil and a spore cloud in seconds.
Then two more. Then four. Then eight. Each one that stumbled too close to the others became a casualty, disintegrating into something so decomposed that even necromantic magic couldn’t reanimate them.
The room slowly began to fill up with spores, the very air becoming thick and cloudy.
Within thirty seconds, half of the undead in the room were nothing but soil and the Purity Front witches looked ready to bolt.
Thaddeus’s grip on my throat faltered, just slightly, as he watched his army dissolve into steaming compost around him.
That was all the opening I needed. I let my body go limp, dead weight, and he dropped me to the floor without a second thought.
My body crumpled against the marble and I did everything I could to stay still as I desperately tried to get air back into my body.
“That’s not possible,” he snarled, and for the first time since this whole nightmare started, I heard something that sounded almost like fear creeping into his voice.
“Told you,” Wild said, and the cocky grin was back on his face even as he wove more of that golden thread-magic between his fingers. “That’s what you get for underestimating your grandson’s mate.”
The spore cloud kept spreading, drifting toward the remaining witches now too.
I saw one of them clap a hand over her mouth and nose and stumble backward, dragging a companion with her toward the far wall in terror.
Atlas took advantage of the confusion, his massive jaws closing around another corpse and flinging it bodily into three more, the impact alone enough to send them all crashing into the growing cloud of my accidental biological weapon.
“Enough,” he growled, and I felt the vibration of it through the floor as he bent down and picked me up by the back of the collar, hauling me up into the air once more. “Morgana. Finish this. Now.”
Across the room, Morgana’s masked face turned toward us, green magic gathering thick and fast around her hands. I couldn’t see her expression, but I felt the intent radiating off her like heat from a furnace.
“No!” Aeron’s roar shook the chandelier overhead, the chains around him groaning as he threw himself against them with everything he had left.
I stared at her, knowing she was about to deal a killing blow. Her hands reached high, magic coalescing around her. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to tell Aeron. But the only thing that slipped out of my mouth was a few whispered words.
“I love you…”
I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the end to come.