Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Valroy stood at the edge of his war camp, watching the fires burn in the distance with the satisfaction of an artist admiring his latest masterpiece.
The smell of smoke and terror drifted on the evening breeze, carrying with it the sweet perfume of chaos unleashed at last. How long had he waited for this moment?
How many centuries had he endured the careful political maneuvering, the endless negotiations, the suffocating weight of restraint?
Now, finally, he felt like he could finally breathe for the first time in his long life.
Behind him, his forces prepared for the night's work with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine.
Three hundred Unseelie warriors joined him now, their weapons of various makes sharp and eager for blood.
Some hunted with fang and claw. Some with magic.
And others, with gleaming armor and silvery blades.
And they did not stalk the night alone. Constructs born from human nightmares prowled the perimeter like hunting dogs, their forms shifting and writhing as they fed on the terror that hung thick in the air.
And then there were the humans who had chosen to stand with him—a fascinating development, really. He had expected some would seek to bargain for their lives, to offer their services in exchange for survival.
What he hadn't anticipated was how many would embrace the slaughter with genuine enthusiasm. A few, yes, perhaps.
But so many? So quickly?
Humans.
“My lord,” Cruinn approached with their usual deference, head bowed, though Valroy could smell the unease rolling off the shapeshifter in waves. “The scouts report the Weaver and her companions are still holed up in that opera house. And our…guest…continues to be uncooperative.”
Valroy turned from his contemplation of the burning horizon.
Part of him almost missed the presence of the Duke of Bones.
News of the situation would have inevitably been ferried by him instead.
Now there was simply trepidation. Caution.
An absence of any humor. But the void where the grinning Izael had once been served as a reminder of what happened to those who mistook his patience for weakness.
Which had been the point of destroying him in the first place.
And no one had questioned him since.
“Alexandra continues to resist?” He almost smiled at that.
The woman had spirit, he'd give her that.
Even chained to the gnarled tree he had set to torturing her, blood slowly seeping from the roots and branches that pierced her flesh to sample her essence, she maintained her defiance. “How wonderfully predictable.”
“She refuses to tell us anything about the Weaver's plans. Won't even confirm whether she knows what they're planning at all.” Cruinn's frown deepened. The glassy creature was always so very sentimental. “Perhaps if we—”
“No.” Valroy held up a hand, cutting them off. “We shall not increase her suffering unnecessarily. Alexandra is bait, nothing more. Her purpose is to draw my beloved wife into making a choice, not to provide us with intelligence we already possess.”
The truth was, he knew exactly what they were planning. Mother Morrigan had been most…generous…with her visions. Why she had allowed him to see it all—the ritual that would separate the worlds, the three anchor-points, the prices that would be paid? He did not know.
Yet his creator had shown him the same terrible knowledge she'd forced upon the Weaver all the same. Though she'd delivered it to him with far more ceremony and considerably less physical trauma, he suspected.
How thoughtful of her.
“You know what they intend to do.” It wasn't a question. Cruinn had served him long enough to recognize the signs.
“I know many things, old friend.” Valroy began walking through his camp, noting with approval how his forces had arrayed themselves.
The nightmare constructs formed an outer perimeter, their hungry presence ensuring that nothing could approach undetected.
The Unseelie warriors occupied the middle ground, ready to respond to threats from any direction.
And at the heart of it all, the ancient tree he had created that served as a crude and twisted altar to Alexandra, looming above it all.
It was to that point he was headed, but in no rush.
“I know, for instance, that Abigail will come,” he continued, pausing to examine a weapon rack where blades forged from silvered bones caught the firelight.
“She cannot help herself. For all her power, for all her wisdom, she remains fundamentally good. She will not allow someone to suffer for her choices.”
“And if she brings the spider?”
Now Valroy did smile, and it was a terrible thing to behold. “Oh, know she will. I have been looking forward to meeting my dear half-brother in battle for such a very long time.” He paused, regarding Cruinn. “And what of you and Bayodan?”
Cruinn hesitated. “What do you mean, my lord?”
Valroy sneered. “Do not mock my intelligence, shapeshifter. You betrayed me once before, when I was close to victory. Do you think I would not suspect another dagger in my back? Perhaps one given to you by my wife?”
The expression of fear on the shapeshifter’s glass-shard face was delicious as they stepped away from him. “We learned our lesson, the both of us, King Valroy. We paid the price. Our loyalties were demonstrated.”
“And it is for those reasons I will spare your lives. But I will not have you here.” He grimaced. “Begone from this place, the both of you. If Abigail comes and I must rip her heart from your chest, I will not have your plaintive wailing in my ears.”
Cruinn opened his mouth as if to argue.
“I will not speak of this a second time. Go.” Valroy snarled. “Now.”
Another goodbye.
Another unspoken parting.
And Bayodan he would not even witness. It was for the best. He could not take the disapproving fatherly gaze of the ancient lord.
Cruinn bowed his head and nodded before hurrying away. If he was intelligent, he would gather his goat-legged lover and listen to wisdom. And not return at the side of Abigail and her friends.
Valroy would be unsurprised either way. He resumed his walk, making his way toward the heart of the camp.
There, Alexandra was suspended, embedded into the bark of the trunk of the tree.
Roots of the tree had wormed their way underneath her skin, the dark lines like so many veins and arteries.
Blackish brown lines bulged under the thin, pale membrane as the tree drank from her.
The witch turned Unseelie looked terrible—her purple hair matted with blood, lips chapped from the slow drain of the roots that pierced her arms and legs. But her eyes…her eyes still burned with unbridled fury.
“Good evening, my dear,” Valroy said pleasantly as he approached, folding his wings at his back like a cape. “I trust you're finding your accommodations adequate?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Alexandra spat, though the effort clearly cost her. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth where one of the smaller roots had apparently decided to sample what her tongue might taste like. “Never mind, you’d like that too much.”
“Such language!” Valroy placed a hand over his heart in mock dismay. “And here I thought you were supposed to be the civilized one in your marriage. I can see why our dear departed Izael was so fond of you—you have a delightfully uncompromising spirit.”
The mention of her husband's name made Alexandra's expression crumble for just a moment before fury reasserted itself. “You murdered him.”
“I executed him. For treason. For placing sentiment above duty. For forgetting that sometimes, my dear Alexandra, the only choice we have is between destruction and greater destruction.” He moved closer, studying her with the clinical interest of a scholar examining a particularly fascinating specimen.
“He wanted to save the Unseelie from the consequences of my war. As if they were somehow separate from the conflict, as if they could remain untouched by the chaos I was born to unleash.”
“They’re your people—”
“They are tools, nothing more. Just as you are a tool. Just as I am a tool. We are all instruments in a symphony that began long before any of us drew breath, and will continue long after we have all returned to dust.” He reached out to touch her face with surprising gentleness.
“The difference is simply that I have learned to find joy in the music. You of all people should understand that.”
Alexandra weakly jerked her head away from his touch. “You're insane.”
“Perhaps. But I am also free.” He gestured broadly at the camp around them, at the fires burning in the distance, at the chaos that spread like ripples across the merged realities.
“For the first time in my existence, I am allowed to be what I was created to be. Do you have any idea what that feels like? To spend centuries pretending to be something smaller, something less, than your true nature?”
“I know what it feels like to love someone.” Alexandra shut her eyes, wincing in pain that had nothing to do with the torture she endured. “To care about something more than your own self. To choose to be better than what you were made to be.”
For a moment—just a moment—Valroy felt something like a crack of guilt in the armor of his certainty. Because yes, he did know what love felt like. He knew the weight of caring for someone more than himself, knew the agony of watching someone he cherished pull away from him because of what he was.
But it did not matter anymore. Did it?
Because he was not loved in such a way in return. Love did not conquer all. Love was not total. There was always a line it could not cross.
Namely?
Him.
“Yes,” he said finally, his voice soft with something that might have been regret. “I know that feeling as well. And it is precisely why this must happen. Because love, Alexandra, is the cruelest joke the universe ever played on creatures such as we.”