Chapter 19
We loitered in Gaia’s tomb like squatters, all our gang now at the bottom of the staircase of horror, pale-faced, dead-eyed, and now thanks to my belated honesty, shell-shocked.
There’d been a lot of shouting. A whole gamut of questions. An assault course of demands and finally, anger. Mostly at Cleodora, but some at me for not telling them, or etching it into a rock, or sending a message via fucking carrier pigeon.
“She was compelled,” Kier snarled, shutting them right up with that deep, throaty dominance.
Even my regular human instincts told me to freeze and hope the predator looked the other way.
“She tried to tell us, multiple times. Every time, she choked on blood, and suffered in pain. She tried, so back off.”
That was an hour ago, and now we still hovered in the mausoleum, probably desecrating it in some way. Aerona sat on the edge of the sarcophagus, everyone else on the floor or leaning against the walls, and Kier held me tight under the arch of the doorway, the steady beat of his heart grounding me.
“Just so we’re all on the same page,” Rook said, keeping a wide berth from the shattered pieces of Gaia’s statue, “this is worse than we were expecting, right?”
“Much worse,” Xiona agreed. “I was convinced it was a human who got hold of a stone of power.”
“My money was on that married rebel couple we left behind,” Jakoda muttered. “They’ll hold a grudge for us killing Farrang.”
“Fucker deserved to die,” I mumbled against Kier’s chest, relishing finally being alone with my own thoughts.
No insidious queen lurking, listening to everything.
I flexed my hand around Gaia’s sword, refusing to let it go, but I had to balance the tip on the floor because it was damned heavy.
I didn’t want to find out what happened if I let go, if she’d slip back through my defences again.
“I want to learn how to shield,” I said abruptly, talking over whatever Hames was saying. I tipped my head back to look at Kier. “I know you can do it. I want you to teach me how to shield my mind.”
His blue eyes had been as hard as diamond, but they softened the second our gazes locked. He traced the line of my cheekbone with his thumb. “I’ll teach you.”
“I can help, too,” Cherish offered. “I’ve got years of experience blocking mental attacks.”
The words struck with a far sharper edge than her flippant words intended, and I watched their impact on my troupe, but surprisingly on Rook and Xiona, too.
“I’d appreciate that,” I said when the silence stretched on a beat too long. “Well, I won’t. You’re a ruthless tutor and I’m sure I’ll hate you at the end of it. But I appreciate the offer.”
Humour lightened the shadows in Cherish’s golden eyes and she smirked. “Oh, you’ll absolutely hate me. For at least the first ten lessons.”
“You’re going to punish me.”
“It’s going to hurt.”
“Kinky,” Ryvan remarked, earning a glare from both of us and a bonus growl from Kier. I patted my husband’s chest, leaning up to kiss the bristly underside of his jaw.
“I like you jealous,” I whispered. “But there’s no need. I don’t want anyone except you.”
I felt like such a sap for admitting it, but it was true, and we were married. If I couldn’t get all soft and emotional over my husband, I was doomed to be emotionally unavailable forever.
“Awwww,” Ryvan cooed, propping his head on his palms. “Letta’s in love.”
I gave him the finger behind my back—because I could do that now I was unbound—and kissed Kier before turning to face everyone.
“So, what now? You know everything. Cleodora’s not going to stop just because she can’t control me when I hold the sword.
She’s coming for Bluescale. She wants to be queen of the entire goblin lands. ”
“Simple,” Aerona replied, kicking her feet where she sat atop the tomb of a possible fucking goddess. “Kill her.”
“We can’t kill a queen,” Hames immediately shot down, big arms crossed over his chest. Whatever had haunted him on the way down the stairs, he looked exactly the same and showed no sign of it. Cherish meanwhile, was as wan and haunted as I’d seen her.
“We can if she’s committed an act of war,” Kier disagreed. “Technically. But her involvement with my brother complicates things.”
Because I was already watching Cherish, I saw her flinch. Saw Hames inch closer too, though the fool didn’t give her the hug she clearly needed. I rolled my eyes at the big lug and crossed the space to do it myself, squeezing Cherish until she grunted.
“We’ll talk, when we’re alone,” I murmured.
“Oh, I don’t—”
“Non-negotiable.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
I caught her eyes, slid a sly glance towards Hames. Talk to him, too.
She shook her head, suddenly appearing tired, about a decade older. I’d tried talking to her on the trek through the forest, four sad words hitting my soft heart hard enough to leave a sympathetic bruise.
He doesn’t want me.
But he did. I saw it every damn day. Why hold back? Human rebels were invading, even with an official ceasefire between human and goblin leadership. Cleodora had set her sights on ruling Bluescale too. We had no idea what the future was going to look like. Why fight their emotions?
“Can you channel through that?” Aerona asked, breaking the silence.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jakokda huffed. “It’s an ancient sword that belonged to the Mother herself. Of course she can’t channel through it.”
I considered the sword in my hand, flexing my fingers around the dark fabric of the handle. “Would it work the same as channelling through a ring or stone?”
“Letta,” Hames warned, eyes narrowed on me.
I gave him an innocent look. I wasn’t going to try it. Honest.
“Bet you half my purse that she tries it,” Ryvan said, draping an arm around Aerona’s shoulder.
She shoved it off and scoffed. “I don’t take bets I’ll lose.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I muttered, rolling my eyes, testing the weight of the sword in my hand as I put as much space between me and the others as possible. Aerona jumped down and stood beside Jakoda, watching me warily.
“Please be careful,” Kier implored, his eyes tracking every move I made. “Tiny, tiny bits of magic at first.”
“I said I wasn’t going to channel,” I complained.
His raised eyebrow told me he—and everyone—knew I would. I sighed. Fine. I reached for the place where Valour and Baby slumbered, and crooked a very small, very careful finger at the power.
“Holy shit!” I blurted when a deluge of icy, crackling power blasted down the sword, lighting up the ancient script down the fuller in sky blue, surging into the huge gem sat in the hilt, sparkling in the sapphires around the pommel.
Kier lunged towards me, no care at all for his own personal safety. “I said a tiny bit.”
“That was a tiny bit. Barely anything.”
We locked eyes, both stunned, and then smiled at the same time. Gods, I loved my husband.
“Very, very carefully,” he said, “do you think you could discharge the power?”
“Preferably not at the maybe-goddess sleeping in her stone coffin,” Rook suggested, a potion bottle in hand. Probably a good idea. The sword vibrated in my hand, like lightning had charged it rather than a tiny crook of magic, and it felt alive. A wild creature that wouldn’t break to my will.
My arms lifted as the sword hummed, power travelling up and down the fuller. “You might want to move back.”
“Gaia, forgive us,” Xiona murmured, pressing back against the wall.
I could half-control the swing of the sword, but in no way could I stop the way it carved through the room, sky blue magic racing down the blade one last time before it crackled from the tip.
I winced, expecting stone to shatter, for all Gaia’s beloved possessions to be dented, or singed, or incinerated altogether, but the magic curved in the air, whipped around, and drove at me.
“Zaba!” Kier roared, lunging to grab me.
It was my magic, but the sword gave it a biting, crackling edge I wasn’t used to.
It moved faster than I could track it, arching around and sinking into the back of my neck hard enough to make me gasp.
There was no immediate pain, no sense that I was being fried alive by lightning, but I felt exactly where it pierced the back of my neck.
“What the fuck?” Aerona demanded, shoving Rook aside so she could get to me closer. “Oh, seriously, what the fuck?”
“What?” I demanded, slicing through the magic with my other hand, trying to get it out of me.
“There’s, um. I don’t know how to say this.” Aerona gave me a wide-eyed stare. “There’s a worm of green smoke being ripped out of the back of your neck.”
“Fuck off,” I laughed breathlessly. Her expression didn’t change. “What? How?”
Kier’s fingers brushed my neck, tilting my head.
“A parasite,” he snarled, so ferocious that it sent a shiver through me.
“I wondered how she could control you.” He kissed the top of my head, hard, his breathing deep and furious.
“It can be done by embedding gems beneath the skin, or corrupting a person’s power against them, but this? ”
“It’s been outlawed for generations,” Jakoda spat, elbowing closer for a look.
“Roll up, roll up, see the incredible worm girl,” I muttered, my fear making me snap. Kier kissed the top of my head again.
“The sword’s power is removing it. And it shut out Cleodora’s voice,” Xiona pointed out, a deep furrow between her eyes. “Maybe it really is Gaia in there. I don’t know many other kinds of magic that could achieve this. How would it even know the parasite was there?”
The parasite as they so delightfully worded it, was now long enough that I could see it writhing, fighting, from the corner of my eye.
Glowing as bright as the emeralds in Cleodora’s crown, it was as thin as a ribbon of smoke, but long.
The thought of that thing burying itself in my soft, vulnerable brain matter made my stomach heave.
“I’m going to throw up.”
“Not until the worm’s out,” Aerona said, like I was a fool.
A hand pressed to my stomach, soothing the worst of the nausea, and I shot a grateful look at Hames, repaying him by catching the clawed hand Kier aimed his direction and entwining my fingers with his.
“She put a worm in me,” I said, because it really needed to be said. When? It must have been when she held me still with her twisted rat pile. Had one of the rats gotten inside me? I shuddered, gagging.
“It’s nearly out,” Kier soothed, squeezing my hand.
“The worm. The worm inside my head. That’s what’s nearly out?”
“Should we bottle it?” Ryvan suggested. “You know, like mad scientists bottle organs?”
“Pretty sure those are jars,” Rook replied.
The strange, piercing sensation in my neck spiked with sudden, vicious pain. My knees weakened, a gasp preluding the scream that erupted as the pain grew and grew.
“Get it out!” Kier yelled.
Light flashed in every shade of blue, casting my tear-stained vision in vivid colour.
I don’t remember my knees hitting the ground, but I felt the cold bleed through my clothes, felt the frantic hands of my family catch me so I didn’t knock my front teeth out.
And pain, in my neck, my jaw, my skull, carving through bone like a torture device.
The second their power touched me, pain eclipsed every other sensation in my body.
I didn’t feel where Kier held me, didn’t feel the ground under me, didn’t feel my fingers, my toes, my face.
I knew my mouth stretched to its limit as a harrowing scream unbound itself from my chest, but only because I tasted blood from my cracked lips.
“Stop!” someone thundered, right as my hearing turned to static, my vision crowded with dark spots like reverse fireworks, darkness filling the bright sky until I saw nothing.
As long as they got the parasite out, I thought, then passed out.