Chapter Fifty #2
And in that same heartbeat, the king surged upright, his strength summoned from some dying ember within.
His hand whipped from his pocket, ax gleaming, and in one motion he slashed the throat of the warlock who still stood, sending him collapsing in a spray of crimson.
Another witch lunged, only to have the blade buried deep in her chest. With a desperate twist, he wrenched it free and hurled it across the space, embedding it squarely into another’s skull.
Vera watched in quiet amusement as her witches crumpled, one after another, painting the snow with their blood.
The king, pale and trembling, stood swaying but unbroken, his breath ragged as he levelled the ax at her heart.
‘Let… me children go,’ he growled, voice raw with grief and rage. ‘Why are ya…doing this?’
‘You know how mortals never hesitate to crush an ant beneath their heel?’ Vera asked, her tone airy, almost disinterested, as her shoulder lifted in a languid shrug.
‘Why do you suppose that is? You never pause to mourn its life, never weigh its worth…
and why? Is it because you are larger? Cleverer?
Because you believe yourselves the superior species, ordained to tread where you will?
‘You slaughter animals daily, and not a flicker of guilt stirs your conscience. You crafted a hierarchy, your lives poised loftily at the top, while a bird, a fox, an ant…’ she waved a hand dismissively, ‘are but trivial nothings. Who cares, after all, if a sparrow dies beneath your boots?’ Her lips curled into a cold smile, a chuckle slipping free like the hiss of a blade leaving its sheath.
‘Let us simply say… gods feel precisely the same about you. To them, you are nothing but ants, crushed without thought, without mercy, without regret.’
One of the girls began to pray, soft words breaking against the silence.
Vera cackled at the sound, her laughter slicing through the cold air like a blade.
‘Pray all you wish,’ she muttered, her focus sharpening on the final wolf still chained to her will. Her fingers curled cruelly. ‘As I just said, the gods will not save you.’
Vera curled her fingers inward, and the wolf obeyed with a grotesque swiftness, its jaws yawning wide before tearing mercilessly into the wolverian princess.
‘NO!’ Gwyneira’s scream fractured the air, her body collapsing sideways in despair.
The king lurched forward, a broken roar tearing from his chest as he flung himself at the beast, clawing and straining to prise it away from his daughter’s limp form.
Vera released her hold on the creature, and it slunk back at once, its blood-slicked muzzle lowering in submission.
The king crumpled to his knees, trembling hands clutching at what little remained of his child, his sobs raw and ragged.
A sharp impact struck Vera behind the knee. She pivoted with serpent speed.
The small boy stood with his fists raised, trembling yet defiant.
A slow, cruel smile unfurled across Vera’s lips at the sight.
She lifted her hand, fingers poised to smother the boy’s face in death’s cold caress but a force wrenched her backwards, dragging her off balance.
A startled scream tore from her throat as she twisted, only to find Gwyneira behind her, eyes blazing with grief-fuelled fury.
‘Eirwen, run!’ the girl cried, voice breaking with desperation.
Enough.
Vera’s patience snapped. She seized the princess by her snowy hair, yanking her brutally to her knees, while her other hand lifted, palm outstretched.
With a mere flick, her blood magic snaked through the king’s body, threading like fire through his veins until it burrowed deep into his diseased lungs.
He screamed as crimson streamed from his mouth in wet rivulets, pooling dark and steaming on the snow.
‘Watch,’ Vera hissed, her voice a silken knife, meant for him and him alone.
Vera wrenched the princess’s hair tighter, fury seeping from her like venom as her blood magic writhed its way into Gwyneira’s body.
It coiled, constricting, then gathered in the fragile cage of her chest. Bone by bone, she forced the ribs to splinter and tear free, each one slowly rending through skin and sinew until the entire ribcage was wrenched from within, blooming grotesquely outward like a macabre crown of ivory.
King Fannar’s scream ripped through the cold air, raw and unrestrained, a father’s agony echoing into the skies.
Vera, already tiring of his wretched grief, twisted her hand. A single, vicious snap of magic shattered his neck, the crack so brutal it nearly tore the head from his shoulders.
She exhaled slowly, licking her lips as exhaustion and dark satisfaction bled together in her veins. Turning, she fixed her gaze upon the young boy. So small and so breakable, shivering and sobbing under her shadow.
‘Run, little prince,’ she purred, leaning forward to savour the heady scent of his terror. ‘Find your brother and sister, and tell them I am coming for them.’
A smile, sharp as broken glass, curved her lips as she watched Eirwen flee, stumbling and wild-eyed, into the waiting arms of the forest.