Chapter 34
“She was spell-bound [by her elfin lover] . . . Her whole inner being was changed. She felt that now, but never before, she knew what love—fiery, intense, passionate, consuming love—really was. It took possession of her whole soul.”
The beast watches me as I stand there, half at an angle to be sure my mother is safe as she walks along the path.
I am grateful that the soldiers obeyed my order—still wishing someone would have followed me.
If they had, she’d have help on the descent.
I am unable to help Mother, and it pains me to see her flinch.
“How long until the poison takes hold?” I ask quietly, testing how keen the beast’s hearing is. The sky is brightened by only a sliver of moon, but I realize that neither of us needs the moon’s light now. I did when she first attacked me.
“The heart fruit is only poison if you are not in love,” the Beast of Brimmond says. “Your heart will turn to stone after one moon’s cycle.”
“And if I am in love?”
“You will be fine.” The beast’s voice sounds like the dowager duchess’, and I wonder if my father had guessed. I wonder if he disliked her before that because he knew she was a faery that ought not walk in this world.
“I have accepted a geas to kill the Beast of Brimmond,” I tell her. “I do not want this. You ought not be in our world. Faeries are not—”
“I do not take orders from the Hunter,” she scoffs.
“Your queen is why I am here.” I draw my sword. I’m not certain that I have the strength or agility to beat her. The faeries I have trained to fight are weaker things, ones that slip through the gate from Faerie. “I don’t even know what you are.”
“Your death,” she says softly.
And then she charges at me, and although I expect it, I am still not prepared.
Not for the sheer force of her, not for the power of the arm that slashes toward me.
I hold my sword, grateful that the one in my hands is a strong two-handed blade, and the impact of the blow between my blade and her arm shakes me to my bones.
I was not prepared to fence blade to clawed arms, but she moves as if her arms are both swords. I feel the cuts of my sword sink into her skin, and the ground is littered with purple flecks and green gems as droplets of her blood sail through the air and harden.
She strikes, and I parry and riposte. Over and over, she swings. The air takes on a strange hue as if the sky is raining emeralds.
Yet despite the blood loss, the Beast of Brimmond does not slow.
My arms ache, and my shoulders feel like I might fracture. Small cuts decorate my own skin, and I feel blood drip from my arms to the earth. Every lesson I’ve ever had comes into play. Her weapon is a part of her, and so I cannot disarm her—short of severing a limb.
“Do you drink blood?” I ask between the next round of parry and riposte.
She scowls, briefly off kilter at my query. “No.”
“Why do you drain them?” I press with both my question and the blade in my hands. The steel of my weapon does not burn her, but it does seem to stop her wounds from closing. That is as much as it does on the strongest of faeries I’ve seen.
“A consequence of the beheading.” The beast’s claws rake over my dominant arm, and the pain of it is searing this time.
I keep my arm aloft, only making oberhau or mittelhau cuts now. The over and middle cuts keep my elbow bent, so they become my default. I do not want to straighten my elbow for any unterhau cuts; doing so will allow the blood to roll down my forearm onto my hand.
Slick hands drop swords, Father’s voice booms in my memory.
He has trained me for this fight. If I can stop her, if I can survive, Rylan will not be the Hunter tomorrow.
“I love Isabeau,” I announce. “The poison will not kill me.”
This time the beast steps back, as if she must find an opening to attack more ferociously.
“And she loves me,” I add, “just as my father loved my mother. You took him from her. Stole years from them.”
“He upset Isaac, telling him about my mistake.” The beast growls at me. “One dead man, and the Hunter comes here to upset my love. He upset my husband on our last day together. Isaac knew what I was, and he still loved me, but he was so angry about my mistake.”
“Killing people is not merely a mistake. You nearly severed his head.” I cannot let myself think of her as Isabeau’s mother, as the duchess, as a person. She is the Beast of Brimmond. She killed my father.
“My husband was dying, and that wretched man was disrespecting marriages.” The beast growled. “Death should come to the evil, and good men like Isaac should live forever.”
“My father was a good man.”
“He stole almost an hour of my husband’s life with his prattle.” The beast charges at me again.
“And Emma? Girard? The nameless man at my house? Hugh?”
“The chit and the barkeep upset my daughter.” The beast stabs upward, and I barely block it. “The others . . . one made a lecherous look my way, and the first made such looks at everyone in his path.”
“You cannot simply murder people over these things.” The blood loss from the deep furrows in my arm is making me tired—or perhaps that’s from two sleepless nights, riding all day, and fighting a monster. Either way, my reflexes slow just a little more.
She sees it, though, and again, she launches at me. “I can do whatever I please. My husband has abandoned me to this horrible place without him.”
I falter, but this time, the beast’s claws don’t sink as deep. The pain, though, is in my thigh. Stepping out as I parry and riposte, even standing, makes blood trickle down my leg.
A growling sound fills the air, and I think it’s her, the Beast of Brimmond, growing excited as she is prepared to kill me. Then a hairy blur charges to my side, and for a flicker of a moment, I think I will have to fight two beasts.
I think Isabeau has come here to defend her family, but she surges forward and her claws dive deep into the Beast of Brimmond’s belly. Isabeau continues forward until she is at the edge of the sea cliff, holding the dowager duchess in her clawed hands. She lifts her mother up higher.
“Isabeau! Wait!”
A furred, monstrous Isabeau hurls her mother over the edge of the cliff, and the Beast of Brimmond plummets into the dark night. The rocky edge of the cliff will impale her, and if those sea rocks do not kill her, the icy water will. I can feel the weight of the geas release me.
All that is left is sorrow, pain, and confusion.
Isabeau looks at me with the same eyes I know and love, although they are currently lost in a furred face. “You scared me, love.”
She opens her arms as if to embrace me, but I cannot. She is still a faery, and I am still the Hunter. Even as my heart breaks, I lift the point of my sword and await the fight that will likely end my life.
“You are not bound to kill her,” a voice says from behind me. “The geas only was to kill the murderous one.”
I whirl, blade still at the ready.
A feral barefoot woman stands there in a long dress that looks as if it was made of molten silver.
As she steps forward, taking two paces toward me, the length of her right leg from ankle to hip is bared.
More scandalously, she appears not to have a chemise or anything under the gown.
Even nightgowns are more modest than this.
A long swath of cloth trails over one shoulder, but her arms are bare, and only one leg is covered.
Corpses in their winding cloths have more material.
Infants do.
Seductresses—who make their money teaching nobles and merchants the ways of intimacy—wear more.
“Where did you come from?” I ask, still holding my blade in hand as she strolls by me and reaches up to touch Isabeau’s face.
From this angle, I see that under the woman’s long hair, her naked back is exposed. Her hair, however, is as a cloak. It falls around her shoulders, sliding over her arms and back like something living. It writhes, serpentine waves undulating from shoulder to hip.
Faery, my mind supplies in a panic.
The woman’s skin is luminous, and staring too long at her makes my eyes burn as if I’ve been looking directly at the sun.
“You’re a . . . faery.”
“The faery, in fact.” The woman’s voice is as inhuman as her appearance, and I can’t decide whether it is cacophony or symphony.
The two options are equally possible and simultaneous.
The woman either sounds like the screams of the damned or the sweetest music of nature.
I’m not certain which . . . or if it’s both.
I shake my head and guess, “Queen Gloriana?”
She smiles. “We must speak now.”
“Faeries aren’t to be in this world. There’s a treaty. An accord. The queen—”
“The mortal queen, you mean?” Gloriana tilts her head like a feral creature trying to understand words.
“Gabrielle?” Isabeau stares at me. “How did I get here?” She glances at the sky, and a lovely smile suffuses her face. “I’m not cursed! It’s nighttime and—”
“Why would you be cursed?” Gloriana frowns. “Oh, child. Your mother has not told you.” Her language is not the common tongue, but I recognize it all the same.
The language of Hunters is the language of faeries.
Then the queen sweeps away from Isabeau again and passes me, trailing a cloud of some intoxicating fragrance that feels like peace inside my body.
I stand there, speechless, senses blinded by the scent exuding from the faery queen.
My mouth is dry, and my vision blurs. Sounds mute, and I feel like the very air pauses.
In the distance, I hear the waves against the cliff stop.
“What are you doing?” Isabeau manages to say, and I see her moving toward me in the heavy air.
“Do you see?” the faery queen asks. “She wants to save you, protect you, love you. And you love her, Hunter of Mine.”
I am unsure whether she means hunter of creatures that are her subjects or whether she is calling me one of her creatures. I don’t want to know either. I want to stop bleeding, to see my family, to figure out what to do about Isabeau.
“Take her to Faerie,” I blurt out. “I can’t kill her.”
“Kill who?” Isabeau asks.