19. Delphine
Not for the first time,I wondered if this was the right thing to do—sending Nyx into the shadows.
But one more look at Sol, at Caldamir, at Armene, and then back at the fae of the Sand Court dutifully, patiently watching as the high kings’ armies advanced in the distance, and there was no more hesitation, not on my end. I had more than my own interests in mind, my own desires to fulfill. This was more than condemning Nyx and saving my brother. This was saving all of Avarath, all of Alderia, all of Elysia and every realm that Deimos and Mordrigal’s greed could one day touch.
Because it wasn’t just about fulfilling the deal between Nyx and Deimos, in ending the cycle of betrayal that Nyx had begun.
It was all a part of the game. The farce. The dance that Deimos didn’t yet know we stepped together.
I wished I had another day, another hour, another second alone with Nyx. I wished I could express to him all of the gratitude, all the thanks, all the forgiveness that welled up inside me as I looked down at him where he stood at the base of the steps, facing my brother still chained by Deimos’ magic—but I didn’t have that luxury.
I didn’t have to reach deep inside myself to pull out the magic as I once did. I barely had to think of it, barely had to will the magic to rise to the surface of me, before I felt the tug of the Afterworld at my fingertips. It was all I could do to keep the glamour from pooling out of me, from overwhelming and pouring out of me to swallow Nyx and drag him down into the Afterworld in an instant. It was a struggle to pretend I struggled, that it was a challenge for me to reach down into the depths of Avarath to that other realm and pull the shadows out to wrap around the fae prince. Careful as I was, I still felt the shift in the balance as I accessed my powers, saw Deimos and Mordrigal register it even more than the others. A slight hint of surprise crossed Deimos’ face before it was replaced, shortly after, with an even more smug smile than before. I’d forced myself to falter, for a moment, drawn back the shadows so it seemed like I struggled to hold on to Nyx long enough to complete even the most basic of my magic as the Judge of the Starlight Fae.
But even I couldn’t keep up the farce forever. I couldn’t look so incompetent that Deimos didn’t bother with his own army. So, though it made something inside me die, too, I strengthened my hold on the shadows and let them tighten around Nyx. Tighter and tighter they grew, darker and darker, slithering over his ankles, his calves, his knees and thighs until they wrapped around his waist like a strangling corset.
It was then, as my glamour wrapped around him with damning intensity, when he felt the truth of what was about to happen, that Nyx’s peace shifted to panic. I felt it well up inside his very soul, so entwined with my own in that moment. I felt it grow, felt it consume him even as my shadows did. I knew that feeling too well, had grown so accustomed to it in the past months that it was as second nature as my own heartbeat to me.
But this time, it was different.
This time there was no thrill in pulling my victim to the next realm, no satisfaction at the feeling of reality giving way, bending to my will as I dragged Nyx down from Avarath into the cold, dark depths of Deimos’ domain.
The moment I felt my bond with the Woodland Prince break, so did the bond between Deimos and my brother. The shadowy chains that wrapped around Sol’s wrists and ankles broke, dissipating into black tendrils of smoke. I held out my hand for him to take, but no sooner had the cold, clammy skin of his hand met mine then another fae stood in the place he’d just left.
I felt the stirring between the realms as Deimos reached for him, but still, seeing Nyx drawn to his side struck me harder than I expected it to. I’d thought the high king of the Afterworld might flex his power by calling the prince right back up, but I hadn’t expected it to feel like it did. I thought I’d be happy to see Nyx, even if he was poisoned by Deimos’ shadows, locked now in his control. But when I saw him, it was quite the opposite.
Because it wasn’t Nyx that I saw. The fae that stood beside high king Deimos was not the fae I’d come to know these last months. It was his body, his soul, but it was not himself. Nyx’s glow was gone. There was no spark in his eye. No sharpness to his stare. He was merely a puppet at Deimos’ hand.
He was lost, but because of that, the battle was that much closer to be won.
A heavy silence fell over the court in the moments that followed, still. Armene’s court, his soldiers, and his advisors, were prepared for battle, but remained under the strictest orders not to attack until given the word. I felt the tension leaching from them, saw the flicker of their eyes out of the corners of my own. I saw the way they looked between Deimos and Mordrigal, wondering why we hadn’t yet attacked, wondering why we waited for their armies to be upon us. For this, Armene struggled nearly as much as Caldamir still did. Even now that Mordrigal was distracted, his mere presence had an effect on the Mountain Prince. He’d managed to compose the rest of his body, but he couldn’t stop the shake of his hands held a little too firmly by his sides.
Armene, meanwhile, stood too straight, faced forward too rigidly, forgetting, it seemed, to blink or even breathe. The weight of his new crown weighed on him, too.
It was a dangerous game, we played, one that relied on too many moving parts all falling perfectly into place. It was not the most intelligent strategy, the one any one of us thought the most likely to succeed, but it was the only one that might allow us to avoid losing any fae—none that hadn’t already been lost, anyway.
The fact that now Nyx already counted amongst those lost was like a knife shoved deeper into my already breaking heart. But still, as deep as that blade wedged itself inside, I couldn’t allow myself to shatter. Not yet.
Even with Nyx crossed over to the other side, only two amongst us weren’t present. Seren and Tethys. Even though Seren watched over us from my ancestral realm and Tethys’ brother stood by in proxy, it didn’t keep me from feeling the weight of their absence as if they were just as lost now, too.
Too short were we all together. Too short did we all stand as one.
If this battle didn’t go as planned, we’d never stand together again. I felt it as surely in my bones as I did the glamour that now ached to be unleashed. I’d spent so long using it—relentlessly, endlessly—that it was no longer accustomed to being caged within me.
Sol’s hand, warming slowly in mine, squeezed gently. His touch was different from Nyx’s, but the feeling of it haunted me still. I didn’t dare tear my eyes away from Deimos, Mordrigal, and the encroaching army growing ever closer through the storm of sand their feet kicked up into the air, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him looking over at me. He was taller now, too, nearly as tall as me. There was still something boyish to him, if not in the look in his eyes—eyes that had already seen too much—but in the way he held my hand.
There was not so much time between us now, not the many years that had once separated us, but he still looked to me for guidance. As they all did.
The last thing I wanted was for Sol to witness what was about to happen, even less for him to be so close to war if it were truly to break out, to be close enough to be swept into the chaos that would ensue, if so much as one part of my plan went wrong. But I also didn’t dare let him out of my sight, out of my grip, either.
There were too many spies in this court. Too many traitors. Too many fae who’d be willing to leverage my brother against me once again, should I so much as let go of his hand. He might not be the child I’d once felt duty-bound to protect, but he was my brother still, and old as he might grow, I’d always see him as that little boy drenched in sunshine. I’d always feel responsible for the horrors he’d faced and the fate now bound to both of us.
Because of me.
He might have been descended from the fae, but he was never fae marked.
Not like me.
So, Sol stood beside us, beside me and the princes and regents left in Avarath, as Deimos and Mordrigal summed us up for one, final, time.
Mordrigal was the one who finally spoke. His voice carried with it a deep rumble, one that seemed to come from the very makeup of the realm itself, of Avarath, his kingdom.
“So it is,” he said, each word carefully spoken. With each word, the sand beneath him began to quake a bit, as if fighting between the master of the realm and the master of this court. “If war is what you want, then war is what you’ll have.”
No sooner had the words dropped from his lips than that rumble began to grow. It started from somewhere deep beneath our feet, making the very foundations of the court start to shift. Patterns erupted across the surface of the sand, shaken loose by the rumble of the high king’s magic, however contained it was. It spread out from Mordrigal, scattering across the glittering grains of sand until it reached the front line of his army—serving as the signal for them to start running.
And so, they did, all at once, the entirety of Mordrigal’s army rushing forward, the glint of their golden armor making them look like a wave of molten metal pouring over the sand towards the courtyard.
All around me, I felt bodies tense. I heard the shift of feet, the clink of metal as weapons were readied, the quickening of breaths. More than that, however, I felt the glamour of Armene’s court tighten like the string on a bow preparing to be fired.
I held out one hand, signaling for the armies to wait. Armene followed suit, and though I saw his own advisors and Nereus shifting uncomfortably, their eyes fixed on that river of gold, no one moved against us.
Meanwhile, with our own fae stilled, my eyes scanned the horizon, searching that golden wall of molten warriors for any sign of the army of the Afterworld. Mordrigal’s army, however it glowed in the sun, wasn’t nearly as impressive in number compared to those we had waiting on the other side of the pools to rush in if needed. I didn’t have to see them spread out across the sand to know it. The princes had called not only on their armies, but their entire courts. We had all of Avarath waiting to rush into battle, every last fae male and female prepared to fight for their freedom one last time. Even if Nyx’s successor chose not to follow his old orders, we still had six courts waiting to meet Mordrigal’s one.
But that was not the point.
We weren’t here for Mordrigal’s army.
We were here for Deimos’.
The point was never to actually call on the fae of Avarath and Elysia to fight this battle for me. I just needed Deimos to believe I would so he would call up his own army, too.
But still, despite my best attempt to intimidate or offend him enough to play his own hand, there was no sign of the Afterworld’s army amidst the plated tide of Mordrigal’s. Try as I might to keep my own composure, I couldn’t keep from seeing the shift in the stances beside me. Armene kept glancing at his own men, watching to make sure they followed his orders. Nereus, meanwhile, grew more unsteady by the second. He watched me too closely, Armene too closely, the approaching army too closely. He looked on the brink of making a rash decision, though what it might be, I didn’t know. He’d already betrayed us once. I wouldn’t put it past him to do it again, should the tides of fate shift one way or another.
Caldamir alone stood completely still, and whether it was from his own internal battle he fought, or surety in the plan we’d laid together, it was enough to keep me steady.
That army of gold swarmed closer and closer, the rumbling of their feet growing until it was enough to make my own teeth chatter. The dust and sand rose up like a great storm behind them, obscuring the distant mountains until even they were threatened to be swallowed by it. Soon, the army before us was nothing more than the thunderous sound of feet and the glimmer of gold amidst a tidal wave of sand.
Closer and closer they grew, and with each step, so did the uncertainty within myself.
Just before I called my own bluff and surrendered to the shift myself, it happened.
Deimos and Mordrigal, together, took a step back as if to prepare for the swarm of my own army—and as they did, fae spawned like an army of fiends to fill the courtyard with a second sea of warriors. It happened in the blink of an eye, one moment the shifting sand was empty, the next it was filled with forms cloaked in the high king’s shadows.