29. Delphine
I hadn’t cometo the Mountain Court expecting allies.
The first time I found myself here, I was an enemy of the fae. I was nothing more than a sacrifice to bring back the high king I now came back to face. I was a pawn in a faerie game meant to bring Mordrigal back to ultimate power. At least one part of that remained true.
If fate had its way, all of it would.
I had no intention of fighting Caldamir, of fighting his court, that was not why I came here. I hadn’t expected to find Caldamir in the state he was in, that we could even talk for the brief time that we did, that we’d be able to share, even for a moment, what we had. I’d been brought back to Avarath by the will of the gods, not fate, but in those few brief moments, I felt my determination waver.
Everything I’d done for Sol, and this I did for him, too.
I’d be lying to myself if I kept telling myself I was doing this out of duty to my courts. Nereus had been right, in some of what he said when he betrayed us. How did I know what was right for the fae? I’d only been one of them for a short time. How did I know that fate didn’t have the best plan in mind, that Mordrigal was meant to rule all the realms?
The only thing I clung to was that a being I assumed was a god had told me to fight against it.
I’d set out to destroy Mordrigal, to end Deimos, for selfish reasons. First, so I might have a chance to keep the fae I’d fallen in love with—to keep Seren, Armene, Tethys, Caldamir, and Nyx by my side. To have a chance to spend my life, now considerably longer than any life I’d imagined, with them. To keep the family that I had found. Now I was here for selfish reasons again, to save my brother.
I was a pawn, still, just to another player.
But I had unselfish reasons, too.
Mordrigal had power over the fae because it was granted to him by the glamour, but it didn’t mean the way he used it was right. I saw the darkness when it clouded Caldamir’s vision, saw the way it took over his will and turned him into something he was not. Or, at least, something he didn’t wish to be.
I might not know what was ultimately right for the fae, but I knew what I had to do. If I failed, then fate would have its way. If I succeeded, then fate itself would have to be rewritten.
I had no intention of sending Caldamir or any of his fae anywhere. I could send him to the human realm, sure, but I needed every ounce of my power if I was to take on Mordrigal—and even more if I planned to face Deimos next, which I did.
Because the two came hand in hand. To face one, I had to face them both.
There was a split second before Caldamir was completely taken over by Mordrigal, and I took advantage of it. I drew as little of my power as was necessary to pull his sword from his side and threw it across the room before he could reach for it. The motion twisted his body, jerked him away from me so I was able to evade his hands as they reached for me, instead. I slipped from the room as he scrambled after me, the door jamming into him with a grunt as I threw it shut behind me.
I felt out for Mordrigal’s power, felt it flowing steadily from some place deep inside the court, and that was where I headed.
Caldamir’s court was more maze-like than any of the others, the halls and rooms here tunneled and carved out of the mountains in a complicated web that led first one way, and then the next. It worked both to my advantage and against it, gave me plenty of opportunities to catch Caldamir and the fae that soon followed in pursuit off guard, using only the slightest bit of my shadows to mislead or make them misstep. Each time I thought I grew closer to Mordrigal’s source of power, however, the path I was on seemed to suddenly dip away, leading to staircases or tunnels or rooms with doorways leading anywhere but the right way.
With each passing minute, more of Caldamir’s court came searching for me, too, seeking out my own glamour the same way I followed Mordrigal’s. They, however, knew the twisting maze of corridors, knew which ways would actually lead them to me, and not into the endless circle leading to nowhere where I currently found myself.
More and more of them gathered, following at my heels, and meeting me in doorways with swords and daggers drawn, littering my path with obstacles that had every intention and every ability of more than slowing me down. If I was to meet Mordrigal in battle, to stand up to this ageless, all-powerful fae, I couldn’t exhaust myself in the maze to get to him.
I would have, perhaps, if it weren’t for that distant sound again. This time, when I heard that familiar sound—however faint—I listened right away. There was no time for wavering, for wondering if that song that wasn’t a song was what I thought it was. I let it tug me away from Mordrigal’s pull, away from the footsteps that followed behind every door I sealed with shadows.
Caldamir was always close behind. I felt him amongst the others, like a beacon in the growing dark. He alone stood out, his glamour nearly rivaling that of Mordrigal’s in its pull. He alone seemed able to break through the barriers I placed in my path, my shadows struggling to withstand his own power, especially when it caused the stone to crumble in his path, doors ripping from their hinges as the stone they were embedded in gave way to his command like softened clay.
The moment I heard that sound, however distant it was, I heeded it this time. That noise was the reason I was here, the voice accompanying it promising a way to conquer even fate, fate which currently had me running in literal circles, each one more flooded with danger than the last.
It led me away from Mordrigal’s pull, down a long empty corridor—empty only because all the smaller ones I’d been running through were now filled with the fae who’d followed me. The distant sound of more footsteps, even more fae called to flood the corridors until I was caught, grew ever nearer. But still, above it all, distinct enough to follow, was that sound.
It led me this time not to a pool, not to a carving, but to a painting.
I recognized the room at once, a strange circular moment where I’d once again found myself in a place steeped in memory. Tethys had taken me here once, stolen me away when I was held captive here. We’d shared a moment in this room, looked out on the plains stretching before Caldamir’s court and realized then how though we shared feelings for each other, it was inevitable that I had to be sacrificed for the good of faerie.
Fitting to be brought here now.
I’d never paid much attention to the massive framed painting on the wall, but now I was drawn to it as if there was nothing else in the room. It was a beacon, the god’s distant sound echoing as if from somewhere far within.
Behind me, behind the door I’d sealed into the hall, one that would surely crumble when Caldamir and the others caught up to me, footsteps thundered ever closer. There was no other way out of this room. No other escape, except to throw myself out the window—which I had no intention of doing. I wasn’t helpless against these fae, I just didn’t wish to waste my precious powers against them.
The painting was of a battle, brutal and vicious, depicting fae and fiends locked together in a bloodstained match for dominance. It was a reminder that this place was wild and merciless, even when the fae weren’t at each other’s throats. It was so lifelike that even as I watched, the wrestling beings seemed to quiver with movement, their muscles twitching and weapons glinting in the dramatic light.
Even still, as I looked, that sound from beyond steadily grew, as if drawing me into the painting itself.
I searched the edges of the frame for some kind of mechanism that might make it swing open. Perhaps there was a tunnel behind it, some way of escaping the feet that followed so close behind me. I broke my nails trying to pry it from the wall, bruised the tips of my fingers frantically pressing on the frame, looking for some kind of catch, but try as I might, I found no way to open it.
The footsteps had grown too close. Hands began clawing and banging on the door. I wasted a little more of my glamour to strengthen the bond keeping the door shut. It wouldn’t hold for long, not once Caldamir caught up.
The god had yet to steer me wrong, so perhaps fate might want me to end my time here, in this room, or waste my time fighting off the droves of fae now throwing themselves at the door at Mordrigal’s command, but I had no intention to.
I stepped back to evaluate the painting again, the movement in it uncanny as I watched. It wasn’t just the fae and the fiends, it was everything from the grass to the trees to the subtle shimmer of a mirage painted into the sky. The longer I looked, the more alive it looked, the more real—until it didn’t look like a painting at all, but rather a window into the forest itself.
The clamor from the hall grew louder, then fell suddenly, and I knew from the swell of glamour pulled from the other side of the door that Caldamir had finally arrived. From the sound of it, the sudden drop in noise, he’d brought much of his court with him. In its absence, that sound swelled to a symphony, but it wasn’t just that music that wasn’t music.
I heard the rustle of trees, the sway of grass in the breeze, the grunt of fae and the snarl of wild beasts. The painting wasn’t just seeming to move. It was actually moving.
Without thinking any more of it, I knew exactly what the god intended me to do. I stepped up to the edge of the painting, lifted my foot above the edge of the frame, and stepped into it.
I did not step into the forest, however. I wasn’t surrounded by the surreal symphony of a forest battle, but rather was plunged into silence and darkness. Behind me the room existed still, framed now like the painting had a moment before. Ahead of me now stretched a long dark tunnel, lit only by the sunlight that still filtered from the room behind me.
I didn’t linger, didn’t wait to see if Caldamir and the others would burst through the door and know to follow me through the painting. I didn’t know if it was a magic painting, or if the god had once again intervened to carry me to a place where fate did not want me to go.
I followed, instead, the steady growing of Mordrigal’s magic as it pulled on me, my feet carrying me forward into the darkness until I was totally blind. Still, I moved onwards. I was not afraid of the dark, not even the blackest reaches of this realm, not after my time spent in The Endless. I didn’t need to see to carry onward, the high king’s glamour and the god’s music carried me forward, each one growing stronger by the step.
I felt myself winding blindly through the darkness, delving deeper and deeper into the Mountain Court, winding between passages and stairwells, until that darkness suddenly shifted. At the far end of my vision, a tiny square emerged from the dark. It was dim and blurry at first, but as it grew so did the image inside it. A cavernous throne room formed, columns and ceilings carved from the heart of the mountain, stretching and vaulting overhead. Braziers burned with flames, casting a flickering light over the massive seated form, hunched over a too small throne.
I’d never seen Mordrigal’s throne, but this was not it. There was no point to sitting on a throne for an empty court, one I’d stolen from him. He sat instead on Caldamir’s throne, cementing his hold over the prince and all that was his. His court. His body. His very mind. All that the Mountain Prince held dear, Mordrigal commanded. Even now, as I drew up to the edge of the frame, he commanded me—not with the glamour he did the rest of the court, but in the way that he held my fate in his hands, as much as the gods might want me to defy it.
His fate was at the tips of my fingers, too, the two intrinsically entwined, more perhaps than he knew until the moment I stepped through the painting on the other side. The moment my feet hit the stone of the other side, his head snapped to face me in surprise, an expression that looked foreign on his face, as if it was one his muscles weren’t used to practicing. His eyes drank in the sight of me like I was a ghost, the rest of his body reacting a moment later.
He looked even bigger trapped here, beneath the mountain. He’d looked fiend-sized in the courtyard, a larger-than-life gold-plated figure in his armor. But here, amidst a court carved from stone, made for fae of normal size, he looked immense. He was a creature, a monster, his body towering over me as he rose, slowly, that surprise on his face turning into something smug as he looked down at me.
His glamour intensified as he did, shifted, the unspoken call drawing his unwilling army from where they’d lost me.
For a moment, it was just he and I, this great king of faerie.
The moment wouldn’t last long. I knew the hoards would follow soon, but in this moment, the high king and I were alone for the first—and only—time. By the time we left each other’s presence, only one of us would remain a high king of faerie.
Or neither of us would.
I didn’t know what would happen when I followed Mordrigal into the darkness, into the Afterworld.
All I knew was that I had to. If I succeeded, I’d be trapped in the Afterworld, either lost to it or lost in it with no way to escape. If I failed, then Mordrigal alone would remain here, unchallenged, while I faced that darkness alone.
Either way, the Afterworld was what awaited me.
It had always been my fate, and so fate would be satisfied. All that remained to be seen was whether I ended up there alone, or if I had one last chance to end the other high kings’ tyranny when I did.