30. Delphine
Mordrigal stoodbefore me like a mountain within the mountain. He was nearly as broad as he was tall, his body made of pure power and muscle. He wore only the barest of armor, not the golden cocoon of metal he’d donned to meet me and the princes in battle.
Unlike that day, he’d not been expecting a battle.
He’d not been expecting me—not just here, in his court, but here, while he sat upon his stolen throne. He’d clearly underestimated me again, though as satisfying as that was, I couldn’t truly take credit. If it were up to me, up to fate, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be king of the human realm he’d tried to claim for himself. I wouldn’t have outsmarted his army, the command of his own glamour, and stood here ready to face him with my own.
I lifted my hands before me, readied to call on my shadows, only for Mordrigal’s voice to rumble out like the rasp of something from the earth itself and make me pause.
“Delphine, long have I wondered if it would come down to this.”
His glamour should’ve had no hold over me, but his voice held a weight to it that made my reach for the glamour falter. The mere sound of him was like stone and dirt and sand and sea. It rumbled, growled, scraped, and grated; it was made of such deep baritones that it shook small stones from the ceiling as he spoke.
In the distance, I felt the tug of the glamour as Mordrigal’s army shifted directions. I felt them no longer searching for me on the other side of the tunnel. Soon those footsteps would diverge here, in the throne room, where Mordrigal’s power over their bows and swords would plunge me into a different kind of battle.
I shook the literal gravel from my shoulders and the gravel of Mordrigal’s voice from my ears and started to lift my hands again, the glamour once again responding to my call—only to recoil the moment Mordrigal opened his mouth again.
“You may be a high king, but you have no idea yet what that means,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, but the kind of pity that laced it was somehow worse. He was right, of course. I had no idea what it was to be a high king, like him. I didn’t need to understand why, however.
I only needed to understand what needed to be done.
I pulled on my glamour—or, at least, I tried, only for Mordrigal’s rumble of a voice to interrupt me again.
His glamour wasn’t supposed to affect me the way it did Caldamir, but here, in his realm, in his court, so close to the wellspring of his power, it somehow made my own power shudder. And he knew it, too.
I saw the slight smug pull at the corner of his mouth. This was not a battle fought at the outer corner of his realm, or a show of shadows in another. I stood in the very heart of where his power sprung, power that flowed more steadily now than ever. My own power slowed within my veins more with every word that he spoke, thickening into something that moved more like tar than water within me.
“You were never meant for this world, Delphine,” Mordrigal continued. He kept his gaze on me, predatory like, even as he tried to make his movements slow and methodical. His voice was even, no command directly spoken, but being in mere proximity to him made my own body and magic respond. Far off noises dulled, dimming until the distant sounds of armored soldiers running to heed Mordrigal’s newest command were forgotten entirely. A strange deafness fell around us, blocking out all the rest of the world except for the high king of Avarath and me.
“Admit it, you don’t even want this role you’ve come here to claim. You don’t want the one you already have.”
A stirring compelled me to answer him, and though I knew I could call on that tar-like magic within me to resist it, I chose not to.
“You’re right, Mordrigal,” I answered. I kept my voice steady, matching his almost disinterested tone, hiding all the fear that racked me to my core as I gazed up at this giant creature of a fae as if I was facing a god, instead. From the weight and pull of his power, I nearly was. The power was close, different, it bore a different weight than the power I’d felt around Tethys and the unnamed god that had led me here, but it was powerful enough still to make something deep inside of me shake—especially when Mordrigal took a slow, even step towards me. It didn’t matter how measured that movement was, every inch that he drew nearer, the more intense the glare of his power burned within me.
It was no wonder Nereus and the other courts refused to fight again. As I stood here now, facing him, I understood completely. I couldn’t blame them, not when every instinct in my body was begging me to run—and I was arguably the only fae left in all the realms with the power left to face him.
Not only that, but I was sent here by the gods, gods who very much wanted me to defeat Mordrigal and change the path fate had laid out for Avarath. I had to remind myself of this, over and over as the high king stepped towards me again. I had to fight off the urge for my very bones to shake. Even with the care he took with each step, the earth was not able to resist shaking itself. It quivered and quaked, more pebbles raining down on my head from up above. The sound of it was so distant, however, so strong was the spell Mordrigal had on me. If it weren’t for the way my own feet struggled to stay in place, or the rain of those small stones upon my upturned face, I might not have noticed the way the world shuddered at his mere words—not even words intentionally laced with glamour.
The fact that Caldamir had resisted this call, even with the aid of the bracelet that protected him from the high king’s power, was only made all the more incredible.
Mordrigal stopped advancing, finally, when he stood just out of my reach. He looked down at me with a face that was both ancient and ageless. I felt as if it was taking everything in me just to stand before him, a feat that even Mordrigal seemed impressed by. He was clearly used to fae falling at his feet, or under them, not fae who stood their ground as I did.
If I wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t just that he was impressed, he was surprised, and unless I was completely misreading the clouded look in his eye, a little afraid, too.
That made one of us.
A swell of something began in my core, heating from within, from that place in my chest that had once been so empty, but had been filled by the love of the very same fae that took me to Avarath to face this fate. I was afraid of Mordrigal only in the strictest of senses, in the way any creature, fae or otherwise, was designed to. His power was fearful, his presence all-consuming.
But I was not afraid.
Not of what lay before me.
That was what separated us. That was what would give me the power to win.
From somewhere far off, that melody began again. Soft, at first, but growing. This time it was not made up of the gentle trickle of water, but instead, of the clanging of swords, of metal, of armor and heavy footsteps. The music of the god broke the spell Mordrigal’s words had put over me, revealing the noise of the army in the mere seconds before it burst through the door.
I was ready when they came.
I should never have waited for Mordrigal’s army to catch up to me. I’d had an opportunity to face him alone, but at least I’d been dragged from his hold in time to face him at all. The doors at the far end of the hall burst open, and with it came a wall of Mordrigal’s glamour, slamming into me like a wave of molten gold. It shimmered and prickled and stung in my mind, making my knees nearly buckle beneath the sheer brunt force of it as I struggled to withstand its power. The fae of the Mountain Court, his stolen soldiers, poured into the hall, a sea of glinting armor and bared steel. They were not Mordrigal’s golden army, they were better.
They were warriors, they were the fae fate had destined to stand at Mordrigal’s command. At their head strode Caldamir, the darkness of his eyes visible even from the rapidly closing distance. His jaw was set, his features a mask of pure dedication. It was his body, his soul, but his mind was not his own. He was a pawn, fully, to the high king—and a deadly one.
It was his sword that I dreaded the most.
This was his craft. This was violence. This was war.
I felt his own glamour intertwining with Mordrigal’s will, felt it not just wrapping around himself, but reaching out towards the high king’s target.
That target being me.
Mordrigal’s face twisted up in a grin that would make lesser fae shudder.
Perhaps, even once, it would have made me. But even as he opened his mouth to speak, to make a command or remind me of how unprepared I was to face him and his awesome power, I was reminded of my own power. I was not only a high king by blood, by right—but I was not standing on my own. I might not have fate on my side, as evidenced by the swarm of soldiers rushing towards me, weapons at the ready
I was backed by the gods. Gods I didn’t know, didn’t understand, but gods still.
And in that moment, it wasn’t just the sound of music that drowned out all noise and cancelled out the last of Mordrigal’s hold over me.
I felt the power too.
I felt it pour into me, entwining with my own glamour the way Mordrigal and Caldamir’s powers combined.
It surged into me with such intensity that it forced my own glamour to spring forth.
That glamour, black and thick, poured from me in a way it never had before. It was alive, barely at my control, acting on the basest, deepest instincts within me. It lashed out in hundreds of tendrils, wrapping around the fae that rushed to meet me in battle. It caught hold of their weapons and tossed them aside, caught their arrows as soon as they were loosed from bows that I’d not even had time to see were already knocked, they grabbed fae by the ankles and pulled them screaming from the room, threw them against walls, smothered them in suffocating darkness. The soldiers closest to me didn’t even have a chance to lift their weapons before the dark power slammed into them, forcing them to their knees.
Even Caldamir fell to my will, his power snuffed out beneath the weight of the dark. I felt their pain, their anguish, felt their very life force flickering in my grasp, but I was powerless to stop the vicious assault.
I couldn’t have pulled back this wave of my own glamour if I tried.
It consumed me, too.
It was all I could do to keep my power from pulling every single one of them to the Afterworld. I had to fight against my own power. It would be all too easy to win this battle only to lose the war.
The level of power surging through me was intoxicating. It overwhelmed my senses as the tendrils of inky blackness acted of their own accord, fighting back the Mountain Fae with a ferocity I’d never witnessed. Not even in the worst of the battles I’d faced in Icarus’ fiendish realm had I seen my magic react this way. I was both terrified and exhilarated, unsure if I was even in control of my own magic anymore. The gods had unlocked something primal in me, something I didn’t fully understand.
And I didn’t need to.
Mordrigal’s smug expression had vanished, replaced instead by disbelief and rage as he watched his soldiers fall helpless before my onslaught. His voice roared higher, louder, only to fall on ears now completely deafened to him. His eyes flashed and something within him awoke too, but as he raised his hands, not shimmering with a visible golden spark, a tendril of my glamour reached out for him now, too.
The moment it touched him, I felt the change, felt the very real fear that flashed in the high king’s eyes.
The tendril of inky darkness wrapped around Mordrigal’s wrist, rooting him to the spot. He let out a roar, loud enough that even the god’s couldn’t deafen it this time. It was more animal than fae, this scream, as primal as the magic twisting further and further around him. I saw the whites of his eyes as he strained against the dark magic, but even as he summoned his golden glamour to force it back, it only ensnared him more.
Still, the battle was hardly won.
I wasn’t the only one holding back a reserve of power.
His glamour flared brighter, pushing back against the smothering darkness. For a moment, it seemed as if he would break free, but my own power only pushed back harder, too. It dug into him, wrapped further around him, wrapped and dug, wrapped and dug, not only matching his own draw on his glamour, but outmatching it. I felt, then, something begin to scrape deep within me. The darkness in my veins began to writhe as it wrestled with Mordrigal’s golden light. He let out a ragged scream, another roar to outdo the first, the cords of his neck straining as he fought against my hold. His eyes were wild with fury and—unless I imagined it—desperation.
He’d not foreseen my resistance. He’d not foreseen his own glamour rendered useless against my own. His own magic swelled as mine strained against its limit, our glamours far too evenly matched.
Even with the gods’ help, there was a limit to my power.
I couldn’t keep this up forever, not so long as I held onto the fae still struggling against my shadows as Mordrigal’s own power over them grew, too. Already, I could feel my strength waning, dragging claws through my veins until they stung. I gritted my teeth and held fast until a rivulet of something hot and thick began to drip from my nose. Blood. I could taste it on my tongue, feel it trailing down the back of my throat.
I was using too much of my glamour. It didn’t matter if I sent Mordrigal from this realm now, if there was none of my own magic left to follow, no magic left for me to finish the job. I was wasting too much of it, stretching myself too thin.
So, I let go, just a little, and that was my greatest mistake of all.
Because Mordrigal was not the only fae here whose power I needed to contend with, needed to fear. The moment I let go of my power, the moment I let it loosen, let it slip, the Prince of the Mountain Court broke free. He stalked towards me, freed of the smothering grip of my magic, one singular focus consuming his mind as his grip tightened on the sword that he’d returned to his hand. Time itself seemed to slow as I tried, and failed, to reach for him again. His face had become a nearly unrecognizable mask. His eyes had darkened into pools nearly as black as my own. There was nothing left of the fae I’d fallen in love with. All that was left was a war machine, a creature born and bred to do the deadly bidding of the high king, barely held within my grasp.
He raised his sword, readied to fell me with one powerful stroke, and I had no choice but to let go of Mordrigal and reach for him, instead. But the moment I did, Mordrigal seized his chance. With a guttural roar, his golden glamour surged, breaking free of the dark tendrils trying to contain him. The force of it knocked me back, out of range of Caldamir’s strike, but also shattered the rest of my concentration. All around me, the writhing shadows I’d summoned recoiled as if they themselves had been struck, releasing the soldiers still trapped within their grasp. All at once, the power in the throne room shifted.
The heady rush of my power was gone, my own glamour seeming to tangle as I tried to reach for it again, only to find my fingers grasping at wisps that refused to be taken hold of.
Mordrigal advanced, magic crackling around him, his eyes alight with triumph as the rest of his army rose to stand at his back.
“Did you really think your borrowed power could defeat me?” he sneered. “I’ll show you what it is to be defeated by a high king.”
He raised a hand, and I tensed, waiting for the blow as my own glamour slipped again from my grasp. But Mordrigal’s hand did not fall, his jaw, unhinged in preparation for the command meant to curl from his lips, simply froze.
Another voice did speak, however.
It rang out, clear and commanding.
“Enough!”
Mordrigal froze alongside his army, surprise flickering across his features. I blinked, scarcely believing my eyes as the crowd began to part from the back of the throne room. At first, I couldn’t see who shook the Mountain Court from their spell, but I didn’t need to see the face beneath the fiery red curls to know it belonged to Mordrigal’s heir—not when I felt the glamour falter, twisting to follow her command instead of the high king’s. Caldamir’s footsteps faltered, the sword growing heavy in his hands as he went to swing it again. His dark eyes lightened, widened as they took in the sight of me cowering before him.
“Delphine.”
His voice wasn’t the only one forming the sound of my name.
The heir hadn’t come alone.
I had just enough time to see the fae that had brought her here, to catch one glimpse at Seren and Armene standing behind Caldamir as the crowd parted further. One look at them was all it took. All the resolve that had driven me here returned tenfold, all the pain, the fear, the anguish—it surged into me at the sight of their faces. I’d set out to end this war to keep them, and now I had to end it to protect them. It wasn’t just my brother’s life at stake. It wasn’t just my own. It was all of ours.
I knew that each and every one of them would surrender their own immortal lives for mine. They, who knew what it was they were truly giving up.
I did what I did next for them, too.
There was no time to reconsider, no time for them to try to interfere, to stop me—because they undoubtedly would, if they knew what it was I planned to do. If they didn’t already know.
I reached out my hand to Mordrigal in his distraction, and I seized hold of him once more, this time wrapping not around his body, but the essence of his glamour. I dug deep, deeper than I ever had, deep into that ancient well of power that flowed through his veins—and I drew it out. I took hold of his glamour like it was a creature within him, and I hurled it into the human realm. I sent it to a fae who would know what to do with that kind of power, who would know what it meant when he felt it scorching through his veins.
And then, with the last of my own glamour, the very last tendrils of smoky black darkness, I sent Mordrigal to the Afterworld—and took myself with him.