Chapter 11 #2
“I don’t rat on my employers.”
Jax moved his head a fraction too far in my direction. His word choice made it simple for someone like Noth to put it together.
“Oh, Pumpkin! If you wanted to spice up our love life with a third, you just had to tell me. I would have preferred a female, but he will do. You didn’t have to pay him.”
The bridge slammed down, clearing the path for our escape right into the setting sun. I gritted my teeth until I thought they would shatter. Noth made it a joke, but his eyes blazed a hellish red.
It was enough of an opening that Jax pressed the paper with the witch’s sigil to Noth’s chest. As my magic crawled all over him, I realized I had made a terrible mistake.
As fast as it invaded his body, it pulled from mine.
Not in the controlled way of expending magic, but a haywire feedback cycle that stiffened my limbs and fired pain through my blood just like it did him. The spell rebounded on me tenfold.
“Counter the sigil, Maggie!”
My arms moved just enough to draw the counter on my own chest and the magic released both of us.
I staggered back and Noth did too, like a string tied us together.
What the absolute fuck? My admittedly limited magic had never acted that way before.
Rue never bound herself to another person’s magic, even her mentor.
But Jax took full advantage of the pause. With ruthless efficiency, he ran Noth through with his own night terror sword.
I screamed as Noth’s knees hit the dirt, with what had to be black blood leaking from his mouth.
“Wait,” I yelled at Jax, my hand wavering like it would take all of this back and the human froze.
“Your concern is touching, Pumpkin, but playtime is over. That one hurt.”
Pain did something special to Noth’s face and I had to keep my purpose steady.
The Calix’s vines wrapped around him, pushing out the sword, filling the hole it left.
It was then I realized the black wasn’t his blood leaking from his mouth.
His shadows came out to play. Noth’s body began to distort and grow.
“Run,” I said to Jax.
To his credit, Jax backed up to shield and defend me.
“You said he was an Elf. What kind of freak is he?” the soldier said.
My heart broke a little watching Noth flinch at the words. Shadows flickered stronger around him.
I kept the details of the job scarce because I needed Jax to believe he could do this. Hells, I needed to believe it. Fighting a Nightmare Walker would have ended the conversation before it started, no matter what gold I offered him.
Noth’s claws splayed in the dirt, forming a skirt of deadly tentacles around his hulking, boiling form that remained too agitated to settle into one creature.
The sun gasped its last warm rays over the horizon and sunk down into a twilight only lit by Noth’s many ruby eyes.
They all blinked in a ripple, all trained on me.
He would really kill me this time. Part of me accepted it and the other part wept that I had destroyed what we might have been together.
Watching him fight Jax like a fierce warrior and not the prima donna he pretended to be, I realized Noth’s every action hid something deeper.
My revenge wavered in front of me. My anger propelled me this far, but I never asked him the most important question of all - why?
Rue would have tanned my hide for not remembering the most basic tenet of witchcraft.
When everything had its equal and proportional price, you got good at understanding consequences.
I never pressed Noth about what happened in Rue’s cottage and now I would never know.
This was my fault. I placed myself in front of Jax, despite his protests and faced Noth head-on. I would die first with the hope Jax would get away.
Dust filled the darkening air as the Nightmare clawed the ground with its many limbs.
High-pitched, inarticulate fury fueled the Nightmare’s cries.
I braced for death until the creature came crashing to my feet and rolled over onto what I assumed was its back.
Staring at me with a tongues-lolling expression of bliss, I felt a tentacle wrap around my ankle.
I didn’t dare pull away. Those limbs reached up to lick my neck.
Was that my heart thundering in my chest?
Wait, the ground shook too. I glanced over the bridge and found a band of Elves rushing through the dark straight toward us.
Their flaxen hair streamed out like glowing pennants behind them as if they collected the last of the luminescence in the world to light their way.
Even their horses shone with an otherworldly radiance.
Had Jax called them? Betrayal choked me in a fit of pure irony.
I expected them to stop, perhaps rein in and display themselves with the nonchalant grace I watched Noth produce without thinking.
Instead, all three of them plowed their mounts into Noth, producing a tangle of limbs, swords, eyes, screams and terror.
All the breath left my lungs as Noth fought the Elves in earnest. No hesitation.
No mercy. He made the scuffle with Jax into a playground slap fight.
I summoned my magic and drew a rune on the closest horse.
Its whinny became a tinny whine as I shrunk it down to palm size.
The Elf I took it from barely glanced my way, but still lost his head for his inattention.
His glow faded as his corn silk hair unfolded over the cold ground.
Noth’s salamander scuttled over to snap it up in his jaws.
I should have been screaming, but from everything Noth told us, his people didn’t deserve him. More importantly, my magic actually worked when I called it!
The Elves fought in a graceful dance, sliding swords and daggers against Noth’s limbs. A hail of blows came from all angles. These fighters matched Noth’s blurring speed and furious sword work and there were two of them left.
I flipped through my mental grimoire of spells Rue taught me and they were all local cures, hearth and home type stuff. I only knew the size spell so she could pack more supplies into her herb boxes.
“We have to help him,” I said to Jax.
He reared his head back. “I thought you wanted me to kill him?”
“I’ll double your fee.”
“Done.”
I would sell every piece of plate armor off those Elves if I had to. My head could go shove itself into a bag full of spiders. My heart needed Noth one hundred percent alive.
“Contain the King. Bring the Stormlight,” the Elf with the delicately arching ears said.
“Brad will have your head if you call him that again!” the other Elf replied.
“I knew it!” Noth crowed in a half-monstrous voice. He had backed into the darkness and all that remained visible were his floating eyes. “He was too stupid to die.”
Goddsdamnit. If that dick waffle somehow survived Evie’s last assault and took the Elven throne, we really needed Noth’s help.
I threw hearth sigils into the air, lighting them on fire for brief flares.
It didn’t seem to do much more than annoy the Elves but Noth’s smile glowed at me through the fray.
Jax jumped into the melee and the woman clapped her hands together and grew a torch in the space between.
The light it gave off hurt my eyes. I couldn’t imagine what it did to Noth.
Jax batted it out of her hands but the last Elf lunged forward in a vicious strike while Noth was still blinded.
The Calix’s vines and thorns burst from the point where Noth gripped it. Thick ropes scooped us all off the ground but no thorn pierced my skin. The Elves were not so lucky. Choking on the bramble, their eyes grew large and not because they were about to breathe their last.
“The True King,” one whispered, just before he died in a tangle of dagger-like thorns.
“Your Highness, forgive us,” the female Elf protested.
My breath caught in my throat. Would he show mercy? Would he show mercy to me?
“The Calix decides,” Noth said, his voice like a sepulcher. “Does she speak true?”
The vines removed her head before Noth spoke the last syllable. His chest heaved as he scanned for more enemies. Shadows licked up his legs, blending him with the growing night. Only his eyes glowed a terrible red.
Noth walked toward me with lethal intent.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He twisted the Calix as he willed the vines to close around me, pierce my flesh. My skin remained unmarred. Did that mean I was worthy too? I had only ever heard that from Rue.
The black fanning out from Noth’s eyes wouldn’t recede and I stared at the ruby center of the dark pits, mesmerized.
“I didn’t really mean it.”
“I know. I'm hurt, but not hurt. You’re annoying as the seven hells, Pumpkin, but you need me. You’ll never kill me.”
“We do need you. All the Harrowlands needs you if Brad survived and took your throne.”
“No, no, innocent girl. You need me because I’m willing to do what everyone else won’t. Obliterate anything, anyone, everyone in my way just so I can have a taste of your skin. What would I have done if they had touched you? The Harrowlands would have burned to ash.”
That was… a lot. And true. Some witchy sixth sense told me he didn’t lie. I fought against the tide of his words, ignoring how turned on he was by this.
“Ward’s territory too?” They were best friends. I waited for him to qualify his absurd declaration.
“All of it.” He gathered my hair in his fist. “It's ridiculous you're not obsessed with me yet. I'll die of a broken heart faster than your assassination attempts.”
Brad became a bigger concern than our tangles, my vengeance. I sagged into his grip, relief flooding me. I wouldn’t have to fail at killing him again, or fight the sizzling attraction between us.
“No more. We’ll need every ounce of our ability to find out what Brad wants this time. He can’t be in charge of a kitchen spoon, let alone a territory. That he lived after being flung across five territories is scary enough.”
We would have to sort out our personal problems as we ripped the human interloper off the throne.
“The human is only part of the problem. His mecha won’t save him from me. Not all the Elves will be thrilled with my return. They did hand me over to him in the first place.”
A reasonable concern.
“I will just have to be twice as majestic. And the Calix won’t hurt.” He turned to Jax. “We'll even take this one.”
Would they defend Brad? We might be fighting a territory of Elves instead of three of them. I don’t know if I would willingly go back to the place that tried to kill me and Noth had never given me a serious answer, only a snarky one.
“Majestic? I don't know how the crown fits on that giant head of yours. Does it do anything to contain your raging ego?”
“Nothing has contained it yet.”
“Why does this mean so much to you, Noth?” I asked. I had to know what he was fighting for if I was going to fight with him instead of against him. “Why not find a corner of the Harrowlands and farm peas or something?”
I knew the image was laughable the moment I said it, but I needed an answer that would let me believe I had been wrong to try to kill him.
“Pumpkin, if I’m not King, I’m just a half-breed, deviant monster everyone would rather battle back into the shadows. I will do anything not to be that. Seeing Brad dead is a bonus. He tortured me. Nothing tastes better than revenge.”
I wouldn’t know, because it didn’t look like I would ever get mine.
I wasn’t able to say it out loud, but I kind of liked the deviant part and the Nightmare Walker part despite the fact it was scary as hells.
Noth proved courageous and funny, in a snobby way.
He fucked like a Dark Godd and with everything I’d tried; he laughed like my murder attempts were his new favorite thing.
He didn't mind that I acted “difficult”.
Well, he did mind, but only so he could tease me to the edge of sanity.
Still, our banter wouldn't protect us in a fight.
I shifted in the vines but Noth didn’t release me. “We need to get Ward, Evie. The others.”
Whatever I had to work out with my sister, I would. Watching Noth almost die finally made me realize: I needed to meet Evie where she was. Relentlessly pulling her to-and-fro into my mess wouldn't get us anywhere.
“I trust Ward with anything, but this is a matter for the Elves. If I can’t defeat Brad and restore my rightful throne by myself, the other Kings and Queens will descend on my territory and tear it apart.”
That sounded like a man-answer, but I wasn’t a King.
“Well, what have we got then? A salamander. A mercenary. A magic Godd object. And a witch… kinda.” I pointed at myself without enthusiasm.
He didn’t look anywhere else but at me, like I was the only thing he needed–if he didn’t strangle me first.
My heart rose in my throat, beating double time. We needed to clear the air if we had a Brad to defeat. He would only exploit our hate and Rue would always be between us if we didn’t resolve this.
Though I wasn’t willing to admit it, I also wanted to know if Rue could ever forgive me for falling into his arms because, Godds forbid, I actually liked the bastard.