Chapter 19
Noth
Midnight was the darkest part of the night with the deepest shadows and my Nightmare’s natural element.
The best part of my shadow magic was how much it disrupted the Fae.
Neither side gained an advantage over the other until I came to power.
We were too similar. My Nightmare gave me a slight edge over Severin.
I didn’t abuse it, but it was gratifying to see Severin faint in the inbetween as we traveled to my palace.
I easily stepped Maggie and dragged Severin through the dark and into the gloam of Brad’s bedroom.
Slapping the Fae awake, I swallowed the sound, and his cry.
I knew Brad would take the most ornate bedroom.
The one I saved for visiting dignitaries that I hated.
It dripped with pointed arches hanging from the ceiling, in overwrought gold.
A stark contrast to the tastefully accented silver in the rest of the palace.
The candles in this room were always tallow and the entire space smelled of it.
Brad was too dumb to replace them. The tall windows appeared as if they framed an artful, grassy knoll, but it was actually our sewage field.
The enormous scarlet bed with all its silk pillows and twisting bedposts was comfortable enough, but positioned to catch the odd night breeze over the field.
Never underestimate psychological warfare when negotiating.
The two guards in his room made the mistake of attacking a pissed off, groggy Severin whom I might have tossed in their direction. I made sure to swallow all those fighting sounds too. Couldn’t have our sleeping beauty awaken before we were ready for him to perform.
Maggie pulled down and crushed the black boxes surrounding his bed. Watching her move from room to room in the palace, unmaking Brad’s leash on my people was hotter than the sun in Sandaniska’s summer.
A small hurt sound and the chime of chains sounded in the snore-filled room.
We all turned to find the bride awake in a pile, tied to the floor.
I bristled for Maggie’s sake. Maggie started forward when she saw the girl’s black eye and split brow until a bloody Severin stepped in front of her and snapped the chain.
Maggie knit the girl’s skin back together, but she would always carry the wicked scar bisecting her brow up to her hairline.
It looked strange on such a delicate creature.
“Take her, Severin,” I whispered to him.
He picked the girl up. “I won’t come back and I will still expect my half.”
I knew Maggie wanted the girl safe. Tucked away with the Fae, she wouldn’t be vying for my throne when Brad was dead.
“You’ll get your payment, Twinkles.”
“I better, Rat Face.” He disappeared in a puff of golden dust.
I narrowed my eyes, a frown on my face. Severin didn’t need to start with that too. Maggie widened her eyes, managing to look not an ounce innocent.
Brad slumbered peacefully in the gigantic bed, his sawing sounds somehow the least offensive thing about him.
We stalked to his bed and Maggie made a throat-slitting gesture. I shook my head ‘no’. She pleaded with her eyes. I shook my head again. She crossed her arms and canted a hip, a mulish pout to her lips.
“NO,” I mouthed to her more clearly, secretly excited to see her so bloodthirsty.
I went to pull a nightmare out of his mind, hovering over him. Was Brad’s hair askew?
Moving back, my curiosity got the better of me. I poked him with the Calix, pushing it slowly through that barrier that always formed from his bangle. The Calix reached out to him with hand-sized thorns, welling up a few beads of blood.
His startled awakening slid the hair right off his skull, the odd tuft remaining. Brad scrambled to put it to rights when he should have been trying to kill me. Too bad I didn’t need him dead just yet. My hands twitched. All the hate inside me welled up to a bitter sting.
“Are you awake, worm?” I asked him.
Brad scrubbed his face, annoyance in every crease. “Delightful as always. You are a real trooper, halfbreed. I was sorry I couldn’t make a real monster out of you in our delightful time together.”
He had come close. I didn’t like how much of him remained in me. My Nightmare leaked through, stabbing my claws through the bed, crowding Brad into the mattress. “Looking for me to wear your head as my crown?”
Maggie laughed on the other side of the bed. She was right. That didn’t make a lick of sense but Brad paled anyway.
“Guards!” His yelp made it impossible to understand how he had convinced anyone that he was capable of being King. “Thank God!”
The door creaked open to reveal an empty black hallway. Shadows flickered dramatically against the wall.
“Guards?” Brad’s voice reduced to a child’s nighttime whisper.
My Black Skulls slipped into the moonlight, weapons drawn. Everyone had a secret order in their back pocket, right?
One handed me the fake Calix and I had to tear it away from the vines of the real one to toss the fake at Brad.
“Get up and try not to cry. You have an announcement to make.”
I would have just killed Brad in his sleep.
But this wasn’t about death. This was about my territory, my people’s faith in me.
In us. Because I was determined to make me and Maggie an “us”.
I heard her heart’s confession as I sunk my cock into her depths and tied us closer than ever.
It only made dumping Brad and regaining my throne more urgent.
As we hurried him out to the wide balcony that overlooked the field, he stumbled into a small side table and I had to pick him up to get him moving again.
When Brad saw his soldiers and a decent number of Elves assembled, he did something I never thought he would.
He attacked with the fake Calix. Brad’s first thrust and parry was better than anything Maggie attempted.
I stepped back in surprise, a thin line of blood welling on my forearm.
I didin’t expect a real fight from him. I moved forward to shear his head from his shoulders, plan be Goddsdamned. Except I forgot Brad fought dirty.
A small black stick, he must have palmed in that stumble, produced an arc of electric magic that sizzled over my skin as he shoved it against me. Even my Nightmare roared in agony. It was humiliating to lose control of my limbs and have him cut me again with that stupid toy.
My Nightmare pressed against my mind. I didn’t want to lose all sense to the dark in front of this careful display of Elves but Brad took it out of my hands.
The blue arc of his magic split my Nightmare out of my skin, much to the gasps of every councilor Yaya found to witness.
Most of them had never glimpsed my shift.
It broke the soundest of minds if I chose.
One fainted dead away. The rest clutched their nightwear or a hastily slipped-on robe, looking as rumpled as an Elf might look in the dead of night.
“Hideous,” Brad said just before he hit me again with that magic stick.
His words struck true, but I was smoke and air. Thought and memory were insubstantial things that made up night terrors and his silly stick passed right through me as my shadows shifted and my extra eyes blinked from my cheeks.
“Yes,” my voice sounded from the deep echo of the blackest night. “You are hideous.”
I shattered his fake toy with a thunderous blow of my bony claws. Fragments of the sham Calix rained over the crowd. Brad staggered under the weight of my anger, infuriatingly uncowed.
“Behold your King!” I bellowed across the crowd.
“Truly!” Brad shouted back to the assembly, righting his clothes with a toothy smirk. “Your halfbreed is a passable messenger to bring me the true Calix. When he’s dead, he will have fulfilled his obligation.”
I ground my teeth as the Councilors murmured in agreement.
The slap of skin on skin drew everyone’s attention as Maggie’s palm slid down her face. “You have to be fucking kidding me. What in all the seven hells will it take for you to wake up?”
“He proves his magic even now. He is unharmed against a Nightmare.” Councilor Nemian, my least favorite, pointed at Brad.
I frowned as a tide of Brad’s soldiers ran up against the wall of their fellows that Jax managed to recruit to our side.
“A Nightmare and a Witch,” Maggie piped up. “That just splintered your Godds object all to hells. He’s a fake.”
I didn’t like how the Council’s attention shifted to her. In fact, every Elf’s focus locked on her. My shadows spiked but Maggie refused to stay behind me.
“Child, you can go back to where you came from.” Nemian stepped forward.
Maggie met him halfway and shoved him. “You can sit right down and shut up if you won’t help.
” She turned to the rest of them. “In fact, all of you can take a seat and watch how a True King handles his business.” She traced a sigil for a host of chairs and the Elven Council arranged themselves out of sheer shock.
I don’t think anyone had treated them with such brusque inconsequence in a few hundred years.
While Brad watched the show, I attempted to swallow his feet out from under him with a shadow portal but his bangle barrier surrounded all of him, keeping him hovering above it.
Tired of this game, I clashed against his bright magic but it was made of the darkest sorcery and nothing I did broke through with brute force.
Sweat collected on my brow. The barrier pushed me back and Maggie stepped in front of me.
“Enough of this shit. Hit me with your best shot, Noth. Power me up.”
My heart had thumped at her calling me the True King. “Pumpkin. We can’t fuck right in the middle of a battle.”
She grabbed hold of the thin but strong mate bond. “Align your chakras and give me all the magic you’ve got.”
This was a stupid idea. The only success Maggie had had with killing was getting me hot and bothered with her attempts on me. This mistake might cost us both our lives.