Reshina
Pushing aside how much I hated it, I pulled the dagger from Arthur’s chest, instructing Piffle to bandage over the wound.
While the cut stopped bleeding, he could not close it, and after attempting three times, I instructed him to stop.
He held the candlestick while I pulled under Arthur’s arm, slowly dragging his body further through the tunnel.
Piffle followed in quiet whimpers, cowering at the Underfae who came near, their clicks preceding them. But I was now a Goddess without limits.
The first came, springing from the dark and I stunned it. Piffle’s light caused the others to hiss and sink back into the crevices of the tunnel.
I searched their faces and features for the one we had captured, finding her peering out at us curiously, hungrily, from a rocky crevice.
I addressed her, stunning those around her, though more were coming.
“I will give my blood freely, but you must tell the others to let us pass!” I spoke with clarity, our eyes meeting in the dim.
She emitted a few clicks as if trying to communicate with me.
I cut my arm with the dagger and she slid closer, eyeing me carefully.
“I will leave a trail for you. For all of you, but you must allow us passage to Ishtak. If you cannot abide by this bargain, I will start removing your heads from your necks.”
She clicked once, darting to the dripping of blood below my arm.
Licking the rock furiously, she clicked again several times.
I chose to trust her for that moment, releasing the spell over the others.
She communicated to them again, and without wasting time, I continued dragging, slicing into my arm every few minutes as the wound closed.
Soon, I knew my bargain had been accepted.
Soon, a long trail of a Goddess's blood stained the tunnel behind us, dozens of Underfae in tow with their faces pressed to the rocky floor.
“Ishtak! I seek Ishtak, Goddess of the Underfae!” I yelled, grunting and pulling my husband’s body in great heaves.
I kneeled down to Arthur, checking his pulse again.
“Please! Ishtak!” My voice echoed endlessly through the cavern, my arms bloody and the coppery scent permeating the increasingly putrid stench of the tunnel.
“Just a bit more, Mistress,” Piffle whispered. “Just a bit more and we can reach her.”
I nodded, swallowing my fears. After what felt like hours, the stone floor transitioned into smooth marble, crusted over with something black and flaking. My bare feet slapped against it as the tunnel opened into a low-lit cavern.
The clicking of the Underfae echoed on the rounded walls, shaded in shadows. I pulled Arthur further into the room, bending down beside him, cradling his head in my lap. “Ishtak?” I heaved, catching my breath.
A voice came from the dark. “Is that you, Reshina? Ravenfae Goddess of the Veil?”
I cried in a sigh of relief. “Yes, Ishtak, it’s me.”
She entered the light of Piffle’s candle and I bolted upward.
Where once I knew an old woman with silver hair, pale skin, and grey eyes now a corpse stood before me.
Bite marks spread all over her body, mottling her once pale skin to purple and black stretched over sharp bones.
She wore a simple dress of black, tattered and frayed with slashes throughout the material.
Furious, I cast my gaze to the Underfae crawling up the walls, their incessant clicking inciting my anger further. “What have they done to you?”
Ishtak hobbled forward. “No more than I’ve allowed them to do.”
I swallowed my questions and my ferocity at seeing a Goddess of the Veil in such condition. “I need your help. My husband is dying and I do not know how to save him.”
She shuffled forward, peering down at Arthur, his chest barely moving. “The King of Heartstone Castle has returned where he vowed never to return again.”
“Great Goddess of the Underfae!” Piffle cried. “Oh, Dark Mistress of the Underrealm! He does not return of his own free will! We have dragged him here! He does not know!”
“Tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me what has been done to your faekind.”
Though her body stood crippled, her eyes darted to me in sharp anger. “You have no power here, Reshina, Goddess of the Ravenfae. No authority to ask such things.”
I swept my hand in an arc, stunning the Underfae creeping closer along the walls. They stilled, frozen. “I have every authority. You’ve done something to them. I know it to be true.”
Her beady black eyes narrowed.
“But I care not,” I continued. “I am here, begging you to save him.”
“I saved him once already.”
“How?”
She bent on cracking knees and I followed, refusing to trust her so close to the man I loved. With bony fingers, she pulled back the tatters of his shirt. Her eyes squinted to slits as she looked over the wound, tracing the flayed skin. “Ah,” she cackled, “There he is.”
“Who?”
“The Beast.”
In a split moment he shifted, transforming before us. With fur indistinguishable from black in the dim light, the Beast’s chest heaved and he turned, a low growl rumbling from his throat.
“But the curse…” I trailed. “The curse was broken. I was able to leave. Why is the Beast still with him?”
Ishtak slowly rose, her eyes filled with greed. “You have returned to this place, Beast. Do you remember the cost?”
A dark voice I’d never heard rumbled from his chest. “YES, MOTHER.”
“Mother?” I took a step back, pulling Piffle behind me. “Explain yourself.”
A dark grin lifted her lips. “When the curse you delivered upon this land settled into its king, he fell into the Underrealm. My realm. I knew the father, but the son was…different.”
She slid her hand over the Beast’s arm and I darted forward, snatching it into mine. “You will refrain from touching my husband, Ishtak.”
“This Beast is not your husband.”
I dropped her hand. “Every part of him is my husband.”
Her low cackle set my teeth on edge. “My children would have killed your Arthur had I not intervened after he fell. They’d almost drained him dry, hadn’t they, Piffle?”
The Changeling fae nodded, clinging to my skirts.
“What did you do to him?” I whispered.
“I bound him to my realm by way of the Beast inside, forcing him to feed my children in exchange for saving his life.”
“Feed your…” I searched the walls. Hundreds of Underfae crawled along them, leering over us as one hoard. “The biting. The hunting. The obsession with blood… the Beast was hunting to feed them?”
“The sustenance my children seek was delivered here through the Beast. He drank the blood of animals and it nourished their bodies through a power given to me as Goddess of the Underfae. He was their brother.” She lifted her arms, twisting them to show the bruised bite marks all through her skin.
“I assume you are the reason he has not been hunting and I have become their primary source of food.”
“Ishtak,” I whispered. “How have the Underfae become…this?”
Her head lowered. “It is a long tale. For another time, perhaps.”
I shoved my questions aside, coming to one conclusion. “Arthur didn’t know the Beast hunted for the Underfae.”
“He did not.”
“And what is the cost of him returning here?”
Her eyes met mine. “Death of the man inside the Beast.”
I moved swiftly, positioning myself between her and the Beast, the dagger drawn, pointed right between her ribs. “You will save his life, not take it.”
Her laugh echoed around us, madness seeping from her acrid breath. “You cannot harm me, Ravenfae Goddess.”
“No. But your children are not safe in my presence.” Before she could stop me, I threw a vial from my pocket. It hit the cavern ceiling, shattering with silver smoke pouring over her children, the distant sound of music chiming through the cavern.
“NO!” she screamed, sprinting faster than I would have thought possible as they began to fall, one after the other after the other. Bones snapped and her screaming continued.
“Be ready to leave quickly,” I said to Piffle, who nodded rapidly, sticking close to the Beast, still prone on the floor with labored breaths.
“Curses are never delivered to the Underfae, Ishtak, now why is that?” I picked up the hem of my skirts, taking slow, deliberate steps toward her and her children broken on the floor.
“What questions the Goddesses of the Veil might ask… What interest they might have if I care to tell them the tale of my visit to you.”
“What have you done to them!” she screamed.
The Underfae that had fallen lay before her, knocked unconscious but alive.
“Heal him. Allow us passage through this corridor, and I will leave a letter at the entrance detailing their curse.”
“And how to break it?”
“Yes.”
“The Beast must stay,” she demanded. “He must continue to roam the land of Heartstone and drink the blood he craves to feed my children.”
“For three months of the year.”
“Six.”
“Done.”
She rose from the floor and I counted the Underfae the curse had captured. Twelve of her children lay sprawled across the flecks of black, which I’d come to realize was dried blood. The change over them had already begun and it became more imperative that we leave as quickly as possible.
Ishtak made quick work of the vein at her wrist, biting into her skin, ripping flesh and allowing a stream of her dark blood to pour into the Beast’s maw.
She stepped back as he stirred. “Go. Do not repeat what you have seen.” She flicked her hand toward Piffle. “He will not be able to speak about it and your husband will not remember it. Do not seek me out again, Reshina.”
“No, Ishtak. When the time comes, it is you who will seek me.”
With the last of my words, the Beast had released himself back to Arthur, his wound closed, his chest steadily breathing. I pulled him up to sit, taking one of his arms over my shoulder. His head leaned on mine, his eyes closed as if he was stumbling around in a dream.
With the guidance of Piffle’s candlelight, we trekked down the corridor one last time. The Underfae gave us a wide birth, but watched carefully with their eyes of black, sharp fangs glinting in the light.
When we made it through the entrance and finally stepped back into the great hall, Arthur stumbled, falling onto the black marble floor. His eyes blinked open, focusing on my face. “Another dream?”
I laughed, allowing my tears to stream freely. With hands caked in blood, I brushed the golden hair from his forehead. “No. No, it is not, but I must tell you something.”
He blinked again, tears pooling in his eyes.
I kissed his lips soft and slow. “I love you,” I whispered there, drawing back to watch his face.
With shaking hands, he cupped my cheeks. “It is a dream, then.”
I laughed in half a sob, taking one of his strong hands and biting down hard on his palm.
He hissed in pain and bolted upright with narrowed eyes, darting over my face, my body, meeting my eyes of dark brown to his steel blue. “You love me?”
I nodded repeatedly, working my way into his lap, pulling him to me—the truth of everything I wanted to say finally at the tip of my tongue, but I could not say it through the tremble of my chin. Instead, I chose to say the simplicity of it again. “I do, Arthur. I love you.”
He pulled my mouth to his and our kiss was wild between us—the same kiss we’d shared many times there below the surface, but this time it came with such truth, I felt the shatter of any reservation I’d been forced to face before.
His hands left my cheeks, sliding and pressing into my back, over my wings, pulling me closer. The heat of his skin on mine was enough to burn me, flay me—sear me thoroughly until I could not separate Goddess from King.
“Ahem!”
He kissed my neck, driving a moan from my lips when his teeth grazed over the bite marks left there a year before.
“AH-HEM!”
I startled, holding onto Arthur’s shoulders and turning my head to see Piffle, standing there covered in what only the deepest parts of the Veil could identify, and wringing his hands again.
“Apologies, Piff,” Arthur started, pulling the strap of my gown back over my shoulder.
“Perhaps a bath is in order? It is one thing to be saved again on the brink of death, and entirely another to go at it in such…filth.” He looked down at his own attire. “I suppose I could use a wash as well.”
Arthur rose, pulling me up with him, slipping a hand underneath my knees and holding me at his chest. “After you, Piff,” he said, nodding toward the northern corridor.
With a toothy grin, Piff led the way to fill our bath, and I wrapped my arms around the man I loved.