Chapter 47 Unless. #2
“Well, I guess you should have thought about that before you killed all of the other Alchemists then, shouldn’t you?
” I slammed my hands closed, and the shield snapped out of existence.
I shouldn’t have let him see it. The madness in his eyes declared that he’d never stop until he’d found a way to chain me to him now, and that prospect was terrifying.
“Is that what they told you? That I killed off your kind? You should do more research before—”
“I don’t want to hear it. Before you start spinning lies—”
“Insolent female! You are too fond of interrupting your betters! Hold your tongue. You won’t make it out this wood without my say-so,” he barked.
Chest heaving, I lowered Erromar and Selanir to my sides and spat on the ground, running him through with the most contemptuous look I could muster. “Won’t I?”
“No. You won’t. And you know why you won’t, too. You will stand right there, and you will behave yourself, because you want your mate to live. Orious, why don’t you show the little Alchemist where her precious dog has been spending his time the past few days?”
Orious.
That sniveling, greasy piece of shit.
He was here, too?
Yes. The rail-thin male stepped out from behind a tree, chin held high as he met my gaze. “I warned you, girl. You had your chance. This could have all been much easier. Much less . . . painful for you.”
“Fuck you, Orious. Tell me where Fisher is.”
Off to Orious’s left, the Hazrax hovered in the dark, eerily luminescent in the moonlight, watching . . .
“Oh, but he’s right in front of you, girl,” Orious purred. “Don’t you see?”
Belikon’s seneschal casually stepped to one side, moving out of the way, and suddenly I did see.
The woods pitched, the trees seesawing, and a brutal cry cut through the night air.
At first, I thought the bloodcurdling scream had come from one of the Wicker Wood’s tortured shades, but then I tasted blood, and I realized it had come from me.
I’d screamed so loud that I’d torn my fucking throat open.
A monstrous tree stood before me, fifty feet tall, its bark black as sin.
A huge rent ran down the center of its trunk—a split in its wood so rotten and foul that it actually looked like a wound.
That’s where Fisher was, at the center of that wound.
The lower part of the tree looked like it had healed around his body.
All the way up to his shoulders, in fact, the wood had grown around my mate, caging his body inside it. It had almost swallowed him whole.
Fisher’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes a stark black ink against his cheeks.
His hair was plastered to his head. He looked far worse than back in the dream—seconds away from death.
At the base of the tree, Nimerelle rested on top of a flat piece of stone, spewing clouds of thick shadow from her blade.
Fisher’s god sword was not happy in the slightest. “What are you doing to him?” I whispered.
Belikon grinned a wolfish grin then turned his back on me, confident now that he had my attention.
“You may recall, when we met first, Saeris, that I said this male, this . . . dog, was to face trial for his part in the death and destruction that took place in my beloved city of Gillethrye. He fled my palace without my knowledge and then sought harbor in an illegally warded refuge. Since he refused to stand before the court that he serves and give his account of what happened at Gillethrye—”
“You fucking monster. He didn’t have anything to do with those people’s deaths,” I spat.
“—the trial was conducted without him and judgment rendered in his absence.” Belikon’s grin widened to terrifying, unnatural degrees.
“As you might have guessed, he was found guilty of mass genocide. Why he would have killed so many of his own people remains a mystery,” he said, a false airiness in his voice.
“But as a just and fair king who cares about the welfare of his subjects, there was only one thing for me to do.” He fixed me in his gaze then, his expression going blank, and I saw the cold, evil thing inside him, peering out from behind his rheumy eyes.
“I sentenced him to life imprisonment, of course. Here, in an oubliette.”
“What is it doing to him? Why is it trapping him like that?” I hated the panic in my voice. I hated the way it shook.
“Tell her, Orious,” Belikon said in a bored voice. “The Alchemist will learn eventually. And it’s better for us if she understands her predicament sooner rather than later.”
Orious, bootlicker that he was, bowed until he was bent double at the waist. “Certainly, Your Majesty.” He rose and set about explaining.
“You might assume that you are surrounded by trees right now, but you would be wrong. These are no ordinary trees. They were once a clan of dryads. Self-righteous and arrogant as they were, they took it upon themselves to stand up to one of the northern witch clans. No one really remembers why. That doesn’t matter.
What matters is that they lost their feud and suffered the consequences forthwith.
The witches cursed the dryads and turned them into these prisons.
They were damned to find no solace or comfort in the daylight that they worshipped and instead were doomed to feed only on the suffering and misery of others.
The witches transformed the dryads into everything they abhorred .
. . and here they still stand today, fueled by the fear and the never-ending pain of those they house inside of them.
They keep their prisoners alive, you know.
Their relationship becomes symbiotic. It’s fascinating really. I have—”
“Enough, Orious. I think she understands now,” Belikon intoned.
His seneschal stopped speaking, falling into an even deeper bow than the first.
To me, the king said, “These dryads are on my land. They exist at my discretion. They obey me in everything, and in return I keep them fed. Try to cut this one down or hack your mate free, and it will kill him in an instant. They’ve turned into spiteful things over the years.
” He laughed. “I have to admit, I admire their ability to inspire such fear into their captives. Sometimes, if you place your hand against their trunks, they’ll show the symphony of terror they are conducting inside the minds of those they harbor within. ”
“Let him go,” I seethed. “You know Malcolm’s horde killed the people of Gillethrye. Fisher had nothing to do with it!”
“Fisher has been nothing but trouble since the moment he was born, and the only way I will suffer him to live is like this, where he can’t stir up my people and cause any more trouble.
He will remain here until I am satisfied he no longer poses a threat to my crown.
He will stay here,” he repeated, “until I have seen you bow before the Firinn Stone and you have rendered yourself Oath Bound into my service. You will accept this without complaint, and after you have proven yourself to me . . . become my tool to wield, eventually, in a couple thousand years, I may set him free. This is the only way he lives, girl,” Belikon sneered. “Make your peace with it.”
I would not make my peace with it. Never in a million years.
But Belikon didn’t know that. He thought he had me cornered with nowhere to go.
I nodded to the god sword still churning out black smoke on the stone at the foot of Fisher’s prison.
“And Nimerelle?” I asked. “What happens to Fisher’s god sword while he’s trapped inside this prison for thousands of years? ”
Belikon’s gaze was feverish as it fell upon the sword in question.
“Since Kingfisher stole what was rightfully mine and took Solace when he fled the palace, it’s only right that I take his god sword from him.
Soon, the oubliette will consume your mate.
When the dryad encapsulates him fully, it will not kill him, but he will enter a state very much like death.
The bond between god sword and male will be broken, and Nimerelle will be mine.
A gratifying justice, I think. With such a legendary god sword in my hand, I will bring those who refuse to bow before me to their knees by force.
For the good of Yvelia—” His words died on his lips. “Wait. What are you doing?”
I had used the time while he was speaking to press Erromar and Selanir together. The short swords had become one again, reforming Solace. The singular sword was far bigger than was comfortable for me, but I could wield it just fine. And I was going to need two hands for what was coming next.
“He isn’t staying in that thing.” It was a statement. A simple fact.
Orious barked out harsh laughter, though he shuffled his feet. “Stubborn until the end, Your Majesty. What did I tell you? She can’t be reasoned with.”
But Belikon wasn’t listening to his seneschal. He was staring, eyes narrowed into slits, at me. “What are you hiding, girl? What do you know?”
I took a step forward. “I know the history of that god sword over there. Do you?”
The bastard’s frown deepened. He drew his cloak about him, arranging the fabric so that it hung correctly at his feet. “It is a sword, half-breed. Swing and it cuts. What else do I need to know?”
“It was given to Fisher by the gods themselves. Did you know that it’s made of iron?”
The king laughed dismissively. “Don’t be stupid. No member of the Fae can wield iron. One second holding that in his bare hands, and the dog would have been dead. He’s carried it since Ajun—”