Chapter 2
KORMAC
That fucking piece of shit pampered prince!
Elven poison filled my veins like a million slugs of ice vying to fill me up. And they did. By the gods, they did.
Curse Prince Valance Rosestar! Curse the name of Rosestar! Curse the seelie and the whole lands of Summer. Hellpiss to the lot of them.
Something crawled in the corner of my eye. Too close, tiny, scuttling over a fallen leaf.
An ant.
Great
I tried to move my limbs, sending an endless stream of orders to every corner of my body.
Come on, limbs. Up! Move!
But I was a fish on dry land, without the flopping. Gods, if only I could move enough to flop and not be this heavy mass ready for ants to come and investigate.
The insect came closer to my eye. Where were the others? I could still blink, and I fluttered my lashes at the hellpissing thing. It wouldn’t have my eyes today. Not ever. I’d get up, and I’d fight, and I wouldn’t let that perfumed ponce have his way with me.
A shame I wasn’t magical at all to force myself up. I couldn’t even brew a basic healing potion like many humans from my village could. If only I’d spent more time learning herbology rather than how to fight, then I might have something in my arsenal to get out of this.
And if only we had elves on the unseelie side to provide poisons. Gods, I’d love some poison to throw in Valance’s face. But only elves knew the poison-making side of herbology, humans skilled in healing and helpfulness, and the pointy-eared folk were all kissing the ass cheeks of the seelie.
Fuck the elves!
Damn. I was at the mercy of the forest and the prince. This was me done for now—until I found another form of escape.
Poor Ren. He was so frail, so broken. We’d been stupid to think we could pull this off.
Sneak into the palace and unleash Ren’s power upon the Rosestar seat of power.
Really, really stupid. Of course, this was destined to fail.
We were two men, not an army. Even if more of us had entered the forest, created a distraction or something, we were no match for these fuckers.
Gods, I wanted to spit at the thought of the royals.
Ren wasn’t a tool but a gift. He was a living thing.
A man with a soul and feelings and dreams of a better life beyond this endless war.
Thirst for power and revenge blinded everyone, including me, to these things.
He was the strongest shadow sorcerer in decades.
Immediately, he’d been cultivated as a weapon.
A sickly fae boy grown into a sickly man, sent into the heart of the enemy with his friend and fractured hope.
Regret is a strange thing. It rises up to gut you at the worst moment.
Hellpiss! Now what? What would they put Ren through?
I had to save him.
Think! Use your hellpissing brain for once!
My dad always told me I’d been knocked on the skull too many times for scholarly work, but that didn’t matter because the likes of me didn’t need our brains. We only needed brawn and a thirst for seelie blood.
I thought my brain was a fair enough brain, though. Held smarts for being out in the real world, not for books and things for softer folk.
The ant changed direction, turning to run at my left side.
Ren had tried his best to deflect the enemy with his two shadow tricks—the four men. Even placed a curse upon one of the prince’s men. But when Valance and the woman cut up two of those tricks, Ren’s composure cracked until it’d fallen apart to expose us.
We’d come so far, traveled through the elements, survived many nights on the road.
Avoided so many dangers, got into fights with bandits.
Well, I’d gotten into those fights and protected him.
My axe had spilled a lot of blood. All of it could have broken Ren, but it didn’t.
The horrors of the world outside our village had strengthened the sheltered sorcerer.
Been the fuel to his determination. After all, we’d reached the royal country of Summer.
We’d reached the hellpissing Rosestar Forest, dodged seelie patrols and checkpoints across the lands.
No. This wasn’t his end. Not after everything. This was the start of a new world. He’d recover from using so much magic, and he’d succeed, and we’d get away from here.
I believed in him.
Tickling across my hands and along my arms. Damn! I was covered in insects. Tiny legs on the back of my neck, darting under my clothing. Something bigger, something slimy. More ants coming for my eyes, and an eight-legged monstrosity of fur and many eyes coming right for me.
I didn’t have many fears, but spiders were at the top of a short list. Particularly huge tarantulas of red and black.
A whimper escaped me as it slowly made its way toward my face. I blinked away some ants, many of them now crawling up my face, tickling my nostrils and lips.
By the hellpissing gods!
I clamped my eyes shut and prayed for insect mercy as my flesh literally crawled with an army of forest dwellers.
Oh, sweet damn mercy… Please!