Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
HORNHALL
S ure enough, the catacombs were a hive of activity. Just as the child had claimed. What Katarra didn’t understand was how they’d gone unnoticed.
Granted, she’d failed to find anything of interest in them when she first arrived at Hornhall. But she didn’t live here. How Archer and his men never suspected there were rebels housed beneath their city… It was incomprehensible.
So bewildering that she had conducted her own little test.
Luring the dungeon guard had been easy. A wink and a promise had the idiot abandoning his post, following her past the last cell, then down a dimly lit tunnel. He only started to balk when she revealed a child-sized door, blending in with the brick and mortar.
A flash of tits had cured him of hesitation, and he followed her through it. To where the frigid subterranean passageway descended sharply into a pitch-black abyss. The labyrinth of bones and twisting underground tunnels stretched on from there. It would be easy to get lost.
Based on the scents–the varying degree of decomposition–more than a few unlucky visitors had joined the ranks of the dead in recent weeks. Interestingly, the eager guard seemed to care not as he pressed her up against the cold stone wall.
Katarra had been tempted to go with it at first. Who was she to deny a necromantic kink?
Unfortunately, even she couldn’t fantasize her way around the truth. She’d lured an insipid male down here. Not an interesting one.
When she dislodged his fatty tongue from her mouth, she asked where he thought they were. He looked at her strangely. Then replied earnestly, “A broom closet.”
It wasn’t the answer she expected. But it solved her quandary. The fool had no idea where they actually were.
She killed him on the spot.
It felt good, draining the life from his worthless veins. It had been too long since she’d broken an ironclad rule of the commander’s. Eating a Hornhall guard was a doozy. She’d promised him she would only dine on ne’er-do-wells and vagabonds; fae that served little purpose to the crown and wouldn’t raise suspicion if they went missing.
A zing skittered over her skin at the rebellion. She wanted to fight, to fuck, to kill…
Katarra made herself focus. Her kingdom was at stake.
Spelled! The catacombs had been spelled from view. That explained why none of the occupants above knew of the occupants below.
So then, who were the newly dead down there? All rebels? Katarra might rationalize that she could see the underground network of tunnels due to not being fae. That didn’t explain how Oakley was able to see past the spell.
Curious…
Katarra licked the last trace of blood from her lips and strolled back the way she had come, taking the stairs that led up from the dungeon. It didn’t matter how the child knew. Or why the High-fae of Hornhall didn’t. She had enough information to win back her kingdom. She took a right at the top of the stairs. All she needed was an audience with–
Someone slammed her face-first into the side of the wall.
“Fancy finding you here,” he purred in her ear.
Both her arms pinned behind her, with his body pressing into her back, Katarra turned her face as much as she could. It was enough to make out the elongated canines poised at her throat. She knew them well. Knew the feeling of them puncturing her flesh.
“Hello, Dagan,” she said sweetly. “Is my son with you?”
Katarra could feel the shape of his smile against her neck as he twisted her wrists tighter, his body an immovable force against her. “Why in seven hells would I tell you anything?”
“Because you like me.” She grinned, despite the pain. “At least, your cock does. It’s leaving a rather large impression on my back.”
Those fangs came down on her throat, not hard enough to puncture, just firm enough to warn that they could. She held still, so very still. Until he retracted them and growled, “Attraction was never our problem.”
He shoved off her.
Katarra peeled her bruised cheek off the cold stone and turned to face him. Beneath the hooded black cloak, he was just as striking as she remembered. Tall, muscle-bound with shoulder-length hair the same color as his onyx eyes. But it was the ruthless personality and vicious temper that had once drawn her to the High-fae warrior.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?” Dagan looked her up and down, nostrils flaring. “That I wouldn’t scent you out?”
“The last I heard you were in Dubai.” Katarra rubbed the sting off her wrists. “Interfering in Earthly politics. Where I had hoped you’d stay.”
“I bet you did.” He stared her down.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think your feelings were hurt.”
“I know why you’re here, Katarra. Wearing this…” Again his steely gaze swept over her. “...inferior skin. ”
“Another compliment.” She smiled up at him. “I‘d say fatherhood has defrosted something in you.”
He took a menacing step toward her. “Listen to me and listen well. That throne belongs to Xavier.”
Katarra held his stare. She wasn’t stupid enough to go toe to toe with him. He was too strong. The deadliest fighter she’d ever seen. Other than Archer.
Which was why she had chosen him to be her son’s sire.
“You seem to forget how succession works, Dagan.”
Another step closer. “You lost that right when you lost the crown.”
“A temporary setback.”
“One I see you’re well on your way to correcting,” he said. “Which is why I’m here. To hold you to the promise you made me.”
“The promise that became null and void when you betrayed me.” She arched a brow. “Aligning with Thaddaeus instead. Costing me my crown.”
He reached out and grasped a strand of her hair, rubbing the blonde locks between his thumb and fingers. “It’s remarkable. Almost as soft as your real hair.”
“Sort of like your shapeshifting abilities,” she said. “ Almost as good as a real dragon.”
He let go of her hair and compressed his lips. “You’re in my kingdom. If you want your throne back, you’ll have to play by my rules.”
Katarra didn’t dare avert her gaze. “And they are?”
Dagan stepped back. “Win the tourney, ask for your army, take back Gerra. And marry me.”
“So romantic.”
“Just do as I say.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What will you be doing in the mean time?”
“Clearing a path,” he concluded with a flash of teeth.
Someone turned the corner at the end of the hall. Katarra didn’t need to see past the High-fae warrior to know who it was. She could tell by the familiar stalking gait.
The sudden gleam in her ex-lover’s eyes proved he likewise knew the identity of the male headed their way. A shudder went down her spine, violent enough she had to ball her fists to keep them from shaking.
Dagan slipped effortlessly into his courtly persona and spoke, smooth and unhurried. “Hello, nephew.” He grinned, but didn’t turn. “What an unusual champion you have this year.”
A rcher had studied the champion enough over the past weeks to discern most of her moods, down to the minute details she thought no one else could detect.
There–the faint muscle that twitched just under her left eye. A clear marker. A last-ditch effort to rein in her true nature, to not give over to whatever rage was now riding her. It told him all he needed to know about the encounter transpiring in this hall.
His uncle, the Wolf of Ventus, turned and smiled, teeth gleaming from under his hood. “Wherever did you find her?”
“Kellimont,” Archer replied. Though he knew Dagan could care less. His uncle never asked a question he didn’t already know the answer to. “Did you arrive alone?”
“I brought a few friends.” Dagan pushed the hood back from his face. “They should be entertaining your poor distraught mother about now.”
Archer knew who those friends consisted of then. The Pack. Ruthless, lightning swift cutthroats loyal only to his father’s bloodline. Ingrained from birth to protect and kill for his family.
The same males his father had warned him about before he was murdered. They couldn’t be trusted. Not unless Archer denounced all ties to Hornhall. Only then would they follow him as they had his father and uncle .
The Pack, and their unwavering devotion to the Voltaire line, was one of many great mysteries surrounding his famed family tree. A lineage with secrets they didn’t even trust with themselves. That spoke more about the family than its secrets.
“Your timing is…” Archer looked again at Katarra, then his uncle. “...appropriate.”
“You’re being generous, nephew.” Dagan smiled again, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time. “If our arrival was appropriate, I would have gotten here in time to stop the rebels from stealing my family.”
“It wasn’t meant as a compliment,” Archer said evenly. “Your timing is, as is it has been since the day of your birth, too late.”
Dagan squared off with him, eyes growing hard as coals. Riling him had always been too easy. Archer’s uncle might be one of the most skilled fighters to ever roam the realms, perhaps the best, but his pride was his Achilles heel. It would always keep him in his place.
A place, if Archer could help it, that would remain far away from any throne.
“As much as I love a good family squabble,” Katarra interrupted, sounding bored. “I have things–far more interesting things–to be doing with my time.”
She turned and headed away from them, her every movement brimming with unfaltering confidence. They both watched her go. All the way to the other end of the hall, hips and hair swaying in opposition.
Only when she rounded the corner did Dagan say, “Have you fallen for her yet?”
The question came with equal parts surprise and confirmation. He knew her .
Knew her…and was willing to keep her secret.
Why?
Archer didn’t let himself consider the question further. The truth of it might carry a price tag he couldn’t afford.
Windsong
T he princess stood at the rail of the round stone turret, facing the endless ocean, her honey-blonde hair stirred gently by the occasional wandering breeze. Beyond her, the moon bathed the water’s surface in diamonds so bright and white it mimicked the stars. It was hard to tell where the sky ended and the sea began.
“No one said their names,” she mused aloud, almost to herself. “The names of the fae that did not survive today.” The princess continued to stare out over the calm waters. “They’re somewhere out there, in unmarked graves.”
“We can say them now,” Glenton suggested. He leaned against the curve of the opposite railing. The tremendous pines of the forest were nothing more than dark smudges across the sprawling landscape behind him.
The princess turned her profile to them. “I’d like that.”
Bastian, hands in his pockets, stepped up beside her. Glenton eased off the rail and joined the two of them. Together they looked out over the glassy water, between the crenels that once shielded archers, in a quiet vigil for those drowned at sea.
Sage hung back just watching the unlikely trio. The mood had taken a somber turn the second they had stepped onto the turret. The only space without eyes and ears, the princess claimed.
Indeed, a sense of peace prevailed this high up. As if the castle itself could finally breathe here. Far removed from its nest of occupants below.
Sage felt it then. What they were each likely experiencing. Relief...
She hadn’t noticed how pressing the castles interior actually felt, how the atmosphere had burrowed in–smothering her magic between these ancient walls. But stepping out here…she knew.
Knew some type of darkness had seeped into the stones of this once great structure. The same sickness responsible for the destruction of Arrowren. It was back, in another form. But born of the same vice. Greed.
Sage recognized something else with absolute clarity now, too. As honest and true as the nature all around them. She felt it with every fiber in her being.
Bastian LaGoryen had been placed in her path for a reason.
As if she had called his name, he turned his head to her. Then he smiled, and Sage heard something in her heart shift. A small, twisting sound, like a flower breaking through frozen ground.
The princess looked back over her shoulder, a pain in her eyes Sage understood too well. The guilt of surviving what others did not.
She joined them on the battlement’s edge beside Bastian. Together they said the names of the fae who had gone into the ocean and hadn’t come out. When the last name was called, Sage closed her eyes and said a prayer for those who’d lost their lives before today.
Her breath caught when a strong hand slipped around hers and squeezed gently.
She opened her eyes. Bastian’s were shut and his handsome profile still faced the sea. He exhaled slowly, as if honoring a similar goodbye, then those inky black lashes lifted.
“Now’s probably a good time to tell you my father’s possessed.”
The princess’s words were as direct as a knife, cleaving the night and yanking all their attention to her.
“We need a strategy,” she added, looking to each of them in turn. “Or no one will survive this next tourney.”