Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
She glances over her shoulder, as if he might be marching through Elfhame at that moment.
I crawl forward, reaching for the spiderweb spells spun around Conrad, but the queen turns and hisses, stepping in my way.
I find myself grabbing hold of her skirt instead; she’s still wearing the gown of scaled red silk; it feels like the skin of a snake.
The knitting needle slides from my hand.
“Let him go,” I plead.
“Let him go?” she replies. “He broke his faith with me, failed in his duties, and sentenced my world and my people to destruction. Even now my fae clamor to escape. They will flee straight onto the end of my brother’s sword, and those who surrender to him he will add to his own ranks.
And then he will turn his eye on your people, little witch.
Tell me, how does it feel to know you’ve started a war that will see the deaths of millions? ”
“Conrad didn’t know what would happen when he broke that branch off the Dwirra. If you must do this, use me instead!”
“No,” Conrad rasps.
“There’s hardly anything of you left,” Morgaine comments, without much feeling.
She turns back to the tree, putting her hand on the feverish bark.
“Human energy is the strongest there is, stronger even than my own. You mortals burn so hot for so short a time . . . it is fitting that the one who harmed the Dwirra should be the one whose life would heal it.”
But she looks uncertain, despairing even.
“It’s not working, is it?” I whisper, gazing at Conrad, who watches me through glazed eyes.
A tremor rolls through Morgaine; she stares across Elfhame. “I kept them safe for three hundred years. Three hundred years, and all my work is undone by a mortal man with a common infatuation.”
“Your work was undone by your brother,” I retort.
“Indeed. I should have killed him when I took his throne, but I was too soft. I have always been too soft. He told me it would be my undoing, and he was right.”
“You’re not soft,” I reply. “You’re . . . capable of love. I know how you cared for the moorwitches, who came here to learn from you. I know what Liam North was to you. And I know about Sylvie.”
She stiffens, her eyes snapping to my face, and on the ground, Conrad draws in a sharp breath.
“She’s your daughter,” I say. “And you loved her enough to send her away from you, to protect her. You watch her from afar, and she knows you only as a ghost. So I know you’re not like Lachlan, and that you can yet feel love.
You must love Conrad too—you’ve known him all his life.
He’s danced in your revels, stood guard at your doorstep. So don’t do this to him. Please.”
“And what ought I to do, then, little witch? Lead my people out of Elfhame, to their slaughter or surrender? Then wage war on your kind, as my brother wants? How many of you mortals shall I snuff out before I meet my end with your iron in my belly? What ought I to do?”
Even as she scorns me, she seems to plead for a true answer. Her eyes pin me in place, vibrant as cut emerald.
I stare at her wordlessly. I do not know. I cannot begin to think of how this can end in any way that doesn’t involve people dying, myself and Conrad first.
Morgaine closes her eyes, then shudders. “We are too late. He is here.”
The air behind her fragments, separating like fibers being pulled apart. For a moment, I see the now-familiar chaos of the thread-world through the gap. And then Lachlan steps through, alone and shining in his silver armor, his sword sheathed.
Morgaine turns to meet him, and for a terrible moment, their eyes lock and the whole of Elfhame seems suspended between them.
I dart behind the queen and throw myself beside Conrad, pulling at the cobwebs clinging to him.
“You came back,” he says, whether in appreciation or admonishment I cannot tell.
“Of course I did, you fool.” I kiss him gently, quickly, a desperate press of lips and breath. Cradling his heavy head in my hand, I touch my forehead to his. “I left my heart here.”
“That’s all right.” A languid smile spreads across his parched lips. He does not seem entirely conscious, but still manages to murmur back, “You can have mine.”
I am as weak as he, yet I hold his head to my shoulder, my other hand pressed to the bare skin of his back. He is pallid, even his hair drained of its shine. I can feel his pulse fluttering weakly in his chest, and I wonder how much of him she stole.
Morgaine doesn’t seem to notice us. Her brother consumes her whole attention, and to them, we may as well be mossy lumps.
“Brother,” she says.
Lachlan’s smile is slow and self-assured, a cat certain of his prey. “I got tired of waiting for you, my dear sister.”
“Did you really think I would simply lay down my crown?”
They are remarkably cool with one another, as if they were exchanging chilly glares over a fine dinner, and not engaged in a standoff for a kingdom.
“Where’s Sylvie?” Conrad whispers.
“She’s safe, for now. Do you think you can walk?”
He gives a dry laugh. His skin is cold to the touch, as if he’s been walking in the snow.
“You weren’t supposed to come back,” he says. “You were supposed to take her and run away.”
“Things got . . . complicated, I’m afraid.”
Lachlan steps toward Morgaine, his hand going to his sword. She reacts with a flick of her hands, and twin daggers of obsidian, their hilts studded with blood rubies, appear in her palms.
“Not another move, brother,” she warns.
He scowls and brushes his shoulder, flicking off a spider. “I’m not here to bargain or offer treaties. Step down or be torn down. That is all. Take the first route and live as my prisoner. Take the second, and you die in your hole in the ground.”
“We could have been happy,” she says. “We could have lived here forever, if you hadn’t slaughtered my moorwitches. It would have been a small existence, but not a bad one.”
“Can a lion lower himself to play house cat?” With that, he lunges at her, drawing his sword in a bright arc of silver. She meets him with daggers raised, and the clash they make is like a flash of lightning.
Conrad and I pull back as the din of the faerie battle grows louder.
I hear the rip of shredding cloth, and peek over to see more fae threadwalking out of thin air, appearing on the grass and in the enclave below.
Screams sound from the root-houses and are followed by the clash of more weapons, silver and obsidian and stone.
Lachlan’s army is equipped and prepared; Morgaine’s is caught off guard, in the midst of panic and terror.
It is easy to tell which way this battle will go, even with the great spider-wolves streaming out of the Wenderwood to hurl themselves on the enemy.
The queen gives no ground. She fights as well as her brother, and they move as I’ve never seen anything move before, faster than the eye can follow, from one end of the Dwirra hill to the other.
Morgaine has slashed the sides of her skirt, freeing her legs so she can dance around Lachlan like one of her spiders, lightning quick, stabbing and retreating again.
He, meanwhile, is a tower, unassailable, defending her slashes and returning blows with devastating power.
There is not a single misstep between them, no clumsy stumbles, no awkward parries.
They fight as if they were gods, with terrifying precision.
Every blow they trade seems to make the very air shudder in response.
Leaves from the Dwirra twirl around them; their smooth spinning raises whirlwinds that rustle the great Tree’s branches.
“She’s getting weaker,” Conrad says, though I don’t know how he sees it. “All her people are. They rely on the Dwirra for strength, while the Briar King and his exiles have grown independent of it.”
I look up at the Tree.
If Morgaine falls, war will follow. Blackswire will be the first battle, and it will be horribly brief.
Lachlan will burn every house to the ground, murder every person and child in it, and move on to the next.
My people will not know what hit them. Not more than a handful of them truly believe in the fae at all, but a week from now, the fires will burn from north to south, and Fates only know what the final death toll will be. But it will be great.
“We have to help her,” I say.
“How? Look at us.” He is bitter and resigned, and still so weak.
A tempest of defiance roars through my chest, sharply probing the bleeding fractures of my heart, filling my lungs with hot anger.
Enough!
I am done being pulled about by other people’s strings.
I wish I had the power of the Fates to reweave the world, to pick up the threads of reality and—
“Oh!” I gasp.
Conrad frowns, confused, as I dig through my pockets until I find the shard from the portal glass, the one I’d picked up off the grass in the stone circle, and had used to cut Lachlan’s spells out of Sylvie’s hair.
“What good is that?” Conrad asks.
Maybe it’s no good at all. But Fates, I have to try.
When I tilt it toward my face, I see it again—the thread-world, with its teeming, festering strings swirling all about. It is a very small window, and certainly no means of escape, but it just might be enough.
All it takes to change your fate is a bit of thread.
“Here goes,” I say. I’m starting to feel strange. My head seems to be lifting off my shoulders, and the sound of the battle is growing dim in my ears. I feel as if somewhere deep inside me, some crucial thread is frayed through, about to snap.
It’s nearly midnight. The thought is vague, as if spoken by someone else, and oddly emotionless. I have to hurry.
“Rose, are you all right?”
I blink at Conrad, and feel my heart slow, a clock winding down to its final ticks.
“I . . . I think I’m about to . . .”
“Connie!”
We both freeze at the sound of the voice that rings across the hilltop. Even Morgaine and Lachlan fall silent, spaced yards apart after another parry.
All of us turn to stare at Sylvie North standing in full view, her now-short black hair curling around her cheeks, her emerald green eyes wide and full of fear and yet a little wonder too, wonder at the faerie king and queen engaged in a battle right out of her storybooks.
But the fae are staring at her too: Morgaine with naked astonishment, her breast heaving, lips parted as she takes in the sight of her daughter. And Lachlan—with sudden cunning, as he looks from Morgaine to the girl.
The Briar King moves first, diving at Sylvie with his sword raised. Morgaine screams and lunges after him, but it is Conrad who rises to block the faerie’s blade. It is Conrad, teeth clenched and eyes dark with fury, who raises his arm and takes the edge of Lachlan’s sword to his own flesh.
“No!” Sylvie screams.
Blood pours down Conrad’s arm, the laird grunting with pain but holding his ground, blocking his sister from Lachlan’s murderous intent. The faerie leans on him, putting his weight into the sword and driving it deeper into Conrad’s arm, until it strikes bone.
But Conrad does not yield an inch. The veins in his neck stand out like vines, and his eyes are wide and glazed with what must be shattering pain. I watch with horror fracturing me in two, the whole of me frozen in place, unable to even cry out for the knot in my throat.
“Foolish mortal.” Lachlan laughs, though I catch a flash of irritated surprise in his silver gaze at the laird’s defiance. “I did promise I would kill—”
He cuts short with a strained grunt. His eyes grow wide, his mouth slack, as Conrad twists the iron knitting needle deeper into his side. He must have picked it up after I’d dropped it. And now the long, thin rod is half buried in the faerie.
“That,” Conrad gasps, “is for my father.”
Lachlan’s eyes flicker from the wound, which leaks silvery blood, to Conrad’s face in disbelief.
It is only when Morgaine slips by to drag Sylvie to safety that Conrad’s legs give out. He drops to one knee, never breaking eye contact with the faerie, his arm drenched in red from wrist to shoulder and his face white as snow. His hand drops from the knitting needle to dangle at his side.
Conrad’s gaze drifts to my face, his glassy eyes struggling to focus. “Rose . . .”
With a snarl of disgust, Lachlan slices his sword free of Conrad’s arm with a spray of crimson, then swirls it and stabs the point toward the laird’s exposed throat.
I thrust my hand into the glass shard, my fingers passing through as if the glass were the still surface of a pool.
And my hand closes around the Fates’ own threads.