Moss crawled over the castle walls, covering rock and concrete growing endless leaving nothing behind but a fuzzy green carpet. Vines slithered around torchlight's and lanterns yes they burned but were quickly extinguished. The frenzy mass of leaves, moss, and vines engulfed the castles walls, the palace was becoming a green house. Nature had a beautiful yet powerful way of overcoming even the most hardest of obstacles.
With each step the Summer King took, floods of flowers and shrubs sprouted nearby. At his feet, columns of rose gardens, strawberry patches, and corn stalks rose. His glow overpowering all other light in the castle, if the vines didn't dowse the fire his glow would. He could smell blood, thick in the palaces hall and his stomach dropped. Dropped hard like the large raindrops that fall from the sky during a rainstorm, a wicked rainstorm. And like the storm the rain kept dropping. His ever-growing worry wouldn't cease. He feared for Ash.
His consort, his Queen. His everything that without her could make him nothing. And he didn't feel like spending another nine centuries searching for her. Not when he was so close to restoring his kingdom, restoring balance between the courts.
And this court, the court he was dimly unaware of-would crush- they had no purpose in the balancing of the courts. This one only set off an imbalance. An imbalance that only took a week to separate and point fingers in all the other courts. He was curious in the origin of this court. Its reason for being, maybe under better circumstances.
As he strode through the palace passing rooms and corridors, he was surprise by the lack of security. Encounters were few and fae rarely present, he calculated that they were already aware of the Kings escape or they were tending to another, important matter.
Ash
That was until the blood started intensifying, growing thicker and heavier. Faerie instinct kicked in at the moment. He recognized or moreover felt her. He ran, as green and grey blurred together, meshing to sick sludge hue. The glow danced on his dazzling and radiant skin, burning where his moss grew then sprouting again over the ash. He knew he was closing in for a trail of blood curled around the corner of rock. As of something was being dragged along that cold, grey rock.
He slowed some, analyzing and calculating the struggle here. Blood painted the walls, one in the shape of a hand the fingers long and streaked. Peering closer he saw bits of dirt clinging to the rocky surface. A tiny smile spread across his face. She fought, she fought hard. Always a fighter, temperament and volatile like his Queen is and should be. He could see where her nails scraped against the wall-due to the dirtied rock surface-and then using the remaining strength grab hold on to the wall with her skin as her only hold. Skin that seared the wall, it was fresh meaning she could still be alive.
Of course, once he looked around the corner he saw a far worse sight than what was once on the wall. After that turn he could see that her struggle didn't last long. The blood trail was more shaped, a pattern revealing no signs of movements or irregularity. The blood was all the same, all the same down a long dark hall.
The blood trail disappearing into the shadows.
"You will not escape," despite Rose's wind, winter was faster. Snarls and tendrils of ices criss-crossed over one another tangling in Rose's feather, shards of ice increasing the weight made her loose attitude. Donia spread her hand, fingers far apart and summon a blizzard towards the wind fae. Around Rose the wind grew crisp, icicles hung from her elegant hair and skin. Frost bite was sitting in and the wind Fae was seething.
"Witch" Rose did a flip before she landed perfectly on the frosted ground. "You're infuriating." She hurled gusts and twisters at the Winter Queen, only to have her wind frozen on the spot. As ice rose like a wave, defending her. The wind around them picked up matching the annoyance and fury emanating from Rosetta. "Curse you!" Again, she hammered away at the ice shield. Summoning wind infused with her energy, fiercer than any twisters wind speed. "You cannot hide behind your igloos of shield forever."
But Donia wasn't. Her shield acting as decoy as she used ice picks and frost to burrow deep into the ground, she was literally drilling into the fortress. "Do you think I inept?" Rose summoned a twister once more drilling into the Queen, locating her, "The wind picks up even the lightest of sounds, all of which I command!" She howled, her twisters digging relentlessly into the ground. Stabbing and cracking the ground till she rid herself of the wintry witch.
"My Queen." Evan dashed into the tormenting winds, despite the plethora of cuts that danced upon his skin. He charged forth with his sword and dagger ready, slicing through the winds.
"What?" Rose would not stand for this, "You better come save your boyfriend, before he's mincemeat." She snapped her fan closed all the wind in the area ceasing. Is her power weakening?
Donia didn't have time to stall; she slammed her hand with fingers spread wide into the ground and summons jagged ice shards all around her.
"What? What's happening? My wind…you!." Again, she was drawing power, like a tsunami draws back from shore and strikes the land with all its might. The wind twirled and whirled in a circular motion just directly above Rose's head before they felt the destructiveness of this wind. It was literally sucking all the air out of the area. With her fan raised she threw her fan forward still clutching it letting the whirling mass suck life out of everything.
With the sword raised high, he sliced through it. He only grinned. "What happened? How did he cut through my hurricane?" Rose glared at Evan but not before an ice shard drove its point around Rose's body. Her elegant sculpted body was nothing more than bloody mess.
From the ground an earthquake rumbled and Donia emerged like geyser. Several ice shards took form from the connecting ice that held Rose in place. From each shard the Queen danced from one ledge to another, ascending higher till she meant the Wind fae's face, "That's for my Fae and my court."
Rose coughed, "you fool those weren't-" Like the Winter Queen before her Donia silenced her watching as ice ebbed her throat and her lips. She waited till the light died from her eyes. She frowned musing whether this was her expression when Beira did the same thing to her.
Almost as elegant as the Wind Fae, she hopped down from the ice pillars and landed on one elegant foot revealing her ankles. With one finger pointed at Evan she spoke with ice chilling her words, "never intervene with my affairs." She whirled around, ice shimmering in the sun.
Evan only smiled knowing it was his doing that saved them both from the terror and destruction without his sword and dagger canceling the wind fae's power it would be her bleeding from the mouth not the other way around.
With his hand he pushed the wooden door open. It creaked like he expected, the door was a dark black color. Darken with mold as if this area hasn't been used in a centuries. He took a step forward, scanning the room till he saw the blood trail cease. He breathed in and held it for five seconds then let it out.
The stench was reeking not of iron or coppers something worse like decaying, bone morrow and other organs. With his bronze hand on his hilt and his hand raised he illuminated the room.
It was as if everything drained away from him again. His ears were ringing, he could feel his face on fire but he knew it wasn't his glow was gone along with what he saw. His hand fell from his hilt and his knees smacked the cold and dried-blood concrete.
He knew he had to stand again, to see just to be sure. But it was like a thousand suns were weighing on him too hot and heavy to carry on his own. And he knew he couldn't carry on his own again. Alone, now that she was... But instead of letting the numbness creep over him. He let the one emotion flood over that he was accustomed too.
Volatile.
With it his skin shined and shone illuminating the room with heat and light that it melt the door behind him. His eyes raged with burning volcanoes and seething lava pools. This wasn't summer no this was the sun in all its rage. He saw her with hair pull and tangled as if someone dragged her by the roots. Her one limp hand above her head, her hand that wasn't bronze nor tanned but pale as the Dark courts.
He edged no he crawled towards her. Reaching for her shoulder, her cold and lifeless shoulder and turned her over. A gasp, a gasp that took all the moss and vines out of the room and turned them into ash. Her eyes stared with emptiness at him, her eyes lidded and her ruby lips were like sapphire. A faded and corpse sapphire hue. Then, he let the tears fall, tears that burned the ground, burning holes through it and causing them to hiss once they hit the surface. He stroked her silk hair; despite being straggled he could make out the blond and gold streaks.
He cupped her cheek, rubbing his thumb over the smooth roundness of the plumpness. Then he finally moved his hand over her eyes, he hesitated before closing them completely. "Forgive me, my Queen." He kissed her forehead watching as he left a sun burn between where her eyebrows came together.
His eyes glided over to her neck and rage consumed him once more. Her beautiful neck, like a swans, like mare's was so brutally slice. Cutting off her air so she couldn't breathe, she died in misery struggling to breathe in her last breathe through two holes. Air that makes the flowers bloom and the bird flutter and sing for her. Air that breathes life into this planet, that without her air that this place would die and decay.
Just like her, he thought bitterly. Ren will die and decay till her dying breathes. He vowed Ash's death will not be in vain. He would make her suffer just as she made Ash suffer. With a prolonged agony and eternal torture she would feel every burn, every cut, and thorn in that perfect alive body.
With care he moved his fingers to her shirt to hide her hideous scars. He couldn't manage the expression of Seth's face if he found her like this. For once he didn't loathe him, but was sympathetic. But it didn't last long; the fae's emotions were not abiding.
When he moved her shirt her body jerked. Ash's mouth rattled with air, entering from two strange openings, and her eyes rolled. "Ash?" It was between trepidation and euphoric, this feeling. It was almost impossible but here it was. He had his hands on either side of her face, oh god the pain she must be in. She kept breathing her body arching, his touch was healing her. He watched as sunlight entered her. Returning the color to her cheek, her hair becoming like a smooth, gentle leaf, but the wounds they weren't healing. They were not closing. Why? Why can't he ever do anything right? With the Summer Girls, with Donia, with Irial, with Niall, with Ash? With anyone, he couldn't save his loved ones only maintain a bloody court. He urged his sunlight faster, regarding the dizziness that overcame him. Come on, he pumped his sun and rain and summer faster but her wound, it was still fresh and still bleeding never closing
"Is she still breathing?" Keenan jumped as the sound of another voice. He didn't even hear her come in. She was at the door, bending over with an arm at her chest around her waist. The summer king dared to move, but fear that Ash would resume her corpse-like form.
The Queen of the Hidden Court looked at the Summer Queen for a mere faerie's breath. "She is?" With an immeasurable speed she was right their beside both Summer King and Queen. Now would be the time to strike. Smash the face in, melt it off with his fiery and solar blast fists, however he saw the girl's condition. And for a moment they saw stared into each other's eyes. Ren saw the fire but also the uncertainty in the King's eyes. "Good. Let's save her." Quickly, she averted her gaze already she could feel her eyes watering from the intense heat and light. She saw dots fly away at the edge of her eyes.
Keenan watched as the girl withdrew her hand from her chest and waist, saw the blood ooze instantly from their wounds and stain her outfit. Dripping and staining the floor more porously than Ash's wound. Her time in this world was limited.
But the next thing he saw made him hesitate made his body still, his Fae heart stop. There in her hands was the answer to it all. The sun was in her hands. The sun and the energy of her court, it was searing her flesh, radiating life and warmth. Around them a forest took form, apple orchid bloom, a fox's den emerged, a thunder storm rumble. "I managed to spare some." Blood dripped from the corner of her lips. "Save your court Keenan." And she handed him the glowing sun into his palms.
I know I haven't update but here it is. Please enjoy and thank you for any reviews. Hope you like it. :D