Amarantha smiled at him, her lips a savage red, flashing white teeth. Her armor was pitch-black with lines of glowing red where the plates fit together, fitted to her body, showing the voluptuous curves alongside a sense of immense deadliness. She dropped the crossbow entirely, unsheathing twin blades instead, each serrated and slightly curved at the end, like a set of wickedly sharp fangs. "Just checking the work of my new army, making sure they did as told. Honestly, it's like these tens of thousands of fae have just been waiting for someone like me to give them a purpose again. And so I have. You know, the second Illyrian band we invaded simply agreed to help us right away?"
"Did they?" Cassian snarled. He'd have to figure out which band it was and make sure they regretted that choice.
"They did," Amarantha said sweetly. "And so we let them go. They sent their best men with us, darling bat. We left their elders, their women and children, alone."
Cassian hated to admit it, but he could see the reasoning in that, why they'd done what they did. He'd still have to make sure it never happened again. He backed away from her as she moved closer, keeping Siphon-blades ready. The burning camp was a circle of flame around them, smoke that made him cough, that smelled not just of pitch and thatch and wood but also a sick-sweet smell he recognized all too well as burning bodies.
"Also," Amarantha continued, "getting some fresh air. I am loving the air up here in the north. Maybe I'll build a second court here... Wait. Are you important?" She asked, tilting her head at him. Then she struck, testing with one blade, which he easily countered.
Another try. Another counter. He gritted his teeth at the madness in her eyes, now that she was so close to him. The twist of insanity, some ancient pain that had eaten her alive a long time ago, until the lunacy itself was all that was left. He wondered if the young Spring lord, then just a younger son, had seen this in her eyes when she had first propositioned him, if that was why he'd said no.
"I don't know. Depends on who you are." Their blades slammed together. Then again. She moved back, slowly, toying with him. He growled as they matched blades again, his muscles rippling at the strength in her swing. "What are you doing here? You made a deal with my lord-"
"Oh, did I? How strange, I must have broken it," She purred. She wore a thin band of entwined gold, a crown that sat lightly on her head, with a single blood-red ruby the size of her own fist that hug just over the center of her forehead. Cassian thought of his own red Siphons and felt vaguely ill, that anything on him should look so much like anything on her.
She attacked him again, this time in a wild flurry with both blades that he just barely kept up with. She kept coming, kept pushing him, as she snarled. "Do you know-" CLANG "how many of my ideas have failed-" CRASH "with him? He's so bloody strong." A shrieking screech as blade was forced to slide against blade. "Torture? Nothing. Sex? He's better at it than he's ever been, you're welcome by the way, and never tells me a thing." They hit each other with blades crossed this time, all four meeting at an angle in the middle. Cassian felt himself forced back a couple of steps, the ache in his chest from the crossbow bolt rising as his heart rate rose in battle. Amarantha slid the swords away and backed up again. "I can't force him to talk, like I can with my sweet Tamlin. I just wish Tamlin had anything worth taking any longer."
"My condolences," Cassian snapped. Her ranting was unsettling, her voice a little too high-pitched, her eyes too wide and white-rimmed. By the Cauldron, was this what Rhys had to feign desire for in bed? He tried a direct attack and she countered, easily, hardly breaking a sweat.
CRASH. Blades hit again. Cassian had to throw up a Siphon-shield to hold off a sword, and the momentum off it knocked him back, stumbling a few feet before he took his fighting stance again. "It took me five decades to correctly guess how I could break the cruel, merciless High Lord of Night. Fifty years to fuck him up so badly he'd give me what I wanted. Fifty. Years. But I figured it out!" Her smile, from behind the blades she held crossed in front of her, was full of triumph. "And now I'm going to get everything I want." Those eyes suddenly focused on his, and the intensity of them threatened to drive him mad, too. "Have you ever met him, in person? Rhys? Your lord?"
"Have I-... no. I'm just… I just take orders. I'm a lesser general of the fifth division. The Night Court isn't exactly… welcoming." This wasn't working. He was tiring too quickly, and she was keeping up with every strike. She was a legendary general, Hybern's greatest warrior. He'd just thought all this time playacting at royalty would have cost her edge in battle He'd been wrong.
Cassian tried to keep his eyes on her and still look all around him for an exit plan. Each time he tried, though, she attacked again, keeping his eyes on her, his body focused on defense. He couldn't take off like this, he couldn't get the purchase, she kept him constantly moving. Strike. Parry. Strike again.
Strike- and he got her, slicing across her arm. She pulled it back with a hiss, but the lunatic good humor never left her face. She slashed back at him with both blades, a wild joy in her face that was more frightening that swords ever could be. He managed to back away, evade the hits, but she didn't stop trying.
"You look familiar," She said softly, as though she knew what he was thinking, taking a few steps back herself. Both of them were breathing hard by now. Then she let out a peal of laughter, a sound of absolute and consummate beauty twisted by long centuries of hatred. "All you Illyrians look alike to me, though. Do you do that on purpose?" She flickered a smile, and it was seductive, wicked, and made his stomach sink somewhere near his knees. "Hey, general, is it true what they say about Illyrian wingspans?"
He moved forward as if to attack, but his sword and shield faltered. He looked down, seeing his Siphons flickering wildly, before they came back.
"Oooh, look at that," Amarantha purred. "How embarrassing. Don't worry, general. I'm sure that happens to every male sooner or later."
His chest ached where the crossbow bolt had gone through. It had somehow hit in the exact space between two of the armored scales, a space of less than half an inch of vulnerability. She'd known exactly how to aim for him. She brought her blades up and he struggled, this time, to parry effectively. She caught his blades in hers, twisted hard, and both his small swords went clattering away. He scrambled back, keeping to his feet, though only just.
"You agreed to leave us alone," He said quietly, buying time as he backed further away. The heat of the houses afire all around them was making him sweat, made the world seem to wave, slightly, as though it were no longer real. If he could just buy some more time, Keir was supposed to be rallying the troops-
Keir isn't coming, he realized, and cursed himself for his stupidity. Of course not. Keir had told him to take this pass, to come this way. Keir had given him the name of this camp as the first place to stop, because he'd already known where she would be.
Keir had sold them out.
He went into a low defensive crouch, backing away from her, towards another corpse nearby. He just needed time to draw a regular sword…
"What's an Illyrian doing in the Dawn Court?" Azriel heard one of them hiss to another.
"Spying for the Night Court, no doubt," The other one replied. Azriel slit the throat of a half-armored lesser fae who ran at him, turned in a motion as smooth as dance, and plunged his daggers into another. Truth-Teller lay dormant at his back, forgotten, as he poured all his energy into the Siphon-blades he wielded. He had no time to unsheathe his true blade. They were on him, never stopping, never slowing, they were on him-
Azriel spun, blades out, taking three out at once. The odds hadn't been good, but Azriel had been alive a long time, and he trafficked in beating the odds.
Azriel smiled. It was a bright, cheerfully sunny smile, and on him it looked like the death-grin on a long-bleached skull. "Do you know how long it's been since I've had the chance to work like this?"
The remaining raiding party backed away from him, slowly, biding their time. Beyond them, the empty cabin beckoned. Lucien had gone in and not come back out. Whatever he was doing, Azriel had thrown himself in with him, and he intended to live long enough to see the book that Lucien's riddle talked about.
Azriel took in a deep breath, smelling the morning glories, the dawn around him lighting the whole world like a song, a bright and beautiful day. Underneath it all, the unmistakable, familiar scent of someone else bleeding.
Azriel, smiling still, moved forward to slaughter them all.
"I thought you stayed Under the Mountain," Cassian hissed.
"I don't have to," Amarantha murmured, as they continued to circle each other, warily. She was herding him, he realized, keeping him away from the corpses with weapons he could reach. Each moment they did this dance was one moment more the ache in his chest grew worse and worse where the crossbow bolt had gone in. The pain was throbbing with his heart as it pushed the poison through his blood, as whatever she'd coated it with spread. It wasn't faebane, but… his Siphons had gone dormant.
"I've been in so many battles," Amarantha said, voice breathy, tilting her head absurdly to the side, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. "So many. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Cassian said gruffly, a little unwillingly. She stepped closer and he backed up, nearly tripping over a dead lesser fae, but caught himself.
"I got so tired of fighting." She pouted, just slightly. "It makes me so bored. So now…"
A crossbow bolt came from somewhere behind him, and Cassian gasped as it went through his left wing and out the other side, burying itself in a nearby tree. At almost the same moment, a different one hit the right wing.
"Now," Amarantha said brightly, "I cheat."
Even as he tried to pull his wings further in, to defend against it, a third bounced off the back of his armor along his shoulder blade, the momentum sending him stumbling forward a step. A fourth, a fifth, shredding themselves through his wings. A sixth he managed to evade by spinning to the side. A seventh found his knee, buckling it beneath him, and he fell forward onto the ground.
Cassian raised his head, trying to scramble back up to fight again even as his knee shrieked in protest, and found one of the jagged, curved swords was held to his throat. He swallowed and tried to sit back a little, the sword following him, just barely grazing his skin.
He raised his hazel eyes to meet her gaze.
"By the Mother," Amarantha whispered an appreciative smile on her face. "You're not exactly pretty, not like Rhys. But you… Look at the hate in you. I'll bet you're a firebrand in bed."
Cassian spat at her.
She laughed, again, not even bothering to wipe it away, and the sound bounced around, echoing around the bodies and the burning homes. "That's fine. I don't fuck animals, anyway."
"Where are the other Il-Iluh-Illyrians?" His voice was beginning to slur. He couldn't seem to think quickly enough, his muscles not quite answering his mind. Soldiers stepped up, soldiers he hadn't seen before because he'd been too… distracted. Damn it. She'd distracted him while they got into position. Stupid. He'd been too thrown off by seeing her in person, hadn't paid attention the way he should have. "Where are my people?"
He understood her taunting, her hesitation to begin the fight, now. All those strikes and parries, the constant dance she'd led him on. All of that was just buying time to let the poison spread. Stupid stupid stupid. He was having trouble swallowing. The throb of his heartbeat was becoming an agony. He tried to stand, only to feel his injured knee simply give out, forcing him back down. One of those wicked serrated edges scraped along his neck, drawing blood. He stilled himself, slowly raising his bare hands into the air.
"Safe," Amarantha whispered. "Most of them. What's your name?"
Cassian stayed silent. She pressed the edge just a bit further, but still, Cassian said nothing. He cut his eyes away, finally, seeing more blades on every side. Frankly, it was a little flattering that they believed they needed so many.
Everything hurt, pain beat through his body with the pulse of the poison. His wings, his chest, his back… He could barely keep his hands up. He wanted to ask her about Rhys, how he was, what she'd done to him over the past five decades. Nuala and Cerridwen said so much, but he knew there was much more that Rhys made them swear not to tell. Still… he shouldn't give away that he knew him personally. Not when he knew something important, now - that she had no idea who he was.
"Fair enough," Amarantha said thoughtfully. "Nobody else wanted to tell me theirs, either. Well, give it time." She looked to the soldiers behind him. "Take that armor off. Now. Keep it. I want it on display."
Cassian kept his hands up as lesser fae swarmed, using the Siphons to bring in his armor, taking the gauntlets away. Taking the Siphons right off of him, leaving him in only the thin shirt and pants he usually wore underneath. One of them yanked the crossbow bolt straight out of his chest and he let out a low-pitched scream of pain and rage, even as they kept him from falling over, even as blood began to spill.
"No no no," Amarantha soothed. "No, my lamb. None of that." She leaned over, pressing her hand over the blood burbling from the wound, and he felt a sudden spike of heat, a pain even worse than the bolt had been, his face white with it, teeth ground down against it. The wound closed… unhealed on the inside, the poison continued to spread. But at least the bleeding stopped.
His mind was full of fog and he could feel his heartbeat slowing. "Wh… what was on those crossbow bolts?" He asked, looking back up at her, swaying back and forth. She wavered in the heat. In and out of black. "Just… you know… for edu- ed-... learning reasons. Not related... an'thing. Just… that's… thass not faebane, some… thing elsssse..."
Amarantha laughed. "Oh, you're as funny as your lord, little drugged one. No, it's not faebane. You should feel flattered, Illyrian. This particular poison has been in development for fifty years. And I made it..." She leaned down, touching the end of his nose to emphasize each word as she spoke it. "Just… for… you. Or, well, someone like you. All you need to have to be a good tool is someone you love. And you won't remember a thing." She looked up, her eyes fixed just behind him. "Take him out. Let's finish up the remaining camps and send word to Keir. We're done here. Tell him he'll find his reward at the rocky island just outside the Silver Straight. Can't have allies if I don't pay handsomely, hm? I better get back home before my darling boys realize I'm gone and start to miss me."
The hilt of a sword smashed down onto his head and Cassian collapsed backwards into the grass. Four of the lesser fae picked him up, one by each limb, and carried him away. Cassian stared up at the black, starless sky until he passed out completely.
Azriel, where are you?