Author's Note: here's the latest update. I don't typically post on a Sunday, but I know we've been running late so I wanted to make sure I got this up on the site now that it's been beta'd and everything. You can get the monthly chapter approximately a week in advance on my Pat. Re. On.
Important Thing: for those who missed it in the last chapter's author's note, Once is not being taken down (although I wish I could chop it up into the different books so it wasn't so unwieldy, but apparently that's against FF's rules, I guess…) in any way. I'm not going to half-heartedly blackmail anyone into donating to me. That might imply some sort of obligation, which I don't want. I want you guys to enjoy the chapter, and the fic as a whole, without any shadows. So enjoy it. I love you guys and write this story to, among other things, make you happy (and also to give Nuada some justice but we all knew that).
There's some nice stuff on my Pat. Re. On., though. There's 2 serialized novels, art for my various projects (including Once), sneak peaks of upcoming fic chapters, early releases of said chapters, playlists, original music written for various projects (including Once), and there's the audiobook version of Once to be downloaded, as well.
I'm also going to have some things available for purchase on Amazon Kindle, for anyone who might be interested. I'll have two short anthologies (one sci-fi anthology and one anthology of retold fairy tales), a contemporary romance novel, and an urban fantasy novella. Go ahead and check me out, see what you think. :) It should be up over the next several days.
Regarding a Current Dust-Up: There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. - Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Last Time on Once Upon a Time: while Nuada spoke with his father, Francesca thought angry thoughts about King Balor, Zhenjin unconsciously sought out Dylan, and Prince Dastan and Petra discussed their personal lives and knife-throwing techniques. When a scream broke the night, everyone rushed out to see what had caused the commotion. Harnessed dragonfire raged through a recently-restored field of crops, fatally burning two innocent people in the process. After Zhenjin and his brothers brought the dragonfire under control and Nuada put the victims out of their misery, Dylan uses her knowledge of psychology and anatomy to discern that the attack is a chilling message…
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Chapter One-Hundred-Twenty-Seven
Brotherhood
that is
A Short Tale of Messages, a King's Concern, Suspicion, a Bandit Captain's Taunts, an Eye for an Eye, Threats of Suffering, Headlocks, Eating, Fathers, Monsters, an Impossible Challenge, and the Bond of Sisters and Brothers
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"A message," Nuada snarled, "from Sréng."
Dylan nodded. Shuddered. The bandit leader wasn't dead in the infernoZhenjinand Shaohao had unleashed on the bandit camp when she'd been Sréng's prisoner. If her theory was correct, he couldn't die—he was fueled by true immortality. The sort of immortality that drove people insane. And now this psychopath, brimming with wild magic and immortality, the man who'd tortured and killed her, knew she was alive and was sending her and Nuada a message.
"We have to do something for them," she added softly, nodding to the burned bodies of the victims.
"We can't," Nuada said. "The magic warding them is too strong, even for me. It feels royal, almost. My father will have to break the wards first."
A chill whispered down Dylan's backbone and she turned, scanning the field. Murmurs and commands traveled through the air from where they left Petra, John, Dastan, Zhenjin, and his brothers. People were organizing, rallying.
Dylan's leg ached, her nose and throat burned from the smoke, and it was freezing cold, even with her coat and cloak. It was time to head back. There was nothing left to do just now. So she took Nuada's trembling fist between her hands. "Come on."
He turned an anguished, xanthous gray gaze on her. "I won't let him hurt you again. By the stars, I swear, I will not let him harm you again. Ever again. I swear it, my love."
"I know," she whispered. "I know."
She heard the oath thrumming beneath the words: I won't let you die again. I won't let him kill you again. But, Dylan thought as they turned away from the carnage, Nuada hadn't been able to stop Sréng from attacking the village, or burning those poor people alive, or torturing her to death. And they both knew it.
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Nuada ignored the ache in his hands, the smoke stinging his eyes, and the reek of burnt flesh. He couldn't look back. If he looked back, he would see it all again, hear it all again, live it all again, and if that happened…
It would plunge Bethmoora into civil war, because there would be absolutely nothing Nuada could do to stop himself from challenging his father for the throne. Not this night.
So he trudged through icy mud made up of half frozen flesh, ash, and charred soil and plant matter, and stared at head to where his friends waited. Of course Taran, Kamaria, and Günther had come out. So had Lorelei, Wink, and Erik. Mary stood with Petra and John, and a shivering Francesca warmed her hands around a ball of blue corpse-candle flame provided by the village steward's eldest son, the imposing figure of Davio behind her to shield her from the wind.
The wind. He noticed it suddenly, a viciously cold gust breaking through his determined focus. It carried to him the stench of death and fire.
He would find Sréng. To the thirteen hells with the treacherous king and his blasted treaty. Nuada would hunt Sréng down like a dog and gut him. For the people of Lallybroch, for Dylan, for those poor innocents back there left to burn, for his mother, for Uilliam McBás and the children he protected and his fae father who'd been raped and murdered by the bandit captain's witch-hearted lieutenant. For them all, he would find a way to make Sréng die.
Dylan stopped walking. She stared at the demarcation between the crushed but clean snow and the freezing mud-slush. Swallowed audibly. Hugged herself as if suddenly cold, despite her coat and cloak, despite the fact that there had been no change in the wind.
"Dylan?"
She hugged herself tighter. "Nuada…your father's here."
"What?" Golden eyes scanned the assembled face and sure enough, his father hunched against the cold inside his fur-lined velvet cloak near the beginning of the fire damage. Nuada bit back half a dozen vile words. "What does he want?" Nuada muttered. Dylan bumped him gently with her shoulder and he turned to regard her from the corner of his eye.
"He is the King, Nuada."
The Elven Prince bit back a snarl; lashing out at her in his anger at Balor would be viciously unjust. And true enough, his father was king, but usually only when it suited him. So then why face the bitter cold night now? The answer—and he was almost stunned that Dylan hadn't realized it yet—was that the old king, coward that he was, had come to make sure Nuada did not answer this new threat in a way that broke Balor's oh, so precious treaty.
Dylan scanned the night around them as they drew near the king and the allies they'd left behind in the snow. The Tuathan prince had no idea what she was looking for. Did she sensed something?
"Dylan—" He began, but his father's next words silenced him.
"What happened?" The king demanded. "Are you hurt?"
Was that true concern from his father? Or was the king merely trying to discern if the prince had killed whoever was responsible for that terrible screaming?
Thoughts of those screams dragged his eyes to Petra, who stood shivering despite her coat between Dastan—and why was she with Dastan?—and Mistress Stooree, the leprechaun woman who'd somehow made friends with the human harpy. But it felt a little unjust to call his lady's sister a harpy just now. Petra had been frantic to throw herself into the fire, to rescue the doomed innocents sacrificed to the ravenous heat. What shadow in her had hurt her so? What had caused her to throw away any thought for her own safety? Anyone's natural instinct, human or fae, when presented with dragonfire was to run away. It was part of the fire's inherent magic; no one without the strongest fire magic in their blood could stand against the white-hot power of it. So why had she been willing to throw herself into the flames?
But he had to focus on the king now. He would wonder about Petra and the rest of his lady's kin later.
"Harnessed dragonfire," was all the prince said.
"How could anyone harness—" Balor began, but his son cut him off.
"It is possible, merely difficult. I saw the harnessing of such powers in my exile. You don't even need a great deal of power. Merely to use it in clever ways. I don't know how Sréng mac Umhor did it, but the filth is cunning enough—"
"What did you say?"
It was the hollow tone of Balor's voice that pierced his sons fury and pain. Nuada stared at his father—the suddenly gray cheeks, the wide eyes, the lines of strain etching across his face. Did his father know? Did his father know that one of the vile beasts that had murdered his mother and nearly killed Nuala and himself still lived? Impossible. Even Balor, coward that he was to hide so behind the treaty, would never have stood for any of those monsters to remain breathing. Surely…surely…
"Sréng mac Umhor," Nuada repeated, watching his father. Noting every flicker of an eyelid, flexing of jaw, twitching of lips, flaring of nostrils. It couldn't be. Balor couldn't have known that animal still lived…"He is leader of the bandits hereabouts."
Slowly, woodenly, Balor shook his head.
"No, Nuada. You are mistaken. It is impossible."
"Why?" A whipcrack demand. Suddenly Nuada didn't see any of the people's around them except for his father. His king. The man, he thought with a sudden churning in his guts, who'd allowed the bandit rot to fester here in the north four months without a care.
Balor had loved Cethlenn. There was no question of it. Her murder had destroyed him, shattered his honor, broken his spirit. Left him a ghost. And his father had admitted more than once that treaty be damned, if any of those craven beasts had still lived, he'd have hunted them down and butchered every last one of them. Or practically admitted it, anyway.
But practically wasn't the same as actually admitting it.
The suspicion slithering through Nuada's mind couldn't be true…
"Sréng… Sréng is an old friend, my son," Balor said. Nuada frowned. That hadn't been what he'd expected his father to say at all. Perhaps…"He did me a great service many centuries ago. We…we were practically brothers for a time, a comrade of the heart when I truly needed one. You wouldn't recall him, you were still too wrapped up in your moth…" The king swallowed back the words. Offered a weak smile. "Well, it matters little, I suppose. It can't be the same man."
"Brown hair," a quiet voice interjected, and Nuada was dragged partially back to the world around himself and the king. Dylan added in a far too quiet voice, "One eye the color of cold iron. A scar slashing full across his face, obliterating the other eye. Missing the first two fingers on his right hand."
Balor stared at her. Nuada began to feel sick a new.
Dylan came forward slowly and the prince saw she was trembling. She swallowed and said, "Nuada, glamour us from sight and sound immediately."
He frowned. "Dylan?"
"Now."
She never gave him orders like that. He was her prince. She never did. Which was why he obeyed instantly, throwing up walls of sight-glamour and magic that silenced their words. His mind must have still been sluggish, he realized, still in shock, that he hadn't glamoured them from the beginning.
"Lady Dylan—" Balor began.
"It was you…wasn't it?" She demanded quietly, and both Elves stared at her. Nuada swallowed. Surely she didn't think Balor to be the one who'd set up this whole elaborate trap, the same trap they'd been warned of before coming here? His father was many things, but…"You made him…It was you. You…"
"You are mistaken," Balor said. "Foolish chit. It is a different man. They may look similar, but the Sréng I know is—"
"Immortal?" Dylan demanded. Balor's skin went so sickly gray it was nearly blue. "A true immortal? Never aging, never dying, his mind stretched thinner and thinner by the centuries until he's lost all reason, all sanity, all hope, all soul?" Balor swallowed, but said nothing. Nuada suppressed the roiling in his guts. "He did you a service, you said," Dylan added. "And you granted him a boon, didn't you? What service did he do you? What would justify doing what you did?"
"Do not question me in that tone, you insolent little—"
"Father?" Nuada bit back a wince. He hadn't meant to say anything, hadn't meant anything he did say to come out sounding so…timid. Uncertain. It was the voice of a much, much younger Nuada. The child he'd been before the queen's death, when he had bad dreams and wanted the king to chase them away. The voice of the child he'd been when he'd pleaded for his father to speak to him, to say something, in the tumultuous wake of the queen's murder. "Father…"
Balor's eyes locked on his son's face. "He…It was for Cethlenn, Nuada. For your mother. Her ring…It was lost, after she was…" His father's voice took on an edge of pleading. "I couldn't bear to see it gone forever, so I sent out a decree, offered a bounty, and…and he found it."
Found it, Nuada thought numbly. Found it. Just like that. Had his father become so blind, so broken by the queen's death that he hadn't found that the least bit suspicious? Hadn't found it strange that a human happened to find the queen's ring, just like that?
If Dylan was right…if it was him, if it was the bandit captain who'd brought back the queen's ring…how had he come by it? Had he found it after fleeing Nuada's rabid, savage attack? Had he taken it from Cethlenn's violated corpse?
"And so you made him immortal, didn't you?" Dylan hissed, stepping away from Nuada now. He felt the absence of her like a knife between the ribs. He was vaguely surprised he didn't stumble, didn't fall to his knees as the thoughts crashed ruthlessly in his skull. "That was the boon that he requested? And you just gave it to him?" Balor opened his mouth, but Dylan went ruthlessly on. "You poured raw, wild, royal magic into a human being and made him immortal, truly immortal. Didn't you?"
"It is not the same man, I tell you!"
"Oh, I'm the same man, all right."
Nuada didn't recognize the jovial, laughing voice with the ragged edge to it, but he thought in the split-second it took to register Dylan and Balor's expressions that they did recognize it. Balor sucked in a sharp breath, then clutched his left shoulder as if it suddenly pained him. Dylan went white as skimmed milk and stumbled back from the heavyset, thickly muscled, badly scarred man that approached with a knife-edged smile on his twisted lips.
"Balor. Old friend. Brother." Sréng mac Umhor grinned at the old king, whose breath came now in hard rasps. "I simply have to thank you for making all of this possible, really. Licking your boots for a couple of centuries was really well worth it."
"Sréng," Balor wheezed. Nuada's eyes shot to him for a split-second. The king's lips were tinged blue. "Sréng, what…?"
"Oh-ho! And Lady Bitch. How are you? You survived me, it seems." He laughed, but there was nothing amused in it, now. Rage rippled across the scarred face even as he leered at her. "I'll just have to try harder next time. I'll certainly enjoy that."
Dylan whimpered. Nuada's hand fell to the sword at his side but he couldn't seem to do more than that. Couldn't tear his eyes away from the human bandit captain as realization sank in of who this was, what this was, what it all meant. It was just an illusion, Nuada noted distantly. The bastard wasn't actually there. It was some sort of spell. But that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. It could be some sort of distraction...like the dragonfire should have been…
"Surprised to see me, Silverlance?"
Slowly, Nuada's scarlet gaze locked onto the single eye the color of cold iron. And in that instant, he absolutely recognized him. Nuada couldn't speak. The words had dried up. He could only stare wordlessly and remember that day in the blood and the dust, wrestling with the demon-boy who helped desecrate Cethlenn's body and a struggling, screaming Nuala, and even a frantic Nuada himself—
His mind shied away from that. What had been done to his younger self and his sister was nothing compared to what had been done to the queen. The royal twins had survived. Battered, bruised, broken, but they'd survived. The queen had not. That was all that mattered. All Nuada would allow to matter to him now.
This man was that boy. This man and his kin had assaulted his mother, dared to defile her corpse. Broken his father's spirit and left their kingdom in ruins. Assaulted Nuala, nearly killed her. Kidnapped, tortured, and butchered innocent fae. Tortured and mutilated young Uilliam. Raped and murdered Uilliam's father. Orphaned dozens upon dozens of children, many of whom had succumbed to disease or the elements before finding safety with the young mixed-blood boy who'd saved so many. This man had tortured and murdered Dylan, and only thanks to the Red Dragon was she at Nuada's side now. This man, this animal, this monster had even tried to…
Old memories of cruel hands, probing fingers and brutal fists and hateful, vicious words and laughter, surged up in Nuada's mind. Something must have shown on his face, because a sick sort of hope flashed across Sréng mac Umhor's expression. The Elven warrior beat those memories down into bloody submission immediately. He would do nothing for that demon's pleasure.
Nuada forced his face to blankness.
Sréng's smile took on a strange cast. Almost melancholy.
"I have sorely missed you, Nuada. I thought of you every day for over three-thousand years. I have dreamed of this moment for lifetimes. You simply cannot imagine. Sometimes the thought of you was the only thing that kept me going. And now here is the first of my long-awaited moments at last." He laughed, and Nuada had to swallow the sudden urge to vomit. "Incredible. Hmmm, I can see why you let him have you," the bandit captain added with a wink at Dylan. "This is a prime cut of Elven meat—"
"Shut up!" Dylan cried, advancing a single step on shaking legs. Nuada's stomach twisted. "Stay away from him, you son of a—"
"Remember what happened last time you insulted my mother, you filthy slut?" He offered her a cool smile. "If I recall, I broke four of your ribs and punctured one of your lungs." Nuada snarled. Sréng turned to him, and the smile brightened. "Now, dearest Nuada. Old friend." Bile surged up in the back of the Elf's throat. "I brought you some things. Call them…early engagement presents if you wish. Or you could call them an apology for murdering your bastard. Slaughtering the putrescent little worm your whore had in her belly. Except that I'm not actually sorry about that. Oh, well. Anyway, one of my gifts was the preview I offered." He gestured to the smoking corpses in the middle of the field. "Very illuminating, I trust. The other is this: your whore lost something the last time she came to visit. I imagine you probably want it back."
The illusion of Sréng held up something that glittered like blue stars. Dylan gasped. Balor made a sound like a low moan of pain. Nuada's blood roared in his ears.
Cethlenn's ring glittered in that monsters grasp.
"I'll see you get this back soon enough, Silverlance. I promise. And Balor? Thank you so much for my army. I couldn't have done it without you."
"Army?" The old king wheezed. Distantly, the prince wondered if he should be worried about his father. "I didn't—I never—"
Sréng grinned. "A man can sire a lot of children in thirty centuries. You made that possible. So thank you very, very much for my lovely family."
Balor fell to the snow, mouth agape.
With a wink at the prince, Sréng added, "I await our time together with great pleasure, Nuada. Think well of me while I'm gone. And don't worry—I won't kill your beloved until you breathe your last. Consider it a token of my esteem. Perhaps you can do me a favor and infect her with your seed again, so I can kill more royal Elven wormlings."
The illusion winked out. Nuada sank to his knees. Dylan fell to the snow, gasping for air, shaking hands covering her mouth and tears freezing to her cheek. People swarmed around them as the glamour shattered, friends and allies chattering at them, demanding to know what was wrong. Nuada could only stare at Balor as snow flurried around them, the flakes stinging his cheeks.
All of it…everything…it was all…all of it was because…
"Your Highness!" Master Gawain, the acting steward, shook the prince's shoulder very lightly. Almost hesitantly. "Your Highness! What is it? Are you unwell, Sire?" Nuada managed to drag his gaze up to Gawain's corpse-pale face. He tried to speak, to say something, but his lips had gone numb. He had no tongue. No voice. "Your Highness, what's wro—"
Dylan suddenly cried, "Nuada!"
An arrow sprouted from the stewards left eye. Thick, dark blood the color of mulberries dripped sluggishly over the pale cheek. Slowly, Gawain toppled backward in the snow as silence descended on royals, Butcher Guards, humans, fae villagers, and everyone else.
"What…?" Francesca whispered. "What…what just—" Davio shoved her aside as the arrow that would have struck her in the throat hit him in one beefy, scaly shoulder. He roared in pain.
"D!" John yelled.
Dylan screamed, "Cover! Take cover!"
Nuada scrambled to his feet as triumphant, bloodthirsty shouting filled the cold night.
The bandits had returned.
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"Here we are!" The denim-clad, blueberry-skinned youth with fangs and horns jerked his clawed thumb at a flight of stairs rising up from the overgrown brush into the darkness of the sky. "Amaryllis's bed. We can scuttle up those steps and wiggle our way back into the awake-world just like that." He snapped his fingers, making Becan jump.
Becan Brownie was at his wits' end. His poor mistress was in danger and the unease in the house sprite's belly had begun twisting into real fear hours ago. Lady Dylan needed him. He could feel it. After almost ten years tending her cottage, he and his mistress had a connection to each other. He simply had to go to her. Now his poor nerves were wound tight, tight as violin strings ready to snap, with the need to make it to her side.
"Relax, snackling, all will be well." That was Oblina, the serpent-eyed monster with the impossibly luscious lips and exquisitely long eyelashes framing her amber eyes. There was something uncannily seductive about her. But it was impossible to forget she'd wanted to eat him until he'd pointed out that he was in Lady Dylan's service.
"Do you think he noticed we were passing through?" That was the last of the odd quartet, Oblina's "darling Icky." Becan didn't see anything darling about a carnivorous, snaggle-fanged cross between a bunny and a chupacabra.
"Darling Icky" had also wanted to eat him.
And who, Becan wondered for the hundredth time, was he? The three monsters had been acutely wary of attracting his noticed. But whose notice? And why?
"Doesn't matter," Becan said to the monsters, marching toward the steps. They were made of weathered wood, painted with blue skulls and amaryllis flowers, leading to a wooden trapdoor hanging in the air that was painted the same design. "Lady Dylan is in trouble." Clutching his tiny dirk in one little fist, he hopped up the stairs, followed by the monsters.
They didn't notice the tall, elegant shadow with eyes that gleamed like ebony stars that trailed behind them, sitting astride a horse made of swirling, black mist.
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People were screaming, but Dylan couldn't see beyond the gray circle of her guards shielding her from flying arrows. She wished fiercely for her lost dirk. She had the pair of betrothal knives Nuada had given her when she'd been elevated to peerage in Findias, but the dirk was the length of her forearm and wicked sharp. Sharp enough to slice a hair or make the wind bleed.
It was Ailbho who grasped her arm and tugged her back toward the safety of the village proper, deflecting blows with his massive, iron claymore. Uaithne and the others backed him up, snarling from inside their beaked helmets and slashing at any bandits that tried to cut their way to her. Dylan had to marvel at their skill; any human that attacked her wasn't harmed, merely knocked back and disarmed, but her guards took little damage. She tried not to think of Nuada, of Petra and Francesca and Mary, of Zhenjin still so drained from the magic he'd had to use to put out the blazing inferno. She had no real weapons; she couldn't fight. She'd only get in the way. The most important thing she could do in that moment was get back to the tavern and prepare for any casualties.
"Ailbho!"
Uaithne's sharp cry came a moment too late. The young Butcher Guard yelped in pain as a cudgel caught him in the ribs. Dylan heard the distinct crack of breaking bones. The fae bandit that had wielded the cudgel stepped back as his human partner lunged forward, a knife raised, ready to strike the young Butcher Guard down.
Ailbho raised his head, began to raise his sword. Saw it was a human who slashed at him. Hesitated.
Dylan slipped between Onóra and Fionnlagh, who screamed her name, and she slammed into Ailbho, knocking him out of the way of the strike. A line of red-hot pain scored down Dylan's half-healed back as the knife sliced through her skin—but it was only a cut, not a stab-wound. Before the bandit could recover his balance and strike again, a massive man with a wild, golden beard frosted with ice and eyes the color of glaciers surged out of the night and the snow. With a roar like an angry bear, he clapped his hands together in a club and brought them crashing down on the human bandit's head. This time, instead of ribs breaking, Dylan heard the human bandit's neck snap.
Compression fractures, she thought dazedly as he fell to the snow.
"All right, little human lady?" The big man asked. Dylan had to blink past the ebbing fear and the burning pain across her back and the tears in her eyes before she could bring him into focus.
"Prince Günther?"
The crown prince of Álfheim offered her an affable grin—absurd in the present circumstances—and then swung around with a wolf-like snarl to smash his huge fist into an oncoming bandit's face, caving in the bones. Dylan swallowed. She'd never seen an Elf unleash their full strength on a human body before, but Nuada had also said Prince Günther was exceptionally strong, even for a fae. Even for a ljósálfar. Just how strong was he?
Günther wiped the blood and gore off his hands onto his fur-trimmed, leather trews and offered her a jaunty salute. "Get to safety, now. We'll protect Silverlance. Won't we, Kamaria? Taran?"
In answer, the air split with a wild, ululating scream. An ebony shadow jumped up from some stones jutting out of the snow, leapt off the crest of the tallest stone, and hurtled feet-first into an approaching bandit. The bandit fell to the snow under the attack and moonlight flashed off a gold-tipped spear. The bandit screamed once as Princess Kamaria of Nyame drove her weapon into his chest. Then he was silent and she surged to her feet. She shot Dylan and Günther a brash, exultant grin.
"This will be a good fight. And we are not the cowards some royals are." No need to ask who she meant. She pivoted, slashed out with her spear. The enemy fell in a spray of blood, screams gurgling in their throats.
"Get moving!" Prince Taran called. He twisted and ducked, wielding a pair of long, silvery daggers limned with an odd, eldritch light like St. Elmo's fire. "We'll guard my cousin's back!"
Ailís, one of Dylan's guards, grabbed Dylan by the arm and pulled her toward the village. Dylan forced herself to turn away from Günther, Taran, and Kamaria. Away from the fighting. Forced herself to ignore the throbbing in her right side from tackling Ailbho and the burning of her back from her half-healed lashes and the slice running parallel to her spine. Ailbho limping beside her with a hand to his broken ribs, Dylan allowed Ailís to pull her along while the rest of the Butchers flocked around her, weapons bristling. Eventually they made it through the press of bodies, away from the miasma of blood-stink and battle screams. They crossed less than a quarter of a mile, but it seemed to take hours. Finally the sounds of fighting grew dim and the lights of the village warmed the night. Dylan began to relax.
But then Ailís stopped. Uaithne swore viciously. The others pressed close to her and Ailbho yanked her behind him.
"Uaithne?" She couldn't see. "What is it?"
"Hello, Lady Bitch."
Her blood turned to ice water. Her head swam. The breath thickened in her throat until she thought she might choke. She didn't need to see. She knew that voice. Biting her lip to stifle a whimper, she drew her twin knives and braced herself, back screaming at her that this was a terrible idea. Didn't matter. She wouldn't let it matter. Sréng couldn't get her at his mercy again. There was no half-mad dragon-Elf prince around to bring her back from the dead this time.
Her guards weren't pressing forward because they knew what Sréng was. A true immortal, unkillable. They could do nothing to him. Trying would only get them killed and put their charge in even worse danger than Dylan was in now. And he was human…of a sort. So then…
"Stand aside." Uaithne's gruff voice reverberated from inside his helmet.
Sréng laughed. The same laugh that had echoed in her ears, mixed with her own screams, while he'd broken her bones, carved up her face, flayed the flesh from her back. She hugged herself, pressing her arms against her midsection, trying to keep from throwing up.
"Stand aside? Are you serious?" He laughed again, the sound tinged with something rabid. "I know the little whore told you about me. She may be stupid, but she's not that stupid. You truly think you can stand against me? You think you can protect her from me? Are you mad?"
"All we need to do," Uaithne snarled, "is defend her long enough for the Silverlance to arrive. He will dispatch you."
"I'm immortal, you fool. He can't dispatch me."
A chill whispered down Dylan's spine. Her gaze darted left and right, dragged by the warning of the Spirit. Movement in the shadows, encroaching from the darkness between the outlying village buildings. Enemies. An ambush.
Dylan ducked her head and leaned toward Ailbho. "The bandits are flanking us."
"Uaithne knows," Ailbho whispered back. "We all see them, my lady."
Translation: they knew enough that they could do their job, and do it well, here and now against this enemy. But this enemy would surely be too much for them, she thought. He was immortal. He could be hurt—she'd hurt him, herself, when she'd tried to escape him—but he couldn't be stopped. And immortal or not, magical or not, he was human still. Would Balor extend the treaty to protect him? Like brothers, the king had said. They'd been like brothers.
What were they supposed to do? If they didn't fight, Sréng would kill them. But if they did fight, he would kill them anyway, and if somehow they managed to survive him, the king would execute them for fighting a human. But they couldn't just stand there and let him slaughter them all either. So what were they supposed to do?
"What do you want, Sréng?" Dylan hugged herself, trying not to panic. Could she bluff him? Maybe. Maybe not. She'd done it several times in his tent. But he knew her now, knew what she was capable of. He might not fall for it again.
"You know exactly what I want, you treacherous slut. I want to hurt you. I want you to suffer. Why do you think I'm here?"
"We will never let you harm Lady Dylan," Fionnlagh spat.
"Oh, I'm not going to kill her yet. That's not why I'm here. Don't you remember, you stupid little trollop? I promised I would make you suffer. I can't do that if you're dead."
Dylan stared at him, at the odd smile twisting his face, at the cold light glittering in his eyes. She didn't understand. If he wasn't there to hurt her, and he wasn't there fighting Nuada - because if he was, her prince would be there, sword out and ready to draw mortal blood, without a care for the king or the treaty - then what was he doing there? He said he was there to make her suffer. How was he supposed to do that, if he wasn't going to hurt her?
Was he there for her sisters? For John? What about the children? Was he going to hurt them? Was that why he was there?
She would gut him herself before allowing him to hurt the cubs or her sisters. And John could take care of himself, even against someone like this. He had guns. If nothing else, he could fight long enough to get away or get rescued.
"What are you planning?"
He laughed. "Oh, you sweet, simple, stupid bitch. What do you think I'm planning?"
Behind them, the sounds of battle remained dim and far off. The fight wasn't escalating. The fae weren't losing. Somehow the bandits were being beaten back. Dylan believed it was most likely due to the presence of people like Prince Günther and Princess Kamaria, people like Erik Ashkeson and Davio. People who could fight, unbound by the treaty. That couldn't be what he was planning. The fighting wasn't really helping him. Why had he even come? He hadn't brought enough people to win any real battle here. Where were the rest of his men?
Oh, no...where were the rest of his men?
"What have you done?"
"Oh, wouldn't you love to know?" He taunted.
Dylan forced herself to roll her eyes, even though she felt like crying. "Yes. That's why I asked, you drama queen."
Sréng sneered at her. "You thought you'd escaped me. How foolish could you possibly be? Don't you know who I am? I'm Sréng mac Umhor. You will never escape me. And neither will your prince. You actually thought you could stop me? That's hilarious. I'm no mere bandit captain. You may think of me as some base-born, lowly highwayman, but the thing is, I have fought in wars upon wars. I have led men into battle. I have led armies. I have cut my way through magic and faerie forces for centuries. I have butchered and whored my way through these people for three-thousand years.
"You pathetic, ignorant slut. Do you really think this fight right here, in this little backward Village with its sheep-dung-eating peasants, really matters to me? You think the village is what matters? We don't care about the village. I don't care about the village. The village has only ever been a tool."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," she snapped. "A tool to hurt Nuada. I figured that out ages ago. Are you seriously going to start monologuing at me?"
"Monologuing?" He echoed. "I don't know what that is, but if it means mocking you for being an idiot, then yes, I rather enjoy mocking you. It's amusing to watch the color flare in your face and watch you fight against your instinct to lash out at me, especially since the reason you fight yourself is because you know what I can do to you if you were to attack me now. Still, if you want, go ahead and give it a try. It would be interesting to see the results."
"Yeah, not happening." If she kept him talking, maybe Nuada would come. She could see the bandits creeping along the edges of her vision, skirting around her and her guards, just out of reach of the torchlight from the village square. How had they gotten past the fighting forces in the field? No time to wonder about that now. Had to focus on the monster in front of her, had to focus on the monsters slithering closer and closer.
"Pity," Sréng said. "I do enjoy your spirit. Now, the thing is, I have the loyalty of all of my men. That's what happens when you are bound by blood. So even though your guards will probably stop us, I'm going to give an order that I know my soldiers will carry out." And he grinned, that feral grin that whispered of insanity and a vicious relish in breaking innocent things. "All right, boys. It probably won't work, but you know you want to try. Go ahead. Try to kill the bitch."
Dylan paled and clutched her knives as bandits, both faerie and human, surged out of the darkness.
Around her, her guards swore and hefted their blades.
These were humans. Humans. Protected by the treaty. What were they supposed to do? The king was barely half a mile away. He would see, he would know if her guards fought them. How were they supposed to defend themselves? But the bandits were coming. Something had to be done. She had to make a decision. If she gave the order, would her guards still be punished? Or would the king focus solely on her? She didn't know. She had no idea. If the answer was yes, he would focus on her, then she could order them to fight back and they would be safe, but if she was wrong...then the king would kill them all. Not her, because she was human even though she was a lady of Bethmoora now, but he would kill her guards. She couldn't allow that.
What was she supposed to do?!
Just as the first of the bandits came within arm's reach of Uaithne, a feral shriek split the night. It cackled like a hyena, echoing off the village structures. Dylan's eyes widened. She'd never heard anything that sounded quite that insane. What was it? It was no Elf, of that she was sure. But it had to be fae. What sort of fae made noises like that?
The doors of the various village cottages slammed open and torchlight and moonlight glinted off of copper and bronze pots and kettles as they flew through the air and smashed into the bandits in a wave of cookware. A snarl like a rabid dog issued from within the cottages, coming from everywhere at once. Ailbho pulled Dylan tight to his side. The others tightened the circle around her. Sréng stared all around him, obviously confused, but unafraid. He looked more annoyed than anything.
"What the bloody hell is that?" He demanded.
"How dare you?" The words snarled from the shadows inside the empty cottages. "How dare you, you filthy mortal wretch? Vile, despicable worm! You think you can just lay hands on my mistress? What have you done to her? What have you done, mortal?"
Sréng looked at Dylan. "What little monstrosity did you bring with you?"
But Dylan shook her head. She had no idea what this was. Who it was. She had no one in her service that could do things like this, who sounded like that when they were angry. Her guards glanced at her questioningly, but she shook her head again. She had many friends who could do things like this, but no one in her service, no one who called her mistress.
Sréng drew a long, wicked-looking knife. "Come out, little faerie. Come out, little sprite. If you don't, I'll cut out your mistress's heart and feed it to you."
A thin, high-pitched howl of rage echoed through the night. Before Dylan could blink, a kitchen knife flung itself out the door of one of the cottages and hurtled through the air to sink hilt-deep into Sréng's chest. He staggered back a pace, then coughed, then laughed. With a grunt and a grimace, he yanked the blade out of his chest. Blood spurted onto the snow, thick and bright scarlet heart's blood glistening in the torchlight.
"Oh, well done. If I was truly mortal, that would have killed me right there. Of course, then the king would kill you. Now, as for your mistress…" Sréng turned to her and grinned. Hefted the knife. "Do you think I could take your eye out from here, traitor?"
Dylan jerked back, but before Sréng could throw the blade, a small brown shape hurtled out of the cottage and skidded to a halt in front of Dylan, its back to her, tiny arms akimbo, as if shielding her from the strike.
"You will not touch my mistress, vile dog!"
Dylan stared. "B-Becan?" What was he doing here? How had he done these things?
She reached for him, but Ailbho grabbed her wrist.
"No, my lady."
"Why?" She protested. "It's only Becan."
Ailbho shook his head. "No, my lady. It may be Becan, but he's not the one you know. Not anymore. He's gone boggart."
Dillon's gaze whipped back around to Becan. Boggart? She'd never seen a brownie go boggart before. Even when Eamonn had threatened her, tried to hurt her in the cottage when Nuada was gone, Becan still had remained a brownie. How could he have gotten the power and the sheer rage to turn boggart now? And what was he even doing here?
Ailís said, "My lady, you must calm him, but you cannot touch him. He must be returned to his former state before he actually kills someone."
Dylan was about to ask why, then she remembered - the king. Becan was a brownie, and by virtue of being her servant, he was now a citizen of Bethmoora. He was bound by the treaty as surely as she was. Even though his magic, his very nature would demand that he kill anyone who posed a lethal threat to her, if he did, the king would execute him. That was the way of the law. Did Becan even know she'd been made a lady of Bethmoora? Suddenly she couldn't remember if she told him or not. She couldn't remember if he'd been there or not. All she could think about was the tiny form, radiating fury and power, squaring off against the insane, immortal human threatening to take out her eye with a knife.
How was she supposed to calm him? What was she supposed to say? She'd never had to do this before.
"Becan? Becan!" She cried. He didn't look at her, but she kept on. "Becan, I'm all right. He hasn't hurt me. I'm fine. It's all right."
The brownie didn't look at her, but he snarled again, like a rabid dog. "Do not lie to me, mistress. I smell your blood on the air. It poisons everything it touches. You're hurt. He'll pay for it. He'll die for it."
"Becan, if you fight him, it will grieve me."
"He'll pay for your blood, my lady. No one harms my mistress. I didn't have the power to kill the dark Elf before, and you nearly died. Never again! No one will harm you ever again!"
"If you fight him, you will be harming me."
At this, Becan turned and stared at her. "My…my lady?"
"If you fight him, it will harm me. It will harm my heart. Stand down, Becan. I command you." She wasn't sure if she had the authority to command him. He called her mistress, and he tended her cottage, and he was her brownie, but being a brownie wasn't quite the same as being a servant. Brownies were a law unto themselves. The only ones who could truly and lawfully command them and win every time were fae royalty, and she wasn't royal yet.
The bandits eyed her warily. They weren't ready to take on an enraged boggart. There was no telling what might happen. Sréng might be immortal, but most of them were not. Most of them were magical, long-lived, but they were much easier to kill than their captain.
Becan's arms slowly dropped to his sides. The scarlet glow that had smoldered in his sloe-black eyes dimmed. The lipless mouth, peeled back in a snarl, relaxed a little. Dylan swallowed hard and hoped that this was enough. Was he turning back to normal?
"As you wish, my lady. I am your servant."
Dylan opened her mouth, but was rudely interrupted.
"Well, this is all been very fascinating and all that," Sréng drawled, "but we should really be getting on with the business of killing you now. Lads?"
"Oh, but darling, I wouldn't recommend that at all!"
The voice that slithered out of the shadows was elegant, cultured, every syllable crisp and sharp as a blade. It was impossibly, exquisitely familiar. Despite the situation, despite all the horrors of the night, Dylan found a smile stretching her face. She knew that voice. She loved that voice.
Sréng was in for the thrashing of his life. His men were going to die.
"You see," the voice continued in a conversational tone, "we are awfully fond of the human. She used to be so cute when she was a little bitty chit of a girl. So the problem is, if you try to kill her, we're going to have to eat you."
The bandits stared into the shadows warily, trying to pinpoint the location of the voice. Dylan laid her hands on Uaithne and Ailbho's shoulders and said, "Don't worry. We're safe now."
"My lady," Uaithne murmured, "do you know who that is?"
"Oh, yeah. Yes, I certainly do. We're safe now."
"Don't you know?" Sréng gestured grandly with his mutilated hand. "It's against the law of this kingdom for faeries to attack humans, no matter what the provocation. If you try to slay us, you'll be executed."
"Oh, but don't you know?" The voice purred. "That law only applies to faeries." As the voice continued speaking, Dylan detected the sound of young, masculine snickering from the shadows. "And faeries, we most certainly are not."
A massive, black and white striped serpentine creature scuttled out of the dark, a serpent with the thinnest of stiletto-skinny legs and a gaping, scarlet maw filled with razor sharp, yellowed, venom-slick teeth. It scuttled forward and leapt at the foremost bandit, whipping around the man's thick body and squeezing. Bones snapped with a series of muffled crunching sounds. The bandit screamed, the striped coils tightened, more bones crunched, and blood poured out of his mouth. The serpent's long, forked, blue tongue slipped out to lick at the blood. Then it released the corpse and let it fall to the snow. It made a sound like someone dropping a sack of rocks.
"So then, darling," the serpent said with a wide smile, and fluttered its impossibly long, midnight-dark eyelashes at Sreng. The immortal bandit captain gaped at her. "Who wants to die next?"
.
In the village jailhouse, Barinthus mac Mannanan paced the length of his cell, wringing his hands. He heard from Beyond the edges of the jailhouse the sounds of combat. Now was the time. Now was when his new master had told him to be ready to start the first steps of the plan to assassinate the prince. And good riddance to him, that wretch had stolen Barinthus's daughter. Him, and his human harlot. Death was almost too good for him. Unfortunately, the Silverlance was one of the greatest warriors in all of Bethmoora. Because of that, subterfuge was the word of the day. There was no chance that a simple laundry master like Barinthus could hope to defeat Nuada Silverlance in one-on-one combat.
But when was his master going to let him out of this place? How was he supposed to fulfill the steps of the plan if he was trapped in this cell?
"Getting fidgety?"
Barinthus started in surprise and world around to see the fear darrig lord that had commissioned him for this task. The pasty-skinned lord glided into the small jail cell, a lipless smile twisting his doughy face.
Barinthus bowed. "My Lord—"
"Silence." The Lord of Fear and Nightmares held up a hand, worm-like fingers waving slowly, lazily. The jail cell's lock clicked open. He gestured with a mocking air. "Go to that strumpet you call a daughter. And here." The nobleman offered him a long, wicked-looking dirk. "Only faerie bandits will come after her. So you have leave to slay them as you will."
The old Elf didn't protest the insult to his sweet, misguided girl; only took the dirk from the fear darrig. But it took all his will not to ram that dirk into the lordling's eye. His girl was no strumpet. He'd called her such in the heat of the moment, but that was his anger, his fear goading him. She was a good girl. It was that Love Talker brat who'd turned her head, tricked her into accepting the presence of that abomination in her belly. Once he got her away from the wretched gancanaugh, she would see reason.
Slipping out of the jail house, Barinthus moved to the shadows between the village buildings. He gripped the dirk in his fist. The sounds of fighting drifted from the edges of Lallybroch. Barinthus ignored them and slipped into the back of the tavern.
He didn't see the small squad of bandits following after him.
The old Elf crept up the backstairs to the third floor, then paused with a sick realization: he didn't know where that treacherous prince and his accursed slut had put his little girl.
Then he heard the squawking sound of a hungry baby.
Horror stole through him. Surely the creature hadn't been born yet...The midwife had said they had another two moons to exterminate it. If it had already been born, it would be that much harder to convince Iúile to give up the creature. But then he heard his daughter's voice from a few doors away, shushing the fussing baby with soft words. It curdled his stomach. It was the whelp. Danu's mercy...
But at least separating Iúile and the squealing creature would be physically easier now, even if it would have a greater effect on her heart. She would heal in time.
Footsteps suddenly pounded up the stairs behind him. He whipped around and looked back the way he'd come. A handful of bandits thumped up the staircase - Elves, a kelpie with dripping wet hair, a fae man with a bare, empty ribcage where his torso should've been. A Boy of Bone Hill. The fear darrig lord hadn't mentioned one of them.
Barinthus lunged for the door hiding his daughter from him. Dirk catching the light, he raced into the room and slammed the door, throwing the lock to buy time.
The famine lord of nightmares had given Barinthus a warning - these bandits could be slain more easily than the others; they were weaker, with pathetic fighting skills. But they had no idea they were being sent to Barinthus to die. If he failed to kill them, if he didn't slay all of them, they would slay his child...or take her back to the bandit camp and leave him dying in his own blood.
"Áthair!?"
.
Nuada had played this game thousands of times before. If you couldn't kill, then you disarmed and knocked unconscious. The king would hate it, but he didn't care. Better that than to die, gored by a mortal blade. So, they had returned. The bandits thought they could defeat him now that the king was here to monitor his every move. Oh, but they were wrong. They were wrong, and they would die for it.
He lashed out with the Silverlance, the blade an argent blur as he ducked and wove through the milling crowd of bandits. There were fewer this time than there had been before. When they had attacked the village before Dylan's kidnapping, there had been a small army flooding through the streets. That was why they had needed Victoria and Francesca and Pauline and Mary and John to help them. But this time it was barely a company. Why were there so few? What was the purpose in attacking? Simply to trip him up and trick him into breaking the treaty in his father's presence? Provoking the villagers to do the same?
Most of the villagers had fled under the hail of arrows. If the gods were merciful, none of them had remained. So far as Nuada could see, there was only Erik, Wink, Günther, Kamaria, Dastan, Taran, Petra, and Lorelei. The king's guards circled him, claymores at the ready, but they did not attack, merely blocked what strikes came within the king's reach. Nuada knew that he most likely should go to his father and try to protect him. His duty was to the king. But his duty was also to his people, and the king had brought this on himself.
He had to block out everything that Sréng had said before the fresh attack. He could not think of it now. Whatever had happened between Sréng and his father, between Sréng and Nuada, between Sréng and Dylan, he could not think of any of it now. He had to focus on defending the village.
The fighting seemed to be dying down, but an odd sense of impending doom shuddered down Nuada's spine. Something wasn't right. Besides the smallness of the initial attacking force, this fight was ending far too easily. There were very few dead bandits on the ground, and none of the mortal attackers had been slain. Very few of them had also been taken into custody. So where were they?
"Hey, they're heading for the village square!"
Nuada whipped around to stare at Francesca, who had disarmed a bandit and trapped him in a headlock. Behind her, the reptilian form of Davio loomed like the shadow of death, his razor sharp claws flashing out to rip open bandit throats. He kept most of the bandits away from Francesca and the son of the prince's steward, the boy with the crutch and his arm in a sling. Nuada could see that the boy ached to fight. But he could also see in the boy's expression that he knew to do so would be suicide, especially with the king barely ten paces away.
The bandits were going toward the village? Nuada studied the churned up snow and saw the shadows of beasts posing as men racing across the expanse toward his village. No. They would not. He would not let them.
The Elven prince bolted across the snow, lance clenched tightly in his fist. If they wanted to kill his people, they would have to go through him first, treaty be damned.
His father yelled his name, but the prince did not turn back. The king could go hang for all he cared at this point. All of this, all of it, the death and the blood and the despair and the destruction, it was all the king's fault. Sréng had made that very clear, and Balor hadn't disputed any of the accusations. When this was over, Nuada knew he and the king would have words. But that couldn't matter now. The near certainty that he would have to kill his father when this battle ended couldn't matter now. All that could matter was the fight, the bandits darting between village homes, heading for the square.
He was ready to fight, ready to kill. Rage pounded through his veins in time with his heartbeat. But the rage shattered, replaced by unease and battle-lust when a symphony of screams flooded the night. Nuada picked up speed, only to skid to a halt in the snow, staring at the scene in the village square that greeted him.
Every bandit was dead. All of them. Not a single one moved.
The putrid bodies lay in misshapen, lumpy heaps, blood dripping from their open mouths. Some of them had had their throats torn out, or been disemboweled. Some had heads flopping at sick angles on broken necks. In the midst of them stood a half-dozen Butcher Guards with clean swords, a baffled-looking Becan Brownie, and Dylan. A strange, skinny thing striped white and black draped along her shoulders like a shawl. In her arms was what Nuada thought at first to be a rabbit—if there had ever been a rabbit the color of old blood, with lambent yellow snake-eyes, its fur patched with scales. Dylan cuddled the rabbit-creature. And beside her stood a young man, skin the color of blueberries, slate-blue horns jutting from his temples. He wore denim and chains. In fact, he dressed like a modern human teenager, except for the wooden doll hanging from a miniature noose, which in turn hung from his oddly long, pointed ear.
"Oh, Doc, that was the best time I've had in ages! Thanks for letting us help out!" The young man cried, actually jumping up and down a few times in his excitement. "The way their necks just snapped, wachow! Oh, it was the best! Why did we stop hanging out, again?"
Dylan looked up from cuddling the strange, burgundy creature. "Because I got older."
The blue boy's delighted expression faded. "Aw, man. Why you gotta go and say stuff like that? You didn't have to grow up!"
"Maurice," Dylan said gently. Only that name, but the blue creature rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, nodding. Dylan turned her attention back to the red thing in her arms and the striped thing on her shoulders. "Ickis! Oblina! What are you two doing here?"
"Your little snackling called us."
Nuada stared. The striped thing had opened large, vividly scarlet lips—he'd thought they were part of the rabbit-beast, because of the color—and a shockingly crisp, Eathesburian-accented voice had come out.
This was too much, too strange. He had no idea what was happening here. No idea who or what these creatures were. They didn't feel fae. They had no magic. He would've been able to taste it, sense it. But they knew Dylan somehow.
He needed answers.
"Dylan!" He called, skirting around a pile of eviscerated corpses. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
She smiled brightly at him. How could she smile like that? It was as if she didn't notice the death all around her. Or didn't care. Had she been the one to slay these bandits? Surely not all of them. But if it had been her guards, she wouldn't have smiled so. She would've been terrified for them. Unless these newcomers had been the ones to butcher the enemy so efficiently…
Dylan hefted the scarlet thing to her shoulder. "Nuada! You'll never guess what happened!" She headed for him, her guards arrayed around her, scanning the bodies with wary eyes for anyone playing dead. "Sréng was here, and I thought we were dead, but then Becan showed up and scared the daylights out of some of the bandits—but he didn't kill anyone. But! You'll never guess who he brought with him!"
She'd said all of this without taking a single breath. The Elven prince blinked, stared at her, and then let out a breath. The corner of his dark mouth quirking a little, he gestured to her…accoutrements.
"Them, I presume."
Her nod came so fast and so sharp, he heard a few of her vertebrae pop. She held up the rabbit.
"This is Ickis! Ickis, this is my fiancé, Prince Nuada Silverlance."
"Oh, a prince, huh?" The rabbit opened an obscenely wide mouth ringed with thin, corpse-blue lips to reveal white fangs when it spoke with a nasally voice. Three-pronged claws at the end of one leg reached up to scratch an ear so long it draped over Dylan's shoulder almost to her waist. "Doing well for yourself, kiddo. Getting married like an actual grown-up. All you need is one of those sparkly crown things."
"Shut up," she said with a smile. "And this is Oblina." She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug and the striped thing smiled. Its eyes were snake-like, as well, fringed with impossibly thick, impossibly long lashes.
When it spoke, it showed yellowed fangs dripping with venom the color of acid. "Charmed, I'm sure." It held out a tiny hand on a toothpick-thin arm nearly two feet long that shouldn't have been able to move with such grace and surety. "That ruffian over there is Maurice."
The creature in denim offered a jaunty wave and rocked back on his heels. "What up?"
Dylan shot it a look. "'What up?' Maurice!"
"Sorry!" The creature—the boy?—threw himself to his knees in front of Dylan and clasped his hands together as if in prayer. "You gotta help me, Doc! I got a real problem with authority! I think I need help! The good stuff!"
"Get up, you idiot. I'm not giving you anything."
"But you don't need it!"
Dylan rolled her eyes. "Maurice, stop being a clown for five seconds. I'm not giving you permission to crack open dead people's heads and eat their brains. No." The boy stared up at her, made an odd squeaking sound, and then fell back onto the snow, moaning. Dylan grinned and focused on Nuada. "You look confused."
"Who…who are they?"
"They're my monsters," she said, as if it should've been the most obvious thing in the world.
He stared at her. "Your…what?"
"My monsters. You know, monsters under the bed?" She cocked her head when he shook his. "You didn't have monsters under your bed when you were a kid?"
The rabbit, Ickis, cleared its—his?—throat. "We only scare humans. Scare School policy. Some fae eat monsters; it helps avoid any…unfortunate incidents."
Dylan shot a look at the prostrate figure of Maurice still mewling on the snow as if he'd been stabbed. She pointed at him. "I thought you said you knew the way here because you were Amaryllis ingen Gawain's monster."
Maurice popped his head up. He bared his fangs in a grin. "Got a problem with authority, remember? I go where the kiddies need scaring! Ha-ha! Besides, her sister is…" The grin slipped from Maurice's face. "Was a babe." Apparently done playing around, he popped to his feet, dusting the snow from his spiked jacket. Nuada remembered suddenly that Steward Gawain's other daughter had been murdered by the bandits. Had this…monster…been courting her? "Anyway, you know we're allowed to break the rules for people with the Sight. You're the only adults we can still scare."
"You're not scary, Maurice," she replied.
"Ouch. That cuts deep, Doc."
"Did…" Nuada cleared his throat. "Did they kill all of these…?"
Maurice chuckled. "Yeah, we did. I'm a neck man, myself, but Oblina's never met a guy she couldn't crush. She's like a boa constrictor. She makes the losers all crunchy and gets the ribs out of the way so Ickis can have at 'em."
Ickis belched and then remembered to cover his mouth with one clawed hand, but it didn't stop the reek of viscera from wafting into Nuada's face. Oblina put a hand to the side of what Nuada assumed was her head and fluttered those feathery, black lashes. "Oh, Maurice, you flatterer. But really, Dylan darling, what are you doing here? Engaged to a prince and in the middle of a battle? And your poor face; what in the name of the Ravenous Dark happened to it? Did these wretches hurt you? Was it that one that got away?"
Nuada jolted. "One of them got away?"
Oblina actually…Nuada could think of no other term except pouted. "Yes," she muttered. "The one with the scar across his face. I shattered his ribs and thought I could leave him in the snow to die, but he had the nerve to get up and walk off. Dylan informed me he's truly immortal. What a horrible trick."
So, Sréng had escaped. Blast it. Well, what could they have done to prevent him? Nuada was only grateful his lady was safe and unharmed, and that the bandits had been taken care of without putting any of his own people at risk.
Dylan pressed a kiss to Ickis's oddly football-shaped head and he sighed happily. "Dylan always knew how to show a monster some appreciation. Speaking of appreciation, that cheese was delicious."
"Simply divine, darling," Oblina said. "But enough about food. How much trouble are you in?"
Dylan locked eyes with Nuada. Grimaced. "Not sure." She glanced over her shoulder at her guards. "But let's talk about that inside, so I can take a look at Ailbho. I think his ribs are broken."
The young Butcher nodded wearily, leaning heavily on Guardsman Loén. "Feels like, my lady."
Reaching out, Dylan took Nuada's hand and gave it a soft squeeze. "Do you…have to get back? Or is the fighting over?"
He glanced back the way he'd come, straining his eyes and casting out with his mundane and magical senses. The fighting was dying out. No one had been hurt. Why attack, then? What was the point? He would have to think about that, but later. He had much to think of later. For now, shades of Annwn, he needed sleep. Or even simply to fall into a bed and stop moving for a brace of hours, even if he didn't sleep. Just rest. Fiercely, he wished he could hold Dylan while they both slept, comforted by her nearness, basking in the scent and warmth of her…but her rules didn't allow it, and he had promised to abide by those rules.
"I believe," he said finally, "that I will accompany you back to the tavern. My father…" The word caught in his throat. Blinking back a sudden burning behind his eyes, he continued, "The king survives. No one has been harmed in the fighting. The bandits are captured, dead, or fled. We have nothing to fear now. Uaithne, I shall take point. Sir Maurice."
At the address, the blue monster-boy blinked, then arched a cocky eyebrow. "S'up?"
"You and Guardsman Loén help Ailbho."
"You got it, Your Princeness." Despite the flippant tone and the laughter in the creature's voice, Maurice went immediately to Ailbho's other side and slid the Butcher Guard's arm over his shoulder, taking his weight. He flicked his eyes at Dylan. "Hey, Doc, I think you're bleeding."
Dylan grimaced again. Nuada's eyes snapped wide. She held up a hand. "It's not deep. I took a strike meant for Ailbho."
He had to grit his teeth before he snarled, "Why did you take a strike meant for your bodyguard?"
"It was my fault, Sire!" Ailbho cried, trying to straighten up. One withering glance from Dylan and a warning shake of the head from Uaithne had him subsiding, relaxing back into Loén and Maurice's arms.
Dylan only sighed. "It was a human bandit. He would've killed Ailbho. So I tackled him out of the way." When he only stared at her, she offered him a tentative smile. "Don't be mad, okay?"
Nuada opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened it. Closed it. Finally he sighed. "I am not mad. We shall talk about this later. Now let us—"
A shrill, petrified scream split the night. Nuada's lance was in his hand, Dylan's twin-knives in each of her fists, and the guards bristled as they raised their claymores. Maurice bared his teeth and lowered his head; torchlight glinted off his horns, which Nuada realized spiraled into razor-sharp points. Ickis leapt from Dylan's arms and Oblina slithered down to the snow. Becan scuttled to stand in front of Dylan, hands up and crackling with magic.
Ickis opened his obscenely large mouth and sucked in a deep breath…and kept sucking, kept inhaling, swallowing air as his small body suddenly swelled up, surging upward, rising higher and higher until he stood taller than Dylan, taller than Nuada. His amber eyes had filled with scarlet and his fangs had lengthened to the size of sword-blades, jagged and slick with saliva. Nuada stared up at the monster as he unsheathed long, silvery needles from the tips of his claw-like fingers.
Dylan didn't seem to notice. She stared into the darkness beyond the torches in the village square, frowning. She leaned forward, staring hard, brow furrowed. Then she gasped and lurched forward. Ailís started in surprise and grabbed her charge by the arm.
"My lady—"
A child raced out of the dark, blood streaming down her arm from a cut on her shoulder, screaming and sobbing. Her scream pierced the night, needling into Nuada's skull. It was almost painful, scraping like shards of glass across his brain. The girl tripped, stumbled. Saw Nuada and Dylan and the guards. Scrambling over the corpses as if they were mere obstacles instead of felled bandits, she raced to Dylan and threw her arms around the mortal's waist. Dylan's arms dropped to surround the child—a young bean sídhe, gray skin slick with chilling sweat and blood the color of swamp weed. She wailed into Dylan's stomach, sobbing as blood ran down her back and arm. That explained the screaming. Nuada immediately cast a muffling spell on the girl to dull her power.
Dylan scanned her as Nuada kept his gaze focused on the direction the girl had come.
"It's all right, peata," she crooned to the bean sídhe. "Don't be afraid anymore. You're safe, you're safe."
"Is it bad?" Nuada asked.
"A few cuts, nothing I can't handle. Sweetheart, what happened? Who hurt you?" She stroked the girl's damp hair, trying to radiate warmth and comfort to the faerie child. "It's all right now. Who hurt you?"
The little bean sídhe pointed. "H-humans," she sobbed. "A human! He cut me!"
Just at that moment, a human bandit dashed out of the shadows, knife raised. The blade dripped dark green blood. The bean sídhe child lifted her head and screamed, shoving her face against Dylan's belly once more. Nuada stepped forward. He would kill this wretch easily and then give the corpse to Ickis so it would appear that the prince had had nothing to do with the death.
Blood leaked from a cut above the bandit's eye. He pointed his blade at the child. "Little bitch…think you can hit me with a stone?"
"Nuada!"
A sharp stab of horror and fury spiked through him. He angled his head just enough to see his father approaching, surrounded by his guards, trailed by Dylan's family and the royals Nuada called his friends. Balor's aged amber gaze slid to the bean sídhe child in Dylan's arms, then the bandit. Nuada opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the king beat him to it.
"That child hit you with a stone, human?"
The bandit sneered at the king, then leered at the girl and the mortal woman. Pointing at the oozing cut above his eye, he said, "Aye, King One-Arm. That little bint struck me in the face with a rock. Nearly took out my eye, she did."
Balor looked at the child then, and Nuada saw it—the emotion, the heart, the soul seeping out of the king's face, out of the king. A chilly hardness took its place, icy and sharp.
Without looking away from the little girl who wept into Dylan's dress, the king said, "Then she has broken the treaty and must be punished." The child's sobs rose in pitch, bordering on hysterical screams. "You are free to go, human," Balor added without inflection.
Nuada's teeth clenched. No. No, not this time. Balor would not set this monster free. He would not punish this little girl, would not murder her for protecting herself from this human filth that had hurt her so cruelly. Gripping his spear, the Silverlance set his shoulders and took a step toward the bandit. Behind him, he heard Dylan muttering something to the panic-stricken bean sídhe. The bean sídhe sobbed something back.
"Hold, Crown Prince!" Balor wheezed. Nuada took another step. "I said hold, Nuada!"
The bandit sneered at the Elven prince. "You heard your father, little princess. Now heel like a good dog."
"Fine," Dylan said sharply, suddenly. There was an odd quality to her voice that drew Nuada's gaze to her face. She'd gone white as milk again, face lined with pain, with weariness. And there was something in her eyes. Something that glittered with feral anger. "Fine. Prince Nuada will not kill you."
Nuada's head snapped back. He stared at her, betrayal etched across his face.
The bandit laughed. "Of course he won't. Stupid bitch, he knows who his master is. He tries to harm me, the king'll have him strung up in a trice." Another cold, sneering laugh. Nuada fairly vibrated with rage.
But Dylan's voice was icy when she asked, "What were you going to do to this little girl?"
A leer twisted the human male's face. "She's a bit young for any fun and games, but I've heard bean sídhe can scream something pretty when you cut 'em into pieces."
Nuada snarled and took another step.
"Guards, be ready to take the prince," Balor said softly. Nuada heard him clear as the ringing of a bell. He tightened his grip on his lance until the leather bit into his hand. Would it come down to this? To the fate of a village, a human bandit, and a bean sídhe child?
How could Dylan have promised he wouldn't kill the bandit?
Her next works nearly gutted him.
"Come and take her."
Everyone stared at her then. Nuada tried to speak. Choked. What was she doing? Was she trying to provoke the king? She couldn't possibly mean to really give up the child to this wretch, could she? Not his Dylan. So what was she doing?
The bandit laughed in disbelief. "What?"
"Come. And. Take. Her."
"My lady—" Ailbho breathed, but Uaithne silenced him. The rest of Dylan's guards were silent.
And so, Nuada realized, was the child. She should've been terrified. Yet she watched the bandit with glittering, milky-white eyes and clung to Dylan stubbornly, as if silently stating they'd have to pry the mortal woman from the girl's cold, dead fingers. Dylan's arm draped across the child's uninjured shoulder as woman and child stared the bandit down. Daring him.
But the bandit took a quick glance at the king and stepped forward. "Come here, little brat."
A cold, vicious smile curved Dylan's cut, scarred mouth. The bean sídhe turned her face into Dylan's protective embrace and the mortal shook her head, tisking softly.
"Interesting thing about bean sídhe," Dylan said. "Most of them, they're born on the days of death festivals. Not necessarily Irish ones, either, but usually. This little one, here? Born on the last day of October, right at midnight."
The bandit shrugged. "What of it?"
"What of it?" Dylan echoed. "You cut her. You're planning to kill her. She was born at midnight on Samhain…and you ask what of it?"
And the sickness rolled away from Nuada, fading like mist in the morning sun. Not offering up the child. Tricking the bandit. Putting an end to him, protecting the child in the only way she could think of on such short notice.
Bean sídhe were Bethmooran, but like the dullahan, they were death fae. And death fae could, if they chose, fall under the power and jurisdiction of a very specific fae monarch. A monarch whose power outstripped Balor's. A monarch that Dylan called friend, a monarch that called her a fortunate favorite.
Nuada didn't know what Dylan meant to do, but it was going to be brutal and swift.
The bandit just laughed and took another step.
"Oh, sweet child. No, no."
That voice wasn't crisp and cultured like Oblina's or nasally like the voice that had come out of Ickis. It wasn't cocky and full of laughter like Maurice's voice. And when it spilled like rich, silky darkness through the village square, those three monsters cried out and flung themselves to their knees, quaking. The bean sídhe clutched Dylan tighter.
Nuada swallowed. He'd never heard a voice like this. A voice the gods might envy. Soft, gentle. Terrible in its gentleness. A voice that caressed, that soothed. The sort of voice one might listen to while the speaker slowly and patiently carved up their victim with long, wicked sharp claws. It smoothed over him, creeping into his skull. Licking along his spine like a tongue of velvet night. It sent bizarre, electric tingling fizzing along his skin and through his blood. Behind him, Dylan whispered something that might have been a prayer.
The prince had only enough attention to spare for Dylan, the bean sídhe, and the bandit. The bandit had gone ashen. His eyes bugged out of his skull and his mouth opened and closed soundlessly. He stepped back. Croaked something that might have been a protest. He backed up another step, and Nuada wondered what he was seeing. Wondered who had spoken. The bandit backed up again, and again. Then, with a choked cry, he turned on his heel and tried to race away.
He smacked into something in the darkness and fell back, landing in a sprawl of limbs in the snow. The knife fell from his grasp to sink into a snow bank. He threw up his arms over his face. Screamed, "Stay back! Monster!"
"Now you've wounded me, sweet child." It wasn't the sepulchral voice of empty crypts and haunted mausoleums that belonged to Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud. It was seduction and shadows, beauty and bane. What was this? Who was this?
Out of the darkness stepped the most beautiful man Nuada had ever seen.
Long, inky black hair hung in a curtain down the man's back and framed a sculpted, aristocratic face nearly as white as Nuada's own. He wore a long black tunic that seemed to swallow up the light of torches, moon, and stars, over a pair of trousers the same deep black. He wore no shoes, and Nuada saw he left no footprints. The eyes beneath slender, elegant, dark brows glittered like obsidian stars. There was cruelty stamped across the beautiful face. It was a face to woo women. A face to launch ships. A face to kill for, and a face to die for. Fear and longing twisted in Nuada's belly.
Those eyes like black diamonds fixed on Dylan's face. Nuada tried to swallow. Tried to breathe. Found the air trapped, caged in his lungs. His fingertips tingled and he couldn't, couldn't look away from the man.
The man looked back down at the bandit and then knelt in an impossibly graceful sweep of darkness. The slender fingers of an artist reached out to lightly caress the bandit's grizzled cheek.
The bandit began to weep.
"You have wounded me, sweet child," the man said again. "More than that, you have wounded one of my little ones. The dear little ones who owe their fealty to my bloodline. You have wounded me twice over, sweet child."
"Please," the bandit whimpered. "Please, don't—"
"Shhh." The man didn't move, only shushed the sobbing human for a moment.
"Please," still pleading, "please spare me."
The exquisitely, agonizingly beautiful man blinked and suddenly the mortal man slammed back into the snow, spine bowing, and he screamed. Screaming, thrashing, he tried to claw at his chest, at his throat.
Nuada wanted to look away, wanted to close his eyes, wanted to breathe. But he could only stare, the air caught in his chest, heart racing, darkness beginning to creep in at the edges of his vision, as the mortal's flesh flaked away from his bones. There was no blood. No viscera. It was as if the man were a mummy that, having been exposed to the elements, was slowly disintegrating. He kept screaming, and the stranger continued to watch impassively with those incandescent eyes until nothing remained of the bandit but bones.
"No," the man said gently.
Nuada blinked and found he could breathe again. No? No, what? Then he remembered the bandit had begged this man to spare him.
The stranger glanced briefly at Balor standing several paces away before dismissing him as inconsequential. He flicked his gaze to Nuada, locking eyes with him, obsidian and topaz, and Nuada both wanted him to never look away and to please, for the gods' pity, stop looking at him. Then the stranger focused once more on Dylan.
"Will you not greet me properly, little one?"
Nuada heard Dylan swallow. Heard her shakily indrawn breath. Then she whispered, "Hello, Azrharn."
The stranger smiled, and it was the most beautiful, despicable, devastating thing Nuada had ever seen. It gutted him. Terrified him. And the rabid fear clawing at his belly only increased when the stranger replied in that terrible, gentle voice, "Hello, un-sister."
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References Made in This Chapter:
- Oblina and Ickis are from the cartoon Ahhh! Real Monsters
- Maurice is from the film Little Monsters
- Azrharn is from Tanith's Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth