chapter Fifteen
Daroch stood at the edge of Cape Wrath and let the sea winds lift the jagged edges of his long vest and flow through his sheared hair. He leaned against his staff, the end having been sharpened to a spear point and the whole thing coated with the Arborlatix. He’d even blunted the top into a rounded carving of the ancient tree of life. Closing his eyes, Daroch connected with each of the guardians he’d called upon to aid him against the Fae.
The pack of wolves paced a wide perimeter around the cape, lending strength, unity, and a predatory ferocity that surged around and through him with feral intensity.
A pair of black polecats tangled with each other nearby, leaping almost imperceptibly from rock to borough and gifting him with supernatural speed and unmatched, observant reflexes.
A conspiracy of ravens circled above calling eerily down to them. They lent a certain darkness to his intent. A fortitude of will and wisdom. Theirs was a sight and perspective that differed from all other creation. A potent understanding of the need for adversity and finality. They were the harbingers of death and the arbiters of new beginnings. Their portent declared that this ended here.
One way or the other.
He sensed Kylah’s approach, but did not acknowledge her as she drew beside him. Despite everything, the strength he gained from her presence was more potent than what he’d derived from any creature in the past. It was as though he overflowed with it, and it unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
“Kamdyn is safe within the protection of your cave behind the runes,” she informed him.
He nodded, though his gaze remained fixed on the sea. If he looked at her now, he might say things he couldn’t take back. Things she could use against him. He might use words and platitudes that he didn’t believe in, only for lack of sufficient verbiage to describe his complicated emotions.
The previous night had become a haze of lust and sex and recovery that had only dwindled when fatigue forced exhausted, trembling muscles to sleep. Barely a word was spoken between them and those that were only served as carnal encouragement. Kylah had taken him any way he’d wanted her to. She never issued commands or made demands of him, only desperate, passionate pleas that made him feel powerful and dominant. She’d allowed him to drive their pleasure in any direction he desired it.
And he’d desired it all.
He’d taken her with his mouth. With his hands. With his body, and sometimes intense combinations thereof. And in doing so, systematically shattered any physical barrier or taboo left between them. Only when she begged him for respite did he tuck her against his sated, exhausted body and allow sleep to overtake them both.
She loved him. Or thought she did, if ever there were such a thing. She trusted him. Desired him. Stood by him here at the end and risked everything she held dear to fight for his justice despite being denied her own.
Foreign and intense emotion rushed into his throat until it was thoroughly blocked. He couldn’t have formed words if he tried.
Kylah’s hand wound its way into his and gripped it with a strength that surprised him enough to command his attention.
War braids tangled at her temple and the ancient blue war paint of their Woad ancestors marked her lovely features in a fashion very similar to his own. Dressed in a loose blue shift and kirtle, she clutched a long, deadly dirk that he’d given her this morning, coated in a substance ultimately dangerous to her.
“Do ye know how to use that?” he rasped, wishing he’d said something better, more meaningful.
Her wee face was fierce as she brought it out in front of her. “Not even a little bit,” she admitted with a wry smirk. “But the important part is, I know the sharp bit goes into a Faerie.”
Daroch’s heart swelled. Her courage put him to shame and a sudden icy fear clutched at him when he thought of all that might befall her in this endeavor.
“Perhaps ye should join yer sister in the cave,” he suggested, turning to her and taking her shoulders in his hands. “I can’t stand the thought of ye—”
“Perhaps you should hold your tongue,” her brow lifted along with her lips in a taunting smile. “There’s not a force on this earth or in the heavens that would keep me from your side.”
His heart jumped into his throat again and suddenly made him bold. “Kylah, I—”
“Do not waste your breath, Druid.” The familiar, arctic voice of the Banshee Queen froze the warm words on his tongue and his heart along with them. “It is too late to save her traitorous life and she will die screaming.”
Daroch and Kylah turned toward the Fae, who’d appeared upon the green plane behind them, trapping them effectively against the cliff. Dripping with diamonds as brilliant as the sun and robes as pure as fresh snow, they would have resembled wrathful seraphim to anyone who didn’t know better.
But Daroch knew. He knew their colors had so many facets and spectra that they could not be contained in this realm. And so they weren’t.
Despite the uncommonly warm spring sunlight, little crystals of frost swirled about them as their auras froze what moisture clung to the sea air. They were the absence of warmth. The ironic immortal antithesis of life. And an all-encompassing hatred swelled within Daroch, lent abject ferocity by the snarling wolf pack now flanking the Faeries.
“I thought ye’d bring an army,” Daroch sneered as he let go of Kylah’s hand to draw his sword. He wished like hell she were somewhere else. Somewhere safe. For, even though only The Queen, Ly Erg, and her hand-maiden stood before him, he knew they were each utterly lethal. Cliodnah and her Banshee companion could kill him with one touch. Probably with only her Banshee scream.
Cliodnah speared him with her empty eyes, and Daroch couldn’t stop the shudder of revulsion that clawed down his spine. “To gather an army, I’d have to call a council of Queens. I do not want nor do I need their permission. You humans have a charming saying about forgiveness being easier to obtain.”
“My death by your hand would be a direct violation of yer Queen’s pact,” he taunted. “Because of yer insolence in keeping me, she mentioned me by name in her contract with the Gods.”
The frost around her agitated the air as though swirled by a powerful wind, the only outward sign of the Banshee Queen’s displeasure. “That is why I brought Ly Erg. He is my assassin when I or my Banshees cannot have a hand in the deed. As you have learned, Druid, since the blood of your people still stain his hands.” She reached to Ly Erg and brought a crimson hand to her lips, planting a devoted kiss to the blood.
Her mouth came away clean. The blood never actually touched her, despite that she was swimming in an ocean’s worth of innocent dead.
“I just came to watch.” The Queen’s liquid silver eyes ignited with a cruel spark.
Beside him, Kylah gasped.
Daroch’s lip curled as he tried to rein in his surging rage and let his logic prevail. “I have defeated Ly Erg countless times. He hardly holds danger for me.” Especially not now.
“I have been toying with you, human,” Ly Erg scoffed, his new suit of armor gleaming in the sunlight. “As the Queen has never particularly ordered your death before now.”
Daroch could not exactly tell if Ly Erg spoke the truth, but it mattered little. Because of his animal guardians, they were more equivalent in combat than ever in the past, and Daroch now held one massive advantage in that regard. Ly Erg didn’t fear his weapons.
And that could prove a lethal mistake.
The Queen pointed at Kylah and gestured to her hand-maiden. “Subdue her,” she ordered.
The expressionless Fae moved to comply.
Ly Erg slowly advanced toward Daroch. “Know this, Druid, once I have taken your life, I’m going to enjoy punishing your woman. And once I’ve broken her, I’ll start on her sister. I’m going to—”
Daroch attacked, not intending to let Ly Erg finish his threat. He leapt with all the dexterity afforded by the wolves, his staff in his left hand and his sword in his right, poised to rain a final death upon the unsuspecting immortal. Ly Erg barely had time to draw his sword before Daroch was on him. The clash echoed over the moors for miles as their weapons collided with unnatural speed and strength.
Daroch used both weapons in a relentless spinning offensive, forcing the Faerie to block his staff before he followed up with a slash from his sword.
Ly Erg did seem to be more dexterous than in the past, his Fae blade moving with barely traceable speed, still managing to deflect every one of Daroch’s blows. Changing strategy, Daroch brought them face to face with a dual-handed attack that caught both his weapons, but took Ly Erg two hands on his hilt to block.
He snarled at the Fae executioner. “Ye’ll never taint her with yer touch.”
Ly Erg opened his mouth, but rather than hear the Fae’s retort, Daroch used a surge of power through his arms to bash at his perfect, cruel features with the blunt head of his staff.
Blood exploded from the Faerie’s nose and a satisfying crunch preceded a faint sizzle as the Arborlatix came into contact with Fae cartilage, blood, and bone.
The extent of the damage stunned them both, but Daroch recovered first and leapt away, disengaging their weapons. He growled and began to spin his staff in his left hand to gain momentum for another assault.
Ly Erg spit blood into the grass and leered at him, swiping his sword through the air a few times.
“Why do you not heal?” the Queen demanded of her executioner.
“The Druid has something on his weapons,” Ly Erg answered shortly, his silver and gold features sobered and settled into an ugly mask of retribution. “The time for play is over.”
“You Faeries are creatures of the forest,” Daroch measured his voice carefully, giving away none of the glee he felt as he watched blood continue to leak from his enemy’s broken nose. “It seems appropriate, then, that a tree would hold the key to your demise.” He advanced again, maintaining his position as the aggressor, his staff whirling through the air as though searching for purpose, his sword poised to strike.
Ly Erg leapt at him, blood staining his teeth and draining from his mouth as he flew through the air, a new and satisfying fear in his silver eyes.
Daroch braced himself, but dangerously underestimated the Fae’s strength as he blocked a blow to his staff arm that he should have dodged. His staff went flying as pain exploded in his forearm. The Fae blade sliced through his leather bracer and found purchase in the sinew there. Daroch cursed, and the wolves howled and snarled their displeasure.
Then he saw his moment. It was but a flash of an overextension on the part of Ly Erg, but using his heightened reflexes; Daroch reached over his body and with a vicious stroke of his sword and relieved Ly Erg of his blade by hacking through both of his hands and shearing them from the bone.
They fell uselessly to the highland grasses and rolled before being swiped by chattering polecats and swept somewhere beneath the earth.
Ly Erg looked at the stumps of his hands for an astounded moment before falling to his knees. The ravens cackled like mad from above, lending a discordant cacophony to the shocked stillness.
Daroch reveled in dark victory. “Never again will yer hands claim the lives of the innocent for yer sick amusement.” He raised his sword above his head, ignoring the trickle of blood down his arm. “And know that when I take yer head this time, it will be the last.”
The Queen’s transcendent Banshee scream ripped through him like a white-hot fire, causing him to go half blind. It felt as though his soul was tattered linen caught in the teeth of two competing hounds, each jerking and ripping in the opposite direction. But he managed to draw the last of his remaining faculties and send his blade through the Fae’s neck with the ease of a glowing-hot iron through candle wax.
One of the wolves caught the rolling head in his teeth before the entire pack fled the dangerous wail of the Banshee, their sensitive ears unable to stand the unnatural pitch.
Daroch dropped to his own knees, holding his ears and feeling the blood leak through his fingers. His teeth locked and a cry of pain ripped from a throat almost clogged with his own blood. He could feel it leaking like tears from his eyes.
He’d underestimated the willingness of the Queen to flout the consequences of the pact, and that might have been the end of him. And maybe Kylah as well.
Kylah’s awe at the defeat of Ly Erg was cut painfully short by her terror for Daroch. Even without his intellectual acumen, she’d known their odds for survival of the day were minimal, but she simply couldn’t allow the Queen’s second to hold her in an idle, unconcerned grasp while she watched the man she loved die on the ground, writhing in agony.
“Do not move and you may yet live,” Cliodnah’s hand-maiden whispered.
Kylah refused to listen. Her life didn’t matter without Daroch. With a mighty Banshee wail of her own to lend her strength, she pulled the dirk out of her sleeve and slashed at the hand-maiden, who jumped back and released her instantly, peering dubiously at the knife’s lethal point.
Once freed, she jerked away and barreled toward the Queen’s turned back. She surprised herself as much as Cliodnah when the dirk slid between the Banshee Queen’s ribs.
Cliodnah’s wail died instantly and her head spun on her shoulders at a frightening and unnatural angle. Turning the rest of her body from Daroch, she caught Kylah’s neck in a lightning-fast grip as her silver irises sparked and snapped overtaking the whites of her eye.
“Though you are one of the immortal ones, as your queen I can kill you in slow, immeasurably torturous increments.” Her voice fractured from one into many, some with a radiant, high-pitched shrill and others as deep as any man’s.
Kylah’s limbs struggled in panic, flailing in the air as Cliodnah crushed her neck and her powerful magic snapped through Kylah’s body more painfully than her flesh had ignited in the forge a year before. Black stars danced in her periphery, but her heart lifted to see Daroch groan and push himself upright.
Their eyes locked and she poured her heart into them even as she felt her life begin to ebb.
“What makes you think you can mean anything to him?” The Queen demanded. “He f*cked me for months. For centuries of your time. How could a lowly, damaged highland washerwoman compete with a Faerie Queen?”
A soft hiss preceded a sickly wet sound as the sharpened point of Daroch’s staff punched through Cliodnah’s shoulder and chest, stopping inches from Kylah’s skin.
Daroch stood panting from where he’d hurled it like a javelin, blood drying on his neck and cheeks where it had leaked from his eyes and ears. The effect was terrifying. He looked like some wrathful, ancient God of the underworld, come to claim his vengeance.
“I may have f*cked ye, ye twisted bitch, but I made love to her.”
Never had Kylah loved him more than at that moment.
The Queen’s head snapped back and she keened with the unfamiliar pain of the Arborlatix as it skewered through her. She hurled Kylah toward her hand-maiden with such incredible force, that Kylah would have broken bones upon impact with the earth had she still been human.
“Finish her!” she commanded as she ripped the spear from her body. The contact with the coated weapon singed her palms. She tossed it behind her and advanced on Daroch. “I’m going to slaughter this Druid with my bare hands.”
Kylah pitched toward the Fae. She’d left her knife in the Faerie Queen, though it seemed to have little effect. She had nothing with which to defend herself. She didn’t want to watch her approaching doom, instead, she pushed herself from the grass as Cliodnah ripped off Daroch’s robes, leaving him only in his trews and touched her deadly fingers to the tattoo above his heart.
“This hardly protects you,” she snarled at the new and sacred triquetra on his chest. “It will only delay your death and prolong your pain.” His body arced violently as she jolted him. His scream was dark and unnatural, filled with incomprehensible torment.
Kylah jumped to her feet, desperate to stop her. His pain pierced her heart. This couldn’t be how it ended. There was no justice in this.
Her eyes fell to his staff, discarded by the Queen. It was covered with the Arborlatix, and if she could pierce a vital organ with it, it would surely slow her down.
Kylah reached for it, but the Queen’s hand-maiden kicked her hand and snatched it from the ground.
It sizzled in her hands, and the smaller Fae’s soft eyes pinched with pain at the edges. She speared Kylah with a look of profound regret that stunned her. “I do what must be done,” she murmured.
In a flash of movement, she turned and shoved the spear through her Queen, piercing her lungs.
The Queen’s screams died on a wet gurgle, and Daroch slumped to his knees as her power withdrew from his bleeding body. He panted on the ground for a shocked moment as everyone stared at the red and black stain growing around the staff protruding from Cliodnah’s chest.
“You are no longer fit to rule,” the hand-maiden said dispassionately. “You break our sacred pacts, flout the holy council of Queens, and make light of our immortal words.”
The Queen gave a wet cough.
“You would kill this man who was your servant and your slave rather than grant him the boon he is owed.”
Daroch’s hand tightened on his sword. The Banshee Queen struck her hand-maiden with such force the small faerie nearly flew over the cliff. Cliodnah drifted toward her, slowly pulling the staff through her middle. “You have been little better than a slave to me for millennia,” she screamed maniacally. “You dare to—”
The Banshee Queen’s words died swiftly as her head separated from her elegant neck. She reached the ground in a limp heap before her crystalline flakes had the chance to fall. They settled around her in a ring before melting into the spring grasses.
Daroch spat blood on her white robes, his Druid sword dripping onto her priceless jewels, and promptly collapsed to the grass beside her, still as death.