The Fiend Queen (32 page)

“He’s got her. He’ll get everyone eventually. You have to guard yourself, nephew. Guard your children.” He sucked in a deep breath and stared at nothing with horrified eyes. “I tried to kidnap your children.”

Reinholt snapped his fingers. “That was the Fiend, Uncle, don’t you remember?”

“They’re going to kill me. And they should. Kill me before I hurt someone else, before I have the chance. Choices are
terrible
, nephew. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”

Reinholt glanced over his shoulder, asking if Katya had seen enough. She started to edge out of the cell.

Reinholt paused before he followed. “Uncle, you were in the palace while the armies were fighting outside the wall.”

Roland stared at him blankly.

“You said you knew you were toying with Katya. Why abandon your own army in the field to play with her?”

“I was with the army.”

“No, Uncle, you were in the palace, remember?”

“Not me!
Me
! There were many of me with the army. They could take care of things. I would have won.”

Reinholt just stared, but Katya remembered the host of attackers all speaking with her uncle’s voice.
Hello, niece
. He’d left his copies in charge while he’d come into the palace to kill her. From what she’d heard of the battle outside the wall, he was right. If Starbride hadn’t come along, he would have won. Katya hurried from the cell before the urge to strangle him overtook her.

Roland looked to the small movement, his eyes wide and terrified. “It’s him! He’s here!”

Katya kept going, and Reinholt followed on her heels, leaving their uncle shrieking in terror and rattling his chains.

Starbride

Starbride watched the forest go by. Shame burned in her cheeks whenever she recalled the night before, but she didn’t exactly know why. Because she’d succumbed to her weaker nature or because she hadn’t fought harder against…

She couldn’t finish the thought. Yanchasa crouched in her mind, and it was foolish to think he didn’t know how she felt whether she let herself articulate her thoughts or not. Yanchasa stayed silent, though she thought she felt something from him. Satisfaction. When had she started feeling his emotions?

“Look ahead, daughter. Listen.”

Starbride’s gaze snapped forward. There was nothing to see along the road, but she heard rustling and the echoing crunch of cracking wood.

Freddie slipped off his horse with an easy motion. “I’ll scout ahead.”

Starbride almost called for him to stop, worry for his safety warring with her need to be the one who led the charge. She narrowed her eyes and fought to find her center.

Freddie jogged back moments later. “It’s a whole hypnotized village.”

“How do you know they’re hypnotized?” Hugo asked.

“Regular people talk to one another as they work. They take breaks. These were just…blank.”

“What was the snapping noise?” Starbride asked.

“They brought down a tree at the village edge. Probably firewood.”

“Hypnotized or not, Roland wouldn’t have wanted them to freeze to death,” Starbride said. “How many?”

“Too many for the few of us.”

“For you perhaps. Not for me, not for them.” She nodded into the trees and put out her call, the adsna filling her with confidence. The children gathered in the nearest shadows. The remnants shuffled their feet, ready to attack.

She gestured one messenger forward. “Ride back and tell the king what we’ve discovered and that we’re taking care of it.” She waved four corpse Fiends toward him. “Make sure he gets to Marienne safely.” She put mind magic behind the words, embedding it in the remnants’ pyramids.

They gathered around the messenger, who grimaced as if he didn’t know which was worse, staying here where he could feel the presence of the children or riding back alone with the remnants. “Yes, Princess Consort.” He spurred his horse back along the trail.

“We’ll circle around the side,” Freddie said, “come at them from two different directions, but we should scout that way first.”

Starbride shook her head. “Let’s do what we came to do so we can get back.”

He opened his mouth, but Starbride waved him away. “You circle around if you need to. We’re going in.” She kicked her horse forward, taking the children and the remnants with her.

A small cluster of thatch-roofed buildings sat in a clearing ahead. A stream wound near the opposite side, frozen over now, but during spring Starbride bet it flooded its banks time and again, the reason for the low rise of dirt near its edge.

People moved through the village with single-minded purpose, carrying wood or blades, and she heard the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer. The people seemed a little worse for wear, their clothes ragged. Starbride could smell the dirt on them, and she was certain that the thatch would have been repaired if the villagers had been in their right minds. And there would have been children or dogs playing in their midst.

As she rode into the open, she sensed hypnosis pyramids in several of the houses. She let the adsna flow, changing them to wells of power. She’d expected the villagers to drop whatever they were holding, but the work didn’t cease. They’d been mind-warped.

That shouldn’t have been possible without a pyradisté working on them, and Starbride didn’t think Roland had been out here recently. He’d had too much to do in Marienne. But he’d either made time, or someone else was working for him.

Starbride scanned the houses as she rode closer, looking for active pyramids. Something called from the edge of her senses.

One of the mind-warped villagers turned her way and gave a shout. His expression didn’t change to fear or fury but remained placid, soulless as an alarm. The other villagers picked up weapons or tools, whatever they could reach, and charged. Starbride waved the remnants and the children forward. This would be a slaughter.

“Look out!” Yanchasa called, and Starbride’s body lurched to the left. An arrow skimmed her arm, drawing a line of pain across her bicep. She hissed and sealed the cut with flesh magic before sliding down from her horse, making herself less of a target.

She spotted the archer along the tree line to the east and commanded two of the remnants to lope after him. He shot several arrows into them, but they didn’t slow, and she didn’t stay to watch them tear him apart.

She burned several villagers to ash. When a pyramid came flying at her from a cluster of buildings, she cleansed it with a thought.

“Stop, stop, we’re on your side!” someone cried.

Starbride followed the pyramid scent and found the pyradisté between two shacks. She was young, probably thirteen or so. Her dirty blond hair had been cropped close to her head, and she hadn’t lost the baby fat in her cheeks.

“My side?” Starbride asked. “Which side is that?”

“I work for the Fiend king! Don’t you? You have the corpses!”

“Guess again.”

The young pyradisté looked hastily left and right as she backed away.

“Princess Consort!” someone called from out in the press. The young pyradisté ran. Starbride was about to pursue when one of the messengers charged toward her on his horse. “Princess Consort, Lord Hugo and Master Freddie are trapped within the forest.”

“Trapped?”

“By a gang of these.” He gestured at the hypnotized people. “I was barely able to escape. They’ll be overwhelmed.”

Perhaps they should have scouted ahead after all. She cursed Freddie for getting himself and Hugo into trouble. She needed to catch the pyradisté. She started after the young girl without thinking.

“No,” she said. “I need to go after Freddie and Hugo.”

The messenger slid down from his horse. “Here.”

“The pyradisté is a more pressing target,” Yanchasa said, standing behind the messenger’s shoulder. “If she escapes, she could create more problems for us.”

Her body felt wrenched in two directions. “Freddie and Hugo could die!”

The messenger stared. Yanchasa’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Starbride felt the adsna roar through her, threatening to steal her feelings.

“No!” she cried. The power pulsed, forcing the messenger back a step.

“You don’t want your mission to succeed?” Yanchasa asked. “Did you enjoy your time last night?”

Before she could reply, the power drained away, and the cold crashed over her like a wave. Her legs threatened to buckle. No! She wouldn’t give in this time, wouldn’t sag to the floor and beg for help or surrender to the power that stole her emotions. She stumbled toward the horse.

The messenger had to help her up, and after she was astride he swung up behind her. “Take me there.”

He aimed the horse in the right direction, and she barely held on. She tried to call for the children or the remnants, but that power wouldn’t obey her.

Starbride heard the shouts echoing off the trees long before she saw the fight. Hugo, Freddie, and the last messenger tried to use the forest to keep a mass of mind-warped villagers from surrounding them. As she watched, the messenger went down beneath a wall of swinging blades. Freddie stayed ahead of the strikes, trying to get to Hugo who swung his rapier with wild abandon.

It wouldn’t be enough. They’d have Hugo soon. Freddie would never reach him in time. Starbride flung her destruction hand out to summon fire or an earthquake or even a flash bomb, but the power felt sluggish, disobedient.

“Hugo!” Starbride cried. He couldn’t look toward her, and she knew of only one way to help him. “Get down,” she said to the messenger. Once he was clear, she rode into the fray, her horse knocking villagers to the side. Some turned toward her, weapons raised. “Hugo,” she called again, “your Fiend!”

A blade dug into her thigh, turning her voice into a howl. Her horse reared as the villagers chopped at its hide. One of Starbride’s feet slipped from the stirrup, and her arms couldn’t hold. She slid to the ground, the impact sending shockwaves through her knees. The booted feet of the villagers converged on her.

Yanchasa was there, waiting to help, but hatred for her own cowardice reared within her. A club thudded into her ribs, driving her breath out, and an acid sting rolled all the way to her core as someone buried a knife in her back. She opened her lips to call Yanchasa’s name.

A warm spray bathed her from head to toe, and the booted feet flew away as if before a hurricane. Her body folded in pain. The knife that had bitten into her dropped to the crimson-smeared grass. She lifted her head to look beyond it. The forest was a ruin of blood and body parts. The messenger was a retreating dot in the distance, and his horse lay in three tidy, oozing pieces.

Freddie perched in a nearby tree, watching with a look of awestruck horror as Hugo tore the last villager’s head off. His eyes had become pits of light blue. The spike jutting from his chin moved up and down as he breathed hard. Crow’s wings had torn the back of his coat wide open, and as he turned to look at Starbride, he bared his fangs in a snarl.

Starbride struggled to her feet with the aid of a small tree. She curled her free hand over her ribs, and her foot squelched as blood from her leg filled her boot. More flowed down her back. Hugo took a shambling step toward her.

Starbride reached for the adsna, but it eluded her still. Freddie slipped down from his tree, too far away to help her. Hugo took another step, and Starbride reached through her flesh pyramid in a way she hadn’t since she’d first felt the adsna.

She sensed Hugo’s ability to become human again—that rusty handle inside all Umbriels—and yanked on it. The magic still felt sluggish, but it grew stronger as he stalked toward her. By the time he broke into a run, it flowed again. When he neared her, she felt the rusty handle give, and he collapsed mid-step, falling into her arms and making her cry out in pain. She managed to guide him to the forest floor without dropping him.

“I can’t find the medical kit,” Freddie said.

He tugged her upright, making her stutter a cry. “What are you doing?”

He was tearing cloth. “I have to bind your wounds, but the horse with the fucking medical kit is gone!”

“Shouting’s not a good idea.” The pain beat at her, and she knew it should have been excruciating, undeniable, but she was slipping away. Hugo had almost died, and half of her still wanted to go chasing that pyradisté, but she was so tired. She sank to the ground, and Freddie went with her.

“Everyone else is dead.” He pressed something against her numb back. “I can’t stop this bleeding.”

Starbride gasped as the adsna filled her. “You don’t have to.” He jumped back with a curse when her wounds mended themselves.

Yanchasa stood amidst the trees, the bare amount of armor over her clothing. “What have you done, daughter?”

“I saved my friends.”

“I never expected betrayal from you, someone who claimed to know it so well.”

Guilt tried to worm into her, but she stopped it with a thought. “That’s a shabby trick. I betrayed no one.”

With a blink, Yanchasa stood just in front of her. He laid a spectral palm on Hugo’s head, and Hugo came awake with a start. “I understand the connection he must have for you, daughter. He carries my flesh; he must call to you.”

“He’s my friend.”

Hugo staggered upright but would have fallen again had Freddie not caught him. “What’s going on?”

Freddie shushed him, his eyes fixed on Starbride. She glanced at him, but her words with Yanchasa couldn’t wait, and she didn’t care to keep them in her head. “You’re working through me.”

Yanchasa leaned back, an unreadable look on his face. “Sometimes you lack the necessary skill.”

That made sense. Still, she’d learned so much. She felt the adsna waiting, ready to carry her feelings away, but she didn’t want to bury her disquiet. She knew Yanchasa could make it worse, could make the cold feel like a thousand knives; he could make her wounds reopen. And she’d let him in, embraced him.

She didn’t want to rid herself of him, not completely. There was knowledge and power in those bottomless eyes. And as today had proven, Roland’s forces were still at work. Surely they could come to some compromise.

“Stop working through me,” Starbride said.