The Last Faerie Queen (27 page)

In the center of the grounds, the first wave of faerie servants poured over their captors like insects covering a corpse. Still, the courtiers pushed back. I saw Olorian shove a nymph against a signpost that was really a tree. The nymph's lips opened slightly as she asked the tree to come to her aid. A second later the post bent down, encircling Olorian in its grip.

On the other side of the space, the Lady Claremondes fought furiously with three ogres, cackling as she slithered between their feet. The first fell, unbalanced and confused, and the others looked as if they were going to go hurtling to the ground as well. The Lady shrieked, thinking she'd won, when a dozen minuscule arrows whizzed across the battlefield, piercing her neck. A group of brownies shouted in triumph.

They're winning,
I thought, my hand subconsciously threading an arrow through my bow. It hurt like hell, but it was better than being useless.

We're winning.

Then, just as suddenly, a terrible feeling bloomed in the pit of my stomach as I watched Elora stare down Naeve.

I crept to the edge of my branch.

“Taylor,” Alexia said.

I shook my head. It made me dizzy, but what didn't, at this point? “This whole thing is a sham.”

“What?” Kylie hissed, looking up.

“Our place in the trees. Playing ‘defense.' It doesn't mean anything.” I gestured to the stage. “If he grabs her, none of us is a good-enough shot to take him out, without risking … ”

Alexia opened her mouth, but she didn't say anything.

That told me everything I needed to know. “We're just pawns. Even she's a pawn in her own game. She'll do whatever it takes to distract him, to keep him busy until … ” I slid my arrow into its quiver. “I'm not playing anymore.”

“Taylor,” Alexia said softly. “Every part of this has been planned—”

“You can't plan for everything! That's the point.” And then I was gone, slipping down the trunk of the tree. Kylie watched me as I hit the ground, but she didn't try to stop me.

Up on the stage, Naeve was drawing a sword from his cloak. “After an impressive, surprising day, you choose such a pathetically uninspired end?”

Elora said nothing. She made no move to defend herself.

I started to run.

Naeve took a step forward. “So typical of you to sacrifice yourself for the good of your kind. Elora the valiant. Elora the fool.”

“Bravery always did elude you,” she said, absently adjusting her crown as I pushed between two trolls.

“Such an insolent tongue,” Naeve snapped, his gaze drifting to her head, where her hand had lingered. “Yet I still believe, with the proper training, you will make a suitable servant to the Unseelie Prince.”

“Ha.” Elora scoffed and spat in his face.

Naeve twirled his sword. “All I need is one little sign of subservience.” His golden eyes flashed. “Give me your crown.”

Elora frowned, like she'd forgotten she'd put on the crown in the first place. “No.”

“What?” Naeve asked, pleased by her somber reaction. “A faerie who willfully relinquishes nobility is undeserving of such ornamentation.”

“No,” Elora murmured again, touching the crown with her fingers. “It was a gift.”

Naeve's face flushed, instantly angry. “Then you will watch the blood drain from everyone you love.” He slashed the blade across her face.

Elora gasped, cupping her cheek. Down below, I'd reached the bottom of the stage. For a second, our eyes met, and something in Elora's eyes changed.

“All right,” she said, taking the crown from her head. Blood dripped through her fingers onto the jewels. “You can have it. Just don't hurt my friends.”

Naeve grinned. “All I ever wanted,” he said as Elora stepped toward him with the crown, “was to see you kneeling at my feet. You'd be much more appealing from that angle.”

“You have no idea,” Elora said in a sultry voice, lifting the crown to his head. “Too bad you never will.” 

She shoved the iron spikes into his flesh.

Naeve stumbled forward, his eyes rolling dizzily. The sword clattered from his hand. I watched him from below, my arms screaming as I tried to pull myself onto the stage. When he drew something out of his boot, I cried out in vain.

Elora lifted a shimmering sword from the folds of her dress as Naeve rose to his knees
. She swung the sword in a way that was so familiar, it made my chest hurt. She lifted her blade. He lifted something too.

Isn't it funny, the difference a second makes?

Just as she brought the blade down, Naeve flung his dagger into her throat. Red blossomed over the white.

“You lose,” Naeve said.

A scream ripped from my lips. Then Elora was falling, sliding into a puddle on the ground. I tried to catch her eye, to tell her I loved her one last time. Kiss her cheek. Stroke her hair. But a funny thing happened then. Elora looked out at the grounds, and
grinned
. As I followed her gaze across the battlefield, I saw faeries slumped in the dirt, both servant and courtier. But of those standing
,
there were hardly any courtiers left.

“
I
win,” Elora said. I thought she did, but something about the voice made me loosen my grip. The voice wasn't Elora's.

The building slipped from my hands.

Everything will be an illusion.

The voice was Keegan's.

38

E
l
o
r
A

I arrived to find the battle in full swing. So perhaps my people did not need me after all. Or perhaps everything had been plotted so perfectly, my presence was less important than all the arrangements I'd made. I'd gathered the servants of the Unseelie Court. I'd made certain my mother was absent, so more faeries would survive.

I did that,
I told myself as I reached the top of the mountain.

I set this up
, I thought as the body hit the ground.
My
body, or so it seemed, but looking down at my hands, I knew what was mine and what wasn't.

Still, I had one quiet moment of denial where I forgot everything that had led to this eventuality. I told myself it couldn't be my fault. I told myself I couldn't have prevented it. Then reality hit me like a knife to the gut.

A knife to the throat.

“
No!
” A voice screamed, as the glamour bled away from Keegan's body. Looking to my left, I saw a figure on horseback traveling along the outskirts of the grounds, trying to reach the place where Keegan had fallen.

Where her brother had fallen.

“Oh, Darkness,” I breathed, wishing for wings that could lift me into the sky. Wishing for someone to carry me. Wishing for magic that wouldn't come. Then, as beings often do in times of trauma, I remembered the parts of me that did work. The parts that were magic, whether anyone realized it or not.

I picked up my feet. I curled my fingers into fists.

And I ran.

Into the fray I went, past centaurs trampling nymphs with their hooves. Past nymphs choking pixies with vines. Blood streaked my arms, and I hadn't even done anything yet. Brambles nipped at my ankles, taking away my skin in little bites.

When I reached the center of the battle, I sought out the key players. I already knew where Naeve was, but where were his favored courtiers? And where were Taylor and Alexia? As an arrow buzzed past me, landing at Naeve's feet, I found one question answered.

But what of the others?

My heart began to race. Really, it was an amazing muscle, withstanding torture, witnessing sacrifice, and still managing to be surprised by such a scene. Brother fighting brother. Sister fighting sister. All of us, so righteous in our indignation. And oh, we'd have our equality!

Death makes equals of us all.

I stumbled over the bodies of fallen faeries. I searched for green eyes and golden hair. I was flinging my darkness haphazardly, inky webs shooting out of my fingers, binding but not suffocating. I needed to find him, to make sure he was all right.

It was foolish, and I focused on it anyway. Love can kill us or save our lives, depending on the minute.

That minute, I chose love over self-preservation, and ran smack-dab into my third greatest enemy. The Lady Claremondes, in all her hideous glory. Even more hideous since Naeve had wrenched her tongue out in the graveyard and used it against me. First I'd been poisoned with her venom, then with iron. Another kind of girl might've been irritated at the injustice. But all's fair in love and war, and I was about to rain
fairness
all over this wretch.

“Ooh, hoo, hoo!” the Lady crowed, that stump of a tongue making me feel sick. I took a step back, a wave of nausea washing over me. “If it isn't the broken princess.”

“You aren't exactly the belle of the ball.”

“You're speaking like them,” the Lady Claremondes said, twirling her sugar-white dreadlocks. Her skin was so pale, she might as well have been a ghost. And she would be when all was said and done. A doomed spirit, haunting this land. Unable to grab. Unable to poison.

Yes.

Come closer
, I thought, and beckoned with my hand.

She grinned. “You think you can best me? You cannot even fly.”

“Then I guess I will have to kick your face in.”

“Have at it,” she said, slithering backward. It was easy for her, as her bottom half trailed behind her like a snake, more vapor than substance.

Fair enough
, I thought.
I'll just pin her top half against something.
But with what?

Glancing around, I saw the ground was littered with knives.
Kylie
, I thought, my eyes drifting to the outskirts again. I couldn't see her, but it didn't matter. A quick look around the battlefield showed what she'd been doing. Rather than aiming her knives at people's hearts or temples, she'd been wounding them, so that they'd stumble and be overcome by dark servants.

Clever trick.
Clever and merciful, for she wasn't taking their lives. She was only incapacitating them. Still, as I watched Naeve yank the crown from his head, swaying dizzily, I knew Kylie would not be merciful with him. If she reached him before I could reach him, things would get uglier than they already were.

Better make this quick.

I swooped down, plucking three knives from the ground. In quick succession, I hurled them at the Lady Claremondes' chest. The first pushed her back, into a tree that looked like a signpost. The second lodged in her chest, stealing her breath. But with the third blade, I gave a little extra oomph, and it slid through her body like she was made of butter.

It pinned her to the tree.

I should've walked away then. Should've sought the stage and taken down Naeve. Should've used the vantage point to locate Taylor and come to his aid. But I didn't. I didn't even think about what I was doing. I just walked toward her with a grin. “Funny how a flightless faerie can still take you down, isn't it?” I said, grabbing a strand of her hair. The long, circular dreadlock she used as a noose.

“You speak like them. You fight like them. You'll fall like them.”

“
I've already fallen, and come back.” I wrapped the hair around her neck. Not like a noose, but over and over again, the way a python wraps around its victi
m.

A punishment befitting a snake.

Still, it wasn't enough. I couldn't just let her die quietly, allowing her world to fade to black. I didn't have such mercy in me. I wanted her to bleed. To shake. To scream. I wanted to poison her the way she'd poisoned me. And, as I looked to the
trees, locating a thin, delicate web, I knew how to do it.

“Come lovelies,” I whispered, and started to chant under my breath. I felt it in my fingers first, prickling like sweat, as the spiders in the forest lifted their heads to listen to me. And slowly, like sap seeping from a tree, their venom leaked out of their fangs and crawled through the air, dancing toward me.

Oh, the dance! I hadn't even realized how much I'd missed fighting until this moment. But Naeve had made my childhood hell, and I'd risen to the occasion. Drown me, and I'll suffocate you. Toss me off a cliff, and I'll bring back the waves to crash over your head.

Poison me and, well, wait and see …

I grinned as the venom settled under my fingernails, making a home there. The Lady's face was turning blue from the choking, and I lowered my lips to her ear. “This is for me. This is for him. This is for the life I could've lived.”

I dug my nails into her neck. And that wicked, poisonous creature, oh, how she screamed. Shaking, her face a pleasant purple, she shrieked with a vengeance, her body suffering spasms.

“Oh, beautiful,” I said. But I didn't feel joy. Not like I used to feel when I'd bested Naeve. Quiet guilt settled over me, and I thought of Kylie. I thought of how she'd shaken when the Lady Claremondes had licked her neck.

Here, she was vindicated, but it didn't matter. Her brother was still dead. I saw a flash of her between two buildings. She was closing in on Naeve.

This game of torture had to end. Yanking the knives from the Lady Claremondes' chest, I tossed her to the ground, calling to the pixies that fluttered around me.

“Hungry, my darlings?” I asked.

They flashed sharp teeth. Of all the beings in the Unseelie Court, the Lady had tortured the pixies the worst. She loved the way their bodies crunched when she bit into them. Loved to snap their necks. She loved to whip them and break them and laugh.

Now they hovered about, gossamer wings flapping furiously, so tiny and beautiful except for those fangs. The least I could do was feed them. The least I could do was step aside and let them have their vengeance.

“Dinner is served,” I announced, pushing away into the crowd.

I heard them surround her, buzzing in a swarm. I heard tiny teeth sinking in. I heard screams, then, nothing. Or rather, everything else, as the battle reached a fever pitch. I pushed forward, tuning the noises out, until a horse brayed.

I spun around, my heart racing. Across the battlefield, Kylie's horse reared up on its hind legs, nearly tossing her to the ground. She'd almost made it to Naeve. Now she hung in midair, trying desperately to keep from falling as dark courtiers circled below.

I changed direction, racing toward her. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. And I knew, with crushing clarity, that if she dropped to the ground, I wouldn't reach her in time.