You Bet Your Banshee (11 page)

“Absolutely not,” he said in a clear, firm voice.

I stared at Ryvan, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, even while a part of me felt instant relief. The way Melosia acted, it was obvious she cared for him, craved him like a drug. Like a—a light went off in my head. Ryvan was part gancanagh, one of the few males in Fairworld who had the power to addict females to him. Had he purposely addicted Melosia? And why?

She displayed the twitchy, hungry look of someone caught in the throes of an addiction. Why would Ryvan want the banshee queen to need him so desperately? If I believed everything I saw, it was possible he was so hungry to be the Wailing Court’s Prince Consort that he’d take it any way he could. Except he’d lied, effectively protecting me.

I stared at him, trying to understand, to make heads or tails of everything I saw and heard. My brain felt slow and sluggish.

Dimly, I heard Melosia titter and ask, “And did she fall in love with you, my dearest Ryvan?”

“I do not know, Majesty.”

She turned to look at me and I saw the triumph in her eyes. “She did! She did fall in love with you! Oh, just look at the heartbreak in her eyes,” she chirped happily.

I blinked. What? I didn’t love Ryvan. I would know if I did. Even if he hadn’t let me be captured by my enemies, I’d only known him for two days. Love couldn’t happen that friggin’ fast. Could it?

Yet as I stared at Ryvan, I studied him like I’d never seen him before. I recalled the concern in his eyes, remembered the way his body trembled when he thought the Host caught me. He’d been genuinely worried for me. He’d cared for me.

Did I love him as Melosia claimed? Maybe, just maybe.

With that admission, it was like a floodgate in my mind opened, drowning me in sensations and thoughts.

I had to blink against the shockwave of images that bombarded me. I saw myself kneeling before Melosia, my chin high and proud, my eyes defiant. I felt Ryvan’s pride in me and his fear that I would never forgive him for not telling me his real plan. Like a movie set on skip, I saw him meeting with Tamsyn several years ago, heard their plans for him to infiltrate Melosia’s court and make himself indispensable to her so she would share all of her plans with him.

He’d used his gancanagh powers to seduce her into trusting him, allowing him to go after me alone. The Host being called out hadn’t been part of Melosia’s original plan which was why Ryvan had gone into panic mode. I heard his thoughts each time he looked at me, felt the affection and love and, yes, unadulterated lust he had for me. It was a surreal experience and one I would have enjoyed more if I wasn’t currently shackled and kneeling before my worst enemy. Talk about bad fucking timing.

“What the fuck?”

His thoughts went blank. My heart skittered to a stop with panic. Had I read him wrong?

Then I heard,
“Gods, you can read me? You
do
love me!”

His delighted laugh made my lips tremble with the need to share the giddy excitement, but Melosia was still talking and taunting me. We had to get through this before we could even think about having a relationship.

“We already have a relationship and I’ll remind you how it works as soon as this is over
,” he said in my mind, sending a thrill of erotic delight through me.

Thank gods for my leather uniform because it hid my tight nipples. It was sheer insanity how Ryvan could heat me up even in the most inappropriate circumstances.

I hurriedly cleared my mind of all naughty thoughts.
“Since you’re so confident, do you want to share what the plan is?”

“You have to defeat her.”

“Um, I’m a little tied up right now, remember?”

I swear, he purred. An image flashed in my mind of me shackled down on a bed with Ryvan hovering over me, torturing me with his mouth, hands, and cock.

“That is
not
helping me right now!”

He laughed again. I could only marvel at how well he held his blank expression while his mind flashed even more erotic images at me that nearly made me squirm on my knees. He growled in my mind and I swear I could feel his cock harden in his pants.

We had to stop this before Melosia noticed.

“How am I supposed to defeat her when I’m shackled and protected by guards?”

“Your guards are allies. You only have to worry about Pollard and Melosia. I can’t touch her,”
he thought with an inward sneer.
“She put a
geas
on me when I first came to her court, preventing me from doing her harm. But the rest of the guards and any supporters in the crowd are mine and our allies’.”

“…believe she thought she could defeat me! Look at her. She’s a pathetic excuse for a banshee.” Melosia was on a roll, her voice climbing higher and higher until she was screeching. Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth, but never once did she let go of Ryvan’s hand. “A banshee who
strips
!” She threw her head back, laughing. “Like the whore she is, she took her clothes off for money. My Ryvan tells me you have a very special talent, Magda. I want to see this talent. Make her show me, my love.”

My love? A nauseating thought occurred and I thought,
“You didn’t—”

“Gods, no!”

“Tell her, Ryvan! Tell her who your queen is! Make her show my court her…trick,” Melosia demanded.

Ryvan bowed, his perfectly composed face giving no hint at the disgusted thoughts in his mind. “I only have one queen.” He turned to me. “Queen Melosia wants you to show her the trick you learned in the club.”

He had to be kidding. “Fuck no.”

“I can’t believe you told her about that!”

“My sweet, what you have is a life-changing talent.”

Melosia, too delusional to realize Ryvan hadn’t actually said she was his queen, screamed at my refusal, “This is the female who’s supposed to take my throne? The female who takes her clothes off for money? You’re pathetic, Magda O’Quinn, and there’s no way you’ll ever defeat me! You have no powers worthy of a queen.” Her scoffing laugh echoed around the eerily quiet throne room.

You could have heard a pin drop in the heavy silence, but I only heard a very familiar sounding
mreow!

Startled, my eyes darted around the throne room looking for my Breeze. I didn’t see him anywhere, but I knew that meow. He’d been one of my only friends for so long, I’d recognize it anywhere. Hope soared.

“They’re in place,”
Ryvan told me in an urgent tone. When I glanced at him as unobtrusively as possible, I saw his black eyes flicker to blue and back again.
“Be careful,
my
queen.”

* * * *

I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but one minute I was bound in shackles and in the next, they fell open. I didn’t bother to look around for whatever benevolent soul had freed me. I leapt to my feet using the element of surprise to relieve Pollard of his sword. I shoved him to the side, trusting Ryvan to watch my back as I went for Melosia.

With vengeance and righteous fury on my side, I leapt to the dais. Melosia’s piggy eyes widened in shock and her grip on Ryvan’s hand tightened.

“Stop her!” she demanded of someone, anyone.

No one moved except for Pollard. I could hear him cursing at the Red Caps, but I paid him no mind. I focused on the bitch queen who’d nearly destroyed an entire race. Ryvan stepped away from her, ignoring her grasping hands and the hurt astonishment on her face. We passed each other on the platform, our shoulders brushing. Our eyes conveyed everything we didn’t have time to say out loud.

She must have seen something of my feelings in my face because she shrieked at me, her face a mask of hatred and madness. “Mine,” she snarled leaping to her feet faster than I would’ve given her credit for. “You whore! You think to take my throne
and
my male?”

Why did I suddenly feel like I was on Jerry Springer? I gaped at the queen as she launched herself at me, claws bared. I’d been expecting more of a battle to the death by sword kind of fight, but it looked as though she wanted to claw my eyes out.

I hesitated a moment, not sure if I should go for the win or honor, but that was all it took for her to bat the sword from my hand. She hit me like a freight train, all of her weight behind her as she took me to the ground. The breath whooshed from my abused lungs as she landed on top of me.

What the fuck was it with people trying to suffocate me? Honestly, it was like my breathing bothered them. I expected Melosia to go for the kill immediately, to slash my throat with her claws, but she was too maddened to use the battle skills she’d gathered over the centuries. No, she grabbed my hair and started banging my head against the floor.

I bucked beneath her trying to dislodge her, but she stuck to me like white on rice. Claws out, I grabbed the first thing I could find with my eyes filling with tears. It just so happened to be her cheeks. She seemed intent on tearing my hair out by the roots, so I dug into her face with my claws, feeling her skin curl underneath them and blood spilling down her face to drip on me.

Her scream threatened to burst my eardrums, but I held on, reminded of Breeze with Gideon. Her hold on my hair tightened as she tried to drill my head through the marble of the dais. I already knew I’d have a concussion from this, but if I didn’t stop her, she’d flat out kill me with a lucky blow.

My legs were still free and I tried a move I’d learned, but never mastered during my training. Years of using my lower body to keep my hold on a steel pole had only honed the strength in my legs and I used that to my advantage now. I swung my legs up, wrapping them around Melosia’s torso and put all my power behind them as I pulled her back.

The bitch kept her grip on my hair, pulling me up as she went back, but since it left me on top of her, I didn’t care. Can we say yay for stripper poles? She couldn’t bash my head into the floor now. As soon as she realized it, she shrieked, her hands latching around my throat. Again with the strangling? These people needed to learn new murdering methods.

I let go of her face and started punching her with all of my strength. My feet and legs, pinned beneath her substantial weight, started going to sleep, but I only concentrated on putting her down. She tightened her hands, the strength in her body evident in the way my vision started going dark.

Tears spilled down my cheeks, splashing onto her face. She shrieked even louder, punching me in the jaw and sending me flying away from her. I landed at the base of the throne, my head cracking against an ornate leg and my back catching the edge of the marble pedestal the throne sat upon.

I stayed down, my head throbbing from the beating it’d taken and my lungs working overtime to get oxygen. I was hyperaware of chaos taking over the court. Bodies moved and writhed in battle. The scent of blood and desperation was thick in the air, nearly choking me all over again. They were scents I remembered well from my time at court, smells I’d hoped never to breathe in again.

“I’ll
kill
you,” Melosia breathed from somewhere nearby.

I glanced through watering eyes to see her face blistered where my tears had landed. Added to the blisters were great, gaping rips in her cheeks where I’d clawed her. If I died today, Melosia would live with a constant reminder of the banshee she’d thought couldn’t cry. Savage satisfaction filled me. I’d marked the bitch for all time.

She lumbered to her feet, her pink dress looking out of place with her bruised and bloodied face. She picked up the sword she’d made me drop, starting for me with my death in her eyes. I couldn’t move. I’d known this as soon as my body hit the pedestal. I don’t know if she broke my back, or if I was just stunned, but there would be no getting away from her until I healed, which didn’t seem likely in the next couple of minutes.

“You think I spent centuries culling the weak from my court just to hand it over to a deformed bitch like you?” She had to shout to be heard over the raucous battle coming from the main floor. “I should have had you drowned at birth just like I had done to my children. You’re worthless as a banshee, weak and deformed. I thought for sure you’d die during your training. I prayed for it.” She neared warily, the sword held in her expert grip. “When you left this court, I knew I should have had you tracked and put down like the disgusting animal you are, just like I had your mother put down, and your grandmother when she tried to go after you.”

My heart hurt hearing those words. I hadn’t known Aideen had tried to come after me. No wonder I hadn’t seen her in court. I didn’t know if she’d been coming to kill me, or help me, but knowing she’d died because of this crazy bitch made me want to tear her limb from fucking lim—

Something ominous creaked in the heart of the Wailing Court. Pressed to the floor as I was, I could hear what sounded like something massive crashing through the palace. Screams sounded below and the whole palace shook as though in the midst of an earthquake.

“What is that?” Melosia demanded, her crazed gaze never leaving me.

The floor beneath us shifted and she had to hold her arms wide to keep her balance. Her face was shocked. I knew the feeling because whatever was coming had to be the size of a dinosaur to move the pillars and marble floors that’d withstood thousands of years of abuse.

“What is happening to my palace?”

A crack formed in the dais between her feet. It split the court in two, ripping the marble open like a piece of paper. I stared, my mouth hanging open in shock. I’d never seen anything like it before in my life.

And then I saw a leaf appear. Bright, green, and tiny, it popped up from the depths of the crack. I blinked. Okay. I didn’t understand why a leaf had found its way into the Wailing Court or how it’d cracked the marble, but it wasn’t exactly something to write home about.