Queen of Blood and Vengeance (Secrets of the Faerie Crown #4)

20. Veyka

20

VEYKA

One last task remained.

Excalibur strapped to my back, heavy fur mantle over my shoulders, I climbed with my travel pack down the curtain wall of Eilean Gayl to the small strip of bare ground that encircled the castle before giving way to the lapping waves of the lake. Lyrena was already there, flanked by several terrestrial guards.

Hands and legs bound, her fine features contracted into an ugly snarl, stood my mother.

Lyrena did not hesitate to drag her forward for my inspection.

“Remove your hands or I will drown you where you stand,” the Dowager hissed, her voice as serpentine as any snake shifter in the terrestrial kingdom. Once, that voice had haunted my nightmares. But no longer. She could not lay claim to a single piece of me, not even in my dreams.

Lyrena’s laugh rent the air, harsh and sharp as I’d ever heard it. Instead of pulling her hands back, she gripped the Dowager’s upper arms harder, harder, harder—until wisps of smoke curled into the air between them. Another fierce laugh, and Lyrena released her charge, stepping away to reveal the charred fabric and angry red skin where her fire had burned right through the Dowager’s sleeves.

This moment was not just for me, I realized. Lyrena had loved Arthur. Gwen had befriended Parys. All of Annwyn had been subjected to the Dowager’s cruel whims in a thousand ways, large and small. For Annwyn, and for the friends that had become family, I would not flinch.

I stepped out of the shadows of Eilean Gayl’s round tower.

“You are no longer in a position to give orders,” I said.

The Dowager only deigned a glance in my direction. She’d detected Arran, coming around the foot of the tower, rope in hand. She judged him to be the bigger threat. But what she made of the small wooden dinghy he tugged through the water, I did not know. I’d never wanted ethereal powers, least of all in that moment. I’d suffered the malignant darkness of the Dowager’s mind. I would rather bring my own dagger to my throat than venture inside of it.

Arran reached her, taking her bound hands to force her into the small boat. Her pale brows arched in disdain even as her feet moved. “Water? A poor prison for an elemental. You’ve spent too long with the terrestrials, daughter.”

Even as she stepped onto the boat and Arran pushed them away from shore, she did not reach for her power. She did not believe she needed to.

Her lips curved. “Did the death of your foolish friend teach you nothing?”

Anger and grief danced through my veins. But all around them rolled a current of certainty. This time, I would write the ending.

A swirling wind carried voices down from the battlements, where elementals and terrestrials both gathered to watch. It was not every day that one could bear witness to regicide. I’d anticipated the audience. Encouraged it, even, through well placed conversations. I may be High Queen of all of Annwyn, but I’d been an elemental first. I knew how to manipulate perception. I wanted stories of Igraine’s death written into legend. Not to immortalize her, though that was inevitable. I wanted every living being in Annwyn to understand that I would not flinch from my duty to protect them—even if it meant slaughtering my own mother.

Arran’s oar cut through the water with brutally efficient strokes. A few breaths, and the boat reached the single pillar sunk into the water several yards from the castle. When I’d first spotted it from our bedroom window, Arran told me that it had once been part of the island itself, used as a whipping post. But the millennia had eroded away the land until all that remained was the narrow strip of grass and mud beneath my feet.

I’d decided to put that post to a new purpose.

Arran said something to the Dowager—something that made her flinch. In another life, I would have wanted to know what my devious mate had thought of to gain the upper hand, even if only for a moment. But I did not reach down the golden thread of our bond, nor seek out his beast’s comforting rumble.

Whatever it was, I was grateful that it kept her from resisting as Arran adjusted the chains at her wrists and ankles to bind her to the post. When he pushed away, sending the small boat clear, the Dowager’s face was once again impassive.

Arran shifted, swimming back through the water in his beast form even faster than he’d paddled. I did not ask what motivated his shift.

A wave of her hand and Lyrena set the boat and its oars aflame.

Igraine was alone.

For several heartbeats, nothing happened. I counted each one, wondering academically whether I would reach ten, or twenty, or thirty. It did not matter. The outcome would be the same.

I made it to six before the smooth surface of the water broke.

Whether it was the same fuath who had feasted on the fauna-gifted terrestrial at my welcome feast or one of its kin hardly mattered. The claws that rose from the black water were unforgiving, clamping down on the Dowager’s wrist and severing it from her body in one jolting motion.

“How dare you?” Igraine screeched.

She’d played along with my game, waiting to see what I intended. But even though that hand would regrow, she’d had enough. She reached for her power, her remaining hand clenching and releasing as she called to the water surrounding her.

And found that it did not answer.

“A fitting end.” I’d thought long and hard about how I would punish my mother before realizing there was nothing I could do to repay her for the pain she’d wrought. But a powerful water wielder, surrounded by her weapon of choice, unable to call upon it… there was poetry to it that I’d only ever found when killing.

The Dowager’s ice blue eyes narrowed, her mouth forming a word even as her ironclad will protested against it. “How?”

A small smile turned the corners of my mouth. “Legends and prophecies are not always what they seem. You ought to know that better than anyone.” As I spoke, I heard their too-loud footsteps behind me. Despite living among us for months, the two half-humans had not mastered the fae silence.

Half-human. But also, half-witch.

I tossed a wink over my shoulder. Percival rolled his eyes. Diana squeaked. Typical.

I turned my irreverent gaze back to Igraine. “Witches are not as extinct as you taught me to believe.”

An old witch spell had bound her power. Sealed with the right combination of ingredients in her morning wine, it would not inhibit her magic forever. But it was enough, and long enough.

She began to thrash against her restraints, turning to the strength of her physical body to save her where her magic had failed. But the movements only attracted the lake’s occupants. Another massive claw emerged from the water, snapping at her remaining hand. She twisted away, just avoiding it.

Igraine did not beg for her life. She did not look to me at all. As always, she was much too preoccupied with herself to notice as the smile on my face deepened.

A better female could not have watched.

But I was more than the monster she’d made me.

Given all possible ends, I’d chosen this one for my mother, the Dowager High Queen of Annwyn. And I watched until there was not a single shred left of her to piece back together or heal.

I did not flinch when a massive, fanged fish leapt from the water, taking a deep bite from her breast before splashing back beneath the surface. Not a tremor as leeches the size of my thumb began to crawl up her body, leaving a trail of greenish slime that mingled with the rich red of her blood.

I watched as a great tentacled creature rose from the depths of the lake, wrapping its arms around her legs and sucking so hard that holes opened up in her pale flesh.

I saw the moment the shining hatred in her blue eyes went out.

I’d expected revenge to taste different. Better, maybe. For freedom to flood my pores. But my mother had taught me many things. As I finally turned my back on her, I understood one final lesson. Freedom is not something that can be given. Only taken. And I’d taken mine from her months ago.

Arran shifted back into his fae form. Lyrena stepped to my side. I took their hands, my mate and my friend, and stepped into the void.