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

35. Arran

35

ARRAN

Morgause was going to get herself killed.

Decades ago, we’d entertained a passing entanglement. It could not even be termed a relationship. There’d been no affection, only fucking. Mutual release followed by retreats to our separate quarters. And from it, a child had been born.

But Mordred was not my concern in that moment.

It was my mate and the mess we would be in when she killed Morgause and left the Dyad one short.

Veyka had learned self-restraint as a means for survival. But she had a wicked temper, and a quickly mounting list of reasons to want the other female dead. Morgause thought she was flexing her power. Stupid, foolish female.

“We have heard that only the most formidable warriors are granted seats at your Round Table. What better way to test them than to battle them yourself?” As she spoke, Morgause stroked a vial that hung at her waist. She had not been wearing it before, when she’d escorted us up to the Cloud Tower. But the finger-sized vial could only hold one thing—what Morgause was known for. Poison.

My stomach lurched, the meal we’d eaten suddenly heavy. She would not be stupid enough to poison us outright like that, when the act could so easily be linked to her. But there was nothing innocent in the way she stroked that vial nor her proposal that Veyka or I enter the Pit.

“You have heard incorrectly. More than one Knight of the Round Table are not warriors at all,” Veyka said with feigned disinterest. After months of knowing and watching her, I could note how her eyes slid casually over the candidates, covertly assessing them.

“I have never seen a harpy myself. But I hear they are quite lethal.” Morgause stroked Orcadion’s arm. “Would you like to match yourself against one, husband?”

Veyka’s pupils dilated just slightly at Orcadion’s willing grunt.

Someone in Eilean Gayl had been reporting to Morgause.

We’d anticipated as much, but it still rankled to have it confirmed.

“Will you be competing for the Knighthood?” Veyka said with saccharine sweetness. Her smile matched her tone, but her storm-cloud eyes made a different kind of promise. She hoped that Morgause would enter just so she’d have an excuse to kill her.

My cock hardened instantly.

The option to ignore all of this and drag Veyka into my lap sounded infinitely better than political posturing.

Morgause matched Veyka’s smile. “Alas, I have surrendered that honor to my son.”

The crowd lining the Pit shifted to accommodate the arrival of one more. Mordred stepped up to the edge, the warmth of his light brown skin heightened by the gray leather armor he wore. Just like in the Cloud Tower, his expression was stoic, focused. He held a hatchet in one hand. Vines curled around the other. That answered one lingering question, at least. Not a shifter.

Over Veyka’s corner, Lyrena laughed, making an easy mockery of the entire spectacle. “And how is that supposed to work? Battle the King or Queen to the death for a chance to serve as a Knight for the King and Queen? Terrestrials aren’t known for their cleverness, but I’d thought you’d at least understand how to follow your own rules.”

Veyka’s golden knight was brilliant. A few brash sentences, and she’d made Morgause look a fool while also clarifying the terms of the competition.

Morgause’s smile melted into a sneer. “The final round will be to first blood.”

I felt Veyka’s pulse of appreciation, matched it with one of my own. Lyrena deserved a new gold tooth or two. In one supremely elemental twisting of words, she’d also managed to remove the possibility of fatal harm to either Veyka or myself. Not that any of the terrestrials stood a chance against me or my queen.

But talking was getting tedious. If we let Morgause keep going, she’d conjure up some other complication. I stood from my chair, drawing the axe from my belt and shrugging off the heavy cloak I’d worn while we traveled.

“Let’s get on with this.”

Veyka lifted one impertinent white eyebrow. Something else white flashed behind her, but it must have been a lock of her hair shifting.

“So eager for bloodshed, Brutal Prince?” Veyka purred. “Maybe I’d like a try.”

“You’ve already done your share for the day,” I countered. “It’s my turn.”

Veyka’s smile grew, her eyes sliding past me to the terrestrial challengers. Pity shone in those clever blue orbs. But they widened, suddenly.

Her head jerked to the side, where curved white claws closed around her shoulder.

“Majesty,” Isolde hissed. “You must not fight.”

There was no privacy in the middle of a thousand terrestrials. Nowhere we could go to have an unheard conversation—except down.

Veyka jumped into the Pit without hesitation. I helped Isolde down one level, expecting to see my mate waiting. Nope—Veyka had already descended two more levels, into the very heart of darkness.

This deep, the cloudy light from the open sky overhead bled away to almost nothing. The scent of dried blood filled every pore, oppressive as any battlefield. The lowest level of the Pit was meant to disorient, to steal away one’s senses and strip them down to their basest self.

`If Veyka noticed, she did not show it. She turned to Isolde, her voice low even forty feet below eager ears. “What is wrong?”

Isolde clicked her claws together, her white braids trembling against her shoulders. “I… I do not think you should fight, Majesty.”

Addressed to me, not Veyka.

“What do you mean? Why not?” my mate asked anyway, as if I were not even there.

“I could be wrong.” The faerie could not hold back her trembling any longer.

Veyka lowered a hand to the tiny female’s shoulder. “I trust your instincts, Isolde. Tell us.”

Her gentle command seemed to calm the white faerie. At least enough to get the words out. “His Majesty, Arran,” she stumbled over my name. “You may not be fully healed.”

“What?”

“I am fine.”

Veyka’s eyes pinned me with accusation. I felt her presence in my mind as she wrapped herself around the golden thread between us and tried to search for some sign of weakness. The beast inside of me began to growl.

“I am fine,” I repeated.

“Then you will allow Isolde to examine you,” Veyka commanded. I wanted to throttle her. Or fuck her.

She did not flinch from the ire in my eyes, nor from the growing rumble of my beast’s growl.

“We need to know either way,” Veyka insisted.

Fine .

She nodded to Isolde, who lifted her hands to my chest. Veyka stepped in front of us, blocking the white light that emanated from Isolde’s hands so that the terrestrials above us could not see what we were doing. She understood better than most that perceptions were the first half of any battle.

For two agonizing minutes, Isolde moved her hands up over my shoulders, then back down to my abdomen and to my chest once more. I counted every second. Finally, Isolde dropped her hands. The light snuffed out, and Veyka turned back to face us.

The faerie wasted no time with her diagnosis. “You emerged too soon from the healing sleep on Avalon. Had you remained, perhaps the gaps would have closed.”

I had no words.

Veyka said one for both of us. “Gaps?”

Isolde nodded her sharp little chin. “It is not a precise description. But when my light touches your power, it is as if there are gaps in it where the pieces are not fully connected. There are suggestions of congruence; as if it was once whole, and now it is not.”

Gaps in my power. What in the Ancestors’ hell did that mean?

Nothing good , I thought. I did not know if my mate heard it. There was only silence in my mind. And a persistent bead of recognition.

“I had visions of Accolon while I slept,” I said slowly. “He showed me things—the past. The final battlefield of the Great War.” I swallowed. “And he told me that it was time to wake up.”

She needs you now.

Accolon’s final words echoed in my memory. I had not realized who he meant when he said it, all my memories of Veyka stolen from my mind in exchange for healing from the near-fatal blow. Accolon had known it was not enough time, but he’d also known that Veyka needed me at her side.

My mate watched me carefully, her eyes searching my face. But she did not press into my thoughts, giving me space to sort through my reactions.

She waited, expecting me to say more.

Sensing, without meaning to, that I was keeping something from her.

But I would not tell her about Accolon’s final words. She carried too many burdens. I would not let her shoulder the guilt for this as well.

After several heartbeats without a response, she swung her eyes begrudgingly back to Isolde. “What do these gaps in his power mean? Will they heal?”

Isolde started quivering again. “I don’t know.”

Veyka turned to me. “Can you feel them?”

“No.”

She growled in frustration. “So someday you’ll reach for your power and… it won’t answer? Or you’ll suddenly no longer be able to shift?”

The beast roared inside of me.

“I am fine,” I said again. As much to myself as to her. I’d sensed no gaps in my power. Since waking in Avalon, it had behaved exactly as I’d always expected and experienced since I’d first learned how to control it hundreds of years ago. “Morgause cannot be trusted.”

Veyka rolled her eyes. Twice, for emphasis. “Obviously she had this planned from the moment she asked for a seat at the Round Table. I do not believe her explanation about the new terrestrial proving their worth. She watched me battle the Dolorous Guard. She knows you. She knows we will best anyone who enters that Pit.”

The thought of poison entered my mind again. Morgause had not poisoned our food. She knew we would not die in the Pit. So what were all these machinations about, then?

Veyka offered no possible explanations as she rolled her shoulders back to stretch.

“Well, best order some more wine,” she said, unsheathing Excalibur from her back. “I will be the one fighting in the Pit. Enjoy the show.”