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

54. Veyka

54

VEYKA

“Traitors.” Anger seared through me, hot and bright even through the driving rain. I expected to see lightning coming down around me, even though I’d shown no affinity for storms. The force of my anger was enough to defy all logic. “I knew you’d come for me one day. But I will admit, I did not expect it to be today.”

The resemblance only made it worse. Agravayn conjured images of his brother, memories of the guardian who’d been the next thing to a father to me in those months after Arthur’s death. Just the memory was enough to set the blood in my veins sizzling dangerously.

“We are no threat to you.” Agravayn lowered his weapon, sheathing it at his belt and showing submission by offering his hands palms up. I gripped my weapons tighter, savoring the weight of Excalibur in one hand, my familiar dagger in the other.

“Save your lies. Your brother was good with them, too. I have learned my lesson.” My eyes scanned the flat expanse behind him. There were two more brothers, no doubt lying in wait to support Agravayn.

“You haven’t learned anything. You’re the same self-centered princess.”

Fucking Evander.

Ancestors. I’d managed to forget his existence for the last few months. Gwen had told us that communications stopped coming from the estate belonging to Gawayn’s brothers on the edge of the Split Sea. But with the liberation of the survivors from Baylaur, then the settling of those from the mountains into Eldermist and reaching the terrestrial army…. Evander had been a blip unworthy of my attention.

Until now, when he stood before me gripping a short sword and sneering at me, hate shining out of his dark eyes.

The feeling was utterly, completely, and overwhelmingly mutual.

“I always knew you wanted to kill me, Evander. I did not realize that by ridding myself of you, I was sending you into the arms of the traitors lying in wait in my own kingdom.” But it was a mistake I could rectify now, quickly. “You finally have your wish. Kill me.”

It would give me the ultimate pleasure to put him down.

The battle around us ebbed. The screams died away from the urgent sounds of imminent death to the longer groans of agony that belonged to the wounded. By sheer numbers and luck I was not going to question, we’d defeated the succubus this day.

There were carcasses behind the two traitors. Human and succubus. Which meant they’d fought their way across the bridge. Were those blue bodies as well?

Before I could follow that line of thought, another male appeared, wading through the carnage to stand between Agravayn and Evander.

“The killing is done for today, Majesty.” Gaheris—the most reasonable of the brothers, after Gawayn. Or so I’d thought. I could remember with perfect clarity the day they’d stood before me shoulder to shoulder in the throne room of the goldstone palace.

I’d been amused and intrigued to meet Gawayn’s brothers. Before their brother murdered my handmaidens, tried to kill me, and aided the female who’d orchestrated Arthur’s death.

I had been horrified when they’d described the children gone missing from their shores. Had that, too, been a lie? A ruse to rob me of my Goldstone Guards?

Agravayn was the angry one. That was also easy to recall. And he deferred easily to his brother, the conciliator.

“Come to convince me of your goodwill? Your loyalty?” I lifted a brow at Gaheris. Nothing they could say would convince me. Not after what Gawayn had done. The primal need for vengeance mingled with the adrenaline of battle, driving away all reason. I would kill them where they stood—

Except I didn’t. The anger was there, alive in my veins. But my feet did not move. I did not swing Excalibur or throw my dagger. I waited, giving them a chance to say something, to convince me, to change my mind.

Mordred’s words from the Pit came back to me, when he’d beseeched me to judge him for himself, rather than the actions of his mother. There was a chance, ever so slight, that Gawayn’s brothers had not conspired to overthrow my throne. That Evander, hated and vile as he had always been to me, had a reason for his prolonged absence.

Gaheris mirrored his brother’s stance—feet apart, palms up in supplication. “We came because the humans called for aid. But our eventual goal was to find you and join our forces with the elemental army.”

“There is no elemental army. The succubus took Baylaur. Where was your aid then?”

Actions. That was what would convince me now. They’d come to the aid of the humans at the Crossing but left Baylaur to be overrun? Where was the loyalty and duty in that? They should have done both. They should have been fighting and losing loved ones the way I had been. They could not possibly be loyal.

“We heard of the fall of Baylaur. The succubus has not spared us, nor the estates nearby. We secured our own homes and we came,” Gaheris explained, his voice steady and reasonable. The consummate elemental.

But I did not want to deal with him, with reason. I threw my snarl at Evander, his sneer shifting into a frown, the hatred in his gaze softened to something more difficult to identify.

“You do not step up to defend your queen,” I accused, although neither Agravayn nor Gaheris had offered any real threat. But I wanted to provoke. I wanted him to swing that shortsword, so I could finally let out my anger and put to bed the reason that kept trying to take control. “You have abandoned your vows.”

But his sword arm dropped instead. “I did not abandon them. But I am bound by new ones more powerful.”

He would not advance. Neither did I. “And what are those?”

“Marriage vows.”

Laughter bubbled out of my chest, wild and unhinged. “And how am I to trust anything you say? You, the brothers of a traitor.” I threw my hand wide, sweeping in front of the three men. “And you… the hatred still shines in your eyes.”

But they were spared a response by the crashing of water upon the shore. We turned as one as a pale-blue figure emerged from the water. A female, her dark curls sticking to her shoulders as she dragged herself up onto the shore. She wasn’t alone. I recognized the torso she gripped beneath the arms, hauling it out of the water. I knew the knot of dark hair and the stubbled bronze cheek. My heart stopped—his chest was not moving.

Then Arran heaved a massive cough, water ejecting from his lungs and spattering across the front of his leather armor and down onto the ragged rocks that broke the land from the sea. My eyes clung to his chest, watching every gasped rise and fall as he forced his lungs to function normally again.

I counted those rises and falls, the rich sapphire blue of the sea behind him slowly coming into focus. Until it wasn’t the sea. It was a tail. And it belonged to the pale-blue skinned female who’d dragged him out of the water, who now looked up at me with a smile so wide, it almost reached her delicately pointed ears.

Evander’s harsh laugh swept in along with his cold wind. “Because my wife is the Ethereal Queen.”