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

82. Evander

82

EVANDER

They ran and ran and ran. The elemental queen was stronger than Evander had realized, even after watching her spar for months in the training ring of the goldstone palace, defeating her Goldstones and palace guards alike. Lyrena kept pace at her side, always off of her left shoulder, a half-step behind. Her priorities were clear.

He cursed Veyka with one breath, for refusing to use her void power, even as he begged the Ancestors to help her maintain control of her inner darkness long enough to banish the succubus from Annwyn. He’d seen the terrestrial male she’d eviscerated when she lost control of the portal rift. He understood what she’d explained in stuttering words in the command tent. If she took them through the void now, if she allowed the succubus access to that part of her too soon, she might not be able to get back the control she needed to banish them once and for all.

Evander would make sure Mya made it to the tower. She gasped for breath as they cut through the foothills of the mountains, the difference between swimming through the Split Sea and running through the sandy desert more evident with every passing minute. But none of them slowed. They could not. The farther they got around the edge of the valley, the less succubus stood between them and the tower. At least, in theory.

But the horde was bigger than they’d realized.

It had grown during the night. They’d planned to sneak around the back once the horde advanced past the tower that stood in the middle of the valley, beyond the edge of the ruined city of Baylaur. But there was no rear, not anymore. The horde filled the valley nearly to the edges. The only space left free was the strip of land patrolled by the Gremog, and even that would not last forever. Eventually even the sucker-mouthed sand demon would be overwhelmed.

Mya slipped in the sand, but Evander caught her before she slid down the dune into the valley. The others had stopped, finally, and he recognized why. They were parallel to the tower. The shortest length from the mountains to the center of the valley lay before them. And it crawled with black death.

“What do we do?” Mya whispered.

“We fight.” Veyka turned to Lyrena. “Give me Excalibur.”

The Goldstone reached for the mighty sword, sheathed on her back alongside her own.

“You cannot give her a weapon,” Evander protested. He knew better than to reach for Lyrena. The female was as likely as her king to cut off his arm.

Veyka rounded on him. Her arms were still bound, her leg shackles gone to allow for running. But she was terrifying even so, her black eyes shining, lips curling in a sneer that did not belong to the succubus, but to the queen.

“That is a succubus horde. That is an amorite blade. Your wife’s best chance of survival is if that blade is in my hands. Leave the shackles on. I can kill them just fine with my hands bound.”

If they entered that horde with only Lyrena and him fighting, the succubus would overwhelm them and kill Mya. Veyka would survive. Her soul be lost entirely to the succubus, but her body would live on.

Veyka might lose herself to the succubus. With the sword in her hand, she’d be even more deadly. But at least Mya stood a chance.

“At my back,” he ordered Mya. For once, his wife listened. “Use your powers, but don’t sacrifice yourself. Do you promise me?” he demanded.

Lyrena handed off the legendary sword. But Veyka watched Evander and his wife, her brow wrinkled as she listened carefully to their words. He did not care what she heard. He needed Mya’s promise.

“Yes,” Mya agreed, water already spinning from her fingertips. “I promise.”

They entered the horde at a run. Five yards, ten, they wove their way through the horde with as much speed as they could, for as long as they could. But they succubus were drawn to Veyka. They clawed for her first, closing in from every side. Veyka beheaded one easily with Excalibur. Lyrena twisted with the grace of a dancer, taking out one that came from the other side. A blast of water sent three of them falling back, and then Evander could not watch Veyka and Lyrena anymore. He had his own queen to defend.

Lyrena took the first injury—a slice down her thigh that would have felled most warriors. She screamed, missing a step, but Veyka was there to cover her, slitting the succubus who’d inflicted the wound open from navel to throat. The amorite did its job. When the monster fell, it did not rise again.

Now it was Veyka guarding Lyrena’s back instead of the other way around. Mya sent out spiral after spiral of water. They combined into tidal waves that knocked down rows of approaching succubus. Her water could not kill them. There was no life to choke out of them; they could not drown. She could only hold them at bay. But it was enough. They were closer to the tower now, more than halfway.

They were going to make it.

Until Veyka fell.

She was impressive with her daggers, but in the time he’d been away she’d mastered the massive greatsword as well. But her hands were bound. Graceful and powerful as she was, it hobbled her. She drove the blade straight down through the decayed skull of a succubus, but she couldn’t release her hand to swing back and defend herself from the one that attacked her from behind. It sank its fangs into her neck, the features of the male whose body the succubus had taken long since melted away to nothing but black, rotted bones. Veyka ripped the sword loose, but it was too late. She stumbled to her knees.

Lyrena tried to get there. Mya too. But they were too late. Three, four, five succubus fell upon her. She screamed so loud, Evander was sure her mate must have heard it on the other side of the battlefield. He expected the great white beast to break through the horde, demanding justice for his queen. But nothing came. She screamed again, terrible and wrathful and—

The bodies of the succubus flew back, forced away by plumes of shadow. The queen rose from the heap, her fair skin coated in black bile. But it was impossible to tell where it came from. Dozens of scratches marred her skin, and from each of them leaked the darkness of her soul. She lifted her head to the sky and screamed again.

“Veyka,” Lyrena skidded to halt, barely keeping her feet under her in the puddles of blood and black spray.

But there was nothing of the queen in the creature’s eyes.

She turned to the mass of black around her, the mindless, soulless horde, and smiled.

Shadows shot from her hands toward her golden knight. Evander moved without thinking. If he’d thought at all, it would have been to protect Mya, surely. Not Lyrena.

But there they were, rolling through the blood and bile. The succubus streamed for Veyka now, and she lifted her hands to greet them. Still bound—she was still bound. But those were shadows at her command now. The succubus inside of her had seized control and awakened some new, strange power.

Before Veyka’s shadows could greet the succubus streaming toward them, a plume of heat blasted past. A wall of fire rose up, encircling them with golden flames that reached over Evander’s head.

Lyrena. The blood flowing from her leg had slowed to a steady stream. At least it wasn’t gushing. She was on her feet, hands thrown out on either side of her, wielding fire instead of a blade. A few of the succubus tried it, but they fell back from the pure, cleansing heat.

Evander reached behind him to lower Mya’s hands, to tell her to hold back her water. But she wasn’t there. A flash of blue cut across his field of vision.

“Stay away from her!”

But Mya didn’t stop. She didn’t even turn as she ran. “I have to help her!”

She dropped to her knees, grabbing the elemental queen and dragging her down to the ground alongside her. “Veyka, you can do this. You can get back control.”

The creature that was Veyka snarled, throwing her body forward, teeth first. Mya dodged, but Evander could not allow it. He dove— “Stay back!” his wife ordered.

Not his wife. His queen.

She did not even look at him. All of her attention was on Veyka, where she resolutely held the female’s arm, using her ethereal powers to dig around inside the shell of what had once been a remarkable female.

“You are strong. You have friends who love you. A mate who needs you.”

Evander eased in closer, one eye on Lyrena and the horde she held back, the other on Mya and Veyka. Lyrena was bleeding, but her jaw and brow were hard set. The flames did not waiver. It might kill her, would surely drain her, but Evander knew she would hold the line. He let his focus shift entirely to Mya and Veyka. If the succubus Veyka lunged for Mya again, he’d slice off her head.

But Mya ignored him completely. He stepped closer, her words filtering through the death that surrounded them.

“They tortured you. Your mother, the male. They raped you and hurt you. Your father let them. Everyone let them. No one protected you, Veyka. And it was wrong. They were wrong. They were evil,” Mya said. She recounted horrors without breaking tone, without letting her own horror show. She’d trained her entire life for this moment, using her ethereal powers to help her people. It had all been in preparation for the moment of direst need, when destiny had placed her here, to help this queen. To save Annwyn and the human realm and the whole damn world. “But you, you are not evil. You are more than what they did to you.”

Evander’s throat clogged painfully.

He’d never known.

The court believed she’d been sheltered in the water gardens for her protection, a precious, spoiled princess so treasured that the world could not be trusted with her—Ancestors, everyone in Annwyn believed it.

“No,” Veyka whimpered. Veyka. Not the succubus.

“You are the monster, Veyka. The succubus is inside you, it is you. This is your darkness. Yours. You control it, not the other way around,” Mya urged.

Veyka lifted her eyes, and though they were still black, the tears that leaked from their corners were clear.

The heat around them shifted. Evander turned. They all did, watching in awe as Lyrena extended the circle, elongating it, creating a path hemmed in by flame on either side. A path right to the door at the base of the Tower of Myda.

Her arms shook. Blood slid down her face, leaking from her nose and ears, red and bright. She opened her mouth, but the words were too hard to form. She managed just one, and it was for Veyka.

“Go.”

This would kill her. This type of power, the cost… the cost would be Lyrena’s life. Whether it killed her outright, or she fell to the ground exhausted and unable to defend herself from the succubus.

Evander did not let Veyka second guess her Knight’s choice. He hauled Veyka and Mya to their feet and shoved them down the path. They ran, the distance disappearing quickly beneath their feet without the succubus to fight off. The monsters hissed and screeched, clawing at Lyrena’s fire, falling into it and burning away to ash.

There was the tower.

Veyka and Mya skidded to a stop, the former wrenching open the nondescript wooden door.

But Mya turned to him. “Release her shackles.”

“She could lose control again.”

She shook her head, her sapphire blue eyes refusing to consider any course but the one she’d chosen. “There is no other option. I cannot do it once we are up there. You need to stay and block the entrance. She cannot do what she must with her hands bound.”

“What if she attacks you?”

Mya lifted a pale blue hand to his face, caressing his cheek. Her touch was cool, soothing, with just a hint of salt. “Then I will fight for my life. And if I die, then it is for a good reason. I will die helping my friends and believing in the light.”

“You are too good for this world.”

She shook her head. “We are the good in this world. We will protect it.”

An immense wave of heat rolled over them. But when it ebbed away, there was no flame left to protect them. Evander shoved them through the door before they could look back and see what was left of Lyrena.

“I love you,” Mya said as she turned for the stairs. Evander slammed the door behind them, planting his back against it. There was no lock. He’d have to hold it from the inside with his body and his shortsword. He lifted his head to tell Mya that he loved her, too.

But they’d already disappeared up the tower. “You always need to have the last word,” he said to the emptiness.