Page 85 of Crowned
As the parade of ghostly spirits finished their rush from the water, I turned back to face the river and found one final opponent hovering before me. A man—a spirit?—sat in a chariot pulled by four ghastly horses, but unlike the others who had emerged as part of the Darkest Lord’s army, this man didn’t have a figure that shimmered around the edges. He didn’t move with that unearthly wispiness. He seemed more solid, more human.
A hood covered the figure’s face, obscuring him so that he was completely unrecognizable and yet, somehow, I understood I’d met this man before.
“You,” I said. “You’re the harbinger. You’re the one who altered the kraken and the lycanthropes. You visited me at my court. You murdered those fishermen.”
“I’m only doing the Darkest Lord’s bidding, you’ll see soon enough,” the harbinger promised in that slithery voice I’d initially thought had been a disguise. “Your time is up, my queen.”
I tilted my head higher, studied the man from a distance. “You’re wrong.”
He gave a dark, cackling laugh. “The doors to the underworld have opened, and the Darkest Lord’s army will be upon your shores before you can stop him. Next time, they won’t be held back by their spirit form. It will be complete and utter annihilation for anyone who does not surrender to his will.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said again, meeting his gaze as head-on as possible through the shadows. “My time as queen has only just begun.”
Then I raised my hands, and I called upon my newfound powers: the fury of the water, the harsh whip of air, the shudder of the earth as the entire island trembled beneath my feet. All three elements churned together in a display of power only a true Triune Queen could manage.
I enveloped the harbinger and his chariot completely in a column of elemental magic that flowed from my ancestors straight through me. It was a storm unlike anything the island had ever seen before, and though it lasted mere moments, its power was palpable for miles.
When I dropped my hands, the harbinger was gone, vanished into the blackness of the river beneath him. Not destroyed; merely pushed back to the underworld for now.
I looked down at the now-silent shores as the onlookers stared at me awestruck.
“The Darkest Lord may be at our doorstep,” I said. “But he has not accounted for me. I am the Queen of Isles. If the Darkest Lord wants my throne, he will have to burn the entire island to the ground to take it, and I promise you, I will not let that happen.”
THE END
