Page 33 of Fae Unleashed
“I figured they would be able to clean the place up and get it ready. We found some rooms with sleeping Seelie, so I made the small fae promise to respect them. We’ll see how that goes, but you should be able to sleep peacefully in your own home tonight.”
My castle would be brimming with life again. The thought warmed me. The dryads would tend to the living things, the plants and creatures still thriving there. I wasn’t sure what the redcaps would do, but I was happy so long as they weren’t singing drunk battle songs at my table again.
I let my head rest against Rhoan’s knee. If I could have slowed or stopped time, I would have done it just to savor this moment. Barely a second later, I heard Beryl’s laugh.
The woman stepped out onto the roof with a flourish of her skirt. Behind her, Faust stalked in her shadow. His hungry eyes remained on Rhoan while Beryl took in the Lakesedge skyline sprawling beyond my rooftop.
I stiffened. Rhoan’s hand tightened on my shoulder. Any second now, he would throw me behind him. I couldn’t let him do that, so I stood and approached Beryl with my head high. What would that get me other than brownie-points for courage? Probably another brush with death, but this was my turf.
“Get out,” I said, flatly.
Beryl tilted her head and smiled demurely. Her eyes flashed wine-red. The woman didn’t have any good intentions today. That much was clear.
“You stole something from me, dearest. I came to retrieve it.”
Beryl struck out with her clawed hand. The rooftop erupted with plants. Massive trees shoved her back. Thick roots wound around Faust’s ankles so that the creep couldn’t step in-between.
Even I was surprised at the speed of my arcana. It’d reacted on its own, but I wasn’t going to let them know that.
Rhoan stepped up and pressed his chest to my back. It would have been a show of protection had I not felt the thunderous hammer of his heart in his chest. He was afraid. Rhoan’s fear made my spine tingle with worry.
This could end badly. I refused to believe that Beryl would come here just to kill me. The woman was still waiting for her curse to take effect. She’d made it unbreakable on purpose. It was only a matter of time until the curse consumed every last bit of my arcana and made me Unseelie. Then, I would be hers.
Or so she believed.
This curse couldn’t change who I was deep down. I’d seen evil. I’d looked it in the eye and survived. There was no way that I would become like her or Alvin or Bastien. My heart was mine, and I chose to keep it soft and loving.
Beryl’s eyes flashed with furious light. She snapped her wrist and a blight spread across the foliage holding her back. However, her power only went so far before it was forced to a halt. Her Unseelie arcana tried to rot away the Seelie power at work, but it hit a wall when it met the Unseelie blight in my magic.
That brought a smile to Beryl’s face. She might have been caught in my green web, but she’d learned something important.
“You’re not all that you claim to be,” Beryl purred as she leaned forward. “You’re becoming something else. Soon, you’ll find yourself inmycourt, and my fae will have no sympathy for you.”
Rhoan snarled. His growl rumbled across the rooftop. The sound covered Tal’s footsteps as he appeared on the other side of the roof, behind Faust and Beryl.
While Rhoan and Tal both seemed apprehensive, I laughed in Beryl’s face and tightened my grip on her with my thick tree branches. Bright crimson leaves spawned across the branches and framed Beryl’s frustrated sneer.
“What makes you think I’ll become yours? If this power consumes me, and I become like you, then I’ll come into your court and take your throne from the inside.”
Beryl recoiled like I’d struck her. When she leveled her gaze on me again, she realized her mistake. The wrath had returned. Her cockiness vanished. I wasn’t a fly in her web anymore. She realized I was another spider treading the lines beside her.
I grinned. “Get out.”
Faust disappeared. It took my brain several fractions of a second to realize that he’d moved so fast that he vanished from sight. Tal reacted, freezing time. The leaves of my trees stopped moving, but Faust had reached his target.
The pookah assassin’s claws pierced the skin of my throat as he yanked me away from Rhoan. My fae warrior snarled. I reached out and found his hand, but his eyes went to Faust’s hand on my throat. I could already feel the rivulets of hot blood dripping down my skin. Rhoan let me slip through his grasp.
Though I knew why he’d done it, every bone in my body screamed in betrayal. He wanted to keep me from getting hurt more, but I’d learned that never works out the way one would want.
Faust yanked me off to the side. Last time he’d taken me hostage, I’d trapped him in a cage with me. It’d been a stupid idea, and I didn’t really know what to do this time. His fingers dug into my skin and drew more blood all while he stared Rhoan down. Faust’s laughter echoed inside his chest and vibrated down my spine to create chills.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Beryl shake off Tal’s magic. She leaned forward on the tree branches and placed her chin in her hand so she could watch this fight. The look of triumph on her face confused me. This fight hadn’t been won yet.
What had her so confident again?
I wasn’t dead or defenseless yet, but when I saw the lost expression on Rhoan’s face, I knew the woman had struck an intentional chord. Rhoan’s hand still hung in the air where I’d been. The whites showed around his eyes as the irises turned a deep, Unseelie black.
When I’d met Rhoan, he’d been drinking heavily to chase away something from his past. In that moment, I realized it was the loss of his court. He’d been there when Beryl had killed my parents. He’d been there at the fall of the Seelie Court, and Beryl was going to force him to relive it.
