matter. This Banshee Queen ruthlessly stole Daroch’s life from him. Plucked him from his home, his time, and…
“I will not argue semantics with a human.” The Queen’s lip curled in a very human gesture of distaste. “I’m here to offer you more than that. I’m here to give you the chance to save not only your existence, but that of your sister Kamdyn as well.”
The Queen was silent for a moment to allow her offer to sink in.
“How?” Kylah whispered, though she had a sinking fear she knew.
“I want you to kill Daroch McLeod.”
Chapter Thirteen
“You know I will not do this.” Kylah refused to entertain the idea. No matter the danger Daroch posed to her and the Fae, perhaps they deserved what retribution he was about to exact.
“I know nothing of the sort,” Cliodnah said imperiously. “I know that I am your Queen and you will do as I command you to do.”
“I cannot.” She employed a different tactic. “I cannot touch him nor use my Banshee powers on him.”
The Queen’s mocking gaze raked Kylah as though she still had a corporeal form. “It is simple as this, Banshee. I will grant you the form and powers of the Fae. You will find the Druid and use your Banshee magic to slay him. To reward you, I will create you and your sister as one of us, granting you untold power and immortality.”
“And if I refuse?” Kylah asked.
“You and your sister, Kamdyn, will be thrown to Ly Erg as his pets for the remainder of your contract with me.” The Queen ventured closer. “Three months can seem an eternity, as you well know.”
Terror stabbed at Kylah. Not only for herself, but for her sweet, innocent sister. She wouldn’t survive the kind of debauchery that lurked in Ly Erg’s unnatural eyes. Neither of them would.
She turned back to Daroch. How had he survived? “What did you do to him?” she whispered. Watching an intricate outline of a triquetra appear in the ink over his chest.
The Queen scoffed. “The appropriate question would be, what haven’t I done to him? He was mine to do with as I wished. He did what I desired, when I desired it and he did it because I promised I wouldn’t harm the Druids and keep his sect intact.”
“But… the Druids disappeared.”
The Queen’s smile chilled the very core of her. “When one enters into a pact with a Faerie, they must pay very close attention to how it is worded. Of course I didn’t harm any of the Druids. But Ly Erg eradicated entire villages of them and their kin. A Druid sect only needs five Druids to work their powers, and Daroch’s had close to forty. I slaughtered all but four and then I returned and forced him to lick their blood from my flesh. I made him thank me for sparing his life and theirs.”
Kylah wept for him. Her soul bled for him. “Why?” she whispered the burning question. She wanted to sob it. To scream it. But she didn’t dare. What would the Queen do to him? To her sister?
“Why not?” was Cliodnah’s dispassionate answer. “At the time, they were our enemy, favored of the Gods with which we were at war, and granted their magic.”
“But Daroch told me they’re not clerics of the Gods.”
“The distinction is… minute,” the Queen said. “They are still a holy race and now they are no more. But for one. I only gave him up because Elphamae found that I kept him in violation of the terms of the pact and she made me put him back from whence I’d taken him. But now that he is a danger to all those within our race, I believe that she will forgive this latest breach.”
Please do not make me do this,” Kylah begged. “Why not just send an army of Ly Erg’s to kill him? Wouldn’t that have been the easy solution all along?”
Cliodnah laughed, not the evil, maniacal sound Kylah expected from someone so cold and cruel, but a soft, enchanting melody of amusement. “You simple creature. You think we would not have? His cave is protected by powerful runes and denies us entry. I cannot even watch him in his inner sanctum behind that stone wall he disappears into. Besides, the pact forbids me to touch him unless he uses his Druid magic. Ly Erg failed in this, with no small thanks to you. Also, because of the help I gave your sister, Katriona, I broke the