wrathful, ancient God of the underworld, come to claim his vengeance.
“I may have fucked ye, ye twisted bitch, but I made love to her.”
Never had Kylah loved him more than at that moment.
The Queen’s head snapped back and she keened with the unfamiliar pain of the Arborlatix as it skewered through her. She hurled Kylah toward her hand-maiden with such incredible force, that Kylah would have broken bones upon impact with the earth had she still been human.
“Finish her!” she commanded as she ripped the spear from her body. The contact with the coated weapon singed her palms. She tossed it behind her and advanced on Daroch. “I’m going to slaughter this Druid with my bare hands.”
Kylah pitched toward the Fae. She’d left her knife in the Faerie Queen, though it seemed to have little effect. She had nothing with which to defend herself. She didn’t want to watch her approaching doom, instead, she pushed herself from the grass as Cliodnah ripped off Daroch’s robes, leaving him only in his trews and touched her deadly fingers to the tattoo above his heart.
“This hardly protects you,” she snarled at the new and sacred triquetra on his chest. “It will only delay your death and prolong your pain.” His body arced violently as she jolted him. His scream was dark and unnatural, filled with incomprehensible torment.
Kylah jumped to her feet, desperate to stop her. His pain pierced her heart. This couldn’t be how it ended. There was no justice in this.
Her eyes fell to his staff, discarded by the Queen. It was covered with the Arborlatix, and if she could pierce a vital organ with it, it would surely slow her down.
Kylah reached for it, but the Queen’s hand-maiden kicked her hand and snatched it from the ground.
It sizzled in her hands, and the smaller Fae’s soft eyes pinched with pain at the edges. She speared Kylah with a look of profound regret that stunned her. “I do what must be done,” she murmured.
In a flash of movement, she turned and shoved the spear through her Queen, piercing her lungs.
The Queen’s screams died on a wet gurgle, and Daroch slumped to his knees as her power withdrew from his bleeding body. He panted on the ground for a shocked moment as everyone stared at the red and black stain growing around the staff protruding from Cliodnah’s chest.
“You are no longer fit to rule,” the hand-maiden said dispassionately. “You break our sacred pacts, flout the holy council of Queens, and make light of our immortal words.”
The Queen gave a wet cough.
“You would kill this man who was your servant and your slave rather than grant him the boon he is owed.”
Daroch’s hand tightened on his sword. The Banshee Queen struck her hand-maiden with such force the small faerie nearly flew over the cliff. Cliodnah drifted toward her, slowly pulling the staff through her middle. “You have been little better than a slave to me for millennia,” she screamed maniacally. “You dare to—”
The Banshee Queen’s words died swiftly as her head separated from her elegant neck. She reached the ground in a limp heap before her crystalline flakes had the chance to fall. They settled around her in a ring before melting into the spring grasses.
Daroch spat blood on her white robes, his Druid sword dripping onto her priceless jewels, and promptly collapsed to the grass beside her, still as death.
Chapter Sixteen
The soft, familiar lapping of water against stone told Daroch he was in his grotto. At least, he dared hope he was. He tried to move and pain lanced through him, though he welcomed it as verification that he was yet alive.
“I think he’s stirring, Kylah,” a young sweet voice pierced the pain in his head. One he’d heard before. But where?
Thank you, Druid, for what you did.
His memory returned to him. Kylah’s younger sister, sweet-faced and deceptively innocent looking. She was safe. Alive. Well, not alive, exactly.
A cool, wet cloth had been wiping at his face, but it left him, and a hand reached beneath his neck. His soul recognized the touch immediately.
“Drink this. It will help with the pain.” Kylah’s gentle voice soothed with as much efficiency as any tonic she could give him. But Daroch forced himself to swallow the bitter brew she gave him, testing his mind by identifying each herb by its taste.
That achieved, he decided to risk opening his eyes. Daroch drank in the sight of her, hale and whole and as lovely as she’d ever been.