Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

" L ay down your weapons, or I shall relieve you of your arms," Balthasar said.

The Riverclear men hissed threateningly at him, their fallen comrade bleeding out on the floor beside them.

"You're an embarrassment to the Gwaed Gam," Anton Riverclear spat. "How dare you force us to make peace with these creatures that have hunted and slaughtered us for centuries!"

"Can you say we haven't done the same to them?" Balthasar asked. "We descend from them, or have you forgotten that? We are the same people despite our differences."

"I am going to have to interject." Ryn's voice made the room fall silent. "We are not the same kind. You are abominations—the failed experiments of one selfish and dishonored family who fled to this realm like scared cowards."

Eli stood tall and straight with the look of a man whose future was being taken from him.

"Come home, Black Star, and stop this abominable charade," Ryn demanded. "Your queen demands you return to her. You lost a kingdom. You have no right to try to build another."

Balthasar's ears popped as the glamor that Ryn had laid on his fae broke, and their weapons were exposed.

"I wanted to make peace with you, Ryn, despite the pain you have caused my family over the centuries. I've spent the last fifty years trying to convince my people that you are honorable enough to make a treaty with. You were the one that suggested it after all," Eli growled.

"Why do you think I did that? I knew you would bring all your useless kind together, and I could get rid of them all at once. Honestly, after the way your own father died, you should have known that the Autumn Queen does not make treaties or bargains with your filthy kind."

Battle fury surged through Balthasar, filling him with strength. His eyes fell on Rosa. Eli brought her here to be safe .

His father looked at the opposing forces and Ryn's sneering face. He pulled a pen from his pocket and the glamor melted off it. A long obsidian blade grew in his hands like a shard of midnight.

Ryn's eyes widened in rage. "You had Widow's Fury all this time? How dare you touch it, you Unseelie scum."

"How dare I touch it? It is my birthright! I was hoping to give the queen a taste of it tonight, but she was too much of a coward to face me. Her subjects' blood will feed it instead." Eli blurred, bringing down four Seelie warriors with one swipe of his blade.

Bedlam broke out around them as Gam and fae tore into each other with boiling hatred and betrayal. Balthasar leaped up the wall and pulled three swords from the Vane coat of arms. Balthasar dropped a sword, and Saul caught it, bringing it down to cut a fae's head in two.

"Brother!" Lily shouted as he landed back on the bloody floor. He threw her another sword, not bothering to see if she caught it. Lily had taught him to use a sword; he wouldn't have to worry about her. He needed to find Rosa.

A fae was binding a Southgate vampire in brambles, the twelve-inch thorns piercing through him before it hit his heart and reduced him to dust. Balthasar drove his sword into the fae's spine, tearing it up and out his shoulder, the brambles vanishing.

Other Gwaed Gam were struggling with the glamours as they tore and cut at their own faces and each other, fighting off invisible monsters. Balthasar felt the magic in the room, felt his own Unseelie blood calling out to it.

"Rosa!" He searched, fighting his way through the heaving, bloody crowd.

A high-pitched whistle echoed through the hall, and the younger Gwaed Gam clutched their heads as blood began to pour from their nose and eyes. The Seelie broke through the ballroom windows and fled out the doors. The Gwaed Gam pursued them, their screeching calls echoing through the house. Balthasar flipped the tables, searching for Rosa.

"Balthasar!" Saul appeared, bloody beside him. "Bal, they got her. They got her. I tried to stop them, but I couldn't catch them."

"Got who?" Balthasar asked, his blood running cold.

"Rosa! Ryn has Rosa!"

Rosa had watched, frozen in horror as the battle broke out in a heated mess. Limbs were being torn off, and blood was showering everything about her. She grabbed a carving knife from a roasted pig and climbed under the table. Kicking off her heels, she crawled, shaking in fear at the noise and screams on the other side of the tablecloth. Panicked tears ran down her face, and she slipped over in the blood that was pooling on the floors.

She had to go for the entrance, hoping to escape into a servant's passage. Rosa peeked out from under the table to see Balthasar cut a fae in two with one swing of his sword. He looked like the blood god of a nightmare fairy tale, his fangs bared in fury.

She climbed out from under the table and ran for the doors, almost tripping over the corpse of a Gam with its face torn off. In the corridor, more Gam and fae were fighting as they tried to escape the house. Rosa didn't look behind her as she went for the tapestry that hid the door into the tunnels.

"Rosa, look out!" Saul shouted behind her.

She turned as Celyn flicked his fingers, her knife flinging out of her hand. Rosa turned to find another weapon, but it was hopeless. Celyn picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder. She beat him with her feet and fists, but it didn't seem to have any effect on him. He moved swiftly between the other fighters.

The fae swarmed out of the ballroom and down to the front entrance. Celyn whispered a cantrip, and holly briars wrapped around Rosa from ankles to shoulders, her arms pinning tightly to her sides.

"I knew that you would be mine," Celyn whispered in her ear. "I knew I had to have you from the moment I smelled you."

"Get away from me!"

"Fight all you want, Rosamund Wylt, but you are mine. Spoils of war, a tithe to the old gods." He slung her over one of the gigantic faerie horses before mounting it. Ryn and the other fae were appearing, escaping through the broken windows. He mounted a silver stallion and rode close by.

"Good work, Celyn. She'll make a fine addition to the court," Ryn laughed joyfully, his face covered in dripping blood. "She is also Leiddiad's favorite which makes the victory all the sweeter."

"Balthasar and Eli will kill you for this, you haughty bastard," Rosa shouted.

Ryn leaned over to grip her face.

"Scream your threats all you like, little rose. I would be very surprised if either of them survives the night."

The Seelie catcalled to each other in their vicious, lilting tongue, and the horses took off. Celyn held to Rosa tightly as the grounds of Gwaed Lyn blurred around her, hurtling through the dark forest. The lake shimmered in the moonlight, and Rosa screamed as the faerie horse raced across the water, the moon making a path for them.

The stones were shimmering up ahead in auroras of silver and gold. The Seelie were all laughing as if they were having a grand time. Ryn's stallion leaped over the stones, and it disappeared, the other fae soon following. Rosa tried to fling herself off the horse. If she crossed into the Aos Si, she could never escape. She struggled and screamed as Celyn's vines tightened keeping her bound to him. The horse leaped, and Rosa was falling through the lights into the ground and darkness.