72. Avenging Angel

Avenging Angel

E verything settled into perfect calm. It was as if I'd found the center of the universe, put my foot down on the spindle of the world to watch it move around me. If Faery was a solar system, I was its sun, standing in utter quiet with everything wheeling around me. Perfect balance, found at last, and far too late. The heartbeat at the center of the world beat in my chest while the body of the one I loved cooled across my thighs.

The Court of Mercy didn't leave me. It settled into me, purring like a cat. Every inch of it was mine, from the western seas to the eastern deserts. Every rock, and tree, and beast.

Cass was the Merciful King, and Cass was dead. But his blood was him, and that blood flowed in my veins. His soul stood balanced with mine, still bound to me, his blood-unity and the balance of our soulmate bond keeping this last remnant of him from falling into the abyss. For these minutes or hours or days, I was both King and Queen, and Mercy answered to my hand.

Icy rage wrapped around my heart, holding in the grief; holding me together. I tucked Cass' hair behind his ear and shifted his head off of my legs.

There was no more reason to stay. Cass wasn't his body. There wasn't anything more binding me to this patch of soil.

I stood. Turned. Looked back towards the Buzzing Palace.

Talien. His soldiers. A Court bought with the blood of my soulmate.

My hand clenched. Absolutely not.

Under my skin, the Court of Mercy purred its pleasure. It was an empire. It liked to conquer. It liked to take .

If all that was left of Cass was his Court, I'd be damned if I let it fall.

I could hear my heartbeat like a drumbeat. That sense of standing on the fulcrum of the universe didn't abate, as if every step I took was the exact right one—as if the whole world moved around me, my balance perfect and my fate preordained.

With a snarl on my face, I pulled out Tech's opal necklace and closed my fist around it.

Find these , I told Mercy, my eyes boring into the distance, to where I could see the towers of the Buzzing Palace spearing up above the reaching arms of the forest, outlined against the pale dawning sky. Every opal. Every fucking amplifier. They put a collar on us.

Behind me, across the border, birds raised their voices in a dawn chorus. Dangerous voices joined them, one by one: Wargs. Wolves. Monsters I had no name for, things of teeth and hunger. They were my army— Mercy's army, every named and unnamed thing, the living beasts who answered to my Court. My anger shimmered in the air, and every wild creature of Mercy answered that icy rage.

Awareness lit up on my mental map of the world, one gleaming prism at a time, outlining the Misted Court, the Court of Flies, the unactivated border along the Sagebrush Duchy.

I couldn't touch the opals. But I couldn't touch iron, either.

That didn't mean they were untouchable.

I bared my teeth in a predator's grin. Give me time !

In three vicious lines, like the swipe of a sword, Mercy turned forward the clock. All around me the world burst into motion, my little patch of safety torn forward by the same power that ripped through the borders. Trees grew so quickly I heard them screaming into being—screaming and dying and falling and rotting, a thousand years passing in the blink of an eye. Cass' body returned to the soil, even the bronze of his wing corroding away. Clothes rotted off of the fae manning the arrays. Mortals fell between heartbeats.

Those tens of thousands of arrays, delicate patterns engraved into thin sheets of metal and suspended in the air on wooden frames, didn't stand the test of time.

The borders shattered, and Mercy's army surged across the front lines.

The Court of Mists fell with a sigh. It was already mine. It merely needed to be reminded of its Monarch.

The Court of Flies fought back.

Talien's power hit me like a battering ram, the air going solid and crashing across me. My little patch of Mercy evaporated like a raindrop on hot pavement. Agony raced through the marrow of my bones, but I didn't die. Cass' blood was lying in a little vial in cold water, chilled and alive and very much inside the Court of Mercy, and Cass was me.

I silently snarled, unable to even breathe in the face of Talien's magic. I had to take a step back. Another. My lungs burned and vision swam.

"The lines of Courts are drawn with conquest and treaties," I remembered reading, one of those late nights spent studying Court magic with Cass. The Court of Flies was new. The boundaries weren't settled. They could be rewritten by force.

I didn't have soldiers, but I didn't need soldiers. The beasts and monsters of Mercy could serve the same purpose; living creatures devoted to their Court setting foot on enemy soil and laying claim to it, step by step. An ordinary Queen couldn't have called them, but I was no ordinary Queen. I was land-tied. I was Cass' soulmate. Mercy was mine.

Above me, the sky darkened with a cacophony of wings, and Mercy slammed back into me.

I staggered and fell to my knees from the overwhelming force of tens of thousands of living creatures flooding into the forefront of my mind. The Court of Mercy twined through me like a cat weaving around the feet of its beloved master. Heat flooded my veins and love limned my bones. I lifted my eyes to the Buzzing Palace and got to my feet.

The vanguard of my army flew for the Buzzing Palace. They gave voice to every dram of my grief and pain, ravens cawing and hawks screeching and songbirds screaming. Talien's attention slipped. Air flooded my lungs again.

I started walking forward, and then jogging, and then running. My blood pounded under my skin. It felt like I could run forever. Mercy's power snarled underfoot, as hungry and angry as me.

The wolves passed me first, then the deer. A creature the size of a rhino thundered past, head down and heavy armor on its spine. I grabbed the fur of a warg and vaulted onto it, moving with her like one creature.

My hungry Queen , Cass said with admiration. As vicious as a warhound when the mood takes you.

Bears. Weasels. Many-limbed monsters that eeled across the ground. A wildcat the size of a horse. Foxes and boars and things with no names, all yoked to my will and my rage.

I screamed out my pain, and every voice of every beast and monster of Faery roared with me.

We ran and flew and slithered for the Buzzing Palace. Talien fought us every step of the way, his magic carving chasms in the stone and raising great thickets of sharp-thorned brambles, but we were wild things. Deer bounded over fissures twenty feet wide. Hares vanished into thorns and forged new paths, followed by their predators in an ancient dance.

Talien was a King, but I was a Queen, and my Court was far greater and far older than his. The beasts of the field and forest drove forward, and in the shadow of that vicious army, I sealed the gouges in the broken bedrock and sent the brambles to sleep. My army arrowed for the throne of the Court of Flies, leaving dust and trampled thorns in our wake.

It had been hundreds of years since the Court of Flies had first been conquered. Maybe once, the Buzzing Palace had been a place that could withstand a siege, but no longer. King Omahice hadn't allowed his conquered foes to build fortifications against him. Walls had been torn down. Moats had been filled in. All that defended the Buzzing Palace from the monsters of Faery was a single curtain wall, held by a skeleton crew of soldiers.

A wall can't defend against hawks and songbirds. A handful of soldiers can't stand against an army of predators. Men screamed and died on the fangs of wolves, the antlers of stags, the talons of nameless beasts. Birds crossed the wall, carrying Mercy in their wake.

My warg didn't pause as she charged for the great gates of the castle grounds. I bared my teeth and hooked my fingers into claws. With the same power I'd used to raise walls against a goddess, I tore down the curtain walls of the Buzzing Palace.

Stone shattered. Dust rose in great clouds, shining in the dawning light. My warg leaped through the chaos without hesitation, clearing the rubble in a single bound.

I saw the world from a thousand eyes. I was the wind under my wings and the stone beneath my feet. As one great beast, we hit the walls of the Buzzing Palace, a tidal wave of wrath.

Windows shattered. Doors smashed into smithereens. Glass sliced my flesh and shards tore at my mouths, but the blood was only the crimson of my war banners. I was Mercy, and Mercy's King was a healer. What was blood to me?

I need you .

Couldn't think it. Couldn't break. Needed to carry him with me, command the power in his blood, be Mercy's everything—

I need anchors . Reasons to come back—to stay .

You.

Cass' voice, the memory so raw and clear that tears started cutting across my face. My warg shouldered through the broken doors of the Buzzing Palace, a low snarl in her throat. We stalked through the halls, the palace itself struggling against my command, but it was young and Mercy was ancient, a Court that had subdued it before and would again.

I need someone who will drag me back, Cass said, his voice insistent, no matter how far I go or how lost I get .

Feet padded on tiled floors and hooves left snowy prints on carpets. Wings flickered through halls and chased screams.

I clung to Mercy with a will like claws. I dragged him with me, step by furious step, and he came willingly.

The throne of the Court of Flies was in a courtyard. Unlike the rest of the world, it was bare of snow, the hard-packed earth glittering with salt and the throne itself a stark shape cut from the bedrock. Talien sat there in a ring of bare dirt twenty feet wide, surrounded by the beasts of the Court of Mercy.

I snarled. My army growled and cawed and shrieked. Dust rose and walls fell and a King sat frozen in his throne.

Birds lined every wall; clung to doorframes. Rodents and vermin swarmed across the ground. Wolves stood side-by-side with their prey, eyes fixed on the man fending them off with his will.

I heard the muffled boom as a wall collapsed. Birds flew up, screeching victory, and circled in the sky.

Moving with grace, I slid off the back of my warg and drew my sword. "Talien Shamais," I said, the words falling into eerie silence of the courtyard. I stepped forward, past the unmoving ring of animals, and Mercy came with me.

He met my eyes with a flat gaze. I could see the fear – in his pinned-back ears, in the tightness of his shoulders, in the way his fingers dug against the stone of his throne – but none of it showed in his eyes. "Quyen Anh."

I started walking towards him, slow and sure. "You betrayed me," I said, the grief starting to win over the anger, looking at this man who had taken everything from me. "You betrayed my King. You betrayed my Court ."

"I did," he said, his voice very calm. "Your Court was the death of mine, and the death of my family. It was thoughtful of you to have your soulmate remove the curse on my line, but," Talien said with a humorless laugh, "the chance to sire children hardly means the dead will breathe again."

The corners of my mouth tightened. "So in revenge, you handed over an innocent man for execution. One who'd never caused you any harm."

Talien breathed with care, his chest rising and falling. His ring of safety diminished with my every step. I walked towards him, the drumbeat of an execution, my hungry Court gnawing at his land.

"Blood for blood," he said. "The dead don't rise, but a Court may be reborn."

Something about that itched at me; scratched a bed in my heart. I walked up the steps to his dais. My footsteps rang in the unnatural silence.

"He would have given it to you," I said, feeling the truth in the words. "If you had asked. If you had come to him, and told him how it might be done. He would have willingly suffered that to right the wrongs done to you and yours."

The King of Flies sneered at me. "Easy words for you to say without your King here to deny them."

Even now, he wouldn't bend. Wouldn't give in. Looking at him was like looking into a mirror, seeing a person I could have become—someone I could still become. I saw it from a hundred eyes; watched my fingers tighten on the hilt of my sword and his fingers tighten on the arms of his throne.

He'd killed a King for that throne. Taken what would have been given to him. There was no remorse on his handsome face. Talien would defy me to the grave.

I wouldn't give him the victory. The satisfaction .

I raised my sword. Pointed it at his heart. "Ask me for your Court, King of Flies," I said, my voice very soft .

His gaze darted past me, to the hungry creatures just out of arm's reach. To all those shining, watching eyes.

Talien gripped his throne. Leaned forward, his expression tight.

"I already have it, Merciful Queen," he said, glaring into the teeth of a hungry Court.

The world felt so still. Mercy held its silence, waiting for me, every tooth and claw mine to command.

It would be so easy to kill him—to take what was mine. All I had to do was decide to do it, and it would be done. Mercy's jaws and Mercy's power would snap down on him, and that would be the crimson end. The Court of Mercy would be whole again. Mine again. Cass' legacy would be saved, without a single inch of land lost.

No , I thought, the sorrow settling onto me like snow. Cass wasn't a blood-streaked tyrant. I knew my soulmate. He was sunlight shining off of bronze wings and laughter in the dark of night. He was irises on a dance floor and notes signed with hearts; wickedness glinting in golden eyes and the sort of loyalty that threw itself into the teeth of danger for the ones it loved with no hesitation or regret. His legacy shouldn't be written in blood.

Beneath my feet, Mercy snarled, rage thrumming in my veins.

A soft smile touched the corners of my mouth. He was protective wrath, too, but I was his balance. I could stand between him and those he wanted to destroy, and he would pull the blow.

Talien had killed a King for his throne.

I would not.

I took a deep breath, and lowered my sword.

Talien struck like a snake—and the earth itself surged up to stop him.