10. Aldrin

Chapter 10

Aldrin

I pull my blade from the dead spriggan and face another. Black rot drips down the woody branches of its body. This one walks on four legs like a beast, each limb a different shape, with the joints set at sharp angles. Short, leafy branches jut out all over it and the thing’s head hangs low on its body, with red eyes glowing back at me with fire. Sickly sap jewels its flesh.

With a sweep of my sword, its head falls to the ground and thick, black blood spurts out. The thing’s body lumbers and lands on its side, its shoulder splatting open from the slow impact, revealing the depth of the rot.

The stink of decay fills my nostrils as its flesh dissipates to ash floating away on the wind.

The sight boils my anger. It breaks my fucking heart.

These are peaceful lower fae, and I have to put them down like pox-infected goblins.

“Aldrin!”

I turn to my name being called.

“Cyprien is here!” Hawthorne shouts, pointing his sword to the treeline.

A dozen warriors stand there wearing the royal uniform, silent sentinels watching us do the dirty work for this realm. We are outnumbered and I do not care. My impotent frustration runs fire through my entire body, down to the tips of my extremities.

“Do you not see?” I jump onto a tree stump and roar at them, amplified by magic. I raise my sword straight up into the air. “Do you not see the rot on these creatures? The way they fall apart the moment they die, because the magic cannot sustain them? Are you still blind?”

Cyprien shifts on his feet. The elaborate gold trim on his brown leather armor throws the light, along with the gold beads woven into the many braids of his black hair, pulled into a thong and shaved on the sides.

“What I see is snow on the spring side of the border,” he throws back, voice booming as loud as a clap of thunder. “No wonder the tulips have died here when winter encroaches on our lands. No wonder the flower nymphs suffer.”

I want to shake the man who should have my back. Who should have trusted me after all these years, but supported my enemy instead. He has always been blind to what is right before him and cursed by his own inaction.

A sharp movement catches my attention and I slice clean through the middle of another spriggan, one that is humanoid in form but has lost most of its arms to the rot. It falls with a disgusting squelch.

These poor creatures are decaying as they live. I cannot imagine the pain they must be in.

Killing them is a mercy.

That much is clear from their high-pitched wails. In the sluggishness of this pack’s movements. Their magic can be sown back into these borderlands. The gods know we need every last drop of it.

“Come here and see these spriggan for yourself!” I yell across the space.

All around me, my band of high fae warriors efficiently slaughter the beasts. The ten still loyal to me, doing the work of an entire kingdom. We are not enough.

“I have seen,” he calls back after a long pause, stiff but yielding .

Shock reverberates through me, and I turn to stare at him. There is gravity behind this admission.

I dare to hope for a single heartbeat of time.

Perhaps I could convince Cyprien of the truth. That he could bring others to our cause. That maybe we could save our kingdom, our entire realm, in the short time we have left.

Within a flash, his expression twists from humbleness to something dark and cruel, as his gaze flicks over my shoulder. That olive branch dissipates immediately.

An ethereal song whispers in my ear and I swing around to the source of that power behind me. The old portal in the middle of the clearing hums to life, the moonstone arch glowing brightly through the growth of vines draping across it. Mists bellow out.

“No,” I whisper to myself. “No. It cannot be.”

The portals to the human realm have been locked since the Dividing War. Fae are forbidden from activating them without the approval of the leaders of every single court in agreement, or at least their own king.

It is for our protection.

To stop humans from the slaughter they had inflicted on our kind when they still allowed us in their lands. To stop those from both realms dragging back victims.

“I should have known!” A viciousness tears from Cyprien. “I should have damn well known! I almost fell for your lies, Aldrin. Your convenient stories. Are we back to this, are we? You would go against your council? Your people? This idea of yours was the reason you were exiled.”

“No, Cyprien! I didn’t open the portals.” My words fall on deaf ears, as he swiftly turns and addresses his soldiers. My weaves of air drag back his commands not meant for me.

“Arrest him. Arrest all of them.” Cyprien snaps.

The squeal of metal on metal fills my head as they pull their swords from scabbards in unison. The ground vibrates around me as something huge charges and I turn to the alpha male spriggan just in time. I cut it down without a second thought, despite the healthiness of the creature. I have killed too many of its diseased kin. We all have our breaking point when we betray our nature and turn violent.

I fixate on that portal, as two human women walk through.

Such insubstantial, slight things, to be my utter undoing.

Pretty, with white flowers in their hair, one with red-gold locks and the other auburn, and a scattering of faint freckles over milky white skin. Sisters perhaps, the first with big doe eyes and parted rosebud lips, and the other fire in her emerald eyes and stern angles to her face. Both have rounded ears.

They look like lambs led to a slaughter, startled by the butcher’s blade.

My attention lingers and lingers on them. On one with a curvaceous body, with a generous swell of breasts and the sweetest curve of hips, hidden beneath a green dress. She has a magnetism that pulls at me.

I drag my attention back to Cyprien’s warriors charging down the slope, double taking.

Men and women pour from the hilltop, double the amount he initially revealed. The sun glints off the metal of their swords and the plates in their armor. The air rumbles with the crashing of their boots and the yells of their attack.

“To me!” I yell at my loyal band of exiles. “Forget the spriggans. Do not let them take the human girls.” I point my sword at the humans stepping out of that damned portal.

My people rally to either side of me, and we form a wall of bodies. The few kelpies of my band transform to their half-humanoid and half horse shape, pulling free the weapons strapped to their sides. They stride eagerly back and forth across our line, without the discipline to hold position.

“Do not kill Cyprien’s guard.” I growl. “I will not have any deaths from the Spring Court on my conscience.”

“Makes our job a hell of a lot harder.” Silvan grunts at my side, pulling throwing knives from their sheaths strapped to his thighs.

“I didn’t say you can’t maim.” I ignore the smirk that forms on his face .

The enemy streams down the hill. I wait for them to enter the reach of my magic, calculating the speed of each body and their position in the next moment. The first boots land within my domain and I allow them to trek through it, for more to enter before I spring my trap.

I thrust my power down into earth and pull up the roots beneath their feet, belonging to the surrounding ancient trees. The thick lengths elongate into spikes that crush up through the ground, forming a woody wall between Cyprien’s people and mine.

Soldiers crash into that sudden barrier at full speed and the crack of their bones reaches my ears. The second wave of warriors hack at the roots, slicing through them with swords. I pull more roots out of the ground, plucking up soldiers and wrapping them up within woody binds.

None would even attempt to rival my magic to wrest control of the roots from me.

Cyprien conjures a localized wind volley that picks up dust and branches alike, forcing me to shield my eyes from the dirt that flicks in my face. With that tempest, he snaps multiple sections of my wall and walks straight through it.

A ripple of anticipation runs through my band as the enemy falls upon us. Sweat drips down my back and my muscles tighten in preparation.

In a great crash of their air shields against our air shields, bodies against bodies, a clap of thunder rises from us. My teeth jar as the impact runs through my bones and my feet slide back in the dirt, but I hold my stance.

The enemy soldier before me bears his teeth. It is all I can see of his face beneath a helmet with a nose and cheek guards. His sword swings at me and I evade the strike, catching it on the spiked armor of my forearm, reinforced by a shield of air. Sparks fly as the blade slides away and the metal against metal releases a high screech.

I kick the man in the center of his torso and propel him away with a blast of air, his body arching through the air and colliding with a tree trunk. With a flick of my hand, I have the branches wrap around him, pinning him in place, but he uses the same vein of magic to part the flesh of the entire trunk in two and slip through the back of it, healing the tree as he retreats.

Kai bolts before me, the hooves of his powerful equine legs beating against the ground, and shoots an enemy rushing toward our line with a jet of water. The kelpie rears on its hind legs, kicking another in the chest, then speeds away. There is a huge smile on his humanoid face.

These lower fae are absolute chaos on a battlefield.

An arrow whistles past me, nicking the bare flesh of my shoulder. The wound is shallow, but it hurts like hell. The sting radiates throughout my muscle. Iron arrows with ash shafts. It takes longer than it should to heal.

“Gods damn you, Cyprien! You’re going to kill someone!” I scream, looking for him on the battlefield.

Hawthorne has a shaft through his thigh and two of Cyprien’s warriors are binding his arms in iron where he kneels.

A rage runs hot through me, powering my every muscle and focusing my attention on Cyprien. That fool would have saved us both a lot of heartache over our lifetimes if he listened to me.

I stalk straight to him, parting the battlefield around me with a huge gust of wind that picks up all the fae in my path, tossing the enemy force like ragdolls and wrapping them in roots on the ground, and gently placing my own people back on their feet. It expends far too much of my power.

I swing my sword in loops as I approach Cyprien, pooling all of my menace into my words. “Call your people off. Let us have a rational conversation. I don’t want to hurt you,”,” I say through gritted teeth.

He sends the sword out of my hand with a sharp slap of wind, then has roots grab my ankles from under the earth.

“Well, now, you're really pissing me off,” I snap.

Cyprien laughs, but there is no mirth in it. “We can talk when I have you in iron chains.”

I unsheathe my daggers and throw them at him, toward his arms and legs, and run into my attack, snapping the twigs wrapped around my feet. A battle of whirlwinds erupts around us, as my magic tries to guide the blades and his to throw them off course. Every single one slices into his flesh, in gashes too shallow for my liking.

The blood that drips from him is satisfying. How did we come to this?

I barrel my shoulder into Cyprien’s chest and my weight throws us both to the ground, rolling in the dirt.

“I. Didn’t. Open. The. Fucken. Portal.” I growl, landing on top and punching him in his stupid face.

He spits blood. “Then who did? The humans? Please .”

“Maybe,” I say.

Somehow, in the absolute chaos of the battle, my attention is stolen for a split second by those human girls, as they run through the edge of the battle toward the forest.

We could lose them in there, and I am not about to track humans with an enemy force at my heels. I need them, as witnesses to my innocence and as my glimpse into their Otherworld.

I throw out a hand in their direction, my power taking hold of those vines wrapped around the portal and making them whip out to catch the women in their ropey length. I bundle up the two humans in vines and move them slowly, delicately, back to the moonstone portal. It is a callous, desperate move, but they will have to forgive me.

In that single moment of distraction, with my air shield down, an unnoticed arrow flies through the battlefield and pierces my right shoulder.

The impact throws me off Cyprien.

My head rebounds off stone and the entire world turns black for an instant. Pain rushes in, exploding within my skull and chest, and all I can do is breathe. I cannot get up, my mind too jarred from the brunt force. The iron tang of blood fills my mouth.

The sounds of the battle crash around me, the panicked voices of my soldiers as Silvan calls out to form an overlapping turtle formation of their bodies and shields.

The whistle of arrows flying through the air registers in my mind, then puncturing the ground with dozens of thwacks, all around me. I shudder as the sensation of arrows slicing into my magic shield reverberates through me. Not all of my people have my immense ability to form them.

We are losing, I can feel it.

I am only senseless for a few seconds, but it is enough to turn the tide of the battle. I scramble to get up and find Silvan pulling me to my feet. An enemy charges at his back and he whips around to defend. Both Drake and Klara materialize behind me, protecting my flank from three of Cyprien’s warriors.

I scan the high ground and find the bastards with the bows and arrows, four of them standing at the top of the hill. Rage thunders through my veins as I send roots through the ground to whip out and crush their bows and bones alike.

They will heal in time.

Another volley of arrows whistle through the air and I swing around to second group of archers hiding in more trees. I make quick work of trapping the soldiers into the wood, feet, bodies, hands, whatever I can grab at in a fraction of time.

But there are more archers. Cyprien must have another dozen people out there, taking us down from the shadows. This show of force means he is desperate.

I whip around in a full circle, trying to find Cyprien within the madness of fighting bodies, throwing away any who rush me with a volley of air. A crazed spriggan bolts past, notched with arrows and screaming.

My energy is sapping away with each drop of blood that flows from my wound. My magic is disappearing just as rapidly. The iron and ash are preventing it from healing.

“Retreat!” I roar. “Retreat to the delta site!”

I use the last of my power to throw up an air shield over the entire battlefield to stop those damned arrows, unable to distinguish between friend and foe who tangle so closely in their wrestling and clashing blades. Arrows hit the surface and sink in. I feel each one like a slap to the back .

“Silvan! With me!” I yell at the man and he follows immediately.

We run toward the human women, so vulnerable in the bonds of vines I put them in.

Their eyes grow wide and faces pale at the sight of me. I can imagine why. I must look a brute. Blood smeared across my skin and armor, both black and red. Sweat and dirt and stubble across my face. The horns and war markings of my warrior power.

A pang of guilt fills me at the sight of what I did to them; hands, arms, legs, all bound into a spindle like flies captured by a spider. Even their mouths are covered, like my subconscious couldn’t bear to hear them scream.

In the heat of the battle, I didn’t put the proper care into their treatment. I wouldn’t want to be that helpless with so much fighting around me.

My lost sword flies up into my hand as I run past it, thrown to me by my thrust of air. I swing it to cut the vines tethering the women to the portal. It is far quicker than unraveling all that magic. Before I make contact with the bindings, my weary mind tries to think up something heroic to say to them, about how I will save and protect them.

As my blade swings to meet vines, something snaps in those huge doe eyes of the prettier girl. Her red hair turns into pure firelight, red, orange and yellow tongues of flame licking the air. This close, the heat of it sears my face.

A blast of wind and earth magic radiates from her, cracking in a loud boom, then shattering the vines into a hundred darts that hurtle from the two women in a radius.

I am thrown to the ground by the sheer force of the power, with multiple projectiles needling my body. Silvan lands next to me moments later, spikes in his body as well. My flesh heals slowly with that ash shaft still through my shoulder, but I try to crawl as the woody spines fall out of me one by one. Those women run from me.

All I can do is watch as I try to pull myself up, terror mounting within me. Silvan chases them, but he is slow, battle-fatigued, and injured. I need those two humans. They could be my salvation, my ticket out of exile. And right now, as they head for the dangers in our forest, they need me.

The humans run, holding hands with their arms outstretched, as one girl practically pulls the other who is drained from using too much magic. They land straight into Cyprien’s hidden archers.

I reach out my left arm and the branches of the trees swipe at those archers. I pull at the roots, trying to grab the girls so Silvan can catch them, but the other sister destroys them with her autumn earth magic.

“Stay still, Aldrin.” Klara is suddenly at my side and her knee presses into my back. “You’re going to bleed out if we don’t get this ash shaft out of you. Damn, it’s close to your heart.”

She snaps it and sends fire through the wound. I muffle a scream as the shaft is pulled from my shoulder, then collapse into the dirt splattered with blood.

Probably my blood.

The pain builds to a boiling point as she thrusts healing magic into my open flesh to cauterize it, and I am left panting. Blackness rushes across the edges of my vision, threatening to steal my consciousness, but my sight returns. There is pure chaos around me.

Arrows land in the dirt, penetrating through cracks forming in the shield I still struggle to hold over the entire battlefield. Cyprian himself is dragging my man Hawthorne by the neck of his armor to his ranks.

An enemy archer grapples one of the humans around the waist, dragging her backward. She uses the embrace to lift herself up and kick another fae in the chest with both her legs, in a powerful blow that sends him sprawling.

Kai’s hooves pound the ground as he gallops toward the edge of the trees, zigzagging through the volley of arrows that fly at him. The earth explodes beneath his feet as Cyprian tries to catch him with whipping tendrils of roots.

More and more enemy warriors rush to cluster around the humans, but one sister kicks the other’s captor in the head, forcing him to release the pretty girl. She runs wildly from Cyprien’s force that converges on her, but Kai gallops past and collects her in his arms, then thunders away.

Thank the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves for creating those beautiful, utterly insane creatures of human, horse and fae.

The human’s screams trail behind Kai as he breaks into the woods, and I swear it is a name that leaves her lips. That she cries for Caitlin.

Klara pulls me from the ground and drags me along in our retreat. Waves of hot guilt crash through me at leaving Hawthorne to be carried away by the enemy as their prisoner. Ideally, I would want to take the other human girl from Cyprien as well. We have lost this battle and my hand has been forced.

My head spins and black marks the edge of my vision, as my energy goes into the healing of that arrow wound. I am damn lucky it didn’t take my heart out. My blood still dribbles down my chest, causing my leather armor to chafe across my skin. The adrenaline of the fight is wearing off, fatigue is setting in, but we are not safe yet.

It is a struggle to get past the dead forms of the spriggan, their woody bodies littered across the battlefield and the branches scraping the bare skin along my shoulders. Some of the low fae crouch over their fallen, wailing in long, pitched notes. It is heartbreaking.

There is no dead high fae on this field. Keeping it so was my greatest weakness in this battle. Plenty of wounded limp away.

Cyprien took as much damage as we did, and a quick glance over my shoulder tells me he retreats in the opposite direction.

My air shield over the site drops completely as I slip and crash down on my knees, but there is no pursuit. Silvan pulls me up and both he and Klara support my weight with an arm around me each.

Iris thunders toward me, the kelpie transforming from half mare to her full horse form, skidding to a stop long enough for me to be deposited onto her back.

Agony shoots through my arm as I grip onto her, each jolt from her galloping tearing more of my shredded flesh, but I grit my teeth through the pain. She slows at my command. Somewhat.

The woods fly past at high speed and I put all my energy into not falling off Iris’ back or into unconsciousness.