Chapter 32

The shadows had ripped a tunnel through the heart of the mountain we'd been standing on before burrowing beneath the feet of the army themselves and gouging a path for us to follow.

I'd cast a Faelight for us to see by as we walked through the dank, narrow space, but Tharix hadn't reacted to it, making it unclear whether he needed its aid or not.

He'd been silent for a while as we followed him, giving Max and I time to exchange brief looks, the edges of a plan forming between us. Max slid a hand into his pocket, subtly wielding magic around himself. He was shielding us too, an impenetrable barrier of air magic clinging to our flesh like a second skin, ready for an attack.

My focus was on the creature my father had created to be his Heir in my stead, my posture tight with the expectation of the attack I was certain was coming.

"Child of sin and mourning," Tharix said, almost to himself. "Will break the mould ‘twas born in."

"What?" I grunted, my fingers itching for the feel of my axe in my fist.

He looked around at me, his dark eyes flashing with what could have been surprise, like he either hadn't expected me to speak to him or hadn't realised he'd spoken aloud.

"I was created between a junction in the stars, balanced on an uncertain fate," he said, his voice low and thoughtful. It unnerved me to see him that way. Not as a monster but as a sentient being with true consciousness and a mind of his own. I'd watched him attack Orion, Gwen and Gabriel from beyond The Veil. I'd seen the soulless look in his eyes while he hunted them, and this version of him didn't add up.

"You were created using the souls of four murdered Fae," I replied, my lip curling back. "And all fates are uncertain."

Tharix considered me for a moment, not even glancing at the path beneath his feet as he continued on into the dark, his steps sure and even.

"Sometimes they whisper to me," he said, lowering his voice like he was confiding in me and offering Max a dark scowl as though he wished he weren't there to hear it too.

"I can feel them," Max said tightly. "And they don't whisper; they scream. Those souls are trapped and suffering. Your creation lashed them here on the wrong side of The Veil. Every moment of their prolonged existence is an agony which taints the air surrounding you."

Tharix bared his teeth at that accusation, and I took a step closer to Max, placing myself between them as I felt the tension growing in the confined space.

"Tell me, bastard-born Heir," Tharix purred, his gaze locked on Max. "Did you request your own conception? Did you appeal to the stars for your creation? Or was life simply thrust upon you and presented as a gift no matter how hard living can so often be?"

"I was born of love and handed into the arms of destiny, designed to help rule this kingdom by the stars themselves," Max replied stiffly, a taste of pride and anger tainting the air as his emotions struck the walls surrounding us. "You aren't even Fae. No one knows what the fuck you are, but it certainly isn't natural."

Tharix moved so swiftly that I barely managed to slam into him when he lunged. His fist met with my side and mine cracked against his jaw as I hurled him back into the wall. Shadows flickered and trembled around us, the cavern we were walking through groaning precariously, the walls tightening noticeably.

Tharix broke a laugh, his eyes onyx black and sparking with the thrill of the fight which I knew only too well.

"Shall we continue this, brother? Shall we see what fate befalls us if my shadows stutter again?" he taunted.

I fisted his shirt and dragged him nose to nose with me. "If I thought this mountain might crush you when they did, I'd be sorely tempted," I snarled.

Tharix considered those words for a few moments, his head cocking to one side. A slow smile tugged at the corners of his lips as some understanding seemed to sink into his expression.

"No," he said slowly, raising a hand so he could tap two fingers against my chest, right over my steadily thumping heart. "I don't think the man whose heart is twin to his queen's would welcome death so willingly a second time."

I shoved away from him with a snarl, throwing him back against the stone wall hard enough to bruise and backing up several steps.

"You don't speak of her," I warned him, but he didn't seem to care much for my threats.

"What is it like?" he asked, watching me with a voracious hunger that I didn't want to address. "When she looks at you the way she does. What is that like?"

"All Fae look at each other. You know what it's like," I replied, refusing to be baited into a conversation about Roxy. It was bad enough that he had figured out the link between us. I wouldn't give him so much as a scrap more to offer up to our father.

"I'm alone often," he replied. "But there is so much to know about the world. So I watch. I read. I learn."

"Then keep reading to find your answers. You won't claim any from me."

I turned my back on him despite my instincts warning me against offering him up an easy target then stalked away into the dark. Max hurried to walk at my side, though his steps weren't as purposeful as I was used to, and I cut him a concerned glance.

Tharix was deathly silent behind us, his movements like that of a wraith clinging to the shadows, but I refused to heed the prickling sensation that was crawling along my spine and offer him a glance.

Instead, I flicked a tight silencing bubble around me and Max.

"Are you alright?" I asked him, keeping my jaw tight so as not to draw attention to our conversation.

"We're closing in on it," he grunted, his hand fisting at his side, his iridescent scales catching the dim light of the glowing orb that hovered before us. "Its pain is hard to block out."

His hand brushed against mine and a breath caught in my throat as he offered me a taste of what he was feeling, the agony, the torture unrelenting and the desperate need for salvation. Although the emotions were potent, they were unreal too, beyond comprehension, without any true sense of a person behind them. Whatever we were striding towards, it wasn't Fae.

I gritted my teeth, offering Max as much of my own strength as he required to keep walking beneath the weight of that pain.

"You still have it?" I muttered, knowing our time was running thin, needing to be certain that we were agreed on what we had to do.

"I'm ready," he breathed, shifting his hand away again and relieving me of the burden of that agony. But I could still feel the weight of that power hanging in the air, pressing down on my shoulders and making it hard to fill my lungs without tasting the wrongness of it on my tongue.

Tharix leapt over us, making my heart spike a beat before he landed cat-like on the stone floor ahead, smiling that unsettling grin of his.

I refused to check my stride and he straightened, inclining his head to the passage ahead of me and drawing my attention to a change in the light just as fresh air blew in from above. I guttered my Faelight as the sound of many Fae drew my attention and I exchanged a look with Max to make certain that he was ready for what would come next.

I disbanded the silencing bubble with a wave of my hand then followed Tharix out into the darkness of the night.

I found myself standing at the foot of a palace of jade carved straight into the face of a barren mountain.

There was no doubting who it belonged to, the gawdy stonework depicting the same green Dragon over and over again, a crown of spikes perched upon its scaley brow. This was where my father had run off to when the Palace of Souls had kicked him out. This was the stronghold he had forged for himself in the heart of the mountains. And at our backs, far below on the rocky plains which spread out beyond sight, his sprawling army of ruinous creatures and power-hungry Fae gathered in their thousands, just waiting to meet the army of the True Queens in battle. If their numbers were anything to go by, they would obliterate us entirely when that day came.