Chapter Thirty-Nine
I ordered my soldiers to shoot the unseelie nobles who were standing. Cel was a prince of faerie. He was heir to a throne. He had diplomatic immunity. They shouldn't have taken my order, but we had crossed a battlefield together. I had saved their lives. My orders through their sergeant had kept us alive and unharmed. We were a unit, and as a unit they fired on my order.
I watched the nobles' bodies jerk and dance to the explosion of the bullets. The noise was deafening. They were wounded in a sort of silence, because the guns were so loud, and seemed to have nothing to do with the movement at the other end of the barrel. It was as if we fired, but they fell because of something else. But not all of them fell; most remained standing. I had to do something before they unleashed their hands of power on us all.
Blood leaked black in the moonlight, but it wasn't enough blood. I needed more, so much more. For the first time I felt no dread of my power, no pain at the call of it, just a fierceness that was almost joy. That fierceness poured over my skin in a wash of heat. It hit my left hand and poured out my palm.
Dawson yelled next to my ear. "What are you doing?"
I had no time to explain. I said, "The hand of blood." I pointed that hand, palm out, toward our enemies. I should have worried that I would hit Doyle, but in that moment I knew, simply knew, that I could do it. I could control it. It was mine, this power, it was me.
Blood fountained in black sheets from their wounds. They screamed, then Cel raised his hand. I knew what he meant to do. Without thinking, I stepped out from between my men, my soldiers, my people. Dawson grabbed for me to pull me back behind the shield of their bodies, but then Cel's hand of old blood hit us all, and Dawson's hand fell away. There were yells behind me, but I had no time to look.
I screamed "Mine!" There was pain. I could feel the nails in my arm and shoulder again; the knife wound I'd taken in a duel; claw marks in one arm and thigh from an old attack. It hurt, and I bled for him, but he could only make the wound as bad as it had been, and I had never had a blood injury that was near fatal.
"What did you do?" Dawson asked. "One minute we were bleeding, now we're not."
I had no space in my concentration to explain. Cel's hand might not kill us, but there were others at his side who could. It was a race now to see if I could bleed them to death faster than they could recover themselves.
I screamed, "Bleed for me!"
Blood geysered from them, and I could feel their flesh tearing under my power, their wounds like a doorway that my power could rip apart. The blood arched, black and shining liquid. The sound of it was like rain on the grass and trees around them.
The brilliant armor in all its rainbow colors began to turn black with blood and gore. They were screaming now, but what they screamed was "Mercy!" They called for mercy, but as I watched Doyle lay motionless at their feet, covered in black blood, I discovered that I had no mercy to give them.
I had never meant them to die for me. The thought came, "What did you think would happen if you sent soldiers against the Unseelie?" But even Cel wasn't supposed to be mad enough to fight the United States Army. I hadn't foreseen this, hadn't dreamed that he would be so out of control. But my lack of foresight didn't matter. I had asked for help, and my help was dying around me.
I stood there bleeding, staring across the yards of the frosted grass at my cousin's mad eyes. His helmet left his face bare save for a crosspiece down the line of his nose. His eyes burned with the color of his magic. He had called all his power, and I realized that it wasn't enough. It had never been enough.
The wind picked up the long blackness of his hair where it spilled free around his armor. He'd always worn it loose in battle. Too vain to hide his beauty, too bad a warrior to be willing to hide the hair that marked him as high court Unseelie. He would never braid it or put it back as Doyle did.
Cel was weak, evil-minded, and petty. Faerie would never accept him. I was going back to L.A. but I could not leave my people to him. I could not leave faerie in his inadequate hands.
I whispered onto the wind, "Bleed for me." The wind carried my voice, my magic, and where it moved it began to form into a whirlwind. A tornado formed of ice and blood and power. Faerie was the land, the land was faerie, and I had been crowned its queen. It rose to my word, my power, and my desire.
The nobles around him who could move, ran. Those who could crawl did so. They picked up their wounded and fled. Cel screamed at them, "Come back, cowards!"
His concentration had slipped away from me, and my old wounds were closed, as if by... magic.
Cel lashed out at his followers. Some fell in the winter-kissed grass, brought low by ancient wounds reopened by the man they would have made their king.
A wave of blackness moved across the field, as if a different night moved in a line above the frost. This night was moonless, and darker than dark. I knew, before she materialized completely, who would be standing in the way of my cold wind and blood.
Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, stood in front of her son, as she had always stood in front of him. She wore her black armor, carried her raven blade. Her cloak spilled out behind her, and it was darkness itself spun into cloth, and more. She held darkness around her, and I felt her power of air push back at my own.
The twister I had conjured with faerie's help stopped moving forward. It did not die or fade, but it stopped, as if its twisting front had hit an invisible wall.
I pushed at that wall, willed my power to move forward, and for a moment the wall softened. I felt the whirlwind move forward; then it was as if the air was drawn away from it, sucked out and sent whirling into the moonlight. She pulled the air from my whirlwind as she could pull the air from your lungs.
Lieutenant Dawson barked orders and the soldiers formed two lines, one standing, one kneeling, both pointing at her. Would I have fired on my queen? I had a moment of hesitation, and that was my undoing. Darkness poured over us, and we were blind. The next moment the air was heavy, so heavy. We could not breathe. We had no air even to call for help. I collapsed to my knees, my hands on the cold grass. Someone fell against me, and I knew it had to be Dawson, but I could not see him. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness, a goddess of battle, and we would die at her feet.
Chapter Forty
I was lost in the dark. Her blackness had taken the sky. Only two things remained, the ground under my cheek, and the body next to me in the choking dark. I no longer knew right from left, and only the frozen ground let me know up from down, so I did not know who lay pressed against me in the blackness. A hand found mine, a hand to hold while we died.
The frost crunched under my free hand, and I clung to the warmth of that other hand. The frost began to melt against my hand, and I wished for Frost, my Killing Frost. He had let faerie take him away because he thought I loved him less than Doyle. It broke my heart to think that he would never know that I had loved him too.
I tried to say his name, but there was no air left to spare for words. I clung to the melting frost and the human hand, and let my tears speak for me into the frozen ground.
I regretted the babies inside me, and I thought, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you." But part of me was content to die. If Doyle and Frost were both lost to me, then death was not the worst fate. In that moment, I stopped fighting, because without them I didn't want to go on. I let the dark and the choking wash over me. I gave myself to death. Then the hand in mine spasmed; it clung to me as it died, and it brought me back to myself. I could have died alone, but if I died there was no one left to save them, my men, my soldiers. I could not leave them to the airless dark, not if there was anything I could do to save them. It was not love that made me fight again, it was duty. But duty is its own kind of love; I would fight for them, fight until death took me silently screaming. The babes inside me, without their fathers to help raise them, were almost a bitter thing, but the soldiers who clung to me had lives of their own, and she had no right to steal them. How dare she, immortal that she was, take their few years away.
I prayed, "Goddess, help me save them. Help me fight for them." I had no power in me to fight the dark and the very air made too heavy to breathe, but I prayed all the same, because when all else is lost, there is always prayer.
At first, I thought nothing had changed, then I realized that the grass under my hand and cheek was colder. The frost crunched as my fingers flexed, as if the melting that my warmth had caused had never happened.
The air was bitingly cold, like breathing in the heart of winter when the air is so cold it burns going down. Then I realized that I was breathing a complete full breath of the frigid air. The hand in mine squeezed, and I heard voices saying, "I can breathe," or simply coughing as if they'd been fighting to draw a full breath all this time.
I whispered, "Thank you, Goddess."
I tried to lift my head from the grass, but the moment my face got more than a few inches from the ground, the air was gone again. Sounds in the dark let me know that I wasn't the only one who had discovered how narrow our line of air was, but it was there. We could breathe. Andais could not crush our lungs. She would have to come into the dark and find us if she wanted us dead.
The frost thickened under my hand until it was like touching a young snow. The air was so cold that each breath hurt, as if ice were stabbing me. Then the frost thickened more, and moved under my hand. Moved? Frost didn't move. There was fur under my hand, something alive, growing out of the very ground. I kept my hand on that furred side, and felt it go up and up, until my hand was stretched tall to follow the curve of something. I stroked my hand down that furred but strangely cold side, and found the curved haunches of something. It was only as my hand followed the curve of the leg to find a hoof that I thought I understood. The white stag had formed out of the frost. My Killing Frost was here, beside me. He was still a stag, still not my love, but it was still him in there somewhere. I stroked his side, felt him rise and fall with breath. The stag's head had to be far above mine, and if he could breathe, so could I. I rose slowly to my knees, keeping one hand on the stag's side and the other in the hand that still clung to mine. The hand moved with me, and its owner got to their knees.
It was Orlando, next to me, who said, "I can still breathe."
I didn't answer. I was afraid to talk, as if my words would frighten the stag, make it run like the animal it was. My hand found the rapid beat of its heart against my palm. I wanted to wrap my arm around its neck, hold it tightly, but I was afraid that it would climb to its feet and run. How much of my Frost was in there? I had seen him watching me, but did he understand, or had the Goddess just sent the stag to help us?
I whispered, "Oh, Frost, please, please hear me."
The stag shook, as if something that it didn't like had touched it, and it got to its feet. My hand was just on its leg as I struggled to my feet in my long coat, with no hand to help me hold the hem, but I was afraid to lose my grip on either warmth that my hand touched. The stag because it was the closest I'd been to Frost since he had vanished, and Orlando's hand because it had been that touch that had made me fight. A human hand that had made me realize that a queen does not despair as long as her people are in danger. You fight, you fight even if your heart is broken, because it's not just about your happiness anymore. It's about theirs, too.
I stumbled on the hem of my coat, and Orlando's hand steadied me as I righted myself by the stag's side. It shifted nervously, as if getting ready to bolt. I knew he was a stag, and I knew he wasn't really in there, but this was the closest I had come to him, and I wanted him to stay. This curve of fur and warmth was all I had left of him.
The stag began to walk. I kept my hand on its side, and pulled Orlando with me. I felt a tugging, and thought that Orlando had someone else by the hand. The stag pranced nervously, and I felt the presence of someone else on its other side. We touched the stag, and held hands like children, as it led us forward in the dark.
It was Sergeant Dawson who said, "Weapons off. Safe. When we can see again, fire. Don't give her a chance to use her magic again."
Andais was queen and my aunt. My father had refused to kill her and take her throne. That bit of mercy had probably cost him his life, because once the rebels offer you a throne, even if you don't take it, there are those who fear that you will. He had loved his sister, and even his nephew. I realized in that moment that I did not. They had both made certain that there was no love between us. Some would say I had a duty to my queen, but my duty was to the men crowded around me in the dark. My duty was to the stag who led us forward, and what was left of my Frost. My duty was to the children inside me, and anyone who would steal them away was my enemy. War in the abstract is a confusing thing. War on the ground, in the middle of a battle, is not. When someone shoots at you, they are your enemy, and you shoot back. When someone tries to kill you, they are your enemy, and you try to kill them first. War is complicated, battle is not. She was going to kill us, even knowing I held the grandchildren of her brother inside me. In that moment I had only one duty, for all of us to survive.
If she used her magic again there might not be a second miracle to save us. Goddess helps those who help themselves. We were armed with automatic weapons; we'd help ourselves.
I felt the soldiers around me shifting, and thought they were readying their guns. Orlando squeezed my hand one last time, then took his hand into the dark. He was getting ready to kill my queen. Would she still be where we'd left her? "The queen may not be standing where we last saw her," I said.
Dawson gave orders for the men to cover a circle around us, because there was no cover save the darkness that held us. Once free of that, we would be naked to the view of all.
We stepped into the moonlight, and it seemed unbearably bright, bright enough to make me blink. I was still blinking into the brightness when the first gunshots exploded around me. It made me jump, but the stag jerked so violently that for a moment I thought he had been hit. Then he bounded away, a blur of white, streaking away from the noise, the guns, the violence.
I yelled his name. I could not help it. "Frost!" But there was no one inside that body to answer the sound of human words. The stag vanished into the tree edge, and I was alone again.
Dawson yelled beside me, "Field of fire, the black area. Suppressive bursts with rifle, squad weapons, give me ten seconds of raking fire. She's hiding behind it."
I turned and looked at the battlefield. I turned and looked at my aunt and my cousin and the nobles from the court I was supposed to be fighting to rule, and I cared more about the stag leaving than about them dying.
Andais had called darkness, like a mist to hide herself and Cel and the other nobles. Dawson and the rest were firing into it. If they were still there, the bullets would find them, but there was no way to tell what lay in the dark. Had she fled?
I looked behind us, and found that the men who had been given the job of watching the back of the circle were doing just that. They were letting the others fire into the dark, but they watched to see whether the darkness was a trick, whether our enemies were trying to sneak up behind us.
What could I do to help them?
"They're behind us!" someone yelled, and I turned with that yell.