Page 60 of The Realm That Falls to Her

Chapter 17

Her appearance in the pool at the Unseelie Court should have prepared me, but seeing her standing in a graveyard of her own making still shakes me. How long did this woman live beside us, offering advice, pretending to share in our struggles to fix the court, when all the while she was the one hurting it? She stood there and looked us in the eyes while she plotted to destroy everything. I glance at Ruskin, glad that he doesn’t remember her betrayal. It will help him keep his head clear, something I need to attempt too, I remind myself.

Ruskin might not know Evanthe, but he’s seen her in action, and his lip curls in disgust at the sight of her. She meets his gaze and then mine, her eyes lingering on my face, all while holding her ground, making no move to retreat from the Unseelie army now only yards away from her. She knows they’d struggle to go any further with so much iron. Some of them can already feel the effects, I think, as I scan the faces of the soldiers around me and notice some going pale.

“You’ve already brought them to me,” Evanthe says, her voice echoing around the square as she addresses Lisinder. “Now all you have to do is hand them over, and this matter between our people can be done with.”

Lisinder sits straighter on his horse and growls.

“There will be no end to this until you are rotting in the ground, Evanthe. You saw to that when you murdered my niece, invaded my kingdom, and butchered my citizens.”

“All means to an end,” Evanthe replies, sounding impatient with the discussion. The thud of marching feet rises up from the streets on the opposite side of the square, and I can see movement in between the buildings. Her army is close. In response, there’s the rustle of weapons being drawn and arrows nocked by the Unseelie behind me.

“But I see you’ve made your choice,” she continues. “I only hope that you can one day understand that I am doing what is best.”

“And I am only glad that my brother never lived to see his bride betray everything she once believed in,” says Lisinder.

His words achieve what he intended, I think, as for just a moment she seems genuinely taken aback. I’ve known Evanthe to cry out for her husband Lucan in her most vulnerable moments—when she first woke up, when she undertook her trial with the founding stone—and her face betrays a flash of sorrow now. Even in her madness, his memory holds sway.

But then her expression twists into anger, and she curls her hands into fists. The iron that litters the square comes alive, the spikes snaking upwards, evolving into the shoots I’m now so familiar with. The shadows remain with them, twisting around the iron like ribbons of night, carrying the shoots towards us.

I urge Parsley to the front line just as Evanthe’s army charges into view, armored rows of them filing into the square. Most of them wear thick helmets and I don’t have time to work out if I can recognize anyone. I have to focus my magic on the first wave of iron twisting towards us. I throw my hands and begin forcing it back beneath the ground before it can reach our front line. The metal bucks and fights me every step of the way, and I notice the shadows are working to help them resist me. They make the iron “slippery” to my magic—like something coated in oil—and I have to go slowly so the shoots don’t wiggle.

I’m single-minded, entirely locked into my task, so it’s only when I’m sure I’m making headway, the first wave of iron tendrils nearly buried underground, that I risk glancing up at the Seelie soldiers. They’re positioned across the opposite side of the square now, advancing slowly towards us as the Seelie and Unseelie exchange a volley of arrows. The weapons whistle through the air in a blur of speed, followed by the thud of the projectiles hitting shields of metal and magic. One arrow shot by an Unseelie archer falls short of the Seelie front line, disappearing into the swirling shadows at their feet. I frown, because that doesn’t make sense—the shadows are attached to the cold iron, and the Seelie shouldn’t be able to get so close to it without it affecting them. In fact, the only thing that I’ve found that offers protection against it is?—

I fix my eyes on their armor. It’s dark and heavy looking, and not dissimilar to the pieces I had made up for Hadeus’s miners when they were excavating iron in the palace. It’s all made of lead. They stole my idea to make armor out of the magic-warding metal, and now they’re using it to advance past Evanthe’s iron without so much as flinching.

At least the volley of arrows is doing some good, I think, watching one get past their defenses and easily pierce through a soldier’s shoulder plate. Normally, lead is considered too soft for armor. The Seelie have sacrificed physical protection for the magical kind, and it’s a choice that might work to our advantage now.

That is, if I can stop the iron. It’s still coming thick and fast. I’ve gotten better at fighting it than I used to be…but Evanthe’s gotten better at casting it, too. Not to mention the boost she’s gotten from Interra and its shadows. With every line of snaking metal I push beneath the cracked paving stones and churned up earth, another is behind it. And with every moment I spend fighting the metal, it crawls closer. Evanthe has barely moved from her spot in the middle of the square, allowing her magic to work for her as she’s overtaken by her soldiers, disappearing behind a wall of advancing lead.

“Stop trying to dispose of it,” Ruskin calls to me from my left. His eyes are on a handful of soldiers across the way who are currently being strangled by some aggressive tree roots he’s conjured. I can’t help but wonder if he’d know which of his subjects they are, if he had his memories.

“What?” I shout, trying to maintain my own concentration over the shouts and screams, mingling with stomping boots and grinding metal.

“Just focus on getting it away from us.”

I take his point. I don’t need to remove the iron from the town, just from this side of the square—at least to start with. I pull together my magic for a new push, feeling it build inside me like a freshly stoked fire.

When I release it, my magic expands as it leaves me, spreading wide in a huge blanket that catches up the iron and throws it backwards. The shoots turn in on themselves, pushed in the opposite direction, and collide hard with the front row of Seelie fae. The metal easily punctures their lead armor, and they crumple like toy soldiers in a horrible spray of crimson.

I blink, then stare down at my hands. I’m amazed by how well that worked. By how easy it was to use my gift as a murder weapon. Surely, it shouldn’t be that easy. I look up again I see the bodies of the Seelie joining those of Evanthe’s victims on the ground. It was so fast—I snuffed their lives out in just an instant—and I’m reminded of the speed with which Evanthe snapped Pyromey’s neck.

“Thorn!” shouts Elias above the noise. He’s to my right, a crossbow at his shoulder. “Do that again!”

I’m hit with the urge to refuse, to deny visiting more brutal death on the square, but the iron is still gaining on us. It hits an Unseelie who’s strayed too far from the front line, running him through. As long as the iron keeps coming, fae will fall to it. At this point, it’s just a question of which side bears the blows. I lift my hands up, pushing the iron away once more.

This time I meet more resistance, an opposing force pressing against my magic. When I look up I immediately meet Evanthe’s triumphant gaze. She’s fighting me harder, but what she doesn’t realize is she’s easing my conscience a little. Her pushing back allows me to slow down. The tide of iron still turns, only with more precision this time. I see Evanthe’s smug look drop as her tendrils continue to curl back on themselves. This time they only creep towards the Seelie, rather than surging at them. It means they have enough of a warning: some of them dodge the tendrils, ducking aside as the metal crawls past them like a snake in search of prey. Others simply turn and run from them. It means the front line of Seelie falls back, leaving shadows swirling behind them as Evanthe’s soldiers start to retreat from the square. For a single, hopeful moment, I think they might be leaving Evanthe behind, abandoning their queen to save themselves. If she could be captured, maybe this could end tonight. But then darkness rises up like a wall of night, obscuring her from view for a moment, and when it drops back down, Evanthe has disappeared into the throng of soldiers, impossible to see.

Lisinder shouts, like the bellow of a great animal, calling for us to advance. Ruskin’s horse shoulders its way back up beside Parsley—we’d gotten jostled apart in the action—and he nods to the iron I’m sending rolling across the square.

“They need you to make a path, Elias just told me. We’re going to chase them down.”

“Can you do that?” asks Destan. I’m relieved to hear his voice, though when I turn towards him I see that something has sliced right through the fabric of his shirt, the thin sliver showing between his shoulder plate and the protective rerebrace on his forearm. There’s a smattering of blood there, but nothing severe. Still, the image of Halima lying pale and unmoving flashes in my mind.

“Be careful, Des, for star’s sake,” I say, even as I call on my magic, focusing on redirecting my energy. “Don’t you know by now you and arrows don’t mix?”

He grimaces. “I’ll try to remember that.”

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