Page 145 of Crowned By the Fae King

Avenging Angel

Everything 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.

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