Page 8 of Kings and Monsters

Nimue unrolled it and found the stub of a candle. There was no flint to light it.Unless… Nimue rested her hand on the earth sides of the hole, and her magic flickered under her skin. It was weak, but it was still there, and a small flame appeared in her hand.

She lit the candle stub, wrapped the cloak around her shoulders, and thought about what she could do. There was no doubt in her mind that Bleddyn would be coming to take revenge on the queen, and there was no way he could keep Rosa from trying to get Balthasar back. The queen had tried to take Merlin and had been unable to. Could he have crossed into the Aos Si with Bleddyn, or would he have been denied passage again? Nimue's magic was muted, not gone, so she placed her hand back into the cold earth and sent her voice out on the winds of the Aos Si hoping it might be strong enough to find him…Merlin.

On entering the Aos Si,Balthasar had been locked into a cell with stone walls and left alone for hours. If the intention was to heighten his panic and anxiety over his coming fate, they were going to be disappointed. He had been tortured in nearly every way possible over the years, and it no longer held any terror for him.

Instead of worrying, Balthasar used the time to wipe as much blood from the battle off him that he could and tried to relax. Leading up to the invasion, he had barely rested, so despite being a prisoner and missing Rosa so much his bones ached, he had curled up in the warmth of his battle leathers and slept.

The last time Balthasar had been a prisoner of war and tortured had been in France during World War II. He had been an empty shell of a man with nothing to lose. He didn't want to lose Rosa, but he also knew that while she was with Merlin and Eli, there wasn't anything strong enough to take her from them. He started going through his memories of her as if they were Cards of Fate, turning them over and admiring them before burying them deep inside himself until he was an empty shell once more.

When the queen's guards did finally come for him, Balthasar was no longer the man they had put in the cell. He was calm as they brought him up a winding staircase and into a lush set of chambers. He'd expected to be dragged before the Court for a torture session, but the queen had other ideas.

The guard shoved him onto a plain wooden chair in the center of a lavishly decorated bedchamber and clamped his wrists and ankles to the legs before locking a collar around his neck. Balthasar made a quick note of how long the chain was and how it was fastened to the stone wall. He had broken and built many cells in his time. The only other furniture in the room was an oversized golden four-posted bed with a high canopy of velvet and gossamer.

"Balthasar Seren Du, how I've longed for this meeting," the queen said, gliding into the room. She was dressed as if she'd come from a ball with her hair decorated with an elaborate headdress of antlers and red roses. Her golden and red gown was heavy with velvet and embroidery; the bodice opened enough to reveal the pearlescent curves of her breasts. She would be abeautiful way to die, and if he would've been the self-destructive man he'd been five years ago, he might have been tempted by the trap she was trying hard to set.

Balthasar remained silent. If he knew one thing about Aeronwen, it was that she liked to talk.

"I must say you aren't as tall as I expected," she said critically, moving about him. She ran a finger down his stubbly jawline. "I can't deny there is a feral sort of appeal about you. It's little wonder that a naive young thing like Rosa Wylt would be taken by you. Your attraction to her is what I can't quite figure out. Oh, sure, she tastes pleasant enough, if a little plain."

Balthasar's expression didn't change despite the insinuation that this bitch of a queen had done far more to his Rosa during her time bespelled than she remembered.

"I'm sorry, was there a question in there I was supposed to answer?" he asked when she looked at him expectantly.

"I suppose not. I see you won't waste time with any pleasantries at all, which is very bad manners. Tell me what Bleddyn is planning, and your time here won't need to be as horrible as we can make it."

"To my knowledge, Bleddyn has no plan when it comes to the Aos Si. He has only ever wanted to be left alone. Something you fail to understand."

"Would you leave Rosa alone if she left you? Or would you try to win her back?"

Balthasar began to laugh. "Killing his people and kidnapping his son isn't the right way to win someone's love."

"Perhaps not to humans, but to the fae? War against each other is just another kind of foreplay. A true partner is one strong enough to handle the other. Equals in power. If I yielded to him now, it would prove I wasn't worth his affections."

"If you yielded to him now, I'm quite sure he would still cut your lying head off. That is if he can get to you before Rosa does.She wasn't impressed with her last trip to the Seelie Courts, and she won't like returning."

"She'll walk into every trap I set because her love for you has made her stupid, like it's made you, the great Leiddiad, cow eyed and soft."

"Wait until I get out of these chains, and I'll show you exactly how soft I am."

Balthasar didn't feel the spell, only the pain as the pinkie finger on his left hand was twisted off. The queen held out her hand on the other side of the room and caught the bloody finger.

"I've always been curious about how the Gwaed Gam can regenerate," she said, gliding over to him, her curved body swaying as the edges of her bodice opened further. Balthasar didn't hide his disgust as she knelt down on her knees in front of him and sucked on the bloody stump where his finger had been, her pale hand moving to knead at his crotch.

So…she was going to be that kind of torturer.

CHAPTER FOUR

By nightfall, they still hadn't reached the ever-shifting border of the Unseelie lands, and Merlin was getting the impression that they were being kept out. He took the first watch, his companions curled into bedrolls around the fire.

How many times had he sat in a similar position? A small group going off to fight an impossible foe.Slay the dragon and rescue the princess.He tried his best to remind himself that Nimue had survived the queen before. Looking at Rosa and Eirianwen, he realized that all the women the Seren Du loved had suffered at the queen's hands. Retribution was well overdue.

Merlin swallowed his anger and tried to hold more recent, happier memories of Nimue in his mind. That she had been strong enough to love him in this crumbled version of his former self was a special kind of miracle.

"What are you frowning about, cousin?" Rosa climbed out of bed and sat beside him by the burning logs.

"I was contemplating, doing some fire gazing," he lied, burying his pain. "Why are you still awake, young Rhosyn?"

"I'm waiting for the borders to shift and have Eli turn into some kind of badass god that Eirianwen keeps talking about,"she lied back. She curled into him and admitted in a cracked voice, "I miss Bal."

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