Page 51 of Till Kingdom Come

I wasn’t actually sure I could, but I had to try. I had to dosomethingand quickly before my whole life blew up in my face.

I moved over beside him and took hold of his arm, but he jerked it violently away from me again. He glared down at me, but then as if he were unable to stand so close and not to touch me, he grabbed me by the waist and bent me back over his arm, staring down into my eyes, as if he were searching for answers. The reaction of my guards was immediate. They ran to my side, weapons drawn and trying to push Bracca violently away from me, all the while yanking on me to move me backward.

It was like putting a torch to a powder keg the minute they touched me. Loud shouts erupted as Bracca reached for me, pushed me behind him and savagely swung his sword at the guard who’d put his hands on me. The guard fell at his feet with a mortal wound. Bracca reached down to his boot for a dagger and when another of the guards lunged at him, Bracca turned on him and slashed his throat open with the dagger in his left hand. The guard’s blood splashed all over me and I tried to catch him as he fell. He screamed and clutched his throat as other fights between the guards and Bracca and his father were breaking out as well, and it was quickly becoming complete and utter chaos.

King Larek was backing toward the door, pulling Bracca with him, though Bracca was resisting and still trying to get to me. I thought he would kill me if he managed to do it. His face was that fierce and that full of fury, and all of it was directed toward me.

“Bracca, no! Please stop!” I shouted and tried to take a step toward him, but I was knocked roughly to the floor by someone surging in front of me. I looked up in shock to see Larek standing over me with his sword drawn. He saw me looking at him and growled his outrage and his anger. I had barely avoided having my head lopped off up to now, but I thought this might be it. Stunned by the suddenness and the violence of the attacks, I stared at him in horror and waited for the blow to fall. His eyes glittered with hatred as he stared down at me and raised his sword.

Bracca yelled something I didn’t understand and pushed his way over to thrust his father out of the way and kneel over me. Incredibly, he had what looked like tears in his eyes as he stared down at me in the midst of the terrible fight, and I saw him slowly draw back his hand that had the dagger in it. The minute I touched him I knew he planned to kill me, but something was stopping him. I put out a hand to him.

“Don’t do this. Please, darling.”

“Don’t call me that!” he shouted fiercely, completely out of control with his voice breaking somewhere in the middle. He hesitated for another moment, glaring down at me with some strong, savage emotion working on his face, and I wondered if he were trying to decide whether or not he could go through with it. He lowered the dagger with a vicious oath, jumped back to his feet and turned in disgust to go toward the door, just as his father and their two guards were managing to fight their way out into the corridor. I could hear shouts and curses continuing down the hallway, before they spilled out of the building and into the city streets. I could still hear them all shouting and cursing.

“Just let them go!” I cried out to the guards. “Stop fighting them and let them leave the city!”

I was still on the floor, feeling stunned by what had happened and too shocked to get back up to my feet. I wasn’t hurt, but I felt as dead inside as I knew my marriage must now be. Around me on all sides men were sprawled, either dead or dying. This meant war between us and the Dark Fairies, and I couldn’t see any way around it. The stupid argument had exploded into a deadly, dangerous fight, and it would never be settled now without iron and blood.

Chapter Sixteen

A few nights later, as had become my nightly ritual, since Bracca had come so perilously close to killing me in my own throne room, I went out for a walk and some fresh air. I followed my usual path and was now standing by the gate, looking down at the scene below.

How had it all gone wrong so quickly, so irrevocably? I had meant to speak to Bracca privately and try to convey to him that the curse was already working against us both. That we had no choice but to separate, because I could feel it ripping us apart. We had to somehow find a way to stay away from each other.

Then Hendris had inexplicably butted his way in and Larek was absolutely no help either. Maybe the reaction and interference of others was somehow part of the curse. It certainly seemed likely.

The siege had begun yesterday, with Bracca and his army showing up and camping out just beyond the reach of our soldier’s weapons. From the size of the encampment, their numbers had increased in only the last day or so. They must have managed to send for even more soldiers, and they had begun to stream into their camp. We still didn’t know what their plan was, though they certainly had one by now. Bracca and his father weren’t the kind to leave anything to chance.

Hendris said they wanted to lay siege to our city and force us to surrender.

Daeneid had an ample underground water supply, along with large stockpiles of food. The food wouldn’t run out for over a year, if then. But eventually…

There could be an attack, but they were obviously still working out the logistics. There were clear, unwritten rules once a siege had begun, and there were really only three possible outcomes—a successful assault by the attackers, a negotiated surrender by the defenders, or an unlikely win by the defenders when the other side inevitably attacked their weakened forces.

A successful assault by either side without negotiation could result in massacre, execution, and plunder. That was the last thing I wanted for the Dokkalfar people, or for the Fairies, for that matter.

In case of a negotiated surrender, only the nobles could expect reasonable treatment and to leave with perhaps some of their possessions. The poorer people often lost their rights, possessions, homes and sometimes, their freedom.

In this case I thought that Larek had long wanted to take over the Dark Elf kingdom and incorporate it into his own. He wanted to be High King, but he would need to enslave the Dokkalfar people to work in their own mines.

Bracca was like Larek in that they were both far too stubborn to simply give up and go home, so I believed that the second of these choices was the one most likely. They wouldn’t attack, but rather lay siege until we asked for a negotiated surrender. I suspected that King Larek had been working toward that goal for some time. He had arranged my kidnapping and Bracca’s marriage to me to be able to control me—to get me to restore the throne and then after that, I was more or less disposable except for maintaining the throne with my blood every few years. The horrible curse my grandfather had put on the blood-stone had worked to Larek’s advantage in that way. Bracca didn’t feel love for me, but he did feel possessive of me. He would keep me around under lock and key to maintain the throne and ensure my faithfulness. And because he was a stubborn ass who would never give away anything that he thought belonged to him.

And I had gone and stupidly fallen in love with Bracca. I’d been flailing around ever since trying to find a way to save us both. But there simply wasn’t any way.

I’d thought sending Bracca away might preserve his life and maybe even mine. But that would have ruined all of Larek’s grand plans for an easy takeover. He could have simply disposed of all the nobles, enslaved all the common people and as for me…he could just let the curse take its course. After all, his son wouldn’t be affected, because for him it wasn’t a matter of love at all. He felt possessive and jealous like the curse made him. But only I had been foolish enough to succumb to my feelings of love. So only I would truly suffer.

I was just at a loss as to what to do about it.

*****

Bracca

My father and I walked out to meet the Elves, about halfway between our encampment and the city gates. We were going to ask for their surrender, as the outcome was inevitable. Surely they must know that. I could already see who it was—Hendris, of course, most of his council members and the one I longed and dreaded to see most in the world, Killian himself.

Sitting by the campfire with my men two nights before this, drinking hot, mulled wine that was as dark and rich as blood, I had been gazing up at the city gates of the Daeneid, wondering if I should just get drunk. If I did, would that help this empty feeling inside me to go away? The anger had filled me and driven me a while, but as the minutes and hours passed, it was fading. French mortals had a word for it—désolé.

The word meantsorry, and I was. More and more with each passing moment. Sorry I’d ever met him. Sorry I’d allowed myself to get caught up in his web of lies and deceit and begin to care for him. Sorry that I now had to lock him away for being unfaithful to me. It would be easier in some ways to simply kill him, but we needed his blood on the stone to keep the city alive.

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