Page 83 of Queen of Ever

In a moment, she seemed to understand.‘Okay,’ she agreed, already scanning the space behind us.Before she could go, I pulled her in.Kissed her hard.

‘Be careful.’I released her, already turning.Picking out a way around those already engaged, heart hammering.Light burst before my eyes, bright as lighting, blinding me and everyone else, before the whole cavern was plunged into a mirage of shifting mists.The walls became mirrored, reflecting back a warped reality as formless bursts of light darted around the dizzied fighters, disorienting them.A strategy that could backfire, since it was just as confusing for their own fighters as it was for ours.A Seelie soldier clad in silver chainmail caught the advantage, ramming his sword into the rebel he fought all the way to the hilt, the point sticking out of his back as he slumped to the floor.I reached them as he perched a boot against the rebel’s chest, yanking the blade back out.I caught him on the shoulder.His flesh shrivelled away from my touch as he yanked away from me, trying to lift his sword to retaliate even as his arm disintegrated in a mess of rotting flesh.A shudder ran through me, my detachment suddenly shattering for a moment at the horror of the sight.Ihad done that.And I was about to do worse.

‘Fall back!’I called to Cassian just as another beam of light cut through the mists, missing him by a hair’s breadth.The Unseelie and Seelie forces ahead were cloaked in the mirage, but I could still hear them in the clanging of blades, the screaming voices and the groans of pain.I didn’t know how many of the rebels were among them.I hoped few.‘Tell your men to get behind me!’

I thought for a moment he’d refuse.But he cut down one last opponent with a slash across the neck then yelled the order, signalling with a wave of his arm.More soldiers emerged through the mists as the rebels retreated, and there were suddenly a handful of Unseelie bearing down on me.Magic burned through my arms, the cold gnaw of it building in my palms, humming along my skin in crackling pulses of energy.I released it just before they reached me.It surged outwards in a torrent, catching the soldiers directly in front of me, bringing them down in a volley of screams.The mirage abruptly broke, mists and mirrors dissolving until it was just a tunnel once more, and a great swathe of bodies were dropping to the floor, writhing as magic ate at their flesh, liquifying them until the ground was soaked with blood and fluids and the stench of rot choked the air.The floor shuddered, walls trembling, but already veins of crystal were crawling over the ceiling, stitching the cracks even as clumps of earth rained down.

The pounding in my head was a persistent pulse as I retreated back to the others, the chills wracking my body weakening my grip as I tried to draw my sword again.I was churning with nausea, partially from the aftereffects of the magic and partially because the stench was vile and there was no air down here to move it.I felt like I was drowning in it, that it was coating my lungs with the reminder of how abhorrent my magic was.I pushed the sense away, tried to rebuild that detachment.There was no time to ruminate on the right or wrong of what I’d done, because even if I’d taken out the closest soldiers, there were more on their way down the tunnel.I could already hear them.

The rebels had drawn further back than I thought, regrouping in the mouth of one of another adjoining tunnel.I found Imogen with Ethan, who was leaning heavily against a wall, hand pressed to his stomach as blood leaked slowly through his fingers.‘Could have pulled that move a bit sooner,’ he said weakly.

‘We need to get you some help,’ she said, worry cutting deep channels between her brows.But there was no time to think about Ethan, or to remark on the blood smeared across her upper lip.There was a pulse of tearing, burning cold at my back, and I turned to the crackle of flames, the sharp scent of ammonia cutting through the rot.A wall of black flames were burning down the tunnel towards us, licking at walls, shot through with luminescent silver, eroding the ceiling in patches as it dissolved Imogen’s reinforcements.Blackfire.

‘Run!’I pushed Imogen, slung Ethan’s arm around my shoulders, and we were all running for our lives, trying to outpace the hungry magic chasing us.

Imogen wrenched open one of the doors in the wall.‘This way!’

Ethan and I stumbled through the door, and he slumped into a sitting position on the floor, his breathing shallow and fast.Imogen slammed the door just as the blackfire ripped past us with a roar of gushing wind.The sounds of yelling and the pound of feet were muffled through the door, and we held frozen as we waited, all three sets of eyes fixed on that flimsy door, waiting for it to reveal the blackfire had caught and begun to burn it away, or for a turn of the handle to expose us.

‘They just keep coming.’Too many had got past us now.We weren’t holding this tunnel anymore.They had a free path straight into the centre of the lesser court.I thought of all those people locked in the cavern below.

‘So do something!’Imogen said, turning away from Ethan.

‘If I do anything else, I’ll bring the whole tunnel down.’

She gripped my arm, fingers digging into me, face streaked with soot and blood, eyes wild as she held my gaze.‘Then bring it down.’

I stared at her for a few costly seconds, unravelling what she meant.

‘I’ll hold the end,’ she continued.‘You bring down the rest.’

I was already shaking my head.‘You’ll—’

‘Tarian.’Her other hand was on my face, like she was holding me captive, forcing me to face her fierce determination.‘You need to trust me to do this.Bring it down.’

And then she was opening the door and surging back out into the corridor, and I had no choice but to follow her.She wove around those already in the tunnel, shooting a shard of ice into the neck of someone in her way, dropping to her knees to plant her hands at the base of the opposite wall.And I didn’t know if she had the strength to keep everything from collapsing, but she’d asked me to trust her and that’s what I was going to do.

I took a breath.Breathed through the pounding, splitting pain in my head.Summoned magic to my hands once more, hands that were still numb with the cold of the destruction I’d already wielded.Took several steps forward, putting some distance between me and Imogen.Raised my hands.

Magic burst out of me in a haphazard arc, chaotic and without direction, completely untethered from any ability I’d had to aim before now.It slammed into the walls of the tunnel, a dark tide of energy seeking out the High Fae ahead, streaming into the cracks in the ceiling.The stone above split, groaned, and the earth itself shuddered.The stone beneath our feet trembled, splintering apart as the raw energy shot through the earth.Cracks snaked up the walls, splitting the tunnel in jagged lines.Chunks of rock and streams of dust rained down as the tunnel groaned like a dying beast.

The soldiers advancing down the tunnel slowed, one of the commanders yelling at the others to fall back as the cracks in the ceiling grew larger, gaping like open wounds in the earth.With a deafening roar, the tunnel’s ceiling gave way.

Massive slabs of rock broke free, crashing down in a chaotic avalanche of stone and debris.The High Fae screamed as they were swallowed by the collapse, their bodies crushed under the weight of the falling rocks.Dust choked the air and the tunnel shook violently as the collapse triggered a chain reaction, more sections of the ceiling caving in, the floor shifting underfoot, the sound of stone crashing against stone reverberating all around me as I became hyper aware of the tonnes and tonnes of earth above my head, waiting to collapse down and bury us.I bolted back to where Imogen still knelt, eyes closed, hands clawed into the wall as blood dripped from her nose down her chin.She groaned when I touched her, and her skin was icy cold from the rush of magic she was channelling to keep the tunnel network around us from collapsing, growing crystal where there had been crumbling earth.

‘Imogen?’I wiped the blood from her mouth with my sleeve.Was the vertigo in my head, or was the ground really beginning to sway?Her eyes flickered open, her shoulders slumped, hands disengaging from the wall.

‘I think it’ll hold,’ she panted.‘But I don’t know for how long.At least we’ve stopped them.’

‘For a while,’ I replied.The tunnel here was completely blocked off now, but we’d only bought ourselves a little time.

A few other rebels were moving through the tunnel behind us, helping the wounded up off the ground, checking the dead and dying.Marietta joined us as I helped Imogen to her feet.The Seelie princess was limping, and her hair had come unbound, hanging around her face in wild snarls.

‘We have to get Ethan,’ Imogen said as Marietta examined her with a frown.Her gaze flickered to me.

‘We’re heading for the surface,’ she said.‘Too many of the tunnels have been destabilised.They’ve struck from all different directions and caused cave ins all over the place.’

‘What about the people sealed in below?’Would Haddock get them moving in time?

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