Page 57 of Brutal Fae King
“How did he find her?” another one asks.
“I don’t know…” Vicmar answers. “The marriage, the spell around her, around the castle… it should have made it impossible for him to find her.”
My heart is sinking. I’m now gulping spit like I’m going to puke; I know.
Because as fast as we married, as fast as the spell was cast—it wasn’t fast enough. After all, he could teleport into my dungeon cell much faster than anyone could do anything…
It flashes past my eyes:a crooked, sexy grin… very dark eyes… long, silver blonde hair pulled back tight to his head… large insect wings resting wide…so muscular…
A soft touch taps between my shoulders. I flinch. A heat creeps up into my cheeks.
“Are you okay?” Vicmar asks. “You look flushed.”
“Oh, I… I’m worried,” I answer vaguely.
“Don’t be,” Vicmar growls. “He will never lay a finger on you. I will kill him with my bare hands if he tries.”
The snarling tones send another chill through me; I believe him. Vicmar looks back to the table of war counselors.
“What are our options?” he asks. “What do we have at our disposal right this moment to work with?”
“N-not, uh, not much, Sire. Most of our forces are tied up in Murbyn Bridge—we essentially have only the castle guards at our disposal right now.”
Vicmar sucks in a deep breath, then huffs it quickly.
“Is that it?” he asks. “Just the population of guards inside the castle right now?”
“Yes, Sire.”
Vicmar huffs out another stressed sigh, leaning on the table and hanging his head. He stays like that. No one dares say a thing for a moment.
“He must have known where Ebelor was for a while,” Vicmar grunts. “He was biding his time. He was waiting until we were at our most vulnerable before he struck.” He looks over at me. “If he realized Ebelor was starting to master her powers, he might have felt the pressure to make his move. After all, the lost queen is supposed to be Faevea’s salvation when she is at the side of the person trying to save Faevea, which means his defeat. He couldn’t let her master her powers entirely before he made his move; she’d be too much of a threat.”
I’m suddenly the focal point of the conversation. In fact, it’s almost like he’s talking entirely to me in this huge room of people for a moment.
“But we are married, and we are bound,” he says. “You’re inside the castle, and the castle has so many wards on it that hecouldn’t teleport his army in here. Until those doors are broken in and the castle itself is sieged, it’s the safest place for you.”
“But what then?” I whisper. “The army is in the castle town right now. Surely, they’re going to break in.”
“They haven’t yet,” Vicmar answers. “We still have time.”
He looks at me, and then his eyes sharpen. He turns back to his war counselors.
“We still have time,” he says again. “If all we have in the castle are the castle guards, then that’s what we’ll have to use to defeat his army.”
He reaches forward, grabs a blueprint of the castle, and pulls it over to him.
“We do not have the raw numbers… we don’t even have the magic…” Vicmar says. “But we have the environmental advantage in the castle. It’s a stronghold of its own…”
He looks up at the war counselors.
“Tell the cooks to start boiling oil,” he says. “As much of it as we have. Bring all the available guards to the top of the castle. Any magic users will be brought to me, and I will place them and give them the spell I want them to cast. Tell all the other staff to work on barricading all entrances, except for the secret one into the moat. Have someone contact the witch and bring her to me—we may need her assistance. Once all the regular staff have finished their barricade, take them into the bowels of the castle for their safety.”
A few of the council bow their heads and scurry out of the room. I don’t know if they are the ones who are designated as the ones who do errands or if they snatched up the opportunity to get out of the way of Vicmar’s yelling, but they sprint off immediately.
He looks over to me, then looks back to the war counselors.
“Two of you accompany Ebelor down to the safe room,” he says. “She will stay there until either the battle is over or I give the signal that the castle is about to fall. Once I give that order, you both escape the castle with Ebelor, and you flee as far across Faevea as you can. From there, you are on your own, but your ultimate objective is to make sure this woman never finds herself in the grasp of Dralis.”
