Page 126 of Oaths & Vengeance
As the plant began to drag him into the garden, a soldier arrived to chop at the vine and free my cousin, but the damage was done. Ulmar backed away, holding a hand to the left side of his mutilated face. I’d just barely caught a glimpse of his empty eye socket and the blackened skin around it where the tractvine must have inserted some of its nasty poison. A healer could stop the spread, but they couldn’t repair that kind of damage.
Meanwhile, the hunter-green vereloe to my left sent one of its vine arms toward my back. As the tendril wrapped itself around the protruding blade, another one plucked one of its fleshy leaves, breaking it open to reveal a natural healing gelatin inside.
The brilliant plant quickly pulled the dagger and pressed the leaf to the wound. The relief was almost instant. While the vereloe wasn’t mobile, it could tend wounds if someone who’d gained its loyalty came close enough. I’d aimed my collapse precisely. It went after my shoulder next, tucking another opened leaf under the bandage. That gave me more relief.
“You can’t hide in there forever, Aella,” Lord Morgunn said as he stopped a few feet from the arch with the other soldiers who hesitated to enter after seeing Ulmar. My uncle had a scowl, but his expression transformed into incredulity as he witnessed my flora tending me and the others standing guard, ready to tear him to pieces. “Where did you find all these plants?
It had been a long time since he’d bothered looking in here.
I angled my head to see him better from where I lay on my stomach. “All over the world. When you can access a portal to almost anywhere, you explore and discover all sorts of interesting things.”
“So many secrets you kept, Aella. I’d admire you if you weren’t undermining my plans.” He lifted his hands and shot streams of ice toward the crunchertraps, shocked when his magic didn’t touch them. My uncle could only use curses against people, so he’d tried his other gift against my garden. Unlike with Darrow and his people—my heart clenched—nothing in here could be harmed by magic.
I let out an ironic laugh, thankful I’d at least thwarted him on this. “I suspected you might do that someday, so I put protection spells on the whole garden to prevent ice and flames from harming anything in here.”
It had been no easy task to develop the right weave of defenses and build them up over the years so that no one could break them easily. He could spend a week trying to crack them, but it would be of no use to him. It would take longer than that. I’d known better than to block him from entering because that would have drawn his attention and made him suspicious. Instead, I’d focused on spells for specific types of attacks. It also made them more impervious to tampering than if I’d created something broader.
Lord Morgunn narrowed his eyes and pulled his sword. My intelligent plants scooted back a couple of feet rather than attack. Every type of defense I had on the place stopped under that arch, and my sweet little beauties knew it. My uncle swung at them, but they avoided his reach.
“You always were too smart for your own good, niece.” His gaze returned to me with barely restrained fury. “You know we’ll cut down every one of your precious plants if that’s what it takes to reach you.”
I considered the portal ring at the back of my garden, covered in vines at the moment to hide it. I wished I could use that to get away, but I’d drained myself escaping to the garden. There wasn’t enough magic left in me to even channel to the nearest location. Maybe if my plants held them off long enough, but I’d lost a lot of blood, which would slow down my magic regeneration. Even then, I doubted my curse would allow me to channel before putting me to sleep. That could never be my escape as long as my uncle lived.
“You three,” Lord Morgunn pointed at several soldiers beyond the archway. “Clear a path so we can reach her.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spell to protect against blades because that would prevent me from using my trimming shears. My plants would have to defend themselves against swords. I could only pray to the nameless ones that they didn’t come to too much harm. That was the trouble with spending all these years tending them—I’d grown attached.
The three troops ran forward, swinging at the crunchertraps in the lead. The massive lavender flowers ducked, so the blades went right over them before lunging forward to take chunks of flesh from two of the elves. Then, the plants flung the men straight into the waiting tractvines. The snake-like flora wrapped themselves around each of the soldiers, squeezing until bones crunched and screams filled the garden.
The sounds cut off abruptly a few seconds later. I didn’t dare look, but I knew it meant those elves were no longer breathing. Near the archway, both crunchertraps mauled the third soldier until he was bleeding and missing too much flesh to do more than wail in pain. Someone else darted in quickly to drag him out of there.
“Retrieve more soldiers—as many as you can,” Lord Morgunn ordered the remaining female elf.
She dashed away.
My uncle eyed the garden, undoubtedly contemplating how to defeat it. Strategizing against an army of flora was something fae usually didn’t have to contemplate. He lifted a hand and once more tried pushing his ice magic toward my large flowers with blood dripping from their petals. One of them sneezed at him, spraying red droplets all over his face.
He scowled in disgust. “How is it that my ice won’t even form in there?”
“Oh, Uncle. I wouldn’t have wanted them catching frostbite in the winter,” I said wryly, though that hadn’t been my true motivation. I’d worried he’d try punishing my plants someday instead of only me.
Another soldier arrived, and they moved a short distance from the walled garden, whispering low enough that I couldn’t hear them. It would be nice if they could keep planning for another thirty minutes. Maybe I could fool my mind into escaping this place. If I thought about only going a short distance and nowhere out of Therress, would that trick the curse? I had no idea, but it would be worth a try.
My hopes crashed when, less than ten minutes later, the female elf returned with more soldiers than I could count from my position on the cobbled path. I scooted back farther to give my plants room to maneuver. Two of my tractvines were out of the fight since it would take weeks to consume their fresh meals, but I still had a few more that would love to eat something meaty, and one that was only wounded from having a short section of its limb cut off. They mainly subsisted on underground insects and the occasional rodent, so tonight was a real treat for them if they could catch a whole person.
I only felt bad that the soldiers would be seriously harmed or lose their lives because of me. If I didn’t know for sure that my uncle was serious about torturing and possibly executing me, I’d surrender to save my plants and the troops. I had to consider the fountain as well. If I died, all hope of retrieving it before our world reached the point of no return would be gone.
The next few minutes passed so quickly that I could hardly keep track. My uncle's military contingent stormed my garden en masse, swinging blades as they moved. The crunchertraps wounded the first handful, tossing a few at the tractvines and other malicious plants before the fae cut them down. A tear fell down my cheek as they dropped to the stones, lifeless and missing many of their petals.
The spittlestalks were out of season, but they managed to spray a little poison when the soldiers passed them. Four elves and goblins choked and coughed, gasping for breath. They fled moments later.
All the remaining soldiers, about a dozen, managed to slice up most of the plants that got in their way. A few fae lost their lives, but the majority managed to keep moving forward. As they approached me, I caught sight of plant pieces littering the path behind them, and I wanted to scream in agony at their loss.
A couple of other deadly varieties remained stationed in front of me as my last line of defense. They sent out tendrils to trip their targets’ feet and more to pull off their limbs with ruthless violence that even shocked me. My garden had no mercy for its invaders.
Several troops were torn apart, with high-pitched screams and sprays of blood filling the air. In the end, though, the last of my warrior plants were butchered by blades. There were too many soldiers for them to take on all at once, forcing me to watch their massacre with pain and horror. They suffered and died—for me.
In the end, it turned eerily quiet.
