Roses the devious fae bo.., p.16
Roses (The Devious Fae Book 2),
p.16
This had turned into a nightmare really fast.
“Killing her wasn’t part of the deal!” Rell yelled. “I was only supposed to make sure he found the heart of the forest.”
“Plans change like the wind, Rell,” Asreth said. “Now, do as I command, half-breed!”
Half-breed. Even his own people don’t accept him.
The thought floated into my mind in an instant, but I pushed it to the side just as quickly. The Sprites were almost on me, even if Rell wasn’t moving. I wasn’t going to get very far with just my knife. Some of the Sprites, I could deal with. But how was I supposed to stab a floating puddle?
I still had an option, though, even if it was probably squashed underneath the Viscount.
Frantic, I dropped to my knees, letting the knife fall to the dirt, and I stuck my hands under the Viscount’s shoulders. He was a huge sack of tightly woven muscle I wouldn’t in my wildest dreams have been able to shift. But I planted my heels into the ground and pushed with all my might, calling on my fight-or-flight instincts to help me move him.
The Sprites were coming to kill us, and if I didn’t get him turned around, there was nothing I could do to stop them.
Grunting, I rolled him from his front onto his side. The dolls were underneath him, some of them crushed, most of them covered in wet dirt. I grabbed one, spun around, and held it in out in front of me like it was a holy symbol I was using to ward off demons.
The moth with the sharp teeth hissed as it descended, beat its wings, and pulled away. Other Sprites began to shriek, and howl, and wail as the doll’s aura affected and repelled them. I had fallen on my ass, and was sitting up against the Viscount’s body, digging around in the dirt for another one of the Viscount’s dolls.
When I found a second one, I held it up too, and I saw more of the Sprites begin to retreat toward the safety of the trees.
“Stay back!” I yelled. “Get the hell away from us!”
“You would brandish those totems here?!” the wind screeched, “In our sacred place?”
“I’m not letting you kill us!”
“You cannot stop us with those things, human. They cannot keep us at bay forever.”
I don’t have to keep them at bay forever—just long enough.
I forced myself to my feet. My hands were dirty, and wet. My dress was soaked and ruined. I was tired, and hurt, and hungry, but I had to reach inside of myself and keep fighting. Not just for me, but for him. I swapped one of my dolls for the knife, leaving the doll sitting on the Viscount’s back.
Armed with my weapon and my shield against the Sprites, I hurried over to the bed of black roses, threw myself onto my knees beside it, and cut a handful of them at the base. Their thorns bit into my skin as I held onto them, causing blood to trickle down my arm, all the way to my elbow, but I was so full of adrenaline, I didn’t care.
“What are you doing?!” Rell called out.
“I’m saving his life whether you like it or not,” I said, as I turned around and headed for the Viscount. I had the black rose, and I had the daggervine. I didn’t know how they worked together, what amounts of each to use to create the potion needed to heal the Viscount, but I had to try something in the short time I had left.
If I was going to get out of here, I needed his help.
We needed each other.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Rell said.
“I’m tired of listening to you,” I said, as I grabbed the little jar with the silvery liquid inside it. “We were supposed to be friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Really? Because you just led me into a trap.”
“I didn’t have a choice, Avery.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe he could’ve helped.”
“He’s only going to help himself. Do you really think he’s going to send you home if you save his life?”
My hand was bleeding. I could feel the hot, sticky blood trickling through my fingers. Quickly, cut one of the roses’ heads off, opened the jar of mercury, and stuffed the rose inside. “I would rather risk having to stay in this awful place forever than watch your people murder him.”
Instantly, the silvery liquid began to crawl over the rose and consume it. I shut the jar and watched as the mercury started to turn black. It didn’t take long until there was nothing left of the rose, or its petals—there was only an inky, slimy black substance left inside the jar. After a moment, I thought I saw little glittering sparkles start popping to life inside of the dark liquid.
“Allow me to make your choice a little more difficult,” came the voice on the wind.
Turning my head, I saw the bark-faced creature had hold of Rell. The moth with the sharp teeth and claws was hovering overhead, ready to dive and scratch the dragon to ribbons. The water elemental stood off to the side, clearly prepared to drown any flames Rell could produce.
“Let him go,” I snarled.
“Save the Fae,” said the wind, “And Rell dies.”
CHAPTER 23
Rell was being restrained, and the Viscount was unconscious. I had in my bleeding hand what I thought was the cure to the Viscount’s parasite problem. Rell was about to get torn to shreds, and Silvan was mere moments from being taken over by the parasite inside of him. Asreth had made it clear I couldn’t save them both.
It was probably already too late to save one of them, at least.
“If you save his life,” Asreth said, “He and his people will hunt us down to extermination. They will not stop until their thirst for revenge is quenched.”
“And how are you any better than them?”
“They have committed genocide against our kind!”
“You’re about to. Do you want to be like them, or do you want to be better than them?”
The wind shifted and moved, and I caught another glimpse of the face behind the voice in the dust clouds circling above the bed of black roses. This time, it stayed where it was, allowing the dust around it to settle and reveal the face of the thing I was talking to. It was a strangely human face, with eyes, a nose, a mouth… but the ears, they were Fae ears—that much I couldn’t miss.
“You are interfering with things far beyond your comprehension,” said the swirling dust cloud.
“What, you think I don’t know about war?” I asked, “About genocide? Humans are guilty of both those things in spades, but some of us have learned, you don’t answer death with more death. Do you think that’s going to make you feel good?”
“We are going to take back what is ours. These forests, this land, it belongs to us, not to them. With his blood we will put an end to their terrible reign, and we will bring balance to the forests once more. There is still time for you, and for Rell. Smash the jar, let us have the Fae, and we will send you back to your home. Refuse… and you all die here.”
I looked over at Rell. He hadn’t tried speaking into my mind, maybe because the rest of the Sprites would’ve heard him anyway, but now more than ever I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted him to tell me this was all part of his plan, that he was working on a way to get us all out of here. I wanted him to tell me he hadn’t just betrayed my trust the way Kady had.
Even though he couldn’t speak, I could see my answer written all over his small, red face.
He didn’t really care whether the Viscount lived or died. He had made a deal with the Sprites—Silvan, for his mother. He had also made a case for them to send me back home; I had no doubt about that. The only problem was, he hadn’t counted on them stabbing him in the back.
Rell had also misjudged my feelings toward the Viscount.
To him, Silvan and the rest of the Fae were the enemy. They were his people’s oppressors, their nemesis, their one great adversary. He had made it clear, time after time, what he thought of the Fae. I should’ve seen something like this coming; should’ve known he would’ve picked his people over the Fae, if it ever came down to it.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame him... but if we somehow made it out of this alive, I was going to kill the hell out of him.
“Smash the jar!” the wind roared.
I shut my eyes hard, then opened them again and looked to Rell. I didn’t see fear on his face, or anger. He simply nodded and let his head droop, and I knew what the nod meant. He didn’t want me to smash the jar. He wanted me to help Silvan, to help myself, to get out of this mess.
With that simple gesture he had told me he was sorry, that he had wanted to help me, but things had gotten way out of his control. He wanted me to go and save the Viscount. This was his way of trying to make things right again.
I looked at the jar in my hand, and in my periphery I noticed one of the corn-husk dolls laying on the ground. It was sitting next to my knife, battered, dirty, and horrible, but still functional. I grabbed it, and without thinking, I tossed it over at Rell like a grenade—and all hell broke loose.
The woods screeched, recoiling from the dark magic embedded into the doll. As the Sprites panicked and retreated from it, I rushed over to the Viscount, pinched his nose shut, and poured the black liquid down his throat. He resisted at first, coughing and gargling on the concoction, but I closed his mouth where I could and helped him swallow it.
“Come on, Silvan,” I said, my breaths coming in short and ragged, “This had better work.”
Getting the liquid down his throat was a process, but the hard part was trying not to look around at what was unfolding behind me. I couldn’t see Rell, or the other Sprites, but I knew the world had turned upside down. The screeching hadn’t stopped—in fact, it had gotten louder, and it was coming from everywhere.
Once there was nothing left in the jar, I tossed it aside and helped Silvan swallow the rest of it. He was so weak in my arms, and only barely conscious. I was worried the potion hadn’t gone all the way down his throat, or that it was already too late, or that I’d made a mistake in mixing the two. I wasn’t a Fae healer; what did I know about any of this?
Something whooshed past my head at top speed, forcing me to duck. Looking up, I spotted Rell zooming away. He was faster than the other Sprites, and nimbler in the air. His Drake ancestry gave him an advantage over the other Sprites, even the ones with wings. It also gave him something of a resistance against the dolls.
They made him uncomfortable, but some of the other creatures in the clearing had retreated entirely, as if they couldn’t be anywhere near it.
“You need to get out of here!” Rell yelled from above.
“I can’t leave you!” I called out.
“You don’t have a choice, Avery. Get him out of here… now!”
Another gust of wind pushed past me, only this time I didn’t see a winged creature, I only felt the air. Asreth. She was going after Rell. I couldn’t see her, not exactly, but I could tell where she was going by the way the air shimmered behind her. She slammed into Rell so hard it made his wings crumple, and forced him into a dive.
“Rell!” I screamed, standing upright.
“Just go, you idiot!” Rell croaked.
Looking down again, the Viscount was starting to hack and cough, but the black veins around his mouth were already gone, and some of the color had returned to his cheeks. “Silvan,” I said, kneeling next to him, “You’re awake!”
“I am… somehow… alive,” he groaned.
“We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”
“I can.”
The Viscount picked himself up with my help, and in a moment we were both on the move again. I had grabbed one of the Viscount’s dolls and was holding it ahead of myself as we made our way toward the edge of the clearing. It was working. The Sprites didn’t dare get close to it, but I remembered what Asreth had said.
It wouldn’t last forever.
Once we reached the path, I stopped and turned around to look for Rell. He was still in the air, but he wasn’t alone anymore. The moth had found its courage again, and it was after him. Rell was doing his best to keep ahead of it, and draw it away from us, but Asreth was getting under his wings, causing him to struggle to keep control of his flightpath.
When the moth took hold of him with its claws, my heart leapt into my throat. “Rell!” I screamed, my voice shooting through the forest. But my call went unanswered. I watched Rell go down somewhere behind the trees on the other side of the clearing, into the waiting arms of all the Sprites that couldn’t fly.
I was about to leap back into the clearing when Silvan took my hand. “We must leave,” he said.
"But they’re going to kill him!”
“He’s already dead. He gave his life for you. Going back would be an insult to his gift.”
The sting of tears came instantly. I shut my eyes to keep them from falling. The Viscount didn’t waste another moment in pulling me away from the clearing, away from the fight, away from Rell. I felt listless, untethered, dazed. I knew we were moving, but I couldn’t feel my own legs. I’d gone entirely numb.
The sounds of the fight began to dim as we put it behind us, but before it was gone completely, a flash of golden light filled the forest, catching the Viscount and me by surprise. I turned around to figure out what was going on, but the light was too bright. I saw only the dark silhouettes of tall, thick trees and the massive shadows they cast between the beams of light.
Something moved through me, then. A feeling I couldn’t describe and wouldn’t have been able to repeat to anyone if they had asked me. The closest word I could find was warmth. In the midst of all this cold, damp gloom—warmth.
It was gone in a manner of seconds, plunging the forest into an even deeper darkness than before.
“What… was that?” I asked.
“I am not sure,” Silvan said.
“Should we go back?”
He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. We have to find our way out of this forest, otherwise we will suffer Rell’s fate when the Sprites catch up to us. Although I do not the way…”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and looked around. It was hard to see anything, but a couple of flickering dots of golden light caught my eye. I moved closer to them and noticed they were embers burning soft and low against a tree. Scanning the wood around us, I noticed more lights a little further down the way.
I smiled.
“Rell left us another gift,” I said, pointing at the lights. “I think he’s showing us the path back.”
“We should move quickly, then.”
“Thanks, Rell…” I said to no one.
“Do you feel like you can run?”
“I should be able to run.”
“Then we should run. As fast as we can. This place isn’t safe for us, and we have overstayed our welcome.”
I nodded and prepared myself. “Alright… yes, you’re right. Where we’re going isn’t any less dangerous than this forest, though. I almost prefer giant beetles to Invidia.”
“As do I, but we don’t have a choice.”
I looked up at him, and even in the darkness I could tell he had improved. The veins around his mouth and jaw were completely gone. The cure had worked, or at least, it looked like it had. “I’m glad to see you standing again,” I said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
The Viscount took my hand. “I didn’t know you cared about my life.”
“I don’t…”
He lowered his tone. “Liar.”
I pulled him close and kissed him. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the thought that we could turn a corner and get eaten by a giant caterpillar or something, or maybe I’d just wanted to. It didn’t matter. Rell was gone. We only had each other right now, and with every passing second, the odds that we’d make it out of Darkwood stacked against us.
This could very well have been the last kiss I would ever give another person.
I was glad it was him.
*** TO BE CONTINUED ***
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ALSO BY KATERINA MARTINEZ
THE DEVIOUS FAE
Thorns, Book 1
Roses, Book 2
Liars, Book 3
THE COLDEST FAE
Taken, Book 1
Stolen, Book 2
Marked, Book 3
Fated, Book 4
THE OBSIDIAN ORDER
Wings of Light, Book 1
Wings of Night, Book 2
Wings of Shadow, Book 3
Wings of Fire, Book 4
THE WARDBREAKER
Heart of the Thief, Book 1
Soul of the Storm, Book 2
Crown of the Queen, Book 3
Heir to the Throne, Book 4
THE DEVIL OF HARROWGATE
Night Hunter, Book 1
Dusk Stalker, Book 2
Dawn Strider, Book 3
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katerina Martinez is an emerging author of fantasy and paranormal romance novels. Follow her wherever you like to interact!
Copyright © 2021 by Katerina Martinez & LJ Sampere
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Katerina Martinez, Roses (The Devious Fae Book 2)
