Page 131 of Lady of the Lake

Vellar is still diving. Tarasque is flying slowly, an easy kill.

At the last moment, she turns and rockets upward like a hurtling spear.

Vellar is too late. He overshoots his target. He keeps racing down, giving Talan what he wanted from the very first second of this battle: a position above Vellar.

Tarasque whips around, plunging at Vellar. Her claws rip into Vellar’s back, wounding him severely. But more importantly, she hits Auberon, and the king tumbles off Vellar’s back.

I watch the tiny figure turning in the air, his crown tumbling off. He plummets toward the ground and disappears.

One last portal to save his life. I feel Nimuë’s sigh of relief inside me.

Vellar, bleeding and riderless, flees into the clouds.

Tarasque circles above the courtyard once, twice, a third time, like a raven. Then she swoops back toward Castle Perillos.

Around me, people scream, some in awe, some in horror.

At last, Talan lands in the courtyard, not far from the willow tree.

But there’s no time to breathe. Talan is alive, but the starving mob is advancing, marching toward this very castle.

Below, the Fey soldiers have formed ranks in the courtyard—swords drawn, armor on, magic pulsing at their fingertips. Even without the king,someonetook charge. The marquis, maybe.

My blood turns to ice as I wonder if the real battle hasn’t even begun.

I race down the tower stairwell to meet Talan.

And by the time I slam through the castle doors, he is stalking toward the Marquis de Bosclair.

Arwenna’s father falls to his knees, shrieking in horror, gripping his skull. Talan has taken hold of his mind. Quick as lightning, he snaps the marquis’s neck.

The marquis’s body crumples.

Talan turns to face his soldiers, breathing hard. His commanding voice stretches across the courtyard, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Your king has left you because he cannot face the rebellion he created. I will lead you today, but you will not touch a single Fey subject unless you are about to die. These subjects are mine. They are starving. And I will not let them fall.”

CHAPTER 60

Iride alongside Talan, and only our allies follow behind us. A small, nonthreatening retinue.

Talan’s banner snaps in the wind. It is green, the Fey version of a surrender flag.

Hundreds of yards behind us, the battalions of Fey soldiers march in formations. They are outnumbered by the revolutionary mob five-to-one, but they’re better armed and better trained.

If these two forces clash, only the ravens will win.

My heart beats steadily, a war drum in my chest.

“It’s going to be fine,” Talan tells me softly. “They don’t trust me, but I trust them.”

Up ahead, an envoy from the resistance army rides closer to us. Fifteen of them, one for each of the nobles who ride with us.

I recognize two of them—Nivene with her shining ginger hair and Brados, the raven-haired owner of The Shadowed Thicket. From the way Brados rides in front, I surmise that he’s the current leader of the resistance. I don’t know him as well. If Meriadec were still alive, this would be easier.

We stop a few years away from them.

“Have you come to surrender?” Brados asks.

Behind me, Lord Aedan scoffs. “Surrender? To therabble?”

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