Page 55 of Immortal Alliance

“I would think you already know the answer to that question.”

I think of Eilish and I swallow hard. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

***

THEREN

Oronrel

I know I should fight these visions, the ones that pull me into her darkness, but I can’t. I glide my hands across her alabaster skin as my hips thrust into the wet, pulsating suction that holds me captive. The memory of Eilish’s love makes me dread ever leaving, ever seeing the light of day and feeling the burden of being king. Here, she’s my home—and my undoing. I lick the sweet-tasting sweat from her lips and push her knees toward her chest. She gasps, squeezing around me like a vise.

The snow melts beneath our heat, pooling around us…

Water fills Cambion’s mouth as he reaches for me. My arms refuse to move, but my muscles twitch. Morrigan stands over him and I see the horror of his fear in his golden eyes...

Blue eyes stare up at me as the sound of Eilish’s moans fill my ears. Pale fingers reach up to brush the hair from my face. The gesture is kind and out of place in the midst of our desperate race to reach inside one another’s souls.

Something breaks... the vision begins to shift between the study in Oronrel and the glade. Morrigan... she is weak... now’s my chance...

Glass shatters, and I stare into my own reflection. Scarlet liquid pools between my fingers. I pry a piece from the mirror and tear open my robes. I blink in the darkness of the study and see the rune Morrigan used to bespell me. I carve it out of my flesh, feeling the heat of my blood sizzle as I defy the magic. My reflection screams and claws at the surface, but I grit my teeth and dig a little deeper. A chunk of skin falls to the floor amid so much blood.

My hands slip and the mirror drops from the wall, breaking into a thousand tiny shards.

“I am… free.”

The magic of the Midnight Queen begins to fade, and I run for the door, glancing back at the droplets of blood that serve as a reminder of my path. I look at my wound and heal it with a simple charm.

I must find Cambion and the others, to warn them. The door eases open without so much as a squeak. My bare feet tap softly against the petrified wood. Holding my breath, I move quickly between each open archway until I reach the throne room. The doors open just barely wide enough to let me through.

Water... there’s water everywhere.

So, my vision wasn’t completely false. Is my brother still alive?

The doors open suddenly, and the servant who watched over Cambion leads a throng of soldiers toward me. “Halt! I’m your king!” I shout, but the soldiers don’t stop.

The man looks at me with narrowed eyes. I take a step closer, my mouth set in a line.

“Until Oronrel falls, I’m its leader!” I say with steely reserve. “The Unseelie Court hasn’t yet removed me from my position. It’s still my bloodright to—”

“I am the head of the Unseelie Court now,” retorts the man I thought was a servant.

I pull back because I don’t understand his words. What the fuck is he talking about?

His eyes flicker and his face begins to shift, to morph into someone or something else. The men under his lead begin to back away from him, their mouths dropping open in astonishment and horror.

As we watch, he morphs into a creature I haven’t seen in many years. The Cockatrice… at least, that’s what he appears to be. He must have come across dark magic over the years in order to alter his appearance in such a way.

I should have recognized him. The Cockatrice snaps his fingers and the Unseelie suddenly jump at attention, clearly under the thrall of the creature’s dark magic. They thrust me to the floor, using their weight to hold me down as I fight against them.

Morrigan’s dwindling magic still weakens me, so it’s a fight I can’t win. A heavy, blunt object strikes the back of my head and I see stars as my body goes limp.

I can hear the sound of movement and action as the Cockatrice summons the Unseelie Court to this room. But as I watch, it is only the women of noble blood who fill the seats around me as I lay limply on the obsidian floor. I don’t know where all the men have gone.

“Our great leader has defied the orders of one of our most holy figures,” the Cockatrice announces. “The Midnight Queen has long been a treasured ally and friend to this great kingdom.” A round of shocked inhalations and sounds of outrage fill the room. The Cockatrice continues: “Oronrel may suffer the loss of a blood-born king, but we gain the Midnight Queen’s allegiance in return. He’s a traitor to our people and a known affiliate of the war criminals who plot our demise.”

“Don’t listen to him. He lies!” I scream as I lift my head from the ground and am rewarded with intense dizziness and nausea. The Cockatrice must have afflicted me with magic, as I can’t imagine the blow over my head would leave me feeling such.

The Cockatrice speaks over my pleading. “We have all watched the Unseelie King’s sanity slip further and further away since the Great War that sent his brother into exile. Haven’t we already suffered at the hands of his father long enough, a man who succumbed readily to the darkness?” A round of cheers and claps ripple through the room. The Cockatrice then quiets all the women and continues his speech. “At the very least Theren, Son of Elioth, is guilty of treason for conspiring with the enemy!”

---