Page 36 of Curse of Darkness
Tangled, matted hair lies swept back from her face. She’s bound it with silk thread in bunches that almost touch her hips. A circlet of gold sits on her brow. The elegant kohl she once wore is smudged around her eyes, and her pale skin is almost ashen. A plain dark red gown clings to her lean figure, the neckline cut square and edged with fur. It looks like something a maid may have cast off, and I have to wonder who brought her the clothes.
Does it amuse the Erlking to see her in such rags?
Or is this some sort of game between them?
Her gaze drops to my side, searching hungrily for something that isn’t there. “Although, you appear not to wield that which you stole.”
“I’m not a thief. The sword is still here,” I tell her. “I returned it to the Hallow and there it stands, driven deep into the stone there. Though I do intend to claim it this time.”
“Athief,” she hisses, her eyes bleeding blue with fury and her knuckles clenching. “That sword is mine.”
“Better a thief than a liar.” Surprisingly, the Erlking comes to my rescue. “The sword belongs to the one who has claimed it.” Their eyes meet. “Though perhaps I have the most right to it, since you buried it in my heart.”
Blaedwyn cuts him a look. “Alas, I did not leave it there.”
Stillness seeps through my veins. I’ve been promised safe passage here today, but even I’m not tempted to step between their incinerating glares.
This is the problem with near-immortals falling into bed together. I don’t know the truth behind their story, but I do know it ended with Blaedwyn betraying him and burying the Sword of Mourning in his heart in order to trap him inside the prison world bound to the Hallow.
Five hundred years is an excellent space of time in which to nurture a grudge.
And I guess there wasn’t much else to do in his prison.
The Erlking’s hate is polished like steel.
“What do you want?” Blaedwyn turns to me.
“A moment of your time. I wished to speak to you.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. The last time I saw Blaedwyn, she was a queen in the full flight of her power. Her glossy black hair hung down her spine in smooth folds, and she’d worn armor woven from braided leather and painted black. Snarling silver wolf heads were pressed into the leather to hold a black silk cape to her shoulders, and she’d worn some sort of elaborate jeweled gauntlet on each hand.
But it had been her merciless blue eyes—darkened with kohl—that caught my attention then.
Even as they stab through me now.
“Then do come in,” she replies, those upswept eyes turning to him with a predatory intent.
The Erlking merely smiles. “If I step over this doorway, you’ll have me trapped in here.” He glances at the spiderwebs that circle the room, the pattern of the webs strangely hypnotic. “Your spellcraft is exquisite.”
“But you’re so powerful,” she whispers, biting her lip. “Surely you don’t imagine I can vanquish you.”
The humor in his eyes dies. “Vanquish me? No. But I have no intention of killing you just yet. And if I cross this threshold, then I will have to.”
I set a hand on his arm. “Can I enter the tower without becoming trapped?”
He doesn’t like it. But he nods. Guest-right is a powerful thing. The moment I stepped over his threshold and asked for it was the moment I placed my life in his hands. To see a guest die when you have promised them safety is anathema to an Old One—even the fae keep to the old traditions. “You may enter. A spider bit me and wove my blood into the strands of her spellcraft. The trap is meant for me alone.”
“But may I leave?” Wordplay can be so important.
His smile is a dangerous thing. “You may enter and leave. But if you enter, you are at the mercy of her whims, and while she is no longer a queen bound to her lands, she is still dangerous.”
Warning then. His offer of protection extends only so far.
I consider Blaedwyn. I can sense the Hallow pulsing from the distance now, where I was never able to do so before. One tug and I could access its powers. But still…. “I have a proposition for you. And you would be a fool not to hear me out.”
“Then I will hear you out.” Her eyes glitter.
This time, my words are for the Erlking. “Alone. I wish to speak to her alone. Please.”
