Page 4 of WitchCurse
Even a monster didn’t want me…
Maybe it was waiting until I fell unconscious. That would be a mercy at least. As long as I didn’t wake up in its stomach, some horror like eternal digestion awaiting me.
The dragon paused. A strange action as it had a dozen chances to strike and end this. Three days we’d battled. One army against the other, seelie against unseelie. The light versus the dark. A battle against demons everyone had assured me. At first, they hadn’t looked all that different from our side.
A month earlier I had a brief interlude with a pretty man. Spent hours beneath his skilled touch, dancing to the caresses and kisses he painted over my body.
Landon, I had breathily screamed his name a dozen times, and would have willingly found my way back to his bed. If he had been a demon beneath all the pretty words and caresses, I’d been unable to tell.
On the battlefield everyone looked the same behind armor. Pretty faces everywhere. It was a trait of the sidhe, high court or not, light or dark. Bred to seduce, control, and destroy.
Theywanted to devour all of the light. But I had begun to realize, that neither side’s intent was pure. High fae fed on magic. The biggest source of magic other than Underhill itself, was fae. But war was war, and I was expected to be the obedient son, despite never being good enough.
Landon had liked me. Most fae weren’t picky with their lovers. They didn’t look at me like I was lesser. And I hadn’t thought of him as an enemy. Simply a beautiful exotic male with rainbow-colored curls, and skin that set me on fire. I’d have dallied with him longer if I hadn’t been recalled to court for the coming war, which led to this battle.
The dragon had appeared, scattering both sides, the others retreating. Which made no sense. Was it one of theirs? Why run from their own? The iridescent red/orange glow of the scales was more commonly found in the unseelie court. Our line had attacked, and paid for it with their lives.
I was staggering, barely on my feet, a pebble facing a mountain. It stared at me, and I tried to focus on it. Everything wobbled, my breathing tight, strained, body losing strength from the loss of blood. My helmet was lost a while ago, vanished in the field of blood. My hair stuck to my face, pasted in place by the many cuts that bled freely. My sparkling white hair had been the mark of the light court, similar to my mother, but not enough to ever be a true prince of the court.
Not sidhe, they had been telling me since I’d been old enough to hear. Still bled gold. Last one alive facing a monster. Not that a gallant death would grant me any sort of boon in the afterlife.
The beast bowed its head, lowering the long neck toward me.
I thought it finally meant to snap me up in its jaws. I turned in a whipping dance of motion, thinking I’d die for one last strike, slicing forward and surprisingly through the beast’s neck. Severing its head from its body.
The head rolled away, a half-stunned expression on its face, if that was possible for a dragon. Then the body fell to the side, lifeless, and suddenly dissolving into bits of light.
Light. Not darkness. Was this beast seelie?
I blinked, thinking maybe my sight was that far gone.
The sword, a blade of magic and ice, and a gift from my mother, able to cut down gods she had assured me, all the while dismissing me to a gruesome death in battle. The blood on the blade was gold, not black, and the shaft glowed with magic. I had survived, and killed the beast, who transformed from monster to the prone body of a male. Arms, legs, covered in armor, too bathed in blood to determine the color and to which court it belonged.
I trembled, weakened to the point I leaned on the sword to keep upright, and watched in horror as the dragon vanished completely. The remains now that of a tall male, muscular build. Not a monster at all. The realization hit me as I slowly turned to find the head. Could all unseelie change into these great beasts? Was that why they were so feared and I had spent my entire existence flung into battle against them?
But the head, having rolled to a stop, faced away from me. The back of the head, untouched by the wash of blood, was etched with thick rainbow curls. Blood spread out beneath the severed neck, not black blood, but golden, and the hair began to soak up the flow. I gasped, heart leaping in horror.
Gold blood.
It couldn’t be.
I swallowed fast and hard, stumbling across the distance, certain I was wrong, even while my gut flipped and churned with rising sickness.
The face I adored in my dreams lay lifeless in a sea of death, skin a dark shade of bronze, the mark of the unseelie, and covered in etching swirls. It had been breathtaking. I had spent hours tracing the lines on this skin, memorizing them for a time I’d be locked away inside the palace, hidden from the rest of fae existence. I knew he’d been a warrior of some sort, and not cared what court he had belonged to as he brought a song to my touch-starved flesh.
My strength gave out a foot away, and I fell hard, landing on my knees first, then collapsing sideways, only able to turn my head and avoid drowning in the blood soaking the battlefield. Darkness closed in, but my gaze focused on the face. I would later think that perchance the angle was wrong. Or my mind simply added the idea of the face to the hair I knew all too well. The rainbow curls could have been an unseelie trait, after all. But I knew the truth. The face belonged to the man I’d reveled in a month prior. Landon had somehow become a monster. A dragon of fire, pain, and death. And I had killed him.
My gut clenched and heaved. I rolled over, praying not to drown in my own vomit or the spent life of thousands of my brethren. He had paused. He had hesitated to attack. Why? Had he recognized me? Darkness washed over me, stealing away the horror, and dropping me into an abyss free of questions and pain.
* * *
Iawoke with everything aching, body throbbing in pain and hundreds of cuts still stinging. Had I not been found and brought to a healer? I blinked back stars until I could see, realizing I was staring into the bars of a cage. Iron and magic slowing my healing as I lay on the floor in the center.
Had I been captured by the enemy forces? It would explain why I hadn’t seen a healer. My gut ached in an unfamiliar echo oftoo much, rare as I’d spent my life starved and forbidden to eat anything not provided by the court.
Footsteps approached. An echoing sound of hard soled shoes on stone. The small cell gave me little room to move, but I sat up, hand pressed into my side, hoping nothing vital would break free from my gut. The memory of the face, severed head before me, vivid in my mind. I fought back bile and tears, expecting to soon meet a demon leader of the unseelie. Or some monster who had forced poor Landon to turn into the terror he’d become.
He had paused. Burgundy eyes filling with something warm. Recognizing me. He had stopped, and I had killed him, making me the monster.
