Page 6 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
Maire. The name foreign but familiar. Maire. The Darkland monster. Leanna.
Bristol peered through wild strands of hair lashing across her face. Standing between six armed warriors was a woman. Her mother. The version of her mother she had mistakenly glimpsed in a motel bathroom twenty years ago.Your mother is only playing dress-up.
But she wasn’t.
Her eyes were glowing pieces of jade, her skin cold alabaster, bright against her indigo gown. And there were horns. Deeply ridged horns that looked like they were dipped in gold. They wound around her head like a thorny crown, and her long copper hair flowed freely in the wind, wrapping around her body like a royal banner. And lastly, her right hand—the one that was always colder than the other—was fashioned out of silver like elegant filigree jewelry.
“Let them go, and I won’t hurt your daughter!” Tyghan yelled.
“Hurt who?” her mother answered. Her voice was regal, authoritative, a voice Bristol didn’t know.
When she regarded Bristol, her eyes held no recognition.
“Your daughter Bristol!” Tyghan shouted again.
Maire smiled, now eyeing Tyghan, unmoved by his threat. “Your tricks are beneath your station, Prince Trénallis. Go ahead, kill the creature. She means nothing to me.”
Bristol couldn’t breathe. Was this really her mother? But she noticed the familiar movement of her thumb brushing her finger, the old nervous itch to perform magic that Bristol used to think was just an odd habit.
Tyghan didn’t move, and Maire laughed. “It seems we’re at an impasse, then, and all the favor is mine. Pay better mind to who you are dealing with.” She looked down at Kasta, Cully, and Olivia, still pinned to the ground. Cully’s quiver of arrows was strewn across the rocks and trampled beneath the warriors’ boots. Olivia was still, her eyes closed. Hollis dangled in her mouse form from a warrior’s hand just above the frothing jaws of a snapping hound. “These trespassers have killed one of our guards. They must pay. Who should we kill first? Your elven boy? He already looks half-dead. Pity our first bolt didn’t do the job.”
The warrior who pressed a crossbow between Cully’s shoulder blades shifted his weight, like he was about to launch another bolt.
“Shoot one more, and she’s dead!” Tyghan yelled.
“Mother!” Bristol called. “Please! It’s me. I swear! Your Brije. I’m begging you! Let them go, or he’ll kill me!”
Maire’s eyes narrowed, the smile gone, replaced with a fury Bristol had never seen before. Her nostrils flared and her eyes sparked. “Go ahead, young prince,” she said, taunting him. “Kill her! What are you waiting for?”
Bristol felt Tyghan’s forearm straining against her shoulder, trying to maintain the sharp blade a hair’s width from her throat. She had to do something, and there was only a split second to think it through.
Bristol leaned forward imperceptibly, appearing to struggle against Tyghan’s hold, forcing the sharp blade to slice into her neck. She winced at the sting of cold steel cutting her skin. It went deeper than she expected, her skin like butter beneath its razor edge. Warm lines of blood instantly trickled down her neck, calling the bluff and making Tyghan’s threat real.
Maire’s pupils shrank to tight pinpoints, jolted by the sight of the blood. For long, taut seconds she was frozen, but then she snapped, “Enough!” as she took a threatening step forward. “You’re not worth my time! Leave and take your worthless underlings with you before I summon my legions and order them to pick your bones for the rotten carrion you are! You have five minutes before I unleash my pets.” Her hand swept the air, and a blast of thick, hot mist exploded around them. When it cleared, Maire, her warriors, and the hounds were gone.
Kasta ran to Olivia’s side, trying to rouse her, while Dalagorn scooped up Cully and began running for the horses. “Five minutes! You heard her!” Tyghan lifted the unconscious Olivia and threw her over his shoulder and Quin snatched Hollis from the ground. She was still a mouse, apparently too terrified to change back, and Quin secured her in his vest pocket.
Julia shifted to her lion form, saying she would help safeguard the rear, that she was best equipped to fight off the hounds if they should follow. But Bristol was certain that thepetsher mother spoke of weren’t the hounds but the legions of restless dead from the Abyss.
Kasta was in the rear with Julia, already summoning a mist that followed at their back, as thick and dark as solid wall. It crested over their heads like a protective wave.
They ran, stumbling as they rushed down the rocky trail. They all believed Maire to be true to her word.Five minutes. And their horses were a long way down the mountain. Tyghan held the limp Olivia secure on his shoulder with one hand while summoning magic with his other, heedless of the noise as his powerful sweeps of energy cleared the path of boulders, branches, and thorned holly. “Your neck,” he yelled through the clamor. “Hold your—”
“It’s only a flesh wound,” Bristol yelled back. “Mind the path! I’m fine.”
But she really didn’t know how bad it was. She only knew she was soaked in blood and running for her life because her own mother had threatened to kill them all.
CHAPTER 6
The city was in lockdown. There were no evening gatherings in the plazas, as they prepared for a retaliation. Every watchtower was manned, and the garrison sent squads to border villages to watch for trouble there. It was rare for music not to be playing somewhere in the palace. Instead, there was the strangled thrum of waiting.
By now, Kormick had to know they had nearly breached Queen’s Cliff.
Nearly.
Cully, Bristol, and Olivia were being treated, and Hollis was being observed. She still hadn’t changed back. She had literally been held in the jaws of death, and Esmee said she was still too shaken to resume her human form. No bones appeared to be broken, but a piece of her ear was missing. Sashka and Rose were with her, trying to coax her back.
The rest of them had gathered in Winterwood, an interior salon rarely used in the spring and summer months. Recruits and officers milled in the corners of the room. Ivy had dinner and drink brought in for them, and a fire blazed in the hearth. The fire was unnecessary, considering the season, but there was something comforting about it in the darkly furnished room. It was something bright to focus on, the crackling embers a needed distraction.
