Caged: A Fae Fantasy Romance (Fae Magic Book 4) Page 21

  Maeve took a deep breath. Her pale white skin began to glow blue as she gathered her Gift to her. The bones holding him hostage to the ground began to glow, the same blue chasing itself along the iron, sparks flying at the crash of cold iron and magic.

  “I command you to fly, Atavantador. Fly high to the battle and kill the army.” The magic burned hot into his skin, and suddenly his chains were lighter.

  He launched into the sky, flying hard for home. But no matter what he did he could only circle around the palace, unable to fly in any direction but that of Bosco’s army. Anger rushed through him. She’d given him no choice. He either had to kill Bosco, or go nowhere. Well, then. He’d go nowhere.

  He settled back down into the courtyard.

  “No.” If he stayed here Bosco would come. The army would come. There was no doubt in his mind that the battle would be fierce. He might die in chains, the little queen might die when the palace fell, but there was a chance that Siobhan would live.

  “How dare you!” A flush stained her blue-white cheeks purple. “I command you to kill the army.”

  The magic burned and he arched his head back, keeping his scream of pain inside. “No,” he ground out. “I refuse to fly to kill men who have done me no wrong.” Men who might still do him such a service that he would be grateful into the next life.

  Magic flowed into the queen. He could hear the tiny queen’s desperation as her life-giving source was pulled from her. It nearly killed him to let this happen, but if he didn’t, all was lost. Frost flowed out like a river. It ate up the courtyard, icing over the flowers and devouring guard after guard, freezing them in place. The rest broke ranks and ran.

  It raced toward him and flowed over him, trying to devour him too, but he was a thing of the ice, and despite his chains, his own magical nature held it at bay.

  He kept his gaze level with Maeve’s forcing her to see—he would not move.

  “You will do this, or I’ll kill that girl I have in my dungeon.”

  Fear for Siobhan rushed through him, but he pretended not to be affected. He had one chance to fool Maeve. If she had any idea how much Siobhan meant to him, he’d never have his freedom again. “What girl?”

  “The one you were supposed to have eaten and disposed of months ago. I have her and I’ll kill her. I’ll freeze her slowly, bit by bit, letting each tiny piece of her get solid, and then breaking it off. She’ll die knowing you could have stopped it.”

  “Fine, kill her.” He shrugged and turned his muzzle away, as if the whole concept bored him. He wasn’t a dragon for nothing. “If you do that, will you take off my chains?”

  “Are you telling me you don’t care?”

  “About that little servant wench? Why would I?”

  “You kept her alive, despite my direct order to kill her.”

  The rich roar of his laugh echoed around the court. The tiny frozen leaves and petals of the frost flowers shattered in the sound. “You think I kept her alive because I care about her? I kept her alive because I needed someone to cook and clean for me. That mountain is filled with dust and I like my treasures kept shined.” He sobered up. “Besides, she was mine to do with as I liked.” He pulled his lips back, showing his teeth and his displeasure with the woman standing in front of him. “If you think you can ever command me, think again. You can threaten all you like, you can wrap me in the bones of my ancestors, you can even throw me in the dungeon with the likes of that servant girl and whomever else you have trapped down there in the belly of your dungeon, but I am done doing what you say.”

  “You swore an oath!”

  “I swore to protect the Winter Palace.” He sat back down on his haunches and surveyed the wreckage of the courtyard. “I see no threat, except you.” His voice dropped low. “You had better find a safe place to store me, ice queen, or you’ll find you’ve tied yourself to the tail of the dragon. And that is not a good place to survive.”

  “You would threaten me?” Fear flickered across her face, and her color fled. “To the dungeons!” Guards slowly approached, inching over the slippery ice paving the courtyard. “I have a special cell for you, one that is laced with bones and iron. Take him, and lock him in.”

  “My queen.” One of the guards raised and dropped his hands hopelessly and gestured at Doyle’s massive form. “How are we to take him down?”

  “Shift, damn you, shift!”

  Her shriek was accompanied by a magical force sparking blue fire along the iron writing on his chains. He struggled against the command, but in the end the searing pain of the magic of his own kin drove him to give in, and he shifted back to his humanoid form, the chains conforming to his new smaller size.

  “Now you will be locked in that dungeon you so despised, right next to all the low creatures. See how you like it down there. And you’ll have no room to shift back. You’ll have to stay in this form. Maybe that will teach you to defy me.”

  The guards dragged him across the ice. Not even his boots had survived the shift to dragon form and back again and by the time they shoved him down the stairs into the black hole of the dungeon, his skin was cut and bleeding. And so was his heart.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Ardan hesitated at the edge of the courtyard and surveyed the destruction. He’d just come from the operations room where he’d been receiving live reports of the battle between the last of the queen’s army and Bosco’s. He turned to go. The news of their defeat would wait until she’d calmed down because if she took out her rage on anymore of the guard, there would be none left to stop the oncoming army.

  “General Ardan.” Her voice snapped out, jerking him to a stop. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere, my queen.” He eased past the frozen bodies of his guard. Unlike when she’d frozen Siobhan a hundred years ago, she hadn’t taken the time to keep them alive. Each face he passed was a frozen rictus of death—Shamal, Tunista, Lynn. Men and women he’d joked with in the barracks. Men and women they could have used in the upcoming fight.

  He stopped, a bit further away from her than he normally would. “My queen?”

  “How is the progress of our army? Have we stopped the bastard in his tracks?”

  “Um...” Panic choked him and Ardan coughed, trying to clear the sudden closing of his throat.

  “Speak up!” She eyed him narrowly. “Nothing could be worse today than that dragon failing me at the last minute.”

  Nothing could be worse. Ardan stared at her. He’d seen it himself, earlier as he’d watched the battle reflected in the metal bowl of ice water magically endowed with a vision of the army’s failures. The blood staining the snow for miles, frozen into puddles around the bodies of the dead.

  “The army is defeated and they’re moving faster than expected. We’ll be under attack within the hour.”

  He waited for the news to seep in, but she just stared at the shattered remains of her garden.

  “My queen?” In former days he would have dared to approach her, to touch her sleeve. But no longer. She’d proven to him that he was no longer someone she cared about, if she ever had.

  “I heard you.” Her voice deceptively quiet, she reached out and plucked a lone surviving flower. Its petals were coated in ice, preserving the delicate shape. It sparkled in the sunlight, but all he could see was that it was just as dead as the members of his guard. “So, what’s your plan, General?”

  He had none. They were facing annihilation. “Give Bosco what he wants. Give him Siobhan.”

  She stared at the flower resting on her open palm. “Give him what he wants?” On anyone else’s hand the ice would be warming, melting from the petals, but not on hers. “He was supposed to be my Winter King. I gave him everything. He was supposed to give me years of pleasure. Instead, he stole away from me. I had to wait years to get another king and when I did it was that fading substitute. Now he’s broken the vanguard of my army and he threatens my home? My palace?” Her hand closed around the flower and he heard the crunch of broken ic
e. “I will not give her to him.” She tossed the fragments of ice and flower to the ground. “He will come here and we will hang his sister’s head from the walls on a pike.”

  The ground under his feet trembled. Magic welled up from the bedrock of the palace, rushing into Maeve in pulses of blue and white light. He’d never seen her draw power like this. He didn’t know she could.

  “I will take every ounce of power this place has to give and I will use it. And I will crush him like the little boy he is.” She strode away, grinding the broken fragments of frost flower under her boot heel and leaving only dust.

  The last hopes of his surviving the day died. He’d seen the magic of Bosco’s army. A host of full-blooded fae lords—Tuathan, Fir Bolg, wild fae from the forests. They even had a puca, chortling with glee as he’d slaughtered ranks of the queen’s men, blood dripping from his razor sharp hooves and teeth.

  Every guard they had left would die. The queen would drain not just the palace, but by pulling so much power from the nexus underground every drop of magic in this section of Underhill, and the surrounding countryside would be lucky to fade into mist. His village, and all the other tiny villages in the area, would cease to exist. He doubted any one of them would live to see the dawn.

  A pressure rose in his chest and he lifted his hand and rubbed it, trying to make the ache go away.

  Did he actually care about the people in those villages? He hadn’t thought of his home in years, but it had always been there, an idyllic memory of childhood from the days before he’d been taken to be king. And surprisingly enough, the thought of that memory being gone, hurt.

  He dropped his hand to his side and changed his course, pushing by surprised guards and courtiers with long determined strides. There was only one thing to do if he wanted to stay alive and keep the surrounding countryside from falling into ruin—betray the queen and loose the dragon. And then get the hell out of the Winter Palace. Or die trying.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Doyle tried to fight, but the chains and the weight of Maeve’s magic kept him from fighting successfully. He was thrown into a cell laced with its own lattice of dragon bones wrapped in cold iron and embedded with his own magic stolen, not just from the safeguards he’d left in the ice to protect the egg, but also with magic stolen from the tiny queen herself.

  He sank onto the stone floor, the cold seeping into him. He’d failed.

  “Doyle, is that you?”

  “Siobhan?” He stood and rushed to the door, reaching for the bars, then flinching back from the burn.

  “What happened? Why are you here?”

  “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I thought—” What had he thought?

  That there was no way Maeve was smarter than him, stronger than him, more powerful than him—a dragon.

  “How did you get here? Where is Atavantador? Will he come rescue you?” He could hear the rest of her unsaid sentence—would the dragon come rescue her?

  “No one else is coming.” He peered through the bars of the door. Across the aisle he could barely make out the glow of Siobhan’s white hair through the tiny barred window of the opposite cell.

  “What are you talking about? Doyle, what’s happening? Where is Atavantador and why are you here?”

  He sighed. “I’m here because of my own arrogance.”

  His secret about shape shifting was a secret no longer. Maeve knew. Her guards knew. He had no reason anymore not to tell Siobhan, who deserved not to be the last to know.

  “Many years ago I came here, to the north of this world. It was nothing but ice and mist floating over the tundra. No people, just the wild magic. More magic than I’d ever seen drifting around like low-lying cloud cover. It was exhilarating.”

  It had nearly been addicting.

  “Back then, most of this world was unsettled by any but the lesser fae, small beings with small brains. The Fir Bolg were here in small numbers, and your people, the Tuathan, had just arrived. The two tribes spent all their time fighting one another for territory down south. So I decided this was the perfect place to hide something. I raised the stones of power and anchored the mists to the land, creating a way to channel power into a place deep under the ice. And then I left, secure in the knowledge that it would be safe and undisturbed, for who in their right mind would come here?” He heard the bitterness in his own voice, the knowledge born too late, of his arrogance.

  “But we live here. There are villages and the palace.”

  “Yes, that’s the sticking point.” He sighed. “By anchoring the mists and creating the stones, I gave the magic something to form around. My magic held the land, like a strong magic user does when they create a court. That’s how the Gold and Black and other courts were formed. And then I left, not realizing it was here for the taking. Maybe it started with a few villagers, and their own magic held a little more land, built enough stability for living, I don’t know. But soon after, one maid with more power than the rest realized the treasure trove to be had for the taking. And she built a palace, enclosing my work. She’s now able to extend her own magic with the magic I harnessed, the magic that I left here. And look at me. The great Atavantador held prisoner in a jail cell built of his own ancestors and fed by his own magic.”

  “Atavantador? Doyle, I don’t understand.”

  She did. She would. It was only a matter of letting it all sink in. And then she’d know enough to hate both sides of him, forever.

  “I swore an oath not to reveal my duality, to give dragon kind one more strong hold over your people, should we need it. One last thing to keep us safe. But not every one of my race has been so careful. Someone told Maeve our secrets. And because of that, I’m captured.”

  “But you’re Doyle. How can you be the dragon?”

  “Just think.” He lapsed into quiet and let her wheels turn. He almost heard the click in her head when she put all the pieces together.

  “You bastard. You could have told me. I thought you trusted me.”

  He winced at the anger in her voice. “I do trust you. But to tell you violated my oath.”

  “Like I violated mine?” Her hands formed into fists at her sides.

  “It’s not the same. Your oath was made under duress.”

  “Oh no, of course not.” She moved around her cell, the sounds of her footsteps pacing the narrow space. “You’re so superior, my oath is nothing compared to yours. Oh Goddess, I can’t believe it. A dragon.”

  “It’s not like that. You didn’t believe in your oath. I still believe in mine.”

  “Still? There’s more, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And of course you can’t tell me.”

  “No. I can’t. But if you try, you can figure it out without me saying a word.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that? Read your mind?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” He could. Maeve was pulling so much power the walls pulsed with it. And underneath it all he was so close to the egg, he could hear her crying out in pain. There was nothing he could do and it was killing him. But maybe Siobhan could do something. “Reach out with your Gift.”

  “She took my dragon pin. I’m powerless.”

  “You’ve never been powerless. But maybe Maeve thinking you are is a good thing.”

  “It’s a good thing my power is small and worthless?”

  “She didn’t even bother to bind your magic, did she?” He could tell by her silence that it was so. “Use your Gift, Siobhan. Sense what is happening.”

  The laced walls of his cell prevented him from feeling her try. Minutes passed and he grew frustrated at only being able to see the top of her head. “How’s it going? Do you feel it?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Damn it! You have to do it, for both of us. Maeve has me so tied up I can’t access anything in here, but you can. We’re under the palace, very close to the roots of the stones. Feel for them, find the feet of the standing stones, the source of Maeve’s power.”


  “What are you talking about?”

  “I put them here. Dragon power. You know how to use it, you’ve used it before. You just have to try.”

  It was nearly too quiet. The glow of Siobhan’s hair was brighter, more blue—the color of her magic, ice magic, just like the queen’s. But instead of the chilly ice blue of Maeve’s magic, this was somehow warmer, filled with a kind of banked heat.

  “I feel it! It’s just like the feel of my dragon pin only it’s here, under our feet. But it’s flowing out and up. She’s taking it all.” Her voice dropped. “I can’t access it. I’m sorry, Doyle. I tried, but I have to get closer to the source to draw on it.”

  “But can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel her?”

  “The queen? I don’t want to feel her.”

  “No, reach deeper down. Into the ice. Beneath the stones.”

  “It’s... Doyle...it’s another dragon!”

  SIOBHAN STUMBLED BACK away from the small window in her cell door. She sank down and cradled her head in her hands. Doyle was the dragon.

  The ache in her chest was so huge, she wrapped her arms around her body and held on, trying to keep her heart from flying out of her chest.

  He’d kept her in the lair. Given her the dragon pin. He’d made love to her and then he’d lied to her. Or had he? Had he ever directly lied to her? Did it matter? It was all lies anyway, everything between them had been a lie.

  “Siobhan?” His voice was quiet, but the worry in it carried across the space between the cells.

  “Did you know there was another dragon down here? Don’t answer that, of course you did. You’ve known everything all along. I’m the one heading down the pass without a clue.”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “You could have. You didn’t.” The betrayal was too big.

  “You have every right to be angry, but there’s little time. Can’t you feel her pain?”

  “Her?” She reached again. “She seems so weak. Who is she? How old is she?”