Darkest Mercy

Chapter 33

A block from the Dark Court’s warehouse, Chela held up one gloved hand. Three faery messengers and one Hound directly behind her paused. She told the messengers, “Obey him.”

The messengers nodded.

“Once they’re gone,” she told the Hound, “you will fight, but until the messengers go, you wait.”

The thought of missing any of the battle obviously wasn’t appealing to the Hound. His scowl deepened, but he nodded. “I’ll make up for lost minutes, Gabr—Chela.”

“I know you will, Eachann. Gabriel will be pleased when he comes back,” Chela said, and then she urged her steed, Alba, forward. No one would declare her mate dead if she could hold even a sliver of hope.

Some Hounds are daft, Alba muttered in her mind.

Instead of answering, Chela urged aloud, “Faster.”

In only a matter of seconds, Alba battered down the warehouse door with his front paws. Unlike her mate’s steed, Chela’s shifted shapes the way some people changed clothes. Alba wasn’t frivolous, merely awkward with emotions. He chose to express his feelings with his shape. The fact that their Gabriel was missing meant that Alba was leonine, feral and ready to hunt.

Me too, Alba. She stroked one hand over her steed’s close-cropped fur, and then she extended her voice to the rest of the Hunt and added, No mercy if Gabriel is . . . gone.

None of the Hounds replied, but they all knew that their Gabriel was either dead or severely injured. As his second, Chela wouldn’t be able to communicate nonverbally with the pack if he were safe. She held hope, though. She and Gabriel might have had a few difficulties—including those over his tendency to sire half-mortal children during their times apart over the years—but they were as faithful as Hounds ever were.

He is not dead yet, she told Alba once again. If the words were lies, I couldn’t speak them.

Her steed was too kind to remind her that opinion didn’t follow the truth rule, but they both knew it. If Gabriel was gone, she’d do what she must. Gone or not, he’d been injured enough that she was acting in his stead.

She will suffer, Alba growled. We will not stand down.

The faery courts had let things go too long. The Hunt had no such patience. Gabriel had pursued Bananach. That told them where their Gabriel stood on the issue of striking War.

We will finish the fight our Gabriel began, Chela told them all as they followed her into the Dark Court’s warehouse.

They were silent as they saw confirmation of one of the fears that had brought them here: Bananach sat on the regent’s throne. The raven-faery snapped her beak at them as the Hunt continued to thunder into the vast room. She stayed spine-straight, ankles crossed and hands dangling carelessly over the arms of the black throne. Her wings curled forward on either side, so she appeared to be surrounded by a giant shield.

All around her, Ly Ergs and unfamiliar faeries waited. A few Dark Court faeries were in the crowd, but they did their best to duck behind others as the Hunt poured in. Sparks glimmered in the shadows as the steeds’ claws, hooves, and talons struck the cement floor.

Stay mounted, Chela ordered.

Where is the Dark King? one of her Hounds asked.

Seth is caged, another reported. Left and above the throne. Birdcage.

Is Seth injured? Chela asked.

Yet another Hound replied, Can’t tell. Not moving. Think he’s alive, though.

If he is dead, it’s recent, said the first Hound.

Despite the flurry of reports that joined these in her head, Chela’s outward expression was implacable. She faced War, who had apparently staged a coup.

Straight up the center, Alba.

Chela’s steed stalked toward the raven-faery.

“Gabriela!” Bananach crooned. “Have you come to show your support of your queen?”

Chela stared directly at Bananach. “I am Chela, mate to the Gabriel, second-in-command of this Hunt.”

“You are Gabriela, and I am the Dark Queen . . . and this”—Bananach opened her arms wide—“is my court.”

“No. There is no Dark Queen,” Chela ground out.

Underneath her, Alba growled his accord. The assembled faeries—the whole mutinous lot of them—shifted nervously as other steeds and Hounds echoed Alba’s growl.

“Yet here I am.” Bananach paused as if confused. “No, I’m sure of it. I am the queen here, and I could use the Hunt. As I killed him—the last Gabriel—that would be your decision, Gabriela.”

Gabriel is dead. My mate. Chela’s hand tightened on the hilt of the first sword her mate had given her. She drew it from the scabbard with a slide of metal on metal.

Draw weapons, she demanded.

As the Hunt complied, Chela lifted her voice and her sword: “The Hunt, with Gabriel at the helm or with me, will stand with the Dark King. If you are here with this imposter”—Chela did not look at the assembled fey, but instead sneered at Bananach—“you are declared enemy to the Hunt.”

“You challenge me, whelp?” Bananach tilted her head to one side and then to the other as if studying Chela.

“Do you declare yourself queen of this court?”

“I do,” Bananach said.

“Then the Hunt challenges you.” Chela added silently to her Hunt, On my word . . . Ready . . .

“Fair warning,” Chela said aloud. “The Hunt comes here as sworn support of the rightful regent of the Dark Court. Stand against us, and be found our enemy.”

She focused on each of them, marking their faces and scents in her mind.

Know them. Remember them, she told the Hunt. They stood with the one who killed our Gabriel, who killed his daughter, who killed Irial. No mercy. No survivors.

The bemused expression on Bananach’s face was unfaltering. She looked only at Chela, but she told the assembled traitors, “You’ve sworn fealty to me, and I’ve spoken War. They stand with our enemies, and as your queen, I order you: kill them all.”

Now, Chela growled to her Hunt.

Then Bananach launched herself at Chela in a blur of feathers and talons, and there were no more words.

Hounds and faeries and steeds filled the Dark Court’s warehouse with screams and blood. Bodies crashed together in a fight that had been too long in coming.

Send the messengers for the faery courts. This is the end.