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I wasn’t going to allow that today.
Beryl swung around and brought a clawed hand down towards Hilda. I shot to my feet and cried out for her to stop. At the sound of my voice, the earth shook. This was a nightmare of my Seelie castle, but it felt like home all the same. The ground answered my cry and roots shot out of the earth to wrap around Beryl’s wrist and stop her in her tracks.
I didn’t stop there. My arcana suffused the terrain around us. As a new hedge maze sprang up from the ground, I dove forward and tackled Hilda away from Beryl. I never thought I’d be here, saving Hilda from…anyone. Together, we hit the ground. Somewhere between my tackle and our impact, Hilda reverted back to her short brownie stature.
She flopped onto her back and groaned in pain. I pushed myself half up and looked back at the maze growing between us and Beryl. The Unseelie Queen howled on the other side. We had barely a heartbeat before she tore down her last portal and created a new one.
I snatched Hilda by the back of her blouse and yanked her off the ground.
“I didn’t sign up to be handled like a football today!” Hilda shouted from under my arm. “Why didn’t you let me finish my attack?”
We never had a chance. I still wasn’t prepared to face Beryl all on my own. Had we followed through on our plan, Hilda would have died back there. I never would have forgiven myself, even if she was an annoying little brat of a fae. She was still under my protection—and she’d willingly entered into a nightmare to help me.
I leapt headfirst through Beryl’s closing portal. Eyes closed, I prayed the portal didn’t collapse half-way and cut off my feet or something. Instead, Hilda and I tumbled out into the dark dining hall of Beryl’s restaurant.
Tense, I waited for Beryl to step through her own portal and brush herself off before finishing the job. There was no way that I was going down without a fight, so I set Hilda down and pressed my hands to the hardwood floor and prepared myself for what was to come next.
“If you’re so scared of Beryl, shouldn’t we be running?” Hilda asked.
I couldn’t speak. All of my focus was on the seed of power planted deep beneath the restaurant in Beryl’s underground court. I shoved as much as I could into the seed. Arcana flowed out of me and pooled in the seed like thread on a spindle. My head grew light, and the dark room started to spin.
“Oh hells,” Hilda said, catching me. “Let’s get you back to that man of yours.”
I felt the telltale prickle of arcana across my skin. Beryl had arrived. Though I tried to stand, my feet gave out beneath me.
“I’m telling you, we have to run. Stop being a stubborn child and get a move on before she comes over here and puts an end to everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
It didn’t feel as though I’d achieved anything. In my mind, every time I turned around, something fell apart. If it wasn’t my castle, then it was my court. If it wasn’t the court, then it was Rhoan’s curse.
But my castle was whole, and my court was holding it together. Rhoan had returned, as a king in his own right, no less. I had so much.
And I had the information that my mother might truly be alive still.
I managed to get to my feet, but I still swayed like a shallow breath might blow me over. Hilda groaned and turned into her shadowy boggart form so that she was closer to my size. Arcana crackled around her as she prepared to step in-between, but I couldn’t move. My feet turned to lead on the ground.
The sound of Beryl’s heels clicked along the floor in the darkness. Hilda hissed something under her breath. While I didn’t quite catch what she said, I understood the gist of it from the way she spat it out. She was frustrated and scared.
“Between one breath and the next,” I said.
“What?” Hilda snapped impatiently.
“In-between is anything I will it to be, so we’re moving in-between one breath and the next. Inhale with me.”
She gave me a dubious look, which was rather unsettling from her shadowed boggart face. But she did as I asked. Though the Seelie castle was the safer option, and I really wanted to see if Beryl’s sleeper agents had done any harm, Hilda couldn’t go there yet.
So, we exhaled and found ourselves falling through the in-between back into Rhoan’s castle. My ass hit the floor so hard my teeth clattered. For a moment, I sat there and reconsidered everything I’d ever done.
Once more, I’d found myself face to face with Beryl. I’d used bravado and wits to hold out, but in the end, I’d run like a scared little girl. And that frustrated me more than anything.
Someday, I would see this fight through to the end. I would stand my ground and be finished with Beryl once and for all. Every day that I saw her, I asked myself why it couldn’t be that day. Why couldn’t I end this?
Bent double, I let out a visceral scream that barely made a dent on the growing frustration within me. The sound of footsteps thundered towards me. I didn’t flinch when Rhoan swept me up from the floor and pulled me close.
Though his warmth tried to soothe me, it could do nothing about the anger I had simmering in my veins. I wanted this to be over. The desire to go back nearly made me fling myself from Rhoan’s embrace.
What would I do, though? What would I be able to accomplish that I couldn’t do before escaping from her? I’d run out of fear, and now that I was safe, I considered going back. It seemed counterintuitive, but I knew that it was because I feared failure.
“All my life, I’ve had to be perfect.” I pressed my forehead to Rhoan’s chest. “I had to make up for my lack of a wolf. I had to behave just right to avoid Alvin’s attention. I had to be the one that my friends came to for answers.”
