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“Ash.” Nua sounded afraid. He curled his long fingers into my sleeve, curved black claws digging into my flesh. “Please. Please calm yourself.”
I ignored him. “Why don’t you stop the forest from dying? Why don’t you get rid of the Carlin so Lonan doesn’t have to put himself at risk? You won’t, so now it’s my fucking fault, and when I try to fix one of the few things that’s actually fucking important to me, you stop me? Fuck. You.”
“Goodness, boy, that’s quite a temper you have, eh?”
The voice was new—rough and loud and jovial. I blinked rapidly, momentarily stunned into silence as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
An enormous woman, thick with muscle, her skin a ruddy sunburnt red and her hair a wispy yellow, was suddenly standing beside Fioda.
And Mol, the cow, had vanished.
All the rage drained from me, replaced by utter confusion as I stared at her. “What—”
“Now, I understand the anger, laddie, but I won’t have you speaking to my lady that way.” She folded her huge arms over her chest, eyeing me disapprovingly.
Beside the giant of a woman, Fioda sighed and leaned in to kiss a thick bicep. “He’s hurting, my dear. In more ways than one.”
The giant woman grunted. “No need to forget his manners though, eh?”
Manners? I’d just lost the most important person in my life—one of the few people left in my life—and I was being scolded for forgetting my fucking manners?
The fury surged back in an overpowering wave, clenching my hands into fists. “Who the fuck are you?”
She peered at me, blonde brows drawn into a frown in the centre of her freckled red face. “Bit slow today, eh? This is why you should calm down, little king. You’re not thinking too clearly.”
Little king?
“Fuck you,” I snarled, then turned my murderous gaze to Fioda. “If you don’t let me go into that fucking forest—”
“That’s quite enough, I think.”
The mountain of a woman—Mol—was suddenly striding towards me. I took a reflexive step back, a tiny touch of fear making me swallow. She was big.
Forcing myself to ignore it, I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, scowling at her. “You can’t stop me from—”
“Do you really think, little boy, that if the Higher Spirits got to decide every single thing that happened, they’d decide to put you on the throne?”
Suddenly, impossibly strong fingers were digging painfully into the delicate pointed tip of my ear. I yelped in shock, instinctively trying to wrench my head free and hissing when it sent pain shooting down the side of my head.
“A child who has had a crown plopped onto his head and is treating it like a toy.” Mol yanked on my ear and tugged me forward. I cried out in pain, hands scrabbling to claw at her thick wrist. “A naïve, spoiled little brat with more power than he has the brains for.”
“Get off me!” I tried to tug my ear free, but her grip was impossibly strong as she marched me away from the forest and back towards the palace. “Ow! Get off!”
“We’re going to get a drink first, I think, so you can calm down from this little tantrum.”
“You’re hurting him.” My brother’s voice was more furious than I’d ever heard it, but that fury was mingled heavily with fear. “Please… He has been dealing with so much. This isn’t just a tantrum, he has—”
“I know, and I feel for you, son. Truly I do.” With her free hand, which was probably bigger than my head, Mol patted my cheek. The other was still dragging me along by my ear. My face burned with furious humiliation. “But you are too worked up to calm yourself down, so I’m going to do it for you.”
“Get the fuck off me,” I roared.
Intense terror flooded my limbs, turning them to jelly, as I managed to twist my head enough to see the forest getting further and further away behind us. I squirmed harder, desperate to break free.
“No—I need to find him.” My voice was ragged with panic. “Please—I need to—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mol interrupted calmly, not once breaking her stride. “Time to accept it, Luad. Your holly king is gone.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
