Chapter 39: Squirt Conquers
It was midday before Vaanas finally found her wayward youngest brother’s scent. With a growl, she raced after it. He’d disappeared at some point during their damn wild goose chase through the woods that had led them fucking nowhere. The only positive was that she’d been able to get her daughter to sleep on her back before she realized her uncle was missing.
Damnit. He’d always been her daughter’s favorite uncle, and now it was quickly growing into a trauma-bonded obsession.
At least the pixie he was apparently in love with was, according to the stories she’d heard, a worthy model for her daughter to look up to. It was her only consolation upon learning the previous evening that her daughter had claimed the tiny pixie woman as part of her hoard.
A dragon’s hoard was a dragon’s family, always and forever.
Her daughter was now safely back at the castle, sleeping off the wild night with one of her mates by her side while she searched the damn woods for her brother-by-mating. That was one role model she had tried her damnedest to make sure her daughter didn’t take after. The partier, the heathen worshiper, the damn golden child—
Though the huntress he’d fallen for had finally made him grow a pair, at least. Gave him some sense of responsibility.
She stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide on the scene before her. She’d heard of the treebeds of this side of the mountains, but this was her first time seeing one.
Gods, it was huge. Hundreds of trunks twisted together into an impenetrable maze of bark and leaves half buried by the brown of leaves from previous years.
The scent was definitely coming from in there.
Weren’t treebeds feybeast hotspots?
Growling as some smoke started burning her sinuses, she snorted it out and jumped into the fray, ready to rend any creatures that came at her limb from limb.
Nothing happened.
But the scent of blood grew thick in the air. She paused to sniff it.
It was at least a few hours old.
She followed the scent of her brother, but soon the blood grew thicker until she was practically choking on it.
When she finally crested the final trunk, she stared down at the unrecognizable form of her brother.
He’d always been a clean fey, somehow managing to remain blood-free even when battling for his life. When he killed, it was quick and merciful, almost regretful, as he had a tendency to turn enemies into friends like he had with Annabelle before she became queen.
This? This was a scene she would have expected from his father.
Blood coated the entire clearing. Entrails hung like ornaments from the trees. From the wreckage of the limbs, the fey had been torn apart bit by bit. Her brother sat on a blood-soaked log, his head bowed and eyes on a golden dungeon door. There was a deadened look to them that made her regret her thoughts about him only minutes prior, as suddenly she wanted nothing more than for him to return to being the same flippant youth he’d always been.
Next to his seat on the log sat the severed head of a once beautiful elf, its mouth open in a silent scream as it kept sentinel with him.
Stepping quietly into the clearing, eyes scanning for danger and one hand on her blade, his dull voice drew her attention.
“I tried to get in.”
She scanned the area before turning to face the broken face of her brother.
Listlessly, he rasped out, “I tried. But the door is shut and will not open.”
She glanced behind her at the dungeon door. Then turned back to her brother-by-mating and nodded at the head. “Friend of yours?”
It was rare that she ever truly saw the depths of her little brother’s power. She’d known for centuries that he outclassed her.
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It was one thing to know that intellectually. It was another to be incidentally crushed as his listless eyes glowed with feral rage. His voice echoed and she bit back a scream as she fell to her knees, the pain almost drowning out his words. “She is no friend of anyone.”
Then, as suddenly as the storm of power appeared, it disappeared, leaving her brother brokenly staring at the door again. She gasped in a breath, feeling bruised and hurt all over, choking on the air thick with the stench of death.
Nodding, she merely said, “Noted.”
Then she settled herself down to wait, using her bonds with her mates to let them know their brother-by-mating had been found and sending them the image of the severed head.
Like she suspected, they confirmed her as the missing Lady Scholar.
Soon, others joined the scene. The first was a shadowfell, followed quickly by a redcap, whose eyes glinted with appreciation at the scene. He made the mistake of asking for one of the body parts and was subsequently crushed by her brother’s raging magic. The redcap barely walked away with his life.
After that, she started warning people to not mention the body parts as they arrived. Instead, they started gathering on the upper crests of the trunks around the flat clearing, their eyes on the locked dungeon door and the grizzly scene before them, raised up like they were watching a stage show in an amphitheater. Hunters. Guards. All standing sentinel.
Afternoon soon turned to evening, and Lord Everwinter himself appeared along with a large contingent of knights. After a hushed conversation, they also remained respectfully back.
Hundreds of fey all standing around, staring at a golden dungeon door that would open for no one.
Finally, just as the sun began to set, the ground began to shake. The door cracked and shattered into dust. The roots in front of it parted, lifting up a nest of silks along with a tiny, greenling pixie, her eyes wide with awe. In her arms she cradled an egg close to her chest the size of a wyvern’s egg. It glowed faintly in the gathering darkness, and her wide eyes grew wider as she scanned her audience. Terror was plain on her face.
Vaanas’s brother-by-mating stood, and the tiny woman’s attention snapped to him. Somehow, her eyes grew wider, her jaw dropping as she looked the man up and down. Vaanas let out a tiny breath of relief, recognizing the move as scanning for injuries.
Good. His affections weren’t misplaced.
He didn’t approach her right away, an uncharacteristic amount of pain on his face.
Her eyes, finished scanning him, turned wary as she scanned the rest of the clearing, noting the strewn body parts.
He reached down, grasping the head by the bundle of what was once a fashionable updo, and slowly stepped forward.
The entire clearing held their collective breathes as she noticeably stiffened, fear being traded for determined fury as she curled protectively around the egg with one arm, the other arm reaching for a blade.
Then the tension dropped as he fell to his knees, placing the severed head before him like an offering.
The depth of the emotions on the woman’s face were plain for all to see, and Vaanas started to put together exactly who the elf had been. Namely, someone who must have deeply tormented her.
Her little brother cleared his throat, though it retained the rasp as he said, “I wanted… to make sure you saw. You knew. She will never hurt you again. I swear it.”
The pixie’s green eyes, previously fixed on the offered head, slowly raised to her brother’s. “I… but… her charms…”
Vaanas had heard her brother say many a line to a fey, but none with the depth of feeling that he did now. “Paled in comparison to your beauty and did nothing to sway me from your side.”
From the way the tiny pixie swallowed, her eyes wide with vulnerable hope, she could sense Feldan’s sincerity as well as Vaanas could. Even still, she swallowed and rasped out, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
The only sound beyond the drama playing out before the crowd was Lord Everwinter as he jumped down from his trunk. His heavy footsteps brought more terror out onto the little one’s face, followed swiftly by stunned awe when he kneeled to her.
“Athereon. I must apologize for putting you at risk in my selfish pursuit of what I thought was right. Her charms worked only well enough for me to realize she had used them. I hadn’t realized who she was, or I would have offered you her head myself.”
Wide eyed, stunned, she hunched her shoulders. “I… you can’t be serious.”
He sighed. “I had been a fool to assume you trusted me enough to use the bolt holes. If you had, I would have gutted her for the repeated offenses she had made. Since you did not, I wrongly assumed she was nothing to you until I realized you had run.”
“You… you would have…”
He nodded solemnly. “I would have, Athereon. She was found to be a traitor to the crown and connected to the murder of her highness’s brother. I had waited only to try to bait her into revealing more information about her treason. Knowing what I know now, I regret ever hesitating.”
For a moment, no one moved. They barely breathed. Everyone waited for the pixie’s reaction to this news, to the lord of the land kneeling and begging her forgiveness for wronging her.
Her green eyes slipped back down to the severed head. Slowly standing, she took one hesitant step forward. Then another. She crouched. One hand trembled as it reached forward to touch the head, feeling behind one of the ears.
In awed disbelief, she said, “It’s really her.”
Vaanas’s brother-by-mating nodded. “No death dealer can bring her back from this.”
The hitch of her breath was heard by the whole clearing. Then, like that one breath opened the floodgates, she fell to her knees, her hand gripping the head’s hair as great wracking, wailing sobs burst from her lips. Falling forward and curling around the egg clutched to her chest, she sobbed, her hand wrapped up in the head’s hair and feeling something behind the elf’s ear.
Lord Everwinter merely shifted to sit, a soft look in his eyes as he gazed warmly at her.
And Vaanas’s brother-by-mating.
Finally, the telltale hints of a smile appeared on Feldan’s face as he rubbed her back and murmured words too soft for his sister to hear.