Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court)

We both stare at the smoldering spot for a moment. Our eyes meet. I swear to God, the sickening bubbling coming from the thing’s throat is laughter. It steps closer.

Fire again, and then ice; neither leave a mark on the creature’s bloody flesh. Its breath steams as it huffs and moves farther into the light, exposing the long curve of its back. I hurl a summoned blade. A delicate paper cut appears on the monster’s paw.

I’m sweating, from panic at its advance, and from my straining efforts to control the boiling energy that flows up into me, filling me against my will. I don’t want the ley line to go off. I can’t let it go off.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whisper, edging closer and closer to the nearly extinguished bush.

More hexes, more failure, each one more pathetic than the last. The monster doesn’t even flinch when I try now. I am not a threat.

God, my skull’s splitting. My knees go out and I hit the earth. The monster is so close I can smell the nauseating rotting meat stench wafting off its body. Another gurgle and its tail whips from the darkness, curling around my wrist, dragging me forward a little as the spines dig into my flesh.

And...that’s it.

The ley line surges forward, demolishing my flimsy control. It flings itself out of me, into the creature’s tail, climbing and falling and cresting over those raw muscles.

Now the monster’s on fire.

Its shrieks of pain are deafening as it takes off into the garden. It flails, kicks, and spins in an effort to escape, but I’m still in its grip so it can’t escape the fire coming from me and the ley line.

I manage to glance up long enough to see that we’re hurtling toward the back wall of the garden. I know that hidden behind that hedge, there’s a brick wall. I doubt my enemy knows that. I’ve got to get away before we collide with the wall in a heap of fire and blood. I thrash against the tail binding me, trying to muscle my way out of the

monster’s grip, but it’s too strong. Too strong, and too fast—

A soft whisper of metal, and then I’m free. Rolling over the grass and smashing my face into some of the flowers, but still miraculously free. Groggy, head spinning, muscles screaming, I lift my head.

Roark, rapier unsheathed, the edge coated in viscous black blood, stands there, watching the monster with a strange expression. “Goddess, Smith, what the fuck did you do to the poor thing?”

“Poor thing?” It comes out as a croak. I unwrap the tail from my wrist, wincing and hissing as I pluck the delicate spikes from my flesh.

Roark ignores my misery and watches the monster, who did run into the brick wall. It didn’t break through, so it’s huddled in a burning heap at the base. The hedges around it smolder and catch. Images of Roark sheathing his weapon are mirrored in its rows of eyes.

“Don’t,” I call to him, struggling to get to my feet. The moron’s going to get bitten or something, and I do not need Queen Mab coming for revenge if I get her son killed.

“It’s a sanglin, you idiot,” Roark snaps. “It won’t hurt me.”

I have no words. My wrist drips blood, I ache everywhere, and Roark says it won’t hurt him. Flabbergasted shock gives way to incoherent rage swiftly.

I gesticulate at the chaos surrounding us. “Are you insane?”

Roark glances back, at least. A splatter of my blood hits his cheek, dark against his pale skin. He glares and wipes at it with his wrist, smearing it over his skin.

“You’ve done enough already,” he says, accent heavier in his frustration. And he turns his back on me.

Just...fuck my life.

Roark

This has to be a new record. Two attacks in as many days? Either someone’s taken a shining to Smith, or the universe is trying to prove a point about his mortality. Only Smith could get a sanglin to attack him. Herne and the hunters, no one’s seen one of them aboveground in centuries. Only Smith could get a sanglin—a creature who ferociously hunts beetles, mice, and bats—to crawl out of the depths of the earth to find him and then attack him.

And only Smith is incompetent and ignorant enough to not know that a simple illumination spell would finish the thing off. Any infant in the Winter Court knows how to do that. At least he lit it on fire. Probably did that by accident, but it’s what kept him alive long enough for me to get involved.

Do ancient creatures attack him because he lights up the magickal atmosphere like a fireworks show, or because he’s easy prey? Between his luck and his almost total lack of control, he should be dead a hundred times by now.

He would be, except for me. That’s how he survives all of this. Because I’m a fucking pathetic mess who places more value on his life than I ever should.

Smith never even saw this one coming. He walked past the garden, missed the tail whipping toward him, and before I could shout a warning, he was on the ground, vanishing into the darkness. The sight of him being dragged away, knowing what could have happened... No, thinking about it won’t help. Besides, I have more pressing matters now.

The charred creature snarls as I approach and collapses against the wall. The black blood coating it has cooked onto its skin, leaving an oily, rancid smoke hanging in the air. Its claws twitch and dig into the ground. It’s mortally wounded and doesn’t have the energy to launch itself at me. The stump of its tail twitches, spewing blood over the earth. This garden will look like a murder scene in the morning.