Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court)

“Stay together.”

I home in on Roark’s voice, searching for him. There. Tall, confident, gesturing behind him as he keeps an eye on a writhing mass growing out from a central pillar in the back of the garden. A small handful of partygoers rushes to obey while other shady forms flee from the onslaught. It must be Roark’s Unseelie taking up place behind him. They’re the only ones who would trust him in this moment.

A hob—caught partway between the French door and the grass of the lawn—trips on her way up. I rush down and get her to her feet, but before we can get back to the door, a thorned stalk cuts off our escape. The tip of it, covered in fine spikes like a flail, lifts as we move, tracking us with an uncanny serpentine grace.

“Go,” I urge her, pushing her down the steps behind me. The vine doesn’t chase after us, but I keep it in my periphery as I watch to make sure the hob makes it. She doesn’t stop running until she joins her friends, who are clustered safely behind their prince.

Blue fire erupts from Roark’s left hand, casting his sharp-boned face into stark relief. His lips curl back from his teeth, his eyes narrow, his fury focused wholly on the spiked vines erupting from the earth and slicing their way toward him and his subjects.

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His lips barely move and a rapier I know from years’ worth of fights appears in his right hand. It’s sharp and fast, but these stalks need a machete or an axe or freaking Agent Orange. Agent Orange on fire.

Aileen stands in the doors, all pale beauty, watching Roark with some mixture of terror and awe.

“Close them,” I yell at her. She comes to, stares at me, and I point to the doors. “Close them! Get out!”

With a quick nod, she obeys. The doors slam shut, drawing the attention the vine had focused on me. I steal the momentary distraction to head toward Roark.

His fire spreads, circling his subjects, rising higher until it shields them. Tiny tendrils erupt near the group and sizzle into cinders as they try to reach past the flame. The temperature keeps dropping, the moisture freezing midair and catching the shifting light, tugging at my lungs when I try to breathe.

Roark flicks his hand and the fire there extinguishes. The first of the vines reaches him.

His blade flashes like quicksilver, severing the whipping end with the worst of the barbs, just like he did with the sanglin. Another vine snakes toward his ankles. He twists, slamming his hand toward the earth, and a brutal, jagged stalagmite of ice shoots up, severing the vine.

I’m halfway across the lawn before I realize that I’m running toward the fight weaponless.

He must catch my movement from the corner of his eye because he spins toward me. His face contorts. “Smith—” he bellows.

The thick green coil darts toward his exposed neck before I can yell a warning. The whip of the curved hooks slicing through the air echoes in my ears.

Panic. Fear. Fury. I fling my hand forward, willing the vine away from him. No fancy spells, no hexes. Just a desperate hope that I won’t see him killed in front of me.

It slams into an invisible wall and shivers back, golden sparks flying off over Roark’s head. He adjusts a moment too late, but it doesn’t matter. The vine crumples on itself like paper being eaten away by a slow lick of flame.

I reach his side and he turns back to me.

Amusement and wild delight in those pale eyes. My chest hurts from the brilliance of his smile.

The first true smile I’ve ever seen on Roark’s face, wide and shining and utterly confident. Every other smile he’s ever worn pales in comparison. And this one is for me.

He looks away from me toward the teeming wall hurtling toward us. He shakes out his left arm. An ice shield begins to form and he raises his arm, bracing for the hit.

Below us, the ley line buzzes, resonating up into my body.

“Come on,” Roark snarls toward the darkness, as if someone is back there behind the column of vines, urging them on. Aileen’s plea makes sense now. We didn’t do this. Except, that can’t be true. The Seelie have attacked Roark and his Court and broken the neutrality of Mathers. Despite that, Roark stands here like he could defeat this enemy with his will alone.

This is the Unseelie prince people pay homage to. And watching him steady himself behind that shield, even though he knows we may not win this fight, makes me wonder why I’ve never seen this side of him before. For all that we’ve fought together, I’ve never seen such desperate heroism in him.

I barely catch his murmured “Still okay, Smith?”

I swallow.

I don’t want to die here. Not at the Seelie sorority house. Not because of some stupid faerie civil war. But if it’s a choice between fighting or going out quietly, I know how I want this to end. And, maybe, if I can do this right, I keep Roark from dying, too.

I close my eyes. Imagine the ley line forming a wall between me and the oncoming tide of pointed, painful death.

The explosion of their contact against my imaginary shield jerks me back to this moment. The impact resonates through me, back to the ley line, where the earth swallows the shock and leaves me standing. Solid. Uninjured. It’s the vines that bruise themselves against that invisible barrier, bursting into flame where they touch.