The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

Prince Sláine also recognizes the danger. He creates new earthen walls to slow the enemy’s progress, but the tragedy will play out, even if we escape. Our dead lie on the beach with no hope of retrieval. Many of the redcaps drag up their wounded compatriots in an effort to bring them to safety, while others use their swords to offer faster, more merciful ends. My Sluagh gather around me, bristling with weapons and shields they’ve gathered from the fallen.

Another volley of arrows hits Smith’s shield. Prince Lyne grasps his shoulder without flinching, and shakes him. “Retreat,” he orders.

Smith doesn’t move. He can’t because Queen Mab can’t look away from Goodfellow, can’t step away and admit her defeat at his hands. The Knight must protect his queen, even when she would rather die than retreat.

I release Lugh and push him toward his mother. “Make her leave,” I command.

He shakes his head and forces himself to look away from Goodfellow.

“Lugh!”

At the sound of his name, he nods and rushes away from me. Between the efforts of her two sons, she begins to withdraw. Smith and Lugh and Prince Lyne force her and the Unseelie soldiers to move faster, to get to safety before Prince Sláine tires and drops the protective walls he’s built. The Sluagh and I hurry after them. Goodfellow follows us, his pace sedate, and his face bright with horr

ific pride. We’re nearly to the woods, nearly to freedom, when I look over my shoulder and see him stretch his arms toward us.

The blast of his magick drops Smith and the princes to the ground. Even Queen Mab stumbles and loses hold of one of her daggers. The ice shatters against the frozen beach. She recovers, notices her fallen sons and her Knight, who shakes his head and tries to rise, only to fail.

“You can’t escape me,” Goodfellow calls as he continues his inexorable progress across the beach. The walls holding back the rest of his troops fell when Prince Sláine’s control faltered, and the legion of fighters surges behind him, waiting for the command to finish us. “I’ve followed your path for centuries, until this moment. I am born to unite the Courts, and with your death, I will restore true balance to Faerie.”

Queen Mab doesn’t respond. Instead, her gaze alights on me and the belt sings.

“Change,” she commands.

The Sluagh will stay to defend me after, as will Lugh. I can’t change now. They’ll die if I do. I fight the belt’s sharp obedience. I shake my head and biting pinpricks of sensation crawl under my skin, the threat of fur about to break loose.

“Keir,” Lugh begs from his mother’s side, “don’t!”

Queen Mab’s eyes are cruel. She lifts a finger toward me. “Now.”

I scream as the transformation takes me, a concentrated, bitter swell of magick, and the bear breaks loose.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Keiran

I don’t know how we escaped that beach and returned to the sídhe. I know my Sluagh fell to protect me. I know Lugh tried to defend me and, in turn, the bear tried to defend him. And I know Goodfellow was just past the line of fighters, looking at me with disgust and a hint of fear. I wanted to rip out his throat. I rushed toward him and his fear grew so great, there was no doubt I would finish him this time—

Then weightlessness. Cold. A jagged landing sending all my earlier injuries screaming in a discordant chorus of agony. I drifted in that hazy sea as hands found me, held me, and carried me away.

Now, the sídhe’s familiar walls close in around me. Lugh whispers a litany of prayers to the Goddess, to the gods, as he helps me stagger on to our chambers. My blood leaks from too many wounds to count, too many wounds to examine for fear of the pain I’ll feel, and I can feel its wetness soaking into his clothes and hair.

Down the hall, a hob watches our approach with worry.

“Bridget,” Smith calls from my other side, “we need help.”

She’s kind. Her fingers skim my back and shoulders and when I hiss, she declares me too injured for a tunic. She brings loose trousers that don’t hurt once they’re on and a pair of soft boots to keep the earth’s coolness from soaking into my feet.

“He needs a healer,” she warns Lugh, as though I’m not standing right here. She presses the back of a delicate hand to my skin and frowns. “What do you normally give him to break the fever?”

Lugh rattles off a list of herbs. I ignore him. I ignore the surviving Sluagh fighters who follow like silent shadows at our backs. I focus on Smith, who strides down the halls beside us. He wipes absently at his bleeding nose with a chain mail sleeve, smearing blood over his upper lip.

“Is he okay?” Smith keeps asking Lugh.

Bridget slows her pace to offer Smith a handkerchief. I seize the moment and set my feet against the ground. Lugh struggles to adjust, but can’t budge me.

Bridget, who has continued on now that Smith’s mess has been addressed, comes to a stop in the hall ahead of us.

I glare at Smith, who stuffs the handkerchief away and watches me back with new wariness.