The Faerie Curses

Chapter Forty-Six: Ruler of Deception

Queen Titania looked pained as she gazed upon her son.

"Glen, you don't understand-" she began, her eyes pleading.

But the tattooed sprite cut her off with a flick of his wrist.

"Can you imagine the insult you bestowed upon me?" He laughed at the queen. "The insult of talking to the prince himself and realizing that he had no memory of who I was?" He pouted in mock hurt. "I was quite offended, Titania." 

Titania bared her teeth. "I should have just murdered you, damn fool. I should have just killed you instead of watching you run out of my palace and vanish into thin air the night I watched my husband die."

My jaw dropped. It was the tattooed sprite all along; he was Oberon's killer. Glen had told me himself that an assassin had murdered the king, but they were never caught.

Not until now.

Glen's face turned ashen white. All color drained from his cheeks as his fingers slowly curled together into fists.

"It was you," he murmured at first, but his voice began to grow louder and louder. "Twelve years ago, it was you who stabbed my father to death. You were the sick bastard who tore my entire family apart!" Furious tears gathered in his eyes. "IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS! I WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO GROW UP WITHOUT A FATHER!" His shoulders heaved as a bead of sweat slid down his forehead. "I'm going to make you pay," he seethed. "I'm going to kill you for all the hell you put me through."

Queen Titania reached out to her son. "Glen, no! You need to let me explain!"

Glen's eyes were alright with a savage, roaring fire that smoldered across the grounds and scorched straight into the grinning tattooed sprite. I had never seen Glen look like this before. I had never seen him look so possessed by vengeance.

I straightened my jaw and snatched my sword out of Diandre's grasp. This was the sword I had clutched as I watched the tattooed sprite shoot down my own father in cold blood.

"Marissa!" Diandre hissed. "What do you think you're-"

I ignored him, and aimed the blade straight for the sprite's beating heart. I took a deep breath.

I wasn't going to let him hurt anyone else ever again.

With a cry, I leaped out of the underbrush and into the clearing of the stark moonlight. Titania and Glen gaped at me in astonishment as I screamed, lunging at the tattooed sprite and plunging my sword into his stomach. The blade only sank in a little through his skin and muscle, piercing the inside of his chest for a moment. In a flesh of reflexes, the tattooed sprite's staff end of his scythe smacked against my face, the force sending me tumbling to the dirt.

My cheek felt as if it had been lit on fire, and I collapsed with a cry as the tattooed sprite drew my blade from his body.

"Marissa!" Glen shouted, racing to my side. The murder in his eyes had evaporated, replaced with overwhelming fear.

The tattooed sprite winced in pain, but only slightly. He held my sword in the starlight, studying it as his own blood slid down the blade and splashed into the grass.

"You little bitch," he spat at me as he clutched his stomach where the wound still bled through his shirt. "A little pinprick isn't going to kill me."