Tomorrows updates will probs be in the evening because I need to do the quick chapter edit. My dissertation is due on Friday so hopefully once it's done I'll be back on track guys!
Let's goooooo
♔ 𝔑𝔦𝔯𝔞 ♔
Rage simmers within me, a moment away from boiling over.
I stride back to the market, Calix and Libitina hardly a step behind. They say nothing, and neither do I. They are not the kind to try and offer condolences, or attempt to appease me. I am glad for it, for it means they will not judge me for what I plan to do.
Outside the butchery, I skid to a halt. "NEXER!" I shout, banging my fists against his door. No sound comes from inside, and I do not bother to call for him again before I am throwing my weight into the door, falling into the butchery as the door sails across the room.
It smacks into the wall with a deafening crash, knocking knives from where they hang and sending rolls of parchment across the floor. I march to the next room, prepared to take this off one from its hinges too, but it creaks open.
"Nexer?"
His wide eyes peer from around the door and he whispers my name. It is hard to respond when I see him completely. Nexer, the plump, sweaty man I knew is not the one that stands before me now. His clothes hand from his frail and thin frame. His jowls droop and the skin beneath his eyes hangs with a tired weight. He looks weak, with skin pale and covered in the same sores as the girl in the alley, though his are scabbed and faded as though healing. Teeth are missing, and what little hair he had left on his head has fallen out completely.
"How? How?" He stutters out, choking on the words when he sees those stood behind me. "No, no."
"It is alright –" I interrupt him, jamming the door open as he tries to slam it closed. He fights against me, banging it against my foot but the wood only starts to splinter. He gapes. "They are not here to hurt you. They are fine."
I can only thank my prior sense for covering my own ears with my hair. It was in the hopes of seeing my family again, and wishing not to startle them. It has worked the same for Nexer. "Why have you brought them to me? Get out," he starts to cry, and though sympathy forms within me, I do not meet his request.
"Nexer tell me what happened here." I demand of him, pulling the door further open. I notice the dark stain on his pants – he has soiled himself. "Tell me where everyone has gone, why there are so many dead."
He shrinks away with a sob, flinching when Libitina takes a step forward. I stop her with a raised hand, and my other holds him still by his shoulder. "Spring brought sickness. It took many. We could not manage the dead." He cries, and my jaw aches from how tightly I clench it. It is always the poor that must suffer. Those with so little left to lose. We receive no help. Not even to respect our dead.
It is hard to force out my next words. "Did it take my family?"
He is trembling now, clinging to the door frame, but I do not mistake the shake of his head. "No. They had medicines. They were sent goods for months, and the tonics saved them." I blink at that information. Zaire's doing. He kept his word to me. It is a shame he failed to keep the rest. "Then they came."
"Who came?" I insist.
"The Fae. The Fae." He whimpers, eyes scrunched shut as he speaks. Never have I seen this man in such a state. He was always so loud and impatient and humoured. Now he shakes and weeps with fear and desperation. "Not long ago. They raided every house the day they arrived, and dragged those that lived on to the street.
"I hid. The attic space, but I saw. They took your brother, and your mother, and she was clinging to Mari in her arms. Screaming that she would not leave her behind." Sorrowful and guilty eyes meet mine. "They took them all."
This cannot be real. Not them. Not after all I did to protect them. "The King knows?"
His nod is shallow. "He lead them around the Outskirts. He orchestrated it all for money that would heal his last few knights from the sickness."
The rage boils over.
Power surges through me.
I scream through the lengthening of my fangs and claws, through the eruption of the Stygian and fire and ice.
It ravages me, setting my hair on end, pulsating the air around my frame. The energy shatters windows, shakes the walls, throws the knives across the room.
Nexer is screaming, cuddled to the floor to protect himself, but I do not care.
The King.
I will fucking end him.
As I pivot, a burning heat captures my body, and then I am glowing with the flames. Bright orange and red turning my clothes to ash, tangling with my hair and licking my skin. I am made of fire. I am entirely Fae.
I am the worst kind of wrong, and I will kill him.
"Nira," Calix calls me by name, but I only hiss, stalking out of the butchery with one single thought on my mind. The Stygian whips around me, clearing my path. It needn't, for when I step from the door, I Scere to the courtyard of the castle, the pain of the journey nothing compared to what floods my heart.
I hope this pain is a fraction of what I make him feel.
~
The few knights that linger in the Courtyard scream at the sight of me.
Flame blackens the ground as I walk, marking the path of my destruction, while the Stygian launches forward to embark upon it. It coils and strikes at the knights, devouring them from the inside out as it invades their mouth and ears and eyes and nose. It rips them apart, suffocating them in a way that they cannot even scream or beg.
There is nothing but the noise of merciless murder. Flesh splattering across the ground. They cannot run from my wrath, nor do they try, for the Stygian reaches them quicker than they can move.
"Nira!" Libitina shouts, and I turn to look over my shoulder as she and Calix Scere into view. I do not know what she sees, but it is enough to sober her expression. "Remember who deserves to feel your ire." She tells me, mouth ajar as her own fangs grow.
I spare a glance to the knight crying on the floor, rocking as he anticipates what is to come. He does not threaten me. He does not need to die.
Onward.
The voice is louder than it has ever been before. A distinguishable feminine drawl, keen with instruction. She repeats the word, over and over, and the Stygian pull back in tune with her chime, until they simmer around me like a blanket, dancing with the flames. It is a coincidence that in other circumstances I would not ignore, but now, I think nothing of it.
I step forward, extending a hand towards the knight and urge the air to thicken until it lifts him to his feet. He fights the restraints – ones similar to those I felt from the Elf in this very Courtyard so many months ago – but I do not lesson my hold.
"Take me to your King." I hiss, but he only cries. "I will not hurt you if you lead me to him." I drop him to the ground and he fumbles to balance, but then nods and cowers as he begins towards the Castle doors.
Libitina surges forward, snarling in his ear to hurry him and aids in pushing the doors open.
Calix falls into stride with me, a wisp of his shadows curling towards me and caressing my cheek. I look at him briefly. He does not shy away at the sight of me.
"Tell me what you need me to do, little Viper." He says, his voice too soft for what chaos has become of me. He does not fear me at all – not what I have done, or what I will choose to do next. He sees what this life has made of me, and still stands at my side.
"Tell me when I have done enough." He only dips his chin in understanding, and then pulls his shadow away from me as I march through the door, immediately ascending the stairs that Libitina drags the knight up.
He points left, and that is where we turn, ice crawling along the walls as I speed through the corridors. The castle succumbs to my power, all of it tainted by me as we weave through the corridor, climbs stairs, and pass through doors.
Some knights rise to the invasion of the three Fae, drawing steel and preparing to fight as they are trained to do.
For the most part, I ignore them, Libitina and Calix spending the energy to battle their fruitless attempts at stalling us.
Libitina uses her blades. A single dagger that passes through the air in dramatic arcs, singing before it splits open bellies or slices throats. It is graceful, unlike the bodies that slump to the ground. The monstrous nature of her killing should not be beautiful, but it cannot help but be described as much. She dances in spins and twirls, the dagger passing from one hand to the other with swiftness that I cannot even follow with my eyes. All I see is the spill of blood.
It is not her I pay the most attention to. It is Calix, who uses power that I have never seen him hone.
Shadows wrap around the men, engulfing them until they are not visible, before slinking away and leaving nothing behind but a fading black mist. Like those which he attacked were never there at all.
They do not cry, or scream. It is like they feel no pain at all before they disappear. Never to have existed. The shadows move slow, almost lazily, and Calix does not even watch as they feast on their victims. For a long while, I cannot tear my eyes from the immensity and horrifying elegance of his power.
Other knights do not consider themselves brave enough. They cower, dropping their weapons before they fall to their knees. Some whispers words of mercy, others say prayers to their God.
Those manning the doors of the throne room pray to me. A breathing torch of flame, a body dressed in darkness. A monster that wears fangs and claws, glares with eyes of red and hisses with a tongue on poison. A woman that has known only pain and suffering, and now brings destruction and ruin.
I do not move an inch as I send air barrelling forward, throwing the doors open. Libitina pushes aside our guide and slows her steps to allow me to enter first. The King, surrounded by several of his knights, sits on his throne.
The moment I step over the threshold, the voice comes again, loud and clear.
Death, Stygian.
And it is not limbs of it that erupt from me, but a sheet that rolls across the floor, thick as tar, drowning those that are within its path. They howl and scream as they are pulled beneath the blackness, writhing bodies that suffocate as the Stygian does as its commander orders. It is an unstoppable force, a demonic sort of power that has no right belonging on this earth.
It spreads towards the knights that press against the wall in futile attempts of escape, some climbing the iron frames of the windows to move as far as they possibly can from the Stygian.
"Libitina. Those that surrender, spare." She nods, brandishing her weapons and stalking towards her prey. I turn to Calix, the male whose olive skin has begun to grey, whose eyes have darkened from hazel to obsidian. Whose blood spills from his forehead as horns curl from his skull. "Those that fight, leave nothing of." The Fae, the one who I thought I hated but have started to see so much of myself within, smiles at me before his shadows engage.
The Stygian pushes forward, pulling back from those that drop their weapons, while obliterating those that stand to fight. Fire weaves through the air, dripping from the lit sconces as I bend it to my will, turn it from fickle flames to indomitable lava. It burns alive those that turn to protect their King.
The King who has not moved an inch. Whose skin has drained of all colour. Whose eyes fill with fearful tears.
The knights around him raise their weapons. I tilt my head and smile. "It is not you I wish to hurt. Do not die for a man I will reach, regardless of your attempts to stop me." Some heed the warning, faltering for only a second before dropping their weapons and fleeing for safety on their knees along the walls. Others choose an honourable end, and my power claims them before they have a moment to despair their choice.
The Stygian pushes on, edging closer to the King. "No." I hiss at the power – the voice in my head which encourages its hunt. "He is mine." The Stygian slows, stops, and carves me a path.
Serve death, King slayer.
The air presses against the King, lifts him to his feet before the throne. It stretches him wide, arms and legs pulled out to his sides. Now, he panics. He screams for mercy, for a God to save him. He cries until he struggles for breath, he shakes and trembles and sobs. I let him. For so long, I let him feel fear. A fear I have grown knowing too well all my life.
"How strange," I muse, stepping forward until I am close enough to reach for him. I trace his jaw with a claw. He flinches, screams. Pleading. Begging. He does not seem so kingly now. "Now it is your life held in the hands of a Fae, you wish for mercy."
"Please. Please." His tears roll down his cheeks, unbidden. I track their path with the point of my claw, pressing hard enough that the trails of saline become ones of blood.
"Do you know who you beg?" He shakes his head, so quickly I think it might fall from his shoulders. I grip his jaw still. "Look at me, then. Recognise me."
He forces his eyes open and tries to shake his head again. "I do not know you." He attempts to claim.
My smile is one of disbelief. "I should not be surprised. You care so little for anyone other than yourself." Keeping my hold on his face, I turn, pointing a single finger to an empty point on the floor. "I was once forced to kneel there. For crimes against the Fae, when all I wished for was to save my brother.
"I begged for mercy, much as you do now. I begged for death." The smile is gone when I look back at him again. "And you, my king, cared only for how much money you would make from my life. Even if it meant I was slaved, or tortured, or raped, or murdered. You tried to barter for coin to line your pockets."
"I do not know you." He insists again, and I cannot help but sigh.
"You should have bothered to remember my name. It is about to mean something." I flex my hands and the air pulls him tighter, his screams echoing in this silent room. A curved claw glides down his waistcoat, splitting it open and presenting me old and filthy underclothes. I ruin them too, until I see only flesh. His chest heaves with shallow and staggered breaths, pot belly clenching in fear.
"A leader can be many things. Kind or cruel. New or old. Rich or poor. Hated or loved. But they should never be so spineless. Like you. They should care for their people, threaten everything to protect them. Yet you, you made deals that cost all the lives you served to save your own.
"It is because of you that my family have been taken by the Fae. It is because of you that they face the same fate as I. My mother. My siblings. One of them is barely twelve years. The other a bairn. Do you know the fear that creates for me? The pain it leaves me in?"
"No! I do not, I do not!" He screams out. The next layer I flay open with my claw is skin. I drag it from his sternum to his navel, blood spilling across the white floor. He screams and screams.
"You should consider yourself thankful that you have no family of your own. For if you did, I would torture them to prove just how much agony it causes." He finds the breath to apologise between his brutalized cries as I dig my claws further. Deeper. Through flesh and sinew.
"Stop! Please! Stop!" I do not. "I am sorry!"
I call the Stygian forward. It pushes aside the folds of flesh and holds them apart. I push my hand further until it is between his insides. "Apologies mean nothing to me King. You cannot change what you have done. I will just make it so you can do no more."
His voice gives out as he screams again. "Nira." Calix calls. I look over to the Fae who wears the horns of a devil, with skin as black as his eyes. It is still his voice. It is still him within this second form. "This is enough."
It is still him, so I listen. I punch my hand forward and grab the king's spine. He falls limp then, already dead, but I still pull his spine with me and I move away, dragging it from his body. I loosen my hold, his mangled corpse collapsing in a heap to the ground, and I toss his spine across the room. "There. Now you die as spineless as you were born." I mutter.
As quickly as my need for revenge is sated, the power lessens. Flames hiss as they are extinguished, my vision blinks back to normal. Claws and fangs retract, the Stygian crawls across the floor towards me. The darkness dresses my naked body, donning me in a gown of black from my neck to the floor, leaving my bloodied hands for all to see.
I step over the late King's body, turn my back to his throne, and lower myself into it.
"Bow to your new leader." I call out to the room. "Queen Daenira Alinac-Tenybris." There is a pause, a beat of stillness, before the knight's held hostage by Calix and Libitina find their knees. Then the Demon and the Lord lower to the floor too. "You will spread the news across the Realm to those few left. You will send your messengers to the Realms around us. No longer does this land support their treaties. No Foreign Fae is welcome here unless I deem it so. You will tell them this, and assure them what a risk it would be to ignore my authority."
I cast a glance to Calix. His second form fades as I watch him, leaving behind the Lord I know, wearing a smile across his lips. He bows his head further beneath my gaze.
Libitina cackles, slamming the point of her dagger into the marble floor with a wide grin on her face. I cannot help but let my own features morph into a look of success.
"You cannot," a trembling voice calls. I look towards the knight that regards me in terror. "You cannot claim the throne. It is not yours to take."
I only spread my arms, gesturing in suggestion. "No? Then remove me from it."
He does not. All the knights remain on their knees.
Before their Queen.
Queen Daenira Alinac-Tenybris.
———
Screaming, crying, throwing up.
She's officially a QUEEN
I love love love her.