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“What are you doing?” Enyd exclaimed as Lucais raised the sword in the air over the man’s throat.

He looked at her, face screwed up with confusion. “I’m sorry. Did you want to keep him as a pet or something?”

The High Lady of the Court of Wind blanched.

“Morgoya, darling,” he called over his shoulder, eyes on the squirming body at his feet. “Can you do your job for once, please?”

She stepped forward, hands across her stomach, and began explaining the Malum to Enyd and her Court. When she was done, the sentry standing beside Enyd turned around and vomited onto the stones.

His High Lady stared at the body on the ground for a long moment before finally declaring, “Do what you must.”

Lucais raised the sword again and brought it down upon the body with perfect form, slicing it clean through the neck. The body stopped moving as a cloud of thin grey smoke hissed out of the wound.

“They’re making more,” the High King announced, holding the hilt of the sword out to its original owner as he turned and stepped back to my side. “They left this one as a message.”

“How do you know?” Wren enquired.

“They took faeries during the raid on Sthiara, and the High Mother knows what they’ve done with Blythe’s Court,” Lucais answered tightly. “Gregor is probably offering his help in the hopes that he can avoid the same fate for his own, but it’s just a matter of time.”

“Why has it taken you this long to tell me?” said Enyd.

Lucais regarded her with a frown. “Need-to-know basis. If you weren’t so paranoid, stationing your men beyond my wards, then I wouldn’t have had to tell you at all.”

Enyd glared at him and threw out her hand, sending a torrent of wind towards him. It wasn’t strong enough to knock him over, but it did make his hair stick up like he’d been electrocuted.

He rolled his eyes and began to smooth it down. “That was rude.”

“So was keeping this information from me,” she seethed. “Who else knows?”

“Only my favourite High Ladies,” he answered with a grin, glancing pointedly between Enyd and Morgoya.

“Your favourite,” Enyd sneered. “And yet you asked me here to see if I was conspiring with them, I presume?”

“Oh.” Lucais pulled a face. “Yes. About that. You didn’t bring the Malum General with you and sacrifice your own men because it would make you look innocent, did you?”

“No,” she growled through her teeth.

He held his hands up in submission. “Just checking.”

“I need to return to my Court,” Enyd told him. “I would ask for a week to mourn my dead, and then I am at your disposal.” Despite the scene before her, she bowed low. “If it’s war they want, then we will give them hell.”

Lucais nodded. “I rather think they’re already in hell, considering most of them look likethat,” he replied, gesturing to the corpse, “but I appreciate the enthusiasm. Take your week. That gives us enough time.”

“For what?” Morgoya asked him.

But it was to me he turned with the answer, his eyes sparkling with pure light. “To go home,” Lucais replied. “I’m taking bookworm here to Caeludor.”

Oh, no, you’re not.

I smiled at the High King, and then I unclipped the leash. Somehow, Wren already knew what I was doing, but his shout of warning came too late.

I turned the lights off in Faerie and disappeared into the dark.

The End