Page 109 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

Bastion slipped out of his chair and shuffled across the floor.

The sight of him grovelling was pleasantly distracting; before she knew it, he was sweeping her hand in his.

He managed to press his lips fervently to it several times before she tried to yank it away.

But he held on. “Your Majesty, there must be some other way. Garin and Myrddin will go! It will be grand, and I can stay here with you.” He fingered the encased gemstone with his free hand, holding it up in the light. “With this amulet, I’ll protect you.”

Lilac stepped back, pulling him into the beam of sunlight.

Bastion winced and released her—then scowled when nothing happened to his uncovered hands.

“Likely, when the sun still makes you flinch.” She extended a hand, and the vampire begrudgingly took it, righting himself.

“I need someone to bring the chest to Kestrel. Garin is my emissary.”

“And now, one of her knights,” Piper said, crossing her arms and savoring the look of shock on Bastion’s face.

“Garin isn’t going anywhere near the Low Forest,” Lilac confirmed.

Bastion looked helplessly at Myrddin.

“As much as I’d love to help, I cannot,” the warlock said. “Garin gave me clear instructions to watch over her.” He angled his head toward Lilac. “Your Majesty, when would you expect Bastion to leave?”

“Today. We shouldn’t prolong getting the chest to Kestrel with my approaching coronation day.

” She failed to mention the wedding—-the words failing to form.

“Bastion’s amulet will protect him from any sunlight that might otherwise undo his existence, so long as it stays on his neck. It will be more than enough.”

“So kind of you,” Bastion spat. “So kind of you both. Let’s send the big, bad vampire traipsing into the den of faeries.”

“Perfect. It’s settled then,” said Lilac, pressing her fingers together.

“Then you can ask Kestrel, straightforwardly, if that generous bottle of delicious wine was a gift from him. He won’t be able to help himself from admitting it was he who thought of such a grand gesture.

If he dances around the answer, it was him. ”

“And what will you have me do if it is?”

Lilac chewed on her lip. She thought of the sheer terror she felt fighting and running from his revenant. Not even she would want to put Bastion through that. “Nothing, I suppose. But it is important we find out.”

The vampire remained quiet.

Myrddin had begun to stroke his beard.

“Something is bothering you, too,” Lilac said to the warlock. “What is it?”

“Besides the imminent danger of going to Cinderfell without a fae escort?” Bastion growled.

Myrddin silenced him with a glare. “Kestrel, King of the Court of the Valley, asked you specifically to bring this chest to him? Was there any confirmation of whom the Yao Guai might’ve been delivering the chest to when the accident occurred?”

“No,” she replied slowly. “But I think Kestrel’s wish to obtain it trumps anyone else’s need for a measly chest. They offered it to us without question.”

“Did he request you hand-deliver it to him?” asked Myrddin.

Lilac considered the night of the failed Accords meeting and couldn’t quite recall. She’d been rightfully distracted. “All he said was that we were to retrieve the chest from the Midraal Market and bring it to him. He never got to say how before he—I mean, his revenant—grew violent.”

“But he didn’t specify a journey to his manor in the Low Forest? That is what I’m asking.”

“No. Once the revenant took over Hywell’s body, the communication with him ended. He said the deal was made in blood as he died in that fire, and then he was gone.”

“Lovely,” said Bastion. “So that settles it. We don’t go. Garin has his way with Lilac and we all get on with our lives.”

Piper shot up from her seat, knocking her chair back. Before Lilac could stop her, Bastion lunged sideways and yanked her into a headlock.

Lilac gasped as the wind was knocked out of her, and somehow managed to twist and jerk out of Bastion’s grasp. Once free, she craned her arm around and snaked her fingers against his scalp, slamming Bastion’s head upon the desk and holding him there. Or, attempting to.

He nearly bucked her off, but Lilac’s fingers stayed curled into Bastion’s long sandstone hair, taut against his skull. Marvelling at her own strength, she laughed—until his hand shot out, fingers snapping around Lilac’s free wrist and squeezing. She yelped when he twisted his hand.

“I should have let you die in that room,” Bastion rasped. “Should’ve let Garin have his way with you.”

“Actually,” said Myrddin, chuckling and only sounding mildly alarmed, “she got herself out of the brothel. And he wouldn’t have killed her. It would take a dark and unholy magic to force him to allow that to happen.”

“Shut. Up,” Bastion breathed against the tabletop, Piper frozen near the window with the back of her chair in her hands like she was getting ready to swing.

“Any one of you move a muscle, and I’ll snap her forearm in half.

She might’ve inherited an ungodly amount of our speed and strength, but it is yet only a portion.

She still has the body of a human. A shell of mortal life.

And she is just as delicate, just as easily broken. ”

“Let go of me , ” Lilac snarled, yanking away from him, still refusing to let go of his head.

Bastion dug his nails into her flesh. “I’ll?—”

“ Stop! ”

A pop sounded, followed by a gust of wind that violently ruffled Lilac’s hair. A deafening silence followed, as if all the air and sound in the room were sucked away.

She gasped when she cleared her eyes. It was unlike any of his spells she’d witnessed before; the warlock was surrounded by several books knocked off the shelves by the wind—two on the floor, one was frozen midair, blown open on its way down.

Several of its pages were impossibly suspended mid-fall, their corners quivering in the dying breeze.

Myrddin’s arms were raised, his hands projecting a cannonball-sized thing of swirling mist, shards of gold, mahogany, and gray just inches from his chest. A reflection of the library pulsed in a frenzy within the floating sphere—the same muted colors of the room, anyway.

The pain at her arm from Bastion’s grip had subsided; Bastion’s face and unruly hair had frozen, too, wrenched in a furious snarl.

Stunned, she shimmied her arm out from his grasp. “What have you done? What kind of magic is this?”

“A kind you don’t want me using,” Myrddin said warningly, his expression stoic.

“Something only I can do. It is a beacon of arcana, enacts all kinds of consequences, good and bad.” He lowered his voice.

“But I will use it if it means saving you and that disastrous vampire. Beyond your kingdom’s immediate future, the very fate of our arcane world relies on?—”

There was a gasp. “Look!” Piper was very much not frozen, her face pressed against the floor length window.

Myrddin turned and blinked in disbelief. He trailed Lilac over to Piper, bringing the hovering ball of smoke and fragment with him. “Does magic just roll off her body, like rainfall on a goose? Meanwhile you, Your Majesty, soak it up like a sponge.”

Outside, the swaying canopy of Brocéliande was still. Completely . More than it ever was on dry, windless days.

But that wasn’t all Piper had noticed. Up and to the right, just past her tower balcony, an unfamiliar black bird with extravagant olive wing markings hung in the sky.

Frozen, like everything else.

“A lone Cormorant,” Piper whispered in wonder. “What’s it doing so far inland?”

“Oh, marvellous.” Myrddin cocked his head for a better view beside Lilac. “Why, would you look at that? Yes, that is rather strange. An ample distraction for this kingdom going to shit!”

Both Lilac and Piper turned to look at him.

“Each and every one of us has a role to play.” His brilliant blue eyes flitted threateningly between them, first landing on Piper. “No more picking fights.” Then, on Lilac. “No risking your lives. Not yet.”

“Bastion was her kidnapper and abuser. He deserved at least three of those punches she landed,” said Lilac, sneering at his spinning ball. “Garin might’ve brought you, but you have no authority over us. It sounds like he’s made it crystal clear to you what your role is in securing my sovereignty.”

To this he said nothing, solemnity gracing his golden features.

“I’ll do what I have to. Your interference isn’t needed. What do you think I was doing before the two of you broke into my library?”

Myrddin’s mouth twitched as if he wished to say more. But he simply brought his hands together. The mystical sphere was gone—and the lone cormorant soared north, past the window in the foreground of the rustling trees.

There was a thud behind them .

Bastion was on the floor, barely catching himself on the edge of the desk.

He stood again, glancing around the room and snarling when he finally discovered them by the window.

“I have no idea what’s going on anymore.

What I do know, is that I’ve been with the witches and those aggravating trolls.

None of them think travelling to Cinderfell is a good idea.

I’ve left the same letters to the Fair Folk in two separate trees, every day,” Bastion reiterated, spreading his arms. “No response. Is that not odd to any of you?”

“What’s odd,” quipped Piper, “is that, out of all of you—witches, korrigans, and other vampires—no one has found a way to deliver this chest for Lilac.”

“Wait,” interjected Myrddin as Bastion grumbled.

“No, he has a point. You vampires and even we have always communicated with Kestrel this way, at least since he came into power as a young faerie centuries ago. By leaving notes in the hollows of Brocéliande’s or Huelgoat’s hawthorn trees.

Then, either he or the bluejays retrieve them. ”

“Does it hurt?” Piper glanced sideways at Bastion.

“Sometimes,” Bastion answered. “Not if we’re careful.”