Page 24

Luc Zelsor and the Freakshow

The Shadow Assembly’s meeting place was possibly the most secret location in the Corners of Ever. Not even the Queene of the North herself had been able to discover the room hidden for centuries behind enchantments and layers of secrets and riddles. Its appointed chairs consisted of the highest-ranking members of the Shadow Court, a few powerful, greedy beings who just wanted to have a say in things, and only the richest and most influential nobles across the Dark Corner. It was not easy to gather them all in one place. It was not easy to stand in their presence, either.

Yet here Luc was. Standing.

The discussions had gone on for hours too long. Days, in fact. Luc had barely managed to slip away and return as much as required to convince everyone he’d been present the whole time. But it was a necessary, exhausting feat, considering he’d needed to be in two places at once. And he supposed he didn’t mind that everyone wanted him. It was the curse of a fox—to be wanted all the time. To be so desperately needed by all who knew him. The High Court of the Coffee Bean needed him. The Shadow Assembly needed him. Mor needed him.

Unfortunately, Luc hadn’t kept his word to Mor yet, despite his best efforts. It wasn’t his fault though. As much as the High Court of the Coffee Bean needed Luc, the Shadow Assembly needed him just a little bit more at the moment.

It was, after all, his own trial. And Lily Baker, of all people, would understand the importance of a trial.

From where he stood on an onyx stage, Luc’s nose scrunched at the thought of the mighty human trapped in an utterly horrifying situation. Would she be broken already? He bristled as he considered and calculated the days. As he wondered if she had far exceeded her expiration date for sanity and clear thinking. She was a strong-minded female, but no human could withstand fairy torment. Luc knew he should have done something about it, that time was of the essence, that Lily Baker might already be dead, and he would be in all sorts of trouble then, but…

Well, he did try to warn her not to come here. She should have stayed in the human realm. It wasn’t Luc’s fault she had a desperate need to prove herself all the time, though Dranian would be disappointed Luc had disappeared without warning immediately following Mor and Cressica’s departure from the Ever Corners. Luc only hoped Dranian was still waiting where he’d told him to wait—though many days had passed since then, so it was doubtful.

Ah, it was all a bit of a mess.

The great Shadow Assembly’s meeting room was in the heart of a black mountain, only reachable by airslipping. The magnificent candlelit space was filled with numbered velvet chairs, chatter, a dollop of shouting, and a fat portion of unnecessary judgement. People were far too critical of foxes. It hardly seemed fair.

“Are we ready to vote?” Luc interrupted the chatter to ask.

Approximately three hundred sets of silver and brown eyes turned in his direction. Most of them weren’t that friendly.

“Vote? We’ve hardly discussed what’s to be done to a traitor like you!” High Lord Bobin said whilst pointing. It seemed he might be trying to point at Luc , but his old finger was so crooked, it made a few heads turn toward the nothingness off to the side.

“Hardly discussed?” Luc scoffed. “You’ve all been discussing for over two weeks!”

Low Lord Ramoth leapt from his chair in the seventy-fifth position. “You killed the Dark Queene!” he shouted. Hundreds of outraged voices erupted through the meeting room, the noise so violent, Luc was sure the walls shuddered a little.

He thought about the accusation, tapping a finger against his chin. Then he said, “I don’t think you can prove that was me.”

The Army Commanders objected at once, shouting things like, “We all saw you do it!”

Luc’s jaw slid to the side. They had a point.

He decided he would keep his mouth shut after that. There was no sense in trying to convince these fools of anything anyway—they were all cranky over the death of that heap of black-blooded hog meat they called a queene. People needed to get over things. He could have easily therapist-ed this group into recognizing that if they held grudges, they’d never be happy, but… well… Luc was a bit of a hypocrite in that regard, and he was afraid they’d all point it out.

So, instead, he sighed and looked out a window depicting a shimmering crystal mosaic of the great symbol of order the Dark Corner had abided by for centuries. The three standards of rule were written in the glass: Absolute Domination, Fearsome Power, Victory Over Enemies.

Yes, the Dark Queene had fulfilled those three obligations well. It was a shame she’d ticked Luc off so profoundly and it had all come to an end. Luc supposed his only option was to die now, should this Assembly require it, and if that were to be the final ruling, he’d already resolved he would vanish on site, head straight for the House of Lyro, break in with a clamour, snatch Lily Baker, drop her off in whatever crack of the forest Dranian had found himself in, then race the wind back into the Dark Corner where the Low Kings and Queenes would claim him as their prisoner the second he showed himself. At that point it wouldn’t matter how enraged the House of Lyro was; one measly household wouldn’t dare cross the boundary into the Dark Corner and risk a mighty face-off with the kings and queenes of the Shadows or the Shadow Army guarding its borders.

Luc tried not to think about the fact that humans rarely stayed in one place for too long once captured. They were worth too much for that, so they were given as gifts for parties, often traded or sold…

“Tell us, Prince, are you even the least bit remorseful for your actions?” The Great Judge brought the room to order with the question, and those in the numbered chairs hushed to listen. “It will help us decide whether to execute you publicly before the Corner,” the Great Judge added with a fresh tone of resentment, making it clear which side of the debate he fell on.

It took Luc a moment to realize the Judge was speaking to him.

A ‘prince’?

Luc nearly snorted a laugh as he dragged his gaze away from the windows’ crystal mosaics and let it fall upon one Lord at a time. They looked back at him, waiting, perhaps hoping to see something in their fox ‘prince’ they had failed to see thus far. Perhaps hoping there was a shred of decency in him they might be able to rely on.

And so, Luc said, “No.”

Roars of horror boomed through the room. The Assembly members who’d finally sat down leapt back to their feet. The Great Judge’s eyes narrowed and he barred his shiny teeth.

Luc went on anyway, “I don’t regret killing that disgraceful monarch you were all idiotic enough to recognize as your ruler, nor do I regret killing the High Prince who was the most disgraceful father in the Ever Corners. If you were looking for a nice answer, you shouldn’t have asked such a stupid question.”

Naturally, the meeting room boomed with a level of noise worse than before, a decibel strictly forbidden at Assembly meetings of the past. Luc’s gaze drifted up the walls as the whole mountain rattled above, as though it too was angry at the fox who’d done a bad thing.

But ‘bad’ was subjective, and the mountain could kiss Luc’s sorry—

A grape hit Luc’s face. It was the first of a dozen mushy fruits and vegetables hurled in his direction, filling the onyx stage with the sour fragrance of a fruit salad gone bad.

It seemed the Assembly had made their choice. Luc might be stabbed with cold iron even before the vote took place. He glanced back at the window, sure he could slip through it in the blink of an eye and outrun these older, less fit fairies. He turned his body an inch, taking a small step forward to brace himself to fly…

An enchanted vine grappled his ankles and tore him off his feet. Luc fell forward, his face hitting the onyx, and he growled at whomever had provoked a powerful nine tailed fox. More vines slithered over him like serpents with minds of their own, constricting his wrists, squeezing his midsection, grasping at his throat, even. He tugged at the green stems, but it was no use. As soon as he’d touched the vines, airslipping was no longer an option, and he realized that whatever fate was decided for him in this shadowy Corner would be the one he’d face. As he sat up, bound in every way, he released a small huff-laugh of disbelief.

It was poetic, really.

He would finish his life a lonely fox, the same way he’d started it.

Admittedly, his last thought was of Lily Baker whom he realized he owed an apology to. Because despite his best efforts, or partial efforts, he wasn’t going to make it to rescue her after all.

“I hope you’re still alive, dear Lily,” he murmured beneath the commotion around him as a dozen Army Commanders wrestled him to his feet. “I hope the sky deities care more about you than they do about me and you survive.”