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Chapter 6

Marius

M arius’s hand twitched, almost giving the signal to take off. But this Unseelie—what in the name of the gods was he doing in this realm?—was a wild card. What if he had already enacted rune magic that would kill them as soon as they left the ground?

“Why are you in this realm? What do you want? We can petition King Lysanael to return you to the Unseelie realm if that is your goal,” Marius struggled to keep his tone even.

“I have my own passage, thank you very much.”

His own passage? Was there a forgotten portal here like the one they found in the southwestern human lands? That one had been destroyed.

“What is your goal?”

“You’re boring me, Commander Marius.”

How did he know his name?

“I’d have thought you would be more interesting,” the Unseelie said. “Too bad.”

He grinned with his wickedly long fangs, teeth that were far more animal than Fae, and Ragewing growled in full.

The Unseelie snapped his fingers. Two things happened simultaneously. The air exploded in a cloud of glittering black and indigo, and a sapphire-hued smoke slithered over the ground, heading toward them.

“Fly!” Marius shouted, already leaping onto Ragewing and checking if Tahlia was climbing onto Lija. She was, thankfully.

They drove into the air, the smoke and glittering magic chasing their tails. Marius twisted in his saddle. The Unseelie stood below, amid the magical chaos, smiling in a way that made Marius’s blood boil.

What power is that? R agewing asked. And which way should we head?

I have no idea. I know very little of Unseelie magic. I was hoping you could tell me.

I have done my best to steer clear of Unseelie, although I have met three Fae with both Seelie and Unseelie blood who were decent folk. I don’t hate them outright, but they don’t make me very comfortable, you could say.

Marius laughed without humor. You could definitely say that.

He looked to Tahlia, who met his gaze. She didn’t often show fear, but it widened her eyes now and he hated to see it. Wise, though it was.

Marius commanded the order to fly back to the beach where they’d started from in case the Unseelie had patrolling boats near him, past the Ketch Strait.

As they landed and dismounted on the beach, Fara’s swearing drowned out all other sounds.

“We have to annihilate him.” Fara’s voice was strong and unhurried, but her hair had slipped from her braid and her purple skin had flushed to a deep plum. “He is certainly going to do it to us if we don’t. He’s the Eelsmen captain now? I can’t even believe it. Have you ever fought a full Unseelie?” she asked Marius.

“Slow down, Healer. Let us all talk calmly. We will figure out a plan.”

The riders gathered around him, their dragons facing out of the circle to keep watch and to defend if some magical attack tried to surprise him.

“Does anyone know of a portal that may have been forgotten?” he asked the group.

Before King Lysanael shut the drumstones, which had served as a rough portal, many Unseelie monsters and folk had accidentally fallen into the Seelie realm. But since the closing of the stones, Unseelie were a true rarity in this land and the surrounding kingdoms as well. Yes, some folk had a touch of Unseelie blood—some distant ancestor who had a roll in the hay with an Unseelie in their high Fae form—but Tahlia had only met two in her entire life traveling about the Realm of Lights.

Ewan rubbed his bald head with increasingly exasperated movements. His purple-blue eyes narrowed. “Not me.”

Maiwenn perched on a boulder and kicked the sand at her boots. “I have no idea.”

“Could we send a raven back to Dragon Tail and have one of our Scholars look through the old scrolls for any mention of a portal up here?” Tahlia suggested, glancing at the cage on Titus’s Spikeback. Two ravens cawed from inside, trained birds that were well accustomed to these missions.

“It’s a good idea,” Marius said, proud of his mate’s ability to think under pressure. “Will you take care of that Justus?”

“Aye, sir.”

Justus and Titus set to writing a note on the waxed parchment they’d brought and securing it to one of the ravens’ legs.

“We must assume we can’t simply shove him back through the portal from whence he came,” Marius said.

“Please start pacing. Your stillness is making me nervous,” Fara said.

Tahlia’s forehead bunched. “We need to know what he is capable of.”

Atticus crossed his silver-skinned arms and set his gaze on Tahlia. “Anything. He can likely do almost any type of spell if he has the knowledge, the time in the moment of action, and the will to draw the Unseelie runes for it.”

“How can we negate this magic?” Titus asked as he watched Justus release the raven into the wispy clouds slipping through the blue sky.

“We must surprise him at every turn,” Marius said. “We must act fast enough that he isn’t able to draw whatever rune might hinder our attack.”

“Maybe we can approach him from the far northern coast of that island. No one comes down from that direction,” Claudia said.

Atticus and Enora nodded.

“True,” Marius said. “But there’s a reason for that. This lovely warm breeze isn’t present when you cross over the Kniving Sea. We don’t have the clothing for that trip.”

Justus fed a crumb of dragonbread to the raven who hadn’t been sent on the messaging errand. “We might have to do it anyway.”

Tahlia raised two fingers. “We have a pair of Seabreaks. Let’s make use of their magic and stealth. Maiwenn, our mounts, and I could approach from under the water and distract them as the rest of you come from the north.”

Maiwenn raised her eyebrows. “Not a bad idea.”

“Maybe Lija and I can call up the sea creatures like we did in Midhampton.”

“You were in Midhampton?” Maiwenn climbed off the boulder, staring.

Ah, Tahlia, he thought, grinning and covering his mouth with a hand. When will you learn proper knight behavior? Mission information was always on a need-to-know basis.

He cleared his smile away. “Forget she said that. You heard her wrong. But yes, that is a fine idea. Will you ask Lija how she feels about this? And Maiwenn, will you speak with Donan?”

Tahlia and Maiwenn nodded and looked to their dragons, speaking through their bonds.

“Does dragon fire affect Unseelie like it does humans and us?” Ewan asked.

“I believe so,” Marius said.

“So we flame him the second he’s in range,” Atticus said.

“At first thought, yes, but he will expect fire.”

“Then how do we end him?”

“With bloodiron.”

“I forgot about that stuff,” Maiwenn said.

Bloodiron was often used by King Lysanael before the portals were closed, back when Unseelie monsters were tripping into this realm every other day. But in the Shrouded Mountains, they rarely had use for the material.

Maiwenn finished whatever she was telling her dragon and met Marius’s gaze. “Donan is good to go with the underwater surprise distraction attack.”

“Same with Lija,” Tahlia said. “She’s excited about it.” Tahlia’s grin was far too wide for this deadly situation they were in.

Ewan rubbed his bottom lip and frowned. “But how are we going to get bloodiron? Only the king’s guard has it and they don’t have much, from what I’ve heard.”

This would be tricky, but… “I would be willing to bet that we can find it around here on the black market,” Marius said.

Tahlia wiggled her eyebrows, and Marius shut his eyes, shaking his head. She was undoubtedly imagining insane disguises.

“No hats this time,” he muttered in her direction.

He was rewarded with a small chuckle that gave him hope somehow in this impossible situation.

They set to planning a trip to the nearest port town, Queen’s Coral.