Page 10 of Night Meets the Elf Queen (The Elf Queen #4)

THANE

T hane stood at the base of what was left of Valeen’s castle ruins, watching her and Hel in the distance. Being at odds with her was the last thing he wanted but he couldn’t let her kill Synick. Not yet.

Why was he alive? How did he get here? Did the council make a deal with the demon princes to bring him back?

They must know these things to plan for future attacks.

Because if they didn’t make a deal, that meant that Synick got out of the underrealm in a different way and it could mean the door was open and only the Maker knew what else could have crawled out.

He turned to the heap of old stone, wishing he could remember the details of what it once was in all its glory.

It had been too long. Wisps of another time flickered at the back of his mind, the jasmine trellises, the ornate celestial sconces on the stone walls, a glossy floor made of moonstone he’d once danced across with Valeen. But the finer details were lost.

Now goblins and monsters had taken over this place. They shouldn’t linger here.

Even though this was never his home, it was devastating to know what it once was and what had become of it in her absence.

Witnessing the pain in her voice, seeing her face twisted with agony, it cut into him.

Part of him wished he was the one wiping her tears away under the oak tree, but seeing them together…

He had never been able to console her the way Hel did.

She didn’t trust him in the same way, he hated admitting that, even to himself.

Synick groaned under Thane’s boot. His chest heaved up and down, struggling to breath under his weight.

“I can hardly believe your betrayal, War. Zaurahel, I understand, he was never as loyal—rebellious to his core, but how could you betray your own and join forces with one of the Drivaar? Not to mention my killer.”

Drivaar, Primevarr… the two sides of the gods were something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. Fighting over whether the All Mother or the Maker was superior seemed foolish now.

Thane tilted his chin down. Seeing Synick after so much time brought up strange feelings. This was the god who mentored him and Hel with cruelty and malice, but he was also one of the things that had forged a strong bond between him and his cousin.

“She poisoned you with her lies. Females and their wiles, you can’t trust them. Especially a primordial goddess. She will take everything from you with the promise of pleasure.”

“Stop talking.”

“You understand my animosity with her, do you not? She took my life, War. Sent me to the underrealm. It is only fair?—”

“You killed her sister first. Don’t act like you’re innocent.”

Katana sat a few yards off, tucked under a tree, with her arms hooked around her knees. Hopefully she couldn’t hear Synick. Her face was paler than before, those lavender eyes almost hollow.

The others gathered on the broken stones, taking seats while they waited for Valeen to compose herself. It was as if they shared an unspoken knowing that she was the one to decide what would happen next.

“There is no, ‘innocent or not innocent’, there is only power and who has it,” Synick retorted.

“Well by that logic, currently we have the power.” Thane shook his head at the messed-up worldview his former mentor had. Whether he knew it or not, Hel had picked up on some of his worse traits.

“Just listen to me. Valeen is not going to win. You can’t win by choosing her side. Is she humping you both? Is that what’s got you so hooked?”

Thane pulled his sword from the sheath on his back and bashed Synick on the head with it. His body went limp with unconsciousness.

With crossed arms, Piper raised her brows at him. “Frustrated?”

“I couldn’t take the sound of his voice any longer.”

Leif tapped his boots and lowered his voice, “I’ve never seen her like that.”

“She’s just realized she lost her home, Leif, and all the people in it,” Piper said, softly. “There is no one left.”

“It was lost long ago,” Thane said. “She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.”

“I wouldn’t say that to her if I were you,’’ Leif drawled. “Might lose your balls.”

After the tension earlier, Leif was probably right.

It was not a good time to antagonize her.

In all the years Thane had known her, he had seen her break down worse.

After she discovered what she thought was Hel’s betrayal.

He hadn’t known her when she lost Katana, but he imagined it took her down a dark road.

“Thane, can we talk?” Piper stood, crossing her arms.

He gestured for Leif to take over watching Synick and followed Piper away from the others. When they were out of earshot he turned to his second-in-command. “What’s going on?”

“You can’t look at her like she’s yours.” Piper rested her hand on her dagger handle, an old habit they all had.

“Katana?” He’d been watching her, wondering what he could do to make her feel better. He knew what trauma looked like in a person and she was riddled with it.

“Are you daft? Valeen, obviously. She’s not Layala anymore. I know you spent all your life as Thane wanting her and thinking she was supposed to be yours but that person with Hel is not her. Which only makes sense given in her mind, she’s thousands of years old.”

Although he didn’t feel the same way as Piper, he understood why she thought that Layala and Valeen weren’t one and the same. “I’m sure if you just talk to her, you’ll see it’s still her. You’ve been avoiding her since she got back from Ryvengaard.”

“You said yourself she was a different person,” Piper murmured.

“It’s why you pushed her away.” She’d let him taste her wrath the day Layala and Hel left to Ryvengaard.

He’d never seen her so upset. She’d sobbed as if she lost her, too.

He supposed in a way, she did. She screamed at him for letting her leave without being able to say goodbye to her friend.

She didn’t know if she’d ever see her again.

“And don’t try to turn this conversation back on me. She chose the Black Mage .”

“I’m acutely aware she chose him over me, Piper. No one is more aware of that than me.”

“Are you? Because right now, you’re staring at her like there is still a chance.”

“No, I’m not.” His tone turned sharper.

“It’s your fault she’s with him anyway. You told her to leave.”

Thane frowned, the crack in his chest he’d ignored for months began to split and throb. “I had to. She needed to know all of who she is. I was holding her back.”

“You lost her, and it was one thing when they weren’t with us but now…

now she’s with him. I don’t understand how she can love him.

Him . After everything he did to Palenor.

We had to fight the pale ones for hundreds of years, we lost countless people because of that curse he’s responsible for, and let’s not forget the way he treated all of us when he first arrived.

I can’t even fathom how you and her just welcome him with open arms. I’m disgusted every time she touches him and when he calls her his wife . He created the pale ones, Thane.”

Thane ran a hand over the top of his head.

Everything she said was absolutely true and yet she didn’t know him the way he and Valeen did and never would.

There were no excuses for him either. He couldn’t say, “Once you get to know him, he’s not so bad”…

because well, Hel wasn’t a hero. He didn’t share Piper’s morals.

He’d cross every line if it meant saving Valeen.

“I know what he did. You’re going to have to accept that he’s with us now.”

“Why should I? Why are we even here, Thane? This is about them, not us.”

“You swore to be her bodyguard, didn’t you? To protect her?” A falling pebble from the top of the ruins bounced until it rolled to his foot.

“I swore loyalty to you, and through you, her, as your future queen. She’s obviously not that anymore.” Piper let out a long breath. “She’s—not one of us. She’s a goddess from this strange world. And I’ve only seen a fraction of what she’s capable of, but she and Hel will be fine on their own.”

“You have no idea what we’re up against. And she is still your friend.

” The sound of the goblins inside the ruins caught his attention and he lowered his voice.

If the creatures came out here and found them, it was a fight they didn’t need.

“You’ve only ever known me as Thane, but I came from this world, too. ”

“Let Hel protect her. We can go back home. The gods will leave us alone in Palenor. It’s her they’re after, right?”

“Wow, you would really leave her alone to die? You’re not who I thought you were. And no, they will not leave us alone.”

Shaking her head, Piper looked away. “You’re doing this because you’re still in love with her.”

“So what if I was? She is one of the closest people in the world to me. I do love her.”

“I bet if the situation was reversed and she chose you and not Hel, he wouldn’t be here. You don’t owe either of them loyalty.”

“He’s my family, Piper.”

“So is Aldrich and you’d kill him if you had the chance. Wherever that weasel disappeared to.”

Thane’s jaw began to ache with how hard he clenched his teeth.

Piper was almost as stubborn as Valeen and never held back either, even to her king.

“Aldrich didn’t spend hundreds of years with me.

Didn’t defend me as a child, didn’t take beatings for me, didn’t stand by my side whenever I needed him.

Hel and I were inseparable until… You’ll never understand because you see him as the Black Mage first.”

“I want to go home.”

He waved a hand at the ruins. “You see this—this is what they will do to Palenor. They will come with armies the likes you have never seen. Creatures from every realm, beasts and monsters, races who know the sword as good as any Raven. I had a thousand dragons on my side, and we still eventually lost. Valeen and I were captured at our full power, so was Hel. And the gods, they cannot be killed except with the blade Valeen has. Even if she and Hel stayed and we went home, they would destroy Palenor to punish me, to punish them.”

Her brows furrowed into what seemed to be turning into a permanent scowl. “I thought—how could they do that to all the innocent people in Palenor? I thought the gods were supposed to be just and fair?”

Thane let out a humorless laugh. “Just? Those are fairy tales for children. The gods of Runevale lost justice and peace keeping long ago. Like Synick said, it’s about power and who has it.

We are a threat to theirs.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Valeen and Hel leaving the cover of the oak tree.

She appeared to be composed but even from this distance sadness was etched into her face.

“I want you to talk to her and see that Layala is still in there.”

Rolling her eyes, Piper stubbornly crossed her arms. “I will but I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her for choosing to be with Hel. She swore she had no feelings for him, no loyalty at all, then they disappear for a few months and she’s his godsdamn wife .”

A gurgled, throaty call cut through the air; Thane snapped his head toward it.

A goblin with gray-black skin and a fanged skull covering the top half of his face stood at the darkened threshold of the old castle ruins.

He raised a spear above his head and a trill for battle brought hundreds crawling up over the crest of the wall and scaling down ropes like spiders from webs.