Claiming the Prince: Book One (17 page)

“Yes. I did,” Ouda said. Her eyes seemed to grow larger, or perhaps it was only a trick of the light. “You are quite devastated.”

Honey dabbed at her eyes with one of the sheer layers of her dress. “No, I’m not.”

“The sylph told you nothing more?” Kaelan asked.

“Two things more,” Ouda said, never taking her eyes off of Honey. “The first, that if you survived, you would have a hand in the new age of Alfheim and the end of the Throne, which is why I helped you. The King is poison and must be defeated. And the second, that when I gave you these swords, I would be freed from the magical bond the sylph placed upon me and I could take my reward for assisting you.”

Slowly, Magda began to release her blades.

“Reward?” Kaelan said, taking a sword in each hand and rising. From the way the handles of the blades knocked together, it was clear he had little experience handling swords.

“Yes,” Ouda said. “And your friends will do nicely for a start.”

Damion drew his swords. Magda took a step forward.

Ouda opened her mouth, and opened and opened and opened it.

Magda blacked out or felt as if she had. One moment she was about to rush the spindly white woman, and in the next, Kaelan smashed into her and both of them crashed to the dirt.

“Damn!” Magda grimaced as her shoulder crunched against the ground.

Kaelan’s green eyes were wide. He scrabbled to pick up the swords that had fallen between them.

Magda pushed up to her feet. Damion stood frozen in place, swords in mid-arc, brow like a hawk’s. Ouda drifted over to Honey and placed both of her hands on either side of the nymph’s face. The black maw that had been her mouth was almost as big as Honey’s head. The nymph, like Damion, was frozen, her heel fixed above the ground, just about to step back.

A high-pitched whine from Ouda’s throat needled into Magda’s ears, muddling her thoughts and stiffening her body.

Kaelan’s shoulder bumped into Magda’s as he regained his feet. The contact loosened her limbs and cleared her head.

“It’s you,” she said to him.

“What’s she doing?” he said as Ouda’s mouth fixed around Honey’s face. Ouda’s petrification-inducing whine was dulled and Damion’s arms moved slightly, but as if in slow-motion.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Magda muttered.

Kaelan lurched forward, shaking one of the swords loose from its sheath.

Magda retracted her own blades, clamped down on his arm, and ripped the sword out of his hand. “Hold onto me.”

“She’s killing Honey!”

Magda took his hand and hooked his fingers into her waistband. “Don’t let go.”

She charged forward, dragging Kaelan like a Pixie Prince-shaped anchor. When she stopped, he slammed into her. She wobbled, trying not to topple into Ouda.

She sliced Kaelan’s blade through Ouda, but the fine curved sword simply passed through her stomach and out her back. The creature didn’t break away or even flinch from Honey, who had lost rigidity and hung slack, only held upright by Ouda’s leeching mouth.

As she feared . . . a normal sword wasn’t going to stop this creature. Fortunately, her blades were not normal weapons. Each was unique, each had magical properties. She just so happened to be in possession of a blade made for less substantial creatures.

She unleashed the tiny ghast blade from her left pinky, thrusting the bluish knife up into Ouda’s side, and was rewarded with the pressure of the blade hitting something solid.

Ouda’s mouth broke away from Honey, who dropped to the ground in a heap.

Ouda spun, clutching the wound in her side, which did not bleed, but shone with white light. She shrieked at Magda. The force of the howl threw Magda and Kaelan up and away to the very rim of the hollow. Magda landed on top of a fallen log. A black toad hopped over her back, leaving a slimy puddle of glue-like stickiness dripping between her shoulder blades.

Ouda’s whine started up again, thickening Magda’s thoughts and making it impossible for her to sit up.

“Magda.” Kaelan gripped her arm, breaking Ouda’s power over her again. “Look.”

Magda lifted her head with a groan. Down on the forest floor, Lavana and a dozen of her warriors were frozen in mid-dismount.

“Fuck.”

Kaelan dragged her up off the log. “You hurt her with your knives.” He gave her a bit of a jerk, as if he was going to fling her back into the hollow. “You have to kill her.”

Ouda floated down over Honey again, lowering her oversized mouth to Honey’s slack face once more.

Kaelan’s fingers dug into Magda’s arm. “You have to help her.”

“I know! I know!” She rolled her shoulders. The toad’s ooze was starting to harden. The fat bugger had the nerve to hop onto her foot, staring up at her with its bulbous smirking toad eyes. She glanced down at Lavana, locked in mid-stride.

“Grab this toad,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Do it!”

He reached down with his free hand, never releasing her. The toad let out a startled erping sound and tried to jump away, but Kaelan caught him.

“Come on.” She jerked him down the opposite slope towards Lavana.

“What about Honey?”

“She’ll have to hang on or we’ll all be dead, so it won’t matter! Just keep a grip on me and don’t touch Lavana.”

She stormed down to her cousin. Kaelan stumbled along behind her. Trying not to lose momentum, she swooped down and slammed her shoulder into Lavana’s waist. Heaving Lavana up over her shoulder, Magda swung around, almost losing Kaelan in the process.

“What are you doing?” Kaelan asked as he clung to her elbow.

“Still got that toad?” she asked, charging up the slope. Lavana’s rigid weight was harder to handle than pulling an unconscious human from the surf—something she’d had to do numerous times as a lifeguard.

“Yeah,” he said.

The added weight of Lavana gave her more momentum than she’d expected. She stumbled down the slope at a tripping run. Ouda had refastened herself to Honey’s face, feeding on her like an algae-eater stuck to the glass wall of an aquarium.

Ouda’s entire face had been overtaken by her mouth. Her nose and her eyes were gone. She didn’t flinch when Magda threw Lavana down on the ground next to Honey.

Kaelan’s hand lost contact with her for a second and she sank into a brume before he clamped down on her again, breaking her from Ouda’s trance.

Along with the paralytic whine, a terrible gulping sound issued from Ouda’s throat. But Magda didn’t allow herself to think about what was being taken from Honey.

Ouda’s hands were both flat on the ground on either side of Honey’s body. Magda shoved Lavana over until her hand covered Ouda’s. Again, Ouda seemed to take no notice.

Magda straddled Lavana in a crouch, flicking out her ghast blade again. Kaelan crowded behind Magda, his breath ragged. A churning melee of emotions flooded out of him into her: fear, panic, sadness, worry, anger, and most strangely . . . relief. But she let them flow through her and out again without giving them consideration.

“Okay,” she said. “As soon as she breaks free, shove that toad down her throat.”

Without waiting for his acknowledgment, she stabbed Lavana and Ouda through their hands with her ghast blade and then released it, pinning them together. Ouda snapped back from Honey. Kaelan released Magda as he chucked the toad into Ouda’s gaping mouth.

Magda experienced another second of immobility before Ouda’s whine died.

Ouda’s oversized mouth shrank, her pale eyes reappearing, her free hand grasping at her throat. Her neck distended as the toad struggled, no doubt unleashing a flood of glue-like goop. Before Ouda could shut her mouth, the toad scrambled out and flung itself free.

Magda threw herself back as Ouda jerked against the blade piercing her hand. At the same moment, Lavana’s eyes began to flutter and then they snapped open. She bolted upright, screaming.

Damion stumbled out of his trance.

Kaelan was dragging Honey away from Ouda and Lavana who were grappling, both pulling against the blade skewering their hands together.

Magda seized the front of Kaelan’s tunic. “You get her out of here and then you come back for us.”

She released him and set free the rest of her blades.

Kaelen gathered Honey to his chest. The shadows bled out from between the trees and surrounded him. He and Honey vanished.

From over the hillock, the voices of Lavana’s warriors grew louder.

Damion rushed to her, gaze flicking between her, Lavana, and Ouda.

“What in the—?”

“A dozen warriors coming over,” she told him.

Confusion dissolved into a hard smile. He started to back up, kicking one of Kaelan’s swords as he moved. He slid his own blade into his vault, stuck his foot under Kaelan’s sword, and flipped it up into his hand.

In gleaming afternoon light, the slender, curved blade was blinding.

The first of the warriors came over the ridge. She reached down and picked up Kaelan’s other sword, still in its sheath.

“Here.” She tossed it in his direction.

With one fluid motion, he put away his other sword and caught Kaelan’s. He gave them a twirl.

“These are too good for an imp,” he said.

She didn’t have time to respond as she darted forward to meet the first warrior. Weak, tired, covered in toad goo as she was, she met each of his blows and knocked him unconscious.

The timed strikes, the silence that filled her head, the measured cadence of her breath, all returned to her in an instant. Yet, she was slower and weaker than she had been when she’d last fought in the Lands. Her training had not been lost though. Her body remembered.

But it did not remember fast enough.

After throwing another warrior over her shoulder and back into Lavana, who had managed to extricate herself from Ouda since the creature had fallen flat and lifeless on the ground, Magda turned in time to block the right hand of the next warrior. But not the left. His blade plunged into her gut, smooth as a fin through water.

Her breath caught. Her heart’s steady pace stumbled. The world at once rose below her and fell on top of her.

Damion’s roar restarted her heart and breath, both of them lurching into a panicked rush. The warrior ripped his sword free. She swayed and fell.

“I’ve got you.” Kaelan’s lips were brushed against her ear and yet his voice sounded distant.

The last thing she saw was Damion spinning, his sword—Kaelan’s sword—slicing through the warrior’s neck, and a crimson spray bursting into the air.

T
HE WORLD CREAKED
and rocked, as if she were at sea. A high-pitched voice pierced through the haze of her healing sleep.

“Why did you bring them here?”

“I didn’t know where else to go,” a familiar voice replied.

Another familiar voice cut in. “Shut up, imp.”

“Don’t speak to my mother that way.”

“Damion . . .” Her throat rubbed raw and dry against itself.

“It’s all right, Mistress,” he said. “It’s all right.”

She groaned, trying to open her eyes, but failing.

“She’s still bleeding,” Damion said. “I thought you healed her.”

“I did.” Kaelan’s voice. “I tried,” he said. “I’m weak.”

“Because you wasted all of your energy trying to save that nymph!”

“I used all of my energy bringing us here. Including you,” Kaelan said. “Besides, I tried to help Honey, but I couldn’t—”

“Of course you couldn’t! She’s not a Rae!”

“I’ve been able to heal others—”

“Oh, yes,” the high voice chimed in. “Healed the wart on my toe. Zip-zip, gone!”

Damion growled again. “If my mistress dies, then so do you.”

Magda moaned again. Not because she was in pain, she could barely feel her body at all. Rather, she wanted to tell Damion to back off, but couldn’t.

“Grump, grump, grumpy that one,” the high voice said. And then more softly asked, “Is this a Rae?”

“Yes,” Kaelan muttered.

“Can you heal her?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good boy. Always such a good boy.”

The world rocked again, and a sharp jolt of pain cracked through her. She clenched, screaming, her eyes flying open.

“It’s all right, Magda.” Kaelan’s green eyes shone through the surrounding darkness.

He grasped both sides of her face, his Princely power pulling her away from the pain. It felt as if she were rising high up over the clouds into the stars and darkness.

“Honey,” she croaked. “Is she alive?”

A grieving wind, cold and inescapable, swept through her—from him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“She’s not dead,” he said, looking away. “I just can’t . . . Sleep now, Magda. I can’t help her, but I can help you. Sleep.”

And she did.