The Dark Queen (The Dark Queens Book 5) (25 page)

His thumb lightly grazed the corner of her eye.

I love you...

The words were just there, on the tip of her tongue and ready to be breathed to life, ready to be spoken. But she was scared. So very scared. Not because she thought he didn’t care for her, she knew he did.

But because the ghosts of her pasts taunted and mocked her, telling her she’d done this once before and was only setting herself up for yet more pain. That George had seemed like an angel until he’d turned back into his true demonic form. That she might be doing the very same thing with Owiot.

And just as doubt would threaten to suffocate her, hope would rear its bloody head and tell her just the opposite. That George had never taken such care of her. That George had never taken the demons from her. Taken a knife wound for her. That George had never shared any intimacies with her...and on and on and on it went, the battle for whether to tell him or not raged like a tsunami inside her heart.

Hope, however, was stronger than almost any emotion in all the worlds; hope gave her heart wings and told her to “just try one more time,” that Owiot was someone worth fighting for.

She was going to do it. Just rip it off and say it and put it out there and if he didn’t return her affections she’d understand, but for once in her life she wanted to be brave. She wanted to—

“Just hold my hand, Fable. That’s all I need right now. Is just for you to hold my hand,” he said softly and with a thread of pain laced behind it.

Like the coward that she was, she held his hand and said no more.

Calypso

“A
re you sure, Dite? Shouldn’t we stick to the plan and pair them in the order we chose?”

Aphrodite had thrown Caly a curve ball just now. One she wasn’t sure about, and that truthfully made her sick to her stomach.

“No, I really think this is the route we need to go. We need to offer her the chance to battle The Blue next.”

Calypso shook her head, glancing at a still brooding Hades. Her lover hadn’t said much after today’s match. It had been hard to watch Baba nearly destroy her granddaughter’s mate, and if she hadn’t been so sure of the outcome of these love matches, Calypso would have probably tossed the damned witch back to Kingdom and rescued her granddaughter and future grandson-in-law. It had been all she could do to sit back and simply watch.

Though she had chewed more than half of her nails down to the quick. Which sucked, but whatever, they’d grow back. Why hadn’t the girl just said the words already? Or Owiot for that matter? Aphrodite had pumped so much of her love juice into their realm that even Calypso was affected by it whenever she stared through the sea orb. Frustrated and grumpy, she turned on her seat, staring at her husband.

“Hades, what do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Caly.” He sighed deeply. “I’m beyond my element with this. All I know is this, if anything happens to Fable, I will personally end everyone in there.”

And she knew he would too. Calypso looked toward Dite, who was pleading with her eyes and clasping her fingers tight.

“You have to trust me, just as you did before.”

“But why!” she snapped, then rubbed at her throbbing brow. This was no fun, not the way she’d hoped.

Calypso was too close to Fable. She should have known that going into the games, but she hadn’t expected it to be so hard to sit back and watch her granddaughter suffer as she had.

“She’s almost done, Dites. It’s just a matter of hours, possibly even a day before she and Owiot admit how they really feel. If you throw Galeta at her as her next match, she’ll stay. For a chance at retribution, and rightly so.”

Aphrodite, who’d taken to watching Baba Yaga’s child—Phlegm—through the entirety of the games, rocked his cradle as the little green flesh ball began to stir awake.

Immediately the goblin child settled back down into a deep slumber.

“Okay, say she does choose to stay. What’s so wrong with that? You saw what she did to Baba in there. If the witch hadn’t tricked her, Fable probably would have won that match.”

Calypso set her jaw, glancing off to the side. How could she put into words what she was feeling? The pain that felt like a stab to the chest each time she saw her granddaughter get hurt. There were very few things in life Calypso loved more than her family.

“She’s not a child anymore, Cals, you don’t have to protect her. She’s strong, and she’s—”

“She cast us out for years!” she snapped, frustrated enough that she finally allowed herself to speak the words that had haunted her from the beginning. “She thought she was too dirty, too repugnant for us to love and she had no one, Dites. No one! And I can’t...I can’t watch that happen to her again.”

Her voice cracked, and the seas rolled.

Hades stood up, coming over to his bride’s side and reaching down, he helped her up and gently embraced her. Kissing her temple as she shuddered into his strong, powerful body.

“It won’t happen, Caly.” Aphrodite spoke softly like one would to a spooked animal.

“How do you know?”

Her friend’s smile was dazzling as she said, “Because I just do. Because I know how love works, and I know that this is the final step to getting her there. She has to willingly walk away from the one thing she wanted most for all those years. Revenge on the Blue. When she does that, she’ll choose Owiot with her whole heart and soul and have no regrets, but she needs that chance.”

“But what if you’re wrong?” Caly squeaked, praying with all her might and soul that Aphrodite was right. That Fable would walk away from the darkness this time, that she’d choose love. Choose life. But she was so scared that her granddaughter wouldn’t, because she and Fable were so similar in so many ways.

If Calypso were in Fable’s shoes, she’d choose revenge and love. But if Fable did, the chances were very good her granddaughter might not walk away from this alive.

“All I can say is trust me, Caly. But I won’t push you on this, if you’re not—”

Curling her fingers into her husband’s dark collar, Calypso buried her face in his chest and murmured, “Then do it. I’ll trust you.”

~*~

Fable

B
utton landed back in the verdant rolling valley of pines and lavender-tinged skylight.

Owiot had healed almost instantly the moment he’d slipped from that realm and back into this one. His powers had returned when they’d parted through the shimmering veil between worlds and he’d breathed a heady sigh of relief behind her.

She was grateful that he was okay. But she was also upset by how close they’d come to losing everything.

Why hadn’t that witch killed him? She’d taunted them with death. And Fable had even seen the surety of it in Baba’s moss green eyes when she’d tipped the vile toward them.

But at the last moment, it was like the witch had changed her mind and decided to merely pin his foot instead.

In short they got lucky. Very lucky. Whoever came next might not be so generous.

Button was shaking his massive head and flexing his membranous wings like a dog shaking water loose. Owiot grabbed hold of her hand, squeezing gently and refusing to let go—which she was completely fine with as she had no desire to go without him tonight—the very trying, very long ordeal was finally over, and she was going to tell him everything. It was foolish to waste another minute in this place when the keys to freedom were literally at their fingertips.

She’d decided it was time to be brave. Time to stop hiding her head in the sand when things got too frightening or unsure and simply fess up.

“I have something to tell you,” Owiot whispered in her ear a moment later and a delicious shiver coursed down her spine.

Leaning into him, she wrapped her free arm around his bicep and squeezed. “And I have something to tell you too, my starlight.”

He was looking directly at her when she’d said that and his eyes blazed with silver fire.

“Oh, by the way,” Button said before they got too far down the path.

She groaned, knowing in her gut that anytime that bastard of a dragon sounded so blasé and amused, nothing good ever came from it.

Twirling on her heel, she snapped. “What, Button? What now?”

The massive, golden-scaled dragon chuckled heartily, causing the ground beneath their feet to gently sway.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, Evil Queen. I’m merely to tell you who you’re next opponent will be.”

Rolling her eyes, and awash with relief she held up her hand. “No need, I’m not—”

But he pressed on as though he’d not heard her.

“It’s none other than my own mistress, Galeta the Blue.”

The words died on her tongue. She gasped, suddenly suffused by rage, by a desperate desire to confront the villainous, evil fairy disguised as something made of light and goodness, when in fact she was the epitome of all that was wrong and corrupt within Kingdom.

Button lifted a regal brow. “Now, what was it that you were saying, oh dark one?”

She glanced at Owiot, who’d gone unnaturally still beside her, awaiting her answer.

And though she shouldn’t know his thoughts, she did. She could read them clearly on his face.

He wanted her to tell the dragon that there’d be no meeting. No need for it, because she’d found her mate in truth and she was done with this blasted world.

Five seconds ago, she’d have been able to utter those words in truth. But the need for vengeance was an insidious thing. Through all the years since Galeta’s leaving, Fable had tried in vain to conjure the demonic fairy again, to bring her forth so that she could extract her revenge—but the Blue had never shown.

Now, not only was she here, but Fable would be pitted against her next. The Fates had handed her revenge on a silver platter. How could she walk away from that now?

“No? Nothing?” Button chuckled, stirring the breeze. Unfurling his wings, he unfolded his body to its long, majestic length. Ready to set sail. “I’ll make sure to let the goddesses know.”

Owiot’s eyes practically bore through her skull; she felt the heavy weight of his stare like an anchor tied to her soul.

He wanted her to choose him. To choose him over her revenge. Over her need to hurt and kill. Over the darkness that had pervaded her mind these past centuries. To become a new woman, the type of woman he could proud of—
she
could be proud of.

This was a test.

She knew it.

Clenching her fists, she opened her mouth, but no sound escaped. She swallowed hard, trying to find the right words, searching her heart for that tiny kernel of goodness still left to her...

Button smirked. “I’ll be seeing you then, Dark One.”

And with a chuckle, he burst from the ground with one powerful flap of his mighty wings.

Only once he’d become a spec did the words come tumbling out. “No, wait! Button, come back, wait!”

But it was too late. The beast was gone.

Tears choked her vision as she twirled toward Owiot, lifting out a hand to beg him to understand, that she’d simply suffered a moment’s weakness, but her male too was long gone. And where he’d stood rested one lone beautiful flower with petals of white and thick bands of turquoise across each.

With a cry torn from her heart, she dropped to her knees, and plucked the pretty flower up, hugging it tight to her chest.

“Owiot,” she breathed, knowing in her heart that she’d wounded him as deeply as his Aiyana had. She shook her head, and cried alone.

The flower trembled in her hands.

~*~

Owiot

H
er look of unfiltered greed for revenge against the Blue had nearly shattered his heart. Aiyana had chosen to die rather than to remain with him; he’d hoped after they’d shared of their souls with each other that Fable would not do the same to him.

Call him a coward, but the moment he’d seen that thread of gold begin to wind through the blues of her eyes, he’d not stayed behind to find out. He couldn’t. Couldn’t hear her choose retribution over them.

It wasn’t that Owiot didn’t understand what had been done to her. The violence perpetrated against her. He hated the fairy for her part in turning his female dark. But war and death were not the answers. It was not the way.

Brother Coyote came padding silently out of the woods, looking up at him with his perpetually mischievous grin.

Owiot shook his head. “Not today, Brother. I am in no mood.”

Coyote gave a reedy, throaty chuckle and Owiot had to bite his back teeth.

“I am not running from her. I am giving her space. Giving her time.”

Coyote snorted and began to guide Owiot off the path, toward a massive oak tree with leaves burning like flame in the distance. The vexing Spirit animal that knew him far better than almost anyone else loped toward a fallen fire apple, snapping it up in his great big jaws and swallowing it in one greedy gulp.

Owiot sighed, settling against the base of the tree, watching as his brother consumed his weight in fruit. Finally satisfied, Coyote loped over to him and collapsed upon his legs, his big fat belly now overstuffed and full of food.

Sighing, Owiot proceeded to scratch Coyote behind his ears. “You vex me, Brother. But then you always have.”

Coyote snorted softly. That perpetual grin still firmly fixed in place. But when he turned to look at Owiot, his eyes were no longer the yellow of his animal familiar, but twin pools of liquid silver mercury.

His Brother wanted to show him something. Owiot frowned, peering into the shifting miasma of colors that had begun to take on shape and form. That of Fable and that of him.

In the left eye stood Fable. Tall, proud, and full of seething hatred.

Bowed low before her was a tide of people all wearing white, but their robes were dipped in blood. Pools of blood that poured like a waterfall down from her throne—a throne built of the skulls and bones of her victims. In her hand, she held a goblet full of green, noxious poison.

Her gorgeous face was twisted into one of perverted and evil delight, and her maniacal laughter echoed to the rafters as one body after another after another dropped dead at her feet.