A Strange Hymn
Page 68

“Mara,” he whispers.
Mara, the vain Queen of Flora, has been hiding men in her sacred oak forest, one of the places where it’s forbidden to strike down a tree.
No wonder no one had found the soldiers—they’d been hidden inside the one place that could not be disturbed. Only an outsider like me would be ignorant and ballsy enough to desecrate this grove.
I feel the breath of Des’s magic a second before it hits the vines. The tree shrieks as it blackens and decays, the vines that hold the man fast now curling away.
Motioning with his hand, the Bargainer’s magic pries the sleeping soldier out of the tree. Vines groan and snap as the man is released.
His body is covered in gore like a new baby’s might be as Des’s magic settles him onto the grass. And in some ways, this is a dark rebirth.
“The bleeding trees,” I say to Des. Each one must house a missing soldier, his body cocooned inside it.
The Bargainer nods. “I know, cherub.” His eyes meet mine.
The plants aren’t rotting from a disease at all—they’re coffins.
Des leans over the sleeping soldier, his eyes scouring the man. “He’s just like the women.” A muscle in his cheek ticks.
The trees begin to rustle and shake as a wind kicks up. It lifts my hair and lashes it about.
“Mara’s coming,” Des says, his voice ominous.
My skin chills. This whole time it was the Queen of Flora who was behind the men’s disappearances.
The wind picks up speed, beginning to tear leaves from their branches.
I feel rather than hear her approach, her magic thickening the air with scents of pine and honeysuckle.
When I finally see her, her dress is whipping behind her, her bright red hair billowing around her like a fiery corona. At her back, a regiment of guards follow, their faces solemn.
“Who has struck down one of my trees?”
Struck down—like it was a man not a plant. Perhaps to her it was. Perhaps these trees are far more beloved than the men lying dormant inside them.
I straighten as she closes in on our group.
Mara’s eyes move to the tree I just demolished, and her low moan carries on the wind, rising higher and higher until it becomes a shriek.
“My sacred oak!”
For a moment, we’re forgotten. She rushes to the tree and falls to her knees at the foot of it, her hands going to its bloody trunk.
Now’s probably not the time to tell her that we actually took out two oaks, not one.
She doesn’t spare the sleeping soldier laid out near her a passing glance.
“I never thought it would be you,” Des says quietly, menace riding his voice.
His wings snap out, the bone-white talons gleaming in the darkness. The shadows are gathering around him.
Mara’s head is still bowed. “You entered the Fauna King’s palace and defiled it. I invited you to my kingdom and you dared to do the same. First with my harem, and now with my holy forest.”
Around us, I hear roots and vines begin to snap and stir.
“You thought promising peace between our kingdoms would earn you immunity.” Her hair begins to whip about her as her power rises, the floral scent now mingling with the cloying smell of rot. “You—thought—wrong.”
Mara screams, and a hundred different roots and vines shoot towards us. Des steps in front of me, and shadows blast out from him, snuffing out the fairy lights and blocking out the heavens above. The roots wither and die away before they can do more than caress my skin.
Everything is inky darkness. I can’t tell up from down, left from right. There is no ground, no forest, no soldiers, no sky. Nothing but primordial night.
From the darkness, I hear Des chuckle. “Oh, Mara.”
The air fills with power, and the fae queen shrieks.
BOOM!
The earth shakes as Mara unleashes another wave of her magic.
“Is that the best you have?” Des taunts a moment later.
I can’t tell what’s happening, I can only assume that the two rulers are fighting.
The magic in the air crests again—and again and again.
“Callypso …”
The hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. Des’s voice calls to me from an entirely different direction than where I assumed he stood.
“Enchantress …”
I spin at the sound of his voice.
From the nothingness around me, a figure appears in the distance. Des watches me from afar, not coming any closer.
And yet, I swear I can sense him still engaging with the Flora Queen somewhere else in the darkness.
Des beckons me towards him. When I don’t budge, he turns around and heads deeper into the inky blackness.
What is going on? Is this an illusion? Is this real? What happens if I follow him?
What happens if I don’t?
On reflex, I begin to move, throwing a glance over my shoulder. I don’t know why I bother. Aside from Des, there’s nothing here but unending darkness. I understand now why one of Des’s titles is the King of Chaos. This world of perpetual night could drive a person crazy.
Slowly, however, the shadows give way to forest once more. It’s not until I can see the fairy lights overhead that I look behind me. A swell of darkness still swathes the forest. From it I can hear faint shrieks and grunts.
When I swivel back around, my mate waits for me in the distance, surrounded by those bloody oaks.
“Des?” I say, confused.
How can he be in two places at once?
“How very beautiful you are,” he says.
Again my gooseflesh rises. Something about his voice is … off. But what?
“Callypso Lillis, the enchantress,” Des says, strolling forward.
“Des, what’s going … ?” My words die away as he nears.
That hair, those eyes—it’s a spitting image of Des. But the shape of his face is a little squarer, and the curve of his mouth a little crueler.
Not Des!
I take a step back.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.”
My heart’s thundering, my gaze moving from the fairy’s pointed ears to his white hair and sculpted frame.
Not Des, but similar.
This man’s body is a shade more compact than my mate, his frame a bit more wiry.
Despite the incongruences, I recognize him from my dreams.
… dreams are never just dreams …
“Who are you?”
He disappears, only to manifest behind me.
“A ghost.”
I whip around, expecting to see him at my back, but there’s no one there. I spin in a full circle, but the man who could be Des’s doppelganger is gone.
“So the Bastard of Arestys found himself a human mate.” The man’s voice comes from above me. “Here I was, ready to pity him.”
The Bastard of Arestys … I’ve heard that from somewhere …
“But you are nothing quite so ordinary,” he continues. “A human with wings and scales. A siren who can ensnare mortals with her voice alone.
“Even I might’ve made an exception for a mortal like you.”
I stare at the canopy above me, trying to track his voice.
“How did you lead me here?” I ask. How did no one sense you? Des rules the darkness and everything in it.
The fairy laughs. “By the time your mate was learning tricks in the darkness, I had already mastered them.”
I glance around me, trying to pinpoint the man’s voice. Damn him, he keeps moving about.
“The foolhardy ruler of Night is everything he is because of me—but not for long.”