“Apart from my life, what’s in this for me?” Daigh narrowed his eyes. “What good is a kingdom inside an iron box?”
“In return, we will give you back the wild places of the earth,” Aline said. “We will throw open the gateway so the fae can return to dwell in the forests and on the glades and in the caves and upon the meadows. You will have dominion in these places, the only rule imposed on you that you may not harm a human.”
“That doesn’t sound like any fun.”
“Fun is where you find it,” Aline smiled at Daigh.
I glanced up at Aline. Could we really make an agreement like that, one that concerned the whole world, without consulting anyone?
Daigh threw his head back. “Why would I take this sorry deal, when in a few days I will have the entire world at my mercy?”
“Because this way you get exactly what you want – what you claimed this battle was all about.” An idea popped into my head.I can’t believe I never thought of this before. I pressed on. “I know Blake told you about the rest of the vision – the burned and cracked earth, the sky on fire, the air poison in your lungs. Do you know what that is? It’s a nuclear weapon – it will turn the earth into an uninhabitable wasteland for at least five-thousand years. It’s what the humans will hit you with once they see the Slaugh coming. I know fae live a long time, but can you really wait five thousand years before you ever hope to see a forest again?”
Nice one, Princess.
I know.I cast my mind back to the dream that had haunted me for so many nights. I’d been focusing on the stakes, I hadn’t even considered the ruined landscape. Now that the idea had occurred to me, I knew I’d guessed correctly. The fae didn’t have the power to do that kind of damage – and even if they did, they couldn’t turn it against the natural world. I highly doubted it was the hand of a witch. No, it was the kind of destruction only humans were capable of.
“As dramatic as your tale is, I think I’ll take my chances.” Daigh swivelled his gaze to Blake. “You shouldn’t have left, Prince. You chose the losing side.”
“I think you did, old man.”
“You will join me before this is over, daughter,” Daigh flashed me that cold smile of his. “We will be a family. You will see.”
A black cloud rose from the sherd, tendrils swirling around us. Aline shoved me back just as one reached for my ankle.
Daigh’s face disappeared into the black mist. The mirror shattered to pieces. I fell to my knees, my stomach lurching as his cold, cruel laugh rose from the mirror and echoed through the wood.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN: BLAKE
Only when Daigh’s face disappeared from the surface of the mirror did I drop Maeve’s hand. His evil laugh reverberated in my head, reminding me how important it was that we beat the bastard in this battle. Because if he won…we’d all be buggered, to borrow a phrase from Flynn.
Maeve bent down and picked up a long sherd of the cracked mirror, pinching it between her fingers. “It’s hot.”
“We did just hit it with a ton of magic,” Aline pointed out.
Maeve tossed the sherd on top of the broken frame. “That was a waste of a perfectly good mirror.”
Aline flopped down on the grass, wrapping the long sleeves of her cloak around her body. “Wasn’t that exhilarating!”
“It wasn’t. It wasawful. And it was a waste of time – he didn’t take our deal.”
““Did you really expect him to?” Arthur frowned.
“I thought that was the plan.”
Aline grinned. “Have faith, daughter. We’re much more subtle than that.”
“You did what you came to do, Princess.” I kicked a mirror sherd with the edge of my boot, sliding it on top of the rest of the glass. “You unnerved him.”
Seeing Daigh again sure unnerved me. I hated the way he directed that smile of his at Maeve. I’d seen that smile too many times before, and it usually led to someone getting spikes under their fingernails or losing their head.
“We did,” Aline grinned, twirling a strand of her hair around her long fingers. “I hoped we would also learn something valuable, and we did.”
“We did?”
I nodded. Aline and I were the only people who knew Daigh well enough to read between the lines. “He denied practically everything else, but he never denied he was in love with Aline.”
