The gnome walked toward me, taking a long, pointed dagger off his belt.
His red eyes glared with maddening glee.
I looked back at the will-o’-the-wisp. “Help!”
The tiny creature zipped over me and the gnome, heading back toward the stairs.
“Don't leave me!” I cried.
My back was frozen, and I used my hands to push myself up toward the wall to give me some sort of protection.
Summoning my magic, I desperately tried to push through the cloud in my mind, to find that tingling tendril of power.
Nothing, not even a glimpse of magic.
Without a weapon or access to my elemental ability, I had no defense.
“Please,” I cried as all feeling left my limbs, and I slumped to the floor.
Unable to lift my head, I watched in horror as the gnome came closer. A splotch of dried blood covered his left boot.
The gnome stepped on the candle, extinguishing the only light, sending us both into darkness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kane
Acaden stood across from me,staring at the war map, discussing the dead humans I had found, including the one who looked eerily like Deirdre, birthmark and all. “I've sent men to retrieve the human female you spoke of, Your Majesty. We’ll return her to their king. The rest will be buried.”
I leaned over the wooden table, examining the map of Saol etched into the giant landscape. Wooden figures of the different kings and notable leaders of the lands were strategically placed. The ancient model held both the surface and underground regions with the Life Tree in the center of it all. Magic infused the structure, making it easy to move the pawns around the table.
I took one of the hunched figures representing the twisted and placed it on the fae settlement I had just been to.
“This is the farthest the Lich King has come in years. Why is he advancing now?” I looked at the different areas the Lich Kinghad infiltrated. Always skirmishes on smaller settlements as he picked off the weaker ones one by one.
“You should meet with the human king.”
“We're still further away from any real conflict. This could have been a…” I paused, rethinking my words. What could it have been? And why were humans there? There was no love between our kind, not in the past few centuries. “We need to wait and see who that girl was in that camp and why she looked like Deirdre.”
Tapping my fingers along the wooden edge of the table, I questioned whether I did have the right woman.
No. The way she fought, how she sacrificed her freedom to save her husband. If she wasn’t the child of prophecy, wouldn’t she have mentioned that?
A tinge of guilt swept through my thoughts when I thought of that day. Yes, I expected a fight, but death was not my intention. Pity her husband wouldn’t listen.
“Your Majesty,” Acaden said, hands pressed against the opposite side of the table. “We don't have enough fae to keep the land safe from the Lich King and fight the humans.”
In that, my trusted companion was right.
Someone banged on the door. “Your Majesty!"
No one had the audacity to disturb us unless it was an emergency. “Enter.”
The door opened and my chamberlain walked in, his stuffy black tunic making him seem more human than goblin.
“You know that I'm not to be disturbed when Acaden and I are in here.”
“I'm sorry, Your Majesty,” Gitz said, tapping his green fingers against each other. “We have an issue. Needs your immediate attention.”
