We paused at the edge of the forest and were joined by three horsemen. Amadan rode the black horse, Lyel dismounted his own steed to mount the red, and Elidor sat upon the white. He was glamoured to appear in his former beauty: his long silvery hair full and unbound, his face shining like gold, his garments elegant and snowy white. You almost did not notice the vines wrapped round his wrists and tying him to his horse.
Too dangerous to live, but almost too pretty to die.I wondered what would have happened if I had danced with him at the coronation; if that would have been enough to change his mind about me, or if he simply would have tried to kill me then. In the end it did not matter. Someone needed to die today, so that Faery might live. And my mother’s killer was the perfect choice.
Yet my seneschal would not meet my eyes. My heart felt weak and my conscience stumbled at the thought of killing Elidor. Was it simply that I must be the one to hold the blade?
You nearly killed him once. This time it will take.
I closed my eyes, conjuring up the most dangerous parts of myself, all that was fatal inside me, hard and cold and cruel, but did not let it take over. Instead, it coalesced, and I stretched out a single arm from which a dagger sprouted, deadly sharp and cold as ice.
“To the well!” I cried out, and held my dagger high overhead.
The company roared out their assent and on we rode.
Among the woods of Carterhaugh, the Unseelie roamed. The shapeless brollachan clung like shadows to the night-dark trees. Blue-faced hags muttered in the darkness, their every step turning the ground to frost. An unearthly washerwoman wrung out soaking wet clothing; I did not look too closely to find out whose garments they were.
I ruled them as much as I did the prettier fae in the company. They would feed tonight as well.
How infinite we all were, in our magic, our hunger, and our desires. I knew then I would do whatever it took to make my people thrive.
And at last, we were at the well.
The company stood back, all but the three horsemen. Amadan helped me to dismount, while Lyel did the same for the bound Elidor. I stood against the well, and the roses,myroses surrounded me, crawling up my skirts and over my arms like fine embroidery.
I raised my chin and looked straight forward. “Bring the prisoner to me.”
Lyel paused for just a moment, and around him I saw twining vines of light, as though he too were somehow bound. I cocked my head, questioning, but my seneschal did not speak, only pushed Elidor forward, so that he fell on his knees.
Pity, treacherous as this one who knelt beside me, pooled in my heart. I grabbed his hair and forced him to meet my eyes.
“Oh, for what might have been,” I said.
Elidor’s eyes glinted with malice. “You haven’t rooted out the last of us.”
“Die,” I told him and slammed my dagger into his chest.
Time slowed, and Elidor fell backwards, gurgled. I had caught him by surprise.
Then the world fell away.
I saw desert. Rocks. Corpses.
Carrion birds cried overhead.
Blinked again, and Elidor hit the ground.
He had betrayed me. He tried to turn my people against me, killed my mother. Even so, it hurt to see him dying, for he was part of Faery and thus part of myself. I had to remind myself I did this to save us all.
I felt no relief, no satisfaction; a hollowness took me over, a hunger that was like none I had ever known. I was the desert, the bare rock, the dying trees. I had emptied and been refilled with need. The land still hungered.
The Teind had not been paid.
You haven’t rooted out the last of us.Elidor’s final words hit me even as I was dying inside, and Faery was dying too; Samhain was nearing its end and the Teind had not been paid. I stared madly around the assembly, desperate, my heart clenched by a grip of iron.
“Find them,” I howled, my voice hoarse as a woman who’d not drunk in days. “His partisans! Find them and bring them to me now! The Teind will be paid.”
Confusion erupted throughout the assembled fae. Some pushed forward Aos Sith known to be friends of Elidor. Some no doubt offered peers they did not like much, to get rid of them. Others merely turned on their neighbors and began to feast. It could not sate their hunger, not as they hoped, but perhaps that did not matter to them now.
But a lone voice cried out, mellifluous under its desperation. “No! The Teind can only be paid with innocent blood.”
