“Show me where to cut,” he murmured. My trembling hands indicated the place on each wing joint where a blade would encounter the least resistance. Attempting to block out Antenor’s cries, I pulled up the magyk of my healing gift and prepared to close the wounds as they were made.
When Devil’s scythe made the first cut, I nearly fell to pieces. It was all I could do to pour a steady stream of magyk out, to staunch as much bleeding as possible while Antenor begged over and over for me to kill him myself. Hot tears slid down my face, mixing with his royal-red blood, but I could not wipe them away without severing my connection to his body. Oberon and Simeon watched in stoic silence, keeping an eye on the Rot, which was still spreading, seeking out a heart to tear open. When the first wing fell away, already dead and dessicated, Antenor’s wretched pleas turned to quiet, pitiful sobs. His muscles gave out, and he hardly even flinched when Devil began to cut away his remaining wing.
Just as blade met sinew, there was a flash of light nearby. I looked up through my tears to see Titania and Hippolyta. Prim hovered just above them, wringing her tiny hands.
“What happened?” the queen demanded, moving forward and sweeping her amber eyes over the gruesome scene.
“He was attacked, my lady,” Simeon explained, quickly stepping between her and Oberon. “Forced to use his wings as a shield against the Rot. Whoever it was, they got away, and he has not been coherent enough to give us any details.”
Hippolyta’s face hardened and she drew the sword from her belt.
“You must leave him,” Titania called out to me. “You must all go, quickly!”
“It’s not spreading!” I shouted back, battling to maintain my stream of magyk.
“No, but they are coming.” She pointed past me, into the darkness of the Rot-tainted forest, and I was too afraid to look.
“May,” said Devil, keeping his focus on the task at hand, but speaking urgently. “Run.”
“No!” I cried. “I won’t leave him! It’s almost done.”
“May!” Devil snarled, pressing the blade harder into Antenor’s wing joint. I looked over my shoulder at Titania, and out of the corner of my eye, caught something creeping slowly along the blackened forest floor.
Panic rose in my throat. “Someone help, please!”
It was directed at Titania, but she had moved to stand between us and the Rot, summoning an enormous shield of blue flame between her hands. Hippolyta, however, stepped forward and raised her sword. Devil lifted his hands and aimed a beam of light at it, making the blade glow white-hot as she swung it down. With a sickening, crunchingrip, the wing tore free. Immediately, Oberon used his shadows to launch Antenor’s prone body away from the Rot, just as Devil wrapped his arms around me. His wings flared out, coated in light, shielding me from…something.
I could not see what it was, but I heard its voice—screeching and shrieking. It sank between my bones like unholy ice, expanding and cracking and filling me with a dread the likes of which I had never felt before. Hippolyta, Oberon, and Titania closed in behind Devil, blocking another attack as I scrambled back and drew out my own shadows. I had never fought before, especially not with magyk, but I was not about to leave them to their fate.
“May, you have to run!” Devil begged, closing his shielded wings around me. “Take Antenor and go to the Hollow, please!”
“I’m not leaving any of you!”
He had no time to answer before Hippolyta slammed into his back, sending him to the forest floor, and I finally saw what the Rot had sent for us. The creature had clearly once been fay, with a pair of shredded, rotting butterfly wings hanging limp from its back, and huge, glassy eyes sunken into a hairless skull. Blackened, festering flesh hung from eerily long, mismatched limbs and brittle bones. It crawled back toward us, its movements jerky and unnatural, like a spider missing half its legs, but also disturbingly quick. Before me, Titania’s blue flame and Hippolyta’s glimmering sword, Oberon’s forest of shadowy spears and Devil’s golden scythe closed ranks.
The monster snarled at them, reaching beyond the Rot with spindly but lethal clawed hands. Its human-ish jaw hung loose, dripping black ooze onto the forest floor, and yet somehow it still made that terrible noise. I could not tell if it wascontained by the boundary of the Rot, or by my family holding it at bay. Slowly, I backed toward Antenor, forming my shadows into small, sharp arrows that I hoped I might be able to launch if the Unseelie thing came for me. From my vantage point, however, I was able to see the second monster closing in, and to cry out a warning.
This one was cat-like, with a gaping maw of jagged, obsidian teeth and a long, whip-like tail made entirely of charred bones. Without setting foot into the Rot, Titania sent a burst of flame toward it, but was blocked by the first Unseelie monster, which dodged and stepped outside the boundary of the curse, swinging with deadly claws. Its companion leapt into the tree canopy, loped along a long branch, and then launched itself at Oberon from above. He threw his shadows out, creating a solid shield studded with spikes, which impaled the beast’s shoulders.
Devil swung his scythe across its belly and had to duck behind his own shield of light as it spewed black bile. Calling up more shadows, Oberon threw the entire shield back into the darkness just as Hippolyta brought her blade down on the first monster’s leg, severing it clean from the body. It let out a horrifying wail and swiped at her, its talons scraping across her copper breastplate with an ear-splitting squeal. She stumbled away, falling beside me, and Titania screamed with rage, finally engulfing the dark thing in her flames. I bent down to put a hand on Hippolyta’s chest just as she opened her eyes and shoved me to the ground behind her and covered me with her own body.
“They’re gone,” Titania cried, collapsing onto her knees. “They’re gone. It was only two this time.” Hippolyta left me and rushed over to pull her queen away from the boundary of the Rot, while I shifted to sit on trembling knees, hardly knowing what to do. Devil, still covered in Antenor’s blood like I was, pulled me into his arms and closed his wings around us. I held him tightly, pressing my face into his neck so I could feel the slipshod pulse of magyk beneath his skin.
“Are you hurt?” he whispered.
“N-no,” I sobbed, fresh tears falling as my body shook with relief. “Are you?”
“Fit as a fiddle.” He attempted a smile when I looked up, and I just shook my head incredulously. There was a shout from behind us, and Devil’s wings opened to reveal Simeon approaching with a small contingent of fay soldiers. He surveyed the scene quickly, determined that we were in no immediate danger, then crouched beside Antenor. I released Devil and ran to help. It took me only a few minutes to get all the remaining blood loss under control, but he was still unconscious. I used the opportunity to run my magyk through his veins,preemptively soothing his pain and getting a headstart on repairing the vicious slash marks marring his entire upper body.
Finally, I ran my fingers over the ragged stumps of flesh protruding from the back of his tunic. The sound of him begging for death echoed in my head, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made the right decision. Only a few days before, he had told me that he would not trade his wings for even a drop of the Arden’s magyk, and now I had taken them away from him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, bunching his ruined and bloody shirt between my fingers as I cried. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do…”
A shadow fell over me and I dried my eyes to look up.
“You should have run,” said Oberon calmly.
“I couldn’t…just leave…” I took a deep breath and changed the subject, not in the mood for a lecture. “We need to get him back to the Bower. I have to work on these wounds quickly, to reduce the scarring.”
