The Fiend Queen (41 page)

“A council member,” Roland said. “You can stop her, Little K.”

Katya snarled at the beloved nickname. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”

Redtrue flung her arms toward where Starbride stood transfixed. “She has succumbed.”

“Then get me in her mind. Use dream magic.”

Her mouth worked soundlessly. Leafclever strode up behind her. “She cannot, Princess, and you know it. We must kill Starbride before it’s too late.”

Katya was tempted to turn her sword on him, but instead, she gripped Redtrue’s hand. “Please, Red. Please.”

Redtrue’s eyes bored into Katya’s. She nodded once. Leafclever sucked in a sharp breath. “You know what this means?” he asked.

She nodded again. Katya didn’t know what they were talking about and didn’t much care. Her friends, still groggily shaking their heads, gathered around her. Katya pressed a knife into Dawnmother’s grasp and spoke in her ear. “If anyone interferes, you know what to do?”

Her gaze never wavered. “Yes.”

Katya cut her eyes at Roland. “Watch him especially.”

Roland stepped closer and drew a pyramid from a bag at his side. Katya let the point of her rapier rest against his heart. “Don’t.”

“Let me help you, niece.”

She looked from his pyramid to Redtrue, who could cleanse it with a thought.

“I know more about Fiend magic than anyone here, save Yanchasa. Whatever they’re doing, maybe I can slow it down.”

“I should kill you for what you did to my mother.”

He sighed as if the idea made him happy, but he also had steel in his gaze. This was the only man who could ever stand toe-to-toe with Katya’s father during an argument, who could match him volume for volume, with the same passion, when each believed his cause was just. “I’ll help first, and you can kill me after.”

This must have been where Reinholt got his sense of humor. Katya gave Redtrue a glance. She nodded as if to say she’d keep an eye on him.

With her friends forming a barrier around them, Katya sat at Redtrue’s side, just in front of Starbride’s feet. Redtrue pulled her dream walking pyramid from her bag and closed her eyes. Katya closed hers, too, shutting out the heated words between her friends and the adsnazi. Seconds passed before she felt as if the hard ground dropped away, and she was pulled through the air.

The world faded to a white void.

Cavern gone, friends and family, gone. Even Redtrue was a hazy silhouette. “Starbride?”

Katya had never been able to see anything in these visions before. She’d always had to concentrate on Starbride’s thoughts and emotions within the darkness of her own mind. This time, air rushed around her, and Starbride popped into view. The pyramids no longer marred her skin. She was dressed in the outfit she’d worn when Katya had asked her to be the princess consort: dark blue trousers, shirt and bodice, jewels around her throat, but her hair lay in tangled knots over her shoulders.

“Katya?” Starbride asked. Her eyes were the same milky white as the void. “I can feel you, but there’s so little room in here. Did I pull you into the pyramid with me?”

Katya started for her, but a shadow stepped from the void behind her. She wore a metal breastplate over a knee-length coat, leather trousers covering her long legs, and tall black boots studded in metal. Her black hair was short and spiky, and her reddish brown skin was the same hue as Starbride’s. She radiated strength and confidence along with beauty and charisma. As Katya watched, she shifted to male and then back to female before she laid her hands on Starbride’s shoulders.

“Is that you?” Starbride asked.

Yanchasa bent to whisper in Starbride’s ear. Starbride frowned. “You abandoned me.”

“Never in my heart, beloved,” Katya cried. “They forced me to leave Marienne, and I hated them for it.”

“You could have come back for me.”

“I did! You don’t know how badly I wanted to run back to you as soon as I awoke.”

Starbride’s frown deepened, and the ghostly light of a pyramid shone from her forehead. “But you didn’t.”

“Monster!” Katya shouted at Yanchasa. “She knows the truth. It’s only your poisonous words swaying her.”

Yanchasa whispered in Starbride’s ear again. “You want me to be weak.”

Katya put all the force of love behind her words. “I want you to be whatever and whomever you like, my love. I adore every part of you.”

Starbride shifted, color blooming in her eyes before fading. “I’m afraid.”

Katya stepped closer. “Then lean on me, dearheart. I will help you as you’ve helped me. We’re better as a couple than we could ever be alone.”

Starbride tried to reach out, but Yanchasa laid his hand over hers.

“I don’t know how to stop it,” Starbride said.

Katya knew they didn’t have much time. They were in some dream world of Starbride’s creation, but Katya knew only one way to fight. She concentrated, and her rapier appeared in her grasp. “I think it’s time you face
me
for a change, Yanchasa.”

Starbride

Starbride’s vision was hazy, but she felt Yanchasa’s comforting presence, his words in her ear. She could hear Katya, but the sound came from the end of a long tunnel. Still, Starbride could feel her emotions as if they existed in the same head. She’d pulled Katya into a dream.

Had it always been a dream? Yanchasa’s focus shifted, and Starbride could see Katya’s hazy form coming closer and then sharpening, a rapier in her grasp.

But not aimed at Starbride. No, she pointed at Yanchasa. His attention split too far, some on Katya, some on transferring his essence from the capstone into Starbride, and even more trying to pull in one of the council members, a long process, but Starbride could feel a form beginning to solidify. She bet the adsnazi felt it, too.

Yanchasa’s power filled her head with white noise, but as Katya leapt, Starbride felt that river slow. A longsword appeared in Yanchasa’s hand, and she batted Katya’s attack away. Undeterred, Katya came on again. This time, Yanchasa parried and slashed at Katya’s arm.

The blow tore through Katya’s bicep as if she were made of smoke. Katya gasped and backed off, her arm not bleeding, but blinking in and out of focus. She may not have been physically present, but the blows would take a toll on her psyche.

With a laugh, Yanchasa charged, and Starbride felt his control slip again. She’d had a dream, she remembered, in the hideout while Roland still controlled the city. She’d been running, trying to escape the castle, and Katya had left her behind. It had been buried deep, but part of her had always thought Katya had abandoned her.

Her waking mind had never believed that, especially after she’d gotten in touch with Katya, when their love had been easy to feel. Lately, it had been Yanchasa plumbing her subconscious and fanning the flames, but she couldn’t realize it because he was
inside
her mind.

That shouldn’t have been possible. She was a pyradisté. No one could invade her thoughts, not unless they used the same method as Roland and obliterated her brain before ransacking it.

“I believed you,” she said. Grief had made her vulnerable, and she’d let him in, and then, Horsestrong forgive her, she’d believed everything he’d said. He’d turned her emotions as if cranking a handle, the adsna letting him control what she felt and when.

Yanchasa’s sword rang against Katya’s, but she cast one look over her shoulder. “I didn’t have to lie to you, daughter.”

Most of the time that had been true. Yanchasa had found every insecurity, every doubt. Starbride struggled against the power that coalesced around her like a web.

Yanchasa staggered, and Katya delivered a stab to her thigh.

“Keep fighting, Star!” Katya called.

Yanchasa’s rage blew Katya away like an autumn leaf, and she tumbled out of sight in the void. “Fool, you’re nothing without me, can’t you see that?”

And it was so. No one could give her power like Yanchasa could, no one could ever be so close, so intimate. Yanchasa appeared before her and cupped her face in his icy fingers. “I can be everything to you, daughter. Embrace me fully, and you’ll need no one else. I can watch from within your mind, and sometimes, if you’re tired, I can use the body while you rest.”

And she was tired, very much so, and the power filling her felt so warm and comforting. How bad could it be to—

“Get the fuck away from her!” Katya yelled, charging out of the white.

Yanchasa and Katya traded blows again. Starbride shook herself back to thought.

“Star, I love you,” Katya called. “You can’t doubt that, not ever.” Her feelings leapt the space between them and wrapped Starbride like a warm blanket.

“Keep her busy!” Starbride yelled. She pushed against the power and held on to one truth: Katya loved her, and she loved Katya. Even if Yanchasa sometimes spoke the truth, that didn’t make him any less of a betrayer.

She repeated that to herself as she tried to close the flow of power, but she feared it was too late. Yanchasa howled and blinked from sight, but Starbride knew the fight wasn’t over. The ribbon of power doubled and smacked into her like a hammer.

“It would have been easier if you’d accepted,” he whispered in her mind. “But I can steal your body if I have to.”

“No more promises of love?” Starbride asked. In response, pain cascaded through her skull, and she cried out. Katya’s arms went around her.

“More difficult,” Yanchasa said, “but I can manage.”

His power filled her. Her arms and legs jerked in their sockets, and she willed them to still. Yanchasa cut into his council-summoning efforts, and the excess power surrounded her.

“Fight it, Star!” Katya cried.

“I’m trying.” It wouldn’t be enough. Yanchasa’s feelings of victory rose inside her, coupled with contempt for the beautiful woman in her arms. Farraday was a kingdom without ambition, but all that was about to change. “You have to kill me.”

Katya held her tighter. “Everyone keeps saying that, but I’m not going to listen. Redtrue, can you bring us closer?”

Redtrue’s hazy shape sharpened, and the edge of Katya’s form slipped into Starbride’s. Katya pressed their foreheads together, into each other, and Starbride felt the force of Katya’s iron will. Yanchasa’s power waned, but they were still two young minds against an ancient one, one that had been plotting, waiting. Yanchasa had grown tired of wasting time with amateurs like Roland and wasn’t about to give up the prize she’d been given.

Starbride felt a sliver of affront, and a fourth consciousness brushed her own. Roland’s power crackled alongside them. He’d been a strong pyradisté
before
merging with his Aspect. No wonder he’d always seemed leaps and bounds ahead of everyone.

“This is twice everyone has turned against you,” Starbride said. “Now I know why
I
felt so rejected, Yanchasa. You were feeding me your own fears. Even Roland has turned on you. How did you think of him? Amateur? Puppet?”

Roland’s angry power flared, free to do as he wished, no longer under Yanchasa’s thumb. She knew the feeling. Yanchasa gave a hair’s breadth of ground.

“It’s like trying to move a boulder with a spoon,” Starbride said. “We can’t stay like this forever, Katya.” All of them would tire before Yanchasa, bodies that needed to eat and sleep.

“Try harder!” Katya screamed.

Starbride didn’t know if they could. Katya eased deeper into her until Starbride couldn’t separate Katya’s thoughts from her own. Both wanted the other to live as much as each wanted to go on living. One consciousness, bearing both sword and magic, they were invincible, unstoppable.

Yanchasa’s grip weakened. “Think of the power, daughter!”

She and Katya had all the power they needed. They fought as a single force, aided by Roland and Redtrue and now the adsnazi, forcing Yanchasa back into the capstone. Starbride thought of her real parents, the love of her father, her mother’s determination. “I am not your daughter.”

“I will not be refused!” A pulse roared through them, and Katya nearly jerked from Starbride’s grasp.

Roland’s magic spiked in response. Starbride grabbed for Redtrue’s power and forced her and Katya back together, their minds merging with such a rush that they emitted a pulse all their own.

Yanchasa screamed and gave way, and they intruded on her psyche the way she’d plagued Starbride’s, saw her fears laid bare: that she would spend eternity imprisoned, never to feel the sun upon her skin again, never to see Edette or the other three, never to taste a pear or feel the rush of blood from a defeated foe.

“Get out of my mind!” he shouted.

“You’re just as scared as the rest of us,” Katya-Starbride said.

And they weren’t alone. Redtrue followed them, and she pitted her own considerable will against Yanchasa’s. Roland’s power hammered on the pyramid, keeping all the precious ground they won. Katya-Starbride sensed the adsnazi pushing Yanchasa toward his prison as gently and unstoppably as a leaf being carried down a river.

Yanchasa jerked and struggled and screamed in dual voices, but they forced him down, cramming his consciousness into the pyramid and sealing the way out.

Katya

It felt so right. Each wanted to stay joined with the other. They could be Katya-Starbride always, sustained by love.

But in whose body?

“Making love will be easier and more difficult at the same time.” And with that thought, they were separate again, though Katya still reveled in Starbride’s affection.

“That was you,” Starbride said. “Trust you to break us apart with a thought like that.”

A ping of exhaustion traveled through the void like a vibrating harp string. Redtrue.

“We have to leave,” Katya said. Still, she didn’t let go of Starbride’s spectral form, not trusting that Yanchasa wouldn’t spring back between them. “Let’s go together.”

Redtrue was lying on the floor, her head cradled in Castelle’s lap. Next to them stood Riverwise, the young man who hadn’t been afraid of the capstone or its magic. Roland knelt by the large pyramid that had tumbled from Starbride’s arms, the one that held the capstone’s energy. He heaved as if he’d just run a race, and Hugo and Maia were at his sides. Around all of them stood a half-circle made up of Brutal, Freddie, Vincent, and Dawnmother.