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The Fae tried not to scream as my blade cut down to the bone, dark musky blood pouring everywhere. I thankfully stepped back before any of the vile stuff landed on me.It smelled far worse after it dried.
“The children? We don’t?—”
“Lies!” I cut him off with a roar, grabbing the identical brother to my blade from where I stashed it on my back. “Trust me. You do. Well, not yet. But you will.”
His eyes grew wide as I approached him, golden daggers held out to either side. He didn’t even try to flee. He just stood there staring.
“Wait. It’s not her. It’s you! No! Don’t—!” I didn’t let him finish. I sliced the head from his shoulders with one quick motion.
The second my blades went through, I let the last of the magic flare, the gift pulling me into the Ether as the ripples of time moved in shadow around me. His blood went everywhere, his head sliding to the ground as the rest of him crumpled into a pile of twisted, lifeless limbs. My magic snapped back into place as the last of his blood fell to the ground, leaving me perfectly clean.
Well, almost.
“Damn Fae,” I shook my foot to the side, sneering at the large drop of purple blood that had landed on the toe of my boot. I had run out of magic too soon. “That’s going to be hard to get out.”
Jayse would not be happy. Her biggest gripe was cleaning Fae blood, and for good reason. The stuff smelled fowl, the stains it left behind nearly impossible to remove. Most wouldn’t recognize the smell of rotted wood that lingered in that deep indigo shade of their blood, but some would.
Those who would, would also cause trouble for me.
I threw some dirt on the blood before it fully congealed and cleaned my blades on the clothes of the now headless Fae. Fae never wore cloaks, something that made them easier to track. That, and their overly gaudy clothes. They wore the silks and soft materials of the royals, even as they tried to move on Qits and through villages as though they belonged there. Same with the rapiers. They were no good with them, so it never made any sense why they had them. They were better fighting hand-to-hand or with their magic. But I had yet to meet any of them who could best my power. Perhaps it was cheating, catching them off guard the way I did, but as long as I got my head in the end, I didn’t care.
I didn’t care about any of it. I didn’t care what they wore. I didn’t care how they fought. I didn’t care about them. All that mattered was that I stopped as many of them as I could before the queen turned them into her own personal army. That, and they got me close to the queen. If I killed enough, if word of me spread enough, I could see myself into the Runturin, into her court.
I could bow before her as The Wanderer, the notorious Fae killer. Her servant. Then I could kill her right there on her throne, end her before any of the Red Wave and the massacres that haunted my childhood began.
I simply had to kill enough Fae to get there.
It never made sense to me years ago, when she had announced paid bounties for every Fae head that was brought to the palace. The monsters were to be her army, after all. But I wasn’t going to question. It was what I had needed to gain clout to stand before her, to end her, so I would kill them. Seeing as they were the ones who killed my family, it would be my pleasure to end them.
So, I would keep killing them. Killing what would be her army, and killing to end her.
“You’ll do nicely for that,” I growled as I lifted the head by the hair, the open eyes and mouth making the monster's face look almost comical. “I’ll kill you all if I have to.”
Stuffing the head in the thick transport bag Jayse had made me, I checked his pockets for anything good. They never had money, but sometimes I could find trinkets Jayse and I could sell for fair coin.
Today I found what looked like a sapphire on a chain, a comb with a few rubies on the handle, and a locket bearing the small painting of a Fae female and a babe.
The quality of the miniature was exquisite. The female’s smiling face was freckled, her eyes bright as she grinned with teeth straighter than I had ever seen. Odd.
I pocketed all three and also stripped the Fae of his belt, the leather workmanship far beyond what I had seen in the Qits. Taking that and his stupid sword, I removed his shoes, placing it all in a separate bag before I stood and let my magic surge through me.
I had only ever heard of fíra, vio, Ær, and the others. Never this power. This power of time was all mine. The power of the Sypher, as that murderous Fae had called it. But there was another, that of fire and destruction, that Lily had left me with.
I could almost feel both eyes slide to her deep shade of blue as I pulled at the energy in the air and turned the remains of the Fae to ash. In one blink, he was gone, floating away on the wind as my eyes returned to their usual dual shade.
My own icy blue paired with the darker color of my sister. The colors shifted depending on which magic I used but remained in a dual shade otherwise. Beautiful, unless you were trying to go unnoticed.
Which I always was. Which also made them a problem.
Hitching up my bags and sheathing the sword, I followed my path back out of the forest.
It had been decades of hunting, of trying to find a way into the palace and to the queen. As a child, I had known I needed to train to be able to take the queen, to be able to help Princess Elara in her fight when the time came. I not only needed to find a way into the Runturin to be ready for that day; I needed to make sure my magic was ready, too.
So, I had trained in killing, in tracking, in every way to fight. I had journeyed to the assassins in the snow-capped world of the North and learned their ways, then spent years with the feral hunters in the south to find answers to my power and perfect the skills I had. I had ventured among the witches in the hopes of finding more lessons in the skill of a Sypher. I found out nothing of them and was only to be chased from their camps on threat of death. I had lived more lives than were my own, taking when needed and pulling myself back in time again and again. I should be an old man with all the lives and time I had moved through, but my body had stopped aging years before. So, even when I spent a lifetime learning to kill on the Isle of Dám, when I returned, it had only been a fortnight to Jayse.
It had all been for the purpose of helping the princess defeat the queen. Of saving Lily. Even if it wasn’t me in this life, that would be with her. She deserved to live a full life, just like all the others.
It didn’t matter who died in the process, I would give her the life she deserved. I would give all the Catalysts a life.
