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“Yes. It needs doing. We need to get Goliath inside and the drawbridge up. The dragons will be fine outside. What about the Cylons?”
“Will you worry about even them?” Rogue teased with a half smile.
“Yes. Get used to it.”
“They cannot be harmed.”
“And the moat monsters?”
“You can’t protect everyone, soft-hearted Gwynn.”
“Then it’s not sympathy, but political. I’ve been hearing the discussions. You’re promising everyone protection. That means everyone we possibly can. Leave anyone out—even a moat monster—and it could come back to bite you. I mean that both literally and figuratively.”
A look of almost comical exasperation crossed his face. “Where exactly do you propose to put them?”
“It’s a big freaking place. You and I can make a lake to put them in—in the practice arena maybe. Can we poof them there?”
Marquise made a tsking sound. “Not a living creature, pet. Honestly, sometimes you say the funniest things.”
I rolled my eyes, which Rogue caught and laughed at. No doubt pleased to see someone else on the receiving end of it. “Do they have legs? Can they survive outside the water for a short length of time?”
“The point of a moat monster, as you call them,” Rogue explained in a tone of great patience, though he was clearly amused, “is for them to defend the castle by swimming around in the moat. Bringing them inside the castle renders that point somewhat moot, don’t you think?”
Fine. Focus on the main problem. A slew of dragonfly girls showed up then, distributing what looked like meat sandwiches to the winch team, who gobbled them up with gusto. Rogue gave me a questioning look.
“People need to eat,” I explained sweetly, as if I’d been on top of this all along.
“Indeed.” He snapped his fingers at one of the girls—a pretty buttercup-yellow one—who bounced over and gave him one of the sandwiches. He handed it to me. “You too. Eat while you think.”
I would have argued with him about ordering me about, except the scent of the meat made my stomach growl. Voraciously hungry, I gobbled it down, along with the second one Rogue grabbed for me. By the time I was done, I had an idea.
“Okay, this is actually an easy workaround. You don’t want to have a magical door in place because the mundane works so much better as a seal against magic attacks. But it can work for a temporary solution. You’ll stop the spin, Marquise and Scourge will nuke all the spiders they can reach, Darling Goliath will come in, I’ll create a magic door, put it in place to hold the seal while the guys there pull up the drawbridge. Once it’s closed, I’ll poof the magic door. Slam dunk.”
I loved a simple plan. I know I’ve said so before, but I really did.
Of course, it wasn’t nearly so simple in the execution. On the first try, Marquise and Scourge nearly fried Goliath, the black-laced white spear of their magic setting his fur on fire before I doused it. Which meant a wave of spiders poured into the opening because I didn’t make the magic seal in time.
Rogue set the spin going while we adjusted tactics, the inertia of setting it into motion dragging at his energy. Marquise and Scourge argued with me and called me sentimental and crazy, but finally agreed to aim around my Familiar.
On the second try, Rogue fumbled the spin—something I never thought I’d see—and a sign that he was tiring more than he showed. We stopped well past the drawbridge, facing Titania’s encroaching troops, who hurled a flaming missile of globular green fire straight for the doorway. Marquise and Scourge flung their readied spell at it instead, while Rogue wrenched us into motion again.
“Are you okay?” I asked him quietly, and he nodded but rested a hand on me. I fed him all the magic I could spare while keeping a healthy portion to execute my share of the spell. The black-and-white twins indulged in a long, probably incestuous kiss to bump up their own magic.
“Let’s hope three’s a charm,” Rogue said. “Ready everyone?”
We settled ourselves, cooling and focusing. Gathering our meager reserves. To make sure my timing would be perfect, I listened in on Rogue as he executed the complex spell to stop the spinning relocation of the gate. I might bring an inventive approach to magic, but he worked the medium like a maestro. Yes, it turned me on. That was the kind of gal I was—won over better by passionate expertise than by all the flowers in the world.
He knew it, too, sliding me a hot blue glance. For once, I didn’t mind. We needed all the power we could dredge up.
Rogue’s spell clicked into place with finesse, stopping the spin on a dime right at the drawbridge. And none too soon. Titania’s forces had reached the other end and ran toward us, brandishing spears, flaming torches and tortuous devices I didn’t care to contemplate. Marquise and Scourge smoothly nuked the spiders with a blanket of magic that slid under and around Darling Goliath—who then leaped through the doorway, sending me an annoyed thought when I caught the tip of his tail as I slammed a magic force field into place.
The men sprang into action, chanting furiously as they drew up the drawbridge, flaming spiders and fae tumbling off the rising plank like passengers tumbling into the sea from a sinking Titanic. The moat monsters churned the water in their frenzy, gobbling up the unfortunate fae. They likely had no more choice in this battle than we did. Just hapless puppets to Titania’s will. It made me sick and sorry to witness it—I should have thought to make the force field opaque. But holding it there was sapping enough of my magic, especially when the catapults nailed it with a few more flaming missiles. I couldn’t split off attention to alter it.
Rogue, recovering from the drain, wrapped his arms around my waist and drew me against him, now supplementing my magic with his.
At last the ponderous drawbridge sighed into place and the men cheered, anchoring the great pins that held it in place. I dropped the force field with relief, leaning back against Rogue, grateful for the sudden peace of sealing the army outside.
It was past midnight. Faerie never slept, of course, since so few of its denizens did, but the castle grew quiet. No more missiles. Titania had either exhausted herself or was devoting her considerable deviousness to surrounding us and planning her next move. Everyone in the Castle of the Dark Gods, safely fed and sheltered, had retired to nurse their wounds or those of others.
