Claimed by the Elven King: Part Four (13 page)

The expression of extreme smugness on her face looked so uncannily like
the one she had worn in the image I had conjured of her during my imagined
beheading that for a moment, I felt slightly unbalanced.

“Leave us,” Limira ordered the guards. When both of them hesitated, she
added without taking her eyes off me, “If the human wishes her children to
remain untouched, she will not lift a finger against me. Now go.”

I fisted my hands angrily at my sides but said nothing. To use my own
children as her shield was the lowest of the low. I suddenly had the irrational
urge to bare my teeth at her.

“The king is failing fast,” she said as soon as the door closed behind
her. “He will be lucky to last more than a few more marks.”

My eyes narrowed angrily. “Thaylan will come to save him.”

That was the only thing that mattered now.

The queen smirked. “Yes, the mongrel’s healers said as much. I, of
course, immediately dispatched a messenger to the
Lithviri
informing
your brat of the king’s imminent demise and urging him to come home at once. Of
course, he will arrive only in enough time to bury his father and learn of the
execution of his traitorous mother. You understand, don’t you? With both
parents deceased, the heir, your children will of course belong to me.”

“So what are you waiting for?” I demanded bitterly. “It’s just you and
me down here. The whole of the elven court already believes me guilty of
cursing the king to his death thanks to you and your cronies’ lies. No one but
my friends and children would cry if you just slit my throat right here in a
fit of ‘rage.’ Or are you too much a coward to dirty your own hands? I hate to
tell you this, but they’re already blacker than pitch and that shit doesn’t
wash off.”

“I could,” she said with a nod, seemingly ignoring my crude taunts,
“but that would not even begin to repay me for these past thirteen years of
insult you and the House of Elerren have afflicted on me and my family name. A
thousand years of suffering would not be enough, but that’s exactly what you
will receive. A thousand years to sit here and rot, knowing that the fault of
your husband’s death lies solely in your hands for refusing to leave the realm
when I asked, knowing that your children will grow up hating you not only for
killing their father, but also for the human taint that runs through their
veins.”

As the queen looked at me with absolute hate in her eyes, I knew that
she meant every word, that she really intended to keep me locked up here for a
small eternity.

Thaylan! Hurry!
my soul screamed with all the desperation I had
in me.

As I sat in the darkness screaming my silent warnings to Thaylan over and
over until I wondered if I would ever get those words out of my head, I
occasionally had paused for a few moments and had tried desperately to sense
Sethian’s essence deep within me in the place where our souls were bound. Over
the years, his presence within me had grown to the point that I had been able
to sense him without any real effort, like viewing someone from the corner of
your eye. Now, it was as though a part of me had been cut away and only a
gaping wound remained.

I refused to believe that it meant that he was gone; I was certain the
queen would have already come down to gloat and did the knife in just that much
more deeper if that had been the case, so I comforted myself in feeling the
emotions of my children even though they were currently dominated by anxiety
and confusion. I don’t think I would have been able to bear it if their
emotions had projected physical pain.

Then clear as day, I heard somewhere in the space before me, “I’m
here.”

The dark outline of a small person suddenly appeared before me, then
like an avenging angel, the slightly glowing form of my son was standing before
me, long black hair hanging wild and tangled over his shoulders as though he
had just come in from a windstorm. I was already hugging him to me before the
glow about him completely faded and we were plunged into darkness again. The
blackness was almost painful after that brief illumination.

“We have to hurry to your father!” I said urgently, my voice thick with
threatening tears. “The queen had a mage place a death curse on him, and—.”

“I know,” Thaylan interjected. “I heard your words quite clearly when I
reached the edge of the palace.”

“I don’t know how they managed to get past your barrier,” I said as I
felt rather than saw the air around us begin to warp.

“It will be all right, mom,” he said, though I could hear the
uncertainty that he had tried to hide.

Then the darkness all around us began to rapidly lighten until we were
abruptly standing next to the bed where Sethian lay as gray and still as a
corpse. The healer closest to us backpedaled so quickly that he managed to trip
himself up and ending up sprawled in a heap on the floor.

The look of utter shock on the queen’s face is something I would remember
for the rest off my life, but it was probably nothing compared to the shock on
mine when Thaylan made a strange gesture with one of his hands and the very air
surrounding Limira seemed to peel away in six large, oval-shaped strips and
began closing inward on her like petals on an enormous, nearly transparent
flower. She only had time to shriek once before the bizarre phenomenon enclosed
her completely, and she winked out of existence as though she was never there.

“Now she can’t cause us any more trouble,” Thaylan said with
satisfaction into the dead silence that followed as he turned to Sethian
without another word.

He picked up his father’s limp hand and fell still, staring intently at
Sethian’s chest as he furrowed his brow in concentration. I quickly put what
had just happened with the queen out of my mind, filing it under the “things to
have a
long
talk about with your son later” category in my brain, and
stepped closer to the bed. I saw several of the guards within the room tense up
the moment I moved, but after what Thaylan had done to the queen, no one dared
say a word or even dared to
move
. Can’t say that I blamed them. Fear
rather than rank was what commanded them now.

“No…” Thaylan abruptly whispered, his voice sounding preternaturally
loud in the silence.

“What?” I demanded anxiously, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“I can’t stop it,” he said, turning to me with a stricken look in his
eyes. “The drain is connected to his very soul. The mere act of another’s
essence touching it would kill him instantly, never mind me trying to extract
it. His life-force is the fuel that sustains it. Another’s cannot be used to
ease the burden. That’s why the healing energies given him by his healers have
failed to revitalize him. It will continue to drain him until there is nothing
left to drain and the curse can no longer be sustained.”

He turned completely towards me and clutched both of my arms. “I can’t
stop it!” he cried again, this time sounding every bit like the boy he was as
tears began to well in his eyes.

Those words stabbed into me as painfully as if I had been run through
with one of the guard’s swords.

I grabbed his arms in return. “There has to be something,
something
we can do?” I pleaded.

“No one can touch his soul,” he insisted with anguish. “Not unless—”

“Yes, there
is
!” I practically screamed.

Our soul bond. Our soul bond had to be the answer. It was something
that neither Sethian nor I had ever discussed with the children. Sethian had
been reluctant to tell Thaylan his theory about why he had been born so
different than everyone else in the event that he was wrong. He feared setting
Thaylan on a path that he was never meant to take. Thus, we had mutually agreed
to keep that aspect of our relationship to ourselves for the time being.

“Your father and I are soul-bound,” I said. “Help me Thaylan. Help me
connect with his soul again. It’s not something a human can do on their own. I’ll
open my soul completely to him and feed him my life-force until the curse has
consumed all of his and ends as it’s intended to do.”

Thaylan’s eyes widened incredibly large. “What! No! Mom, I can’t!” he
said, shaking his head vigorously. “Even weakened, an elven soul would consume
a human’s!”

“I know—your father warned me to never do it, but we’re out of options.
One of us must survive this for you, for your brother and sister’ sakes, and
the
Sidhe
need their king more than a Royal Wife.”

“But we need our mother,” Thaylan said brokenly, releasing my arms only
to throw his own around my middle and hug me with a desperation that almost
made me lose my resolve.

I hugged him just as tightly and planted a kiss on his forehead. I
wished I could hug Anir, Rinya, and Arra once more before I did this in case
the worst happened, but we were simply out of time. I compromised by sending
them a wave of love through our empathic bonds.

Thaylan released me reluctantly, his eyes suddenly looking way too old
and weary for a twelve-year-old. It made my heart clench painfully with guilt.

“Just remember that I love you—all of you,” I said with a tremulous
smile. I wanted desperately to promise him that everything would work out just
fine, but I had never lied to my children and I wasn’t about to start now.

I kicked off my slippers and climbed onto the bed, trying not to get
tangled up in my long skirt as I laid myself half-draped over his chest and
threaded our hands together. “Here we go,” I murmured for Thaylan’s benefit.

Then I closed my eyes, and remembering that overwhelming feeling from
long ago when I had completely surrendered to Sethian and our souls had bonded,
I sought to replicate that feeling, that total surrender. I sensed more than
felt Thaylan guide me towards a tiny thread of Sethian’s essence that I had
been unable to find before when I had searched while stuck in that dungeon
cell.

Once I touched that thread, I had about a split-second to feel the
horror of his rapidly fading life-force before the thread suddenly latched onto
me, this sudden influx of life energy it had found, and began to instinctually
draw its fill more quickly than I had anticipated. It was like trying to stop
the downward flow of a waterfall with a twig, and just as both Sethian and Thaylan
had warned, the whole of my being was drawn into that flow before I could even
think to pull away. As my consciousness faded, my last thought was not of fear,
regrets, or even of death. It was of my family and the knowledge that they
would certainly prosper with Sethian at their side to guide them.

I was surrounded by warmth, that was the first thing that registered as
my consciousness rose from the murky depths of oblivion. It was both comforting
and comfortable, and I would have let my mind fall back into that blissful
nothingness had I not suddenly felt something warm and soft brush across my
lips. It was a struggle, but I forced my eyes open and managed to keep them
open after a couple of false starts even though my eyelids seemed to weigh a
ton each and my eyes, themselves stung a little. At first, my vision was one
big blur of various flesh-toned colors and yellows, but eventually everything
came into focus. I realized that my head was currently lying on Sethian’s bare
chest, and he was looking down at me with a very strange look in his eyes.

It wasn’t just his expression. There was something different about him,
something that my still sleep-fuzzed mind couldn’t quite figure out. I lifted
my head and looked at him quizzically. There didn’t seem to be anything
different about his face that I could tell, but at the same time I knew there
was.

Without saying a word, Sethian cupped the side of my face and leaned
forward. Thinking that he was going in for a kiss, I started to close my eyes
again but then blinked at him in surprise when I felt him press his forehead
against mine and close his eyes with a pinched look on his face as though he
was struggling not to cry.

Frankly, I was starting to get a little freaked out by the way he was
behaving. In all the thirteen years we had been together, I had never once seen
him cry, nor did I ever expect to.

“Sethian?” I questioned, grimacing as my voice came out so raspy that
it sounded as though I hadn’t had a drink of water in days.

“I was beginning to think that you would never awaken,” he said
thickly. He hugged me more tightly against his body.

“Never awaken?” I echoed in confusion.

He pulled back a bit and studied my face, his eyes swimming with worry.
“You don’t remember?”

I tried to think back to what I had been doing before going to bed, but
my mind was coming up with a big fat nothing. Apparently there was a lot I was
missing because aside from Sethian’s strange behavior, from the moment I had
awakened everything had felt a little—off.

I shook my head. “Did I have an accident? Hit my head or something?” I
raised my hand to feel along my scalp, but there were no bumps and nothing felt
even remotely tender.

“You have been asleep for almost a moon-cycle,” he said.

I sucked in a sharp breath. “What! Why? But I don’t feel—”

If I had been unconscious for that many days, then shouldn’t I have
been so weak that it would have been difficult to talk, much less move?
However, other than an extremely dry mouth, initial confusion, and a little residual
weakness, I felt no worse than if I had woken up with a slight hangover.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, suddenly feeling a little overwhelmed. “My head
is still a little muddled. If I’ve been out of it for so long, it’s no wonder I
had so much trouble opening my eyes earlier. Just tell me Sethian. Please.”