Christina Henry - Black Heart

I didn’t have the least idea of how I would defeat Titania. I just knew that I had to. This wasn’t just about my life, no matter what I’d claimed to Nathaniel and J.B. It was about my baby.

My pregnancy wasn’t hidden anymore. Now that her son was dead, she wouldn’t be satisfied with just killing me. She would want my child, the tangible proof that she had defeated Lucifer’s favorite, that she had obtained an advantage in her ongoing battle with the Morningstar.

So she wouldn’t kill me. Not right away. She would keep me like a breeding animal until the baby was born. Then she would take my son and kill me by inches, letting me live my final moments in agony, knowing that my child would grow up calling her “Mommy” instead of me.

Maybe I was getting better at figuring out what immortals wanted.

The storm above the city had chased me over the lake, the physical manifestation of Titania’s seeking magic. I waited.

There was no warning. One moment I was alone, fluttering my wings to stay aloft in the increasing wind, and the next moment she was there before me.

Her face was as unearthly and beautiful as always, even when frozen in a white mask of rage. She was dressed in unyielding black, and it only made her beauty more perfect, more unreal.

“Madeline Black,” she said, and in her voice was all the power that she had kept suppressed for centuries.

This was an ancient being, perhaps older than the Earth itself. She had been toying with her court and with mortal lives to keep amused as the eons passed. Like Lucifer, she hadn’t bothered to exert herself for time untold. But now she was angry, and grieving, and all of that magic was building inside her, waiting to punish me.

“Titania,” I said. “I had nothing to do with his death.”

“If you did not, then why did you run from me?” she asked. Her voice was pitched low and full of malice.

“Because I knew you would think I killed Bendith,” I said. I gathered my energy. I didn’t want to be the one to strike the first blow. I was still hoping—in a vague, naïve sort of way—that this wouldn’t turn into a fistfight. But I wanted to be prepared for whatever Titania might decide to do.

“You were there,” she said. “You, and Amarantha’s whelp, and that fallen angel that Puck fathered.”

“Yes. We were looking for your child,” I said. Something in me grasped at straws, hoping she would believe we were there for benevolent reasons. It didn’t seem likely. Titania had thought the worst of me from the start. As I gathered my energy, I touched the place of darkness inside me, the place that had nearly overwhelmed me. I did not want to go to that place again. But I would, if I had to. I could not let Titania take my son.

“You were looking for him so you could kill him?” Titania said. “Spare me your lies.”

“Titania,” I said. “It doesn’t have to end this way. I never sought to be your enemy.”

“And yet you have behaved as my enemy from the start. You murdered Queen Amarantha, one of my subjects. You killed my Hob. You diminished my husband. Time and again, you have defied me, made me look the fool in front of my own court. And now you have taken my son from me.”

“I did not,” I said. “Someone made sure that you would think that. I might be guilty of all the other stuff, but I didn’t kill Bendith. Why would I?”

“To hurt me, of course,” she said. “To lay me low.”

“I don’t care that much about you,” I said. “I don’t want anything to do with you. I’m not interested in having you as ally or an enemy. I just want to be left alone. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“And your wish shall be granted,” Titania said. “After I cut your child from your belly, I will bury you alive at the bottom of the sea, on a planet at the far end of the universe. There will you die slowly, alone, secure in the knowledge that it was your own actions that brought you there.”

“You won’t take my child,” I said, my anger flaring. Thus far I’d managed to remain relatively calm in the face of Titania’s magic, in the face of her threats. But when she spoke the very words I had thought only a few minutes before, my temper surged. Nightfire lit on both of my palms.

To my surprise, Titania laughed. It was a high and mirthless cackle, the cry of a heartbroken witch.

“Do you really think that you can defeat me with such small and pathetic spells?” she said. “I have seen galaxies rise and fall. You are nothing but a blip in the universe, and your power is nothing to me.”

She lifted her hand, palm flat, and blew air across her fingers at me.

I tumbled backward across the sky, caught in the gale of a hurricane wind. There was no way to right myself as the world went spinning. Titania’s laugh trailed behind me.

The wind abruptly stopped, and I plummeted toward the lake. I managed to pull my body up just before I crashed into the cold depths below.

The nightfire in my hands had been extinguished by Titania’s wind. I looked wildly around for the Faerie Queen, but she seemed to have disappeared.

I did a quick search of the area for a trace of magic that I could follow. I didn’t want Titania to sneak up on me again. But there was nothing. The Faerie Queen had appeared without warning, and disappeared just as quickly.

She hadn’t even really used her power on me, and I’d been completely neutralized. Somehow, despite all the odds against me, I’d always managed to defeat my enemy. Even when I’d fought Azazel, I’d been sure I could find a way.

But I was outclassed here. Everyone had warned me that tangling with something as old as Titania was a bad idea. Too bad it took me so long to realize it.

The attack, when it came, arrived without warning. One moment I was searching the air for Titania. The next moment pain was arcing through my body. It was like I had been set on fire from the inside out, but it was a small, subtle fire. It wormed in between the layers of muscle and nerve. It made me want to scream and tear at my clothes, claw at my skin until it bled and I let the burning thing that was underneath out .

Titania blinked into sight a few feet in front of me. She’d been covered under a veil so thorough that I hadn’t even been aware she was using magic. My own spell hadn’t found a trace of her.

She had one hand raised, and her eyes were focused with laser intensity on mine. I could feel her hate. She wanted me to bleed, and she wanted to watch.

The pain was agony. I couldn’t fight this. Fire was the weapon I used on everyone else. It had never harmed me before, and a part of me felt vaguely betrayed. I couldn’t smash it or hit it or knock it down. I could barely even think straight. The fire had sped through my spine and up to my brain, seeping into the layers of cortex, setting off all the synapses like a triggered minefield. Pain exploded in my head, and I did scream then. Blood gushed from my nose in a torrent.

I had to get away from her, get away from the pain. But I couldn’t even move, and I realized she was holding me in place, keeping me still so she could torture me. I hung in the air like a rag doll, suspended only by Titania’s will, unable to do anything more than writhe in agony.

There had never been any hope for me, really. It had always been a matter of time before I was caught and pinned like a struggling butterfly by one of these creatures.

As I thought this, my son shifted in my belly, his little wings fluttering in distress.

My son. My son. I couldn’t let Titania win. I couldn’t let her take him away. That thought centered me, gave me the clarity I needed to think through the pain.

There was no chance of my reversing the spell on Titania as I had with Azazel. This magic was much more powerful, and much more invasive. I needed to get her to stop.