Sophie Oak - Beauty

“Then we leave in an hour.”

Shim picked up Duffy, holding his small body close. “Lach, I…”

Lach shook his head. “I love you. No more fighting. All that matters is winning this war and getting our wife back.”

Shim nodded and followed. Lach prayed the morning would find him closer to his goal—getting Bronwyn back in his arms.

* * * *

Bronwyn awakened to the smell of home. She could smell the bread the bakers in the White Palace made for each and every meal. It was a smell that had haunted her dreams since she’d fled. She’d tried to re-create the bread, snowy white and buttery soft with the smallest hint of honeyed sweetness, but never got it right.

She opened her eyes because no matter how lovely the smell was, this place was no longer home. She groaned a little. How long had she been here? A day at least, though it already seemed like a lifetime. A day away from them. Would she ever see them again?

“The hags certainly worked you over.”

Bron turned her head and then wished she hadn’t. Her every muscle ached. She was so, so weary. All through the long night the hags had tortured her with spell after strength-sucking spell. Pain had wracked her system and then a horrible weakness had overtaken her.

“They’re sleeping now. They don’t sleep often and no one knows where they go to do it, but it seems the only time they don’t listen in.”

A blonde woman came into view. She was regally perfect with her thin crown and slender figure. Cold blue eyes and a narrow chin completed the usurper queen’s appearance.

“Maris. To what do I owe this honor?” Bron wished she had the saliva in her mouth to spit at the bitch.

Maris chuckled a bit. “Goddess, you’re loud. I actually heard that.”

Bron’s whole heart sagged. She’d forgotten. Maris was a bondmate. It was exactly why she’d been engaged to Bron’s brothers. How could she pull this off if the queen herself knew what she was planning?

A little smile curled Maris’s thin lips. “You’ve been an annoying hum in my head for years.”

She’d been so stupid. So very dumb. She should have listened to her husbands. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was just a girl. She was still just a dumb girl.

“Stop scaring her, Maris,” a deep voice said.

The queen rolled her eyes. “It’s the only fun I have anymore, Niall.”

Niall stepped out, dressed in the livery of the Queen’s Guard. “Your Highness, I see you finally made it. Though I might point out that if we’d done this my way, you wouldn’t have been horribly tortured last night and most likely for a few nights to come.”

“A little torture never hurt a girl,” Maris said. “And she looks strong. If she’s anything like her brutish brother, then she should know a thing or two about torture.”

“You know he doesn’t like it when you talk about Beck like that. He explained that.”

Maris nodded and a bit of her bile seemed to flee. “I know. I hold on to it though because it’s what got us here in the first place. Where is he?”

“Making certain the hags aren’t around. And why are you here? If your husband catches you, he’ll find us all out.”

“Torin is scared of the girl. He was angry the hags brought her to the palace in the first place. I had to think fast on my feet or he would have had her throat slit and most likely by his own guard. We don’t own them, Niall. I should think he would be pleased with me.”

“Who are you talking about? Goddess, am I in some strange dream?” Bron asked. She was so deeply confused.

“Drink this.” Maris held a cup to her mouth and forced her head back. It was slipping down her throat before Bron could cough it back up. “Give it a minute.”

She stepped back and Bron tried to gag, but her arms were bound tight to the chair she sat in. The hags, she’d discovered there were two of them, had cackled as they’d cinched her in tight and began the ritual that would loosen her soul from her body. Now Maris had used her bindings to force some poison on her.

Maris grinned at Niall. “She thinks I killed her.”

Niall sighed and got to one knee. “Bron, Maris is on our side.”

Bron shook her head. If there was one thing she knew, it was that Maris was an evil bitch. “No. She is the one who let Torin in.”

Maris shrugged. “Can’t a girl make a few mistakes? Ooops. I made the wrong move and got your parents killed. Your father has forgiven me.”

“My father?” What Niall had said before came back to her. Her father had become a sluagh and chained himself to this place. At the time she’d barely believed it. Could it really be true? “My father is here?”

A cool wind seemed to pass through Bron and a phantom coalesced in front of her. Her father floated, an insubstantial but welcome presence. “Hello, my little pixie. It’s been a long while.”

A little sob threatened to escape her throat. “Father.”

He smiled down at her. A ghostly hand reached out to touch her face. “We have so little time. The hags are waking. You’ve figured out what you are? And what you can do?”

She nodded. “I’m a conduit. That’s what they called me.”

“Your mind works on a frequency that every bondmate can hear and you can access your blood’s powers.” His voice, not quite above a whisper, tightened. “If you’ve tapped into power, I have to assume your brothers are here. Beck and Cian have come into their powers, then? They’ve formed a true triad?”

Bron stared at her father. “No. I mean yes. They have bonded and have power, but they aren’t here yet.”

“Then whose power have you accessed? It should only work with a true triad.”

“My husbands. Lachlan and Shim McIver, princes of the Unseelie Fae. My Dark Ones.”

Her father’s image shimmered for a moment and then became a bit more solid. “They were real.”

So real. “Yes. And they’re here. They are going to Aoibhneas to gather the troops.”

Her father was silent for a moment. “So many things to have gotten wrong. It doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is they will come. If they came for you each night in your dreams, they will come for you now. You have to be brave, my daughter. You have to be the princess I never taught you to be. I am so sorry to require this of you, but you can’t do what you need to do until the battlefield is set.”

Niall stepped in when her father became quiet. He pulled a knife from his belt. Her knife. “I didn’t do what I should have done. I didn’t find another to take your place. I came back here to wait for you. There is only one Princess Bronwyn, and I knew she would come here. This is for you when we win the day. We have to kill Torin and the hags, too. We get one shot at this. They’ve become very powerful.”

“They control the guards for Torin,” Maris explained. “If you don’t kill the guards as well, even with the hags gone, they will continue to fight and continue with their mission to kill you and your brothers and everyone who is against them. Even now Torin is pulling them back from Aoibhneas since you’re here. They will guard the palace now and they will be in place when the kings arrive. Goddess, tell me they’re bringing an army with them.”

Bron hoped so, too. “I know the Unseelie are sending a force. And from what Lachlan told me the village will come.”

Maris groaned. “I hate that village. They’re all insane. Aoibhneas is where the crazies go. The mountains do something to their brains. And I heard some of them prefer to walk about naked. I pray they bring weapons.”

Bron wanted a few answers. “Why are you doing this?”

Maris’s cornflower-blue eyes turned down. “I was a foolish girl.”

“You hated my brothers.”