Midnight End

3

His voice was cold and clinical while he recited each of my transgressions. He paused his pacing and stilled at my back, making me feel like the target of a firing squad as my final verdict was being read. I was surprised at the stir of feeling his words provoked. I had thought myself past that kind of weakness. Doing what I had done on so many occasions before, I squashed each of the treacherous emotions. “I see you’ve been paying attention all these years, despite your inability to talk. I suppose you know all there is to know about me, which likely means you won’t be helping me out of here. I don’t need your help, anyway. I’ve spent lifetimes managing on my own—working with someone else would just be an added aggravation.” With a ghost of a glance in his direction, just long enough for my gaze to touch his defiantly, I walked away from Knight and all he represented. The lies. The rumors. The blind hatred. I wasn’t going to lose myself in the past—the days when every sneer and whisper, every snub and attack felt like a blade slicing into tender flesh, a death by a thousand cuts, but not a physical death. Morgan of the Lake had been reborn as the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, stronger and more resilient than ever. She didn’t give a f**k what anyone thought. All that mattered was getting the cauldron, and I was closer than I had ever been. For centuries, I had worked tirelessly to get back onto Seelie Lands, seeking out archaic spells and barbaric runes in the hopes one might get me past Guin’s wards. I had come to the conclusion that the only way to get past her wards was to kill her. Simple enough—kill her, and her magic dies with her. The wards would fall, and I would be free to go after the cauldron. As the saying goes, easier said than done. Guin had not become the Seelie Queen based on her winning personality. Upon the death of the previous queen, Guin had been chosen by the magic of Faery as the most powerful Fae woman and ruler of the Seelie. Not to mention, she had over a thousand years of practice keeping her crown. In order to orchestrate a rebellion that had a chance to overthrow her, I had forged alliances with the deadliest Shadow Fae and rallied hordes of Unseelie. Years of research and strategizing culminated on the sacred night of Beltane when the veil between the worlds was the thinnest and there was a swell of magic in the air. While not everything had gone exactly to plan, overall, the rebellion had unfolded according to my design. On the night my revolution was to take place, I was drunk with the knowledge my struggles would soon be at an end. Until she showed up—the human-turned-Fae woman Merlin had plucked from obscurity and ordained the savior of her people. Rebecca. In a matter of minutes, she used the unique powers Merlin had bestowed upon her to crush everything I had worked toward. Yet again, he had won. Stripping me of the use of my powers, Merlin put me in a magical sleep and whisked me away to his secret prison. Imagine my surprise when I woke alone in a house ensconced in a forest on Seelie Lands. I went from believing he had robbed me of everything to being gifted the one thing I’d been dreaming about. When I gazed out the window at the bantiff trees and flowering canips, there was no question where I was. It had been centuries since I had seen a wooded Seelie forest, but there was no mistaking its beauty. I had thought I was long past the ability to cry, but at the sight, tears had streaked down my cheeks one after the other. I had no idea how Merlin had managed to get me inside Guin’s wards, and I didn’t need to know. All that mattered, was I was there. And if I could get within her wards, I could get beyond the walls of Merlin’s prison. That had been over a month ago. Since then, I’d spent each of my long days strategizing a way to escape. I gazed up at the bantiff tree that towered over me. It stood tall and proud, each full-grown tree nearly as wide as they were tall. Their brilliant green leaves spread out in clusters at the end of each branch, creating a multi-layered canopy over the forest floor. The branches would have made a perfect ladder to help me over the cursed wall, had it not been for the wards. I attempted scaling the wall on the first day I arrived. One touch of his ward and I was blasted backward as if I had grabbed hold of a live powerline. I had no need to repeat the experience. Over the course of my stay, I had walked the entire length of the perimeter of the property, unable to find a single weakness in the wall. I had no magic or tools to attempt to blast through it and digging under the wall had proven impossible as it extended deep into the soil. Without my magic, I was a bird without wings. The wall was secure, and my powers were bound. At present, there was no way to change either of those situations. The most obvious variable was Knight. He had entered my prison of his own volition and could likely leave in the same fashion. Whether he used his magic to take me with him or removed my iron cuffs, he had the ability to help me. He claimed he wouldn’t, but stranger things had been known to happen. What kind of negotiator was I if I walked away the first time I was told no? The direct approach hadn’t worked. Fine. Maybe I could find another way to win him over, perhaps appeal to his more … elemental nature. There were a lot of ways two people might find common ground. Feeling more centered, I walked back to the simple one-story house tucked beneath the canopy of trees like a child hiding under its blanket. The house was not a standard Fae dwelling, much too modern to appeal to the traditional Seelie tastes. Considering only a handful of Seelie had been exposed to the progress of modern human culture, I could only imagine the house had been designed by Merlin himself. While I was not a fan of the man personally, I had to give him credit on the clean lines of the transitional design. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the space gave the feel of outdoor living with the finest of indoor comforts available. As I stepped inside, the warm air began to thaw my chilled skin like the rising sun on a morning frost. I shivered at the sensation. Knight had not been wrong—the house was far from unpleasant. The electromagnetic pulses common in Faery didn’t allow for the use of electronics, but Merlin had found a way to duplicate the use of modern human amenities in his home. Not only was the place temperature controlled, there was a refrigerator and modern plumbing. On my first day at the house, I had been immensely relieved to discover he had fashioned a shower with hot running water. A long, hot shower was exactly what I needed to eradicate the chill that had seeped beneath the surface and deep into my bones. Once I had thawed myself inside and out, I would attempt to warm Knight to my cause.