The Bastard Queen (Viciously Yours #2)

A few hours later….

Pressing a finger to my lips, I cautioned the others to keep quiet as we approached the Estate. Still about a half mile away hidden between the trees, we could see the soldiers lined along the Estate’s clearing. Shifting periodically and leaving little to no openings that we could slip through, the protection along the building was even more intense. With another line of soldiers stationed along the top of the wall, there were easily twenty soldiers that we needed to get around. And that wasn’t counting the unknown numbers possibly inside. If these had been guards instead of soldiers, I wouldn’t have thought twice about our entry. However soldiers were much more highly trained then guards, so as much as I hated to admit it? The Royal Unseelie shield on their purple tunics gave me pause. This definitely wasn’t a regular Estate.

Brows dipping together, I drummed my fingertips against the side of my right thigh as I thought on how to proceed. I could take them all out but that would leave a chance for one or more of them to travel out and warn the nearest army post. We would be overrun in minutes. What to do, what to do… Our best bet while down two soldiers would be to create a distraction-

“My Queen? I heard about your damsel in distress routine, perhaps it would work again?”

Smiling at memory, I replied softly, “While that would be extraordinarily fun, General. That would draw too much attention and runs the risk of us not getting inside. And I want inside, General.”

Giving me a sharp nod of understanding, Erick went back to watching the treeline filled with enemy soldiers.

Humming lowly, I scanned over the soldiers with me at the moment. And then a thought hit me, I could do this. I just had to do it alone. “Stay here and stay quiet. If anything goes wrong, travel out.”

“My Queen? Where are you going?” Erick question, hand clasped around my shoulder to stop me from walking deeper into the forest.

Shaking out of his hold, I repeated, “If anything goes wrong, leave. We’re outnumbered almost five-to-one. That’s an order, General.”

Brown eyes narrowed, “My Queen, you can’t possibly-”

Pushing past Erick, I plucked a ring from my index finger and quickly wound my long hair into a tight bun at the base of my neck. The second my hair was secured, the metal on my fingers slipped over my skin to morph into my trusty twin swords. Rolling the tension from my shoulders, I weaved around tree after tree until I felt that I had gone far enough. Twisting the handles of the swords in my palms, I drew in a deep breath, Here goes nothing.

Spreading my feet, I dug my heels into the dirt and…..How exactly did I do this? The last and only time I had done this, I wasn’t actually thinking of anything at all. Did I just think ‘fly’ or ‘launch me’ and it’d just- Holy motherfucker! Losing my breath on a gasp, the sense of zero gravity took over my body as the wind pulled at my clothing. When tree’s quickly became dot’s of green sprinkled through with brown, I snapped my eyes towards the Estate before I lost my window of opportunity. From this altitude, I could see the very top of the building and everything that had been hidden behind the walls.

Soldiers, three rows deep, lined the inside of the courtyard surrounding the tall circular building. Fuck. So landing in the shadows of the courtyard was out, I thought, mind racing as my body halted mid-air. My eyes snagged on the small roof of the Estate itself just as my body was snatched back into gravity’s unforgiving grip. Making a split second decision that would give everyone a heart attack when they found out, I traveled.

My ass hit the hard brick of the roof followed by my back seconds before the hard surface parted. I fell through, catching a glimpse of the soldiers shifting to look over their shoulders before the gap disappeared. Falling a few more feet, my body jolted as I hit the ground hard. Head jerking, I winced when the back of my skull cracked against the wooden floor boards. Not allowing myself more than that, I rolled onto my stomach before jumping to my feet. Swords outstretched in a fighting position, my eyes frantically searched the room for soldiers. Coming up empty, I strained my ears for any nose that would signal a multitude of soldiers headed my way.

Panting at the exertion of using three of my abilities back to back, I lowered my swords and bent at the waist to stretch my spine. Groaning lowly, I straightened up and slipped my swords into the sheath resting against my shoulders. Placing a hand against my aching skull and the other at the base of my spine, I rubbed until it felt like I wasn’t going to break into thirds. Maybe I should be a little nicer to my body, it’s not like I’m a thousand anymore. I really shouldn’t be tossing myself around like this, I mean I didn’t see Lilly doing the shit I did.

Snickering, I shook my head at myself, What the hell am I talking about? Lilly’s old as shit, that silver fox. I’m solidly in my prime, I got another thousand years to toss myself around. And if I was lucky, for Lilly to toss me around too.

Laughing quietly, I dropped my hands and took in the room around me. Long curved desks were stationed on either side of the room following the shape of the building. Beakers, tubes, notebooks and other scientific shit I had seen used on T. V. covered every square inch of them. Large posters seemingly hand written covered the walls along with black and white photographs. A comfortable chair with an empty IV stand stood between the tables facing the far wall. Confused, I stepped closer to the desk lining the left wall and thumbed through the pages. Words like diluted, variable B, unstable chemical balance, and test subject 3 filled line after line of the book.

Moving to the next and then another and another, my brows furrowed together tightly as they were almost identical to the first. The only difference to be found in the scientific jargon was the change in test subjects. Unease that had been nesting inside my chest since I first heard of the Estate, swelled uncomfortably behind my ribs. Rushing to the next table, I grabbed a notebook sitting at the very top of a mountain of identical books resting against the wall. Flicking through the pages with a mounting horror, I stilled as I reached the last passage in the book.

Test Subject 636: We’ve made a profound breakthrough. It seems that the chemical unbalance that resulted with past subjects has been corrected. Once the essence has been diluted with exactly 4.5 milligrams of the receiver’s blood, the transfusion is successful. Though painful, Mab has increased her abilities exponentially from the regular dosage of test subject 636’s essence.

No side effects can be noted at this time. As we are unaware of why this test subject proved to be so agreeable with Mab’s magick, we must find another with similar environmental and physical makeup. Unseelie. Female. Late adolescence to early adulthood. Light blue in Fae color.

The book fell from my slack grip as my stomach rolled violently and I tripped over myself backing away from the table. She was injecting herself with their magick. This whole time, she’s been stealing their magick to-to, to what? Enhance her own? Swallowing around the thickness climbing up my throat, I fought the revolution that threatened to spew itself all over the floor. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t possible. You couldn’t just take another’s magick for your own. But she...she has. She’s figured out a way to make someone else’s magick her own and there were a lot more victims than I had ever thought.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, why would she do this? This wasn’t her normal brand of evil and paranoia. This- this was betrayal on a realm level. Faekind didn’t experiment on each other, we didn’t seek to rip the magick out of each other. We fought and killed each other with a little torture here and there, maybe a bit of cannibalism for kicks. But not this. Never this. Humans did this shit, fuck other supernaturals did this shit. Faekind didn’t, not after everything we suffered through during the Lost Generation when humans had found out about us.

My eyes rapidly scanned the room, why was she doing this? What could possibly be so rewarding or alluring that she’d betray the realm? What was worth signing the death warrant that would be absolute if the realm found out she was doing more than draining Fae of their magick?

Taking rapid steps towards the far wall where my eyes were pinned on a large sheet of paper, I felt like I couldn’t breath. Reaching up, I ripped it off the wall as my vision began to blur. Despite the way my eyesight was swimming in and out, I could see the writing as if it was burned to the inside of my brain. The Divine Prophecy was scrawled across the paper with a blood red circle around two very significant lines. ’Taking the power She’ll go from royal to Divine…. A false Queen will test her ascension but all of FaeKind will recognize the true Queen in time.’

My chest heaved as my lungs emptied and refilled at a dizzying pace. Streams of fluid thought turned choppy and sure hands started to shake sporadically. Normally sharp eyesight went from blurry to intensely focused and back again within seconds. The sound of shredding paper exploded through the room caused by the seizing of muscles curling my fingers into fists. My heart pounded harshly against the cage of my ribs, begging and raging to let free.

My fault. Everything. Was my fault. It was because of me that my people were scattered and left without protection after the battle. It was because of me that Mab was granted a bigger hold over the people of Tir Na Nog. It was because of me that these Fae lost their lives. Stripped of their magick, innocent souls burned because Mab thought the Divine Prophecy was about her. Because if I had never been born none of this would have happened.

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes as blue flames engulfed my fists, burning the paper to ash within moments. Divines, nothing I did fucking mattered did it? Every time I tried to fix things the worse it became and for what? What was I trying so hard to achieve? To create a better realm for the Fae? Me? Macha the Bastard? Macha, who strung together an army using deals without a modicum of decorum? None of them followed me because they believed in me, they followed me because of the deals I made.

Fuck, what a joke. I laughed brokenly at my internal thoughts. God Queen of the Realm, a battered thing with a burned soul wrapped in a shield of anger and sarcasm.

An overwhelming sense of rage and self-hatred shoved up against my restraint, a combination I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Pressing my flaming hands against the sides of my head, I fell into a crouch with my eyes squeezed together tightly. NO. I fought and pushed it down while I was in Slykhelm. I could do it again. My rage was a living thing caged so deep inside my own mind that I hadn’t felt it clawing up to the surface. No, no, no, no, no. I worked through all the pain from my time in Slykhelm in a remarkable amount of time. This anger, this emotion that had a life of its own? Had no place in my healing process.

Oooohhhh, but I wanted it. I wanted to hurt and cause pain because I’d been hurt. I wanted to watch those soldiers break like toys beneath my hands. The relief that would run through me at the loss of their lives was almost tangible. Their screams would ring like traditional tunes, lilting and high pitched to the ear but still pleasing. Colorful eyes, dull and unseeing staring up at the sky while blue flames raged their surroundings. The wrath of a God raining down on-

Eyes snapping open, I jerked myself back into a standing position as my last thought processed. It’s time to go.

Lifting my hands, I made to motion at the roof to part when my vision snagged on something from the corner of my eye. Cautious and still very aware of the rage rattling it’s mental cage, I stepped back towards the wall that had held the Prophecy and yanked a photo from the brick. Eyes flying back to the wall, I realized that there were hundreds of them hiding the brick beneath. They were grainy and slightly blurred but I knew what they were showing. Me. Me, huddled against the side of my bed. Me, chained and littered with bruises. Me, with precise knife wounds maring my skin. Me, hanging limply from the ceiling, blood leaking from a large gash to my abdomen.

The cage that had been holding my rage at bay for centuries crumpled like sand when I realized that I had been unconscious during these. When they knocked me out to take the iron chains off so I could heal, she had taken pictures. Close up pictures of exposed bones and muscles. A dozen photos of the lashes that had ripped apart my body. An enhanced image of my tattered eye. Zoomed in portraits of the skin hanging off my face. Close ups of torn flesh and third degree burns. It was a sick mosaic of the wounds she had Fearghas inflicted on me over the years.

My head slowly swiveled to take in the chair and the IV stand perfectly positioned to view the wall. That...that evil bitch stared at them as she got injected with another Fae’s magick. Like it was a fucking magazine in a waiting room. Fury burned through me as my skin began to itch at the dirty feeling of being so completely and utterly violated. Teeth bared in nasty snarl, I gave myself over to the rage that promised retribution with a scream of primal wrath that shook the bricks of the Estate.

Flames burst to life in my hands seconds before I slammed them against the wall, sending the photos ablaze. Fire raced to the top in thin blue lines before covering the expanse in a mass of flames. Spinning away from the blackening photos, I skipped along the left table and set it on fire with a dragging fingertip. Dropping back a step and spinning to the right, the wood of the right table bucked harshly before shattering in on itself. Boot crunching the beakers and tubes, I left a trail of blue flames as I walked towards the open doorway.

Shouts and multiple pairs of boots hitting the floor in a run echoed off the brick halls as I stepped into the short walkway. Black smoke billowed down the roof of the hallway and curled down the single winding staircase making the air thick. Staring down the only exit on this floor, I grinned down at the soldier’s racing towards me with their weapons drawn. A lazy flick of my wrist had bricks filling the space between us, cutting the hallway in half and stopping their approach. Another wave of my hand sent the wall rushing down the stairs and a wave of screams rising as soldiers were crushed beneath its weight.

The fear coursing through the air was like a balm to my anger but it wasn’t enough. I needed more. Blue light flashed against the wall as I flicked eyes to it, the brick shifting and falling away to reveal the outside world. The black plume of smoke rushed around me to pollute the fresh forest air and temporarily block the courtyard from view. Without moving, the floor rolled and stretched out to extend me over the side of the building.

Sharp teeth cut into my cheeks as I sent a wide smile down at the soldiers looking up at me in horror. Rising my hands out to my sides, the hilt of my swords slid into my palms while I shot a wink at the crowd. Immediately, large chunks of metal and balls of ice whistled through the air in my direction. Bricks cracked on impact with a shriek as giant chunks of ice and metal punched through the walls like butter.

Deflecting all of them without a thought, I tipped my head towards the sky and purred, “You say you’re my father, old man? Prove it.”

There was a low rumble before dark clouds rolled over the fading moon, throwing the Estate back into darkness. Electricity built, sparking between the charcoal confines of the sky as claps of thunder pierced the new night. Laughing at the production, I dropped my eyes back down to the soldiers in time to see several of them moving in tandem. The air shifted in warning moments before the Fae stopped moving, an almost invisible blast of wind headed straight for me. Raising a brow at the audacity, I took a swan dive off my perch at the same time a lightning strike hit the ground with a boom.

Dirt and rock imploded underneath the force of the electricity, the Fae closest to the blast sent flying through the air as ranking soldiers screamed orders. Another explosion caused by the wind, that was meant for me, rocked the Estate and sent bricks chasing me to the ground. Pushing my arms to my sides, I tightened my core and pulled my knees to my chest until my body flipped right side up mid-air. Keeping my knees bent, the earth absorbed my landing causing cracks to split the ground as my boots slammed into the dirt.

Shaking the hair away from my face, the metal keeping it in place lost during my free fall, I slowly straightened with my eyes on the soldiers in front of me. There was a single moment of hesitation before the first line of purple tunic’d Fae rushed at me. Laughing hysterically, I leaped into the fray in a whirlwind of blue metal and long limbs. Twisting at the hips, I arched my back and drove my swords into the necks of the closest Fae. Snapping upright, I watched three more flashes of lightning hit the ground as I dodge an axe to the face.

Weapons pinged off my breast plate causing me to grin at the Fae responsible before slicing through one of their major arteries. The sleeves of my tunic quickly became drenched in blood as I worked my way through the thickening crowd. Hissing in pain at the slice to the back of my right thigh, I threw my elbow into the face of the female to my right and flicked my sword across the eyes of the man on my left. Turning on my heel, I swung my sword wide to block the blow aimed at the back of my neck and thrusted the other one up to the hilt in her lower belly.

Slamming a boot against her shoulder, I roughly shoved her body off my sword before tossing it high into the air. As it split into multiple spikes, the ground rolled on either side of me before dropping out beneath the Fae’s feet. Screams of terror ripped through the grunts and groans until the dirt closed over their heads, burying them alive. A mace slamming into my shoulder caused me to growl in irritation and whip around to cleave their head from their neck. The red haired head thumped to the ground while the blue metal still hovering above us flew into action. Fae near and far suddenly slumped to the ground beside their comrades with blue spikes sticking out from their chests, winking in the bright flashes of lightning.

With the area around me somewhat cleared, I could see more soldiers flooding into the courtyard through the entrance of the Estate. Licking my lips in anticipation, I dove to my left in order to avoid the boulder that slammed into the ground where I had been. Rolling my weight onto my shoulders, I tossed myself up onto my feet and immediately struck out. My sword caught the leg of a male and dropped him to his back as I called my other sword back to me. More bodies dropped at the sharp pieces cut straight through Fae in order to form back into the sword that was now sliding back into my palm.

Aches and pains flared to life while I cut into the soldiers around me, collecting more injuries as I went. Lost in the adrenaline and exhilaration of the battle, I almost missed the scream of my name over the crash of lightning and the screams of soldiers. Flicking the red tinged locks from my face, I head butted the female in front of me and slit her throat before looking around. Ignoring the blood splattering my tattered tunic, I quickly scanned over the charging soldiers for the person who had screamed my name. Nobody should be screaming my name right now unless it was out of rage. Because I gave strict-

Oh, son of a FUCKING bitch!

My grin twisted into a snarl as I caught sight of a shaved light green head beside a brown haired male. The rest of my small troop surrounded them, fighting back the wave of enemy soldiers that threatened to overpower them. A fresh batch of rage washed over me and I took off towards them while a blue ring of fire sprung up around them. The flames pushed the soldiers backwards and bought them time until I could reach them. Dropping to a knee in haste to avoid a sword to my throat, I winced at the pain that sparked through my ankle. Not giving myself time to dwell on it, I swiped the legs out from under one soldier while the others burst into screaming balls of flames.

Scrambling to my feet, the ground lifted slightly to roll me towards my troop at a faster speed than I could run. Spinning my swords in my grip, I slashed and sent the chunks of metal and ice back towards the bewildered Fae that had thrown them. Bending my knees, I pushed myself into the air as the ground fell away and swallowed the surrounding Fae. More shouts split the air over the still striking lightning while my body twisted over the heads of enraged soldiers. Tucking my arms and legs close to my body, I released a grunt as I hit the ground hard and rolled.

Pushing my hands into the dirt, I ignored the scrapes to my palms and got to my feet. Blue flames roared loudly, keeping the enemy at bay while the heat caused the inhabitants of the circle to sweat. Tossing my swords into the sheath at my back, I stomped over to Erick and grabbed him aggressively by the bloodied collar.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I shouted, straining to be heard over the hundreds of Fae screaming for my blood just outside the ring of fire.

Brown eyes were wild as they jumped from my gaze to over my shoulder, “Soldiers do not abandon their Queen!”

“You weren’t abandoning me! I told you to leave! Travel out, General! Now!” I screamed in frustration.

“Not without you!”

Shoving him away from me, I turned and looked over the soldiers. Bloody and bruised but they’d live as long as they-

Blinding pain punched through my shoulders right beneath my collarbones stealing my breath and train of thought. Stumbling backwards, the blue ring of fire began to flicker as I dropped my chin to look at my chest. Two dull grey arrows jutted out from the torn flesh of my chest before the arrow heads broke open like umbrellas. The body of the arrows rubbed against the inside of my body sending agony rocking through my veins as they were pulled backwards. The umbrella shaped heads pierced my chest for a second time, locking in place. And a quick look over my shoulder showed me the chains extending from my back that disappeared into the dwindling flames.

Grappling hooks. They shot me with motherfucking iron grappling hooks.

With the numbness already starting to spread throughout my body, I snapped my head back to the others and screamed, “TRAVEL!”

My soldiers blinked back at me in horror and fear as the flames died and a purple wave surged forward. Cursing through the pain from a tug on the hooks that dropped me to my knees, I dug deep and ordered on another frantic scream, “TRAVEL! NOW!”

In a fraction of second, my troop was standing there staring at the hooks in my chest in fear and then they were gone. Relief pounded through my veins following the agony that roared to life from another yank on the chains connected to the hooks. They dug deeper into my skin, stopping me from reaching for the swords laying behind my shoulders. The iron effectively blocked my ability, making me completely human and vulnerable.

Panting as the angry crowd closed in around me and my vision began to go, I made a futile call to the only person who mattered, I fucked up, Lilly. And I’m so fucking sorry.

——— finally we see Macha in her full glory!! She was giving me allll the war god vibes! I hated to see her relapse though after she was in such a good place. How do you guys feel about Mab now? Now that you know the significance of her draining other fae of their magick?

In the upcoming chapters a lot of things are going to be clicking into place!! Also there’s going to be a lot of reveals! I’m so excited to be writing the last half of Macha’s story!!! Btw it’s Cillian’s P.O.V next chapter!

As always, comment if you feel like it!

Smooches, Verbage 💋