Red's Wolves

Chapter Eighteen

Alera was stunned into silence as she saw the smug face of her maid and the blatant betrayal seep from her father's advisor. Nicholas, however, had his attention purely on Alera, and she felt like a slimy film crept over her skin. His smirk was arrogant and his stare was cold— there was no care in his heart about what he did to the forest or to the people within so long as he got what he wanted.

Alera would die first.

She wanted to yell. Wanted to challenge them. Wanted to ask how Brigette and Xavier could do this to their own Kingdom, but there was no time. The archers and magic users around her saw their chance to exact their vengeance on what was done to their forest and their chief, and charged for an attack with a battle cry that echoed through the canopy.

Nicholas was waiting for them.

With a smooth wave of his hands, the black vines crawled over the ground and whipped around the approaching fae. Some yelled as they were pulled to the ground, struggling to escape from the grappling weeds. Others attempted to leap over, covering more ground closer to the intruders on their sacred ground, but the vines they avoided whipped back and locked around their ankles, legs, low-hanging limbs— anything it could grasp to cease the encroaching attack.

In what felt like an eternity but also in no time at all, the entire fae battalion was restrained... all except Alera and Jere.

She didn't dare move. There was too much at stake. The lives of every person tangled in his hideous vines was at risk. But there was Nicholas. Step by step he moved close, with Brigette and Xavier on either side, flanking him as he moved, each with their own triumphant grin as if they had just won the grand prize in a contest no one else knew they were a part of.

"There she is, my beautiful bride."

Nicholas' voice was a chilling spider walking down her spine. He tsk'd as he approached, but was stopped by the snarling wolves that blocked his direct path to Alera, and he actually seemed to hesitate. Alera made note but returned her attention to the approaching prince.

"It's time to stop these games. You made your point, but enough is enough, Princess."

Alera moved forward, closer to the wolves, trusting them to protect her if it ever came to it. "I am not playing games, I am not going anywhere, and I am not your princess," she hissed, almost like a growl to match the wolves between them.

"I had a feeling you'd say that."

Nicholas gave her a gruesome smile that made the bile from her stomach rise into her throat. With a violent flick of his wrists the vines that already restrained the forest fae tightened, causing them to cry out, no longer in surprise, but pain.

Alera gasped in surprise as those people she had come to know well over these last weeks were in agony, and because of her. Her mother's people— her people— were being hurt because of a choice she made...

It was too much.

"This can all stop with a word, Alera. Just like these... people... your father sleeps, waiting for your return."

"What have you done to him?" she cried out.

He gave her a leering grin as if his slimy grasp on the world around her was inching its way to her heart. "Your father— and your kingdom— are currently mine to control, all thanks to your decision to ignore our arrangement. But for your sake— and for his— I'll be more than willing to overlook your little... trespass. All you need to do is return with me, and show me this lovely power of yours that I've heard so much about."

"I will never do anything for you."

"Then would you choose to allow your father to perish at your own hand? For it is only your magic that can save him, Princess."

"Don't listen to him," Jere murmured at her side. "It's a trap."

Always the voice of reason, but the blood was rushing so quickly in her ears that she could barely register what he was saying.

"Save your father and your people, Alera," Nicholas continued. "If you want to see them alive again, you will do as I say. Do my bidding and do not allow the blood of so many innocents to stain your hands. Lend me and my kingdom your power, for I have plans for us..."

She clenched her fists at her sides and felt the rage well up inside of her. She did not take her attention from Nicholas' hawkeye gaze. Did not even pay attention to the traitors at his side. The fury and wrath she felt were solely and completely focused on him.

Raising her hand that held tight to the blade up into the air, she yelled. Screamed. Whether it was a known language or a dead voice of the gods from long ago, she didn't know as the power of the forest coursed through her. She cried out for help and the forest answered. The trees that had parted once now trembled and shifted as a far more familiar force greeted them. Blossoming green tendrils of life infiltrated the hold the black tentacles had on the forest fae, and with them they fought against the vine, tearing them away and hacking them down until the company was back on its feet, feeling the new power of the forest surrounding them, and not willing to let a moment go to waste.

With a battle cry, the forest fae returned to formation and marched forward. The archers had their bows at the ready while the magic users protected them with their shields, all while the wolves took the front of the company. But there was no delaying this time. There was a newfound anger that matched Alera's rage, and as the felt her blood come to its boiling point, the fae unleashed an attached as the forest collapsed on the unwelcome intruders.

Wolves pounced and arrows flew and magic surged towards the army from Abignor, and Alera watched as the soldiers faltered and scattered as if they believed they'd have the upper hand by their prince's power alone. But Alera didn't let them get far— with a thought and a point of her blade the forest came to life, and answered to her whim. Roots rose from the ground and tripped their feet, while tree trunks and limbs and bows wove with one another to create a natural fence to keep the others back.

With more force of sheer will than she didn't even know she possessed, Alera watched those trunks weave together, imagined them like an impenetrable wall, and with a powerful clap of her hands whose collision resounded throughout the forest, those slammed together, keeping Nicholas and his people away from the forest fae.

And the last thing Alera saw before the silence of the forest surrounded them once against were the piercing black hawklike eyes of Nicholas, and his lingering smirk of pure and absolute amusement.