The Goblets Immortal by Beth Overmyer (highly recommended books txt) 📗

the way their queen had kicked and struck him. “You can’t have anything to ask of her. She knows nothing more than I know, and certainly less than even you do.” That earned him another kick in the shins. Pain shot up his legs, and he held a grimace in check.

The nymph shook her head, and her guards advanced and seized him by the arms. They were strong, too strong to resist as they hoisted him to his feet.

Aidan reached out, feeling for their Pulls. Still nothing but Slaíne and the firewood.

“Take him away.” She sounded bored, but the tone belied another: frustration.

Aidan dug in his heels. “Why do you need the Goblets? Hold on a moment.”

The queen signaled to her inferiors that they were to stop. “Do you wish to tell me now?”

“Perhaps we have similar goals,” he offered. It might be true. He doubted it, but perhaps he could manipulate her into giving him more information. At the very least, he would buy Slaíne some more time if she had any ideas percolating.

The nymph queen’s gaze swept over him, piercing like ice daggers. “The Goblets,” she said, her tone stern, each syllable articulated with care, “do not belong in the hands of mortals. We wish to see them reunited…and destroyed. Is that your goal, Lord Ingledark?”

Aidan shrugged. “After I get what I want, then yes.”

“And what do you want? More power?”

He looked to Slaíne, who shook her head. She was right; if they knew he was making deals with Meraude, they were done for. Meraude wanted the Goblets. It didn’t mean she would get them, it didn’t mean she was trustworthy. But she seemed like his only option to getting what he wanted most. Aidan knew he must choose his words with care. “I want my name cleared, my life back.” And my family back. “I have no love for the Goblets Immortal.”

The nymph considered him for a moment, her look thoughtful. She surprised Aidan by taking a sudden step forward, motioning for the guards to relinquish their grasp on his arms.

Aidan stumbled to his knees, but he did not stand. He fought the urge to flinch away as she reached out for him, taking his chin in her hand.

The creature turned his head this way and that, her eye contact never wavering. At last she spoke. “I see it. I see it in his eyes.”

Aidan wondered what she saw. He hoped not too much.

“So much pain. So much loss. He speaks in half-truths, hoping to hide his intentions.” She tapped on his cheek, though not roughly. Her eyes narrowed, and then widened. “This man has been corrupted.”

The nymphs backed away, and the queen dropped her hand. “She is coming. Kill them. Kill them both.”

Chapter Nine

Aidan Called Slaíne, who slipped out of her captor’s hand, so strong a tug did he give her. They were ringed in, outnumbered. He could Dismiss himself ’til he turned blue in the face, but something told him the nymphs knew of this trick and were waiting for him to do it. An hour would be wasted, and when he emerged, Slaíne would most likely be dead.

The nymphs had their iron staves pointed toward them. They only needed their leader out of the way, and then they were clear to impale the two prisoners.

Aidan leapt at the queen and locked his arms around her neck.

She responded by shaking him like a dog getting rid of fleas. It took all of his strength to hold on. “Never mind him,” she choked. “The girl. Kill the girl first.”

“Sir!” Slaíne shouted. “Push me.”

“Push you?” What was she doing, distracting him from their one hope?

“Oh, for pity’s sake.”

The queen shook Aidan free, and he fell onto his back with a great oomph. It was in this moment, staring down a stave, that he Pushed Slaíne away from himself, and watched in amazement as the girl sailed over their heads and soared past the circle with great speed.

“The wood!” she shouted. “Aidan, Dismiss the wood!”

Aidan grabbed the end of the stave with his bare hands, fighting the nymph queen’s strength with gritted teeth. What good would Dismissing the wood do? The fires would burn out, and…. That was it! Clever girl. Aidan reached out as the nymphs ran screaming toward Slaíne. He Dismissed each log, listening to the anguished cried of the nymphs as they dissolved into mounds of ice and sand.

The she-nymph was not finished yet. Before she could be drawn to her death, she brought the pointed stave down with full force into Aidan’s shoulder.

He screamed as pain he’d never felt before coursed through his veins. It burned with three times the strength of the remedy he’d been forced to drink after the Romas had poisoned him. And he saw things. Strange things.

“Don’t let her—” Whatever the queen was going to say evaporated in her throat. She broke apart, piece by piece, and ash rained down from the now-dark sky. The only light provided them was the stars and a waning moon.

Aidan lay there panting as his shoulder went cold, his flesh throbbing in time with his crazed heartbeat. He gasped for air. He was drowning in the ocean. He was being born on the shores inside a strange cave, lit from the light of no sun he’d ever seen before. Light overwhelmed him, and he saw: four Goblets, all an array of colors, all glittering like the eyes of a cat in the semi-darkness. He reached out his hand to grab one, but his arm was weak. His arm was tiny, the size of an infant’s. Aidan cried, and the sound that came out of his mouth was so small, so frail.

“When will it manifest itself?” a slow, deep male voice asked a woman in the shadows.

Aidan silenced his cries; he wanted to hear, though the pain was beyond bearable.

“It is not easy to say,” said a familiar voice, though Aidan could not place it. It was a safe voice, if not a happy voice.