Pickup Styx (24 page)

I pushed myself along, dragging my damaged foot behind me. I could do this. The ferry was in sight, a long gondola-like boat that took one person across at a time. However, as soon as it rowed away, it reappeared at the dock. A tall, cloaked figure stood at the bow, holding a warped, wooden stick he used to propel the boat forward. The Pole of Charon.

I raced through the hallways seeing nothing but my target. I tore open the door, and Sy and Frost jumped up from their chairs.

“What’s happening?” Sy asked.

“My father is here.”

They looked around. “In here?” Frost asked.

I searched the room top to bottom, but he wasn’t there. “He wants Selene dead and is distracting me with the elverpige.”

Frost shrugged. “Wish granted.”

“Yeah.” I looked at Selene’s body. It wasn’t like he could make her deader. Maybe he’d seen her and left, but where had he gone? The sudden appearance of the exact spell the witches needed to send me directly to the elverpige had been too convenient. Had he been in the castle all day, planting decoys, listening to my plans? “But he’s here—and she’s running out of time.”

“We’ll make sure she’s safe. Find your father and take care of things for good this time.” Sy gave me a hard look. He had wanted to kill my father when we took the crown, but I’d stopped him. I could see in his eyes he thought that was a mistake.

I went to the hallway and waited until I heard the door lock. There was only one place my father could be. What he was doing there though was another question.

I sprinted toward the old family wing. We hadn’t used it since my mom’s death. I used my key to unlock the wing and relocked it behind me. “Why are you doing this?” My footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. “What do you think you’ll accomplish?”

A second pair of steps sounded in the hallway.

“It’s good to see you, Cheney.” My father came into view, looking relaxed and calm.

“Why are you hurting us? Why Bella?”

“Sitting imprisoned in that house while you were off with the half-elf whore gave me time to think about where everything went wrong.”

My fists clenched. “And where was that?”

“When your mother died, of course.”

“I agree. Because that’s when you lost your mind.”

“I used to have control of this kingdom. I used to have a family who loved me.” He held out his arms. “I used to have a son.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Are you going to tell me how we can all live together in harmony and get along? Are you really that naïve? I don’t want to get along. I want what is mine.”

“I guess I am that naïve.” This was the same face who used to tuck me in at night. The man who’d had an answer for every problem I ever had.
The man who checked out as soon as my mother was gone
, I reminded myself.

“Will you let me tell you a story?”

I nodded.

“There was once a man who had a perfect life. He had a beautiful wife and a robust son. They looked up to him and times were good. The couple conceived another child, but this one was not a blessing. It broke the happy family and took the man’s wife away. The man’s heart would never heal from the loss, but matters still got worse. The child demanded attention and monopolized the son’s affections, blinding him to her true nature. The beastly thing grew into an ungrateful adult, set on embarrassing her family beyond repair. A human. She believed her affair was hidden from her family, but the father had eyes everywhere. He knew of her plans and he knew his son had kept her indiscretions from him, but he did not blame the boy.”

Father stood before me, tapping his foot.

“The man waited for the couple that night, and when the human betrayed her, killed her, the man’s only daughter, he took his revenge. The son fell back in line and everything was once again tolerable, but the man was lonely. He did not wish to remarry, but he needed companionship, so the man made the grave mistake of going outside of his race. He didn’t know it was mistake, however, until it was too late. The son, who was always impressionable, also strayed from the natural order and allowed himself to be seduced by—”

“Enough,” I cut him off. “I know the rest of your ‘story.’”

“Do you?” He smiled without humor.

“The ungrateful son allowed his head to be turned by a pretty face and fell prey to a half-elf. He betrayed his father and imprisoned him. But the father had one more trick up his sleeve. He devised a plan to exact his revenge and clear the books of all past mistakes. He charmed one of his guards, no doubt, and retrieved the body of the first person to betray him, his daughter. He then sacrificed his wife’s people, feeling they too had betrayed him, in order to raise an elverpige that would clear away all his indiscretions. While the elverpige did her job, the man came to personally take care of the half-elf who ruined his beloved son.”

“Close, very close. The guards were loyal to you though. I had to reach outside for help. You were always better at storytelling than me.”

I nodded. “It has come to this. After everything we’ve been through together, you want to kill me?”

“I don’t
want
to kill you, son. Join me. Renounce the half-elf and take your rightful place by my side. She can live if you do that.”

I took a deep breath. “No. This is more important than just Selene. I will not abandon my people to save her life.”

“Then you do not love her. I would have done anything for your mother.”

I shook my head. “That isn’t love. It’s obsession. I do love Selene, which is why I won’t curse her to live with my decision for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t want me to save her at the cost of letting you have the kingdom again.”

“Then you leave me no choice.”

I held out my arms. “So do it. Don’t take the coward’s way out. Do it yourself.”

He placed a gentle hand on my cheek. “If I could, I would. But I cannot harm a hair on your head. I will grieve you for the rest of my life, but you brought this on yourself.”

“Why can you not accept the other races? Selene is a good person. Your other children are good people too—”

He scoffed.

“I don’t wish to hurt you,” I told him.

“You are a fool. How did I raise you as such?”

I smiled, though my heart was sad. “I may be a fool, but you have lost. The elverpige will kill no one else. I have reached Bella. The curse is broken.”

“Impossible.”

I beckoned him to the window that overlooked the garden. Sebastian was still there talking to Bella. Father’s face turned red and his hands shook with rage. “Then I will find another who will not be so easily stopped.”

“No, you won’t.” I put one hand on his shoulder and one on my sword. “Where is Bella’s body? She was not dead. The human didn’t kill her. They were trying to get away from you. Didn’t you wonder why she didn’t disappear?”

He turned to me, his face getting brighter and brighter. “I knew perfectly well what happened.”

My jaw tightened. “And you left her buried.”

“Punished. She needed to be punished.”

“Where is she, Father? Tell me that and I will let you live out your life.”

“Gone. I could not raise an elverpige without extinguishing the life. She is gone.”

I pulled my dagger faster than he could take his next breath and pressed it to his throat, tears stinging my eyes. “After all this time, you killed her. Your own flesh and blood. Look at her,” I yelled, grabbing the back of his neck and forcing him to look. My hand shook as I struggled with myself, blood bubbling up on his neck where I pressed too hard. “Look at her face. Her eyes. Her smile. She looks just like Mother.”

He struggled to turn his head from the window. Then he laughed. “Kill me. Go ahead. Kill me and lose your sister forever. I should have done it centuries ago. She has brought nothing but grief to this family. A plague since the day she was born.”

The sharp burn of a blade entered my side, but I caught Father’s hand before it could twist. He stared at me with cold hatred.

“I didn’t think it could happen, but I curse the day you were born too.”

He pulled the knife from me and backed away, wielding it as if we were about to spar as we had when I was a child. My side burned and warmth spread over my shirt. “I will not let you hurt anyone else.”

“Then by all means stop me.” My father’s supporters came from the closed doors down the hallway. Guards, noblemen, commoners, and in the middle of all of them, Alanna. There weren’t more than thirty, but the odds weren’t in my favor.

“We tried to get you to see reason, Cheney,” Alanna said.

“What exactly do you consider reasonable, Alanna? Change was inevitable. I have saved this kingdom from ruin.”

“Not like this. You cannot force the people to accept the half-elf as their leader. Who is she? Where is she?” Alanna said. “They don’t want her.”

There were too many. There was no way I could fight them all, no matter how I calculated my attack in my head. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it. I’m tired of talking about it.”

“We aren’t going to kill you. We’re here for her,” she said.

I drew my sword, ignoring the pain in my side. “You will have to come through me to do it.”

My father threw his dagger with expert precision and speed. But I moved out of the way just in time, deflecting it with my sword.

“Allow me,” Alanna said. She flicked her wrist and knocked me down the hallway, pinning me against the wall.

As one, they moved down the hallway toward me—but then a hand grabbed me from the shadows and pulled me down, breaking the spell.

“Looked like you needed a little luck,” Lily said, winking.

I moved back to the center of the hallway, my sword in front of me, my newfound sister beside me in Hello Kitty pajama pants. Everyone paused.

“This is your daughter, Father.”

He wouldn’t even look at her. The doors opened behind me. Sy, the coven, and several young guards filed in.

“You’d been gone a while. I thought you might need some assistance.” Sy flashed a wide grin. “I brought reinforcements.”

Anticipation built, both sides waiting for someone to make the first move. Father roared and all hell broke loose. Father and Alanna faded into the crowd. The coven stayed back casting spells, and I pushed through the melee, looking for him. I caught sight of him rounding the corner at the end of the hallway. I took off after him, twisting through hallways and corridors until there was nowhere to go and he vanished.

“Damn it!” I pressed my hands against the walls and looked at the knickknacks on the tables. There had to be a way out.

“You should have chosen me,” Alanna’s said from behind me. “It would have saved you all of this.”

I laughed. “You’re right, Alanna.” I turned to her. “I would have never fought to keep you.”

Her face flushed.

“And don’t kid yourself. My father wouldn’t have been any happier if I had chosen you. You still aren’t an elf. You’re fighting on the wrong side. Do you know how he got out?”

“I’m better than any of those half-bloods you surround yourself with.”

She threw a vase at me and then pulled a blade from her hair and ran toward me. Before she got to me, she crumpled to the ground. Lily stood behind her, a wooden pole in her hand. “Bitch just kept talking.” She smiled at me and I laughed.

Alanna moaned, holding her head. I picked her up by her arms. “You will stand trial, Alanna, for treason. You will kneel before my wife and me and beg for our forgiveness before all of this is over.” I dragged her back to the fight, which was all but finished now. I handed Alanna to a guard to be escorted to the dungeon and headed back to Selene with Lily on my heels. I knocked three times.

“What?” Frost’s irritated voice came through.

“Are you okay?”

“Just me and a dead girl.”

I sighed. Selene didn’t have much time left, but I couldn’t let myself dwell on it. She would either make it back or not. I wasn’t going to fall apart. I wouldn’t let my kingdom down as my father had.

“The dead girl is your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“But you think she is coming back?”

“I hope so.”

“Me too,” Lily said softly.