Chapter 4 : Chosen

“What do you mean that I didn’t place in the tourney!?” Slamming my hands upon the Knight-Commander’s desk was a mistake, one that I could see would cost me dearly as I looked into Shepard’s amber eyes, but I refused to back down. If she-wolf wanted to treat me like a child, then I was going to make her rue the choice. “That’s utter nonsense and you know it!”

“Captain Malachite you may take your leave.” Mal tensed, green eyes flicking back to me, ears flat to his dark hair.

“Ma… see reason in what Ellie is saying.” He touched my shoulder, just under my wing, a clear sign of support. “If you would just listen—”

Mal’s plea was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. She rose to her full height, as Alpha of the Wild Hunt, as the second-in-command of the Night Court’s legion, and carefully—keeping an eye on us both as she did it—pressed her hands to the scarred wood of the desk. The effect was perfect. Shepard was just shy of seven feet thanks to being blooded from weirdling Amazons to the south and through the Alphas of her pack, and so she easily filled her small chambers with her hulking frame.

And when she was angry—Gods—the world quaked beneath her wrath!

“CAPTAIN MALACHITE!” Her voice was a deep howl, eyes burning livid in her sockets, as nails lengthen to wicked claws. “THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER FROM YOUR SUPERIOR OFFICER! YOU ARE DISMISSED, DO YOU HEAR? DISMISSED!”

“Yes, Knight-Commander.” Mal crossed his right arm over his chest, fist over his heart, and bowed at the waist. From the corner of my eye, I could see the bristled edge of his tail sweeping in irritation. Shepard had embarrassed her prized pupil—her son—in front of non-pack. It was the gravest of insults werewolves could give each other besides exile. Especially a Beta hoping to take over both the pack and her title of Knight-Commander once Shepard stepped down.

But, he wouldn’t fight her now. He wanted to test her, which could be done on the black sands of The Quartering’s arena. I knew the moment he nodded at me, form stiff, that he was already plotting away. “Knight.”

“Captain.” And maybe, just maybe, I would get to join him.

The room didn’t thaw exactly when Mal had finally left his mother’s office, but the anger did dial back a notch. Shepard huffed, cracking her knuckles, and gestured for me to sit. A moment later, she had the bridge of her beaked nose pinched between her fingers and pursed her lips.

“What the fuck was that?”

“That?”

“Raquel…” Shepard sighed, weary, eyes back to her normal amber. “Why do you always run your mouth? One day it’s going to backfire. Horribly. And I won’t be able to save you.”

“You don’t need to save me.” I sounded childish even to my ears, the sullen griping of a teenager I was no longer. I crossed my arms, feeling awkward and foolish, and inwardly cringed at the picture I was making. Gods, was it any wonder Shepard kept pulling this type of power move well into my twenties if this was how I was acting? “I mean that, I’ve earned my place with the Knights of the Moon more times than anyone else on Squad Io! Warg hunts, doppelganger extermination—I bested a wyrm even!”

“A juvenile,” she corrected. “You hunted and slayed a juvenile wyrm that had just hatched with the aid of three other knights.”

“It was still done!” Shit, reign it in hot-head, you’ve nearly got her. “Point is, I am more than capable of being in this year’s Quarterly. If you would just give me a chance—”

“You don’t have magic, Raquel.” Ah, so there it was. The real reason Shepard had taken my name out of the running. Why I hadn’t even been seen on the boards. “The Quartering isn’t like the Pit or sparring sessions in-between missions. People die, Raquel. Good knights, seasoned veterans even—and with your disability—”

“My what?” She had the nerve—I could hear the buzz of my wings matching the disbelieving staccato of my heart. “Of all the unicorn shit—”

“A doxy messenger can outfly a pixie by five klicks in optimal conditions. They can span forty klicks in a little over five hours. Though not particularly good in combat, doxies can turn invisible, kill with a kiss, and cause hallucinations if touched. You can barely hold your own body weight on those dragonfly wings of yours, and can only last about seven minutes in the air tops—”

“That’s more than enough time to win a fight and you know it! I’ve toppled Gareth in less—”

“—Can you shift?” Shepard loomed over the desk, her red cape billowing out across her muscular bare arms browned by a life in the sun. “Do protective spells? Conjure flame into your hands? Manipulate ice? Can you do something as simple as healing yourself, Raquel? That basic spell even children in primary learn!”

“You know I can’t.” I slammed my fist down, jostling the stack of bewitched vellum at her desk. “But it hardly matters if I—”

“Gloaming-on-the-Hill.”

The day I’d almost died. Troll, he’d been infected with blood magic, forbidden dark arts, rolled by a human mage to slaughter young girls. Children really. The mage himself, when I corned him in a shabby barn, was barely out of boyhood himself. He was a cherub youth, big brown eyes framed with a wealth of long lashes, baby fat still rounding his cheeks, at odds with the spatter of little hairs trying to coat his upper lip. I’d underestimated him, I was young and stupid then, eager to show myself to my Captain then, Thagog. I’d extended a hand, trying to use my cuteness to sweeten the deal of a peaceful resolution.

I hadn’t seen the mimick until it was too late and hadn’t even felt when its teeth plunged into my stomach. There was pressure, and then nothing, nothing at all from the waist down. I think I screamed—surely, I must have screamed—but I can’t recall doing it. I just remember when the boy’s watery eyes blinked away his false tears and he slid a bucket underneath me as I bled.

Faes bleed golden—ambrosia the humans call it. Our blood is highly coveted by humans for its use in all manner of spells and potions. Use our blood right and you can have a longer life, eternal youth, and power beyond anything you could ever hope to know. But, if you use it wrong you get a half-life, a cursed life, a taint in your bloodlines like Shepard and Mal. These are the shifters, the vampires, changelings, wildlings, and the wraiths of the world. But that’s the trick of our blood, the joke, you can never just have a taste—you’ll always crave more.

Sometimes a guardsman can get you to our healers if they care enough to. The healers can ease our blood out of you, and restore you to a shadow of yourself because you’ll forever be haunted by what you could have. What you used to have. Sometimes the memory is enough to relapse, and sometimes the memory is enough to covet more. It’s why the humans waged war with us for so long, fiends for our blood or damming us for even being a temptation.

With that mage boy, I could see the twitches in his hand, the way he licked his lips as the bucket beneath me filled. An addict close to cursing himself for something twisted no doubt.

I was lucky my sword hand hadn’t been pinned by the mimick's fierce fangs. I might not be here today if I hadn’t freed myself by stabbing the foul creature in the eye with my cape pin. That and Mal finding me and rushing through the In-Between to Everwood for healing. Actions that later led to his promotion to Captain.

My lip curled, and the silvery crescents across my waist felt like they burned beneath my fatigues.

I had been lucky, that was true, but I had also been clever, resourceful, and determined—

“I will not lose you again.” She tried to mask it with her rage, her animalistic nature, but there was no mistaking the terrified mother underneath it all.

I may not have been hers by blood, but Shepard found me when the fairy circle cleared. Shepard who’d held me tight as she promised slavers would never find me here. It was Shepard who’d named me Raquel after her hero, her grandmother, in celebration of my first year here at the Everwood. I may not have been hers by blood, but I was still her daughter in spirit.

“I could not bear to see you for a second time in the healer’s tent a step from death’s door. You ask too much of me.”

“Mother—”

“Knight Raquel.” Shepard stood up, palms clasped. “I do not believe this is up for debate any longer.”

“So that’s it then? I understand your fear, and I know I risk so much to be a knight, but all I’ve ever wanted—”

“And want is all you ever do, Raquel. When will it be enough? When will you feel like you’re enough and stop these suicide missions?”

“I—” I couldn’t tell a lie, but Gods I wished I could when the truth was thrown back in my face. “—I don’t know. But, if you let me compete in the Quartering, I may learn the answer.”

“And it is precisely that lack of certainty that I will not change my decision.” She nodded once, back to the stoic commander that I knew her as, hope sinking in my breast.

She wasn’t going to budge. No matter how much I’d already proven myself, she only saw me as that same broken girl cradled in Mal’s arms, more victim than the victor. “So it is with a heavy but clear conscious that I do hereby, from this day forward, ban you, Knight Raquel of the Crimson Blade, from taking part in any Quarterings.”

“Is that an order, Knight-Commander?” I said to my boots, anger shaking my body with fine tremors.

“Yes, Knight. It is.”

I didn’t wait to be dismissed, I just thumped my fist to my breast and bowed before stalking out of the room. I was getting that drink I’d promised myself earlier; the tea had only been an appetizer. Unfortunately, the hallway to the mess hall was packed with celebrating guardsmen, quick to rattle off their lots to see who’d made the final cut.

“Read them and weep boys,” Gundrin, a dwarf who’d failed most of his rounds when patrolling the south meadows and would’ve been culled from the guard if not for his noble mother, showed his lot brooch to his companions.

Lot numbers told of how well you’d scored overall in the recitals. The lower the number the higher the score, and this untalented bastard, had ranked twenty-five out of fifty men. I sat there stunned, as he showed off his pin proudly, my chest blank. “Oh, what’s this? The doxy-girl didn’t get a pin? That cause Knight-Commander doesn’t have a cock for you to milk sympathy points toward?”

“Gundrin!” Ezik, a satyr with blond ringlets, bumped his furry shoulder into Gundrin’s, their table rocking as his knees hit the rough underside. “Come now! Go easy on the venomous gadfly, otherwise, you may never know her true talents.”

Ezik cupped himself through his pants, jerking his shaft in my direction, and I flipped the lot of them off in response, much to their mocking amusement. Little fuckers. I hope they drank themselves sick and missed the tourney together! Why I would…would?

I stopped somewhere between the kegs of ale and the bar as harried maids tended between rowdy guards.

If they missed the Quartering…

I jerked my gaze back to Gundrin and his little posse. The dwarf was around my height, a little stockier in his frame in that way all dwarves were… Full plate mail armor, androgynous enough to hide a female frame underneath without anyone becoming the wiser, complete with an identity-blocking helmet…

“TODAY’S SPECIAL IS AESIRIAN MEAD!” Maud hollered, wizened goblin hands ringing the bell behind the bar. “FIFTY SCEPTERS FOR A PINT! ONE CROWN FOR A TABLE OF FIVE! FRONT AND CENTER! FIRST COME FIRST SERVE!”

Aesirian Mead, the strongest alcohol in all of Gaia, was on tap? The logo of which, was a red sparrow clutching holly. Follow the red sparrow indeed, I thought wickedly as I still had my full purse that Mal rejected. Oh, follow the red sparrow indeed.