Chapter 1714: Hatred
"This isn’t..." Her voice came hoarse and unsteady, and the fingers still resting on his chest curled. "The hunger... it’s not receding."
"What idiocy are you two doing?!"
Sera’s voice hit them both from behind like a whip crack, golden light blazing on her palms as she marched across the gore-slicked stone toward the two of them with fury that had nothing to do with the battlefield outside.
The gorgeous elven healer was fuming at her own lover. "You lost a lot of blood yet here you are, cutting your own arteries open?! To make a buffet?!?!"
Then she pointed at the woman sitting on top of him.
"Her channels are fried as her spell has been eating herself alive for days, and you think what she needs right now is your blood?!" She shoved between them with her hands already reaching for Black Fang’s shoulders, trying to pry the larger woman off Quinlan’s chest.
Black Fang’s grip tightened on his skin. "Stop making a scene."
"Excuse me?!" The elf stomped in a puddle of blood.
"The blood did help. It just wasn’t enough." Black Fang spoke without looking away from Quinlan.
"Sera." Quinlan spoke calmly beneath the woman straddling him. "She’s not hurting me. You know my physique isn’t normal... I have a lot of blood to offer."
Sera bit her lower lip, the fury deflating out of her as quickly as it had arrived.
Her hands lowered to her sides and the golden light on them dimmed, and what remained on her face when the anger left was far more honest.
"Sorry..." She looked at the wound on his shoulder, then at the blood on Black Fang’s chin, then at her own hands.
"I... I just get really agitated when you’re injured. Also... This really isn’t the time to be experimenting with blood transfusions, but..."
Her gaze lingered on the color returning to Black Fang’s skin where the blood had touched her lips. "If it actually helps, then I shouldn’t have..."
Quinlan smiled at her, soft and warm, and the elf who’d been fuming at him three seconds ago went quiet.
Wind gathered beneath him in a cushion that lifted them both off the stone.
He rose with her wrapped around him, one arm hooking beneath her thighs to hold her weight against his chest as the air carried them upright.
"Take more if it helps," he told her quietly, and Black Fang’s mouth found the wound on his shoulder again.
His free hand reached for Sera, fingers threading through her golden hair and cradling the back of her head with the same gentleness he’d used on Black Fang a minute ago. "Don’t worry about me. Focus on healing her, and see if you can help dispel whatever the hunger is doing to her channels."
Sera leaned into his palm for one breath, then pulled back and turned to Black Fang’s arm with light already blooming fresh on her hands.
"Excuse me!" Myrasyn’s voice rang from the wall with an indignation that had been building for several minutes. "Not to interrupt this deeply touching reunion and family drama, but I am still chained to a wall with a slave collar around my neck!"
Her ears were bolt upright, swiveling between the three of them and the dwarven smiths who stood trembling in the corner of the cell where they’d retreated after removing Black Fang’s collar.
"You three!" She fixed the dwarves with the full weight of a four-thousand-year-old sovereign’s command. "Remove this collar at once!"
The smiths didn’t move.
They looked at each other, then at the floor, then at the compressed knot of charred flesh and steel that used to be their colleagues, and then very carefully at nothing at all.
Myrasyn’s ears went flat. "I said remove it!"
Nothing. One of them swallowed audibly.
"They’re Quinlan’s subjects now," Sera explained without looking up from her work. "They won’t answer to you anymore."
The sound that left the elven queen was closer to a teakettle than a monarch.
Sera sighed, her hands still glowing against Black Fang’s ruined veins. "Free the woman."
The dwarves moved toward Myrasyn immediately, and the queen’s ears perked with relief.
Then she paused.
Her gaze shifted to the smiths approaching her throat, and a memory surfaced with uncomfortable clarity.
When they’d freed Black Fang, Quinlan had been careful. Very careful. ’Take it off her cleanly, without causing any harm. If you aren’t sure you can take it off without failure, stop.’
Every word chosen to prevent sabotage, every loophole sealed before the dwarves could exploit it.
Sera had just said ’free the woman.’
"Um." Myrasyn’s ears drooped as the first smith’s fingers found her collar. "Don’t you think you should add a few... conditions? Like he did for Black Fang? He was very specific about not causing harm, and stopping if they weren’t sure, and-"
"No, not really." Sera’s voice came flat, and her eyes stayed on her work as she shrugged dismissively. "I think you will be just fine."
She didn’t sound convincing.
A chill ran through the queen that had nothing to do with the dungeon air.
Her ears went still for the first time since Quinlan had walked through the door, and the bubbly energy that had carried her through captivity drained out of her face as she studied the elven healer’s profile.
"You hate me."
Sera’s fingers pressed deeper into Black Fang’s forearm, the glow beneath her hands intensifying. She didn’t look up.
"You actually hate me," Myrasyn repeated, and the discovery sat heavier than the chains.
Sera’s hands paused for a fraction of a second. Then she murmured without turning, "...Fine. Ensure you make no mistake on her collar as well. Remove it cleanly, without causing any manner of harm to her."
The dwarves did their work, and the locking runes clicked apart beneath their fingers.
The collar dropped from Myrasyn’s throat and hit the stone with a dull clang.
Sera still hadn’t looked at her.
"You and your council conscripted me on the exact date I became of legal age."
She kept her tone quiet, almost conversational, her hands never stopping their work on Black Fang’s veins.
"You dragged me from my home, my family, my friends, because the army was lacking in Healers. You sent me on a sacrificial probe attack into human territory where my entire unit was slaughtered. I was captured, enslaved, and sold in belly dancer attire."
The healing pulsed steadily from her palms. Her tone didn’t waver.
"So I’m sorry if I don’t have the most favorable opinion of you, Your Majesty."
Myrasyn’s freshly freed hands hung at her sides.
Sera kept working, her voice settling into a rehearsed cadence, like she’d had this conversation with herself a hundred times in a hundred different cells.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. You work together with the council, not all of it is on you. And I know you have to play your game of thrones on a national scale where disposable pawns like me are just numbers in a ledger. The greater good demands sacrifice and all that."
She smoothed the glow across a cluster of burst capillaries in Black Fang’s wrist. "I understand. You don’t have to defend yourself."
But instead of what Sera expected to hear, either the indignant scoff of a Monarch who was spoken to by a lowly citizen in this manner, or a queen of many excuses...
A wet sound echoed in the dungeon.
Sera looked to the side.
The four-thousand-year-old Queen of all elves was on her knees in the blood of her captors with her forehead pressed to the gore-slicked stone.
