Deleted Scene: Shade Battles Scath’s Victims

(please remember, this scene is unedited and unpolished)

Scene: It has just been revealed that Aoife has her powers back, and the victims demand Scath return theirs as well. Scath refuses, so the Queen of the Unseelie Court decides maybe if Shade gets hurt badly enough, Scath will release the rest of the magic to her.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  This was a darker version of the story and a lot changed before the final draft.

* * * * * *

I had a bad feeling that the vertigo washing over me had nothing to do with a lack of sight, and everything to do with the fact that the darkness robbing me of my sight had transported me physically as well.

They didn’t call her the Queen of Air and Darkness for nothing.

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision. A familiar scent washed over me as I tried to force my surroundings to come into focus.

A mix of whiskey and clean bed linens.

I knew who it was before the darkness cleared.

“I take it things aren’t going well,” Flint said dryly.

The leannan sidhe stood in front of me, wearing blue jeans that clung in all the right places and a black T-shirt tailored to fit his V-shaped frame. He stood close enough that for a minute, he was all I could see of my surroundings. Flint, though the bane of my existence, wasn’t dangerous. Or at least, he was low on the list of threats I was worried about at the moment. I cared less about why he was there and more about whether he knew where “where” was.

“Where am I?”

Flint’s hazel eyes shone for a brief moment, giving me a hint of tiger’s eye gold bands in his irises. “One of the fighting rings at the queen’s court. And I have to tell you, Shade…that’s bad.”

The lingering darkness faded away, starting at the center of the room about ten feet away from me. Slowly, my situation revealed itself, and I stared with my lips parted.

Flint had called it a fighting ring, but it looked more like the main ring of a circus. There were bleachers set up to one side, and a black canvas tent rose around us, creating a large dome. Flint and I stood on one side of the ring.

Riona, Treasa, and Baine stood on the other.

Treasa stared at me as if I were a bottle of water and she’d been lost in the desert for weeks. “You can do it,” she said, her voice breaking. “You can give it back. Aoife proves it. You can give it back.”

“No, she can’t,” the Riona said. The blonde pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, then folded her hands in front of her, resting them on the gauzy white material of her gown. “The Abyss must release it to her, and only then can she give it back.” Her brown eyes hardened. “But the Abyss refuses.”

“She’s not refusing,” I corrected her, my voice almost lost under the pounding of my heart. “She just wants me to solve her sister’s murder first. Surely you can understand why she might be afraid the urgency to find the murderer will be lost once—”

Baine stepped forward, cutting me off. “You will find no sympathy for the Abyss among us. Simone is dead. She is beyond caring who killed her. And the Abyss was consigned to stone for this past century or so, unthinking and unfeeling. With all due respect, her suffering pales to what she’s inflicted on us. Her decision to let us continue to suffer the loss of what we need simply so she can more quickly get the answers she wants…” His eyes hardened. “Her selfishness is cruel.”

I wanted to argue with him.

But he wasn’t wrong.

I closed my eyes, then forced them open again. “I’m sorry for what you’ve suffered. And you’re right, it’s cruel for Scath to continue withholding your magic out of her own fear. I wish I could make her give it back now, but I gave her my word, and I’m bound by it.” I took a breath. “But I will find the murder—”

“You gave her your word that you wouldn’t take the magic from her unless it was to save your own life.” Baine reached into the bag at his side and pulled out a soft cream-colored fur with black spots. A cheetah’s hide.

Suddenly I remembered what Methilda had told me. That the queen was attacking me, hoping to drain me, force me to draw magic from Scath. It hadn’t worked, and I didn’t think it would work.

But it seemed she thought perhaps she’d just been too gentle. She’d graduated from having random creatures jump me—and I was now almost certain that the agaricum had been her doing—to dropping me into what amounted to a gladiator’s arena with the three people desperate enough to kill me.

Suddenly Flint’s presence here was more terrifying than it had been a moment ago.

“This isn’t my choice,” Flint said quietly, as if reading the realization on my face.

“It doesn’t work like this,” I whispered. “She can’t drain me of magic.”

“No, but if you use too much magic, you’ll drain your strength. And Scath admitted to her that you are permitted to use the bond if it will save your life. So if your life is in danger, you can force Scath to let you bond with her. You can access her strength and her magic.”

I shook my head, desperation making my voice shake. “Scath knows they won’t let me die. Not when I’ve proven I can return their power. Not when there’s a chance Scath’s death won’t release the power back to them and I’m a sure thing. We both know that, and so my life isn’t in danger.”

Flint looked at me, and I saw genuine regret in his eyes, along with a flash of anger. “Sometimes it’s not about the truth. Sometimes it’s about letting them try it their way.”

He was talking about the three victims.

“She’s going to let them beat me until I’m nearly dead and hope it takes the edge off their anger,” I said, my voice sounding far away. “This is just to make them stop badgering her.”

Flint put his hands on my shoulders and leaned down to press his forehead to mine. “The queen is watching from the shadows,” he whispered. “Scath is with her. She’s forbidden me to help you. And she’s been quite insistent of what my role must be.”

I knew what he was going to do before he did it.

I felt the brush of his power wash over me, the sensation as erotic as it always was. For once I wasn’t angry about the seductive nature of his power. I knew it was who he was, how his magic worked. And honestly, at this point, I was just grateful to feel something besides betrayal.

Scath would call their bluff. She’d let them hurt me.

The build of Flint’s power was slower than it had been before when he’d used his abilities as a leannan sidhe to “inspire” me, to boost my power. He was giving me a bigger push, filling every space in my body with his power until my magic pulsed inside me like a living thing that would outgrow my skin.

The power wasn’t my biggest problem. I was outnumbered. I had no idea what Treasa was capable of, no idea what artifacts she might have on her. Baine would have more animal skins, but truly he only really needed the cheetah skin. He didn’t need claws or teeth to kill me.

He just needed to catch me.

Knowing I wasn’t going to die made it so much worse. There would be no quick fall into unconsciousness. No minimum of pain. They had to hurt me as badly as they could. Make it last as long as they could.

Flint stepped back, and I turned to face my opponents. Riona stood still while Treasa and Baine slowly stepped to the sides, moving to flank me.

“Corpus umbra,” I whispered.

I watched Treasa’s  eyes widen as my body and all my clothes turned black, my form fading until I was just a shadow.

“She’s incorporeal,” Riona called out. “She’ll try to stay that way as long as she’s outnumbered. Treasa, the holy sword!”

Treasa dropped the bag she was holding onto the ground and knelt beside it, tearing open the flap to root around inside. I deduced that the bag was enchanted the same way my waist pouch was—bigger on the inside.

The thought made me lower my hand, and my stomach tightened as I realized I wasn’t wearing my waist pouch. The queen had taken it.

No potions.

No healing potions.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” I said out loud. “I’ve already proven I can access Scath’s magic. And she’s said she’ll release it as soon as I solve her sister’s murder. Help me solve the murder and you’ll get your magic back.”

Treasa drew a sword from her bag, but her hand shook so badly she nearly dropped it. Riona stepped forward and took the blade from her grasp, her eyes locking onto me as she stepped farther into the ring. She drove toward me with the blade held parallel to the ground, aiming for a spot on my chest two inches below my left breast.

Aiming for my heart.

I pointed at the space in front of her. “Summonitores,—gelu!”

A burst of blue light erupted in front of Riona, writhing and twisting into the form of an ice elemental. The creature looked like a pile of icicles that had fallen from a roof with a leaky gutter, with sharp features and eyes like frozen stones. Riona’s blade bit into the elemental, drawing a screech of anger from the being as ice chips flew outward from the wound. It grabbed the sword and a line of frost raced up the razor sharp edge and over the hilt to cover Riona’s hand in ice. Riona shrieked.

Baine watched everything with a calm, steady gaze as he stepped a few paces farther away from the two women, still trying to flank me.

“Baine, more options are never a bad thing,” I told him. “You can try to kill me any time, but solving Simone’s murder will get harder the more time that passes.”

“It’s been more than a century,” Baine said, slowly pulling the cheetah fur over his shoulders, “I don’t think a few more days will matter.”

I shook my head wildly. “I’ve been stirring things up, gathering more information, more evidence. Whoever the killer is, they know I’m circling. They could be trying to cover their tracks, or maybe trying to escape while all the attention is on Scath.”

Treasa was scrambling in her bag for a new artifact, but I forced myself to keep concentrating on Baine. He was the calm one. If I was going to reason with someone, it would be him.

“And what is it you’ve discovered that you think will make the killer so nervous?” he asked.

“Simone was framed,” I told him. “Scath told me Simone didn’t kill Cellica, but Cellica was killed with one of Simone’s arrows. Either someone recovered one of her arrows or someone made a duplicate. Either way, the queen was always looking for someone who wanted Simone dead. I’m looking for someone who wanted to kill Cellica.”

“If you want our help,” Treasa shouted, “then give us back our magic!” A sob wracked her body, making her drop the small goblet she’d been holding. “If I had my power back, I’d rip you in two. I’d make you pay for all of this, make the Abyss pay.”

I shut Treasa out. Baine was looking at me. Considering.

I almost had him.

Suddenly Treasa threw something at my feet. A small glass vial that shattered when it hit the ground, sending a cloud of fog over me that dissipated as quickly as it appeared.

“You can touch her now!” she screamed.

Baine grabbed me, and I didn’t fight him. I hadn’t seen him move, but even when I felt his hands closing around my arms, I forced myself to hold still.

“Tempus mutatio,” I whispered.

I looked Baine in the eye as he tightened his grip until I was sure he’d shatter bone.

“Only you can touch me,” I told him, not bothering to keep the strain out of my voice. “But please listen. There were rumors that Cellica was planning a coup. I need to know if that’s true.”

“Why?”

“Because if it’s true, then I’m looking for someone loyal to the queen,” I said. “If it’s not, then I need to look at other avenues.”

Again, Baine considered me. “It’s possible,” he said finally, “that we may have found evidence on the body, and in Cellica’s room, that she was planning treason.”

“Where is this evidence?” I asked.

“It’s possible it was accidentally destroyed.”

I closed my eyes, then forced them open. “Can you tell me what it was?”

“There was evidence that Cellica and Methilda were meeting with old Seelie friends. And there were some meetings scheduled with people in court who are…less than enthusiastic about how the queen runs her affairs.”

He was holding something back.

“There’s more?” I asked.

Baine frowned. “I conducted my own investigations. To make certain the queen found no threats in our House. I found no evidence that Methilda had gone through with any of the meetings indicated by the evidence.”

He was still holding back, but before he could speak again, Treasa interrupted.

“Cellica was a traitor! And after Morgan’s mother took her in, treated her as one of her own children.” She slumped over her bag. “No wonder Grainne faded so quickly. To lose her adopted daughter and her magic so close together.”

Baine made a face that only I could see.

My eyes widened. “Morgan’s mother? Grainne was involved in planning a coup with Cellica?”

Baine looked away, but I struggled, just enough to make him reassert his grip.

“Morgan’s mother attended a few…suspicious social engagements,” he admitted, keeping his voice low. “She met with a Seelie family. One of the more…battle-friendly families.”

Before my brain could fully process what he’d said, something cold and hard struck me in the back. My mouth opened and I looked down at the blade protruding from my chest, the tip pressed against the front of Baine’s body just enough to brush the fur he wore.

Riona withdrew the blade and Baine released me, letting me fall to my knees. I felt as if I’d been punched, the wind driven from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make my chest move at all.

 Riona raised the sword again. She looked down at me, her head tilted as she put the tip of the blade against my side, a few inches from my belly button. Without changing expression, she leaned forward, pressing the blade slowly into my body.

I screamed. My magic exploded, erupting from my body in brilliant beams of lightning that struck everyone but Flint. Riona and Treasa hit the ground hard, their bodies convulsing with the force of the lightning.

Baine grabbed my shoulders and shook me, making the pain in my body spasm so that I screamed again.

He leaned down, putting his mouth close to my ear. “You have your new lead. If you haven’t made something of it by nightfall, you’ll see me again.”

I was barely aware of anything beyond the pain as he lifted my body and then brought me slamming down onto the ground.

And then there was nothing.