𝐀 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐎𝐟 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐬

Ch 1: Queen in everything but oath

Fenrys POV

I was scared for her. She wouldn't break, I knew that. She was the fire-breathing bitch queen and she would bow for no one, I knew that too. But it was too much to watch. The light and mirth in her eyes slowly fading.
More than anything else, I couldn't watch this anymore. I have been blood sworn to Maeve for 130 years and yet she never managed to achieve this loyalty and love I felt for this young queen. My queen. My queen in everything but oath.

Cairn had come in during the early hours, took his time with the lashes too, and I had growled and sneered at him as much as I possibly could but he hadn't even acknowledge me. He knew the command in my head wouldn't let me move. I needed to do something. I needed to save her as she saved me.

I whimpered, begging her to look at me. She did and I blinked three times, asking her if she was okay. Two blinks were her answer. She needed to leave or she wouldn't last, she knew that yet she held strong. Loyalty to the death...

Maeve had commanded me by the blood oath to stay in my wolf form, and it took everything in me to resist when I changed into a human. I would die... But she would live. That's all that mattered.

"You. need. t-to draw. the marks. Aelin. Y-You need to. escape. please."
She looked at me first in shock, and then the realization of what I had done hit her, and that look changed into one of horror. She immediately shut her eyes as if she was trying to tell herself that I wasn't real, that it was just another one of those nightmares Maeve tortured her with.
"I'm r-real Aelin. I n-need you to escape. Draw th-the marks. Leave."
She opened her eyes, realising Maeve would never say that, and looked at me with pain in her eyes.... for me.

She closed her eyes again but this time her forehead crinkled in thought. She opened them with a renewed fire that I knew was coursing through her. I would die...but she would make it. That's all that matters. She will avenge me, I knew that and that was enough.

She dipped her finger in her own blood and slowly, painfully, lifted herself from her currently open coffin and started drawing marks I didn't understand on the stone lid. She was chanting something then, and the marks began to glow, and suddenly a greenish-blue vortex opened up in the middle of the cell-like room. I looked at her, looking at me, and smiled one last defiant smile at her, before I doubled over with blood oozing out of my eyes, and nose, and mouth, and ears. The oath was broken with no honour or permission. It would kill me.

She looked at the swirling vortex again and started chanting. There was a sort of change in the air, an overwhelming sense of roses, which is when I heard the doors creak open, and in came Cairn. He seemed to connect the dots for a minute before he lunged at her. But he was too late, the vortex pulled her in before Cairn could touch her.

I could smell the anger rolling off of him in waves which only increased when he looked at me, pure hatred simmering in his eyes. He pounced and I closed my eyes with a smile on my face, at least Maeve won't be the death of me. The hurt never came, but a sort of sinking feeling did. Like I was being pulled apart and put together in a matter of seconds. I landed on a hard concrete floor with a wince and doubled over, not from the fall but from the break of the bind. Blood came oozing out of my mouth and landed on the floor when suddenly, a wrist with a cut on it came into view. I looked up at the owner of the wrist.

"I think... I think I know how to save you. Would you swear the blood oath to me? One replaced by another?" she asked.

I just stared at her, wanting my face to split into a shit-eating grin but I was in too much pain to do anything besides be internally grateful and place my mouth on her wrist, biting into it a little and drinking. She recited some words in the old fae language which I figured Whitehorn had something to do with and suddenly, my being felt as if it was being dipped in water right after burning. The hurt receded and the constant urge to spill my guts out stopped too, relief flooding my body. I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled right back, before she passed out. I was worried, what just happened? and then it hit me. What had I done!?

Cairn had told the healers to wait a little longer before healing her, leaving all her wounds open, blood dripping from cuts that marred her entire body. I should have waited till the healers were done and then asked her to escape. What the hell was I thinking...

I looked at my surroundings, trying to grab anything that would allow me to help her, but when I looked up I realised just how much shit we were in.

We were in a dining room, with an obscenely huge table, piled with food enough to feed the entire cadre, which was saying a lot. This wasn't the palace of Orynth, or Adarlan, or Doranelle either. We weren't in Erilea, or any place I knew, and I have traveled quite a lot during my long life.

I decided to put that problem aside and focus on the one right in front of me. Saving the queen that saved me.
I started looking around for something, anything that might help, anything that might stop her from bleeding out, then suddenly the door burst open and entered an obnoxiously handsome blonde guy with a redhead trailing him. "who the fuck are you and what are you doing on my grounds!!?" he yelled.