Incessant pounding at the door had my eyes sliding from my strategy plans to it with a scowl. Debating with myself for less than a second, I called out a permission to enter. It must be important if they were bothering me at such a late hour. As the highest ranking soldier on base, they knew better than to interrupt me for anything less than an emergency. And this damn well better be an emergency. 

My expression flattened as the door hesitantly swung open despite my permission to do so. A young woman wearing a purple soldier’s tunic stepped into my office, her hand still clutching the door knob. Folding up the plans and stuffing them underneath a stack of books, I gave the nameless soldier my attention in the form of a blank stare. 

“Speak.” 

“Commander, apologies for the interruption but we have news on the location of Macha Tills.” The woman rushed out. 

What? “Where.” 

“High Tail Tavern. She was spotted by some soldiers and your brother this morning. I overheard them talking about a woman they saw and just knew that it had to be her.” 

Temper spiking, I demanded, “Where are they and who else knows about this?” 

“I put them in an interrogation room, Commander. With your personal experience of the enemy, I thought it best if you confirmed the identity of the woman they saw as Macha Tills before we alerted Mab.” She replied logically. 

I nodded my approval and stood, “Let’s go.” 

She turned to wait out in the hall as I exited my office making sure to lock it behind me. Because of the late hour the only beings we passed on our way were the Brownies, who were far more concerned with cleaning than the Fae who passed them. The woman in front of me was almost an entire head shorter than I was and seemed to cower whenever my heavy gaze landed on the back of her yellow streaked head. And she calls herself a soldier, I thought with a curl of my lip. 

Stopping at the first cell of the interrogation block, she opened the door before moving aside to let me pass. Ignoring her, I walked into the room to get a good look at the soldiers who believed they saw our enemy. The room itself was bare with only a long metal table in front of the occupied chairs positioned in the middle of the room. The drain in the center of the floor, hidden underneath the table and the hook directly above it, made it obvious what type of interrogation usually went on in here. And the Fae who sat at the far end of the table, next to his battle mates, tempted me to use the room for its original purpose. 

“Commander.” The men, boys really, all murmured before standing in respect of my position.

The woman closed the door behind us effectively making sure that whatever happened in this room stayed in this room. A precaution she’d soon regret. 

I nodded at them, making eye contact with light green eyes that immediately darted away. 

“Tell the Commander what you saw, Soldiers.” The female told them, almost vibrating in excitement. 

The boy at the closest end of the table with dark purple hair spoke for them, “We went to High Tail Tavern the night before to blow off some steam, Commander. And when we left this morning, we all saw a tall woman at the edge of the forest. She had on a black cloak that covered her almost completely but it couldn’t hide the shine of her hair.” 

“The color.” I commanded, eyes narrowing.

“A deep shiny royal blue, Commander.” The boy next to him answered, “But it was when Sergent Bolia overheard us talking about the woman’s tattoos that we realized who we saw.”

“Tattoos?” 

The second to last boy, sitting next to the one with a shaved pastel green head, piped up, “Interlocking swirls in silver ink decorated her hands, the mark of a Slykhelm inmate, Commander.” 

Anger bubbled up beneath my blank exterior, overflowing from my chest to drown the rest of my body in it. The sheer idiocy that my baby brother seemed to be capable of was almost unbelievable. Gaze drifting to Baris, I allowed the rage to reach my eyes and took great pleasure in watching him flinch. I’d given him clear instructions not to go to the tavern, to make sure he kept the others from going as well. He’d obviously chosen to ignore me. 

The woman spoke, ignorant to my thoughts, “This is fantastic news, Commander. The day has come and gone but we can still search the area. See if she’s left behind a travel trail, this is it! This is the break we’ve been waiting for!” 

That insufferable female better not have left a damn travel trail.

“Is this true?” I asked, looking pointedly at Baris. 

“...Yes.” 

“Then you know what happens next.” 

Getting to his feet, Baris nodded slowly.

The female soldier took a hesitant step back as I turned to face her, “Commander?” 

Without warning, I grabbed her by the face and slammed her head back repeatedly against the iron lined door. Sounds of a scuffle broke out behind me as the boys shook off their shock and began to panic. Releasing her face, the woman’s body slid to the floor leaving behind a bloody streak on the metal door. Dismissing the dead soldier, I took in the rest of the room with cold eyes. Baris was grappling with two soldiers on the ground while the other pressed himself up against a corner with wide eyes. 

Keeping the scared soldier within my line of sight, I calmly walked over to the boys wrestling on the floor. Picking up a chair from the table as I went, I swung it up with both hands and rammed it into the closest boy pinning Baris to the floor. The boy dropped flat from the brutal hit to his back before rolling off to the side with a groan. Not one to waste time, I re-adjusted my hold on the chair and brought it down against the front of his face. Repeating the action, I felt the metal vibrate as it hit the soft tissue of his skin and then slammed against bone. A crack split the air seconds ahead of the blood spraying the ground around the boy’s head. 

After hitting him one last time, my lip curled from the sensation of blood misting over the back of my hands. Ugh, sticky hands. Tossing the chair away, I ignored the flecks of blood and flesh flying off it to look at Baris. The idiotic boy was struggling to breathe around the hands currently wrapped around his throat. Pale green eyes held a wild glint to them as he made eye contact with me followed by a harsh nudging to my mind. While I lifted the barrier, I wished not for the first time that we had been born regular fae. Ones without this irritating ability. 

Brother! Help me!

Did I or did I explicitly tell you not to go to that tavern?

His eyes bulged further, Are you serious right now? I’m dying!

I know. How sad. I’ll make sure to tell mother it was your own fault. 

Face twisting into a snarl, Baris jabbed his fingers into the other boy’s eyes causing him to lose his grip with a shout. Shooting up into a sitting position, he grabbed both sides of the soldiers head and twisted it until a crunch echoed out. Shoving the body aside and getting to his feet, Baris panted and choked harshly trying to force air into his starving lungs. Waiting for him to catch his breath, I glanced at the last soldier only to find him on his knees. The boy’s arms were extended palms up and his head was tipped back to face the ceiling. Praying. He was praying to the Divines in his last moments instead of using this time to try and run or fight. 

“You are such a dick.” 

Slanting my eyes back to Baris, I replied, “Mother and father are too soft on you, that’s why you don’t fight back as hard as you should. You think someone else is going to jump in and save you.”

“So what? You were just going to stand there and watch me die?”

“Of course not, I would’ve stepped in once you passed out. The only people allowed to kill you are Syrus and I. It’s been decided.” 

His eyes rolled to the back of his head, “Such wonderful brothers, I have.” 

“Kill him.” I replied, nodding to the praying soldier.

Baris took a step towards the boy before halting, “Can’t we just let him go? I doubt he’ll tell anyone what we did.” 

Tch, soft.

“He’s right! I don’t know anything!” The boy frantically shouted. “Let me go and no one will ever see me again!” 

Crossing my arms over my chest, I shook my head, “No. You let him go and two weeks from now, we’ll be strung up, tortured and killed by Mab personally.” 

“You can’t possibly know that.” 

Feeling the anger from earlier start to creep back in, I turned to the boy in the corner. “My father, former Elite Guard Commander Dougal Grymes, is now the Commander of Macha’s Elite Guard. I took over my father’s position in order to get information directly from Mab to feed to my father. My brother is here to keep up the facade of trust between my family and Mab.-” 

“Cillian!”

“Stop!” The boy cried.

“The only people who know of my involvement are in this room plus my father. And when the time comes to pick a side, the Grymes family will be drenched in royal blue.” Shifting my eyes back to Baris, I stated, “There. Now he knows too much. Kill. Him.” 

“That was cold hearted, brother.” Baris spat the words at me like a curse as he walked towards the other boy. 

I bristled, we were in the middle of a war and I was doing what needed to be done in order for us to survive it. If that made me cold hearted then so be it. Everything I do is for the sole purpose of seeing Mab dead and Macha seated on the throne. It didn’t matter that my future Queen hated me for tossing her into Slykhelm, it had been the only way to save her life and I’d never apologize for that. 

Macha didn’t know it yet but over the next couple of months a lot of things were going to be revealed to her. If she would’ve let me speak when I found her instead of stabbing me, I’d have told her everything myself. But of course, Cell Bait was too stubborn to ever let anything go. 

What made it worse though, was this new found attraction that had reared its ugly head both of the times that I’d seen her. The crazed shine to her eyes when pissed off and that almost insane joy she got when in the middle of a battle was almost seductive. I missed the days where she had been too young for me to think of her as anything other than an annoying little girl who needed my protection. Now, she was a fully developed female that hated me and for some reason that wasn’t enough to dull my attraction. I would deny it until my last breath but I was almost excited to take over as Macha’s Commander when I left Mab’s court. If it was the idea of how pissed she was going to be or the possibility of her attacking me again that excited me, I didn’t know. 

But my attraction to her didn’t matter, she was going to have to do a lot of self discovery on her journey to being Queen and she didn’t need me distracting her. It was important that she won this war because unbeknownst to her, the fae of Tir Na Nog needed her now more than ever. So, I was going to put her sexy psychotic Fae warrior ass on the throne if it was the last thing I did. 

“And just where in the Centaurs ass do you think you’re going?” Baris shouted. 

Already halfway to the door, I said, “You made the mess, now clean it up.”

“But there’s brains everywhere!” 

I shrugged, “Not my problem, Bear-Ass.” 

“Mother told you to stop calling me that! I’m telling-”

The door fell shut cutting off the rest of his juvenile screams.

—————————————————————————

So, sorry for the late post Verbies! This week just got away from me. But please lmk what you think of Cillian’s P.O.V and Macha’s story so far!!! Btw I was freaking psyched to write in Cillian’s voice!

Smooches, Verbage💋