Page 121 of The Knucker King

The two guards quaked at his fury. Their battered leather armour creaked, and spear points rattled as they trembled before him.

“Queen Morgana has forbidden your entrance,” one of them piped up, his face half hidden by a helm.

Trewoofe did not have the time nor patience for this.

Quick as a striking snake, he lashed out, biting the head from the shoulders of the guard who spoke. The Knucker pulverised his skull with a brutal crunch and his body fell with a thud. The dark blue blood contaminated the earth. The foul taste stained Trewoofe’s tongue, and he spat the head out at the boots of the second guard who shrieked and dropped his weapon with a clatter. He fled from the terrible fury of the Well King, leaving a trail of rotten fear in his wake.

Trewoofe huffed and marched over the threshold into the Faerie Queen’s domain, talons cracking the ancient flagstones beneath him. She sat at the opposite end of the small cavern, on top of a towering throne made of human skulls, next to a giant green geode. The orbitals of each skull were stuffed with singing crystals, in some sick mockery of eyes. They seemed to wink at Trewoofe as he marched across the chamber. A half dozen courtiers draped in fanciful rags that hung from their skeletal frames, split like the tide, trying to avoid his wrath.

Trewoofe hissed and snapped at a Tall One who did not get out of the way quick enough, ripping his tattered tunic from his torso. The courtier shrieked and covered his bony trunk with his thorn-tipped fingers, moving into the shadows of a column.

“MORGANA!” Trewoofe roared, his face level with the Queen upon her throne.

She dipped her head with the barest acknowledgement of the furious Knucker before her. Like all her flock, once, she would have been beautiful enough to have any male, Faerie or human, crawl to her on his knees. Now? She was emaciated with sunken starshine eyes that no longer glowed. Her cascading red hair was the colour of dried human blood and matted with knots. On the top of her head, she wore a crown made of a man’s mandible, teeth and all, embossed with tiny crystal chips.

“Well King,” she hissed through her needle-like teeth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Where is your Prince Consort?” he snarled.

She lowered her head, finally deferring to his authority. “I would not know. He has been banished from Tall-led after I found out he tried to tryst with a woman who entered the Underneath.”

Trewoofe tensed at her description of the assault on Avice. “Tryst? Did you say tryst?”

She met his eye; her face pinched in defiance. “What else would you call it?”

Trewoofe smashed his paw into the throne, a hairbreadth away from the Queen’s lap. He raked down, his talons effortlessly swiping through bone. Morgana shrieked as she fell and landed at the base of the skulls, a tangle of limbs and raggedy skirts. She tried to skuttle away, but he lashed out, caging her beneath his talons.

“HELP ME!” she screamed to her courtiers.

His ears twitched, her high-pitched shriek needling them. He tightened his grip on her, and glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that no Tall One would sneak up on him from behind. None had moved. All of them lurked in the shadows, their eyeshine the only sign they were still in the cavern.

“No one is helping you. Now, tell me, where is he?”

Morgana bucked against him, even sinking her teeth into the pad of a toe. He hissed and tightened his grip. She let out a whelp as he pressed down, forcing her still.

“Nature help me, Morgana. I will kill you if you do not tell me!”

“I banished Orfeo after I found out he tried to lay with the human woman! Last I heard, he was headed for the tunnels at the coast.”

“Now, that was not so hard, was it?” Trewoofe huffed, lifting his paw. “To be clear, there was no tryst. He attacked Avice. The woman I am courting.”

Morgana stood and smoothed her skirts. “To think you have lowered yourself so.” She curled her lip. “If you wanted someone with two legs to rut…” She tossed her thorned hand to where some of her courtiers hid behind a stalactite. “You could take your pick from the females and males of my court.”

He hissed again. “Do not insult her or me,” he warned. “Be glad I am not seeking retribution against your whole clan, instead, only your Prince Consort.”

“I am forever grateful, Lord,” she simpered, curtseying with exaggerated flair.

He puffed. His hot breath blew the grim crown from her head. It shattered as it crashed to the ground.

“As you should be. From the time that my father took you in, you have caused nothing but grief. You are lucky I have not cast you out ten times over,” he growled, before sweeping his gaze to the courtiers and back to the Queen. “Avice is under my protection in my Kingdom. If anyone touches her, you will go the same way as that guard out there, and Orfeo when I find him.”

Morgana swept down and scrabbled with the pieces of her shattered crown, chittering as she tried to piece it back together. “You did not have to do that,” she whimpered.

“Be happy it was not your neck.”

He paused just before he swept from the cavern. His mind turned as he remembered the Tall Ones were old – far older than him – reaching back to the ancient days when his father ruled the Underneath.

“What do you know of the Greenfolk?” he asked.