The Fae Princess (The Pacific Princesses Book 2) Ektaa Bali (free ebook reader txt) 📖

lands. In that cave where the only water supply was a deep pool of sleeping potion.”

Sonakshi found it suddenly hard to breathe. Was it possible that Vidya’s grandfather had done this? Batuman must have seen the scepticism on her face because he quickly added. “You were not there, unicorn majesty, the Bunyips were taking everybody. Eating everyone they could find. The Fae King could not leave monsters roaming around the Murray river. He had to fix it.”

“Alright,” came King Deven’s voice. “If that’s the case, then how does Mankini come into it?”

Batuman stepped forward. “Mankini wanted revenge for what the Fae had done to her brother and his people. It was her life’s mission after… collecting my unicorn mistress, of course.” He bowed at Sonakshi again.

A jolt of old fear struck Sonakshi, but she remembered Mankini was dust now. She was not alive to get her revenge on the Fae.

“But she’s gone now.”

“Not quite,” said Batuman, holding up a fat finger.

Sonakshi stared at him in horror. She had seen Mankini die before her eyes. Seen her turn to dust and fade away. Sonakshi had broken the curse herself!

“Mankini may be gone in body, but her spells still remain, do they not?” Batuman bowed, indicating himself as the truth of the matter. He was still alive after a hundred odd years, after all.

“And this spell was a spell of a special kind. On the event of her death, the spell would activate, and the Bunyip King would awaken, and he would be sent special knowledge of how to take his revenge.”

Batuman shrugged his furry shoulders. “And that’s all I know.”

Sonakshi remembered Mankini’s last words to her in her tower on Makogai Island. There will be others. It sent a shiver up her spine. She meant this. She meant her brother. But they weren’t coming for her. They were coming for all the Fae.

King Deven stood. “We must warn the Fae, Sona.”

Sonakshi nodded, and the small group made their way out of the dungeons. But a thought in the back of her mind made Sonakshi linger behind.

“Batuman…” she said, coming to stand in front of the cage again. Batuman was sitting on his bed, toying with his blankets. He looked up with hopeful eyes. “You said Mankini had two brothers?”

He nodded his fat head.

“What do you know about the other brother? The one that’s not a Bunyip?”

Batuman shrugged one shoulder and looked down at his feet. “I do not know much, Princess.”

She nodded, biting her lip in thought.

As Sonakshi turned her back on him to leave, she did not see the sly smile that had spread across the old bat’s face.

7

The Bunyip King

The Bunyip King sat on his throne of rocks, staring at the forest around him. His bunyip army had built a bonfire in the middle of the clearing that they called their current home. Behind him was the cave where they had slept for over one hundred years. The large rock that had blocked it tightly shut was standing uselessly to the side. He was the biggest Bunyip of them all, and he watched the rest of them with too-clever eyes.

One group of his Bunyip army were chopping down trees to make more space. Another group was fast asleep after a long night of patrol. They had taken over this forest, and half of the silly little creatures in it had fled in fear. They owned it now.

When he first woke up weeks ago, his world had been dark and cold, his thoughts full of what had been done to him and his people. The Bunyips around him been fast asleep in their spots, still and silent. Just when he wished he never had been woken, a light had come to him through the darkness, and he had seen his sister’s face. He had been so happy to see Mankini, but then she told him that the spell that allowed her to send him the message meant that she had died. His grief made him howl with sadness into the lonely dark. But then she told him what he needed to do to get his revenge for what the Fae had done to him, and it had made him feel better.

He had followed her instructions to the letter. His sister was so brilliant, so genius, that her plan was unthinkable and quite unexpected. But it had worked. He’d swum deep into the ocean. He’d fought dark sea creatures and returned with the secret weapon. The very thing he’d need to make him successful against the Fae.

His army had awoken clever. They could talk to each other properly and they could build fires. They were smarter than they had been before.

Before, that is, they had been forced into a prison of sleep. Tricked and imprisoned. The Fae were responsible for everything. Because of them, he and his people had been left for dead. His fist clenched around the rock he was holding. It crumbled to dust. It hadn’t taken him much effort at all. He was now also strong. Far stronger than before his long sleep.

He had a secret. Something the tree huggers would never guess. Something they would not even think was possible.

“Those flower sniffing, tree hugging abominations!” he growled.

One of his soldiers, young and keen, came to his side.

“They’re disgusting, your highness, so disgusting.”

The Bunyip King growled with approval.

His eye caught movement at the edge of the forest. One of his Generals was escorting three Yara-ma-yha-who out of the line of trees. There were many strange and fearsome creatures in this forest, but out of them, the Yarama were apparently the scariest. They were small red men with bald heads and big teeth. Once they had their prey, there was no escaping.

But the Bunyip King did not find them scary at all. His teeth were sharper. His muscles were stronger. His brain was more clever.

The Yarama at the front was holding something in his hands as he walked toward him. The Bunyip King watched them