by M. C. Aquila
Philip always said my anger burned hot, that it made me reckless and stupid. But Alan’s anger runs cold. Cold anger is patient and calculating, Philip said, and it always wins out.
Glancing down at the exposed flesh on his hands, he saw the still-healing burns and shrapnel cuts from the explosive thrown at him. Though Boyd had been cleared for combat a week later, he wished he was still lying in the infirmary. Before then, he would have given anything, done anything, and followed any order if it meant he had a place in this war by General Callaghan’s side.
Boyd supposed he had too much time to think while he was recovering from his wounds, something the general discouraged. He had nothing but his own thoughts and how badly he wished his brother were still alive to dwell on.
Boyd’s jaw clenched, his eyes stinging as he glared at the entrance to General Callaghan’s quarters where he was talking to someone. As the tent flaps opened slightly, nudged by a breeze, Boyd saw the man was not talking to a person but to a small round mirror he was holding in a gloved hand.
He had worn a glove since the festival, claiming the faery girl, Deirdre, had decayed his hand with her magic, and had not allowed any physician to examine the injury.
His mouth dry, Boyd stepped closer and listened in on the conversation. A woman’s voice, severe and soft at once, came through clearer than over a radio, as if she were present in the room.
It’s magic. Damn faery magic.
Beyond Alan’s face reflected in the mirror was the ashen face of a woman. Her eyes were hidden in shadow and revealed nothing, and her corpse-white hands gripped the fabric of her dress.
“What have you done to yourself?” the woman asked Alan, disgusted. “I do not sense any humanity on you, save for the fact that you are made of mortal flesh, slowly sloughing from your bones. The rest is smothered by Unseelie magic. If you were not a walking, heartless corpse before, you have surely destroyed yourself beyond all hope now.”
“Raisa.” Alan did not flinch at her horrifying words that made Boyd’s head spin. “I will see my agreement with the Winter King through. That is the only thing you need to concern yourself with.”
“Oh, I am not concerned—I am vexed. This has the Master’s scent all over it. As usual, that little man’s solution to any problem is to make it exponentially, chaotically worse.” With a wave of her hand, Raisa continued, “Be that as it may, the leader of the Unseelie Varg forces and his monsters are on their way to the barrier. Yet… still we wait.”
“What are we waiting for, exactly?”
“The Master has a mission from the Winter King to complete first. One that will bring the Seelie Fae to their knees.”
Boyd wanted to barge into the tent and demand to know what was going on but found he could not move, his limbs locked in place and his mouth unable to form words. For a flicker, he thought it must be cruel Fae magic—but it was just human fear.
The same unease settled over the camp now hit him with full force, caused not by Unseelie hounds but by General Callaghan.
* * *
Ever since Alan Callaghan came to after the eldritch Unseelie crystal had shattered in his hand, shadows breathed in the blurred periphery of his vision, birch trees and creatures hidden in the forest stared with too many dark eyes, and unintelligible whispers rattled through his head.
He had not known whispers could be so loud and insistent when he did not know what they wanted. The Unseelie magic contained in the crystal had whispered with clarity to him before it had embedded itself under his skin. “Find her. Find her…” the magic had whispered to him when Deirdre escaped from the ties of the machine. But now they urged him toward an indiscernible edge, fueled by a base hunger or need.
Unseelie Fae need blood, and they need carnage. They want Seelie blood and Seelie carnage. Simple.
Leaning against a tree, Alan sipped hot tea from a Styrofoam cup as the soldiers and Iron Architects went about their early-morning duties and routines: training, drills, checks of weapons, and double-checks. But his eyes drifted past them, past the human figures, and fixed on things unseen that had perhaps always been there. Beyond his sight, in the tangles of the wilderness, monsters were gathering.
Alan looked down at his free hand covered in a brown leather glove and flexed it with a grimace, anticipating but feeling no pain. At first the Unseelie crystal the Master had given him had ravaged his flesh and gnawed like greedy teeth.
But then it had stopped. It was satiated by the blood from the sword-wielding warrior he had fought at the Wayfaring Festival—Cai, he recalled. He still remembered, like watching himself from far away, plunging the clawlike hand of the crystal into the man’s side. He had known exactly where to strike and exactly what weaknesses to exploit. The magic had known, and it had wanted to drain the other man’s blood.
The cries of the Unseelie hounds grew louder. Alan requested that Boyd and a small troop of Iron Infantry scout the hounds and their activity to steer them away from the villages and civilians if need be. But the hounds were too preoccupied with the hunt to notice them.
From the edge of the woods, on the high ground of a hill overlooking a lake, the soldiers watched with binoculars as the hounds cut through the land below with sharp precision in organized yet chaotic groups, running together and then splitting off in all directions.
“General.” Boyd’s voice was sharp yet thick and heavy with meaning. “What’s our objective here? Do we leave these Unseelies alone or not?”
The monsters were chasing humans—thralls. One of the beasts latched onto the arm of a small gray body—a girl, no older than a child—and threw her like a doll, leaving her broken and discarded. As her bones snapped, Alan felt it inside his chest and gasped.
This is wrong. It’s all wrong.
His spirits, once smothered under the Unseelie magic and the faery pact, balked and ignited, like taking breath after being starved for air.
Images of the dead little girl from the Winter Court, all those years ago, flickered behind his eyes—the girl dragged from her home by those hounds, whose body he had carried back to her family.
His heart was beating, and it pounded relentlessly in his chest like it meant to burst. His breath came out in ragged, angry gasps. Alan steadied himself against the trunk of a tree, the fingers of his good hand digging into the bark. He had been buried deep underground, a corpse, since his heart was taken, and suddenly he was a living creature again, sparked to life.
As this spark of anger flared in him for the first time in what felt like ages, the Unseelie crystals under his skin shifted and writhed as if it couldn’t abide it. Searing pain shot up his arm, his vision going white from it, as the crystal tore through his flesh like teeth.
“General Callaghan!” Boyd was at his side in an instant, asking questions.
Alan looked right through him, only sensing him the way the Unseelie magic was: as mortal flesh and nothing else.
That’s what we’ve always been to them… the Unseelies… Blood and flesh. He gritted this teeth as the Unseelie magic pulsed under his skin, disgust filling him.
Through the din of whispers, the Unseelie magic spoke to him. It whispered, loud and penetrating, in words and images flashing: There is always new desolation, spreading and decaying everything. Do you see the Seelie bodies and human corpses? Can you taste the ash in the air of a new Cataclysm? The world is beautiful when it is white with frost, choked on fallout. Imagine the quiet when no one is left alive but for Unseelie monsters to feed on—
“Stop. I need to see Levi,” Alan heard himself say over the voices. “I need to find Levi.”
After recovering from his daze, General Callaghan walked there with Boyd following and held his gloved hand trembling against his chest, easily ignoring all questions asked by his infantrymen. When he arrived inside the truck with the machine, Levi was not inside.
“General—Alan.” Boyd faltered, and when Alan turned to face him, the soldier’s face was drained of color. “As… as your right-ha
nd soldier, I need to know what the hell is going on. You owe me that. I deserve that, at least, after everything! After all I’ve done for you!”
When Alan did not speak, the soldier jabbed his finger at the doors they had come through, saying, “We’re not just complying with the Unseelies, are we? You’re working with them. You’ve got their damn magic on you, and it’s—”
“We are doing what we must.” Alan interrupted him, his words sounding more certain than he felt. “There is no going back now, Prance. I have sacrificed… what I had to.”
The soldier thundered toward him but stopped himself, his fists trembling from the effort. “I never signed up to work with the Fae—our enemies! I would’ve done anything—” He broke off, shaking his head. “I thought Philip would’ve done anything for you too.”
Alan expected to loathe the sight of the soldier’s weakness, doubt, and reckless anger. But all he could muster was distant pity.
“Philip knew, didn’t he?” Boyd asked, his brother’s name catching in his throat. “He knew, and he wanted out. He wanted to turn you in, and he was trying to warn me. Wasn’t he? And—damn—bloody Iain was right too?”
Alan said nothing, watching him.
“Well… well, I want out now.” Boyd’s blue eyes were clouded, red-rimmed. “I want to be reassigned. I-I want to go home. Back to Ireland.”
“Fine. Leave,” he said, and Boyd flinched, stricken.
Alan removed his glove and held up his hand for Boyd to see; the soldier turned ashen at the sight of the blackened, skeletal remains. With each pulse of his heart, the crystal’s magic pulsed with pain under his skin.
“This was supposed to mend what was wrong…” Alan hissed, flexing his hand. The crystals glittered darkly at him, shifting, forming an Unseelie claw over the remains of his hand. “But it’s made it worse. I still feel her.”
Instead of blotting out the weakness of his humanity he’d thought had left with his heart, it made it more apparent. And his fragile humanity was the same as when he had stood in front of the Unseelie king in the Winter Court and as when Kallista had haunted his thoughts.
Kallista…
As if flinching at the sound of her name, unable to bear the flicker of longing it produced in him, the Unseelie magic writhed, and Alan let out a gasp as the crystals spread farther up his arm, blackening the flesh as it went, frost seeping out like maggots from dead flesh. It was going to destroy him.
He stumbled forward. The instant he stepped toward the machine, which thrummed with energy from Deirdre’s drained magic, the Unseelie magic stopped aching, pulsing instead like an insistent knock to gain his attention. It stopped feeding on his flesh, and he knew what the dark Unseelie magic wanted. Its longing was an ancient, strong hunger that covered his own desperate, weak longing for gentleness. Alan could not resist it as the hunger overcame him.
* * *
“How long had you been using your magic when this happened, Deirdre?” Lonan asked, speaking to Deirdre as they walked away from the river.
Deirdre was glancing behind, wishing someone else was coming along, as she answered, “Just a few weeks.”
“Truly?” Lonan tilted his head. “What happened, exactly, to unlock it?”
“In Neo-London, I accidentally touched this banshee. It all started after that.” She brushed her fingers against her palm, the electric energy of the moment a distant, fading memory.
Lonan stopped at the edge of a small clearing. They were surrounded by thick pine trees with red wood and sea-green needles that swayed in the wind; the breeze carried delicious scents of pine. Animals and small faeries rushed and chattered around them, and in the trees above, a row of small, stone-like faeries as large as lumps of coal rushed by, squabbling, carrying twigs and mushrooms.
After they passed, Deirdre glanced at Lonan, saying in a low voice, “Alvey never… she never said her adopted parents were also my parents. Maybe she didn’t know?”
Lonan led them into the shadowed clearing, and each step on the pine needles made a pleasant crunching noise. “Alvey is too smart not to have put the pieces together. She knew we had a daughter named Deirdre who was sent away to be raised in the human realm, would have strong, powerful Shadow Magic, and would be like a Noble faery in all ways save the horns.” He gestured to his hornless head and then to hers with a small smile.
Deirdre shut her eyes, clenching her fists. “So Alvey lied to me. She lied.”
“From her point of view, there might have been a small chance you were not our daughter. She might have been holding out hope that was the case.”
Scoffing, Deirdre paced as she asked, “Why? I mean, we didn’t always get along, but I… I thought we were friends! Why would it be so horrible to have me as a sister?”
“She might have been scared.” Lonan sat on a large black stone in the center of the clearing, which had lacy, flowery patterns carved into it. “Sybil’s mind is damaged because of the strain of the barrier and the stress of losing you. And she often dreamt, both asleep and awake, that you had returned.”
Deirdre hugged herself, glancing back at the way they’d come. “Is that why she said those things?”
“Aye. Alvey could have feared the trauma that seeing you, even the real you, would inflict on Sybil.”
“Trauma?” She snapped her gaze to Lonan. “I finally, finally meet my mother, my real mother, and she’s just—” She covered her mouth, turning away and biting down furious words she knew she’d regret.
“I wish things were different,” Lonan said in a low, soft voice. For some reason it reminded Deirdre of the softness of her Shadow Magic. She lowered her hand and took in a few deep breaths, steadying herself.
“Why did you do it?” She looked at him, meeting his ruby-red eyes. They were unsettling, but she didn’t turn away. “Why did you send me away?”
Lonan titled his head. “Did Alvey tell you I was from the Winter Court and born Unseelie?”
Eyes widening, Deirdre answered, “No, she just mentioned that the faery who dropped the bombs and caused the Cataclysm was once Unseelie…” She trailed off as he raised his eyebrows, looking at her expectantly. “Oh no. No, no.” She sank down to the forest floor, clutching her head.
“’Tis the truth,” he said softly, eyes downcast.
“No. You weren’t supposed to be like this!” Deirdre looked up at him, aghast, her head swimming. Images of the ashen, charred remains of Old London floated through her mind, her brain buzzing with all she had ever learned about the Cataclysm and its death toll. “How could you do it?”
“I was the judge of the Winter Court. It was… part of my job.”
“Your job?” She slammed a fist on the ground. “Do you realize what happened after? People died, and then the faeries and humans… you should have seen what it was like in Neo-London, there was iron everywhere—I was thrown in jail and shot at! People don’t trust faeries because of the Cataclysm! Even Iain…” She bit down on her lip.
That wasn’t Iain’s fault. It was Alan’s. He hates faeries too, because of the Cataclysm. She looked at her father, seeing a link between him and the man—the monster—who had hurt and taken from her.
Sick to her stomach, she was about to rise and leave when Lonan spoke again. “Deirdre, I know it is impossible to make up for all the pain and suffering I’ve caused. I have paid and am still paying for my actions.” His mouth twisted into a mirthless smile. “Among the Nobles, my own wife is among those afflicted most.
“Without her magic”—he pointed up at the blue sky above through the trees—“not only would the realm be destroyed but the entire island would be damaged, reliving the Cataclysm. But it would be more severe, as this bomb was both larger and has now sucked in some volatile magic over the years.”
“Can’t it be destroyed with magic, or”—Deirdre gestured, grasping at the air—“I don’t know, flung out into space or something?”
“It is too powerful and unstable. If this realm was the only thing we were
concerned about, then yes, such actions might be taken. But we must consider the entire planet. And surely”—he locked eyes with her—“if you have connected to your Shadow Magic, you understand space is not merely a simple, lifeless void. There is growth, change, balance—and magic. Even if tossing the bomb, now laced with magic, skyward was successful, there would be harmful repercussions.”
“Fine.” She brushed her hair out of her face with a trembling hand. “What does any of this have to do with why you sent me away?”
“The Winter King hated me for leaving his Court and becoming Seelie. He craved, and still craves, revenge for my betrayal. He is adept at curses, but he could not touch me or any of the Nobles with them. However”—he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, clasping his white hands—“you were… different than the other young Noble faeries.”
“No horns?” she asked with a small, weak smirk.
“A changed Unseelie like me had never been joined with a Seelie before. We thought you’d be exactly like every other Noble Seelie child. However, in some ways, you are a new kind of faery, Deirdre. This created a sort of loophole, something the king could use to create a curse.
“The curse was that any faery child in my care on the twentieth moon after her birth would be cursed to wither and die. This curse was well crafted, for even if we fled the realm, it would still follow us. And since I am connected to every single member or associate of the Court, great or small, if any of them were taking care of you, you would still be cursed.”
“Fine, giving me to humans would make sense for avoiding the curse, but why not get me back afterward?” Deirdre asked. “The curse was only until the twentieth moon, right?”
“The problem was—” He tilted his head, frowning. “Where were you raised, Deirdre?”
“Inside a convent, an orphanage.”
