Aspen nearly tripped on the first body at the top of the stairs. Tana stifled a gasp. Aspen slapped a hand over her mouth as the smell hit her and her stomach roiled. It was the same as she’d smelled in the Heads’ room before: decay and discharged magic.
“Aspen, he’s—”
“I know,” Aspen said, trying not to look down at the body. “I know.”
She also knew she should leave. The horrified, terrified expression on the dead boy’s face told her that it was unlikely there was anything more pleasant in the rooms ahead of her. But there had to be something, some clue as to what Hugo had done. And, more importantly, where he’d gone.
They moved down the hallways, checking each room as they went. None of it was pretty. It seemed Snitch had been lucky after all. At least he was alive. The rest weren’t so lucky. They were strewn all over the other rooms, most, mercifully, killed by some spell so that there wasn’t any blood. Only hollow, vacant eyes and the too-pale flesh of death.
The smell was getting worse the farther they moved. It began turning waxy and charred.
“Did Hugo…did he…why would he do this?” Tana whispered.
Aspen faced the last door at the end of the hall. She found herself being inexplicably drawn toward it with mounting dread, her thudding, methodic footsteps matching the ever-quickening beat of her heart. She held her knife forward and slowly pushed the door open with the tip of the blade. “I’m not sure, but—”
Aspen stepped into the nearly pitch-black room and bumped her shin against something near the floor, pitching her forward. Her hand reached forward to catch herself but landed on something leathery. Something that peeled beneath her fingers. Aspen looked up and stifled a scream.
Hugo’s dead eyes stared back. Whoever had murdered him had managed to catch him in his physical form. He lay prostrate in his bed, almost as if he were asleep, if not for his head tipped back and neck arched in a silent howl of anguish. His skin…that was the waxy smell. His skin had shriveled to flaps of flesh hanging off his skeleton. All the magic around him was gone.
“Oh no,” Tana was muttering. “Not good…this is so not good…”
Aspen shoved herself away and hit the floor. She scrambled back on all fours, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and the body.
Her back hit someone’s legs. Tana let out a squeak of surprise.
“At last,” a sweet voice whispered. “It’s time for you to meet us, Aspen Rivest.”
And then Aspen knew no more.
The Night Court
“Look! Lookit!”
“Is it her? Is it the Norm?”
“She’s awfully ugly, isn’t she?”
“So plain.”
“But her hair!”
“Yes! Her hair! So shiny!”
“Is she dead?”
“Can we have her hair when she dies?”
“I want her arm!”
“I want her toes!”
“Hush now.”
The high-pitched voices giggled, sounding like the tinkle of bells in a light breeze. Aspen heard them faintly. Slowly, the real world came back to her in snapshots seen through the haze of grogginess and disorientation.
A cold, dark cell.
Her skin clammy and cold.
The barest sensation that there was life up above her, far above her, through stone and dirt. The outside world, just out of reach. Too far to help.
Aspen moved her aching neck. First left: nothing but a bare earthen wall. Straight was the ceiling. To the right….
Round, glittering eyes peered at her from the darkness.
“She moved!”
“She’s already awake!”
“I want to touch her!”
“I want her hair!”
An arm as slender and smooth as a child’s slipped through the bars and reached toward her. Aspen instinctively moved away from it, even though it was all the way across the cell. There was something unnatural about it. The skin was the color of a pearl. A faint, glittering shine coated the air around it. That was enough to cause an uncomfortable sensation to crawl up her spine.
After a couple more grabs at the air, the arm drew back.
“I can’t reach!”
“Unlock the door!”
“Let me taste her!”
Okay, she needed to move now. First her legs, lifting each one up and over the side of the bed until they were under her. Then each of her arms until they were able to steady either side of her as she pushed off to try to stand. It took her three tries before she lurched to her feet and was able to stop rocking in place.
“Look at her!”
“She’s huge!”
“She’s ugly!”
“Would you please shut up?” Aspen groaned, clutching her head. The memories of Hugo’s house were coming back in snapshots. Hugo’s horrified face, silently screaming in death. The house of bodies. Tana…Tana! Was she all right? Aspen hoped beyond hope that whomever had taken her had left Tana alone. Just the thought of them hurting her made Aspen sick.
And very, very angry.
“I’ll go get the princess!” one of the voices squeaked.
Bare feet slapped on stone, fading away. Aspen had regained enough of her senses for her normal habits to kick in. She shoved down her worry about Tana for the time being. She couldn’t do anything for her while she was stuck in here. She needed to assess her surroundings. Done. A cell. Obviously. Weapons?
Aspen patted her jacket, but her knife, grapple, and all her powders were gone.
But gone where? And who had taken her here?
The eyes continued to glitter just outside her cell, fixated on her. One of the creatures giggled. The sound was so sweet it made her sick.
She…didn’t want to know who had taken her just yet. She had a good idea, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Aspen turned in a full circle in the small space, her hope at escape lessening with every passing second. She was definitely underground. It was the dense feeling of the walls, the sensation of heaviness above her and the thickness of the air. There also wasn’t a window. Nothing she could try to escape through.
Except the door. And the eerily now-silent spectators beyond. Their eyes jostled back and forth as they fought for better positions to watch her.
“Do you mind, you little creeps?” Aspen growled.
They giggled again. Without warning, Aspen’s heart swelled with joy at the sound, racing at an unnatural pace, before just as quickly plummeting with dread. She clutched her chest as she stumbled back into the bed. It took a moment to get her breathing back under control again.
Yeah, she definitely didn’t want to know who had taken her.
Aspen gingerly stood and went over to one of the walls, letting her fingers brush over it for any chance at escape.
“Lookit her! Look how hard she tries!”
“Such a silly Norm! No one gets away from here!”
“The princess! The princess will be here soon!”
Aspen gave up trying to pry up one of the stones. She began searching for something she could use as a shank. “Tell your princess to piss off. I don’t want any part of whatever she’s doing.”
“She’s been watching you!”
“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”
“She has big plans for you, Null!”
Aspen’s hands stopped feeling in the darkness. Oh. That wasn’t good. She hadn’t realized news of what she was had traveled outside the Council quite yet. It had only been a few days…She should have assumed…but still.
“Your princess…” Aspen crouched beside a spot in the floor where the stones were a bit loose. She began tugging at one of them. It was small, but it was something.
“Whatever—she—” Another tug. “—has planned—” Another tug. The stone was almost free. "—I say no thanks. And if she still wants to try....”
There it went. The rock was jagged on one end, smooth on the other. The weight was good in her hands. “Then I’ll give h
er so much hell she’ll wished she hadn’t tried to—”
Aspen turned just as a hand far stronger than any mortal’s gripped her wrist and squeezed. Aspen choked down a cry of shock and tried to swing the stone around. Another hand caught this and squeezed tighter until she gasped and dropped it.
“Hello, Aspen,” the princess of the Fae said.
Aspen tried to struggle again, but the princess squeezed until needles of pain were driving up her arms. “My my…but you are persistent. Do you so quickly want to leave your accommodations? I had them made up especially for you, after all.”
The voices giggled.
Aspen dropped to the floor, biting her tongue to ignore the pain in her arms. Hex it all. Hex it all. The princess of the Fae, of course. The Unseelie Fae. The Night Court. Powerful, evil, sadistic. Out of the two Courts of the Fae, they were by far the worst, taken more to doing evil than playing harmless tricks like the Day Court.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” the princess said. “We’ve been watching you. Waiting for just the right moment. And when you struck out on your own…How could we pass up the chance to grab you when you were so vulnerable?”
“Easy, it’s called don’t freaking kidnap me!” Aspen tried to shove back against her but she might as well have been pushing iron. The princess smiled but there was nothing kind in it. She gently wrapped her fingers around Aspen’s throat and lifted up. Aspen choked, kicking her legs but finding the tips of her toes barely touching the ground.
“My, my, how utterly normal you are,” Segur said conversationally. “I was aware but…the reality is even less impressive than I’d hoped.”
The lack of oxygen was making Aspen’s head spin. She tried to sputter out a response, but before she could, the princess dropped her to the floor. Aspen scrambled up as fast as she could.
For not the first time, she was struck by how physically perfect the Fae were. The princess’ body didn’t seem real, like it had sprouted from the realm of impossibility where all the Fae resided. Her eyes were fathomless pools of color, swirling in place like vortexes of stars. Perfect honey blond hair flowed to her waist. Perfect slender hips, a wide bust, curves in the exact right places to drive any mortal mad.
Everything flawlessly designed to draw their prey in for the kill.
The princess adjusted the ringlet of jewels across her brow, her silver wristbands clinking musically together. Her blood-red lips curled into a smile.
“Behold, mortal. I am Segur, Princess of the Night Court—”
“I don’t care,” Aspen said, rubbing her throat. She could still feel where Segur’s fingers had burned her skin. “What did you do with Tana?”
Segur’s perfect brow wrinkled. “Tana?”
“The other girl with me. If you hurt her I swear—”
“We took no one but you. You are the only being even remotely worth our time.”
“Do you have any idea how many magical laws you’ve broken? You can’t just take Norms without special permission.”
“Ah…” Segur knelt down, her smile benign. One hand rested casually in front of her, its fingers hooked into claws ready to tear into Aspen’s flesh. “But you are not just a Norm, are you, Aspen? What do I care about the magical laws when such a powerful weapon sits on my doorstep?”
Aspen stopped rubbing her throat.
“You see, daughter of man,” Segur said, “the outside world has abandoned you. They cast you out without realizing your true potential.”
She reached out a hand soft as silk and brushed Aspen’s cheek. Aspen tried not to shiver. “But I see it. You are a mirror, Aspen, like all Nulls before you. A way to reflect everything that is put into you. Alas, they banned Nulls from the boroughs, which was a shame. They broke easily, yes, but they contained so much power. I suppose that was why.
“The Mages do not see it. The Mages are blind. You are a tool of the highest calling and I will wield you as such. My enemies in the Day Court will never see it coming. And after them, the other boroughs will know my wrath.”
“You kidnapped me for a turf war?” Aspen said, knocking her hand aside. “Of all the stupid—”
Segur’s slap was swift. It broke across Aspen’s skin like a hammer blow and sent her sprawling into the wall.
“I believe the first thing to go will be your tongue,” Segur purred. “After the testing of course. I want to hear you scream. I want to hear you beg. And so…we shall begin!”
“No—” Aspen lunged for the sharp stone as Segur’s eyes flashed and Aspen’s world went dark again.
The second time Aspen awoke wasn’t any better than the first.
“So it’s true,” Segur said, standing over her and stroking her hair. “Spells wear off faster on you the more you use them. I believe you were out less than ten minutes. Fascinating.”
Aspen tried to claw out Segur’s eyes, but her arms had been strapped to the sides of a stone table with leather bindings. Her legs too. She tried bucking but the straps only seemed to tighten. She managed to move her head to the left. Her weapons! They lay in a heap against the far wall. Way, way too far to reach. The table she was on had been placed in the center of a large open chamber, stone bleachers raised on all sides. A place for entertainment. Or sacrifice.
“If magic won’t work, then we have to employ more barbaric methods,” Segur said apologetically, picking at the leather. “Don’t worry, you won’t notice these in a moment.”
She removed her glittering cloak and tossed it aside, revealing a sleeveless dress the color of plum. Without it, her pale skin and too-long arms were even more inhuman. If she straightened her fingers, they sharpened to scalpel-like blades prepared to slice her open. Shadows in the bleachers behind her tittered gleefully. Curious, cherub-like faces leaned into the light, looking hungry.
“First things first…” Segur grabbed the jade necklace around Aspen’s neck and ripped it off. She gazed at it curiously before crushing it to dust in one hand. “We can’t have anything blocking you from your true potential.”
“I’m a Null,” Aspen said quickly. Fear had seized her now, the promise of unimaginable pain hovering above her, like a knife ready to fall. “I can’t be a weapon. I can’t even use any freaking magic! It doesn’t matter what you do to me. It won’t help.”
Segur drew closer, bringing with her the smell of night. Of dead earth, the dry husk of corpses, and rotting leaves. “You’re wrong. Nulls have long been misunderstood by outsiders, but we Fae know their true value. Nulls consume magic so that magic doesn’t hurt them. They eat and eat and eat. But there comes a point…”
Segur raised a single nail and drove it into Aspen’s sternum so hard it pierced her skin. Aspen bit her lip to keep from crying out. Blood seeped through her shirt.
“If enough magic is put into a Null then they change.” She leaned down until she was speaking next to Aspen’s ear. “They soak up all that magic and then the Null can use it. They can send it back to those who tried to hurt them. The powerless can suddenly become the most powerful. Rather poetic, don’t you think?”
She gave a wicked smile. “That’s assuming the Null survives, of course. I do so hope you do, Aspen. You’d be a valuable asset to my army once you’re properly broken in. But if not, it’s no matter. You won’t be missed. After all, nobody ever wanted a Norm around anyway.”
Segur raised her hands. She drew her fingers apart so that webs of crackling magic appeared between them.
“Can I just say one thing?” Aspen blurted out.
Segur paused. “I suppose. What is it?”
Aspen whispered. Segur frowned. “What?”
Aspen whispered again. Segur leaned forward until their foreheads were nearly touching. “What did you say?”
“Go to hell, you ugly harpy.”
Aspen slammed her forehead against Segur’s nose, feeling the satisfying crack of cartilage splinter. Segur screamed and reeled back. Blood cascaded down her lips.
“There, now your face ma
tches your personality,” Aspen said with satisfaction.
With a strangled cry of rage, Segur plunged her magic-laced hands against Aspen’s chest.
It was pure, agonizing, bliss.
The magic tore into her, slithering through skin and tendon and bone, filling her until she couldn’t take it anymore and then some. Aspen was suddenly too big for her body, too big for anything. She was everything and everywhere at once and she was nothing at all. She was a dam breaking and a river drying up. The pain was so intense her mind began to separate from her body, drifting away to a separate place and Aspen knew she was dying…
Segur lifted her hands and in an instant Aspen’s consciousness slammed back to the table. She tried to suck in air but none would come. She tried to pull at her bonds but they wouldn’t give. Her arms had stopped responding. She felt so big. So much. It was a wonder her body hadn’t exploded yet, a wonder her skin could contain this new power writhing inside her.
“We’re not done yet!” Segur snarled. “You will never defy me again!”
She lifted her hands again and plunged down.
The second time was even worse. This time her mind had nowhere to go. Every nerve ending screamed with pure agony. Aspen tried to hold back the flood of magic coursing through her, but the tidal wave of power broke down all her defenses. It filled every cell, every molecule. It tore at her insides like a licking flame threatening to consume her very soul…
And then it stopped.
Aspen was aware that she was no longer in pain. It was as if her body had stopped fighting and everything inexplicably became infinitely easier. The magic wasn’t something fighting against her, it was her, and she was it. She had soaked it up like a sponge until she was full and she knew it had to go somewhere.
Aspen’s arms could move again. The tips of her fingers sparked, and when she opened her eyes for just a moment, there was a swirl of magic in front of her eyes. Inside her. A whole new world.
“You survived. How convenient,” Segur said.
The Fae Princess’ nose had already healed. Her skin and dress were free of blood. She leaned over Aspen, being sure to stay just out of range of her forehead.
Mage's Apprentice (Mages of New York Book 1) Page 23
