Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  Nandin was right, his court was taking the brunt of it; winter was much less drastically affected by Faerie’s wrathful sorrow. But how long would that last? If shadow continued to collapse into the chasm, how long before it was destroyed completely, further disrupting the already teetering balance? How long until the rest of Faerie was as severely affected?

  As Faerie once again fell still and silent, Nandin rubbed his thumb and finger along his chin again before saying, “So, which of us has connections to the other courts?”

  Chapter 26

  It turned out, no one had many promising connections to the other monarchs. Shadow didn’t interact with the other courts that often, so had never made many efforts to forge alliances as the court tended to be shunned anyway, and Falin was simply too new of a king. Oh, he’d been receiving delegates from the other courts since taking the throne, but actual alliances? Not so much. Add in the former queen’s long-declining mental health and that he’d been her bloody hands for decades, and it meant that he had few friends in other courts. I actually had what was determined to be the most promising position for approaching summer, and since that was largely based on the fact that the Summer King wanted something from me—and had cursed me when I hadn’t immediately agreed to his wishes—it was a pretty good indication of how bad everyone else’s interpersonal relationships were.

  It did mean I was the one charged with contacting summer.

  The hour, combined with an exhausting day full of nasty spells and shocking discoveries, was really starting to drag on me. I did not want to try to play emissary to a lecherous Faerie king or prim and judgy queen, but time was working against us. Nandin lifted a hand toward the mirror over the library hearth and inky shadows crawled over the icy glass. Once the enormous surface was filled with darkness, Nandin turned and nodded to me.

  That was my cue.

  “The planeweaver seeks an audience with the summer royals,” I said, feeling awkward addressing the dark glass, to say nothing of referring to myself as “the planeweaver,” but if it got their attention, it was worth the cringeworthy title.

  This spell was slightly different from the ones Dugan had been using to communicate with me. Those spells had been direct, his shadow cat bridging the connection on my end. This spell was more of a seeking spell. It would find a reflective surface near the King or Queen of Summer, and my words would travel there, but until they established a connection on their end as well, we would get nothing in return, not even confirmation that Nandin’s spell had managed to find a surface in range.

  We waited in silence, because our end of the communication was already open and anything we said would be overheard. I fidgeted, tugging at the sleeves of my sweater until I remembered that the crusty black stains on my sleeve were troll blood. Then I wrinkled my nose, dropping my fingers. Not that I could actually get away from my own shirt. I needed to ask Falin if he knew where my castle had ended up. I really needed some fresh clothes.

  I’d just surrendered to the yawn that had been threatening for over a minute when the shadows in the mirror cleared and a handsome, deeply tanned face surrounded by soft brown curls appeared.

  “Planeweaver,” he said, his voice pleasant—but he wasn’t smiling and the tightness around his eyes made him look almost like a different man than the jovial and libidinous king I’d encountered a month before.

  Of course, I was now in midyawn with my mouth wide open and my eyes squinted half-shut. Trying to cut a yawn short in the middle is nearly impossible. I snapped my mouth closed, but then I could feel my nostrils flaring as my reflexes tried to finish off whatever impulse makes one yawn. It was probably not a good look. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only thing to look at, and I saw the Summer King’s eyes scan over the men around me.

  “You always keep such interesting company, planeweaver. Are you calling to speak of your return visit to my court?”

  As I finally regained control of my face, I fought not to cringe at the mention of visiting his court. I had promised him an extended three-day visit in exchange for speaking to some of his people during a recent investigation. I’d have to follow through on that visit soon, but not right now.

  “No. I—” I started when another voice interrupted.

  “Planeweaver?” The voice was light and feminine, but with undeniable authority.

  The image in the mirror wavered, the king’s face becoming less distinct as another image appeared in the mirror as well, this one of a beautiful woman with hair the color of spun gold and features so delicate and perfect a painter would have sold his soul for a chance to capture her likeness. The Summer Queen.

  Apparently magic mirror spells included three-way calling. Unfortunately, the spell didn’t have any split-screen features, as the two scenes holding the royals were superimposed over each other. Every previous time I’d seen this mirror spell, the reflections were so clear that it looked like I could reach out and touch whomever I was speaking to, but in this case, both royals were slightly hazy, tree branches showing through the queen’s delicate shoulders and a pillar running through the king. At least their faces were clear and in focus. Still, it was a little disconcerting, like a double-exposed photograph.

  “How lovely to see you, my dear,” the king said, and I assumed he was speaking to his wife.

  She pressed her full lips together, but only said, “I’m sure.” Then her focus landed on me with a nearly physical weight as if I could feel her dissecting everything about me, from my bedraggled hair and stained clothing to the company I kept and the location of my call. “Planeweaver, good of you to reach out to us. Hello, Winter. Shadow.” She gave the men tight prim nods. “What is it Summer can do for you?”

  I cut my gaze over to Falin, but he was watching the mirror, his face carefully neutral. Not blank, exactly—he looked pleasant, not threatening—but there was nothing genuine or emotive in his features. Which was fine. We had all discussed what needed to be said before we made the call, and we’d agreed I would take lead with summer, but a summarized direction and an actual conversation were a little different.

  I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders before I answered. “We believe we know who is behind the destruction of the doors, and we are seeking allies to challenge him and his people.”

  “Do tell,” the king said, his face growing larger as he must have leaned forward toward whatever surface he was using for the spell.

  Dugan spoke up this time, quickly summarizing what we knew and what we’d put together about Ryese and the light court. Both summer royals listened intently until he finished. Then they looked to each other through the mirrors, both silent for a beat.

  “There were a lot assumptions and statements hedged with ‘we believe’ in that summation,” the queen finally said, a small furrow appearing in her otherwise creaseless brow.

  “True, but the conclusions we’ve drawn are logical and follow a known pattern for Ryese,” I said.

  “Perhaps.” Her tone was dull, noncommittal. We were not winning the ally we needed here.

  “Let us say we believe all your assertions to be correct,” the king said, his voice far more jovial than his queen’s, but I wasn’t fooled by his tone. He was no more convinced than she. “What would we gain by sending our best duelers to the aid of Shadow and Winter?”

  “Seriously?” I said, making no effort to conceal my annoyance. Falin, who had been standing to one side of me but not touching me, now grabbed my hand. His touch held a warning, an urging for caution. I tempered my tone before saying, “You would gain the possibility of protecting your remaining doors. How many more can you afford to lose?”

  The welcoming and puckish look the Summer King always seemed to wear suddenly froze on his face. His eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, a hint of what looked like anger slicing through, but it didn’t show anywhere else in his expression. Of course, my question hadn’t really been fair as none of the
courts could afford even one door lost, and they’d already lost three. Or maybe it wasn’t anger; perhaps that glinty edge to his eyes was a hint of fear.

  “An interesting proposition, planeweaver, but there have been a lot of interesting propositions recently. Did you know that not long ago, we were offered a new amaranthine tree for our court in exchange for handing you over?” The king delivered all of this in an offhanded manner, as if discussing something trivial, but his gaze bore into me as he spoke. “Now isn’t that interesting, and ever so useful, as I have found myself short a few amaranthine trees.”

  I went still, and Falin’s hand around mine tightened. Not a warning this time, but a reflex. There was a bounty on my head—one it would be hard for any of the seasonal courts to pass over.

  “Husband!” The Summer Queen hissed the word, censure in her gaze as it stabbed at the king.

  “Are you threatening Alex?” Falin asked, his tone low, ice-cold, and one I recognized as very, very dangerous.

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed the Summer King’s face, and I wasn’t sure if it was due to him wondering if he’d made a misstep—after all, winter was currently at its strongest and summer its weakest due to the natural progression of the seasonal calendar—or if he simply didn’t know my real name and it took him a moment to put two and two together. The uncertainty vanished within the blink of an eye, his features returning to relaxed friendliness as if this was a far more amiable conversation than we were actively engaged in.

  “Would I warn her if I were threatening her? Come now, Winter, that wouldn’t be in my best interests.” The Summer King smiled, and I found myself wanting to believe him. After all, he was a nice guy; he probably did have my best interests at heart . . .

  Bullshit.

  The Summer King had no reason to look out for me. Glamour. It had to be. He’d tried to bewitch me with his personal glamour before. He was being subtle currently; the warm friendly feelings seeping through me as I stared at him felt natural. But they weren’t, and as soon as I realized they weren’t, I cracked my shields, drawing on my ability to see through glamour. There was technically nothing to see here—he was just emitting a feeling, a sense of safety and contentment–but my ability to break through glamour still helped insulate me, the happy feelings falling away as soon as I let the first sliver of magic rise.

  My darkening glare must have been a pretty clear sign to the king that his manipulation was failing, because he frowned, his gaze moving over the two kings and prince at my sides.

  “Who offered you an amaranthine tree in exchange for the planeweaver?” Dugan asked, his hand held nonchalantly on the hilt of his sword. Not that he could strike the Summer King through the mirror. Or at least, I didn’t think he could, though in all honesty, I wasn’t certain.

  The king’s frown deepened, but it was the queen who answered. “I cannot speak for my husband, as we were approached by two different ambassadors, I believe, but the one searching for the planeweaver sent only representatives. I did not meet him in person, and he would not identify himself. He did have the tree, though, which was . . . interesting.”

  “Did you see his face? Did he have scars from iron?” I asked, because I already had a pretty good idea who she’d spoken to.

  “He wore a hood,” the Summer Queen said, and lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug as if this was a very unimportant detail.

  “A gold cloak and hood?” I asked, and her eyes widened ever so slightly.

  “Perhaps.” She shrugged again.

  “I do believe it was gold when I spoke to him,” the king said, his smile brilliant and his glamour pushing off a friendly, helpful vibe.

  The queen shot him a censuring glare.

  “Would you really want to cut a deal for one tree with the fae who already destroyed three of yours?” Falin’s voice was low and cold. There was nothing particularly threatening in his tone or words. If anything, he sounded calm and unconcerned, if intense. But I knew him well enough to hear the danger hidden in the depths. “Did he offer any reassurances that your remaining trees would be spared?”

  “No.” The queen’s frown deepened. “Of course, had he done that, it would have confirmed his involvement, and that would not have been wise. He offered only the replacement tree. A single one to whichever court turned over the planeweaver.”

  So Ryese knew that I’d escaped his trap and fled to Faerie. Or perhaps he was simply covering his bases. He surely knew I’d escaped by now, but he couldn’t know for certain that I had made it through a door to Faerie, not unless he had a spy among us. I resisted the urge to look around the room. Who would I suspect? Not Falin. I had doubts it would be Dugan, not that I knew him well enough to bet my life on it, but it didn’t feel right. Brad had apparently risked his life to get me here, and, well, even if my brother had vanished without a word for more than a decade, I still couldn’t see him actively betraying me to my enemies. Nandin? If it suited his purposes I could see him doing it, but it just didn’t fit. I doubted anyone who’d been part of getting me here had revealed my entry to Ryese. Of course, we’d walked openly through the winter halls and had been seen by dozens of guards. Who knew how many traitors still lurked in winter. Ryese had spent centuries in the winter court. If he was able to recruit loyal followers from all the other courts, he surely still had sympathetic supporters hiding within these halls.

  “Will you pledge your best duelists to preventing the collapse of Faerie and the destruction of more doors?” Nandin asked, redirecting the conversation back on track.

  Neither summer monarch answered immediately. I forced myself not to fidget as I waited. At least they weren’t refusing outright. That they were considering it was a good sign, right?

  Finally it was the queen who answered first. She shook her head, her rosy lips pulling down in a small frown. “No. I will not commit my best duelist or even my second best. Nor will I take such a risk myself, not without more proof that this Ryese you speak of is truly behind it. I have not even seen proof that the Queen of Light has fallen and he is now king. So, no. Bring me more than ‘we believe’ and ‘it can be concluded’ and perhaps I will change my mind.”

  “I concur with my wife,” the king said, nodding. “Devoting such resources and taking such risks when we are already weakened would be unwise. Especially on supposition alone.”

  I sagged, deflating at the words. So we would receive no help from summer—and they’d been deemed the most promising out of the courts. This did not bode well.

  “So, then you will sit on the sidelines and hope someone else saves Faerie,” Falin said, his tone that eerie calm, like the stillness of a snow-covered night. “If we succeed, that will be quite a boon your court will owe us.”

  Both summer royals bristled at the word “boon.” They clearly did not like the implication that they would be indebted to winter and shadow.

  “I must consult with my wife for a moment,” the Summer King said, holding up a hand. The mirror misted over, both royals vanishing from the surface, but it neither returned to reflecting the room nor filled with the shadows of Nandin’s spell. So did that mean the spell was still connected and the king had simply put us on hold, for lack of a better word?

  “Can they still hear us?” I whispered, glancing at Falin.

  He in turn looked at Nandin.

  The Shadow King gave the smallest of shrugs. “It would be safest to assume we can still be seen and heard.”

  Great. I stood waiting and staring at the oddly foggy-looking mirror for at least a minute. When it didn’t change, I huffed out an annoyed breath and decided to chance the frozen furniture. I collapsed into the chair beside the couch where Brad was sprawled. His jaw had fallen open and he made soft snoring sounds in his sleep. I stared at him, studying the familiar angles of his face, still hardly believing it could really be Brad.

  A glance at my watch showed that it was only a
little after ten p.m. I yawned again, and envied Brad’s careless slumber. I was exhausted. My head felt heavy, like it had been stuffed with damp cotton that I was struggling to think through. While it wasn’t late, considering that I’d barely slept the night before, added to the emotional shocks of the day and of course Ryese’s spell, which had been sucking on my life and power for several hours, I wasn’t going to be good for much soon. I gave in to another yawn, as the mirror was still clouded. The day felt like it had been wasted. I’d set out to find a way to evacuate the fae, and failed. I still didn’t know what had happened to my father. We hadn’t found the amaranthine tree, though I guess we at least knew it was on hand somewhere, as Ryese was apparently using it as trade fodder. We weren’t even managing to secure allies against a clear threat.

  I sighed, leaning my head against the icy back of the seat, my gaze moving to the fathomless depths of the ceiling, watching the patterns of snow fall above me. My sleepy mind drifted, and I wondered if Caleb had dragged Holly out of Nekros City yet. Did they know more doors had fallen? What would happen if Ryese destroyed more? All of them? The Magical Awakening had radically changed a world that had previously been completely focused on technology. Would the pendulum swing again? Would the folded spaces once again be lost? Magic forgotten? Or was there no putting that rabbit back in the hat, but only human magic would survive? Why would Ryese want either of those outcomes?

  My eyelids were growing excessively heavy, my blinks lasting a little too long. Then the fog in the mirror cleared. My head snapped up as a dainty throat cleared.

  The queen looked as calm and pristine as she had when the mirror had gone blank, but the king now looked like he’d been running his hands through his hair and his cheeks were flushed, as if he’d been yelling. Or maybe there had been no discussion at all and the king had been up to a very different activity with some fae in the forest with him. I wouldn’t put it past him.