Crown of Darkness

by Bec McMaster

  I think she struck more than that.

  But our smiles last only a few seconds.

  “Wake up, E,” Thalia says, squeezing Eris’s hand. “Please wake up.”

  It’s beginning to wear on all of us, I think.

  To see her like this—struck down and motionless, with only her fingers twitching occasionally—makes me feel sick.

  “Get some rest,” I tell Thalia. “You’ve been hovering by her side day and night since we returned. I’ll watch over her for the night.”

  Thalia sighs. “I can’t afford to rest. You heard what the Prince of Shadows said about Elms Day. So far none of my little spies have heard anything. And without Eris we’re severely undermanned. Elms Day is only five days away and I have nothing.”

  “Can you get in contact with the Prince of Shadows?”

  Thalia arches a brow. “We don’t hire assassins, Vi. Tolerating them when there’s no proof of actual murder isn’t the same thing as hiring them.”

  “Then tell Theron that we want these conspirators alive. And offer to pay him double if he can get them to talk.”

  “Everything’s turning to shit,” I tell Eris later that night as I sit at her bedside. “I wasn’t foolish enough to think my mother would merely accede to this marriage once we broke the curse. She lives and breathes vengeance, after all, but I was so focused on Thiago—on saving him—that I didn’t think about the true cost of what I was doing.”

  Eris remains still.

  There’s a woven web hanging above her bed—a six-pointed star threaded with iron beads—in order to keep Queen Maren out of the room should she attempt to reach for Eris again, but so far, not a single bead has broken.

  “I keep waiting for my mother’s next strike. Elms Day means something, and I don’t like not knowing who is involved.” Pushing to my feet I pace to the window. “And as if that isn’t enough, we don’t even know what Angharad is doing in the north.”

  She’s the true threat, though my mother cannot see it.

  Or no, not cannot.

  Will not.

  Five hundred years of peace. And I am the catalyst for breaking it. I rub the bracelet that locks around my wrist. The fetch can’t see me while I wear this, though the bone-white imprint of its hand is still scarred into a manacle around my wrist from where it grabbed me.

  “I need you back,” I tell Eris. “I even asked Thalia to use Theron and his assassins to help us. That’s how desperate I am.”

  Nothing.

  I know Thiago’s tried. I know Thalia’s tried. Even Finn, in his own manner.

  But I’ve never tried.

  My gifts from my fae heritage are negligible. Thiago thinks they’ll grow stronger with practice—my mother’s curse didn’t just take my memories of him, but everything I’ve ever learned about magic too.

  But I’m not talking about my fae gifts.

  It’s far too easy to reach out and pluck at the power of the ley line. Ceres was built right over the top of a nexus point, where several ley lines cross. Perfect for inter-Hallow travel, but also… the power of the lands is stronger here. It doesn’t just vibrate through me. It sings. It feels like a pair of warm hands curling around me, finally welcoming me home.

  “Wake up,” I whisper, setting my hands on her chest. “Come back, Eris. Wake up.”

  In my mind I see a glimmer of light deep within her, like a seed. Darkness surrounds it. The light remains trapped like it’s in a dark maze, with nowhere to go, no way out, except to twist and run through the shadowy hedges of her own mind.

  There’s also something else there.

  Something deep and dark and hungry. It doesn’t feel like an enemy. No. It feels like part of Eris herself. It turns into my touch, drawing in a breath as if it can scent me.

  “Who are you?” it asks, turning its full attention to me.

  Something about it feels wrong. It’s too hungry, and it captures my mind, nibbling at a delicate thread of my power. Instantly, the storm of darkness doubles in size, until the seed of light is lost even further. Sharpened hooks latch on to me, siphoning away my strength, and through them, the power of the ley lines.

  “Free me,” it suggests. “Free me and she will wake.”

  But the words are merely meant to stall.

  I try to pull away, but it’s as if my resistance only encourages it. Its teeth sink into me, and it’s lapping at my power, drinking it down in hot, greedy gulps—

  I lash out, cleaving straight through the darkness with my power, and it parts like smoke. And then I’m free, staggering back from the bed even as Eris cries out softly.

  What in the Underworld was that?

  “Eris?”

  Her head writhes as if she’s suffering a bad dream, but then she slowly, slowly subsides. Silent once more. Still once more.

  And I’m left trembling, feeling as though half of my soul has been gouged out.

  A shaking fills me. I need to sit. Badly.

  But even as I think it, I eye the chair and how close it is to the bed.

  If that thing reaches out for me again—

  Sweat presses a clammy hand down my spine. I know what they say about her. The Morai called her the Devourer, and even they—as monstrous as they were—feared her.

  But this is Eris.

  And she’s alone and helpless right now, and as much as I don’t want to go near the bed, she’s my friend.

  I’ve been alone before. Ever since I turned twelve, if I’m being honest.

  So I force myself to haul the chair next to her bed, and I sit there and, while I don’t dare touch her, I tell her that I’m here.

  And that I’m staying.

  It’s nearly dawn when I slowly lean forward on the bed and rest my head on my arms. Every inch of me aches as if something big and gnarly has taken bloody, invisible bites of me, but the wounds no longer feel raw.

  I’m healing.

  Just tired.

  “So tired,” someone says.

  And as something tinkles and falls to the coverlet, I swear I sense a man’s hand caress the back of my neck before he pushes me down into sleep.

  I dream of spiders crawling all over my skin.

  And a forest where I’m running, always running….

  And somewhere ahead of me, a baby cries.

  “Not that way,” whispers a voice.

  We explode into a different forest, but this one is green and verdant and somehow alive. It’s like no other forest I’ve ever seen, for there are ferns and soft fronds of barely formed plants that thicken the undergrowth. There’s a hint of the untouched about this forest, as if we’re so far from the nearest civilization that it’s forgotten what a city looks like.

  Sunset falls, bringing with it a thousand shining stars as we creep through the trees. Plants part before me, as if to welcome me.

  Ahead of us, voices chant in unison.

  There’s laughter. Smoke from a fire. And children squealing as they chase each other through the ferns.

  We walk among the camp, unseen and unknown, and though there’s a hand in mine, leading me, I find it impossible to turn and look at my companion.

  The creatures wear ragged deer pelts and simple homespun smocks. Stubby horns peek through their hair, and I catch a glimpse of hooves and tails on some of them. One even wears a set of bat-like wings. Some of them have swept gold dust along the angle of their cheekbones and painted thin black lines along the bridge of their noses, sweeping it across their foreheads.

  All of them have black eyes.

  No pupil. No iris.

  Just bottomless depths.

  I don’t know if there are different clans depending on their animalistic features, though I notice the ones with horns seem to linger together, and the little children leaping through the forest on hooves seem all of a kind.

  And through it all, the creatures I know as demi-fey weave like little drunk glistening fireflies.

  The otherkin.

  I feel breathless. They no long
er exist now except in stories or in the features I sometimes see bred into unseelie faces. When my kind fled through the stars and arrived in this land, these were the beings that lived in what we now call Arcaedia.

  Monsters, all the history books say.

  But there are no monsters here.

  “This way,” says the voice. “Let me show you what we are.”

  Rune stones appear. A Hallow. But the rocks remain mere sandstone, unblemished by any mark or rune. They simply exist, surrounding a smooth plane of rock that looks like it’s been polished for centuries.

  Otherkin kneel there, singing and weaving back and forth in some sort of… prayer?

  The Mother of Night appears, walking among them in a gown of shimmering black that look like she’s stolen a piece of the night sky and woven it into some sort of material. Little black horns poke through the glistening strands of her dark hair. She’s always looked ageless to me, but something about her tells me she’s younger in this moment.

  As she passes the otherkin, she ruffles her hand through their hair and smiles at the children, and perhaps it’s the smile that undoes me.

  This is wrong. This is all wrong.

  “Why am I here?” I demand, tugging my hand from the one that curls around mine.

  Instantly the forest disappears.

  I’m standing on the icy-cold island in the middle of the Mother of Night’s prison world.

  “Because we wished to show you the truth,” says the male voice at my side.

  The truth?

  “I want to go back! What have you done to me? What have you done to Eris?”

  “She is but sleeping,” says the voice.

  “You could end her sleep.” The Mother of Night appears, walking up the rocky shore. “You could wake her with but a single word.”

  “And does that word have anything to do with ‘yes’?” I demand. “Yes, I will free you from your prison world. Yes, I will free you all. Because if that is to be the price of… of Eris’s waking, then you do not know me. And you do not know her. Because if Eris were here to tell me what to do, I know what she’d say. No price is worth the risk of seeing you and your kind free.”

  There’s a long moment of silence. “We are not monsters, Iskvien.”

  But I’ve had enough.

  “You pulled me into this dream, didn’t you? And you did something to Eris. It was you who plunged all those guards into sleep. It wasn’t Maren, after all.”

  All of this, just to push me into a place I don’t want to be.

  The Mother exchanges a glance with the creature beside me. “Maren wielded the Dreamthief’s Mirror, and with it his power. It took your friend. But she did not realize that the second she wielded the Mirror, the Dreamthief was granted access to you. We can help you and your friend, Princess.”

  I’ve played this game before. “You’re lying.”

  “We’re not lying.”

  I glare at the Mother of Night. “I will find your crown and I will give it to you by the end of the year. And then you will rot in this prison world, because I will not be your pawn. I will not be your leanabh an dàn! You can all rot!”

  I turn and lunge for the forest I first found myself in. The one with bare branches that hook toward the sky and snow underfoot. The baby is screaming now, the sound cutting right through me.

  I’ve been trapped in these dreams for months.

  “You’re just trying to scare me!” I shout.

  And I turn and run the other way as the baby’s cries echo louder.

  And then Thiago is there, his eyes flashing with green fire as he grabs me by the upper arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the leanabh an dàn? Why didn’t you trust me to love you?”

  “Because you said the child of destiny needed to die!” I gasp.

  “But that’s not the truth, Vi,” he snarls. “I would have loved you. I would have trusted you. I would have given you everything. And you have ruined it.”

  The protest dies on my lips, because there’s something quivering around his hand, an enormous twist of shadow writhing into a nest of shadowy snakes.

  He hurls them at my face, and I try to scream, but they evaporate the second they hit my skin, leaving me to inhale the smoky residue of their being.

  It tastes like death.

  At that I wake, gasping in a suppressed scream, every inch of me hammering with alertness. My hands shake. My pulse thunders. And I swear I can still taste the kiss of the grave.

  But I’m in the room beside Eris’s bed, and though the candle has burned low, it’s the same candle I lit hours ago. I wave a hand through the flame, just to feel the bite of its heat.

  “It’s just a dream. Just a fucking dream.” I reach for Eris’s hand to squeeze it, but she doesn’t squeeze back.

  She’s still asleep.

  Still shockingly vulnerable.

  Every bead in the web of dreams lies crushed into dust on the pillow around Eris’s dark hair.

  I want to run. I want to hide. Even my nights are no longer safe. But I reach out for the power of the Ceres Hallow, feeling it tremble awake somewhere close by.

  “Prove you’re not monsters. Let her go.”

  It’s a foolish thought, thrown out into the night in the hopes that the Mother of Night will hear it.

  I don’t dare hope for anything more.

  But nor do I lay hands on Eris again, because that hungry, slavering darkness within her knows I’m there.

  And I think it knows that I’m the key to freeing itself.

  Even though, Maia help me, I’m the one in chains.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next day, I’m slumped in my bath, trying to wash away the residue of oily smoke that still somehow clings to me, when I receive a note from Thalia saying the impossible has happened.

  Eris is awake.

  Slipping into my training leathers, I hurry through the hallways of the castle, though the sound of someone yelling makes my footsteps slow as I reach Eris’s apartments.

  And then Finn bursts out of Eris’s room.

  A boot follows him, and Finn snarls as he turns and catches it. “I missed you too,” he yells through the doorway. “Next time you swoon, I’m going to leave you in the dirt!”

  “Swoon?” comes an enraged hiss from within. “I didn’t swoon, you ass. That bastard hauled me under with his magic.”

  “Who?”

  “If I knew that, then I would have slit the prick’s throat and broken free!”

  And then Eris appears in the doorway, her eyes widening when she sees me.

  We stare at each other, and my foot shifts before I remember that endless slick of darkness within her.

  “Vi?” She sees the hesitation and tips her chin up.

  Eris has known a lifetime of fear. I won’t add to it.

  Though it takes everything I have in me, I step forward and hug her. Startled arms come up around me, though she stiffens a little, as though the act is unnatural.

  “You’re awake.”

  Is this a gift from the Dreamthief?

  Eris eases out of the embrace, and I see hints she’s not as sanguine as she acts. Her dark skin is paler than usual, and there’s a hint of unease in the gleam of her eyes.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eris display anything other than a stoic fuck you attitude to the world.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Did you see anyone?”

  “Did you feel Queen Maren?” Finn demands.

  “Maren?” She looks startled.

  “Tall. Evil. Possibly the most beautiful woman in the world, but with a heart made of ice,” Finn muses. “She used the Mirror against you.”

  Eris turns back into her bedchambers, and I follow as she gathers a robe and drapes it around her shoulders. The scarlet silk looks like nothing she’d ever wear, though I suspect Thalia’s been in her wardrobe. “You. Out.”

  Finn crosses his arms over his chest. “I have seen you in your nightclothes before, E.”

  Her
eyes narrow.

  “And I’m pretty sure you’ve seen me naked,” he muses.

  “I can’t recall. It must have been an underwhelming experience,” she growls.

  Finn takes a step toward her.

  She points at the door. “Out. And I don’t care what you think of my nightclothes. Just get out.”

  Finn shoots me a filthy glare. “There’s a tray on the table. Perhaps you can get Her Royal Pain-in-the-Ass to eat. I wash my hands of it.”

  And then he’s gone.

  A faint flicker of relief crosses Eris’s face, and while I definitely think there’s a reason Finn’s been wearing a rut in the floor for the past four days, I’m uncertain whether Eris feels the same way.

  I set the tray by the bed. “Let me guess? He threatened to kiss you?”

  Halfway through the process of slipping back beneath her blankets, Eris nearly loses her balance. “What?”

  I tell her about how Finn’s been calling her the Sleeping Princess of Somnus all week, promising her every night that if she isn’t awake by morning, then he’ll bestow a kiss on her lips.

  “He would.” She sinks into the enormous feather mattress and sighs. “The last thing I remember is hurrying down the stairs to see where the smoke was coming from. The second I entered the courtyard, I saw six guards lying flat on their backs.” She shrugs. “I drew my sword and checked to see if the closest guard was still breathing and realized he was merely snoring. And that’s when I felt it.”

  I sink onto the bed beside her.

  “There was a man walking across the courtyard in long black robes that left his chest bare. Tattoos marked his chest, and they were swirling. It looked like Thiago, which is why I didn’t react at first. It even smelled like him. But when he smiled at me, I knew something was wrong. There was a look about his eyes, a hint of… something glowing. I went for my sword, and he reached out and touched my forehead…. And the next thing I know, this enormous lummox”—she gestures at the door where Finn’s ghost still lingers—“is leaning over me and asking me if I know where I am. What did he mean about a mirror?”

  I tell her that Maren used the Dreamthief’s Mirror to ensnare her.