Crown of Whispers

by Isabella August

  Beatrice clenched her jaw against the thought. Somehow, as terrifying as the darkness was, the idea of creating light now seemed almost worse. Still, she let go of Dorian’s hand in order to summon up a few sparks of orange in her palm.

  The small light threw the scene before them into sharp relief. A large, ornate wooden door rose before them. Unlike the other doors in the Labyrinth, this one was old, and carved with the image of those smoky, vaguely humanoid figures. There was no lock on that door, and no obvious method of opening it.

  Beatrice opened her Witchsight.

  The carved figures on the door flickered beneath her extra senses; their limbs writhed with warning, and their mouths opened in silent screams. A deep, malicious watchfulness stung at her being, and Beatrice staggered back with wide eyes.

  Dorian caught her by the arm. “Trix?” he asked worriedly.

  Beatrice glanced sharply toward him… and blinked in shock.

  Dorian had almost never registered to her Witchsight—he should have been effectively invisible to those senses, even now. But the effect of the Labyrinth had made his power more evident. Against the backdrop of those other whispers, he appeared to her as a smoky outline, wavering in the air. Flashes of human emotion showed through here and there, and Beatrice remembered the heavy dread she had seen on him a few nights ago.

  That was a real emotion, she thought. Dorian looked perfectly human in all the ways that count. I couldn’t even tell the difference, back then.

  “Ça va,” Beatrice murmured. I’m fine. She knew that dread had returned to him, stronger than ever before, and she didn’t want to fan it.

  Beatrice looked back toward the door, sizing it up apprehensively. She didn’t need to open it… but even her relatively simple plans were going to require a delicate touch. The entrance to the Lady’s most valuable vault was so carefully protected that it was very nearly a faerie creature in and of itself.

  Those awful, hissing whispers tugged at Beatrice’s attention—louder than ever, now that she had her Witchsight open. She pulled away from Dorian’s touch to dig through her side-bag, pulling out her smartphone and her headphones.

  “I’ve got to focus,” Beatrice said, in a trembling voice. “Can you… watch my back?”

  Dorian gave her a grim nod. “For whatever good it may do,” he said.

  They both knew that the most likely interruption would be from the Lady herself.

  Beatrice tried to ignore that inevitable reality as she pulled on her headphones and started up the pounding trance-like music on her playlist.

  This is the last mile, she promised herself. You can have a nervous breakdown later.

  She pulled out the golden coin, and summoned up every drop of magic she could manage.

  Electricity arced between her fingers, hissing and spitting at the air around her. It crawled its way slowly down her body and toward the ominous door, climbing its way up the hideous engravings. To Beatrice’s relief, those carvings didn’t yet react—they’d been put in place to prevent the door from opening, and not to protect it from being touched by magic. That orange glow began to permeate the air in front of the door, slowly knitting itself into a frenetic, vibrating veil of power.

  Time distended beneath the comforting, predictable beats of her headphones. Beatrice let herself zone out, ignoring everything else around her. The whispers outside dulled and eventually disappeared as she excluded them from her attention. Her magic wove its way back through the door insidiously, making subtle changes. More than once, Beatrice worried that she’d pushed things too far—that the thing would come alive at any moment, and lash out at the source of its annoyance. But she kept her touch just delicate enough… and the harsh reaction never came.

  The whispers outside rose in volume, tingling against her skin. A cold, eldritch attention pressed down upon her, in the middle of one of her spells.

  Dorian’s hand closed upon her shoulder… and Beatrice’s headphones erupted into screaming static.

  Chapter 15

  Beatrice nearly fumbled her magic at the unexpected agony in her ears. She caught herself just in time, snatching back her power and clawing at the headphones.

  “Wayward child,” a familiar, alien voice whispered behind her. “What have you done now?”

  Beatrice snapped her Witchsight closed and turned, still clutching at her ears.

  The Lady of Whispers stood at the foot of the stairs. Her pale, ashen skin threw back the orange glow of Beatrice’s magic, leaching the color from it where it touched her. Black whispers crawled hungrily across her skin, arcing over her ghostly hair in a vague, shifting crown. Her white eyes were fixed on Dorian.

  “Mostly,” Dorian replied dryly, “I have been standing here, doing nothing.”

  The reality of the faerie lord’s presence was far, far worse than the imaginary figure that Beatrice’s anxiety had dreamed up for her. Her very existence made the air shiver with terrified expectation, balancing on a razor’s edge. Every accidental sound felt frighteningly sharp and magnified, as volume twisted and distorted around her.

  Somehow—just barely—Beatrice managed to hold onto the edges of Punk Corporate Trixie. She went stock still behind Dorian, willing herself not to fall apart where she stood.

  The Lady of Whispers knitted her brow at Dorian’s curt response. She looked toward the door, where Beatrice’s magic still sparked and hissed. “You cannot have expected to break into my most precious vault, Dorian,” the faerie lord observed in a flat, emotionless tone. “Though I still wonder how it is that you came by the desire at all. I created you with the drive to collect secrets from other creatures.”

  I have to talk, Beatrice thought. That’s part of the plan. She gave a swift mental kick to Punk Corporate Trixie, who startled into action, clearing her throat.

  “I’m sure that’s how you meant to create him,” Beatrice rasped. “But it’s a lot more natural to make things in your own image. You based Dorian’s mind off of your mind—that’s why his head is so similar to this place.”

  The Lady of Whispers turned her attention directly upon Beatrice now. The brush of her attention sent uncontrollable shivers skittering down Beatrice’s spine. “You,” she murmured. “You have broken my changeling. You are the influence which ruined my work.”

  “You’re not listening,” Beatrice said in a trembling voice. “You ruined your own work. You were human too, once. In fact, I’m starting to think…” She swallowed hard. “I’m starting to think all faerie lords were human at one point. Most of you just… forget.”

  The Lady’s white eyes somehow… deepened at that. The uncanny whispers around them hissed more angrily than before. “You have not entered my vault,” the faerie lord said. “The door is still closed. How did you come by this information?”

  “Context,” Beatrice managed. Her voice was weaker on the word than she would have liked. “I don’t need to see the secret in order to figure it out. You gave it away with your behavior… with your changeling.”

  The Lady of Whispers smiled. There was no obvious emotion in the expression… but Beatrice had a feeling that it did not bode well for her. “Obviously,” the faerie lord said. “I will not allow you to leave. So the knowledge does you little good.” She turned back toward Dorian. “And you… I will need to erase you. It is a shame to redo all of my hard work. But I will make sure that this does not happen again.”

  Dorian tensed visibly at the suggestion. His smoky eyes showed open fear for the first time since they’d entered the Labyrinth.

  “Wait!” Beatrice said quickly. “You don’t want to do that. If you do… you’re never getting back your secrets.”

  The Lady of Whispers paused at this. She looked at Beatrice with a vaguely perplexed expression. “My secrets are still here,” she said slowly. “All of my secrets, except for those which Dorian hid from me. But I can find those. I am patient.”

  Beatrice shook her head. “You don’t have any secrets behind this door anymore,” she told
the Lady of Whispers. “Or at least… you’ve lost access to them.” She took one slow, careful step aside, to put the door more prominently on display.

  The Lady tilted her head curiously. She considered Beatrice’s spell on the door… and slowly, the expression on her face changed. Real, human fury stole across her features—followed by a tinge of abject horror. “What have you done?” she whispered. Her voice began to rise. “What have you done?”

  Beatrice clutched her hands over her ears again with a cringing gasp. The Lady’s voice was sharp and biting—it struck directly past her body, into the core of her soul. “I… I double-encrypted your vault!” Beatrice managed. “Well, I mean. I had the time to triple-encrypt it, actually. But it all washes out to the same thing, in the end.” She forced a weak smile. “Basically, I infected you with ransomware.”

  The Lady of Whispers clearly had no idea what the word ransomware meant—but her ongoing reaction suggested that she had gleaned the basic idea from looking at Beatrice’s spell.

  Black whispers rose and thrashed around them. The screeching began in Beatrice’s ears again, and her knees gave out. Dorian caught her quickly, holding onto her tightly. The smoke of his eyes was more pronounced than ever, but somewhere in the middle of all that noise, Beatrice thought that there was actually something beautiful and compelling about this side of him.

  “Give. Me. The. Key!” the Lady of Whispers raged. “Those are my secrets!”

  Beatrice burrowed her face into Dorian’s shirt, cringing away from the shivering fury in the air. Punk Corporate Trixie shattered and deserted her.

  Only normal, neurotic Beatrice was left behind.

  Tears threatened at her eyes. The shivers in her body intensified abruptly, overwhelming in their intensity. Beatrice clung to Dorian with a breathless sob as all her careful plans fled her mind, chased away by the reality of the situation.

  I can’t, she thought. I can’t face her down. I can’t even breathe.

  Dorian held her tightly. His lips pressed at her hair. “Je suis là,” he promised her, in that low, ethereal voice. “I won’t let you go, Trix.”

  But you will, Beatrice thought desperately, as the panic attack overtook her. I’m already screwing this up. She’s going to destroy you, and I’m going to be trapped at the bottom of this god-forsaken Labyrinth for the rest of my life.

  The words didn’t come out. She didn’t have the breath with which to speak them.

  Dorian’s gray, empty aura surged around her. It was a weak thing, compared to the storm of power that had focused itself on Beatrice—but it was something. The smoke of his eyes flashed against that maelstrom, forcing it back by inches.

  Beatrice sucked in a single, terrified breath.

  “I’ll destroy the key!” she managed. “I swear to god, I’ll do it!”

  That hurricane of power stuttered around her.

  Slowly—very slowly—the power of the Lady’s fury eased. Dorian’s aura gained purchase, silencing the immediate world around them. Beatrice shuddered against him, searching for the strength to stand on her own two feet. It didn’t come… but it didn’t need to. True to his promise, Dorian still held her upright, though his own muscles had begun to tremble.

  “…what is it that you desire, witch?” the Lady of Whispers hissed.

  “I…” Beatrice laughed shakily. “I want Dorian,” she said. “I want you to give up any claim to him. I want you to close that back door you put into his head and never bother him again. And… I want the both of us to walk back into the Looking Glass, absolutely unharmed.”

  The faerie lord cooled abruptly at that. Bewildered curiosity reappeared on her ashen features. “You want my changeling?” she asked. “My broken changeling?”

  Beatrice wanted to argue the point—he’s not broken, her brain snapped instinctively—but she remembered just in time that she hadn’t walked into a hostile faerie realm just to argue philosophy. “I meant what I said,” she replied. “All of that, in return for your key. You’ll have access to all your most valuable secrets again.”

  The Lady of Whispers regarded her in silence for a long moment.

  “…I do not accept your bargain,” the faerie lord said finally.

  Beatrice clenched her fingers into Dorian’s arms. Oh, fuck, she thought. She hadn’t let herself think of what she’d do if the Lady chose the nuclear option. It hadn’t seemed possible, given her nature. She’s supposed to want secrets, above all else, Beatrice thought desperately.

  “These secrets are… no use to me,” the Lady said slowly. Her blank white eyes focused on Beatrice. “If I unlock them, they shall die at my touch. There is no value in that.”

  Beatrice knitted her brow. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said. “And I definitely can’t… can’t fix that for you.”

  Dorian sucked in a breath. “These aren’t her most valuable secrets,” he said. “Or rather… they’re not the secrets that I thought they were.” He turned his gray eyes back upon the Lady. “This vault holds your humanity,” he said. “Your last memories of who you once were. You hid them away so that your mantle couldn’t destroy them.”

  The Lady of Whispers did not respond, at first. But the harsh edge of her power dulled somewhat, and she looked down at her ashen fingers. “They are useless,” she whispered. “Beyond me forever. I own them… but I cannot have them.”

  “You can,” Dorian said. He closed his eyes wearily. “You could give up your mantle—pass it on to someone else. If you really did hide your humanity early enough… it’s possible that you could be nearly yourself again.”

  Beatrice was expecting an instant and vehement reaction to this—but none came.

  She glanced warily at the Lady of Whispers. The faerie lord’s face was blank, and utterly devoid of emotion. But Beatrice had learned to see past Dorian’s masks… and there was something similar in the Lady’s manner that suggested her mind was much more active than her features.

  “I will take the mantle from you,” Dorian said softly. “If that is your wish.”

  Beatrice tensed against him. “You can’t offer that, Dorian,” she said. “Your humanity was nearly an accident. If you pick up that mantle—”

  “I will hope that I have learned enough to withstand it,” Dorian said bleakly. “At least for a time.”

  The Lady of Whispers considered him for a long moment… and Beatrice knew that she had begun to think on the offer.

  “No,” Beatrice said. She shoved her way free of Dorian’s arms, trembling on her feet. “I’m the one with the goods. If you give your mantle to Dorian, I’ll destroy the key. You’ll never have your memories back.” She sucked in a panicked breath. “Give me the mantle instead. I’ll… I’ll take it.”

  Dorian stared at her. “Trix,” he said hoarsely. “You have no idea what you’re proposing—”

  “I know exactly how bad it is,” Beatrice hissed at him. “I don’t need to know the details to know it’s a majorly stupid idea. But that’s why I’m not letting you do it.” She pulled the golden coin from her pocket, offering it out toward the Lady of Whispers. “New deal. Your mantle, in return for your key. You get to be yourself, and walk away from all of this forever.”

  The Lady’s white eyes fixed upon the coin in Beatrice’s hand. The black whispers around her shivered and danced. There was a greed in her gaze now, fighting with a strange reluctance. What remained of the Lady’s humanity wanted to take the offer… but the mantle had her, and it clearly did not want to let her go.

  “Dorian,” Beatrice said. “You left one of your secrets in my head. I want you to hand it over to her.”

  Dorian gave her a sharp look—but Beatrice dredged up the memory forcefully, bringing it to the forefront of her mind.

  Snow falling silently on the street.

  A short, tired woman in boots and pajamas.

  The warmth of another human being, curled beneath his arm.

  The taste of hot chocolate, and the sharp stab of longing for s
omething… more.

  Beatrice breathed out… and a soft, gray whisper curled from her lips. It wavered toward the Lady of Whispers—tiny, and barely visible against the greater veil of her power.

  The faerie lord breathed it in… and all at once, the battle within her soul shifted. Her white eyes sharpened. Her long fingers curled into her palms.

  “I accept your bargain,” she hissed.

  The words echoed strangely—they broke apart into a hundred thousand black, whispered echoes. Those tattered words surged for Beatrice, digging beneath her skin. They kept digging until they reached the very core of her soul, grasping at her very sense of identity. The whispers tore at her emotions, trying to replace them with a cold, implacable certainty.

  You are eternal, that power told her. You are inevitable. You spin the web which controls Arcadia’s secrets.

  Somewhere in the midst of all those mad whispers, Beatrice began to laugh. The ever-present anxiety at the bottom of her mind pressed back against the mantle, shrieking a thousand terrified doubts back at it.

  I’m not inevitable, Beatrice thought back at that power. I’m afraid of my own shadow. I’m a total nervous wreck… and now, you’re stuck with me.

  Those black whispers crawled through her veins, forcing their way into every corner of her being. But Beatrice kept laughing until she cried—and when those horrible hisses finally subsided to a dull murmur, she was laughing still.

  Presently, she became aware of Dorian’s arms around her. “Trix,” he said urgently. “Dit quelque chose, bon Dieu!”

  Beatrice forced herself to focus on him.

  The smoke of his eyes was made of a hundred precious secrets. The power he carried echoed the magic in her soul—but the infinitely complex pattern of his mind was snagged and confused, woven with something utterly foreign… and messy.

  He still smelled like hot chocolate.

  “Something,” Beatrice told him dazedly.