Sea Fae Trilogy

by C. N. Crawford

  I opened the sharp prong on the buckle, then jabbed it through the leather to create a new hole at the very end of the strap.

  Then, I lifted the hem of the delicate dress and buckled the holster around my thigh. I could just barely get it around my thigh with the new hole—a bit uncomfortable, but it would have to do. I slipped into the plain blue flats.

  As I crossed back into the bedroom, I tried to ignore the fact that I wasn’t wearing any underwear—just his dagger under my dress.

  Lyr closed his book, his blue gaze resting on me for a moment. “Better.”

  “You think?” I crossed to the window. “So where is this thing we’re looking for? Nearby?”

  “I believe so.”

  I leaned out, looking down at the sandstone walls beneath us. As I did, my stomach curdled. Skulls dotted the walls. Some were horned like demons, but many were fae or human.

  Worst of all, a fresh body hung from one wall in chains—a woman with pink hair and a white dress, the front of it stained brown with blood where her throat had been slit. Moonlight glinted off a collection of charm bracelets on one of her slender wrists. Blood stained her glittery tennis shoes.

  I cleared my throat. “What happened to her?”

  “I slit her throat.” His tone was casual, almost bored.

  Just in case I might have thought that the hot bath and fancy dress meant Lyr was a nice guy, the body dangling below me was a sharp reminder of the truth: I couldn’t let my guard down around him.

  Chapter 12

  “And why did you slit her throat and hang her body from your walls?” I prompted.

  “As a message to others who would break the fae laws. Every skull and corpse you see on the castle walls belonged to outlaws and dirtlings.”

  Dirtling, incidentally, was what he liked to call me.

  I backed away from the window. I was no stranger to the macabre, but the sea fae had a very different notion of moral authority than I did. I didn’t kill little girls just for breaking rules.

  “What crime did she commit?” I asked.

  He lifted the silver key from his neck. “She tried to steal this.”

  I knew the key had to be worth a ton of money. Worth risking your life over. “You slit her throat and hung her from a wall because she tried to steal your necklace?”

  “Are you judging me for killing? You have slaughtered plenty, Aenor, Flayer of Skins.”

  “For very naughty things. Murder, disfiguring other people. Not, like, pinching jewelry, you know?”

  His stare cut right through me, like every sentence I uttered was some kind of crushing disappointment to the entire fae race. “It’s not jewelry. It’s a tool that helps to open the worlds. It’s called a World Key.”

  Good to know. Valuable.

  The silver ring lay on the floor where the portal had appeared. Was that part of how the worlds opened? I knelt to look at it. It wasn’t attached to the stone, so I picked it up. I dropped it around my waist, hula-hooping with it. “And this? Is this part of how you open portals?”

  Lyr was watching my hips move rhythmically back and forth. Maybe the comb I’d used hadn’t entranced him, but the hula-hoop seemed to do the job.

  “That’s not required, no. It just keeps the portal opening tidy.” With what seemed like a lot of effort, he pulled his gaze away from my shifting hips, blue eyes narrowing. “Do not even think of stealing the key from me. For one thing, you will find yourself on the receiving end of my justice, and for another, you probably wouldn’t be able to use it. And if you did figure it out, it would sicken you to the point where you’d yearn for death.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of stealing from you.” I flashed him an innocent smile and kept hula-hooping, enjoying the fact that it seemed to throw him off guard.

  He touched the key at his throat. “As Grand Master of the Institute, it is my duty to keep the magical realms shut.” He lifted the key. “The woman you saw hanging outside didn’t know she’d be unable to use the key, that it required my magical signature to open a world. She tried to seduce me and stop my heart so she could steal it.”

  Interesting. “And how far did she get with her seduction?”

  Lyr’s gaze had drifted to my hips again. “And why is that detail important?”

  Why was that important? It wasn’t—not to me. It’s not like I was thinking about what it would be like to seduce him. Only an idiot would be thinking about tying him down, straddling him, and running her tongue over him, a sexual interrogation until he gave up the answers. My body was growing hot in the humid Acre air.

  I cleared my throat and let the silver hoop drop to the floor. It clanged over the stones. “It’s not important. You said something about dinner?”

  With the hoop on the ground, the sharp focus returned to his eyes.

  He turned to the heavy wooden door and pulled it open. “Follow me.”

  I followed Lyr into a hall of dizzyingly high arches with torches on the walls. I kept thinking of the woman hanging outside. One misstep here, and I was sure I’d be joining her. Without my true power, I’d have a hard time defending myself against the knights.

  As we walked further into the corridor, I saw that trees grew within the castle itself. Red-berried rowans arched over us, their boughs climbing the arches. Little white lights twinkled among the branches. These were sacred trees to the fae, native to our homelands. The sea fae must have imported them here from the British Isles.

  On one side, rounded openings in the trees revealed a pool of turquoise water.

  Colored sea glass dappled the walls. Gosh, they had a nice place here. Ages ago, I would have felt right at home in a place like this. Now, I’d be much more comfortable lounging on a sofa with Gina in a pair of stretchy shorts, watching reality TV. Eating Pop-Tarts.

  I hadn’t always been stuck underground. Humans hadn’t even known the fae existed till a few decades ago. But once they’d caught on? All supernaturals had been put under tight control, ruled by the knights.

  Now, I’d come into their world, where the vaulted ceilings soared thirty feet high and gold engravings glinted in the torchlight. Flags hung on the walls, decorated with family crests—eels, starfish, waves, the runic symbol for the sea god—

  My blood raced at the sight of one of the crests, a mythical white horse emerging from frothy water. My family crest, from my mother’s line. The House of Meriadoc. A long-buried power fluttered between my ribs like a dying moth, then sputtered out again, leaving me feeling empty.

  “Your mother’s herald.” Lyr’s voice held a sort of reverence.

  “It’s mine, too.” I waved at the flags. “Seems like a fire hazard. All the flags and the torches.”

  “Keep moving.”

  I straightened my back as the corridor opened into an enormous, dimly lit hall with a round table.

  Only two of the knights sat at the table—the two males I’d seen before, Gwydion and Midir. Melisande wasn’t there, luckily. I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to stop myself from trying to pull her wings off.

  Gwydion rose abruptly, snatching his goblet of golden wine as he did. His boots clacked over the stones as he crossed to us, and a faint smile curled his lips. The torches bathed his brown skin in gold. “Ah. You recovered from your head injury.” He frowned at Lyr. “You healed her?”

  He shook his head. “The dirtling? I wouldn’t touch her if I didn’t have to. She healed herself.”

  That was a lie. Weird.

  At the table, Midir shuddered. “At least she has bathed.”

  “Maybe I should go back to the Winter Witch and hang out with her ice wraiths,” I said. “Seems like a better time than this. More welcoming.”

  Midir leaned back in his chair. “I do wonder why Lyr didn’t kill you a long time ago. If he’d wanted to, he could have ripped your head clean off your body. Just right off, like a child destroying a little doll.” He seemed all too gleeful as he described this. “Did you know that Lyr slaughters with alarming efficien
cy? He can make a person’s heart explode out of their chest, should the situation call for it. Though he’s much more restrained than I would be.”

  “Relax, Midir,” said Lyr. “The Winter Witch has sent her back to us. We do not need to kill her.”

  “It’s lovely to see you both again,” I said. “Are we going to move on to the details of the mission? Also, I heard there was dinner.”

  Lyr turned and nodded at the servants who lined the wall. “We’re ready to eat.” Then, he gestured to Midir, whose vibrant red hair was now wreathed with a spiky crown. “You’ve met my seneschals already, I believe.”

  I nodded. “I learned all about their amazing torture hobbies.”

  Midir’s eyes were dark as the bottom of the ocean. Everyone in this place was beautiful and terrifying. He twirled his wineglass, glaring at me. “You killed Irdion. He was useful. And he was my drinking buddy, if you must know.”

  Lyr crossed to the table, taking a seat. “And yet we do need Aenor, and you are never short of drinking buddies, Midir. In fact, you are much more pleasant to be around when you’re drunk, so drain your glass.” He gestured at an empty chair, addressing me. “Join us.”

  I pulled out a seat at the table. Lyr started to fill my glass with a golden liquid.

  “What is this, exactly?” I asked.

  “Dandelion wine,” said Gwydion. “Sweetened with honey. Obviously.”

  It had been a hundred years since I’d tasted dandelion wine. No, 150. Gods, I remembered it being good.

  A humid, salty breeze rushed in from the window, raising goosebumps on my bare skin. The wine tasted warm and summery, with just a hint of honey.

  I took another sip, and it warmed me from the inside out. I’d forgotten how deliciously intoxicating fae wine was.

  “Nice castle you have,” I said.

  Lyr was studying me. “If you weren’t corrupted, you could have joined us here as one of the knights, long ago. You could have served the sea god.”

  “What would she do for us?” asked Midir. “She doesn’t have power anymore. She’s broken. She’d never survive the trials.”

  Truthfully, I knew probably just enough spells to compete in the trials to become a knight. I didn’t know a cleaning spell, but I did know how to explode a few things, as well as how to give myself speed in order to run and fight. I could survive underwater for long periods of time. I could enchant people, as long as I had water nearby. But I wasn’t going to bring any of this up. Let them think I was broken.

  “Not to mention her disgrace,” added Gwydion.

  They’d subjected me to such an unrelenting barrage of insults that I hadn’t had much time to wonder about the disgrace they kept talking about. I’d lost my kingdom and my power, but it wasn’t as though that was my fault. Someone had invaded our kingdom of Ys and destroyed everything I had.

  “What is this disgrace you all keep going on about?”

  Gwydion’s eyes went wide, a wicked smile curling his lips. “Oh, dear. She really doesn’t know, does she?”

  Chapter 13

  “Know what?” I asked, quickly losing patience.

  “That we all know the truth.” Gwydion quite clearly found this hilarious. “We know your secrets. How you drowned your kingdom.”

  I stared at him. “You think I what?”

  “The wanton princess who wrecked her kingdom and ran off to America in disgrace,” Gwydion went on. “I do love a good tragedy, really. You drowned your own kingdom to appease a lover. The gods despaired of your recklessness and stole your powers. They left you with nothing but a ragged dress and a few spell books to your name as punishment.”

  “We all know,” said Midir. “Everyone knows.”

  I was gripping the stem of my wineglass so hard I thought I might break it. “Is that what you think happened? That I drowned my own kingdom?”

  Midir’s eyes were hard as flint. “Of course that’s what happened. You took after your wicked father and flooded the island.”

  I could hardly form the words. “Y’all think I killed my mother, too?”

  Gwydion shrugged. “I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose, but a fae queen dies with her land, and you drowned the land. So, yes, really, you did kill her.”

  Icy darkness slid through my bones. This was what everyone thought of me—all the fae who survived the drowning of Ys believed that I’d been the one who destroyed it.

  But that wasn’t what had happened.

  I clenched my jaw. “Start from the beginning. What’s the story you all think that you know?”

  Lyr’s body had taken on a strange, animal stillness as he pinned me with his glare. “You had the power to control the sea and drown a kingdom. It was your birthright. Do you deny this?”

  I stared back at him. “That part is true. But I didn’t drown Ys. It was someone else. Did no one else see him?”

  Gwydion sighed. “Look, you were young. We all know the story. You got drunk on wine, like you always were.”

  I bit my lip. “I was often drunk, yes. I did not destroy the kingdom because of it.” Back then, I’d had so much power that it had deafened me at times. The noise of it—the overwhelming rush of magic, the clanging cacophony and rushing waves…. I needed the dandelion wine for a little peace in my mind.

  “You had many lovers,” Gwydion went on, “which I don’t judge. In fact, I possibly admire it.”

  “I wouldn’t judge that either,” I said. “Except it’s not true.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. We all know. They’ve passed on the details. You had them wear black satin masks. Sometimes you strangled them in flagrante, and you forgot to stop before they died. Like I said, I admire that.”

  I could feel that my cheeks were bright red. “This isn’t me.”

  “But then one of your lovers betrayed you with your cousin,” Gwydion went on, “whose beauty you always envied. In a drunken rage, your emotions got the better of you. You drowned the city.” He shrugged. “It could have happened to anyone with that power, really. I once cursed an entire village to dance to death because my boyfriend got off with his tailor. In my opinion, it’s perfectly understandable. But there’s no reason to lie about it. Own it.”

  “What? Slow down.” I stared at him. “I hardly had any lovers, let alone any lovers in masks.”

  I’d had exactly two lovers in my long years. One, a viscount’s son who’d seduced me in an apple grove for all of four minutes; the other, a human in London who had liked watching darts. Both forgettable.

  “I don’t get along with men, and I never have,” I said. “I don’t get jealous of other women’s beauty. And I definitely didn’t drown a kingdom because I was jealous. Was this story told to you by a man, by any chance? This sounds like a dude story. The girl who was sooo slutty she broke the whole world.” I breathed in slowly through my nose. “And this all brings me back to my previous point. I don’t get along with men.”

  Lyr stared at me with an extreme curiosity. I felt like a butterfly pinned under his gaze. Did he believe this whole blindfolded and strangled story?

  “I wasn’t finished with the story,” Gwydion cut in. “We haven’t got to the best part. After you drowned Ys, one of the knights of your kingdom tried to save you on his horse. But the gods called out, Throw the demon thou carriest into the sea, if thou dost not desire to perish! That’s when the gods took your power from you. You clung to the knight’s body, promising him all sorts of sordid sexual favors if he would only carry you to shore.”

  My mouth dropped open. Sordid sexual favors? “This is not what happened.”

  “He kicked you off his horse anyway,” Midir went on, “and you washed up in your sea-torn dress on the shore and lived out your days as a murderous prostitute.”

  “Frankly, it’s all fascinating,” said Gwydion. “It’s honestly probably my favorite story.”

  My skin went hot. “You think I needed a man to save me from drowning? I can swim for hundreds of miles. I’m a Morgen, and no one sto
le that power. Is this story by any chance coming from the knight who says I promised him sordid sexual favors?”

  “Yes,” said Gwydion. “I mean, he was there.”

  “And you didn’t think that maybe this is the kind of dumb crap insecure men make up to impress each other?”

  A silence fell over the hall for a moment, and Lyr scrubbed his chin. “That part about the swimming always perplexed me.”

  Midir licked his lips. “But you did sell your body to survive? You must have. What else would you have done? A broken princess with no skills.”

  I stole things, mostly. But I wasn’t about to bring that up now, when it could get my throat slit.

  “So, what did it feel like when the gods stole your power?” asked Gwydion.

  It hadn’t been the gods. It had been a fae who stole my power.

  A fae who burned like a star. One whose name I didn’t know—so I called him the Nameless One.

  Dark shadows sliced the air around Lyr. “I was the only one who believed the stories were wrong. I believed that as the daughter of Queen Malgven, you remained our true ruler. I didn’t believe you would destroy your own kingdom. But in the end, when I saw you for what you really were, even I had to admit it was the truth.”

  I stared out the window, where the dark sea crashed against a rocky shore. Right now, I wanted to leap into it. It seemed impossible to clear my name.

  This was the thing with men, as my mother—Queen Malgven herself—had warned me. It didn’t matter who you really were; they wrote their own stories about you. They cast you in one of several roles: the innocent girl who needed teaching, the lunatic who needed calming, the whore who’d break your heart. Or, in my case, the demonic prostitute fueled by rage and jealousy. A fallen woman. That was my story, whether or not it was true. And as Gwydion had said, wasn’t it a good story?

  But why should I care what they thought? I knew the truth. Gina knew the truth.

  This bunch of jerks was not worth my time.

  “Interesting story,” I said as calmly as I could. “It was all a long time ago.”