Our plan was starting to feel increasingly ridiculous. I was supposed to sit in an apartment and just listen out for the sounds of an athame. Lyr seemed sure I could find it if I simply focused enough, but that wasn’t how it worked.
I took a huge bite of the pastry, and I felt the hair raising on the back of my neck. Someone was using a scrying mirror to watch me.
I started to run for Lyr, but I had only taken a few steps when the world fell out from under me—the floor rumbling, cracking open.
I plunged into an icy portal, and a hand clamped around my ankle. Tragically, the chocolate pastry fell into the water with me.
Underwater, I fought to swim to the surface. Swimming I could do, even in the most powerful of currents. And yet now, magic was dragging me under like light pulled into a black hole. It happened fast—the break through to the other side, the rush of air as rough hands yanked me from the portal.
The ground closed up immediately behind me, and I found myself back in Acre, surrounded by the possessed knights.
Chapter 25
I lay flat on the stone ground, and Midir pointed the tip of a sword at my neck. Morning sunlight washed into the hall, lighting his red hair ablaze.
It seemed the possessed seneschals had figured out how to reverse the spell on the key.
Midir stared at the floor. The World Key gleamed from his throat. “Did the bloody portal close?” he asked in his singsong voice. “We don’t have Lyr. He was the important one. Why did you grab her first? This is a fucking disaster.”
“She was right there.” Gwydion came up behind him. “Just open it again.”
“It took me an hour to open this, and I was vomiting the whole time. We didn’t reverse the spell on it properly. I feel that my host’s body could be falling apart.” The fuath-Midir was whining now.
He looked sick—his eyes bloodshot, skin sallow. His cheeks looked sunken. “I don’t speak the Ys dialect, and I need that to reverse the spell properly.” He covered his mouth like he was about to vomit.
Deep, booming voices echoed off the stone walls.
“Where is Lyr?” It seemed everyone was asking the same question at once.
“We need to open the portal again!” possessed Gwydion shouted. He pulled out a gun. Where had he got the gun? He pointed it at me, then flashed a wide grin. “Tell us how to open it.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Who are you working for? Who is looking for Nova Ys?”
Gwydion kept the gun trained on me. “Things being as they are, little one, I don’t believe you’re in a position to interrogate me.”
Fair point.
By Gwydion’s side, Midir was chanting the spell to open the portal. But the fuath possessing him couldn’t get the accent right. It was in the language of Ys, and he was screwing up the words. I listened in, trying to remember the words to the spell. If I was going to make it away from them, I’d need to somehow get the key from Midir and open a portal myself.
“I need to make sure you can’t escape,” Gwydion went on. “You attacked us with magic before.”
Uh-oh.
I had to think fast. I had a few spells at my fingert—
The bullet ripped through my shoulder, so hot and sharp I didn’t even hear myself screaming. I only felt mind-bending pain spreading through my body. The way the pain rippled through my veins, I was sure it was iron.
Gods, was that what Lyr had felt when I’d shot him?
When the haze of agony cleared a little from my mind, I stared up at Gwydion.
“Tell us how to get to Nova Ys,” he said. “You’re the heir. You must know how to find it.”
“I genuinely have no idea.”
“You know”—Midir flashed me a brilliant smile—“as soon as you begin to chant one of your attack spells, Gwydion will shoot another part of your body. And you should know that I’ve been slowly starting to learn from some of my host’s memories. And my host is very skilled at torture, as it happens. First, I think he’d cut off your nipples. Then, he’d slowly carve away at the rest of your breasts—”
I tuned out the fuath’s macabre listing of all the parts of me he wanted to cut off. They were going to try to torture me into giving them information that I simply didn’t have.
If I still had my true power, everyone in the fortress would drown. From here, I could hear the ocean, the waves pounding against the rock. I tasted the salt on my lips. The sea called to me, and I wanted to draw it down over the fortress like a tsunami.
A searing pain in my side snapped my attention back to the room. Gwydion had cut me, and blood dripped from his sword. “I felt we were losing your attention.”
“So tell us.” Gwydion pointed the gun at my kneecap. “How do we get there?”
The pain was so blinding I wasn’t entirely sure I could form a sentence. My body felt uncomfortably hot and sweat beaded on my forehead.
“I don’t know,” I managed.
Once, I would have drowned them all.
Now? I could make fog.
I broke into a wild, hysterical laughter that made tears run down my cheeks, then I instantly regretted it because it felt like my side was splitting open where they’d cut me.
“I don’t know,” I said again, this time through real tears.
Stop crying, you idiot.
“Well, then,” said Midir. “What good are you? We will have to cut you up into tiny little pieces of princess.”
I let out a slow breath, blocking out all the torture threats and trying to focus on the hall around me.
That wild laughter was threatening to bubble up again. Fog. Maybe I could just confuse them all with fog, like the baffled fishermen—
You know? It wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
“Then,” Midir went on, “I’ll cut off your thumb.”
“Tell her,” said Gwydion. “Tell her who we have captured.”
“What? Captured who?” I snapped.
I needed him to stop interrupting my thoughts.
I closed my eyes, tuning into the sound of the ocean, the waves crashing against the fortress. I hummed a low tune in my throat, calling the sea to me. The air thickened, and a faint ocean spray cooled my heated face.
A chilly mist pooled in the hall, and I hummed a little louder. The fog roiled in around us, a soothing balm on my body. Salt stuck to my skin.
“What the hell is this?” Midir trilled. “Stop it.”
I shifted on the stone floor, agony shooting through my shoulder as I did. But the fog was so thick now, I couldn’t even see a foot in front of me.
When the fuath fired his gun again, the bullet only grazed me.
Clenching my teeth, I rose as swiftly as I could.
I had a plan. I needed just a little more chaos in this cloud of sea spray.
I blocked out the pain as I rushed to the side of the room where the flags hung. Then, I pulled one of the torches from the wall. In the heavy dampness of the air, it was hard to light the fabric, but once I let a little oil drip off the torch, a corner of a flag went ablaze.
I pulled the dagger from its sheath.
Just a little more pandemonium.
“The room is on fire!” someone shouted.
The scent of burning fabric and smoke curled through the air. Screams and commands filled the room. Luckily, I could find people based on sound.
“I need to open the portal again!” Midir shouted in his high-pitched voice. “I can’t even think clearly. I want to be sick.”
He probably didn’t realize that his voice told me exactly where he was. He hadn’t moved.
Through the fog, I crept up behind him.
I jammed my dagger into his neck—into his trachea, so he couldn’t make a sound. Since he was a demigod, it would hurt like the devil, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Then, I ripped the necklace from his throat. It isn’t easy to break a silver chain, and it bit into my fingers as I yanked it off. Sticky red blood coated the key.
Midir fell to hi
s knees, not making a sound except the gurgling from his throat.
I rushed for the window and crouched on the foggy ledge, sea air whipping up mist into my face. Smoke from the burning flags billowed from the room.
I stared down at the shore, thinking of how shallow the water might be where it crashed over the rocks, and how it would feel to smash my legs on impact. I’d be stuck there with shattered bones, waiting for the fuath to torture me to death while I failed to give them the answers I didn’t have.
Time for a new plan.
Better to run through the secret tunnel again—the one that Lyr had showed me. I could find a clear space and try to remember the spell for the World Key.
With the heraldic flags burning around me, I found the door to the secret passage. I slipped into the narrow hall without any of the other knights noticing, a plume of smoke wafting in as I opened the door.
The shouts of the fuath echoed around until the door clicked shut behind me.
Once again, the pain from my shoulder ripped through my mind, pulsing like poison in my bones.
Now—what were the words to that spell?
Chapter 26
I couldn’t think straight. I felt like my mind had been infected.
Iron was poison to the fae. Was this what the witch’s prophecy meant about poisoned blood? Maybe.
I slowly walked through the tunnel. Wincing, I reached around my back, feeling for an exit wound. I grunted with pain. I did feel a ragged hole in my shoulder, which meant the bullet had gone through to the stone floor behind me. Even without the actual bullet in me, it still hurt like the dickens and made it hard to think.
Now, to figure out how to open a portal again….
A bit of light cracked into the dark passage as someone opened the door behind me. Rays of orange beamed through the smoke and the tendrils of fog.
Oh, gods.
I forced myself to start running, and I called the sea mist closer to me. I cloaked myself in a cool fog as I ran, my breath ragged.
I whispered a healing spell, and it started to work slowly over my skin, taking some of the pain away. I picked up the pace, fog enveloping me in the dark tunnel.
Injured and bleeding, I felt my thoughts start to wander back to my old life as I ran, down the dark stairwell into the flooded tunnel at sea level. A hundred years ago, I’d gone to a party in a grove of blackthorn trees. I’d danced and danced until my feet ached and sweat ran down my gossamer dress. I’d gorged on blackberries until my lips and fingertips turned purple.
Then, a darker memory flickered in my mind: my dagger plunging into a demon’s heart, and the strange exaltation I’d felt when ending his life.
Heart turns to ash, soul infected by evil.
It seemed like ages till I reached the tunnel’s exit into the sunlight. This time, the fog protected me. All of Acre was a cloud of thick, salty mist.
Midir’s blood dripped down my hands from when I’d slit his throat. Death spills from her.
My pace had slowed, and when I looked down at myself, I saw that I was bleeding not only from my shoulder but from the cut in my side. I’d forgotten about that one, and now the blood loss was dizzying me. I stumbled, careening into a wall.
It was hard to remember the words to the spell when I couldn’t think straight. I gripped my side, trying to keep moving. Gods, I wanted to lie down.
A man shouted something at me in Hebrew, but I ignored him.
I needed to hide, just long enough that I could clear my thoughts. I’d find my way back to Lyr and we’d find this godsforsaken magic blade to stop this nightmare.
In the thick fog, I didn’t have a great idea where I was going. All I knew was that I needed to lose the knights. I turned off the road into a narrow alley that smelled of fish.
Another turn took me into a covered market. Here, market stalls lined a cobbled passageway—bakeries, fruit stands, almond pastries.
The mist thinned once inside, but when I turned around, I didn’t see anyone coming after me. Just the baffled vendors wondering why a bleeding, blue-haired woman was stumbling through the market, veering into their halva and pistachios.
When I reached an empty alleyway off the market, I slowed.
I leaned against the stone wall, catching my breath, and closed my eyes. I touched the key around my neck. What had Midir been saying when he was trying to open the portal again? It had been in the Ys dialect. Luckily, I spoke it fluently.
Something about a door, a kingdom….
A gunshot rang out, and a bullet cracked the stone wall just to my right.
I whirled to find Gwydion, a dark smile curling his lips. “I’m glad I got your attention, Aenor.” He pointed the gun at my chest.
My heart slammed against my ribs. “I can’t help you. I simply don’t know how to get to Nova Ys.”
“I believe you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help us. You know, the bodies we inhabit slowly start to give us some of their memories, if we take the time to sift through them. And what we learned from Gwydion is that you don’t care so much about your own life. You care about the human.”
Oh, no.
A second knight came up behind him, one with golden hair. He flashed me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and drew his sword. “We had a hard time finding Lyr, you know. And he slipped away from us so fast.”
I touched the World Key at my neck, swallowing hard. I didn’t have enough energy to fight these two. “What did you do with Gina?”
Gwydion shrugged. “It was easy to find Gina. Our hosts knew exactly where she was. Melisande remembered.” A thin smile. “The Savoy Hotel. This was discussed.”
The other pulled something from his pocket—a necklace I recognized as Gina’s. It had an octopus pendant and googly eyes. “I wanted to take her finger, but I was told to wait.”
I started shaking, and a bit of magic started crackling between my ribs. “Where is she?” I looked toward the fortress. Flames rose from some of the windows, and dark smoke curled into the air. I could hear my own breath coming fast. “Is she in there?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Gwydion. “We’re not hiding her in an obvious place like the fortress.”
“Then where the devil is she?” I knew they wouldn’t answer, but pure frustration had me screaming at them anyway.
Gwydion wagged his finger and prowled closer. “Ah, well. When you give us what we want, you can have your human back, and we’ll do our best not to cut anything off her.”
The world had gone quiet except for a ringing in my ears. I summoned my magic. Despite my weakness, power was rising higher inside me, charging my body. Anger gave me fire. “And what do you want me to give you?”
“Lyr,” said Gwydion. “You can keep the World Key. Use it to get to Lyr. Shoot him with iron, like you did before. Open the portal. Dump his body in it for us.”
“What will you do to him?”
Gwydion didn’t answer, but I already knew. They’d torture him until he went demented with the pain.
I gripped the dagger. I could use it to conduct another attack spell.
I whispered a spell and unleashed a blast of attack magic at the two knights.
The blond knight lunged for me. I had one last blast of magic in my reserves, and it electrified my arm, then exploded from my fingertips. I managed to catch him right in his chest, and he fell back.
Elvis bless my soul.
What was the spell to open the portal? With all the blood I was losing, it was no wonder the knights had found me so fast.
I tried to run again, desperately wanting to rest. I was moving at a snail’s pace. Why wasn’t Gwydion catching up to me?
My heart was pounding hard in my chest, loud as a drum. Or was that the sound of a drum echoing off the walls? No, it was footfalls—someone chasing me.
A seductive scent curled around me: the sweet, wine-ripe scent of pomegranates tinged with dark smoke. I froze and stole a glance behind me.
Seemed someone new had entered t
he fray. A fae I hadn’t seen before.
Behind him, the bodies of Gwydion and the blond fae lay broken, ripped apart. Only Gwydion would return from the dead.
I stared at the stranger, who moved toward me with an elegant grace. His beauty felt like glass shattering in my heart.
Dark hair swept over his forehead, and the morning light blazed over his face. His eyes were dusky hues—purple streaked with gold—and his cheekbones were blade-sharp. Possibly the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I realized I’d simply stopped walking.
“I believe those two fae were bothering you,” he said. “I had to kill them.”
“Thanks,” I said. I still clutched tight to the bloodied knife.
His eyes gleamed, and he arched a dark eyebrow. “You look like your mother.”
My stomach swooped. He knew way too much about me.
“Who are you?”
As I stared at him, the sound of a low drum pulsed in time with my heart. It seemed to me that it was a sacrificial drum, a sound echoing off rock. I had no idea why that word popped into my mind—sacrifice. I felt dreadfully hot, and phantom flames seemed to rise and burn around me. Boom, boom, boom…. A drumbeat to drown out screams.
However gorgeous the man standing before me was, the drum was telling me to run.
Chapter 27
Shadows cascaded behind his back like wings. He smelled fae, and he seemed ancient.
The world seemed blurred around him, as if no one existed but us. That low, rhythmic beat pounded in my body.
I stood, immobilized, while the man with the bright eyes took another slow step forward. Peering down at me, he stroked a fingertip along the side of my face. His touch was hot. I had the strangest, strongest urge to kiss his hand.
“The Daughter of Malgven,” he said. His voice was like a lover’s touch that skimmed under the fabric of my clothes, sending hot shivers rippling over my body. “I might need your help someday.”
My heart pounded harder.
The man pulled something out of his pocket. A ripe, red piece of fruit. My mouth watered as he held it out to me, hunger and desire mingling in my belly.
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