Faeries might live an eternity, but they mature slowly, so the munchkin could be thirty times my age. Yet if she were a human, I’d reckon she’s about ten years old. The possibility smites me with guilt for whupping her at The Parliament of Owls.
In any event, guess how thrilled I am to see her. “Shit,” I mutter.
“That’s no way to address a superior,” the moth grouses, giving herself airs. “You humans have such a lacking vocabulary, a shortcoming as pitiful as your mating rituals, which rarely last in spite of your flimsy lifespan.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. Why not fuck off? That’ll spare you from having to judge us.”
Someday, if I know what’s good for me, I’ll muzzle myself.
The highfalutin’ Fae stiffens. With a jerk of her wrist, the crate tips toward the ledge and knocks me into the frame.
Fables! I reach overhead and snatch the bars for dear life. My pack loses additional supplies, the hawthorn berries, salt pouch, and bread rations tumbling into the abyss.
The compartment rights itself with a decisive shudder. “That was for the whip,” the runt states. “And for the cheek.”
Perspiration rolls down my armpits. My pulse drums as I stutter, “Guess y-you don’t mind having a human’s death on your conscience.”
“Conscience,” she spits. “Consciences are for elves. Now I have a question that’s meant to be answered. Cooperate, and I won’t send you over the rim.”
“You willing to risk that? I might take my answer with me.”
“Perhaps, though it worked the last time.”
The last time. Exactly how many humans have been forced into this shit?
I’ve got questions, too. Plus, distractions to dish out. Lastly, an escape to plot before she makes good on her promise. “Where am I?”
“I’m asking the questions, not you!” Nevertheless, the Fae replies, “You’re in The Black Nest. It’s where we jail prisoners and leave them to rot, along with the humans who fail to reach the labyrinth’s crest but also fail to perish in the process, thus ruining our entertainment.”
“How rude,” I remark.
“Well, if you didn’t wish to decay here, you should have informed The Cauldron of Bats on your way down. They would have boosted you back up.”
I’d seen The Black Nest inscribed on the courtyard post. As for The Cauldron of Bats, that one’s a wild card.
So I’m in a cage shaped like an enclosed nest. And she happened to be here when I crash-landed? Hardly. Maybe she was part of the gaggle watching from the trees at The Wayward Steps. Whatever question’s chipping a hole in her head, it must be important enough to trail me.
“A trade,” I say, remembering a certain tongue-twister delivered by Cerulean during our initial meeting. “An answer for an answer. And…” Careful not to agitate the crate, I check my pack for the remnant offerings that survived my fall, then withdraw a ball of ribbon. “This too, but none of your parlor tricks. I like this cage right where it is.”
Her topaz eyes twinkle. She hops from her perch and plucks the ball from between the bars.
“What do you want to know?” I ask, bracing myself.
“A simple thing,” she says, weaving the ribbon into a sash around her waist. “Reports say that you resisted Cerulean’s lure. Is that true?”
I blink. “You mean the flute? It’s true.”
“But that’s impossible! If I was able to glamour you, he certainly should have been capable. You’re lying again.”
I’ve got no way to disprove it. All I know is his flute should have swayed me twice but didn’t.
It was a dumb idea, telling this to the Fae. She glowers as if someone revealed that her hero, the tooth fairy, doesn’t exist. “I should tip you over for this slander. I should splatter you all over the valley floor.”
“Do I get to ask my question first?”
She huffs. “If you must.”
What do I want to know most of all? Whatever I choose, she’ll skip around the truth, unable to outright lie. I need to start with something that no Fable mentions.
“Why, this mountain? Why make it into a labyrinth?” I ask, exaggerating my tone to sound awed. With any luck, it’ll stoke the Fae’s ego, enticing her to share more than she usually would.
The Fae puffs out her chest and opens her mouth.
“But what better landscape for tricksters to live in?” a new voice inquires.
The female snaps her mouth shut, her eyes inflating. I follow her gaze.
From the shadowed hedges, Cerulean emerges like a midnight wraith. With lazy strides, he prowls down the path, his boot heels clicking against the ground and the javelin prominent at his hip.
Not taking his eyes off me, he speaks to the whippersnapper. “Pecking at my spoils, Moth? What have I told you about sidetracking our quarry? It interrupts the fun.”
Moth. Guess her parents weren’t feeling very creative.
The Fae flutters into a curtsy. “Sire. We were—”
Cerulean halts and fixes her with a censorious expression.
“Cerulean,” Moth corrects with a sigh, as if he’s being mulish about the use of his title. “I was simply—”
“Detouring from your job? Indeed, you were.”
“I never shirk my duties,” the female grumbles, pride digging into her runty face. “You know me better than that.”
His dark blue mouth relaxes and tips sideways. “I should hope so.”
They exchange words in their language. Though while speaking in the mortal tongue, Moth has the same crystalline accent as Cerulean. I gather all the Fae do.
He turns back to me, his visage sharpening. “Away with you, Moth. We’ll talk later.”
Rather than sternness or authority, I detect a trace of camaraderie in his command, soft around the edges—a fellowship based on closeness or a bond of sorts. It’s the same tone my sisters and I use on each other.
Moth glances between us, then vanishes down the shadowed path.
Starlight embosses the helix tip of Cerulean’s javelin. I resist the urge to crawl backward, submerging myself into the depths of the cage, or crate, or nest, or whatever the fuck it’s called.
“The mountain has been here since we existed,” he supplies while heading toward me, his lilting tone airborne. “It was wrought by the ancients and preserved by the ones who came after them. It’s a cliff of imagination, deception, merriment, and fear. This range is its own revel, its own masquerade, if you will.”
He strolls around the enclosure, light on his feet and indifferent to how little space the ledge offers, as if he’s done it a thousand times. Maybe he has, with other victims.
I don’t move, other than to glare at his trajectory.
“This mountain isn’t merely a threat to the body. Oh, no,” he says, the words a veritable tease of wind. “It’s a sacrifice, a threat to the mind, to the heart, to the very soul.”
“A sacrifice?” I echo. “Meaning what?”
“Enticements abound—food, drink, music, seduction. Faeries such as I wait to flout rules that don’t exist and pounce on you, whether or not provoked.” His eyes darken, catching mine for a second. “Though provoke you do, in spades.”
I jump as he runs the tip of his javelin across the bars, and the grille rattles. “Illusions thrive here. Make the correct turn? Not so fast, for those paths may be glamoured to appear correct. A route you trusted might betray you. This land is a double-edged sword. Even if you win, you won’t win.
“You’ll be stripped bare. You might degrade yourself.” He circles in front of me, his fingers fitting around the bars. “All the while, mourning, melting, moaning for the privilege.”
I make a show of crossing my arms. “You done stroking your cock?”
An evil chuckle jumps off his mouth. “Let us make another bargain, pet. Tell me, which is scarier? Fear, desire, or regret? To be hurt, to be fucked, or to be shamed? Give me the right answer, and I’ll free you.”
The cage croaks a
s I match his pose, snatching the braided twigs. My nose taps against his, and I remind him, “My name is Lark.”
We stare at one another. Our fingers flex around the lattice.
Cerulean stalls, his attention unwillingly stuck on me. The feeling is mutual, a hiccup in which I peek at him through the shredded cloud of my hair.
That’s when it happens again, striking me between the sternum: loss. That bizarre wistfulness returns, a key twisting its teeth into the rusted bolt of my chest and fighting to unlock something that’s been trapped inside for a long time.
Once in my past, in my very own Fable, I did this exact thing with a Fae boy. A cage had separated us, except that barrier had been forged of iron—and he’d been the one locked inside.
That must be the reason for these misplaced feelings. It’s the memory, the recollection of someone else, the only Fae of this misbegotten land who’d become my weakness.
Cerulean flinches, blown by a similar disturbance. It’s as though a screen drops, bringing his angular beauty into stark relief. The steeples of his cheekbones slacken with surprise, exposing his own secret: longing.
Me, loss. Him, longing.
The yearning for something long deprived. That, and the bereavement. The sadness of both.
Confusion leaches the arrogance from his features, years leaking from the crevices until he looks younger. Alone and friendless. Solitary.
We jerk away from each other. Awareness cuts in, scattering that visual and returning us to where we started. Animosity. Suspicion. They wash the uncertainty from his countenance, and mostly, I’m glad. Hating him is easier than empathizing with him.
Besides, he has no right to my memories. He and that Fae boy aren’t the same person. I never saw the boy’s irises or hair, but he didn’t have blue lips, and there were other differences. And either way, I’d still know him…if he were still alive.
Cerulean’s mouth curls into a sinister grin. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Gimme time,” I whisper back, pelting his mouth with my hot breath.
“That is something you don’t have. Pity for you.”
“Freeing me means you’ll let me out of the cage. Doesn’t mean you’ll let me go.”
“Ah, but deterring you would defeat the purpose of this game.”
Exactly. Yet he’s willing. He wants to know my answer badly.
Which is scarier? Fear, desire, or regret? To be hurt, to be fucked, or to be shamed?
No one’s ever asked me something like that, and I don’t like the first response it brings to mind. Worse, I get a terrible premonition that he might extract those very emotions more brutally than the mountain ever will.
In fact, he’s partway there. I’ve gotta set myself free. Otherwise, he’ll resurrect memories I don’t want to talk about, feelings I refuse to hand over.
That visual flashes again, of me and a Fae boy separated by bars, our positions reversed. I’d breached a deadbolt that night to enter a glassblower’s forge, where the boy’s cage had been stored. I’d used a feathered quill to jimmy the lock.
My palm skims the pack concealing the blue feather of my past. The one that Fae boy had been wearing when I met him, as part of a mask concealing his face. After I lost him, it was the only thing I had left of our time together.
All right. This bolt’s gotta be impervious to a mortal plume. But can it resist a quill of its own world?
“What’s with the javelin?” I ask. “I thought Faeries carried swords and daggers.”
Cerulean quirks a brow. “You’re stalling.”
“You bet I am,” I say, because why not? “I don’t know how to answer your question yet.”
“Fair enough. Why brandish a whip?”
“An answer for an answer,” I recite while inching my fingers into the pack and foraging for the plume.
His mouth twitches. “Hmm. You’re quoting me. Does that mean I’ve made an impression?”
“You’re a Fae with blue lips to match your hair. Plus, you’re holding me captive to your whims, all the while calling me your pet.”
“Oh, but you hardly behave like a proper captive. I have a mind to sulk about that, but then, I’d be disappointed if you capitulated so easily.”
“Whatever. You repulse me, so yeah, you’ve made an impression.”
“Javelins fly,” he replies.
That’s something I understand. Really, I do.
But I wish I didn’t. I don’t want to have anything in common with this menace. Yet if we were friends, I’d gush nonstop about weapons that fly, the same way I’d lob him with questions about the avians dwelling here.
Anyway, it’s not the safest angle, but I’ve got no chance of him moving farther away, much less turning his back on me. He’s too shrewd for that.
I hold his gaze steady, willing him not to glance down. Meanwhile, I slide out the feather and worm it through the bars, mimicking Cove’s sleight of hand. “Whips fly, too,” I confide, because it’s sort of true and keeps the conversation going. “My weapon can soar and swat the air with the best of ’em.”
“Is that a fact?” Cerulean murmurs, those twinkling irises hellbent on temptations and curses.
I bat my lashes while nudging the feather into the knotty lock I’d discovered earlier. “But if you want me to demonstrate, you gotta say, ‘Pretty please.’”
“You display more sass than you’re wise to.”
“Sounds like a compliment.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“In that case—” The lock croaks and shudders open, at which point, Cerulean’s eyes widen “—it’s my lucky day.”
Adrenaline’s my hero. Taking advantage of his momentary surprise, I reel back and slam my boot sole into the bars. The door rams into Cerulean’s chest, blasting him backward. He’s too strong and agile to flounder, so before he can spot the quill, I wrench it from the knot and shove it into the hidden closure of my pack. Then I leap out and crack the whip across his legs, bringing his ass down.
“By the way, I can free myself, thank you very much,” I gasp, then hop over his prone form. “So piss off.”
Racing for the hedge path, I veer around the bend. The shrubbery multiplies into a maze of ascending stairs, each lined in tall shrubs and twisting up the mountainside.
Fear the wind. Follow the wind.
Always both. Never a guarantee. Damn him.
Relying on same tactic from the courtyard, I unravel my whip and watch the breeze drag it around until choosing a direction—toward the stairs leading away from the crest. I can only hope this choice will have the opposite effect and guide me toward the peak.
The walls of foliage crowd around the stairway. I pump up the incline, my heart pounding out a frenzied rhythm, my thighs scorching. I skid around a second corner, discover another grid of turns, and keep navigating away from where I want to go. Another bend. Another intersection of slopes. I lose track of where I am, the shrubs looming, bracken scratching my skirts and snatching my hair. The stairs get steeper, narrower.
Oxygen thins, sawing through my lungs. Everything looks the same, all these blues, greens, and whites of eventide. I’m running in the dark, fleeing without knowing where to go, where I’ll end up.
But it works. The summit seems a tad larger, a bit nearer.
I accelerate my pace, anxiety gripping me by the gullet. My nemesis was caught off guard, but he’s not a numskull, and he’s got the wind on his side. Any moment, I expect to feel the lash of a gale ensnaring my ankles and hauling me back to him.
Instead, I hear pounding feet—the sound of Cerulean himself pursuing me.
11
I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined his day. But hey, a mortal’s gotta do what a mortal’s gotta do.
I imagine him seething while he chases me, because how dare I be a troublemaker, how dare I outfox him, and how dare I do it without another lively bargain.
Then I imagine him sighing, as if I just can’t cooperate. I imagine he’s not
the brooding type, because amusement is healthier for the complexion.
Then I imagine him smirking, his dark mouth crooking into the slopes of his face. I imagine him taking his time, because he’s faster than me. And yet, I imagine him catching up very soon, too soon.
The glistening hedges crowd the stairs. I pound up the steps, my legs shaking from exhaustion. Everywhere smolders. My lungs, my thighs, my rump.
The maze of stairs refuses to let up, the trajectory getting steeper. Again, I scramble toward another fork, a crafty split veering in opposite directions, with no indications what lies around the bends. I use my whip, check the gale, and take the rightward incline.
The stale funk of sweat infests my nostrils. Can his heightened senses pick up my smell? Does he hear me panting?
My palms blaze from that journey across The Wayward Steps, my flesh stings from tumbling into The Cauldron of Bats, and my bones ache from the crash into The Black Nest. Everything’s catching up and slowing me down.
My pace lags, lags, lags. Dragging myself to the landing, I grip a stone banister that protrudes from the hedges and slump against it, my breath hammering. The pack strap bridled across my torso cuts off my air supply. I can’t move, but I have to move.
I have to move because I hear him flying my way. Why run after me when he can pop up wherever he wants? Hell, I know why. He fancies the chase, wants to draw it out.
I should have cashed in on that bargain I’d made with Cerulean. That free rule allowing me to skew things to my advantage. I could have used it to make him open that cage.
But it would have been too soon, playing that hand. Any time I see a way out, I’m gonna take it without squandering my one and only asset.
A breeze rushes up the steps and snatches my skirt. I bolt from its grip. The foundation levels as I reach the end of the stair maze, resurrecting a cache of energy. I sprint down a torchlit lane.
The flames taper into a screen of mist. I hotfoot in that direction—then yelp, skittering to a halt. The route ends at a steep drop into the forest valley. My arms windmill, saving me from tipping over.
Swatches of hair batter my face as I gawk into the sylvan woodland. Somewhere down there, Juniper’s suffering at the hands of a demon.
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 9
