Her back to me, the Queen studies the charts on the wall. Eons pass and she doesn’t reply.
Maybe she didn’t hear me?
Tell her about Jacob, my Heart coaxes. Tell her about Mom. Tell her why you’re really here.
“Drake has taken my brother Jacob, and my mother, the Princess Nissandra. I seek protection for myself and my family, as well as for the banished Fae. I beg your help in rescuing my brother and my mother from Drake.”
“No.” Her response is a lightning strike.
My heart caves in. “No?”
“It’s much worse than you realize, Child. My scouts have sent word that Drake has followed you here into the First Realm. He and a small but heavily armed infantry are a week from the Royal City at most. I will not offer asylum to the exiled citizens of the Seventh Kingdom. I will not expend resources or lives to reclaim your brother, nor the Princess Nissandra, and I will not ask my soldiers to fight to protect you.”
“Because I damaged the barrier? I swear it was an accident,” I stammer. “I don’t know how to fix it, but if someone will teach me, I’ll do everything I can. Please, you have to help us!”
“No doubt you are aware that the Princess is my step-granddaughter, by the King’s first wife, who was killed fighting a Dragon of Legend.” The Queen spins to face me. “Ælfwig and Indira bore seven sons. The seventh son, Foster, was married to Nissandra’s mother, the traitor Queen Rhyannon. Are you gullible enough to believe my obligation to my husband’s blood extends to the daughter of a traitor?”
Rhyannon wasn’t a traitor! I scream my head off with my lips firmly sealed. She died to protect her daughter! The High Queen’s irises are backlit with rage. Rage and something else I can’t quite pinpoint.
“My first duty is to my people.” She takes her seat at the table and turns to organizing papers, as if she were merely going over her accounting. “We are under siege by a malignant force even more vile than Drake, Child. One that was set in motion a hundred years ago by the very people you are now asking me to harbor.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Obviously. And yet here you stand, asking impossible things of me. You are the single most serious threat to the safety of the my people.”
“Me? A threat?”
“You continue to feign ignorance?” The Queen’s eyes bore into mine. Her words suggest I know exactly what threat I pose. Her tone implies I’m the worst kind of degenerate for posing it.
Her judgment simmers in my gut. A low-rolling dread begins to bend me at my core as she speaks.
“A plague has ravaged the First Realm ever since the Seventh Kingdom was destroyed,” she says. “We thought we contained the outbreak by banishing the infected Fae, but we miscalculated. The plague went pandemic, spreading through the kingdoms until all were destroyed. Except the Royal City.”
Horror creeps up the back of my neck as the insidious details fall into place, dropping my jaw and bulging my eyes. It all makes terrifying sense now…the bubble rising above the black wall. The refugee Fae between the gates, their bodies cold and gray beneath layers of muck and grime. The crazed man who tried to climb inside my skull.
They were all infected.
“Is it contagious?” I ask, breathless.
“Extremely.”
“Aidan and Claire…” I’m on my feet ready to bolt, but she stops me with a militant hand.
“Sit down, Emily. Your brother and sister are safe, for the time being. As safe as any of us can be in your presence.”
“How can they be safe if…if they’re with me?” I stammer, tightening my internal grip on my tear ducts. “Didn’t you say I pose the biggest threat?”
I won’t cry in front of this woman who doesn’t have a maternal bone or ounce of sympathy in her entire body, but my throat narrows as my mouth twitches like a live wire.
“You already knew that, didn’t you, Emily?” She leans forward on her elbows, closing the distance between us. “You’ve known for a while now that you are a danger to the people you love.”
Cold sweat starts at the inside edges of my wings, saturating the gossamer fabric of my shift with dark ugly stains. I wipe the beading moisture from my upper lip.
The composure I wove around myself along with the fine-gauge color-shifting fabric made of Blaze and Keen vanishes, threads unraveling into another dimension.
She knows. We’ve only just met and she already knows there’s something wrong with me.
“I don’t understand, Your Majesty.” I’m gripping the edge of my seat, bracing against the motion sickness tilting my spine.
“Of course you understand. Don’t play stupid. The plague is spread through Connection, and you’re addicted to it.”
“No. I’m sober now. I’m not sick anymore.”
It’s a wish more than a truth. My hands move compulsively to my lap, my nails dig into the flesh of my thighs. My shift dress darkens with blood as well as sweat. I want to dig deeper. I want to feel this pain, something physical and real, the kind of pain I can gauge. I can’t cope with the pain of the world, of the Realms, of my life. But self-inflicted physical pain…that’s something I can control.
She knows everything about you. There are no second chances. You’ll never escape your past, my mind taunts. If you were braver you’d end it altogether. But you’re a coward.
“Do you tell yourself they choose you because you’re irresistible, Emily? Because you shine so bright they simply can’t help themselves?” Her voice is a sneer.
The sallow recessed lighting plays tricks with my eyes, casting everything in uniform yellow-gray obscurity. Solid objects merge with shadow, creeping across the curved walls toward me.
“They choose you the way all predators choose their prey. They choose the weakest, the most vulnerable. You’re addicted to Attraction. Your need to be desired—to be validated—is a beacon. Hell, it’s a bonfire. They line up to tell you exactly what you need to hear: that you’re special, that you’re different. Yes, it may start with curling vines and bowers of sweet-scented blossoms, but what does it always become?”
The jaundiced whites of her eyes narrow as her lips pull back to reveal her canines, pointed and hungry.
Or is that a trick of the shadows? She warns of predators and plagues, but she’s the one who has me locked underground.
The anemic whine of electric lights bores into my ears like an infected cockroach. But I’m up from my seat, perched on angled legs of stilted steal, all my volition aimed at the Queen.
“That’s a lie,” I lash out. “I’m not weak!”
But my words hold no conviction. I’m sliced and bleeding. “Why do you blame me?” I plead. “Is it because of the crypt? Because of the Connection I shared with Grandfather?”
That look again—rage and that something else— Oh. I know what it is.
“You’re jealous,” my breath accuses as it draws ever so slowly all the way in.
“Jealous?” Her shrill laughter fractures her composure. “Of what?”
“Great-grandfather’s love. He would never hurt me.”
“Oh, Child. You should know better than anyone how blood can hurt blood.”
I gasp, defeated. How does she know my secrets?
Everything’s upside down inside me. I felt Great-grandfather’s love. It was real…wasn’t it?
“You gullible, silly child, Emily,” she taunts. “So quaint, opening yourself to the lie of instant love and understanding. But your behavior is far worse than foolish. It’s deadly. Beasts of prey use Connection to manipulate the weak. Forget the High King. What about the Twelve, Emily? You allowed every one of the convicted criminals in those twelve caskets to form a Connection with you.”
“Criminals?”
But they seemed so good. They welcomed me. They celebrated me. And I felt nothing evil in our Connections, only sparkling splendor and magnanimity.
“And what of the crazed man between the walls? Why do you think he chose you of all the Fae in your gr
oup?”
The incident replays in my mind. His hopeless eyes, the spark of recognition... I even climbed over the seat to see him more clearly. ‘It’s her,’ he’d cried, before hauling backwards on the rope.
She’s right. I didn’t question. I wanted to be ‘the one.’ I wanted to be chosen. I didn’t pull away until the pain had already started, until it was almost too late.
Like a nightmare scene from the Bates Motel, I imagine a crackling neon OPEN sign flickering above my head.
I Am Too Open. But Great-grandfather said I needed to become more open…I don’t know what to believe.
“As long as you have this illness, Emily, you are a victim in constant need of protection. You came to like it, didn’t you…being rescued? It feels nice to be saved. It makes you feel worthwhile. But certainly you have come to see that your weakness…your inability to set boundaries…puts everyone at risk. Especially the ones you love. You are open to anyone, anytime. The sweeter the flattery, the easier it is, but it doesn’t always even take flattery, does it? You’re so desperate for attention you don’t even care if it’s negative or positive.”
“That isn’t true! I’m not a risk anymore…I’m doing better, I swear! I can take care of myself and them,” I cry. “It’s been hard. I’m just…I’m still learning…”
But the words die on my tongue as the Queen reaches across the circular table, holding out her fist. She uncurls her fingers to reveal a spool of fuchsia ribbon pooled on her palm, growing thicker as I watch.
In horror I look down to See her harvesting my own essence directly from my chest, lazily twirling the vibrant, thrumming strands through her elegant fingers.
“Now lower your wings, Child,” she says in triumph. “You look like a whore.”
Chapter Eighteen
The same two maidens lead me away from the War Room and back through the Crypt. They are still in armor, but have removed their helmets. Chloe introduced the dark-haired maiden to me, but with my ears still packed with the High Queen’s vicious words, all I heard was something unusual that starts with an ‘M’.
Right now I’d be hard put to remember my own name.
There were more ‘negotiations’ after the Queen called me a whore while swirling my unguarded soul around the palm of her hand like she was playing cat’s cradle, but I don’t remember any of it. Hopefully I didn’t do or say anything stupid. Not that it matters anyway. It’s clear we aren’t welcome here.
I walk two paces behind the maidens with my head bowed, my wings flat against my back, transfixed by the rise and fall of their steel-toed boot heels against the packed earth in the dank tunnel. For a military moment they march in perfect unison, but I don’t think it’s on purpose; I think they’re just that in sync with one another. They’re a lot less formal now that it’s just me they’re guiding—though they do shoot worried glances at me over their shoulders. I must look as strange as I feel.
It’s as if the Queen injected me with venom and then spun me up in miles of a sensory-numbing bubble-wrap web. She would probably insist her little demonstration was for my own good. She was inside my head, my heart, my soul. And I was so distracted by her ugly accusations and talk of plague, I didn’t even notice when she began siphoning my power.
I was a sitting duck. A walking target. I can’t even think of a non-clichéd way of saying how I literally let her get under my skin.
Which was, of course, exactly her point: not only did I leave the front door unlocked, I left all of the windows open wide.
I’m numb and right now I want to stay numb. This vacant detachment reminds me of how I used to feel after I’d come-to after taking pills: indifferent, remote…like a vague echo of myself. It wasn’t fun, no, but I didn’t take pills for fun. They were a way of being ‘not present’ for a little while. They cushioned me from reality, kept decisions and consequences—everything I felt I couldn’t control—at a blurry distance.
I know it’s not wise to be out of my senses right now, not with Aidan and Claire and the rest depending on me, but I can bask in this padded absence at least until I can talk to Ava or Kaillen or Quince. They’ll tell me what everything means. They’ll know what I should do.
We’ve come to another liquid-metal organic door. The mind-boggling snicking gears and fluid mechanisms glide straight up into the ground above our heads, revealing what looks like a too-sleek freight elevator lined with three rows of streamlined reclining seats.
“Minali will help you with your restraint, Lady.” Chloe eases me into one of the recliners.
Minali. That’s her name. Minali, folly, lolly, dolly. I’m loopy, but not in a good way.
Dazed, I stare up into Minali’s charcoal-ringed brown eyes while she straps me in. A distant thought tells me that I don’t really like Minali, and I don’t think she likes me much, either. Before I can even hook my arms around the straps the way she demonstrates, we rocket off in an orbit that can’t be linear.
I never even asked where they’re taking me.
Inertia leaves my guts in a heap underground while my ears pop and my teeth clatter in my skull. My body begins the pre-limping process of shutting down that happens whenever I have time to ponder the onset of hysteria, like I’m a sailor battening the hatches before a white squall. Playing possum is one of my best talents when I have warning of a threat. But before my eyes can roll back in my head, the hydraulic hum of our lift slows and then stops.
A panel above us slides open. The chairs rise noiselessly out of the shaft.
Numb is now completely out of the question. I’m so satiated with stimuli that I can’t handle one more sight or sound or smell. Maybe if I just keep my head down and concentrate on surviving I’ll be okay. The less I see, the less I acknowledge, the less my bewildered mind has to try to make sense of. I’ll pretend none of this exists.
When outside, enveloped in the queasy semitransparent dome above the black wall, the Royal City looked like your classic Rivendell-type elven stronghold, complete with white towers and soaring spires. But now on the inside, it’s like nothing I would have imagined.
A heady tropical breeze billows my shift around me, drying the sweat from my creases, letting my body breathe. The lush botanic scent is like a living entity. As Minali and Chloe unfasten my harness and we step off the platform, I glance over my shoulder because I’m convinced an exotic woman must have walked up behind us.
But no, we’re alone. Alone on an elevated terrace in the middle of a vast jungle.
A hanging bridge suspended between giant palm oil trees leads across a dizzying rainforest gulch. I grip the ropes on either side of me, following Minali across the narrow planks. The planks sway precariously beneath us, creaking with each step.
The air is balmy, the temperature mild.
This is the third ecosystem I’ve experienced in the First Realm, and if my sense of time is still trustworthy, it’s been less than half a day.
Normally I would revel in this lush green beauty. But after the first glance I keep my head down, my eyes rigid on the maidens’ heels. It’s all I can do to put one foot in front of the other.
I don’t know how long we pendulate through the jungle, how many bridges we cross. I’m focused on the miracle of proprioception like I’m discovering how to walk for the first time: visual target, foot placement, push off, lift, lean out of balance forward left, correct with right hip flexors, begin again. Every part of me from my inner ear canals to my muscles, ligaments, and joints messages my nervous system with reports of where I am in space and in relation to gravity, constantly adjusting to keep me upright and mobile.
At last, we stop at a blue wooden door set in a stone wall. It could be at ground level, it could be thousands of meters in the clouds for all I know, because I refuse to look up or down or even to either side, only dead ahead. I’m completely overwhelmed, spinning. The next impossible First Realm-spectacle will make me lose my mind completely.
Praise be this door is only a door. Not a fancy door with org
anic liquid parts, just a boring old door, bright blue and wooden with old-fashioned hinges. It opens (thank God) just like a proper door should, swinging wide and back into an almost ordinary room.
Ordinary in every way except that it’s unmistakably the interior of a shadow-filled, echoing cave.
Chloe and Minali escort me into a sparse, but beautiful sitting room, furnished with a single wardrobe and sofa, and separated from the bedchamber by a simple ivory-painted folding screen.
Everything is white on white: smooth argent walls curve into the low-arching alabaster ceiling. White sun-bleached woven rugs line the stucco floors, and snowy blossoms in low-lipped earthen bowls rest on the shallow steps leading to the platform bed.
I must really be going crazy, because I could swear the faint tang of a saltwater breeze tickles my nose.
Folded neatly on the crisp white coverlet are my clothes: my well worn slub-knit racerback tanktop, fresh underwear, my favorite pajama shorts, and a pair of fuzzy socks.
Chloe places her hands on my shoulders, rotating me to stand before a rectangular sunken soaking pool filled with mineral water set into the floor. Is that where the salty smell is coming from? Languid blue-green reflections dance above the water on the rounded cave walls. Chloe takes my hand in hers and leads me through an archway that opens on the most Zen bathroom imaginable in any Realm. She points at knobs and buttons, explaining how to work the waterfall shower and I’m nodding my head like I’m paying attention, but I’m not. Chloe realizes I’m not grasping her instructions and turns the shower on for me, then leads me back out and up the steps to the bedroom where she hands me my clothes.
Minali is at my shoulder, saying something urgent about the windows. Her serious brown eyes demand acknowledgment, but her words slip like oil through my fingers, lost before I can make sense of them.
Giggle. A chimp in haute couture.
Where the hell did that come from?
But it’s too late. It’s happening again. I’ve started snickering and I can’t stop. I’m hunched over, belly taut from laughter, wobbling clumsily with my knees clamped together because the idea of a chimp in bright pink lipstick wearing my fire opal shift strikes me as so incredibly hilarious that I’m in very real danger of peeing my pants. Hahaha. I’m not even wearing pants!
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