I imagine a zillion eyes watching us.
Holding a finger to her lips, Roue leads the way. Three windwarps, and we’re there, hugging the adamant walls, her hand in mine. I’m a bundle of freezing, teeth-chattering nerves.
But the sheer fact that I’m with her makes me brave.
We come to a sturdy black-oak door hidden behind an outcropping of wicked-looking thorns. Roue clears them away and shoulders the door, a quick movement that cracks it wide. Frost cascades down, making me shiver more.
“Stay right behind me,” she sends, scanning the parapets, the towers and turrets. A thousand places for guards to hide.
It only takes one to sound the alarm.
“Got it.” I step up close, feeling Winter’s chill wafting off her.
With a short, sharp gesture, she throws a more powerful Glamoury over us both. The tingling bite of Winter caresses my skin as it settles into place. Then she takes three steps and leaps up, up, up to the top of the castle wall.
The courtyard is crisp and cold beneath my boots. I follow, pushing off, the wind in my face, and then land next to her. Below us, the castle sprawls out like a massive sleeping dragon, its scales dotted with winter crocuses and night-blooming jasmine.
The crescent moon casts thin light across the white landscape. Everything glitters, beautiful and deadly. Even the curve of Fair Faerie looming bright above it all, like a sun about to crash into the earth, can’t diminish the cold beauty.
The epitome of Dark Faerie.
I sense a wave of nostalgia from Roue.
“I can see why you love it here.”
Her gratitude warms me down the bond. “Let’s take a shortcut.” Grinning dangerously, Roue darts around a tower to plunge through an open niche. I follow, leaping from twilit night right into the castle itself.
Dark, thorny halls vaulted with ceilings of stained glass open up before us. We race through upside-down passages, where gravity works in reverse, wintry chambers filled with ice and snow and terrible, lifelike statues. Here, a massive adamant dragon raises its head. There, an obsidian gargoyle stretches its wings…
Cold blasts us, and I draw nearer to Roue.
“The Ebon Vault is close.”
I sense tension humming through her like cables of energy.
We plunge back out into the wintry twilight. I see sentries pacing the walls far, far below us, but before us… The castle stretches on and on, a massive sprawl of marble and adamant glinting, all sharp angles, edged gables, jagged towers.
One black tower stands alone on an outcropping of rock.
I chin-nod. “Up there?”
“Yes, but…” Dread shoots down the bond, bright and thudding.
“What is it?”
We wait for a few breaths. Winter wind blows over the castle, swirling the snow.
Silence.
She looks around at all the towers and turrets. “The deep wards. They’re…deactivated. That can only mean one thing.”
Now my dread mingles with hers. I brush snow out of my face, shivering. “Your father turned them off.”
32
ROUEN
Ebon as my soul
Ebon as the night
Darker than dark
Behind the doors of blight
- “Ebon,” Euphoria
* * *
I am a creature of Winter and ice. Cold should not bother me in the slightest, and yet, a shudder spikes down my spine. The deep wards have been deactivated. Only one person could have done that.
Father, I see your plan.
As Syl would say, Wits training for the win!
In order to let Aldebaran run free, Father turned off the castle’s natural defenses. I don’t miss the other possibility: He turned them off because he knew I’d come.
He knew I’d bring Syl.
“Stay close.” I take her hand protectively, and she leans in to me.
Snow spirals down, coating our hair and clothes where we stand on the parapets of Castle Knockma. Most fair Fae would’ve died instantly upon crossing over to the Dark Faerie realm. Lucky for us, the soul-bond protects Syl. A little. She’s already shivering.
We don’t have much time before Winter gets the better of her.
My brave girl. She’s clutching the Aureate Queen in her free hand. I touch the fall of her curls on her shoulder, loving the way moonlight shines across her young face. She is the brightest thing in this dark place.
My father’s been after her for some time now. First her blood. Now, he wants to infect her—and me—with his Inimical circuits.
I vow to protect her.
“Come on.” Hand in hand, we leap across the parapets, darting over heavy fluted allures and winding tower stairs. This far-flung section of the castle is carved straight from the looming mountain behind—a group of brooding dark chambers and towers. Rising high above them, the Ebon Vault patrolled by Adamant Guard. At least it was, until my father dismissed the Guard from their posts.
I doubt the prissy Ebon Knights will patrol here.
“Especially not if your father wants Aldebaran to get into the Vault.” Syl hits the nail on the head. “He’d probably want his people far, far away, in fact.”
Yup. Sounds like dear old dad, all right. “Let’s be extra careful.”
Our fairy winds gusting, we leap up into the moonlight, motes of dust and snow spiraling down from the broken vault far above. This is the part of the castle that was destroyed when the sleeper-princess—when Georgina Gentry—poisoned the hearthstone.
Syl senses it down the bond and tightens her grip on my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, princess.” But as we leap to the tower closest the Vault, I stop, my breath coming out in a gasp as memory assails me.
Suddenly, I am a young child, racing through rubble, tears streaming. “Mother!” I remember too much—the smell of blood and death, lightning and burning flesh. A pale hand beneath the fallen stone. “Mother?” How cold her hand was. Not the living cold of a Winter-blooded dark Fae.
No, this was a dead cold, heavy and waxy.
“Mother!” My scream shatters the wintry landscape, echoing off broken vaults and sagging towers. I lose my balance.
“Roue!” Syl’s gentle hands ease me back from the edge, crumbling stone falling down, down, down into the darkness below us.
My heartbeat pounds in my temples and a cold sweat slicks my skin. I shake the images away. What was that? Why am I thinking of her now? The more I focus on the future of Dark Faerie, the more the past rears up, a sinister mystery I’m afraid to solve. I shake it off. “I’m all right.”
Except you just sent up the alarm, Roue.
Even now, I feel the rumbling above, the very stones shivering. “Someone is at the doors to the Ebon Vault.” Rattling them, trying to puzzle out all the cogs and wheels and locks—how to bypass thirteen-foot double doors of adamant and wintersteel, goblin-made before the Cleaving.
Rattle. Rattle—groooaaaaannnnn—rattle, rattle…
Syl meets my gaze, her fear a bright blare down the bond. “If Aldebaran unleashes the Moribund…”
“I know.”
Whoosh! Together, Syl and I windwarp up.
The Ebon Vault lies inside a massive ringed keep seated atop a craggy outlook high above the castle proper. Snow and wind cut quick here, the cold blasting us, wind whipping my hair and Syl’s like black and red flames.
She clings to me. “Look!”
A set of footprints stamped into the snow leads to the looming doors.
Before them stands Aldebaran, Prince of the fair Fae. A golden beacon in the wintry storm, he’s as bright as the stark-white snow—save for where his forearms are blackened, the crimson Inimicals spliced through his skin glowing furnace-red.
His hand is pressed against the door, and crimson circuitry races up the adamant surface like red veins. The cogs groan, gears whine, the whorls of wintersteel flash, but the doors don’t open.
“You need a royal dark Fa
e for that,” I tell him.
Whoosh! In a spray of needle-sharp icicles, my father windwarps in to Aldebaran’s side. The shadows around him deepen, then peel back, and his Ebon Knights step out, black adamant armor and pikes gleaming.
“All righty, then.” My mood sours. “Seems like you’ve got a royal dark Fae.”
“Nine to two,” Syl sends. “Not great odds.”
“Nope.” Even though I’ve already beaten most of the Ebon Knights, the Reinghûl/Aldebaran teamup would be a very bad thing.
Except, my father’s got other plans.
“Kneel before me.” King Reinghûl commands, the Inimical rune on his cheek firing blood-red in the snowy twilight.
Aldebaran’s runes flare up in answer.
“No!” The fair prince struggles, but the Inimicals spliced into his forearms, his chest, and neck flash hotter. The scent of bitter burning strikes the air like a lit match. Those black scorch marks sear up his arms, sizzling his skin. He shrieks so loud a murder of ravens breaks from a nearby spire and flaps away, dark wings on the wind.
I’m not impressed. I’ve seen my father’s cruelty. I know the horrors his dark self is capable of. Syl does, too, but still, she lets out a small, pained gasp. Her hand tightens on mine.
My father’s gaze sears into me. “I wanted you here to witness this, Rouen.”
“Witness what, Father?” Dread coils around my temples like an ill-fitted crown.
His smile is sharp, his eyes a deep brooding blue. “The prince wants to shatter your girlfriend’s shield around the fair Fae king, so he can kill him and usurp the throne.”
“Yeah.” My voice is flat. “It’s not the most original plan.”
“Perhaps not.” A dark chuckle rumbles from my father’s throat as he steps toward the massive doors. “I’m going to give him all the Moribund he needs to do that.”
Blast and bloody bones! I sing, and the snowy twilight blares violet and crackling. “I’ll stop you.” I drop into a battle stance.
Syl steps up with me. “We both will.”
The Ebon Knights step in, blocking our way, shoving bristling pikes in my face.
In Syl’s.
But they’re about to find out—fighting a soul-bound team is no joke.
“Ready for this, princess?”
“Born ready.”
“I’ll take my father. You get Aldebaran.”
“Right on.” She fist-bumps me.
Oh yeah. It’s on. In a big way.
33
SYL
The Fae can hold grudges
For years, and some say,
Forever
- Glamma’s Grimm
* * *
“Go!” Roue shouts, throwing her fairy wind at me. Winter winds rush in, tingling across my skin, adding to my Summer breeze. It’s just enough to fling me up, past her father, past the Ebon Knights, at Aldebaran.
The Knights surge forward, but King Reinghûl commands them back. “She’s mine!” He moves, fast as black lightning, frost rushing down his forearms to form two jagged wintersteel swords.
He lunges for me, slashes.
But I am past him, Roue’s fairy wind and my own carrying me toward Aldebaran.
Ta-tat! I stick the landing and straighten up, ready for a fight.
My Winter girl faces off against her father. I face off against Aldebaran.
The Prince of Fair Faerie is deathly pale, his skin ashen except his arms, which are scorch-blackened to the elbow and veined in crimson circuits. A single Inimical rune carves across his left cheek. All his Inimicals are dormant, though, which means…
Roue’s dad’s not controlling him right this second.
Fury and disgust ignite in my chest as I get an angle on him. “You’d do anything, Aldebaran, even throw away your own freedom, to take the Aureate Throne.”
“Of course I would.” His tone’s indignant, his expression stubborn. “I am the rightful king. And you are—”
I sigh. “Your rightful queen, blah, blah, blah.”
“Oh, Syl.” He chuckles, his voice rich and dark like syrupy blood. He raises one arm, the crimson circuitry lighting up, blasting darkfire to his hand. “I can taste your light even from here.”
He claws at the air with black, cracked fingers.
Instantly, a sharp tugging pull hooks my veins. Pain shoots through my body. Is this how the fair Fae queen felt when he pulled all the Summer from her blood? When he killed her?
He yanks harder at me. Golden beads begin to well from my pores.
“Over my dead body, pal.” I blast him a good one, slamming him back into the tower. Obsidian breaks, rushing cracks up the wall, and he falls to one knee. I move forward, white flame wreathing my hands and lighting up the twilit snow.
Behind me, the clash of blades and lightning echoes, the air burning with violet and black electricity. Roue and her father. He’s waved off the Ebon Knights.
For now.
“Why are you fighting so hard for a throne you don’t even want,” he taunts her, dodging behind Aldebaran toward the double doors.
Roue windwarps in at my side. “Maybe I just don’t want you to have it, Father.” She fires a searing blast at him, but he deflects it, his wintersteel blade rushing with tiny pops of violet.
He shakes them off; they spatter to the ground.
“You always were willful and rebellious.” He lays one palm on the doors to the Ebon Vault. “Once this door is opened, you will be obedient. The Moribund will make you.”
For a moment, nothing happens. Hope lights my heart.
Maybe it didn’t work?
And then…all across the double doors, the wintersteel whorls light up, flashing from red to blue. A glowing, ice-blue seam splits the middle, bleeding frosty light into the world. Clicks and whirs vibrate from the doors’ innards. The gears hiss and pop, the pulleys squeal, the locks screaming open.
The Ebon Vault is opening.
They’re two seconds from unleashing all the Moribund in Dark Faerie.
I step to Roue’s side. “We’ve got to stop them!”
But Roue stands, serene and badass, violet lightning crackling around her fists. “He’s right. We have to figure out the thrones, but we need time.”
Time’s one thing we don’t have a lot of.
The doors creak, the adamant grating open an inch, another…the chamber beyond a dark maw yawning like it’ll swallow us up. A thrumming pulse pounds from deep inside, sluggish and slow.
The Moribund Heart is waking.
We have to stop it. I rack my brain. It’s a Faerie equation just like any other. Think, Syl, think!
And suddenly, lightbulb! “I’ve got a plan.”
Roue raises an eyebrow. “A whole plan?”
“Well…”
“Syl!”
“It’s like, seventy percent of a plan,” I send it to her.
A smile curves her full lips. “Good enough, princess.”
I blow out a breath, gearing myself up. I hope it’s good enough.
34
ROUEN
Enemy
You’re my enemy
And I will see you vanquished
Before the day is out
- “Vanquished,” Euphoria
* * *
My father stands before the doors to the Ebon Vault, bristling with black lightning, wintersteel swords in his hands. This is the man who first put a blade in my hand, who taught me to fight. He was once the Adamant King. I wanted to be just like him.
Now, his dark self has taken control.
Duel or not, I have no choice but to fight him, right here, right now.
Maybe the bain sidhe will understand. Maybe she won’t shatter my bones with a single scream.
“Father.” I step forward, violet lightning bursting around my fists.
Syl stands by my side. Aldebaran moves to my father’s.
Two princesses against two would-be kings.
Tension bleeds between us, charging the air
. This is what the future would have looked like—us dueling them at Midsummer.
But they don’t want to wait.
I step forward. “Looks like Midsummer’s coming early this year.”
My father laughs. “Oh, Rouen. You always did telegraph all your moves. In chess and in battle.”
You’re better suited to checkers, Rouen.
The old anger fills me. Violet lightning crackles around my fists. “We’ll see, Father.”
Syl has a plan. “If we can trick them inside. Lock the doors…”
“Trick them?”
With one last burst of royal power, the doors to the Ebon Vault blast open in a rush of blue ice and stale blasts of winter.
“There’s no time for that, princess.” Grim determination steels my nerve. “We’ll just have to overpower them.”
“Go-time!” Syl’s sending is high-pitched, tense.
Snow and ice pelt us as we windwarp at our foes, Syl blazing with white fire, and me? I’m all things violet lightning, power ballads, and thundersnow. The Ebon Vault trembles on its foundation as we unleash our power.
I blast my father in the chest. At the same time, Syl blasts Aldebaran.
They summon their shields, black lightning and darkfire. We keep it up, volley after volley slamming into them. They stagger back with each blast.
Toward the doors.
I grin, showing my fangs. “Keep blasting!”
We pour it on, white flame and violet lightning, knocking them back and back toward the darkness of the Ebon Vault, until, finally, they’re in position.
“Now,” I send, my inner voice eerily calm even as my heart tries to spasm out of my chest.
Together, we lash out, me with violet lightning and thunder, her with white flame and sunfire. The space before the doors lights up, violet and white versus black and crimson. Smoke and ozone stain the air.
Father and Aldebaran blast back at us, but they haven’t fought side by side like Syl and I have.
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