Peirs groaned beside Memory, and the guard that hit them lay face down on her other side. She reached over to check on him, and felt no pulse at his neck. Memory took a deep breath to calm herself.
Peirs coughed again and Memory looked down at him where he still lay beside her.
His chest was bleeding and he held it clutched in one hand. He saw her looking. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“I could lie and say not bad at all. But you’re a big boy and holy hamballs it looks bad. Super bad.”
Memory scrambled across the floor, ducking out the door to see if anyone was still around. She needed Eloryn, needed anyone that could heal.
The hall was empty except for an equal mix of bodies of guards and gaunts, sprawled on the messy carpet. Too many bodies. Too many lost lives.
Back in the room, Memory tugged down the old lace curtain from the window and shook the dust from it.
She folded it into a wad and lifted Peirs’s hands away from the wound. She could clearly see the spread of four claw marks torn through his clothes, slicing into his flesh.
Peirs smiled crookedly. “I Branded the bastard back at least.”
Memory pressed the fabric against the wound and lifted his hands back over it.
“Hold onto this, press it on firmly to stop the bleeding. I’m going to get help.”
His hands flopped down weakly, sliding away from the wound.
“Crap.” Memory took his place, keeping her hands against the old curtain to slow the flow of blood. The cream cotton lace was already stained red through.
“I’ve heard Maellan excel at healing magic. I know you’re busy, but I’m not wildly keen on pain, Your Majesty.”
Memory winced. She hadn’t been able to heal anyone other than her sister before. And even if she could, she’d made the oath to not use her magic. Damn fairies and their damn oath! “My sister, she’s the one that’s good at that stuff.”
Peirs’s eyes rolled back and Memory squeezed his shoulder. “Stay awake, you’ll be all right. The bleeding is already stopping.”
“Probably means I just ran out of blood.”
“Don’t sass me. You’re going to be fine.”
Peirs blinked and seemed to have trouble opening his eyes again. “You always did have too much faith in me.”
“Maybe putting lots of faith in people is what helps them rise to great things.”
He smiled, but his lips were stained with blood, burbling from his mouth.
That is a very bad thing. Memory gritted her teeth. She should try, she had to at least try and heal him. Maybe she would be able to do it now. Screw her deal with the fae.
“Peirs, I’m going to have a go at healing you, ‘kay? I’m not great at it like Lory, so keep your fingers crossed.”
Peirs just stared at her. He was too still.
“Peirs?”
Memory squeezed his shoulder but he didn’t reply. She shook him and he did nothing.
Peirs’s wisp behest began fading.
Memory clutched for Peirs’s wrist and found it quiet, no pulse tapping away under the skin.
A single, rasping sob tore up through Memory’s throat and she covered her face with her hands, sitting still and quiet.
Sorrow swelled inside Memory and settled, large and heavy in her chest. She gave it a home there, alongside the weight of everyone else she had lost. She would carry them always, every one of them, even if she had to grow stronger to bear that weight.
The light faded out entirely and she held Peirs’s hand in the dark, a dead man on either side.
She heard the crunch of feet crushing dry leaves behind her. No light of a wisp behest came with it. It was not another human. Memory reached for the knife at her belt. Before her fingers closed around it, a heavy hand slammed into the back of her head and she collapsed.
Chapter Nine
Erec kept in front of Eloryn, so she could barely see past his torso. She spoke her behest to enchant the bodies of those around her to be faster and stronger, and with her iron as well they were making headway into the crowd of gaunts.
“Some are running for it,” Erec yelled over the fighting. He looked at Eloryn, urgency in his features.
Eloryn shared his concern. If the gaunts’ plan to corner and capture them failed, they might turn on the captives. They needed to chase down the runners and stop them from getting to their prisoners first.
“Quickly,” Eloryn ordered, waving the guards around her forward. “Quickly,” she said again in the magical language. They surged onwards, chasing the remaining gaunts through the dark house, sped faster by Eloryn’s behest.
The floorboards strained and crackled under the charging footsteps. Eloryn pushed to the front of the group, leading the charge. I have to get to Roen before the dark fae do. Please don’t let it be too late.
Eloryn took a face full of cobwebs and wiped it away. The corridor came to a dead end, blocked by half a dozen armoires piled atop each other in a splintered mess. A hole had been clawed in the walls on both sides and one above in the ceiling.
“They’ve made this house a maze. Which way?” Erec said.
Eloryn changed the meaning of the behests she spoke, and the creatures’ path was revealed to her in shining footsteps. “Two went right, one went up.”
Erec signaled his men, splitting them off to the right and boosting some up through the hole in the ceiling.
As the space cleared of guards, Eloryn gasped. “Where is Mem, and Peirs?”
“They were right behind us,” Erec said, looking back down the empty corridor. “Your Highness, it’s my fault. It’s my responsibility to protect the queen.”
Eloryn looked back the way they’d come, then forward through the holes the guards had gone. Memory was behind and in danger, Roen and others were forward, and in danger. Memory was still with Peirs and some of the other guards. Eloryn hoped that meant she was fine. “Go back and find her, I’ll continue on for the abductees.”
“Your Highness, you’ll be alone, are you sure?” Erec asked.
Eloryn hesitated. No. I want to find my sister. She’s too vulnerable without her magic.
In the silent moment, Eloryn heard a soft sound that made her heart race. “Go and help Memory,” she ordered Erec.
Erec nodded and ran.
Eloryn stood still, alone in the quiet, straining to listen. She stepped toward the mass of furniture in the corridor.
“Eloryn?”
It was like Roen’s voice, but weaker, rougher. It seemed to come from within the barricade.
“Roen, where are you?” she called out.
Eloryn climbed carefully up onto the first armoire. It lay on its back on the floor and the doors bent inwards, creaking when they took her weight. Some of the other furniture on top of it shifted.
The glint of eyes shone from a dark gap between the cupboards. A low growl hissed, “Eloryn…”
It wasn’t Roen’s voice at all.
The creature launched itself out from the jumble of wardrobes, claws first.
Eloryn inhaled sharply and stumbled away. She turned to dodge the sickle-like claws and they caught in her hair, pulling it loose from its pins. She cried out as tearing hair made her eyes water. The gaunt swiped at her again. It was smaller than all the others had been, small enough to conceal itself in that slim shadowed crack, preparing its ambush, but it was no less strong.
Its fingers tangled in her loose hair, grabbing on and tugging her head down so her face turned up toward the hole in the ceiling. The gaunt’s other hand was above her, claws splayed and slashing down at her exposed neck.
She had to say the Brand, while she still had a throat to say it, but she knew there was no time left. “Bronma-”
The gaunt froze, eyes wide. It gurgled a harsh cry as its arms went limp, releasing Eloryn. Black smoke and slime spilled from its mouth and it fell to the floor, revealing Roen standing behind it.
Roen held his iron dagger, and it was slick with gray blood. Squinting a
t Eloryn and the bright light from her wisp around her, he said, “You look like an angel, my love.” He grunted softly, winced, and wobbled on his feet.
Eloryn blinked, letting herself believe her eyes. Her heartbeat grew strong. “You’ve sustained a blow to your head,” she said gently, wrapping her arm around Roen’s waist to support him.
Roen nodded. One side of his face had a trail of blood running from his hair line to his jaw and he waved at it weakly. “I escaped the beasts, but this left me too weak to get out of the house. I’ve mostly been hiding and waiting for my princess to come save me.”
Eloryn smiled and sighed at the same time. “I think we’re one for one on that count. Thank you,” she said, placing a hand to her still intact throat.
Roen smiled in return, but his eyes were vague, haunted.
Eloryn pulled a dressing from the collection she brought with her for treating wounds until she had time to perform proper healing behests. She pressed the wadded cloth to the gash on Roen’s forehead. “How do you feel? I can heal you now but it could take some time and we’ve yet to reach the captives. We’ve also lost track of Memory and Peirs.”
Roen just stared at her. “Come here.”
He wrapped her in his arms, burying his head into her neck.
Eloryn felt tears aching for release in her eyes. “I worried I’d lost you. I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“Let’s never lose each other, no matter what. Nothing will part us again.”
Eloryn’s tears burst free. “I promised I would solve Hayes’s demands before I saw you again, and I haven’t.”
“Never mind. Let’s just run off to sea together and be pirates.”
A breathy, rich laugh of relief escaped from Eloryn. She squeezed Roen tightly, but could tell his grip was loose, looser than the strong embrace she knew him to have. “I can heal you now,” she offered again.
Roen let her go and smiled. “I will keep. And I know where the gaunts are holding everyone. Let’s go.”
Roen led Eloryn through the hole in the wall the two gaunts had gone before.
They soon came across the guards who’d gone that way, who had managed to dispatch the last of the gaunts. Their gray bodies and black blood mixed into the gloom and grime on the floor.
“This way,” Roen said, and the guards followed. They squeezed through a narrow gap between two walls and around into a large ruined sitting room.
“It’s down under there.” Roen pointed to the center of the room where a round carpet lay underneath broken armchairs and a tipped over piano.
The guards began to roll back the rug. Roen shook his head and pointed again. “There. The piano.”
The guards seemed confused at first, but together put their shoulders against the piano and slid it out of the way. A hole dropped into black beneath it.
Roen looked grim. Eloryn’s body refused to move, to go and see what would be found in that dark pit. She forced it to, leaning over the edge and calling the names of children who’d gone missing, names Memory had told her.
The small, weak voice of a child made everyone move for the hole at once.
The guards dropped through first, helping to catch Eloryn as she followed. Eloryn strengthened her light behest to clear all shadows from the space.
The enormous basement had the tang of blood on the cool air. Clean cut stone walls had chains bolted into it at regular intervals, where the bodies of humans, pale and drained, hung like a butcher’s shop window.
Many were adults, but some were children. Eloryn sharpened her senses, and could see the faintest rise and fall of breath on their chests.
“They live.” Some of them, a mournful voice amended internally. “Help them down.”
The guards acted quickly, breaking the shackles and cradling the prisoners as they dropped free.
Across the other side of the room, a ragged group of captives shied away from the light. Most had blank faces, compelled or dazed or too traumatized for thought. Eloryn approached them slowly. “Be still, we are here to help. You are safe now.”
Hidden behind the front row, a huddle of dirty limbs and rags in the corner began to move. A pale face turned to blink at Eloryn.
“Mem?” The girl with the mountain of messy dark hair was familiar to Eloryn.
“No, Maeve, but she’s nearby.” I hope.
Maeve unwrapped herself from the clutch of other children she was hiding beneath her skirts and small body. She moved stiffly, as though she’d been fixed in that protective posture for weeks.
Eloryn stared, dumbfounded with grief and fury at what she saw in that cold stone room. Then she shook some sense back into herself. These people needed her to act, they needed her help. She began speaking words of magic. She could not heal everyone at once, or rid them of the horrors they’d experienced, but she could give them enough strength to move, to escape this prison.
Eloryn put on a friendly smile and took Maeve’s hand, helping her get the other children to their feet.
Maeve mumbled, “It’s lucky Mem’s not here. This would break her heart.”
“Or very seriously enrage her,” Eloryn added.
Maeve couched out a sobbing laugh.
Roen called to them from the hole above. “I’ve found a ladder to help bring people out. And Erec has returned.”
Eloryn called back, “And my sister?”
Roen grimaced. “Peirs is dead. And Memory is gone.”
Chapter Ten
Light flickered through Memory’s eyelids. Her head ached and she forced her eyes open. Two gaunts carried her slung between them, one holding her wrists and one holding her feet. They were going down stairs. Her vision faded again.
She wavered in and out of consciousness. She saw snatches of her surroundings — tunnels, darker tunnels, dirtier tunnels — but had completely lost her bearings. Each time her eyes twitched open it took moments to even remember where she was and what was happening. She’d been captured. She was being taken somewhere. She had to fight back. And then darkness would steal her away again.
A slamming jolt shook her whole body, waking her up. She’d been dumped onto a stone alter on her back. Her body still quivered from the impact. She took quick stock of her surroundings, but all she could see were close, dark, stone walls, and cobwebs. She wished for light. The fae had much better night vision than her and moved without any. The only light was a glow coming from the opening to the room, the color of early sunrise, but dim and distant. Still, it gave Memory hope. Maybe there was a window somewhere nearby, a door, some exit she could escape to outside.
“It’s awake,” said one gaunt. A splash of black blood on its cheek shone wet in the dark.
“Keep it still,” the other replied. Its voice was strangely high pitched and gurgling despite its masculine appearance. “Remember what the master told us to do.”
The creatures held her pinned, one at her arms, and the other pushing her thighs down. She may as well have been bound by metal bars for all she could move. Their sharp claws dug cruelly into her. Panic burbled aggressively in her chest.
The panic had a voice in her head, screaming, Let go of me, let go, don’t touch me! Memory squinted her eyes, about to loose her magic on them.
She clenched her jaw so hard it made her aching head throb. I can’t. Calm down. I still have my knife. There has to be another chance to escape.
Across her temple and down to her ear was a sore area that felt wet and sticky. Consciousness was a wild bird, struggling to fly off and leave her at any moment.
The gaunt holding her arms leaned close to her and sniffed at her head. “Can you smell that?” it asked the other dark fae.
The gaunt holding Memory’s legs down, the one with black blood on its face, growled a warning. “Leave it. This one is the master’s. All the blood is the master’s.”
“That blood is mine. Keep off me, monster,” Memory said. Both creatures ignored her.
“So full of magic.” The dark fae sniffing Memory leaned c
loser, dragging a long, raspy tongue across her forehead. It scratched on her skin like a cat’s. Memory cringed in disgust.
“Full, full, full of magic.” Excitement rose in the gaunt’s voice as it licked her a second time, sharp teeth grazing her skin. Its clawed hands closed tight on her arms, tearing into her skin. Memory cried out and wrestled against it, trying to break free.
“Stop it!” Memory said. The gaunt kept licking, getting more and more excited, more ravenous each time. Memory yelled at the other one. “Stop him, he’s going to get you both in trouble with your master!”
The gaunt holding Memory’s legs down hissed in frustration. It hesitated, then let go, rushed forward and pushed the bloodthirsty gaunt away. In return it howled in the face of the other, a berserk fury in its cry.
Out of their grasp, Memory wasted no time to take her advantage. She whipped her knife from her belt and slipped off the side of the altar onto her feet.
Both gaunts heard her move and turned on her. One roared so loudly it made Memory’s chest reverberate and hair fly around her face.
“Just stay back and let me go,” Memory said, holding her knife up in front of her as a warning. Her vision still swam and she worried she’d simply drop like a stone into unconsciousness again at any moment. “Just let me go. I don’t want to have to use this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Both gaunts now had bloodied faces, the one with black dark fae blood, and the one with Memory’s blood red around its mouth. The one with black blood grinned. “That’s your mistake.”
It grabbed the bloodthirsty fae beside it and pushed it toward Memory. The gaunt flew at her so fast it was impaled on Memory’s knife to the hilt before she could pull back. Dark blood spattered, warm and sticky like molasses onto Memory’s hand. She recoiled, yanking her knife out of the fae. The knife had already done its damage. The wound foamed and hissed, smelling like burning hair. Thick smoke that sparkled gold within as if sparks from a fire poured from the hole.
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