by K. J. Sutton
She was talking about Damon, I realized. Blaming my brother for her niece’s descent, as though he’d had any control over being taken by a faerie from the Unseelie Court. As though he’d had anything to do with Savannah’s reckless spell going so terribly wrong. “Then why are you here?” I asked, my voice notably cooler now.
If the witch heard the shift in my tone, it didn’t bother her. Her demeanor remained open and friendly as she answered, “I’m trying to find Savannah, actually. She seems to have vanished. Her cell phone is dead and her house was abandoned. No scrying spells have worked.”
“I can honestly tell you that I have no clue where Savannah is. She left a note saying she’d ‘be back someday’, and that was the last we heard from her.” I hesitated. “Are you… like her?”
“A necromancer?” the witch asked bluntly. “No. I tried to undo her mistake, but my abilities come from the earth. Savannah channeled something a lot darker when she completed that spell.”
“I didn’t know she was doing that kind of magic. If I had…” I pursed my lips. Whatever regret I might have felt vanished when I remembered how she’d betrayed us to Astrid, and the part she played in Fred’s death. She was the reason that Emma spent so much of her time sitting on a grave.
The witch turned away from the bear and faced a throng of dancers. She kept her eyes on them as she said in a conversational tone, “Oh, magic. I hate that word. It’s originally Enochian, did you know that? Translated, magick essentially means ‘power’. But then humans started using the word and it became ordinary. Trivial. Fairy godmothers, children’s tales, spells that rhyme.”
There was a faerie on the outskirts of the festivities, painting on a canvas. His long, thin arm moved in frantic strokes. It was me and Collith, I realized. The artist was so skilled I could already see what was forming on the white surface. The king and I stood in a dark wood, facing each other. My hand rested on his chest, just slightly, and there was an expression on my face I’d never seen before. Hope, maybe.
“If I were you, I would let him go,” the witch said.
I looked at her and frowned. “I’m sorry?”
As she spoke, there was a hazy cast to her eyes. I’d seen the same look in her niece’s eyes at the bottom of a damp oubliette, and by the time the witch spoke again, I already knew this was a Telling. “You are beautiful, Fortuna Sworn. Beautiful women tend to cost men their lives. Anyone who loves you will pay a price. It will cost you, as well.”
I didn’t know what to say. As the witch’s eyes cleared, I glanced around for Lyari again, hoping to use her as an excuse to leave. That was when I remembered I was a queen and I didn’t need excuses.
“Good luck finding Savannah,” I said, turning back to the shorter female. I mustered a polite smile. “Anyone dumb enough to piss off a witch deserves what’s coming to them.”
She smiled back and started walking backward. “See? You were born to be a queen.”
“I didn’t catch your name,” I called.
“Mercy Wardwell,” she called back without hesitation. She paused to give me a deep bow. I searched her expression for any sign of mocking, but I found none. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty.”
Giving me no chance to respond, the witch turned away. I watched her slip through the crowd, graceful as a faerie. I reached down to yank at my skirt and continue walking, but something dug into my palm. Startled, I raised my hand to see what hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. It was a business card. Only two lines had been printed on the creamy, stiff paper. The world of magick is dark, and no one goes into it willingly, it read in small block letters. Beneath this was a phone number.
Witches, I thought on a soundless sigh.
Tucking the card into the bodice of my dress, I turned around to face Lyari. Her gaze was directed elsewhere. I followed it and spotted Thuridan immediately, standing several heads taller than anyone else in the clearing. Lyari had caught his eye, too, apparently—his expression blazed with an intensity that made me suspect there had once been something more between them. And still was, if their lingering stares were any indication.
Interesting, I thought, tucking the revelation away for later. I could hardly blame Lyari, though—Thuridan had bathed since the last time I’d seen him. When his face wasn’t lined with malice, and his eyes shone with desire instead of hatred, he was undeniably appealing. Like most of his kind, Thuridan had high cheekbones. His jaw was angular and strong, contrasting with his full lips. His hair, which had been shampooed and cut, curled against the back of his neck in tawny curls. Most of his mouth was still covered in a beard. Maybe, for Lyari’s sake, I should use my queenly authority and order him to shave his face. For my own entertainment, I’d also make him shave everything else, too.
“Good evening, Your Majesty.”
I wasn’t surprised by the sound of her voice, but I did go still. “Gwyn,” I said simply.
It was an insult, in a way. To use a faerie’s name so simply, so intimately, indicated a bond or a lack of respect. Gwyn’s pleasant expression didn’t shift at my greeting, though. She merely folded her hands behind her back. With the firelight flickering over the smooth planes of her face, and the moonlight making her golden hair white, she had never looked more otherworldly. There was no blood hiding her features, but there was makeup caked over her eyes in a black strip.
“Would you care to dance?” she asked.
I kept my eyes on Lyari and Thuridan. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Gracious,” the huntress murmured after a moment. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the thrill of rejection.”
“What can I say? I prefer my lovers to be born within the last century. It’s why I could never get behind Edward and Bella as a couple.”
Despite my blasé tone, the rest of me was tense. But Gwyn didn’t lash out or reach for her sword. Her mouth twitched and she followed my gaze to Lyari. “Queen Fortuna, am I to understand that you’re calling me old?”
I lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Well, you know what they say. If the dentures fit… excuse me, I believe I’m being summoned.”
Lyari was still deep in conversation with Thuridan, so I made a show of walking toward Tarragon. The muscular faerie noticed me and, to his credit, surmised the situation immediately. “I apologize for interrupting,” he said by way of greeting, speaking just loudly enough for Gwyn to hear. I turned around to see her reaction.
She gave me a look that said, You’ve won this round. I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a breath as I faced Tarragon again. I was about to construct an explanation for that little performance when Lyari appeared between us and demanded, “What did I miss?”
Tarragon quirked a thick eyebrow at me. “I believe Queen Fortuna denied Gwyn’s request for a dance,” he said.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Lyari hissed, staring at me with a combination of disbelief and exasperation. “Sooner, I mean?”
“On the contrary.” I resisted looking toward the huntress again, because I knew she’d be looking back. “Gwyn finds me fascinating—wouldn’t you want a person like that to stick around? Even if it was just to stave off the boredom of immortality for a little while?”
Tarragon observed our exchange silently, and though his expression didn’t change, I could’ve sworn amusement gleamed in his obsidian eyes. “I don’t like it,” my Right Hand muttered. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
I smiled faintly, staring out at the clearing of faeries before me. “I’m just playing their game, but better.”
I could feel Lyari watching me instead of the revel. A sensation pulsed down the bond between us—a sense of unease. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, a cry rose in the air. Something about the sound made me think, Human. Without a word to Lyari or Tarragon, I hauled up my massive skirt and started in the direction it had come from.
Within a minute, I spotted a group of fae males standing by one of the bonfires. With the flames r
eflecting off their smooth, perfect faces, the scene looked like some dark painting I might find on the wall of a decrepit, abandoned house. Something held their attention, and they’d formed a circle around it. I drew closer, keeping my eyes on the spaces between the faeries’ bodies, and I caught a glimpse of her. A human girl, her face streaked with tears, her mouth opening to form another cry.
It took me another moment to realize what the males were doing. Every time she flew across the circle and landed in a different set of arms, there was a blur of movement, and a piece of her clothing tore free. In typical fae cruelty, their game was both psychological and physical.
I pushed through them and snarled, “Get your hands off her.”
They turned their faces toward me, and most of them looked amused. I focused on the one who still held the girl. “I told you to let her go,” I said.
“Or what?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.
The simple question made me falter. I stared at him, and he looked back with a taunting smile. The sides of his head were shaved, and the top was styled into a blue mohawk. Silver hoops lined his ears, all the way to that pointed tip, and his pale body was encased in leather.
For the most part, only fae youth—youth being a relative term, as their lives spanned centuries rather than decades—wore modern clothing. During my brief reign, I’d grown to hate the younger faeries more than the older ones. They had the arrogance of gods with none of the wisdom.
“Are you the one who brought her?” I asked finally.
“Yes.” He flashed a grin. “But she was more than willing, Your Majesty. I have broken no laws.”
The girl he held made a sound of defiance. She was even younger than I thought, probably fourteen or fifteen. She had brown hair that fell to her shoulders in dirty clumps. The skin around her wrists and ankles was torn and bleeding. The rest of her was covered in bruises. Some looked fresh, but there were others fading into yellow and violet. This girl had been his captive for a few weeks, at least.
Every face in the clearing turned toward us. A tight knot of anxiety formed in my stomach. Behind the wall I’d built between myself and the faeries of this Court, I felt their curiosity. This was the first time my new law had been broken, after all, and I’d made many dark threats toward those who dared defy me.
My first instinct was to have the Guardians deal with it. But when I saw the thin slash of Lyari’s mouth, who stood at the front of the crowd, I knew that wouldn’t be enough. She was worried.
As I worked to conceal a lighting bolt of terror that shot through my heart, I turned back toward the human. Her survival probably depended on what I did next. There was no other way. Steeling myself, I took a step closer to the blue-haired faerie, planning to grab his wrist and destroy him. Destroy both of us.
Then his cheek split open.
For a moment, I didn’t react. My mind couldn’t accept what my eyes were seeing. The faerie stared back at me, open-mouthed, and a line of blood ran down from the fresh gash in his face. “What—” he started.
His eyeball popped out.
Somewhere else in the clearing, a shrill scream rose up. I stopped hearing things after that; I was too horrified, too consumed by what was happening in front of me. Look away, look away, I kept thinking. But I couldn’t seem to move. It was as though my brain had forgotten how to send signals to the rest of my body. Wide-eyed with horror, I watched the blue-haired faerie die.
It wasn’t much different from what werewolves experienced, some part of me observed. His body twisted and contorted, the skin tearing and forming into bark. Branches sprouted from his rib cage, and the faerie was still screaming until his mouth was overtaken.
After he’d finally gone silent, and the place where he’d been standing now filled with a tall, swaying, lovely tree, no one spoke. I knew I was in shock as I turned, trying to find the cause of his abrupt transformation. My gaze landed on a child perched atop a faerie’s shoulders. I followed her gaze downward. There were flecks of blood on my chest and neck. I looked out at the revel again and sensed their fear. They think I did it, I realized distantly. I found a familiar face in the crowd. It took me an extra beat to realize it was Lyari.
Subtly, so subtly that I almost missed it, she inclined her head. When I just stared at her, uncomprehending, Lyari’s voice appeared along the edge of my mind. Say something.
Right. This was all a show, and the final curtain hadn’t come down yet. I still had a part to play. Was I shaking? Could they see it? I lifted my chin and displayed the gore splattered all over me. “Did anyone else think it was all right to break our law tonight?” I called. It felt like a miracle that my voice didn’t waver.
Silence hovered through the clearing. The only movement came from the children and the flames. Everyone else looked like a statue made of flesh and bright colors. Once it seemed they were sufficiently terrified, I found a Guardian—there was always two or three nearby—and directed my next words at her. “Bring this human back to her home. If anyone tries to harm her, kill them immediately.”
My blunt order finally broke their silence, and reactions filled the air now. Angry shouts or hushed disbelief. The Guardian helped the human to her feet, failing to hide a grimace of distaste, and the unlikely pair headed toward the edge of the glamour. Someone must’ve signaled the musicians, because the cheery sound of a fiddle played through the night. A moment later, more instruments joined it.
Lyari walked over to me and stood at my side as the revel slowly resumed. I waited until no one was looking in our direction anymore. It took longer than usual. “Go ahead,” I muttered at last. “Say it. I know you’re dying to.”
Her dainty jaw flexed. Every word was clipped as she replied, “Council members are questioning you. The courtiers started the feast without you. And when that arrogant pup challenged you, the Unseelie Queen, you hesitated. That was not the ruler I serve. That was… someone else entirely.”
I knew it should matter to me, what she was saying, but every word only made me want the crown less. Part of me wished I could set it down in the grass and walk away. “I thought you said I was good at this,” was all I said.
“I said you have good instincts.” Suddenly Lyari was glaring at me. “Do you think you’re the only creature to know real pain? Why should you get the luxury of falling apart, while the rest of us pick up the pieces and press on?”
I was about to respond when there was a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. I spun, thinking there would be something behind us, but the only movement was farther off. I recognized her clothes and her short frame. Mercy was walking away, leaving a trail through the tall grass. In a flash of intuition, I knew. I just knew she was responsible for the grisly scene that had just occurred.
“Did you do that?” I asked, raising my voice to span the distance between us.
Mercy turned around. Unlike the Tongue, who always seemed pale and drained after every spell, Savannah’s aunt glowed with vitality. Her eyes were unnaturally bright as they met mine. “I don’t like bullies,” the witch said.
I glanced over my shoulder, wanting to make sure I hadn’t imagined the tree. There it stood, dangerously close to the fire, its blue leaves fluttering in a breeze. From this vantage point, one of its branches looked like an arm, bent into a cheery wave. Unnerved, I turned back to Mercy with my eyebrows raised. “Earth magic, huh?”
Her red lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. In that moment, she was the epitome of those fairy tale witches she lamented. Beautiful, immortal, and powerful. “We are Fallen, sister,” she reminded me. “There’s darkness in that, no matter what form our power takes.”
A whisper of instinctive fear drifted down my spine. Mercy Wardwell was powerful—even more powerful than her niece—and I recognized a potential threat when I saw one. If this witch ever went dark, people would die. I had no doubts about that. “Well, I appreciate it,” I said evenly. “I know you did that to help me.”
Some of Mercy’
s intensity faded, and suddenly she looked more like the ordinary, middle-aged witch I’d met earlier. She held her shawl tightly against herself. “I sense the road ahead of you is long and dark, Queen Fortuna. Choose your steps wisely,” she warned.
Gee, thanks, I almost said back. Luckily, Mercy was already walking away again. With every step she took, it felt like another layer of exhaustion sank into my bones. There was the familiar sound of creaking armor as Lyari shifted, reminding me she was there. “I’m going home,” I said dully, starting in the same direction Mercy had gone.
The revel wasn’t over—the literature I’d read claimed they could last for days—but Lyari didn’t utter a single argument. She fell into step beside me with one hand resting on her sword, as though to warn off anyone who considered approaching us. Maybe I needed to start carrying around a sword, too.
I could pinpoint the exact moment we stepped over the glamour’s boundary, because the noise behind us stopped. All the lights and shadows from the bonfires vanished. In the silence, my mind went back to the conversation we’d left unfinished. Do you think you’re the only creature to know real pain?
If I didn’t bring it up now, I probably never would. I cleared my throat. “Hey, about what you said earlier—”
I cut short when I lifted my head and saw Úna, standing in the doorway that led to Court. She instantly fixed those emerald eyes on my face. Her expression was… hungry.
Nightmares had this effect on people sometimes. It was rare, but it happened. I remembered, when I was a child, thinking how creepy it was that our neighbor Mr. Nesbitt followed Mom with his eyes. Unless they crossed a line, there was nothing else to do but avoid them and discourage them.
“You must come now, Your Majesty,” Úna said, her voice low and urgent. “It’s Lady Naevys.”
Chapter Eleven
