by K. J. Sutton
When I entered the passageway again, I started toward the surface more out of habit than any real decision to do so. Torches quivered as I passed. Dry earth crunched underfoot. The Guardians followed at a distance, as if they could sense that hungry power inside me. I stopped at the mouth of the tunnel, and only then did Nuvian dare to approach me. Slowly, I turned to face him. “I want to be alone,” I said with a voice that didn’t sound like mine.
Strangely enough, the Guardian didn’t utter a word of argument. I saw my face reflected in his eyes, and I almost didn’t recognize it. The creature looking back at me was void of anything resembling humanity. She was death incarnate and rage personified. I put my back to her, to Nuvian and the others, and moved into the sleeping forest.
I walked for hours. With every step, I gathered the darkness of the Unseelie Court to me. The bond to them was still broken, but that didn’t matter—something had crumbled in me, or been unlocked, and now it had overtaken all the rest. I feasted on their anger. Their pain. Their cravings. The sun crested the tree-filled horizon, erroneously radiant and hopeful.
At long last, I arrived at the black market.
During my brief time as queen, I’d thought of this place often. It was a thorn that throbbed during my quiet moments. Now there was nothing to stop me from doing something about it. As a cherry on top, some of these creatures belonged to him. They were his kind and his subjects. His blood. Striking out at them, however depraved they may be, would hurt the one who had betrayed me.
I stopped in the center of the clearing.
It didn’t take them long to notice my presence. A minute, maybe two. I didn’t think about the fact that I hadn’t made physical contact with anyone—not as all this power ran through me like I was a live wire. I was invulnerable. Limitless. Slowly, I lifted my arms, and with a single attempt I claimed every mind in the clearing. So many fears, so many flavors, so many memories. It was a rush almost comparable to what I felt when I’d been fighting Oliver’s shadow. For a moment or two, I forgot why I’d come. I was a junkie in the grips of a high.
Then, inevitably, I thought of Collith. The euphoria retreated… and the rage returned.
My arms were still raised, and I opened my eyes slowly. I met the gaze of a shapeshifter with a pig snout. He stood in front of a stall full of jars, and the ones I could see held body parts floating in clear liquid. One of those parts was undeniably a baby’s hand. I looked back at the shapeshifter. He was frowning. Probably trying to figure out if I was a master or an escaped slave. Just as he started to say something, my own hands closed into fists.
Their fears exploded into existence like fireworks.
Blinded by my illusions, helpless against my will, slavers scrambled to open cages. I saw every species imaginable claim their freedom. Shapeshifters, vampires, witches, warlocks, humans. One of the captives climbed out of the cage closest to me, enormous and thick-limbed. When he straightened, I recognized the horns jutting from his head. I knew that curly dark hair, that angular jaw, and those clear blue eyes.
The goblin from the oubliette.
“You just have some shitty luck, don’t you?” I murmured. Before the creature could reply, I gave him a cold smile. “Looks like your luck has finally turned. Leave this place, now, and I will let you live.”
My arms dropped to my sides. Now imaginary doors slammed shut, trapping the slavers in rooms with their worst nightmares.
The goblin ran when the screams started. I took no pleasure in their pain, but I didn’t relent. Not for a moment. I stared at them, feeling as if I were watching it all through a pane of glass. I was untouchable. The wind howled with the voices of the dying.
After an hour or two, silence reigned in the clearing. The captives I’d freed were long gone, including the goblin. Bodies littered the snow, along with blood and debris—some of the slavers had gotten violent in the grips of their hallucinations.
The urgency in my veins had dissipated. Feeling like a husk of who I once was, I turned in the direction of home.
My eyebrows went up in faint surprise when I saw the kelpie.
It stood by the tree line, and I got the sense that it had been waiting for me, somehow. I’d never seen a kelpie before—they were rare, not because of being hunted, but rather there hadn’t been many to begin with—and despite how hollow I felt inside, I took the opportunity to study it.
The creature at the edge of the clearing had come a long way from the heavenly mounts of its ancestry.
Kelpies lived in deep water, where it stood in wait, like a crocodile, and dragged its victims into the darkness to drown and feast upon. Fins stood in place of where a horse’s pointed ears would be. Instead of hair, there was a scaly hide. Its eyes held no irises or pupils, only a milky sheen that seemed to be staring right at me, but I knew that was impossible.
Kelpies were blind.
I owe you a debt, a voice said in my head, making me jump in both pain and surprise. The words felt like a ragged fingernail scraping over my brain matter. Before I could react it continued, Should you ever have need of me, put your blood in the river and I will come.
The kelpie didn’t wait for a response—without another word, it turned and moved into the trees. I stayed where I was, wary that it was a trick. My gaze shot to every stirring leaf and sought each distant sound, but minutes ticked by and the creature didn’t reappear. It really had just stayed to repay a debt it believed was owed.
How extraordinary, I thought with a hollow sense of amusement. A kelpie with a sense of honor.
Even though the screams had long since stopped, they still echoed in my mind. I had a strange thought that my soul had been painted black by all the blood around me. There was something in my hand, I thought next. I glanced down with a detached sense of curiosity, and I was startled to see that I was still carrying the novel from Collith’s library.
A hollow wind moved past. The cold didn’t bother me in the slightest. With a vacant expression, I tossed the book and it landed on one of bodies, pages splayed. Blood began to seep through the paper.
“And then there were none,” I whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a bright, cloudless day.
Any other morning, I would’ve gone for a run. Any other morning, I would’ve been stepping onto the porch with warm coffee in hand.
Instead, I stood in front of the barn.
I stared at the door handle, as I had been for several minutes, and considered whether to wrap my hand around it. Silence rang all around me, but inside my head, it felt like a disquieted crowd had gathered. I knew I’d have to face Collith sooner or later, and part of me wanted to. When he lost his crown, he should know why.
There was another part of me that would do anything to avoid him. Put off the inevitable ending. I could go into the house and put it off by a few hours, at least. But if Emma saw me, she’d ask why I was back in my old room. She’d ask if something was wrong. Those questions might shatter the wall of numbness I’d built around myself, and I wasn’t ready to face what was on the other side of it.
So I put my hand around that handle and pulled. I stepped inside and my senses were assailed by the now-familiar smell of fresh paint and new wood. The door closed behind me and I stood there for another moment, waiting for the sound of footsteps or something playing on Collith’s phone. But there was just more silence. I forced myself to move toward the stairs. It felt like my body temperature increased with every step.
The lights were on in the apartment, but there was no one in the kitchen or living room. None of the showers were running. Was he still sleeping? Feeling bolder, I quickly walked past all the doorways. Each bed was made and every light was off. I stood in the middle of the space, absorbing the stillness, and came to the obvious conclusion.
Collith was gone.
Since leaving the black market, I felt my first emotion—relief. Faint but unadulterated relief. A second later, I heard a trilling sound, and I looked down to see the kit
ten rushing at me. She immediately started twining around my ankles. “Hello,” I said.
The clock on the microwave said that it was almost noon. Not morning, then. It must’ve taken longer than I thought to walk home. In eight hours, I would go back into the ground and take Collith’s throne from him. Right now, though, I needed to sleep. Sleep until the screams in my head faded to echoes and the throbbing in my chest subsided to a dull ache.
Emma, Damon, and Finn hadn’t moved in yet, and their rooms stood empty. I chose one at random, closed the blinds, and crawled into bed. I was still wearing Collith’s sweatshirt, but it didn’t smell like him anymore. I curled into my body, small and tight, like the knot in my stomach. The position made something jab into my thigh. With a tired frown, I pulled a cell phone out of the pocket. Oh, right. I put it there.
The screen brightened from my movements. The lock screen showed numerous texts from Lyari and one from Finn. That was surprising—he’d never used the phone I gave him. I had only been gone since last night, and for all they knew I was pulling a shift at Bea’s or training at Adam’s. My bodyguards were overzealous, though. They’d probably figured out something was wrong.
Some faraway part of me knew it would be unkind not to respond. But I was so heavy. So weary. Even the thought of pressing buttons on a phone seemed daunting. Telling myself that I would reassure them the second I woke up, I put the phone on the nightstand and curled back into myself.
The kitten must’ve come into the room shortly after I had, because suddenly I felt her press against my ribs, solid and warm. I stroked her soft head as my eyes fluttered shut. The vibrations of the small creature’s purring went through me, oddly soothing.
“Fortuna.”
That familiar voice yanked me from darkness. I must’ve only been half-sleeping, because I knew instantly who it belonged to. I sat up and hugged my knees, blinking the drowsiness out of my eyes. In doing so I dislodged the kitten, who yowled in complaint and walked to the end of the bed.
Twilight shone through the window. I reluctantly turned my face toward Collith’s. The light was at his back, making his features dim. As the silent tension lingered, he stepped forward. Our gazes met. His eyes were so dark that his pupils were nonexistent. Sweat slid down the small of my back but I didn’t shove the blankets away. Somehow, they feel like a defense against him.
“What did you do, Fortuna?” Collith asked finally. The words were hollow. He already knew about the black market, then. I wondered who told him. He probably had a spy or two reporting everything happening in his absence. He could hardly call himself the Unseelie King if he didn’t.
Hearing his voice brought back images of all our nights together. They were imprinted on the insides of my eyelids. I saw bare skin, shy smiles, gentle touches. Physical pain I could handle; it was this sort of pain I couldn’t endure. Collith Sylvyre had managed to do what no one else had.
He’d completely shattered my heart.
“I know the truth,” was all I said.
Something in my voice made him go still. He hadn’t been moving, but those tiny movements that made us blend in and seem human—blinking, fidgeting, shifting—those were gone. Collith stood in the middle of the room like some creature from a fairy tale, come to whisk me away into the magic-filled night.
Except this was no fairy tale.
“The truth about what?” he asked at last. More pretending. A faerie, through and through, no matter how easy it had been for me to forget it.
Suddenly I smiled at him. It wasn’t a real smile, not when I could feel the pieces of my heart inside me, fragmented and out of place. “No more games, faerie,” I said, finally pushing the covers aside. “The real reason you married me. The reason I’ve always been after, no matter how many pretty lies you spout at me.”
“Fortuna, I—”
I stood up and walked toward him, every movement slow and deliberate. I felt like something dangerous now. Maybe Collith felt it, too, because a shadow passed over his face. “You looked me in the eye that day I asked if you’d told me everything about your abilities. ‘That’s everything,’ you said. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t blink.”
My words confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I’d learned about him. Realizing this, Collith’s jaw worked. I waited for him to say what I secretly wanted him to say—that I was wrong, I had made a mistake, and he hadn’t been lying to me from the moment we met. What followed was the longest silence I had ever experienced. Finally he said, his voice more anguished than I’d ever heard it, “I’m sorry.”
His apology rolled off me like a drop of water. All I could feel was the disappointment, the pain, rushing through my veins and washing away anything good or light.
“God, how stupid could I be?” I asked bleakly, still gazing up at him. “During the story about your feud with Laurie, you said you were ‘showing off your abilities’ to each other, and that’s what led to the fallout. I believed you without question.”
Laughter bubbled up and I couldn’t contain it. Collith watched me laugh for a minute, then he said tightly, “You aren’t stupid.”
“It just made me wonder,” I continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “how far back does it go? Did you have those goblins kidnap me so I’d end up at the black market?”
“No.” He pursed his lips. “But I did know of your existence before we met.”
“Explain.”
“You once asked why I hadn’t done anything to help Damon, when I saw him at Court. I told you I did do something, and that was the truth—I went to Nym.”
“To Nym? Why?”
As he always did whenever I asked a direct question, Collith hesitated. My control was a swiftly-unraveling thread, though, and he must’ve been able to sense it, because the Unseelie King dropped all pretense. “Nym has the ability to move through time,” he said with an air of finality. “Every journey takes a little more of his sanity, so I rarely ask him to do it.”
Move through time? I thought blankly. And with that, another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
I remembered that night at the Unseelie Court, sitting at my injured brother’s bedside, clutching Damon’s hand as if holding onto someone tightly enough was all it took to make them stay. Collith had sat in a chair across from me, giving me bits of his secrets like scraps from a table. I asked him why he hadn’t helped Damon when he first saw my brother at Court. It’s difficult for me to make significant decisions without knowing something of the outcome. When my conscience wouldn’t rest because of Damon Sworn, I sought… counsel. In hopes of discovering what effect taking him from Jassin would have.
This response had sparked a wildfire of questions. At the time, I’d decided to back down. Let Collith come to me on his own terms. It was all so ironic now. My voice sounded like someone else’s as I asked, “What did he find?”
“Nym told me that someone else was coming to save Damon. He began drawing you. For weeks, he was obsessed. Your face covered the walls of that room, and in some of them, you were wearing a crown. That’s why I didn’t stop you from pursuing the throne—Nym said your brother’s survival hinged on it. I had the crown made weeks before we met.
“There must’ve been some part of me that didn’t believe you were real, because that morning, when I saw you at the black market, I thought it was a trick. Some kind of creature that could see your face in my head or a spell that showed what I wanted most. But I had nothing to do with your abduction, I swear it.”
I scoffed and shook my head, backing away from him. I sank onto the bed and stared at the wall. “Your word means absolutely nothing. If all you wanted was to get in my pants, you should’ve just said, instead of forcing me through that farce of a marriage.”
Collith stayed where he was, but every muscle in his body tensed as if he’d been about to move forward. “Fortuna, that’s not why I slept with you or built this home for us—”
“Oh my God,” I blurted, my gaze snapping to his. “That’s why you wouldn’t
have sex with me, back at the old place. You weren’t being noble! You were feeling guilty.”
His silence told me I was right. More laughter burned in my throat, but it faded as my mind traveled even further back. I remembered standing in the wet darkness of the Levithan’s prison, thinking that I was about to die. That night, Collith could see I was terrified. You will survive this, Fortuna. That I can promise, my new mate had told me.
Even then, I’d found it strange. How? How can you promise me that? Can you see the future?
Another question that had gone unanswered. There was so much I hadn’t seen. So much I hadn’t known. But I’d ignored my usual instincts, changed who I was because I was falling for the Unseelie King. Ultimately, I only had myself to blame.
“…admit it, after the day Laurie cut my face open and I realized what I was capable of, I made mistakes,” Collith was saying. I blinked at him, slow to focus. “It was the darkest time of my life. I hurt and used others for their power, and for a while, I resembled my father more than my mother. But that’s not who I am anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
“I suppose you miraculously had a change of heart?”
“No, I had a mother that loved me,” he answered. His throat worked before he went on. “She asked me to dinner one night, and it started like any other. We talked about the other bloodlines and events happening in our old world. Then, out of nowhere, she put down her fork and turned to me. ‘Is this it, then? This is who you want to be?’ she asked. I’d never seen such disappointment in her eyes.”
Even now, Collith flinched at the memory. He stared at the floor for a few seconds, as if he could see his mother’s face in the pattern of the wood. It felt like an hour had passed when he refocused on me. “For years, I didn’t touch the powers I’d stolen,” he said. “Then, of course, my father finally used the spell Laurie had given him. He’d heard a rumor that I was conspiring with a Folduin to overthrow him. He could’ve used the spell on me, but he didn’t want the Court to think he was afraid. It was a taunt. A challenge. He killed my mother with that spell to teach me a lesson.”
