by H. E. Edgmon
“But?” My hands clench.
“But I don’t know if they will. Not when...” He stops again.
Briar growls, “Just spit it out!”
Emyr doesn’t. But Wade does speak up. “Not when the Throne is already seen as too sympathetic to witches.”
So, this is my fault.
One way or another, I am responsible for everything that happened tonight.
I don’t have time for this. Don’t have time to wallow in my guilt and feel bad for myself. That can come later. After the witches are out of the dungeon and far away from here. I turn to Wade and Tessa. “What are you two doing here?”
“Officially, I’m on duty tonight.” Wade shrugs and tucks one strand of blond hair behind his ear. “Unofficially, we were looking for you.”
The Throne makes the rules. The Guard enforces the rules. The Committee makes sure everything runs smoothly.
I think I know a way to get the witches out. It’s blooming in the back of my mind. I just need a minute to let it get there.
Tessa is staring at me. I meet her eye. Neither of us blink.
“And what are you doing out here, Wyatt?” She asks the question like she already knows the answer.
We have always been more similar than Tessa would like the world to believe.
“We’re going to break the witches out of jail.”
Wade, Briar, and Emyr burst into a cacophony of arguing, but I’m not paying them any mind. I know what I’m doing. At least, I have some idea. And Tessa’s staring back at me.
I think of her dragging those stones out of the wall to toss at Unicorn Boy’s body. Neck-deep in her own panic, nearly drowning in whatever flashback she was having, and still trying to fight back. I don’t know what that means.
“We’ve tried doing things the right way.” I speak, and the others stop arguing long enough to listen. “And if we don’t try doing them the wrong way, Jin is going to die. Derek is going to kill them.” My gaze flicks to Emyr. “Jin. Do you really trust that your parents will come through with a stay of execution at the last minute? Enough to risk Jin’s life?”
Emyr stares down at me. A moment ticks by. Another. Finally, he folds his arms over his chest. “How are we going to do it?”
“We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to stay as far away from this as possible. Derek’s goonies are already looking for anything they can use against you.”
“But—”
“No. Go back to the cabin. Tell people I was with you all night.”
Briar is staring at me. I don’t stare back, but I can feel her question boring into me, anyway.
If my goal here is to help Derek get his Throne just so I can waltz out of Asalin a free man, wouldn’t it serve my purpose to drag Emyr into this with me?
And the answer to that is yes.
But I can be introspective about all of this later.
“How are you going to do it?” Tessa asks.
I look at her and swallow. She looks back at me. Finally, she nods.
“Okay. Right.” She turns to Wade. “We’re going to need your keys.”
“Excuse me?” He looks at me, then toward her with an eyebrow raised. “Really?”
“Would you rather innocent people be put to death?”
“Well, no, but—”
“The keys, please, darling.” She holds out her hand, crooking her fingers toward the center of her palm.
Wade hesitates only a moment longer before pulling the keys free from his belt. As he drops them into Tessa’s hand, he mutters, “Absolutely ridiculous. This timeline is completely fucked. I hate it here.”
“I know.” She slides the keys into her back pocket.
Briar glares with all the rage of a wild dog, staring at Tessa like this is some kind of trap. “Why would you help us?”
“I’m not helping you. I’m helping my best friend’s sister’s girlfriend.”
That sounds like bullshit, and I don’t care. There’s a lot going on tonight that will need to be unpacked in the daylight. But I can’t worry about any of it right now.
Emyr clears his throat. “You’ll need to make it look real.”
“I know.” Tessa has already picked up a rock. She tosses it up and down, and it makes a quiet thud each time it connects with her palm.
“Make what look real?” Briar asks, and I put an arm around her waist.
Wade glowers. “Not the face. I am far too pretty.”
“Turn around, then.”
“I hate it here.” But he does as Tessa says, turning around and hitting his knees.
Tessa raises the rock.
Briar gasps at my side. “Oh, shit.”
It takes three swings for Wade to collapse to his front, his blond ponytail bloodied, the rock falling to the ground beside him. Tessa rubs her red-slicked hands against her jeans.
“Emyr, could you—”
“Yes.” He moves to Wade’s side, kneeling down and gently touching the side of his neck. “He’ll be fine. You three go, now.”
We don’t need to be told twice. But as we start to walk away, Emyr calls out, “Wait!”
He’s risen from his post at Wade’s side, moved closer to us. He lowers his voice. “No one knows what happened to the fae who attacked us. No one but the four of us. Keep it that way.”
In all the events of the night, I’d nearly forgotten about Unicorn Boy. “Or else I’ll be the one in the dungeon?”
Emyr need not say anything in response. I know. I got away with it once. I won’t a second time.
“Whatever.” I turn away, start to walk off again. “He’s lucky he lived another three years after the first time he attacked me.”
“Wait, hey—” Emyr snatches my arm, forcing me around to face him. “What are you talking about? What attack?”
“What are you talking about?” I demand, reaching down to shove his hand away from me. “The group of fae who assaulted me. The attack that started the whole goddamn fire.”
A second ticks by and my body begins to grow cold.
Emyr has no idea what I’m talking about.
I guess I’d always thought there would be some investigation into what I’d done. And that, eventually, someone would have said something. That one of the boys would come forward, or one of Asalin’s citizens who had to have seen what really happened that night. I guess in some part of me I always imagined they wouldn’t just think I’d committed arson, and murder, for no reason. That they would at least dig until they found a freaking reason, even if they thought I did it on purpose.
But no. Apparently not.
“The night I left Asalin, that one-horned piece of shit and a group of his friends surrounded me on my way home. They pinned me down—” I swallow. I can’t say any more than that. “That’s when the fire started.”
Reading Emyr might not be as easy for me now as it once was, but I can see the wheels rolling in his head. He steps back, wings snapping shut. “I didn’t know. No one knew.”
I look from him to Tessa. Her face has gone perfectly impassive again.
But I think her bloodstained fingers are shaking.
“What, you thought I started the fire for fun?” I look back at Emyr. “You thought I left your bedroom and went home to kill my parents for no reason?”
Silence.
A broken laugh escapes my mouth. “And you accused me of not knowing you?”
I can feel his stare on my back as I turn, and Briar, Tessa, and I race to the palace.
* * *
The castle is more awake than the village is, but somehow that works in our favor. As witches and fae alike sweep this way and that, trying to put the palace back together again, no one has time to stop and question what we’re doing. No one looks up from their tasks long enough to realize we’re there.
&
nbsp; The dungeon is quiet and damp and dark, the same as it was the day Briar and I spent locked down here.
“Wyatt?”
There are six witches in the holding cell. Jin, Solomon, the older couple I remember from that first night, a girl with a shaved pink head, and a kid who can’t be older than six.
“Holy shit.” Briar curls her fingers around the bars, looking in on them. “Are y’all okay?”
“We’re...fine.” Jin rubs a hand over the back of their neck. “We’re fine. What are you doing here?”
Tessa is already undoing the lock on the cell door, shoving it open. She goes to the little kid first, kneeling down so she can get the cuffs off their tiny wrists. She has to shrug out of her jacket and wrap it around her hands so she can touch them without being burned. “You lot any good with Influencing magic? You’re gonna need one helluva glamour to get past the barriers undetected. Guard are prowling all over the village right now.”
“Why is there a baby in here?” I demand, throwing my arm out at the kid who’s sitting there, little body quivering. Like, hello, am I the only one seeing this shit? “Why was there a baby at the riot?”
“She was in the palace when shit got bad, ended up caught in the crosshairs,” Jin explains when Tessa pops their cuffs off. They tug the kid against their legs. “We have to take her to her parents.”
“No, you don’t.” Tessa shakes her head. “Because you do that, and you risk getting caught, and shit getting worse. You need to leave Asalin. Immediately.”
“Fuck.” Jin reaches up to press their fingers into their temples. “I—I don’t have anything to make sigils with. Crap, I don’t even have my phone—it’s back at my place.”
“Here.” Briar reaches into the front pocket of her overalls and produces a Sharpie and a pocketknife. She grabs Jin’s arm and pops the cap off the marker with her teeth, scribbling out a phone number. “This is my mom’s cell. Get out of Asalin. Get somewhere where you can borrow a phone, and give her a call. She’s got a whole network of people, all over the country. They’ll help you get somewhere safe.”
“Humans?” The older woman—I think I remember her name being Miranda—demands, shaking her head. “What are we supposed to say?”
“Tell her I sent you. Tell her you’re family. That’s all she needs to know. And take this, just in case.” Briar presses the knife and the marker into Jin’s hand, and they immediately start drawing sigils onto their other arm, moving on to the kid when they’ve finished with themself.
Like nearly all of witch magic, these sigils are alien to me. I don’t know what they’re meant to do, but I hope like hell it’s something that’ll get them all out of here.
“Have you seen Roman and Lorena?” Solomon asks, rubbing his wrist, expression soft. “Are they safe?”
“We just left them.” I nod. “They’re scared shitless for you, but they’re fine.”
“God, Roman’s gonna kick my ass when we get back together. He told me to run.”
“Yeah, I know. He won’t stop bitching about it.”
If nothing else, that makes Solomon laugh a little.
“Okay, are you finished? We need to hurry this show along. Now.” Tessa tosses the keys to the cell onto the floor, glancing up the steps in the direction we came. “Wade’s shift is supposed to be over at sunrise. Won’t be long after that before someone comes down here to check on you.”
Jin grabs me, hands pressing into my shoulders. “We have to fix this, Wyatt. This shit is getting so much worse, and I don’t—I don’t know how to fix this from out there. You have to do something.”
My chest hurts. I open and close my mouth. I don’t know what to say.
“Briar.” Jin wheels on her now instead. “Clarke.”
“I know. I’ve got her. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
“You have got to move,” Tessa snarls.
Jin scoops up the little girl. Her cheeks are fat and tearstained, eyes red-rimmed and near-vacant, like she’s disappeared to someplace inside of herself. That’s probably for the best.
“This is on you now, Wyatt.” Jin shakes their head. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” Because I don’t think I’m the hero any of these people need.
Jin presses their fingers to a sigil on their arm. One minute, they’re standing in front of me, and the next, they’re not. One by one, each of the witches does the same thing, disappearing in front of my eyes.
Eventually, it’s just me, Briar, and Tessa, alone in the dungeon. I guess now I know what those sigils are for.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LIKE DAY AND NIGHT
For two days, I don’t get out of bed.
On the first day, someone comes in the morning and stitches together the damage done to the room the night before, waves their magic around and watches as evidence of the fire disappears.
I pull a card. Eight of Swords.
Briar gets up and heads into the village alone to check on Clarke, returns with more of Lavender’s spellbooks, and sets up shop on the balcony, reading silently except for asking if I’m still breathing every half hour.
No one comes to arrest me. That seems like a good sign.
Briar tells me that her mother heard from Jin, another good sign, because it means their group got out and into the human world. I don’t know exactly what story Briar spun for Nadua, but it doesn’t matter. The witches were sent to an activist commune somewhere near Geneva. They’re safe, for now.
Jin’s words keep playing over and over in my head. You have to do something.
All I can seem to do is stay in bed.
I pull the Eight of Swords again the second day.
Trapped.
In the middle of the afternoon, I get a message from Emyr.
ROYAL PAIN
Do you know the names of the other fae?
It takes a minute for me to realize what he’s talking about, and when I do, I desperately regret ever learning how to read.
He wants to know about Unicorn Boy’s accomplices. The ones who helped him get away with what he did.
i don’t. and i probably couldn’t pick them out of a lineup,
either, if that was going to be your next question.
and also i’d really rather not talk about this.
His reply comes almost immediately.
ROYAL PAIN
I’m sorry. We don’t have to discuss anything that makes you uncomfortable.
Well. Good, then. I lock the phone screen and roll onto my back, content to leave it be. For, like, eight seconds. And then I pick my phone back up and type a new message.
you seriously thought i just went, like, full-blown anarchy
and tried to burn down a bunch of houses for no reason?
ROYAL PAIN
Of course not. I’ve told you, I never thought you did anything on purpose. I thought you’d just...lost control. You’d been so angry for so long at that point. I guess I thought you finally snapped. And no one had any answers for me. You were gone. I woke up one morning and you were just gone. I had to make up the story in my head.
I think of Emyr, that Emyr, my Emyr, the one I left behind. The one who existed before this version, this prince caught up in his diplomacy and his political strategies. I think of the boy who wrote poetry and nursed our puppy back to health and giggled at my silly jokes. I think of him waking up one morning to realize I was gone. That after I’d been so shitty to him, so angry and volatile for months leading up to it, I was just...gone. No explanation. No goodbye.
My throat tightens.
i’m sorry.
Because I am, and because it’s true, and because, really, I don’t know what else to say.
ROYAL PAIN
Please don’t apologize.
Briar is back on the balcony today, flipping throug
h a spellbook. She looks up when she hears my phone go off for the fourth time.
“Everything okay?”
“Mmm.”
She nods and goes back to her reading.
i’m just saying. no wonder you turned into such an asshole.
i traumatized you.
It’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t land like one.
Three little dots appear. Then disappear. Then appear again.
ROYAL PAIN
I don’t try to be an asshole.
And it sucks in particular because I know he doesn’t. I’m starting to piece that together.
There are two Emyrs. There is Prince Emyr, His Royal Highness, who barks orders at the Guard and develops technology for the kingdom. Who trains with his swords and studies the history of Faery. The one who dragged me here on threat of a blood oath to procure heirs.
But then there’s my Emyr. The one who reads graphic novels and knits blankets. Who makes ileiva and smokes stolen morghira and tends to the peryton. Who sleeps in a hammock surrounded by plants and dresses like no one else I’ve ever known.
Three years ago, maybe he was just a boy. But then his mate disappeared and he found out his mother was dying and he split in two, because he had to, because he couldn’t be just Emyr anymore.
Now, I want to strangle one version of him and hold hands with the other.
I might want to make out with them both.
I hate this.
everything okay? i haven’t heard anything.
ROYAL PAIN
Nothing to hear. No one knows what happened.
derek must be beside himself.
ROYAL PAIN
Oh, certainly. I’m expecting poison in my wine anytime now.
I think that’s supposed to be a joke, too. It just makes my stomach hurt.
“Hey.” At some point, Briar must have moved from the balcony to the bed because now she’s there, at my side, her fingers wrapping around my elbow. “You okay?”
