The doors at the other end were held open and guards marched in, taking their place, in two perfectly straight lines. The courtiers stopped chattering and a silence slid into every available space, like water, cold and soft and dangerous.
Creature after creature was led into the hall and chained to the wall. Iron touched fairy flesh and the smell of burning mingled with wilting lily. Some walked proudly, some were dragged, wailing. Some were beautiful, some were bizarre; all were bruised or cut or dead-eyed. I shivered, tried to look away, couldn’t. He was collecting them like wooden masks or silver beads.
There was a tall, thin woman with birch branches in her hair; a man bleeding what looked like sap; a woman who was half girl, half wren; a white dog with red ears on a choke chain; a mermaid with a peeling fish tail; and Winifreda with her torn wings.
Strahan clucked his tongue. “This won’t do,” he said blandly. “They’re tattered and hardly impressive enough to be enjoyed as entertainment at the ball. I’m known for my collection, after all. Heal them, clean them up, and for God’s sake, do something about that fish smell.”
Several of the guards nearest to us bowed in unison. A young man began to move through the crowd, setting the corseted courtiers to whispering. Strahan lifted his head like a hunter testing the air before the chase.
“Ah, Eldric,” he said, satisfied. “Home at last.”
Eldric was about my age, maybe a couple of years older, with a lean and handsome face. He looked human, but with a kind of fierce dignity that was something else entirely. His scuffed boots and ratty jeans didn’t fit in at all. In fact, Strahan sniffed once. “You stink of them.”
Eldric shrugged. “You were the one who sent me up there.” He saw me and stilled, except for the flaring of his eyes, like coal catching fire. “Who’s she, then?”
“Who do you think?” Strahan said with a hint of warning and something I couldn’t recognize. The Grey Ladies drifted over, stroked Eldric’s cheek, swooned and sighed. He ignored them. I had to bite my teeth down to keep them from chattering together. The Grey Ladies weren’t any less creepy when they were flirting.
I really didn’t recognize my life anymore and I’d been here less than a full day.
“She doesn’t look like much,” Eldric said. One of the guards handed him a cup, which he drained and handed back. “Thank you, Malik.” When he leaned over me, I smelled honey and wine. There was something not quite tame about him, like a wild dog who might as easily eat from your hand as bite it right off.
“Back off.” It would have sounded more impressive if my voice hadn’t given out into a pathetic little croak. He smiled insolently. I wanted to punch him.
“She reminds me of that pet ferret I had.” He glanced at Strahan. “Before you drowned it.”
Strahan didn’t look particularly penitent, only nodded at the guards to start leading the captives out. Eldric watched dispassionately, though I did see his jaw clenching.
“Anything?” Strahan asked, so nonchalantly I knew it must be important.
Eldric shrugged again. Everyone else winced, stepped back a little as if they wanted to be unobtrusive. The air crackled. “They’re like cattle, huddling together. I’ll never understand it.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Eldric pushed his long hair off his face where it kept tangling, lifted by the Grey Ladies’ adoring breaths. “Nothing. This one”—he barely glanced at me—“hasn’t even been missed yet.”
“And Antonia?”
“No trail and none of our scouts have heard anything. Even the Seelie courts aren’t sure where she’s at.”
That made me feel better for my aunt even though white lines of suppressed fury tightened Strahan’s mouth. “So near Samhain. She should be here by now.”
That did not make me feel better.
“And the Richelieu?”
“Not talking. Do they ever?”
“Clearly, you’re not being persuasive enough.” He smoothed the lace at his cuffs. “You’ll be ready.” It wasn’t a question.
Eldric bowed, but it was all cockiness and condescension.
“Yes, Father.”
• • •
When I was taken back to my room, every available surface was covered in platters of food and jugs of cider, mead, and peach nectar. There was an entire roasted chicken, herb-encrusted olives, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, warm bread, jars of blackberry jam, stewed apples, ice cream that didn’t melt, cherries floating in some kind of chocolate cream, rice-stuffed grape leaves, spinach pies, chocolate muffins, croissants, and every color of jelly bean imaginable.
My stomach growled so loudly the guard smirked before locking the silver door and leaving the other one open. The smell of so much food was making me want to stuff my face. My mouth felt dry and tasted like an old sock. Nothing a huge spoonful of raspberry coulis wouldn’t fix.
And yet Jo had been really adamant that I not eat or drink anything. At all. Which was totally unfair. I was hungry.
And being hungry made me cranky. I kicked at the heavy leg of the four-poster bed and swore. And kicked it again. Looked at the blueberry turnovers. Kicked. Sniffed the vegetable dumplings. Swore. Drooled over a tureen of cucumber soup. Kicked some more.
My toes hurt and I was still hungry.
“Stupid Fae feast,” I grumbled, stomping away from the food. “In this stupid Fae hill.”
The hallway was clear of guards for the first time since I’d gotten here. I could see the door across the way, also barred, and a few more if I turned my head so that it felt like it was going to pop right off my shoulders.
“Hey,” I whisper-yelled. “Anyone?” There was silence, but I caught the faint scrape of movement in the room directly across mine. “Hello?”
First an eye, then half a bony shoulder peeked out. He was sitting on the ground and looked thin enough that a sneeze would break him in half.
“Are you hungry?”
He nodded. He was clearly Fae, so I didn’t think a hunk of cheese was going to trap him here. Mmmm, cheese. Focus, Eloise Hart.
“I haven’t eaten in days,” he said, his voice rusty, as if he hadn’t spoken in that long as well.
“You don’t have food? It’s like a banquet here.”
“Food is a chain to mortals in this place,” he said.
“Don’t remind me.”
“And summer has blighted our crops so that food is scarce. Strahan saves the best for himself.”
“Oh.” I took a few soft buns filled with whipped cream and strawberries and rolled them across the floor so they bumped into the bars. He was careful not to touch the iron when he reached out to grab them. He stuffed the food in his mouth, not stopping to chew. There was a smear of whipped cream and strawberry sauce on my thumb. I wiped it on the rug, rubbing so hard my skin chafed.
“What’s your name?”
He shook his head, chewed faster. “I can’t say, not even to you.” His hair was long and braided, the color of honey. Antlers curved out of the braids. One of them was broken, hanging crookedly. It looked really painful.
“Why not?”
“Names have power.”
“Um, okay.” I thought about Winifreda and how she’d told me her name. She’d called it her speaking-name. “What about your speaking-name?”
“Nicodemus.”
Ha, I’d figured something out. Okay, it was a small thing and got me no closer to getting home, but still. “I’m Eloise.”
“I know.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked, trying to find a comfortable way to sit in a bustle and corset.
He swallowed, peered down the hall nervously. “Three months or so. His bogey-beasts caught me in the fens. I ought to have been more careful, but the harp was singing to me.”
“Oh. I don’t really know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.”
He shook his head. “They’ve been looking for you, for the Hart girl, for a week now. We were hoping they
wouldn’t find you.”
I made a face. “I was kind of hoping that too.” I struggled to ignore the smell of baked apples with cinnamon. “Why did they capture you?”
“I’ve a way with music,” he said. “I was poet-born and I can make the kind of songs Fae like best. I suspect he wants me to play at the ball.”
“What is this ball?” If I was kidnapped to go to the Fae equivalent of a high school dance I was so going to kick some ass. “What does it have to do with my aunt? Or me for that matter?”
“It’s Samhain,” he said as if that explained anything.
“Which is?”
He blinked at me. “Do you not have any schooling?”
I got the impression that I was being called stupid by a violet-eyed fairy poet who played the harp in a swamp. And come to think of it, Lucas had made a comment like that.
“I go to school.” I scowled. “And at least I know better than to call girls dumb.”
His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon.”
“So what’s Samhain then? Isn’t that some sort of old Celtic legend thing? On Halloween?” Call me dumb, will you.
“Aye, it’s the last day of summer.”
“Okay.” I was thinking really hard, trying to connect the dots before my intelligence was insulted again. “And Strahan wants to get my aunt before Halloween? Or Samhain, whatever. Why? What happens then?” I remembered something about crowns. “My aunt takes over?” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense, she’s just Aunt Antonia. She’s not some Fae queen. I think we’d have noticed.”
“I wrote a song once about the lovely Antonia.” His expression became faraway and dreamy. I’d seen my mom with the same look on her face when she was caught in the middle of a painting. I missed her even more than grilled cheese sandwiches and root beer. “She loved him, you know.”
“Strahan? Ew.”
He shrugged. “He never lacks female companionship.”
I thought of the Grey Ladies and their frigid melancholy, their hunger and pearl-like teeth. “Again, ew.” If Strahan had been her first boyfriend, no wonder Antonia took off the way she did.
Every spring.
And came back every autumn.
Damn.
“Are you seriously telling me my aunt is a Fae queen?”
“Of course not, she’s as mortal as you are. But she wears the crown, which she stole from Strahan, who would wear it all the year long. It’s because of her and the Richelieu that the Seelie courts can still roam free. And because of her, I suppose, that we’re here. Every Samhain, it’s the same.”
I shivered. “What does Seelie mean? I heard Strahan use that word earlier.”
“It roughly translates to ‘blessed.’” He smiled faintly, looking homesick. “We keep to our own revels. But the Unseelie love only power in both your world and mine. They live for the hunt, and the kill. They want our courts, as well as their own.”
“And if I don’t want to belong to either?”
“You may not have a choice.”
• • •
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, Eldric was shaking me awake and scowling. “Get up.”
I woke suddenly, bolting upright and swinging my fist at the same time. He simply leaned back, avoiding my wild punch. “Someone should teach you how to do that properly.”
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered. My head felt bleary, as if I’d been sleeping too deeply. I couldn’t figure out why I was breathing so lightly until I looked down and realized I was still wearing the corset under my dress. It was quite pretty for an instrument of torture, covered in little pink ribbons and bows.
“Come on,” Eldric said, like I was a particularly slow child.
“What?” I blinked up at him. I didn’t know how long I’d been staring at my waist. “Why? And where?”
He rolled his eyes, tugged me out of the warm bed. “Just come on. Are you always so difficult?”
“You try being kidnapped by a bunch of storybook weirdos.”
“Please, the weirdos are up top.”
I just snorted. He yanked on my hand, dragging me until I was walking fast enough for his liking. He probably wasn’t taking me somewhere to murder me horribly.
Probably.
The hallway was deserted, lit only with a few oil lamps. The lanterns hanging from the roots were dusty. All the doors were shut and the ground was cold under my bare feet. There wasn’t a single window or corridor, no chance of escape. Eldric kept looking over his shoulder, which made me even more nervous than I already was, because whatever he had to be anxious about couldn’t bode well for me.
He ducked under an arch like the ones in medieval cathedrals and into a room that quite simply took my breath away. The ceiling-roots were painted silver and hung with crystal and glass lamps. The walls were stone and the floor had white pebbles in narrow paths leading to a fountain in the center with a circle of benches surrounding it. Stone deer and hounds bent their heads to drink.
There were roses everywhere, from tiny buds to fat ripe blossoms, in every shade of cream and pink and red and purple. They climbed trellises, low crumbling garden walls, and up into the silver roots. I turned on my heel to drink it all in.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. It was the most calm I’d felt in days. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It was your aunt’s favorite room.”
“But she hates roses.” She always said they were typical, fake.
He shrugged, but I could tell he was interested.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“I want to know more about Antonia.”
“Ask your father.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Why would I tell you anything?” I trailed my hand through the fountain’s water and even though it was full of moss and silver glitter, I seriously considered taking a mouthful. I wondered if that would count as drinking. My throat felt like sandpaper. “Your dad hates her. You probably do too.”
“I’ve never even met her.” He was pacing, his boots scattering the pebbles. I envied the fact that he was in comfortable jeans while I had to perch delicately in burgundy silk.
“You want her crown or whatever, right?”
“I just want to know what she’s like. Every year it’s the same thing, and every year I get sent off on some made-up errand. Not this year.”
I raised my eyebrows. And I thought I had parental issues. My dad might live halfway around the world and barely remember he even had a daughter, but at least he never made my voice do that weird squeaky, angry thing. Eldric clearly hated Strahan as much as he might love him. I guess we had something in common, after all.
“Antonia’s smart,” I said. “And funny. She eats caramels by the ton, and she’s going to kick your father’s ass.”
He snorted. “We’ll see.”
“She’s strong and she’s loyal and . . . haunted,” I said, realizing it. “I guess I never really got that before now. You guys changed her, stole her life.” Bastards.
“You sound like Malik.”
I recognized the name. It was one of the guards, the one who’d given him the honey wine earlier. He sounded like the one who might not want to drink Antonia’s blood as a nightcap. I’d have to try and get closer to him, see if he might help me.
“He would never betray me,” Eldric said. I blinked. “Your every thought is written on your face,” he explained.
“Crap,” I muttered. I’d really have to work on that. “Is he your bodyguard or something?”
“Yes. He’s also my taster.”
“Your what?”
“He’s in charge of my food and drink.” He elaborated when I just looked at him blankly. “To make sure nothing is poisoned.”
I shivered. “This place sucks,” I muttered. I touched the stone deer, rubbed its smooth ear and could have sworn it was warm under my hand. I remembered the stag in the park. “I don’t understand any of this.”
He nearly sm
iled. “That’s the first step.”
“Eldric.” I said it softly. “Will you help me get out of here? Please?”
He jerked a hand through his hair, then glared at me so fiercely I swallowed. “Don’t make the mistake of trusting me, Eloise. I’m not your friend.”
• • •
When I got back to my room, Nicodemus was singing softly. It was such a melancholy sound that it made my eyes burn. There was another sound underneath, a broken sort of moaning from the room next to his.
“What is that?” I asked, pressing against the silver bars. I’d half hoped Eldric would forget to lock it accidentally on purpose. No such luck.
“It’s a ceasg,” he explained, which wasn’t an explanation at all.
“A who-what?”
“A mermaid, I think you’d call her. She answers to Cala.”
“Is she okay?” It was clear by the sound that she wasn’t. It was just as clear that Nicodemus had been singing to soothe her. It made me like him even more.
“She needs water. The dry causes her pain.”
“Oh.” I might not be able to do much about my own predicament right now, but that was something I could at least fix. “Hold on.”
I took the jug of water and a basket of figs for Nicodemus and slid them between the bars, pushing them across the floor. He stretched as far as he could to get them, the iron singeing his broken antler. It was oozing sap, green and inflamed. I winced for him even though he didn’t blink. The smell of burned hair tingled in my nostrils.
If I tilted my head just so, I could just barely see a barred window between his door and Cala’s. I couldn’t see her at all, but I remembered her from the procession in the Hall. Her hair was all shades of blue and green and silver. She was quiet now.
Nicodemus smiled his sad, gentle smile. “That was kind of you.” He ate one of the figs. Then he reached up and snapped off the broken antler, his face going white with pain.
“What are you doing!” Blood and sap ran into his hair. He tossed the broken antler at me.
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