I paced to the edge of the clearing and damn near tripped over a raised section of tree root concealing the entrance to a tunnel. Catching my balance, I crouched down and peered inside. Since when were there underground tunnels in Summer?
I lifted my head. Oh. From this angle, the clearing rested on top of a mound not unlike the one that contained the Gatekeeper’s training rooms, so the Erlking’s living quarters must be underground.
If there were other tunnels beneath his territory, perhaps the killer had sneaked up on him via some subterranean route. I stood beside the tunnel entrance, measuring the distance to the throne. If the killer had popped out of the entrance and fired an arrow off immediately, that would have done it, but it didn’t explain how they’d got into the tunnels. The other entrance must be elsewhere in the forest, beyond the reach of the Erlking’s talisman.
I ducked through the entrance and climbed into a narrow passage which opened into a wide hall like the one leading to the Gatekeeper’s training grounds. More tunnels branched off, presumably into the Erlking’s living quarters. In some places, plants and fungi had begun to grow, roots sprouting beneath the earth and moss coating the walls. Summer thrived on life, and even a talisman that killed anything living couldn’t keep it out forever.
The first tunnel halted at a dead end. When I backed out, my gaze snagged on a faint light and a flutter of wings. A pair of eyes shone from a semi-transparent humanoid form with delicate wings like a butterfly’s. The small creature flew backwards with a faint cry of alarm.
I crouched down and beckoned to the sprite. “Hey. It’s only me. Can you lead me to the other entrance? In the forest?”
The sprite flew closer, wings beating like a hummingbird’s, and beckoned me into a tunnel. Its transparent body was barely visible in the gloom, and I hurried after it, using my hands to feel my way between the narrow walls. The roots of dead plants broke away at my touch, and my feet crunched on the decaying remains of insects. From the musty smell of earth and rot, they were newly dead. The talisman’s magic had touched this place recently.
The killer walked out this way.
I quickened my pace. Light streamed in ahead of me, and I came to a halt at an opening that led out into the forest. I reached through and caught a handful of branches. Trees lay across the entrance in a trampled mass, forcing me to crawl out through the spiky remains. I know where this is.
The murderer had deliberately chosen this spot to kill the security beast, so the trampled trees and crushed roots would conceal both the tunnel entrance and the damage done by the staff. Few would know the Erlking’s quarters were underground, but the killer must surely have known it wouldn’t be long before someone figured out how they’d sneaked up on their target.
Maybe they were buying time. So the Sidhe would bicker among themselves instead of guessing the truth.
My feet caught on an arrow, discarded among the branches. Hello, a clue. The arrow was rough, misshapen, and tipped in silver-grey metal. I slipped it into my pocket and threw a glamour on top, silently thanking Darrow for loaning me trousers with actual pockets.
“Mortal?” Lord Kerien’s voice came from the clearing.
She has a name, you know. “Coming.”
I scanned the undergrowth to see if there were any other secret passageways under the earth. The forest near the gates had been undisturbed, suggesting the killer had found some other way to smuggle the staff beyond the boundaries of the Erlking’s territory.
“Gatekeeper,” Lord Kerien said, louder. “Where are you?”
“Here.” I marched back to the clearing. “Keep your hair on. Also, you might want to have a closer look near where that beast was killed. There’s an underground passageway that goes into the Erlking’s home.”
His brows rose. “Underground passages?”
“Look over there.” I jabbed a finger at the mass of fallen trees. “There’s an entrance hidden under those trees. I’m sure that’s how the killer got into the clearing without being detected. It goes a long way to explaining how they got out of the forest without damaging it with the staff, too.”
Lord Kerien’s piercing eyes pinned me to the spot. “You are correct. Now, you must leave before you’re found here. Go. The gate is open.”
Damn. I knew there must be more evidence here in the forest. Who had even known about those tunnels? Except for—
The Seelie Queen. I’d bet there was another tunnel entrance on her territory, too, on the off-chance that she wanted to pay a visit to her husband. She’d lived there for centuries, and even if she’d only taken one lover every few years, that would add up to an awful lot of Sidhe who knew the tunnels existed. I’d been fairly sure she and Lord Daival had had a thing going when they’d been arrested, though he was in jail, too. But that left a lot of other possibilities. And had the Erlking himself had lovers, for that matter? Had he had children, and where had they grown up?
So many questions. No wonder they hadn’t found the heir yet, if they weren’t too preoccupied with the Erlking’s death to start looking. That was out of my area, but I was one step closer to finding the killer. And my next move would be to come back for a look around the Seelie Queen’s home.
9
I’d forgotten my uncomfortable attire until I walked through the Summer gate into the heat of my family’s back garden. As I’d suspected, more than a day or two had passed, judging by the position of the sun, and I was sweating buckets by the time I reached the house.
The instant I unlocked the door, a ball of fluff collided with my legs, nearly bowling me over. “Whoa.”
“Down, Pepper.” Morgan, my older brother, beckoned to the ball of fluff, otherwise known as a cu sidhe or faerie dog. I gave the puppy a stroke on the head, and he gambolled around my feet, yapping excitedly. “He likes you.”
“He likes anyone who pets him.” I crouched down to give the puppy some attention. “I probably smell of dirt, too. Took an unexpected bath in a swamp.”
“What the bloody hell are you wearing?” Ilsa entered the kitchen, a huge textbook balanced on her arm.
“Is that a corset?” Morgan cracked up laughing.
I rose to my feet and gave him the finger. “The faeries stole my clothes. This was all I could get. Besides, I’d rather wear a corset than a cloak that makes me look like the Grim Reaper.”
Aka, the standard necromancer uniform. Morgan and Ilsa were off duty today, so they wore plain T-shirts and jeans. Morgan’s looked a little worse for wear, and his shoes were falling apart at the seams.
“How many pairs of shoes has he chewed through now?” I asked.
“He’s teething,” said Morgan, giving the puppy a stroke.
“Or he’s developed a taste for Converse.” Ilsa’s dark brown curls were tied back and her eyes were shadowed, suggesting she’d been pulling all-nighters in the library since I’d last seen her.
“What does Mum think of you letting him run amok around the house?” I rolled my eyes at my older brother.
“She’s too busy to notice,” Morgan said confidently. “C’mon, give us the gossip on Faerie.”
I extracted the arrow from my pocket and held it out to Ilsa. “Entertain yourself with that. Got it from the scene of the crime.”
Ilsa dropped the textbook, catching it between her fingertips before it hit the floor. “You went back?”
“With permission, don’t worry.” I handed her the arrow. “Be careful. I don’t know if it’s deadly to humans, too.”
I left the room and went upstairs to change into my own clothes. I’d have preferred to take a proper shower, but from the excited barking noises downstairs, the puppy was as fascinated by the arrow as Ilsa was.
Sure enough, when I came down to the living room, I found Ilsa examining the arrow, while Morgan restrained the puppy from jumping at her. At only a few months old, he was already up to my knee, and cu sidhe could grow to the size of a small car after a year or two.
I flung myself on the sofa. “What�
��re you two doing here, anyway? Did you know I was coming home today?”
“Lucky guess,” said Ilsa. “Mum’s into one of her projects again and she wanted me to help out.”
“So she dragged me along as well, since River made excuses,” said Morgan.
“He wasn’t making excuses,” said Ilsa. “He’s busy at the necromancer guild.”
“I’m surprised his dad hasn’t got in touch from the Court,” I commented. “How’s he taking the news?”
As a half-faerie who’d chosen the human realm over Faerie, Ilsa’s boyfriend River would be a little behind on Court gossip, but I’d bet even the half-bloods in the mortal realm with no links to Faerie knew of the Erlking’s passing by now.
“He’s worried, of course,” said Ilsa. “How can he not be? That’s Mum’s new project, by the way.”
Ilsa jerked her head towards the coffee table, where a large spread of paper covered all the available space, featuring the sprawling lines of a family tree. Not our family tree, but the Erlking’s. “She’s trying to figure out who the heir is?”
It must have taken hours to sift through history books spanning thousands of years and pull out all those names, but Mum had nothing but time on her hands now.
“Don’t ask me why.” Ilsa turned the arrow over in her hands. “It gives her something to do. I can’t figure out where this arrow came from, by the way. It isn’t marked.”
“Pretty sure the killer wouldn’t have signed it,” said Morgan.
“That’s not what she meant.” I looked closer at the arrow, which was shorter at one end and unevenly carved. “It looks manmade. Not fae.”
“It’s dipped in iron poison, all right,” Ilsa said. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s magical at all.”
“What is that?” Mum stood in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed and her a pen tucked behind her ear. “Please tell me you didn’t get that from the crime scene.”
“Lord Kerien invited me to look around,” I explained. “He thinks the Sidhe might be missing a clue only a human could spot. I found this arrow left behind.”
“Did anyone see you take it?” Her voice was quiet yet sharp as a whip, and when she used that tone, part of me wanted to curl up in a ball, remembering the time she’d temporarily turned me into a tree to startle me into stopping a particularly extensive temper tantrum when I was a toddler. Unconventional parenting, maybe, but it’d worked.
“No,” I said. “The only other person who knew Lord Kerien and I met today was Darrow, my mentor.”
“Is this Darrow person trustworthy?”
“Are any of the Sidhe?” He’d thrown me around during training, let Aila try to drown me in a swamp, and then given me some clothes out of the apparent goodness of his heart. Who the hell knew? “I did make a friend, Coral. She’s half-selkie.”
“Oh?” She arched a brow. “Is she a spy for the Sea Queen?”
“A spy?” Damn. I hadn’t even thought of that, but it was a logical reason for a non-Summer faerie to be in the Court. “I don’t know.”
It was a risky move if she was. On the other hand, what better place to gather intel than the place where the Sidhe trained their human ambassadors? Nobody would question the presence of someone not from the Courts if they’d been told to hire people who fit that criteria. And it’d be just my luck if the one friend I’d made turned out to be a spy for another Court.
“Never mind her,” said Mum. “Why did Lord Kerien let you look at the crime scene? He was disdainful at best towards humans when I worked with him as an ambassador.”
“He’s not anymore,” I said. “I mean, he was promoted from being ambassador to being one of the Erlking’s hand-picked personal advisors. The Erlking fired all his staff after the Seelie Queen was jailed.”
“That makes sense,” Ilsa put in. “Hazel’s impartial. Plus she’s actually been there.”
“Which is why we were accused to begin with,” I reminded her. “Anyway, he confirmed that the killer stole a security talisman to get into the Erlking’s place, and then shot his personal troll guard dead. I also found some tunnels underneath his territory, which answers the question as to how the killer sneaked up on the Erlking and smuggled the talisman out. The surrounding forest wasn’t damaged at all.”
Mum’s brows shot up. “Did you tell the Sidhe?”
“I told Lord Kerien. It’s up to him if he wants to pass it on to his fellow Sidhe or not,” I said. “Not sure what it all means. Perhaps the killer wanted to avoid leaving an obvious trail, so they used the tunnels to avoid destroying the entire forest on the way out.”
“Why would they care if they killed the forest on the way out?” Morgan wanted to know. “If they were that fussed about killing things, they wouldn’t have shot the Erlking.”
“Thanks for that contribution, Morgan,” said Ilsa. “Perhaps they wanted to make sure they didn’t accidentally hit one of their allies.”
“Which backs up the theory that there was more than one person involved,” I added. “I doubt they could control the talisman right off, either. Imagine carrying that thing around and vaporising any living thing within range? There’d be no do-overs if they killed someone without meaning to.”
“The real question is whether they claimed it,” Mum said. “If they did, it’ll be that much harder to get it back.”
My throat went dry. If you tried to win over a talisman, you either claimed its magic or died. Nothing in between. That particular talisman was dangerous whether it had a wielder or not, but if another person took that insidious magic into themselves, they’d become its official owner, as powerful as the Erlking himself.
“We can’t know for sure if they did,” said Ilsa. “The killer must have been confident the arrow would reach its mark before the talisman’s magic got within range. Really, it was a smart choice of weapon. The arrow is already dead and isn’t magical at all.”
“Smart?” Morgan said. “Hardly. Anyone can pick up an arrow like that at the market.”
“The bow they used might have been enchanted, though.” My hands twisted together. “If it was faerie-made, it must have been. And this scheme was well-planned enough that they must have at least seen a map of the territory to know which areas to avoid.”
That, or they had personal experience with it.
Mum’s grim expression told me she’d guessed my thoughts. “How many people set foot in the Erlking’s territory?”
“Aside from his advisors?” I said. “Lord Kerien said the Seelie Queen used to bring her lovers through the gate herself. They’d have known how to get back in, and probably how to navigate the tunnels too. She might have told anyone else before she was jailed. Even Lord Kerien admitted that.”
“I’m glad they’re considering the possibility,” said Mum. “I was starting to worry they’d let their focus on outsiders make them forget the enemies within their own Court.”
“He still thinks a human or half-faerie did it,” I added. “I’m not so sure on that one, but as long as we’re not accused again, I’ll take it.”
“Have you not considered summoning up the Erlking’s ghost and asking who shot him?” Morgan said.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Ilsa. “If you walk into the Court and announce that you raise the dead for a living, the Sidhe will turn you into an antelope. Besides, I nearly ripped a hole in the universe the last time I tried using necromancy in Faerie.”
“Yeah, we want to avoid that,” I said. “For all we know, he’d come back as a wraith.”
Darrow’s mention of the incident at Lord Niall’s party was a reminder that to most Sidhe, their only experience of the dead were the dark spirits from the realm of the outcasts.
“You haven’t seen any wraiths, have you?” Ilsa said. “Because… well. I’m pretty sure even the Sidhe know where the murderer must be hiding.”
I know. There was no way the Sidhe, even divided and bickering, wouldn’t have noticed the talisman’s presence on their territo
ry by now, and even Winter wasn’t immune to its destructive power. I’d heard no word of it in the mortal realm yet, which left one place… the Grey Vale.
“No, I haven’t, but the murderer doesn’t need to set a wraith loose in the Court to spark panic. That talisman is more than enough.”
Most spirits were harmless, and since the Erlking had died in the Court, he’d have moved on without a fuss. Wraiths, on the other hand, formed when Sidhe died in a place even death didn’t dare to touch. A fitting place for a talisman which turned the living to dust.
“You have a message from your father, by the way,” said Mum, handing me my phone. “Wanting to know how your training is going. I told him you were going to take some tests to become Gatekeeper.”
“Oh.” As a human with zero connections to Faerie, Dad knew the bare minimum without the gory details. It was easier that way. He didn’t need to know about murdered monarchs or talismans or crime scenes. I typed a reply—training was fine—and hit send.
“Is everything going fine?” Mum enquired.
I put the phone down. “Pretty sure my mentor’s trying to kill me, but it could be worse.”
“Not in a literal sense, right?” said Ilsa.
“I hope not.” Maybe I shouldn’t tempt fate. “I still don’t know why the Erlking’s note insisted I didn’t show it to him. Have you figured out that riddle yet?”
“I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” Ilsa said. “One breathes without life, and one lives without breath. I guess the first one might refer to some kind of spirit.”
“Or a zombie,” said Morgan.
“Zombies don’t breathe,” said Ilsa. “And don’t exist in Faerie, either.”
“And the other lives without breath,” I said. “What about the arrow? It used to be alive, once, technically.”
“It’s a piece of wood covered in poison, Hazel,” said Morgan. “Maybe the Erlking was trolling you from beyond the grave.”
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 9
