Thorny vines shot from his hands into the tree I hung from like bladed whips. I dropped to a lower branch to avoid them, took aim, and pushed all the magic I had into the tree directly behind him.
The tree’s roots shot out of the earth beneath Lord Daival’s feet. He leapt back, closer to my tree, and I let go and dropped onto him. My knees clashed with his armoured shoulders, my knife sinking through his armour into the nearest bit of flesh I could find. Warm blood gushed over my hands. I’d hit his arm, not his neck, but it did the job. The thorns began to flicker and fade out, deprived of the magic that fed their power.
I yanked the knife out of his arm in a gush of blood, then I drove it towards his heart. The blade bounced off his armour, and he slid out from underneath me, flipping me onto my back. He bared his teeth in a snarl. “You will be your own ending, Gatekeeper.”
“Try again when you aren’t bleeding to death.” I tried to stab him from underneath, but his heavy armour weighed me down.
“Tell me,” he snarled. “How did you trick the staff into giving you its power? What deceit did you use?”
“I didn’t trick it.” I gave another shove, feeling his blood soak into my clothes. “I claimed it as my own, and if you strike me dead, its magic will infect and destroy you.”
“You are not the talisman’s master, mortal,” he said. “Even the Sidhe know we are slaves to their magic, for the alternative is having no power at all. If it is truly yours, then you will feel its pull even now, a constant urge to feel its magic slide through your very being and offer you everything you’ll ever need.”
“You sound like you’re the one who’s enslaved, not me.” My gaze darted to the thorny knife in his hand. Talismans. Might the power he’d stolen have come from the gods, too?
“If any traces of your talisman’s magic remain within you, I could remove them now, with the right words,” he said. “Yes, don’t think I’m unaware that your sister has the power of an Ancient, and she used an Invocation to free you of the talisman’s magic so you could continue to deceive the Courts about its location.”
“Do you want a medal?” Whether it was my rebellious streak, the memory of my troublemaking grandmother, or just pure Lynn stubbornness, I didn’t know, but I would not bend my head and let an inanimate object make decisions for me. My Gatekeeper’s magic might not be as strong, but it was eternal.
And there always had to be a Gatekeeper.
I tapped into my circlet’s magic, drawing on every ounce of power I could conjure. The glow brightened, and Lord Daival’s eyes squinted against the dazzling light.
That was all the distraction I needed. I rolled to the side, locking my legs around his and sending him crashing onto his back. The Gatekeeper’s magic broke free from my hands and directed the tree roots to wrap around Lord Daival from behind. Thorns burst from his hands, but the effects of the iron had begun to kick in. His face greyed, the green light in his eyes dimming, his body weakening along with his magic. Blood soaked his arm, and his feral expression promised pain.
“You will die, Hazel,” he said. “You can’t fight that talisman’s magic, no more than you can fight a rising tide or a setting sun on your mortal plain. The power will consume you, along with your Gatekeeper’s magic, and you will wish for death’s touch for the remainder of your existence.”
“That’s a pretty speech.” I’d dropped my knife somewhere in the undergrowth, but I had plenty to spare. A blade slid into my hand, and I pointed it at his throat. “Where do you want me to stick this one?”
The sound of hooves beating on the path rang through the trees. Then came a shout, followed by more hoofbeats, and two armoured Sidhe rode into view. Whether they were Lord Niall’s people or not, I didn’t know, but I had no patience for their bullshit.
“I found your escaped criminal.” I gestured with my knife. “You’re welcome.”
Lord Daival spat out a curse. “My lady will make you pay for this. The Courts will collapse from within as the Sidhe destroy one another. This, I promise you.”
“If anything, I’m doing you a favour by handing you over to them rather than finishing you off myself.,” I said to him. “As luck would have it, there’s a mass execution scheduled for this morning. Maybe the Sidhe will be nice enough to give you an invitation, too.”
The Sidhe drew their horses to a halt in front of me.
“It’s him!” one of them said, pointing to Lord Daival’s silver head pinned beneath the web of tree roots.
“Watch out for those thorns,” I warned. “If you want me to stick another iron knife in him, I’d be more than happy to. And please put his talismans somewhere he can’t steal them back this time.”
“You have no right to give us orders,” said a fox-eared female Sidhe with auburn hair. “You broke the law when you fled to escape justice and asked your fellow half-Sidhe to turn on Summer’s soldiers.”
Crap. I hope they didn’t arrest Darrow. He’d been a royal pain in my arse yesterday, but he’d stepped in to defend me at the risk of his own freedom when he didn’t even belong to my Court.
“I came here to look for Lord Raivan, because Lord Niall and his band of merry men were set on stringing me up and using me for target practise,” I said. “My fellow half-Sidhe were defending me, that’s all. You must know that killing or arresting me will only work in the enemy’s favour.”
“My Lord, she claims to have been looking for you,” the fox-eared Sidhe called over her shoulder.
Lord Raivan strode into view. I never thought I’d be so glad to see his grumpy face again. “Hazel Lynn, what have you done?”
“I caught Lord Daival,” I told him. “I completed my mission. That ought to cancel out my transgressions, right?”
He gave me a look tinged with frost. “Come with me, Gatekeeper.”
18
The Sidhe wouldn’t even let me retrieve my weapons from the bushes. Instead, Lord Raivan marched me back to the ambassador’s palace, while his fellow Sidhe hauled the limp and bleeding Lord Daival off to jail. The one upside was that he continued to call me ‘Gatekeeper’. Maybe not all the Sidhe thought I deserved to lose my title after all.
“Lord Raivan,” I said when we reached the doors to the palace. “I would like to see Lord Daival taken into the jail in person. Feel free to do whatever you like with me afterwards, but you might have gathered by now that I don’t have all that much faith in your ability to keep hold of your prisoners.”
Lord Raivan merely gave me a prod in the spine, urging me towards the palace doors. My hands itched to punch him in the nose, but the sight of Lady Aiten inside the hall stopped me in my tracks. About damned time.
Across the hall, Coral gave me an encouraging smile. I nodded back at her and approached Lady Aiten.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “Lord Niall brought a mob to kill me. He’s gone way off the rails.”
“The Gatekeeper betrayed us all,” said the fox-eared female Sidhe, slinking behind me into the hall. “Lord Raivan thinks we should grant her leniency because she caught that criminal, but her actions still cost lives.”
“Yes,” said Lady Aiten. “They did.”
My heart gave a sickening dive. After I’d pissed her off yesterday, I could expect no mercy from her, and if she wanted, she could seal my fate and cast me out, leaving everyone to suffer the consequences.
“You gave me the task of catching Lord Daival,” I reminded her. “You didn’t give me any instructions on how to go about doing that, and I had the Court’s safety in mind when I decided not to share his threats to murder the potential heirs with every Sidhe in Summer. You yourself were the first to agree that the rest of the Court shouldn’t know all the details of his escape. Also, Lord Raivan supported my plan to arrange a revel at Lord Niall’s. If I’m to blame, then so are the two of you.”
“Is that true?” asked the fox-eared Sidhe, addressing Lady Aiten. “Did you know he planned to target the heir?”
“I suspected,” she said.
“Hazel is… correct, in assuming that certain members of Court would react hastily to that knowledge becoming widespread. We have no evidence the true heir, whoever they are, is his intended target.”
“Is it true or isn’t it?” she demanded. “He cannot lie, can he? If he said he planned to murder the Erlking’s successor then we will take him at his word.”
“He promised to murder the potential heirs,” I corrected. “But he just told me the whole thing was a bluff. He doesn’t know who the heir is, and he only made that threat because he wanted to cause everyone to panic. Ask him if you don’t believe me. He might start talking now you’ve cornered him.”
“I will speak with Lord Daival to verify his words myself,” said Lady Aiten. “If it’s true, then as far as we know, the true heir has not been harmed.”
The sprite has, though. “Can I talk to you alone first?”
“No,” she said bluntly. “I must speak with Lord Daival at once. In the meantime, you will remain here in isolation for your own safety, until our newest prisoner has been dealt with.”
“I don’t think so.” I stepped forward, but Lord Raivan barred my path.
“You will stay here, Gatekeeper.” He indicated the tapestried room. “Until the executions begin.”
I hope Lord Daival is among them. If he didn’t perish from iron poisoning before then. “Fine, whatever. Don’t get your tail in a twist.”
Coral slipped into the room to join me. “They shouldn’t be punishing you for helping them.”
“Nah, it’s probably to stop Lord Niall coming into the palace and stabbing me before Lady Aiten gets back,” I said. “But I wanted to see Lord Daival jailed myself. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to try to wriggle away at the last second.”
“I know.” Coral peered through the gap in the door, noting two stony-faced Sidhe had moved to stand on guard. “That blood isn’t yours, is it?”
I glanced down at my blood-streaked shirt. “It’s Lord Daival’s. I stuck an iron knife in him. Missed anything vital, but the Sidhe ought to finish him off once they’d verified that his threats were utter bullshit.”
Coral leaned against the wall next to me. “But he did trick the Sidhe into slaughtering their own, didn’t he? Might one of them have been the heir?”
“It’s anyone’s guess at this point.” Guilt lanced through me, but the poor sprite had been doomed the instant Lord Daival had found him. I’d never have reached him in time. “Considering how often I’ve fucked up lately, maybe losing my Gatekeeper status would be the best-case scenario, though Summer doesn’t need to bring down even more bad luck on their Court.”
I sank into a sitting position on the polished floor, wishing the Sidhe had locked me in a room with a sink so I could wash Lord Daival’s blood off me.
Coral sat next to me. “They can’t fire you, can they?”
“Nope.” My hands folded in my lap, marked with cuts from Lord Daival’s thorns. “My siblings are too old to take my place and my cousin Holly is the only survivor on the Winter Gatekeeper’s side of the family. If I have kids, one of them will be chosen as the next Summer Gatekeeper, and the whole cycle will repeat.”
She swore under her breath. “They can force your kids into this?”
“If you’re wondering how Mum turned out the way she did… that’s how.” I heaved a sigh. “Every Gatekeeper has tried to find a way to undo the curse. Even the Sidhe don’t know how it started. Most of the ones who were around in the early days when my ancestor was first bound either didn’t witness the curse being cast or don’t remember it.”
She lifted her head. “Your ancestor?”
“Thomas Lynn.” I studied my blood-encrusted fingernails. “He made a promise to come to the Sidhe’s aid whenever they needed him, and they took him at his word. There’s one Gatekeeper in each Court because he had twin daughters. One went to Summer…”
“And the other went to Winter,” she said. “What does the Winter Gatekeeper think about all this?”
“You saw her, at the party. Holly Lynn.” I raised my head. “None of us knows what happens if the last Gatekeeper dies. If I die, in other words. The curse might pick out another human, or it might backfire on the whole Court. I’ve survived up until now because nobody wants to risk breaking a centuries-old curse, but Lord Niall and his pals seem to have stopped giving a damn.”
“Oh.” She went quiet for a moment. “So the Sidhe are obligated to keep you in their good graces to protect themselves from the potential effects of breaking the vow?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “Even the Seelie Queen fears it. That’s why she wants me on her team. And Lord Daival promised both Holly and me a place at his side when his people invited us to that party. Not sure whether he planned to betray one or both of us, to be honest.”
Raised voices came from outside the room. I rose to my feet and trod to the door to eavesdrop. “Dammit. Lord Niall. Hasn’t he got another revel to plan?”
“I’ll go and distract him.” Coral inched the doors open and walked through. “Oh… hey, Darrow.”
“Hazel.” Darrow stood in the doorway. “May I come in?”
“You know I’m a prisoner, right?” I had no idea what to say to him, but with Lord Niall in the hall, leaving the door open was a bad idea. “All right, but the master of revels is still out for my blood.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t try anything,” said Coral.
“He seems to have calmed down somewhat.” Darrow let Coral pass him then stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
“You mean he’s not trying to stick a knife in me,” I said. “Thanks for helping distract him earlier.”
“Of course,” he said. “You told me not to follow you, so I did the next best thing.”
Well, this is awkward. He’d taken my shock at his keeping an eye on the gate to my house as a rejection, and who could blame him? Silence spread between us, thick as mud.
“What I said earlier,” I began, “I meant ‘don’t come to my family’s property while I’m sleeping or otherwise absent’. Helping me fight egotistical thieving Sidhe who want to destroy the Court is fine. Encouraged, even.”
He raised a brow. “I thought you wanted to take out Lord Daival alone, you said.”
“I wouldn’t have minded if you’d helped.”
Not when we were in Faerie, away from the staff. You can’t fight that talisman’s magic, no more than you can fight a rising tide or a setting sun on your mortal plain. The power will consume you, along with your Gatekeeper’s magic… what total bollocks. What did Lord Daival know? He’d never held its magic in his grasp.
Oh, who was I kidding? Even when the talisman had helped me, it’d always had its own agenda, and at the moment, my staying alive served its own purpose. Given how it’d exposed itself to Lord Daival, it wanted the Courts to know someone had claimed its power, and with every passing moment, the talisman wore down the Inner Garden’s defences with no trustworthy individual to take it off my hands.
Darrow cleared his throat. “I should tell you… I know Lord Daival took the Erlking’s sprite captive in order to learn who the heir to the Summer Court is.”
My heart missed a beat. “You do?”
“I heard Lord Raivan and Lady Aiten talking,” he said. “I understand why you didn’t share that information publicly, considering how the Sidhe reacted when Lord Daival told them.”
“Then I guess you know Lord Daival killed the sprite before he could give anything away.” I looked down at the swirling patterns on the carpet. “We were too late. That’s on top of his sending Lord Niall a note outlining his plans and emphasising that it’s all my fault for scheming against the Court. That’s why he told his followers to hunt me down. If you haven’t guessed.”
Darrow swore under his breath. “Lord Niall has no influence over the higher Sidhe’s decisions, and it should be easy to prove Lord Daival lied about his intentions to manipulate the other Sidhe.”
“I doubt it,�
�� I said. “Lord Daival didn’t even want to know who the heir was; he just wanted to make sure nobody else did. Maybe they’ll surprise us all and make me pick the heir next, assuming Lord Niall doesn’t convince them to cast me out into the Vale.”
With the sprite’s death, the identity of the heir was lost forever, so our half-assembled family tree was the closest the Courts had to any sense of direction on who to choose as their next leader. Even if everyone on it did have code names and one of them happened to be Etaina. Did Darrow know she was the Seelie Queen’s sister?
Does it matter? The Sidhe needed to pick someone, and fast. While they delayed, there’d be other parts of the forest going the same way as those unfortunate dryads, rotting from the inside out as the magic sustaining their existence melted away.
“Lord Niall has no authority,” Darrow said. “He’s popular with the other Sidhe, but his name won’t be anywhere near the list of potential heirs, and at this rate, he won’t even remain in control over his own estate for much longer. He’s already in debt to another Sidhe for fixing the damage to his house after the recent attacks.”
“Debt? Really?” I should have guessed throwing that many parties cost money, but the Sidhe seemed to have gold falling out of their fingertips.
“You forget I’m here as an outside observer,” he said. “Lord Niall has little magic of his own, so he’s forced to rely on others. It sounds like he hired someone to fix the damage to his house who charged rather more than he could afford.”
Right. Darrow’s a spy. A fact I seemed to forget all too often these days. “I really don’t give a shit about Lord Niall, to be honest. I’m surprised you noticed him yesterday, considering…”
Considering he’d been off his tits and endearingly so. The day might have ended in bloodshed, yet it’d had some highlights. Mum’s bizarre sex talk skirted through my mind, and I wondered if he knew about the reasoning behind the no dating faeries rule. He did know it existed—I’d told him—and yet he’d kissed me anyway.
He looked down into my eyes, his own aquamarine irises brighter than usual. “When I guarded your house last night, it was not my intention to make you uncomfortable. I was concerned for you, nothing more.”
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 39
