“Hang on!” Ilsa ran to the forefront of the Sidhe. The bright blue glow of her talisman shone in her hands, but the memory-eater’s misty magic blocked her from view as she flew at Darrow and me.
Then she spoke a word, and pain split my skull in two. The staff fell from my hand, shadows coiling outward—Darrow exclaimed in alarm, reaching for my hand—and I fell backwards into the clouds’ embrace.
Catching my balance, I found myself standing on a silver-tinted path below clouds of mist. I was in the Vale… without the talisman. She’d spoken an Invocation and brought me directly to her master’s side.
Dread gripped my chest at the sight of the Sidhe standing before me. Dark curls flowed past the Seelie Queen’s shoulders, while her armoured dress shone with gold buttons beneath woven patterns of green and grey. Magic shimmered in her eyes, and the memory-eater fluttered at her side like a giant, angry piskie.
“That was cheating.” My head gave a throb. She must be more powerful than I thought, being able to speak Invocations. I’d thought only Sidhe and wielders of the gods’ own magic were able to speak them without being torn apart. I swallowed hard and looked up into the Seelie Queen’s eerily bright eyes. “What do you want?”
“You owe my assistant a favour.”
“You hired the memory-eater?” I forced a laugh. “Damn, you must have been really convincing. She nearly killed me for suggesting she use her powers to intervene in Court affairs.”
“Most Sidhe have no respect for my abilities,” said the memory-eater. “The true Queen of Faerie will offer me an honoured spot in her Court.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right. I can’t believe someone like you got played by an ex-queen who couldn’t even claim a throne when she was married to the guy who sat on it.”
Anger flared in the Seelie Queen’s eyes. “Be careful, mortal.”
“Or what?” I gave her a challenging stare. However much I might fear her, her own terror of setting off the backlash of the Gatekeeper’s curse kept her from doing me harm. Whatever said backlash would do to her remained a mystery even to me, but right now, it was the only thing keeping me alive.
The memory-eater beat her bright wings. “Your curiosity for knowledge remains intact, I see.”
Stop reading my thoughts. You don’t know anything about me.
“Oh, I can,” said the memory-eater. “I can show you what you desire most in the world.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “You know, I preferred it when you lived in your kingdom of clouds and played tricks on people. Now you’re just another one of her minions.”
A furious hiss escaped her. “Do not judge me, Gatekeeper. Your bastard of a friend cast me into Death, while the Queen returned me to life again.”
How? She wasn’t Sidhe, and the source of immortality no longer existed. I turned to the Seelie Queen. “You didn’t bring your husband back while you were at it?”
“He’s long gone,” she said dismissively. “I had need of the memory-eater’s talents.”
“I bet you did.” My heartbeat quickened against my ribcage. Not only did she know everything about me, the Seelie Queen did, too. I might not be keeping secrets from the Court any longer, aside from my desire to escape the Gatekeeper’s curse, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be able to use them against me—and my family.
“It is time,” said the Seelie Queen. “You will take your place at my side in my new Court, Hazel Lynn.”
“No thanks.” I pulled out my sword. “I think I’ve outstayed my welcome.”
“You assume you have a choice,” said the Seelie Queen. “Go on.”
The memory-eater bared her jagged teeth. “I call my favour. You will stand at the Seelie Queen’s side as Gatekeeper of the Court of the Vale.”
6
A sharp tugging sensation yanked on my chest and dragged me towards the Seelie Queen. Then a dazzling light rose to engulf me, blanking out my surroundings. When the light cleared, we stood in a wide hall with arched ceilings.
“I’m not your servant.” I tried to take a step away from her, but the vow took hold and yanked me back to her side. “Let go of me, or I’ll make you wish you could die.”
“I am doing nothing, Hazel Lynn,” she said. “Merely seeing you reap the results of your own bargain.”
“The memory-eater died,” I spat. “If one of the participants in a vow dies, it’s voided.”
“I bought her back, Hazel,” she said. “Along with her magic.”
Then I’ll just have to kill her again. I’d bet she wasn’t immune to my talisman, but I’d been forced to leave it behind. The Seelie Queen had planned this well.
But not well enough. My binding to the Courts had endured through generations, even the death of the Erlking, and it ought to outdo the memory-eater’s vow.
Movement stirred beyond the Seelie Queen, and a wave of coldness brushed my skin, bringing chills to the surface. I glanced up, and a gasp caught in my throat. The ceiling was thick with wraiths, their icy magic casting eerie blue lights over the otherwise pitch-black hall.
“Damn.” My teeth chattered, my hands numbed, and even the mark on my forehead lost all sensation. “This is your plan? You want to freeze me to death?”
“No, I simply wish to stop you from running.” The Seelie Queen looked me up and down. “I confess, I don’t see the need for a Gatekeeper, but thanks to my new assistant, I have a new understanding of your particular situation.”
Icy fear that had nothing to do with the wraiths trod cold steps down my spine. The memory-eater had shared everything she knew about the Gatekeeper’s curse, from every person she’d met… which might well include whoever had started it.
“Is that so?” I injected false calmness into my voice. “I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me, since I’m the person who has to suffer the consequences of said curse?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “Etaina told you nothing, which gives me more of a foothold. I should have known my sister would hoard that knowledge for herself.”
Oh, crap. The memory-eater had even shared the details of my meetings with the Aes Sidhe, which might well have given the Seelie Queen clues as to how to find Darrow’s home.
The Seelie Queen smiled. “You don’t think I’m aware of your friend’s Court allegiance? I have to confess, I thought the Aes Sidhe long dead, like most, including my sister.”
“Is that why you sent wraiths to attack them?” I asked. “To recruit them? Because if you just wanted to say hi to your sister, you might have just sent a messenger sprite and not murdered her soldiers.”
“I wanted to test the skills of the army my sister has spent the last few centuries building underground,” she said. “After all, I may want them on my side in the future.”
“Etaina will sooner see you dead,” I told her. “Now you’ve attacked her people.”
“I suspect the long years of separation will not have been kind to her,” she said. “She remained hidden for a reason.”
So she didn’t go there in person. Interesting. “She knows I wield the Erlking’s talisman and you don’t.”
“Does she, now?” She tilted her head. “Now you’ve left it behind, how long will it last before someone else in the Court tries to claim it? You did leave it outside a gathering of hopefuls for the Erlking’s throne.”
White-hot anger bubbled inside me, but I pushed it down. I would not let the talisman start manipulating my emotions again. “If they don’t have the sense to leave it the hell alone, they deserve what they get.”
“You have a ruthless streak, Hazel Lynn,” she said. “When you and I come to an understanding, you will be a much more useful assistant than Lord Daival was.”
“Until you let me kill him,” I said. “Do you have an ounce of loyalty in you? Wait, don’t answer that question.”
My feet twitched. If only the cold would dial down a notch, I might be able to reach my blade. Being dead, the wraiths were unable to strike me with anything other than ma
gic, which I was immune to. I needed to find a way to raise the temperature.
She gave a soft laugh. “These wraiths are much less talkative than my previous subjects have been. You will be the difficult one, I suspect, but you’ll soon come to understand my perspective. There has been a rot beneath the Courts for a long time. Even Etaina knew it, though we had our differences. The Sidhe’s longevity has always come with a cost.”
“You don’t mind that the source of immortality has gone?” I felt below the earth for anything living, but not so much as a spark remained. “I suppose you wouldn’t, if nothing can counter your healing powers.”
She’d be the last true immortal, unless other Sidhe with the same ability existed.
The Seelie Queen continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “The Sidhe will be easier to bend to my will. I didn’t expect the Aes Sidhe to reappear, of course, but that may work in my favour.”
“Oh, please be quiet,” I said. “If I have to listen to you monologue at me for the next few years, I’d sooner freeze to death.”
Her eyes flared with Summer magic. “Be careful, Hazel. That talisman of yours will not save you this time, and I can do very unpleasant things to you without killing you.”
“For the record, the talisman and I have an understanding,” I said. “You know, I always thought the Erlking was practising great restraint by not using its magic on you over all those years. I just didn’t realise how much.”
“There were many occasions where the thought crossed his mind, but the fool was weak,” she said. “He couldn’t have done it.”
“Did your little rainbow-winged friend rip that out of someone’s memory or did you come up with that one yourself?” I reached for the slightest spark of Summer energy, and sensation tingled in my Gatekeeper’s mark. I still had my Gatekeeper’s powers.
My vow is to serve the Summer Court. I’d sworn a vow to Summer, and it would always come first. If I took a single step out of range of the Ley Line, the vow dragged me back into its orbit. It must be superior to my agreement with the memory-eater.
The light grew brighter, and sensation returned to my hands. Then I pulled out my knife and swung at the Seelie Queen.
She whipped out a blade with typical fae speed, blocking my attack. The wraiths swarmed, their coldness bathing me in iciness, but my circlet brightened in retaliation, forming a shield that blunted the cold, made it bearable.
“You can’t overcome me, Gatekeeper,” she said. “I can cripple you with a single strike. You don’t have to be in one piece to act as my servant.”
Again and again, my blade clashed with hers, and even when the iron cut her skin, her healing magic sealed the wound in an instant. I, on the other hand, was soon bleeding from a dozen cuts to my arms and hands and one long deep one on my thigh. My wounds throbbed, but the pain also grounded me, kept the wraiths’ magic from numbing my senses again.
As I reeled backwards, catching my balance, the shadows turned to mist, and the memory-eater flew in with her spindly hands outstretched. “You made a mistake in trying to deny your fate, Gatekeeper.”
“I wondered where you’d crawled off to.” I gave a half-hearted swing, seized with an idea. Without the talisman, it might be painful to open a doorway back into Faerie, but it was worth a shot. If I got the Seelie Queen on top of my talisman, maybe I could use its magic to circumvent her healing powers. They must have a limit somewhere. Magic wasn’t an inexhaustible resource, even in Faerie.
“You will stay here,” said the memory-eater. “Your plan will not work.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, with a smile. “But I’m bound to compete in the trials to become the next ruler of the Summer Court. Didn’t tell your Queen that, did you?”
The Seelie Queen let out a hiss of fury. “You—?”
“And it’s really thanks to you,” I added. “If you hadn’t set that wraith loose, I wouldn’t have had to break into the maze and gate-crash the first trial. I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me the name of the person you have on the inside and save me the bother of going through the other two?”
A doorway into Faerie opened beneath my feet. I tumbled out into the middle of the dark lawn, rolling to a halt beside a dark patch on the lawn. The staff stood upright in a halo of darkness, its shadows reaching as though to welcome me home.
Behind me, the memory-eater flew out of the doorway I’d created. At once, a torrent of shadows folded over her head, eagerly seeking life to feed on—and the memory-eater had that in spades.
“Stop!” she screeched. “Gatekeeper, stop this!”
“I don’t think I will, considering you tried to have me enslaved for life.” I rose to my feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in my forehead. “You know, those shadows feed on magic and life force. How much will they get from the memories of all the people you met in a lifetime?”
The memory-eater gave another piteous screech, struggling against the shadows’ grip, her thrashing growing weaker. The darkness swarmed her, covering her head and reducing her screams to silence.
“Bye, bye.” I waved at the outline of the memory-eater as she disappeared into the relentless shadows. “And bye, bye, vow.”
That just left the Seelie Queen—wherever she was. I rotated on the spot, searching for the doorway, but found no signs of it. Had the Seelie Queen closed it from the other side? Why not take the opportunity to send more of her monsters into the Court?
Unless she was already in the palace… with my family.
I closed my hand around the talisman’s hilt and willed the shadows to disappear. It took several seconds for them to withdraw, as though the staff wasn’t happy with me for leaving it behind, but it still answered to me. One enemy down… not that I was any closer to understanding how she’d come back from the dead in the first place.
My leg and forehead throbbed, reminding me of my wounds as I turned back to the palace. When I reached the door, a flash of blue light lit up my vision. Ilsa stood facing off against a wraith, her hands aglow with magic. She caught my eye and relief crossed her face, before the wraith evaporated in her hands. Good. She’s okay.
“The Seelie Queen?” she said.
“She got away again.” I limped over to Ilsa’s side. “Where’s River?”
“He and Morgan went around the front to deal with a bunch of sluagh.”
“Wait, Morgan was here?” I said. “I didn’t see him.”
“I told him not to come,” she said. “Can you find him? I’ll deal with these bastards.” She held up the book, daring the wraiths to come nearer.
“Give me a shout if you need me to use this.” I used the staff as a crutch and limped around the side of the palace. I was lucky the effects of opening a doorway into Faerie without the talisman in my hand weren’t worse than a headache.
As Ilsa had warned, shapeshifting sluagh filled the front garden and the palace steps. One of them had Morgan pinned to the grass, and I waved the talisman at it, causing it to release him.
“Hazel.” Morgan twisted out of reach of the sluagh, clambering to his feet. “They took Lloyd.”
“Who took… you brought a human here?” Dammit, Morgan. Not content with keeping his ridiculous shenanigans to himself, he’d gone and dragged his human boyfriend into this mess.
“I thought we were safe,” he said defensively. “Because you had that thing.”
I used the talisman’s magic to turn the sluagh into dust. “A talisman isn’t a substitute for common sense, Morgan.”
There came an eerie howling noise from somewhere ahead. Then a sluagh shaped like a giant hound bore down on me, a knife sticking out of its semi-transparent hide.
“Hey, that’s mine!” yelled a voice. “Get back here, dickface!”
A human stomped out of the shadows in pursuit of the sluagh, dark-skinned with dreadlocks and a second iron blade in his hand. Lloyd hadn’t come here unarmed, then, but I’d be giving Morgan a stern talking-to when we got home. Why did my family have to go looking f
or trouble as though we didn’t attract it in spades already?
Lloyd gave a wild lunge at the sluagh and tripped through its transparent form, falling flat on his face. “Ow! What the hell is that thing?”
“A dead faerie ghost,” I told him.
“Ghosts can’t be stabbed.” He picked up his knife from where he’d dropped it.
“Different rules here, mate.” I backed up a step to avoid hitting him with the talisman’s magic. “Word of advice: find your boyfriend and get out of here.”
Lloyd was a necromancer, but that didn’t mean much in Faerie, as Morgan himself ought to know. I waved my talisman, sending a jet of shadow at the sluagh’s ghostly form. It vanished into the darkness, consumed down to the last particle.
“Holy fuck,” Morgan said from behind me. “No wonder the Seelie Queen wants that thing.”
I shot him a warning look. Lloyd, meanwhile, backed slowly away from the shadows curling around my talisman. At least one of the pair of them had some common sense.
I used the staff to limp up the steps leading to the entrance hall. “I’m gonna see if there’s any more dickheads who need me to teach them a lesson inside the palace.”
It seemed Ilsa’s talisman had done its job, though. No more wraiths remained inside the entrance hall, though the party had long since broken apart. Sidhe stood among shattered statues and upended tables, wearing aggrieved expressions at having their fun interrupted. Spotting Lady Aiten, I hobbled over to her. “I killed the memory-eater, but the Seelie Queen escaped in the Vale. When my sister is done banishing the dead, can I go home?”
“Yes, you may,” she said. “You and Darrow will present yourselves along with the other contenders first thing tomorrow morning for the second trial.”
I limped off in search of Darrow, and spotted him helping lift an injured half-Sidhe from the ruins of a collapsed statue. Surprised rooted me to the spot for an instant, until he saw me looking and rose to his feet. His silver hair was covered in dust, his clothes and weapons bloody.
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