The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy

by Emma L. Adams

  “The Queen is dead!” one of them howled.

  The words travelled throughout their group, echoing away into the haze surrounding the Sea Kingdom’s village. Within seconds, the merpeople surrounded me, their long hair wild, eyes hostile, and their weapons sharp.

  “Neither of us killed her,” I told them. “She poisoned herself.”

  “Where is her talisman?” Coral shifted into human form again, her voice choked.

  Shit. “Gone. The Seelie Queen’s army took it.”

  A mermaid with glimmering silver-blue hair swam up to me. “If that’s the case, the two of you must leave this kingdom at once. You no longer have a claim to leadership.”

  “Give her a moment to grieve,” I snapped. “Besides, Coral is the heir.”

  “She is not,” said the mermaid. “This kingdom was ours first, and without that talisman of hers, you are nothing.”

  “All right.” I raised the staff. “Coral, do you want me to turn them to ashes? Just say the word.”

  She shook her head. “No… if you do, there’ll be nothing left of the Sea Kingdom.”

  I pointed the staff at the merpeople. “Back off, all of you. This is your last warning.”

  The merpeople shrank away from the shadows in my hands. Then cold hands closed around my throat, cutting off the air from my lungs. For an instant, I thought someone had grabbed me from behind, but the burning sensation came from within.

  The effects of the berries were wearing off. I was drowning.

  Coral swam up to me, an expression of alarm on her face. I felt her arms close around my shoulders and pull me out of the palace door. I struggled to cling onto consciousness, despite my lungs screaming for air—and then we were floating upwards, through the water and towards the spark of light in the distance.

  13

  I emerged in the palace garden in a shower of saltwater, to the sight of Darrow and several other half-bloods doing battle with the Vale’s monsters.

  Coral released me, and I staggered onto the lawn, shivering uncontrollably and coughing up mouthfuls of water. Using the staff to prop myself upright, I looked into Darrow’s concerned eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” My teeth chattered. “I wondered where you were. Glad you didn’t follow me.”

  “So am I, considering I can’t swim,” he said.

  “You can’t? Seriously?”

  “Where would I have learned?”

  “Fair point.” I scanned the lawn, which was strewn with the bodies of the Vale’s beasts. “The Sea Queen is dead. The Seelie Queen’s forces took her talisman, and now the merpeople want her throne.”

  Coral sank into a sitting position beside the pond, her expression dull and her eyes streaming. “They have as much of a claim on leadership as I do. More, if anything. They are prepared to fight for the crown. That talisman was the only leverage my family had left.”

  “Coral!” Willow left the other half-bloods and hurried over to join us. She knelt beside Coral with a comforting expression on her face. “It’ll be okay. We got rid of the Seelie Queen’s forces, and now the doorway is closed, there’s no other way for them to get in.”

  “Gatekeeper!” The Erlking’s sprite flew towards me, his expression panicked. “The third trial will start soon, and you should be with the other contestants.”

  “Oh, no.” I coughed, shivering. “I dropped out. I never should have made it through to the third round to begin with, and besides which, I’m freezing cold and I just dropped half my weapons in the bottom of the ocean.”

  “You must, you must!” Warm air bathed me from head to toe, drying my clothes in an instant.

  “Thanks, but really—I can’t.” I looked around and spotted Lady Aiten crossing the lawn behind him.

  “Gatekeeper.” Lady Aiten halted, her gaze landing on Willow and Coral embracing by the pond. “What is the meaning of this?”

  I barred her path. “Coral just lost her mother and her Court at the same time. Besides, it might have escaped your attention, but your old king is dead, and you have nobody left to impress. If you’re really that scared of being cast out as a traitor, you’d be in there watching the trials, not policing the choices of your adult daughter.”

  Her gaze cut to me. “You swore to use your talisman in defence of our Court, yet you abandoned us at the first opportunity.”

  “To help a friend!” I exploded. “Speaking of talismans, the Seelie Queen just stole the Sea Queen’s talisman—you know, the bow that’s enchanted so it can’t miss a shot—which is pretty damned relevant to your trials.” Didn’t mean she’d be able to claim it, but with the way my luck was going at the moment, she’d have it pointed at the next monarch of Summer before the third trial was over.

  The blood drained from Lady Aiten’s face. “I cannot leave the palace at a time like this. The Seelie Queen is still in the Vale, is she not? You will find her, Gatekeeper. That’s an order.”

  Willow walked up behind me. “Do you need us to come with you to the Vale?”

  I looked past her to the other half-bloods on the field. The only people who’d come to my aid in the end had been my former bodyguards. “I wouldn’t ask you to risk your lives.”

  “We have to get that talisman,” said Coral. “Even if it doesn’t let me claim it—we can’t let someone else use it to kill Summer’s next leader. Not again.”

  “I won’t let them,” I vowed. “I’ll use my own talisman to get it back, one way or another. Can you stay here and guard the doorway? I can pretty much guarantee the Seelie Queen will send more of her monsters through the instant I follow her.”

  “Doorway?” said Lady Aiten.

  “Yes, doorway.” I was done playing nice with her, or anyone else, for that matter. “I can’t cross into the Vale without one, you know.”

  “Then you will do so at your own risk,” she said. “All of you.”

  “Fine by us,” said Willow, prompting a furious look from Lady Aiten.

  As she swept away, I turned to Coral. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to retrieve my mother’s body before those merpeople leave her to rot at the bottom of the ocean.” She pushed to her feet, trembling. “Then I’m coming with you, Hazel.”

  My eyes stung, and not just from the saltwater. It seemed bitterly unfair that Coral had to lose so much at once and wasn’t even allowed to grieve her mother in peace. Getting her mother’s talisman back wouldn’t solve all the problems in Faerie, but it’d remove a weight from all of our shoulders, especially hers. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  I found a clear spot on the lawn to open a doorway. While the water had vanished from my clothes, my skin felt salt-sticky and a persistent chill gripped me. I wasn’t doing myself any favours by going into the Vale, either, but I was at the crux of the war in Faerie, whether I took part in the trials or not. I always had been, for as long as the Sidhe had pushed me between these ancient monarchs who cared nothing for the damage they did.

  Even the Erlking. He was as much to blame as the others, for arrogantly assuming he’d live forever and that nobody else would have to deal with the talisman after his death. Like the others, who couldn’t take responsibility for their own decisions if their lives depended on it. I might resent the hell out of them for leaving me to deal with the chaos they’d left behind, but that didn’t mean I’d let them bring about humanity’s end.

  A doorway into the Vale opened at my command, allowing me to step through onto the silvery path. Darrow entered beside me, his silver hair glowing as bright as the paths.

  “The Seelie Queen didn’t steal it in person, did she?” said Darrow.

  “No, so I hope it’s here,” I said. “The Sea Queen didn’t tell me who took it. She was dying. She poisoned herself, in fact. I guess she didn’t see a way out, because her talisman was taken and the merpeople were beating down the doors of the palace.”

  “They drove Coral out?” he said. “Isn’t she the heir?”
<
br />   “No.” I suspected everyone in Faerie would know soon. “The Sea Queen adopted her and her brother because she had no biological heirs and didn’t want to lose her kingdom to the merpeople.”

  Darrow’s eyes widened. “She did?”

  “She told me before she died,” I explained. “Turns out she was an immortal, not half-blood, and she couldn’t have children of her own. Can’t say I know why she told me that, but she wasn’t exactly in a rational frame of mind. She’s from the Erlking’s generation, so she knew both Etaina and the Seelie Queen and knows they’re both after me. Pretty sure she hasn’t left the water in years, so I’m inclined to believe she was telling the truth.”

  Confusion furrowed his brow. “What did she know of Etaina?”

  Of all of us, she was the hardest for Oberon to contain. If Oberon was the Erlking, then… was he the reason she’d ended up trapped underground? I’d thought her decision to split from Summer had been her own choice.

  “She told me Etaina—or the Lady of Light—is out to claim power she was denied, which fits with what she told me herself the last time I spoke to her. Etaina implied the Erlking tricked her out of securing the talisman, so we all know why she’s so thrilled that I wound up claiming it myself.”

  Darrow wore a troubled expression. It couldn’t be easy to hear the truth about the one person who’d been his unwavering supporter even when he’d lost the respect of the rest of his Court.

  “She seemed to think the Seelie Queen’s days were numbered,” I added. “That she’d be dead before she had the chance to use the talisman she stole. Which I guess means she thinks Etaina will challenge her directly, and soon.”

  As for what else she’d said? The other Queen wants you to disappear because she knows what you are, what you may become. She saw to it, after all. Those words might be the rantings of a queen losing her grip on life and sanity, but whatever truth was within them was lost to the depths of the sea.

  Darrow’s body tensed, a knife sliding into his hand. “Someone’s coming.”

  A dark shape crossed our path, the outline of a slight figure holding a crossbow appearing on the silver path of the Vale.

  Aila. I’d thought she was dead, marked for execution after she’d aided Lord Daival in his attempt to murder the potential heirs to Summer.

  “There you are,” Aila said. “I wondered if you’d drowned along with your pathetic friend, human.”

  “Give Coral’s talisman back,” I warned. “Now.”

  “That would ruin the fun.” She pointed the crossbow at me. “You’ve always thought you were better than us, haven’t you? The lone human, blessed with the power of the Sidhe. You think you have the right to strut around here like you own the place.”

  “I never said that,” I said. “I think you’re a vain, self-centred bitch, but that has nothing to do with being human or not, or your magical talent. And I’m here because the Sidhe ordered me to find the depraved piece of shit who stole the Sea Queen’s talisman and drove her to suicide.”

  “Killed herself, did she?” she said. “She had no right to wield this talisman. It wasn’t the Erlking’s to give away.”

  “What did the Seelie Queen offer you for it?” I said. “Let me guess… a chance at a bit of power? You know she’s as likely to screw you over as anyone else in Faerie, right?”

  She raised the bow and aimed an arrow at my chest. “Time for you to die, Gatekeeper.”

  An arrow arced towards me, and the world slowed down. Darrow pushed me out of the way, and I opened my mouth to shout a warning—but my own talisman got there first. Shadows burst out, turning the arrow into ashes.

  Aila gave a startled yell, jumping away from the shadows. The bow trembled in her grip.

  “You haven’t claimed it, have you?” I held out my free hand. “Give it here before it kills you.”

  “You’re no match for my talisman,” she said. “I claim its magic as mine!”

  The talisman glowed white-blue, and she dropped onto her back, her body convulsing. Blood and spittle flew from her mouth, along with cut-off cries. Darrow and I watched in silence as she flailed and struggled. The talisman had rejected her, and the price for failure was death.

  The bow’s brightness grew blinding, and Aila gave one final gasp before falling silent.

  “Don’t touch it!” I warned, as Darrow took a step forward. “It might think you want to claim it, too.”

  “Think?” he echoed. “The bow isn’t alive.”

  ‘It was.” I paced towards Aila’s fallen body. “Some talismans—like mine, and the bow—were created using the magic of one of the Sidhe’s predecessors. They were worshipped as gods, once, and because of that, part of them is still conscious even inside the talisman itself.”

  “Did you say god?”

  “You bet. Etaina knew it, too,” I said. “I hope my talisman is enough to stop it from doing the same to me.”

  My hand closed around the bow’s edge, and at once, a shock jolted through my limbs, throwing me onto my back.

  No. I’m not trying to claim you.

  Darrow shouted my name, but I locked my hand around the bow again and lifted it off the ground. Images exploded behind my eyes, violent and stark.

  An arrow slammed into the chest of a young half-Sidhe, sending him toppling onto his back. Another hammered into the heart of a huge tusked beast—one arrow, two, three—and it fell into a pile of trees with a tremendous crash. An arrow flew from the bow, arcing towards a throne of tangled, rotting roots.

  The Erlking.

  “Stop!” I screamed, but the Erlking didn’t look up until the arrow found its home in his heart, sending him sprawling into the dirt.

  Bile seared my throat. I just saw the Erlking’s death. A shiver racked my body, vibrating beneath my skin and trembling in my nerve endings. The Sea Queen had lived beside this talisman for years? No wonder she’d seen death as her only way out.

  A jolt of disconnected anger shot through my blood as the glowing light of the bow made contact with the shadows in my other hand, followed by pain so all-encompassing that its light extinguished the darkness.

  14

  Water lapped above my head, lulling me to wakefulness. The hedges of the grove spun like a merry-go-round. I took in a gulping breath of clean air, then the darkness took me again.

  The next time I woke, it was to my mother pushing a mug into my hand and ordering me to drink. Voices murmured around me, indistinguishable. As I drank, a rush of warmth spread to my fingertips, and the mug drooped in my hand as I fell into sleep once again.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was to the incongruous sight of Darrow standing beside my bed, his silver hair gleaming in the bands of moonlight creeping across the floor through a gap in the curtains.

  “Are you okay?” Darrow tilted his head in my direction. I blinked, disorientated as hell to see him in my childhood bedroom.

  “What are you doing here?” I mumbled. “In fact, what am I doing here?”

  “Your mother ordered me to bring you upstairs,” he said.

  I squinted suspiciously at him. “Isn’t she concerned about leaving us alone in the same room?”

  “You were unconscious and drooling all over the pillow when she left,” he said. “Besides, we’re not alone.” A sprite flew into the light. Hummingbird blinked his large eyes at me, his pointed ears poking through his transparent hair.

  “You brought your sprite here?” I pushed into an upright position. “Wait, the bow. The talisman. It rejected me, didn’t it? How am I not dead?”

  “That.” He pointed to the staff leaning against the bed. “It opened a doorway back into Faerie and I got both of us through to the gate. I saw to it that Lady Aiten took the Sea Queen’s bow safely to the palace and hid it before the trial started.”

  Right… the trials. It felt like an age since I’d dived into the Sea Kingdom to help Coral. “What time is it here?”

  “Midnight,” he said. “You should rest. The Court will cal
l you when they need you.”

  I leaned back on the pillows. The bow was safely back where it belonged. Aila was dead, but I didn’t pity her in the slightest. And Darrow… had brought me home. After our last major misunderstanding, I didn’t want to drive him away again. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

  “You’re welcome.” The human response made me blink, and he took a step backwards, making me very aware of the not-exactly-pristine state of my room. Most of my possessions hadn’t been touched since I’d taken up my job as Gatekeeper, and when I recalled how spartan his own quarters had been, mine looked a total mess by comparison. Moonlight shone across stacks of paperbacks, discarded clothes, weapons, and other relics from an unconventional childhood.

  “You could have cleared a space on the floor to sit down.” I leaned over to push a stack of books under the bed and unearthed my annotated copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “So you did read it,” he said.

  “You didn’t think I read Shakespeare?” I said. “I did, back before I was Gatekeeper. I’d have more time to read if I wasn’t always picking up after the Sidhe. I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of time either.”

  “Etaina never encouraged me to learn to read,” he said. “In fact, I asked Hummingbird to bring me the books so I could teach myself. She preferred her soldiers to focus on battle arts, not poetry.”

  “She didn’t want you thinking for yourself,” I surmised.

  His gaze dropped. “I suppose I wasn’t as good at following the rules than I thought I was.”

  “What, and it’s not just me being a bad influence?” I winked at him.

  He didn’t smile back. “I spent my life following the rules of the Aes Sidhe and gained nothing in exchange but regret. Now I have no Court to call my own.”

  “You can call your mind your own.” I met his eyes, wishing I could reach past Etaina’s influence. “You taught yourself to read? That’s awesome.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” he said.