by Evelyn Avery
Puck’s hand rested on the bench in front of my face. Nearly invisible hairs sprouted along his arm, casting tiny purplish shadows along the skin. With the tips of my fingers, I stroked the back of his hand and marveled at the softness there.
His lips touched the back of my neck. “Rest.”
A shiver worked over me. I briefly wondered how he would react if I rolled over, wrapped my body around his, and kissed him. As attracted to him I was, I knew the impulse was born of desperation. I craved anything that might distract me from what waited for us on the other side of the sea.
But my eyes refused to close. “I can’t.”
He hummed against my ear, the sound soft and melodic like the purr of a contented cat. The sound thrummed along my back, then spread out to the rest of my body. It was like being underneath a weighted blanket made of vibration. His arm tightened around me as he pulled me closer, safe in the circle of his arms as Tamlin stood like a guard in front of me.
I closed my eyes with a soft sigh as my mind finally quieted.
Which meant that I didn’t see the shimmering silver fog that rose up from the water and crept over the sides of the boat. If I had, I would have known to raise an alarm and get us as far away from it as possible. But like an idiot, I was much too focused on my own sorry thoughts to pay attention to our surroundings.
At the best of times, that fog was like the tendrils of steam wafting off a hot cup of chamomile tea. And at its worse, the fog would lure unsuspecting victims into a sleep from which they might never wake. If I’d seen it, I would have screamed at them to get as far away as they could and hold their breath until we could lock ourselves below deck.
Except I didn’t see it.
Chloe was at the bow of the ship, watching as the boat cut through the waves. The fog reached her first, teasing at her ankles and slowly rising while she took deep, even breaths.
I didn’t realize anything was wrong until she collapsed to the deck with a loud thump. When I raised my head from the sleeping berth, Puck’s heavy arm around my waist weighing me down, it was already too late. Fog rose around us, covering the entire deck of the boat and moving higher.
And as I opened my mouth and inhaled a frantic breath to shout a warning, the fog entered my lungs with a rush of sparkling heat. Before I could say a word, my eyes rolled up into the back of my head, and everything went dark as I passed out.
Vaughn could barely make sense of the visions he saw in the glass orbs. They showed him things that couldn’t possibly be happening at once because the subject always remained the same.
Izzy.
He watched her planting strange flowers with too many petals in a garden. He saw her dancing in the Erlking’s arms. And he witnessed her face transform into ecstasy as they fucked.
That couldn’t be happening for real. He refused to believe it.
The Erlking was tormenting him with these visions, even if Vaughn had no idea why. The strange man seemed to detest him, taking joy in watching him try to force himself to his feet even as overwhelming weakness brought him to his knees, hands curled into angry fists. Vaughn knew that the Erlking had done something to him that kept him too weak to even stand on his feet, and it infuriated him. He had never really understood the concept of impotent rage until now.
Occasionally, Vaughn would lay down on the cold stone floor and attempt to sleep. But slumber never came for him, and every time he opened his eyes, another orb lay before his face, showing him a vision of something that could not be unseen, even when he begged for it to stop.
It felt like days had passed as he drifted in and out of consciousness, mouth dry from thirst and stomach cramped from hunger. The Erlking had told him that Izzy had only thirteen hours to reach the castle, but to him, it seemed as if at least a week had passed. In wilder moments, it felt like years since he saw another person’s face, even though the logical part of him knew that couldn’t be true.
Footsteps scrabbled against the floor behind him, distinct from the steady clicks of the Erlking’s boots. Someone else was here.
Could it be Izzy?
“Help me,” he groaned through cracked lips. “Please.”
“Get him up,” an unfamiliar voice rasped, the sound like the screech of metal grinding together.
Dozens of small hands, no bigger than a child’s, reached for him. Vaughn looked at the sea of faces hovering over him in confusion and no small amount of fear. None of them stood taller than his waist, but their gnarled faces made them seem ancient despite their childlike size. Long, thin fingers snatched him up, pinching and pulling as they forced him to his feet.
“What the hell are you?” he gasped, feebly trying to evade their grip. But even at full strength, they would have been too much for him to overpower.
A few of the creatures laughed, the sound grating on his ears before one of them spoke. “Goblins, a’course.”
Goblins. He didn’t have time to think through the implications of that before he was being hustled out of the room and down a long corridor. They forced him, stumbling through the darkness, and only their rough hands with sharpened nails kept him from pitching forward onto his face or crashing into the wall on either side.
His head spun, blood rushing to his ears so loudly that he couldn’t be sure if any of them spoke to him. Pebbles skittered under his feet, making him stumble and nearly fall. The goblins only tightened their grip and kept him hurtling toward the glowing brightness at the end of the hall.
They forced him into a bright chamber before unceremoniously dumping him on the floor. Vaughn fell to his knees, getting his hand up in just enough time to keep his forehead from smashing onto the rocky floor. Leather creaked as a pair of boots appeared in front of him.
He looked up to see the Erlking staring down at him from his seat on a throne that appeared to be made of twisted vines and sharp thorns.
As soon as Vaughn’s gaze rose to meet his, the Erlking shifted in his seat and threw one long leg over the arm of the throne where it rested across a particularly sharp set of branches. The position couldn’t possibly be comfortable, Vaughn thought, but the other man appeared more than relaxed.
He looked triumphant.
His voice whispered along Vaughn’s skin like the chill of winter wind. “Have you been enjoying your time in my castle?”
Vaughn’s fingers clenched against the stone floor, tiny grooves and pebbles digging painfully into his skin. “How long have you had me here, you bastard? How many days has it been?”
“None.” The Erlking regarded him with a mocking smile. “I may have forgotten to mention before that time passes differently here than it does in your world. The whims of the Underground cannot be contained by the ticking of a clock. It may have felt like days to you, but only a few hours have passed.”
The sense of extreme thirst and starvation had already begun to fade as if the Erlking’s words were enough to remind his body that it wasn’t dying. At least not yet. The last of the discomfort fled on a wave of anger. “You did that to me on purpose.”
“Forgive me, I must find my amusements where I can these days.” The Erlking’s voice remained mild, even as dark humor swirled in his eyes. “Sit.”
A chair materialized out of thin air beside him. Vaughn hesitated for only a second before pulling himself up into it. No matter how much he wanted to smash the man’s face in, he wasn’t in a position to turn down comfort after spending hours on a stone floor.
Vaughn did his best not to stare, even though this dude might be the strangest person he’d ever met. The Erlking lounged on his throne, seemingly impervious to the razor-sharp thorns and jagged branches beneath him. His long legs were encased in calfskin boots up to his thighs, and underneath, he wore only a pair of the tightest fitting leather pants that Vaughn had ever seen. The guy’s undercarriage had to be a literal sauna in that getup. His upper body was wrapped in a loose shirt of pure white linen and decorated with elaborate gold embroidery that shimmered in the light. Despite its intr
icacy, the pattern had to have been hand-sewn. A dark brown vest made of a beaded leather very similar to goblin skin finished the eccentric outfit. Anyone else would look ridiculous, but the Erlking conveyed such an aura of menace that Vaughn couldn’t help but be intimidated, even as he fought to ignore the feeling.
“Where is Izzy?” He was proud of himself when his voice didn’t waver. “What are you doing to her?”
“Nothing. Yet.” The Erlking tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowed like a bird of prey sighting a lone mouse in the grass. “It’s not what I’ve done, but what I will do that should concern you.”
“Izzy is stronger than you think.” Vaughn scoffed. “You might have her running your little maze like a lab rat, but she’s going to wipe the floor with you.”
“So you say.” A strange expression briefly twisted the Erlking’s features, giving him an air of almost childlike eagerness. Then it was gone, and only arrogant amusement remained. “Tell me more about this strength, since you seem to know her so well.”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
“I am only expressing interest in polite conversation. You can provide it,” the Erlking mused. “Or I can return you to the dungeons and find other ways to amuse myself. My goblins have expressed great interest in the uses of human flesh, so I might leave you to their care. And perhaps I should check on dear Isabella’s progress through my labyrinth.”
His tone made it obvious that his amusements involved something terrible and sexual.
“Fine,” Vaughn bit out. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me how you first met.”
Something about this made Vaughn uncomfortable, like he was spilling Izzy’s secrets. But it wasn’t as if he would tell the Erlking anything important, and the longer he kept the man talking, the less time he would have to torture Izzy.
“We’re both students of a small theater program. We probably ran into each other for the first time at orientation, I don’t remember.”
“You can’t lie to me, boy.” The Erlking’s eyes narrowed. “You saw her first, didn’t you?”
How could this asshole possibly know he was lying? But the longer the Erlking stared at him, the more compelled Vaughn felt to give him the truth.
“Fine, yes. Jesus. I heard about her when she was still an undergraduate. This brilliant girl who was one of the most amazing playwrights that the program had ever seen. And even though people said she was gorgeous, she had absolutely no interest in ever being on the stage. That’s not normal, at least not like most of the girls who come through the program. Her name was on everybody’s lips, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
The Erlking leaned forward, his gaze unreadable. “Go on.”
“The first time I actually laid eyes on her was in one of her classes. It was my first semester as a grad student, and I had to step in to TA because the professor was out. It was a small capstone class where the students worked on individual projects. Izzy had just started working on her play . . .”
His voice drifted off as it occurred to him that the subject of that play was sitting across from him in a place that shouldn’t exist.
“And then?” The Erlking seemed profoundly interested, in a way that made Vaughn distinctly uncomfortable if he thought too much about it. “What did you notice about her?”
Clearing his throat, Vaughn continued as it felt more and more like he had no choice. “Obviously, I noticed how pretty she was, but that’s always the first thing you notice about people even when you know it’s not the most important. She was the only one in the class who was writing fantasy, most of the other students were obsessed with gritty realism. I had to listen to a lot of crap about guys drinking alone at bars while they contemplated the meaning of life. Izzy was more whimsical than that. But it was a sad sort of whimsy which, combined with her talent, only made her stand out more. She was the first person I ever met who seemed both entirely comfortable with themselves but also lost at the same time. I wanted to know more.”
“Describe the expression on her face when your gazes first met. Did she smile or blush?”
Vaughn shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t know. C’mon, man. Do you remember everything that’s ever happened to you with perfect clarity?”
The Erlking’s response was clipped. “Yes.”
What the fuck was there to say to that?
“It’s hard to describe,” Vaughn admitted. “People who don’t know her very well sometimes assume that Izzy is standoffish when really she just spends a lot of time in her own world. She’s not the type to smile at someone she doesn’t know. But she hung back after class to ask a question, and we got to talking.”
“How interesting. You must have made an impression.”
“Or she just had a question about the assignment that made up her entire grade in the class.”
“Of the substitute instructor? I doubt it.” The Erlking’s gaze flicked over his face, expression mocking. “And did she fall at your feet like a silly lovesick girl? I’m sure that’s what you expected when she approached you.”
“Wrong on both counts,” Vaughn snapped, unsure why the thought offended him so much. “I already knew she’d been accepted in the graduate program and hoped she might want to collaborate. Just because I thought she was pretty didn’t mean I was trying to get into her pants. Not all guys think with their dicks.”
“How noble,” the Erlking commented, voice droll. His leg shifted off the arm of his throne, not even wincing as thorns dug into his thigh. He planted both feet on the ground and leaned forward until bare inches separated them, staring into Vaughn’s eyes as if searching for the answer to whatever question he actually asked with this interrogation. “Tell me that you didn’t feel your gaze drawn to her even as you forced yourself to look away. You wanted her from the moment you first laid eyes on her.”
There was no way he was going to admit anything to this fancifully dressed douchebag. “Fuck off, asshole.”
Instead of being angered by the insult, a vicious smirk played at the Erlking’s lips as he leaned back on his wretched throne. He seemed more pleased than he should have been considering the circumstances.
Vaughn couldn’t stop himself from asking the obvious question. “Why do you want to know all of this?”
For a moment, he assumed the Erlking wasn’t going to respond. And when he did, he seemed to be talking about something else altogether.
“I loved a woman once. And we suffered together, for that love. Until she left me here to rot.” An orb appeared in the Erlking’s hand with only a twist of his wrist. He twirled it on his fingers with impossible dexterity, gaze never leaving Vaughn’s tight-lipped face. “It may seem like I hold this world in the palm of my hand, but the Underground is little more than the pretty scene inside a snow globe. I am trapped here like a prisoner with pretty bars made of dreams and illusions. Alone.”
Vaughn opened his mouth to speak, but found that his throat had gone dry and incapable of producing sound. Unspoken words choked him, like an invisible hand wrapped around his neck. He wanted to know what this unearthly man could possibly know about love, but there was no air left in his lungs to ask the question.
Somewhere deep in the castle, the bells of an unseen clock tolled. Once. Twice. Then there was near silence, even as the sound echoed in his ears and set his bones shaking.
“Two hours left,” the Erlking mused. “And then we shall see who will prevail.”
Light refracted through the orb, momentarily blinding him, but he could have sworn that for an instant, he saw Izzy’s sleeping face. Without warning, the Erlking rose gracefully to his feet and tossed the orb out the window behind him.
Vaughn couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since he’d been dragged into the room by goblins. He understood the Erlking deliberately messed with his perception of it. But outside, the sky had darkened. Through the windows, a reddened sun set against a forest backdrop. Vaughn could see little of what e
xisted out there, most of it drowned in a shifting halo of light. Then it occurred to him that light shouldn’t move that way, creeping along the ground as if it had a mind of his own. He realized that it wasn’t light, it was fog. So dense that he couldn’t see anything through it.
He fought to stand but his body suddenly felt heavy as if he’d been glued down to the heavy chair underneath him. His limbs hung like weights from his sides and it took every ounce of strength in his body to lift his head.
The Erlking stood in front of the large window, framed by the red-gold light in a way that made him seem even more unnaturally dangerous. Another crystal orb had appeared in his hand, and he lazily twirled it on his finger as he watched Vaughn struggle, expression pensive.
“Perhaps if I understood what the girl sees in you . . .” the Erlking murmured, almost to himself.
Fog crept along Vaughn’s legs and oozed past the imposing throne of thorns. It didn’t hurt or burn, but he really didn’t want to breathe it in. He struggled against the invisible bindings keeping him trapped in the chair, setting it rocking back and forth. But he only managed to offset his balance enough to tip the chair over and his body with it.
Vaughn was unconscious before he hit the ground.
I snapped back to myself, standing in my warm and bright kitchen. My hand rested on the Formica countertop as I tried to remember what I had just been doing.
The oven timer went off, and I rushed to remove a perfectly done roast before it burned. The handwoven pot holders on the counter were done in rainbow colors, like a child’s project from summer camp. I grabbed them quickly to remove the roast, inhaling the delicious aroma that filled the kitchen.
What would my husband think if he had come home from work and caught me daydreaming while our dinner burned?
I looked out the window that was covered in frothy lace curtains to see a bright-green lawn lined with immaculately maintained flowers that were all in bloom. A surge of pride moved through me as I regarded it because I knew our yard was the prettiest in the entire neighborhood.
