“Why?” he asked, his face contorted with anguish. “Do I need to tell you why? Haven’t I told you enough? I told you what these people did to my family, and when my sister married into their lot, she became one of them. They are murderers, all of them. They should no more be running a kingdom than should a pack of wild dogs.”
“And you should?” Rowan asked, trying to keep from sounding as incredulous as she felt.
“No, Rowan, we should.” He held her gaze, and for a moment, she lost herself in his eyes, in what could have been. “I tried to tell you that day in the kitchen. I tried to make you understand that together we could rule. Don’t you see, Rowan, the things we could accomplish? You know about the documents I’ve unearthed. Your father has told you. You’ve seen for yourself the wonders they hold. You’ve seen the power they contain, but it took me months to decipher that one page of ancient script. I need you, Rowan. I need your gifts. Together we will change the world.”
Rowan took a step back. “By unleashing monsters on it?”
“I can control it. I know how to control it. I promise you.”
“You knew what you’d awakened, and yet you let it descend upon our village? You knew it had killed your soldiers, and you didn’t warn us?”
“You think the monster killed my soldiers?” he laughed. “Oh, but how very wrong you are. You think it gouged out that man’s eyes? No, my love, my monster was still sleeping then—stirring, perhaps, but still sleeping, I assure you. It didn’t awaken until after they were all already dead.”
“Then how?” Rowan asked, her mind suddenly cold with the possibilities.
“You really haven’t figured it out yet? Think, Rowan. The captain’s eyes were torn from him. The other soldiers’ fingers were stained pink.”
“They killed him,” whispered Jude. “They killed him, and then they removed their clothes to wash the blood from their bodies.”
The duke smiled. “The boy is brighter than he looks.”
“But why?” asked Rowan, the horrible truth of it washing over her in waves.
“Why?” he asked, smiling at her with the eyes of a madman. “For the same reason I have a gun pressed to a child’s head. For the same reason your friend Tom is heading off to the tundra to be consumed by death’s mistress.”
“The coin?” Rowan asked. “It’s a talisman, a spell of some kind. But what is it to you? Why does it have this hold over you?”
“Can’t you hear it?” he asked, his wide eyes growing stranger by the moment. “Can’t you hear it calling to you? It’s beautiful, like nothing else in this world. When my monster began to stir, when it began to push open that doorway to this world, the call became irresistible. Those men had no choice but to do what they did. We mustn’t blame them. We are the same.”
“A doorway? That’s what Mama Tetri said—that the coin is like a doorway.”
“My darling,” he said, his face alight with a rapturous smile. “It’s that and so much more. Can’t you feel it? It’s not just any doorway. It’s the doorway to the underworld—the doorway to hell—and what beautiful music it makes, what glorious symphonies of lust and longing and death. Don’t you want to follow it? Don’t you want it to be yours? The only thing that stands between us and that beauty is the talisman around a dead girl’s neck. Join me. Help me remove it, and I will show you wonders beyond your wildest dreams.”
Rowan wanted to tell herself that there was no truth to his ramblings, that he was simply a madman. But she knew that she couldn’t, for she had heard the melody as well, had perhaps always heard it—that distant music that haunted her sleep and awakened in her bones, a horrid longing to sink into the earth and meet death face to face. But she also knew instinctively that it was a trick, a lure, and that the call must always be refused.
Without meaning to, she took a step away from the duke.
His face grew hard, his eyes suddenly cold. “You stupid girl. I’m offering you the world.” He pressed the gun harder against the base of Merrilee’s skull, and the child cried out in pain.
“Let her go,” Rowan said, her breath catching. “Let the girl go, and I’ll come with you.”
“Rowan?” Tom said, meeting her eyes with fear, but it passed quickly, for he knew his old friend, and he began to see what she was doing.
“Listen to me,” Rowan said to the duke. “Let Merrilee go, and I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll join you. I’ll help you retrieve the coin. Just don’t kill her. She’s only a child.”
She took a step toward him, and he held out a hand to her, his features cut with the strange and exquisite longing of a man who thinks he might not have to die alone.
“Rowan, no!” her father said. “This is not for you to handle. I have brought this fate upon our house. This battle is mine to fight.”
But before she could communicate her true intentions to her father, it was too late. He moved quickly toward the duke, who shoved Merrilee aside and pointed the gun at Henry Rose.
“Father, no!” screamed Rowan.
And then something caught her eye. She stared in disbelief as Merrilee seemed slowly to change. A smile graced the child’s lips, and she withdrew something from her sleeve—a flash of moonlight on silver, the sharp tip of a hunting blade. In Rowan’s mind, she saw the image of Merrilee standing over the candelabra, sliding her greasy fingers over the silver, and she understood. Merrilee hadn’t been looking into the forest; she had been looking into the silver. The duke wasn’t the Greywitch. It was Merrilee.
“Father, no!” she cried again, but he didn’t seem to hear, so intent was he on rescuing what he thought to be a helpless child.
It happened too quickly. One moment Merrilee was flinging herself into Henry Rose’s arms, and the next there came a terrible sound as the child plunged her knife deep into his body, and with the strength of a man, she tore upward through his flesh, splitting him open, rending the fabric of his being.
Henry Rose tried to gasp, tried to cry out, but when Merrilee plunged the knife into his heart, there was no longer any more of him to scream.
Covered in blood, Merrilee stepped away, wrinkling her nose as if offended, and observed as her victim, opened up, ribs and viscera exposed, fell face-first into the snow.
Rowan screamed. Her world seeming to spin, she ran to her father, to where he lay motionless, crimson flooding out around him. Her hands moved against his shoulders as she shook him, tried to stir him, but her frantic fingers met only an empty vessel. She held his lifeless body, refusing to believe he was gone. Around her she could hear disbelief, screaming—but the cacophony seemed to flow past her as she sat shocked and silent. Soon Tom was beside her. He turned her father’s body over, searching in vain for a way to save him. A moment later, Rowan felt Jude’s hands on her shoulders, pulling her away from her father, pulling her into his arms.
“Rowan,” he whispered. “Oh, Rowan.”
The duke looked on, his face drained of color. “Merrilee, what have you done? Great god of the sea, what have you done?”
“I’ll do what I like,” Merrilee said, her tiny voice a bizarre companion to the darkness in her face.
Rowan stared at the child, unable to comprehend that this small creature could be capable of such evil. And then her eyes fell to her father’s rifle, now abandoned in the snow. Before Rowan could move to retrieve it, Merrilee was upon it. Rowan scrambled to find her own weapon, but it was too far away to reach in time.
Gingerly, Merrilee lifted the rifle from the snow. She held it awkwardly, as if she meant only to keep her fingers to the metal, to avoid touching any wood. Gun in hand, she moved toward Tom.
“Tom!” Rowan screamed, and he jumped up to face Merrilee just as the child swung the butt of the rifle, cracking it with great force against his knees.
The sound of bones shattering echoed through the night, and Tom cried out, crumpling to the frozen ground. Distaste upon Merrilee’s face, she hurled the rifle into the trees. Her knife in hand again, she grabbed Tom
from behind, and pulling him to her with a relentless, otherworldly kind of strength, she pressed the blade flush against his throat. Rowan knew then that Merrilee was no child.
Fiona, who had been watching from a distance, sprang to attention, anger burning in her eyes.
“Let him go!” Rowan cried. “Please, let him go.”
But Merrilee ignored Rowan and turned her attention to Fiona. “I want you all to understand something,” she announced. “There are only two outcomes possible tonight. Either I leave here with that coin and I let this boy live, or I leave here with the coin and he dies—probably along with the rest of you.”
“What are you?” Jude screamed, his face contorted with pain. But then his gaze connected with Rowan’s, and she saw comprehension dawn in his eyes. He realized that whatever they were up against might be something they couldn’t overcome.
Merrilee ignored him, her attention focused solely on Fiona and her necklace. “The dead girl gets to make the choice,” she said, and then, dragging Tom through the snow like a rag doll, she made her way closer to Fiona. “Do you even know what it means to die a second death? Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you know what it is to have darkness consume you anew each night?”
Rowan looked on in wonder as Fiona snarled, her face suddenly contorted into a fiendish mask. She was a monster. Rowan knew this, but still something in Rowan’s heart struggled against it. Her father was gone now. She had no family, except for this girl. Fiona, monster or not, was her sister, and she found that she didn’t want to lose her just yet.
Rowan tried to push through the pain and grief that clouded her mind. She needed to think. Something wasn’t right. Clearly Merrilee would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, and yet she wouldn’t directly challenge Fiona. If she wanted the coin, why not kill her and take it from her? What power did Fiona hold over the girl? And then Rowan remembered what Fiona had said about her connection to the beast. If the beast died, Fiona died. Perhaps it was the other way around as well. And Merrilee needed the beast alive.
“Give me my coin,” Merrilee growled, and with a hand on Tom’s shoulder, she pulled back and twisted, the bones shattering beneath her grip as Tom wailed in agony.
Jude turned and ran to his brother’s side. Enraged, he pointed his gun at Merrilee, but she pressed the knife into Tom’s flesh, beginning to draw blood.
“Put your gun down or I kill him. You have three seconds.”
Jude dropped his gun.
“Not just you,” she said, looking around. “Everyone throw your weapons over the side of the cliff. Do it now, or the boy dies.”
Shaking, Jude flung his gun over Lover’s Leap before gathering the other weapons and heaving them over as well. For a split second, he stared into the woods where Henry Rose’s gun now lay, but then he looked away and threw his arms into the air, though not until after giving Rowan a quick glance.
“They’re gone,” he said. “Now let him go. I beg of you; let my brother go.”
“You too,” Merrilee said to the duke, ignoring Jude. “You know the things I’ll do to you if you refuse me.”
His breath coming in raspy bursts, the duke tossed his weapon over the cliff, and the Greywitch turned back to face Fiona, a bright smile now on her face.
“The beast belongs to me,” Merrilee said. “It’s mine.”
There came the sound of branches twisting, snapping, as behind them something moved. And turning, Rowan saw it—back at the Mouth of the Goddess, at the outcropping of forest, the creature hidden among the branches and snow.
Merrilee narrowed her eyes and turned to see what it was that moved among the trees.
Carefully Rowan made her way through the snow to Fiona Eira, and when the girl saw her, her expression transformed from suspicion to surprise. Looking into each other’s eyes, the sisters suddenly knew each other. Fiona held out her hand to Rowan. Rowan reached out as she’d done a thousand times before, only this time cold fingers reached back, and clasping at her warmth, Fiona Eira pulled her sister to her side.
Hatred burning inside her, Rowan stared at the child who had just killed her father. “I’m not frightened of you,” she said.
“Rowan,” the duke said, his voice shaking as he walked slowly through the snow to the Greywitch. “Don’t be stupid.”
Merrilee turned her focus to him.
“Are you frightened right now?” the Greywitch asked. “Are you frightened of what I might do to her?”
“Stop, Merrilee, please!” cried the duke. “You promised that no one would die. You swore to me that no one would die.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Promises have ways of getting broken. You think I don’t know about the promises you’ve been making to Rowan?”
He shook his head, terror transforming his features. “I haven’t …”
“I see,” she said simply. “This is why you bought me from my parents, why you took me from my home? So I could work the magic that you cannot, and then once you have my beast, you could abandon me?”
“I’m not abandoning you, Merrilee,” the duke said, his face pale with fear.
“You are,” she said, furious. “You would take her to the throne. I will not have it. I do not like your change of plans, and I am tired of hearing your voice.”
She turned her back to the duke and flashed a terrible smile at Fiona. “The coin,” she said. “Now.”
Rowan looked at the duke, who stared at her, pain in his eyes, and then he began moving slowly toward Merrilee. Rowan’s heart gave a start as his intentions became clear. Approaching from behind, unseen, raising his hands as if to catch a violent cat, the duke descended upon the Greywitch. For a moment, Rowan was certain that he would save them all, but then, with one swift motion, without ever taking her eyes from Fiona or removing her grip from Tom, Merrilee thrust the knife behind her, plunging it directly into the duke’s heart.
Rowan screamed as the duke’s eyes grew wide. He shook his head and then took a single step before falling forward into the snow, crimson rivulets spilling from him, feathering their way through the powder.
With the knife once again pressed to Tom’s throat, Merrilee drove her fingers deeper into Tom’s already broken shoulder, shattering it even further. Tom screamed as his arm seemed to tear away from his body, hanging at an inhuman angle. Rowan looked at her sister, and all at once Fiona’s expression grew calm. Any indication of the monster within seemed to melt away until only the clear, beautiful face of the living girl remained. She closed her eyes, and as if deciding something, she nodded.
Fiona turned to Rowan and squeezed her arm. Rowan stared into her sister’s coal-black eyes, and within them she saw longing and grief, the vast tragic emptiness that had been the dead girl’s short life. And then Fiona smiled, and her dark eyes filled with tears.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
In one fluid motion, Fiona Eira tore the necklace from her throat and flung it high in the air, far out over the edge of the cliff, down to the frozen lake below.
Merrilee looked on in horror, and then ran to the edge of the cliff as behind her there issued the terrible noise of trees torn asunder. The beast, atop jagged bone legs, surged toward the cliff and the coin. Fiona pulled Rowan back and out of the path of the beast just in time for Merrilee to turn and see the gaping wounds of its eyes, and the needle teeth lining its mouth as it clamped down on her, and the two of them hurtled out and over the cliff, the beast intent on the coin that lay on the ice below.
Rowan could barely breathe as she ran to the edge of Lover’s Leap just in time to see the ice break beneath the enormous creature. To her shock, the starving water nixies—vast schools of them—swarmed upon the beast, pulling it and the Greywitch it held in its jaws down and down and down, their sharp teeth tearing and chewing as they went.
Stunned, Rowan backed away from the carnage below. She turned, then nearly fell to the ground as she took in the devastation before her. Her father—his body—lay lifeless in the snow. G
one from her so soon. Tom sat broken and in pain, staring up, terrified, at Fiona Eira beside him.
“What have you done?” he cried. “What have you done?”
“It’s better this way,” she said, and Rowan could see her sister’s once-lovely skin pull in on itself as Death began to suck the life from her. “It’s better.”
“No!” he howled. “You can’t leave me. Please, no!”
But she only held a finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she whispered, and then she closed her eyes.
Rowan watched as Fiona faded before her, shriveling, twisting as if burning from within, and then an awful cloud of smoke rose from the ground, and Rowan had to turn away and cover her mouth to keep from choking on the fumes. When she looked again, Fiona Eira was gone, now nothing more than a mound of white ash piled atop the snow.
Reaching into the ash with his good arm, gasping at the pain, Tom swept his hand through it, looking for something, anything. And then, collapsing completely, he curled into a ball. Hands to his face, he wailed, a cry that would ring in Rowan’s ears for years to come.
19. THE HERMIT
AFTER PLACING THEIR cinnamon at the Mouth of the Goddess, Rowan and Jude made their way down Cairn Hill to Seelie Lake. It had been three months since Rowan had laid her father to rest, and still she experienced the pain of his loss as if each day he were torn from her anew.
They were leaving Nag’s End, invited by the queen herself to the palace city. Rowan, hesitant to leave her village, had promised her brethren that they’d return shortly, but Jude had a sense that the journey that lay ahead of them would bring a grander adventure than either could anticipate. He, like Rowan, was hungry to see the world, and so certain was he that her destiny was larger than the limits of Nag’s End that he was simply happy to go where the winds might take them.
Hand in hand, they made their way along the banks of the crystalline lake, their boots slipping through the fresh green shoots of grass. Above them, the trees were waking, stretching out beneath the warmth of the vernal sun.
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