by Ron C. Nieto
“Librarian?” The Queen’s attention never wavered from Lily, and the Librarian’s voice came from a corner beyond the wall of leather and silver provided by the guards.
“There is no such tome in my care,” he said without hesitation. “There is no battered tome as per her description, either,” he said with a bit of a proud sneer.
“Was this the tome in her hands when she was found?” she asked, this time tilting her head just enough to include Troy in her penetrating stare.
“It is,” he replied. He sounded sure, even though there must have been a thousand slim, tan, nameless tomes in the library and he hadn’t even bothered to check the contents before giving an answer for his Queen.
The Unseelie Queen whirled, the storm that had threatened before unleashing full force. “Explain!” she commanded.
“The tome has been used as anchor to weave a glamour that would compel its victim, and within it lies another that worked once the victim’s attention had been ensnared. This second weaving aimed to weaken the victim’s will and plant a compulsion within the blank slate of their mind, forcing them to take action they might have avoided in normal circumstances, such as calling forth the Wild Hunt,” said the Librarian, offering a monotone of the explanation Troy had given Lily beforehand.
“We know that,” the Queen hissed. “Do not waste Our time with inane prattle!”
Funny, how a timeless creature kept mentioning time, Lily thought before the inappropriateness of the random comment made her flush.
The Librarian bowed his head. “Your Majesty requested an explanation,” he said, managing to give an apology without saying it—and without sounding apologetic at all.
“Indeed, We commanded you to explain. Explain how this tome”—she gestured to the thin volume again, a grimace of distaste curling her perfect upper lip— “could have been put to such use as you describe.”
“That, I do not know.” The Librarian shrugged, his chin high in the air.
“Is that so? Is the library not your domain, Librarian?”
“It is.”
“Could you be implying that your domain is not under your control?”
The Librarian said nothing and clasped his hands before him, the long sleeves of his robes tumbling over his wrists to hide all but his laced fingers.
“Answer Us!” The Queen raised her voice and the distant rumble of an avalanche exploded, burying the world beneath its thunderous echoes.
“No, I do not imply such thing,” said the Librarian, his shoulders firmly set and his back ramrod straight. He would have been the perfect picture of proud defiance, if Lily hadn’t seen his half-hidden knuckles turning white.
“Ah, so you are responsible for this attack on Our sovereign will?” asked the Queen, voice suddenly soft and furious expression turned into the smile of a shark who had found a trail of blood.
The Librarian didn’t answer, his lips thinning as he held his posture and his silence, and Lily felt the staggering blow to her core. She had trusted the Librarian. He had been nice to her. He hadn’t been any more human than the other faeries, but at least he hadn’t looked at her down his nose for being mortal. He had been willing to arm her with knowledge; he had even said so.
Hadn’t he?
She turned to Troy, who stood silent by her side. Troy had been comfortable with the Librarian. He had treated him like a friend, or at least as close to one as she had ever seen—not even with Marast did he lower his guard quite so much. In truth, if she had been so quick to trust the Librarian, it had been because she had seen Troy trust him first.
Did that make him another victim? Or an accomplice?
Troy didn’t glance at her. Instead, his expression was somber, the set of his shoulders nearly as tense as the Librarian’s. His hair, which had been damp at best, was dripping wet now, fat droplets of water running down his temple and the back of his neck. His brow was furrowed, a single line creasing his forehead, and his eyes were sharp and hard as cut emeralds.
It wasn’t the look of the betrayed, nor that of the guilty. In as much as she could read behind his faerie mask, Troy felt was frustrated, perhaps angry.
But why?
Lily shivered, wishing this spectacle could have gone on without her presence, and the minute movement caught his attention. He didn’t say anything, his expression didn’t change at all, but he shifted enough that his fingers brushed the back of her hand.
Is that supposed to be calming?
Whatever his intent, it was, and she hated herself for it, enough to push past the sense of loss and betrayal and focus once again on the Queen.
She was not the kind of creature on which one would want to turn one’s back.
“Captain,” she said, the shark smile fading into a look as cold and inexorable as an iceberg. “We command the Winter Guard to take the Librarian into custody.”
The Captain of the Guard, who had been standing on the same wall as the door, barked a single word and four guards detached from the group, surrounding the Librarian. They didn’t shackle him, they didn’t even touch him, and he didn’t bow, but still. When the group marched past Lily and out into the labyrinthine corridors, all she saw was a proud but broken convict.
“Our loyal Hunter,” the Queen went on when the doors were locked again and silence reigned once more in the chamber. “We have a new task for you to perform.”
“Your Majesty.” Marast bowed low again. “Speak and I shall obey.”
The inhuman visage of the Queen smiled again, this time displaying amusement. Of course he shall obey, Lily thought. He has no other choice.
“You have served Us well. We would entrust this quest to no other,” the Queen began, pacing slowly to circle her Hunter. Lily was glad to have put some distance between them when making way for the Librarian; otherwise, she would’ve stood in her direct path. “A snake has been found in Our mist,” she continued. “Until We have not discovered the extent of its poison, We do not dare to claim it vanquished. Therefore, We charge you, Our most loyal Hunter, with the protection of the Herald until such a time as We deem it safe for her to return to Our Court.”
Lilly froze, realizing exactly what the Queen was saying—and what she wasn’t saying.
They had locked up the Librarian, but they had no clue whether more faeries had been involved. Actually, they must’ve been pretty sure the answer was yes, there were more traitors, if the Queen was willing to let Lily and the Horn get out from under her nose after going to such lengths to find her. And then, they were getting her out of the Winter Court, which should be good for Lily’s plans, but she was far from being free again. After all, Marast had been dispatched, not to look for the Horn but to look after her.
“As you say, Your Majesty,” said Marast, cutting a side glance to Lily. “Where do you wish me to take her?”
And of course, nobody was asking Lily’s opinion.
“To the mortal realm,” the Queen said. “It will difficult the hiding of hostile glamour, will it not? And surely the Herald shall appreciate the return to her land,” she added, addressing Lily as if on cue.
In fact, Lily didn’t. If she went back to the mortal realm, time would go back to flying by. She had no idea when the Queen would “deem it safe” for her to return, so maybe she would be stuck for months with Marast looking over her shoulder, watching her every step. Keeping her from going through with her plans. Worse even, delaying her enough that it might not matter for her grandmother, despite Troy’s comments about Mackenna probably being beyond time herself.
Months? It could take years.
“Your Majesty is very kind to think of me,” she said aloud because one didn’t disagree with royalty.
The Queen nodded, and Marast saved Lily from having to say anything else.
“Should I take the guard?” he asked, glancing toward the Captain.
“No,” the Queen said, turning to him again. “You shall be alone in this mission.”
Either she doesn’t trust anyo
ne else, or she expects something else to happen and is setting him up to fail.
Marast nodded without comment and offered one last bow.
Then again, perhaps he really is that good.
“I must insist in accompanying them,” said Troy, speaking up just as Marast turned to usher Lily out of the room. “As per my standing bargain with the Herald.”
Lily froze and glanced from Troy to the Queen, then to Marast and back again. She had not realized what “alone” meant. She had not considered it could mean leaving Troy behind.
That wasn’t an option, not in her book.
However, before she had a chance to say anything stupid and make an enemy out of a faerie Queen, the Queen waved a dismissive hand.
“Of course,” she said, already turning toward the Captain and his guards. “A bargain is a bargain.”
C H A P T E R XXII
When they traveled out of the faerie path and set foot in the Highlands of Scotland once more, a wave of bitter cold hit them like a physical blow. Troy didn’t seem to mind, despite being wet, and Marast wasn’t affected by it either beyond being forced to tuck the long strands of his white blond hair behind his ears.
Lily’s teeth chattered. She had put on her cardigan sometime during the trip, but it was a thin summer article, not designed to do more than keeping the chill at bay, and there was nothing about their surroundings suggesting chill. They were far past that.
“Where are we?” Lily asked, shivering so bad that her words, however few and however short, ended up mangled and nearly unrecognizable.
Still, Marast must have gotten the gist of it, if not from her question then at least from the confused look she threw around them.
“This is the same path we took before,” he explained. “The Cairngorms, near the river Dee.”
“Impossible.” Lily looked again. There were no features she recognized. Everything was flat, monotonous. No trace of the verdant forest, no sound of animals, no rustling indicating life. Nothing. “When are we?” she tried again.
Marast shrugged. “We have not passed the height of Winter yet,” he said. “It is close, though.”
The height of Winter. Does that make it November? Early December?
I’ve been gone since August.
Troy placed a hand on the small of her back, angling his body just enough. Lily was so underdressed that even his usually cool body temperature felt like a furnace, and she had to fight back the urge to snuggle into his side.
“It has not been too long,” he whispered, cutting right through the core of her current fear. “I believe it is the same year still.”
Lily laughed. “Sad that that’s the good news, uh?” she said.
“Why ever would that be?” asked Marast, who had stopped a few steps ahead upon realizing they hadn’t followed his lead.
“Never mind,” said Lily, struggling to reclaim enough coordination over her numb legs to get them to walk.
When she managed a step, she sunk up to her hips in a snow drift and realized she couldn’t see the forest because it had been snowed under.
“This can’t be normal,” she breathed, shock momentarily allowing her to speak without stuttering.
“And of course, that is first and foremost in your mind while in danger of freezing to death,” said Troy, his hand squeezing her waist to let her know he was teasing her.
Can he tease? Isn’t that too human?
But no, of course it wasn’t. Troy had always displayed a sense of humor, Lily just wasn’t used to being in on the joke. She had more experience being the butt of it.
“Will I freeze to death? Can’t you do your hocus pocus thing to make me warm?” Hevana had used her glamour to make her more beautiful while she was in the Winter Court. Surely if a sidhe maid could pull off that trick, one of her two faerie escorts could do something about the cold.
Troy shrugged. “The cold has never bothered me, so affecting the way you perceive it is far from my realm of expertise.”
“Regardless of that, maintaining a glamour would drain us to a point where we would be useless defending you, which is our primary task.” Marast spared them a glance before focusing on the forest around them once more.
“Those were the words of our Queen, yes,” said Troy. “However, mortals are frail and may need defending from more than hostile glamour.”
Marast turned to face them fully, giving up on his security scan to focus on them. On Troy, rather. He probably didn’t think Lily merited that much attention. “Do you imply you would spare the energy required to maintain such a glamour if you were capable of creating it?” he asked at length.
Finally, a hint of life crept through the white endless background. A branch creaked somewhere, an unseen bird fluttered its wings and took flight.
Troy smiled his best faerie smile. “A dead Herald is a useless Herald,” he said, quoting his previous conversation with Lily.
No one said anything else for a while. The standoff was broken when Lily’s chattering teeth became too loud to be ignored.
“Come.” Marast was the first to look away, returning to a careful survey of their surroundings. “Let us find suitable lodgment for your mortal then. As she said, this situation is not normal and I would rather find a defensible place.”
“When you say ‘not normal,’” Lily said, picking her way through the snow after him half dragged and half supported by Troy, “you’re talking about having to protect me or . . .” She let the words trail off, hoping he’d fill the space with more information than she had at the moment.
Of course, he was a faerie. “Or,” he said.
Lily looked up and to the side, hoping Troy would add something, but he just shook his head and kept walking at her snail’s pace. She was too cold to sigh, so she settled for tightening her arms around her middle and hunching her shoulders, as if that would make a difference.
After covering some hundred yards fighting against the snow banks that hugged her thighs and threatened to swallow her whole, Troy nudged her aside until her knees bumped on something. A rock, perhaps? Just packed snow? It didn’t matter, not when she scrambled over the obstacle to find the snow only reached up to her calves. That was almost enough to make her groan with pleasure, and Troy laughed.
“What?” Lily asked, the burn on her legs still growing but not as fast as before.
“You are pleased by the strangest things,” he said, darting a glance ahead to check on Marast.
Their exchange, the only noise amid dead silence, had drawn his attention, causing him to stop and look back at them again. Lily would have given a great deal for being able to decipher his expression, but even if she had been able to pierce his faerie façade, the Hunter was too far for her to make out any details.
We’re really falling behind, she thought. Aloud, she said, “It’s not strange. Anyone would be happy to escape a snowdrift. My legs are wet now, but at least I don’t have to fight for every step.” A dead branch chose that moment to entangle her sneaker, buried as it was, and she flailed to avoid planting her face in the snow. “Not fight that much, anyway,” she grumbled.
“I see,” said Troy, the smile lingering in his voice. He didn’t comment on her ability to find the one branch floating in an ocean of white, and on letting it tangle her step when the poor thing must have been dead and dry for weeks now, maybe months.
“We should move faster,” came Marast’s voice before the short conversation could evolve into banter. “Cheery as it is to frolic, I still believe we should settle at a defensible position.”
“Believe or not, you must have noticed this is the fastest pace the Herald can handle?”
“She does not waddle in snow any longer,” said Marast, furrowing his brow. In confusion? Annoyance? Both?
“Cold appears to affect reflexes and coordination in mortals,” Troy commented when they drew abreast. “As it is, I am surprised she can move at all.”
“You could also order her to be more coordinated then,” said M
arast. “Is it not true you hold her True Name after all? That is how you brought her back after the attack, is it not?”
Lily noticed Troy’s arm tensing around her waist, and for a moment he held still, like a statue carved of ice and emerald.
“Well?” Marast insisted. “Could you or could you not just tell her to pick up a more accommodating pace?”
She had forgotten. Lily had forgotten for a moment about the looming threat of him holding her True Name. Since she woke up in bed with him hovering over her and decided it would be a great idea to forget her plans while kissing him, she hadn’t thought of how he could command her to do as he pleased, regardless of her feelings or thoughts. A new wave of cold hit her, one that had nothing to do with the weather.
It was not the sort of thing one could afford to forget.
She braced herself for the command, for his voice to touch her soul and root there, strings of a puppet ready to obey the yanking and pulling of her puppeteer, but it never came. Instead, his hand gently nudged her to keep walking.
“Come now, Kelpie.” Marast’s voice sounded a bit farther behind as they moved onward. “I understand keeping your cards close to your chest, as the mortals say, but I have seen your hand already. Why not play it?”
Silence.
“Ah. I see now.”
“Do you?” Troy finally snorted.
Steps drifted through snow behind Lily and when Marast spoke again, he had caught up to them. “Ah, but of course,” he said. “Do not presume to understand the ways of the fay, correct?”
“You would put your mind to better use figuring out how to fight the cold,” Troy said, his voice again under control even though Lily still felt the tension through his arm.
“Yes. The invisible enemy.” They kept walking for a few moments longer before he sighed. “I figure there is little point in staying to fight the visible one if we let the Herald die from other causes, hm?”
“So kind of you to worry about me,” Lily snapped, unable to keep silent and let the faeries talk over her head any longer. Still, she said it with a smile—or what would have been a smile but looked more like a grimace—and it seemed to help to further diffuse the tension.
