by A. R. Kahler
Sure, the streets had been empty the last time I was here. But at least then there had been streets, and the only things lining the edges were snowdrifts and ice.
Now, the roads of the kingdom are strewn with rubble—shards of black ice, piles of obsidian. Not even the snow drifting down can blot out the destruction. There had been statues and storefronts, frozen fountains and glittering topiary. It had been beautiful, in its own stark way. Now, the buzzing faerie lights above cast their blue tint over windows shattered across the snow like panes of ice, everything glittering hungrily. The light thickens the shadows, makes the cold more palpable. More menacing. With every step I take, I expect a wall to crumble on top of me or for the ground to give way in a sinkhole. I expect to unearth a body under the snow. I expect for this to feel more like a war zone and less like an abandoned movie set. The silence and stillness give away nothing.
“Oh, how far you’ve fallen,” I whisper as I walk through the wasteland. Then I realize I’m quoting Kingston and shut my mouth.
The emptiness swallows my footsteps, devours my words. I feel as though I’m walking through a war-torn third world country. Which I’ve done, many times. Only here, there are no signs of attack. No scorch marks on the facades, no piles of bodies, no scent of smoke and flesh in the air. Just the silence and the destruction. Like a cancer that has eaten the host from the inside out. It makes me want to scratch at my skin. It makes me want to scream, if only to fill the place with something alive.
I meander down the boulevard, staring at the destruction with a growing sense of anxiety. This had been my home. And yet the memories I have of this place no longer match with what I’m seeing. I’d fallen down drunk in that crumbled doorway. I’d gotten ridiculously high on flight Dream and tried to leap off that building, which is now a pile of rubble barely reaching my knees. I’d spent many late nights lying amidst the naked denizens of Winter in the ruined park over there, listening to faerie music and making notes of my own. I’d learned how to dislocate a Shifter’s shoulder in that bar (accidentally, drunkenly, but successfully), which is now half caved in.
Maybe it is a testament to my upbringing or to the shit I’d gone through in the last few days, but the sight of it all doesn’t hit me as hard as it should. I’d already lost my mother and my past, and my father had just put his own head on the chopping block. What was a city compared to that? Especially a city that had never truly been mine?
Mab is waiting for me outside her castle.
The beastly structure stands untarnished by the quakes that have sent the rest of the city into ruin; it squats heavy and low against the ground, all polished obsidian and spiked turrets. The boulevard leading to the castle has been similarly spared. Every one of the statues lining the street is perfect—the dragon slaying George, Little Red being eaten alive by the Shifter wolf. Well, almost every one of the statues.
The one of my mother has toppled, and the blue flames that once curled around her have gone out.
Now, Mab sits on the empty pedestal, wearing plated leather armor that seems to reveal more flesh than it protects. I can’t imagine the fishnets stretched from her killer leather boots to her tight skirt are battle-ready. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are bulletproof. She even has a sword strapped to her waist, a relic of silver so heavily carved with runes it looks to be made of words rather than metal.
The Winter Queen is formidable under any circumstance, but tonight, poised and armored as she is, she looks positively deadly. Her long black hair is woven in an intricate braid, and her pale face is all seductive angles and a slash of blood-red lips. She doesn’t smile when she sees me. She’s been waiting. And I’ve clearly kept her waiting too long.
“I am surprised you have the nerve to return,” she says. Her voice is sultry and smoky, like a woman used to singing in jazz clubs, but even her deep voice can’t fill the void of this place. She sounds small. And the moment I think that, she actually looks smaller. Like the illusion of her has shattered.
Or maybe she truly has lost more than just her people.
“Yes, well, you didn’t make it easy.” I step up beside her. “The Oracle’s Sacrifice,” the plaque had once read. Now the words have been scratched out, and I don’t know whether to blame a peon or Mab for it.
“You of all people should know there are many ways to enter my kingdom without magic. Or have you forgotten the basics of your teachings?”
“I was a little too busy being put back together to search for a faerie mound or ring of mushrooms. Thanks for asking how I was, by the way. Very kind of you.”
“I don’t have time for kindness.”
“Funny. You speak as though you ever had.”
Maybe it’s too much, talking to her that way, but this is an interaction I’m used to. Talking back to her feels natural. It makes me feel like my old self. Which probably says more about my psyche than I care to explore.
“Oberon is dead,” she says.
“I know. I saw him die. Right before I was brutally maimed and imprisoned.”
Mab stares at me, her expression just as stark and dangerous as the rest of this place.
“I do not think you understand the weight of this situation,” she says.
“Don’t I? The Summer King is gone, which has thrown the worlds of Faerie and mankind out of balance, and the Pale Queen is coming for your neck, and even if you do fend her off, we’re all fucked because there’s no Summer to hold the balance. I’d say I have it down pretty well.”
“Oberon cannot die,” she says.
“And yet I watched him turn to ash.”
“He cannot.”
“And now you’re repeating yourself. Great. The Summer King is dead and the Winter Queen has lost her damn mind.”
The slap that sends me sprawling to the ground echoes in the boulevard like a cracking glacier. Lights swarm over my eyes, and for the briefest moment, I think she’s dislocated my jaw. I dig my fingers into the snow and concrete, forcing down the stars and the pain. Without my runes or magic, it takes much longer than it should; before I can even push myself to sitting, Mab’s boots fill my vision. I would not put it past her to kick me while I’m down. Literally.
“You would do well to remember to whom you speak,” she hisses. “I am the Faerie Queen!”
And I don’t know what scares me more right then, the fact that her boot is tipped in steel and could probably bash my head in or that her final shouted words are hysterical. Like, actually hysterical. Like she is about to start screaming or crying.
Mab has never broken her perfect calm. She has slapped me. She has yelled at me. But I have watched her kill a dozen trespassers without flinching, watched her sentence three of her most trusted advisers to a very gruesome death by mutilation. I’ve watched her watch her kingdom disappear between her fingertips.
I have never, ever, heard her sound like she was about to have a meltdown.
It sounds as if she’s trying to convince herself who and what she is. Or was. And if she’s questioning that, the rest of us mortals have a great deal to worry about.
The fear that twists through my throat makes me want to vomit.
For the first time ever, I think Mab is afraid of her own impending death. A death she has been promised to never experience.
I push myself to standing and brace myself for the blow that never comes. Mab stands before me, shaking slightly, her pale cheeks flushed and her green eyes burning like barium flames.
“Oberon cannot die,” she repeats. “And yet he is gone. You let him die.”
I stare at her. There’s no point arguing. Because yes, he died when I was in the room. My blood helped summon the Pale Queen. I have done nothing to keep her or Oberon safe, and everything to ensure their deaths, and I didn’t even know it. But I didn’t have a hand in this. Even in the past, when I went after him, it was all just for practice. I wouldn’t have truly killed him—I wouldn’t have even known how.
Or perhaps that’s a lie; the
Pale Queen had told me she would aid me, get Oberon off my back. I just hadn’t expected her to be able to follow through on her offer. I can’t pretend she killed him for me. But I can’t pretend that I wasn’t part of her plan all along.
Mab’s eyes narrow.
“What have you done?” she whispers.
Shit.
She’s always been able to read my thoughts. I’ve just always been better at hiding them.
“Nothing,” I reply. “She’s manipulated me every step of the way.”
“You let yourself—”
“I am not here to be yelled at!” I take a deep breath, try to calm down. Not very successfully, I might add. “I’m here because Kingston sent me. Melody’s dying and the circus is in danger and you need all the Dream you can find. Austin followed me there. He’s offered to make himself the next bearer of the tithe.”
“That will not hold.”
“No, but you’re also not doing anything to find the next lucky sacrifice. So he’ll do. For now. I need the book of contracts.”
I can tell she wants to tell me no. She’s never liked giving in to my demands, even if they were to further her own cause. But she’s also not an idiot. She nods her head and turns away.
“Did you do this?” I ask, pointing to the toppled statue as she walks.
“Yes,” she replies. Faeries can’t lie. Sometimes, that takes all the fun out of accusing them of things. “It is because of you and your mother that this has happened. When this is over, I will ensure both of your names have been erased from our history.”
My feet turn to lead as the scene I’d been shown in Tír na nÓg replays itself in my brain: Mab, congratulating me for a job well done. Making me a true killer princess and heir to the Winter throne. In the vision, she was proud of me. In the vision, she treated me like an equal.
Another future, scratched out as easily as words on a plaque.
I keep walking, though. Because I signed my damned contract, and I will fight for her until the end. Even if she is being a bitch and throwing away any emotional impetus to help.
The castle doors open of their own accord at our approach, and she guides me through the twisted, sloping halls even though I know the place like the back of my hand, scars and all. She doesn’t speak as we go. The silence pulls at my chest, a void trying to suck the air from my lungs.
“What are you going to do?” I ask her.
“About what?”
“The Pale Queen. Your lack of a kingdom. Even I can see you have nothing to hold on to.”
“So long as I have breath in my lungs, I have something to hold on to. Winter is more than a kingdom, more than a place. Winter is the blood in my veins, the will in my chest, the power in my fingertips. So long as I exist, Winter will survive. And I refuse to fail myself.”
“I bet Oberon thought the same thing.”
She actually stumbles. But when she rights herself and stands up straight again, any uncertainty in her features is gone.
“Oberon was a fool. He was overconfident. He saw the best in people. I know better.”
“She’s offering you amnesty,” I reply. “If you give in, she’ll let you live. You have two days to decide. Think about it, Mab. Winter can live on. No one else has to die.”
“The irony, that you of all people would plead a line of action that results in no more death.” Mab shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in me. More disappointed in me. “I will not give in to her offer. The Pale Queen is not Fey. Whatever she is, she is not Fey. And that means she can lie.”
“But what if she’s telling the truth?”
“I cannot just surrender,” she says. “I am tied to the kingdom. To Faerie itself. I can no more bow down than I can turn the sun to ice.”
Which I think might actually be a lie, or at least a shit ton of poetic license, because I have no doubt the all-powerful Queen of Winter could freeze the whole universe if she damn well pleased.
“Then she will kill you.”
“Luckily for you,” she says, turning back around to resume her unnecessary leading, “you are bound to protect me to the death.”
“Lucky me indeed,” I repeat.
A few darkened hallways later, we arrive at her study. The door leading in is nondescript—stone with a silver skull as a doorknob—but it opens to a room that I might actually describe as warm. The walls are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, interlaced with crystalline skull sconces and standing candelabras and thick leather armchairs. There’s a huge wooden desk in the corner, laden with books and floating, dripping candles and more skulls, not all of them made of stone and not many of them human.
She heads over to the desk, waving her hand at a bookshelf as she goes. But when she reaches the desk, nothing has stirred from the shelves. She turns on a heel and looks around, her eyebrows furrowed. When nothing moves—and clearly, she is looking for something to move—she walks behind the desk and begins throwing open drawers.
“Have you been in here?” she hisses. She doesn’t look at me.
“You know I haven’t.”
She doesn’t respond, but when all the drawers are on the floor and she still hasn’t found the book, she knuckles her fingers atop the desk and stares at me.
“It is gone. How can it be gone!?”
I shrug and try not to step back. At least right now her fury isn’t aimed directly at me. Or, wasn’t caused by me.
“Maybe you misplaced it?”
She takes a long, slow breath and I brace myself for her wrath.
“You should go,” she whispers.
“Go where?”
“I do not care. But I cannot stand you here.”
“Did she take it? The Pale Queen?”
“Impossible.”
“Just like killing Oberon.”
Her lips thin. Once more, she looks as if she’s on the edge of hysteria. I know that face—that’s the everything is falling to shit and it keeps getting worse face.
“If the Pale Queen has my book, we are in much more danger than I had feared.”
“Why?”
“Our world runs on contracts. Rules. Without those contracts, I have nothing. My magic . . .” She waves her hand at the candles, making the flames turn black. As though reassuring herself that she still has some sort of power. “Without the book,” she muses, “we cannot make Austin bear the tithe. Which means the show will fall. Soon. And when it does, I will not be far behind.”
She doesn’t look at me. She stares at the bookshelf as though it holds more questions than it does answers.
“Could she . . . could she change the book? The contracts, I mean. Could she undo them?”
She doesn’t answer immediately.
“It has been done only once before,” she finally says, still looking away. “But the one who did that is long since dead, and the knowledge of how to change those contracts gone with her.”
Something in her words triggers my thoughts. The Pale Queen was dragged up from the astral planes . . . Could that mean she was dead? Brought back to life? Or was she always something inhuman, something more along the lines of Eli? Because if she was killed once . . . Where she ended, she must end again.
“Who was it?” I ask. Because there are too many coincidences to think it’s nothing.
“No one worth remembering,” she replies.
“But I think—”
“I have not hired you to think,” she interrupts. Still not looking at me. “I have hired you to kill my enemies. You are a weapon, Claire. Nothing more, nothing less. Do not forget that.”
“Would you fucking listen to me?” I yell, slamming my fist on her desk for emphasis.
She does look over to me at that. Her expression is perfectly blank.
“I believe I have been doing nothing but listening to your childish tirades,” she says smoothly. “But please, do continue. I am all ears, and have so much time in which to listen.”
“My mother . . . the Oracle. When she died, she gave a prophecy.”<
br />
“Which was?”
“Her name is writ in hell. In blood and twilight, her name is spelled, and this name shall be her downfall. She must die where her shadow began. Where she ended, she must end again.”
Mab’s eyebrows furrow.
“Are you going to tell me you understand what this means?”
“No,” I say, admittedly a little deflated. “But I think there might be a connection between the Pale Queen and whatever happened in the show. She hates you. And let’s be real here, Mab—the people who hate you most are often the ones who were employed by you.”
Her lips quirk in the smallest grin. “Present company included.”
I shrug.
“If there’s a connection . . . if there’s any sort of lead . . . you have to tell me. I’m a weapon, yes. But you’re not letting me do my job if you don’t show me where to strike.”
She considers me for a while, which allows me time to consider her. And the Pale Queen. So far, the Pale Queen has been blunt about her plans and where I fit in. Mab has always been secretive. She’s never let me hold my own. Which raises the questions I shouldn’t be allowed to ask: If the Pale Queen is changing or canceling contracts, does that mean I’m free? And would I want to be free in the first place? If nothing is holding me to fighting for Mab, would I continue to do so by my own free will?
I stare at her, and I honestly don’t know. On the one hand, fighting for her is something I’ve done my entire life. On the other, the taste of freedom is intoxicating.
What if—when not bound by a contract—I’m actually just the type of woman who watches the world burn? I’d thought I found something worth fighting for—saving Melody, helping my dad—but as I stare at Mab, I realize those chances are slim. Mab has always been the center around which my world turned. Without her . . .
“I will look into it,” she finally says. As though that’s enough. I want to scream at her to tell me what she knows. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Mab in all my years of service, it’s that she will never divulge more than she wants. No matter how loudly you scream at her.
