by Leigh Kelsey
The reality that we could be caught, and punished, and thrown back in our cells made the world around me sharper, the colours brighter as adrenaline made me twitchy. I pointed out our route as Kwame led us up another staircase, and then another. We made it to Fear Doirche’s study without getting caught and I exhaled in relief, throwing the door open and rushing inside.
My heart stopped. I hadn’t even considered that the fae would be in here. But there he was, his mouth opening in confusion and then rage filling his eyes as he spotted Sceolan and Kwame behind me.
And I knew—he wouldn’t throw us back in the cells. He’d kill us all, and find someone else to tell him about Finn.
I recoiled hard enough to slam into Kwame as the fae god stalked towards us.
DARK POWER
Sceolan slammed the door shut behind us and before I could react, he was hauling a heavy table against it to barricade it shut. Barricade us in the study with a fae god. I opened my mouth to question him, to shout at him, but Fear Doirche’s hand closed around my throat and I choked on the words. Fear bled through me, my breaths tight as I clawed at his hands, kicking my feet as he pulled me into the air, my legs dangling.
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Sceolan snarled, and suddenly I was knocked free, falling onto the rug at my feet, gasping hard for each breath. I looked up just to see Sceolan get thrown across the room into the huge, heavy desk against the wall. What wisps of breath I’d inhaled whooshed out of me as his dark head hit the corner and he slumped, swearing in pain. But he didn’t black out—he didn’t break his neck—and relief hit me so hard I swayed as I pushed myself up.
Unlike the last time I’d been here, when every weapon had clearly been removed, my eyes landed on a marcasite-incrusted dagger, the cross guard of it fashioned into two upswept bird’s wings. Fear Doirche had been using it to open a pile of letters. He didn’t need weapons as weapons, I supposed. Not with how strong he was.
I grabbed the knife, ignoring the way my bloody hand shook and feeling better for having something to hold onto as someone tried to barge open the door from the outside, bodies slamming into it. The table held, leaving Fear Doirche alone to face us. Or us alone to face him.
“Don’t,” I began as Kwame launched himself fist-first at Fear Doirche. The fae lifted his hand and a wave of something slammed through the room. A dark, oily power slid over me, pressing against my skin, my skeleton, my will until I felt sick, until I was cowering. It covered me like a film, pressing, questing—curious. I wanted to curl into a ball, retreat somewhere dark and quiet inside myself to hide from that slithering, aware darkness. But I kept my eyes open, a gasp catching in my sore throat as Kwame dropped to his knees and screamed, holding his hands over his ears. That sound … I’d never heard anyone scream like it, and for it to have come from calm, collected Kwame…
“Stop it,” I begged, stumbling toward Fear Doirche and doing my best not to ask how many times he’d used that power on my mate. It’s oily residue still clung to me, the sense of it like a pleased, preening feline, but the awareness of it had shifted to Kwame. “Please.”
“Please?” Fear Doirche laughed. “You dare plead with me when you had the gall to attempt escape.”
“We weren’t escaping,” I gasped, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “I changed my mind. I don’t—I don’t want you to hurt me again. We’re here to give you what you want.” I shuddered, my chest so tight as he took a slow, controlled step towards me. There was eagerness in his eyes, a greed for any information to destroy his enemy.
“I can—I can tell you all about the Fair House,” I whispered. Scarlett could have told Harrington anyway, and it didn’t matter what Fear Doirche knew about our home. We could move, we could go anywhere—as long as we were alive, and together. “I can tell you about all the rooms, the layout.”
“You’ll tell me where Fionn Mac Cumhaill sleeps?” he asked with barely restrained glee.
“Y-yes,” I breathed, shaking so hard the knife trembled in my hand. Fear Doirche didn’t look bothered by me holding it, and I knew I couldn’t do any lasting damage with it. “He … he sleeps in the room at the end of the hall. It’s—it’s blue,” I gasped, tears rolling down my cheeks. But I had his attention, and Sceolan was moving. Kwame was still on his knees, his hands pressed to his head, but Sceolan could do … something … I didn’t know what. It didn’t matter—I just had to keep Fear Doirche’s focus on me.
“There’s—there’s a bed,” I said through a shuddering breath. “A wardrobe, drawers, a guitar.”
“Guitar,” Fear Doirche repeated. “So the great poet Fionn has turned to song.”
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
“Go on,” he hissed greedily. His eyes were lit with fanatic light and again I wondered what had made him into this. It couldn’t just be losing Sadhbh to Finn.
“What else do you want to know?” I gasped.
“Tell me everyone he loves. Tell me his habits—what does he do every day?”
“He … he spends time with us. Guards the house,” I whispered, crying. Protects us, I didn’t say. I didn’t tell him Allen shared Finn’s room, either. I couldn’t betray them both that badly. “We watch TV together, or go out, or he works—I don’t know what he does.”
“Good.” He nodded, and I stilled at a shadow moving behind him. “Good, Elara. Continue. More.”
I flinched, scrambling for something to say. What would Fear Doirche want to know? “He—”
It took all my effort to keep my eyes on Fear Doirche as Sceolan lifted a heavy lamp with both hands, the strain obvious as he brought it down punishingly hard on the faerie’s head. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but his concentration must have slipped because Kwame launched to his feet, bleeding from his nose, ears, and eyes. Fear Doirche lifted his hand to use his faerie magic again—whatever it was that made Kwame scream and bleed—and I knew if he let that power fly, we’d never get out.
We’d be locked back in the cells. I’d never see my mum, or Allen, or Scarlett, or Oisìn, or Finn. The only thing I’d know for the rest of my immortal life would be darkness and torment. Shadows and pain. And I couldn’t bear a life shut in the dark, deprived of touch.
My throat ached badly enough to distract me, but I tightened my grip on the knife and slashed blindly at Fear Doirche’s body. Resistance pressed on the blade but then it sank through his forearm and I shook with relief. He growled with fury, but that was all I needed as I skittered away. The magic stopped forming on the air and whatever false kindness he’d had when I’d been telling him what he wanted to know vanished. He poised to squeeze the life out of me again but then Sceolan hit him on the base of the skull again, disorienting him, and this time Kwame gripped his head, twisting hard until—I flinched at the visceral sound of his neck snapping.
“Come on,” Sceolan said gently, discarding the lamp and taking my shaking hand. My other was still dripping with blood, locked around the dagger. “That won’t keep him down for long. We’d better run.”
I shook, staring at him, seeing Fear Doirche and Graham Harrington and Oisìn bleeding out, all overlapping in my head until death was all I could see. My fault—all of them my fault.
“Elara.” Kwame squeezed my shoulder, jolting me back into the room. I looked up into his brown eyes and felt myself shattered, breaking down inside in a way that would be near permanent. I’d only heal with Allen and Oisìn and Finn and Scarlett. But Kwame’s hand on my shoulder helped me pull myself together enough to blink, to move, to say, “Okay. I’m okay.”
“The way out?” he asked, so patient and kind despite the fact that Fear Doirche could wake any moment. I knew Sceolan was right—a broken neck wouldn’t stop him. I didn’t know what would kill him.
“Here,” I breathed, forcing my legs to strengthen, to carry me to a door at the back of the room. I paused only to grab the letter off Fear Doirche’s desk and push it into my jeans pocket—I couldn’t explain why, except it must have been important for
it to be addressed to him.
Paper crinkling as I walked, I flung open the door, urgency catching up to me now and speeding my breathing. Adrenaline returned to race through my veins as I marched into the opulent bedroom, ignoring gilded furniture and velvet and diamonds in favour of the window to my left. I tried the catch, smearing it with blood, and nearly cried when it released easily, the glass swinging open.
“I’ll go first,” Sceolan said. “Better check there’s no one out there.”
“Oisìn said it would bring us out near the stables,” I breathed, gripping the knife in my hand tight and ignoring the blood dripping onto the jade green carpet. “There’ll be three guards there, maybe more.” I left out the fact of there being hundreds of vampires inside the castle. I didn’t even let myself think about it.
Sceolan just gave me a nod, his vivid blue eyes darting around and stress written in every taut line of his lithe body as he hauled himself through the window frame and jumped down on the other side.
Relief loosened my muscles as his feet thudded onto the ground moments after he jumped; we had to be on the first floor, instead of a perilous drop from the highest tower. I didn’t trust this castle to be as it seemed—not when Fear Doirche was a faerie and nobody knew what species his Mistress was. I’d read too many stories about fae to believe I was safe, even when I landed on hard packed earth outside the castle, Sceolan steadying me with a hand on my arm.
I was caught off guard by the comfort in the grip, the signature of his touch like a live wire—volatile and unpredictable—compared to the steady, unwavering signature of Finn, the soothing sense of being absorbed by a thousand cushions I got when I touched Allen, the shivery feeling of Scarlett’s touch, and the rightness I felt with Oisìn. Judging by the way Sceolan’s eyes flickered, he felt that same reassurance from touching me.
I wanted to hug him—he’d been locked up for three years. It was nothing to Oisìn being starved of touch for seven hundred years, but still, the compulsion to comfort was there.
“No guards,” Kwame observed as he climbed out, pulling the window shut to cover our exit. Maybe when the vampires finally broke through and found Fear Doirche, they’d think we’d used magic to get out. Sceolan still had some faerie magic, I knew, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possible.
“This way,” I breathed, watching where I placed my feet so my path was silent as I walked away from the window and around a corner. I smelled the horses before I saw the stables and heard the steady footsteps and the rattle of metal. Peering around the rounded base of a tower, I glimpsed three guards—all massive and armed, and with obvious vampire strength—and two other, less powerful vampires. One was brushing down a horse, the other moving around busily, putting saddles and equipment away.
I leant back into the cover of the tower, glancing between Kwame and Sceolan. “Should we steal the horses? I don’t know how to ride.”
“You can ride with me,” Kwame replied in his deep voice, a crease between his eye the only sign of his nervousness. I gave him a long look, lingering on the blood trails from his nose and ears, but I didn’t look much better. My jeans were ripped and slashed, my top grimy and stained, and I had crusted blood down my chin and throat, as well as along my arm from where Sceolan had fed me before. Even Sceolan had a spray of Fear Doirche’s blood over him. We looked like serial killers. I just nodded.
“You get the one with the saddle,” Sceolan said lowly, peering around the tower with narrowed eyed. His mouth flattened into a determined line, and for the first time I noticed the scar cutting through his upper lip, slashing up his pronounced cheekbone. It didn’t look recent—it looked like a well-established part of him. “I can ride without one,” he added, the ghost of a smile crossing his eyes. “I was raised with horses—I can communicate with them. Assuming this damned spell hasn’t ripped that from me too.”
Instinct propelled me forward and I pressed a gentle kiss to his scarred cheek. “You’ll get it all back.”
His eyes softened even as he scowled. “I fucking better.”
“Two guards are facing away,” Kwame said, and without further warning, he sprinted around the tower and towards the hulking vampires. Panic spiked my heart rate before Sceolan darted after him and I ran too, lifting my winged dagger. I didn’t want to kill anyone else, but I could stab someone in the leg or shoulder if it meant getting a horse and escaping this place. I’d only been here … a few days, a week? I didn’t want to know how badly it would wreck me if I stayed here a month, a year, a lifetime.
Kwame snapped the necks of both the distracted guards, his bare arms flexing with brute strength. His eyes were empty, flat, a complete contrast to Sceolan’s feral grin as he thrust a hoof pick into a guard’s throat with enough wild strength to tear her throat open. The guard hissed, tearing at Sceolan’s forearms with wicked black claws, but the metal pick plunged under her ribs and into her heart, and she collapsed. I didn’t know if she was dead—could you technically stake a vampire without a wooden stake?—but I didn’t stick around to find out.
“There’s no others?” I whispered, glancing at my friends before I remembered the men tending the horses further in the barn. I lunged towards a brown-haired man trying to slip slowly through a side door. His eyes flared wide with panic—he obviously wasn’t trained by Fear Doirche, maybe at all—and before I really thought about it, I buried my knife in his shoulder. He cried out, thrashing in panic, his eyes like a spooked animal’s as I held onto him. Adrenaline raced through my blood—had someone heard his shout of pain?—along with the sharp edge of panic. I didn’t want to kill him but he couldn’t get away.
“Get that,” I told Kwame, nodding at a heavy-looking steel first-aid box. Kwame hefted it, grunting, and used it to knock out the stable hand.
Sceolan barged into a stall and dragged out a man who, judging by his appearance, was a farrier. Mercilessly, my friend hit his head against the stable door until he passed out. No, those men had not been trained to fight, not even to defend themselves. And working in a castle surrounded by predators and killers … worse things could have happened to them than us.
Kwame assessed our surroundings and nodded, heading towards the horse that had been saddled. It reared, letting out a warning sound of panic, and I stumbled away. I knew what sorts of injuries a horse’s hooves could give someone, and vampire or not, I didn’t want to suffer that.
“Easy,” Sceolan said, approaching the black horse slowly. “We’re not gonna hurt you. I’m a friend. You can smell that. I’m like you—I’m a beast, too.” I glanced sharply at Sceolan. He was? “We just need you to take us to the wall. Could you do that? My friends here would ride you.”
The horse tossed its head, and I wasn’t sure if this was normal horse behaviour or if it seemed pissed at the idea of carrying us and not Sceolan.
“Please,” Sceolan begged, and that seemed to be the magic word. The horse huffed and stilled, dipping its head. “You can mount her now,” he said to us. “She’ll lead us to the wall, and then you can take us to the gatehouse, Elara.”
“Um,” I said, suddenly unsure. “It’s really high up. On the wall.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Kwame assured me. “But we need to go right now. I don’t want to stick around for Fear Doirche to wake up.”
Neither did I. “How do I…?”
Kwame got onto the horse’s back effortlessly, while I balked. Sceolan stepped up behind me, his hands settling around my waist and squeezing reassuringly before he lifted me onto the mare’s back. He grunted at my weight but didn’t complain, helping me steady myself in the saddle behind Kwame.
“What’s her name?” I asked Sceolan as he introduced himself to a pale brown horse in a stall to our right.
“Alice,” he called across the stables. “But the people here call her Savage Knife.”
My stomach became even more turbulent. “Thank you for letting us ride you, Alice,” I whispered. I really hoped she lived up to the name Alice, and not Sav
age Knife.
CROSSROADS
In seconds, Sceolan was on the back of the brown horse, and leading the way out of the stables. It felt as if the ground under me was uneven, rocking me from side to side and trying to throw me off. I clung to Kwame, feeling every hard muscle beneath his ragged vest, and I screwed my eyes shut when Alice began to sprint. I couldn’t help crying, my chest hitching and body shaking as I gripped Kwame’s shirt hard so I didn’t fall off.
Everything caught up to me as we raced away from the castle—the fear, the panic, the sense that we would be followed and dragged back to those cells, the tremulous hope that we’d be free.
I’d killed Graham Harrington, and stabbed Fear Doirche, and hurt a stable hand, and my fear of being caught was matched by my fear of what that made me. The only reassurance I had was that Oisìn would never think me the monster I was convinced I was becoming—he’d done the same and much worse and I knew he would always forgive me, always accept me for what I was and what I did. And that carried me through, made me scrape the tears from my face on the shoulder of my shirt, open my eyes, and watch the mammoth wall come into view.
Mountains sprawled around us, forming a grassy valley for the cold wind to whistle through. And cut across the grey-green valley in front of us rose the wall. As high as the castle itself, the sheer rock face of it was only broken by the conical bump of the gatehouse on the top. Cold pierced my heart, looking at that building and remembering the last time I’d been here. I wanted Oisìn at my side again. I wanted Finn here to tell me we’d be fine.
A minute away from the wall, Sceolan threw his head back and whooped. I startled at the whiplash of his emotions, turning my face to stare at him. His horse continued sprinting but he leapt off the mare’s back and—landed on four paws. My mouth fell open, and all my fear was erased by shock as I looked at the giant black dog. It was like the Hound of the Baskervilles, shaggy and dark and massive. He bayed loudly, and there was such joy in the sound that my heart stuttered.
