by Jenna Black
I froze, thinking about how my fidgeting caused me to rub against him. The moment I thought of it, I forgot all about the discomfort of the saddle, my mind focusing on the fact that my breasts were smooshed up against his back and his butt was cradled between my legs. My cheeks heated with embarrassment, even as the tingle of awareness spread throughout my body and made me want to rub up against him harder. I wondered if he was even now thinking about our venture to second base the night I’d snuck out of my safe house to see him. I knew I was, my mind conveniently editing out the strain we’d both been under at the time and the anger and desperation that had tainted the encounter.
Maybe accepting Ethan’s offer to ride double with him had been a bad idea.
“Sorry,” I said, willing myself to be still.
“No worries,” he said, his voice still strained and breathy. “This is kind of fun.” He turned to wink at me, as if he were perfectly satisfied with a little playful flirtation. As if he weren’t used to getting girls into bed, and my enforced chastity were no big deal.
Not that any of that mattered right now. Even if I were a total slut, we wouldn’t be doing anything more than flirting, in full view of dozens of people. But the tingly feeling of excitement from being close to him never failed to rouse my worries and concerns. I was desperately addicted to Ethan, and the fear of losing him could be debilitating at times, no matter how logically my rational mind explained that we had no future together.
“Maybe I should ride in the wagon after all?” I suggested tentatively.
“No way,” Ethan said with gratifying speed. “I’m not missing out on my chance to have you so close to me.” He sighed, and some of the tension eased out of him. “Besides, we won’t be riding all that long today.”
“We won’t?” From what my dad had told me, the Sunne Palace was at least a couple hundred miles from the Avalon border. I didn’t know how much ground we were covering at our plodding speed, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a couple hundred miles yet.
“No. Finn showed Keane and me a map of our route last night. We’re going to take a shortcut through some standing stones.”
“Huh?” I said intelligently.
“Standing stones. Like Stonehenge, only with real magic. There are tons of them in Faerie. They can be tricky to use, but if you’ve got the skill, you can travel from one set to another in the blink of an eye.”
“Tricky to use? What exactly does that mean?”
“Each set of standing stones is naturally connected to another, and they’re active in the moonlight. So if you don’t mind traveling at night, and if you want to go where the stones will naturally take you, using them is a piece of cake. But if you want to travel in the daytime, or if you want to control which set of stones you travel to, it takes some serious magic. And screwing up the spell could be the last mistake you ever make, if you know what I mean.”
I liked the idea of taking a shortcut—the sooner we got to the Sunne Palace, the sooner I’d be able to go home—but the way Ethan was describing it made it sound like a really bad idea to play with standing stones.
“Don’t worry,” he said, no doubt sensing my tension. “Prince Henry wouldn’t risk using standing stones if he thought there was any chance a hair on his head might be ruffled. And once we go through them, we’ll have only a few more hours to ride. We should be sleeping in luxury at the Sunne Palace tonight.”
Sleeping in luxury sure sounded nice, but an uneasy voice in the back of my head told me the standing stones would not turn out to be such a great idea after all.
* * *
I was right, only not for the reasons I thought.
We’d been traveling for about two hours, and I was pretty sure riding double on Ethan’s horse had already crippled me for life, when the caravan came to a sudden and unexpected halt. It was too soon for a lunch break, so I hoped that meant we’d reached the standing stones, even though the idea of passing through them made me decidedly nervous. I leaned to the side for a better view, but there were too many riders between me and the front to see why we’d stopped. At least there weren’t any shouts of alarm.
“Are we there yet?” I murmured, and Ethan laughed.
“Don’t know,” he said. “Let’s go see.”
We were still in hilly terrain, and Ethan guided his horse off the road and up the side of the hill that bounded it. We were pretty far toward the back, but the extra height allowed us to see why we had stopped. In the distance, at the crest of a flat-topped hill, were the standing stones: about ten big slabs of gray rock arranged in a circle, making it look like the hill was wearing a crown. But that wasn’t why we’d stopped. The road we were on forked, one branch leading right up to the standing stones, the other leading around the hill and off into the distance. The road that led to the standing stones was blocked by what looked like a big hedge. The hedge was about six feet high, and wide enough to span the entire road.
“This looks like a setup for an ambush,” I said, looking nervously around, wondering if there were more Bogles about to descend on us. “Except no one seems the least bit worried.”
“I don’t think it’s an ambush, exactly,” Ethan said cryptically as he nudged his horse forward. Either he was taking us closer to the prince’s position, where it was supposedly safer, or he was taking us closer to the front line, which didn’t seem like such a good idea to me.
From our vantage point, we could see Henry slide from his horse, then talk to one of his Knights—having a conniption fit, if the way he was waving his arms around was any indication. Ethan continued to urge his horse closer, but by the time we got within earshot, the discussion/argument was over. The Knight got back on his horse and started weaving his way through the stopped caravan toward the rear, and Henry stomped up to the hedge. When he started talking to it, I wondered if he’d lost his mind.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, his fists on his hips and his jaw jutting out. “Do you know who I am?”
The hedge … moved. Not like the trees and underbrush did when they got out of the way, more like some multi-limbed amoeba changing shape. The vines rustled and quivered, drawing in from the edges, and I could see now that although the leaves looked kind of like ivy, there were wicked-sharp thorns all along the branches. Whatever the hedge was, it definitely wasn’t ivy.
“Shite,” Ethan muttered under his breath. “It’s a Green Lady.”
“Do I even want to know what a Green Lady is?” I asked.
“Probably not.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The vines reshaped themselves until they formed the figure of a woman in a flowing green gown, looking very much like an animated topiary. The Green Lady bowed her head.
“I know who you are, my prince,” she said, although her head was just a featureless oval with no mouth that I could see. “It goes without saying that you may pass freely. These others, however, must pay the toll.”
“This is outrageous!” Henry shouted. “You dare to impede my progress?”
“Not at all, my prince,” the Green Lady said, and there was unconcealed amusement in her voice. “As I said, you may pass unhindered.”
“You will remove yourself from this road immediately,” Henry said, not a bit appeased. “My chattel are exempt from your toll.”
Even some of Henry’s most loyal Knights looked offended at being referred to as chattel. Even if being his chattel meant they didn’t have to pay whatever toll the Green Lady was demanding.
“Can’t they just hack their way through the hedge?” I asked Ethan, keeping my voice down, because the last thing I wanted to do was draw Henry’s or the Green Lady’s attention. There was enough firepower in our caravan to fight off what had seemed like an army of Bogles. It seemed like this one Green Lady should be no match for them.
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed, keeping his voice just as soft, “but that’s one of those things that’s ‘not done’ in Faerie. To kill a Green Lady is to poison the land, and th
ey can demand their tolls whenever it suits them.”
“And what, exactly, is this toll she’s demanding?”
“Blood, of course,” said my dad, and I practically fell off the horse in surprise. I felt Ethan’s body jerk, too, so I guess I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t noticed my dad riding up beside us. “Virgin blood, more specifically,” Dad said, and I felt the prickle of his magic.
A chill passed down my spine. “You think Henry’s going to throw me under the bus.”
Dad gave me a quizzical look, but even if he wasn’t familiar with the saying, he took my meaning. “He can try,” my dad said grimly, and I realized we might be in more trouble now than we had been yesterday when the Bogles attacked. There was no way my dad would allow Henry to hand me over without violence, and Henry might be enough of an ass to try find a way around the safe passage agreement to do it.
It wasn’t a fight my dad could win, and we both knew it.
“These people are not all your chattel, my prince,” the Green Lady said. “I’m afraid I must insist they pay the toll. Or, of course, you can take the long way.” She gestured with one leafy arm at the road that led around the hill.
Henry sputtered a little more.
“Come, come,” the Green Lady said. “What is a little blood between friends? You do wish the land to prosper, do you not?”
At that moment, I noticed the Knight who’d been talking to Henry coming back. And I noticed, to my horror, that Elizabeth was sitting behind him on his horse, her face once more wet with tears.
“Oh, no,” I said. “He’s not going to…”
My dad’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Better her than you,” he said; then he turned to me and made a calming gesture before I could bite his head off about his callousness. “The blood toll isn’t fatal,” he assured me. “But it is unpleasant.”
I didn’t doubt that. What did Henry have against this poor girl? She was only a kid! Then again, the rest of the women in his caravan were all adults and could be thousands of years old for all I knew. Maybe Elizabeth and I were the only virgins in the bunch. Well, except for Kimber, but I doubted Henry would be allowed to offer up an Unseelie girl.
I got the impression that the Green Lady was eyeing Elizabeth hungrily, even though she didn’t technically have eyes.
Henry had obviously decided to give Elizabeth to the Green Lady from the very beginning—otherwise why would he have sent his Knight to fetch her?—but he still pretended to be completely indignant about the sacrifice. He scowled fiercely at the Green Lady, making thinly veiled threats and reminding me of a three-year-old having a tantrum.
Elizabeth was clearly terrified, and my heart squeezed with pity for her as the Knight dismounted, dragging her down with him. Her face was so white I was surprised she didn’t faint dead away, and even from a distance, I could see how badly she was trembling. She was just a kid. And Henry was going to hand her over to the Green Lady like she was exactly what he’d called her and all the rest of his people: chattel. When she balked, Henry turned on her impatiently.
“Stop blubbering,” he said with a truly overwhelming level of compassion. “Just hold still and it will be over in a moment.”
His words weren’t exactly comforting, and Elizabeth flinched from the sharpness of his tone. An angry red flush was creeping up his neck, and I had no doubt he was on the verge of beating her into submission.
Without having consciously made a decision to act, I found myself slipping off the back of Ethan’s horse. My thighs and butt groaned in protest, and when my feet hit the ground I found my legs were all wobbly, but I managed not to fall on my face.
“What are you doing?” Ethan asked me, and my dad turned to me in obvious alarm.
I remembered the Erlking telling me once that I was very protective of the people who mattered to me, and that it took very little to make someone matter. I guess he had me pegged. Elizabeth had never spoken a single word to me, but I couldn’t just stand by and let Henry hand her over to the Green Lady.
I ignored Ethan’s question and avoided my dad’s eyes as I walked around their horses toward the road. Elizabeth was trying to pull away from the Knight’s grip, and Henry was yelling at her, ordering her to march straight into the Green Lady’s clutches.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, and everyone in hearing range went silent. Except for my dad.
“Dana, no!” he barked, and I heard the sound of his horse as he came after me.
Henry turned to me, and there was an ugly gleam in his eye that gave me a chill. “We cannot pass without a sacrifice,” he said as his gaze bored into me. “Unless you’re volunteering to take her place, my servant will give her blood to the Green Lady.”
Dad’s horse came up beside me, and Dad reached down for me. I dodged out of his reach but kept most of my attention on Henry.
“I’ll take her place,” I said, wondering if I was completely crazy. I didn’t know exactly what would happen during this blood sacrifice, and here I was volunteering for it in the place of a girl I didn’t even know.
“Dana, no!” my dad said again, this time with even more heat. “I forbid it!”
I turned to look up at him as he glowered down at me from his horse. “You said the blood sacrifice is non-fatal, right?”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said through gritted teeth. “You are not doing it!”
“Dad, look at her,” I argued, indicating Elizabeth with a sweep of my arm. The poor girl was still crying, though she held one hand over her mouth as if trying to stifle the sobs. If she were a human girl, I’d be afraid she might die of terror if she was forced to act as a sacrifice. As it was, I doubted she would actually die, but she would no doubt be emotionally scarred. Maybe I was overestimating my own toughness, but I was pretty damn sure the sacrifice would damage me a lot less than it would her.
I don’t think my dad felt nearly as sorry for Elizabeth as I did, and I was sure he was about to put his foot down, but the Green Lady spoke before he got a chance.
“A willing sacrifice is of far more value than one that is forced,” she said, turning her featureless head toward me. “I will take the willing sacrifice.” She held out a thorny arm, beckoning to me.
“No!” my dad said, a hint of desperation in his voice.
“She has already offered herself,” Henry snapped. I didn’t think he was a bit unhappy at how things were turning out. “It is too late to renege.”
“I am her father, and I forbid it!”
“Then none of you shall pass,” the Green Lady said. She pointed at Elizabeth, who cowered at the gesture. “I do not want that one.”
I could practically see the calculation in Henry’s eyes as he looked back and forth between my father and me. Our guarantee of safe passage probably meant Henry couldn’t give me to the Green Lady by force, but I doubted it would be any kind of violation if I volunteered. Which meant Henry was currently within his rights, and my dad was within a heartbeat of getting himself in serious trouble.
I didn’t think letting my dad and Henry keep up a dialogue was a good thing, so instead of waiting to see who said what next, I broke into a run, surprising everyone around me.
“Dana!” my dad cried, and I was sure the next thing I’d hear was the thundering of his horse’s hooves.
I was wrong. The Green Lady was apparently eager to accept my sacrifice, and she quickly lost her humanoid shape and tendrils of thorny vines shot out toward me.
I was a willing sacrifice, but I am human (at least mostly), and I couldn’t help pulling up short at the sight of those vines reaching for me. The thorns were as long as my fingers, and a hell of a lot sharper.
My dad yelled out something else that I couldn’t hear over the thundering of my heart. In seconds, the vines had surrounded me, trapping me in a circle of greenery. A circle that grew darker and darker as the vines packed themselves together around me until I was completely buried within them. If I so much as twitched, I was going to get firsthand knowl
edge of just how sharp those thorns were.
I’d been feeling really brave a couple of seconds ago, but right now I was so scared I could barely suck in a breath. I closed my eyes, hoping that would make me feel less claustrophobic, and forced myself to think of poor Elizabeth and her terror. Sure, I was scared. But I knew without a doubt that I wasn’t as scared as she would have been.
“Do not struggle,” the Green Lady’s voice said. Maybe I was crazy, but I could have sworn there was a touch of gentleness in that voice.
The vines pressed closer, until I could feel the prick of thorns against my skin. I couldn’t help the little half-gasp, half-whimper that escaped me.
“Shh,” came the Green Lady’s voice, coming from all around me. “Be still, and this will not hurt so badly.”
And suddenly, the vines contracted around me, driving the thorns into my flesh.
The thorns were everywhere, piercing me from head to toe, and it was all I could do not to scream. My most primitive instincts urged me to struggle, to pull away even though there was no escape, but I fought those instincts. I understood now why the Green Lady told me to be still. I felt like a human pincushion with all of those thorns sticking into me, but although they hurt plenty, the pain was … manageable. If I struggled, those thorns would tear me to shreds.
“Well done,” the Green Lady said, and just like that, the thorns withdrew from my body and the vines retracted, giving me room to breathe.
My knees were wobbly, and I would have fallen on my butt if several of the vines hadn’t wrapped themselves around me—without piercing me with their thorns—and held me up. Greenery still surrounded me, but it was less dense now, allowing light and air into the Green Lady’s center. I glanced down at my hands and saw lots of tiny pinpricks of blood. I suspected my whole body looked the same.
“You honor the land with your willing sacrifice,” the Green Lady said. “Such courage and generosity of spirit I have not seen for a long, long time.”
I almost said a reflexive thank you, then remembered at the last moment that there were certain creatures of Faerie you weren’t supposed to say that to. For all I knew, that was nothing but a legend—certainly the Sidhe seemed to have no problem with the words—but instinct told me that if the restriction applied to any creatures of Faerie, it would apply to the Green Lady.
