Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1)

by Mel Sterling

  "I—" Tess could only sputter, confounded. She was out of logic. "I didn't. I didn't even know what was happening—"

  "Oh, but you did. I'm sure Thomas told you." The Queen raised a slender finger, as if to beseech a moment's grace from the determined girl before her. With a slow smile, she said, "In free and grateful return for the gift of your home, I give you your heart's desire, Tess."

  What had Thomas said about names? That giving the fae your truename gave them power over you? Who had given the Queen her name? Not Hunter, for Thomas had never spoken her name in his hearing. Nor had she given it herself.

  Suddenly she knew. The whispering, traitorous corn-husk pixie. No doubt she and Thomas had missed finding one, somehow. It had overheard them at home and escaped to betray them. She froze, staring first at the Queen's beautiful smile. A warm lassitude, like sinking into a bath of sun-warmed honey, spread through Tess. When Thomas gasped, she turned to look at him. On his face was such horrified sadness that she reached out to cup his cheek, comfort him. The hand that stretched to him was not her own. She flinched back away from this new creature in their midst, and the hand flinched back too.

  "No. Oh, no." Thomas moaned and reached for her. His big rough hand caught at the strange new hand. Tess, feeling that trow hand close around the strange hand, knew it was her own. The lassitude ebbed, and in its place was panic. The Queen had done something to her, but what?

  She stared at the fingers in Thomas's grasp. Where she had once had pale skin, now there was rough, papery...was it bark she was seeing? She tried to look down at herself and found her movements strangely stiff and restricted. She felt as if she were suddenly taller, yet at the same time more delicate and diffuse, as if her nerves were unfurling and reaching out past her flesh, forming a network of sensation. Her clothing fitted her oddly. Her boots hurt her feet. When she looked down at them, she saw tree roots protruding from between the leather uppers and rubber soles. She shuffled once and the boots flapped loosely, ruined.

  Tess leaned forward, intending to push into Thomas's arms, beg him to stop what was happening to her. She was the same height as he now, their gazes on a level with one another. She sought his eyes, desperate to read something there, find an explanation, and saw her own reflection in the darkness of his gaze. Where she had once had hair, now there were twigs and branches stretching upward, and the trembling gold leaves of the birch. Where she had once had lashes, now there were curls of birch bark, black and silver.

  She did not recognize herself in the tiny images. Nothing of Tess remained. Horror swept over her. She began to shake. Leaves drifted down from her branches, settling on the sleeves of her jacket and Thomas's shoulders.

  Birch girl, birch girl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  IN THAT INSTANT THOMAS UNDERSTOOD it all. The sly whisper of the cornhusk pixie at the Queen's ear. The cornstalks rustling on Tess's porch. His own impassioned murmur of her name as they embraced on the front walk, ignoring the fae truth for his very human desire and hope.

  Betrayed.

  Thomas clutched Tess's hand tighter and knew it for what it was: the papery bark over the bones, the twiggy fingers of the ghille dhu, the birch girls. Tess had surrendered without even knowing what she was doing, her trusting, kind nature childlike to a player of the Queen's power. It was a brutal wound to learn that Tess's heart's desire was to be something besides what she was, something beautiful and fragile and other.

  "Thief," hissed the Queen, and made a grab for the sack of trinkets. Thomas supposed she hadn't tried before now because she hadn't had proof that Tess had stolen them. His own admission had strangled their last chance at using the trinkets to buy their freedom.

  Yet even now, Tess was still in there, still somehow Tess. Thomas wondered again at the strength of mind that held her determination in place like one of the piers of the Burnside Bridge, bulwark against the ceaseless current of the Willamette. Her new woody body-trunk pivoted, arm-limbs reaching out to push the Queen away even as more twigs passed the tote bag upward into the autumn crown of branches, out of reach. The sack burst at a seam, and a trinket fell, spinning on the floor, a fir cone made of silver and clay. Tess made a noise like creaking house beams, trying to bend after the cone, bare roots flailing and groping uselessly over the slick floor. The Queen's tail deftly slid the cone out of sight among a cluster of pixies.

  Thomas roared. "That was not her heart's desire, and you know it! Queen or not, you are a liar and a cheat!"

  The Queen turned on him, the serpent tail twitching so hard that the pixies upon it were thrashed and broken, and the fir cone slapped to the wall many feet away, whirling like a puck on ice. "She wanted to become something you could love, Thomas. That was her heart's desire. I will return her to her human form, in return for that bag. A new bargain for Tess, if she will make it."

  Tess flinched at the sound of her name, and Thomas swallowed his words of hate, knowing that to speak further would only whip the Queen's anger to retaliatory fury.

  She softly touched his cheek, her gentleness cloaking her ire. "My poor knight. Did you never tell her you loved her?" Her eyes searched his, and the birch girl that was Tess twisted, looking at him in confusion. The Queen smiled. "These humans, you must spell everything out for them. They are so literal and unimaginative. How much simpler to be fae." She walked away, leaving him standing clutching Tess's woody hand. "Get me my meat, Hunter, and not this feckless knight of mine. I hunger. I am spent this Allantide, and my work is unfinished because of her."

  Tess still held the torn corner of the bag closed by one slender twig hand, but now she was struggling to free the other from Thomas's grasp. He was reluctant to release her. In her new form she was very strong, and rather than upset her further he slackened his grip. Tess reached into the neck of her shirt, her woody fingers clawing over the bark there in search of something.

  Her fingers pried under the edge of a blackened tree scar, and gave a mighty pull. A scab of bark broke away, falling to the floor and rocking. Where the bark had been was the seeing stone, imbedded in the softwood of Tess's new body. Her fingers worked at the stone, sap drooling down the front of her trunk.

  "Stop, Tess," Thomas begged. There was no reason not to use her truename now. "You're hurting yourself."

  "Have to see." Her voice came out muffled, though he could see the knot that was her mouth, moving.

  The Queen, having dismissed Tess for the moment, was pouring wine into goblets, enough for all of them. No doubt the same poisoned clover wine, as if it might succeed this time. The pixies that had been cleaning his blood from the floor shifted their attention to the sap—Tess's blood—and giggled drunkenly even when Tess's roots and branches caught and flung them away from her.

  "See what? Just stop. It's no good!"

  The stone came loose at last, leaving a hole as if the tree had grown around it. A freshet of sap followed, and Tess gave a creaking gasp. Her branches drooped in pain. Across the room, Hunter was following the proceedings with great interest, coming forward a half step at a time, his eyes darting from the Queen to Tess and back again, like a schoolboy intent on wickedness. Thomas moved to put his body between Hunter and Tess, keeping watch on the huntsman over his shoulder. The Queen might have commanded Thomas's loyalty once, but no more. Let her tighten his band until it severed his arm if she wished. He would be free no matter what it took.

  Tess held the seeing stone up to one of her large, lustrously brown, ghille dhu eyes. Leaving the tote bag high in her branches, she fished out the snail shell once more and peered at it through the seeing stone. Thomas looked at the shell as intently as she did, but saw nothing other than its smoky pearl and the filigree of silver chased with the Queen's purple glimmers. There was a long, tense pause as she studied the shell, looking for all the world like a fae jeweler with a primitive loupe.

  Her lips pursed, then a set of splintery wooden teeth showed in a snarl. The seeing stone fell to the floor.

  "This is what s
he must have done to Stephen," Thomas heard her whisper, her new voice like a whistling reed, beautiful and thin with music. "Who did you trap in this shell, Queen whatever your truename is? You'd just better hope I never learn it! Is this what happens to those whose bodies die? My brother Stephen's body is in the ground, but is his life—his soul—in one of your things? Dead but never dying?" She sobbed. "I can never bring him back now, even if this could be the way. Oh, the cruelty of you! Look. Look at what you've done!"

  Tess held out her hand. The shell rocked in her spindly palm. Thomas could only see a swirl of smoky pearl inside it, but Tess the birch girl had looked through the stone. Glamour upon glamour upon glamour, covering, canceling, dispelling.

  With a mournful wail, Tess closed her birch girl fingers around the shell, tightened them, and crushed it. White smoke poured out of her hand, drifting to the floor like the mists haunted by will-o'-the-wisps, pooling around her roots. She let fall the shards of the shell, which thinned like fast-melting ice.

  Another strand of Thomas's armband broke and pierced his skin.

  Not far away, he heard a sharp plinking sound, and saw Hunter raise a hand to his head, where one of the thorns had broken away. Its absence left a bleeding wound over Hunter's eyebrow. Hunter's fingertips explored it and his gaze flicked to Tess and fixed there.

  The Queen turned from the goblets with a dreadful hiss, swelling like an adder and then freezing in place.

  For Tess had the bag in her grip again, one hand inside. The seeing stone was forgotten upon the floor. Thomas, disturbed by the way the wound in Tess's trunk still wept sap, scooped up the stone and tried to press it back in place—a rocky bandage, but he doubted it would work.

  Tess ignored him, drawing a trinket from the bag and crushing it. And then another. Two more strands on Thomas's armband broke.

  Hunter let out a roar of pain and triumph. "Yes! Yes, all of them!" he shouted. "Release us, all of us!"

  Tess squeezed one after another. Where their pearly contents puddled, bluebells and moss, ferns and saplings began to grow in the floor of the Queen's chamber. The Queen herself was strangely immobile after her first reaction, studying Tess with a thoughtful gaze that gave Thomas shivers.

  "Every. One. A soul." Tess squeezed, crushed. Chose another. Squeezed, crushed. She wept, walking awkwardly toward the Queen. Hunter moved slowly around the edge of the room, his staff in his hand, a dark smile on his face, blood trickling from a dozen cuts from the ribbons.

  "Willingly given," the Queen said, unmoved. As Tess approached, the pixies fled to the chamber door, clustering there with thin cries of fear and loathing. "And now they are become what they longed for, as they would have done had you left them alone in Underbridge."

  Squeeze. Crush. Blossom. Jangle. Plink.

  "Tess, keep away from her," Thomas entreated. He bent, snatching up his oilskin and jerking it on. Nothing in it mattered now, not the nails, not his iron-edged knife. Whatever he tried here in the Queen's chamber would be of no avail. She knew him too well. She would see it coming and the depth of his bond with her would keep him from more active attempts. But if they could escape...

  At another movement from Hunter, Thomas was on his guard once more. "Hunter, stay back!" He moved to keep between them, suddenly certain Tess would become the night's meat in his moment of inattention.

  "I'm not afraid of you," Tess said to the Queen. She had not even looked at Hunter.

  "Why would you be?" The Queen was poisonously sweet. "I am only making a better place for my people."

  "By draining the lives of mine." Burst. Plink, jangle.

  "Stop now, and I will let Thomas live."

  That made Tess flinch, and she paused. Thomas halted with her, sliding a glance over his shoulder to make sure Hunter wasn't there with his staff, ready to make him stone or worse. But Hunter was edging along the room's side, intent upon the drama in the middle. His crown was ragged and skewed now, its shape held by very few golden razor ribbons and spikes.

  "You haven't found them all, you know," the Queen said. "While you are here wreaking havoc and destroying my court, Underbridge is transforming."

  Thomas imagined Underbridge consumed by Forest Park, as Tess's house had been. Bluebells along the riverbank, moss and ferns along the bridge, gleaming crystals taking root and growing like crazed plants. And everywhere the ivy, the Queen's spy network.

  His house—his trow-hold—what would happen to it? Not that it mattered, if the Queen planned to kill him. The thing now was to make sure the Queen left Tess alive. He had never seen his Queen in such a cold fury, so controlled within her anger.

  Tess looked at him, her fingers wrapped around a silvery chess piece. "They're inside, Thomas. Their souls. I could see them when I looked through the stone. She's taken away their lives to make more fairy earth."

  So much magic, crammed into such tiny things. No wonder their release was overriding the binding on his arm, around Hunter's brow. No doubt the same thing was happening in the Queen's bed, where Aaron lay in his stupor, drained by his Queen. Thomas looked from Tess's hand to the Queen's face, avid in its focused attention.

  The Queen spoke, still softly. "I will kill him. Choose, sister of Stephen. Life for Thomas, in exchange for the rest of my things. It seems an easy bargain, if you truly love him."

  "You don't know what love is," Tess spat. "You haven't the first idea. You're mistaking greed and power for love. Just because you can make someone choose doesn't mean you should." She turned to Thomas, tears streaming from her beautiful ghille dhu eyes. "I'm sorry." The wheat-colored leaves fell from her birch-girl branches as she upended the bag. Her roots clutched at the skittering, precious little things, stamping and crushing them all at once. Her boots, pierced by her roots, thumped awkwardly on the floor, but they did the work. "I love you, Thomas, I'm so sorry!"

  In the chaos of rising soul smoke and bluebell scent, Hunter laughed. He held in his hand the one trinket that had escaped Tess's destruction, the fir cone. The Queen rushed at him, her hands like claws, and Hunter spoke, blood pouring down his face where now only a single thorn held the crown on his head, cruelly plunged into the flesh above his right ear.

  "Get your own meat, Queen of the Unseelie," he said, and crushed the cone in his fist.

  The Queen froze.

  In the silence, the severed golden thorn sang a thin, brittle note as it broke from the crown. It rang upon the floor bouncing, then settling, its tinkling notes fading only gradually. They all stared at it.

  Thomas recovered first. He grabbed Tess's hand and dragged her to the chamber door, where the pixies were squeezing through the crack at the bottom. The Queen's attention and magic must have faltered, because Thomas was able to open the door a foot or so, shoving himself through the slender gap and pulling Tess after him, bending her branches, scraping her roots. Outside, the kelpies were milling, big-eyed at the chaos, leaving the floor wet and slippery with waterweed. Their eyes locked on the crack of the door and what else might burst through it, unconcerned once they recognized Thomas.

  "Aaron!" Tess cried, hanging back, but Thomas took hold of her, staring into those dark, drowning eyes, ignoring the wild fury of the dance in the large cavern beyond the Queen's chamber.

  "We've all made choices tonight, Aaron included. You and I are leaving while we can. We're going now."

  "Will she come after us?" Tess wanted to know, her branches flailing.

  Thomas didn't answer, because just then Hunter's broken, bloodied crown crashed against the doors and fell in the open gap. Inside the chamber there was an awful silence. Outside the chamber, a stillness fell over the dancing crowd in the crystal hall. All eyes turned toward the Queen's chamber, and light poured down from the ceiling far, far above as the trees opened the mound to the moon.

  Allantide was well and truly upon them.

  Tess looked at the crown, then to the place beneath his oilskin where Thomas's armband still circled his arm, held by no more than two or three strands
of gold.

  "All that, and you're still hers—" Her voice was loud in the uncanny silence.

  "So are you," he said. Bitter, so bitter.

  Inside the chamber, Hunter spoke. "Long and long I have waited. Long and long did you deny me, did you bind me. No more. Come to bed, or come to war. It makes no difference, but no longer shall you rule me."

  "War, then," snarled the Queen.

  A fresh stream of gibbering pixies spewed out the gap in the doorway, and inside the Queen's chamber there was a massive crack, as if the room had split. Hunter's staff, Thomas thought.

  Thomas bent, picked up Hunter's crown, and flung it into the stilled mob. The eyes of all watched it rise and begin to fall, making way for it as it dropped. It struck the floor with a discordant jangle.

  "There is your meat!" Thomas shouted into the hush. "Your Queen keeps not her faith with those she rules. The Wild Hunt bows to another now. Be ye warned!"

  Silence reigned for another moment, then with a mighty roar, the fae began to move again. The spiral fell apart like leaves blown in the wind, and in its place clots and clumps of fae began to form.

  The denizens of Forest Park were choosing sides.

  Thomas caught Tess around the middle, lifting her from the ground. She would never be able to keep up with him on her new roots, with her ruined shoes flopping. "Hang on, and keep your branches pulled in tight. I'm going to run as fast as I can, and the ceilings will be low." Thomas laughed crazily as he bowled over one of the Queen's kelpie guards and fled into the darkness of the nearest tunnel.

  As he ran, Thomas wondered whether Hunter or the Queen would summon him next. Both would kill him, so it made no difference. For now, it was all he would ask of Allantide, to survive until dawn and get his love to daylight outside the mound.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  TESS FOUND IT LESS SICKENING to close her eyes and not watch their perilous passage through the tunnels of Forest Park. Thomas ran so swiftly and changed direction so often that she was immediately confused. Instead of paying attention to the route, she concentrated on clinging to Thomas as best she could, lifting her feet—her roots—from the floor and keeping her branches from scraping the walls and ceiling. It wasn't easy, and it hurt.