Toying with the iron pendant, I watch the monuments fade away into the night. They’re all majestic but isolated. Like me. That lonely ache is like a bunch of Ginsu knives in my heart, cutting me up inside.
I want, but I don’t know what I want.
Euphoria.
I blush again. It’s still technically “after” the show, Syl. You could go back, tell her—
Tell her what? That I’m an insane-o stalker who felt “something” when she touched me? Ugh, no. She’d think I was out of my mind.
No, she wouldn’t because… Because she felt it too, my heart whispers.
Stop it, heart, ya darn traitor!
Being obsessed and acting all crazy bananapants over a goth-rock star isn’t my jam, no matter what passed between us in those few moments.
A queasy feeling, all anticipation and longing and uncertainty, balls up inside me, my stomach rolling and tumbling like a bag of weasels. Frustration tenses me up. I feel like I’m on the verge of something huge, life-changing, but I have no idea what.
I’ve felt this way more and more this summer, a weird wistful pang twisting in my guts, getting worse and worse as the heat ramped up, leaving all of Richmond in a sweltering-hot haze.
It’s as though something is stirring in my very blood, slowly coming to a boil.
I glance at Fiann. Maybe this is what’s stewing—our inevitable BFF breakup.
I had more of a connection with Euphoria in those two minutes than I’ve had for months with Fiann. Then again, I don’t want to kiss Fiann. Oh, she’s pretty and all, but seriously? Girl is super-high maintenance, and that is how nature says, Don’t touch in my book.
I’m absurdly grateful that I don’t have a crush on her. No matter what she thinks.
Her giggling grates on me, and I don’t have to look to know she’s leaning on Brody, hanging on his every word. She promised this would be a girls-only night, but I’m the only one who seems to care.
It’s just another one of Fiann’s broken promises.
Like Euphoria’s broken promise?
“After…” I turn my face to the window and watch the night whip by as the train races toward Richmond, toward home. The knives in my heart go swish, swish, swish, sharpening themselves. Darkness, what Glamma calls “the wee hours,” always makes it worse, as though the night whispers its secrets, but I am tuned to the wrong frequency.
Out of tune, always two steps behind, pay-as-you-go Syl.
I slump deeper into my seat, caught between Fiann’s chatter, the girls’ giggles, and the calling of the night as the knives drive deeper into my heart, cutting, slicing off pieces of me, bleeding and raw.
Not even Euphoria’s voice and violin could soothe me tonight. If anything, meeting her, touching her, has made everything worse. The train shudders headlong on iron tracks, and the night deepens its siren song.
I want to be anywhere but here. Anywhere. As long as I can be with someone who understands me.
Chapter Four
Rouen
Over road, river, and rail, they come.
The Wild Hunt, tireless, relentless
Over road, river, and rail,
And no one escapes
Not mortal or Fae. Or sleeper-princess
-“Road, River, and Rail,” Euphoria
I’m breaking my vow—something no dark Fae should ever do—but Agravaine makes me. Instead of meeting the cute redhead “after,” I am standing in the back alley of the 9:30 Club, cloaked in darkness. Just me and Agravaine.
All cozy. Yeah, right.
The clubgoers are gone, the roadies have packed up and driven off, the staff is cleaning tables, putting up chairs, the club growing quieter and quieter by the moment.
It’s only when the streets go silent, the stillness broken by an occasional passerby that Agravaine bends down and touches the oily asphalt. “It’s time.”
I brace. I know what comes next.
His black eyes begin to glow, the motorcycle jacket slips off his left shoulder, and I see the Moribund come to life. Indigo sparks zap and lick across the thousands of tiny black circuits, lighting up his shoulder, down across his chest and along his arm in spindly, scrawly electrical patterns. With a hideous zzzaaaap, black circuitry leaps from his fingers, shooting through the asphalt.
He’s summoning them—the hell-hounds of the Wild Hunt.
All around us, the ground begins to glow. It flashes on his face, indigo and sinister, making him look ghoulish.
I step back as he reaches out with his personal gramarye. The natural magic of the Earth, the ley line responds to his call with a low, deep thrumming. The city is a hub of mortal emotions and events—passion, births, sadness, deaths, jealousy, breakups, hatred, murders, love, miracles. The ley lines here are powerful.
One of them answers immediately, firing up bright blue in the darkness.
He’s using the magic to part the Shroud between realms, to summon the hell-hounds from Dark Faerie, through the Snickleways and into the mortal world.
“I was so sure,” he growls, yanking at the magic. The shadows deepen and thicken around him. “So sure she would come to you, Rouen.”
“Yeah, yeah, I blew it.” I failed to draw out the sleeper-princess. “What now, Mr Cranky?”
I know what now, but I hold my breath, not daring to hope he might give up. The Wild Hunt is relentless, its Huntsman even more so.
He fixes me with a glare and ignores my taunt. Boo. “We will seek her out instead. We will smash the circle of iron that protects her.”
Dread coils like a vise around my black heart.
The shadows rear up at his feet, hunched and growling. Nine pairs of glowing green eyes burn through the darkness, nine massive muzzles crammed full of jagged teeth snap and slaver.
Nine gigantic, bristling-black hell-hounds rise from the shadow, the mists of the Shroud pluming around them like Hollywood fog. Agravaine stands, the Master of the Hunt, in their midst.
He raises a hand, pointing in the direction of Richmond, Virginia.
“Go. Hunt.” The Command thrums from his voice, and like arrows from a bow, the hell-hounds stream through the night, black and glistening with Moribund, their massive paws drumming the pavement, their howls echoing down the alleyway and into the city…
Their collective Glamoury blankets them, keeping their passing from mortal eyes.
The Wild Hunt doesn’t terrify anyone that isn’t its prey.
Agravaine turns to me, sweeping his mane of white hair back from his handsome face. His eyes glitter. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“An engraved invitation.” I know I shouldn’t bait him, but it’s the little things, y’know?
“Go.” He lets his Command be the answer. “Hunt.”
The Command laces every part of my body with obedience. I throw up a don’t-see-me Glamoury. I run as if I can escape what I must do. Breath and blood, muscle and bone, I push myself through the night, my leathers stuck to me in a sweltering second skin that traps the aching dread inside me. The mortal city flashes by faster and faster. My boots drum the pavement, heavy and loud.
Pound, pound, pound…
The girl, the girl, the girl…
Why can’t I get her out of my mind? There’s an ache in my heart that belongs to her, twisting like a bloody thorn, piercing my icy heart.
The girl, the girl, the girl…
Her touch has infected me as surely as the Moribund. Only…I yearn for her, deep inside the black pit of my soul. I yearn for her, but she is not the girl I seek. No, the redhead is mortal, and I am Faekind. I cannot keep my promise of “after” to her. I never should have made it. I am no good for her.
We’d never be anything but star-crossed, at best.
This isn’t one of your ballads, Roue. My boots drum it into my head. This is real. And very serious. Forget about her.
But I can’t. She burned so bright—fire and storm, the purview of the fair Fae, the Summer Court. Could she be the sleeper-princess?
No. My black heart will not accept that. I run from it.
Behind me, Agravaine’s bootsteps are ominous, heavy, reminding me. I can run, but I can never get away.
I dart through an alleyway, calling my fairy wind. In a gust of winter and snow-squall, it comes, carrying me soaring above the DC skyline. The city lights spread out below me, a hoard of jewels for the plucking.
But I only need pluck one tonight. The sixth sleeper-princess.
Agravaine Commanded me to hunt. Whatever I feel for the red-haired beauty, I cannot act on it. I have no time for relationships, no time for romance or love.
A dark Fae shouldn’t want those things. Especially not a princess. But I do.
And I am not a princess anymore. I am Agravaine’s Huntress. I must do as he wills.
He comes up on my left and keeps pace with me. I school my expression, letting my face go blank.
“Try again,” he says, touching his nose for emphasis. “Sniff her out, Rouen.”
I sigh. My dowsing for the sleeper-princesses is part reaching out to sense their unique fair Fae magic and part scenting them on the wind. After hunting five sleeper-princesses for him, I’ll never forget their scent: intoxicating vanilla, skin musk, and opoponax.
But try as I might…
Nope. Nothing. The sleeper-princess had pinged on my radar earlier, but now any trace of her is gone. “Maybe she sensed the trap, ducked back into her circle of cold iron.”
“Then we go to Richmond and destroy the train tracks.”
I picture it in my mind even as I race through the city streets—a rough circle of train tracks around the mortal city of Richmond. I nod, but nausea roils in my stomach.
Once we smash that circle, we will sense her. We will have her.
I’ll have to hunt her, give her over to him. And on the heels of that, Think of something else, Roue.
The night is a velvet mantle around us, filled with my rasping breath and the unearthly howls of the Hunt. He sends the hell-hounds before us to terrify and corral the sleeper-princess once we locate her. We cut across a parking lot, broken glass glinting in the corner of my eye.
“Why don’t we just snickle-step?” I throw back over my shoulder. Because if we step snickle through the Shroud and come out in Richmond, we could overshoot her—on the off-chance that she’s out here tonight. Somehow protected, invisible to my senses.
His eyes dilate darker. He catches on to my deception right away. “You wouldn’t be trying to help her, would you, Rouen?”
Danger, danger, danger.
I clench my fangs and don’t say anything.
“Answer me.” The Command is barely out of him when the truth is forced from my lips.
“Yes.” Blast it all!
He growls low and deep in his chest. I don’t think. I call my fairy wind, urging it on faster, leaving him in the dust. My ears pop at the speed, traffic, buildings, streets flashing past me in a blur. In the distance, sirens scream in a cresting wave, and for one shuddering breath, I hear their cries. The other sleeper-princesses. They ran too. I blot the screams out with pounding boots and my aching heart. Every footfall slams regret into me—regret for what I have done, what I have become.
Regret that I could not keep my promise for “after.”
Five sleeper-princesses of the fair Fae, dead in the dark of night.
Only two to go.
Of course, I’d save them if I could. The fair Fae may be our enemy, but these girls aren’t even Awakened. They don’t know what they are. They don’t deserve to be murdered.
“Rouen!” Clearly, Agravaine disagrees. And he’s not one of those agree-to-disagree types. He’s going to make me pay for saying that—the same way the dark Fae elders, the arch-Eld, made me pay.
In blood and suffering.
His shadow falls upon me, his presence looming and huge, his footfalls overtaking mine. A breath away.
He reaches for me. Strong fingers drag through my hair, and I shunt sideways, tearing from his grasp, ducking into a stinking, trash-filled alley, pelting toward the end. The fairy wind cloaks me, pushing me beyond my body’s endurance.
I run from the Huntsman.
From the man who killed those sleeper-princesses, who wants me to kill again.
I can never get away. He grabs and grabs, and I leap and turn and twist, pushing my body to its limits. The Moribund spliced into my hand makes me stronger, faster, more resilient—a dark Circuit Fae. I half-run the wall and then flip behind him.
“Rouen…” His warning growl tells me I should stop messing with him.
But what fun would that be? “Don’t like it?” I duck him again. “Maybe you shouldn’t have made me a Circuit Fae.”
He was the first. I was the second. He wants me as his mate.
My lips twist wryly. Everyone’s gotta have dreams.
His lips lift from his fangs in a snarl. “I won’t tell you again.”
“You’ll probably have t—”
Bam! He kicks me, a force that could break stone and steel.
The impact slams me into the wall. I throw up my arms to protect my face. Smack! Bricks shatter, dust kicking up around me. Pain jolts through my forearms, shuddering into my shoulders, my spine. My legs buckle. I slip in mucky trash and crash to the filthy ground.
Damn it. I hope no one saw that.
Agravaine’s on me before I can move, his strong hands gripping my arms hard enough to leave bruises beneath my leather jacket. He yanks me to my feet.
My fairy wind peters out in tiny snow dervishes. The sirens are long gone, but oddly, I can still hear them wailing like the voices of the dead.
I slap his hands away. “Get off! You have no right—”
“Rouen Rivoche.”
My true-name. Oh, this is so not good.
Every Fae has a true-name but using it’s complicated. You can’t just spit out a true-name and expect a Fae to dance to the tune you’re playing. Nope. A true-name has to be spoken with awareness of what it is and with intent to control that Fae.
But just my luck, Agravaine has all the awareness and intent he needs. And then some.
The speaking of my true-name stops me cold, bound to his Command.
“I have every right.” He paces before me, his hobnail boots beating staccato on the cobblestone alleyway. Thump, thump-thump, thump. He fixes me with a cold glare, the look of a master scolding a wayward hound. “Your thoughts make you a traitor. You are mine, Huntress.”
He says Huntress, but I hear hound.
He keeps right on berating me. “By your own misdeeds and by our Contract.”
Arrogant jerk. He loves to torment me with my “misdeeds,” which included speaking out against his plan and trying to team up with the sleeper-princesses rather than destroy them.
I shocked everyone with that—Agravaine, the arch-Eld, even my own father. The fair Fae and their sleeper-princesses have been our mortal enemies since forever.
As punishment for daring to suggest peace, I was bound to Agravaine and to the Moribund. I clench my fist, feeling the stretch and burn of circuitry.
“Can I move now?” I dial my glare up to a thousand.
Slowly, Agravaine releases his control over me. Jerk won’t let me forget my mistakes—or the consequences of them.
Even now, the Moribund lacing my right hand prickles painfully. Circuit Fae magic, fell and foul. I flex my hand, and the dark, glittering circuits pull and stitch against my flesh, hooks dug deep.
Agravaine’s eyes are shark-black, stark against his pale white flesh. “Stop fighting me, Rouen.”
Like any dog that’s been mistreated, I flash him my fangs. Fat chance, pal.
“Come now.” He gentles his tone the way a master would to a snarling dog, but I only glare at his outstretched hand as though it’s a snake waiting to bite me. I’ve seen his twisted idea of kindness, of mercy.
He is the Huntsman. He knows only how to chase and kill, how to stalk and harass.
“Ro
uen.” He keeps the Command from his voice this time. “The sooner we find her, the sooner I can release you.”
I barely swallow my snarl. Release me. What a crock. He wants me too much to ever let me go. No matter how many sleeper-princesses I hunt down for him.
He will never release me. Good. I want the pleasure of seeing his face when I free myself.
But for that, I need the sleeper-princess. According to the arch-Eld, only the blood of a sleeper-princess of the fair Fae can purge the sluagh taint from me.
Agravaine uses their blood to power our failing hearthstone, the source of magic for the entire Dark Faerie realm. He knows I need it to break free, and he sees I’m never allowed a single drop.
Five sleeper-princesses dead. Only two more. And after tonight, one.
She is the last hope for the hearthstone that fuels UnderHollow. The last hope for me to break free. I flex my hand again, trying to remember what it was like to be only flesh and blood without Moribund circuitry.
“Now, then.” He brushes stray trash from my shoulder. A rain of pop tabs pitter-patters to the cobbles. His nose wrinkles; he wipes his hand on my jacket as though wiping my filth back on me. “Let’s have no more of those traitorous thoughts.”
“I’ll do my best.” Not.
Even now, my dark and tainted blood cries out for hers. To be free. To devour her, body and soul, after she heals the hearthstone.
Ha! As if. Agravaine might not be able to control his darker urges, but I can.
And if I have anything to say about it, he’s going to be one disappointed Circuit Fae.
“Let’s go.” He picks up the pace again, and I race along with him and the hell-hounds. Soon enough, we leave DC behind for Richmond, the city’s skyline laced with viaducts and train tracks—so much foul cold-wrought iron surrounding the city, surrounding the sleeper-princess, encasing her in gramarye- and Glamoury-resistant metal. Even now, the tang of all that vile cold iron is like bitter ashes in my mouth, a stink that fouls my tracking scent.
We head toward the river and come to a stop near the viaduct. His plan is to make the destruction of the train tracks look like an accident. Our Glamoury is powerful, sure, but a freak lightning storm taking out an entire viaduct?
Derailed: A Prequel Novella Page 4
