by Cate Corvin
He paused to tilt the last of the vial on the back of his hand, snorting it into purple-rimmed nostrils and apparently unaware he was ankle-deep in mud.
A noise traveled through the tunnel, echoing to us like a distant train. Brightkin’s glazed eyes showed their whites all the way around when he jumped in place like a frightened rabbit. “Fuck! It’s the fucking Garda! We gotta go!”
Before Silke could react or move to stop him, the prince tore down the tunnel, shattering the vial on the stones behind him.
I froze, my eyes on Robin, sure that the huldra was going after the prince.
Instead, I heard a soft click behind me and a sigh of relief. Robin was looking over my shoulder.
I turned slowly.
Silke held a long black pistol, held casually at her side. Her kohl-rimmed eyes flashed. “Now that we’re alone without the idiot, why don’t you show me your real face, Goodfellow?”
23
“The fuck are you on about?” Robin asked, throwing his hands out and screwing up Calder’s face in confusion and anger, but Silke raised the pistol and pointed it at his chest.
“Please don’t mistake me for being as stupid as my charge.” Her voice was as cold and calm as an Arctic sea. “This gun is loaded with Faebane bullets. Not even you are immune to those.”
The faceless guards flanked her, hands resting on sheathed daggers. I let out a forced whimper of fear and tried to put several feet between us, but Silke’s cold eyes flashed to me.
“Don’t move another inch.” She looked down at my cut, muddy feet and gave me a thin smile. “You tried, I suppose, but Calder never takes the front entrance, and nereids don’t bleed red. I have no idea who you are under that face, but I assure you, I won’t hesitate to kill you either.”
I froze in place with both hands pressed against the walls. If the bullets were really Faebane… well, it wouldn’t be a pleasant death for me.
“Not a nereid? This is bullshit,” Robin spluttered, waving Calder’s stumpy arms around as he stomped towards her. He was the perfect picture of outrage. “Get Bright’s ass back here before the real Goodfellow shows up. And I want my money back, princess. I don’t pay for glamoured ass.”
Silke just looked at him and aimed the pistol at me.
Robin stopped dead in his tracks.
“I thought so.” Silke looked satisfied, but there was pain under the expression. “This one means something to you.”
Instead of blustering, a look of collected calm came over Robin’s face, the expression out of place on the satyr’s crude features. It looked like the game was up.
“Excellent work, Silke.” It was Robin’s voice now. He crossed his arms over his chest. “If only you’d been open to the Garda about the prince’s movements, I might have offered you the chance to come back to my service.”
Back to his service? I couldn’t ignore the strike to my heart.
It was yet another thing Robin hadn’t told me.
Silke was no longer looking at me, but her arm seemed to be made of iron, holding the pistol aimed perfectly at my heart. “A shame the offer isn’t tempting at all. I’d only be trading my position under one thumb for another.”
Robin cocked his head to the side. “Was your debt really so steep that you needed to resort to guarding this secret?”
The huldra bared her teeth at him. “I owed a lifetime, Goodfellow. A lifetime of faithful service to the death. Better to squeeze Brightkin for every penny he had and leave Avilion with him.”
“And if you’d brought me this information, I would’ve had your debt forgiven for old times’ sake,” he said quietly. “You bargained on the wrong man to save you.”
I couldn’t stop my eyes from flicking between the two of them, all while waiting for a Faebane bullet to shred right through me.
Oddly, I had no regrets despite imminent death. I was right where I wanted to be. Robin would get out, and he would save those human girls from a terrible fate.
Silke took a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re full of shit. I would’ve seen nothing but the inside of a Garda cell until you decided to cut my head off.”
Robin just shook his head. “I tend to reward my informants, which you know perfectly well. You could’ve been a free Fae, Silke.”
The huldra looked utterly stricken, her pretty face drawn into a rictus of agony. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
But her hand was shaking ever so slightly, the first loss of control I’d ever seen from Silke.
“It’s not too late.” Robin shifted in place. “Come clean. Tell me where he keeps the human girls, and I’ll petition to the queen to have your life-debt reduced.”
“For what?” Silke snarled. “To maybe live out a few years of freedom, if I even survive that long? No. We both know I’ve already gone too far, Goodfellow. There is no forgiveness for me.”
She let out a hollow laugh. “The only way out is for you to die. And do you know what the worst part is? I admired you so much. So deeply. I should be happy to finally rub your face in something you fucked up.”
“Oh?” Robin raised an eyebrow, the same look he gave me when he was waiting for another torrent of words.
“But I’m not. I just wish… I want you to know this before you die. I wish I hadn’t done it. I really do. Every morning I wake up and look at that lazy meatbag stuffed full of evanesce, and all I feel is regret over what I ruined.” Silke’s teeth were bared so rabidly she looked like she could bite through bones. “I regret it, Robin. But I won’t let you steal my life away for a second time, either.”
“Silke.”
Hearing her name spoken like that by Robin, so softly and yet loaded with a weight of history, sent a pang through me.
I focused on the gun loaded with Faebane. Priorities, Bri. Priorities.
“Was it worth trading the lives of mortals for your own gain? They will never see the light of day again. They will never feel, never taste, never understand what is happening to them. They were hardly more than children.”
Robin took a step closer.
Silke exhaled. “You don’t understand. You couldn’t. You’ve never had your freedom stripped from you. I loathe Brightkin with every fiber of my being, but he was the only chance I had.”
Robin scoffed. “Do you think I work for Titania because I love her? No. Everyone owes a debt, Silke. Even me.”
Silke’s brow softened and her lips relaxed. She looked at Robin like she was having an epiphany.
He held out a hand. “It’s never too late,” he said fiercely. “Never.”
Silke’s arm swiveled towards him and she fired.
Three shots rang out, the bullets glancing off the stones and sending up sprays of sparks. My heart dropped to the floor.
She had to have missed, but…
Robin was standing there, hand still extended, no longer wearing Calder’s face. His white shirt was spattered with mud, black hair and blue eyes standing out in the darkness like a prince of night.
The bullet had ripped the glamour clean away.
A neat hole pierced the left side of his chest, just below his collar bone. A sluggish trickle of blood crept out, staining through the white in an inexorable crimson cloud, growing darker with every beat of his heart.
Silke stared at him with enormous eyes, her hands now shaking.
He tried to speak, but blood coated his lower lip. Dark veins began to grow up his neck, peeking over the edge of his white collar.
The Faebane was in his veins, turning his blood black as it poisoned him.
Robin went white as a sheet, the dark veins standing out like roots beneath his skin, and dropped to one knee.
“Robin,” I whispered. My lungs were full of ice. It grew inside me in dangerous, sparkling shards, fragile as glass but ravenous to pierce through them all. “Robin!”
My body moved without even thinking, stumbling through the mud and stone to Robin’s side. I pressed my hand to the hole in his chest, and blood pumped out over my
palm in a torrent of black like ink.
“Robin?” I asked, dangerously close to crying. There was a horrible jagged sensation under the tears.
He coughed. The Faebane tendrils were creeping across his face.
I looked up at Silke, gasping for breath. Robin was going to die. The walls of the tunnel were closing in on me, it was so hard to breathe, my lungs crushed under the weight of the stone and shattering the ice…
The huldra’s eyes were still wide with panic. Calm slipped over me when I looked back at her and realized what the jagged feeling was.
Pure rage felt with such crystal clarity it was breath-taking.
He’d offered her a helping hand, and she’d killed him.
Silke took a step back, between the two faceless guards. “Kill the nymph,” she said tonelessly.
I released Robin, my hand still wet with poisoned blood. The guards stepped forward, unsheathing wicked daggers that were no doubt poisoned, as well.
I didn’t need a blade, only my rage. I spun the ring on my finger and whispered, “Spin me a tale.”
The tunnel was full of shadows. I stepped behind Robin, hiding in his shadow when one of the guards sent a throwing star zipping towards my head.
It spun away uselessly, and then I swirled to the right, swimming through a shadow to the guard’s left.
I touched the wall, planting a seed of anger, and laughed when the roots burst out of the wall. The guard whirled around at the sound of breaking stone, but the roots twisted around his arms and legs.
He slashed at them with the knife, and I felt the pain of the dying trees. The poison on his blade rotted them quickly, and before I could cry out, the roots and the seed were dead.
Silke cocked the gun, taking a careful step back and looking around her.
I stepped through several shadows, letting the world spin around me as I remained focused on the target.
Roots burst from the floor and wrapped around their legs, but the faceless ones were quick to cut them away. The poison hurt inside my chest as the trees died, sharing their pain with me.
“He’s not dead yet,” Silke snapped. “But I can remedy that if you want to keep playing these ridiculous games.”
“He’s not yours to kill,” I whispered in her ear, so close that I felt her hair brush the tip of my nose, but when Silke spun around to slash at me I was already gone, moving from the shadow cast behind herself to the sliver of darkness at the edge of a lamp.
Silke took careful aim, refusing to be disturbed by the power of the ring. She was nearly accurate, too; I stepped into a shadow against the wall, and she was aiming only two feet away.
Robin was still on one knee. He dragged in a ragged breath and coughed, spraying black blood on the stone.
Then he slumped over.
I felt his heartbeat alongside the ache of the dying trees, slowing with every breath.
Silke wiped away a tear.
How dare she cry over him? She was the one who had done this, the one who’d spat in his face when he tried to pull her out of this cesspool.
I nurtured the rage inside me, letting it grow. Let it become thorny and jagged, until it was tearing at my insides.
I moved into the open and Silke fired. It was only the embrace of the shadows that saved me; I felt one of the Faebane bullets pass by, ringing in my ears as I stepped into the next shadow.
She pulled the trigger again and it clicked, emptied out.
That was when I slammed my hands into the floor, shoving the little seed of rage down into the earth.
It wasn’t like my roots, creeping out into the world.
It was a tree of fury and hunger, stones shrieking as enormous branches erupted between them, thorns the length of my hand growing slick and black from its bark.
They ripped outwards, tendrils running hungrily over the walls and ceiling, but the tree didn’t stop until it filled the tunnel.
I took several deep breaths, my hands trembling.
Slowly, I looked up at what I’d created.
It was nothing like the tree of love I’d created in the Unseelie lands. It was all warped trunks and thorns, and both Silke and the guards were caught in them. The branches were too thick to see the other side of the tunnel, a solid wall of living, writhing wood.
Silke drew in a ragged breath, her blood pouring over the trunk that pinned her in place. Several long thorns had pierced her throat, her chest, and her stomach.
She died slowly. One of the guards had been killed by the impact of the exploding branches, and the other was shredded to pieces.
I got to my feet silently. This was the tree I’d kept trapped inside me for years, the warped and twisted nightmare the Hesperides had feared.
Looking up at the ruined bodies in it, I saw why they never wanted me to step foot on their island again.
And all I felt at the sight of the monstrosity I’d released was relief.
24
I stumbled away from the terrible tree, slipping in water and blood and nearly stumbling when I reached Robin’s side.
“You’ve got to get up,” I told him. I stroked his back over and over, my palm sliding over slick wetness.
He let out a low groan and managed to sit up a few inches.
The dark veins were spreading rapidly over his face and reaching up into his hairline. He looked down at the neat hole in his chest and let out a strange sound.
I realized he was laughing.
“Robin, if you’re well enough to laugh, you’re well enough to get up and get out of here. We need to find a healer.”
At least the bleeding had significantly slowed down, although that wasn’t entirely a good thing when it came to Faebane. It just meant that his blood was congealing inside him.
He touched the stain on his no-longer-white shirt and looked up at me. “You have to keep going, Briallen. Find him. Finish what we started.”
I set my lips in a firm line, determined not to let him see them trembling. “I’m not leaving you to die here. It’d be undignified, boss.”
A faint smile crossed his face, but it was erased almost immediately by another wince of pain. “Finish it, or this was all for nothing.”
“Robin…” I let my whisper trail off.
He was right. If Brightkin sobered up enough to realize the mess he was in, he would flee Avilion. If he took the human girls with him, we’d never see them again.
I stroked his back one last time and stood up. I was covered in mud, and blood that wasn’t mine, but I wasn’t remotely tired after pushing my magic into that tree.
If anything, I was flooded with energy, like an internal dam had finally broken and was allowed to flow at full power.
But even though I needed to go, I couldn’t bear to walk away and leave Robin to die alone in the depths of the Undercity.
A breeze crawled through the tunnel, icy and fresh.
I never thought I’d be so happy to feel him. Jack came from the direction Brightkin had run, his eyes stealing over the tree I’d made and the corpses it was slowly consuming.
He grimaced at the sight of Robin on his knees, but the black veins creeping down Robin’s arm made it obvious what the problem was.
“Can you help him?” I demanded.
Robin leaned forward again, his breaths coming fast and shallow. If we didn’t get him out, it wouldn’t be long before it was too late.
Jack didn’t bother to roll up his sleeves. He stepped forward, gently nudging me aside, and put his hand over the hole in Robin’s chest.
Ice crept outwards from his fingertips, covering Robin in a fine, lacy frost. My boss’s lips slowly began to turn blue.
“I’ll slow the Faebane,” Jack said. His pale gaze flicked up to me. “But it comes with a price. Nothing is free.”
I took a step back, willing to pay whatever price he asked for, but Robin coughed again. “Wait.”
He reached up and ripped the golden badge off his chest with trembling fingers and held it out to me.
&
nbsp; I took it, swallowing hard. The metal was ice cold from Jack’s power.
“They have to listen to you,” he breathed, and coughed out more blood. “The acting Left Hand.”
I wrapped my fingers around the badge until it cut into the edges of my palm, and nodded once before sprinting the way Jack had come.
It was a long tunnel that felt nearly endless. I didn’t feel the pain in my cut feet as I followed the tracks pressed into the mud, moving as fast as I could without stumbling and falling.
Jack’s footsteps were a straight line, but Brightkin’s were harder to follow; he’d meandered, turned around, and they zig-zagged across the tunnel floor.
I swore when the tunnel branched into three new ones. Two of them had muddied floors, but Brightkin’s tracks veered towards the dry, packed dirt earth of the third. Only a few evaporating water droplets remained from his passage.
Still swearing, I forced myself to slow down as I entered the tunnel. The little oil lanterns overhead made the shadows dance on the mossy stone walls, and that’s when I saw it: a streak of violet sparkles that were out of place against the cool gray rock.
I could picture Brightkin’s hand brushing the wall, leaving this small sign of his passage. With renewed determination, I kept going downwards, until pale roots began to sprout from the ceiling overhead.
Doors began to appear, some warped, some bound with iron. The Solitary Fae lived down here, away from both Seelie and Unseelie Garda; I caught sight of a robed goblin who slinked away as I passed.
There was another streak of violet evanesce smeared against the wall. I began to hurry again, daring to run on the solid floor.
Then one of the doors opened ahead of me. Several tall Fae stepped into the passage, their voices echoing down the hall. They were big enough that their heads nearly brushed the ceiling.
They were rough Fae, wearing leather and denim. Spikes curled out of the skull of one with cerulean hair, and another wore a ring of iron pierced through his septum, permanently burning his nose and lips.
But the last one nearly brought me up short.
Gwyn’s caramel hair spilled over his shoulders like gold in the lamplight. He didn’t look friendly; a scowl seemed engraved on his face. At his side, a sleek white dog that was nearly as big as me sat obediently, its red eyes glowing with internal flames. Its ears were scarlet and pointed.
