by Cate Corvin
These were the Wild Hunters. They looked like the sort of Fae I should run away from as fast as possible.
Instead, I kept plowing forward. The blue-haired male looked up as I barreled towards them, following the evanesce with single-minded purpose.
“Move!” I barked.
Maybe they weren’t used to rough-up nereids shrieking like banshees as they ran at them, but the redhead actually did move, right before I was about to plow into him.
I felt the spikes on his jacket scratch my arm as I passed but didn’t stop. All I did was slap my hand on the dirt wall, injecting a small seed into the earth. There was no time to stop and mince words.
I heard the groan of stone being displaced by a root as I sprinted, leaving the sound far behind me. Hopefully Gwyn got the message.
The tunnel twisted, curving downwards, but there was a faint streak of evanesce where Brightkin must’ve leaned against the wall. I slowed, a stitch in my side, panting for breath.
It was much fainter, the violet shimmer barely visible against the stone. My trail was going cold.
I took a deep breath and clutched my side, willing the stitch to vanish, and spun around when I heard footsteps.
Gwyn looked down at me, confusion all over his pretty face. “Briallen?”
The white dog was with him, panting as it dropped its head and glared at me, and the blue-haired Wild Hunter was right behind him, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “What is this, ap Nudd?”
I looked up at Gwyn pleadingly. “It’s me, Gwyn. I need your help.”
He took a step closer, examining me like he was looking right through the glamour. “Why are you glamoured like this?”
The cerulean Fae shoved his hands in his pockets. “And what are you willing to give us in exchange for our help?”
He leered at me, and Gwyn’s lip curled.
I was so used to the smiles from Gwyn that seeing him genuinely angry was… a little frightening. Somehow I kept forgetting what he was, that no Fae survived in the Wild Hunt by being soft-hearted.
“She’s not giving us anything in exchange,” Gwyn said shortly. He stepped closer and saw the blood. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s not mine.” I swiped impatiently at the blood. “Robin’s hurt. I need to find Br- I’m looking for someone, and the trail is about gone. I’m following the evanesce he left behind.” Tears of frustration tried to well up, and I blinked them away furiously. “Please, Gwyn. I know he went this way.”
He straightened up, his jaw set. “Hellekin, you can go back. I’ll take it from here.”
Hellekin gave him an incredulous look through his cobalt eyelashes. “You don’t give the orders here, ap Nudd.”
Gwyn ignored him completely. “Briallen, this is Ceri. He’s a cŵn annwn. He’ll be able to track your prey. Ceri. Come.”
The white dog padded forward, moving as gracefully as a panther. His back was level with my hips.
“Hold out your hand,” Gwyn told me softly. I did as ordered, and Gwyn held my wrist. “Friend.”
Ceri crept closer and sniffed my hand, his pointed scarlet ears perked straight up.
Then Gwyn pointed to the smear of evanesce on the wall and said something in a language I’d never heard before.
Ceri sniffed the smear of faerie drugs, his golden eyes glancing at me sidelong. I kept perfectly still, hyper aware of the dog’s enormous teeth.
The dog’s ears went flat against his head, and he sneezed several times before pawing the dirt.
“Hunt, Ceri,” Gwyn commanded.
Ceri wagged his tail once, whipping me across the leg, and vanished into the spiral of the tunnel.
“Let’s go, Bananas.” Gwyn took my hand. I took a deep breath, praying to the trees that the stitch in my side would stay gone, and followed the dog.
The tunnel ended in another branching fork, but Ceri didn’t hesitate. He plunged directly down the middle path, his white fur gleaming like a ghost in the darkness.
He was nearly out of sight when I heard a distant, strangled yell.
“That’s him!” I gasped, pushing past both Gwyn and Hellekin, who had crept up on my other side. Ceri’s snarls filled the tunnel like thunder.
I felt Gwyn right behind me as I sprinted down the tunnel, following Ceri’s ghostly glow.
The enormous dog of the Otherworld had a figure backed up into a corner, his teeth bared and dripping silver strings of saliva.
Brightkin held out his hands like he could fend the dog off. His fingers were still shimmering with the faintest remains of evanesce. “Call your dog off!” he shouted, reddened eyes rolling in his sockets.
“By King Arawn’s balls,” Hellekin whispered, joining us. “It’s Prince fucking Brightkin.”
“Prince.” I stopped several feet away, the badge clutched in my left hand like a weight. “Show me where the girls are. This bullshit is over.”
Brightkin cringed into the corner when Ceri growled, low and vicious. “Go fuck yourself, fish.”
I hadn’t wanted to rely on Robin’s badge for this, but…
I forced my hand open and winced, realizing the back of the pin had pierced my palm. I hadn’t even noticed the pain. A drop of blood welled up when I pulled it free and held it up, letting the gold catch the light.
“By order of Queen Titania’s acting Left Hand, you’re under arrest,” I said quietly. I saw Gwyn look at me sharply out of the corner of my eye. “If you give up their location, you can plead for mercy. If you don’t… well, I’m sure the Queen will have something very pleasant in store for you.”
Brightkin shivered, staring at me with so much venom that if looks could kill, I would’ve been curling up like a salted snail on the spot.
Then the corner of his mouth jerked up in a one-sided grin. “All right. I’ll take you there, fish. Get your fucking mutt off my ass.”
Gwyn whistled sharply. Ceri got in one last, deep growl before slinking away to crouch by his legs, but his golden eyes remained fixed on Brightkin.
As soon as the cŵn annwn left, Brightkin straightened up. “It’s right this way,” he said in an oily tone.
I carefully poked the Left Hand badge through the ragged top of my dress and followed him down a tunnel with faintly-sparkling granite walls. Puddles began to appear again as we drew closer to the harbor, high overhead.
There were also vines growing from the ceiling, each laden with heavy clumps of fruit.
It was faerie fruit, their skins as pale as flesh, pulsing with reddened and purple interiors. Unlike Robin’s, these ones looked sickening in a way, like they’d taste like meat and blood.
“Right through there,” Brightkin said, pointing at a dark door, and hiccupped on a giggle.
I didn’t want to get any closer to that door, but what would Robin do?
It’s a trap, Bri. This is too easy.
I took a step closer, my heart pounding against my ribs, and pushed the door open.
25
There was a stone room beyond the door. The ceiling dripped with more faerie fruit, their flesh pulsing with internal light.
That same light reflected off the eyes of the human girls.
Ten of them sat sprawled across the floor in various positions, most of them wearing simple, fruit-stained dresses.
One of the girls, no more than sixteen, still wore a pair of bright blue sneakers. She slowly pushed a slice of faerie fruit into her mouth, tears spilling over her cheeks.
All of them were covered in grime, uncared for and forgotten down here in the depths.
My heart seemed to stop hammering for a second. Like it stopped dead in my chest, becoming a cold stone before remembering that it was living muscle and jumping back to life.
There was someone standing behind them. Someone so tall that in the cramped space, he had to hunch over, and his long arms dragged on the floor.
The jagged ripple of the Fae’s spine showed through his skin. He turned around, mouth open, revealing the smooth stretch of his skin where
his eyes should be.
Behind me, Brightkin giggled again. “Blind Man, eat her.”
The Blind Man let out a deep croak like a giant bullfrog, and lunged out of the room, his trailing arms knocking the girls over.
One of them kept eating the fruit even as she fell. I saw it all in slow motion as the Blind Man rushed at me, his mouth gaping open to reveal the stumps of his rotting teeth.
Gwyn swore and pushed me aside. I hit the wall and reached into the dirt, ripping new trees out of the ground and sending them towards the Blind Man.
The Fae didn’t stop fighting, making more deep croaks as he tried to bite Gwyn, but in the tight tunnel his arms were too unwieldy for him to use.
My branches twined around him, binding his legs and arms and creeping up over his chest.
When I felt them tighten around him, I pushed the tree to grow thorns.
They emerged from the bark, smooth and glossy black. The Blind Man groaned as they pierced him, but he was completely pinned in place.
“Come here, Briallen.” Gwyn held out a hand, helping me over the tangle of roots I’d created.
I looked around for Brightkin, but… he was gone. Hellekin leaned against a wall, arms crossed over his chest, and raised an eyebrow at me. “The fuck are you looking at?”
I wondered if he’d like some new piercings, the kind made with thorns. “Where did Brightkin go?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. But maybe I could tell you in exchange for a favor from the Seelie Left Hand.”
Gwyn gave the Gentry the kind of stare that promised death, but I didn’t have time to sit here and wait for them to fight it out. “Fine. You get a favor from the Left Hand. Where. Did. Brightkin. Go?”
I realized I was trembling from the adrenaline rush. My trees were deeply rooted, sending me their energy even as they grew fat and healthy on Fae blood.
Hellekin grinned at me. “That’s more like it. He went that way.” He nodded to a tunnel, and I turned back to Gwyn.
“If you’re willing to do one more thing for me, please stay with the humans.” His garnet eyes glittered under furrowed brows as I spoke. “Protect them. They need you. Don’t let anyone but Robin Goodfellow in until I return.”
He touched my arm. “I got it, Bananas. Move that ass.”
I smiled at him and turned to go as Gwyn and Ceri stationed themselves outside the door. He was glaring daggers at Hellekin, who was the last Fae I’d ask to watch over the girls.
The tunnel Brightkin had taken dipped downwards. He’d left scuffed prints behind him.
I trailed my fingers along the wall as I walked. Instead of growing trees, I planted the seeds of roots. They wound through the dirt, creating a network that spoke to me.
The roots felt the vibrations of feet through the stone and fed them back to my senses. Brightkin wasn’t far ahead of me.
The more of them I created, the more confident I felt about releasing them. I climbed over a pile of rocks that blocked half the tunnel, and the sound of running water became clearer.
The tunnel opened on a massive cavern and a glittering lake that glowed with a deep green light. Several mermaids hovered at the edge of the lake, running their tongues over translucent teeth and gazing up at the figure standing over them.
“There’s nowhere else to run, Brightkin.”
He whirled around. The prince was still fucked up by the sheer amount of evanesce he’d consumed, and blood ran out of one nostril.
“Take the cattle, then,” he snapped. “Get fucked.”
Brightkin jumped into the water, sending up a sparkling torrent of droplets that hung suspended in the air.
I strode to the edge of the water. The cavern was all glittering granite, but my trees had never cared much where they grew.
I placed my hands on the hard stone and pushed my magic down.
Through the clear green mirror of the lake’s surface, I saw a mermaid reaching for Brightkin, feeding him air from her own lungs as they pulled him away.
Enormous trunks burst out of the stone. My vines grew upwards, reaching for the ceiling of the cavern, then tilted over and plunged down into the lake.
One of the mermaids saw them coming. Her eyes widened and she released Brightkin, darting away to the safety of gleaming coral.
Brightkin thrashed when the vines wrapped around him, but the mermaids scattered, leaving him to his fate.
“Smart ladies,” I told them, and pulled back on my vines, hauling Brightkin with them.
The Prince emerged red-faced and sputtering, choking up water. It dripped off him into the lake, and I finally stood up. My trees were happy where they were; they didn’t need me to survive here.
But the mermaids should probably be leery of the shoreline for a while.
Brightkin spat curses at me. I waited until he stopped to take a shuddering breath before I spoke. “Brightkin, you’re a right cunt, you know that?”
He bared his teeth. It was all he could do with his arms and legs completely bound, mummified in thin but powerful roots. “You can’t speak to me like that!”
“I just did.” I beckoned my branches.
They hauled Brightkin after me. The root network I’d planted on the way down sprouted tendrils when they felt me approaching, and passed Brightkin from tree to tree, overlapping so he never had a chance to escape.
When I reached the junction where I’d left Gwyn, Hellekin was long gone, but two more pairs of eyes widened.
Jack Frost had Robin’s arm slung over his shoulder. Ice was packed all around the bullet hole in Robin’s chest, but the bleeding had stopped, and the dark veins had been halted by the cold.
“Excellent, Briallen,” Robin whispered. The Faebane might have been slowed, but he was still so pale, almost deathly in the dim light.
I felt Brightkin struggling against my branches and had them tighten up a little bit. Just enough to squeeze the breath out of his lungs, but not enough to crush him.
Well, they might crush him if he decided to struggle. I wouldn’t be unhappy about it.
I stepped forward and pinned the gold badge back on Robin’s shirt. “I found the mermaid grotto where they were planning to escape,” I said quietly. “I think these are all the humans.”
He leaned a little harder on Jack, who, to his credit, didn’t complain or even roll his eyes.
But why would he? Now I owed him a massive favor.
Robin looked up at Brightkin, disgust written all over his face. “I see she did the honors of arresting you,” he said. His voice was so hoarse it was painful to listen to. “Now your mother can pass judgment, but I don’t believe she’ll consider you much of a son by the end of it.”
All the blood remaining in Brightkin’s face drained away. Instead of cursing more, he just stared out of hollow eye sockets.
It was over.
Hours later, we emerged on Sobek Street with one captive prince, ten human girls who cried the entire way to the surface, a Wild Hunter, and two Left Hands, one of whom was knocking on death’s door.
Understandably, every single Fae in the vicinity stopped what they were doing and stared.
I took the rear of the cavalcade, carrying a load of the unnervingly fleshy faerie fruits in a makeshift bag made of Gwyn’s tee shirt. Jack had pointed out that after weeks of living on nothing but the fruit, separating the girls from their sole food source entirely might kill them outright.
The entire way up, I had to hand out the fruit when the girls cried. It was sickening to do it, but necessary. More than once, Gwyn had needed to pick a girl up and carry her when she abruptly stopped moving.
He’d sent Ceri back home to the Hunt; the Otherworld hound had been disturbed by the glassy-eyed girls, growling and scratching at the ground around them.
Jack touched my elbow, so softly it was barely a brush.
“The healers might be able to help them,” he told me, giving me a little bit of hope to cling to. “If it hasn’t been too long, they might be able to wean them o
ff the fruit.”
I just nodded grimly and kept walking. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, I was aware of just how much of me hurt, and it was just about everything.
My feet were deeply cut and caked with mud, and I’d been scratched by my own thorns without realizing it. Hellekin’s spiked leather jacket had left bloody gouges in my arm.
Jack hauled Robin out of the Undercity door as Gwyn herded the human girls against a wall, encouraging them to sit down.
My heart swelled a little when he held one’s hand. She was the silent crier, the one who’d been knocked over and hadn’t had the presence of mind to pick herself back up.
While Gwyn comforted them, I grew branches out of the side of a brick wall and had them hoist Brightkin into their embrace. He opened his mouth, and one of the branches pressed between his teeth, cutting him off.
“Phone, Miss Appletree,” Robin grunted.
I patted his pockets until I found the phone inside his jacket, and pressed his thumb against it to unlock it.
He gave me a number to dial, gave what was clearly a Dwarvish code word to a clipped female voice, and within minutes, I heard the roar of the EFS choppers in the distance.
I hung up the phone and pushed it back in Robin’s jacket. I was suddenly, completely exhausted. “Well, I’m going to take a guess and say that wasn’t nearly as quiet as the Queen would have liked.”
Surprisingly, Robin smiled. “It’s like you’ve never heard of subtlety, Miss Appletree.”
“You knew what you were getting into.” I raised an eyebrow, but it felt like such an effort. “There’s no one to blame but yourself.”
Jack’s eyes were on me, and he opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but several Garda cars came ripping up the street and screeched to a halt, leaving long black lines behind them.
In the next ten minutes, we were completely swarmed. The girls were removed from Gwyn’s care and loaded into an EFS ambulance, and I handed over the tee shirt filled with faerie fruit.
