by Cate Corvin
Robin’s car was up the street, where they found Calder unconscious in the trunk. The Garda handled him like a sack of meat, joking about how easy he was to arrest. The satyr’s limp body flopped around like a fish as they cuffed him.
Several officers loaded Brightkin into the back of an armored car, but I left my branches wrapped around him. His sea green eyes looked over their heads for a brief moment before they pushed him down into the vehicle, and I saw terrible, awful hate in them.
I held up my middle finger. It might be the one and only time I’d get to flip a royal Fae the bird without getting executed for it.
“Briallen…” Jack’s voice was strained. “My frost won’t hold forever.”
Robin coughed.
I whirled around. The dark veins were starting to slowly creep again. “I know a healer,” I said, reaching out to brace Robin on my other side. “She’s in Mothwing Falls, if you could help me bring him there.”
Jack pulled Robin’s car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Gwyn. “Here. Enjoy stealing a Left Hand’s car.”
Gwyn’s eyes lit up.
26
“I’m going to puke.”
Gwyn rubbed my back. “No, you’re not.”
“You drive like you’re crazed,” I moaned, clutching my stomach. “If that’s how things are gonna be, then I rescind my compliance on the next motorcycle ride.”
Gwyn had really, really enjoyed stealing Robin’s car. Even though it wasn’t technically stealing.
Maybe it was half stealing, since Robin had said a lot of things under his breath about putting Gwyn back in a Garda cell if the car had so much as a scratch on it afterwards.
Fortunately for Gwyn, he managed to screech to a halt on the curb right outside Carabosse’s house without killing any of us, but my stomach still hadn’t gotten the memo that the ride was over.
In the back of the car, Jack and I had Robin sandwiched between us. It was a little pleasing to see a slight tinge of green in Jack Frost’s usually composed features after the ride.
“You can’t rescind,” Gwyn said reasonably. “At no point was I crazed. That was perfect control.”
“Shush.”
Everyone went silent when Carabosse spoke.
The elderly human woman had made Jack and Gwyn lift Robin onto a wide table. She’d pulled out a pair of silver scissors and neatly cut through the sad remains of his shirt, exposing the perfect form of his muscles and the small, but oh so deadly wound in his chest.
Carabosse leaned over him, holding a pair of thin forceps. She scowled at Robin when he made a small sound.
“I’m going to extract the bullet,” she told him. “And you’re not going to move so much as a centimeter without my say so.”
Robin gritted his teeth and nodded.
The hedgewitch pushed the forceps into the wound. My head spun and the room lurched.
“Look away,” Jack said quietly from my other side. It was a very crowded bench between the two of them, but also very comforting to be surrounded on all sides by men that had my back.
Well, mostly had it. I supposed Jack would require another favor before he helped me again.
“I’m not good at dealing with blood yet,” I muttered, perfectly aware that I was covered in blood and had managed not to pass out at the sight of it this entire time. Still, I turned my head away, focusing on Gwyn’s gloriously naked chest and abs.
I hadn’t had much time to appreciate his general shirtlessness before, but damn, he was a nice distraction. The tattoos of poisonous plants wove all around his arms, shoulders, and down his back and chest.
Robin drew in a hissing breath and my head automatically turned.
“No.” Jack put his hand in front of my eyes, blocking out the sight of whatever Carabosse was doing to him. “You don’t want to see this. Save the fainting for later.”
I grumbled, but did as I was told for once.
A small eternity later, there was a new sound: the clink of metal on metal.
“Bullet’s out,” Carabosse announced.
I heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank the Blessed Branches.”
“I’m stitching now. Better to keep your eyes focused on that washboard for a little longer.”
Color flooded my cheeks when Gwyn smirked.
The witch was speaking softly to Robin. “You’ve taken Faebane before, haven’t you? Usually the Fae are corpses with this much in their system.”
I heard her moving around as she spoke. Silke had said something similar when brandishing the gun at Robin… not even you’re immune to those.
Which made it sound an awful lot like he’d tried to be.
“A pinch in my coffee once a month,” he said, his voice tight. Carabosse must be stitching already. “Not enough to grant full immunity, but enough to slow the effects of a larger dose.”
“Mmm.” There was admiration in the witch’s voice. What a twisted pair they made. “Some might call that suicidal.”
“I prefer to call it preparation.”
I buried my face in my hands. Of course I was working for the guy who deliberately poisoned himself. It seemed like I was destined for a lifetime of insane bosses.
Carabosse snipped a thread, and said, “You can sit up, now.”
I looked up at the sound of fabric shifting on wood.
Robin was still covered in grime, but the only remainder of the wound was a neatly stitched line. The black veins emanated from the area, unfaded, but no longer spreading.
“I gave you a large dose of a counteractive potion when you arrived.” Carabosse crossed the room to a large cabinet peppered with alchemy materials and began sifting through it. “But you’ll need to continue taking it daily for the next three weeks to completely reverse the effects.”
Her steel gray eyebrows drew together when she glared at Robin. “That dose on the bullet would’ve killed any one of your friends several times over. I expect a little more prudence from my patients, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Robin said, sitting up a little straighter. I stifled a giggle at the sight of the elderly human woman beating a Gentry into shape.
Carabosse’s eyes snapped to me. I quickly adjusted my face to look more serious. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I’ll be fine,” I insisted, but both Gwyn and Jack took me by the arms, picked me up, and carried me to the table, where they plunked me right next to Robin.
“Don’t argue with the nice lady, Bananas,” Gwyn told me sternly. “Your feet have seen better days.”
I looked down at the offending appendages and winced. They were pretty bad. I’d seen satyrs with nicer hooves.
“It won’t hurt, dear,” Carabosse assured me. I tried to smile as she pulled a stool over, got out a pair of tweezers, and began pulling little bits of stone out of the cuts in my feet.
“Well, not that much,” she amended. I was gritting my teeth and trying my absolute hardest not to stiffen up or jerk away.
Gwyn stood next to the table, his arm comfortingly wrapped around my waist. Robin laid his hand over mine on the table.
Jack retreated to the bench again. His full lips were pressed flat, but he watched Carabosse working on my wounds with laser-like intensity.
Part of me wanted to ask him to come back and hold my hand, too. He’d taken no credit for his role in this, and favor notwithstanding, he hadn’t been required to interfere.
But I already had two big, strong guys holding my hands. Asking for a third seemed greedy.
“Jack?”
He looked up at me. For the first time since I’d met him, he was disheveled. He’d swept his white hair out of his face, and Robin’s darkened blood had soaked into his white suit. “Yes, Briallen?”
“Thank you.” I forced myself not to look down at the floor under that piercing gaze. “For helping me when you didn’t need to.”
If Jack hadn’t arrived when he had, if he hadn’t used his frost to slow the Faebane in Robin’s bloodstream… so much more w
ould have been lost. Maybe I’d been too harsh in my initial judgment of him.
He just stared back at me, then his lips curved in his familiar, taunting smile. “I wouldn’t be thanking me quite yet.”
With that, he stood up and brushed himself off.
“Keep me apprised of the situation,” he told Robin. “If there’s disputes of this happening in Undercity territory, I’ll bring my testimony to the table.”
And then, without even a goodbye, he walked out.
I stared after him in frustration. “Is he even capable of not pissing people off?” I demanded.
“No,” Gwyn and Robin said simultaneously.
They looked at each other, and Robin’s eyes dropped to Gwyn’s hand around my waist.
Without saying a word, Robin removed his hand from mine, resting it in his lap.
I felt a little like I’d swallowed a heavy stone that settled in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t like saving the mission had actually changed the fact that we were employer and employee; things would go back to normal.
Whatever ‘normal’ was. I’d be perfectly happy with normal being Robin and Gwyn taking me upstairs to my apartment, but again… don’t be a greedy piglet, Bri.
“What’s the next move, boss?” I asked, wanting to cut through the sudden tension between the three of us.
Robin gave the top of Carabosse’s head a pointed look. “We’ll need to discuss that back at headquarters. For now, focus on healing, Miss Appletree.”
“You’re one to speak,” Carabosse muttered. Damn, I loved this old lady.
Well, I did for about three seconds. She pulled a large sliver of stone out of my foot and I let out a horrible rusty screech of pain.
Gwyn squeezed me tightly, letting me bury my face against his chest.
I took shallow breaths as Carabosse cleaned my feet, applied ointment, and wrapped them in bandages. Then she forced us to take several pills that quickly dulled the pain and made my head swim.
“You both need to get some sleep,” she said, and with that, we were kicked out of her shop, along with a promise to send a hefty bill along to Robin.
My boss paused outside and leaned against his car. His keys had been left on top of the hood by Jack, but Robin looked a little unsteady as he reached for them. “Ap Nudd. Can you take her upstairs and drive me to the Seelie Palace? I can’t drive with this in my system.”
“Your pupils are awfully huge,” I noted. They nearly swallowed up the sapphire blue. “Wow, they’re like the moon. Big, black moons. Did you take something, Robin? Aren’t drugs bad?”
Gwyn scooped me up from the sidewalk and carried me up the stairs to my apartment.
“Gwyn, you’re the best,” I told him. “The real MPV.”
He pushed a strand of dirty hair out of my face. “That’s the painkillers talking, Bananas. It’s MVP, by the way.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and nuzzled my cheek against him. His skin was so soft. “Nope. That’s me talking. My lips are really numb. Maybe I’m not actually talking but imagining all this in my head. Did… did I just ask you a question? Was that a question? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling a little as he knocked on the door.
I was barely aware of the twins answering the door with shock in their voices.
Gwyn carried me through the door, and the next thing I knew, I was being settled in my bed.
He pulled the comforter up over my shoulders and adjusted my pillow. Clove and Tarragon were yelling, but Gwyn answered quietly…
Then someone kissed my forehead and I fell into a deep, dark abyss of dreamless sleep.
I slept an entire twenty-four hours.
When I woke up, the sky was darkening into evening. I groaned and stretched, glad my head was no longer swimming from the painkillers Carabosse had given me.
My feet still hurt, but nowhere near as bad as yesterday. It wasn’t even that hard to hobble into the shower and wash off the dirt, blood, and remains of my shredded glamour.
When I emerged with my hair wrapped in a towel, I saw an envelope lying on the floor. Someone had shoved it under my door.
I picked it up and sat on my bed. It was thick paper, the corner of the envelope embossed with a golden seal of an upraised left hand.
I slit the envelope and quickly scanned it. It was an official summons to the Seelie Palace, where Robin Goodfellow and I would present our evidence and testimony against Prince Brightkin the Third.
I swallowed hard. That was quick. Maybe Queen Titania was furious that I’d made such a botch job of catching her son red-handed.
I found my phone in the tattered remains of my clothes. Amazingly, it had survived the journey through the Undercity with nothing but scratched glass to show for it.
I hesitated before hitting dial on Robin’s number. He answered on the first ring, his voice still husky with tiredness and pain. “Miss Appletree?”
“Hi.” I scooted back on my bed, careful of my feet and clutching the letter.
There was a beat of silence. “Hi,” he said.
“Did you send the official summons? What’s going on over there?” Why was my throat so damn tight? Who cared if the Queen was upset? Better that everyone know Brightkin was a complete bastard, than let him get away clean for the sake of keeping it quiet.
I heard the rustle of papers in the background. “I sent it. The Queen is determined to get this over with quickly, before Brightkin’s lawyers have a chance to put together a reasonable case for his innocence.”
I snorted in disdain. “How would that even be possible? We saw it with our own eyes.”
“You’d be amazed.” Robin’s tone was dry. That was a good sign. “Are you ready for it?”
“I guess so…” I looked at the paper again. “Blessed Branches, it’s tomorrow!”
A noise that was awfully close to a snort came over the line. “Yes, Miss Appletree. I’ll expect you here at the crack of dawn so we can go over the necessaries. If it makes you feel better, it won’t be a large jury.”
I licked my dry lips. Better to do it while the memories were still fresh, I supposed. “What if I come over tonight? It’s a lot of information.”
Another pause.
The stone that had dropped into my stomach in Carabosse’s house didn’t seem to have left; if anything, it felt even heavier.
“You should take tonight to rest,” Robin said gently. “You should… consider your other options.”
“What other options?” My lungs were tight. Too tight. It was hard to breathe.
I scrambled up and cracked the window open. A warm breeze flowed in, calming my nerves.
“The kind of options that don’t leave you battered after running through the Undercity.”
I wasn’t imagining the acid bitterness in his tone. “Well, the thing is, I’ve already considered those options, and I’ve decided that they sound like complete shit.”
Robin exhaled. “Briallen, I was useless to you. Silke could’ve chosen you instead, and there would’ve been no coming back from that.”
“Sounds like you should start sneaking Faebane in my coffee,” I said blithely. “And maybe fill me in on how exactly you knew Silke.”
The next silence lasted even longer than the first two.
“She was one of my agents,” he finally said. “One of my own trainees. She was sentenced to a life-debt by the Queen when she was caught taking bribes from evanesce smugglers. I was… the one who turned her in.”
I bit my lower lip. “Why was she so loyal to Brightkin, even knowing what he was doing?”
It was easy to picture Robin dragging a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Her life-debt was given to him as punishment. Her entire existence was tied to his. If Brightkin had died on her watch, Silke’s life would’ve been ended as well. Where he went, she went. I imagine in this case, she planned on sneaking out of Avilion when Brightkin made his final bid for freedom. She never would’ve been able to return, but a life of fr
eedom outside Avilion probably sounded better than a lifetime of debt within.”
I felt a slight pang of pity for Silke, who was probably still rotting on my tree down in the depths of the Undercity. I couldn’t imagine being punished to guard a spoiled prince for the rest of my life, always constrained by what he did.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” I finally said. Robin had probably been briefed on all the deaths by now.
He surprised me. “I’m not. I’d rather have you here and alive.”
I looked at my hand. My torn-up nails looked even worse against the unblemished creamy parchment of the letter. “So, boss. Are we good here? I’m not going anywhere. Especially since I owe you another five months.”
If I closed my eyes, it was easy to imagine he was speaking in my ear. That didn’t help my crush, but still, a dryad could dream.
“We’re good. I’ll see you in the morning, Miss Appletree.”
I smiled. “Good night, boss.”
27
“Are you gawking at the ceiling?” Robin muttered to me.
I shifted in my seat. I was gawking.
The inside of the Seelie Palace was even more beautiful than the outside. From the outside, the spires reflected the sun in hues of flame.
From the inside, it was walking inside a giant prism. The walls shifted with a rainbow of colors, and the light even took on different qualities from room to room.
Robin and I sat in a small courtroom, where a bar of amber light played over his face. He looked much better, some color back in his face, but there were still dark lines fading beneath his skin.
His Left Hand badge was pinned back on his chest in the customary spot, and I’d been given a new outfit by the magical wardrobe in his house: a suit made of dark leather, with a silver circle badge on the chest that marked me as a trainee agent of the Garda.
I peered up at the dais, where a throne of carved leaves and berries waited for its owner. “Do you think they’ll call on me to testify?”
It wasn’t like my hands were sweaty from nerves or anything. It was just really hot in here.
