by Lucy Tempest
Meira was too busy trying to shut her slackened jaw to respond.
Will wasn’t faring any better, eyes threatening to pop out.
“You can all see and hear me now?” Each one nodded, stunned. “I can only assume it’s because we’re in Faerie.”
Robin nodded. “It stands to reason. Your current form is a fairy magic construct, and now you’re here, others can perceive you.”
This didn’t explain why he’d perceived me back in our realm. But for now, I’d be grateful for this development. Maybe it was a first step towards restoring me.
Will turned to Robin. “I could have sworn you were pulling our legs about the invisible girl bit—but she really is here.”
“You always assume the worst of me.” Robin placed a mock-hurt hand over his heart. “Would I ever lie to you?”
“Would you ever—?” Will scoffed. “Would you like a list of all the times you’ve deceived me, or left out vital information?”
“You mean when I couldn’t risk anyone overhearing me spoon-feed you my plans? Or when I had to take action without risking you slowing me down?”
“Slowing you—? We’re evenly matched in speed of aim! I’d argue I’m quicker on the draw because I don’t have to fiddle with my bow and grope around for arrows!”
Robin flung a hand at him. “See? Being so literal is why I can’t tell you all my plans.”
“It’s not his fault Marian got all the brains in the family,” Little Jon said, still staring blankly at me.
“That she did,” Robin agreed, watching the others who were still watching me in shock.
Except for Will, who seemed to have forgotten me as he burst out, “If she was so smart why did she chase after the Wild Hunt when it was the one night they freely roamed our lands? This is what comes of her following your strategy of acting without telling others in advance. It’s why they kidnapped her!”
It got uncomfortably quiet as Will panted in distress, seeming to relive months of fear and frustration like they were fresh incidents. A condition I had become all too familiar with.
I wished I could offer him anything comforting. But I had no experience in handling others’ feelings. Whenever I had tried, my efforts had been perceived as mocking or condescending, for what would a princess know of stress? I also hadn’t been trained in the art of empathy. In fact, my mother had drilled into me that it was a weakness unbecoming of a future queen.
Luckily, Will had friends who didn’t share my shortcomings. Both men reached bolstering hands to his shoulder and back, wrenching him back to the present.
“We’ll find her, I promise you,” Robin said solemnly. “And when we do, you can throw as many knives at the Wild Hunt as you please. All right?”
Will nodded, squeezing his wet eyes shut.
“Time to go through the tunnel, folks,” Alan said brightly, as if he was suggesting a stroll on the beach. “It leads straight into King Theseus’ palace grounds.”
Strangely, the bard was the only one who hadn’t been shocked by my visibility. He’d only been watching me with narrowed eyes, almost like he was trying to place me. Even stranger, now that I saw him in a brighter setting, I found him familiar as well. Not in the sense that I knew him, but that he reminded me of someone.
But I couldn’t dwell on that as we set out to enter the mountain, and a sense of foreboding drowned everything else out. Then we were riding deeper into its craggy insides, and I could no longer suppress the nightmare-inducing memories of my last trip through one.
We were ascending a slope sculpted from dark-red stone, whose glow illuminated our path, when Meira fell back to ride alongside us, thankfully distracting me from the rising tide of remembered horror.
Chewing her lip, she finally said, “It’s good to see you again.”
“Even if it isn’t in one piece?” I tried to smile at her, and failed.
Meira ducked her head. “If we had known it would be like this, we would have tried harder to find a solution.”
“There was no way we could have known that only her body would sleep!” Agnë looked back at me with eyes filled with agitation. “I doubt even the Spring Queen could have predicted this.”
The mention of that woman stoked the flames of my fury towards her and all fairies. “How could she not have? She’s the one who cast the curse, and must have tampered with its amendment! Didn’t you see the thorns encasing the castle?”
Meira nodded, seeming to shrink further. “It’s just that magic isn’t always precise, especially when its wielder speaks their will without carefully chosen words that instill limitations and conditions. The less specific the spell, the more room there is for unseen variables.”
“Like the wishes given to genies?” I recalled what the genie of the golden lamp had done to Uncle Darius’s family, as well to Nariman the witch—now his new wife, of all things. The devious creature had found ways to turn demands into disasters, just by interpreting their imprecise wording differently.
“Like that, but without malicious intent,” Agnë mumbled.
Our conversation died down as we arrived at the mouth of the tunnel to the Summer King’s palace. The silence allowed me to ponder their words, not to mention their unexpected distress over my predicament.
Being my constant companions, they’d been among the few taken into confidence about my curse, and they’d always seemed dedicated to me. I’d never actively thought why, but now I did, I supposed I’d believed it was because I was the princess, and their jobs afforded them a life that was almost as luxurious as mine.
The way I’d been raised, with everything in my life being focused towards the day I’d marry Cyaxares and break my curse, I’d never given much thought to anything else. I’d never truly wondered if they actually liked me, let alone cared for me or my fate.
Yet, with the evidence of them being here now, they did care. Far more than I could have imagined. It was actually strange. But then, through the years, there had been strange instances and inconsistencies that had raised questions in my mind about them. But I’d always been too involved in my own affairs to pursue answers.
Now as I tried to form theories about their involvement in this quest, the tunnel kept getting narrower and darker, our trail only lit by luminescent patches in the walls. It seemed to go on forever, and even the men’s bickering came less and less.
Then in one of the quiet stretches, I heard something move. And not the scurrying of insects or rodents.
The sound seemed to come from within the walls, like something had awoken, and was burrowing and scratching its way out. It was so familiar it dredged up the memories I tried so hard to drown.
But my fears broke through the surface with a splash that hit every corner of my mind, overtaking it with an immediate urge to flee.
“There is something in here with us!” I cried out.
“Ignore it.” Alan’s voice came from ahead. “Keep moving.”
“It won’t make a difference.” My voice rose to a shout as the rousing and rushing within the walls grew closer. “They’ll be here any second—”
“I liked it better when I couldn’t hear you,” Will cut me off. “And what are you worried about, anyway? It’s not like anything can happen to you…”
Something launched out of the darkness and threw itself at him.
Among the startled shouts, my horrified scream, and the panicked neighs of our horses, more dark-dwelling creatures seemed to come out of nowhere, swarming us.
Ghouls!
Chapter Fourteen
After plaguing my nightmares for months, where I’d thought they’d remain, I was again staring into the eyeless face of death.
Those deathly pale beasts were almost identical to the ones Ada and I had fought in the cave of Mount Alborz. Slimy, leathery skin, slit nostrils, sharp-toothed maws filling half their faces, and jagged claws curling out of knuckles-deep nailbeds.
With a roar, Robin threw a ghoul off his back, then shot the one accosting Ag
në with an arrow from his crossbow, where its left eye should have been.
As Agnë shoved the ghoul off with a shriek of revulsion, Robin reached our side, shouting, “What are these things?”
He was probably asking Alan, but it was me who screamed, “Ghouls! Flesh-eating monsters!”
Robin ripped the arrow out of the ghoul’s face before it fell beneath Amabel’s hooves, reloading it back into his crossbow as he yelled, “If you know anything about these things, tell us now!”
“Don’t waste magical weapons on them,” I yelled back over the cacophony of the ghouls’ rabid attack and our companions’ desperate struggles, hoping they’d all hear. “They’re easily killed and have no sense of self-preservation. They have no strategy, are just masses of mindless hunger. But they’re relentless and voracious and will pick your bones clean if they overpower you.”
Robin smashed his crossbow into a ghoul’s head, cracking it wide open, spilling its brains out in blackened clots. My phantom stomach lurched.
“What else did you hear about them?” he shouted as he followed my advice, trading the crossbow for his regular bow, shooting at incoming ghouls in a blur of speed. I couldn’t imagine anyone being faster than that.
“I’ve seen them! They tried to eat me!”
“Then tell us how you survived, quick!”
“A friend kicked one in the head to death, and I smashed another one’s head with my hoop-skirt.”
“Your what?” He gaped at me momentarily, before tearing his gaze away to continue impaling ghouls.
I rushed to add, “But we mostly ran, sticking together, giving them a single meal in one place, just a little out of reach. They ripped each other apart to get to us first, giving us a chance to escape. And–and if we can find a body of water, they can’t swim.”
He didn’t need to know that neither could I, or that Ada plunging us into that submerged shrine had been a last desperate act. There’d been no way out, and the ghouls had just waited for us to get out and be eaten, or choose to die by drowning.
If it hadn’t been for outside intervention—represented in Cora, Cyrus, and Ayman, that wraith-like man Cherine Nazaryan had insisted was a ghoul, but who’d turned out to be Ada’s half-brother—neither of us would be alive today.
Not that I was alive today.
“No chance of water here,” Robin shouted as he cracked a ghoul’s neck with a vicious kick of his booted foot. “But we can do the one-meal thing. If we gather to block the tunnel, there will only be one direction for them to attack. Then we retreat until we’re out of here.”
He shouted his strategy to the others, but each was too preoccupied with their own mindless attackers.
Will, with blades blurring in both hands, furiously slashed at every ghoul that grabbed at his horse or his legs, screaming increasingly filthy expletives at them. Alan had unsheathed a massive sword I hadn’t seen before, was arcing it in sweeps that lopped off the heads and hands of the monsters in his way, while his reindeer stomped on those crawling across the ground. Little Jon gave up impaling them with his spear, resorting to sheer force, more efficiently smashing them against the walls.
As the stench of the ghouls’ black blood filled the area, all I could do was scream warnings at Agnë and Meira as ghouls snatched at them. Being unarmed, they were at the most disadvantage.
As if realizing this, Will shouted, “Meira, catch!” and flung a knife our way.
Meira threw up a hand, but instead of catching the blade, she halted it inches from her palm! Her glowing palm!
Then she ripped it from the air, and with ferocious screams, she alternated between hurling ghouls away with brisk gestures, and stabbing those who jumped at her horse.
I hadn’t had time to reel at what I was seeing, when Agnë’s own hands filled with what looked like smoldering snowballs. She hurled them at the ghouls who came too close, eliciting teeth-gnashing screeches as the ice somehow burned through their fetid flesh.
This was it—the explanation for all those little weird things about them.
They were witches!
All these years, those closest to me had been the one thing I hated most in the world—after fairies, at least.
But whatever their reasons were for being in my service in the first place, and for being here now, that could wait.
We had to survive first. They had to.
But soon, Agnë and Meira started to tire, their magic flagging, and ghouls kept coming. They were starting to surround us when Amabel gave a piercing neigh and kicked a few back. She reared up and landed on the rest, crushing some with her hooves, and spearing others with her horn.
“Good girl!” I cheered her on as she continued destroying any ghouls who escaped Agnë and Meira. “Best girl!”
“This is how we can implement our retreat,” Robin shouted as he pulled an arrow out of his latest kill’s throat, and stuck it in a new attacker’s face. “If we can get the horses to attack like Amabel.”
“Good luck convincing them of that!” Will yelled from up ahead as he lopped the heads of two incoming ghouls with his swirling knives. “They’re scared witless, and won’t budge!”
“On it!” Alan leaped off his reindeer, so inhumanly high, there was no doubt he was part fairy. If there was any left, it was laid to rest as he zigzagged between the tunnel walls above us, literally bouncing off them, before landing behind us.
He proceeded to smack every steed’s rear hard, scaring them enough to overcome their dread of the ghouls. They launched ahead, their mass and speed overwhelming the majority of the ghouls in our path.
“Regroup ahead, everyone,” Robin thundered. “Block the tunnel!”
As we started to obey his order, Agnë swung around, and screamed Little Jon’s name. I looked back in time to see him being buried under two dozen ghouls.
Just as Robin started to gallop back to his friend’s aid, Little Jon exploded up from the pile of ghouls with a roar, drenched in his own blood and theirs, holding one by its massive jaw. He stretched it wider until he broke the whole head apart with a nauseating crack and a shower of black blood.
Cora had done the same in Mount Alborz, that day I’d had to reconsider my belief in demigods. She’d fought a ghoul off us, then had broken its neck with her bare hands. She’d left that cave swinging its head like a purse she’d just acquired, intending to embalm it as a trophy.
That memory swamped me with revulsion again as Little Jon threw the broken ghoul at the rest so hard, he knocked them all down.
As he ran to join us, he yelled for Alan to lead the way out, with Will and Robin flanking us, and with him holding the rear. Alan regained his way at the front in the same spectacular fashion, and jumped on his enormous reindeer.
The ghouls we left unscathed were joined by dozens more. But they finally slowed each other down. With their prey in a unified front, and only one path to reach us, their blood-thirst turned towards taking out the competition. They slaughtered one another, rupturing limbs and tearing throats, their screeching rising to a nerve-shredding crescendo.
“It worked like you said! They’re turning on each other!” Robin’s voice was elated as his hooded head turned back towards me. “Where did you even stumble on these things before?”
“Not now, we’re almost out!” I pointed where a circle of light grew at the end of the tunnel.
“Speed up,” Meira shrieked over her shoulder. “Before they shift their attack strategies.”
Will urged her horse ahead as he shouted, “They’re not smart enough for that, like Briar said.”
“They don’t need brains, when there’s so many of them,” Meira snapped back.
She was right. Sheer numbers could overwhelm anyone. And those we’d been fighting only seemed to have been the advance wave. The tunnel at our back was now swarming with ghouls. We couldn’t risk slowing down.
We didn’t. The opening grew as we retreated as fast as we could, brightness revealing details of what lay on the other side�
��the groves and trees of a palatial garden. Soon, we’d be with the Summer King. And if we played our cards right, he could fix all our problems—
A clawed hand tore through my middle, grazing my ghostly insides.
As I cried out in agony, I realized I wasn’t the only one in danger. A few ghouls had distracted Jon, and this one had reached through me to grab at Agnë.
Before I could whimper a warning, it caught a handful of her cloak and ripped her off Amabel’s back.
“NO!” I reached for her in mindless horror, forgetting that I had no power, no grip. She literally slipped through my fingers.
Agnë fell back with a scream, disappearing in a blink into the darkness of the tunnel as Amabel thundered to the exit. No amount of frantic yelling could make her turn back.
As we burst out of the tunnel, the transition to the sunny palace grounds almost blinded me. I still saw Robin jumping off his horse and running up to me, hood miraculously still fastened on, unscathed by the attacks.
“It took her!” I wailed, feeling as if that ghoul’s clawed hand was still lodged in my insides, disintegrating me. “I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t… They’ll eat her, leave nothing but bones and hair…” Like those skeletons I’d seen in that other cave.
Without a word, Robin bypassed me, and shot back towards the tunnel.
Little Jon, who was the last to exit, bloody and battered, gaped at him in confusion. Before he understood what was going on, Robin zoomed past him, and disappeared back inside.
We all stared after him in shock, as the sounds of rabid struggle and feasting echoed from within.
Will was the first one to recover, bolting to follow Robin. Jon staggered after him, pulled him back at the very mouth of the cave.
“We can’t leave him to fight alone!” Will yelled at him.
“I hate it more than you, Will,” Jon said, deep voice a strident rasp as he looked back at me, noting Agnë’s absence with a pained grimace. “But I barely made it out, and if we go back inside, and don’t come out again—Marian will be lost, too.”
