Another gwyllion shot from the shadows, latching on to Lyr’s neck. But just as I started to charge the dagger with magic again, one of them snatched my arm, claws digging into my flesh. I sliced her wizened throat with the blade, and dark blood poured out.
From the darkness, a large male gwyllion knocked me to the ground. He pinned my wrists down, claws cutting into my skin. The glass still in my backside tore at my flesh. The gwyllion squeezed my wrist so hard I thought he might be breaking the bones. The knife clattered out of my hand, and I gasped.
The gwyllion’s wide, gray eyes hovered just inches above my face, and his wiry beard tickled my skin.
“Beautiful one … just like her.” His breath could kill flowers.
“Who are you working for?” I asked.
“We need to know how get to Nova Ys.” He started to thrust his hips back and forth over mine, which made me want to vomit. “Beautiful….”
Nova Ys?
Well, well, well. This was the interesting secret that Lyr had been keeping from me.
Chapter 20
The gwyllion grabbed my breast hard, claws digging in, and I snarled.
Suddenly, Lyr ripped him off me, his features furious as a wrathful god. His eyes burned with gold, canines bared.
I scrambled back, scanning the darkness. I didn’t see any other signs of movement.
I looked up at Lyr, who was speaking quietly in Ancient Fae. Using his magic, he’d suspended the ancient gwyllion in the air. I gaped as the gwyllion’s chest exploded, blood and bits of bone spraying from his gaping ribs. The corpse dropped to the ground, and I choked down my nausea.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, shifting off the shattered glass. I wanted to be sick. I retched for a moment, then looked up at Lyr from the ground.
He stared down at me, his pale hair wafting around him, body glowing with gold. The bodies of six gwyllion lay around him, most with their chests exploded. Unsettling. I hadn’t even seen some of them creep out of the shadows before Lyr had killed them. Catching my breath, I crawled a few inches to reach for the knife that I’d dropped.
“They’re all gone,” he said. “I don’t smell any living gwyllion.”
“You could have let that last one live long enough for us to question him.”
“He angered me.” His voice sounded distant, and he crossed to the clothesline outside the woman’s apartment. The clothes were soaked with rain, but he yanked a large, red soccer T-shirt off the line and pulled it over his head.
Slowly, I rose to my feet, still holding tight to the hilt of the knife.
I let the rain wash the gwyllion blood off. “Are you sure they’re all gone?”
“Yes.”
I hobbled a little as I walked, the glass in my body now deeply uncomfortable. “What’s Nova Ys? The gwyllion said he was looking for Nova Ys.”
“It’s not your concern.”
“Are you kidding? Not my concern?” I slid the dagger into the sheath on my thigh.
Lyr was watching the move very closely, body glowing with gold. “Is that my arm sheath that you have wrapped around your thigh?”
“Yep. So?”
“It’s practically cutting off your circulation.”
“It’s fine.” It actually bothered me that he’d never asked for it back. He’d just let me steal his weapon from him. That was how much he did not see me as a threat.
I started marching back to the empty apartment.
Was there a new kingdom—a Nova Ys? Lyr wore a crown. Had he crowned himself king of my freaking kingdom?
He might be a demigod, but he was not the heir to the crown of Ys. I was.
As we climbed the dark stairwell, the golden glow from his body lit the way.
When we crossed into the room, he sniffed the air. He said, “You’re still bleeding. Worse, now.”
Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the pain from all the glass cuts was coming roaring back. I needed healing. Then, I needed to sleep for, like, eight days. And after I slept, I needed to punch Lyr in the face until he told me the truth.
“Yeah, I’m bleeding. I still have a whole bunch of glass in me from when you smashed the window and I sat on it.”
“Take off your clothes and lie down. I need to get the glass out.”
As if I’d just strip off in front of this usurper. More glass, as Giles Corey would say.
I narrowed my eyes at him, crossing my arms. “You have another kingdom, don’t you? You stole my crown. King of Nova Ys.”
“It’s not your kingdom, considering you drowned the last one. Take off your clothes. I need to heal you.”
“So, there is a new kingdom. And no, I’m not taking off anything in front of you, usurper. Are you the one who made up that story about me drowning the kingdom, so you could take what was mine?”
“No. I already told you, I didn’t even believe it at first. Take off your clothes. The smell of your blood sickens and infuriates me.”
“You have a wonderful bedside manner for a healer.”
He did look angry. “Lie down on the floor on your front.”
I took a step back from him, my shoulders resting against the wall. Then, I pulled out the dagger again.
I shook my head, my fingers tight on the hilt of the knife. “You gave up on me for no reason at all. Because of some rumors and an … unfortunate situation where I removed a human’s heart. Give me specifics about that particular scene.”
“The fact that you require specifics suggests to me that this is something you did many times.”
I pointed the dagger at him. “You just made five hearts explode in a storm of blood and bone. So, we both have a violent side. The question is whether or not it’s justified. That’s why I’m asking for specifics.”
“It was over a hundred years ago.” His crown—the stolen crown—blazed with gold. “I don’t remember specifics. Just that I found you in an alleyway, ripping a man’s organs out from between his ribs.”
I didn’t normally eviscerate people when I killed them, but I had done it at least once. I remembered this one vividly because he’d been one of the first.
Everyone remembered that man. They still talked about him, trying to figure out who he was. Was he a prince? A freemason? A butcher? They didn’t know his name. To humans, he was a Nameless One, just like mine.
“Was he wearing a deerstalker cap?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” said Lyr. “Frankly, I was more focused on the organs you were removing than his sartorial choices.”
“Near Fashion Street in Spitalfields. Just before the sun rose.”
“It’s possible. Yes, it was just before the sun rose. Near Spitalfields.”
“Right. He was the first recipient of my vigilante justice. A guy named Sam. He’d just finished slaughtering the fifth and final woman he’d ever kill. Mary was a friend of mine. And you should have seen the state she was in when he was finished with her. I assure you, it was much messier than what I did to him. And the police were never going to find him. They didn’t have a damn clue. So, I killed him, and I moved to Tennessee. He never killed another woman.”
This seemed to silence Lyr. He cocked his head as he stared at me, evaluating if I was telling the truth.
“They always talked about how he killed prostitutes,” I went on. “But it’s not the real story. I mean, they were prostitutes, yes, but that’s not all they were. They were just people who’d done what they needed to do to survive. Mary was ridiculously funny. She used to do a wicked imitation of a naughty vicar on a seaside vacation. And I was teaching her to read. And then one of her customers, a psychopath named Sam, tore out her insides for no reason at all. I had to put an end to his little hobby. Humans still talk about him, in fact. That’s how terrifying he was. They call him Jack the Ripper.”
“So, you had a reason to kill him,” he said at last. “Assuming you’re telling the truth.”
The way he said that last part suggested to me that he wasn’t assuming that
at all.
Then, he glanced at the open window. “But you’re not exactly as I expected. You seem to care about protecting weak people. You don’t seem like the sort to drown your own kingdom out of spite.”
“I’m not. And I didn’t know the rule about spirits.”
“Your father knew the rule.”
“I never even met him, Lyr. Apart from the constant lessons from my mother, I was sheltered. All the courtiers kept me sheltered. I just thought my mother was nuts till I got out into the real world. I had never seen death, or poverty, or sickness. I definitely didn’t know about a dark, evil fae who would drown a kingdom, and apparently no one else knew about him, either. But that is what happened to Ys. I remember him. He killed my mother. I was there.”
Lyr took a step closer, pressing his hands against the wall as he stared down at me. “You are telling me the truth? Another fae drowned the kingdom?”
“Yes.” I smacked one of his arms away. “I remember him that day. I just don’t know what he looks like.”
“Who is he? Why haven’t you been hunting him if he stole your power?”
“Two reasons. One, I don’t know who he was. He appeared just like a bluish white light. He smelled like fae, but he looked like— like a star. I heard his voice. He spoke in the fae language, though his accent sounded ancient. He told my mother he was there to kill her, and then her head came off, like it had been sliced with an invisible sword. Then, the island started to sink.”
Lyr’s jaw tightened. “And what’s the other reason you haven’t hunted him down?”
“He stole my power, so I have no capacity for revenge, even if I knew who he was. What am I going to do? Stab him with a stupid dagger? His power was immense.”
Like yours….
“And you have no idea what he looked like?” asked Lyr.
I shook my head. “No idea. He just looked like light. And as the island was sinking….”
I trailed off as the memory blazed in my mind, so vivid that it was like a movie replaying. I stood before the Nameless One, and he burned with blue light like a star. His magic seeped into my mouth like seawater, filling my lungs. When he ripped his magic out again, he took mine with it. I thought I was dead.
“It felt like he’d stolen my soul,” I said at last. “The ground was rumbling, the floor cracking. The palace was breaking apart. My mother’s head rolled on the ground. The water was rising through the cracks in the floor. The marble columns tipped over, smashing her skull open, but she was already dead. And then … the sea swallowed us whole. I sank beneath the sea’s surface, and I just let myself sink because my chest was so empty, I was certain I no longer existed. I’d become a hollow shell, completely alone in the dark.”
I realized I was shaking—and gripping the knife so hard my hand hurt.
I wiped a tear off my cheek. I felt the old emptiness welling inside me. “I just remember that he was there like a star. And then my heart broke.”
“I can see that you’re telling the truth.”
I glared at him. “And I can see that you’re hiding things. So, tell me about Nova Ys.”
“After I heal you. Your blood is a distraction.”
“You sound like a vampire.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to drink it. It bothers me. Without your powers, you seem breakable.”
Breakable. My chest ached to have my old powers back.
Chilly wind rushed in through the windows, bringing the rain with it. I still didn’t want to pull my dress off in front of him. He couldn’t see me naked. And it wasn’t just modesty. I really didn’t want him to see the demon names carved into my stomach. “There’s got to be another way to do this.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Your modesty borders on neurosis.”
“I just need to keep my guard up around you. You seem like you could be unhinged.”
“I seem unhinged?”
“Your whole death god thing. The moving tattoos. The exploding hearts. The claws.”
Shadows danced around him, like darkness was trying to claim him. “In the Ankou state, my primitive side takes over a little. But I can keep it under control.”
I pointed at him. “I knew it. Unhinged.”
I felt a magnetic pull between us that bothered me.
For a moment, I wondered what his primitive side would do when he had a woman lying naked before him, and my thoughts filled with base desires that were foreign to me.
Then, I pushed the thought away again, keeping a death grip on the hilt of my knife. Wolves, Aenor.
Chapter 21
My pulse started to race as I tried to resist the strange pull between us. “Before you heal me, we should protect ourselves against the fuath. At any moment, spirits could come flying in here, and there’s nothing to guard us from them. There’s a protection against the curse.”
“And you know it?” he asked.
“I might be able to remember it.” With my shoulders against the concrete wall, I closed my eyes, trying to remember how it looked in the ancient curse book. It was a fae rune…. I tried to imagine the shop vividly—how it smelled of dried herbs; the sound of Elvis on the crackling record player; Gina sitting on the countertop, eating Pop-Tarts. I’d sit by the bookshelves and pore over the curse book, looking for something good….
On the page about the fuath, someone had drawn an image of a human eating another person to illustrate possession. Blood dripped down the man’s chin. It was one of those weird medieval drawings where people had really calm, bored facial expressions while something horrific was happening.
On the opposite page, there were instructions about protecting your loved ones with your blood. The picture—I could see it so vividly in my mind’s eye, now. It looked like a sort of sharp flower with triangular petals.
I opened my eyes. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Once we do this, the fuath won’t be able to possess our bodies. But this is about to get a little weird. And you need to take off your shirt.”
He did as he was told, dropping his stolen T-shirt on the floor. My gaze swept over his muscled warrior’s body as it glistened from the rainwater.
Now, that tug between us felt even stronger.
“We need blood from each of us.” I pricked my fingertip with the tip of the dagger, then handed the blade to him. Droplets of blood pooled on my finger.
Then, I painted on his chest. His skin was silky smooth, with steel underneath. I stroked the symbol over his chest, around the blackened bullet hole—the dark heart of the sun.
When I’d finished, he looked down at it.
Was this perhaps a sign of trust? He’d just let me mark him with my blood, using a magical symbol that could be anything.
I pulled the neckline of my dress open. “Now you need to do the same thing with your blood. See? I told you it was weird.”
Lyr jabbed himself with the dagger—probably harder than he needed to, his body beaming with gold for a moment. He painted me with his blood, and it dripped down my chest. He copied the symbol, and as he did, magic shivered over my skin.
I wasn’t entirely clear about the logistics beyond this. If the blood washed off, did we have to reapply, or did this last forever? The ancient texts often left out helpful details like that.
Lyr finished with a precise swoop of red, then his eyes met mine. “What other curses do you know about?”
I shrugged. “I memorized a whole book of them. So, you’ll have to be more specific. Some of them had to do with blighting crops, drying up cow’s milk, causing venereal diseases. Exactly what kind of curse are you dealing with?”
“I can’t always control the Ankou state as well as I once could. It comes and goes when I don’t want it to.”
“Because someone put a curse on you?”
The wind whistled through the open windows down the hall, toying with his hair. “I did something I should not have done, and now the Ankou appears when it should not.”
Curiosity roared. “What did you do?”
His gaze shuttered. “It doesn’t matter right now.” He nodded at my blood-soaked dress. “Let me get the glass out of your skin. Take off your clothes.”
“Can you turn around while I get undressed?”
He turned in the other direction, crossing his arms.
I pulled up the hem and unhooked the sheath around my thigh. Tight as it was, it had left deep, red marks in my skin and an imprint where the buckle had been. It was a relief to have it off.
Then, I pulled off the gown, which was disgusting at this point. I had no underwear on, since Lyr had never given me any.
Cold and naked, I felt acutely aware of every inch of my exposed skin.
With a twinge of shame, I looked down at the names carved into my body with iron long ago. The writing was so messy I could hardly read the demon names, but I still remembered them. Abrax, Morloch, Bilial….
Whatever else Lyr saw, I didn’t need him seeing where demons had branded me on the sides. It occurred to me at this point that I could simply keep the dress on and pull it up to my waist. So, I pulled it on again, then lay flat on the chilly floor. I pulled the dress up past my bottom, which frankly probably looked more obscene than just being totally naked, with my backside out there for all the world to see.
Not a big deal, I told myself. I was covered in blood and glass, and it was just healing. Like a medical situation.
We were both just trying to find a magic knife. And if finding the athame meant sticking my rear out in the air while Death Man plucked glass from it, then I guess this was the story fate had written for me.
“I’m lying down,” I said from the floor. The concrete chilled my body, and goosebumps had risen all over my exposed skin.
I closed my eyes, turning my head away from Lyr.
Then, I felt the sharp pricks in my thighs as he started to pull the glass out.
“Do you have tweezers?” I asked.
“I’m using my fingertips,” he said. “When we were still in Acre, you could have escaped, you know. Without your help, they likely would have torn me down and thrown me into prison in iron chains.”
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