At the start of each path, three notes hover at eye level. We read the names on the respective leaflets, the letters embellished in shimmering ink.
Lark
Juniper
Cove
No. Just, no.
I remember Cove teaching me one of the village litanies against the Fae. The one that people recite when they’re afraid of losing somebody to those creatures, or when they’ve already lost somebody to that world, or when they’re desperate to get that somebody back.
If all three apply, I wonder whether a person has to repeat the chant three times. When that person is threatened in a way she hadn’t expected, suddenly those litanies seems a hell of a lot more necessary. Suddenly, an invocation seems like a fine fucking idea.
This is a nightmare, and I’ve gotta wake up, yet I can’t. I know what those notes mean. This was supposed to be one game, one place, and three sisters. But it’s not.
We’re not playing the same game. We’re not even going in the same direction.
They’re separating us.
A feminine wheeze tears through the silence. Juniper and I swerve toward Cove, who’s hyperventilating. Her chest pumps, her eyes glaze over, and she thrashes her head from side to side. “I-I don’t understand,” she panics, her lisp getting more pronounced. “We did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong!”
I snatch her into a hug, and Juniper wraps her arms around us both. Cocooned between us, Cove squeaks over and over, “I don’t understand. We did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong!”
“Shh,” I murmur, stroking her hair and trying not to bawl along with her. “Shh, now.”
Weeping is music to their ears. It’ll do her no good.
Juniper whispers something else to Cove, who slumps on a hiccup. My sisters and I untangle ourselves. Cove wipes her face and hikes up her unsteady chin, the sight wringing out my heart like a cloth.
We approach the leaflets and grab them from thin air. The sound of ripping paper shreds through the wild, louder than birdsong, rickety boughs, or hissing streams. Juniper scans her note, her pupils jumping across the sentences while Cove mouths the contents of her missive.
My eyes burn a trail across the scourge of words inked into my note. It’s an invitation, all right.
For your trespass, be our sacrifice—to surrender, to serve, and to satisfy. Under the vicious stars, three sisters must play three games.
Mutinous Lark, your task is painfully simple. Don’t look down. Watch your step. Fear the wind. Follow the wind. Lose your path. Find your way.
Welcome to The Solitary Mountain.
A set of rules follows those cryptic tidings.
Rule one: Each sister will enter one of the Solitary landscapes.
Rule two: My sisters and I can’t reveal our games to each other.
Rule three: All of us win—or none of us win.
“Fables curse them,” I seethe.
My sisters raise their heads, and we trade horrified glances. I can’t tell from Juniper’s crinkled brow what’s in store for her. Nor can I tell a thing from Cove’s flushed complexion.
Something perilous? Something brutal? Something lewd?
I can handle the latter, but I have a feeling Cerulean doesn’t work that way. He’s too much of an elegant trickster to invest in a kinkfest.
If I’m for the mountain, I reckon Juniper’s for the forest, and Cove’s for the water tunnel. I listen to my sisters’ rapid intakes. Most things, we can read on the other’s faces. This time, we can’t.
“All right,” Juniper says folding the note. “All right. So…so, um, remember not to provoke them. And…” In a daze, she counts off her fingers. “And don’t show fear but also don’t be docile. And don’t accept a bargain unless your throat’s about to be slit. And if you bargain, don’t give away anything precious. Give them a useless token. One of the baubles we packed.”
“Okay,” I said, although I know all that.
“And beware of manipulations. And interpret every declaration frontwards and backwards.”
“Okay.”
“And Cove, don’t get theatrical, and never lie to them—you’re awful at both. And Lark, be polite, and watch your saucy mouth, and control your temper, and don’t bother flirting because it won’t sway them, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and just, don’t be you.”
I manage to smirk sadly. “Okay.”
“And—”
I step forward and grab her cheeks. “Okay, Juniper.”
She sags. “All right.”
Cove pulls us to her, and we melt into each other once more. I smell the practical scent of eucalyptus wafting from Juniper’s shirt and the comforting aura of jasmine from Cove’s intricately loose bun.
My sweet sister bends her teal head and utters to Juniper, “Do not let him see your tattoo.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. The ruler of woodland can’t know about Juniper’s poacher marking, not when the Fae prize their fauna.
Juniper freezes, then nods. I wager she’s already considered that.
The wild lives and breathes around us, though it doesn’t interrupt the hug. Not that we’d let it, because it’s the last one we might share.
Our nails dig into one another, and we murmur private words, and we remember. Then we let go, spread out onto three paths, and step forward.
7
The moment I take that step, my sisters disappear. The woodland and water routes evaporate, trapping Juniper and Cove in their own stories. The world narrows to the sloping hill, the stone stairs crawling up brackets of rock.
It’s just me and The Solitary Mountain.
Me. Without them.
My knees buckle and slam to the ground. I dump my face in my palms, my body shaking, but I don’t cry. I’m too pissed off to cry.
After a while, I get to my feet, crumble the note in my fist, and jam it into my pack beside the first missive delivered by that horned owl. Shouldering the bag, I glare at the looming range. Trees conceal the summit, bits of stone and ribbons of moonlight glinting through. The familiar stink of overripe plums and poison sneaks into my nostrils, but the fireflies have vacated the premises, the atmosphere free of their scorching, stinging light.
On either side of the stairs, torch poles guide the way. The blazes crackle, scarves of fire slapping the atmosphere.
I step onto the first stair, then the next. It’s a slow trek, my eyes scanning the slightest disturbance in the creepers. A flash of feathers. Clawed feet hooked on to a branch.
Must be the Fae fauna. In a friendly universe, this escapade would be a dream come true, and I’d lose myself in exploration. Instead, I don’t trust a single chirp or twitch in the offshoots. For all I know, the Fables are wrong about everything I’m supposed to expect, and I’ll encounter exotic birds that shouldn’t exist in this belt of the continent. What’s more, those birds could be flesh eaters or plagues. I might encounter carnivorous pigeons, rabid parakeets, or enormous fucking flamingos.
I hike the slabs, vigilant of shadows and silhouettes. Soon enough, new shapes emerge in my periphery, humanesque figures with abnormal body parts such as wings or arms lined in plumage. The segments slink through the canopy or squat atop the boughs.
I wheel toward them. Tittering, they slip out of sight.
How many are watching me? How many are waiting to pounce?
Will one of them dive like a kingfisher? Will one of them grasp like an osprey?
I’m mighty certain my eyes are wide and wild. Based on the lurching chuckles, this pleases my audience.
I ball my hands into fists, ceasing the tremors. As the elevation increases, oxygen gets shallower yet crisper. Stars trickle across the firmament, alternating between white and teal. My pulse drums, and my thighs burn.
The stairs stretch, and stretch, and stretch ahead. I’ve got no clue if I’m making progress.
The terrain gets windier, my hair dashing around my face. I pause, bracing my knuckles on my hips, my lungs a set of rusty
pumps. Rifling through my pack, I reach for the waterskin. As I do, the note I’d crushed into a wad—the one that greeted me at the bottom—springs from the bag and into the air, reshaping itself into a set of flapping wings.
I don’t have time to pick up my jaw. The paper flies ahead.
I jog after it, oxygen sawing through my chest. The flying leaflet hurls itself over a precipice, and I race after the paper, barreling over the final step and wobbling in place at the landing. I don’t see the leaflet anywhere, much less a continuing path.
A crescent niche digs into the mountain. All I find is a signpost pointing toward the dead end, which makes no sense.
The marker reads, The Parliament of Owls.
Footfalls multiply and skulk behind me. Wicked laughter spider crawls up my back.
A smart person would hold her tongue. A smart person would be Juniper or Cove.
I spin and unravel my whip. “I’ve got a noose.”
“And you have a mouth,” an accented voice remarks.
I whirl again and lower into a fighting crouch, my whip flicking out to the side. The chiseled crescent is gone. In its place, the space has broadened into a stone rotunda, its smooth floor paving across the summit, with the depiction of a single mountain embedded in its center and a javelin slicing through the peak’s heart. A fleet of rowan trees line the area’s perimeter, protecting the rotunda that wasn’t there before.
And the throne that hadn’t been there, either. At the opposite end, a massive seat sculpted from rock looms atop a dais. The chair has edges carved into a wingspan, which curve inward.
The bane of my existence sprawls sideways across the throne, his long legs hanging over the right ledge. With an elbow braced on the other armrest, Cerulean cups his cheek in his palm and tilts his head. Two rings of prismatic blue gleam at me, the color popping from his face.
It’s clear he likes dark and billowy clothes that hang haphazardly off his frame. Tonight’s ensemble isn’t much different from the costume he wore yesterday. The only distinction is the coat; this one’s russet instead of eventide black, its upturned collar framing the delicate bones of his visage.
And one more thing. Small, bronze wings fashioned into jewelry cap the daggers of his ears.
The summit opens its jowls to the stars. The rowan trunks slant as if the wind has knocked them off balance.
A ring of owls surrounds the rotunda, the tips of their ebony and flaxen feathers shining. Each avian holds court from an individual tree, the medallions of their eyes lacquered in aquamarine or citrine.
The horned owl perches atop the throne’s crest rail.
All right. So this summit must be The Parliament of Owls.
Someone’s finger sweeps aside a lock of my hair. Swinging in the hand’s direction, I smack the invasive fingers away—then stumble backward at the sight.
This Fae’s made of all things fine and lightweight. She’s got a tumbleweed of topaz hair piled around her head and the most garish eyes I’ve ever seen, the irises enameled in the same gem tone. Sort of like a raccoon, a thick swatch of nut-brown cuts across her face, from temple to temple.
A gauzy gown cocoons her compact body in winding strips of cloth. Her pale-as-paper skin matches the silken moth wings flaring from her back, a set of topaz dots dabbing each tip.
The female is slight. She looks young, but who knows with this immortal lot?
Shock robs me of speech. She’s as gorgeous as Cerulean—and as freakish.
The rest of them emerge into the rotunda. My audience edges closer, their movements fluid and mischievous. They possess a hybrid of animal, human, and Fae features, a flamboyant perversion of what I’d imagined, some downright ghastly, others astounding in their beauty.
Tall, graceful monsters sport the feathered arms of sparrows. Stocky dwarves display the armored torsos of beetles. Hovering pixies flourish their butterfly wings, the sheer membranes as animated as stained glass, the tips flouncing into streamers.
The Faeries resemble animals of the sky and mountain.
Bats wings, licorice black and skeletal. Bird wings, the iridescent quills layered along mantles that each span six feet.
The pronged or spiraled horns of antelopes. The conch horns of rams.
One figure has a bobcat’s muzzle and vertical feline pupils. One sprouts jackrabbit ears.
Another flaunts a tail of quail plumes. Another has the lanky neck of a fucking swan.
They’ve got pigmented skin, the green of ferns or the grey-blue of rainy mornings. They sport intricate, spiraling ink marks across their faces. They wear diadems and feathered anklets. They brandish claws and talons. They’ve got pointy ears.
Cerulean slouches on his throne with casual indifference. Propping a finger on his lower lip, he watches while his entourage mocks me.
“Foolish human,” the female moth jeers, a set of porcelain combs sinking its teeth into her tumbleweed hair. “Silly girl.”
She circles, sneering things I can’t hear because I’m too busy ogling the other Faeries. Most take up residence by the trees, where they lean against the trunks, the better to observe this scene.
When the moth chortles something about my being too stupid to talk, the rest cackle. She surveys the exposed seams of my dress—evidence that I’m wearing it inside-out—and speaks with a cocky slant in her voice. “It appears someone has done their homework. By any chance, did you pack hawthorn berries as well? With a side of salt?”
I crank up my chin and call her bluff. “What if I did?”
In answer, the moth glances sideways. I follow her gaze and spot a human woman in burlap rags with matted blonde hair and a maddened expression on her oval face. Blindly, she stumbles toward the precipice and throws herself over the ledge.
But she doesn’t scream. I do.
My feet launch toward her, then stagger in place at the cliff’s rim. Gawking into the abyss, I see no signs of a falling, shrinking body. Not a single, insectile speck of arms and limbs.
Guffaws hit the sky. I whirl toward the Faeries, my heart punching into my sternum. Cerulean throws back his head and chuckles with them, his lips peeling back to expose sharp canines.
My horror morphs into fury. What I saw…it wasn’t real.
“One of our former guests,” the moth boasts. “She met a tragic end. Did you know her?”
I didn’t know her, but that doesn’t matter. I move fast, striding back to the rotunda, to where the twit beams. My whip snatches her leg and sends the bitch on her ass, her wings jiggling. More uproarious laughter from these hellions—but not from their ruler.
Cerulean’s blue mouth crinkles with displeasure. “Quiet!”
The mirth dies a quick death, but the pint-sized Fae leaps to her bare feet with a vengeful hiss. Cerulean cuts her off, saying something in their fluid, melodic language.
Never heard anything close to the Fae tongue. It’s as if somebody sprinkled crystals on their lips.
I sweep my head between the two. The moth points at me, her voice peppered with anger. Cerulean maintains his lazy posture, contemplates her words, then cuts his eyes to me and flicks a dismissive hand. “Leave us.”
“Stay,” I blurt out to them. “I’m not afraid of you lot.”
“She’s lying.” The moth wheels toward her ruler, her tone growing thorns. “Jún lýkur.”
Whatever she said, Cerulean gives it due consideration, his index finger sliding back and forth across his chin. “Éck efast mvjöck um fade,” he replies without taking his eyes off me.
The moth festers. She’s on the verge of stomping her foot, but Cerulean pays that no mind, impatience crimping his features. “Well?” he insists, switching back to the mortal tongue. “Must I repeat myself?”
His posse departs. One of them wears a forehead band with a charm poised between the brows—the dainty bones of a human thumb.
The remnants of supper canons up my esophagus, chunks threatening to detonate from my mouth. The only distraction that keeps me from spew
ing the contents of my stomach is that whippersnapper of a female, who’s fuming that I tripped her and then attempted to undermine her leader within three seconds of getting here. On her way out, she tosses me a warning look before exiting the rotunda, her moth wings bristling.
The owls remain, bearing down on me in rumination. Like an advisor, the horned raptor drops to Cerulean’s shoulder, seeming to communicate something inaudible to its ruler, who obediently angles his head to listen.
All the while, Cerulean stares at me. Without waiting for him to nod, the parliament retires, shooting off the branches and disbanding into the horizon.
Silence descends. A quiet wind weaves through the rowan trees. Beyond them, I get a hazy view of the mountain’s range, its details obscured.
Cerulean swings his legs off the throne’s arm and swoops into an upright position. That single, braided reed of hair plummets from the rest of his layers, the feathered tip dangling in the valley of his plunging neckline.
Fuck him. Fuck him and his kind who think they’re so much better, desirable, and worthy because they have magic.
The Fae gives my dress and supply pack a blasé once-over, his blue mouth betraying the slightest twitch. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read, pet.”
It’s a good thing Juniper’s not here. But wherever she is, my sister’s in for a rude awakening when she learns salt, hawthorn berries, and everted clothes won’t do shit to protect her against glamour. That illusionary stunt with the mortal girl jumping to her death proves it.
Cerulean’s right, at least when it comes to what my people have been taught. The Book of Fables was written by group of ancient scribes who traveled the continent, researching mortal encounters with enchanted beings. Instead of chronicling the details straightforwardly, the scribes fashioned them into Fables, a dramatization of the truth. It reveals plenty about Faeries, but sure, it’s gotten some of the tidbits wrong. For instance, there was a time when humans thought the Fae aged and died slowly.
Wrong. They’re fucking immortal.
Cerulean clucks his tongue. “You’re late.”
I take my sweet time, twining the whip into a loop and jamming it into the buckle at my hip. “That depends on which cuckoo clock you’re looking at.”
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 6