The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

by M. A. Grant

  “Who did you give it to? I need it—”

  “And so you shall have it,” a silky voice says from behind me.

  My vision flashes red when something slices into my neck. Poor Odhrán—

  We stumble forward, falling to the ground in the midst of the group. Tears track down Ingjaldi’s cheeks, but he makes no move to interfere. Behind us, our murderer speaks. We ignore it. We focus on clawing our way forward across the forest floor, on getting away. The man who attacked us with our father’s knife doesn’t come after us. Instead, he speaks of our weakness, of our blood strengthening the cause, even if it couldn’t strengthen us. With each bit of distance we create from the man, our vitality slips away, dripping out to the forest floor with our blood... A fallen log, overgrown with moss and partially hidden by ferns, awaits us. We curl ourselves into the shelter it provides and stare up into the canopy of leaves overhead. A bird flits here and there and the sun’s rays have stretched far enough to create a patchwork of blue sky and brilliant green leaves backlit like stained glass. We try to swallow, but it’s so hard. And we’re growing colder. And no one will ever find us—

  * * *

  I can’t breathe. The sobs have stolen all the air from my lungs and I cough and gasp and pant. Tears stream down my cheeks and I can’t tell if they’re mine or Odhrán’s... Oh, Goddess, I know his name. I know his name now, and that little space in my head has been carved out for him. He won’t leave. He won’t leave me alone. He’ll stay until...until I...

  Someone shakes me, rattling my brain in my skull, and startling me into taking a full inhalation. I blink and my heart twists at the terror in Keiran’s familiar face. His hands squeeze harder on my shoulders. “Do you see me now? Are you back?”

  I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face against him, the unstoppable fall of tears soaking into his shirt. He hugs me back, squeezing me to him tightly.

  From the darkness of our room, the shade whispers, Please help me. Help my family.

  I don’t want to. I don’t want this. I never asked for this curse.

  “I know you didn’t,” Keiran murmurs against my hair. “I know you didn’t want this. But you’re not cursed, Lugh. And you won’t face these dreams alone.”

  “I couldn’t get out,” I finally manage, ignoring the shade’s continued plea. “I couldn’t get out and I couldn’t hear you. I needed you, Keiran, but I couldn’t find you—”

  He hushes me and draws back so I can see his face. I focus on those features I’ve memorized—the curve of his mouth, the thickness of his lashes, and the scars marked in pale lines over his skin. He lets me stare, doesn’t protest when I reach up and run my fingers through his beard. Slowly, so I know he isn’t leaving, he releases me from the hug and instead lifts his hands up to cradle my face. He presses his forehead to mine.

  “Lugh,” he says, and there’s a desperate promise in his voice, “Lugh, you’re safe. You’re with me and you’re safe. I will always keep you safe.”

  I clutch at his wrists. They’re wide and strong, with hair that tickles against my skin. Those sensations are grounding. I’m here. I’m here, not in the woods. I’m here and alive. I’m not crawling through the undergrowth, bleeding out. The shade strikes again, and another flash of memory rips through me.

  We can’t let Igna see us this way. We can’t let her find our body.

  Oh, Goddess, that poor bastard was crawling away from home. He knew he wouldn’t live. He knew he’d die alone. But he had to protect his little sister.

  Keiran doesn’t complain when my grip tightens to the point of bruising. He merely readjusts his position, nuzzles against my temple, and begins to hum. He’s trying to stay quiet, so the notes are flatter, rougher, and sometimes broken, but I still recognize the song. After this long, I can hear the words in my head though he doesn’t sing them. I focus on what they would sound like, the way the syllables ebb and flow, the way he taught me to pronounce them. Those memories begin to chase away the shade’s. Instead of noticing the trickle of blood flowing down my—Odhrán’s—chest from the sliced neck, I’m standing in a stone circle with my best friend, laughing as he tries to correct my accent, watching the stars overhead when he gives up and sings it for me instead.

  Yes, this is a memory I need. These memories with Keiran are the touchstones of my life, the moments that keep the shades from settling permanently inside my head. I wait for the ocean breeze and star shine to fill my mind utterly, replacing the softness of moss beneath my cooling body, before loosening my grip and dropping my hands away completely.

  Keiran draws me back down onto the bed and curls around me. A hand strokes through my hair and the other remains tight around my waist. His mother’s lullaby fills our little room with the promise of a brighter morning and I give myself over to it, relaxing against Keiran, and letting the vibration of those notes settle into my skin.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Keiran whispers when my breathing evens out at last.

  I could tell him. I don’t think, after all these years, that admitting my magick’s affinity to the dead would drive Keiran from my side. Still, I’ve never told him the true source of my visions. Admitting it means admitting I don’t have control over it, and Keiran, in all his care and kindness, would worry every time he thought I was afflicted. I don’t know how I could meet his eyes if he spent every day of the rest of his life trying to protect me from myself.

  “Lugh?”

  The unspoken words sit on the back of my tongue, bitter and painful to swallow down. “Too tired,” I lie, hating how easily he hums his understanding and settles in even closer.

  “Later then,” Keiran whispers when my breathing evens out at last. “We’ll talk about it later. For now, sleep.”

  Keiran’s here now. He’ll protect me. There’s no avoiding what tomorrow must bring, so I give in to my exhaustion and fall asleep with the shade whispering its plea like a ghastly lullaby.

  Keiran

  The men ride ahead of me, jawing back and forth about the gossip they picked up around town this morning on Lugh’s direction. Our fearless leader balances lightly in his saddle, bright-eyed and attentive to their conversation. There’s no hint of last night’s troubles clinging to him. He shifts effortlessly from ease and good humor to sharp focus, but I wonder what he’s trying to hide behind his eagerness. I don’t like when Lugh keeps secrets, especially from me.

  “That many?” Lugh asks, his tone sharp enough to draw my attention back to the conversation at hand.

  “I checked. It’s nineteen,” Armel repeats again. “The apothecary delivered all of them and has watched them grow up. She’s been keeping a list of the missing.”

  “But so many in six months?” Cybel asks.

  “No wonder everyone’s desperate for news,” Drest mutters.

  “And why there’s little love for Aage or his supporters here,” Armel says. “Promising aid, only to leave his promise unfulfilled... I marvel how word of his people’s discontent hasn’t reached him by now.”

  The mystery of the missing villagers... Of course that’s what they’re talking about. Lugh had been adamant as he sent the men off that they bring him any news they could, even if we couldn’t act on it until after we met with Aage. He may not like leaving unfinished business behind us, but his pragmatism makes me worry less about completing our mission for the war.

  “Do you think there’s any chance of finding them?” Cybel asks Lugh. “It’s been so long, I doubt there’s any good signs left for us to track.”

  Lugh hums and nods in seeming agreement, but he’s turned his gaze from the path ahead of us to the forest closing in on both sides. The back of my neck prickles, like an icy finger’s tracing over my skin, and I slow Dubh’s pace. The men continue their conversation. Lugh exists independently of them, drifting through the threads of conversation swirling around him as if they’re no more irritating
than spiders’ webs. Under Lugh’s careful hand, Liath’s steps shift from the center of the path toward its edge, until another step forward would take horse and rider off the road and into the verdant growth.

  “Seidhr?” Armel calls once he realizes Lugh’s come to a stop on the edge of the path.

  Lugh doesn’t look back at any of us, focused on the forest instead. It’s natural for others to underestimate him since they don’t see him like this. They’ve never seen his good humor cut off without warning, how his seeming idleness shifts into something clever and razor-edged and capable of cutting through tattered illusions. In these rare moments, Lugh transforms into something darker, something far deadlier, and I can’t escape the painful reminders that he is Queen Mab’s son, the Prince of War and Chaos. No, the other fae in the Winter Court only see a man barely past the blush of youth sitting astride a pale horse, and they discount him without a second thought.

  I know better.

  “This looks interesting,” Lugh comments, and nudges Liath forward.

  The men glance at each other, then at me. I don’t have to understand Lugh’s methods to recognize when he’s caught some scent, when he’s so fiercely attuned to the hunt it’s as though the gods came down and led him themselves. I just have to follow.

  He works his way slowly through the dense growth, which gives us time to catch up and keep close. We fall into a familiar wedge as we move through the forest, with me at Lugh’s right hand, Cybel following us on the left, with Armel and Drest fanning out to the farthest edges. Every now and then Lugh will sit up in the stirrups, glancing around until he fixes on some unknowable point. Once he’s spotted it, he gathers his bearings, adjusts Liath’s course, and continues on. We weave this way until the forest begins to open up. Armel swears when he surprises a doe, who bounds away. Her movements scare the rest of the small herd into motion and, for a moment, we’re distracted from Lugh’s focused search.

  “Should have taken one,” Drest grumbles as he lowers his bow. “Would have made a nice dinner.”

  “Here,” Lugh says. His voice is low and distracted. He’s dismounted from Liath and wanders the space created by the surrounding trees. He doesn’t react when I join him, hand on my axe handle, ready to defend him if necessary.

  “What are we doing here, seidhr?” Cybel asks from his horse’s back. He leans forward in the saddle, watching Lugh’s movements with curiosity, and allowing Armel and Drest to keep an eye on the surrounding wilderness.

  “They were here,” Lugh murmurs. He kneels down and presses his fingers to the dirt. He frowns and looks up.

  “Who was?” I ask.

  “The first group,” he says. He rises and stalks into the brush.

  Cybel points at me and I nod back. There’s no need for all of us to wander from the horses.

  Lugh keeps his hands stretched out in front to knock away branches so he can keep his eyes trained on the ground. I can’t see anything except the usual detritus of a forest. There’s no sign of disturbed leaves, of broken stalks, nothing I’d normally find when pursuing prey. He’s never explained how he can read the world around us, whether his magick enhances little details, or whether the gods steer him in their own silent ways. It’s a secret part of him, one I’ve learned to trust after witnessing centuries’ worth of inexplicable wonders. Whatever Lugh’s noticed this time, it’s nothing I can aid him with.

  Instead, I begin piecing together the phrases of a new story as I trail after him. The shadowed trunks soaring... The seidhr crossed with light, the eye drawn by his confident stride... Wait, why’s he stopped?

  The forest here is old, undisturbed, and the ferns curling through the fallen leaves around us lend an air of peace to this secluded spot. Ahead, a moss-covered log lies in gentle repose. Lugh stares at it, frozen in place.

  “Lugh?” I call softly. “What is it?”

  He doesn’t respond. Instead, he hurries to the log and kneels beside it. He draws in a short, vicious breath and reaches into the shadows beneath. I start to call for him to stop, but it’s too late. His grim expression warns he found something, and not something I’ll like. He draws his hand out and I flinch when a skeletal arm comes into the light.

  The pale bones seem to stretch out to us in supplication and a cold breeze makes me shiver at the thought of them skating over my skin. “Damn,” I mumble.

  Lugh’s brows pinch and his mouth sets in a hard line. “Bring me a blanket? He deserves a proper burial.”

  “I’ll get one. Any idea who he is?”

  “No. But I’ll find out.”

  “You have your knife?” I ask him as I start to make my way back to the men.

  “Of course.” He waves me off, already returning to the macabre task of collecting the remains. “I’m in no danger now.”

  Now. My mind returns to last night’s terrifying interlude. To Lugh’s nightmare and the muddled half confessions he made. Surely they can’t be related to this. And yet...

  My doubts lend me speed in returning to the Hunt. Once I explain our find, Armel hands over a blanket without a word. Cybel sighs and heads back to the road; he’ll ride ahead to warn the villagers. Drest comes with me to rejoin Lugh. He’s placed what’s left of the body into a neat pile by the time we get back and sits beside it, cross-legged and thoughtful.

  “He’s a farmer,” Lugh announces to us. He gestures to a smaller pile of fabric beside the bones. “Found a belt and some bits and pieces of the clothes. Maybe someone will recognize them.” He watches us unfold the blanket and waits for it to be laid down before rousing himself and transferring the bones onto the fabric. “Are any of the missing from the local farms?”

  “More than you’d like,” Drest answers.

  “Whoever it was,” Lugh says, “he was about Keiran’s height.”

  I eye the bones. If not for Lugh’s interference in my village, I would look like that by now. Centuries spent in Faerie have given me near immortality, but if my life’s path had remained undisturbed, this would have been my end as well, whether as a child or as a man on the battlefield. I suppose when this war comes, I may still end up a pile of bones. I just hope Lugh isn’t the one left to gather them when that time comes. “How do you think he died?”

  “Cuts on the jawline. My guess is his throat was slit with quite the flourish,” Lugh muses. “No way of telling for sure though.”

  “And to die like that out here... There would have been so much blood.”

  “Yes, there was,” Lugh agrees.

  “Was?”

  “I assume,” he tacks on. He won’t hold my gaze. “We should return to the village.”

  No matter how much I want to ask him how he found this body, this place, I know no answer will come. Past experiences have taught pushing him will only leave him testy for the next few days, so instead of saying anything else, I lift up the bundled remains and carry them back to our horses. Once we’ve returned to the dirt path, Lugh shrugs into his glamour. He normally stretches the enchantment so we can see past the illusion, but today he doesn’t. The shadows hiding his face in its hood seem darker as a result, and the antlers crowning his head stretch wider than normal, fanning out in an overexaggerated reminder of his title, an aesthetic choice he only uses when he fears the response to his news will be less than joyful. He, in this intimidating guise, leads us back to the village, where a crowd has gathered outside the hall. Cybel waits in the front beside the group of elders from the night before. He reaches up to take the blanket from me while I dismount and doesn’t protest when I take it back.

  Lugh remains on Liath’s back. He surveys the crowd, a faceless, hooded figure seated like a god for judgment, and calls out, “My man has prepared you for this news.”

  Murmurs of acknowledgment from the crowd. Lugh waits for them to trail off before he continues. “I am sorry. We have brought home one of your own to bury. There was no sign of
the other missing.”

  “Who is it?” one of the older women calls out.

  “We don’t know,” he tells her. “He was tall, as tall as Keiran here. He was strong, broad-shouldered, worked with his hands. He was a farmer, someone who cared deeply for his family and who died trying to find your missing.”

  How could he have discovered that from the meager remains in the forest? Did I miss part of a conversation last night when they were discussing the missing villagers? Or is Lugh reading the crowd as he speaks, guessing at what they’ll want to hear? It’s so like him to try to ease the pain of the moment for whoever will have to step forward and claim their loved one.

  A woman steps forward. Her shoulders are bowed and she clutches the hand of a young girl with a face too serious for her age. The woman clears her throat and tries to speak, but no words come. The girl looks up at her, squeezes her hand, and then says, “My brother Odhrán went missing a year ago. He’d gone into the woods to find my other brother and his friends. They haven’t come back.”

  Lugh slips down from his seat and takes a knee in front of the pair. The woman can’t look at him. She trembles and sways, as though she’ll collapse at any moment, and Cybel moves closer. The little girl stares at Lugh, unafraid, and waits. Lugh tilts his head. The antlers sweep along that angle, the whitened bits glowing in the sunlight. The little girl mirrors his movement, tilting her head so he’s forced to meet her gaze, despite her inability to see his eyes.

  “Igna,” Lugh says softly and my stomach drops. He knows her name? “Will you come with me and Keiran for a moment?”

  She nods and lets go of her mother’s hand. Cybel steps in to help the poor woman, who crumples to the ground as a deep sob wrenches its way out. Lugh takes Igna’s hand and his hood turns to me. I follow him away from the crowd. We’re still within sight of the villagers, but even this short distance away, it seems more private.

  “Hold out your arms, Keiran,” Lugh orders me. I obey and stretch out my arms, offering the bundle toward them.