The concept of witches and trials together didn’t inspire a ton of confidence that my next few hours would be pleasant. My upcoming schedule wouldn’t involve tea and a chat around a table. In fact, the words trial and witches evoked images of intentional drownings. Death in flames. A million tons of rocks crushing Old Man Corey’s ribs in Salem. That kind of thing.
I followed the Ankou onto the winding stairwell, struggling to keep my balance with my arms bound. Truthfully, my legs were shaking with fatigue and dehydration, but I’d be darned if I gave in and asked for water.
What had old Giles Corey done when the Salem judges had pressed him to death for witchcraft? He’d asked for more weight.
I’d ask for more dehydration.
Less poetic but still noble.
I leaned against the slimy wall for balance as I followed him up the stairs. “What does the trial involve?” I tried again.
He shot me an irritated look, like any idiot would know the answer. “I asked her a specific question. The question was ‘should I use Aenor for my task?’ Your trial is simple. All you have to do is meet her. If she deems you acceptable, you will help me with my task.”
“That’s it?” My legs juddered up and down as I dragged myself up the stairs. More dehydration. “I just meet her? Trials are usually unpleasant.”
“It will be very cold.”
I snorted. I could take a bit of cold. Although, the fact that I was still wearing nothing but baggy, damp underwear ate away at my bravado a little.
“Also,” he added, “if the Queen of Misery decides that I should not use you for my task, she will kill you by piercing your heart with her iron claws.”
“What?”
He pushed through a door into a towering hall of golden sandstone.
“You heard what I said,” he said quietly. “Why are you so determined to make me repeat myself?”
I gritted my teeth, a vivid image blooming in my mind of two more iron bullets slamming into the Ankou’s heart. It warmed my cockles.
“You said I’d be safe,” I said.
“Did I?”
“You swore an oath.” I stumbled in the hall trying to remember the exact wording of the oath. “I’d help you with your task and you would let me go free without harm.”
He shot me another sharp ‘are you thick’ look. “You haven’t yet helped me with my task. I have no obligation to keep you safe at this point.”
“And how does this witch—”
“Please stop talking. It’s grating on my nerves.”
He stopped in front of a towering oak door, its surface covered in dark, spiked metal. When he held up his hand, the door swung open.
The room it revealed was enormous. Towering vaults of golden stone arched high above us. Ruddy sunlight slanted in through arched windows. And through them, the scent of the ocean floated on the air, and the sound of waves crashing outside. I shivered a little. The sea air kissed my skin, raising goosebumps all over my body.
A large bed stood against one wall, the dark blankets neatly tucked.
“What’s this?”
“My bedroom.”
I breathed in the humid air.
Israel—so far from home. Once, the fae lived only in the British Isles. Now? The elite fae ruled from fortresses all over the world, their glamour and magic offering protection.
The Ankou turned to look at me, examining me. He took a step closer, and I felt like his gaze was cutting right through me. He’d been so determined on our march here, and now I had the sense he was hesitating. He looked almost… unsure of himself.
For the first time since he’d hauled me out of the prison, I got a good look at him. Sunlight beamed over his sharp cheekbones. His eyes were the shocking blue of the sky over the Mediterranean. If I weren’t totally dead inside to the charms of men, I might have been distracted by his heartbreaking beauty.
Was it just me, or were the worst people also the most beautiful?
A skeleton key hung around his neck. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, which gave me a view of his chest—a hole right in his heart. Not to mention his thickly corded muscles, which another woman might find interesting. Not this one.
For his part, he was staring at me with an intense curiosity.
“What?” I said.
“I’m just wondering if you’ll come back alive.”
“I definitely wish I hadn’t asked now.” I nodded at his chest. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He seemed to snap out of his trance, features darkening.
“Will you untie me for the trial?”
“No. A sickness runs in your blood, and I cannot trust you yet.”
A sickness runs in your blood… I felt my heart constrict at those words.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice sounded hoarse and weary. “So the trial happens right here? With a woman tied up in your bedroom?”
He tilted his head, his eyes moving lower over my body, taking in the flimsy, enormous underwear from the Tesco value section. He frowned at the large white undies that barely stayed on my hips, and the thin tank top made for a man three times my size.
He didn’t seem interested in me in a sexual way. Just curious at what exactly I was wearing, now that he was actually paying attention to me.
He reached out, touching one of the straps of my undershirt. “You were once so powerful.”
“Are you judging my clothing? Because this is how modern people dress now.” I did my best to lie convincingly. “In large white cotton underwear that elegantly hangs off the body. It’s fashionable. You just have no idea because you’re holed up in castle wearing armor like a medieval idiot.” Well done, Aenor. Well done.
You were once so powerful. He was reminding me of the good old days when I lived in a tower, when the sea lulled me to sleep, when I could pull the waves to me like I was the moon.
I’d do anything to forget it. I needed peace. “Let’s start, then.”
He nodded, but he still seemed to be hesitating. “She’s in the Unseelie realm. I’ll open a portal. She’ll tell me if your heart is true for this task.”
He turned away from me, and golden light burst from his chest. He spoke a few words in Ancient Fae—in the particular dialect I recognized as Ysian. “Egoriel glasgor beirianel gamrath, warre daras.”
A blast of cold sea air washed over me as a hole opened in the floor—a tidy portal ringed by silver. A chasm of dark water filled the hole, with chunks of ice floating on the surface. Shivers rippled through me, and I instinctively took a step closer to the Ankou—the only warm thing in the room. If he weren’t such a jerk, I’d want to get even closer to him.
“Wait,” I said. “Can you hold your horses for one second? How about I just swear an oath? I will give you an oath not to kill you again or whatever else you’re worried about.”
“Oaths can be manipulated. And the Beira has already given me a stark warning about you. A prophecy.”
My forehead crinkled. “And what is the prophecy?”
“She’ll tell you herself.” He nodded at the water. I was supposed to jump in.
I stared at the dark ice water. A thin silver ring surrounded the portal—large enough for two people to fit in. I’d seen a portal before, but it still amazed me. Fae assassins—the knights—were the only ones who could open them. Traveling between worlds was the privilege of the elite.
The Ankou made a swift move for me and scooped me up, pulling me close against the warmth of his powerful chest for a moment. He looked into my eyes, and I had that sense again that he was hesitating. Maybe he wouldn’t go through with it. Maybe—
Then, he simply let go. I sank under the icy surface, enveloped by the arctic sea. A little water dripped into my mouth—seawater, sadly, which I couldn’t drink.
God of the deep, I hated the Ankou with a fiery passion right now.
I wished I’d killed him with a more painful method than bullets, even if h
e wouldn’t stay dead.
Chapter 9
Clear, white light pierced the water’s surface. The cold went right down to my bones. As a Morgen I could stay in seawater forever without breathing, but I still felt the chill.
Gina would say I should just float here until everyone gave up and went home for takeout and TV.
The only hitches were that I’d starve to death, and also lose my mind.
Whatever was about to happen, I couldn’t actually avoid it forever. I just had to make sure to exude a sense of… trueness of heart. How hard could it be? Maybe I could charm her with my winning personality.
I kicked my legs fast, moving up and up until my head breached the surface. Silvery light hit me, and ice-cold air filled my lungs so fast they stopped working for a moment.
Still kicking my legs to tread water, hands bound behind my back, I looked around. I was trying to get my bearings. I seemed to be in an icy hole in the middle of a forest of silver trees. Slender boughs arched above me, spindly twigs jutting from their branches.
A strange bounty hung from the branches: jewelry, bones, a pair of jeans, a cell phone, a human skull, a chipped Victorian teapot, a silk scarf in flamingo pink… It was all strangely beautiful.
It also looked like the Queen of Misery might be some sort of demented witch hoarder.
My teeth chattered, and my breath clouded around my face. Moonlight gleamed off densely packed snow all around the icy hole. Now, I was shaking so violently I could hardly tread water—especially since my lungs were seizing up.
I wasn’t entirely clear how I could get out of the portal with my arms bound.
My answer came in the form of a clawed hand gripping my hair by the roots, hoisting me from the watery portal.
Ah. There you are, Beira.
Beira, Ancient Witch of Winter, threw me down on the ice. Already, my cheap cotton underwear was freezing to my skin.
I looked up at her, my stomach sinking.
When my mother had told me stories about the Winter Witch, she hadn’t mentioned that Beira was a giant, about ten feet tall.
Nor had she mentioned the pale frost that formed delicate webs over her blue skin, or the white hair that hung over her shoulders in long plaits.
Nearly as naked as I was, she wore only a tiny white sheath. And she stared at me from a single, bloodshot eye in her forehead. The pale eye blinked at me. She took another step closer, her bare feet crunching in the snow. Her toenails had the purplish hue of death.
A strange voice whispered in my mind. Beira, Queen of Misery. It wasn’t just one voice, more like a hundred whispers, all at once, ringing in my skull.
“Hi.” My teeth chattered so hard I could hardly form the word.
This was awkward. How did you charm someone, anyway? When I was busy scourging the wicked and harvesting their organs, I’d never mastered the art of flattery.
“You have a nice… eye.”
Nope.
She pointed a long, bony finger at me.
I want what you have. I keep things. Give me what you have.
Her words kept whispering inside my skull. Her lips moved wildly, but the sounds didn’t come from her mouth. They were in my head.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do I have that you want?”
A keepsake from you. A treasure. To keep me warm.
Even after she finished speaking, her lips kept moving soundlessly, twitching.
Once, I’d seen an execution—a decapitation of a traitor back in my drowned kingdom of Ys. The executioner held the woman’s severed head up to the crowd. Her lips had twitched exactly like that for a few moments while he gripped her hair, blood dripping from her neck.
Clouds of frozen mist puffed from my mouth. My hair had begun to freeze, rivers of ice on my shoulders.
“What do you want from me?” I asked again.
She didn’t answer this time.
Movement caught my eye, and I realized we weren’t entirely alone. Women, with skin white as the snow, eyes blood-red, whirled between the trees. Dancing silently like snow squalls, they wore crowns of dark twigs. An oddly vacant look shone in their eyes. So much movement, so little noise.
Gods, get me out of here.
So far, this place was ranking somewhere below Ikea on the list of places where I most enjoyed spending time.
The Ankou had warned me about the cold. It was, in fact, the kind of cold where a tear rolls down your cheek and freezes part way, where atoms stop moving in the air around you and existence ceases. Where snowy owls develop the ability to speak just so they can beg the gods to send them into the relative warmth and comfort of outer space.
I looked up at Beira. “What do you need from me?” I asked through chattering teeth.
I need to feel warm. A hundred whispers crystallized in my mind into that one sentence.
“Something we have in common,” I said.
Then, she spoke out loud—a strange, halting speech that I could barely discern. A word repeated, low in her throat. It took me a moment to realize she was saying, “Fear, fear, fear.”
She threw back her head and howled—a keening sound, so shockingly lonely it cut into my chest.
Instinctively, I scooted away from her. I wasn’t warm. I was godsdamn freezing. My veins were tiny glaciers of blood.
Fear. Fear. Fear.
What was she afraid of?
She shut her mouth, and a heavy silence fell over us. Nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat.
The witch fixed her eye intensely on me, then stooped lower, speaking out loud now. “Fear. Fear. Fear,” her voice like iron scraping against ice. “She of the House of Meriadoc will bring a reign of death. She of the poisoned blood.”
My stomach dropped. So that was the prophecy. The House of Meriadoc—my family name. I was the only one left. And apparently, I was supposed to bring a reign of death.
The dancing women swept closer, spinning maelstroms of snow. Flakes glinted in the air around them.
Beira reached for my chest, a clawed finger pointing at my heart. Shit. She was about to kill me, wasn’t she?
I scuttled back a little more, my bare skin freezing to the icy ground beneath me. Wet skin on ice was like licking a pole in winter—you were just stuck there, skin melded. Her claw prodded at my sternum.
I ripped a little skin from the back of my thighs as I shifted away, but I kept my gaze trained directly on Beira’s eye.
Something about the eagerness in her eye, her desperation—
She had a certain hunger in her expression. She reminded me of Karen, our phantom guardian. But why?
I thought it was the sense of loneliness.
Beira hunched over, her claw poking into my skin.
You have luck. Her breath misted around her head.
I couldn’t say I felt lucky right now. Maybe luck meant something else to her. If the stories were true, she’d gone mad in the prisons. Her mind had become twisted from isolation.
Luck. She didn’t seem to suffer from the physical cold, but maybe she just needed… love? Affection? Friends, maybe.
“We can be friends,” I offered in desperation. A bitter wind whipped over me, stinging my skin.
Her breath sounded damp in her throat, a rough, rattling sound. Now, she was digging her claw into the flesh over my heart, the iron seeping into my blood. Red streaked down the front of my chest, and I tugged frantically at the magical ropes binding my wrists behind my back.
The dancers whirled closer, white hair whipping around them.
She was lonely. Of that much I was sure. And I had someone in my life. I had Gina. That’s what she meant by luck.
Gina had given me a ring for luck…
“Wait!” I said. “I have a present for you.” An icy shudder rippled through me as her claw threaten to scrape my bone. “I have a present. A good luck charm. It’s for you. Luck. For you.”
Her claw stopped pressing in.
A present? Whispers fluttered around my mind. L
uck?
With my stiff muscles, I slowly shifted my body enough to give her a view of my hands—of the ring. My underwear was pure ice now, and the blood on my chest had already frozen.
“A ring on my finger,” I said. “It was a gift from a friend to me. For good luck. I’ll give it to you for luck. To my new friend.” I craned my head to look at her.
She blinked at me, her bloodshot eye close to my face. Then, she looked down at my hands. She reached out, claws scraping my fingers as she pulled the ring off. A girlish smile curled her lips, and she brought the ring to her face.
“Luck,” she repeated, speaking the word out loud, her voice scraping at my eardrums. “Luuuuuck.”
The snow-white dancers twirled closer to me, kicking up snow that shimmered in the moonlight. Their red eyes no longer looked quite as vacant. In fact, now they looked hungry, intent on me. Ravenous.
Then, Beira fixed me with her single eye once more.
You won’t hurt the Ankou again.
The world had started to seem hazy at this point, the light dimming. I saw only white hands reaching for me, the dancers closing in.
I wanted to lie down on the ice. I just needed to fall into deep sleep.
“My heart is true.” The words came out of my frozen lips from nowhere.
Without another word, Beira kicked me back into the portal. I sank into the salty seawater once more.
The cold had pierced right down to my marrow. As I fell under the water, memories of my old life flitted through my mind—the glittering fae of a drowned court. A ball, thrown by my mother, me wearing a crown of flowers. My mother had made it for me herself: buttercups, daisies, and a pale purple spring squill.
That night, she told me I was the most beautiful fae she’d ever seen. She told me I might rule the kingdom one day, and I didn’t need a king to do it. I’d been so sure she was right.
The memory took root in my mind and grew more vivid, until I felt myself dancing and twirling along with the others, exhilarated by the music pounding through my blood, drops of dandelion wine on my lips. Lights floated above us, twinkling in the skies.
Dark King Page 6