Be careful what you wish for.
The houselights dimmed to black, and a bright white shaft of light lit up a circle on the broken little stage where Kelley stood. An unseen orchestra broke into an overture. A gaggle of dryads, tittering and tipsy, tumbled out of the wings with a length of shimmering gossamer that they draped over Kelley’s street clothes. They wove garish flowers in her hair and threw handfuls of sparkling Faerie dust over her. In the darkness, a human girl laughed, crass and rude, but Kelley’s gaze remained locked on Gwynn’s face where he sat, smiling back at her.
“I told you, I think, my dear, how much I adore the theater,” he said. “While we wait for the evening’s main event to get started elsewhere on this island, you will indulge us with scenes from your latest show, won’t you?”
Not if it was up to her, she wouldn’t. But, apparently, it wasn’t up to her.
“Speak!” Gwynn commanded.
“Woof!” the girl with the awful laugh heckled from the audience. The king, to his credit, turned a withering glare on that corner of the house, and the girl uttered a choking gasp that rattled away to nothing.
“Probably the type to leave one of those ridiculous pocket phones on at the picture shows,” he sneered. “Cretin.” Then he turned back to Kelley where she stood on the stage, and graciously gestured for her to continue.
Lines of Shakespeare came tumbling suddenly from her mouth, against her will. This was worse than the most humiliating audition Kelley had ever had—and there had been a few. She felt naked under the lights—manipulated like a puppet on strings for the cruel enjoyment of others. She tried to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She tried to shut her ears, but she couldn’t block out the sound of Ariel’s lines from The Tempest. Kelley listened to her own voice speaking words she hadn’t even fully memorized yet, from a role she might now never get to play. She thought of her last three roles and realized that she was getting a little sick of life imitating art so closely.
The fairy . . .
The doomed young lover . . .
The enslaved spirit on the island . . .
On this island where man doth not inhabit, you ’mongst men being most unfit to live, said Ariel, disguised as a frightful harpy. I have made you mad.
Life imitating art, all right.
Gwynn had fed on the madness of the island.
If Shakespeare had been alive, Kelley thought desperately, she might have counseled him against writing any more parts that she could conceivably play. As it was, she realized that the only way she was going to get through this was to let herself sink into the role. Kelley made herself relax and stretch to inhabit the skin of Prospero’s airy familiar and, as she did so, she felt herself gathering strength. She thought about the tormented souls who had sat in this place, watching their fellow patients and inmates perform for them. As a diversion, as a way of combating boredom or despair, as escapism . . .
As escape.
What else was theater but that?
Kelley clutched the idea of escape to her heart. She thought of Ariel and of Prospero at the very end of The Tempest. She imagined Gentleman Jack standing on the stage beside her in that moment, with his magician’s staff and cloak . . . granting her liberty. Freeing her.
Kelley drew on Ariel’s fierce elation and joy.
She was the child of not one but two Faerie monarchs. And she would not be a slave to anyone.
The ice-crystal singing of her father’s magick surged in her veins, a chiming counterpoint to the stinging, fiery whisper-hiss of her mother’s. She felt the two of them melding, merging, building to a crescendo in time to the beating of her own heart.
Kelley heard Prospero’s voice in her head, sounding just like Gentleman Jack. She remembered all the things he said to Ariel about freedom in that final scene. Lines tumbled through her head like incantations. The charm dissolves apace. . . .
Thou shalt be free. . . .
Untie the spell. . . .
To the elements be free, and fare thou well.
The voice in her head grew to a roaring, and a winter-white sunburst exploded all around her, like the brightest spotlight she’d ever stood in. Kelley’s wings burst forth, and she could see them at the edges of her vision—furling outward like silver lace, edged with purple flame. She leaped and they swept her up through the crumbling rafters of the derelict theater and out into the night sky. Behind her, below her, she heard Gwynn shouting furiously as Titania cried out in surprise.
I guess they might want a refund, Kelley thought triumphantly, seeing as how the rest of tonight’s performance has been canceled!
For all her momentary elation, Kelley knew she wasn’t safe. She soared through the air, then dived low, skimming the ground under the thick canopy of trees. Free for the time being, but her freedom would prove worse than useless—unless she could find Sonny. Before she could do that, there was something she had to take care of. She flew toward the main hospital pavilion.
Once back inside the pavilion’s dank halls, Kelley furled her wings and made her way carefully, quietly. Since the theater hadn’t been set up as anything other than a theater, she knew there must be somewhere else on North Brother Island where Gwynn held court. She headed for a set of wide double doors that opened into a large gallery.
Bingo. The room had been decorated with Faerie glamour, but there were also corporeal luxuries strewn about—plush couches and cushions, rugs piled thick on the floor, and glass lanterns hanging by delicate chains from the sagging ceiling grid.
Planters full of flowers stood everywhere. Underneath the froth of scents, Kelley could smell the air-churning odor of vervain. She looked and saw the tall purple stalks, standing in the same silver planter that she had seen in Gwynn’s hall in the Otherworld.
Even as her stomach clenched at the smell, her heart leaped with excitement. Kelley knew what she’d found. She took another step into the room—and a flash of movement and a sound caught her eye. Kelley gasped.
In the corner, wrapped in a constricting net of thick vines, stood Lucky—the gentle kelpie she had rescued from drowning in Central Park Lake, the same night she’d met Sonny. The poor creature’s head was down and his legs were splayed wide in an effort to keep himself upright against the pull of the foliage. His red mane was woven with the trailing, grasping fingers of creeping green tendrils. The vines were strangling him, and the poor creature’s flanks heaved with the effort to draw breath.
Kelley had found more than she’d bargained for. Not only the source of her father’s affliction . . . but her mother’s as well.
Lucky had once been the Roan Horse, ridden by the leader of the Wild Hunt. Created by Mabh as a gift to Herne, her lover in centuries past, the Roan Horse had been corrupted along with the rest of the Hunt and called into being once more last autumn during the bad business on the Nine Night. Lucky would, of course, be saturated still with the residual magicks from that experience, Kelley reasoned. It made him a perfect conduit to tap into Mabh’s strength.
Lucky whickered softly at the sight of her. Kelley took a few steps toward him. “How did you get here?” she asked under her breath. The kelpie had been with Sonny when he disappeared, she knew. And Sonny had been with Fennrys—hunting the last three remaining Wild Hunters. That was when Sonny had been hit from behind. When he’d awoken, Fennrys and Lucky and Sonny’s Janus medallion had all been gone.
Fennrys . . .
“You didn’t think they’d go off to the party and leave the place completely unguarded, did you, Princess?” the Wolf asked as he stepped out from behind a pillar, a sword held loosely in his hand, and his eyes full of regret.
“Why, Fennrys?” was all Kelley could say.
“It was a long time before I’d even met you that I set my feet on this path, Kelley,” he said. “This is nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal,” Kelley scoffed. “You’re a bigger liar than I am, Fenn.”
His gaze darkened. “Gwynn promised me my freedom. Said I could
return to the mortal realm once it was all over. For good. Do you have any idea what that means? A chance to live like a real man. A chance to grow old and die like one. I should have died with my brother warriors hundreds of years ago.”
“Well, I hope you get your wish,” Kelley spat angrily. “Try and stop me and you just might.”
She turned her back on him before Fennrys could make a move. Heaving with her shoulder, she knocked the silver planter full of vervain to the ground. It made a sound like an alarm bell clanging, but Kelley didn’t stop. Rich dark earth spilled everywhere and the scent of the herb was overwhelming. Ignoring the surge of nausea that clawed up her throat, Kelley tore through the stalks of vervain, yanking them free by the roots, which had grown into tangled, twisted masses of ropy fibers around three soil-encrusted iron disks.
Wrapping her hands with the gossamer Gwynn’s nymphs had draped around her, Kelley ripped the roots away from the Janus medallions. The metal felt blazing hot through the filmy fabric. She tore the last strand of vervain away, and there was a bloom of blood-colored light, momentarily blinding her as Gwynn’s vile enchantment broke. And then the metal went icy cold.
Auberon, Kelley thought desperately, hoping she hadn’t been too late. Father . . . She closed her eyes and waited in suffocating silence for what felt like an eternity. Then Kelley felt a brush of thought against her mind, feather-light. A sound like the keening cry of a falcon—angry, vibrant. A rush of winter air. Her father was alive.
She slumped forward, weak with relief and utterly exhausted. She might have actually collapsed were it not for the strong arms suddenly circling her shoulders. Senseless in the moment, she sank back into that embrace and heard a voice whispering her name into her hair.
Fenn’s voice.
Kelley’s eyes snapped open and she scrambled away from him, shaking with emotion. She still clutched the medallions in her fabric-wrapped hands—but she only realized it when Fennrys reached out and gently pried them from her fingers. The metal had left angry welts on her palms, even through the cloth.
Fennrys looked down at the Janus medallions in his hands. They didn’t burn his skin. Because he was mortal—and all he’d wanted, all the long years, was to be able to live like one. Kelley felt her anger begin to melt.
“It might not have been the destiny you would have asked for, Fennrys,” she said quietly. “But I’m starting to think that the only destiny there is . . . is the one we make for ourselves.”
She looked down at the three medallions in his hand. One was Sonny’s. One must have been his predecessor’s—the Janus Guard killed by a glaistig and the first conduit through which Gwynn had begun to weave the poison into her father’s magick, once Kelley’s own power had weakened him in the first place. And one was the Fennrys Wolf’s.
Kelley reached out a hand and took up the braided cord of the one she’d always seen Fenn wear. Her father had bestowed it upon him when he’d made the Viking prince a Janus Guard all those long years ago. The Wolf swallowed convulsively and almost flinched away from it.
“Embrace it or walk away from it, Fennrys,” she told him. “Make a choice. But don’t make an excuse out of it.”
She dropped it back down into his palm.
“Pick your battles?” he murmured.
“Something like that.”
There was a rumbling sound from somewhere outside, and the floor beneath their feet shivered as if from an earthquake.
Fennrys said quietly, “I don’t know if we can win this one, Princess.”
“None of us does, Fenn.” She smiled at him gently. “You Vikings are a bunch of fatalists . . . isn’t that part of the fun?”
Fennrys was silent. His glance returned to the little iron disks in his palm. Kelley picked up the one that had belonged to Sonny and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. As she did so, she felt the contours of the other talisman she already carried. The stag-head charm from Herne . . . Kelley bent down and picked up the sword Fennrys had dropped on the floor when he had caught her, and walked to Lucky.
“Wait,” Fennrys said.
Kelley turned back and saw him fastening his medallion back around his neck. He stepped toward her and held out his hand. “Let me do it.”
Kelley hesitated, but Fennrys stood firm.
“Go find your man, Kelley,” he said. “I’ll free the kelpie. I promise. I won’t hurt him. You need to find Irish and stop what’s happening.”
Lucky nudged her a little with his nose, as if in agreement.
“Please don’t make me regret trusting you, Fenn,” she said, and handed him the blade.
“I won’t, Princess,” he said. “Not this time, anyway.”
Kelley nodded once. Then she turned and ran. She hoped Fenn had been telling the truth. Because if the desperate plan that had just blossomed in her mind was going to work, it was going to depend on him.
Chapter XXIX
The kestrel was small and sleek, her burnished feathers a deep, blushing shade of auburn. She was dainty enough that she could slip inside his cage between the points of the spiky thorns. Sonny stared blankly at the bird for a moment, but his head was far too heavy to keep lifted, and he let it fall forward again. His long dark hair curtained his face, blocking out the sight of the bird perched on the branch in front of him.
All around him, leaves and stalks and swirling masses of vines heaped up in overgrown drifts. He stood—barely, only kept upright by his imprisonment—at the heart of a green nightmare.
The falcon mewled impatiently. Sonny forced himself to lift his head again and he looked into the kestrel’s bright eyes—its bright green eyes.
“Kelley?” Sonny murmured.
The kestrel tilted her head, her gaze fixed upon him, unblinking.
“Firecracker . . .” Sonny leaned forward, heedless of the thorns biting deeper into his flesh. He felt himself smiling, the gesture cracking the mask of blood that had already dried on his face. “Maddox told me how you’d transformed . . . I wish I’d been there to see it. . . .”
The bird hopped forward onto a closer branch, careful to avoid the needle-sharp thorns. She bobbed her head up and down, and there was a kind of urgency to the gesture.
“I know now why you lied, you know . . . ,” he said, the words rasping through his parched throat. “I know I was a monster. But it wasn’t your fault. You think you’re my weakness. You can’t ever think that, Kelley. . . .” He was babbling now, definitely delirious. “Ever since I met you . . . you’ve been my greatest strength.”
It was only then that he noticed the silken black cord dangling in a loop from the kestrel’s sharp beak. The moon had set but, by the pale gleam of starlight, Sonny could make out the familiar shape of the charm that hung from the cord—a glittering black jewel in the shape of a stag’s head. At first, Sonny didn’t understand. But then it dawned on him what it meant. . . .
He was the son of the Hunter. He was all that Herne had been.
Sonny carried the Green Magick that had been bestowed upon his father—the power that was even now being siphoned out of him with every drop of blood. It was not, however, the only magick that Sonny Flannery possessed. He also possessed the magick that had been thrust upon his father by Queen Mabh when she made him the leader of the Wild Hunt all those centuries ago. But there was only one way to tap into that. The thought of doing so made what was left of Sonny’s blood run cold.
The falcon mewled again, impatiently, as if expecting an answer to a silent question.
“Oh, my heart.” Sonny shook his head minutely. “No. That way madness lies.”
But the kestrel just stared intently at him and bobbed her beak up and down, making the talisman dance. The look of impatience on her face was so very “Kelley” in that moment, it was almost comical. Sonny would have laughed if he’d had the strength.
“Haven’t you had enough of me turning into monsters lately?” he murmured.
The kestrel gave him a look that seemed to say, Do you have any better
ideas? He really didn’t. His head began to fall forward again, and Sonny knew that, if they didn’t do something soon, he wouldn’t be able to argue the point further. His fingertips and toes had gone from cold to ice to numb. His limbs were starting to feel hollow, his head and heart empty. . . .
He dragged his head upright again. The kestrel was moving, hopping from branch to thorny branch, deftly maneuvering herself above Sonny. He felt the circle of the silk cord lowering over his head.
“Are you really sure you’ve thought this through?” he asked. “It might not exactly prove the lesser of two evils. . . .”
The falcon rustled her wings and, opening her mouth, let the black cord slip from her beak. The onyx jewel dropped into place over Sonny’s breastbone.
Instantly, he felt the electrifying current of the magick of the Wild Hunt surge through his body. The burning sensation of his wounds lessened. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, and felt some of his lost strength flowing back into his limbs. And with it . . . a kind of hunger.
Darkness flashed behind Sonny’s eyes.
He heard a fearsome scream coming from above. He lifted his head to see a huge, tawny-winged owl come plummeting out of the sky. Perched on a branch in front of him, the kestrel turned her head and shrieked in alarm at the sight. She launched herself through the thorns of the cage and into the sky, beating her wings as fast as she could. Above her, the owl stretched out its talons, gleaming like knives. The blur of the kestrel shot through the air, spinning in an out-of-control barrel roll and narrowly evading the predator.
As Sonny watched the aerial battle, he felt his heart begin to beat faster. With each evasion, he could feel the owl’s rage at being denied its quarry. The Hunter within him snarled in shared frustration. His blood sang with the thrill of the chase, the anticipation of the kill. . . .
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