The King of Faerie (Stariel Book 4)

by AJ Lancaster

  It was with some satisfaction that he heard a chorus of voices exclaim and demand explanations as Gregory attempted to sneak in the back door at the same time as several of his cousins were heading out. Jack ducked quickly back into the stables, not wishing to get involved. The hubbub disappeared back into the bowels of the house.

  It only occurred to him after Gregory had left that he hadn’t asked why he’d been sent down from university for the rest of the term. Inevitably, he thought glumly, it was something to do with the fairies. No doubt he’d hear about it sooner rather than later, but hopefully he could avoid being pulled into his aunt’s tearful recriminations. He didn’t have much patience for Lady Phoebe when she got all teary eyed; Gregory could bloody well deal with that by himself.

  The day was overcast, but it didn’t feel like rain was coming when he stretched out with his land-sense. The Indigoes got a prickly sort of feeling before storms, and there was none of that now. Something that wasn’t quite unease but the echo of it came back to him through the bond. Stariel always had more restlessness to it whenever Hetta was absent from the estate. Maybe he’d hack over to the Thornfield and see how the new flock was faring.

  Jack had saddled his horse, and freedom was so close he could taste it when Old Buddle tottered out into the stableyard.

  “My apologies, sir, but the Duke of Callasham is here.”

  For a moment Jack thought he’d misheard. When you lived on one of the most far-flung estates in the North, high-ranking Southern nobles didn’t exactly drop in casually for tea.

  Buddle coughed. “He asked to speak to Lord Valstar. I’ve shown him to the Red Drawing Room, sir.”

  The Duke of Callasham wasn’t just a Southern noble, Jack remembered suddenly; he was also Lord Greymark. Which meant it wasn’t so strange for him to appear here now, not with the Lords Conclave just around the corner. Probably Penharrow had invited him to his house party.

  Jack’s heart sank because this all seemed like a lot of politics. Bloody Rakken. What was the point of playing host to fae royalty if they couldn’t damn well be there when you needed them? The prince might have been of some use here at last. Typical that he wasn’t.

  The duke stood by the window considering the view towards the rose garden, but he turned at Jack’s entrance. He was a portly man in his mid-fifties, dark-skinned with tightly curled hair, evidence of the strong Noorish blood in the Callasham line. His clothing was fussier than Jack preferred, a reminder of everything he disliked about Southerners.

  Through the window behind the duke, Jack spied a glimpse of Ivy on the far side of the garden, sitting knitting on a bench next to where the Gate had opened. There hadn’t been any sign of activity since Gwendelfear, but one or other of them frequently found reason to check it anyway.

  His relief at seeing the Gate guarded faded as he caught sight of another and entirely unwanted presence in the rose garden. Ms Orpington-Davies was striding down the garden path towards Ivy, notebook in hand. Damn the reporter. He’d told her to get off Valstar lands. She’d not only paid absolutely no attention to this directive, but also her byline had appeared beneath a pointed article headlined LORD VALSTAR IN HIDING?

  I’m going to cart that damn woman to the station myself, and never mind that she’s a female.

  But it would have to wait till he got rid of Callasham.

  “I was expecting Lord Valstar,” the duke remarked as Jack introduced himself. Callasham looked him up and down, and Jack became acutely conscious that he’d just come from the stables.

  “She’s unavoidably detained,” Jack hedged, hoping the duke wouldn’t ask further questions.

  “It seems a lengthy condition. Has she become an invalid?”

  Jack decided it was best to avoid answering this. “What brings you here, your grace? Are you joining Penharrow’s house party?”

  “No,” Callasham said. “It makes no odds to me if she’s accepted into the Conclave or not, though I cannot fathom Penharrow’s decision to gamble on such a flighty wench. I’m here not to represent my own interests but the Crown’s. Lord Valstar failed to respond to the last message she was sent, and the queen is out of patience with her.”

  Jack thought guiltily of the courier’s still-unopened message. It’d slipped his mind, between one thing and another; he’d assumed Hetta would be back soon enough it wouldn’t matter. Yet here she was, still missing. What in Prydein was she still doing in Faerie, anyway?

  Still, ‘flighty wench’ was uncalled for. “You’re in my cousin’s house; I’ll thank you not to refer to her that way.” Jack had called Hetta far worse things, but that was different. That was family.

  The door to the sitting room creaked open a fraction. Jack frowned when it didn’t open any further—was one of his cousins trying to eavesdrop? But a small black shape slipped confidently into the room and trotted across the carpet, tail erect. Those bloody kittens.

  The duke said sharply, “Enough shilly-shallying, boy. Where is—gah!” Callasham broke off as a small black demon darted towards his legs and tapped his shins with a paw before flitting away, hissing.

  “My apologies,” Jack said reluctantly, though inwardly he had a lot of sympathy for the cat. He scooped up the kitten, which growled in protest, and dumped it out of the room, shutting the door properly this time.

  “Her Majesty wishes for assurances from Lord Valstar that the treaty she promised with the fae will in fact eventuate before the Meridon Ball. Which is now less than three weeks away.” Every overly rounded vowel chipped from ice. Jack knew his own accent had more of a Northern burr to it than his mother would prefer, but he didn’t care. The duke could emphasise his lineage all he liked; the Valstar line was still older than Prydein itself.

  Jack was angry enough that the duke’s words didn’t immediately penetrate. When they did, his thoughts jerked to a grinding halt. What the hell had Hetta promised the queen? She was in no position to be offering treaties with fae courts, not since Wyn had renounced his claim to the throne of ThousandSpire!

  Oh. That had happened after Hetta and Wyn spoke to the queen in Meridon, and they’d clearly chosen not to keep Her Majesty informed about the current situation in the Spires. Which put Jack in a damned difficult position. Again!

  “That’s the reason for Hetta’s current absence,” he said at last and with great reluctance. He couldn’t exactly lie directly to his sovereign, could he? “She’s in the Faerie Realm. But don’t ask me for more details than that, because I don’t have them.”

  The duke’s eyes brightened in a way that Jack found unsettling, but his tone remained arctic. “That is an unsatisfactorily vague answer, given Her Majesty’s deadline.”

  “Well, it’s all the answer I can give you. Good day, your grace.” Jack stood. He was being rude, but if he had to stand here and talk politics for one more second, he risked being much ruder.

  Callasham rose with narrowed eyes but didn’t object as Jack opened the door for him and escorted him back to the entryway. To his irritation, Ms Orpington-Davies was there, arguing with Buddle. Simultaneously, a chatter of angry voices sounded from the hallway to the billiards room, where someone had evidently left a door open.

  “What the hells do you mean, Hetta’s breeding?” Gregory’s voice, too loud, echoing down the hallway and amplifying in the entryway.

  Ms Orpington-Davies looked up. Her eyes gleamed.

  Oh, fuck me, Jack thought.

  27

  The Tower

  Wyn flew them into daylight, following the thin line of the tracking spell. The boundary between mosaics was as thin as a wingbeat, and the air smelled of the sea. The salty tang echoed in his soul, awakening an old memory too faint to recall, but the association was pleasant, whatever it was. The world blazed with magic, pricks of it settling at the base of every feather, winding around his body like vines as he flew, as if he’d taken shot after shot of whiskey.

  His heart raced and not only with recent fear. He’d flown with Hetta once before,
but that only for a few downstrokes, to escape Aroset. This was…something else. He risked a glance downwards; her eyes were sparkling, and it eased the tightness in his chest.

  “I’m losing all sense of whether it’s morning, noon, or night,” she said against his neck.

  He set them down on the clifftop. Beyond it stretched a sparkling azure sea, the white crests of waves breaking on the cliff below.

  “I think we’re far enough away—I cannot sense the Hunt anymore. Or the dragon.” The vastness of those golden wings unfurled in his mind’s eye, leaving him feeling quite inadequate in comparison. The dragon had been an old, old fae, its power deep enough that Wyn hadn’t dared to use his leysight.

  Hetta turned a slow circle, examining their surroundings. Below the cliffs, sprites danced in the waves, teasing sea nymphs, who flashed their fins when they saw Wyn watching. Far in the distance, an island rose in a tall, thin needle of stone rising straight from the sea. Between the island and the cliff, the back of something vast breached the surface with a spray of seafoam before disappearing beneath the water. The sight made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  “The geography isn’t consistent,” Hetta grumbled.

  “These are the deepest realms of Faerie. Consistency is optional.”

  “Did a dragon really just offer to be a godparent?”

  “I—yes. Yes, I think they did.” His legs gave out, and he sagged down to the ground with a choke of laughter. A dragon. High King’s horns. A true dragon! He’d never thought to see one.

  Hetta began to laugh as well. She joined him on the ground, and they clung to each other, shaking with either amusement or hysteria until their limbs grew weak. He pulled her into his lap, holding her close, holding her safe.

  Hetta picked at his robes. “And your mother?”

  He blinked down at her.

  “What the dragon said about her.”

  He was still entirely at sea. “What did the dragon say about her?”

  Hetta looked at him strangely. “To give her its regards.”

  “Oh.” Had it? Surely he would’ve remembered such a thing? But the import of Hetta’s words hit him. “She’s alive, then.” If he hadn’t already been sitting, the dizziness would have grounded him. “She’s alive.”

  He’d always believed that to be the case, or rather wanted to believe it. But if she were alive, what had stopped her from returning to them? And where was she? If the dragon knew, did that mean she was here, in Deeper Faerie?

  His thoughts grew tangled and difficult, and he clamped down hard on his leysight, struggling to focus. What had he been thinking of? Deeper Faerie. He lifted his head and stared out to sea, to the narrow needle of the island in the distance.

  He took out the tracking spell, gripping it tightly until the stone filaments dug into his palms. “That’s where Irokoi is.”

  Hetta’s expression was oddly gentle, and she hugged him tightly before sitting back and saying, “I suppose that only makes sense. Having defeated a dragon to win your hand, scaling a tower is clearly the only logical next step. There always seem to be towers in fairy tales, when one is rescuing princesses—I assume the same applies to princes.”

  He supposed the island did resemble a tower, though a natural one. “Defeated a dragon?” he queried.

  “We got past it, didn’t we? I’m fairly certain that counts.”

  “I had not previously considered myself the damsel in distress in this scenario.”

  Hetta patted his hand. “I shall do my best to heroically sweep you off your feet.”

  In answer, he swept her off her feet, hauling them both up. She squawked in surprise and clutched at his neck. “Hold on,” he told her.

  “You enjoyed doing that entirely too much,” she accused.

  “‘Pregnant women are known to experience bouts of vertigo’,” he quoted, hugging her close. “‘A strong masculine supporting hand may be needed at these times’.”

  He took off amid the sound of Hetta’s giggles and her vow that she was going to burn that dashed book when they returned. His muscles strained before he found the right rhythm and balance with Hetta in his arms. The sea air caressed his feathers with each downstroke, warm and buoyant.

  He leaned on his air magic for height, thinking of the vast creature he’d seen breaching the waves. Whatever it was, he did not wish to fly too close to it.

  The island was farther than he’d estimated, and as they drew closer, its true height became apparent. Wyn bore straight upwards in powerful strokes that made his wings burn. Exhilaration sang through his blood, and a laugh of sheer delight bubbled out of him. Magic came at his call, thick and potent, and he rode the winds he was born to, climbing to dizzying heights before he levelled off above the island, curling the air around Hetta protectively. He could handle a certain amount of oxygen deprivation; she couldn’t.

  Hetta swivelled to look down on the island, its top a rock-coloured disc at this distance that appeared almost perfectly flat. In its centre, a circular darkness gleamed like a fisheye.

  “So where do we think Irokoi is? It looks fairly barren.”

  “There’s an opening in the ground.” His eyesight was keener than hers, but he wasn’t exactly sure what the opening in the otherwise flat surface of the rock tower led to. A cave, maybe? He stretched out with his leysight and hissed at its brightness. “I think it’s a Gate. It’s active, wherever it leads.” That had to be where Irokoi was; there wasn’t anywhere else to be on the island; the sharp shape of the rock tower was smooth, hiding no other openings. “Hang on,” he said apologetically. “I’ve given us an excessive amount of height; the dive will be steep.”

  Lightning hovered on the edge of awareness, and he pushed the temptation away.

  It wasn’t temptation. Charge abruptly sizzled towards them, and he banked to avoid it. Hetta’s grip spasmed, and the terrible scent of copper and old-fashioned roses swamped him.

  “Wyn—there!”

  Rising like a crimson arrow from behind the tower was Aroset. He was too far away to see her expression, but he swore he could feel her triumph. He had the benefit of height on her, but he was losing it rapidly, and she was between them and the island. How was she here, in Deeper Faerie? How could she have followed them? She couldn’t have used DuskRose’s Gate.

  But perhaps, he thought with a deep chill, she didn’t need Gates anymore.

  “You’re going to have to be fast with your dive,” Hetta said against his neck. She freed one of her hands, and when Aroset had covered half the distance between them, fog poured fourth in a torrent and surrounded his sister, obscuring her from view. Aroset shrieked in outrage, but Wyn didn’t hesitate. He folded his wings and let gravity take hold of them again.

  Lightning tore through the air, and the world became white with fog, but Aroset couldn’t see him, or the ground, or anything well enough to risk herself in a steep dive from this height.

  Of course, he couldn’t see anything either. Hetta’s illusions weren’t glamour, and no amount of effort would allow him to see through them.

  But Hetta could, and she snuffed the fog out of existence just in time. He flared his wings with a wrench of protest, pulling up cushions of air to halt their momentum just before they hit the Gate. They fell, the world tilting as the Gate transported them, and Wyn flared out his wings again, holding Hetta tightly.

  They hit stone, and Wyn winced at the impact. It wasn’t his most graceful landing, but, on the brighter side, it wasn’t his least graceful either. He folded his wings behind him and set Hetta down, looking to see if Aroset had followed.

  She hadn’t.

  Far, far above, like looking up from the bottom of a well, greenish light shone through a multi-faceted glass dome. A single pane showed blue sky rather than green glass, and a tiny, indistinct face with pale hair peered through.

  “Why isn’t she following us?”

  Wyn couldn’t see Aroset’s expression at this distance, but he knew, somehow, tha
t she was staring directly at him. Cold crept down his spine.

  “She knows something we don’t.” He put out an arm and stepped them both back and out of Aroset’s sight, behind the thick supportive columns and into what appeared to be dimly lit shelves of books. The circular room they were in was at the bottom of many, many floors, connected by winding stone staircases that left the central shaft clear, looking all the way up to that glass dome far above, the only source of light.

  He thought of pulling up his leysight to try to figure out where they were, but some instinct said, very strongly, no, and one didn’t live to a ripe old age in Faerie by ignoring such things.

  “This place is old. Very old,” he murmured.

  “A library,” Hetta said, touching a finger to the nearest spines. “Marius would love this. How many floors do you think it goes up for?”

  “Too many.” Wyn flexed his wings, uneasy.

  Footsteps on stone floors. They turned. Irokoi was walking down the stairs from the level above, into the central atrium. Lights flared to life in his wake, pale feylights set into stone sconces along the walls.

  Irokoi beamed at them. “Oh, good, you found me. Do you have a plan to get out? That Gate is one-way only.”

  28

  Beneath the Waves

  It had been a long time since he’d seen his oldest brother in the flesh. Irokoi looked…entirely himself, and much too relaxed for someone who’d been trapped in Deeper Faerie for who knew how long. Irokoi was as casually unkempt as always, wearing thin gloves but no shoes, and his silver hair hung long and unbound, a sharp contrast against his dark feathers and horns. His expression was open, mismatched eyes wide and guileless, but Wyn wasn’t foolish enough to believe it. Irokoi used frankness as camouflage. There was no sense of magic about him, but that too meant nothing; Irokoi had used astral projection to appear in Meridon, a magic so strong and subtle Wyn wouldn’t have credited it but for the evidence of his own eyes.