“I…uh…” My gaze follows the toadstool trail leading to the floodwall. As I watch, more teeny red caps push their way up through the stone, trailing across the two-story street-art murals.
Faerie energy. And it’s transforming the mortal realm wherever it touches.
That can’t be good.
“Where’s Rouen?” Mom’s sharp voice jars me.
“I…” All I remember is Roue screaming my name as we were both yanked into our warring halves of Faerie. Fear creeps into my mind. “Hold on.” Trying not to freak, I reach out for Rouen through our soul-bond.
Nothing.
A shiver spikes my spine. “She’s still in Dark Faerie.” With her father. The guy who once infected her with Moribund, enslaved her to Agravaine, and cheated her out of her crown. I know she wants to save him, but honestly?
I don’t trust that guy as far as I could donkey-toss him. My fear cranks up to near-panic.
Mom’s upset, too. “In Dark Faerie? Syl, what’s going on?”
“I…” My anxiety expands inside me like a razor-edged ball of black twine, getting bigger and bigger, growing teeth and claws…
Everything seems to whirl around me. On my right, the brownish-grey James Canal on my right starts to spin, while on my left, all the floodwall murals—the giant blue-black owl, the electronica catfish, the comic strip with Wonder Woman’s eyes—blur into one bright, swirling mess.
“Syl!” Mom must sense my freak-out because she pitches her voice low. “Take a deep breath, calm down. Where are you?”
“I’m okay,” I say, super-quick because my mom is a worrywart, and the way she worries is to walk softly and carry a big gun. “I’m on the Canal Walk.”
And probably going to be late for school. But I don’t know that I care about that anymore.
All my worry’s for Roue. “I just hope she’s okay,” I whisper into the phone.
Mom’s voice crackles back. “I’ll be right there. Stay put. And, Syl?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Roue will be fine. Trust in her.”
I blow out a breath, and the crushing, razor-sharp anxiety-knot in my guts loosens a bit. Mom always knows what to say. She’s right, too. My Winter girl is resourceful, smart, powerful. I close my eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Love you, bug.” She ends the call.
I tuck the phone back into my pocket, my mind whirling like a carousel at warp speed. Worry, fear, anxiety from all I’ve learned, it all balls up inside me, but I just keep breathing deep like Mom said. And I wait, feeling super-awkward standing on the Canal Walk while all the bikers and joggers and dog-walkers breeze past me.
No one seems to notice the toadstools.
Or the fact that the black owl mural…is…slowly…flapping its wings. Like it’s trying to escape.
What the—?
I call on my Fae-sight. My vision blurs for a half sec before locking in.
Psychedelic Fae energy swirls over the floodwall like sticky strands of multicolored candy floss. Suddenly, all the murals burst into life. Wonder Woman’s eyes dart around, the catfish lashes its tail. A few crows from a new mural leap off it and flap to the ground, chitter-chattering.
“Whoa…” I guess I was right.
With the two realms colliding, the Shroud really is tearing.
This is a full-on Bleed.
How big? is the only other question. According to Roue, small Bleeds happen all the time, especially in areas of high energy, high emotion, or magical power. Plus, in places like Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle, the Pyramids of Giza, Easter Island, the Shroud is super-thin, allowing Fae and even mortals to cross over.
Sometimes, Bleeds even heal themselves.
The Shroud is tough, and it has failsafes.
Maybe, my inner killjoy whispers, but I don’t think they’re prepared to handle a Faerie apocalypse.
Hush, you. I push my grumpy thoughts aside, relieved when the Faerie energy expends itself and the murals slowly fade back into the wall, going from 3-D to 2-D. The toadstools shrivel up, die, and fall one by one.
Plop, plop, plop-plop-plop!
By the time I reach them, they’ve disintegrated into fairy dust, blowing away on the early-spring breeze. I let out a sigh.
At least we won’t be adding a major Bleed to our growing list of problems.
“Storm’s comin’.”
The raspy, gravelly voice comes from behind me—a man in a ratty trench coat and brand-new white sneakers. His pale face is grimy, his ruddy beard wiry and shot through with silver. In his hands is a bag of popcorn. The buttery scent makes my stomach growl, reminding me I’ve missed breakfast. He strews a handful onto the ground, and the mural crows natter and fight over it.
His eyes are a brilliant brown, his voice rolling on an Irish accent. “Storm’s comin’, princess. Best get indoors.”
Princess? I take a closer look at him. “You…know who I am?”
His smile crinkles his eyes and flashes front teeth capped in gold. “Ev’ryone knows who ya‘re, Syl Skye.” He strews more popcorn out, and the crows squawk and bicker, all flapping black wings. “Storm’s a’comin’.” He squints at the bluer-than-blue sky. “Best git yer throne a’fore Winter gets hers.”
Shivers roll down my spine. Get my throne? “Wait, you know about that?” But how can he? He’s just a homeless man feeding the crows.
Crows that came to life off a mural.
And he’s feeding them from his ever-full bag of magic popcorn.
Plus, what I see with my Fae-sight makes no sense. He’s human, but the Bleed, the energy of Faerie, is sticking to him the way cotton candy sticks to your fingers. All candy-floss pink and blue and sticky-sweet.
A car honks, and I turn. When I look back, he’s gone. Just the remnants of Bleed and the murals.
Storm’s a’coming, princess.
Between Dark Faerie and Fair Faerie.
More shivers rush over me, but Mom honks again, and I shake off my dread. Roue and I have a plan. We just gotta stick to it. I race over to the car. Mom looks so worried I don’t even ask to drive.
My butt’s barely in my seat before she pounces. “What is going on?”
“I snickle-stepped in my sleep.” I grab the clothes she brought me off the backseat. “I ended up in OverHill.”
I can’t tell how Mom feels because she totally keeps her cool as she pulls into traffic on Dock Street and heads up 21st to the light. “You…snickle-stepped? By accident?”
“And Roue… I think she ended up in Dark Faerie.” The anxiety rushes up again, but I swallow it back, concentrating on changing my clothes without flashing anyone in the passing cars.
“Why is this happening now?” Mom keeps her eyes on the road, but I feel her scrutiny anyway.
“I don’t know.” That’s the complete truth, too.
“Hnh.” Mom lets it go. For now. But I know it’s not the end of it, really. Mom’s like a dog with a bone. She pulls left and heads toward the interstate.
“I…” Don’t say it, Syl. But I can’t help myself. It feels like a dream, and I need to make it real, to make sense of it. “I saw Dad.”
Mom’s hands go white on the steering wheel. “You did.”
“He’s the fair Fae king.”
Mom sniffs, but she doesn’t seem surprised. At all.
A sinking feeling in my guts tells me… “You knew.” I try to keep the accusation out of my voice, but I’m pretty sure I don’t one hundred percent succeed, because Mom winces.
“I should have told you.”
“I’m…not sure I wanted to know.” After all, the guy abandoned us, his wife, his daughter. He stopped providing for us, stopped contacting us. Stopped caring. But what if he didn’t? What if…
Storm’s a’coming.
“Do you think something kept him from coming back?”
“No.” Mom’s voice is deadpan. “He made his choice not to return.”
Okay, my sympathy for him wilts a bit. It doesn’t quite f
ly out the window. Yet. I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, and if all this Faerie princess stuff’s taught me anything, it’s that things aren’t always as they seem. “Maybe you should tell me everything.”
Mom looks at me before turning her attention back to the road. “You might not like the answers, Syl. Are you sure?”
Am I? No. He left us. Even now, my stomach churns with a million mixed-up emotions. “He wants me to break up with Roue.” For now, I give my mom the G-rated version. “He says our soul-bond is causing Fair Faerie and Dark Faerie to collide.”
“I knew this day would come.”
Uh-oh. Mom sounds like Gandalf, Obi-Wan, and Aslan all rolled into one. That’s never good.
Mom pulls up to a stop light and turns toward me. Her green eyes are serious. “You have hard choices ahead, Syl. The time will soon come when you’ll have to choose between your heart and your people.”
Her words echo my talk with my dad.
As sad as that makes me, it shores up my stubbornness, too. Roue and I will find a way. If our Faerie plan doesn’t work out, we’ll come up with something else.
The light turns green, and Mom hits the gas. “The fair Fae always knew a sleeper-princess would usher in the Great Convergence, but I’m sure they didn’t count on you doing it the way you are.” She glances at me.
“With a dark Fae.”
“Yes.”
“Well”—I finish buttoning up my uniform shirt—“they’re just going to have to get over it already.” I pause, and then dive ahead. “So…about Dad. Has he always been a Fae?”
“Yes.” Mom’s voice warbles a bit.
“And…” I do some quick relationship math. “You couldn’t stay together because you renounced your power.” Mom was once a sleeper-princess like me, only the fair Fae made her poison the dark Fae hearthstone. A lot of dark Fae died, including Roue’s mom. I don’t blame her for renouncing her power.
“It’s…more complicated than that, bug.”
“Oh.” I want to ask, but when I look at Mom, I stop wanting. Her eyes are damp, and she wipes at them.
Our Q&A is officially over, I decide.
She turns down the school drive, and we both get quiet. I can only guess what’s going on in her mind. As for me…mine’s a whirl of thoughts, feelings, emotions, all swirling inside, making me sick to my stomach.
Mom pulls up to the school, but I don’t get out right away. If I’m late, so be it.
“Don’t worry.” I meet her gaze. “Roue and I will fix the Faerie realms.” Hope surges inside me, and I smile. “You’ll see.”
“Syl.” Mom returns my smile, but hers is sad. “I forsook my sleeper-princess powers.”
I already knew that, but she’s going somewhere with this.
“If you choose to go down this path, I can’t help you.”
Her words rock me. She helped me against Agravaine, she helped us when Fiann trapped us in the school.
How can I do this without Mom’s support?
I open my mouth to argue, but one look at her face—her damp eyes, the way her lips are trembling—and I shut up.
My mom needs my support right now.
I reach out and squeeze her hand. “It’s okay, Mom. Really.” I flip the door latch, get out, grab my backpack from the back seat. “See you tonight.”
She gives me a grateful, watery smile, and that makes it all worth it. “Have a good day, bug.”
“You betcha.” I blow her a kiss and head toward the school. There’s not much more to say.
At least not right now.
I need Roue, my beautiful Roue, my bestie, the other half of my soul. Together we can do anything, but even I’ve gotta admit: the Great Convergence, the Bleed, the Thrones, Midsummer…
We’ve got our work cut out for us.
And all our previous challenges? They’re nothing compared to this.
8
ROUEN
In the wintry twilight
When the bain sidhe keens
When the bain sidhe wails
One of us will die
“Wail and Woe,” Euphoria
* * *
The bain sidhe wails for Death. A soaring dirge, it goes on and on and on, throbbing through Knockma Castle, echoing across the Adamant Hall, shivering the stained glass, the dark Throne, shuddering through the very bones of the castle.
When that wails dies, my father and I will try to kill each other.
My heart cries out against it. He’s not my father, I tell myself again.
He’s a Circuit Fae. Corrupted, infected, his DNA overwritten by horrid black-magic Moribund. There is nothing left of the Adamant King.
His dark self is in full and total control.
My brain understands fully, but my heart? Not so much.
I’m still reeling from the shock.
He steps over Etana where she lies on the floor. His sapphire-blue gaze locks on mine. “Down to business.” With a single gesture, he calls on the power of UnderHollow. I feel his pull on it like a small earthquake beneath my feet. Frost and ice rush down his arms, coalescing into two wintersteel short swords. “Are you sure you wish to face me, daughter?”
Am I? I’m not powerful enough to manifest weaponry from the energies of UnderHollow, and I don’t have my violin. Not to mention, my heart’s not exactly in it.
No matter how evil he is, he’s still my father.
Besides, if I do succeed in killing him (total long shot), I’ll have to become queen. And that involves killing Syl and actually being queen, a duty I am unfit for.
I have my own dark self, so strong it sometimes scares me.
My capacity for evil is just as great as his.
“Hesitating? That was always your weakness, Rouen.” His smile is pure evil, a grotesque stretching of his face wider than normal skin. “Always overthinking things.”
He’s right. I fire back, “I’ll last long enough to smash that master-key circuit off your face and free my people.”
My heart’s not in it, though, and he knows it.
“Will you now? You might find it harder than you think.” With a wave of his hand, the shadows deepen around him, wisps of black energy pluming up into a miasma that cloaks him like smoke.
Blast and bloody bones!
I recognize that power signature.
In a burst of shadows, one of the Xi windwarps to my father’s side.
The Xi are gender-fluid trollkine, masters of disguise and Glamoury. The Winter in their blood manifests as extremes. A Xi might be beautiful martial artist or an unparalleled harpist. Or Xi might be a deadly assassin.
This one’s a deadly assassin, my father’s bodyguard, to be exact.
Warily, I size up this new threat.
Black and ice-blue leathers complement Xi’s light troll-blue skin and glowing eyes. With their platinum-blonde hair pulled up in a topknot, the Xi could belong in Fiann’s old posse, but for the leather, the knives.
Crimson Inimical circuits splice up both forearms, up Xi’s neck, and across their right cheek in a runic tattoo. Only, their rune isn’t a master-key circuit.
This Xi’s a slave, not the master.
My mirthless laugh echoes over the fading bain sidhe wail. “Need your loyal assassin to fight me, Father?”
The Inimical rune on his cheek flashes with fire. Even bloated with Moribund circuits, he can’t handle an insult to his pride. “I do not.” He spins the twin wintersteel blades in his hands. To the Xi, he says, “Stand down.”
The Xi’s face twitches. I see the battle going on behind those pale eyes, the struggle as the Inimical circuitry along their arms, neck, and cheek flash, forcing obedience into bone, muscle, and blood.
The Xi is strong, but the Inimical is stronger.
“As you wish, my king.” The Xi steps back obediently, sliding a jagged dagger back into its sheath.
Cold rage and despair fill me. If I don’t kill Father here and now, he’ll infect the hearthstone and turn us all into Circuit
Fae.
He’s turned so many already. The Adamant Guard, the arch-Eld, the Xi.
I have no choice. I have to kill him.
“It stops here.” I sing a note, my voice swallowed by the bain sidhe’s wail. Violet lightning bursts around my fists. “No more, Father.”
His face twists in mock-sorrow. “You would kill your own father?”
Guilt and sadness sweep through me, but I steel my resolve. “My father died the moment his dark self took total control.” It’s true.
The man before me is not the man I once knew.
He’s not even flesh and blood anymore.
I don’t have to kill my father. I try to gear myself up. I just have to kill this thing that wears his face.
The last notes of the bain sidhe’s wail die.
Game on.
“Haaaaa!” He launches at me, blades flashing, his fairy wind blasting me with ice.
I dodge twin slashes, singing and lashing out with my lightning. Clash, clang! He parries my bolts, wintersteel blades pluming, and we trade positions, the hearthstone between us, a flashing beacon.
The first blows traded without injury.
Spinning, he gestures sharply. Instantly, the air is filled with whirling white—snow and sleet and ice—a storm pelting me. I stagger back, and he’s on me. Three more slashes. I barely evade; he carves a lock of hair from my temple.
Raven-dark, it spirals to the snow.
Note to self: live long enough to regret this.
Breathing deep from my diaphragm, I sing out, the power rushing down my arms in crackling lightning. I blast him with bolt after bolt.
He dodges, impossibly fast, and lunges. His foot slams into my ribs, hurtling me back against the stained glass. It cracks beneath me, and I glimpse the dizzying drop outside the windows.
Hundreds of feet down, down, down…
I launch myself back at him, screaming, violet lightning flying at him. He evades my every attack. Frustration grips me.
I’m losing this fight.
And he knows it. Twilight flashes off his fangs. “It’s not too late to join me. Use your soul-bond to draw your fair Fae girlfriend here. We will kill her together on Midsummer.”
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