Determination burns in my chest. Okay, Fair Faerie, you called me here. Now it’s my turn. I angle myself toward the castle, using Fair Faerie’s gravity to pull me toward it—and the hearthstone.
The last time I was here, my father said I’d stone-stepped, meaning I’d passed right through the hearthstone. Into the Somewhen. As if the hearthstone itself were a portal into that magical place.
If I could do that again, I might be able to press him for more answers.
My plan decided, I shoot toward the horizon, toward the castle, everything whipping by so fast I barely see the destruction, the corruption of Inimical circuits threading crimson through everything…
The hearthstone can heal it. If only I can heal the hearthstone.
I see it now, a dimming beacon, its one flame flickering. It shines in the king’s hands where he sits on the Aureate Throne. In this version of OverHill—the “real-time” version—he’s still captive to Summer’s Rest. My white shield shimmers over him like a bubble.
For a second, I’m afraid I’ll crash right into it.
My reflection shines in the hearthstone. When it pulls me, I pull right back.
Shlurrrp! I’m sucked into the facets. Bright flashes, sun shining across my face. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m back in the copse of golden birches. The Faerie ring.
The Somewhen.
It worked! Score one for the sleeper-princess!
It’s the height of summer here, and I stand in the ring of perfect birches basking in a perfect summer day. Sunlit warmth bathes everything. It feels so good on my skin. I breathe it in, the perfume of flowers and grass and far-flung meadows filling me up.
Fair Faerie could be like this again. If only Roue and I could stop the Great Convergence.
But for now, I’ll find my father and ask him all the things I didn’t have the chance to last time. “Dad?” I venture deeper into the grove. The Somewhen’s version of the Aureate Throne shines like liquid gold among a cradle of boughs.
The branches rustle, then part for a shining figure. My father.
He smiles when he sees me, his grey eyes crinkling at the corners. “Syl.”
His warmth is everything I’ve wanted these past years. Instantly, all my conflicted feelings rush in and overwhelm me—the ache of loss and missing him, shock at finding out he’s king of Fair Faerie, disappointment and anger at him wanting me to take my throne, kill Roue…
It’s a lot to deal with. My mind’s spinning, my heart’s a mess.
“Syl.” My dad opens his arms.
I move back, hating the hurt look on his face. But… “I’m not ready.”
He folds his hands. An awkward silence stretches out between us where we’re both shuffling our feet and looking at each other. I want to ask him a million things: Why am I here? Why did you leave us? Why are you back now? But my throat tightens painfully, and I can’t get any of it out.
“Let me?” he asks, reaching for my hand.
I nod.
He touches my hand. Instantly, the heaviness of his magic settles over me like a warm, weighted blanket. Waves of Summer heat shoot through me. The world ripples before my eyes, and the Somewhen opens up to another time, another place.
“What is this?”
“The past,” he says simply.
Images flash by, snippets of long-ago memories that aren’t mine—Mom forsaking her power as the sleeper-princess; my father’s sorrow as he leaves, a Fae unable to be with a mortal woman; him marrying the fair Fae queen, duty turning into love; the hearthstone failing; the spell of Summer’s Rest he cast over Fair Faerie to shield them from dark Fae vengeance…
The spell breaks.
I meet my father’s gaze. I want to ask him about his life after he left us, how he managed to send us checks in the mortal world while being king in Fair Faerie. I want to ask about the queen he clearly grew to love, but it’s too painful. There are some things I need to get off my chest first. “That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me.”
“I know.” He bows his head, looks at his hands. “Please forgive me.”
His sorrow hits me in a rushing riptide. I want to forgive him, but it’s too soon. Besides… “You still want me to take the throne. Even if it means killing Roue.”
His grey eyes are grim. “I want what’s best for Fair Faerie.”
“But not for me? You’d rather I marry Aldebaran and get controlled my whole life?” I throw up my hands, frustration swelling inside me. “Why are we even talking?”
When I turn back, he’s holding his old softball glove. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk, then.”
Seeing him holding that glove brings all my nostalgia and love to the fore. His smile is infectious. He’s trying, Syl, my heart whispers. I cave just a little. “Okay, but you’re not off the hook. I have questions.”
“I’ll answer,” he promises. A beat-up softball appears in his hand, stitches worn smooth, my initials scrawled on it in ballpoint pen. “But first…maybe I can help you with your softball problem?”
For the first time he sounds like a real-life dad. And something about this place, the perfect summer day, just the right breeze, the smell of old leather and well-worn glove…
It’s my best memory of me and him.
“I don’t have a glov—” In a flash of Summer sun, my glove appears on my hand. Whoa. An ache blossoms inside me. I’ve missed my dad so much. “Okay,” I agree.
What harm is there in a game of catch? Besides, Roue’ll be busy for hours still.
He lobs the ball, and the familiar smack of it into my glove is everything I want it to be. I toss it back.
Soon enough, we’re playing catch like we did when I was a kid.
The sun is warm on my back, and every throw is perfect in this summer place. Time spirals outward, meaningless in this magical place. Suddenly, the golden birches shimmer like ripples in water, and the scene changes. We’re back at the baseball field in the park near our old house.
The one we all lived in together.
I relive every afternoon of practice with my dad. We move from a simple game of catch to him hitting pop-ups and line drives and me fielding to him pitching and me batting.
He coaches me like old times.
The crack of the bat is satisfying, the ball zooming up into the blue of the sky. Everything is perfect. We’re never out of softballs. I hit every pitch like a champ, with no fear, no bad memories.
I don’t even mind the Aureate Throne looming up behind my dad. Much.
Nothing can ruin this moment.
But I have to stop. I have to get the answers I need. Roue’s depending on me.
My dad throws me another perfect pitch. This time, I let it pass me by. The sound of it hitting the chainlink fence behind me breaks the perfect summer spell.
My next statement kills it dead.
“This thing with me and Roue,” I begin, putting down the bat to take a break. “I’m not giving up on her—or us.”
“Syl.” My father’s voice resonates through the Somewhen. There’s just a hint of disapproval there, but I hear it. “You must take the throne. You must be the queen Fair Faerie needs.”
I shake my head. “Not without Roue.”
My vow, my resolve sends a shockwave through the bright day.
Uh-oh.
The entire Somewhen shudders. Suddenly, the sun eclipses, clouds stealing our perfect summer, and the pulling yanks on me, the gravity that pulled me here now reversing to push me out.
“Dad!” The baseball diamond melts away as I grab for his hand. Our fingers touch. He’s warm and solid, and all my missing him slams into me just as the Somewhen sucks me away.
“Syl,” he calls. “Be the queen!”
With that, I’m jolted out of Fair Faerie, and…I’m back by the murals.
Only, this time, I’m definitely not alone.
Before me lies a sprawling nighttime street market crowded with booths, carts, and pop-up tents, teeming with bobbing lanterns of
every color and thronged with people. Savory smells thicken the air, shouts split the wee hours of the night, chatter rumbles.
Moving closer, I see the truth.
This is no ordinary market, and these are no ordinary people.
Blue skin, green skin, skin like bark, horns, claws, warts and wolf ears, fur and fox tails, gossamer wings and rowan wands held in sticklike fingers.
Holy— They’re all Fae. Their auras, and the aura of this place, are a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and hue. I feel the Faerie energy around me, warping the air, warping reality.
Faerie energy transforming the mortal realm.
It’s a full Bleed.
A massive troll lumbers by, ice-blue skin glistening like a frost-covered mountain. In her hamhock hands is a barrow filled with bright orange, warty melons. Sticky green juice drips behind the barrow. The scent of it makes my mouth water, makes me dizzy.
“Where am I?”
“Welcome.” Her voice is like two tumbled stones grinding. “To the Goblin Market.”
28
ROUEN
The king buys loyalty
With promises and power
I would have given mine for free
But not now and never again
- “Never Again,” Euphoria
* * *
The Goblin Market.
An unstable, sordid manifestation of the Winter Court. A teeming throng of dark Fae. Capricious, dangerous. Springing up wherever it wills and then vanishing, taking unsuspecting patrons with it into the maddening depths of Dark Faerie.
No fair Fae is safe in the Goblin Market.
And that’s just where my Syl is right now. Her worry stains her sending. “Roue?”
“I’m coming, princess!”
Fwoosh! In a blast of wintry wind, I speed from her bedroom, sending chess pieces and board flying, leaving behind the bain sidhe, my training, everything. I rush to the Canal Walk, near the murals.
Or should I say, near the living murals?
They shiver and move across the stone wall as I zip past, the giant blue-black bird flapping its wings, screeching to be freed, the four sets of legs sticking out of the bull’s-eye kicking and wriggling. Wonder Woman’s eyes follow me as I rush to the arched entrance of the Goblin Market.
“Syl, where are you?”
No answer.
I stop dead.
Before me, in a dark sprawling spiral, lies a grand market festooned with bright ribbons and grinning skulls, garlands and the innards of long-dead enemies. Sweet and sinister, bright and dark. Striped tents bustle up against tiny rickety carts with spoked wheels. Among them, a motley of creatures carouse. Fauns with curling ram’s horns and striped-fur legs; tiny fairies zipping about, drinking spiced dandelion wine from bluebell flutes; brownies with dour expressions; a troll lumbers by, her pale blue skin like polished ice.
The Goblin Market.
A staple of dark Fae life, the Market moves around, appearing in one place one day and then another the next. It’s pure magic, filled to teeming brim with Unseelie, and how did Obi-Wan put it? A seedy hive of scum and villainy.
And Syl’s somewhere inside it.
Danger, my dark fae instincts scream. If Syl tastes any of the fruit…
“Don’t eat anything!” I send to Syl, but the ambient magic here is so strong, my sending turns to static.
Bloody bones! Pulling up my hood, I duck into the throng, hoping to go unrecognized as I pass stands with striped awnings, carts overflowing with fruits, tents stuffed with Fae produce. Everywhere, outlandish and exotic fruits burst with every different kind and color. Hot-pink spiny dragon’s tails, brilliant jade-green trolleries, black as pitch nadflower fruit, blue cardillions.
And the smell! Sicky-sweet, syrupy, overripe, but somehow, my mouth’s watering, my stomach growling.
Please, Syl, remember not to eat the Faerie food!
“Vermilion juice?” A bog-hag pushes a fluted glass under my nose.
I push it away. “Thank you.” You don’t say no to a bog-hag, or any hag for that matter. It gives her license to attack. She pushes in, her ropelike garments damp and dripping. She smells of swamp water and algae and all things mucky and brackish.
“Thank you.” This time, I push the multicolored glass away more forcefully. “A thousand blessings on you.” With a hiss like a steaming kettle, she slinks back beneath her swamp-grass awning.
Want to get rid of a hag quickly? Bless them.
I move about, ducking the denizens who push fruit and root and stem and leaf in my face. “Buy our fruit, come, buy, come buy!”
“Thank you,” I say to each and every one, but I pass them by without tasting a single drop or bite. My heart is a wreck, hammering hard. Every several feet, I try my sending again. “Syl, where are you?”
Finally, “I’m here!” Syl’s voice comes back, but it’s weak.
“Where?”
“In the middle.”
Gah! That could be anywhere.
The Goblin Market is a labyrinthine tangle that works by Fae logic—which is no logic at all. None of that “go left in a labyrinth” stuff works here. As soon as you think you’ve got your bearings, the entire market will pick itself up, turn itself around, and you’ll be right back where you started.
“Oof!” I sidestep right into a walking wall.
Grey rocklike skin, black eyes like coal. A mountain trogg.
Blast it all! Troggs are as short-tempered, fierce, and bloodthirsty as they are resilient and strong. They freeze their enemies with a touch, then smash the body and feast on the frozen parts.
Lucky for me, they’re also slow as snot.
“Rarrrhhh!”
I duck the gigantic freezing fist, casting about for what I need. Bells. I need bells. Troggs hate the sound of bells, but so do a lot of Fae, so it’s one thing the Market lacks.
Unlucky me.
A fox-eared buall-bob darts away as the trogg turns, lumbering on its three legs. I duck another swing, stepping back. It clips me on the third, and I go stumbling.
My hood falls down. I’m exposed.
Every Fae eye is on me, whispers falling from every mouth.
“The princess!”
“House and Horde Rivoche!”
“Princess Rouen!”
And then I’m swarmed. Now every dark Fae merchant and hawker wants to offer me their wares for free, pushing and jostling.
“Me first!”
“No, me!”
“Get off my tail, you greedy guts!”
“I’ll have yer eyes fer marbles!”
Every one of them is proud of their goblin wine and goblin fruit. They surround me like needy children. I love my people, but sometimes they can be exasperating. I’m forced to thank each one and politely refuse.
Never piss off an Unseelie. Even if you are an Unseelie.
That’s something my mother taught me.
And then, as one, the Unseelie gasp and hiss and part in a wave as sunlight hits the ground, spearing in a golden carpet, sending dark Fae hunching, zipping, skittering back to their carts. One moor-hag throws down the shutters of her tiny vardo.
Syl comes, trailing sunlight like a train, and the Unseelie part for her. Some, the bravest, reach out their claws and maws and wings.
“Dragonfruit for the little fair princess!”
“Her Highness likes a little thistleberry wine, yes, yes?”
“Crannogs, crannogs for her Highness!”
Syl smiles at them all, touching each briefly as she comes. Her small, pale hand is swallowed by massive hamhock fists, brackish claws, swampy fingers, but she never seems to mind.
My heart’s in my throat. “Don’t stop. Just say thank you and keep coming toward me.”
I hold my breath, watching, hoping she gets the courtesies right. The dark Fae swarm her, offering everything they can think, hoping to lure her into a misstep, but I guide her, telling her to touch the grignrs on the shoulder but not to touch the huldafolk at all,
to smile but not show teeth to the trolls, to definitely show teeth to the hags.
Syl does it all, graceful as you please. Like a queen.
For a breath, I have a wild image of us as queens, fair and dark, ruling over Faerie together.
And then the fox-eared buall-bob comes. Half-girl, half-fox, buall-bob are shape-shifting tricksters of epic proportions. Her fox ears twitch as she whips a black stone from her kimono and lifts it up to Syl’s face. “Lookee here, little princess!”
A scrying stone. Blast it!
“Syl, don’t—”
Too late. My trusting Summer girl looks right into it.
Her eyes dilate in terror, reflecting the vision she sees in the scrying stone.
I sweep toward her in a gown of shadow and midnight, a crown of jagged black adamant on my brow. A cruel ice dagger gleams in my hand. Syl steps forward to meet me, radiant in a gown of gold and sunlight, her crown a fiery corona, her dagger made of brilliant sunfire.
We clash. As enemies.
We stab each other in the heart.
“No!” Syl screams. The vision shatters. But it’s too late.
Every single dark Fae in the Goblin Market’s seen it.
The buall-bob hunches into a predatory stance, showing needle-sharp fox teeth. “Let us kill the fair Fae queen for Your Majesty.”
“Yes, yes. So you can take your Throne, Majesty.” A bog-hag sweeps forward, swampy talons clenching. “Let us carve her good.”
“We stuff her eyes for you, Mistress!”
All around us, the dark Fae creep closer, closer, whispering promises of Syl’s death. Syl backs up, fear on her face, but she doesn’t call her white flame. “I’m not the queen,” she tries telling them. “It wasn’t real.”
They don’t care. They hem her in, all cruel clutching talons and gleaming knives.
“Syl!” I dive for her, grabbing her hand as the Market erupts into violence all around us. Shrieks and shouts and guttural growls, breaking glass, thrown pottery—the entire Market lunges at us in a wave of fangs and talons, jagged knives and thrown rotted fruit.
I drag her away from the crowd, talons carving only air.
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