by Ruth Long
But the moment Titania failed her, or fought too hard. The moment Titania was no longer of use…
Mab’s eyes flashed when Titania reached out to take the casket. The glass wobbled like the surface of a bubble about to burst, rippling with a rainbow sheen. Nails scraped over the queen’s hands, leaving a raw trail as they pulled back into the far side of the mirror, tearing skin, but leaving the glass intact once more.
“Nothing can replace you, my Titania. Not if you make it ours. Part of us.”
And then she was gone. Titania gazed at her own perfect reflection, the casket weighing heavily in her bleeding hands.
She turned slowly and offered it to Jack. But her voice reached out to the whole room. Jack remembered suddenly that they were far from alone. Her courtiers gathered at the center of the chamber, at the foot of the steps leading up to the throne, hovering, humming, waiting. Every moment, every movement, watched. Every word heard.
Titania could never show weakness. In that way, she and Jack were alike.
“A mortal girl is loose in our forest. Whosoever brings her to me will be rewarded. Beyond measure.” She dropped her voice and suddenly she was speaking to him alone. Intimate, like a lover’s whisper. “I can give you your desires, Jack. Your freedom and your hope.”
She knew him too well. She knew him better than he knew himself. His dreams, his wishes, all the things he had given up on. She knew each and every one.
“I can’t.”
But he knew his duty.
“Because of your oath?” She laughed. “And where has your oath brought you, Jack?” She said his name like a curse, like a slur. “And what value can we place on an oath you were forced to make?”
Jack stared her in the eye.
She was right. He hated it, but couldn’t deny it. He dropped his gaze to the marbled floor.
“She’ll bring ruin to the forest. Oberon will take her, make her his, refuse to let her go, and winter will sweep back over us. And what will become of the forest fae then? We all know he hates them. Nothing will stay his hand if he takes her.”
Titania placed the casket on the table beneath the mirror and turned back to him, smiling again. A predatory smile. Jack knew it of old. It was more like Mab’s than she would care to admit.
He needed to get out. He needed to get away from her. And he longed to stay. To let go. To obey.
The casket pulled his attention back. Did he hear a beat from inside, an incessant rhythm, like the pounding of a pulse? It called to him, and he wanted to answer. But if he brought the girl here, what would it still take to win his heart from that box? Her own in return?
Titania’s hand clutched his. “Bring her to me, Jack. Or I’ll see you suffer more than anyone has suffered in the Realm.”
Jack met her eyes, a challenge rising in him. “Why not just bring her here yourself, as you did me?”
Titania’s upper lip lifted. “That’s against the rules of this game. If you still had an ounce of what you were inside you, you would know that. I can’t snatch her from the forest. She doesn’t belong there, and she isn’t mine. Yet. You, on the other hand, promised to serve faithfully. You gave a vow both to me and to my husband. And to her. A dreadful mistake, my Jack. No one can serve two masters. Let alone three.” Her patience had fled now. The game of seduction had failed. “If you don’t cooperate with me, you will regret it for eternity. Believe that.”
“She must come to you willingly,” Jack said. “Those are the rules. Offer all the rewards you want to anyone here, but they can’t force her, any more than you can.”
Let them all hear it. Let them know that despite her offer of rewards, the task was impossible. And remind himself of the same thing.
“Then make her come willingly,” Titania snarled. “Persuade her. You were charming once. Or don’t, if you’re that obstinate.” She flicked her wrist as if to wave away an insect. “There are ways and means around it. It’s her heart and soul together that make her strong. Break her heart, strip away her soul, and I can take her as I will. You, Jack…” She turned and slapped him hard, the flare of humiliation more a shock than the pain. “You know full well what to do.”
Titania pushed past him and stalked down the steps from the Rose Throne to the receiving area, then down the three steps to the intricately patterned main floor of the chamber. The light from the high windows overhead filtered down, turning reddish purple as the day neared its end.
“My queen?” said a nervous voice. Jenny’s brother. One who soon enough would know all about the blood required from the Realm. Jack shook his head. The poor fool didn’t realize that come the time of the blood tithe, he’d be the forfeit. Jack paused in his thoughts.
Or maybe he did. Was it a coincidence the piper was at the Edge playing his music? Or did he have a purpose of his own?
“Does he know what he did?” Jack called after Titania. “Does he know who he summoned?” She scowled at him, and he knew he wasn’t going to get an answer.
Instead, she turned to Tom, her touch possessive. “You had a sister, piper. Tell me about her. Tell me what she loved, what tunes you played just for her…” She curled her fingers through Tom’s hair, caressing him.
“My…my sister?” Memories struggled through his eyes.
“Titania?” Jack asked warily. “What are you planning?”
But Titania ignored him, that cruel smile playing across her lips.
“Yes, your sister. Tell me everything. But first, my piper…” Her voice transformed to a purr of satisfaction, one with an edge. “Play for me. Something soothing. Drive the wild from our home.”
The flute struck a series of notes, music that made magic in the air. Magic that had once, years ago, roused the forest and brought Tom here. Finding the boy lost on this side of the Edge that morning, terrified, raving about the trees, Jack hadn’t known what to do. What could one do with a fool who could wield such magic? Jack couldn’t leave him loose in the forest, not with such power, nor send him back to do it again. And so he had brought him here, to Titania.
So who was the fool?
The music rose high and the world blurred around Jack, twisting, the ground falling away beneath his feet. The last thing he saw was the casket, the gold trims gleaming, waiting, as hungry as Mab herself. Neither of them gave up anything willingly. His heart…or Jenny’s. And if he did what the queen asked, Titania would do with it as Mab had done with all her rivals’ hearts. She would eat it.
Jack slammed into the forest floor, his breath driven from his body, pain lancing through him. He was back by the river. Jenny’s voice drifted from the trees, coming closer, laughing at something Puck had said. Jack scrambled to his feet. The last light of day was vanishing. He was running out of time. Titania was weaving more than one web. And now he had a decision to make.
One girl. That was all she was. A mortal. Not even one of the fae. And all he had to do was take her where she already wanted to go.
Jack set his jaw and glared at the forest surrounding him, as if it challenged his intent.
He didn’t have to like it. He just had to do it. A chance of freedom was within his grasp. And she was only one girl.
The sun slid out of sight and Jack cursed it as it vanished.
chapter nine
Night fell on the forest, the evening song of birds settling amid the trees, the red-gold light of sunset fading to purple darkness. Jack made no reappearance, though Puck had gone to investigate and had returned with her clothes, clean and dry, perfectly folded.
Jenny pulled them on gratefully, but kept the cloak too. She wasn’t sure why—a protection against the forest, perhaps, to be clothed as part of it. She lifted the cloak to her face and breathed it in. Its scent made her feel safer. Jenny smiled grimly. She knew how that sounded. She also knew she was only looking out for herself now. She had a plan.
“Where is he?” she asked Puck yet again.
But Puck just shrugged, continued scratching his back on a tree trunk, and ans
wered in the same vague way. “Something must have called him away, that’s all. He’ll be back with the dawn. Get some sleep.”
Back with the dawn. Back with the dawn with some other way to be rid of her, no doubt. And what sort of monster would he deliver her to next? Okay, maybe that was unfair. On the riverbank, she’d felt sorry for him, yes. For a moment. And for a moment, he seemed to have understood her when she said Tom had been…had been taken. But now Jack had vanished again without explanation. He wanted her to trust him. He’d washed her clothes even. But could she truly trust anyone who called the Woodsman and his wife friends? And even if she could get past that, she knew he only intended to return her to the Edge.
The crawling, pinprick sensation of Redcaps raced up her arms again and she rubbed them, trying to scour the memory away. It was no good. They’d come in the darkness. They would come again, them or something like them.
Jenny felt for the locket and held the metal against her fingers. She ran it along its chain, listening to the faint series of clicks it made.
The boy in the tree had told her the piper would go back to the castle, to the queen; the Woodsman and his wife had said he always went back to her in the end. But the queen had hunted the piper when he ran. It seemed less like he went back to her and more like she took him back. So if Tom was the piper and he was running away, he clearly wanted to get home. Had he tried all these years to escape? To get back to them? Had he been trying all along?
“…she’ll follow the river home soon enough…” Puck had said.
The locket clicked along the chain, and Jenny tightened her grip.
Puck was sound asleep, and all around them the forest was still. Not even a breeze to disturb the trees.
Jenny swallowed. Jack had called himself a guardian. Of the Realm. The Edge. His job was to keep people out. She couldn’t begrudge him that. In fact, she could make it easier on him.
Jenny rose silently, her eyes fixed on Puck’s sleeping form. Boarding school dorms had taught her to be quiet at night, to make that dark trip from bed to bathroom without disturbing anyone. Of course, boarding school dorms didn’t include dried branches underfoot or crunchy leaves and undergrowth. They didn’t feature low-hanging brambles or the hooks of exposed roots or rocks. But she managed. Moonlight helped her, a moon much bigger and brighter than anything she had seen at home. It silvered the world and drove the shadows back.
Jenny crept through the forest, back toward the stream, which would lead her to the river. Which would lead her to the queen and Tom.
Once she moved away from their camp, the forest at night wasn’t as silent as she had thought. The shadowy form of an owl swooped from tree to tree, its large moonlit eyes studying her as she passed, following her for a time before taking off after prey. The undergrowth shook and trembled as something hurried past her. Jenny jumped, stifled a cry, but it was gone as suddenly as it had come. She must have startled some nocturnal animal or woken something that slept. Above her, the treetops swayed slightly in the moonlight. The leaves whispered to each other.
They’re only trees, she reminded herself, and she almost believed it, perhaps for the first time ever. The thought should have been comforting. Instead it suddenly occurred to her that this was a terrible idea. Alone, in the forest, in the dark. She pulled the cloak around her throat, burying her fingers in its leaves.
She couldn’t go home without Tom. Not again. She thought of her mother. The dark circles under her eyes. Her sad smile. The nightstand cluttered with orange prescription bottles.
No, without Tom, better to never go home at all.
The stream glittered in the moonlight and Jenny picked her way along the bank, almost enjoying the music it made as it tumbled over the rocks and sang its way downstream. But the rest of the forest had fallen silent. A different quiet from that around the place where she and Puck had settled for the night. That had been comfortable, safe, a shield against the night. Here it was watchful, poised. She stopped and crouched low to the ground, breathing as quietly as possible.
Nothing moved. Not a rustle in the undergrowth, not a movement among the leaves. Nothing. She moved forward again, scanning the darkness around her. The silence deepened. Even the river seemed hushed. Something crawled from her wrists up her arms and she realized it was her own flesh, the tiny hairs on her arms rising. A creature slid through the trees, just out of sight, shadowing her. It kept pace with her, part of the forest, part of the darkness. Jenny stopped, balanced on a rocky outcrop that jutted from the undergrowth like bare bones. She stared into the inky places between the trees.
It was there. Impossible to actually see it, not clearly. But she knew.
Berry-bright eyes, leaf-tangled hair, bark and vines…
Jenny swallowed down the fear that rose in her throat. She balled her fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms. The bite of pain made her temper burn more brightly.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered, as if daring it to come closer.
It didn’t, though. It faded back into the trees, out of sight, but still there. She was sure it was still there—hostile, alien. Then realization slipped silently into her mind. She was the alien in this world, not something formed of it, part of it. She was the other.
The forest heaved as if a sudden gale rampaged through it, leaves and branches roaring like a thunderous sea. A mournful cry, carried on the wind, eerie and unnatural, reached her and she froze. The night pressed close all around her. She shifted to the balls of her feet, but before she could run, everything went still and quiet again. Only the shimmering river danced on, still murmuring its quiet song. Through the trees, the moonlight picked out a leaf here, a thorn there.
There was no sign of the creature in the forest. No sign of anything at all. This was a new kind of silence, born of terror so great that nothing dared move.
Another cry rang out, a weird and plaintive howl, like a small cat in great pain. Jenny’s stomach twisted. She didn’t think. She stumbled from the riverbank and followed a moonlit path through the unnaturally silent forest until it opened onto a glade, in the center of which was a stone circle. The smell of rot and decay surrounded her, but she pressed on, her nerves jangling. When she reached the stones, she found not a cat, but a tiny creature, wrapped in pale green-gray furs.
A baby, perhaps, but the child of what, she couldn’t tell. Its tiny face was squashed and bat-like, the skin a deeper shade of gray-green than the fur. It shivered, its small lips pressed together so hard the lower one had turned white, and its dark blue eyes gazed up at her, ancient eyes in such a small face.
Then its somber expression crumpled and it wailed, a heartrending sound that evoked for Jenny every memory of being cold, alone, and afraid. Its open mouth displayed a row of tiny yellow teeth, sharp as pins, and a thick black tongue curled up behind them. It snarled at her, snapped at the air, vicious and terrified.
“Shh,” Jenny whispered, steeling her nerve and leaning in closer. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s just me. I won’t hurt you.” The creature’s eyes focused on her, and it stilled, its fierce little snarls turning to whimpers.
Before she could think better of it, Jenny scooped the baby into her arms, cradling it close. She had only held a cousin’s baby before, but the little creature fit into her arms as if it had always belonged there. It turned its head toward her, the questing mouth open to receive milk she couldn’t give it. A moment of panic seized her as it bared its teeth again. It was going to bite her, looking for blood like the Redcaps. But the little wet nose just nuzzled against her, and settled, comforted by her warmth.
Jenny shivered, holding it close and wondering what she was going to do now.
“Stop wandering off like that,” Puck scolded as he stepped into the moonlight. Jenny jumped, her heart spasming. He glowered up at her. “Anything could happen to you and then what would I tell Jack? Where did you think you were going? What have you got there?”
So much for sneaking away in the night. Jenny tur
ned to show him the baby, but on first sight of it, Puck’s face paled.
“Put it back,” he whispered. “Very carefully, put it back and move away.”
“I’m not going to leave a baby—”
“It’s not a baby. I mean, it is but it isn’t— Trust me, Jenny. You have to put it back before the mother or the father finds us. Do you understand?”
The baby snuggled closer to her. Jenny smiled, smoothing down the silky hair. Her fingers brushed its leathery skin and the creature gave a tiny cooing noise. Ugly, yes, but a baby nonetheless.
“I’m not going to leave a baby alone out here at night,” she repeated.
“It’s not a human baby. It’s a Leczi, and when its parents realize it’s—” His feet tangled in the ferns and he went down, the air expelled from his lungs in a whoosh. He came back up, swearing loudly and his hands slick with blood, green blood. The conviction had gone from his voice when he spoke again. “I…I think I’ve just found its father.”
Jenny approached the body warily. The Leczi had a thick mane of green-gray hair, the same shade as the fur covering the child. Now she realized that it wasn’t a wrapping, but the child’s own hair that covered it, long and silky. The adult Leczi’s mouth was slack, open to reveal razor-sharp teeth, the same color as the child’s but so much bigger. The fingers were tipped with long yellow claws. These were stained with more blood, a darker red than human, some old, but some fresh. Jenny could see raw, red, almost iridescent flesh trapped behind them. The Leczi had fought savagely, but it had still lost. Its stomach had been torn out. Claw marks gouged its skin.