“Don’t get all emotional about it,” Isadora waved a hand. “It’s a matter of politeness, is all. Besides, you know what they say – live well, die immortal, leave a beautiful corpse.”
“I’ve never heard that said,” I grinned.
“Shut up,” Isadora snapped. “It’s your fault I’m here at all. Every word from your lips should be deference to my sacrifice.”
“Sexy lady with pretty ink, like a picture book with a beginning, middle, and end,” Smithers sang, bending down to inspect Isadora’s tattoo. She slapped him away.
“I love what they’ve done with the place,” I said, gazing around the dark hallway, searching for Liah in the dark corners. I remembered the commentary on the interior design shows I’d watched on the telly. “Bold color scheme, excellent use of lighting, decor a mix of minimalism and abject terror. I have one question, though. Shouldn’t this place be swarming with demons?”
“It will take some time for them to make their way back here after they were hit with that belief bomb,” Aline said. “For now, we’ve got the place to ourselves.”
“Not just you,” a voice said from behind us.
I whirled around. In the middle of the hall, holding a bow over her shoulder, was Liah.
The urge to embrace her itched in my arms. Being with Maeve was turning me soft. Fae didn’t embrace. I walked over to her and fixed her with a nonchalant look. “So you weren’t a mirage.”
“I was not.”
Fuck it. I wasn’t fae anymore. I was a human, and seeing her gladdened my heart. I threw myself at her, wrapping my arms around her neck.
“I’m glad you’re not a megalomaniac villain,” I whispered in her ear.
“Get off me.” Liah pushed me away, but there was a hint of softness in her cold eyes. “The humans have made you all sentimental. We don’t have time for this. If you want to stop Daigh once and for all, you’d better come with me.”
We stood at the mouth of hell – a gaping maw of darkness so dark it made the void seem like the Blackpool Illuminations. Surrounding the arch was a decorative border formed from skulls and femurs. The decor reminded me a little of the Unseelie court, except we never had doorways made of darkness so solid and oppressive it threw you away from it.
Liah took a vial from a pouch on her hip and tipped a black sludge on to her stump. A rank smell rose through the hallway. Liah rubbed her hand into the sludge, smearing her skin with the black slime. Aline shrieked as Liah rubbed the foul grease into her skin.
“Stop squirming,” she commanded. “This is the blood of the demon that held me at Daigh’s behest. He deserved his death. It may spoil your complexion, but it will get you through that door.”
She did the same to Smithers, then approached me, her hands raised. I kept my face impassive as she slid her hand over my skin. This was no worse than some of the things Daigh had forced me to do. And if it led us to Maeve and Corbin, it was worth it.
I sniffed, and the foul shite caught in my throat and made my stomach gag and retch. Liah thumped me on the back while I struggled to breath normally.
It had better be worth it.
With the demon’s blood smearing my face, the black doorway no longer appeared as oppressive. In fact, I could make out the faint glow of a light in the depths. I sprinted forward and passed through the darkness with ease. Nothing bit me nor snared me.
I emerged into a cavernous space, shaped like the interior of a sidhe but on an impossibly grand scale. In the center of the room stood a high throne built from a pile of bones, presiding over an enormous fire from which sulfurous flames leapt and licked. A long bridge stretched from where I stood across to the throne.
Atop the throne sat Daigh, an enormous crown with a blue aura sitting atop his head. Across from him at the foot of the throne stood a figure, her skin smeared with black sludge and her stance wide and defiant.
Maeve!
She had her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side as she spoke. From the expression on her face, it looked like… it was impossible, but…
I stifled a laugh.
Maeve Moore was giving Daigh a science lecture.
Her voice reverberated from the cavernous space as she enunciated on some vital point. I caught the words ‘DNA’ and ‘epigenetics,’ but the rest of it was like a foreign language. On the throne, Daigh’s mouth hung open. He tried to interject, but Maeve kept talking and talking.
“For a High Priestess, she’s useless,” Liah said. “She had him at her mercy, but she let him go. Now she just keeps trying to talk to him about science.”
“That sounds exactly like Maeve.”
As I watched in fascination, trying to figure out if Maeve had a plan, a shadow moved at the base of the throne. A human arm reached up between the femurs, hauling his body up with surprising stealth. Corbin reached the next step and kept going, climbing up the back of the throne until he was so close to Daigh he could reach out and touch him.
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Liah said. “He’s got no weapon.”
But he does.
I wanted to cheer as Corbin reached the top of the throne. Daigh still hadn’t noticed him, mesmerized as he was by Maeve, who was now trying to explain how the genome worked. Corbin hung off the back and pulled the knife from his side – the same knife Daigh had used to kill him. He swung around like a monkey, flying over the side of the throne. I expected him to plunge the blade into Daigh’s chest. Instead, he jammed it into the blue-eyes skull in the center of the crown.
“Ooooh,” Daigh moaned. The blue aura of the crown flickered and died out. Corbin grabbed it off Daigh’s head as he lost his balance on the precarious bone steps. He toppled down, down, in a whirl of pale skin and black robes. Skulls shattered as his body bounced once before sliding to a stop in front of Maeve.
Daigh’s hands flew to his head. When he found it bare, he roared with anguish. The sound was music to my ears. I surged forward, my only thought on reaching Maeve.
“It’s over, father,” Maeve said, her hands still on her hips. “I didn’t have to defeat you with magic. I’ve already outwitted you with science. That crown was the source of any power you had. I’ve destroyed it, and with it your future, as you tried to destroy mine.”
I reached her side and threw my arms around her. She jumped, but relaxed into my embrace as she realized it was me. “It figures you two would defeat our ultimate enemy with a boring lecture,” I grinned, my heart surging with pride and awe and love. Corbin stood over Daigh, his knife in his hand, ready to stab if he so much as fluttered an eyelash.
“Blake.” Maeve nuzzled her head into my neck. She felt so good in my arms. “I trust you’re our rescue party?”
I swept my arm back toward the others, who were crowding on to the bridge to embrace her in turn. “At your service. But how did you know the crown was where he was getting power?”
“Easy. When I got my DNA results back, I realized that our magic was scientifically observable. It was written into my DNA, which means it’s also written into Daigh’s. When he made the deal with the demon king and gave his magic, he altered his DNA. But DNA can only be altered in one of two ways – by random, spontaneous mutations, or by epigenetics, which is changes to the way DNA expresses itself, and not the actual code. Then I thought of Aline’s use of fae magic after she emerged from the painting, and how you were able to perform some kinds of fae magic even though you shouldn’t be able to, and it hit me.”
“What hit you?” This was already over my head, but she was squirming in my arms in her excitement to explain.
“That perhaps everything we think about magic is wrong. That perhaps epigenetics is what gives us our magical specialties. We only present with one specialty, because it’s better for working magic, but we actually contain the DNA potential to perform any kind of magic. That would mean there had to be an environmental trigger to force the change. Yours was the trauma of growing up with Daigh, Aline’s was being trapped inside the paintin
g. And Daigh’s was whatever bargain he struck with the demon when he exchanged his powers.”
Daigh moaned. Corbin kicked him, and Maeve continued. “And then it occurred to me that a demon wouldn’t just allow Daigh’s power to go to waste. After all, they have shades come through here, and I remembered what you told me about the human sacrifices required to raised the Slaugh, and how the demons drew the energy of their blood, of their genetic material.” Corbin kicked the broken crown out of Daigh’s reach. “And I realized that what we’re standing in right here is the universe’s most sophisticated genetics lab, and that crown was the switch. I was going to kill him, but then I realized I didn’t have to. I could truly, finally, strip him of power, and to him that would be worse than death.”
“Sever the crown from the king, and watch him fall.” I stood on Daigh’s wrist, grinding the heel of my boot into his hand until he whimpered. The sound was the purest music. “Maeve Moore, I am in awe. What are we going to do with—”
A bowstring zinged. I whipped around. Daigh groaned, rolling on to his side. A green-tipped arrow stuck out of his abdomen, the shaft quivering.
I didn’t have to trace my eyes back to know who’d taken that shot. Liah stalked across the bridge, her cold eyes narrowed. Daigh groaned and tried to climb to his knees to crawl away. Liah shoved her boot in his back and pushed him down.
He curled over, his eyes meeting hers, swimming with pain. “Your new queen had demanded mercy for me, and you disobeyed her.”
“I’m not Liah’s queen,” Maeve said.
“I have hated you my entire life,” Liah growled. She drew back her bow and aimed her arrow at his forehead. “You took away the one thing in my life that was good. You took Blake and you twisted him into a pale imitation of you, and in doing so you twisted me. This death is only the death you gave me.”
“Liah, stop.” I laid my hand on her arm, above the stump of her ruined hand. Her skin was warm, strong, her muscles taut. I can’t believe I’m doing this. “He’s not worth it.”
Liah’s eyes flicked to mine. “After everything he’s done to you, you want him to live?”
I shrugged. “I want him to live as a shade, without power, without an outlet for his cruelty. He will suffer here in this halfway house of the dead far more than if he were to truly join it. Besides, why should we care about him? We’ve won.”
It was true. Hated for Daigh had burned inside me for many years. Liah was right, he had twisted me, but not nearly as much as that rage had done. Now that he had no power over me, now that I had found my family, I couldn’t bring myself to perform this one last act of cruelty. Daigh deserved death, that I would not dispute. But it would not be by my hand, or by Liah’s.
Now that I knew I had a home, and Maeve, and a real family, I didn’t need that hatred anymore. I let it go.
“You may have won, Blake. You stopped the Slaugh. You have your plan to resurrect your dead friends. You’ll have a bright and beautiful future as a human.” Liah’s lip trembled. “I have nothing.”
“That’s not true. I’ll show you. Let Daigh stay here with the demons. Let him be the one making deals on the crossroads. The fae need a new leader, one who thinks of more than just himself. It should be you, Liah.”
She snorted.
“Blake’s right.” Maeve stepped beside Liah, her hand resting on Liah’s shoulder. “Did you know that we made Daigh an offer? If you would lead the fae, I would make you the same offer. We destroy the gateway to Tir Na Nog and invite the fae back to the earth. You will have dominion over all the wild places. We will return to you the forests and the glades and the oceans and the rivers. And you and Blake will work together to preserve them, to protect the spirits of the trees from further attack. Would you accept this offer?”
Liah lowered the bow. “Yes. I will do it.”
Maeve’s eyes bugged out. “Seriously?”
Liah shrugged. “The fae will return to their rightful home. It is what we were supposed to be fighting for all along. We will need to negotiate something about all the iron up there, and about protection for our—”
“We can hammer out the details later.” Maeve held out her hand.
Liah stared at it until I nudged her arm. “You grab her hand and shake it. It’s a human thing.”
“How odd.” But Liah swung her bow onto her back, and shook Maeve’s hand. “I accept your bargain, High Priestess. The fae shall return. We shall care for the wild places and the ghosts of trees.”
Daigh burst out laughing. Blood bubbled out of the wound in his side. Red blood. Human blood. “You can’t… they’ll never accept you…”
“I have achieved the prize you long boasted of,” Liah said, kicking him in the side until his laughter turned to a slow wheeze. “The fae will return to earth, Tir Na Nog will be destroyed, and we shall have no more bloodshed.”
“I like her chances,” Maeve grinned.
“Yes.” Liah stood back from Daigh. She nodded at the knife in Maeve’s chest. “I am sorry about that.”
An apology from Liah? Wow, this really was a day for miracles. I gathered Maeve in my arms, my heart bursting.
Corbin pointed to the crown at his feet. The knife stuck out of the central skull, whose eyes flashed erratically. “What do we do with this?”
“Throw it into the flames,” Maeve said.
“No!” Aline showed past me, striding up to Corbin. She bent down and picked up the crown. “If you destroy it completely, you’ll bring down this whole place, and then the dead won’t have anywhere to go. It must have a master, and it must be repaired.”
“Than what do you suggest?” Corbin demanded.
Aline’s face broke into a beautiful smile, a mirror of Maeve. She pressed her palm to the skull, which hummed in her hand as the blue light flickered inside it once more. She held up the crown, and placed it on her head.
“I will wear it,” she said. “It’s time the underworld had a queen.”
37
ARTHUR
The void closed up with a shudder and a great rush of darkness, leaving behind a pile of slumped bodies – all that remained of those who’d entered it. I stared at the blank spots on the circle where Blake and Isadora had stood.
“What happened?” I demanded, stamping my foot down on the ground where the void had been. My boot narrowly missed kicking Blake’s limp hand. “How did we lose two extra people?”
“Liah broke through the circle and leapt into the void,” Flynn said, his voice uneven. “Blake followed her. And Isadora followed Blake.”
“Why would Blake do something so completely fucked up?”
“We don’t have time to consider it.” Clara shoved her way to the center of the circle, a black bag slung over her shoulder. “Quickly now, we’ve got a lot of work to do to prepare the next part of the ritual. Bring all the bodies.”
Flynn grabbed Blake’s wrists and dragged him in front of the sidhe. Isadora was already slumped there, her arm shrunk away from me. As Flynn rolled Blake over, his glassy eyes stared at the sky, and a chill ran down my spine.
“We can bring him back too, right?” I asked Clara.
“We’re going to try,” she said. “If he even wants to return.”
A dark rage flared inside me. She had a point. After everything I’d accused Blake of, and the way we’d all refused to trust him even though Maeve did, he might’ve decided it was time to switch loyalties. I thought we’d made our peace, but maybe I underestimated just how much he’d been hurting. Guilt gnawed at my gut, and my bandaged arm flared with pain.
“We’ll need a likeness of Blake.” Flynn pulled a ballpoint pen and one of Corbin’s Post-it notes from his pocket and sat down, leaning the paper against his knee as he started to sketch.
“I’ll get the others.” I spun around and headed to the tree. I didn’t want to think about Blake anymore.
We’d wrapped Maeve’s body in a sheet, which was just as well, because if I had to look at her glassy eyes or touch her clam
my skin I’d probably end up immolating her on the spot, and then we’d never get her back. I shoved my hands underneath her and gingerly picked up the stiff body, the way I’d always carried her up to bed when we’d lived at Briarwood.
“I’ll bring Corbin,” Jane said, reaching for the box. My chest heaved as I noticed again how small it was. I hadn’t looked inside, but there was no way it housed Corbin’s body intact. Could we even restore him if he was in pieces?
We’re going to find out.
Goosepimples prickled across my shoulders. I glanced behind me, scanning the trees for movement. But there was nothing, because the fear was from inside me.
I shook my head. You’re being stupid. You’ve got goosepimples because you’re carrying around your lover’s body.
I gapped it down to the sidhe. The others had dragged the bodies into the entrance, piling them up against each other. I laid Maeve down beside Blake, and Jane placed the box beside her. “As long as some of the body remains, we’ll be able to perform the spell,” Clara said, stroking the end of the box. “You can thank yourself for recovering the body, Arthur. ”
“Oh,” Corbin’s mother took in the box with wide eyes. She buried her head into her husband’s shoulders. Andrew glanced across at me and nodded. I wasn’t sure what the nod meant, but its significance weighed over my heart.
“We’re going to have to take the lid off,” Clara said gently. Andrew flinched. His wife wailed.
“Super,” Flynn gulped, looking up from his drawing.
My gaze snapped to Rowan. He stared at his feet, his lips moving as he counted something none of us could see. After a few moments, he nodded. “If it will bring Corbin back, it’s worth it.”
“I’ll do it,” Clara said kindly, pulling the box toward herself and pointing to a spot on the other side of the sidhe. “You take up that position in the circle, Rowan. Flynn, you’re over there. Arthur, stand between them. Andrew and Bree, you’re at the back. You won’t see anything, I promise. Gwen and Candice will stand beside me.”
The Castle of Spirit and Sorrow Page 22