The grendel works for Nightlock? That little slobbering weasel?
No way. No way. Those two words kept circling my mind. This was the strangest bout of good fortune I’d ever experienced as the only unlucky member of an exceedingly lucky family.
Even better, it actually made sense. When the merchant sold the changelings to the grendel, the hob had mentioned that the grendel’s mysterious employer was buying back merchandise he’d originally sold. Nell was right—Nightlock had had both the opportunity and motive to take the changelings from the human world and bring them down here.
Oh, this was too good. I’d get the changelings back and get our key to finding the secret entrance to the prison in one trip?
Nightlock is elevated enough to have his own staff? His own home? Alastor moaned. How could this day possibly get any worse?
As the Scholar edged farther outside, I had one very specific idea of how that could happen.
Before I could really think about it, before I could list all the thousands of reasons why it was a bad idea, I was doing it. Keeping my eyes on the spider, I slowly edged back through his legs, carefully avoiding his body’s coarse hair.
“You work in the employ of Nightlock now, do you?” the Scholar asked, easing out of the stall completely. As soon as the curtain fell, I whipped back toward the book, my heart slamming so hard, so fast, I could barely breathe.
What are you doing? Alastor demanded.
The Scholar had left his book open to the page of notes on Alastor’s true name.
I glanced back toward the tent’s entrance again, adrenaline surging through me. I could no longer hear the argument out in the market over the roar of blood in my ears.
The malefactor gasped. You wouldn’t dare.
There wasn’t time to stand there and study it and risk being caught doing so. There was only time to rip the page out and take it with me to show Nell.
If I was wrong about the Masters’ curse for thieves not affecting humans, I was about to find myself short one hand. The hand I used to write.
To draw and paint.
My whole body went cold at the thought, but my mind was too scared to actually picture it, or wonder how I could ever possibly explain the missing body part to my parents. But if I was right . . .
A hero wouldn’t think, he’d just do it—he’d make the potential sacrifice for the greater good. Which, in this case, wasn’t just helping my own family; it was helping to save Nell from her father’s terrible deal.
“You demand, do you? I got my paws on it first, which means you best be taking your eyes off it.”
“Curse you to the lava pits! I require that tea set and I will fight in the name of my employer until my dying breath—”
I kept my eyes on my bracelet as I reached toward the page, waiting for it to sense my intentions and flare with molten heat. It was uncomfortably warm, but it had been for the last several minutes as our allotted time ran down.
I sucked in a deep breath.
The paper was brittle with age. It tore easily, as quiet as a whisper. My vision blacked out with panic, but when my eyes cleared, the page was in my hand and my hand was still attached to my body.
Unbelievable! Alastor seethed. I should expose you for this! And the mischief of the Masters—mortals! Humans! Making a profit off fiends for centuries!
I flipped the book shut. The severed head watched me the whole time, its mouth open in a kooky little smile.
“Don’t rat me out, buddy,” I whispered to it, stuffing the page into the pocket of my cloak. “Sorry about the whole . . . body situation.”
Stop talking to the dead man’s head, you rat-brained rump, and leave before the Scholar returns to find what you’ve done!
My pulse was still thrumming through me like waves of electricity. Each step I took felt more like flying than walking. At least until the Scholar swung around and crawled back into his tent.
“You’re foolish enough to linger and test my patience? I’ve other waiting customers and the market closes tonight.” The spider fiend waved a leg at the curtains. “Do try to stay alive, Alastor the Lost. I have plans for you. Now, fix your garment and be on your way, pulpy meat sack.”
I lifted my hood back up and let it shadow my face. And then, before either of us could reply, the severed head opened its mouth and shouted “Next!”
Nell wasn’t where I had left her.
I found her standing a few feet away from the Scholar’s tent, her gaze turned back toward the entrance of Neverwoe.
I looped my arm through hers, trying to tug her forward. She stiffened, gripping my arm like she was going to try to flip me on my back. Not wanting to confirm that Nell could do it—and also not wanting to wait and see how long it would take the Scholar to find that a page from his creepy book of stalkerish secrets was missing—I whispered, “It’s me. We have to go. Now.”
As if agreeing with me, my bracelet grew hot to the point of pain. Nell let out a small gasp, glancing down at hers.
“Good call,” she said. “Is there another exit besides the way we came in?”
Yes, Alastor began, still sounding irritated, if you continue straight ahead—
Another voice rang out over the din of the marketplace, drowning out Alastor. “Mandatory evacuations of the Boneyard have begun! In the name of the queen, you will close this market at once and bring the remainder of its magic to the collection point! Any and all fiends who do not cooperate willingly will find themselves unwillingly thrown into a cell!”
Ogres, all with orange sashes across their armor, stormed through the market, their numbers flooding the aisle of vendor stalls. Several of the guards threw open curtains and dragged fiends kicking and snarling away from their fun. Others knocked down the bone structures and tore at the strands of magic lights, leaving only the illuminated bubbles to light the way. The Masters popped in and out of the air around them, trying to stop them from flattening the whole market under their pounding fists and feet.
There clearly was an exit nearby, because fiends were hurrying past us, merchandise piled dangerously high in their arms as they ran. Their fear charged the air. Equally powerful was the force of their elbows, shoulders, and knees bumping into us, threatening to carry us away with them.
“Look!” Nell whispered, pointing just beyond them.
A shaggy black dog jumped up onto one of the emptied tables, sniffing around. He lifted his head to look right at us, then let out a thunderous bark. Some of the feeling left my hands as another howler jumped onto a chair to see what he had found. Subpar wasn’t far behind.
Sinstar! Alastor corrected.
All right, Sinstar. He held up a lantern glowing with real flame, his wicked-edged blade already in his hand.
Rather than ask Al where to go, we followed a twitchy-looking goblin as it scurried through the last of the market’s stalls, made a sharp left turn into the shadows, and pulled back a curtain to reveal a wobbly set of bone-inlaid stairs.
“Where are the changelings?” I whispered.
“I followed the fiend through the market and overheard the address he gave to the delivery fiend,” Nell whispered back. There was a hitch in her voice as she added, “Their dinner is in five hours.”
I took the stairs at a run, but, sure enough, my lungs began to burn and I couldn’t keep pace with Nell. She drifted farther and farther ahead of me, until I couldn’t see her above the heads of the nearby fiends. I started to call out to her, only to remember why that was an extremely bad idea.
A little help? I thought at Alastor, glancing back over my shoulder for any sign of Sinstar. A goblin climbed between my legs, knocking me off-balance. I lashed an arm out, somehow catching the railing before I took one final tumble.
As you have demonstrated today, you are perfectly capable of looking out for yourself, Alastor said snidely.
Below us, Neverwoe was shattering into pieces, the bone structures tossed aside like toothpicks. I squinted, peering through the darkness to whe
re the ogres had gathered around the clear vat of magic at the entrance. One of them directed streams of magic out of that tank and into a series of lanterns, jars, and orbs.
Section by section, the lights of the carnival went out, the rides went still, and silence swept over it all like a blanket.
The Masters were nowhere in sight.
“Move! Get out of the way!”
I swung back around, tracking Sinstar’s reedy voice. He and the howlers were pushing up through the thrashing knot of fiends behind me like dark arrows. With as deep a breath in as I could manage, I ducked under the arm of an ogre and tried to weave my way in and out of the fiends bottlenecked at the top of the staircase.
“By the Great Ghoul,” a hob said as I stepped over it. “The Void—it will never end, will it? It will take the whole kingdom!”
“No! The queen will save us,” a lycan growled back. “She has a plan for us all.”
Yeah. That plan being my untimely death. The thing I didn’t understand was the why.
What do you mean? Alastor asked.
She said she wanted to open the gate between Downstairs and the realm of Ancients in Salem, remember? Why does she need you and your brothers’ magic and life forces to do that?
The malefactor did not have an answer for me. I felt his presence tighten into a protective coil.
I wriggled my way between an incredibly tall, incredibly hairy duo of fiends, ignoring their grunts. At the very top of the stairs was another tent. I knew the outside world was near when the first whorls of vapor crept in under the fabric of its walls.
Just as I reached for the fabric flaps, a hand latched on to my arm and gave me a sharp tug left, deeper into the shadowed heart of the tent and away from the fiends.
“Here,” Nell said, pulling up one of the stakes from the ground and creating our own exit. We crawled under, careful to replace it just as it had been. I stood up slowly, careful not to slice my back open against the jagged face of the mountain. The sliver of space between it and the tent’s panel forced us to sidestep away from where the fiends poured from the market. We were in the narrow space between the tent and the sheer face of the mountain.
A whispery sound, a whistle with too much tongue, interrupted us. Nell and I turned, searching for the source. Finally, a small cloaked figure stuck its head out from a narrow crevice in the mountainside and a familiar, syrupy voice said, “Come, come, Goody Bishop! This way!”
The fiend who wished to buy the changelings, Alastor noted.
“Don’t call me that, Flora,” Nell said under her breath. Seeing my disgruntled look, she shot me a reassuring one. “It’s okay. We’re going to work together to save the changelings. We can trust her.”
As you trusted the witchling, hmm?
I ignored Alastor’s mocking words and followed the cloaked figure through the large crack in the mountain’s face, turning and slowly sliding forward through it. Stone scraped against me from all sides, forcing me to hold my breath until, suddenly, the space widened into some kind of cavern. As my eyes adjusted to the space’s deeper darkness, I made out a crumbling set of stone steps across the way. They looked as ancient as the mountain itself.
“What is this place?” I asked.
I have the same question, Alastor said, sounding a little stunned.
“There are many passages like this hidden within the mountain; most have just forgotten they were ever here,” the small fiend chirped. “This way, my new friends, I’ll take you to my special shelter.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are and why you care about the changelings,” I called over to her. “And why would we go waste time at your shelter when they’re hours away from being eaten? We should go now. What was the address?”
Nell raised her brows, nodding toward the fiend. I turned, just as she lowered her hood.
The first thing I noticed was her skin. It was the shade of a young piece of wood—pale brown, shot through with rivulets of soft green. Colors flowed in and out of each other as if they had been painted onto the waxy texture of her skin.
The shape of her head reminded me in a weird way of the flower bulbs Mom always planted in the spring. On the top of her head, tufts of green hair, scattered with small white flower buds, stood nearly straight up.
The severe line of her lipless mouth curled into a grin. She flashed pearly, flat teeth that had to be straighter and bigger than mine.
Alastor hissed at the sight of her. My skin crawled with the intensity of it.
“My name is Flora la Leaf,” the fiend said. “We are going to my secret shelter because Goody Bishop says that you haven’t rested the entire time you’ve been here, so you will sleep and I will go find a way into the horrible house to save our courageous changelings.”
“Please,” Nell said quietly. “Don’t call me that. I’m just Nell.”
Flora looked confused. “But you’re a witch . . . aren’t you?”
“And what kind of fiend are you?” I couldn’t keep the words from bursting out of me. Some kind that released poisonous fragrances, or stalked gardens, stealing children?
She almost reminded me of . . . she almost looked like those woodland fairy creatures from Greek mythology—nymphs. Or, wait. Dryads?
She is no fiend! Al shuddered.
“ ’Scuse you!” Flora’s eyes, which a moment ago had been a rich emerald green beneath her grass-blade eyelashes, now glowed a vivid, almost toxic shade of slime. “I am an elf! Elves create, fiends only destroy!”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands.
There.
Were.
Elves.
“Elves exist?”
This was incredible—all those years I’d spent playing Conquerer’s Saga, how many times I’d read The Lord of the Rings, the Play-Doh elves I’d made to ride all those porcelain ponies my grandmother gave me, and no one, not Nell, not Alastor, had remembered to be like, Oh, by the way, Prosper, the one species you’d choose to be if you weren’t human and wanted to enjoy animallike hearing and lightning-fast reflexes—
Are you quite finished?
—those creatures exist, Prosper, and they actually look more like troll dolls than demigods, but they’re still great and cool!
I turned to Nell, utterly betrayed. “Why didn’t you tell me about the elves?”
Nell squinted at me through her dusty glasses. “You okay there?”
“He looks peaky, like he might start chewing on his own hand,” Flora said, in a whisper that was actually not a whisper.
I realized I’d been staring at Flora the whole time. My hand was up and already halfway to touching her wild hair before I yanked it back, horrified.
“Okay, I might . . . be a little dehydrated,” I admitted weakly. “And tired.”
The elf let out a sharp hiccup, one that shook her so hard that her feet left the ground. The second one made me jump.
“Are you all right?” Nell asked, putting a hand on her small shoulder. Even I was a good head taller than Flora.
“Oh, crumbs! Sorry. ’Scuse me.” Flora gave a sheepish shrug as she bent to pick up the small flowers that had shaken loose from her hair. Beneath her cloak, she wore a pale, simple tunic embroidered with leaves and vines. No shoes, but judging by the thick, dark soles of her feet, she didn’t need them.
“Does that . . . happen a lot?” Nell asked carefully.
“Only when I’m nervous. And angry. And excited.” Flora put a finger to her mouth. “Sometimes when I’m happy, too.”
“Ah,” Nell said after a long stretch of silence. “Well . . . should we head to your shelter?” She glanced at me, and clearly I was wearing some of my unhappiness on my face because she added, “You can tell me what you learned about Prue and we can work out a plan from there.”
I nodded, but pressure was building in my chest at the thought of waiting even an hour to go after the changelings and shake Nightlock down for the information we needed.
“Prue? Like a pr
une? I love prunes! I cannot eat them, though,” Flora said sadly. “They make me create too much music.”
I didn’t really want an elaboration on what her definition of music was, because I had a pretty good idea already.
“Prue, like my sister,” I told her. “Who has been captured by Pyra.”
“But why would the queen of Downstairs bother with a human girl?” Flora asked. “Everyone knows all she wants is the boy who is hosting her brother— Oh.”
The quiet that followed was only interrupted by another hiccup.
I stared back at her, taking in the uneasy sight of her eyes as they narrowed. A clicking sound, like small branches brushing together, rose up in a rattle from her throat. “You’re a fiend?”
“It’s a temporary arrangement,” I tried to explain.
The rattling intensified. And, suddenly, her teeth didn’t seem so flat.
They only eat plants, Maggot, Alastor said, sounding bored. Tell her that I once slew a hundred of her ancestors and used their wooden remains to warm my tower for a winter and let her cower.
Yeah. Hard no on that one.
“It’s okay, really,” Nell told the elf. “Prosper is still Prosper. Mostly. Like, ninety percent of the time, at least.”
Flora raised a fist, showcasing a bracelet that looked like it was covered in sharp gold thorns. The blood drained from my face.
By the realms, for all these elves tout their superiority because they love joy and peace—ugh! Alastor shuddered. This one was clearly pruned off the tree for being too vicious.
That was why fiends hated elves? Because they liked bright, happy things?
The only good thing about the elves is that their craftsmanship is truly impressive. If we didn’t require jewelry or finely forged weapons, the quality beyond what the Downstairs guilds can use magic to create, we’d have run the elves out of all the realms.
Why? I demanded, trying to give Flora some distance as we hurried up the staircase. When we reached the top, and what I presumed was the Scales, Flora turned back to glare at me again, bringing her tiny fist up one more time in warning.
The Last Life of Prince Alastor Page 10