We’re in the middle of a cavern, stalactites dripping from a ceiling high above our heads, through which Will’s orb is bobbing and weaving. Directly in front of us, the ground disappears into a yawning ravine several hundred feet across. There is a bridge suspended across it, floating magically, and there, on the other side, is a squat, heavy, black castle.
“That’s the Unseelie Court,” says Will.
“I don’t suppose we can just cross over the bridge,” I note grimly.
“Not with a dragon underneath it,” remarks Kelsey.
On cue, the dragon, from out of sight in its pit, belches fire that rolls over the bridge in hot billows.
“Get off,” the Erlking says to me, and I manage to clamber off the horse. He swings off gracefully and strides purposefully over to the bridge, stopping just at its edge, looking down.
“Well?” Will asks him.
He shakes his head a bit. “You can’t even see the bottom, it’s so deep.” He steps back, frowning at the bridge.
“Well, we have to get across somehow,” I say. This was my only idea, the thing I said we had to do to fulfill the prophecy. We can’t have spent all that time getting here just for it to turn out to be a waste. “Can we enchant the dragon somehow?”
“I can cast a protective spell that will block the fire from reaching the bridge,” Will says. “The dragon isn’t really the issue.”
The dragon roars, flames momentarily engulfing the bridge in white heat.
“I can’t wait to hear what’s really the issue,” comments Kelsey, staring at the embers left behind by the flames, “if it’s not that.”
“The bridge is enchanted,” explains the Erlking impatiently. He is pacing up and down the cliff, looking irritated. The Erlking, I realize, doesn’t like being still. When Kelsey and I just look at him, he continues, “It isn’t really there.”
We look back at the bridge.
“It’s not?” I say.
“It’s there as long as the Unseelie Court wants it to be there.”
“Oh,” I realize. “So we could get halfway across and…”
“Yes,” he concludes grimly. He turns decisively from the bridge and looks at me. “We have to go to the Unseelie Court, you claim. We have to find Benedict’s mother to find the other fays to keep the prophecy on track and defeat the Seelies.”
“Yes,” I respond.
“This isn’t because you hope Benedict is there and you’ve gotten yourself all starry-eyed over the best enchanter in the Otherworld, is it? Because I’m not doing all of this just because you’re under some sort of spell.”
I draw myself up, offended. “He left me,” I say. “It was his choice. I wouldn’t be here if I was just chasing him. The precious book of power said that his mother hid the other fays, and we need the other fays for the prophecy, and you said this is where his mother is.”
“We also need Benedict for the prophecy,” Will says. “I think. If I’m reading it right.”
“But that’s secondary,” I insist.
The Erlking continues to look at me for a long moment. Then he nods. “Then I’ll go first,” he says and turns to face the bridge.
“Wait,” Will protests. “What?”
“I am the least valuable,” the Erlking proclaims steadily, regarding the bridge. “The most expendable. There is no prophecy about me the way there is about the rest of you. And I am the most likely to be trapped by the bridge, since I’m the one who upset a member of the Unseelie Court. The rest of you are innocent. Well, as innocent as you can be in the Otherworld. Which in your case, frankly, isn’t very. But anyway. I’ll go first. Alone.”
There is a long moment of silence. I feel like one of us should protest—he’s only involved in this because we asked him to be—but I’m worried that instead he’d suggest sending across Kelsey or Safford, who are also more expendable than me, and I don’t want that to happen.
I look at Will, who sighs and rubs at his temples.
The Erlking turns away from the bridge and walks over to Will. “You can cast the enchantment to block the dragon, right? I don’t need to be worrying about that too.” He is unstrapping the sword from around his waist.
“Yes,” Will tells him. “Of course. What is that?”
Because the Erlking is now holding the sword, sheathed in its scabbard, out to Will. “Here’s something nobody else knows, Will. This sword is the Seelie talisman. I can’t have it vanish with me, if I do vanish. Take it, and keep it safe, and bring it back to Goblinopolis for me. Do you promise?”
Will nods and accepts the sword. “My word of honor,” he promises, and he tries to say it very brusquely but I can tell he is touched by the trust in the gesture.
“Excellent.” The Erlking turns back to the bridge and walks confidently over to it, standing on the very edge. “Ready?” he asks Will.
“The spell is already cast,” Will answers him.
The Erlking steps onto the bridge without a moment of hesitation. I think we are all holding our breath there on the edge of the cliff—I know I am—but the Erlking strides confidently along the bridge. His cloak drifts in his wake, and the dim light from Will’s orb picks up the blue sheen to his dark hair. The dragon breathes fire but it passes up and over the bridge in a fiery arc that would be beautiful if it wasn’t so obviously very deadly. The Erlking’s rhythm does not hitch. He gleams and billows his way across the bridge and then steps onto solid land on the other side, where he turns and executes a bow in our direction, gathering his cloak dramatically around him.
“Is it safe then?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
“Safe enough for him,” Will responds.
“Should we all go over at once?”
“No,” says Will. “If it disappears and kills all of us at once, then that is far worse than it disappearing and killing just one of us, at which point the rest of us can try to come up with an alternate plan.”
“Then who should go next?” I ask. And suddenly I hear myself saying, all in a rush, to Will, “I think you should go last.”
Will regards me with surprise. “Really? Why?”
“Because you can get everyone back to Boston easily. And you’ll know what to do to protect my aunts and father, as much as you can. If you go, I’ll have no idea what to do to save them.”
Will looks at me for a moment. “But you’re the fay—”
“What will it matter if I’m left all alone? I won’t know what to do.”
“Selkie,” Will says gently. “You’ll be you. You’ve gotten us to this point, haven’t you?”
“And I left my entire family back there and who knows what’s happening to them. Please don’t fight me on this. You can save them. I can’t. I’m going next.”
And then, before there can be any more discussion about it, I run over and onto the bridge.
“Selkie!” Will and Kelsey shout from behind me, but I am already on the bridge and there’s nothing they can do now.
I keep running, focused on the Erlking on the other side of it, watching me expressionlessly. The bridge feels very solid under my feet; I find it difficult to believe it’s not real, except for the fact that I can’t see how it’s moored to land in any way.
Then, just like that, it’s not real. The bridge disappears underneath my feet, and I am falling through space. I can’t even scream; I can’t gather breath to do it. I tumble, head over feet, surrounded by blackness. I can’t even see the dim light of Will’s orb, and panic rises up and overtakes me just as someone’s arms fold around me, catching me solidly against him. I am still falling but I am no longer alone.
I twist my hands into his shirt, and I know who it is before he even speaks.
“Close your eyes,” Ben’s voice says to me.
I don’t have time to react before we land with a thump on solid ground, and it is brigh
t all around us. We are clearly no longer in the dragon’s cavern. We don’t seem to be anywhere near there. We’re in a green, grassy meadow, and the sun is bright in the sky above us. Ben is there, dressed in only one layer, a long-sleeved, bright blue T-shirt that makes his eyes seem like they could almost be blue. Except for how they are also green. And gray.
“Are you okay?” he asks me urgently.
“Ben,” I pant, because the panic hasn’t quite subsided and I can’t quite catch my breath and where did he come from?
“Are you okay?” he snaps at me, his hands roaming over me not at all the way I would have fantasized about back when I was still in love with him (which I obviously no longer am), but as if he is making sure I have not broken any bones.
I realize that I am sprawled on the grass with the sky directly over my head.
“Are you okay?” he demands again, and his face swims back into my vision, his unclassifiable eyes and that beautiful mouth he has and all that artfully tousled hair.
I am furious with him. I lift my hand and give the side of his head a solid whack.
“Selkie,” he exclaims, as if he is surprised that this is my reaction to him. Surprised!
I sit up as he rubs at the side of his head and looks hurt. “You look fine,” I complain to him, because he ran off and left me and he looks as if he went on vacation.
“What?” He looks bewildered.
“You’re fine. You idiotic…” I struggle for a word to call him. “You idiotic faerie.”
“You’re angry with me for being fine? I just saved your life.”
“My life was only in danger because you left me,” I retort. And that’s not quite true, but whatever. Logic isn’t the most important part of an argument, right?
Ben looks amazed. “Were you were coming to rescue me?”
“No.” I fold my arms, belligerent. “I’m coming to find your mother, because it turns out we didn’t have any choice. We had no other ideas how to find the other fays.”
“You need to find my mother?” Ben echoes.
“How did you know where I was?” I ask him, because it’s suspicious to me that he turned up at the perfect moment.
He looks at me for a moment. Then he smiles at me, the kind of smile that would have made me giddy in earlier times, before he abandoned me in the middle of Boston Common. “Selkie Stewart,” he says, and he says it nicely, and it feels nice, and that’s not fair. “I missed you.”
I hate him, I think. “Funny that you missed me, since you’re also the one who left,” I point out scathingly. “Benedict Le Fay.”
He winces, his smile faltering. “Are you really still angry about that?”
I blink at him, astonished. “Did you really think there would be any chance at all that I wouldn’t be?”
He looks uncomfortable. “It was…a while ago. Wasn’t it? I’m unclear on the time being kept, so I—”
“It wasn’t a while ago, Ben,” I snap at him, “and it wouldn’t matter if it was. It wouldn’t matter if it was whole entire lifetimes ago. I would still be angry with you for leaving me when I asked you to stay.”
Ben looks uncertain. “Selkie—” he begins.
I cut him off, because I don’t want to hear it. “Where are we?” I ask instead. “Where have you taken me? Where is everyone else?”
“Everyone else?” he echoes. “Like who?”
“Will and Kelsey and Safford. Did you think I came here alone?”
“You were alone last time you came to rescue me,” he reasons.
“I’m not rescuing you,” I remind him. “And I’m not alone. I have friends now. Friends who stick with me and help me. We need to go back and get them. They’ll be worried, because it isn’t like me to go away and abandon them.”
Ben is silent for a moment, and when he speaks, it is brusque, not light and comfortable the way it had been before, almost as if we are strangers meeting for the first time. I wonder if he’s decided that I’m a lost cause. I would be perfectly okay with that, I tell myself; in fact, it would be the best thing, and I ignore the part where I feel as bereft now, suddenly, as I did when Ben first disappeared on Boston Common. Like even though he is right in front of him, he is still somewhere I can’t find him, and he always will be.
“Where are they?” he asks me.
“Well, they were right beside the dragon pit. They were going to cross the bridge next.”
“The dragon pit,” he repeats. “Wait, were you coming to the Unseelie Court?”
“How do you not know where I was? You were just there.”
“You were in distress. So I went to you. I didn’t know where we were. What were you doing at the Unseelie Court?”
“Coming after your mother. I’ve just told you that.”
“How did you know my mother was at the Unseelie Court?”
“We didn’t really know. We just guessed.” I look around the bright meadow. “And clearly we’re not at the Unseelie Court now. Wait…” I am being seized with recognition as I take everything in. I look back at Ben. “Is this your home? Where I met your father?”
“No.” He looks around himself. “We are at the Unseelie Court. This part’s just been enchanted to look this way.”
“By you?” I guess.
He doesn’t have a chance to answer, because someone calls his name, behind him, off in the distance. “Benedict!” the voice shouts, a woman’s voice. Ben looks over his shoulder, and even as he does so, abruptly, the woman is right there in front of us. She is tall and willowy and lithe and pale, her spun-gold hair floating gently in the warm breeze wafting over the meadow. She is dressed in a flowing dress the hues of a sunset, made of some material that seems to keep subtly shifting colors. She smiles at me, the smile of a Seelie, a smile that makes me feel cold.
I stiffen and debate shifting away from her on the grass of the meadow.
“How did you get here?” she asks me, smile still on her face, and then looks at Ben. “Aren’t you going to introduce me? She must be a friend of yours, for you to have granted her passage.”
“She’s the fay of the autumnal equinox,” he answers her, his eyes steady on mine. “And this…” His chin tips ever so slightly in the direction of the woman standing next to him. “Is my mother.”
CHAPTER 8
I thought Ben’s mother would look like Ben. Instead, she looks, well, like my mother. I gape at her a little stupidly for a moment but I don’t really know what else to do. I’d kept saying we needed to find Ben’s mother so she could tell us where she hid the other fays, but Ben’s mother is acting as if she has nothing to do with any of this craziness surrounding us.
“The fay of the autumnal equinox!” she exclaims in a voice like a purr. “Oh, why, Benedict, she’s lovely. What a beautiful job you did with her, my dear. He’s been so coy about you,” she addresses me. “I thought for sure you must take after the ogre side of your family, but look at you—you’re lovely.”
I don’t know what to make of this speech. I smile tightly and glance at Ben, who is giving nothing away, his eyes, gray-green now, shuttered as he regards me.
Ben’s mother turns to him. “Where did she come from?”
“Linking enchantment,” Ben answers lightly. “She was in distress, so she was brought to wherever I was.”
“Clever enchantment,” praises his mother, and I suppose it would be, except that it doesn’t seem to me to be at all what happened. I’ve been in almost constant distress, for one thing. For another thing, Ben came to me.
Ben shrugs.
“Well,” Ben’s mother says to me, “you are a very lucky little fay that Benedict is so clever. And now you are here, we must have a feast.”
I don’t want to have a feast. “That’s not necessary,” I say with a smile. “I don’t want you to go to any trouble. I just need to know—”
; “No trouble at all,” she assures me with that icy smile still lingering on her face. Then she vanishes.
So much for asking her about the fays and getting out of here quickly. I turn to Ben. “Look—” I begin.
“Don’t—” he starts, but I talk over him.
“We need to go get everyone else and—”
His mother appears at his shoulder again, her eyes narrowed at me. “Everyone else?” she echoes. “Who’s everyone else?” She looks to Ben for an answer.
“Friends,” Ben replies with an easy smile. “Friends Selkie was traveling with.”
“Oh?” She looks back to me. “Where are they?”
I don’t know what I thought meeting Ben’s mother would be like, but she’s too much like my mother for my comfort. I wanted to just ask her about the fays, but now I don’t know if I should. Never trust a Le Fay, says the Erlking in my mind.
“Not sure,” I lie. Or maybe I’m not lying at all. Who knows if they are still by the dragon pit, since they probably think I’m dead? But I do not want Ben’s mother to know where they are.
She studies me closely and then says slowly, “Well, then. I will have the guards keep an eye out for your friends, won’t I?” She vanishes again, less abruptly this time somehow, more like drifting away.
I look at Ben, but he moves forward before I can say anything, his lips directly on my ear as he breathes, “Are they by the dragon pit?”
I nod. And before I know it, we are there, Ben’s hand curled into mine. We are on the side near the castle, and the Erlking is beside us, blinking at us in astonishment.
“Selkie!” exclaims Kelsey from across the pit, bouncing up and down in her excitement.
I wave at her.
Surprise evident in his voice, Will says, “Benedict.”
Ben, having registered the Erlking next to us, takes three enormous steps away from him, dropping my hand to do so. He doesn’t acknowledge Will’s greeting from across the dragon pit. He looks at me accusingly. “You never said anything about an Erlking.”
“Not an Erlking, the Erlking,” the Erlking corrects impatiently.
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