I ran at him, jabbing my elbows into anyone in my way. Then in a flying leap, I crashed into the hooded figure and tackled him into the grass. Pinning his weapon hand, I yanked his hood down, revealing an angular face and pointed ears.
“Get rid of that illusion,” I commanded. “Or I’ll let them trample you.”
Tendrils of magic wrapped around my arms, and my gaze jerked to the sword pinned between us. Green light shone from its hilt, and my heart jolted. Dammit. He has a talisman.
He was using a talisman’s magic to maintain the illusion. No wonder it hadn’t broken.
Magic crept over my skin, the glow spreading across my legs. A tingling sensation ran to my nerve endings, and fur began to sprout from my skin. Dammit. If I let go of him, I’d lose him in the crowd, and not even my Gatekeeper powers would save me from being trampled to death.
“Let her go!” Darrow’s furious shout cut through the noise. Then he was behind me, his blade skimming past my shoulder and sinking into the hooded Sidhe’s chest.
The fur disappeared, the threads of magic retreating, and I stumbled to my feet, watching the Sidhe’s body crumple onto the grass.
The false Erlking shouted, “Murder!”
Shit. The illusion still wasn’t gone? That must mean there was a real person under there. The hooded Sidhe had been a decoy—and now the crowd was mad instead of scared. Darrow shoved me out of the way as they descended on the pair of us. Alarm blared through my mind when he vanished behind the furious crowd, but the false Erlking was right there. I couldn’t miss my chance.
Reaching with both hands, I felt for the magic humming around the stage and pushed at it, demanding the glamour unroll at my touch. Break, damn you! Darrow made it look so easy. If I had iron, it’d be over in seconds, but the Sidhe and their bloody rules had made that impossible.
I stopped fighting the glamour and conjured an illusion of my own, throwing it over my shoulder. The huge shape of a giant troll burst through the door, roaring to the heavens. To my relief, I spotted Darrow break away from the Sidhe as they turned to face the new threat.
I’d give it three seconds before they realised the troll wasn’t real, but that was more than enough for an opening. I lunged for the stage and grabbed the hem of the false Erlking’s cloak, dragging him towards the edge. He snarled, but I latched on with both hands and put all my strength into it, tugging him off the stage and onto the grass.
“My king!” gasped the nearest Sidhe. “The human will pay dearly for her transgression—”
“Oh, for the love of hellhounds.” I yanked the false Erlking’s head upright. “Look at him. No crown. No staff. No talisman at all.”
I tugged on the strings of the illusion. It didn’t quite shatter as impressively as my glamour had at Darrow’s touch, but the Erlking’s likeness disappeared, replaced by an unfamiliar face curtained with dark hair.
Rough hands grabbed my shoulders. “Don’t you dare lay your hands on our king.”
“It’s not real!” I squirmed free of his grip, addressing all the Sidhe. “The Erlking has gone. He was a glamour. See for yourselves.”
“Deception!”
With cries of loathing, the Sidhe descended on the false Erlking. I ducked out of their midst and scanned the crowd for Darrow. My gaze snagged on his glamoured form standing beside one of the arched windows, where he must have concealed himself after I’d diverted the Sidhe from trampling him. My arms stung with a dozen fresh cuts from being caught in the crowd, but I’d got off easy considering the mess they’d made of Lord Niall’s house.
“Let’s go,” said Darrow. “Lord Niall is dealing with the other intruders.”
Inside the main room, Lord Niall stood draped in a deep green cloak, a gleaming blade in his hand. Threads of magic flowed from his talisman, and one of the cloaked outcasts rose into the air, choking and flailing. A shrill scream escaped the trapped Sidhe, and then thorns sprouted from his skin, blood spraying the floor. The Sidhe stopped struggling, but the thorns continued to rip through his flesh from the inside out.
Holy shit, Lord Niall.
I did not want to stick around to see the fallout. Bile burned the back of my throat, and the screams of the Sidhe drifted after me into the night as Darrow and I left the house behind.
“I didn’t expect him to do that to another Sidhe.” They might treat humans and half-bloods with casual cruelty, but I’d assumed they only slaughtered their fellow Sidhe on the battlefield, or at least gave them the option of a dignified death.
“There is nothing worse to the Sidhe than a traitor,” he said. “Especially a traitor who betrays the memory of their king.”
“They must have known what would happen,” I said. “Nobody’s glamour is totally fool-proof.”
“Speaking of which, you did an admirable job of unravelling it.”
My mouth parted. “Seriously? You don’t think I took too long?”
“It was a complex spell.”
His praise took on a whole other meaning when I considered the unexpectedly heated moment we’d shared. What the hell had happened back there? Sure, Darrow was attractive—he was half-Sidhe, it came with the territory—but I hadn’t wanted to bone him there in the bushes, had I? He was part infuriating trainer, part judgemental prick, part stuck-up arse… and yet for all that, it couldn’t be plainer that he was attracted to me.
If I were more like the Sidhe, I’d use it to my advantage, but I’d been as enthralled as he had back then. That was dangerous, and not because of the no-dating-faeries rule. Since I was a teenager, I’d always had an unfortunate tendency to be drawn to trouble-makers. The guy was trouble, all right… but not the good sort.
I had to wait until after my lessons the following day to pay a visit to the Erlking’s territory with the pilfered security talisman. Darrow let me sleep in, so I hoped to sneak off before lunch, but when I left my room, he accosted me and called me into a training room.
“You still need training to resist sense-altering glamour,” he said. “Given the events of last night, I think it’s something we need to work on.”
“What, you mean the magic the Sidhe use to mess with humans?” I said. “No human can resist it. It’s too subtle for my shielding abilities, and it’s impossible to cut off my senses entirely unless I got someone to transform me into a troll or something.”
“It’s subtle, yes, but it’s not impossible for you to use your magic to resist,” he said. “Put your hand on my arm.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
He held out his arm, his sleeve pushed up to show the binding mark on his wrist. “It’s easier to demonstrate if you’re touching me.”
“Sure. No problem.” It shouldn’t be, yet being this close to him brought reminders of how his mouth had felt on mine yesterday, how his scent had infiltrated my senses alongside the seductive magic of the grove.
I rested my palm over his wrist, and felt his magic tingling below the surface, drawing me in.
“Closer,” he said. Was his voice slightly breathier than usual? “We need skin contact for it to work.”
I closed the last half-inch between us, holding onto his forearm. At once, magic zipped from my fingertips up my arm, drawing a gasp from my mouth before I could quite get hold of my senses. My pulse thundered in my ears.
“Form a shield with your magic,” he said.
Magic? What magic? All I could feel was his, whispering along my skin, alight with unspoken promises.
I held my breath, feeling for my own magic churning under the surface. Green light sprang to my palms, forming a barrier. At once, the tingling effect of his magic faded a little. I released a slow breath, my hand slamming against my ribcage. Was his pulse racing, too, or was it my own? I really couldn’t tell.
“Better,” he said. “As I said… it’s not entirely resistant. But it ought to be enough to break out of a trap, if need be. Like last night.”
Trap? He thought the grove’s magic had driven us together, not the off-the-ch
arts chemistry surging between us like a storm about to break? Someone here is in denial, and it’s not me.
“I don’t think it could hold off the grove’s magic.” I looked up at him. “Can I try again? This time, go all-out.”
“Are you certain?”
“You didn’t have a problem with giving it your all when it came to throwing me off invisible horses or knocking me onto the grass.”
His hand clasped my wrist, his bright eyes suddenly inches from mine. They didn’t make faces like his in the mortal realm, yet at least some of the attraction must be my own mind projecting onto him. They said the Sidhe looked different to every person who saw them, depending on what they found appealing. It seemed my subconscious was enticed by silver-haired gods who smelled of oak and ash.
Oh. Right. I was supposed to be resisting his glamour.
Magic sprang to the surface of my skin, mingling with his. His mouth hovered above mine, and my heart skittered fast, too fast. Focus, Hazel.
I wet my lips. “Did the same person who taught you to use glamour teach you this, too?”
He didn’t answer, but his grip loosened a fraction. Perhaps he assumed I’d intended to finish our conversation from the party that those Sidhe had so rudely interrupted. Which I hadn’t, but while the idea of lying beneath a smoking hot half-Sidhe for the afternoon wasn’t an unappealing one, the weight of the security talisman in my pocket reminded me I had a job to do.
And what better way to stop him from following me to the Erlking’s territory than to convince him to admit his attraction to me?
Magic pulsed at the surface of my skin, pushing him back. “I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.”
The glow in his eyes and around his skin brightened, and suddenly I was floating, beyond the reach of human senses. My mortal form slipped away, leaving me suspended in a realm where nothing existed but my desire for him. To be bound to him. To serve him.
Reality crashed headlong into me, leaving me reeling in a sudden rush of sensation. I blinked the glare from my eyes, startled to find Darrow’s hand on the iron band around my wrist. I hadn’t been able to feel anything at all back then, but the iron—the iron must have broken his spell. My heart lurched against my ribcage, and he released me so suddenly that my knees hit the ground. I caught my balance, disarmed to spot him several feet away from me. Damn, he moved fast.
His eyes glowed with an eerie light, making him look both sinister and astonishingly beautiful.
“What the fuck was that?” I forced out the words. Glamour? To humans, the slightest glimpse of a Sidhe was enough to convince them to pledge their service for life, but I’d never seen that sort of trick get through my Gatekeeper’s glamour before. “What are you?”
“Someone who shouldn’t be teaching you glamour,” he answered. “You’ve got the hang of the basics. Feel free to practise by yourself for the remainder of the day.”
How can I practise without someone else? The question drifted through my shock, but I didn’t say a word as he left. That power he’d used—what was it? I’d entertained thoughts of convincing him his attraction to me was more than just glamour, but he hadn’t made me want him. He’d made me worship him.
If I hadn’t left the iron band on, what might have happened?
With difficulty, I shoved the thought aside. Unconventional methods aside, I’d succeeded in getting him off my back, and I had somewhere else I needed to be.
Time to pay another visit to the Erlking’s territory—and I intended to leave with answers.
17
I walked swiftly through the forest with the security talisman concealed up my sleeve. Risky though it might be, I refused to put anyone else in danger by dragging them along with me. Lord Kerien was already dead, and I intended to find out what he’d discovered before his untimely passing.
The security talisman was warm to the touch, dagger-sized, and didn’t seem to object to a human carrying it. Or stowing it in my cleavage, either. Unlike most talismans, it wasn’t bound to a specific person, so its magic remained self-contained. Before her betrayal, the Seelie Queen had been in charge of maintaining access to the Erlking’s territory, and she’d never have let the guards doze off on duty. The Sidhe really needed to get their shit together if they wanted to survive to see a new monarch take the throne.
I followed the route Lord Kerien and I had walked along last time, hoping Faerie hadn’t rearranged things again. Had I been Sidhe, I might have been able to use my magic to shortcut to my destination, but perhaps it was best if I went in the subtle way to avoid being tracked. I kept my weapons close at hand, but I reached the gate without encountering a soul.
Pulling out the security talisman, I used it to open the gate and slipped into the Erlking’s territory. At once, the putrid smell of decay slammed into me. Dead trees stood rooted in a bed of shrivelled leaves, their branches bare and lifeless. Decaying moss hung in tatters, and the desiccated carcasses of insects littered the dry soil. The killer had escaped through the gate this time, and they hadn’t cared what they’d damaged on the way out.
I veered towards the Seelie Queen’s estate, following the path of decay the killer had left behind them. The wooden doors of her manor house hung from their hinges. Were they like that before?
I didn’t relish the idea of treading in the footsteps of the scheming Queen who’d tried to kill my mother, but I had an inkling where Lord Kerien had been when the killer had found him. Holding my breath, I pushed the remains of the door aside and stepped into the hall.
The manor’s interior would have been beautiful, even after nature had reclaimed it, were it not for the shroud of death that lay over the place like a mould-infested blanket. Trees sagged from the walls, pine husks crunched beneath my feet, and the smell of rot tickled the back of my throat. Further back lay a crater in the floor, where earth and dead tree roots were piled atop the collapsed remains of a trapdoor.
I’d bet my circlet that Lord Kerien had come back here to investigate the tunnel that linked the Seelie Queen’s house with the Erlking’s palace—the route the killer had used to enter—and the person who’d taken the Erlking’s talisman had jumped him from behind.
No witnesses remained… except for one. Where was the Erlking’s sprite? I’d have to go back to the clearing to search for him, assuming the killer hadn’t chased him off or worse.
Footsteps sounded behind me. I eased a knife from my belt, wishing I’d forsaken all the rules and brought my iron blade, and pressed my knife against the intruder’s neck.
Darrow hissed out a breath. “I knew you stole a security talisman. Have you no value for your life?”
“I could ask you the same question.” I lowered the knife. “You must have guessed following me would paint a target on your own head.”
“Yes, and you aren’t the only person who had concerns about Lord Kerien’s final moments,” he said. “It’s not your duty to pry into matters that concern the Sidhe and not yourself, and it certainly isn’t wise of you to put your position of Gatekeeper in jeopardy.”
Annoyance sparked inside me. Last night when he and I had fought the false Erlking together, I’d thought he’d started to relax his insistence on tailing me everywhere and let me work alone. Apparently not.
“You don’t get to make that decision for me,” I said. “Besides, I happen to know the enemy wants the Gatekeeper to live, and at the moment, so do most of the Sidhe. You, on the other hand, aren’t even from this Court. Are you sure you aren’t worried about your own position and not mine?”
His mouth flattened. “If that’s the case, you shouldn’t care what happens to me.”
Way to go, Hazel. Guilt and anger surged in a churning tide, tempered by relief to see him leaving. His retreating footsteps rang through the empty manor as I looked down into the gutted hole in the centre of the Seelie Queen’s entrance hall. This was where Lord Kerien had met his unfortunate end, and yet no traces remained of his presence. Just the collapsed ruins of a tunnel
beneath a trapdoor choked with weeds. If I used my magic, I might be able to clear the path, but who was to say the killer wasn’t still lurking down there in the dark?
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to send Darrow away. I felt like a complete arse, not to mention a hypocrite, because I didn’t really believe he’d come here out of concern he’d lose his job. Two Sidhe had died here, and he didn’t want me involved for the same reason I didn’t want him to butt in on my investigation. I’d been set apart from everyone else for so long that stepping in to face danger alone had become second nature, and now I’d driven away one of my only allies.
The sound of rustling leaves came from outside. Darrow? I stepped out the door, opening my mouth to speak. Darrow, however, was nowhere to be seen.
A slithering noise followed, making the small hairs rise on my arms. Then, a web of shadows peeled away from the bushes, coalescing into a semi-transparent formless mass. A sluagh: part spirit, part corporeal, and ugly as hell. The being slid right past me, sending a shudder deep into my bones.
And it wasn’t alone. More beasts slithered and hissed along the paths outside the Seelie Queen’s estate, formless and shadowy.
Darrow.
I turned my back on the house and broke into a run, but the sluagh filled my vision, surging out of the forest all over the Erlking’s territory.
“Hello, ugly,” I murmured to the nearest, palming my sharpened blade. “What are you supposed to be?”
The sluagh made a wet noise like a troll treading on a snail. Had the murderer left them here to deter anyone else from looking into Lord Kerien’s death?
I halted behind the gates, my stomach turning over. A sluagh’s shadowy form swamped the green glow surrounding the spear-sharp points, slithering around and underneath the gate, heedless of its magic. At least one had made it through, into the Court, and Darrow would have no idea they were right behind him.
Drawing a knife, I ran for the gate and pushed it open. At once it closed behind me, but the sluagh continued to slide around and beneath it. Oh, god.
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 16