“How’d you know how to make them listen like that?” I asked.
“The Gatekeeper’s book showed me a bunch of words in the gods’ language earlier,” she said. “I figured that one would be the most effective.”
“Even Etaina’s hypnotism has nothing on the gods,” I murmured. “Which is pretty much the only thing we have going for us now. I don’t know when Etaina will strike. Her kingdom seems to obey different time laws than the rest of Faerie.”
“That explains a lot,” said Ilsa. “I saw you and Darrow vanish along with Etaina—she’s exactly how I imagined her, by the way—and the next second, you two came back without her. I did wonder if some time slippage was involved.”
“She was going to… kill Darrow.” I looked around the room. “Where’d he go?”
“Outside,” she said. “Maybe he went to find Lady Aiten and Lord Raivan.”
Oh, crap. He’d glamoured them—and Mum had helped him do it.
River caught up to Ilsa. “I told my father the truth, but I was trying to prepare him to face the Seelie Queen, not the Aes Sidhe.”
“You and me both,” said Ilsa. “I don’t know how many of them took in our message, but we have no leader, and with nobody to rally around, the odds of us pulling an army together are pretty low.”
“We have the half-faeries,” I reminded her. “They’ll be ready. And the Sidhe you asked, River. How many?”
“Not enough,” he said. “Have we tried sending an emissary to Winter?”
“Holly went to ask for their help,” I said. “But she knows almost nothing about the Aes Sidhe. I didn’t have time to explain everything, and I sure as hell didn’t expect Etaina to show her face here in person. If it was Winter she was after, we might be able to count on the Unseelie Queen’s cooperation, but…”
“I guess it depends if she wants to risk letting Summer be overrun,” Ilsa said. “The Morrigan showed no interest in getting involved either. That just leaves the half-bloods, and there aren’t all that many of them compared to two armies.”
“You’re telling me.” Cedar still had Summer’s crown, as far as I knew. It was probably safer in Half-Blood Territory, but the quest for strong leadership had gone up in smoke. There was no time to pull a miracle out of a hat now. “Etaina’s clones aren’t much tougher than any other faerie, but it’s the ones with glamour skills you want to watch out for.”
“You mean Etaina herself,” said Ilsa. “I felt her magic take over me. It was like I wanted to worship her. If she does that to the whole Court, who can resist?”
Not even the dead, a voice whispered in the back of my mind, recalling how Darrow had scared off the Seelie Queen and her group of wraiths just by using his power for a few seconds. There was no doubt Etaina was the more dangerous of the two, but the Sidhe were prepared for neither.
“We don’t know who will attack first,” River said. “The Seelie Queen or Etaina.”
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’ll destroy one another first,” I added. “I’d lay bets on Etaina showing up first and the Seelie Queen trying to get the jump on her after the fact. Which won’t go well.”
But she hadn’t been able to control or claim the talisman. It still answered to me. That meant, in all likelihood, she’d come to me first. To kill me or strip the magic from me—or both. Like most Sidhe, she could speak Invocations without consequences, so it’d be nothing to her to repeat the same spell Ilsa had used to take the talisman’s magic away.
“There’s Mum.” Ilsa peered over my shoulder. “Hazel, can you—”
“On it,” I said. “She tied up two of the Sidhe earlier after Darrow glamoured them to stop them arresting him.”
Ilsa groaned. “Really, Hazel.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault.” I made my way to the door. Outside, Mum stood on the stairs beside an irate-looking Lady Aiten and Lord Raivan, while Darrow was visible near the fallen Aes Sidhe soldiers. Good. Etaina didn’t get to him.
“Hey.” I closed the doors behind me. “I don’t know how much you saw of what went on in there—”
“I saw you disrupt the ceremony with your ridiculous antics,” said Lady Aiten, white-lipped with rage. “And your friend has a death warrant on his head.”
Movement stirred and I looked past her, but Darrow had disappeared again, leaving the bodies behind.
“Darrow isn’t the enemy, Etaina is,” I said. “If you saw or heard who shot Lord Talthain, it was her. Countless witnesses can back me up on this.”
“The Gatekeeper is right.” Lord Torin, River’s father, exited the palace with River and Ilsa in tow. “We all saw the Queen of the Aes Sidhe appear in the ceremony and use a stolen talisman to shoot down our future king.”
Crap. I’d forgotten she had the Sea Queen’s talisman as well as mine. She hadn’t been carrying it when she’d addressed her Court, and I hadn’t seen it in her office, either. What had she done, locked it away, or given it to a fellow soldier? Surely not. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to use it against her.
Lady Aiten’s mouth twisted with hate. “And what of his confession? She and her servant both forced our future king to confess to crimes he never committed.”
“I’m afraid he did,” said Lord Torin. “We did another examination of the bodies of Lord Walvein and Lady Horell, and found their wounds match those inflicted by Lord Taithain’s own weapon. He was working against us from the start.”
“With whom?” Lord Raivan demanded. “We have spent the entirety of the trials prepared to face our former Queen, yet in the moment we should have seized victory, this… other queen comes back from the dead.”
“Etaina was never dead,” I told them. “She disappeared underground along with her Court when the Erlking gained power. After his death, she decided she wanted to steal his talisman for her own.”
“And where is the talisman, pray tell?” said Lady Aiten.
Ah. “She took it,” I admitted. “But she didn’t claim it. It serves me, not her.”
“Enough,” Mum interrupted. “Whatever Hazel did, you face enemies on two fronts at once and if you waste time bickering, they’ll tear the Court in two and divide up the remains.”
Lord Raivan swore in the faerie tongue. “What manner of armies do this Aes Sidhe have?”
“You’ve seen them.” I nodded to the bodies piled outside the palace, where Darrow had been standing. “Her elite assassins can change their faces to look however they like. Their most talented soldiers can also do what Etaina did and hypnotise others using glamour.”
“Darrow did the same,” said Lady Aiten. “He tricked us into inviting him into our Court. He’s been manipulating us from the moment he arrived in Summer.”
Uh… she’s not wrong. “Etaina wants to destroy the Seelie Queen first,” I told her. “Not Summer. Chances are, they’ll declare war on one another before they attack you. But if they come here, you need to be ready.”
Lord Torin stepped in. “My house and I are prepared to offer our help to defend the Courts. We have a force assembled to face whatever threats the enemies devise.”
“The half-bloods have a contingent waiting, too,” said Ilsa. “Led by Raine Whitefall and Cedar Hornbeam.”
“And myself,” River added.
“I don’t have an army.” The doors creaked open, revealing Morgan and the faerie dog. “But I do have a puppy who’s trained to attack dead things.”
The Sidhe didn’t speak for an instant. Then, as Lord Raivan and Lord Torin began to argue and Lady Aiten stepped in to join them, I turned back to the bodies of the fallen Aes Sidhe and caught sight of Darrow hovering outside the gates.
He’s not leaving, is he?
Without looking back, I descended the stairs and ducked between the large leafy plants outside the palace gates to meet him. “Don’t run off without warning like that. I thought she’d taken you. Or… worse.”
I will undo him, Etaina had said. One look at his bleak expression told me we weren’t finishe
d with the aftermath of Etaina’s revelations, not by a long shot. She’d created him—used glamour to make him from nothing like all her clones. Yet he seemed as real as I was, and as Faerie had taught me a long time ago, reality was relative. Even the Sidhe looked and sounded different to each person they spoke to. The idea of Darrow not being ‘real’ didn’t bother me nearly as much as the notion of Etaina snapping him out of existence.
I inched closer to him. “Darrow, do you think she’s coming here? Etaina?”
“She will,” he said, “but it’s the Seelie Queen she wants revenge on. She doesn’t care about Summer or Winter except in a superficial sense.”
“She wants the Erlking’s talisman.”
“Yes, and so does the Seelie Queen,” he said, still not looking at me. “Given their history, she’ll try to take out the Seelie Queen first.”
“Or the other way around,” I added. “Don’t forget Etaina killed the Seelie Queen’s pawn in front of an audience. The Seelie Queen knows how to get into the realm of the Aes Sidhe. It’d save us a lot of trouble if they just destroyed one another’s armies without us needing to get involved.”
With Etaina’s glamour skills set against the Seelie Queen’s army of the dead, I wasn’t sure who would be the victor. Doubtless Etaina was the stronger of the two, but the Seelie Queen’s healing powers gave her an endurance unmatched by any other.
“They would not leave us unharmed, regardless,” said Darrow. “My own command to kill the Seelie Queen remains intact.”
“I thought she changed her mind when she told you to attack me,” I said.
His mouth pressed together. “For all I know, I’ve been glamouring you as long as we’ve known one another. I wouldn’t know, would I?”
“You think I’m brainwashed?” I gave an unconvincing laugh. “You think you could brainwash me? Get real.”
He didn’t smile. “I recall doing exactly that.”
“Yeah, blasting me in the face with glamour,” I said. “It wasn’t permanent. It wore off pretty fast, actually.”
I still hadn’t told my family I’d met Thomas Lynn. Truth be told, our encounter felt like a faerie-induced fever dream, but even I wouldn’t dream up something that bizarre.
“That doesn’t change what I did,” he said, “or make me any more real.”
“Nothing here is real,” I said. “If you think I’m real and you aren’t, that implies humans are more real than fae. Imagine what Etaina would say to that.”
My words didn’t draw a smile out of him. “Hazel, I’m nothing more than some twisted manifestation of her desire for a pawn, or perhaps a child of her own. I suspect the two are interchangeable to her.”
“She gave you free will,” I argued. “She gave you the freedom to turn on her if you wanted. That’s more than the Courts gave my family.”
He winced. “I didn’t mean to dismiss your situation, but I felt her… undoing me. Like a glamour. Willing me out of existence.”
“If she undoes you, she knows I’ll do the same to her,” I said. “And if I have to stay at your side for the duration of the battle, then so be it.”
Finally, the hint of a smile showed on his face. “And to think you once found it intolerable to spend time with me.”
“Nah, I wouldn’t say that.” I leaned in, brushed a strand of hair from his face and held a strand of my own hair alongside it. “If I asked which of us was real and which wasn’t, would you know the difference?”
His expression softened, but his gaze broke from mine. “There is no way to counter her glamour. If she wills me out of existence, there’s no going back. All I can do is run, as I always did.”
“I’d do the same,” I said. “Hell, I’m an expert on running. Every single time I have the opportunity to get rid of this family curse, I end up turning my back on it. I even met Thomas fucking Lynn and instead of asking him questions, I beat him up and ran away. And it’s my ancestor’s fault all this is happening to us.”
“It’s not your duty to pay the price for his mistakes,” said Darrow.
“Nor is it your duty to pay the price for Etaina’s,” I said, breathless, harsh. “Fuck her vows. Fuck her entire Court. And fuck her claims that you aren’t real. You’re real enough for me to love, and that’s all I have to say to that.”
Shock blanked his expression. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Like hell.” A glint caught my eye. Hummingbird fluttered down to land on his shoulder. “And him? He thinks you’re real.”
“I created him myself,” he said. “For companionship, after Reyna’s death.”
Tears stung my eyes. I couldn't make up his mind for him, and the last thing I wanted was to do the same as Etaina had. “The point still stands. Let me know when you come to your senses.”
I turned away, spotting Ilsa gesturing frantically from beside the gate. Blinking hard, I walked to join her.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she said.
“Thought that was Morgan’s line.” I sniffed.
“Who, me?” said Morgan. “I don’t eavesdrop on people.”
I scowled. “Look, if you’re thinking of making derisive comments about Darrow—”
“That’s not it,” said Ilsa. “Did I hear you said you met Thomas Lynn?”
“Oh.” I took in a breath. “Yeah. That. I was going to mention it earlier, but I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Thomas said he was stuck in the kingdom of the Aes Sidhe for however long it’s been since he got kidnapped by the faeries.”
“He’s… immortal?” Ilsa said uncertainly.
“Didn’t ask,” I said. “I think the realm of the Aes Sidhe is fixed in time. I was there for over an hour while you guys were here.”
“Wait, you met our ancestor?” said Morgan.
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “I also kicked him in the crotch and broke his nose.”
Ilsa rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
“In my defence, Etaina ordered him to keep me locked away while she showed off her shiny new talisman to her Court,” I said. “We didn’t have time to chat.”
Ilsa’s expression turned grim. “You left the talisman behind.”
“I’m still the wielder. She hasn’t claimed it.” She might have the staff, but she wouldn’t have its obedience. Not as long as the god decided it needed me more than it needed her. Yeah, and that’ll end well.
“Yet.” Ilsa shook her head. “Have you heard the Sidhe? They don’t care that the two queens are at war for reasons that have nothing to do with taking over Summer. They think she’s going to use that talisman to wipe this place off the map.”
“Then why aren’t they coming after me?” I said. “I’m the one who lost the damned thing.”
“Because you aren’t declaring war on them.” Ilsa took in a breath. “I’m going to the Lynn house to get some weapons. Coming?”
“Yeah. I lost my knives.” I didn’t fancy hopping back into Etaina’s realm to retrieve them. Even if it might mean having another chat with my ancestor. At the thought of Thomas Lynn, curiosity burned like a furnace, tempered only with the knowledge that Etaina might undo Darrow’s existence in one snap of her fingers. The thought unbalanced me, preyed on my thoughts. I won’t let her. Never.
I’d had bloody enough of being a pawn to everyone, including Thomas Lynn. It was him who lay at the centre of everything, and here I was, running away again.
Fury strengthened my resolve. I was through with ignoring my family’s curse in favour of acting as damage control for the Sidhe’s temper tantrums.
I could still do both. I would do both. I’d free my family and save the Courts in the same instant. And Thomas Lynn would help me do it.
20
I returned from the Lynn house clad in my thickest armoured coat and armed with as many weapons as I could carry. The palace entrance hall had cleared when the Sidhe returned to their own abodes to prepare for war—as much as they could with such little knowledge of who th
ey might face and where. There were too many variables. For all we knew, Etaina had already marched on the Vale, or the Seelie Queen had brought her wraiths to the realm of the Aes Sidhe.
Inside the palace grounds, the bodies of the Aes Sidhe assassins were gone. Mum stood talking to Morgan, looking up as Ilsa and I approached.
“Take these.” I pulled the stones I’d taken from Etaina’s office and handed them to my siblings and mother. “I can’t guarantee she won’t claim the talisman anyway, but these should at least stop you suffering the backlash.”
“This makes us immune to the effects of the talisman, Morgan,” Ilsa told him. “Don’t lose it, that clear?”
“Yes, mother,” he said. “Why are you giving us these now? This place is deserted. There’s no war on yet.”
Because I might not be here when it arrives. “Is River with his father? Give both of them one of these stones, too. And the half-faeries—” I broke off, spotting Darrow conversing with some of my former bodyguards on the steps leading into the palace. Coral was among them, and so was Willow. “Hang on a second.”
I climbed the steps, and Coral’s eyes brightened at the sight of me. “There you are. I’ve heard at least a dozen versions of a story where Etaina of the Aes Sidhe interrupted the coronation to declare war on the Seelie Queen, so I take it it’s not a joke?”
“I wish,” I said. “The two of them are at war over a talisman that still belongs to me. And the throne, too, I guess. It’s an old grudge, let’s put it that way.”
Darrow wouldn’t catch my eye. I didn’t want to resume our conversation about our relationship with everyone watching, and besides, it was easier not to ignite that flame with a bigger wildfire on the horizon. I’d told him what I meant to. If the worst happened to either of us, at least I wouldn’t have that regret hanging over me.
“Damn,” said Coral. “Do you think they’re more likely to declare war on one another before they come here?”
“Maybe, but they’re as likely to turn Summer into a battleground as anywhere else,” I said. “It helps that the two of them hate one another more than they hate the rest of us, but if that talisman switches sides…”
The Gatekeeper's Trials: The Complete Trilogy Page 62