“Winter’s forces were on their way to join Summer’s, last I checked,” said Holly. “I came here—to be honest, I was looking for you, Hazel. I worried when Etaina came back and you didn’t, but I hadn’t a clue how to find those Aes Sidhe.”
“Anyone will be able to find them now I’ve blown a hole in the wall of their realm.” I pulled open the gate. “Thomas, lead the way.”
Still on the unicorn, Thomas rode through the gates, while Holly and I followed on foot.
A number of Sidhe on horseback rode along the path from the direction of the Winter Court, bearing the banners of the Unseelie Queen. Good. They did come.
Holly drew a blade and ran to fight alongside Winter’s forces, her iron sword cutting into a sluagh bearing down on the oncoming Sidhe. Ahead, wraiths drifted in clouds of magic, freezing trees and dodging any attempts the Sidhe made to pin them down. A troll rampaged through the carnage, chains swinging, and knocked one of Etaina’s soldiers off his feet.
I’d never seen a battle like it. Without two clear sides, the Vale beasts ripped into anyone they could—Summer, Winter, Aes Sidhe, even their own people. The Aes Sidhe themselves looked so much like regular Summer faeries, aside from their darker clothing, that they managed to evade notice, sneaking up on their targets with deadly stealth. The half-Sidhe fought, too, and relief swept through me at the sight of Darrow. Etaina had spared him, no doubt so she could finish him in front of me. Perhaps she’d known I’d find a way to escape. After all, she couldn’t use the talisman alone. She needed me.
The misty cloak shivered against my skin as the shadows woke in my blood. She’s close. Etaina is close.
“Hazel!” Darrow withdrew his blade from a troll’s neck, letting its heavy body thump to the ground. His clothes were streaked with gore, but he appeared to be unhurt.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “That is—if it’s the real you and not a clone.”
I knew it was, though, as surely as I knew my own name. I couldn’t guarantee both of us would survive, but I’d do my damned best to try.
“I’m real,” he said softly. “I always was.”
Clapping rang out, and the fighting around us ceased as Etaina strode into view, unleashing her glamour on all the surrounding Sidhe. At once, everyone stilled, watching her. Worshipping her.
“So you came back,” said Etaina. “I wondered if you’d run away, given the chance, but I knew your ties to others would always bring you back to die upon my sword.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about the Gatekeepers,” I said. “After all, you and the Erlking both conspired to keep us in ignorance about the true identity of the one we were bound to. Thanks for the key, by the way.”
Her eyes widened. “Key?”
She hadn’t known. The Erlking—and Thomas—had hidden the text until the Gatekeeper arrived. Sneaky bastard.
The cloak moved around me, a living force, pressing the shadows into my skin. A frown sprang to my mouth. With the cloak in my way, I couldn’t use the talisman’s magic… but neither could anyone else.
I wouldn’t be Etaina’s puppet. Never again.
I faced her with a smile. “I have the gods on my side. Turns out they aren’t too pleased with you.”
The Seelie Queen strode into view, her armoured clothes stained with blood. Someone had dealt her a deadly blow, but she’d healed from the injury as she always did. “What is the meaning of this? You dare to flee from me in the middle of a battle? Have you realised that without the talisman’s cooperation, you cannot win this?”
Etaina raised the staff. “Let’s try this again. Gatekeeper, you will be my hands and wield the talisman at my command.”
Her eyes glowed with power, but the shimmering mist deepened around me, and I felt nothing.
She can’t control me.
My smile widened. “Like I said, I have a new team behind me.”
Her mouth twisted. “Thomas Lynn. You are responsible for this.”
“You are correct.” Thomas rode into view on the unicorn’s back. Its horn was encrusted with gore. “The blame is mine, not Hazel or her family’s. My daughters were trying to correct my mistake when they came to Faerie to fix the damage, but it is I alone who defied the gods, and it is your people who slaughtered them and claimed their magic.”
Etaina raised a hand. “I can still undo you, Hazel Lynn. I summon you.”
She said a name, a single syllable that rang with darkness. Thomas exclaimed in alarm as the unicorn reeled backwards, sending him flying into the air—where he hovered as though propped up on invisible strings.
My body trembled. Etaina had summoned something. Using an Invocation. I didn’t need to be fluent in the gods’ language to know it wasn’t good news.
“This is the life I was promised,” echoed a booming voice. “The life I was denied.”
Thomas didn’t struggle. He didn’t even seem to be awake.
“This human tricked you out of claiming his soul,” said Etaina. “Now I offer you what he denied you once before. Take him.”
“One soul is not enough.”
Raw fear clawed at my chest from the inside. The speaker was the god she’d enslaved to do her bidding, and as a price, she’d offered the soul of a mortal every seven years. Except Thomas had thwarted her and worked behind the Erlking’s back to prevent anyone else from being sacrificed.
A lot of seven-year cycles had passed since then. And she still thought the god would serve her without question?
Etaina faced the spot where the voice had come from. “He is not a mortal anymore. His soul is worth more than one, more than the years you missed.”
“He is immortal because he has bathed in the blood of my kin.”
The cloak shivered around me. Of course that was how Thomas had become immortal. That pool in Etaina’s office had more than one use. He’d used the blood of the gods to be reborn, like the Sidhe once had. Under duress or not, it hardly mattered to the being whose voice spoke.
The air split in two, a wide slash as though a blade had seared the forest down the middle. Around us, the whole forest trembled as though caught in a storm. Leaves tore free, wraiths drifted past, and even Etaina and the Seelie Queen cringed away from the gaping slash in mid-air, and the void waiting on the other side.
The talisman was still in Etaina’s hands, but her eyes were on the void instead. If I were closer, I might snatch it back, for all the good it did. In the end, undoing the vow hadn’t brought about the end of Faerie, yet Etaina might well have seen to it anyway.
“Please,” I whispered to the cloak on my shoulders. “If there’s anything you can do to stop it—”
Close the rift. Could I? I might be able to find the words in the Ancients’ tongue, but the beast would not yet be satisfied now Etaina had drawn his attention. If someone didn’t act, it would consume everything around us.
“Stop!” shouted Ilsa’s voice. “Stop.”
The Invocation ripped through the air, but the gap in the air continued to grow larger. I heard Ivy shouting, too.
“All of you!” I called to the Sidhe, who’d begun to back away, no longer caught in Etaina’s spell now her attention was elsewhere. “Add your voices. We can close the rift, but only if we all speak at once.”
A Sidhe stepped forward, a dark-skinned male with armour dappled with feathers and bloodstains. Lord Anther, the disgraced lord who’d been disqualified from the contenders to the throne thanks to the Seelie Queen’s machinations. He must have returned to join the Courts in battle regardless of the lies she’d spread. He spoke first, and his deep melodic voice rang out with the words of the gods.
One by one, the other Sidhe added their voices to the chorus. I heard Raine and Cedar speak, too, as did Ivy and Ilsa. Gradually, the rift slid closed and Thomas floated to earth.
His eyes opened. “It won’t hold,” he rasped. “Not now Etaina has awoken him.”
I turned to Etaina. “Did you think the god would be happy to see you? You owe him
several centuries of sacrifices.”
“Quiet, mortal,” she snapped. “If you had cooperated with me, I would not have had to take drastic measures.”
“Nobody made you try to force the gods to obey you,” I retaliated. “Nobody made you steal their lifeblood for your own use. Did you tell your soldiers those marks are temporary, and you used up your entire supply of blood? When those marks wear off, the Erlking’s talisman will be able to destroy any of them. She’s not protecting you—any of you.”
Gasps came from the Aes Sidhe soldiers, many of whom wore expressions of shock and horror. They hadn’t known their leader had slaughtered the gods and used the blood to make them stronger. And they certainly hadn’t known her protection would have a time limit.
A breeze tugged at the trees. Thomas exclaimed, bracing his feet on the leaf-strewn earth. “It’s opening again.”
I dropped my voice to speak to Thomas. “Can the Devourer’s magic destroy that god?”
“Only in its original form, and that is long gone,” said Thomas. “But he is weakened after so long without any souls to consume.”
“If that’s him at his weakest, I wouldn’t want to meet him at full power.”
“Enough of this!” Etaina marched over to Thomas and me, her eyes blazing. “I will tear the Devourer’s power out of you by force and claim it as my own.”
Her mouth opened to speak an Invocation, but Darrow appeared behind her, swinging a blade at her neck. She blocked the strike, her mouth opening in a snarl, but before she could retaliate, Thomas tackled her. The two of them went flying backwards, crashing into the earth. While surprised at his violence, I didn’t blame him. Thomas had centuries of fury to unleash on her, after all.
But the rift was still opening, growing bigger by the second. The Sidhe shouted Invocations of closing, as did Ilsa and Ivy, but this time, their words had little effect. Cold air buffeted the trees, and oblivion beckoned on the other side.
Thomas’s nose was bleeding, but he continued to pummel Etaina’s body, the two immortals clashing in a bitter struggle. They hardly seemed to notice the slither of the void opening behind Thomas, preparing to claim him again. The Seelie Queen had, though, and she shouted Invocations along with the rest.
“What is that?” Holly stood behind me, her feet braced on the ground.
“Trouble.” I looked up at Darrow, who’d grabbed the talisman when it’d fallen from Etaina’s hands and extended it for me to take. “Thank you.”
The instant my fingers closed around the staff, the misty cloak around my shoulders brightened and a hiss of displeasure sounded in my ear. The god was less than enthused about me carrying the Devourer’s magic in my hands again.
In a sudden rush of finality, I knew what I had to do.
I caught Ilsa’s eye and mouthed, “Unbind me.”
Ilsa spoke the words, quietly at first, then louder, reciting from memory. The same words she’d spoken when she’d removed the talisman’s magic from me the first time around.
At once, magic tore from my skin, from my bones and blood. The staff fought back, shadows pressing against me, only to collide with the rippling cloak surrounding me on the outside. Magic fought against magic, but the cloak was stronger, the god’s rage far from sated.
In a wrenching tug, the Devourer’s magic poured out of me, shadows flooding into the air from the staff’s edge. Forcing my legs to move, I ran, hurling the talisman towards the widening gap in mid-air and the dark shape of the god waiting below.
“No!” The Seelie Queen ran towards the rift, arms outstretched. Her hands snagged the staff’s edge, but when she tried to tug it out of the gap, something on the other side tugged back.
Etaina released Thomas, diving at her sister. Together, they scrambled for the talisman in wild desperation, and neither saw Thomas approach them from behind. Nor did they see the grim smile on his face.
I didn’t hear the words he spoke, but I did hear the Seelie Queen’s scream of rage and terror, mingling with her sister’s, as the talisman hurtled over the edge of the rift, carrying both queens along with it. The Devourer’s shadowy magic swirled around them as the rift drew them into its embrace.
The ground trembled as though an earthquake shook the very foundations of the world. My body swayed on the spot, reeling with the shock of losing the talisman’s magic, and only the traces of the misty cloak on my shoulders kept me from collapsing altogether.
“Gatekeeper…” I whispered. “I let you go. As I promised.”
Holly swayed beside me. The symbol on her forehead glowed as bright as the sun, as did mine, and I screwed up my eyes against the glare. Through my lidded eyes, I saw Thomas’s form etched against the rift, blocking it from sight.
Thomas had held the original kernel that had started the Lynn curse. The moment he crossed the border into the rift, it would bring an end to the cycle, and transfer the magic back into the faerie realm where it belonged.
The cloak lifted from my shoulders, surging over to Thomas. The image of a gate flashed before my eyes—two gates, merging into one. I saw Holly sink to the ground, and a sharp, terrible pain burned my forehead, a deafening shattering noise piercing my eardrums. My head hit the earth, landing in a soft bed of leaves and fragments of the broken circlet.
I lifted my head, seeing the void wink out of existence along with Thomas Lynn—then the light turned to darkness, and all was gone.
24
I opened my eyes. I lay in a room that almost looked like my bedroom, but not quite. For one thing, there were two beds, and Holly lay in the other. Weird.
I got out of bed and walked to the window. Outside the panes of dusty glass, rolling hills extended into the distance. I recognised the dirt track leading to the village of Foxwood on the right-hand side, but I’d thought there weren’t any houses this far away from the village.
Footsteps on wooden floorboards sounded, and the door opened to reveal my sister.
“Good, one of you is awake,” Ilsa said. “I’m having to sleep on the floor because there aren’t enough rooms in this house.”
“Why are we in this house?” I looked between the rolling hills and the wooden frame of the bed, uncomprehending. “Whose house is it?”
“It’s ours,” said Ilsa. “Well, in theory it is. This is what our home used to look like before the curse turned it into the Lynn house.”
Holly groaned and yanked the pillow over her head. “Shut up, can’t you? I’m trying to sleep.”
“You might want to take a look around,” Ilsa said. “There were… changes, when Hazel broke the curse.”
Holly sat up. “What am I doing here? Where am I? This bed is like sleeping on a rock.”
“The two Lynn houses merged along with the gates,” said Ilsa, an apologetic expression on her face. “They didn’t really do comfy beds in Thomas Lynn’s era.”
Holly blinked a couple of times, comprehension dawning. “My house is gone? And everything I own?”
“Everything the faeries owned,” Ilsa corrected. “Or everything created from their magic, anyway. Mum found all our weapons in the garden, and we’ve been finding things scattered all over the place since we got back from Faerie.”
Holly shoved the blankets aside and pushed to her feet. “That is bullshit. They can’t steal my things.”
“What do you expect from the faeries?” I looked between her and the window, half numb with shock. “They weren’t going to let us keep their magic now we aren’t bound to their realm.”
Holly raised her hand to her head as though feeling for the circlet. The symbol was gone from her forehead, same as mine. We looked at one another for an instant. Her eyes were brown, not blue, and I’d bet mine were the same. Our magic had gone. We were free.
Holly broke her gaze from mine. “I’m going to find my possessions. Try not to wreck anything else while I’m gone.”
“Bloody cheek,” I said, when the door closed behind her. “As though we didn’t just fix the mess that Thomas L
ynn started. Anyway, where’s she going to live? I’m not rooming with her, and Mum won’t either.”
I didn’t have to stay. I could walk away from the Ley Line without fearing the backlash of a curse. I wasn’t Faerie’s servant, not anymore.
“Don’t ask me,” Ilsa said. “Not to deflate your bubble, Hazel, but you and Mum have no money. The Sidhe took it all when they left the house. Or it turned into leaves. I’m not entirely sure which.”
“Of course they did.” I glanced after Holly. “I’m guessing there aren’t a ton of jobs open to an ex-Gatekeeper?”
Ilsa rolled her eyes. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t get lost. Also, Darrow is looking for you.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. Nor how to take it all in. But before I could get a grip on myself, Ilsa had left and Darrow entered in her place.
“Hazel.” Darrow folded his arms around me. “I feared you’d expired along with the curse.”
“Like I’d go quietly into the afterlife without bargaining with my sister to bring me back.” I squeezed him back. “I’m kind of in shock right now, just so you know.”
“I thought so,” he said. “Would it calm you if I told you the Courts suffered no damage from the rift opening?”
“Thanks to the Gatekeeper,” I said. “The real Gatekeeper. I think she was some kind of guardian who kept the other gods in check. Did you see what happened to her magic? I mean, my magic, and Holly’s?”
“You mean when your circlet broke?” he said. “I saw a great deal of magic disperse throughout the faerie realm. But I would very much like an explanation of your side of things.”
“Well.” I fiddled with the woollen blanket on the bed. “Which part? I suppose you guessed I went back to Thomas for answers…”
I told him about the Erlking’s scheming and the riddle he’d left behind, Thomas Lynn’s revelations and the gods’ arrival. He listened with great patience, though I sensed he must have heard at least some of it already from Ilsa, or perhaps Ivy. Thomas, though… he’d be at peace now, no longer Etaina’s plaything. When I’d finished, Darrow watched me in awe, shaking his head. “You never cease to amaze me.”
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