by May Dawson
“She’s a friend,” he promised. “For a while, the sentient statue was the only friend I had.”
“I’m not capable of being anyone’s friend, Raile.” Her voice was soft, but it still rippled through the water and vibrated through my bones with her power. “I’m a statue, and before that, I was a god.”
I glanced at him, wondering how the hell even a god could be bound into a statue, but Raile shrugged. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers. You were close enough to a friend for me.”
“You were so pathetic and adorable, I didn’t have the heart to smite you.” She smiled slowly, her lips twitching as if she were out of practice. I wondered how often he visited her, and if months—even years—went by without her trying to smile.
He scoffed. “If you were in the smiting business, you should have started with my brothers.”
The goddess of the sea blew a raspberry. “You had the situation under control.”
“I very much did not,” he said mildly, and then went on, “We came to see if you had any ideas on how to beat the Shadow Man.”
“Why would I know that?” She stepped down from the dais. She carried an enormous trident, as lightly as if it were nothing. Since she was all one color—a deep burnished silver—I couldn’t track her pupils in those strange eyes, but it felt as if she were staring at me.
“Don’t you know everything?” Raile asked.
She let out a laugh. “It seemed that way to you as a child, didn’t it? When you came to me for help?”
“I can never repay you for what you did for me,” Raile said, and the genuine note in his voice surprised me. “Without you, I wouldn’t have survived, wouldn’t have become king—”
“I think you give yourself too little credit,” she said, turning her face toward him. “You did all those things yourself. What you desperately needed was someone to listen.”
He pulled a face. “That’s a sweet idea, but I also needed help with spells and plots…”
“You could have figured it out on your own. You were the only one who made much use of that library, out of all fifteen of you.”
“Roder tried to make use of it when he came in there to kill me,” Raile noted.
“Mm, maybe he should have picked up a book instead of a vase to clout you with. Anyway if I recall correctly, you weren’t sure if he intended to kill you or make an alliance at first. Until you ran your mouth.”
“We all have our faults,” he said with dignity.
“Did you kill all your brothers?” I asked in horror.
“No!” he said. “I didn’t even kill Roder. I killed the one in the garden, and then the other I poisoned so he wouldn’t tell anyone about the garden. Then I hid out in different realms for a while as they all killed each other. Until I… had to come back.”
“Very efficient,” the statue said admiringly.
“I didn’t even want to fight for the throne like guppies eating each other,” he muttered. “But it was take the throne or see my throat slit.”
“Now you’re a good king,” she said.
He shrugged one shoulder, but I was sure she was right, whether or not she had to see the past or future to know that.
“What do you know about the Shadow Man?” I asked.
She smiled. “I should ask you that. You know everything you need to know to beat him.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Really great. But do you think we could discuss nitty-gritty specifics? Maybe a step-by-step plan?”
She shook her head. “You don’t need that. You just need to return to the surface and take it as it comes. You’ve never planned too far ahead, have you?”
“From what I’ve heard of her Hunting days, I’m not sure I’d say that she should stick with that approach,” Raile said, and I smacked his arm without looking away from the seer.
“Did you hear that, Raile?” I asked him. “She agrees with me that I should go rescue Duncan from his dungeon. One of our plans to fight the Shadow Man has to work.”
He was silent so long that I finally turned to find him staring at me, one eyebrow lifted above his stormy gray eyes.
“Our plans?” he asked. “Are you finally admitting we could be a team? We were once, you know.”
“I don’t remember that,” I reminded him.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “You’re the one who wants to leave the past in the past. I’m talking about the future.”
The statue looked between us with her slow, eerie movements. Then she said, “I think the two of you can take it from here.”
“Oh no,” Raile insisted as she climbed the stairs back to the dais. “This whole just go above and trust yourselves business is not going to fly—”
She settled into her dais, the trident gripped in one hand, her chin lifted regally—and just stopped moving. For a few long seconds, Raile and I both stared at her.
Then he swore. “I hate it when she does that. She always finds a way to get the last word.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Tiron
Merlin refused to help us. “You came knocking on my door because you want something,” he said in irritation. “Well, I have news for you: the world always wants saving. And I don’t care to bother anymore! It never stays saved! I’ve reached my quota.”
When he slammed the door in our face, the two of us exchanged a baleful look.
“We’re not going to give up that easily, are we?” I said. “Surely Excalibur could slay the Shadow Man. It’s magic itself.”
“Oh, so you do believe in Merlin?”
“I always believed in Merlin. I didn’t believe you knew his address,” I corrected. “And that beard is quite admirable.”
Then I added, “And I’ll be honest, I’m pretty desperate. I’d like to go back to our realm with something that could help Alisa.”
Azrael hesitated. “Me too.”
The look on his face made me smile. He was thinking, and I knew he’d work his way to the same conclusion I had—he was simply more cautious along the way.
“Your enthusiasm where thievery is involved concerns me,” he said.
We waited until Merlin left later that day. Breaking into Merlin’s mansion was surprisingly easy. The two of us clothed ourselves in shadow, just in case—Merlin might not be able to see through Fae magic—and slipped inside.
We stepped into a light-soaked room; the ceiling two stories above was filled with skylights. The sun cast vivid rainbows against the white marble floors. Tapestries hung on the walls, in the same ancient style as Camelot, but they looked brand new; between the tapestries hung gleaming swords and shields. No sign of Excalibur, though.
“Still think I’m making any of this up?” Azrael asked softly.
“It’s not you that I doubted, it was your friend Maverichadagh.”
Azrael smiled. “You know mortals can’t remember how to say his name?”
“Disrespectful,” I said, but then they so often are.
That’s part of why Fae used to feel pretty good about dragging them into servanthood from the mortal world; the humans usually managed to make them quite cross first.
An enormous fountain, with three bodies locked together in a passionate embrace at the center, dominated the room. I crouched to read the gold plate at the base of the marble fountain. “Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot,” I read aloud.
“We’re not here to sightsee,” Az reminded me.
I rose and headed along with him, our feet eerily silent on those long marble floors. The story of Camelot always bothered me; for centuries mortals blamed the three of them for the fall of a world that they had saved together. The world had been ripping apart, and so they’d torn it into multiple worlds that each had spun off in their own directions. Avalon. The Greyworld. Dirtside. Our own Fae world.
Some thanks they’d received.
But then, I wasn’t sure how kind the history books would be to me. I wasn’t sure how I could save the winter court and protect my friends. I couldn’t le
t any of them down—but I wasn’t sure there was any way to end this well.
It didn’t matter if the world didn’t remember me kindly. I just had to protect my people and Alisa and these Fae knights who had become my family.
“Let’s split up,” Az said. “Excalibur, or anything else useful you can find. Merlin can help save the world one more time, whether he likes it or not.”
I nodded in agreement. The two of us separated, searching through Merlin’s house.
I didn’t find Excalibur.
But I found what I needed most—what I really believed could help set the world to rights.
A giant emerald, like the one that the statue of Herrick’s great, great grandfather gripped in his hand in the garden. He’d been overthrown by his son, and his son had turned him into the first of the statues—and placed the tool by which the magic had worked in his hand.
That stone glowed with power, but people misunderstood what kind of power it was.
I didn’t want to bring back any of Herrick’s family. But this stone had the power to turn the statues in the garden back into the people they once had been. All I had to do was get it into the center of the garden and work the spell.
I reached for it—but a voice stopped.
“I wouldn’t steal from me if I were you, son.”
I whirled to face Merlin. His staff was gripped in one hand, and magic crackled around it. The hum of that magic was electric in the air, raising goosebumps along my arms.
“Ah,” I said eloquently.
The next second, my thoughts would catch up, and I’d be able to spin some story, but Merlin raised his hand to stop me.
“I get very angry when people steal from me, and then I have to be murderous instead of generous, and that is very taxing, especially when it’s almost time for my favorite telenova to come on.” He glanced at the clock. “So please, let’s skip over all that. Take the stone, son.”
I hesitated, sure that this was some kind of trick.
“Oh good grief,” he reached past me and plucked up the stone before pressing it into my hand. “I know your sad story, winter king. Your quest is a noble one even though you’re doing a pretty shit job.”
“I don’t think I’m doing a shit job—”
“You don’t think any of it is noble either,” he said, “because you’re lying to your friends, people you love, and you think that makes you a terrible person. And it does! But that’s not the whole sum of who you are.”
“That is certainly a pep talk,” I said evenly.
“Yes, Arthur hated my pep talks too. And look how he ended up.” Merlin clanked his staff against the floor. “Look how he ended up!”
I had a feeling perhaps the world’s greatest wizard hadn’t fared so well over the passing millennia.
But I looked down at the rock in my hand, and it suddenly seemed to throb against my palm. I almost dropped it. It had felt for a second as if I held a beating heart.
“The plan has always been that I would take the High throne.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I frowned, wondering why I was blathering on to the wizard. I hadn’t meant to say that.
But I didn’t want the High throne; there was no way to take it from Faer without taking it from Alisa, too, and nothing about that felt right.
“You can find a way to set the world right, Tiron,” he said. “And to be the hero of your own story. You’re no longer that boy, being hidden by his people for the time when he will save them. You no longer have to play by their rules.”
“I want to save them, though.”
“Then do it,” he said. “But on your own terms.”
He made it sound so easy.
“It will be brutally difficult,” he promised me, “but I think you’ll find your way out of the maze in the end, Tiron.”
I nodded.
Then he said, “I can’t give you Excalibur. But I do have another sword helpfully labeled Excalibur that your friend is eying right now, and I’d like to give it to you before he tries to steal it.”
“Won’t he just be in danger trying to fight the Shadow Man with it, then?”
“The Shadow Man isn’t his battle or yours anyway,” he said. “Good luck, winter king.”
He waved his fingers at me and then disappeared—very slowly, slowly enough that it became quite awkward. When he was nothing but a smile and a beard, I headed off to find Azrael.
Chapter Forty-Three
Duncan
Six Years Earlier
It was the night of Alisa’s birthday. Herrick had thrown a week-long birthday party for Faer and Alisa, but that day was their true birthday.
“You’re going soft,” Azrael told me. He had his feet up on the railing, and he was tilted back in his chair. Spreading in front of us before our castle, the trees were a riot of color. He’d been at the front for months, and it was his first day back.
“You’re the one who’s actually listening to her for once.” She’d warned us both to stay away, and Azrael had no choice the past several months.
He smiled faintly. “Just for tonight.”
“You plan to see her again. Despite her warnings about Herrick.” It wasn’t a question. I knew he couldn’t stay away from her any more than I could.
“We have to find a way,” he said. Absently, he rested his fingertips just below his collarbone; I wondered if he had some of her letters in his jacket pocket.
I scoffed, then rested my elbows on the railing. “I’ll give her your regards.”
“I imagine you’re giving her more than my regards.”
Azrael’s voice was mild, but I spun to face him, already furious.
“Relax,” he said. “It would probably take both of us to even begin to look after her.”
I was still heated, but I managed to lean back against the railing. “I don’t think even the two of us are enough to look after her. Alisa always finds trouble.”
“Part of her charm,” Azrael said, “and part of her curse.”
I scoffed at that, but he was already rising to his feet. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the portal.”
“You just want to make sure there aren’t any nasty summer surprises coming through,” I said.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “I know you’ve been fine without me all these months. But old habits.”
He looked thinner, grimmer, after his time at the front. It made me feel ridiculous that I’d spent the last year in school, pining after a girl.
The two of us walked together through the halls of the autumn court until he let me into his room. In one corner, beside the immense stone fire place, stood the portal-mirror.
In my pocket, I carried the bracelet I’d made her. There was nothing that suited me to buy her; we both had all the money in the world, what did it matter that I bought her something beautiful and expensive?
But with my own hands, I’d cut and knotted the metal—three shades, twining the links together. I hoped she’d take its meaning.
And I was going to finally tell her I loved her.
I wasn’t good at being vulnerable. But Alisa had made it clear she wanted us both. The thought made me smile as I touched the cool metal of the bracelet. For her, I’d try to let down my walls—the ones she hadn’t already wrecked.
“You look happy,” Az said.
“Hm? Nah.”
He clapped my shoulder. “Happy’s good, Duncan.”
“Our world is still in tatters,” I reminded him.
“Just because the world has ragged edges is no reason not to find joy where you can find it. Maybe it’s a reason to try harder.”
Normally I’d mock Az mercilessly for his positive attitude. It was always strange to me that we were only a year apart in age, and we’d been through almost the same set of experiences: raised in wealth and power, mother deathly sick from the time we were small, looking out for Zora, father’s cruel training, our mother’s death, the academy. And yet we had almost entirely different outlooks on the world.
Maybe I shouldn’t always be so mean to my brother.
When I arrived for her birthday, Alisa was dancing. For a few moments, I stood in the shadows with the low Fae and watched her; everywhere she went, she seemed to glitter like no one else. There could have been a spotlight on her as she swept across the dance floor. Maybe for me, there always was.
When she saw me, for one second she stopped dead, staring at me. The music went on, and the dancers swirled around her. She stared at me as if she’d just seen a ghost, and for a second my heart stuttered in my chest. The music faded for me. Something was wrong.
The next second, she was smiling, slipping through the crowd. I shook myself, wondering if I’d just imagined that second of horror around her face; maybe she was glad to see me. She was certainly smiling widely enough now, her lavender hair brushing her bare shoulders.
“Come dance with me,” she said, catching my hand and drawing me with her.
“I thought maybe we could go somewhere more private,” I said, but I pulled her into my arms. The two of us steered across the dance floor; I was a competent dancer, because attending balls was part of my work as a royal, but I lacked Azrael’s easy flair. As always.
“Oh? You wanted to celebrate my birthday privately?” Her eyes sparkled. “Did you bring me a gift, Duncan? Or are you my gift?”
“I told you I would.”
“Oh, that was yesterday. Sometimes things change.” She ran her hand down my lapel, and then I realized she was checking my pockets.
I grinned at her and caught her hand just as it reached my hip, pulling up her hand into the proper dancing position high on my chest. “I don’t change.”
Nor would how I felt about her. I wanted to give her everything.
“Promises, promises,” she teased. “We’ll see if you can keep it. I hope it’s something good.”
“You’re in a mood tonight,” I said, and before I could ask her what was wrong, she was already speaking.