Tithe

by Chani Lynn Feener

  “I do,” Cole waited until Eskel had given him his full attention. “The Erlking.”

  “Why would he give Eskel’s brother, a human, his symbol?” Arden was still trying to wrap her head around how she’d been so off the mark. “Did he have the sight as well?”

  “Arden, I don’t—”

  “When did your brother die?” Cole cut him off, still inspecting him. Cole had always had that way about him, the uncanny ability to pick someone apart with a mere glance. In the past, it had fascinated Arden, watching him watch others.

  Now, she found herself annoyed and defensive on Eskel’s behalf despite herself. He might not have lied to her about being a Heartless, and about not knowing what that meant, but he’d still kept things from her.

  “This is all far too coincidental to be believable,” she acknowledged, uncomfortable with the notion that the only person she trusted in this room was currently still unconscious.

  “I agree,” Cole nodded, “which is why I’m asking when his brother passed.”

  “He was murdered,” Eskel growled, clenching his hands so tightly at his sides that his knuckles went bone-white.

  “All right, but when?”

  “Seven years ago.” Arden covered her face and turned away from them. She’d been so stupid. How could she have not seen this sooner? If she hadn’t been so worried about Mavek and Titania, and the dark faeries that both she and the Erlking had brought to town, maybe she would have.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been completely distracted by Eskel’s raspy voice and his height, and his gorgeous hair, she would have realized there was something off about all of this. About his timing, and how easily he’d taken news of the Unseelie. The ring.

  “Your brother was a Heartless,” Cole voiced what she’d just figured out.

  “I didn’t know that’s what he was specifically.” Eskel might have been directing this to Arden, but she couldn’t yet make herself turn around and face him. “But yes. That’s what I’ve come to realize.”

  “How?” Cole canted his head, eyes narrowing. “What are you even really doing here? Cause I assume you didn’t come all this way to attend our little community college.”

  “No,” Eskel admitted. “I didn’t.” He inhaled, as if preparing to divulge an earth-shattering secret, and then said, “I followed one of the Unseelie. I was young when my brother died, but I remembered things, seeing people walk through walls and fade in and out of existence.”

  “That’s why you thought they were ghosts.” Arden slowly turned, keeping her eyes on Tabby, as far away from meeting Eskel’s gaze as possible.

  “You thought spirits killed your brother?” Cole let out a low whistle. “Sorry to tell you, dude, it’s nothing as simple as that. If he really was a Heartless, which I fully believe he was, and the knight of the Erlking no less, then your brother got himself into bed with far more dangerous creatures than any old ghost could ever be.”

  “His body was torn to shreds and his heart was missing,” Eskel snapped. “So yeah, I’m aware.”

  “And yet you chose to follow one of them anyway?” Cole lifted a brow. “Instead of running the other direction like a smart person? How did you even find one of them after all of this time? Seven years isn’t exactly a blink.”

  “Supernatural hotspots.” Eskel informed. “Certain places on the globe emit energy that can be used by creatures like the Unseelie—and spirits, which is why I thought they were ghosts. There’s one in my town, close to where Everett’s body was found. As I got older I kept going back, hoping to see him again.”

  “Wait,” Cole held up a hand and shook his head, “I’m sorry. What? You just said your brother is dead.”

  “He is.”

  “Do you mean you thought you’d see his ghost?” Arden asked.

  “Yes.” He ran a hand through his hair and then moved to the other side of the room. Leaning back against the wall, he tipped his head up to stare at the ceiling as he elaborated. “I thought they were all ghosts, and therefore my brother would be one too. He told me, the day he left, that the next time I saw him he might not be the brother that I remembered. That he might be different.”

  “And you took that to mean he might be Casper?” Cole didn’t sound very supportive.

  “Sorry eleven-year-old me couldn’t be more impressive,” Eskel snapped. “Over the past seven years, I’ve gone back there, to where his body was found. Over and over again, hoping to see him. But I never did. Then, three months ago, I’m there in the middle of the night about ready to go home when I see him.”

  “Your brother?” Arden frowned.

  “No,” Eskel held her gaze pointedly with his own. “Mavek Midnight.”

  Cole’s mouth dropped open. “You stalked the Midnight Prince?”

  “I recognized him,” Eskel goes on, ignoring Cole, “even after all this time. I saw him talking to my brother once. It was outside our house, in the backyard. It was late and our parents were asleep and something woke me. I saw them out the window and went downstairs and out the backdoor. Mavek spotted me first, and Everett rushed me into the house. All he said was that Mavek was a friend from school. But something about him…

  “When I saw him I immediately remembered. I followed him back to this old abandoned house. I spent the next week hiding in the bushes watching over a dozen of them come and go. I overheard them say that they were heading here.”

  “So you decided the best course of action was enrolling in our college and pretending that you’re normal?” Cole asked.

  “Your brother isn’t here,” Arden said, because that much was obvious.

  Eskel shook his head.

  “And me? You didn’t walk into Howl’s for textbooks that night, did you?” Arden didn’t know why it bothered her so much, even when she’d had a few days to deal with the fact that he’d been lying to her.

  “I followed Mavek there.”

  Mavek, who’d left her a cupcake she’d found right after Eskel had left.

  Suddenly, Tabby heaved up from the bed, clutching her chest tightly. Tears streamed down her face, and when Cole touched her she fought him off, clawing and slapping at him. Arden moved to help, holding her friend’s shoulders down against the sweat-stained bed until most of the fight drained out of her.

  Tabby blinked, but her eyes couldn’t focus on any of them, trailing across the ceiling and around the room like the inside dice of a Magic 8 Ball.

  “It’s fine,” Cole said at Arden’s freaked-out expression. “It’ll take some time for the faerie fruit to counteract the poison.”

  “And how exactly does feeding her the same thing that poisoned her in the first place help?”

  “Ask the Unseelie,” he grumbled, then brushed sticky strands of his cousin’s hair off to the side and began speaking to her in calming, hushed tones. Worry was etched all over her face, but he wouldn’t have told them getting the fruit would work unless it really did.

  “How did you get involved in all of this?” Arden asked, partly because she needed a break from interrogating Eskel, and partly because she really wanted to know. Last she’d heard, he’d skipped town without so much as a goodbye, intent on starting over. Starting a normal life as a college student, far away from her and her crazy mother.

  He clearly had not succeeded.

  Cole sent a sidelong look at Eskel, but ended up saying to Arden, “The night market stopped in town and I happened on it one night. By the time I realized not to eat the food, it was too late.”

  “You weren’t put off by it from the start?” Eskel asked. “It didn’t exactly appear to be the most friendly of places. And there’s no way you could have missed the fact that most of them didn’t look human.”

  Arden frowned. “They would have to a regular person.”

  “And I was one,” Cole continued, completely missing her point. “I didn’t have the sight like you two. I only saw what they wanted me to, and it certainly wasn’t anything amiss.”

  “Did you get sick like
Tabby?”

  “No,” he shook his head and began untangling some of his cousin’s hair, “because I kept going back. After the seventh night I was too far gone to stop.” He paused, swallowed. “I’d cursed myself. Now, goblin fruit is the only thing I can eat.”

  “The only thing?” Eskel repeated.

  “Everything else tastes like sawdust.”

  “Cole.” Arden didn’t know what else to say.

  “Don’t,” he insisted. “I didn’t come here for your pity. I came here because I had to.”

  “How did you become a Heartless?” She wasn’t exactly in the mood to pity him either, not when he’d abandoned her and gotten her best friend poisoned.

  “The Erlking. He found me at the night market. He told me that he could help me break the curse, if I agreed to help them. Sign up for the Tithe, become his Heartless knight, and I could earn a chance at my freedom.” Cole looked at her then, and the anguish in his eyes made it hard for her to remember her earlier sentiments about pity.

  “I have to follow them,” he said. “The night market doesn’t stay in one place for long, the Erlking and his people are trooping faeries, they like to wander. But I can’t survive without that fruit now, so where they go, I’m forced to go.” He shut his eyes. “I haven’t been back to school in five months.”

  Cole’s dream had always been to become an actor. His parents hadn’t approved and so he’d worked extra hard to get his grades up and earn enough money to attend a school like Carnegie Melon. He’d worked his ass off, getting straight A’s, participating in the high school drama club as well as in the small Shakespeare company that the town ran. He’d held two jobs, one late at night cleaning hair trimmings from the salon on Main Street and another on weekends sorting files at Jim Baker’s law office.

  And he was good at acting too. So good. That was always why, as shitty as she’d felt about the whole thing, Arden had never blamed herself for not being able to see the signs that he wasn’t happy anymore. That the situation with her mom had become too much for him to handle.

  “You said my brother was a part of this,” Eskel waved his hand in the air, “Tithe thing. But that it got him killed. Why?” His eyes drifted from one to the other. “And what does that mean for you two?”

  A look passed between her and Cole.

  “One of us might not survive,” she divulged, if a bit dryly. Now that she knew who one of her competitors was, she should probably be taking it more seriously. Instead, the dread she’d been feeling all this time remained at the same stomach churning level it’d always been. The fact that she’d have to challenge Cole didn’t make it any harder. Nor did it make it any easier.

  “Or the other guy might not,” Cole put in. “Or two of us could die. There’s really no way of knowing for sure. Sometimes, no one gets killed. It really depends on the Unseelie.”

  “What do you mean?” Eskel pressed.

  Mavek had explained this to Arden from the beginning, prefacing their conversation by saying that he hadn’t wanted her to overhear it from anyone else and think he’d been purposefully keeping details about the Tithe from her. Each of the three rulers had a knight, and each knight was completely under the protection of that ruler.

  “They’ve turned it into somewhat of a game,” Cole was saying. “After centuries of having to deliver a tithe, they came up with rules to make the competition more interesting.”

  “And to ensure that the best candidate always won,” Arden added, but Cole merely lifted a brow at her like he believed she was naïve for thinking so. “Each of the three Unseelie rulers in North America chooses a Heartless, but in the end, only one gets to become the tithe.”

  “Doing so frees them, and their families if it’s hereditary, from whatever curse they’re under. For me, that’ll be the goblin fruit. For Arden the sight.” Cole canted his head at her. “Which, by the way, since we’re on the topic already, why on earth would you want to get rid of the sight? Without it, you’ll be forced to remember they’re out there, but unable to see them. Don’t you feel like maybe that’s leaving you and your family vulnerable instead?”

  Arden propped a shoulder against the wall and peered out the window into the night. The streets were quiet, the only movement was a cluster of silver moths banging against the lamppost in front of Tabby’s house.

  “If it were just the sight, that’d be one thing,” she told them. “Unfortunately, all the women in my family eventually go crazy because of it. My grandmother passed before I was born—the circumstances surrounding her death were strange—and my mom… Well,” she looked at Cole, “you know what happened to her.”

  He had the decency to hang his head.

  “So,” she spun back around so that she was facing them both once more, “when one of us fails, and one of us will, then it’ll be up to the Unseelie regent we’re sworn to serve to decide what becomes of us. The Erlking, for instance, could decide to be a dick and not allow Cole to enter the night market again.”

  “But he would die,” Eskel said pointedly.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t seem nearly as upset by this as you should.”

  “Should I?” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “This has been my reality for a long time now, Eskel. It’s new to you, but it’s old news to me. I’ve dealt with my demons.”

  “No,” he disagreed vehemently, “you’re dealing with them right now. There’s got to be another way to break your curse. What will happen to you if you lose? What will Mavek do to you?”

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. “He’ll continue to protect my sister. And when the time comes for me, when I begin showing signs that I’m going the way of my mother, and her mother before her, he’ll—”

  “What?!” he snapped. “Kill you?”

  “He’ll handle it.” Because that’s what he’d promised her. Those were the terms they’d agreed upon before she’d accepted the Heartless position. “I know the risks. I always have.”

  “And them?” Eskel was pissed, and he was doing nothing to hide it. “What the hell do they get out of all of this? What makes it so important to them that you two risk everything for this Tithe?”

  “They get to stay here,” Cole answered. “The Unseelie aren’t from our world, they come from another. The Underground. Two thousand years ago they managed to escape their home and enter ours. After a war—don’t ask me for details because I don’t know any—a treaty was struck between those who wished to remain here and those who still lived in the Underground. Every seven years a sacrifice must be made: one human who is willing, brave enough, and strong enough to endure the Tithe ceremony. As long as that keeps happening, the Unseelie are allowed to live here in peace. But if they miss even one Tithe…”

  “They’ll be sucked back down to the Underground,” Arden picked up the story, watching Eskel closely.

  “Is it hell?” he asked after a moment.

  “To those who wish to stay here it is.” At least, that’s how Mavek described it.

  Eskel turned and brought both hands to the top of his head. “This is insane.”

  “Coming from the guy who followed what he thought were dead people across the entire country,” Cole drawled, “that doesn’t mean much.”

  The light was on in the bathroom when she got home.

  Arden distinctly recalled turning it off before leaving earlier, and now, seeing the shadow of a person flickering across the hardwood floor had her easing back down the hall toward the front door. Eskel had dropped her off and she’d refused to let him come in, so she was alone.

  After the day she’d had, she was in no mood to deal with a robber and as she back-pedaled her hand drifted down toward the knife tucked into her right boot. Any other time she would have called Mavek, but after her discussion with Cole, she wasn’t sure how she felt about him either.

  Everyone was lying to her, and it made her doubt everything she’d believed in for so long. Surely Mavek had known that her ex-boyfriend was one of t
he Heartless. Why hadn’t he told her? Warned her? She understood they weren’t supposed to interact, but that didn’t mean that Mavek shouldn’t have told her Cole was here and explained why.

  Her hand was just about to grasp the door handle when the shadow bolted forward. She had her knife palmed and ready to toss in less than a blink, catching herself at the last second.

  She let out a shaky breath and then cursed loudly.

  Mavek quirked a dark brow at her from the bathroom doorway. He was dressed in a cream colored coat over a dark vest with four buttons. The dress shirt underneath was black, as were his pants.

  “You look like you’re on your way to some formal event,” Arden blurted, eyeing him down, and not quite happy with the way her stomach flipped at the sight.

  “It’s the coat, isn’t it?” He pursed his lips and played with the collar. “It’s too light of a color for me.”

  On the contrary, it was the perfect color for him, which was why Arden found herself so annoyed. It contrasted with his pale skin and dark hair, and she silently wished that he’d left some of the buttons on the shirt undone so that she could see the outlines of his tattoos.

  “What are you doing here, Mavek?” She was tired, and didn’t think she could handle any more secrets for the night. But she was his Heartless, and she was required to tell him anything that could be pertinent to the Tithe. The fact that she’d discovered Cole and now knew that Eskel’s brother had once been a participant seemed very pertinent.

  And yet…

  Arden wasn’t sure if she should tell him. Not only because it would complicate matters but also because then she might get everyone in trouble. She hadn’t known that the Heartless weren’t supposed to mingle, but Cole had been pretty adamant that no one should see them together. Did that mean that there were consequences? If so, would Mavek act against her?

  Arden wanted to believe that he wouldn’t. Yet if Eskel’s story about his brother was true, that meant Mavek had stood by and watched the Erlking punish him for losing. Killed him for it. While she’d always known what kind of creature Mavek was, she hadn’t been ready to accept that he was capable of this level of brutality. Now, knowing the brother of one of the Unseelie’s victims was forcing her to confront the reality of his true nature.