Before he could argue, she stepped onto the curb and began the trek down the long drive. They’d parked Cole’s car on the side of the street because there was no room past the manor’s gate.
“I’ve never seen so many cars here,” she told him once he’d caught up and settled into a steady pace at her side.
“This is a big deal,” he reminded. “All three courts are here to bear witness.”
She scrunched up her nose in displeasure and gave him a sideways glance. “Seriously? ‘To bear witness’? That’s what you went with? Someone has been spending way too much time with the Erlking.”
“Says the girl who always has a damn cupcake in one hand.” He hesitated in front of the steps, eyeing the door as if afraid it was about to come off its hinges and leap at them. “Are we seriously about to do this?”
“Get everything we’ve ever wanted?” Her tone was sarcastic, even to her. “You bet.”
“Arden.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist, stopping her when she began to ascend the stairs. “Whatever happens tonight, no matter who wins this,” he inhaled slowly, “I won’t abandon you again.”
“We aren’t friends anymore, Cole,” the words were out of her mouth before she could think about how harsh they were. Still, once she’d said it she didn’t flinch, watching him carefully for his reaction. She couldn’t just forgive and forget because he felt sorry, no matter how badly she wished she could.
Because honestly, right now she could really use a friend, even one who was going to be her opponent in less than an hour.
“I know,” he said, “but I’m hoping we can be again.”
“Even when I kick your ass in this thing?” It was meant to be a joke to ease both of their nerves, but it came out too stoic for any humor to carry over.
Cole stared back at her. “I wish it wasn’t you I was going up against.”
“Agreed.” She didn’t want to force him to live the rest of his life with his curse, but she didn’t want to let down Ainsley either.
The two of them finally walked up the steps and slowly opened the double doors. When they entered, the main room was cold and empty. A few flickering candles had been set out on table tops, and the light at the top of the winding staircase to the left was on. It cast a golden glow from above, barely illuminating anything beyond the top five stairs.
“I suppose we go that way?” Cole said, angling his chin toward the light. There weren’t any other clues, so it was the safest bet.
Without another word, they traveled up to the second story, eyes scanning everything all at once, searching every corner. It was creepy, and Arden hadn’t seen the manor this empty since Mavek and his court had left to search for whatever it was he’d ended up not being able to find.
She’d never gotten an answer out of him about that, and now, irrationally, she found that she really wanted one. What could have been so important that he’d been willing to leave her when their time was limited? That was, assuming his feelings for her were real. She hated that she was still questioning that, feeling a lot like a song playing on repeat. Yet, how could she trust anything he’d said to her, ever?
How could she still want to?
Because that, at least, was the truth. Arden did still want to believe Mavek, even though she wasn’t quite sure if she still wanted to be with him. He was a faerie, and she was mortal. He would never age; she would eventually be nothing more than dust. Furthermore, he was an Unseelie prince, a matter that made everything more complicated.
Her thoughts turned to Eskel as she and Cole followed the lights down a hallway to their left and then around a sharp right corner. She could still feel the press of his lips against her own, the way it’d felt having him that close to her, her nose filled with his unique sweet and salty scent. She’d broken a rule with that kiss, and she’d betrayed Mavek by not shooting down Eskel’s proposition.
“Try not to think about him,” Cole’s voice, low, barely above a whisper, reached her. “Not right now. You can figure out what it is you want tomorrow, when this is finally over and we’re—” he stopped abruptly, cleared his throat—“when one of us is free.”
Right. Would losing affect her and Eskel? She’d still be cursed, and at any given time during her life she could go completely insane. It wouldn’t be fair to let this, whatever it was, continue between them if she didn’t win.
They turned down yet another hall, and when a figure stepped from the shadows, peeling himself away from the wall, both Arden and Cole immediately tugged out their daggers.
Once they both realized it was Cato standing before them, they turned and blinked at each other, glancing down at the weapon each held.
“Any good with that?” Cole quipped first, slipping a look from the blade in her hand down to the one still tucked in her other boot.
Noting that he was decked out in a similar fashion, Arden forced a small smile to her lips and then sheathed the silver dagger. Then she glared at the Unseelie, silently waiting for Cato to explain what the hell was going on.
The voice that spoke next, however, came from behind them, and not from the front.
“I told you not to fall for Thomas, Heartless,” Brix said, and there was a bitterness in his tone that she’d never heard before. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, disappointed, or about to be sick to his stomach.
“Leave her alone, Lutin,” Cato stated. “It isn’t love.”
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“Sure we can,” he insisted. “And we will. Soon. But for now,” he motioned the two of them forward with a curl of his fingers, “let’s hurry. They’re growing impatient; midnight is almost upon us.”
With no other options, they followed. Cole waited until Cato was a few steps away before he leaned in closer to her and asked, “Who’s Thomas?”
“I have no idea,” she confessed, wishing that she did. At least then she’d know what Brix was so upset about.
“Then why do they think you’re in love with him?”
“Again,” she told him, “I’m just as clueless as you are. I don’t even know a Thomas.”
They reached an intersection in the hall and nearly bumped into two others who were coming from the opposite direction. One Arden recognized as fae, with her golden-hued skin and long silver hair. She was willowy, and wore a dress the color of moss.
The other with her appeared to be human, and when she briefly met his eyes she realized he was the last Heartless. He had a sword strapped to his right hip—a legitimate sword!—and his hair was buzzed so low that she couldn’t tell the color. A ring glinted on his finger. This had to be Robert Allen Marx.
They were all here.
“Are you ready?” Cato asked, and when she pulled her gaze away from Robert, she found him watching her worriedly.
She frowned. “Where’s Mavek?”
“He’s already inside,” he said.
“Heartless aren’t allowed to speak with their Blackheart until after the challenge,” Brix informed her, and unlike Cato, he pointedly refused to look her way. He’d chosen the very first form she’d ever seen him in, so that he and Cato appeared to be related, with their matching copper hair.
For the first time she wondered if that’s why Brix had initially appeared to her like that, because he’d known that she’d once been friends with Cato. Had he been trying to put her at ease? He’d certainly been waiting for the perfect moment to tell her what he’d really wanted to all along: what had happened to Everett and to warn her away from this Thomas-person.
She wanted to press him for more information on the latter, the boy she still didn’t know. But the female Unseelie who’d been leading Robert was already taking them down another corridor, and any chance Arden had to press Brix for more was gone.
Her nerves frayed with each step, the tension worse now that she knew she wouldn’t have Mavek to provide some final coaching beforehand. Had he known that was going to be the case, and if so, why hadn’t he warned her? There seemed to b
e a lot he didn’t tell her, and the secrets just kept racking up.
Before long they came to another set of large double doors that Arden had never seen before. The manor was massive, but she’d traveled through it dozens of times, and was surprised to find that she didn’t recognize the detailing carved in the cherry wood. Animals graced the bottom of the doors, stags with massive antlers that curled in unrealistic swirls, blackberries sprouting off the ends. Large birds she couldn’t identify were at the top, some with talons drawn, about to attack another midflight. A still lake backed by towering mountain ranges filled the center, with creatures peering out from beneath the surface.
Cato and Brix each rested a hand on a door—there were no handles—inhaled, and then pushed it open.
The room within wasn’t a room at all. Instead, the doors opened to a thick forest with trees so tall, full, and dark green, they were almost black. There was a small clearing beside a large sugar maple, similar to the one Eskel had brought her to weeks ago, though twice the size.
At first, when Arden saw Eskel standing beneath it, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. But when she blinked, he was still there under the large canopy, hands behind his back. She couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, but she could tell by the way his shoulders were squared and his legs parted that he wasn’t in a good mood.
She opened her mouth, but was herded through the entrance before she could get so much as a word out. At her side, Cole gasped, and when she followed his gaze her eyes widened.
Roughly ten feet from Eskel stood Tabitha.
A quick glance the other way showed that further down there was another person, this one also male, who Arden didn’t recognize. But Robert tensed, making it clear that he did.
“What the hell is this?” she demanded, as she realized that a crowd was gathering, moving from within the darkness of the trees to circle the outer ring of the clearing.
Their eyes glowed various shades of color, reflecting the moonlight above, which was brighter than she’d ever seen it before—including the previous supermoon a few weeks ago. None of them spoke; they merely stood there watching, still half tucked in the shadows.
Then three of them stepped forward, coming from the left, the right, and then from behind the massive trunk of the tree. Titania was at the head, trailing her nails across the rough bark as she slowly ambled around it. A half smirk played on her red painted lips, and she was dressed in a gown of delicate silver chains with clear beads. The whole thing tinkled as she moved, like the light pattering of rain against a tin roof.
The Erlking stood on the left, a crown of antlers positioned on his head. White and brown, it looked like it’d been crafted from the real thing. He was bare-chested, with low-hanging leather pants that seemed to be made of moonlight with the way they gleamed and glimmered. A tattoo of a stag wrapped around his lower body, its feet and tail just visible directly above his left hipbone and its head above his right. The stag’s head was tipped upward, as if trying to catch the Erlking’s gaze. Its antlers were capped with geometrically shaped blackberries.
Arden caught movement from the right, but didn’t look right away. She was afraid of what she’d find, even though she already knew. It was difficult to picture the male she was used to seeing in suits and fine clothing now wearing something akin to what the other two fae regents currently wore. And yet, when she finally gathered enough courage to tilt her head in his direction, her breath still caught sharply in her throat.
His crown was a weave of black metal feathers and vibrant red metal roses. It wasn’t large, and atop his head, it seemed like it truly belonged. Like it had always been there, despite that she’d never seen it in all the time they’d spent together. Like the Erlking, he was shirtless, though he wore one of the vests he was so fond of. Chains painted white hung from his shoulders, almost like metal sleeves made of three loops. The vest itself was black leather, with five buttons in the shape of tiny white roses. Each rose had a single drop of red, so that it appeared as though each was dripping blood.
With the vest open and sleeveless, everyone received a great view of Mavek’s tattoos. The outlines of roses in all sizes, some folded over others, trailed from where his left wrist met his palm, all the way up his left shoulder and then across to his right clavicle. They dipped partially over the very top of the right side of his chest, growing smaller as they did, and partially down his right arm, stopping a few inches above his elbow. Only twelve of them were colored in, done so well that they looked real enough to pluck straight off his muscular body.
His pants were familiar, that same weave of leather he’d worn in the past, tucked into his usual boots.
“Welcome,” Titania’s voice snapped across the night like a whip of lightning. She held out her arms and moved closer to where Eskel and the others stood, angling her body between him and Tabitha. “Tonight is the night that we honor the bargain struck six thousand years ago. Tonight, we guarantee the safety and safe passage of our people. Tonight, we give another sacrifice to the old one below!”
The crowd of fae all broke out in a cheer so loud that it shook the ground beneath Arden’s feet. The only ones not joining in were the three regents, alongside the three Unseelie who’d brought her and the other two Heartless here.
A quick glance at Cato showed that his lips were pressed tightly together. He didn’t seem to be happy at all, which was strange. She had expected him to be as relieved as the rest of his kind. The Tithe meant that the Unseelie were safe for another seven years after all. Safe from the Underground.
The place where her soul might one day reside. Arden barely suppressed her shiver as she turned back to Eskel.
Like her, he’d been looking around. Now their gazes met and held, and she felt her heart catch in her chest painfully. Whatever reason he was here, it couldn’t be good, and she was desperately trying not to think of all the horrible possibilities.
Almost against her will, her eyes moved back to Mavek, who was closely watching her as well.
Surely he wouldn’t let anything bad happen here, right? Even with all the lies and the secrets, he wouldn’t betray her like that. Nor would he let something happen to either of her friends.
Titania motioned at their group and the Unseelie at their sides stepped forward, forcing the Heartless to move with them. Silence settled over the fae once more, and no one spoke again until Arden and the others were standing in the center of the clearing, with only a few yards between them and the other humans.
Titania, whose lips curved up the moment Arden looked at her, cried, “Welcome this Tithe’s Heartless!” to another chorus of cheers, though this one didn’t last nearly as long as the first. “Each of them has agreed of their own volition to be here tonight, each desiring something from us that only we can give.” She stared at them, the way a snake stares at a mouse and said, “There’s no backing out now.”
The Erlking stepped forward and all eyes turned to him. “You say you are the strongest, the best, the most worthy,” he said, speaking to the three Heartless. “You want our aid, knowing that we do not aid the weak. You have given yourselves over to us,” he glanced at Cole, “and in doing so, you have welcomed us into your lives.” He stepped back, lifting an arm to indicate the three other humans beneath the maple. “And into the lives of those you care for.”
Arden felt the boys tense at either side of her, knew she was doing the same. They were all smart enough not to speak out, but it was obvious from the tension in the air that none of them knew where this might be going.
Mavek moved into a beam of moonlight and the metal of his crown glinted. He watched them all silently for a moment, and then he picked up where the Erlking had left off. “You have been trained to resist us,” he said, voice deep and magnetic. “to see past our glamours, and our sway. To break free of our manipulations. And so, the Tithe challenge will finally be revealed.” He paused. “While we usually only use family members for this, this year, the rules have
been changed. As many of you well know, the boy standing before my Heartless is not of blood relation to her.”
Some voices finally rose up in the crowd, whispers layered over one another as those who hadn’t known expressed their surprise.
“A rule may have been broken,” Titania called out in explanation, all too happy by the prospect. “We’re here to kill two birds with one stone. Test the Heartless girl in the challenge, and to ensure that she did not break the most important law of all.”
“She so did not mean birds,” Cole murmured to her out of the corner of his mouth, stilling the second Brix’s eyes flashed to him.
Arden heard him, but even if she’d been able to she wouldn’t have responded. She was too caught up in the dread coiling around her insides. Someone must have seen the kiss earlier after all, someone who’d then told the regents. Did Mavek know? Is that why he was allowing this to happen?
“Tabitha,” Titania pointed at Tabby, “step into the ring before you.”
There were three faerie rings, positioned a few feet in front of each of the Heartless’s kin. Tabby hesitated, but one shake of Cole’s head made her do as she’d been told. Hesitantly, she lifted a leg and moved into the center of the ring of mushrooms before her, letting out a breath when nothing immediately happened.
She wasn’t crying, but it was clear from her scarlet stained cheeks that she was close to it.
“And now you, Thomas,” Titania said.
Arden expected to see the boy across from Robert follow the order, so when Eskel moved she felt everything inside of her freeze. She was tempted to turn to Brix, but there was no need. All of sudden everything made sense: Brix’s insistence that she avoid a guy named Thomas. It’d seemed random before, but no longer. Of course Brix would want to do everything he could to try and protect the brother of the Heartless he himself had fallen in love with.
Mavek wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. Eskel had lied to her too, and he’d kept the most important, the most powerful, thing from her that he could.
His real name.
You should know better than to give your name to complete strangers. One of the first things he’d said to her came to mind. He’d all but warned her from the get-go that he knew more than he should. But she’d looked at his credit card statement and Eskel had been the name on it. Had he created a fake identity?
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