by Allison Pang
“Too stupid to live,” I sighed. “Obviously. What was I thinking?” Probably an unfair assessment, but in hindsight, it had been pretty dumb. “So what now?”
“That’s up to you. If you want, I can take you the rest of the way.”
“Erm. Last time I trusted you, you, trapped me in one of those paintings.” I shook my head. “And what happens if I stay here?”
“You’ll fade away, trapped between worlds, but unable to take part in either.” He paused. “Like me.”
Eww. Not that I trusted his ass to do right by me, but the idea of staying here like some sort of zombie from An American Werewolf in London didn’t exactly appeal either. Besides, the only person I’d have to talk to was Topher. No thanks.
He stared at me politely as I attempted to make my decision. Not that there was much of one to be made. Ghost or afterlife. “Guess I’ll be moving on, then,” I said abruptly, though a pang of sadness hung over me. I was leaving people behind, and some things that weren’t quite right, but I suspected that would be true no matter when I left. No one ever said that death was convenient.
“Turn that way and follow the road, Abby.” He pointed behind me.
Blinking, I gazed down and realized an arching bridge of gold had appeared beneath my feet. It spanned the nothingness with a soft glow, suspended by glittering strings that hung from the mist.
“And here I thought it would be a stairway.” I didn’t really expect a reply and I didn’t get one, but as I shifted to move forward, the bells in my pocket rang out again.
“Something left to do,” Topher said, a note of curiosity in his voice. “But you don’t have to heed it if you don’t want.”
“What choice do I have? I’m dead. My neck was broken. You think I’ll be able to do anything, assuming I could even manage some sort of divine intervention?”
“Always a possibility,” he agreed. “But that’s a risk no matter what. It won’t be like it was before, though. It never is.”
“Easy enough for you to say.” The fact I was actually arguing the point with a zombie left a bad taste in my mouth. Besides, he’d lost most of his head. Some things you just can’t come back from.
The bells jingled again, insistent.
“Time’s up,” Topher said. “The bridge forward, or the stairs down.”
I took out the bells to look at them again, shivering as I saw the red thread.
“Ion,” I breathed.
The dream I’d had with him suddenly made a terrible amount of sense and dread pooled in my gut. “Is he dead too?”
The weight of them suddenly seemed to drag my hand downward. Topher didn’t answer and I knew this was my call. I sighed, looping one leg over the rail. “I never was one for stairs.”
Topher cocked a rictus of a grin at me, his rotting lips curling in that old familiar way. “Tell Sonja I left something for her in our old place. She’ll know what it means.” At my frown, he shrugged. “A parting gift.”
I squeezed the bells tight. “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” I muttered. “Second floor, ladies’ lingerie.”
I tipped myself forward and plunged into the darkness below.
“Oh, gods above and below, she’s breathing!” Fire filled my lungs as I sucked in one gasping breath and another, firmly convinced I had a mountain sitting on my chest. A buzzing of voices surrounded me as I was lifted up. I tried to say something, but the words came out as a muffled grunt, my throat burning with the effort.
“Hush, love,” Talivar murmured in my ear. “Your throat was damaged during the attack. I don’t want you hurting yourself more.” I blinked against the sudden rush of light, my eyes tearing as I tried to open them, but the swirling cacophony around us blinded me. In the haze I caught a mix of courtiers and warriors, silver armor and the distinctive green robes of elvish healers.
Talivar shifted me in his arms before placing me on some sort of litter. I saw a large pillow being carried by one of the healers, something small and white curled on it.
“Phin,” I whispered hoarsely, trying to sit up. Pain lanced down my spine and I whimpered.
“He’ll be all right, Abby. He gave a lot to save you.” The rest of Talivar’s words were lost to me when the litter was raised and I spiraled into the darkness.
Unicorn horns are proof against death itself, but not against the hangover that death leaves behind. My head throbbed worse than the time I’d spent an evening drowning my sorrows in a bottle of absinthe with my BFF, Melanie, after a disastrous one-night stand with a vampire.
But I was alive and that was something. I also had my memories back—everything before I’d sipped the lethe and everything after, although some of the later memories were blurry. At least they were there. Apparently Styx water didn’t cover the possibility of resurrection. As loopholes went it was a shitty road to take, but I’m not one for looking a gift horse . . . unicorn . . . in the mouth.
What I didn’t have was my voice. Oh, the healers had been quick enough to say it would come back. Eventually. For now, though, I’d been left with a set of angry red welts where the chains had strangled me and a throaty whisper that would make a chain-smoking whore blush. For an old fuck, Maurice had a hell of a lot of strength.
With his theft of the Key to the CrossRoads, the entire Fae kingdom was in an uproar. Although I hadn’t seen the Queen, I could guess at her mindset. For both her prisoner and the Key to have escaped in one day was sure to stick in her throat.
At least she still had her Tithe, I thought sourly. Traditionally, every seven years a mortal was sacrificed to Hell by the Fae. Hell got a human soul, and in return they’d leave Faerie alone. As situations went, it was win-win for everyone.
Everyone except the mortal, of course.
According to Talivar, Faerie had given up the practice once True Thomas had come along and chosen to align himself with the Fae. He became the first TouchStone and tipped the power balance among the OtherFolk, so the Tithes were no longer necessary.
Until I agreed to sacrifice myself by making a bargain with a daemon, offering my own soul as Tithe for a chance to save my friends.
Not one of my wiser moves.
“Guess the road to hell really is paved with good intentions,” I rasped, wincing at the way my voice sounded.
My fingers looped through the length of Phin’s mane as I stroked the little unicorn’s head. Not that he looked like much of a unicorn these days. He had assured me the horn would grow back in time, but given how long unicorns lived there was a pretty good chance I’d never see it restored to its former glory.
For now, the smallest of nubs remained. The rest of it had been used up in the effort to save me. I sighed, but didn’t touch it. It looked a bit raw around the edges and I had no wish to cause him more distress than I already had. For now he continued to sleep most of the days away, but this was apparently also normal.
“Battle scars,” I murmured, a half smile touching my lips when he nuzzled my hand, his eyes still closed. Inwardly, I worried at the lack of his usual sarcastic response, but maybe we both needed time to recover our sense of humor.
I’d been resting for several days now, and with the worst of the injuries out of the way and the knowledge that I was alive came a certain restlessness. My comfy little nook in the tree palace now felt more like a prison, its golden walls seeming to close in a little more each morning.
And then there was Ion.
The incubus had become the elephant in the room. A big pink one. Juggling pizzas and dildos and wearing a checkered bowling shirt. I still hadn’t told Talivar everything about the dream. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him so much as that I didn’t trust myself. The relationship between the three of us had been complicated before I drank the lethe—the gods only knew where we were going now.
More important, I still wasn’t sure where Ion had gone. If he was still alive.
What I did know is I wanted to get the hell out of here and go home. With the way time ran in Faerie, who
knew how long it had been?
When Talivar entered the chamber and perched on the bed next to me, I fixed him with as steady a stare as I could. “Where’s Ion? I want the entire story this time. You owe me that much.”
“We don’t know, Abby.” His gaze was troubled. Keeping his voice lowered, he bent his head to my ear. “I can’t talk too openly about it here, since the Queen had banished him. But he was coming for you.” He sucked in a breath. “We were trying . . . but weren’t sure if you would have your memories or not in the Dreaming. The incubus said he had a hard time finding you there.”
I nodded slowly. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve dreamed much at all. But he was there that night . . .”
“He was going to try to have you pull him from the Dreaming, and help you use the Key to escape.”
I mulled that over for a moment. As escape plans went it wasn’t too terrible. Brystion and I had always had a special relationship in the Dreaming, and I’d managed to pull him from my dreams before—although we had been TouchStoned at the time and in the throes of a rather intimate moment.
The prince’s mouth compressed and I could tell the idea didn’t sit completely well with him, but he didn’t elaborate and I didn’t see the point in rehashing it. “I made sure my movements were known that night, so that I could not be blamed if you were not here in the morning. It wasn’t a perfect solution,” he admitted. “But if we could get you out of here . . .”
Somehow I doubted the Queen would have stood idle if I managed to get away, but I had to admit my choices were pretty limited at this point. I shifted on the bed, my bad knee aching. “And Melanie?”
“She’s . . . gone. The Queen requested her to stay, but she bolted at the first opportunity.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “She couldn’t bear to see you like you were.”
Hurt bloomed in my chest, but I damped it down. “Normal for her,” I said brusquely. “She moves on when she doesn’t want to deal.”
“Not unlike some other people I know,” he observed, smiling faintly. “Besides, it’s rather difficult to keep the Door Maker within boundaries.”
“Yeah, well, there’s probably a reason she and I are best friends,” I sighed. Hard not to feel disappointed, just the same. Being one of the only mortals who could control the Wild Magic came with its own price, but I still wished she were here.
I tapped my fingers on Phin’s flank as my thoughts turned back to Ion. “Where are the bells?”
Talivar stared at me blankly and I realized he had no idea what I was talking about. I had a moment of panic trying to remember where they’d gone. “Where’s my dress? I want to show you something.”
“We cut it off of you,” he said, finding it lying on the floor next to the door. I eyed the amount of blood on the front of the garment with a grimace of distaste. I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror yet, but judging by the tenderness along my jawline there was a fair amount of bruising. “I was going to have them burn it.”
I waved at him to bring it over, my throat starting to hurt. Annoyed at my own weakness, I felt around for the pocket in the inner lining, relief flooding through me when I found the bells. Carefully I pulled them out, holding them in my palm so Talivar could see.
“I brought these across with me. From the Dreaming.” I coughed. “They were his.”
“So where’s the rest of him?”
I flinched, my fingers clutching them against my chest. “I don’t know. Jesus, Talivar, I don’t know. One minute he was there . . . uh . . . drinking my dreams, I guess, and he said something about giving me all that he was . . . and then I woke up.” The last of the words became a thick mumble and I dropped my gaze. I didn’t know if he knew what the drinking involved or not, but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk to him about it. “I don’t know what it means,” I added bitterly, heartsick. “Did I kill him?”
“If you did, it would not be through any fault of your own.” His thumb brushed away the hot sluice of tears that suddenly burned from behind my lashes. “My lioness,” he sighed. “We have served you so ill here.”
I swallowed hard. Some hero I was, weeping like some sort of lovesick . . . princess . . . waiting for her prince to come rescue her. “What about that shithead Maurice?”
“That is a problem. The Queen has her men scouring the edges of Faerie, but with the Key, he can come and go as he likes. There’s no telling where he is.”
I scowled at my hands. “I was an idiot. If I hadn’t—”
Talivar pressed a finger to my lips. “I share the blame with Moira for not having better measures in place to contain him. Somehow he managed to sneak in the mercenaries. Someone here in the castle is a traitor—of that I have no doubts. An attempt to free him would have happened one way or the other, but the loss of the Key—”
“Your grasp of the obvious is stunning as always, highness,” Phineas mumbled, prompting a strangled squeak from me.
“Phin! You’re awake!”
He cracked an eye open at me as he raised his head. “You two make a good couple, have I mentioned that? Imagine all those precious little child progenies you’d have.”
Talivar snorted, but a flash of good humor played over his face at the pun, his relief evident.
I gave the unicorn a delicate nudge with my thumb, grinning like a madwoman. “That’s enough out of you, hornycorn.”
“It’s never enough, Abby,” he sighed, rolling over so I could stroke his tummy. “But I’ll take it under consideration.”
I obliged for a minute before turning my attention back to Talivar. “So what’s to keep Maurice from just ‘popping’ in and out of the Court with a friggin’ army in tow?” I slumped, wincing at the tender slide of skin against the pillow. “Forget the whole Tithe thing. At this point all of Hell could sweep through Faerie.”
Talivar’s breath slid out of him with a hiss. “There are rules,” he said softly. “If we provide the Tithe, then they are forbidden to enter our lands.”
“Didn’t seem to stop them before.” I pointed to my throat.
“Those were mercenaries,” the elf snapped. “They hold no allegiance to any but the one who holds the purse strings. Even in Hell there’s a sense of honor that must hold true—or the CrossRoads would fall into chaos. And that benefits no one.”
“And since when has Maurice ever cared about honor?” Phineas let out a weary sigh. “He’s human and not bound by Hell’s rules.”
“That we know of,” Talivar said. “Who knows what sorts of bargains he’s made? The best we can do right now is guard any wayward Doors that lead directly into the palace. He may be able to move around at will, but he still needs an existing egress.”
I looked away, my gaze drawn to the fading sunlight outside. The words he’d left unspoken lay between us. There was still the matter of the Tithe to address, and unless we could manage to convince the daemons to let it slide, I was still on the hook for that. I wasn’t naïve enough to suggest an alternative, but that didn’t make the situation any easier to swallow.
The truth of the matter was the OtherFolk needed mortals, even if they didn’t want to admit it. The system may not have always worked well, but without it they’d be in trouble. And even if I suspected humans might be better off without it in the long run, I wasn’t the one to make that judgment call. Besides, a little magic in the real world was a good thing. In the meantime . . .
“I want to go home,” I said finally. “At least for the time I have left. I need to find out what happened to Brystion, if I can. And Melanie.” Talivar’s mouth compressed at my words and I shook my head at him. “I had a life once, Talivar. A real life, even if it was shitty, compared to all . . . this. I want it back.”
He stood up abruptly, the overcoat snapping to attention as he bowed formally, the motion almost masking the hurt in his gaze. “Of course. I will see to making the arrangements immediately.” Before I could say anything else, he turned on his heel and disappeared, the door shutting quietly behind him.
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“That’s not what I meant,” I whispered into the nearly empty room, but I knew the words were hollow even as I said them. I did want to go home. The fairy tale was getting old and if I wasn’t going to have a happily ever after, that was fine by me, but I wasn’t going to sit here for the rest of my life either. What was left of it.
“No words of wisdom from the peanut gallery?” I prodded Phineas with a finger.
“There’s nothing to say,” he muttered. “I think I’ve done everything that could be expected of me at this point. I mean, there’s a raving lunatic on the loose with the ability to move all around the CrossRoads at will. What’s to worry about?”
One blue eye fixed on me as he raised his head. “But don’t take your frustrations out on the prince. He was doing the best he could by you, even if it was a silly plan.”
I flushed, remembering my bold words to the incubus in the dream. I’d nearly forgotten the handfasting thing. “Well, shit. Am I supposed to actually go through with it? I mean, there’s not much point now.” I squeezed the bells in my hand, ignoring the guilt in my gut. Whatever happened to Ion, I couldn’t help but feel responsible, even if I hadn’t been aware of what I was doing at the time. If I could find the Dreaming again I would look for him, but otherwise . . .
“Sonja will know how to find him, assuming we can contact her.” I glanced down at Phineas. “You in?”
“Do I have a choice? Besides, where you go there’s bound to be bacon.” He rubbed the stubby horn on my elbow. “I know I’m not exactly the handsome fellow I was before, but I suspect I might come in handy in the long run.” He grimaced as something cracked in his joints. “Feeling more of my age these days, I’m afraid.”
I scooped him up into my lap. “How old are you?”
“Old enough. Not that I didn’t think I would outlive you at some point, but I couldn’t bear to have it end like that.” He butted his head against my arm, his eyes closing as he snuffled into my chemise.
“I know.” We sat for a few more minutes and I wondered at what I’d done to inspire such loyalty among my friends. I didn’t voice the question.