“All right, settle down,” I said, pressing a hand against his flank to keep him where he was. “It’s too late, anyway. The kid’s dead.”
I’d seen the first and final blow even while I was trying to force myself through the hedges; the poor kid hadn’t stood a chance. One of the twins had taken off his head with a single blow—they hadn’t even stopped to check he was dead, just kept striding along the lane. The second twin kicked the body aside and they did another quick patrol of the lane while Kevin snarled and staggered to his feet, and the female fae stopped abruptly, her head snapping around. She stared at the hedge—stared almost directly at us—her brow sharpened in concentration, for far too long. I found myself holding my breath. Could she really see us?
To my relief, she looked away a moment later and strode away to catch up with her brother. They passed up and down the lane again, this time more slowly, and I realised what I hadn’t before.
“They’re waiting for someone,” I said, dread seeping into my bones. “Patrolling the same place where they know that someone has to pass by. Reckon it’s Zero?”
There was no reply, of course; I didn’t expect one. Kevin seemed more defeated now than he’d been earlier despite his injuries and the danger in which he stood, but I didn’t like to try and make him feel better by reminding him that the dead kid would probably have tried to kill us both if he was trying to become king. There wasn’t any point, and I wasn’t sure it was true.
It wouldn’t have made any more sense of him being slaughtered like an animal, either.
Kevin was staggering, his sides heaving, by the time we got back to where I’d found myself walking through the inside of the hedge. I might not have known it was where I’d begun if he hadn’t stopped, sat, and whined a bit.
I stopped, too, and that’s when I saw the slightly darker edges to the leaves and the faint limning of Between to them.
“We can go that way,” I said to Kevin, my voice doubtful. “But no promises on me being able to actually get us back to the house.”
The bunyip had managed it well enough, but I was pretty sure it had been working on instinct and hunger, and even if I did work on instinct more often than not, walking boldly back into that darkness again wasn’t something I really wanted to do.
Kevin must have agreed, because he gave another small whine that was nearly a yelp and got up to trot back down the path again. We walked for another few metres until I found one of those patches that looked like you could get out of the hedge if you really tried; a place where everything was a bit Betweeny but not shadowy.
I called back Kevin, who seemed determined to run ahead, and experimentally pushed a hand through the branches. It went easily—and to my relief, came back whole, which meant there were no fae twins just waiting outside to cut off limbs—and when I pulled it back in, a faint trace of Between lingered for just a moment, silvery in the darkness of the hedge.
“This is us,” I said, jerking my head at the branches.
Kevin didn’t much like it when I grabbed him by the scruff, but he probably would have liked it less if I’d left him behind, so I didn’t let his offended growling worry me too much.
This time, instead of being prodded and cut when we forced ourselves through the hedge, there was the softest of sensations across our faces—leaves that weren’t quite solid any longer but weren’t quite bodiless either. Being on the outside of the hedge brought with it a perilous sense of openness and danger, however, and Kevin must have felt the same, because his muzzle lowered, hackles up as he shot a suspicious look up and down the lane we found ourselves in.
“Not to worry,” I said, in what was meant to be a cheerful voice but just came out a bit too loud. “I know the way from here.”
It wasn’t so much that I knew the way as that I could sense the way. Kevin and the other lycanthropes had their sense of smell; I had my sense of Between, and home. There’s something very comforting in having a home that tries to pull you back toward it when you’re trying to find it, too.
Kevin made a snuffling sort of sound that could have been either dismissive or a sneeze, but he followed me regardless, and maybe he caught the scent of us from yesterday, because his ears and tail both lifted slightly as we walked.
I think we both felt as though we were on the homeward run, and with the sense of acute danger behind us we didn’t slow down, though the flowers growing up the edge of the next turning ought to have warned us that there was something nasty coming our way. It should have just been a turn or two away from our backyard, so we walked around the edge of a break in the hedge that led to a new section of the labyrinth without first checking to see what was there.
What was there, I discovered, as I froze just a step into the open with Kevin behind me, was a tall, handsome, terrifyingly cold fae with bare feet and flowers in his hair, surrounded by the usual retinue of assorted fae, behindkind, and footsoldiers.
I tried to remember to breathe without breathing too heavily and attracting notice, far too much in the open for comfort. How the heck had Lord Sero managed to wriggle in here? More importantly, why had he come personally instead of sending minions? Obviously he’d brought minions with him, but that was pretty flamin’ different to sending them on their own.
As if being an heirling in the heirling trials wasn’t bad enough, now we had to contend with Lord Sero as well?
I felt, rather than heard, a low, rumbling growl, and that reminded me that even if I wasn’t susceptible to all of Lord Sero’s nasty little tricks, Kevin definitely would be. More importantly, I’d told Zero that I would keep the lycanthropes safe, and there was no way I could keep Kevin safe from Lord Sero if he stayed with me. I had the feeling that home wasn’t far away—if we could just get there.
I gathered all of the filaments of Between that I could feel in the air around me and used those glittering strands to shove Kevin, who grunted in surprise and went sailing back through the hedge next to me—and every other one in the vicinity, if I was any judge.
Heck. I’d meant to use Between, but I hadn’t thought I’d be able to gather that much power! Hopefully I’d sent him in the right direction—or at least back to the inside of the hedge from which he’d be able to make a break for the kitchen window—because the motion of it had drawn all of those cold, fae eyes, and there was no chance of me going after him to make sure he was fine.
Not when it would just draw Lord Sero after us and right to the house.
“How the flaming heck did you get in?” I asked him, with some bitterness. “This isn’t Hobart, and you shouldn’t be wandering around as if you own the place.”
Lord Sero’s face hadn’t exactly lit up, but a smile of deep satisfaction spread across his face, and for the first time I saw his eyes match up with the emotion on his lips.
“So you really aren’t dead,” he said. “I’ve been hoping to meet you again since it was told to me that you yet lived.”
I saw the slight look he threw behind him and slightly to the left. I followed that look and caught sight of Athelas: a grey shadow just behind and beside his master. My stomach clenched, and at the familiar sight of his eyebrows rising just a little, grew sick.
“How expedient,” said Lord Sero, pulling my attention away from the sickening whirl of thoughts that had begun in my mind. “I hadn’t expected to see you in this situation, but you will be quite useful to us, I believe. I will also enjoy calling you to account for your lack of usefulness thus far.”
“What do you want now?” I demanded. It was too late to mind my tongue, and I didn’t think there was much use in doing it now, anyway. Whatever was going to happen was inevitable, unthinkable, and extremely unpleasant. Might as well go out showing this garbage can pretending to be a person exactly what I thought of him. “I’m flamin’ tired of you turning up like a bad smell every time I leave the house.”
“You and I had an agreement,” said Sero, his smile frosty and completely unamused.
“No, we didn’t. We
had a you-telling-me-what-to-do and me-trying-not-to-die thing going on. You’re fae; you know nothing’s set in stone without a contract.”
“I certainly do,” Sero said, and I didn’t miss the absolutely venomous look he flicked at Athelas beneath his lashes. “Some of my underlings would have been well advised to remember that.”
“To be fair, he was pretty busy trying to kill me at the time,” I said. I saw Athelas’ eyes lower briefly to the ground, and the very slight curve of his lips that was at odds with the greyness of his face. I said directly to him, “You don’t get to be amused at the Pet anymore. Wipe that expression off your face.”
I didn’t watch to see how he reacted; I turned my attention back on Lord Sero, who said coldly, “Don’t play with my steward; he has nothing further to do with you and I don’t choose to observe byplays in which I have no part.”
“Yeah, figured you were the sort to think you were the main act,” I said. “You’re not, you know. You’re just an overdressed galah who can’t stop spreading flowers everywhere he goes. One day you’re gunna run into a bloke with a mower and you won’t know what hit you.”
Sero’s brows rose very slightly. “Very little of what you say makes sense. We’ll have to fix that during our discussion before you’re put down.”
If I’d been the centre of attention before, I was pinned by nearly thirty sets of eyes now: fae eyes, behindkind eyes, lizard eyes. I even saw a few hackles go up with some of the less humanoid behindkind. All of them waiting for the word—the gesture—that would sic them on me and start the bloodbath. They might be trying to grab me, but I’d be fighting back as hard as I could, and I was pretty sure that was the kind of situation in which I ended up dead—especially now that I didn’t have to pretend that Lord Sero’s voice held any power over me.
Into that bristling instant of menace, a voice said mildly, “Might I suggest, my lord…?”
It made me feel sick to hear that gentle voice say my lord to Lord Sero after saying it for so long to Zero. I would have said Lord Sero didn’t deserve it, except that Athelas was a traitor and a murderer, and Lord Sero deserved the respect and loyalty of exactly that kind of person.
Sero’s nostrils flared very slightly, but he turned his attention on Athelas. “Well?”
“We have no way of knowing if the king himself has entered the construct, nor do we know how many of his minions are available to assist the Pet. Given his interest in her…”
“Are you suggesting we retreat?”
“Certainly not, my lord. Merely that we take the Pet prisoner and question it in the comfort of our own surroundings rather than question it here where anyone could happen along to…disturb us.”
Lord Sero gave it a moment or two of thought, then said imperiously to me, “Come along with us.”
“Yeah, nah.”
He hadn’t waited. He’d actually just turned and started sweeping off, and at the flatness of my words, he turned back to stare incredulously at me.
“What did you say?”
Heck, maybe I should have used the time to run. I wouldn’t have got far, but I would have got a little way away.
“Did you refuse my summons?”
I probably would have laughed at the pitch of his voice if I hadn’t been feeling too sick to give in to the urge. Was he personally offended because I wasn’t susceptible to fae manipulation?
“Hey, it’s not just you; I can refuse anyone’s commands if I want to,” I told him. “Nothing personal, mate.”
“Our agreement—”
“Told ya,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “We didn’t have an agreement. You don’t have my name and you can’t speak stuff about me into existence without it, so why don’t you just shut your yap and get on with things?”
“It’s unfortunate that I was mistaken about your part in all of this,” said Sero, his lips curling a little in fastidious distaste. “Such a waste of time and effort! I did think that you would prove very useful, but after…debriefing one or two final sources, it would seem that I was misled. My comfort is that at least one other had the same suspicion and seems to be acting upon it. That should be amusing. In the meantime, once you’ve answered a few questions, I have no further need for you. Our agreement is dissolved.”
“You just said a heck of a lot of words to say what I did when I said we don’t have an agreement,” I said. I would have liked to have thought about what it meant that he had had to say it aloud to me before he allowed himself to openly attack me, but I didn’t have that time. Open attack was coming, and I had to be ready to die as strenuously as possible.
“You may regret that, Pet. I would have taken you away gently, but now I’m more inclined to see you injured first. If you give up and beg for leniency, I may spare you some pain now.”
“Nope,” I said, grinning a grin that hurt my cheeks. “I’m gunna fight.”
Actually, I was going to die—whether here and now or after a lot of painful questioning—but there wasn’t much point in telling him that: he already knew.
He said a single, contemptuous word. “Ridiculous.”
Flamin’ rude, that. I drew a sword from one side of the path and another from the opposite side—swords that should have been fenceposts in the human world and saplings in the world Behind, but made themselves into what I needed them to be instead.
“Bring the Pet,” said Lord Sero.
Welp. This was it. I was gunna die somewhere Behind without being able to do anything about the fae who had killed my parents or the fae who had ordered him to do it. It wasn’t going to be an easy death, either, and Zero was going to have to come across the body of another human he hadn’t been able to do anything about saving. Who was going to be there to make sure he didn’t turn into a block of ice again, that’s what I wanted to know?
“Sorry,” I muttered beneath my breath. “Looks like you’re on your own.”
Then I dropped a bit lower into my guard stance, swords at the ready, and waited for the rush, for the swell forward that would envelop me, crush me, and kill me. I waited for the first person to step forward and attack.
But nobody did.
And Lord Sero was just…walking away. Some people never learn. He’d spoken, then turned around and walked away, as if the world always had and always would work exactly as he wanted it to. Maybe he was right in general, but for some reason right now he was wrong.
They tried to move. I saw their muscles straining; I saw the bigger ones at the back pushing the ones in front, but none of them seemed to be able to move past a very small pebble that had bounced down from between hedge roots a moment ago.
I locked eyes with Athelas without meaning to and saw that his brows had gone up. He was startled but he was also amused, and that cut my heart so painfully that I actually pressed a hand that was fisted around a sword to my chest as I looked away, wishing it didn’t hurt to breathe.
“My lord,” he said. “There would seem to be a problem.”
Something much bigger tumbled down suddenly through the roots of the hedge, and now that I was in fighting stance it was really hard not to take it as an attack. And I couldn’t really attack, because it wasn’t a rock this time, but the Old Mad Bloke.
He uncurled in a dusty tangle of limbs and beard and said to me in a confidential sort of way, “Standing is nice. Very nice. But right now, running is better.”
“Got it,” I said hastily. “Let’s get outta here. Hang on, I need to make sure Kevin is—”
“Your dog went home,” he said, grabbing around my right hand, sword hilt and all. “Lady, nest is best so follow the dog!”
“Lycanthrope,” I said, but he didn’t seem to care.
Giggling, Les towed me right back across to the other side of the T-piece I’d arrived at just before I saw Lord Sero, and we fairly sprinted down the lane with the shouts of Lord Sero’s minions behind us. I don’t know if we actually followed Kevin’s path, but Les seemed to know where he was going, and he wasn’
t dead yet. I decided to trust him.
That turned out to be a good decision, because by the time we had skidded around far too many left turns for us to be going in the right direction, we tumbled out into our backyard, which was as much of a relief as it was a worry.
Neither of us slowed down; we jogged toward the back patio, where Kevin was sitting with all the stubbornness of a dog who refuses to be taken to the vet while Morgana pulled at his scruff and vainly tried to convince him to get inside. He rose as soon as he saw us, and we all made a mad dash into the house in a tumble of laboured breathing, bloody shoving, and muttered recriminations.
“Flamin’ heck!” I said, when the door was shut behind us and the cold chills on the back of my neck had a chance to go down. “What were you doing sitting out on the back patio, you dipstick?”
Indignation did what nothing earlier in the day had done, and prompted Kevin to ripple out of his fur and into a slightly less injured, naked young man who could snap at me, “You threw me through the hedges!”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“No you’re not!”
“Yeah, well, you’ll have to get over it. I told Morgana I’d bring you back safely.”
“I could have helped you fight!”
“I know,” I said. “But I didn’t want to fight. I ran away. I just made sure you were out of the way so that he didn’t know which way to chase.”
He stared at me. “You ran away, too?”
“I’m not stupid enough to fight Lord Sero alone,” I said bluntly. “We’re trying not to die.”
“Nobody died, and that’s the important thing,” said Morgana. “Kevin, please go and put on some clothes! I know you don’t care, but some of us want to be able to eat later!”
“That’s flamin’ rude,” he said, but he went upstairs anyway.
Morgana hugged me with far greater strength than I remembered her having and made a small snuffling sound somewhere near my ear that eventually became, “Thank you for bringing Kevin back.”
Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine Page 12