It only took five steps for her to veer off the road and two more for her to trip and fall.
When she opened her eyes, Blackwater Blaze was leaning down over her. He didn't force her to walk on. He carried her to the edge of the water, out of the wind, and set her down. Then curled himself around her so that she could sleep, warmed by his body. It was an intimate, tender gesture. She trailed her fingers in the water. Ripples broke the surface. Down below, in the depths of the pool she saw hundreds of tiny sparkles as the seven moons' light reflected on something down there. Coins? Surely not. It seemed odd that there would be a wishing well in the middle of nowhere, far more likely that the reflections were down to some sort of geological phenomena, but that didn't stop her from reaching into her satchel for one of the coins she'd brought with her. "Say your name," Blaze whispered as she flicked it into the air with her thumb. It sailed into the air, spinning so quickly it looked like a solid ball of silver.
"Ashley," she said.
"That is not who you are, Ashkellion," Blaze said. "Say your name. Tell the world you have returned."
"I am Ashkellion, daughter of Tanaquill, the Fae Queen," Ashley said, feeling vaguely silly as she did.
A pale hand snaked up out of the water to snatch the coin out of the air.
She didn't' feel silly any more.
The silt began to settle and she saw the rippling silver spots again, only this time she knew for sure that they weren't coins.
They were scales.
One of the swimmers came up right to the surface, his lips less than an inch from the air. His silky black hair streamed around his head and across his face as he trod water, studying Ashley every bit as much as she studied him. Dozens more of his kind swam beneath him, the moonlight reflecting in the scales of their tails. She saw all of their faces down there.
"Meres," Blaze said. "Marissa du Lac was one of their kind." She heard the sadness in his voice, and remembered the brutality with which the Wolfen had killed the Warden. It made her deeply uncomfortable.
The Mere disappeared back into the murky depths of the wishing pool.
"They will use the underground streams to swim to the furthest reaches of the Kingdoms, spreading word of your return through the Tribes."
"Will you do something for me?" Ashley said after a while. She looked away from the empty pool.
"If I can."
"Will you change? Seeing you like this… I just see... I can't get away from what happened at Heron House."
"It is who I am," Blaze said.
"Not to me," Ashley told him. "I don't want you to be a monster around me."
The Wolfen nodded. "I understand, but that doesn't change who I am, Ashkellion. I am still Blackwater Blaze."
She shook her head. "No, you are Al and I am Ash." What she didn't say was that Al didn't kill Miss Lake.
But he seemed to understand, anyway.
"Stripped of my form I will not be able to protect you should the King send his forces against us. I will be weak." He waited for her to change her mind, but she didn't. "As you wish, Ash. But now I ask something of you in return: do not follow me. The transformation pains me. I may cry out in the throes of the change. Don't come to my side. I will live, no matter what it sounds like. My cries may well draw unwanted attention. That is the nature of this land. The strong prey on the weak. Watch the skies. Watch the roads. Watch the hills. At the first sight of enemies, run. I will find you."
She nodded, but it was a promise she had no intention of keeping. She wasn't going to leave him alone here, not when he was at his weakest.
He loped away towards the trees.
She let him go.
Blaze turned at the edge of the trees to see if she was following, then slipped into the darkness.
She waited until the trees stopped moving.
Only then did she follow him, creeping to the edge of darkness and in a curious reversal of his spying on her just a few hours earlier, Ashley watched his body willingly succumb to the agony of the transformation.
It was far more intimate a thing than simply seeing him naked; she saw his soul shine through the shift. She saw his body change. She saw him at his most vulnerable.
He screamed.
And when he did something stirred inside her; some primal instinct she couldn't begin to explain.
He lay on the ground, curled up in a foetal ball.
She watched him. He clutched at his legs, drawing them up to his chest. The hair shrivelled away from his back, leaving him half-naked in the rags he'd stolen from the tramp in London and bathed in moonlight as it filtered in through the trees. She wanted to run to his side, to comfort him even as he screamed again, his body wracked by the incredible agonies of the shift, and she realised just how much the transformation cost him. But she didn't. She had given her word that she wouldn't watch, but it was a promise she never could have kept even had she wanted to. She didn't move. She wasn't in control of herself. She felt the blood pounding through her head and the shallow rush of her breathing, and deep inside her an ache that refused to subside.
When he finally stood up the sight of the moonlight and the sweat on his bare chest and his wet hair pushed away from his face was breathtaking.
He saw her and knew she'd watched the whole thing.
He didn't say a word.
TWENTY
Hide and Seek
Rain skimmed the churning and chopping water, flying with the current of the Night River as it rushed back towards Cloud Lake. She would never reach the lake. The Moongate was still open. As she passed beneath the natural stone arch the gate would take her back to London.
The Warg Moon had begun turning the world red. She was in a race now, and with the inexorable cycle of the moons, it was one she was very unlikely to win. But Rain wasn't about to let that stop her. Quite the opposite, she gritted her teeth and flew for choppy little waves of a small weir, determined to beat the moon.
The spray splashed up in her face.
A sudden backsplash soaked her.
Finally, up ahead, she saw the glittering shimmer of the Moongate and beneath it, the shadows of the traitor's heads up on their spikes. They sent a chill all the way in to her heart because they weren't traitors at all. They were her friends. Or they had been, once upon a time. Friends brave enough to stand up against the King Under the Moon. Friends loyal to Tanaquill.
She couldn't bear to look at them.
She put her head down, staring instead at the ceaseless churning of the river until she was through the gate.
On the other side Rain looked up to see the silhouette of the night city. Streetlights were burning, which meant that the Nightgaunt had retreated. That was one small mercy.
Her wings were heavy with water. It was pouring with rain. She was under no illusion that she was at the mercy of the water.
The rain, still pouring from the heavens and drumming eight-inch tall splashes off the river, wasn't about to make her life simple. It bullied her she left the Night River behind and merged with the Thames. It cut up the surface, bouncing and buffeting and making her low-skimming flight evermore difficult.
She gritted her teeth and heaved herself up away from the water as a streak of lightning lit up London. It flashed and faded in the autumn sky. A moment later a thunder crack rattled the satellite dishes and television aerials mobile phone towers all across the city.
Another rumble followed soon after.
It was a proper storm. The kind that had you counting the seconds in between the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder and never making it above ten.
She flew through puddles of light from the streetlights along the embankment and then, when Rain saw the familiar sight of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral through the storm, and the bright shiny metal of the Millennium Bridge, flapped her tiny wings with all of her might. Her wings hummed, half-singing half-screaming with effort as she rose, battling the storm.
As she came level with the embankment wall a gust of wind c
aught her and blew Rain tumbling toward the shore. The wind twisted and tossed her as lightly as a crisp packet and sent her spinning higher, only for her to come tumbling down as the wind blew itself out.
Rain was exhausted; fighting the storm had drained her to the point of collapse. She couldn't fight it any more. The wind picked her up again and tossed her away.
She landed with a splash in the gutter and was swept away towards a storm drain further down the street.
But that didn't matter. She was where she needed to be. Rain knew that all she had to do now was breathe a word of and the fast-flowing gutter-river would sail her to her destination. It didn't have to rhyme and it wasn't some arcane language no one had spoken for hundreds of years. Magic wasn't like that. It was all about need. Not her need, the princess's. That made her need pure, and when it was pure the only kind of magic she needed to tap into was that of longing. She whispered, "Take me to where I need to be," and the water answered. Soon she was skipping over storm drains and racing through the gutters of the streets of London towards Curzon Street.
Rain had never been inside the house on Curzon Street, but she'd been watching it from the first day that the princess moved in. She knew every stone on the façade, and every flake of paint on the windowsill. She knew the patterns of the street. Every place had a pattern. It might seem random at first, it never took long for the pattern to emerge. It could be that the baker's boy would be the first on the street in the morning, opening up early to set the ovens going, then it would be the delivery trucks, the post man, the florist's delivery of fresh flowers, the café taking in their pastries and sandwich deliveries, then the couriers on their bikes come, and all of the other people who have to come and go before the day gets started.
Then it changes and it's men in suits, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, and shoppers come off the beaten path to spend a few minutes in the relative quiet just a few streets away from Piccadilly and Green Park, and finally, as night draws in it's the party animals, but like Cinderella they all end up stumbling home before their Oyster cards turn into pumpkins and they're left stuck in the city for the night. And then Curzon Street is suddenly empty and would stay like that until the baker's boy came back the next morning.
The street was empty as she brushed up against the kerb outside the Hawthorne's house.
There were lights on in every room.
She could see Targyn Fae in the window of one of the downstairs rooms. The juggler wasn't alone. Rain could see Ephram Wanderer's steel-grey hair behind her, talking with one of the wyrd sisters.
The front door opened and the little hunchback Ratko emerged from the house. He paused on the top step and looked down at her. There was no grin on his scrunched up face. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen him quite so serious, but of course this was serious business. They'd sworn to protect the princess and they were in the process of failing.
"Tell me you've found her," Ratko said, stooping to fish the sodden paper boat out of the gutter.
"I know where she is. I have a message."
"Come inside," he said, gathering her up into his hands and went back inside.
He grumbling every step of the way about the stupid girl running off by herself and how she had friends, friends she'd treated like dirt by stupidly abandoning them after everything they'd done for her. There was more, but Rain couldn't hear it for the clumping and banging.
They were in the front room. The atmosphere was tense.
She was soaked to the skin.
She wasn't the only one. Ephram Wanderer was drenched, his steel-grey hair slicked back, and his coat weighing heavily on his thin shoulders. Rain flew from Ratko's cupped hands and settled on the mantle above the fire. The heat from the fire warmed her quickly, and began to dry her.
But before she could begin, Guerin the skin-changer threw the door open and growled, "The Coribrae lost her. Damn fool of a girl. They say the Nightgaunt was on her heels. More alarmingly, the saw Blackwater Blaze. They fear the worst. I do, too."
Rain cleared his throat. "She is alive. Blaze saved her from the Nightgaunt. He has her in the Moonlands." as she said it the room fell deathly silent.
"He's going to kill her, isn't he?" Meghan Hawthorne said, the hopelessness clear in her voice.
Ephram shook his head. "Rain?"
The tiny Fae shook her head. Her wings hummed mournfully, so slow now that the sound they made ached. "I don't think so. I know Blaze. If that had been his intention she'd be dead by now. I followed them. I believe he will take her to the Shard to challenge the King Under the Moon."
"So she is safe?" Meghan asked.
"For now," Ratko finished what they were all thinking. "But the King won't let her live. He's taking her into the jaws of the enemy. It's as good as slitting her throat himself."
"We have to go back," Targyn said, already moving towards the door. "She cannot face this alone."
"It's a death sentence," the dwarf said, making sure everyone in the room really did know what going back to the Moonlands meant for them. None of them argued with him. They knew.
"Not if she defeats him," the juggler said. "I can't force any of you to join me, but I'm going back."
Guerin stretched, rising to his full towering height. At over seven foot he dwarfed them all. "Grimm bade me uphold the Concord," he patted the bag slung over his shoulder. "And I'll be damned if I fail her. But upholding the Concord doesn't mean refusing to fight. I turned my back on my kind, on my home, on everything I ever knew, when I made my promise to Tanaquill. What kind of guardian would I be now that her daughter needs me the most if I didn't follow you?" His bear-nature had begun to take precedence since he'd come back into the warm room. There was little of the man left to see. In his own way he was readying for the fight to come. He didn't need sonispheres or swords. Like Blackwater Blaze, Guerin himself was a weapon.
Targyn nodded. "Thank you, my friend. Who else is with us?"
"We all knew this time was coming," Ephram Wanderer agreed. "It was inevitable. We have no choice in the matter. Elspeth and Marissa have already died for her. So long as there is breath in my lungs, I will fight for what is right."
"I'm in, but that doesn't mean I have to like it," Ratko grumbled, almost, it seemed, for the sake of grumbling. No one was arguing with the little man though. "I've grown rather fond of the sun."
They fell quiet.
Rain broke the silence. "The Warg Moon is rising. We don't have the luxury of time. The gates are closing. We must hurry. Or she will face him alone."
"You're not going anywhere without me," Meghan Hawthorne said, daring each and every one of them in that room to try and stop her.
They didn't.
When it came right down to it, she had every bit as much a right to die trying to save the girl as the rest of them.
Targyn Fae nodded.
That was enough for the others. They didn't ask her what good she thought she could do. They didn't tell Meghan she'd be more of a hindrance than a help.
They were in this together.
Besides, if she faced the King alone… no, it didn't bare thinking about.
They made hasty preparations, not that they could take any weapons of war while the Concord still held.
The juggler stood by grimly while Paget raided the cupboards in the kitchen for potions and remedies she had begun concocting ever since the first alarm bells had started ringing days ago. They weren't weapons in any conventional sense. Most, like the wolfsbane, were protective unguents and warding potions that might just be the difference between life and death if they had to sneak all the way into the Shard.
Might.
That was a powerful and frightening word because of all of the uncertainty it contained.
Everyone in that room knew the likelihood of them coming back was slim.
They had seen beneath the mask of the Enemy.
They knew there was a monster beneath it.
They had all been there that day in the heart of the King Un
der the Moon's castle. They'd seen the smouldering dark behind the Enemy's eyes. It wasn't madness. It wasn't even evil. It was more like some out of control hunger. The need to feed. To consume. To devour.
And in snatching the princess away, they were denying it the one meal it truly craved.
Targyn had been the last through the gate, protecting Marissa du Lac and the baby in her arms from the Enemy. She would never forget a single thing about that moment. It was scorched into her memory. The King Under the Moon striding towards them, the fire burning all around him, his guards fighting to control it before it consumed the entire Shard, and the undeniable truth: the king was dead.
It didn't matter that the man stood before them.
He wasn't in there.
The thing before them was a shadow of the man he used to be: a Shell King.
Elbegast, the King Under the Moon was gone.
A man capable of murdering his only child stood in his place.
At the last moment, as the weakness they'd torn open with nothing short of brute force and the magic of absolute need came slamming shut, nature healing herself, Targyn Fae had seen through him to the monster as he truly was.
It didn't matter why he had done it, or what sacrifices he had made to come back from the edge of death for love.
Love could still make monsters.
They felt it as they approached the great Moongate at Marble Arch: that gradual sapping of their resolve, the quickening of that single pervading emotion: desperation.
They knew what it meant.
The Nightgaunt was guarding the gate.
TWENTY-ONE
Muddy Faces
The Shard of the Subluna was no closer than it had appeared to be the day before. Yet still it towered over the landscape, dwarfing everything else. It looked like a giant ivory tusk thrusting up out of the belly of the world. Around it, she knew, there were hundreds of smaller towers she couldn't see over the top of the trees. The Shard was well over three thousand feet high, making it more like a honeycombed mountain than a building.
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