And beneath the opening, suspended there by invisible ties, an incredible orrery that described the orbits of the seven moons around the world. Only there weren't seven moons in the model. There were eight. He had never understood why there were eight. Blackwater Blaze had never seen an eighth moon in the sky. Crystal gears turned silently, wheels within wheels moving the moons through their orbits, bringing them closer then further away, closer then further away again. Glass teeth bit, turning the gears, moving the escapement on. The orbits weren't uniform. They weren't even regular. Blaze had no idea if they were accurate, but looking up at them always made him feel so small and irrelevant in the great scheme of things. The huge world he stood on was reduced to something the size of his head while the universe expanded around it. If the world were the size of his head, and the Shard, the largest thing on that world didn't register so much as a bump on the smooth glass surface, then what was he? Smaller than the smallest thing he could imagine, that's what.
The huge model was a thing of beauty in and of itself.
There were six similar rooms with the same openings in the ceiling, one in each of the seven towers that supported the Shard, and six more identical celestial models. The Shard itself wasn't visible through any of them, though it cast its shadow over every one of the openings.
Jax's mirrors were arranged around the room—transported from his Occulum in Wolfhir. Jax was transforming the beating heart of the Kingdoms into his own sanctum, Blaze realised, looking around the room at the fetishes, scopes and lenses of the Occulator's craft that littered the Chamber.
He was making himself at home.
Blaze didn't like that.
Jax was the Sabras's right hand; he did not and had never served the King Under the Moon directly. He was Wolfen. That was where his loyalties lay: to the pack. Or so it should have been. Jax had obviously been serving another master all these years.
The stench around this was whole thing was rancid.
Blaze looked around the room. He couldn't see what was reflected in any of the mirrors because they were covered, but he was reasonably sure none of them would show the Chamber of the Moon when the sheets were pulled away.
"I didn't think you had it in you, Blaze." Jax said. "I really didn't. I have no idea how you kept her away from the Nightgaunt, and to be honest, I don't really care. The fact is you are here and we'll just have to make the best of it. You shall have your moment in the sun, girl," he turned to look at Ashley properly for the first time, "It matters little. You will still die. You can see steps have been taken. It is only the fact that your audience has already begun to assemble—and that spectacle you made of yourself arriving just now—that is keeping you alive. I am impressed, Blaze, honestly. You have surpassed yourself. Somehow it seems that you have managed to get word to the furthest reaches of the Kingdoms and representatives of every Tribe are descending on the Shard as we speak. Rumour has it even the Mistress of the Tides will be in attendance, and she hasn't left her watery hiding place in more than a decade. So bravo! Bravo indeed! Enjoy your petty victory. She'll die just the same. But by all means let's make a spectacle of it. She wants to claim the Briar Crown? Let her try.
"Why couldn't you just kill the girl like you were supposed to? How did you rationalise it to yourself? Did you think it was because she deserved justice? Or did you tell yourself it was because it was right? Or was it power? Did you spare her because you imagined she'd turn to you and make you her King Under the Moon? Is that it? Do you dream of her saying 'Oh my noble Blaze, I couldn't have done any of this without you'?" Jax cackled at the thought. We're not so different, you and I. We'll go to any lengths to serve our Liege. Any lengths. It's just a pity that we serve different masters."
Redhart Jax looked at Ashley. "I really should kill you now, without all of the fuss and bother. That would be so much easier," and for a moment he seemed to genuinely contemplate it. He sighed. "But I won't. I've got a charade to stage first. I'll save the fun until after. You can be my dessert." He turned away, going over to one of the mirrors and pulling back the cloth to give them a glimpse of the 'fun' he had in store for them.
Blaze saw the reflection trapped in the glass. It wasn't Ashley, but it could have been her double. It was the Grimm. She laboured over an old journal, writing and writing and writing without a single word ever seeming to stain the page beneath her pen. She closed the book then kissed its cover, sealing the words in. Blaze could lip-read as she said, "I hope these words find you," and set the book aside. It was the same book Ashley Hawthorne had stuffed into her patchwork satchel. Jax drew the cloth over the mirror before Blaze could see anymore.
"Wouldn't want to spoil it for you, would we? After all, it's all about you. It always is." Jax mocked. "I'll have my Redpelts take you down into the Bones—" he saw her confusion and explained, "—the dungeons beneath the Shard of the Subluna. You don't think we'd just let you wander around do you?" He shook his head. "No one has ever escaped the Bones. Indeed, I am sure there are prisoners who have been down there so long they've been forgotten about. Take heart. I promise we won't forget about you." He clapped his hands sharply, and two of the largest, most fearsome Redpelts she had ever seen emerged from the shadows to drag her away.
Four more of them came for Blaze.
"Listen to me, be yourself, that is all you ever need to be." He said. "Yourself, Ash. Not Ashley, not Ashkellion. Just Ash."
"I'll try," she promised.
And then the Redpelts pulled her away.
TWENTY-SIX
Queen of Bones
The Bones were deep and dark and colder than death.
Ashley huddled up against the wall of her cell. She was alone. She had no idea what had happened to Blaze. He could have been rotting in the cell next door and she never would have known because the walls were that thick. They were slick with lichen and in places polished smooth from the backs of prisoners who, once upon a time, had curled up against them. In other places the walls were covered in messages carved into the stone. Some of those messages were filled with hope of freedom, others were little gates of numbers counting down the days of their imprisonment, and then there were the despairing ones scratched into the stones when it was clear they were never leaving the Bones.
She could still taste the desperation in the stale air.
She shuffled over into the corner and drew her feet in, resting her chin on her knees. Her satchel lay on the ground at her feet. Unsurprisingly, they had taken the sword from her, but they hadn't taken the goggles or the book and the locket was still around her neck. Perhaps they didn't care about her knowing the truth?
She didn't move for the longest time.
She had never felt so completely and utterly alone.
It was darker than dark, a single candle burning so far away it barely registered, like a tiny intense eye staring at her from far, far away.
There was nothing she could do but think.
And that wasn't helping her at all.
She reached into her bag for her phone. The battery was running out, but turning it on brought enough light to hurt her eyes after so long in the dark.
Ashley opened the locket to look at the picture of her parents. She'd never really looked at them before. Not properly. She could see herself in both of them. There didn't seem to be anything magical about the locket though; they didn't turn to face her or wink or offer any words of wisdom or encouragement. There wasn't even a hidden lock pick in the hasp.
She wedged the phone into the bay of the goggles that still hung around her neck, and fished about inside her bag for something to write with. It might be the last thing she ever got to say. She found a compass in her pencil case, took the pencil out and used the point to scratch the words one crooked, shaky letter at a time, Ashley Hawthorne, aged 1, she stopped herself before scratching in the 5 and started to count the days, trying to work out if she had actually had her sixteenth birthday or not. She'd lost all sense of the days since entering the Moonlands, but
she was either sixteen or so close to turning sixteen it didn't make much difference so she scratched in the 6. She didn't know what else to say, so she simply added two words beneath her name and age. Help me.
She slumped against the wall.
She wanted to go home.
Just thinking that, Ashley realised she would have given anything to go back a few days and not go to Aunt Elspeth's will reading, not get the key, not get on the bus, and not open the box, not collect any of the Moonland treasures, none of it. Not even the kiss. But short of finding a time machine hidden away in a dark corner that wasn't an option.
She thought about Blaze then, and worried what they were doing to him. Surely Jax was torturing him. She couldn't imagine what kind of fiendish tortures the Occulator was capable of. She'd seen stuff on TV about waterboarding—where they hold a cloth over the victim's mouth and drip water into it to simulate drowning—and other stuff where they put the victim's feet in water and shocked him with electricity. How much worse could it be with magic to inflict the pain?
She didn't want to think about it.
But she couldn't stop thinking about it, and all because she'd remembered what it felt like when she kissed him.
A chink of light appeared under the bottom of the door. She heard heavy keys rattling in the lock, then the heavy clunk of the tumblers falling into place. The door groaned open slowly.
A skeletally thin man was silhouetted in the doorway.
She knew who it was without needing the flickering candle to light his face: the King Under the Moon.
He entered her cell, bringing the light with him.
The candlelight exacerbated the sharp angles of his face, making it seem almost alien. He turned slowly, his movements so smooth he seemed to seep toward the door.
Ashley reached up to where her phone rested inside the alethioptics and fumbled with the camera button to set it recording. She couldn't have said why she did it, or why she even thought of doing it, because it wasn't a conscious decision to film the creepy king, but she knew she had to. She huddled over, pushing herself up against the wall as he closed the door behind him.
He turned to face her again, the mask slipping once more. Those oily black tentacles writhed and thrashed where seconds ago his face had been. There was something hypnotic about it; the flickering light, the slithering sound of the black stuff perpetually moving, the sucking sound that punctuated slithering and the gnashing of very very sharp teeth. That was the worst of it. As the candlelight flickered, threatening to fail, the tentacles peeled back to reveal a mouth that just didn't end. There were rings of teeth, each like rusty nails, covered with plaque and set in angry red gums riddled with disease.
This was the King Under the Moon?
This was her real father?
How could anyone bow down before this thing—because it wasn't a man no matter how much it might look like one on the surface—willingly?
The King snuffed out the candle, leaving them in darkness.
"Can you feel it?" his voice oozed out, filling the entire world. "Can you feel the bond between our bodies?"
Ashley shook her head even though there was no way the King could see the sharp movement in the absolute dark.
This time he whispered right up close in her ear, "I can. That's how I know it's you. My little girl. I never thought I'd see you again."
She lashed out, swinging, but hit nothing but empty air.
The King chuckled mirthlessly.
She felt something oily up against her cheek and recoiled.
She reached up, but it was already gone.
All that remained was the taste of rancid breath in that back of her throat where the King had breathed on her.
"What are you going to do to me?" Ashley asked. It was the one question she didn't want an answer to.
"I can't let you take my throne, can now I? No matter how much I loved your mother, or might have wanted to love you, this is who I am. I am the King Under the Moon. This is my world. The Tribes are mine. I can't let you leave this room. You understand that don't you? I know Jax has promised you a fair trial," he laughed bitterly at that, and she knew there would be nothing fair about it once she appeared before his mirrors. "But I can't let that happen. I can't risk the chance that the fools will want to see Titania's bloodline restored. It has to end here. I would say it's nothing personal, but it is. It's completely personal. I like the way your blood tastes."
Ashley shivered, not doubting for a moment that this thing wasn't human or Fae but something else entirely.
"What happened to you?" She asked, finding her voice at last.
"Ask your precious Ephram Wanderer. Ask Targyn Fae. Ask Paget and her ugly sisters. Ask the dwarf and those other traitors who tore you out of the bosom of your family. They made me who I am. I wasn't always like this," he said, and she believed him, but even as he said that she found herself imagining black bloated maggots writhing around inside his heart?
She didn't need the goggles to see the sickness his body was riddled with and no amount of darkness could hide it from her.
But why couldn't anyone else see the truth? Why couldn't they see the creature that masqueraded in the King's skin?
She felt the weight of the phone against her chest and wondered if it had recorded any of this, and if it had, how could she use it to save herself?
"Now, come to daddy," the King Under the Moon taunted.
"No."
"Oh, don't be like that. It won't hurt."
Ashley wished they hadn't taken the sword from her. She would have given anything for something to defend herself with. There was the book, but she didn't see how that could help her now. The pen really wasn't mightier than the sword when something as corrupt and evil as the King loomed over you in absolute darkness, hungry.
He came in close.
She could hear his breathing, heavy in the dark, and feel his rancid breath on her face.
"Are you afraid?"
"No," Ashley said. And she wasn't, because in the light of the doorway she saw the battered and bloody Blaze.
"If you touch her," the Wolfen said, "It will be the last thing you ever do, king or not. I will tear your throat out, that is a promise, and there's no one down here to save you from me."
"How touching, you've come to save the damsel in distress. But look at you, you are hurt," the King muttered, turning to face the Wolfen. "Let me put you out of your misery."
Blaze launched himself out of the light into the darkness, teeth flashing and claws tearing at the King Under the Moon. Took the brunt of the attack full on, Blaze bowling him off his feet. His teeth snapped at the King's throat, not biting deep enough to do any lasting damage, while the King rammed his fist up into Blackwater Blaze's guts, twisting a fistful of fur and torn flesh. "I can hurt you more than you can possibly imagine, wolf," the King mocked.
"Run," Blaze demanded, and she was struck in that moment by the symmetry of it, the first time she had seen him he had been towering over the old librarian, teeth dripping blood as she yelled run, and this could very well be the last time she saw him, the King towering over Blaze, Blaze like the librarian before him demanding she run.
Ashley didn't hesitate.
She ran.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Exiles Return
They didn't talk about Guerin's sacrifice, but his absence was felt by each and every one of them.
Loss was something they were all too familiar with, first Elspeth, the Grimm, then only days later Marissa du Lac had been taken from them, and now Guerin the skin-changer. Their numbers were being whittled away in short order. Soon there would be no one left to protect the girl. But sooner still that wouldn't matter.
They were in the Moonlands for the first time in sixteen years. The last time they had been here they had fled the destruction of the Shard's eighth tower, The Pillar of the Lost Moon, with a young baby bundled in their arms, fighting for their lives every step of the way.
It would have b
een easy to think that nothing had changed, but in truth everything had in subtle small ways.
It didn't feel like home anymore. It didn't feel anything like home.
Ephram breathed in the cold air. He refused to look back. They had made it through the gate before it had slammed shut thanks solely to Guerin's sacrifice. Now the only way was forward.
The Shard was a bright finger stabbing up at the sky.
They didn't talk. They didn't need to. They had each pledged the oath on the Fae Queen's deathbed, and there was nothing more compelling than a promise to the dying. It bound them beyond this life into eternity and wasn't a promise to be made lightly.
They knew what they were about to do, and what the cost of failure meant—not for them, they'd known the moment they set foot back on Moonlands soil that they were damned—for Ashley Hawthorne and everyone living under the moons.
They had to fight: for what they believed in, for what was right, for their queens, both dead and yet to be crowned.
Now they had to live up to their oath or die trying.
Meghan Hawthorne was the only one of their number who hadn't been here before, the only one not bound by the oath to Tanaquill, the Fae Queen, and yet she was five strides ahead of them, taking point, because she was the one with the most to lose. She had been quiet, almost meek, content to just be part of the rescue party, until they found the corpses of the Redpelts. That had changed everything for her, making it all the more real. As far as she was concerned Ashley was her daughter. Not for the first time since crossing over Ephram looked at her with something akin to awe. She didn't have a weapon, but then she didn't need one. Nothing beneath the moons was more powerful than a mother's love. It was the purest of all magics.
Redpelts guarded the drawbridge into the Shard. He counted a dozen of them; Jax's finest.
They had their claws sharpened and were ready to fight.
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