by AJ Lancaster
She’d thought saying so might anger them, but Catsmere seemed to think it a perfectly natural concern. She momentarily ceased her restless scanning of the crowd to say: “We vowed, my brother and I, that we would not let our sister damage little Hollow as she did Koi.” Aroset had blinded their brother Irokoi in one eye.
“Well, that’s good to know, but I’d like a more precise answer.” She knew very well how fae could slide around truth unless you pinned them down.
Rakken said, a trace of impatience in his tone: “We don’t plan to kill him.” He didn’t sound particularly happy about it.
“I wouldn’t have brought them here if I thought they wanted Wyn dead. Do give me some credit,” Marius said, folding his arms and looking down at her crossly. “Wyn and I might’ve had our differences lately, but, he’s still, well, ours. But I think Their Most Royal Highnesses”—he emphasised the words with a pointed glare at Rakken—“actually are worried about his safety. Family means more to these two than they let on.”
Rakken shot Marius a look with daggers in it. “You are being impolite, Marius Valstar.” Marius frowned, confused, and that seemed to satisfy Rakken in some way that made no sense to Hetta. His expression smoothed into amusement. “Very impolite.”
Marius threw his hands up. “Well, I’m not sure why me vouching for your good intentions offends you, but you can’t expect me to just magically know and abide by all your daft fae rules.”
Hetta’s eyebrows went up, but Rakken just said mildly: “They are only daft from your perspective, which is, naturally, a limited one.”
“Because you know so much about mortal customs and are clearly a completely unbiased judge!”
Hetta met Catsmere’s eyes, seeking confirmation that their respective brothers truly were having a petty argument in the middle of a crowded train station while Wyn was still who knew where. The princess was difficult to read, even for a fae, but Hetta thought she detected amusement in the gleam of her emerald eyes. Or perhaps merely exasperation. Had Marius and Rakken been sniping at each other like this the entire train ride?
And then Catsmere went still as a hunting hound scenting prey. Her stillness spread to Rakken half a second later, and the pair of them scanned the crowded station as if they’d already discussed how to efficiently divvy up the space between them.
“Yarrow,” Rakken murmured.
Catsmere nodded. “Yes…”
Neither twin lost their human form, but they were both sharpened, their beauty strange and overpowering.
“There!” The two of them zeroed their attention in on one particular section of the crowd, and Rakken’s eyes blazed a brighter green. In a heartbeat, the steam and grit were masked with the smell of storms and citrus. Wyn, Hetta thought, but it wasn’t his scent, not quite.
The huge, soundless force of Rakken’s magic radiated outwards, and the crowds became still in its wake, the entire station falling silent but for the engines. It spooled out and out until it…caught, was the only word Hetta could think of to describe the sensation, like a hook on a fishing line. The force abruptly released the eerily quiet mass. Chatter broke out again, and hundreds of people jerked back into motion, as if they hadn’t all been trapped for a moment in frozen soundlessness.
Rakken made a grasping motion, and a man with straw-coloured hair began to stagger towards him. No one reacted to this. Instead, the crowds parted around the man without appearing to notice that they were doing so. Compulsion, Hetta thought. Rakken’s using compulsion. A chill went down her spine.
“What are you doing? Who is he?” she demanded.
Rakken frowned down at her, and the man shuddered to a halt at the end of their platform, his face unnervingly blank.
“He has been watching us this entire time, and he carries anti-fae charms.” A grim satisfaction glinted in his expression. “For lesser fae, at least.”
Rakken and Catsmere stalked towards their prey, leaving Hetta and Marius to trail behind them. Hetta shared a look with her brother. His grey eyes were wide and horrified, a mirror of her own emotions. Rakken had held the whole station in thrall for that gut-wrenching heartbeat, and he’d plucked a single man from the crowd as easily as a fish from a barrel. She’d had no idea compulsion could do something like that.
The thought snuck into her, unwillingly: Could Wyn do that, if he wanted to? But that wasn’t the point—he wouldn’t. The twins held no such moral compunctions. I mustn’t let myself forget that. Their resemblance to Wyn made it too easy to assume they’d act as he would.
Before the twins reached the blond man, a pair of men pushed out of the milling crowd and took hold of his arms. Hetta recognised one—the guard with the Sight—though he wasn’t in uniform now. The other man waved a posy of something under his nose and he jerked, breaking out of the compulsion with a gasp. Again, that terrifying hammer of Rakken’s will spread out, and the newcomers reeled under the blow.
“Stop!” Hetta cried, hurrying after them. “They’re palace guards!”
The guards staggered away, pulling the other man with them. The twins teetered on the brink of giving chase, but by the time Marius and Hetta reached them, they’d decided against it, both tense as un-hooded falcons.
“Why were guards from the palace watching you, Lord Valstar?” Rakken asked with narrowed eyes.
“Still watching you,” Catsmere added. “Don’t look!” she hissed as Hetta instinctively began to do just that. “Or they will know that you know they are there.”
“How many are there watching us?” Marius asked.
“Five, not counting the three before,” Rakken said.
Hetta swallowed, a cold lump settling in her stomach. “Her Majesty must have sent her guards to follow me in case I contacted Wyn.” Anger balled in her fists, threatening to manifest as fire. She almost regretted stopping Rakken from interrogating that guard. How dare the queensguard follow her around? But no; she’d done the right thing. She was, after all, trying to convince Her Majesty that Hetta and Wyn were trustworthy, upstanding citizens.
Besides, it’s also ethically questionable, she thought, somewhat belatedly.
She looked around the train station, where there was now no sign of the vast compulsion of before. Gods, that wasn’t going to help her case with the queen at all.
“Will they remember it? The compulsion?” Marius asked before she could.
Rakken eyed him oddly. “No. They will not. I am no amateur.”
Hetta didn’t know whether to find that a relief or even more unsettling.
Catsmere spoke as if impatient with the subject. “And do you have a way to contact our brother? Or something of his?”
Hetta was about to shake her head when she remembered. “I don’t have a way to contact him. What do you mean by ‘something of his’?” She thought of the ring, lying warm against her skin. Stariel gave a distant hum of acknowledgement.
“Something that carries his essence may allow us to trace him,” Rakken explained patiently.
“Ah—I have one of his feathers,” Hetta said, feeling hope for the first time today. “Will that work?”
Both twins stared at her as if she’d grown a third head, and Catsmere smiled for the very first time. It wasn’t Rakken’s sharp, sarcastic expression, but something warmer and almost familiar, and it made Hetta’s heart ache suddenly with missing Wyn.
“Yes,” she said. “That should work.”
28
Silversine Park
Hetta had imagined quite a different tone to her first visit to Silversine Park—her favourite park—since her return to Meridon. Her mental version had, firstly and most importantly, involved only her and Wyn. His siblings and her brother were very poor substitutes. She’d also envisaged far more romantic strolling arm-in-arm and chaperone evasion and far less furtive spell-casting in secluded copses. Not that either Rakken or Catsmere was particularly furtive, having shaken off their guard escort with a combination of compulsion and glamour. It was certainly useful, but H
etta kept remembering that silent force swelling out at the train station and shuddered. Thank the gods my bond with Stariel makes me immune.
Marius liked it even less than she did. Every time a passer-by came close and then abruptly diverted their route, he glared at Rakken, which was unfair, because Hetta suspected Catsmere was responsible for that bit of traffic management. Rakken was constructing some kind of ritual preparations, which he did with a casual display of magic, scooping a circle in the earth with invisible hands, muttering something too quietly for Hetta to hear.
“I don’t think they really think of humans as people,” Marius reflected beside her. Hetta was fairly sure both fae could hear him, but they ignored the remark. Rakken finished his preparations and stalked over to Hetta.
“Give me my brother’s feather,” he said, extending his palm.
Hetta made no move to do so. “What are you going to do with it?”
He frowned. “As previously stated: attempt to find him.”
“And what then?” she asked. “You’ll welcome him as your prospective king with open arms?”
They might’ve convinced Marius they meant no harm to Wyn—and heavens only knew how they’d achieved that—but Hetta was still suspicious of their motives. “You said you weren’t here to kill him, so what do you want?” Probably she should’ve asked this sooner, but the queensguard had been an effective distraction.
He narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes, Lord Valstar, our choices are not what we would like.”
“You mean you’d rather Wyn than—” She remembered not to say Aroset’s name at the last moment and finished, “—your other sister.”
Rakken gave a tight smile. “We do not know for certain what ThousandSpire wants. But yes, if it comes to it.”
Marius and Hetta exchanged a look. Rakken’s slim hope that he might still be chosen seemed like a simple case of denial.
“I know about not being chosen,” Marius said suddenly. “It’s not always the end of the world.” He smiled at Hetta. “I’ve come to respect the choices of faelands.”
Warm affection for her brother bloomed, despite the fact that she had no intention of respecting ThousandSpire’s choices in this. Oh, Marius.
Rakken ignored this sentimental moment. Hetta was beginning to suspect this was his way of dealing with things he didn’t know what to do with. “Regardless, I assume you’d like to know my brother’s location also, Lord Valstar?” He held out a hand.
She did, but it was still hard to relinquish the feather. “I’d like it back when you’re done.”
“Very well.” He continued to hold out his hand, expression impassive.
Taking a deep breath, she handed it over. He prowled back to his circle, whereupon he folded himself to the ground. He looked extremely odd sitting cross-legged in a tailored suit beneath a birch tree in Silversine Park, but he was supremely unselfconscious. A blackbird chirped in the tree above his head and then took flight, and she wasn’t sure if it was magic or not that had disturbed it.
“How does this work, exactly?” Marius asked, but Catsmere hushed him absently. Her attention was still on the perimeter of the area, diverting foot traffic.
Rakken’s eyes were closed, a faint crease between his brows. Dappled light glinted in the ebony and gold of his hair. His magic had the same storm underlayer as Wyn’s, but overlaying it were woodier citrus notes instead of spice.
Stariel bristled, and Hetta sent a soothing reassurance down the bond, through the ring.
Rakken opened his hand, and Wyn’s feather lay there, silvery white and somehow clearly other. Hetta swallowed to release the sudden pressure against her eardrums, and then realised it wasn’t a physical sensation but a magical one. The pressure increased, and with it the citrus scent of Rakken’s magic, until the feather began to vibrate. Power built for long moments, the feather now humming so intensely it was nothing more than a pale blur floating a fraction above Rakken’s palm—and then with a crack, it burst into flame.
Rakken hissed and closed his hand around the flame, snuffing it out. His eyes burned a brilliant, poisonous green, and he opened his fist to reveal a palm smudged with grey ash. As Hetta watched, the breeze caught a few of the insubstantial grey flakes and carried them up through the budding branches and out of sight, leaving her feeling more bereft than the loss of one feather really ought to warrant. Wyn would be perfectly happy to give her another, when they found him.
Rakken rose, brushing the smudges of ash from his hands. “There is something stopping the connection from forming.”
Catsmere spared a glance away from her glamour. “Why would Hollow be blocking such magic?”
“Could dismae block your spell?” Hetta asked. Both fae’s attention snapped to her, green eyes glowing faintly.
“Dismae?” Catsmere snapped out the word.
“Yes, Wyn said they block the magic of greater fae. The queen made him put a pair on.” She stopped. Despite their sharp edges and their casual use of compulsion and glamour, Hetta hadn’t truly felt in danger from the pair before. Now they’d both gone still. It wasn’t Wyn’s stillness of thinking furiously for the correct reaction—it was the stillness of predators before an attack, and there was abruptly nothing human about them, despite the lack of wings.
“Your mortal queen placed dismae on our brother?” Rakken asked, voice low and menacing. Hetta had to stop herself from taking a step back. Around their private bubble, people strolled in oblivious twos and threes, their unconcerned chatter a jarring counterpoint.
“Well, strictly speaking, he agreed to it,” she said, holding her ground. “And you can stop going all prickly at me. I didn’t like it either, but he was determined that it was the best course of action.”
The twins exchanged meaningful glances. Hetta was already very tired of this secret communication method.
“No, Wyn’s not insane,” Marius said, answering as if the twins had spoken. “He just places more value on Stariel and Hetta than on himself, which I know may be a foreign concept to the two of you. Maybe that’s why ThousandSpire likes him better.”
She appreciated the defence of Wyn, but was it a good idea to bait his siblings? There was a deep and vicious anger in Rakken that he was masking, but flashes of it came through now and then, and she didn’t want to find out what would happen if the mask slipped completely.
“If our brother made himself so vulnerable at your mortal queen’s request and she failed to protect him, she owes him a debt,” Catsmere said flatly.
“I happen to agree,” Hetta said, to Marius’ disapproval. “Well, I do. That creature—the nightwyrm. You didn’t see it, but it was huge. I have no idea how he killed it without any magic to call on, but he wouldn’t have been half so vulnerable if the queen hadn’t insisted he wear those cuffs.”
“Because fae are all sweetness and light and should be trusted on general principle?” Marius said sarcastically. He had a point, but she didn’t want to hear it right now. What did it matter what other fae were like, when they both knew Wyn was different?
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so,” Rakken drawled with a smirk.
Hetta rubbed her temples. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I take it if Wyn’s still wearing the dismae, your tracking spell won’t work?”
Catsmere frowned. “No. But there are other methods, Lord Valstar.” She looked at her twin, who sighed.
“There are few lowfae in this city, and the nightwyrm will have frightened them badly,” Rakken said. “I fear it may take some time for them to speak to me.”
“Then we go hunting,” Catsmere told her brother. “Beginning at the palace.”
<
br /> Rakken nodded, and the two of them began to walk off without regard for whether Hetta and Marius were following.
“Are they always like this?” Hetta grumbled to Marius as she trotted to catch up. They all had longer legs than her.
He wrinkled his nose. “Yes.”
On the one hand, it was a relief to be taking action—any action—but on the other, Hetta had become accustomed to taking charge. She didn’t appreciate the usurpation, particularly not after having to bow to Queen Matilda’s wishes.
“I think even they think they’re grasping at straws though,” Marius added. “If they can’t trace him because of the dismae, how are they going to pick up his magical signature? And Rake is still recovering from an injury and probably can’t keep gallivanting around the city all day. So we’d better think of a back-up plan. What else did the queen say?” Rakken shot him a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder and Marius shrugged. “Yes, I know you can hear us.”
The twins didn’t look like they were grasping at straws; on the contrary, they moved with a supreme confidence that Hetta privately envied. But she trusted her brother’s intuition. He’d always had an uncanny knack for understanding people, when he wasn’t buried in his own thoughts, oblivious to the outside world. She told him about the queen demanding Wyn renounce his ties to Faerie, the newspaper articles, and the unconscious palace guards. Rakken and Catsmere were listening too, judging from the tense line of their shoulders that relaxed when they heard Wyn had refused to swear fealty to Queen Matilda.
Hetta didn’t object to the twins using glamour to gain entrance to the palace; she didn’t really have any high ground, since she’d used illusion in the same manner. She’d seen Wyn do this once before too, creating a kind of cocoon of invisibility about himself, wholly different from the ways illusion could fool the eye. At the thought, a cold lump formed in her throat.
The corpse of the nightwyrm had been removed from the kitchen, though the whole room still reeked of blood and spices, not yet disguised by the industrious cleaning that was currently underway. Rakken evicted the cleaning crew without compunction, informing them that they should take a break outside for a few minutes. Hetta watched uneasily as the maids cheerfully filed out the kitchen door, leaving a wake of buckets and mops.