“Not now we have Winter’s security on our side.”
“She doesn’t know. Unless word’s made it back to her overnight.”
“Hmm.” I considered the possibility. “I honestly don’t know if she does have spies everywhere or if it’s just a Sidhe thing. You know, where they give the impression they know absolutely everything about you, all the time. Of course, it might be because Aspen can dangle me like a puppet on strings.”
“Not for long,” said Viola. “Your will’s stronger than his. He’ll get his comeuppance.”
“You bet he will.”
Viola stood. “Right. I’m off to find Rose and see if I can persuade a couple of scouts to check out the latest in the Courts. They know to watch out for trouble, don’t worry.”
“And they don’t have a price on their heads,” I added. “All right. I’m going for a walk.”
If the Hornbeam palace was to be my temporary home, I needed to figure out the directions. I walked around, memorising all the routes in and out, the gaps in the security—everything that might be useful during an attack. I halted at the weapons room, which lay open on my right, and went to replenish my supplies.
One side of the room was given over to iron knives and arrows, but the rest of the room was filled with more standard faerie weapons, sharpened branches fashioned into swords. Like the one Cedar and I had transformed into a replica of the evil sword. Weird how convincing it’d been—almost like Cedar’s glamour and my transforming ability had actually turned it into a proper talisman. Which was impossible. Talismans couldn’t be made out of any old weapon. They were carved from the hearts of Faerie’s most ancient trees, using spells the rest of us mere mortals could only guess at.
Right?
I selected a knife from the shelf, and blue light flared around it as I reshaped it to sword-length. I spun the new weapon in my hand. It was a pretty good replica, but definitely no talisman. Hmm.
“What are you doing in here?” called a male voice.
I turned to face the intruder. A silver-haired fae wearing armour and a crossbow strapped to his back like he’d just come off duty had entered the room.
“I’m having a look around.” I tried to edge around him, but he moved to block my way.
“Were you at the Summer Court last night?”
Had Cedar told him? I erred on the side of caution. “That’s between me and my confidants.”
“You’re not welcome here, whatever the others say.” His hand tensed on his weapon.
“I don’t have time for this,” I said. “If you’re betraying me, at least commit to it so I can jab an arrow through your eyeball.”
“You can’t—”
Ice sprang to my fingertips and formed a dagger against his throat. “Can’t I?”
He paled, jerking back. “I’m not betraying you, but someone attacked the Summer Court. You were there.”
“If you have spies following me, give it up. The most that’ll happen is my mother’s people will catch you and not me, and you’ll die.”
Behind him, someone shouted a warning. Screams drifted in from outside. My heart plummeted. An attack?
The soldier gave me one last glare. “You brought this on us, Whitefall.”
I ran after him, still gripping my improvised weapon. Outside, soldiers ran in all directions, some shouting orders. I scanned the front yard, but saw no attackers inside the fences. The sounds of fighting came from the forest.
I sprinted out of the gates, calling magic to my hands. As a troll’s club swung at a fae soldier, I aimed my attack at the tree behind him, which fell onto the troll, crushing it under its weight.
The Hornbeam soldiers had spread throughout the trees in a formation, crossbows out and knives in hand, firing on anyone who approached. An ogre tore at the gates, where a mass of plants blocked the way, sharp stinging nettles tearing chunks of flesh out of the creature’s legs. That’s proper security for you. Whoever thought Summer magic wasn’t powerful hadn’t seen a group of lethal plants take someone apart.
I conjured a handful of icy shards, which I threw at another troll’s face. A tremor shook the earth, and the distant sound of howling wind engulfed the back of the palace. They’re attacking from behind.
Cutting the troll’s throat, I climbed over its body. I ran through the trees, circling the palace, and skidded to a halt. A whirlwind encased a section of the fence, surrounded by broken pieces of plant and other debris. Cedar was locked in battle with another faerie—half-blood or Sidhe, I couldn’t tell from the back. The earth trembled again. Damn. He has some kind of earth magic. He’s going to break down the fence. Parts of it lay in fragments, leaving the way into the palace wide open.
A scream came from my left, and an injured soldier crawled away from a long-limbed fae. As I ran forwards, it extended a branch-like arm and grabbed the soldier’s neck. His mouth opened in a scream, his face—changing. Wrinkles spread across his face, shrivelling like a dead leaf, and he fell onto his front, dead.
The beast turned to me. Its long arms were like tree branches, deceptively brittle looking for appendages which had stolen life from someone with a single touch. It had a similar appearance to a skin-eating Vale fae, but appeared to be feeding on something else. Life force, maybe. Three more dead soldiers lay in its path.
“Get here,” I growled. “Try picking a fight with me.”
Magic surged from my hands, freezing the moisture in the air and earth, but the fae creature continued to advance on me, undeterred. Its feet must be made of blades to keep a grip on the ground, and icy shards didn’t make a dent in its armoured bark-like coating. I aimed my magic at the dead plants instead, turning them into sharp weapons, but they bounced off its tough skin.
Long tendrils burst from its arms, surrounding me. Magic turned my clothes to armour, but it held on, tenaciously. If it touched my bare skin, I was dead. Struggling against its grip, I stepped back, falling into the set pattern almost unconsciously. Not that I needed it. I hadn’t moved more than a step before magic blossomed from my hands, hitting the creature full in the face.
“Stop,” I growled.
My hypnotic spell cast a glare over the fae’s eyes. Its branch-like arms fell to its sides. Swiftly, I stepped up and decapitated it. The creature collapsed into a heap of bark.
Cedar stumbled into my path, green light flaring around his arm, which was dripping blood. His attacker was bleeding, too. Green Summer magic shone from the male half-blood’s eyes, and he wore armour the colour of bone.
“Hey, dickhead,” I shouted, and threw a handful of icy shards in his face.
He didn’t duck in time. The faerie yelled as the ice pierced his skin, shearing gaping holes in his face. Cedar lunged and tackled him to the ground. The earth shook beneath them, threatening to swallow them both up. I didn’t dare throw my own magic into the mix. Thorny vines appeared and disappeared, forming a circle around the pair as they struggled against one another.
A flash of movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention to a tree not ten metres away. Leaves rustled and the unmistakable buzz of someone using magic hummed through the air and the ground. Not from the attacker, but from behind the tree. Aha. That’s why Cedar couldn’t get a grip on the bastard. He had help from another faerie, hiding like a coward.
Swiftly, I raised my hands and used magic on the tree adjacent to the one I’d seen the movement behind. Branches creaked and fell. The attacker leaped aside as I fired magic at a root protruding from the ground. The root caught the female half-faerie in the face and she fell onto her back.
A yell from behind me told me Cedar had got the upper hand. I drew my knife and ran at the second one. She raised both hands, holding up a shield of shimmering green. Cloudy black hair surrounded her pale face, and her magic glowed green, shimmering in the air.
She brought her arms down in a sweeping motion and the shield dissolved into a current of air that sent me flying back a good five metres, narrowly missing colliding wi
th the half-blood attacking Cedar. As I landed on my feet, the air attack hit the swirling magic surrounding the two of them. Cedar fell back, unable to keep upright as both air and earth shook with power. Too much power for one person.
I looked at the female half-blood, conjuring ice to my hands. “You’re a tag team?”
Instead of answering, she sent a razor-sharp current of air at my neck. I ducked and rolled, throwing a wave of icy shards at her. My attack bounced off her armour. I struggled to stand, the earth shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
I rolled to the side, grabbing a tree for balance, calculating how best to help Cedar without putting us both in the line of fire. Every plant he conjured was immediately swallowed by the half-faerie’s earth magic, while his partner circled from behind, her air magic tearing up the trees and pushing Cedar closer to his adversary. Trees tore up, and Cedar flew back, crashing into an oak trunk.
I threw more icy fragments at the earth faerie as he renewed his attack on the fence. Broken bits of dead plant surrounded him, and his partner’s hands glowed green, conjuring a barrier of energy around the pair of them. Neither of our attacks could hit.
Cedar’s palm slammed into the earth, and tree roots stabbed upwards out of the ground, only to smash into the air faerie’s attack. The force sent me flying sideways, and Cedar disappeared from view. Sharp tree branches fell, aiming at my face.
I raised a hand and blasted them with blue energy, transforming the branches into spears aimed at the enemy instead. Green light mingled with blue as Cedar’s magic hit mine—he must have used a spell at the same time.
Before my eyes, the branches fused together, the sharp edges blunting and turning into a living thing. I didn’t do that. Cedar’s magic remained, and somehow—it’d connected with mine.
Like when we’d transformed the talisman.
A current of air, a miniature tornado, blocked the two half-bloods from view. Shards of dead plant rose in a frenzy, caught up in the whirlwind of her magic. As the earth faerie worked away at the gate, his partner had conjured a shield to stop us from attacking either of them.
The air faerie grinned wickedly, holding a shard of sharpened wood in her gloved hand, and hurled it at me. Air magic propelled the weapon, but I shot it with my own transformative power, and the shard exploded into fragments. She conjured another one, which I deflected. Damn. I need to get them away from the palace.
“Cedar!” I yelled. “Use magic when I say!”
He pushed to his feet, leaning on the nearest tree, bleeding heavily from one arm. “I can’t—they’re too strong. One of us will get hit.”
“Trust me. Use magic when I say—now.”
Blue light flared from my hands as green light shot from his, colliding with the sound of a thunderclap. The air faerie screamed as a deluge of plant fragments fell onto both her and her partner, burying them in a writhing tide, turning into a thorny net. I felt Cedar’s magic guiding mine, and mine his, as the tornado died down, the earth stilled, and the net closed its grip around the two half-bloods.
I staggered forwards, the earth unsteady under my feet. “Who did that? Me or you?”
“Both of us.” He stared at me a minute. “Did you know you could combine your magic with mine?”
“Not until I saw those two.” I indicated the shards of plant spearing the two half-bloods. My magic had fused it together, but his magic had made it move like a living thing, crushing the two half-bloods between it.
“I’m fairly sure they’re dead.” I stopped. “And you’re bleeding.”
“It’s healing,” said Cedar. “How…?”
I slumped against the nearest tree, suddenly drained beyond belief. “I’ve no idea. I was just improvising. You know what we did to the sword, the one June took? I’ve never seen someone else be able to affect my magic before.” Was it because our magic was compatible? Cedar and I had both used magic dozens of times, but never at precisely the same moment. As though in sync.
Cedar looked at me like the same thought had occurred to him. “It was good timing. Another minute and they’d have got into the palace grounds.”
They’d already knocked down part of the fence. They could have killed half an army with that power.
“Who were they?” I murmured. “Was it them who blew up Winter?”
“I don’t think so,” Cedar said. “I’d know. The traces around the site of the attack weren’t theirs.”
“But they took the fence down without even using a talisman.”
“Exactly.” He grimaced. “If I had to guess, it’s a new strategy of hers.”
“And it worked.” If she used two powerful half-bloods to blast her way into the Courts, maybe she didn’t need a talisman after all.
But she doesn’t know about us. What we can do.
Alone, my talisman’s magic was powerful. With Cedar’s, it was something else. A type I’d never seen before.
Maybe we’d held the key to beating her in our hands the whole time.
Chapter 14
Lady Whitefall seemed to have had enough of attempted break-ins for now, and we spent most of the afternoon repairing the fence. The following day, I joined a patrol of the forest to look for threats, but found none. Nor the next day, either. Despite the lingering threat of another attack, my mother appeared to be suspiciously absent. And so did Cedar, most of the time. He claimed to be busy with security and spent a lot of time giving the other soldiers orders, but still apparently didn’t want to commit to being their new leader. They certainly seemed to see him that way, though, hanging onto his every word. Two young teenage soldiers had also taken to following me around. It was weird, to say the least, after the army had spent so long trying to kill me on Lady Hornbeam’s orders.
One morning, with nothing better to do, I decided to pay a visit to Cedar’s private weapons room, where he’d put the talisman sword. I had no more clues on how we’d managed to conjure up our too-convincing replacement, much less the weird side effects of using our magic at the same time. Unlike my own palace, the Hornbeam one seemed to contain no library with books on faerie history and weaponry, or anything else that might have given me some direction.
I pulled a thread from my jacket and transformed it into an improvised lock pick, and inserted it into Cedar’s door. One twist, and it opened.
“You haven’t lost your touch,” Cedar remarked from the shadows. “Though I’ll have to see if I can fix it. Most doors aren’t immune to lock picks here.”
“I figured,” I said, turning to him. “How long have you been following me?”
“Since you left the barracks. Those two kids were tailing you, so I decided to make sure they didn’t have ulterior motives.”
“Nah, they don’t want me dead. They just have crushes on me.”
“It’s unsurprising.”
“Ha.” I pushed the door open. “I saved their necks several times. I’d be worried if I didn’t get a share of hero-worship.” I stepped into the room, my gaze instantly going to the corner. Ice had spread in a circle around the cabinet Cedar had locked the sword in, as though it was making a valiant effort to get out.
“That’s why you came here? You could have just asked me.”
“I didn’t know where you were, and I got bored.” I shrugged. “The sword looks like it’s about to break out.”
“It can’t. The magic of the palace keeps it contained. Though I have to say, it certainly doesn’t behave like any other talisman I’ve encountered.”
I looked at him. “Then you believe me?”
“I believe there’s something different about it, but talismans can’t be alive. Even Faerie has a limit, believe it or not.”
“Okay, but you have a theory, right?” I tilted my head.
“I think it’s possible talismans might absorb some of the personality of the person who carried it. Talisman owners take in the magic as part of themselves, so it makes more sense than the talisman itself being a separate consciousness.”
“I guess so,” I relented. “The sceptre sort of felt alive, when I first picked it up. I don’t sense it now, but the magic’s inside me, so I wouldn’t.”
A sudden chill settled around the base of my spine, and the vision from the witches’ forest flashed before my eyes. And what about the times I’d used magic without consciously choosing what I planned to transform? No—it was instinct, like any other magic I used. Talismans weren’t alive. Cedar’s theory made more sense.
I took another step towards the sword, which lay dormant. My skin prickled all over. Its blade gleamed wickedly sharp, an invitation.
“Wish I could rip the magic straight out of it,” I muttered. “Is it possible? I don’t think we can get away with keeping it here forever.”
“It’s possible to destroy a talisman, but I suspect only the Sidhe could take apart that particular one.”
I twisted my head to look at him. “You’re serious. But—wait. You planned to destroy the sceptre, right? How, exactly?”
A silent moment passed. “Iron,” he finally said. “A lot of it. If a talisman is surrounded by iron for long enough, its magic fades. I planned to bury it.”
I couldn’t believe it’d taken me this long to ask. In fairness, iron was the quickest way to destroy the magic inside a faerie, so it really ought to have been the logical conclusion. “I didn’t know iron could destroy talismans. Destroy magic, yeah, but talismans are supposed to be indestructible.”
“So are the Sidhe. Iron is their weakness. There’s a reason Lady Hornbeam never actually touched any herself.”
“What?” I stared at him. “You said she wanted to stamp out your weakness to it.”
“And she did. But you were right, you know.”
I blinked. “About what?”
“Being without iron. It’s freeing. I’ve been able to use magic much more easily.”
“Like what we did.” I took in a breath. I hadn’t only wanted to speak to him about the sword. “Cedar… how long have you been forced to carry iron?”
Exiled Queen (The Thief's Talisman Book 3) Page 11