Conall led me up to the dais, looping the end of my chain over a hook several inches out of my reach behind the throne. Without a backward glance he left me, moving at a fast clip back the way we’d come. Relief at his absence warred with fear, fear for myself, for Thomas, Tisean, and even a little for Isana. I carefully lowered myself into a sitting position to the left of the throne. The chain was just long enough to accommodate doing so. I stared at the globes, as if by sheer force of will I could make them reveal what had happened to the competitors. I was having trouble breathing, both from the fear and the pain in my ribs.
A woman in a white dress passed close to the dais, and I steeled myself. I had to know.
“Excuse me,” I said, the words running together. She turned, and I faltered. Curiously blank eyes, flowing black hair streaked with silver and held out of her face with an intricate comb—banshee. I swallowed, and she regarded me with an unreadable expression. Too late to back down, I told myself. “Ah—could you—please, what happened?” I asked. I motioned towards the globes.
The banshee took a slow drink from the goblet she was holding. “Do you know that you are in peril, mortal?” she asked, her voice slight and wispy.
I took a slow, steadying breath. Banshees are not killers, I reminded myself fiercely, trying to keep up my nerve. They foretell death, they don’t cause it. In peril? Of course I was in peril. Every second here was dangerous, now more than ever. “Yes,” I said. “I know. Please…” I looked toward the globes again. She followed my gaze, then nodded.
“The competition. I do not know. The Rhineland fae were the only competitors in danger at the moment the orbs darkened. I do not understand why this has happened…”
“They were…” I cleared my throat. “The Rhineland fae were in danger?”
“Yes… closely pursued by sluagh.” My heart skipped a beat. Mitchell had covered that one. Sluagh were spirits that could tear a soul directly from a mortal’s body. The banshee shook her head slowly. “It should not have been a problem,” she said musingly. “The sluagh could kill mortals easily enough, but the Alder Prince should not have been harmed.”
The mortals. Thomas. I heard myself thank the banshee, numb, as she meandered away. He might be alive, right? The banshee hadn’t actually seen him die. Maybe the spheres were just malfunctioning. Why else would they all darken simultaneously? It was a weak hope, but it was all I had.
“Samantha!” My thoughts jolted back to the current situation as the cat came bounding up to me. “What—” She skidded to a stop just before reaching me. Her tail lashed as she looked me over. “What happened?” she demanded.
I closed my eyes for a second. “What’s going on with the competition?” I asked weakly. “Do you know?”
“Nobody does. The orbs just darkened a few minutes ago.” Her ears flattened. “Something’s not right. Now, what happened to you?”
I swallowed, not sure what to tell her. “When you were trying to find out why I had that thread on me, the second binding...” The cat’s tail quivered. “You told Aerenia it was just from what Lady Saorla did to me, right?”
“Yes…”
“There…” I cleared my throat. “There might have been more to it than that.”
The cat stared at me, her fur rising away from her body as realization dawned. “What have you done?” she whispered.
I looked away. I didn’t know why I felt the need to warn her—it was clear enough that she wasn’t any friend of mine—but I did. “I think you should leave the Court for a while,” I told her. Aerenia wasn’t going to take it well when she realized what that cat had missed. “Now.”
The cat hissed. “Idiot mortal!” she spat, raking her claws against my arm. I jerked back, blood oozing from the scratches, and the cat turned and darted away, fleeing through the crowd.
Hours trickled by. Some of the fae left the hall, but most stayed. I could hear the general murmur of speculation, and a good number of looks were cast my way. Probably trying to figure out how the battered little mortal fit into the new development, whatever it was. I slumped as far as the chain and my bruised ribs would let me. I didn’t know what had happened, but it seemed too much to hope for that whatever it was would drive the issue of what to do with a mortal caught spying out of Aerenia and Conall’s minds.
Suddenly, the large doors to the hall opened, and Aerenia strode in, Conall directly behind her. I forced myself to get to one knee as hundreds of fae dropped into bows. Aerenia did not appear angry, but in all honesty I would have preferred that expression; she was wearing a look of vindictive, savage satisfaction. “Rise,” she said loudly. Everyone did, but I was fairly certain the instruction did not apply to me, so I stayed where I was. My heart beat in my throat as I looked at her. What was going on?
“The competition is, for the moment, suspended,” she announced. Murmurs filled the hall, and she held up a hand. Silence fell. “A matter of some importance has arisen.” She looked directly at me, and I shrunk back, dropping my gaze. She and Conall approached the dais, and she stood before her throne while Conall took up his position to my right. Trapped between the two of them, I stared straight ahead, hardly daring to breathe.
“It has been some time,” Aerenia said, barely raising her voice, “since any have challenged my right to this throne. Or so I thought.” Several fae looked up, startled, as did I, against my better judgement. What was she talking about? “I think the time has come for a reminder as to why such action is unwise.”
She made a swift motion, and there was a sound like a thunderclap. Flames erupted in the center of the floor, and fae creatures threw themselves out of the way with shouts and cries of alarm. The flames died down, and in the center of the scorched circle they’d made stood Dietrich and Isana, both chained. Isana stumbled to her knees, and I restrained a gasp, looking at them; both were covered in cuts and bruises, and Dietrich was bleeding freely from more cuts than I could stand to count, his blood a dark shade. Isana jerked against her chains, then screamed. Iron, I realized, shocked. It hadn’t pierced her skin, so it wasn’t having the same effect as the barbs in the buggane’s whip, but her wrists were blistering even as I watched. Neither one of them would be able to use their abilities, not bound like that.
“These two,” Aerenia said, raising her head high, “have been caught engaging in treachery against myself. They entered this competition and indeed, they fought bravely. But their goal was never an alliance with my Court.” Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps the little siren can elaborate?”
Flames burst from the floor at Isana’s feet, and she screamed again. I turned away, hunched. “Tell them, little wild fae,” Aerenia said. “I would like everyone to hear this confession.”
“Was… did not…” Isana tried to speak, but failed, her voice breaking on every syllable.
“It was not her,” Dietrich spat, his voice drenched in pain. He tried to straighten, but the chains bit into his wrists, and he fell forward again. “Leave her be,” he ground out.
Aerenia’s eyebrows rose. “Very well.” With an easy flick of her wrist, more flames erupted, this time around Dietrich. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to block out his shouts of pain. “To the two Rhinelanders,” Aerenia said, “this competition was nothing more than a means to an end. The Alder Prince’s object was in fact to assassinate me. We have already received their confessions, though they required much persuasion to speak.” She clasped her hands behind her back, looking at Dietrich. “The Alder Prince is quite adept at taking life, as we have seen. A pity he will be unable to take his own to save himself the pain he will soon endure.” I couldn’t look. I kept my gaze on the white tile before me as they both screamed again, their anguish grating across my ears. I couldn’t believe this. They’d come here to kill Aerenia? Why? How had they ever thought that they’d be successful? How could they think to challenge her? I pressed my hand over my eyes at the sound of more screams, barely able to hold it there for the trembling.
“Their plan
was foolhardy,” Aerenia was saying, “made even more so by the aid they chose to enlist.” There was a pause, and then someone grabbed my arm and jerked me to my feet. I opened my eyes as Conall stepped away from me, handing the end of my leash to Aerenia. She was watching me with a cold amusement. “Tell me,” she said, her voice soft and dangerous. “What was your part in this?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“Really.” She twined the leash through her fingers, and my muscles tensed, waiting for the pain that was sure to follow. “The item in your pocket, mortal.” I froze. Then, with painful slowness, I withdrew the gem that Saorla had given me. I handed it to Aerenia, my heart beating painfully in my throat as Conall also handed her the darkcloak. I felt myself going rigid. It didn’t take a genius to realize what this looked like.
Aerenia raised cloak and gem high for the assembled fae to see, then returned them to Conall. My mind whirred, frantic. What would happen if she found out about my bargain with Tisean? Would that be worse than what she’d already decided about me? “Now,” Aerenia said, her voice deadly calm. “Your part in this.”
“I didn’t have one,” I managed, my voice breaking with fear. “I didn’t know. I would never work for them.”
Pain burst through me like a surge of lightning. I screamed as I dropped to the floor at her feet, twisting against the pain. The sensation stopped, and I laid there, trying to force gasping breaths of air into my lungs.
“The truth, mortal.”
“…didn’t know…” Another burst of pain, as though my blood had turned to fire in my veins. Another scream tore out of me.
“Little vixen,” Aerenia said softly. “To think you were cunning enough to support them undetected was the height of arrogance. Did you really think I did not see through your mask of fear? That we would not learn of your actions?”
She was going to kill me. I shook my head with a whimper. Another burst of pain. Huge black blotches clouded my vision. I hoped oblivion would come soon. Another surge of pain, this one worse than any that had come before. And another, still worse. I heard myself screaming something, a confession, anything, please, just stop…
After what seemed an eternity, the pain receded, just enough for me to be able to comprehend her words. “Take the Rhinelanders to the dungeons,” she was saying to Conall. “We shall enjoy their executions soon, I think. This one…” Conall wrenched me to my feet again. I couldn’t focus my eyes. “I have a strong belief in poetic justice, mortal. I think I know how we shall keep you until the time for your own death comes.”
How to keep me…? Pain still clouded my mind, and I couldn’t do anything except tug away weakly as Aerenia reached out and touched my forehead.
Several things happened at once. One, fire raced through me, seeming to melt my bones. Two, Aerenia seemed to grow impossibly large. Three, I felt the collar slip from my neck, falling to the floor with a pale ringing sound. Conall grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and lifted me several inches—no, several feet, I realized, staring in disbelief—off the floor with no apparent effort. I struggled, but my limbs didn’t seem to be moving correctly. At that moment, I caught sight of my reflection in the surface of the bell behind Aerenia’s throne. Even as distorted as the image on the convex surface was, I recognized, with a sort of numb shock, what had happened to me. I was small, with a long tail, silver fur, and pointed ears. Aerenia had transformed me into a fox.
Chapter Twenty
You know how people love to say, ‘look on the bright side—things can always get worse’? Well, they’re probably right. Things could get worse for me. But I utterly failed to see how.
Conall had thrown me into a wooden cage that was maybe two feet square at the base, though it’s hard to estimate size when your own has just changed drastically. He’d then taken me to a cold, abandoned storage room somewhere in the depths of the Court and left me there. I waited until he locked the storage room behind him as he left, then went to my standby behavior for impossible situations; that is, I panicked.
I threw myself against the bars of the cage, doing no damage to them at all and further bruising my ribs. I scratched at the base until my claws bled, then tried gnawing, succeeding only in getting splinters in my gums. After what felt like hours of this, I collapsed in a corner of the cage, my little chest heaving. I tried telling myself that I wasn’t really any worse off than I had been when Dietrich’s company sold me to Aerenia in the first place, but it was a lie, and I knew it. I’d had one significant advantage at that point, namely, that Aerenia hadn’t specifically planned on killing me then. I buried my head under my hands—paws. I couldn’t even garner the strength to be angry with Dietrich, Isana and Mitchell. What had they been thinking? I couldn’t begin to fathom it. Everyone had repeatedly stressed how important it was for Dietrich to win this, but why? So he would have a chance to get close to Aerenia… and kill her? It didn’t make sense, but it also had to be true; Aerenia had said that Dietrich and Isana had confessed, and neither they nor she could lie.
A small whimper escaped me. Me, Dietrich and Isana, slated for execution. Thomas and Mitchell, killed by sluagh. How could this be happening? I stood shakily, still trying to figure out how to signal my new set of muscles, then sat again, hanging my head. I thought of home, of my family. I’d left them on such bad terms… they were never going to know what happened to me. They’d probably find out that I’d left on my lunch break one day, then disappeared. I didn’t blame myself for leaving—I still thought it was the right thing to do—but I shouldn’t have refused to speak with them or answer their calls. I curled into a ball, my tail covering my nose. I closed my eyes, though of course there was no hope of sleeping—Aerenia was going to kill me in a few hours, and my mind kept supplying gruesome images of what I could expect. I shivered. Whatever was in store for me, though, I knew it would have nothing on what she was planning for Dietrich and Isana. Probably my execution would only be a side show. Maybe they’d just nail my pelt to a wall and be done with it.
I heard something then, a quiet scratching at the door. My ears flicked upright, and I sat up, pressing against the bars of the cage. The skittering noise continued, and suddenly, a small head peeped through the grating in the top of the door. I jumped back from the cage’s edge—it was a black rat. The rodent lifted its head, sniffed, then scrambled down the door on my side. The back of my neck prickled as my hackles rose—I’ve always hated rats, and my newly reduced size made this one seem ridiculously huge. The rat scuttled over to the cage, and I snarled, baring my teeth. It sat up on its haunches and regarded me, its whiskers twitching. Then, improbably, it began to hum to itself. I looked sharply at its eyes. They were a light golden color.
“Fa le ra le ri… How interesting,” it said. I stared. I knew that voice. “You smell rather different than you did last time we met, did you know?”
“Puca!” I exclaimed, or tried to—it came out as a sharp yelp. I darted to the front of the cage, my tail flicking back and forth as I pressed my paws against the bars. What was it doing here? How had it found me?
The puca looked inquisitively at me. “Well?” it asked. I tilted my head. It leaned forward. “I’ve given up,” it said, with the air of someone admitting something unpleasant. I looked at it blankly. “The riddle. Yes. What grows with its roots upward, and its head downward?”
It had to be kidding. I stared at it in open disbelief, though I’m not sure how the expression came off on a non-human face. It had tracked me all this way, even through the Unseelie Court, just to get the answer to a stupid riddle? I shook my head. I couldn’t answer anyway. It was actually sort of ironic; the puca had probably seen a few hundred examples of the answer since coming here.
“You can’t speak?” the puca asked. I shook my head again. “That’s unfortunate… I’d hoped you might be willing to tell me the answer… it’s been bothering me so.” It tilted its head. “Perhaps your friend could help? I have a good sense for mortals, you know. I believ
e I could locate him…” I pressed against the bars again, staring at it. Could it possibly be saying…? “Though it’s rather dangerous down there, from what I heard. Perhaps we should wait.”
I barked angrily. The rat’s ears twitched. “I can’t understand you,” it said. “Was that agreement? We should wait?”
I shook my head emphatically. “Hmm,” the puca said. “You may be right. The Sidhe knight will probably be back soon. Whatever did you do to anger Aerenia that badly?” I stared at it, agonized, while I waited for it to get back to the pertinent issue. Would it have killed Aerenia to turn me into a talking fox? “I suppose we need only go for a few minutes. If I take you down there,” the puca said, “will you promise to tell me the answer to the riddle as soon as you are able?”
I nodded quickly, not even caring that I was once again bargaining with fae. “Oh, excellent,” the puca said cheerfully. It dropped back to all fours, then slipped between the bars, squeezing into the crate next to me. It laid its paw on my shoulder.
The next thing I knew, there was a lurching sensation, and the world dissolved around me. When it coalesced, we were in a dark, narrow tunnel. I staggered to one side, dizzy from the magical transportation. I leaned against the tunnel wall, then froze in disbelief. There, not ten feet away, slumping against the tunnel wall with his eyes closed, was Thomas.
“Wards,” the puca said in warning as I darted forward, but too late—I slammed into something invisible and was thrown back, crashing against the tunnel wall. I yelped, my fur on end, and Thomas lunged to his feet, drawing both knives. He looked around rapidly, then frowned as he saw the puca, which was still a rat, and me.
“I’m not dropping the wards anytime soon,” he said roughly. My heart sank, looking him over. He’d bandaged the cut on his arm, but there was a new gash along his jaw, and his posture betrayed his exhaustion. “So you both can go, whatever you are.”
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