My cheeks turned pink, but I was staring at the ground below me as I walked aimlessly. Safety had been an afterthought for me these last few months, hadn’t it? If Lockwood had endangered me, it had been because I’d gotten myself in a hell of a mess through all my lies first. Given all the vampire stuff I’d been through since leaving New York, this Faerie adventure didn’t seem all that bad. A little scary, sure, but … I was dealing with a lot of that lately.
“Look, Cassie,” Roseus said, “there is a way that I can help you, but it might be … difficult.”
My stomach turned over. What did he mean difficult? What could be any more difficult than what I was dealing with right now? I stared at him, waiting for him to go on.
“The Crown only has leniency with those who are openly honest,” Roseus said. “I know that as a human, that will be hard for us to verify. While we don’t ever lie, we have certain means to tell when others are.”
I still didn’t answer him. Might as well make some good on my word.
“Clemency is offered to those who answer our questions, provided they are innocent of any crimes,” he said. “If I ask you some questions, can I have your word that you will tell me the truth? I know that a human’s word is binding to them.”
I glanced up at him. What a nice world he lived in, thinking humans didn’t break their word. When was the last time he spent any time on Earth? The Revolutionary War? Because this was certainly opening a door for me.
“If I tell you the truth, you will get me out of here?” I asked, slowly.
“I am going to do what I can.” He nodded his head. “You know how these things are. I must take responses to those above me, and then those will be passed to the Crown for evaluation.” He stared with piercing eyes at me. “I know that you are innocent, Cassie. You have done nothing wrong while here in Faerie. The testimonies of those who have interacted with you would be able to prove that.”
The Crown had leniency for those who were openly honest?
And they had means to know, according to him. They had figured out that both Orianna and I were glamoured, after all.
I thought of Lockwood, on his knees, head hanging. It pained me too much to think of him suffering, so I just tried to ignore it.
“What about Lockwood?” I asked.
“Hmm?” Roseus said. He had been staring up into the darkening sky overhead.
“Lockwood,” I said. “What’s going to happen to him?”
Roseus’s face fell, and he scratched the back of his head nervously. “I am not at liberty to say—”
“Is he still alive?” I asked, my heart beating faster.
“Of course,” Roseus said. “We wouldn’t kill him. What would be the point?”
Immense relief washed over me, much like the waves pulling the sand from my feet. The sickening knot in my chest loosened. Not entirely, but enough to let me breathe a little more.
“If I give you the answers you want, will you let me see him?” I asked.
“Bargaining, I see,” Roseus said. He sighed. “Well … I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”
I sighed.
“However … it will likely help your chances.”
A chance was better than nothing. What were my other options? Sit in faerie jail with Orianna, staring at the lava dragons with no semblance of a plan? At least if I got to Lockwood, I could talk about some sort of plan for busting out of here, getting back to Earth.
Getting back home.
It may have been the longest shot in the history of long shots, but I had no other choice, did I?
“All right,” I said. “Ask your questions.”
“Very good,” Roseus said.
He came to a stop, so I turned to face him.
“My first question is … why would Lockwood come back to Faerie after all this time?”
Hmm. Tell him that Lockwood had come to lie to the court about whatever had gotten him exiled? That didn’t sound like a winning strategy. The best lies built on the framework of the truth, and while I didn’t know if I was going to need to lie just yet, I knew I didn’t want to tell the whole truth. I started at the beginning.
“He was attacked,” I said. “And I was with him. I saw the whole thing. Pixies came out of nowhere and started bombarding his car.” I left out details, like the fact that Mill was with us, and that Lockwood had just picked me up from school. “They destroyed it. They came after me, and he managed to chase them off …”
Roseus was watching me closely. I hadn’t lied yet, so it was even easier to hold his gaze.
“He thought that someone here in Faerie had it out for him, and so he came back to see what was going on.”
Okay, that part was kind of a lie. But it wasn’t far from the truth, being the gist of what he had told me in the beginning. It just left out the crux of what he was doing.
“All right,” Roseus said. “Next question. What was his plan?”
“Simple,” I said. “Try to figure out exactly why he had been attacked. Those pixies weren’t there to play. They meant to hurt him, if not kill him. They could have killed me, too.”
“Yes, but what was his motive?” Roseus asked.
“To settle the matter. Because Lockwood is honest and straightforward,” I said. “Unlike that Master Calvor or whatever his name is.”
“You know about Master Calvor?” he asked, and his face … changed. Got grimmer. “How much do you know?”
“Only that he has a lot of power in the court,” I said quickly. I’d stumbled on something here, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to linger on the subject. Learning more would have been nice, but I felt like I could also get entangled in the topic given Roseus’s somewhat dark look. “And that he doesn’t have the greatest reputation.” Enough honesty to satisfy the desire most people had for gossip, but vague enough he hopefully wouldn’t think I knew more.
Roseus chuckled, and I felt a little relief. “Yes, well … that is what Lockwood would think of him, isn’t it?” He scratched his chin. “All right, Cassie … one more question. Lockwood brought you along. Why?”
This was a question that I genuinely did not know how to answer. The way that he was staring at me, it was as if he already knew the true reason why, and he just wanted to hear me say it out loud as confirmation.
But I was not going to give him that satisfaction.
“It wasn’t to destroy your precious court or whatever,” I answered, crossing my arms over my chest. “The way everyone reacted in that ballroom … you’d think I’d pulled a gun on them and threatened to start unloading.”
Roseus arched an eyebrow—apparently the reference had gone over his head—and sighed heavily.
“You were an uninvited guest to the Seelie court,” Roseus said, as if this was something I should know. “We prize our hospitality, and would welcome a human to our lands—provided that we could prepare for their coming. What would we have done had you brought some of that dreaded metal of yours here, hmm?” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “We could have had Summer fae dying by the dozens if you had but a little iron and a little anger, hmm?”
Good to know. I made a mental note to start wearing exclusively iron jewelry when I got home. It would have been nice to have something to swing around during the pixie attack.
I blinked. I’d assumed I was going to get home just then.
That feeling … warm and certain, in my stomach, solidified.
I was going to get home. It was no if.
“Think of a lion, or a wolf entering your home unannounced,” Roseus said. “Surely you would be frightened that it would kill you, yes? But with the proper preparations, it would be no harm at all, right?”
Was that all I was to them? Some wild animal that needed to be kept down? “What, like a cage?” I asked. “A weapon, pointed at it the entire time?”
Roseus let out a low chuckle. “Not exactly. But you might want to, ahh … cork its fangs. We have a name for your kind … ‘Iron Bearer.’” His humor dr
ied up. “It is not a polite term.”
He took my silence as agreement. He was right, but I still hated it.
“Well, Cassie, I wish that you had more to tell us. All of this business with Lockwood has been very nasty, and the court … well, we would all just like to put it behind us.”
“Yeah, so would we who are not of the court but caught up in your business,” I said. “So, are you going to let me see Lockwood?”
“I don’t know …” Roseus said. “As I said, these decisions rest with those higher up than me.” He sighed heavily. “But they are so very busy trying to … talk to Lockwood right now that I don’t think they will even be able to hear your request at the moment … if I were to pass it along.”
If … if he were to pass it along?
That hollow, sinking feeling returned to my gut. “… You really have no intention no letting me out of here, do you?”
He hesitated. “Ah … no,” he said, kicking some sand with the toe of his sandal. “It isn’t that I don’t think you are innocent, because believe me, I do.” He shrugged. “It’s just that you ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Does that make sense?”
It made too much sense. So much sense that I couldn’t believe I didn’t see this coming from the beginning.
I hadn’t told him very much, but they knew about the attack now, and that Lockwood had told me about Master Calvor. He would naturally assume that I knew about his son being offed by an Unseelie, too.
That mere knowledge likely made me a liability now.
“Well, thank you for your company, Cassie,” Roseus said, executing a little bow. “It has been a pleasure.”
“Maybe for you,” I said. And then he was gone, as if he had never been there.
As if I had imagined him.
I stared out into the sunset, realizing that it hadn’t actually moved in the sky at all.
The only sound was the waves lapping against the shore, and the wind in my ears, taunting me about home. A place that I might never see again. That certainty I’d felt only moments before was gone, like a sandcastle when the tide came in.
My lip trembled.
No. I wasn’t going to cry. Not here. Not alone where no one would hear me or see me. I held it in, pushed it down, but it felt like a strangled, burning feeling in my heart.
There was no way we were getting out of here.
And it was all my fault.
Chapter 27
The ocean rolled by, salt breeze filling the air. My hair stirred around my shoulders, the cotton dress soft against my skin. Acid burned the back of my throat, combining with the salt to produce a strange, tangy taste in the back of my mouth that reminded me of times when I’d been sick.
And I definitely felt sick right now.
I had experienced situations like this before. Ones where it felt like there was no way out, no way to fix it.
Byron was one of those experiences. I’d been helpless, at his mercy. I would have died if I hadn’t managed to get a lucky hit on him.
Or when that vampire gang of Hollywood wannabes found out I was human and nearly killed Mill and Iona and was moments away from dragging me by my hair up to Lord Draven’s penthouse as a peace offering.
And of course I couldn’t forget that time that vampires set my house on fire while I was still in it, trying to murder me and my team when we fled.
I’d been in situations that looked pretty grim, where death was definitely on the menu and hope was pretty thin.
But all three of those situations had one thing in common:
I had been on Earth.
Now I was Cassie the pretend faerie, locked in some sort of spell or alternate dimension or magical cell type thing, with no way of getting out, and no way of getting home.
At least in all of those other times I had the hope of daylight, or a wooden stake, or holy water.
Here? I had nothing.
I sat in the water, staring out at the ocean, hoping to sear the image of the scenery’s beauty onto my brain. Was that why Roseus had brought me here? Was this my own form of torture?
Seeing home, or something like it … but not being able to actually be there?
I cradled my head in my hands, squeezing against my temple.
This whole thing could not have gone any worse.
“Where did you go?”
I looked up.
The volcano had returned. The heat washed over me, pulling the breath from my mouth and filling my lungs once more with the hot, sulphuric air. The rivers of lava still chugged along, the dragons above still stood watch.
“What … what happened?” I asked.
The beach, the water, the summer clothes … they all were gone.
I was back in the Seelie prison, and Orianna was peering through heat of the shimmering air at me with her wide, golden eyes.
“That General Roseus guy stepped over the lava into your little area there, and as soon as he did, both of you just disappeared.
I looked around. “We … were actually gone?”
“More likely he just glamoured you to make me think you were gone,” she said. “Whatever the case, I didn’t hear a thing.”
A dull, throbbing headache started behind my eyes. All of this magic was just too much to deal with on top of the imprisonment and uncertainty of our peril.
“I’d like to learn some tricks like that,” Orianna said.
“It was weird,” I said. “I was at this infinite beach. It was beautiful, peaceful. We were just walking along, talking …” I frowned. “I think he tried to make me more at ease by putting me in a more familiar place.”
I shook my head. Joke was on him. He should have plopped me in the middle of a forest if he wanted me to be comfortable. Spent way more time around those in my life. Florida was too recent and too dangerous for me to feel entirely comfortable in its environs.
“So?” she asked, her wings fluttering. “What was it all about?”
Had I been gone so long that she forgot her anger toward me? Had I already forgotten mine toward her?
As I thought of it, it came rushing back, and I glared at her. “Why do you care?”
She rolled her eyes. “For the same reason you want to tell me,” she said. Her eyes flashed. “Because maybe it holds a seed of something we can use to get out of here.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen,” I said, sitting down on the black rock. “Roseus made that pretty clear.”
She pouted her bottom lip. “What do you mean?”
“Just that,” I said. “He told me how he knew I was innocent and that I did nothing wrong. Spouted off something about the Seelie court showing lenience to those who speak with open honesty, or something like that.”
“Okay?” Orianna said. “And?”
“And … he asked me questions about Lockwood,” I said. “He told me answering would help my chances—”
Orianna cackled, clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. Her eyes were bright and dancing.
“What?” I snapped. “Why is that funny?”
“Because he told you that he wasn’t going to let you out right then,” she said.
I arched an eyebrow.
“‘Help’ your chances? Vague terms, wouldn’t you say? Nothing solid? No specifics?”
I was an idiot.
“So what all did you tell him?” Orianna asked, smiling wide in spite of our imprisonment, obviously way more interested in harassing me at this point than anything else. “You told him everything, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I hardly told him anything. As you said, I’m a liar.”
“Yeah, but Seelie are really good at wording things to get the right information out of you, even if you didn’t want to say it. They’ll even make you think it was your idea.” She snickered again. “Well, that’s what you get for trusting a Seelie,” she said.
“Hate on the Summer fae all you want but I still trust Lockwood,” I said, wondering again if h
e was all right. “Nothing that anyone tells me here will make me stop trusting him. I actually know who he is—unlike the rest of you people.”
Now she arched her brow. “Do you really?”
I hesitated. “He … he’s saved my life,” I said. “More than once.”
“Someone can save your life without telling you a single thing about themselves,” Orianna said quietly. “Besides, I wasn’t talking about Lockwood. I meant that was what you got for trusting that Roseus would actually let you out.”
“Well, I thought it was a better chance than just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs,” I snapped. Orianna seemed unperturbed. I changed my approach. “Besides … I thought the Unseelie were the tricksters and liars?”
Orianna flicked her hair, though it didn’t really change much; it still hovered around her as if she were suspended in water. “Nope. The Seelie are just as bad as us. The Unseelie are just more open about their deceit.” She tossed her head back and laughed. “You might say the Unseelie are the actual honest court, because we don’t hide behind veiled threats and minced words.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Everything that Lockwood told me—”
“Was probably a lie,” Orianna said.
“I refuse to believe that.” I shook my head.
“Deny it all you want. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s probably true,” she said. “That’s how the Seelie are, human. They don’t lie outright. None of the fae do. We can’t. But you’d be a fool to think that we haven’t learned how to do it in other ways.”
“Lying isn’t always about saying the opposite of the truth,” I said. “I’m really good at the full spectrum of deception, thank you.”
“All right.” Her wings fluttered, catching the attention of the dragons, and she settled them right down, watching warily. “Since you’re the resident liar here, why don’t you tell me? How else can someone lie besides speaking falsely?”
“They can tell half-truths,” I said. I was pretty good at those. As long as I was doing what Mom wanted me to do, what was the harm if I left some stuff out that she didn’t need to know? Like hanging out with Mill or Iona. Or staying out all night hunting vampires.
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