The air was fresh and crisp, with a sharp chill to it. My foot slipped in the mud as I climbed up a tiny embankment, and I grabbed a bare branch to steady myself, bark crumbling into my bare palm. The place felt abandoned and ancient, like it hadn’t been touched in a long time. But there was a presence here, invisible eyes on my back.
The problem with building the doorway to your magikal domain in the middle of nowhere is that the lawn maintenance sucks.
When we cleared the trees we came out in a tiny clearing in the middle of the island, where a worn, red wooden door was fixed in a giant stone archway, just standing there in the open air with no wall to support it.
“That’s not strange at all,” I said.
Hunter started to speak, but my phone rang.
He waved at me to get it and dropped onto a fallen log, folding his arms over his knees. I fished my phone out and my eyes glanced over the caller ID. Mom. I swiped the answer call slider without even thinking about it—a force of habit, and froze. I met Hunter’s eyes, and I must have looked every bit the rabbit about to get hit by a bulldozer, because he was on his feet instantly.
Wordlessly, I brought the phone up to my ear. I said nothing.
A familiar voice on the other end: “Sky?”
I hung up.
“What?” Hunter demanded. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I felt the sharp sting of impatience, the bite of worry—but the feelings weren’t mine, they were his. The only thing I could muster was disbelief. Had I really just done that?
I had to block her calls.
Why was she calling me?
My walking out. That was, had to be, the very definition of leave me alone I am kicking you out of my life why are you doing this to us let me go and fucking give up and—
I was breathing. And she was not here.
I couldn’t hear her voice like that again so soon, so unexpectedly. It brought everything I was holding away rushing back—the fight, the gleam of light on a glass bottle full of foamy liquid, the screeching, tortured noises she’d made the moment I walked away from her and her demons forever.
They weren’t mine to deal with. Shouldn’t have been, before she’d burned them into me. And I had bigger problems.
“That was my mom,” I said. My eyes met his, worried, slightly pitying—and I snapped back to reality.
I could break apart and scream and hit something when I didn’t have an audience. I didn’t care if Hunter knew I was falling to pieces, just so long as he wasn’t around to watch it happen. Crying in front of people was not something that I did.
Instead, I looked at the sky and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me that Crayton was your father?”
“Because he isn’t. Not in any way that counts. ” There was no pause, and no lie registered. He truly didn’t think of the man that way. Sometimes belief was enough, to make something not a lie. “I ran away when he tried to drain my powers, and I haven’t seen him since. He’s dead to me. My father is gone.”
“You lied,” I accused, and he didn’t deny it. “You lied by omission. You tricked me.”
He’d been tip-toeing his way around my gift since the first night, and I hadn’t realized it. But how would I have guessed something so. . .soap opera?
The ex-boss trying to murder him was his father?
“I’m sorry,” Hunter said.
I winced. “No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m fucking not.” He spread his arms wide. “I don’t owe you my life story, just because. You don’t have an inborn right to the details of everybody else’s personal life, Sky.”
“No, but I have a right to know who the guy trying to kill us is,” I argued, and Hunter didn’t argue. He shoved his hands into his pockets and pulled them out again, looking trapped. “And his wife? She was your mother?”
Hunter looked past me, into his own history, and I felt nostalgia pulse through the bond, sweet as sugar and twice as likely to kill you. “She was amazing,” he said. “She had elemental gifts, with fire” —that explained his stunt with the flames— “and I would love to tell you about her. But right now? It will have to wait. The Seelie queen is right beneath our feet, and she could be capable of breaking the bond.” He started towards the door and then stopped, turning back to me. “And, Sky?”
“Yeah?”
“The faerie queen, she’s transgender. If you misgender her, she’ll curse you to dance until you die. She’s done it before. Just a word to the wise.”
Ouch. “Festive,” I said. “And painful. Good thing I’m not an asshole.”
Her methods sounded kinda badass. Wasn’t so sure I wanted to experience them firsthand.
Hunter watched me for a second, expression unreadable. There was no way to tell if he was appraising me or just trying to brace himself.
I didn’t bother: I had a feeling nothing could brace me for this.
For a second there was nothing, and then, as if it weren’t anything more than smoke, the door started to evaporate, a cloud of red dust spiraling above our heads and clinging to the air there. Behind it was a long passageway going down into the earth, a set of wide steps bordered by stone walls, lined with flaming torches.
How. . .medieval.
Hunter started down the stairs without a backward glance, and all I could do was take a deep breath, hope I wasn’t walking into my tomb, and plunge in after him.
~
My first sight of the Faerie realm was one of a dense blanket of trees stretching into the distance, a vast forest that seemed to go on for an eternity. Maybe it did—maybe there was no end to this place.
But it wasn’t a normal forest. Unlike the world above, it was not winter here. The staircase bottomed out in a tiny cave, the forest visible through the jagged mouth as we walked toward it. I ran my hands over the rough brown stone as I stepped out under the vivid amethyst sky. Outside of the cave was a tiny plaza of checkered stones like a playing board, with two sets of stairs winding down on either end of it—they vanished down into the depths of this strange, flourishing wood. Millions of different types of trees lived here, willows with drooping sheets of leaves that blew in a warm wind, towering evergreens like the ones above, and rows of palm trees. Here and there were thick bamboo patches, so tall I knew they must be years and years old. Some of the trees were species I’d never seen; leaves in strange tints like pearl and obsidian, neon aquamarine vines tangling around trunks and strange fruits made of silver and gold and bronze growing on branches or in bushes. There were clusters of crystal jutting from the rocks and boulders dotting the tiled plaza, and they glimmered from inside with a strange light. It was a beautiful place—so beautiful it frightened me.
It was as if every aspect of the place was designed to draw you in deeper, until you were lost in it, unable to find your way back.
I stood next to Hunter and stared down at the forest, full of life and magik. From here we could see massive shapes moving through the strange community of trees. At this distance they were nothing but shadows shifting through the woods, but the sight of them sent something like dread skittering inside my mind. I didn’t want to encounter those things, whatever they were, up close.
Fuck this shit.
“What now?” I asked Hunter, and he shushed me. I snapped. “Not attractive, Hunter.”
“They’ll be here soon,” he said.
“They?”
He didn’t bother with an answer this time. He stared solemnly into the trees, waiting—for the sky to fall, for it to start raining puppies, for me to kick him in the balls—and then, one by one, like dominoes toppling over, they emerged from the forest. The fair folk. The were what I expected, but also not.
They looked like people, at first glance. But as I watched them something peeled away, an illusion was shredded, and I saw them for what they were. A pale girl with one gold eye and one green smirked at me around sharply pointed teeth, and a boy with indigo skin and webbed fingers looked as if he wanted devour us. One of them had wing
s, broad like a falcon’s, but the feathers and flesh had been stripped from them, leaving nothing but cartilage, thin and brittle. They clacked and clattered as they shifted, skeleton limbs moving every time their owner drew breath. A tall woman with broad shoulders and dark skin had eyes that were entirely white, two pale orbs like bowls of milk set into her face, something familiar about them in a way that made my stomach drop. There was something elegant about the Faeries that felt deadly in its opulence. These were not the tittering, gleeful Fae I’d imagined. They were like the gods of some ancient world, feral beasts who could lunge at any second.
I edged closer to Hunter and wondered if he was crazy. He would have to be, to bring us here thinking we would find help from beings like these.
“A pair of Charmers?” asked one of them. It was the boy with powder blue skin. His features were androgynous, with a spill of black hair down his back. “Matched set, too,” he added, looking between us. “What do you want?”
If Hunter was intimidated with the party that had come to meet us, he didn’t show it. I followed his lead. Crossed my arms over my chest, staring around like I was unimpressed. Bored, even.
I totally see shit like this everyday, I tried to communicate through sheer expression. I’m sooo not phased right now.
“We need to speak to your queen. It is a matter of some urgency.”
“Very well,” he said in that husky voice. “But her Majesty doesn’t enjoy uninvited guests. She may throw you to the dogs.” His eyes flashed. “Or to us.”
“So be it,” said Hunter.
The fair folk turned away, melting back into the trees, and I latched onto his arm. “Are you insane? We should just get the hell out of here!”
“Coming?” a voice called from between the trees.
Hunter shook me off and placed a reassuring hand on my arm instead. “I am telling you, this is the only way we might have to break the bond. You can go back up if you want,” he said, “but the queen might take it as a sign of disrespect.”
“Right.” I said. “Got it. Disrespect bad, dance until you die, whatever. Let’s just get this thing over with.”
We walked into the woods together, and I was too frazzled to focus on the scenery around us. Petals drifted in the wind, orange and pink. They caught in my hair and I shook my head to dislodge them. A brilliant glow shone through the trees ahead of us, and sounds echoed through the wood, the strange cries of animals like nothing I’d ever heard. Would this foreign place be where my corpse fed the soil for the next millennium? We walked for what felt like a million miles, but it could only have been fifteen minutes at the most before we were stepping into a place that instantly made my breath catch. I stopped walking so fast I nearly fell over my own feet—so not a good first impression—and felt my jaw drop to the floor.
A crowd of Fae, ethereal and startling in their beauty, reveled in the remains of what looked like it had once been a castle, but had been almost entirely destroyed. Stone walls had been smashed down, jagged chunks of rock shot up from the soil in clumps. What remained were a few sections of wall, old stone pillars stretching into the sky, with vines twining around them, growing along the grooves in the rough stone and snaking over the ground. The arches of what once must have been massive, stained glass windows. White roses the size of my head bloomed from bushes clustered around the bases of the rock walls, and giant boulders spread with moss made perfect spots for the court Faeries to lounge back on, like deadly animals, lithe and lovely, and looking for all the world like a magikal version of the Elizabethan nobility.
Except, you know, more nudity. One of them met my eyes after I’d just spent seconds staring at the purple glitter dusted over her bared breasts, and she tilted her head back with a lazy smile.
Overhead tiny insects danced with pixies. The little creatures shot past my face, bald and the colour of the earth, varying shades of ebony and walnut and carob. Their wings were thin and webbed like those of dragonflies, and a stream of butterflies and beetles fluttered in their wake, tiny marching bands claiming the air.
The laughed, and the sound filled the clearing like the tinkling of bells. I felt a wild, wicked smile spread over my face.
Oh, this place. I am never leaving.
I could paint this scene a million times and never get it right, never capture the vibrancy of the colours or the life that seemed to drip and pulse from everything.
It looked like the best party I’d ever been to.
And in the midst of it all, lording over every faerie there like a divine goddess come down from the heavens, was the Seelie queen.
I could see even from here that she didn’t entirely ‘pass’ (bullshit phrase)—her chest was flat, her hands large and well-sculpted, veins snaking across their backs like tree roots, shoulders broad—and also that she was the most beautiful person I had ever laid eyes on. Her onyx hair fell in sharp tangles down her back, strung with the orange petals that had floated in the woods, and her alabaster skin was dusted with what looked like flakes of gold that clung to her shoulders and chest. She wore a gown of white silk that rippled when she moved, with an incredibly high waist and a collar that exposed her front, from collarbone to navel. A crown perched on her head, a ring of thin, interwoven branches covered in thorns.
When she looked up and her eyes locked on Hunter, they were not what I had expected. Quick and fast and cunning. She smiled. I resisted the urge to walk over and kneel at her feet, so strong I would be willing to step across a bed of hot coals to get there.
What the fuck? I squashed the feelings down and breathed through my nose. The place smelt like sickeningly sweet roses and the copper tang of blood.
Every smile I saw in the crowd was blinding.
She was a queen. She knew it. Everyone else knew it. And if we disobeyed her, there would be hell to pay. She conveyed all that and more in a single gaze.
I wasn’t sure if I liked her or not. If it was even safe to stand this close to her—and something told me that was exactly the way that she wanted it. If there was anyone who could lead the collection of ethereal, menacing beings surrounding us, it would be this woman. Was she going to help us, or kill us?
Somewhere in the distance, a light flute music trailed off, the last strains sending some urge through my feet to leap and spin and party that I clamped down and shot away. The temptation vanished with the final strains of music. After a moment, the queen spoke.
“I know why you’re here,” she said in a voice as sweet as melting honey. “The trees have eyes and ears in my domain, and they’ve told me exactly what you want, little Charmers. . .but it comes with a cost.”
“As does everything else,” said Hunter, neutrally.
Around her the other Seelie Faeries went quiet. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see them shifting, bobbing in place, their armour made of thorns and scales and shells and some dark, glossy material I couldn’t place.
Nearest me, a girl with what looked like goat legs and a pair of ram horns nestled among her downy hair met my eyes and giggled, like this was the funniest joke she’d ever heard. Beside her, a Faerie boy stood silently, watching us, fiery red hair falling into his green eyes. His gaze narrowed when it met my stare. A shiver passed through me and I eased closer to Hunter, hoping it looked like I was only shifting my weight.
Meanwhile, he had continued to address the monarch. “And certainly, your Majesty—I would never dream to ask a favour without offering one in return.”
So now we’re her errand boys?
“A sword,” she told us simply. “Crafted by my kind and stolen from us by a nearby Werewolf pack, the heathens. Retrieve it, return it, and then I will break the bond between the two of you. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” I said.
“You,” she said, grinning, pointing a finger at me. “You are not who I was addressing. I already know you haven’t got a thing figured out—though it might be fun watching you learn. Or try to.”
“Did the trees tell yo
u that?” I asked her, “Because I wouldn’t make talking to plants a habit.”
“Sky!”
The entire court hushed.
Oh. I just sassed the faerie queen. Around us, the faces of her court were frozen masks of shock and, in a few places, outright fear. I was pretty sure I was about to dance until I died.
Hunter looked as if he’d just watched me walk off a building.
At least my hair will look good when I die. That’s all any of us can ask for.
The queen was delighted. A single laugh burst from her lips, and she brought a hand up to her chest, running a finger over her collarbone. “There is that famous sense of humour—I was wondering when you would start to act like your old self.”
Shadows of Ourselves Page 20