“Guess that makes this their party then?” It wasn’t really a question, just my mouth still moving as I stared at the scene around me. The trees in Nekros hadn’t figured out fall was upon them and they should change colors, which wasn’t their fault as it was still warm. Here a crispness in the air spoke of the changing seasons and leaves in shades of yellow, gold, orange, and red filled the trees. I held off blinking as long as I could, sure that when I opened my eyes again, the trees would be gone or draped in shadow. But no, I could see them. Could see the full glory of colors, bright and brilliant, despite no clear source of light. I forgot that the damage to my eyes didn’t affect me in Faerie.
“We’ve talked about this before,” Rianna said, sounding every bit as cross as one of our academy instructors when a student failed to retain a lesson. “On the equinox and the solstice, all doors to Faerie open to that season’s court.”
My mouth formed an “O” but I wasn’t paying attention. I was soaking in the scene around me. Okay, so that scene was a bunch of trees, but I could see them. Really see them, in full vivid color. I hadn’t seen this clearly since, well, since I visited Faerie a month ago. Maybe colors were just that much more vibrant in Faerie. I blinked back tears.
Crap, if I break down over a couple trees, what will happen when I reach the revelry?
It looked like I’d find out soon. A colorful trail of fallen leaves led between the canopy of trees and Caleb headed for it, Holly at his side, and Rianna and Desmond following. I hurried to catch up.
We emerged in a clearing filled with lively music and fae of every shape, size, and color. I’d never seen so many fae in one place before. Even when I’d unintentionally been the guest of honor in the Winter Queen’s court, there hadn’t been so many fae present. And more were arriving. As I stood, gaping at the sight from the opening of the tree line, a fae with flames for hair and eyes of ever-swirling smoke stepped around me. She took only a moment to look around before bounding toward a group of fae not far away, a smile on her face and a blaze of heat in her wake.
“Do all the independents come to the revelries?” I asked, looking at Caleb.
He was watching Holly’s reaction to the scene. Her eyes were slightly glazed as they took in the clearing, but Caleb didn’t seem worried. He also didn’t look away as he shrugged and said, “Most. Not all.” Maybe he wasn’t quite as unconcerned as he appeared.
I wondered once again how safe it was for Holly to be here. Hell, for me to be here. “Maybe this has been enough for one visit and I should take Holly home?”
Her head snapped up at that. “No. I don’t want to leave.”
Okay, so not as entranced as I thought. At least, not magically induced entrancement.
“You can’t leave, Al,” Rianna said, then at my alarmed look, went on, “Well, you can leave, but you’ll lose the entire equinox.”
The unease clawing at my stomach reached deeper, hitting my spine as a wave of shock tore over me. “You mean, no matter what time I leave, I’ll emerge tomorrow?”
She nodded.
Great. Just great. That sure as hell hadn’t been mentioned—I’d have remembered that little nugget of information. I hated losing time to Faerie. And what about the twenty-four hours we were gone?
“Al, geez, you look like you’re about to have an aneurism. It’s going to be okay. I put a note on the door at Tongues for the Dead and Holly gave Tamara a key so she can walk and feed PC.”
Was I the only one who hadn’t realized stepping inside would cost me a day? Apparently so.
Several more fae had passed us while we dawdled in the clearing’s opening. I didn’t pay much attention, until a figure I recognized started past me.
“Jenson?”
The detective turned slowly, like if he took his time, maybe I wouldn’t be there by the time he made it all the way around. “Craft,” he said, and his frown made the calluses under his tusks stretch. “It’s customary to drop your glamour for a revelry.”
I blinked at him. What was he talking about? I didn’t have any glamour.
Whatever Jenson saw in my expression made him growl—literally. It was a sound that shouldn’t have come out of a human throat. He shook his head, collecting himself.
“Be merry, Craft,” he said, the words oddly formal. Then he turned his back to me and scanned the clearing. A large conglomeration of trolls laughed and tussled in one area of the clearing. Jenson stared at the group but he didn’t join them. After a few moments, he rolled his shoulders, straightened his back, and marched in the opposite direction.
I watched him go. What’s his story? And what was his problem with me?
Desmond nudged Rianna’s leg, and she knelt to his level, rubbing behind his ears. “You go on. I’ll be fine.”
Those eyes, too intelligent to belong in a dog-shaped body, studied her for a long moment. Then his huge head bobbed in a nod and he ran into the clearing, vanishing among the growing throng of revelers.
“We need to move,” Caleb said as still more fae passed us.
Rianna nodded and wrapped her arm in mine when I would have stalled. I was already in Faerie, already committed to attending the revelry, but I felt safer among the trees than in a clearing full of fae. A clearing, I’d noticed, that grew to accommodate the ever-increasing number of fae. Rianna denied me any more time to linger, it was follow or be dragged, and as I still hurt all over—and she’d grabbed the arm with the bullet wound—I was disinclined to be dragged.
Caleb led our small group around several clumps of fae, some greeted him by name, others simply bid our group to “be merry.”
“What’s up with that?” I asked Rianna after a thorn fae pranced around us, the tangled briars of her hair rustling. She paused long enough to give me a brilliant smile, her barklike lips spreading wide to show her wooden teeth and then, like everyone else, she bid us to be merry before dancing off to mingle elsewhere. “Is it some sort of ritual greeting?”
Rianna shrugged. “It’s just what it sounds like, a wish for us to have a good time. It’s a revelry.”
The farther we walked, the more aware I became of the hum of anticipation filling the air. It was like all the fae’s combined emotions had become a tangible thing, or maybe it was Faerie itself that was anxiously waiting. But for what?
“Dawn,” Rianna whispered, glancing at the sky. Far off in the east, the slightest hint of light glowed over the tree line.
The near steady stream of fae trickling into the clearing had stopped, and every face turned upward, watching the brightening glow in the distance. Even the music, which had filled the clearing, stopped, the musicians’ instruments silent as the fae playing them turned their attention upward.
“Get ready, Al,” Rianna whispered, squeezing my hand.
The first ray of light sliced through the clearing, and a masculine, bellowing voice announced, “It begins.”
Chapter 26
“The equinox is upon us,” that booming voice announced, and I whirled toward the sound.
The center of the clearing, where I could have sworn was a grassy patch before, now held a wide dais with three throne-sized chairs made of twisting branches. A Sleagh Maith stood in the center of the dais, his brown hair reflecting red and gold highlights as the light of dawn glimmered off it. On his head a circlet of fall leaves formed his crown.
I leaned close to Rianna. “So that’s the Fall King?”
“He prefers Harvest King, but yes.”
Behind the king, his queen wore a diadem of twisting red twigs decorated with mums in cool tones of cream and salmon. She held the hand of a boy who couldn’t have been more than three. He lacked the brown hair and dark eyes of his parents—as well as the angular Sleagh Maith features. Instead he had a round, cherublike face with wide blue eyes and a mop of blond hair.
“The boy’s human?” I asked in a hissing whisper.
“Leave it be, Alex. Now stay quiet,” Rianna warned, recognizing the outrage in my face.
Fol
klore was full of stories in which beautiful children were kidnapped or switched for fae changelings. Treaties had been signed to prevent such behavior in modern society, but I knew it still occurred—Falin was proof of that. He’d told me how the queen had put him in the place of a human child so that he would grow up with an understanding of the mortal world and more resistance to its iron. The child he’d been switched with? He was in the winter court.
“Welcome, friends of the changing season,” the king said. He wasn’t yelling, but his booming voice reached every corner of the clearing. “Be one with us, make merry with us, and enjoy the bountiful harvest.” He threw his arms over the top of his head in a wide “Y” shape, and a wash of magic flooded the clearing.
The magic wasn’t overwhelming the way Briar’s spells had been, but had a gentle, joyous feel to it, and where it passed, Faerie changed. The trees around the clearing filled with fruits and nuts, the bushes with berries. Banquet tables appeared, as did large casks.
A cheer rang out, and the music started again in earnest. Folk laughed, danced, and gathered around the buffet tables. The fall royalty sat on their thrones, watching. Someone brought the king a goblet and he toasted the fae as a whole—many of whom returned the gesture. Other fae approached the throne. All were greeted with boisterous joviality, but even though I was out of earshot, I could tell that some requests set before him were—however cheerfully—turned down and sent away.
“So this is it then?” I could feel the heady excitement in the air, but I wasn’t exactly in a “merry” mood.
Rianna smiled, her lips curling at the edges as if she were holding back a secret. “Just wait.”
A chime sounded, its crystal clear note ringing through the clearing, and the music changed, growing softer, more somber. The fae turned toward the hawthorn-ringed copse of trees we’d passed through to enter the large glen. Curious, I turned to look as well, but saw nothing under the arch of oak branches. Then as if a shroud of gloom had rolled away, a giant, pure white stag with arching antlers appeared. On its bare back sat a woman. I recognized her on sight.
The Winter Queen.
Frost kissed her dark curls and eyelashes despite the relative warmth of the glade. She wore a gown dripping with icicles that sparkled like diamonds, the long train falling over the stag’s rump and blending with her white cloak that glistened like freshly fallen snow. No, not like snow, the cloak was snow. As the stag took each graceful step forward, the cloak blanketed the ground in their wake. But it was fall, not winter, and the snow melted immediately, revealing crisp, colorful fallen leaves once more.
An entourage followed the queen, some guards, based on their weapons and ice-scaled armor, but many were gentry Sleagh Maith, dressed in all their finery and moving with the haughty attitude of their station. A gaggle of nonroyal courtiers finished out her procession, many with their eyes as wide as their smiles as they looked around the glade.
Rianna and Caleb had said the revelry would give me a chance to interact with fae from all the courts, but I hadn’t expected the Winter Queen to make an appearance.
“I have to get out of here,” I whispered, backing toward the tree line. What if the queen saw me? This wasn’t a bubble of Faerie like the Bloom. This was Faerie. Her domain and place of power.
Caleb grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Wait and watch.”
The Winter Queen guided her stag to the dais where the Harvest King and Queen sat on their thrones of woven wood. She held out her hands, and two Sleagh Maith stepped forward. The first was Ryese, the second, Falin. My heart twisted in my chest as Falin took one of the queen’s outstretched hands.
He’s not mine. And he never would be, unless I was willing to bind myself to the frosty bitch he served. Probably not then either.
The Winter Queen dismounted with more grace than I ever would have thought possible, but it didn’t surprise me. She was beautiful, elegant, and powerful—in other words, everything I wasn’t. I’d have fallen on my face if I’d tried that move in a gown with a train that took three attendants to lift. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have managed to mount the stag in the first place.
The knot tightening in my temples made me realize I was scowling and had been for some time. I forced the muscles in my face to loosen. I aimed for neutral, but clearly didn’t succeed because when Caleb glanced at me he shook his head.
“You’ll see,” he whispered before turning his attention back to the center of the clearing.
Rianna locked her arm with mine again. “He’s right. It’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t convinced. Leaving without taking any chances sounded like a better plan, even if I lost a day. But I waited obediently, watching as the Winter Queen stepped forward.
“Hail majesties of the plentiful harvest,” she said, and though she didn’t yell or raise her voice, I could hear her crisp words as if she stood feet from me instead of more than a dozen yards away.
“Hail queen of the long slumber,” the Harvest King said. It was a title I hadn’t heard before, but winter was a time when nature appeared to sleep, so I guessed it was apropos. The king continued. “The oak is still ablaze with color and it is not yet time for your cold touch.”
The Winter Queen inclined her head. “The time in which the oak’s boughs are weighted with snow will come soon enough, but I am content to wait.”
“Then for this day and night, join our revelry. Be welcome in our court and make merry with us as we celebrate the bountiful harvest of fall.”
The words—actually, the entire exchange—had all the formality of a ritual. Which was confirmed when the Winter Queen curtsied and said, “The winter court joins the fall, debts and grudges forgotten for the span of this festive occasion when night and day are equal.”
The gathered fae, of both courts as well as all the independents who had already joined the festival, cheered. Folk rushed forward, enticing the new revelers to join dances or lift overflowing flagons. But as the winter fae dispersed, attention turned to another group of newcomers.
“Did I understand that correctly,” I whispered to Rianna as a couple crowned in woven flowers stepped into the clearing followed by their own entourage. “Did the winter court just join the fall court?”
Rianna nodded. “Only for the equinox.” When I continued to stare at her, she went on, “Remember how Caleb said that all doors open to the fall court for the equinox? That means all the power from human belief is flowing into this court, making it the most powerful for the entirety of the festival.”
And the rest are at their weakest, I suppose. I turned my attention back to the center of the clearing. A very similar ritualistic greeting was being exchanged, only this time the bit about the oak was something about budding and new life. This must be the spring court.
“Will all the courts attend?”
Rianna shrugged. “Maybe. The equinox and solstice revelries are unmatched, but debts and grudges truly must be forgotten for the revelry, and not every monarch can make such a promise.”
That made sense.
As the sun continued to rise, the party around us grew livelier and more courts arrived to join the revelry. I watched as the summer monarchs and their court were greeted and invited to join, followed closely by my great-granduncle, the King of Shadows. His entourage was the smallest I’d seen, with only two Sleagh Maith attending him and a small group of nonroyals, most of whom were monstrous in appearance. Of course, until the High King decided to sever the Nightmare Realm from Faerie, my uncle had ruled that as well, so monstrous was to be expected.
I turned as yet another troupe of fae emerged from between the hawthorn bushes and my breath caught in my chest. I blinked, and then blinked again. All unglamoured Sleagh Maith had an ethereal glow, as if lit softly from within, but the woman making her way into the clearing went beyond an otherworldly shimmer to a radiance that brightened everything around her. An involuntary smile spread across my face as unbidden tears gathered in my eyes. She floated more than walked toward
the dais, and had an ephemeral quality to her, as if she were a wisp of brilliance that a breeze would steal away.
“Who is that?” I asked, my voice coming out choked.
When I received no answer, I tore my gaze away from the apparition long enough to realize Rianna wasn’t watching the procession of courts anymore, but staring at something—or someone—to our left. I had to repeat my question before she turned to me.
“Oh, the Queen of Light,” she said, her attention wavering before she finished the short sentence.
Light? That fit her, and her court who shared that slightly out of reach ephemeral quality and radiance. From what I’d learned from Caleb and Rianna’s crash course in all things Faerie, I knew that just as each season had an opposing season that balanced it, the court of light balanced the court of shadows. Or at least it once had. When the nightmare realm was severed, the shadow court lost the fear and night terrors that supplied most of its power. The counterbalance for the nightmare realm was supposed to be the realm of daydreams, which fed the light court through human creativity and imagination. Now my uncle had the smallest court, while the court of light was by far the largest I’d seen tonight. The darkness fading while the light thrived. But isn’t Faerie supposed to be about balance?
Once the court of light was invited to join the revelry, I turned toward the entrance. All four seasons were now present, as well as light and shadow. “So all that’s left is the high court,” I said, waiting, watching. Out of all the courts, the high court was the one I was most curious about. Both Rianna and Caleb dodged my questions about the high court, so I knew the least about it. I was more than a little curious to see the High King, who ruled over all the other courts.
But no one appeared.
“The high court won’t be here. They never attend,” Rianna said, her voice more than a little distracted. She dropped my arm, taking a step away before stopping and saying, “Al, I have to go.”
Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel Page 24