The hearthstone pulses again. It beckons me, and I follow the dying pulse into the darkest recesses of the castle. Deep, gloomy caverns we have carved out to keep our secrets and the core of my people’s power.
If it dies, all of UnderHollow will perish.
I let out a breath and it echoes, the vaults soaring up high above me on all sides as I enter the dark cathedral of the hearthstone. Gloom shrouds the dark vaults, the stained glass of the hearthstone chamber filmy with dust and decay, rimed with ice.
The chamber opens up before me, and there is the hearthstone, a dark heart riddled with brilliant faults and cracks. It’s clasped in obsidian claws, like a gem in a setting, the size of a dragon’s heart, pulsing pitch-black. Shining white veins riddle its surface. One bright fissure runs right through the center of it.
If it cracks fully, if that dark heart lets out the punishing light within, the ensuing explosion will obliterate UnderHollow.
I step forward, drawn by its dying thrum. I reach out to touch it with my good hand.
I don’t see the remnants of Syl’s power until it’s too late.
Wisps of white flame purl off my sleeve and lick the hearthstone like fiery tongues. No! I lurch forward to grab them back, but of course, my fingers snag only air.
Bloody bones! I brace for the howling hunger of the hearthstone, insatiable and furious, to crack it further, deeper, destruction rippling out across its surface—like it has after every sleeper-princess was devoured.
After all, light like theirs is its weakness, our weakness.
The tongues vanish, sucked into the hearthstone’s dark facets.
Wait for it. I shield my eyes with my arm.
The hearthstone thrums, and then brilliant white light shoots from its facets, washing the walls. The hearthstone pulsates once, hard, rocking the entire castle on its foundation. The cracks and fissures heal, running backward like water to its source, and the hearthstone sits in its setting, whole and hale.
Slowly, all around me, the walls of the chamber run like watercolors in rain, showing me an illusion of what was. And what could be again.
UnderHollow, brilliant and dark and returned to its former glory. High flying buttresses and obsidian-veined vaults, windows and leaping arches glittering with wintersteel, and the people come alive beneath them—dark Fae of all kinds: sluagh, bogies, maorbh—all the Unseelie of the Winter Court caught up in glimmering celebration.
Just as quickly as it comes, the Glamoury vanishes.
The wisps of white flame gutter out, and the hearthstone fades to black once more. Cracks and fissures riddle through it, and it stands dark and dying once more.
As for me…I have never felt more alive and full of hope.
Syl… We need her. But not her blood.
Her blood would only crack the hearthstone. Her touch can heal it.
My heart leaps with hope long unfelt.
And fury. Agravaine… He knew. He knew that killing the sleeper-princesses, bathing the hearthstone in their blood… He knew that it would hasten the bright poison within the heart of our people.
He knew it would destroy UnderHollow.
He wants to destroy UnderHollow.
But why? I cannot fathom it, not in a thousand years and a day. No matter. Whatever his reason, I will stop him.
A heavy breath pulses out of me. It’s time to return. Bracing myself, I push my consciousness back into the mortal realm, obtruding from UnderHollow back into my body. Back into the mortal realm.
Agravaine will answer to me.
And Syl… There has to be a way to use her powers to heal my realm permanently.
There is, the hearthstone whispers. And I know that Syl and I must find it together.
Chapter Fifteen
Syl
To keep a dark Fae
From your home
Nail an iron horseshoe
Over the front door
- Glamma’s Grimm
Mom’s words ring in my ears long after we peel away from the train tracks and hit the interstate. “I was once a sleeper-princess too.” I can’t wrap my brain around it. Mom? A sleeper-princess? And what is that, even?
Agravaine called me that. And though I can’t stand the guy, I felt the truth of it down to my toes and the roots of my red hair.
Sleeper-princess.
Mom guides the SUV down the interstate, the headlights cutting the darkness. She’s nervous. I see it in the way her hand trembles on the wheel. I see it in the way she glances behind us in the rearview. The way she steals glances at Euphoria, as if the glam-Goth singer is going to pop up like some evil jack-in-the-box.
I want to tell her that it’s fine, that Euphoria wouldn’t hurt me, but…my shoulder still aches from where she laid me out, and I can’t deny that Agravaine has some weird power over her.
Besides, Glamma always said the only good dark Fae was a dead dark Fae.
Glamma, everything you told me was true. I’m totally reeling. I sigh heavily, glancing back at Euphoria. Well, maybe not everything. Euphoria did save me. She fought those hell-hounds for me, and in the end, she told Agravaine to go pound sand.
That counts for something in my book.
Not so my mom’s, if the way she’s giving Euphoria the stink eye is any indication. Did she have a different experience with dark Fae when she was a sleeper-princess?
My mom…a sleeper-princess. Like me.
I am still staring at her by the time we get home. She pulls into the tiny alleyway between our building and the next. We’re not supposed to park here, but I doubt anyone will care. Mostly people keep to themselves in Jackson Ward. It’s safer that way.
Mom flicks off the headlights, and darkness swallows us. We sit there for a moment, both of us catching our breath. I don’t know what to say, and I think she doesn’t either.
I peer up at our apartment building. This side is almost completely in darkness, the height of the building blocking the streetlights. Plus, there are mostly retirees on this side. As long as we’re quiet, we should be able to sneak in unseen.
So no one will see that I’ve basically kidnapped a Goth rock star. Good times.
Mom nods as me, and we open our doors quietly. I’m having serious teen culture shock here. It’s totally next-level weird that the first time I’m sneaking back in from a wild night, it’s with my mom. Seriously, how many people can say that?
Not many, I tell you.
Also, not many people have moms as badass as mine.
Mom gets out of the car and opens the back door. “Come on, Lady Gaga,” she says, grabbing Euphoria’s boot-clad legs.
Whoa, did she seriously just throw shade at Euphoria? I stare at her. “Who are you?”
Mom’s lips quirk like she’s going to smile, but she keeps her Mom-drill-sergeant tone with me. “Grab her arms. Hurry up now.” And when I stand there frozen by her cool, she gives me the mom glare. “Stop staring at me, young lady, and do as I say.”
Her tone is steel, and after seeing her in action against Agravaine… Yeah, I’m not about to disobey.
Together we haul Euphoria out of the car, to the building, and into the back hallway. The cruddy yellow light bathes us as we huff and puff up the stairs. My arms ache, my right leg is a screaming knot of agony, and my breath is a panting mess.
Holy cats! For a tall chick, Euphoria is not a petite flower.
We hustle and jostle our way through the tenement, taking the long way around. I stop to rest against the neighbor’s landing, the sprawling initials J.J. on the door looking like two hatchets to my tired mind.
“Ready?” Mom asks, and I nod. We continue, huffing and puffing, and haul Euphoria up the last landing.
I’m careful not to knock her head against the wall.
Could knock some sense into her, if you ask me.
I mean, she could’ve just told me about Agravaine. But I’ll wait ‘til she’s awake. After all, fair is fair.
Mom juggles Euphoria’s boots and the apartment
key and gets the door open like a champ. We pile inside and put Euphoria down on our beat-up couch.
Her legs dangle off the edge, she’s so tall. It looks like I’ve decided to redecorate. A few throw pillows, a glam-Goth star… She looks beautiful, her raven-dark hair spread out on the lumpy pillow, her face peaceful even despite the blood—now that she’s not under Agravaine’s Command.
Mom goes into the kitchen and bustles around. She puts the kettle on. “Wetting the tea,” Glamma always called it. I know the drill. There won’t be any talking until there’s a steaming-hot cup of Assam with cream and sugar in front of each of us. I sit on the love seat, prop my foot on the coffee table to rest my aching leg, and wait.
I have nothing to do except study Euphoria.
Yeah, total bummer.
I settle in to do some first-rate ogling. My heart rate jacks up about a thousand notches, and guilt floods my cheeks with a hot blush. Euphoria’s been kind of an obsession for me ever since I first heard her that night in DC—the night of the train crash.
I remember her standing on stage, all lanky and gorgeous and grave, the way she played the electric violin, sawing at it all fierce, like her parents made her take years of lessons and this was finally her rebellion.
I remember bumping into her coming out of the bathroom.
It seems like a lifetime ago.
And now she’s here, lying on my couch, and we’re all tangled up together. Tangled up. The image those words put into my brain—me and Euphoria kissing and—oh, my! Suddenly, I’m red to the ears. Wow. Oh…wow. I think this is more than a girl crush, Syl.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Mom sets my cup down.
I shove my hormonal thoughts away and grab the cup to have something to do with my hands. Glamma always used to joke, Why is it a penny for your thoughts, but you put your two cents in? I mean, where does that extra penny go?”
But I’m not in the mood for jokes. In fact, I’m pretty darn furious. My mom’s secretly been a gun-toting vigilante all along? Euphoria’s a dark Fae, and I’m… What the heck am I? I clear my throat and glare at Mom like I’m the parent and she’s the kid. “When were you going to tell me?”
“When the time was right.”
“That’s super lame.” My anger flares, and I realize the ceramic teacup is groaning between my hands. I let up before I break it with my newfound strength.
“I did what I had to do. To protect you.” She’s unapologetic for keeping this from me. I want to be angry, but I know my mom. She doesn’t do anything without reason.
I take a deep breath, resigning myself to giving her the benefit of the doubt. For now.
I look at her over the steaming tea. “Tell me,” is all I say. I want desperately to make sense of this night—of the last five months of my life. Everything from the train crash on has seemed a hazy dream, and me some kind of sleepwalking marionette. I rub my leg, thinking I can feel the bit of iron lodged there.
She takes a sip of her tea and winces, maybe at the heat. “I was a sleeper-princess, like you.” She looks at me, her usually bright eyes dulled by sadness. “Both sides tried to drag me into their war.”
“Both sides of what?”
“The Fae.”
I set my cup down before I drop it. “Fairies?” I think of Glamma and her stories, her Grimm, all the tales I’ve read in Irish folklore, and my suspicions about Euphoria. Well, she’s got fangs, but she’s no vampire.
She’s a Fae. A dark Fae, just like in Glamma’s Grimm. And she kept it from me, even when she knew I kinda knew.
Part of me wants to lean in real close and whisper, I don’t believe in fairies just to see if Euphoria keels over.
It would serve her right. The big dummy.
And as for my mom… I fix her with a darn good impression of her own mom-glare. “Tell me everything.”
Mom sighs and pushes her silvery-red hair from her face. “All right. You deserve to know the truth. Both sides, the fair Fae and the dark Fae, wanted me for different reasons, but mainly for the power slumbering within me. Sleeper-princess, get it?”
I do. Agravaine said something about me Awakening, so it makes sense. Sort of. “But…I’m a girl, a regular girl. And so are you. Well…you were. Once, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.” I tease her a little so she knows I don’t hate her or anything.
Her lips twist wryly at our in-joke. “I have Fae blood running through my veins. So did Glamma, and”—she pins me with those bright eyes—“so do you.”
Fae blood? All those times Glamma told me, I’d thought her eccentric—you know, old. It just doesn’t make sense. “But…then why did the dark Fae wait so long? Why not get me when I was little?”
Mom sips her tea, and the steam curls around her, making her look like some kind of carny fortune-teller. “They would have, but Glamma and I brought you here just after you were born. To keep you hidden from them.”
I glance at Euphoria. With all her power, I can’t imagine anything escaping her—or Agravaine. Dude is terrifying. I cock an eyebrow at my mom. “Seriously?”
“All right, Doubting Thomasina.” She rifles through the coffee table magazines and comes up with one. Richmond Mayor Green-Lights Trolley Reconstruction, the cover says. She opens it to a map of the city. Red and blue and purple lines cross the map. Train tracks. “See?” She traces them to the center of Richmond, around the Fan and Shockoe Bottom, where they make a rough circle, the tracks crossing and crisscrossing one another. “A circle of iron to protect you.”
A shiver claws my spine as I look at the map. A circle of iron.
“Now look.” She grabs a marker and draws lines through the circle, cutting it open. “These are the tracks after the train crash. That”—she stabs the map with her index finger—“is how they found you.”
My heart goes cold. The accident, the train… They broke the circle of iron so they could find me, hunt me.
My leg aches, and I rub it. Iron tracks, iron in my— “My leg!” I look at Mom all wide eyed and wild now. “You said the doctors couldn’t get the iron shard out.”
She blows out a breath, and the steam puffs away from her cup. “That…wasn’t exactly the truth.”
Chills flood me. I can’t even feel the heat of the teacup in my hands. My lips feel numb as I ask, “What is the truth, then?” That night, the accident, the iron shrapnel in my leg. Even though I remember the white flame, the aftermath is still foggy—flashing lights, an ambulance, and then the brightness of a hospital room, and Mom and Glamma leaning over me.
Glamma’s voice comes like it’s plucked out of my memories. “The iron shard will have to stay. It’s the only way to put her powers back to sleep.”
Mom sees it all on my face. She knows I’m remembering, and she’s calculating what to tell me.
I probably look as freaked out as I am, but I straighten up. I can handle it. I need to hear it. “Glamma was there that night? The night she…” My throat closes up over the word died.
“Yes,” Mom says gravely, holding the cup in both hands. “Your power had Awakened, Syl. During the crash. That’s why you and Fiann survived. Because you Awakened. And your grandmother…”
“She protected me. Somehow.” A rush of guilt floods me. I know what Mom’s going to say next.
“It cost her her life.”
My hands tremble, and I barely get my teacup down on the table before I drop it. Tea sloshes all over. Glamma. It’s all my fault. I put my face in my hands so Mom won’t see the tears burning on my lashes. Damn it all!
I feel her hand on my shoulder. “Syl…”
I look up at her.
Mom’s face is pale, but her eyes are steel and seriousness. “Your grandmother died to protect you. She knew the dark Fae would sense you once you Awakened. She cast a powerful spell—a Grimmacle—to lock your power down and put it back to sleep. But it was her decision, and she would not want you to blame yourself. Glamma’s Fae blood was strong. She knew what she was doing. And she knew the cost.�
�
“The cost? You make it sound so simple!”
Mom folds her hands. “It is simple. People were after her granddaughter, and she gave up her life to protect you. It’s what you do when you love someone.”
She says it in that tone that brooks no argument and rings a thousand-percent true. Glamma was Irish, stoic, and stalwart as the Cliffs of Moher. She was a Gentry, a warrioress in her own right, and I… With a jolt, I realize I’m totally being whiny-pants. Glamma died to protect me. She was a tough cookie and whip-smart. She wouldn’t have done that without a darn good reason.
I take a deep breath and straighten up. “So what now?”
“Now your mom should tell you the truth about why you’re being hunted.”
I give a start as Euphoria sits up, wiping away the dried blood, her electric-blue eyes luminous even in the cruddy 60-watt glow of our living room lights. She lounges on the couch, one long leg thrown over the ratty arm like she owns the place. Her presence is intense, captivating and menacing.
I’m not sure if I want to run to her or away from her. Maybe a little of both.
Tingles race across my skin, and my heart kicks into overdrive. I’ve never felt so alive as I do when I’m with her, and… A blush scalds my cheeks. And my mom is right here.
Aw, hell. My entire face burns like a brand, and I silently curse my Irish heritage, just a wee bit.
“Rouen.”
“Georgina.”
Glaring, my mom and Euphoria exchange one-word greetings like they’d rather choke each other than occupy the same space.
Wait, what? “You two know each other?”
They’re still glaring warily, and the weirdness of having my leather-clad mom and a dark Fae giving each other the stink eye in my living room is not lost on me.
I wave my hand. “Hello… Earth to Mom.”
“I heard you, Syl.” My mom doesn’t look away from Euphoria. It’s the look you’d give a spider you find in the shower—that I’m watching you so don’t you dare try anything look. “And yes, we know each other.”
Moribund Page 12