Moribund

by Genevieve Iseult Eldredge

  Syl… I take a deep breath and steel myself. Syl would be brave. So must I. An image comes of the Euphoria posters in her room.

  If I was half the hero she thought I was…

  But without her, I have no hope of that. I am only old Rouen, come to pay the final price for all my crimes.

  Agravaine stands on the stage, where fake ice columns soar up to a fake ice balcony made of crepe paper and foam. It’s surreal, seeing his dark form against something so bright. His back is to me, and I see the slight straightening of his spine.

  He speaks without turning. “Join me.”

  He doesn’t Command me, so I stand there, defiant, in the middle of the gym floor.

  Agravaine turns and glares. “Join me, Rouen.”

  The Command means I have no choice, but whatever. I want to get close to him anyway. I move to the stage, propelled by the Contract that binds me. The Moribund in my hand responds to his proximity, rushing with heat and cold at the same time. It flashes through me like a fever, like knives through my skin, my heart.

  But I won’t show him any weakness. I can’t afford to.

  Despite myself, tears well in my eyes. I try to blink them back.

  He takes one look at my face. “It’s done, then?”

  I can only nod. My tears shame me at first, and then hot defiance boils through my blood. To the hells with that. I straighten. Let him see my tears flowing. I’m not ashamed of loving Syl, emo or not. I don’t care.

  He shakes his head and lays a hand on my shoulder like he’s going to console me.

  You know that last straw that broke the camel’s back?

  Yeah, that was it.

  I snap my hip as I punch, throwing my bodyweight behind it. The satisfying crunch of his nose echoes across the gym, and I follow up with a quick one-two to his ribs. He doubles over in shock and pain, and I grab him by the hair, slamming him into the floor.

  “Olé!” I yell like a bullfighter.

  He hits the stage hard with an “oof!” and I swear the wood groans and buckles.

  Chump.

  I laugh wildly, showing my fangs, and grab him by the back of his jacket.

  But Agravaine is fast. He whips around, throwing me off and doing a quick kippup to his feet. He barrels in at me. He’s strong, but I’m fast. I avoid most of his blows, dodging and ducking, kicking him in the chest and once more across the cheek.

  The satisfying smack, crack is sweet, sweet music.

  He staggers back, wiping his bloody lip.

  A low growl echoes across the stage. It’s me. Go ahead. Call me emo dark Fae one more time…

  “Rouen, stop!” The Command infuses his tone, but I fight, struggling against my own body. He comes in, and I hit him again. And again.

  He takes the blows, his body shuddering as he says the Command again. “Stop hitting me.”

  A low growl rumbles from my throat. “Screw you.” He’ll have to Command me to do anything he wants. I swear, even if he said breathe, I’d resist him.

  His eyes gleam shark-black. “I’m warning yo—”

  Smack! My fist connects with his cheek, sending him sprawling. “You’re what?” I hold my hand to my ear like I can’t hear him. “Speak up.”

  He gets to his feet, his jacket hanging off his left side. The Moribund glints, sinister, and he throws a hand up. In a flash of chimerical black, the Moribund circuits leap off his hand and shoot toward me like dark tentacles.

  I dodge them, one, two, three—

  The fourth and fifth ones wrap my arms, binding me tight. More bands of Moribund tighten around my legs, my waist. He gestures, and I hurtle back, slamming into the ice castle so hard a nearby column falls over with a whump, casting a spate of icy glitter.

  I struggle, but I am bound tight, pinned to the fake castle by writhing circuitry. My right hand goes numb, the strength gone out of it, sapping me.

  Agravaine saunters toward me. The blood makes him look wild, his white hair a mane about his face. “You’re the final piece of my plan, Rouen.”

  He walks heavily, the left side of him burdened by the Moribund. Even now, I see the tiny bursts of indigo lightning licking across his flesh. He’s using it too much, and it’s spreading, eating away at him, slowly consuming him, turning him from man to machine. His eyes are full-on black now, inhuman and inhumane. He shrugs as if sloughing off his injuries.

  How can he feel anything with that junk inside him anyway?

  All I know is, I’ll see him dead. For my people. For Syl.

  “I need you,” he says, and I expect more of his man-baby whining about him being the Huntsman and me, his fated Huntress mate, but instead he shocks me. “You’re tied to the hearthstone.”

  “So what?”

  “So, once I infect you fully with the Moribund, then I can blow the circuits. The resulting shockwave of your death will reverberate down the bond you have with the hearthstone and destroy it, and the resulting backlash will not only send UnderHollow into the Harrowing, it will—”

  “Allow you to power your Grimmacle,” I finish for him, my guts churning. It was one thing to suspect it. To hear it from his own lips is another. He’s never wanted to help my people. He only wants to help himself.

  I fight, struggling against the black bindings, but they hold me tight.

  “I’ll create UnderHollow on Earth, but it will be a new UnderHollow.” He paces before me. “For those of us who have been downtrodden.” His face grows somber. “I always thought you, of all people, would be with me, Rouen.”

  “Me?” I want to smack that look right off his face. “I’d never stand by and watch you collapse the Snickleways and trap our people in the darkness.”

  “Our people?” He spits the words like poison. “They’re not our people, Rouen. The entire Winter Court hates us for being sluagh. Your own father abandoned you to this fate. Why stay loyal to him, to them, when you could rule with me? At my feet.”

  Bloody bones. He’s got a point. Of all the arch-Eld, my own father should have believed in me. But full-on betrayal is not my style. And at his feet? Seriously? This guy just doesn’t get it. “Are you deaf or just stupid?” I fix him with my dark Fae death glare. “I don’t want to rule with you.”

  He chuckles darkly. “A shame.”

  “And what of these people?” I gesture with my chin out into the gym. Tomorrow night is the Winter Formal. Tomorrow night, this place will be packed with mortals. “What about them?”

  He shrugs his Moribund shoulder, and I swear, I hear the circuits hum. “They will fall in line or be consumed.” He amends, “Eventually they’ll all be consumed anyway.”

  Clearly he feels no fear at telling me his entire plan. Now that he knows I’m his captive and not going anywhere. I prompt him more. “And when you run out of power?”

  He closes the distance between us. He’s so close I can smell the ozone of the Moribund. “You’ll be a long time dying, Rouen. A living battery.”

  Shivers run down my spine, but I raise my chin, defiant. “Go ahead, then.” I am prepared for it. Prepared to die. Will I see Syl on the other side? Is there a heaven that allows dark Fae and fair Fae both?

  Agravaine shakes his head, tsking. “So impatient. But not yet. Tomorrow night, at the mortals’ silly Winter Formal dance, when the moon is high and the solstice is at its peak. Midwinter Night. It must be then.”

  “The ley lines,” I say sourly. Like the ocean tides, ley lines respond to the moon cycles, flooding with energy during the full moon. He needs the ley lines to fuel his dark plot, to add power and permanency to his Grimmacle.

  “Yes.”

  I glance across the stage. Fiann is craning her neck to see what we’re doing.

  “What about her?”

  His eyes glint shark-black. “I will keep my promise to her. She will become the new dark Fae queen at my side.”

  I snort in disgust. “Turning a mortal Fae?”

  It’s an old trick, a powerful and painful trick—one normally reserved
mortals who despise us. To turn them into that which they hate. In Fiann’s case, though, she’s worshipped us since the first time she saw me take the stage.

  It’s a dream come true for her.

  Except for the part where she’ll be Agravaine’s little slave, to do with as he pleases. She won’t be a queen. She’ll be a puppet. At his feet.

  “I’m sure she’ll enjoy her life as your trophy.”

  He shrugs that black shoulder, circuits humming. “It is a fate she chose.” He studies me, and I see him working out the angles. Can I escape? Can I twist his Commands? Can I break the Contract?

  All the answers come. No, no, no.

  I am well and truly screwed.

  And he knows it.

  He turns to walk away, leaving me bound to the wall, bound by the Moribund. He has nothing to fear. No one will find me here. And just to make sure… Ugh.

  The creep steps back and casts a Glamoury over me. His smile is all sharky edges. “Tomorrow night, at moonrise, I’ll be coming for you. Make your peace.”

  His boots clomp heavily on the stage as he walks away, and now I let go and let the tears come. Make my peace? I want to be brave. I try to be brave.

  But how can I when I’ve lost Syl and all hope with her?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Syl

  Awakening is the key

  Disbelief is the enemy

  - Glamma’s Grimm

  Twenty-nine stories. Holy cats, this is high! The wind whips past me, the coldness cutting through my clothes, making every breath hurt as I hang by my fingernails from the window-washer’s scaffolding. Lucky it was here, Syl. Another gust blasts me, buffeting me one way, then the other.

  Euphoria is long gone.

  Still, I’m hanging by that scaffold, four stories below the top. Still a long, long way to fall. The fairy wind I summoned—go, me—to save my bacon when I let go of Euphoria, now it sputters like a car low on gas.

  Hang on, hang on.

  I’ve counted four minutes since Euphoria left, since I watched her leap from the building and streak off toward Richmond Elite High. I wait another full sixty seconds to make it an even five.

  Then I heave my leg over the railing of the rickety scaffold and crawl to safety.

  My heart is pounding in my ears, in my throat—everywhere but where it should. My breath is a hacking rasp, my sweat both clammy cold and stifling hot as I lie there shaking. For a second, I think I could kiss the cleaning-chemical-stained boards, but then reality sets back in.

  I’ll pass.

  Instead, I take some deep breaths, trying to get my poor heart to come down from DEFCON 1. As it does, I lie on my back, looking at the city lights, and take stock of exactly how crappy and impossible my situation is.

  Euphoria’s gone. She’s controlled by Agravaine. Tomorrow night is the Winter Formal, and Agravaine’s Moribund-laced trolley tracks surround the entire city. He’s got Euphoria, Fiann, the infected student body, and an iron circle of power.

  Everything he needs to cast a Grimmacle.

  Rad. Now I know why Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.”

  Because the odds? Yeah, they’re terrible. The world vs. Syl Skye, sleeper-princess, not yet fully Awakened. My power is unpredictable at best. And I’m all alone now.

  What can one unAwakened sleeper-princess do?

  Nothing.

  Ugh. Of course, the part of me that doubts and despairs, that disbelieves—old Syl—that part of me is fully awake. Figures. Euphoria thinks I’m dead. Euphoria…

  Agravaine’s going to hurt her, going to infect her with even more Moribund, and when the solstice strikes, he’ll harness the power of Midwinter and the Moribund and use her body as a living conduit. He’ll blow the circuitry within her to power his damn circle and cast his Grimmacle over the entire city.

  That’s why he ordered her to kill me.

  Because you can stop him, Syl.

  Don’t be silly, the disbeliever in me whispers. You’re not even Awakened. Agravaine holds all the cards. He’s got Euphoria, Fiann, the solstice tomorrow night, and a circle of power just raring to go.

  But I have to try. He’s going to hurt Euphoria. No way am I going to stand for that.

  But I can’t just go in there all guns a-blazing.

  I try to think. What would Mom do?

  She’d go in there all guns a-blazing. Gah! So not helpful. I can’t even fire a gun much less hit anything. How am I supposed to—?

  Unless guns aren’t all she’s keeping secret. She did pull that Fae-flaunt dust out from Glamma’s old hat box. What else could she have been hiding in that closet? In the apartment?

  A shudder goes through me. It’s such a long shot, and though I feel in my bones that I’m right, I don’t want to go back there. No way. No how.

  But it’s the last place they’d look for you, Syl.

  That devious little part of me is right, the cheeky monkey. It would be completely stupid and desperate to go back there.

  Well, I’m not stupid, but I am desperate, and fifty percent of a plan is better than no plan at all. I decide to risk it.

  I look down at the street below. My fairy wind’s totally given up, so it looks like I’ll be running. Again.

  I swear, if we get out of this alive, I’m making Euphoria teach me how to summon a fairy wind and keep it around.

  With a sigh, I clamber back atop the building and make the jump across Main Street. My boots slam down, and I’m running across rooftops. My body is bruised, but my heart pounds hard, keeping me going. I’m Euphoria’s last hope, the last hope of her people, and now mine too.

  I make it back home in record time, and I don’t bother with stealth. Agravaine and Fiann are probably long gone, probably at Richmond E, twirling their mustaches and muwahaha-ing in anticipation of tomorrow night. My heart aches, thinking about Euphoria. I should be busting into the school to save her. But at this point, I’d only get myself captured.

  I have fifty percent of a plan, but I need more.

  I slam through the bottom door and nearly jump out of my skin as a streak of black and white cuts across my path with a loud mrrowwworrrr!

  Tuxedo kitty?

  “What are you doing out here in the hallway?” I bend down to scritch her stubbly ears. She drops into motorboat-loud purring, winding through my legs and rubbing against me. I stand and try to take another step.

  Mrrowwworrrr!

  Her little kitty-hackles are raised as she tries to block me, with all her six pounds, from heading upstairs.

  “Come on, kitty.” I sigh and go to pick her up, but she darts away. Little minx. I roll my eyes, refusing to believe I’ve entered that part of the story where a sentient cat is trying to tell me something. Glamma once made me watch Lassie reruns, and I thought I would literally die of boredom. That Timmy kid was the worst. The. Worst.

  My mind goes a little crazy, though, when tuxedo kitty blocks me again.

  Tux-Kitty, did Timmy fall down the well?

  “What is your problem?” I stage-whisper, and yeah, now I’m talking to a cat.

  “She doesn’t want you to go up there,” a familiar voice says.

  I have a moment of total culture-shock when I see Miss Jardin standing on the landing. I’ve never seen her outside of school. She still looks like a sexy-evil anime librarian, dressed in a pencil skirt and blazer, her green shirt and red hair too bright in the crappy dim hallway. Her spectacles—yeah, that’s the only thing you can call those half-moon jobs—sit perched on her nose. I smell the fresh sweetness of roses and—

  “Hello, Syl.” And is that the smell of habanero peppers stinging my nose?

  “Wait, what…?” I stumble over the obvious question and look around as though I’m getting trolled or something. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” She steps to the side, and I see the initials on the door. “I’m J.J.—Jessamine Jardin.”

  “Uh…” Nose still tingling, I look around the hallway, trying
to act all cool, like my entire apartment up there hasn’t been totally destroyed by evil dark Fae. “I’m…a little busy.”

  She follows my glance up the stairs. “Do you”—she looks over her spectacles—“need some help?” For a second, I swear she…gets bigger somehow, like she swells up with power, and her shadow gets all weird and distorted on the wall.

  It’s like something huge and dark and sinister revolves inside her skin. “I can help,” she says quietly, her voice all freaky, raspy razorblades.

  The stinging scent of habaneros ramps up in the hallway, and my eyes start to water.

  A chill runs down my spine, and I try like hell not to see her aura, all warpy and red as hellfire. “N-no,” I manage to get out. “It’s…” I clear my throat. “You should stay out of it.”

  “I see.” Suddenly, that dark energy is gone, and she’s standing there all prim and proper, adjusting her spectacles. She calls the cat—“Miss Hillary!”—and the little tuxedo obeys, just as prim and proper as her mistress. Miss Jardin steps back into her apartment. “If you need me, just call my name.”

  She closes the door quietly, but it’s like all the air rushes back into the hallway, dispelling the Hotty McHotness of chili peppers.

  Whoa… What in holy heck was that?

  And then I shake it off. I’ve got a dark Fae girlfriend to save.

  Who said she’s your girlfriend, Syl?

  Ugh. I swat my teen angst away and rush up the stairs.

  The door is busted off the hinges, and the couches are all still torn up, glass on the floor, everything broken, and that stupid lamp is still on. I step over shattered glass, trying to be quiet even though there’s no one around.

  Please tell me there’s no one around…

  I go straight to the closet, to where Mom pulled down Glamma’s hatbox. It’s buried behind a ton of junk, so I dive in, cursing as old Rollerblades and some ancient school art projects, most notably a papier-mâché T-Rex, fall around me. The T-Rex bops me on the head, and I pull back, yanking all the garbage—T-Rex, some old clothes, and a spill of battered board games, Clue, Sorry, Parcheesi—with me. Crap goes everywhere.