Moribund

by Genevieve Iseult Eldredge

  But I have the hatbox in my hot little hands.

  I sit down in the pile of junk and open it, trembling. Just an old pillbox hat and veil. The damp stink of mothballs nearly makes me choke on my own breath. I pull it out. Nothing.

  “Looking for something?”

  That voice, cold and cruel, shoots down my spine like a spike of ice. I straighten and turn, dread making me all edgy.

  Fiann.

  She stands there, looking out of place in her designer jeans and Jimmy Choos. Her heels click-clack-crunch on the glass as she walks toward me, that crazed Joker Homecoming-queen grin on her face.

  “Fiann?” I put the hatbox behind me, but of course she sees it. She’s bananapants, not blind. “What are you doing here?” I swallow the rest: Shouldn’t you be scheming your glorious world takeover with what’s-his-bucket?

  “I knew you weren’t dead.” Her eyes look right through me, unblinking, obsessed. She pulls a black dagger from behind her.

  Okay, where exactly was she stashing that thing?

  It’s stupidly huge, like something you’d see in Final Fantasy, but that’s where the stupid ends. Because it’s made of Moribund circuits: dead black, the whole thing—hilt, handle, blade—teeming and jiggering.

  “But it’s better that you survived.” Fiann keeps up having diarrhea of the plan. “Because I‘d rather see you alive and on your knees.”

  Wait, what? I back up, still holding the hatbox. “Fiann, we used to be friends.”

  Her laugh is madness splintering. “I don’t want friends.” She comes closer, her teeth bared in a predatory grin. “I want subjects.”

  So that’s what her crazy is all about. I snort. “He’ll never make you queen.” I back up and up until my back fetches against the wall. “Agravaine’s not the kind of guy who shares power. You’ll be his hench-wench, at best. Not exactly what I call relationship goals.”

  “Oh, Syl…you’ll see. Once you’re infected too.”

  Crap. I jerk toward the door, but she cuts me off, swiping the dagger down. Barely, I avoid getting nicked. That’s all it’ll take.

  “Fiann, listen—”

  “No, you listen!” Her voice rises all shrill, school girl on the edge. “I’ve had it with being in your shadow, watching you get everything I want, watching you be special.” She spits the last word venomously, and a toxic laugh rolls out of her. “But now…now you’ll be just one of my subjects, your power drained, your life-force taken.” Her green eyes glitter evilly. “On your knees as my slave.”

  Yeah. Fat chance, Miss Crazypants.

  She lunges for me, and I deck her one. It’s satisfying, feeling her nose crunch beneath my fist. Bam! I expect a girly scream, but no. Fiann’s in full-on bee-yotches-be-crazy mode. Like a killer in a slasher flick, she keeps coming, her nose bloody, her teeth smeared red.

  Holy—! I shove the hatbox at her, saving my breath, though I want to laugh when she goes tuckus over teakettle. In a flash, I’m in the hall at the top of the stairs. Home free!

  Not.

  A sharp pain pierces my shoulder, stopping me cold. I reach back, frantic and freaking, but the knife only breaks, releasing its black circuits to swarm my shoulder, my arm, my hand, the Moribund enveloping the right side of me.

  I feel the corruption of it entering my system. I fall to the landing, trying to scream but unable to. I can’t breathe, can’t think.

  Fiann’s shadow falls over me. She looms in, her grin all Joker cheerleader on crack. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, slave, when the Moribund calls you to Agravaine’s ritual.”

  She steps over me like I’m a sack of potatoes. Her heels click-clack on the stairs.

  I only hope she breaks one on the cobblestones outside. My mind whirls wildly, my vision going dark, and I grasp for anything before the darkness takes me.

  I grasp for anything, and Miss Jardin’s voice answers, “If you need me, just call my name.”

  I do it.

  My head throbs and swims. My vision blurs as I open my eyes. “Wha…?”

  My body hurts, but I am lying on something soft, and there is a purring, motorboat-loud next to my ear. I try to lift my right arm to rub my eyes but can’t. I can’t feel it.

  I try my left and that works. I rub away the blurriness.

  I’m on a couch, and Miss Hillary is snuggled up next to my head, purring like mad.

  “You’re awake.” Miss Jardin bustles into the room, bringing her prim and proper air and the spicy smell of chili peppers with her.

  Her apartment, it dawns on me. That’s where I am.

  And even though I’m tempted to check out all her 70s disco-retro decor I have waaaaaay more important things to deal with: Euphoria being captured, Agravaine, Fiann, the Moribund dagger—

  The fact that I only barely whispered her name before I passed out. How in the holy heck did she hear me?

  I sit up awkwardly, my right side numb and oddly heavy at the same time. Steeling myself, I look. Oh, God. Oh, God, no. I squeeze my eyes shut. This can’t be happening.

  Miss Jardin’s voice brings me out of my denial. “The blade didn’t contain enough circuits to infect you fully, but…”

  I look at her, trying not to see the black circuitry spliced into my right arm and shoulder, the Moribund infecting me. “But?”

  “But it will continue to spread, like any infection.”

  Panic settles into me, but I push it down. “There has to be a way to stop it.”

  “There is.” She sits on the love seat across from me.

  I blow out a breath of relief. “Great! What is it?”

  “The power of an Awakened sleeper-princess.”

  Not great.

  Not to mention… I shoot to my feet. “What time is it?”

  “Nine p.m.”

  Nine…p.m.? That doesn’t make sense. I got back home after midnight. Oh, crap. Crappity crap crap crap. “I was out the whole day?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “So the Formal is going on right now?” I feel like I’m losing my mind here.

  “Yes.” She looks a little frazzled too. “Syl…”

  “What?” I pace, getting used to my right side feeling numb, heavy, useless like a limb that’s been put under anesthesia.

  “The wound has closed up…” Miss Jardin meets my gaze. “But, Syl, the Moribund is inside you now, and that will speed the infection.”

  Dread grips me. “How long do I have before it takes me over?”

  “An hour, maybe less.” She stands. “I’m sorry, Syl. I’ve failed you.”

  I look at her. I’ve no time to sort out what she means, but one thing is for certain. “You haven’t failed me. But I have to go. Euphoria needs me.”

  “You can’t go there like that.” Miss Jardin’s speaks calmly, but Miss Hillary leaps into her lap, lashing tail punctuating Miss J’s next words. “Agravaine will sense you. He will kill you.”

  I shake my head. “If I don’t stop him, he’ll kill Euphoria, he’ll take over the city. There won’t be anything to live for.”

  I take a deep breath and steel myself. “I’m going.” Tonight is the night.

  And no matter what comes, Euphoria and I must face it together.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rouen

  Alone, I wait for you

  Twisting in misery

  I am nothing

  Without you

  - “Alone,” Euphoria

  Once Agravaine sets the Moribund free, once it swarms me, the initial shock and agony subside into a spreading numbness, my body thrashing on the column like a leaf buffeted by the wind.

  I pass in and out of consciousness as I am infected.

  One time, I come to and find Agravaine standing too close, his hand on my heart. His touch is cold, more poisonous than all the Moribund put together. And then comes the pain. White-hot and freezing cold, it feels like he is trying to pierce me through. The agony makes my body bow off the column. It leaves me breathless, staring at h
im in hatred.

  He leans in, his lips nearly brushing my ear and whispers, “In the end, you’ll destroy everything anyway, Rouen.”

  I want to tell him to stick it, that I’d die before harming my people.

  But I only grey out again, back into the numbness. I am glad of it. I don’t want to feel anything.

  Syl is…gone. I can’t bring myself to say dead, even in my mind.

  Emo to the end, Roue.

  Struggling is no use. I’ve been struggling through the night and into the day, the Moribund slowly eating away, infecting me, the sounds of the empty school echoing lonely around me—until finally Agravaine and Fiann come, and bring with them the hell-hounds of the Hunt. Savage, pitiful beasts. Their circuitry claws clack and scrape the lacquered wood as Agravaine Commands them into place around the stage.

  They’ll watch and wait. In case anyone tries to stop him or tries to save me.

  Wishful thinking, Roue.

  As I watch, Agravaine casts a Glamoury on the stage, enveloping me and the hounds in an illusion. I look like a statue at the center of the ice castle, and they become columns of shimmering ice.

  I’m on my own now. Over these past twenty-four hours, I’ve never felt so alone.

  Syl…

  It won’t be long before I join her—assuming that dark Fae and sleeper-princesses have some kind of common afterlife.

  Ooh, grimdark and emo? I’m such an overachiever.

  Even now, the Moribund circuits spliced into my flesh spark and flare as they drain me, indigo lightning spasming across their circuitry as they devour my strength, my gramarye, the winter in my blood. My very life-force.

  Every part of me that is Rouen Rivoche being siphoned away.

  It doesn’t hurt. Much.

  If I’m lucky, when it’s through I’ll be like those Moribund hounds—husks of empty machinery, dark contrivances bent to Agravaine’s will. Disguised, they lurk on the stage, the Wild Hunt ready to savage any who might try to stop Agravaine and his dark plot.

  Will I become one of them?

  But I know deep in my wounded heart, that’s not my end.

  Against all hope, I still see myself with Syl.

  New Syl and new Rouen.

  Her hand is in mine, and we are at the top of a building in Richmond center, laughing. I’m pushing her. Another tough-love lesson, and she’s giving me crap as always, but our connection’s strong, the heat between us rising, and there’s that gleam in her—

  The Moribund glints and gleams a bruised blue-purple as a flash of energy surges from me. Dimly, I become aware of other noises in the gym—people talking, laughing, a few bro-dudes shouting.

  The Formal’s starting.

  And then, all around me, the music swells as the band strikes up. Somehow, being drained is less painful than watching Fiann take my place on stage. She lifts my violin—my actual violin, not the borrowed one—the glassy surface shining under the stage lights. She begins to play.

  The violin glimmers with foul indigo power, and the pain in my hand stretches and pulls all the way up my arm and into my shoulder, like cords of energy being plucked. She’s pulling the gramarye right out of me, using the violin as a conduit.

  Agravaine smirks my way. This is his doing.

  All right, now it hurts. Now it feels like the essence of me is being torn away, torn through my skin, leaving me gasping, captured in the Moribund.

  I give Fiann the stink eye. I swear by rue and wrath, before this is done I’m going to slap the crap out of you, Moribund Barbie.

  The music swells outward in ripples of serenity, bliss, euphoria. I am immune. It’s still my power, even though she’s stealing it. The students, though… They stop their mad dancing and begin to sway in a wave, just like that night I met Syl. They sway as one, their eyes going glassy, and Fiann shouts with triumph, her song turning into a mockery of mine, dark and sinister, and promising blood and retribution.

  Syl…if only you were here with me.

  I block out the music, let it swim around me. I conserve my strength. Syl wouldn’t give up, and neither can I. I only need a break, a chance, a distraction. Anything.

  Another jolt of pain racks through me as the Moribund drains me slowly, so slowly. It’s not solstice-time yet. How do I know? Because Agravaine so helpfully carved a skylight out of the ceiling directly over center-stage and yours truly. Jerk. Through the ragged hole I see darkness and stars, the glimmer of moonlight, but the moon’s not at its peak. The ley lines aren’t fully charged yet, and so Agravaine hasn’t begun draining the student body.

  But soon…

  I feel it in my blood. In my bones, the hearthstone cries out, weakening.

  Tonight it will die.

  Unless I do something. But I cannot get free. I must wait. Choose my moment.

  Hours pass, the music flowing and fading, the moon creeping closer until I see the very edge of it through the hole in the ceiling. Once it’s directly overhead, framed by the makeshift skylight, that’s when he’ll start.

  That’s when people will start to die.

  On stage, Fiann keeps sawing away at my violin. She seems to never get tired. Agravaine must not have told her… It’s dangerous, the gramarye. Her fingers bleed on the strings, but she’s caught up in her first experience with Fae magic. Personal gramarye takes years and years to learn to control.

  She’ll likely play until her fingers are ragged, bloody stumps.

  Boo. Hoo. After what she did to Syl and me, I feel exactly zero sympathy for her.

  Syl… I want to struggle, to cry out, but no one will hear me beneath the Glamoury that Agravaine has cast on me. They see only the centerpiece of the scenery, a statue in the courtyard of an ice castle.

  The irony is not lost on me.

  Bloody bones, I’m going to die as a set piece in Frozen.

  My situation is eye-rollingly bad. Even if I could get free, there are the hell-hounds to consider…

  A better time will come, Rouen, I tell myself. A better time.

  But my time seems short. Like, scary-short.

  I’m not sure how much passes before a shadow falls over me. Agravaine stands there, all picture-perfect in his black leather jacket, black jeans, and jackboots. His face is pallid white, his eyes shark-black, and beneath the leather, Moribund teems across his flesh, tiny licks of indigo lightning sparking and flaring. It’s almost taken him over completely now—his chest, his abdomen, shoulders…every part of him glittering and black as though he’s grown some gross bug carapace.

  I bare my fangs at him. “I’m glad to see your exterior finally matches the ugliness inside.”

  His face twists in a mockery of sympathy. “Oh, Rouen.” With a Moribund-infested hand, he pushes my sweaty black hair from my face. He leans close so I can hear him over the music. “Rouen, Rouen, it didn’t have to end like this.”

  He looks like one of those romance-book heroes, but I know the truth of him. Liar, murderer, usurper. The dark Fae didn’t make him a prince in UnderHollow, so he wants to make his own realm and be king.

  “We could have been allies in this,” he says, and now there is a note of regret in his voice.

  Seriously? I summon a laugh from deep inside. “Who the hell are you kidding, buddy-boy?” My body shivers and racks as the Moribund festers within me. It’s been a slow process this past twenty-four hours, and I see in his eyes, he means to speed it up. “You enslaved me, tried to turn me against my own people—our people.”

  “They were never my people!” Rage stains his cheeks, his face the only part of him that isn’t Moribund-black. “I had no choice. They never saw me as anything but the Huntsman, an errand-boy sent to chase down their prey.”

  “The sleeper-princesses…” How many of them did I help him kill? Even at this late hour, I find the strength to struggle. “You used them for your own purpose, drained them of their blood and their power.”

  “Yes.” He paces, his hobnails clunk-clunking on the wooden stage. “The sleepe
r-princesses gave me the strength I needed to exist outside UnderHollow.” He fixes me with a baleful eye. “I am not a royal dark Fae, Rouen. Away from UnderHollow, I have very little innate power and needed all the help I could get. Their summer blood did nicely.” He checks my Moribund bonds, testing each, his biceps flexing with black circuitry. “And now, once I drain the hearthstone power through you, once I fuel the Moribund in the trolley circle, I will create a permanent, solid Glamoury. My own Grimmacle. UnderHollow right here on Earth. My kingdom.”

  I want to spit in his face, but my mouth is dry, the Moribund’s drain dehydrating me. I settle for snark. “You might be king, but you’re still a loser.” I cough, the Moribund spasming through me. “King of Losers.”

  The strike comes as anticipated, and my head rocks back.

  I laugh, tasting blood. “Kind of proving my point, guy.”

  His fangs are huge and white as he snarls. “You would do well to respect me, and I might end you quickly.”

  Ha. Fat chance. I remember his words in the throes of his gloating. “You will be a long time dying, Rouen.” I snort. “Spare me the lies, pal.” I struggle again. “You’re going to look awfully foolish when I get out of this.”

  It’s his turn to laugh now. “Oh?” He arches a perfectly white brow and shakes out his perfectly white hair. “You don’t understand, do you, Rouen? Let me spell it out for you.” He gets in my face, all bad boy and spite. “I hold all the cards. I Command you. I have the city encircled with Moribund tracks. Once the moon hits its crest, I’ll blow those circuits in you and all these students”—he gestures at the teeming crowd below the stage—“and the energy from the hearthstone will surge through you. I’ll steal it as you’re dying, run it along the trolley tracks, and divert the ley lines into creating my circle of power. Your life-force will power my Grimmacle, create my paradise on Earth and—”

  “Blah, blah, blah…” I roll my eyes and manage a chuckle despite the pain.

  And just then, the first beams of moonlight strike down on me.

  Damn it. There goes my gloating.

  With the cruelest smile imaginable, Agravaine steps back. “Good-bye, Rouen.” He clenches a fist, and by his will alone, the Moribund inside me increase their draining, surging my strength out of me. In horrific answer, I feel the hearthstone in my chest. Like a second heart, it beats, labored and failing. The hearthstone gutters in my mind’s eye, beginning to break, taxed to its limit. It pitches and shakes. Cracks rip across its dark surface.