“Did you hear anything about it in Faerie?”
“Certainly not,” he said. “If the Courts spoke of it, then they must have done so behind closed doors. It’s not the sort of information they’d want to be spread widely… nor amongst humans.”
I drew River’s coat tightly around myself, my numb feet skidding in the mud. “Yeah, we’re sworn to secrecy. So what are the Sidhe playing at? They must know that human necromancy is even less reliable than this immortality source of theirs. Also, Winter magic can involve raising the dead. Surely that’s more logical.”
“Not permanently,” River murmured. “This… this has the potential to affect the Courts to such a degree, it might even be someone in a position of power behind this. The Erlking is dying.”
“Yeah, hence the quest for the missing heir.”
He turned on me. “You’ve known for a while.”
“I didn’t believe Ivy at first,” I said. “Would you? The heir thing turned out to be nonsense, so I hoped this was too. I think the Sidhe could do well to learn some humility, but they’re not the type to accept their inevitable fate without trying to drag everyone else down with them.”
“Not every Sidhe would want to do that.”
“One would be enough to destroy this realm,” I said heatedly. “Sorry. I’m not blaming you… I know everyone worships the Sidhe, and heaven knows they might even be justified in being a little pissed off, considering how many thousand years they’ve been immortal. I just wish they’d consider that they’re not the centre of the universe.”
“I think you’re asking for the impossible,” River said, but his expression remained dark and grim. “Perhaps… perhaps your mother knew as well.”
I stopped walking. “Crap. Maybe the Sidhe sent her to find a solution. The Erlking’s dying, the Sidhe are desperate, and…” And answers might lie in the Vale? I almost wished I’d gone there after all, but I wouldn’t have been able to bring Mum back with me as a ghost. I shook my head, frustration burning below my skin despite the lingering chill, and resumed walking again. “We need more information… but it’s a start. I can look around next time I’m on the spirit paths.”
“You almost froze to death, Ilsa,” River said.
“Then next time wrap me in your coat.” It smelled pleasantly of his earthy magic. “This is what I’m supposed to do.”
“According to whom?” he enquired. “Not the Sidhe. You don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.”
“I can’t keep this power and not use it to save Mum,” I said. “And stop those outcasts. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I let them win.”
I might crave the book’s power, but I wouldn’t be controlled by it. Magic was untameable by nature, but if Ivy could traverse Death, so could I.
“I don’t think Morgan can do the same, so don’t tell him,” I said. “He actually would risk his life hopping up and down the Ley Line. But we need to see Ivy in the flesh for sure. She knows about talismans like mine.”
“Does she know who might be behind this scheme?”
I shook my head. “Nope. But it sounds like she brought half the council with her. At this point I’d trust their word more than the Sidhe’s.”
“The enemy is inside the Summer Court itself.” His hands clenched at his sides. “Even if we caught them, I doubt the Sidhe would believe one of their own might be a traitor. But I can’t think of any other way the enemy might have reached the Court. Nobody is allowed in who isn’t spoken for, and only those with Sidhe magic can cross over at all.”
“Then the traitor is Sidhe. It’s the only explanation.” But who? I hadn’t met enough of the Sidhe to form an opinion, and surely if any of them wanted the book, they’d have tried to take it from me there and then. But they of all people knew the consequences of claiming a talisman. Maybe they just… didn’t want to be anywhere near Death at all. It wouldn’t surprise me.
But what did that make Ivy’s talisman? Was mine truly that unique? It was reassuring to meet another human neck-deep in this who wasn’t a Lynn. Though technically she might be, distantly. The curse hadn’t affected her. But maybe we had more in common than shared blood. The way my talisman had tried to reach hers… as though it knew her. I’d learnt so much, yet only had more questions.
The book and the blade. Power beyond necromancy, beyond anything I ever knew. Raw, terrifying power, bound into the fabric of the death realm itself.
Like… a goddess of death.
11
I woke up with my chin resting on my knees, dawn light spilling through the window onto the bookshelves of the library and the bean bag where I’d fallen asleep. I’d sat here for hours at a time as a teenager while Hazel and Mum did their top-secret Gatekeeper training. The textbook fell out of my lap as I stretched, my back aching in protest at the weird position I’d fallen asleep in. I picked it up again, yawning. I’d stayed up until the early hours reading through the book and Great-Aunt Enid’s notes, and by now, I knew what magic was in my talisman.
I also knew beyond all shadow of a doubt that I could never allow the enemy to get hold of it.
Hazel knocked on the door, nudging it open. “Have you been in here all night?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” I yawned again. “We’re not out of coffee, are we?”
“Not yet,” Hazel said. “That must have been some marathon studying session.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” I blinked repeatedly to clear the haze from my eyes.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You’ve been acting… off. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I’ve felt out of it since my magic got shut down, to be honest.” She gave a slight laugh. “Gotta love feeling powerless at the worst possible moment.”
“Sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “What time is it?”
“Ten in the morning. I sent River off to buy groceries because he’s the only one of us with cash.”
“I have cash.”
“You were dead to the world,” Morgan said from behind her. “I had to put my hand in a jar of iron to keep your weird dreams out of my head.”
“I don’t remember any.” Now I remembered why pulling all-nighters was usually a bad idea. I needed at least nine hours’ sleep to function, and it probably didn’t help that I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in what felt like days.
“Probably that weirdness you’re reading,” Morgan said, scooping up the textbook and Great-Aunt Enid’s journal. “Must be a good read if you stayed away from River all night.”
I stifled another yawn behind my hand. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“He’s not my type, but he’s decent enough for a faerie.”
“Thanks for giving your approval.” I rolled my eyes at him.
“He hasn’t given her faerie pox yet, so he’s one step up from the last guy,” Hazel put in.
Why did she have to go there? “Give it a rest,” I told her.
“Faerie pox?” said Morgan, tossing the books onto the floor again.
“You missed the epic showdown.” Hazel ducked as I threw Great-Aunt Enid’s diary at her. “Chill, Ilsa. It was a few months after you left… what was his name, Ernest?”
“No!” I groaned. “If either of you tell Mum or River, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not a sneak,” said Hazel. “You need to get that tension out of your system. Seriously.”
“If you didn’t already in the forest,” said Morgan, walking over to the desk where I’d scattered all my notes.
“You can’t bring up the forest without admitting you both got ensnared by the Sidhe, too,” I said. “Did they know they were making out with humans?”
“Probably not,” she said. “The magic there sent everyone crazy.”
“There you have it,” I said. “None of us was in our right mind.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” said Morgan, picking up the spiral-bound notebook I’d been taking notes in. “Come on, I never got to tease you about this stu
ff before I left. You didn’t crush on a different boy every week like Hazel did.”
“Maybe I didn’t tell you two for a reason?”
Morgan lowered the notebook. “Holy shit. You mean to tell me the Sidhe can die now? Actually die?”
“No, I didn’t mean to tell you. You weren’t supposed to read that. Give it here.”
I made a wild lunge for the desk. My legs were half asleep from sitting on the floor all night so I fell into Morgan and knocked him off balance. He grabbed Hazel’s arm to steady himself, and we all fell into a heap.
River walked in, eyebrows raised, holding several bags.
“Hey, River,” said Morgan. “Want to join the group hug? Ow, Hazel, you trod on my face.”
I disentangled my legs from the others and climbed upright. “Morgan, give me that.”
“Nope.” He held the notebook triumphantly in the air. “I know the Sidhe can die now.”
“So does half the Court,” I said. “It’s not news. If you go around shouting it, they’ll kill you.”
“They don’t scare me anymore.” He grinned. “They can die. You know how many thousand years those fuckers have held their immortality over the rest of us?”
“Yes, I do, and that’s why you can’t tell them,” I said. “River, did those two send you running errands?”
“I volunteered,” he said. “I figured one of us should check on the village and make sure none of those ghosts came back.”
“And you brought us food.” Morgan grabbed the bag from River and emptied it onto the desk. It contained several sandwich packets and drinks from the only café in the village. River glided to the desk chair before anyone else claimed it and swivelled around, tossing me a sandwich. Despite the speed, I actually caught it.
“Anything but Everett’s baking is good with me,” said Hazel, perching on the edge of the desk.
I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite of tuna mayonnaise. “Thanks, River. What were you three doing while I was in here yesterday, anyway?”
“Plotting a way back to the Court,” Morgan said, sitting down on the bean bag next to me. “They didn’t like my idea to cross over in spirit form and haunt them.”
I decided not to mention I could probably do exactly that. “Nope. Not gonna work.”
“You never said if you’d reached any new conclusions from all that studying,” Hazel said.
“Except the Sidhe can die now,” Morgan added, taking a swig of coke from the bottle.
“All of us knew that except you,” Hazel said.
Morgan scowled. “You’re joking.”
“I did find out some things.” I put down my half-eaten sandwich. “Not nice ones.”
“Go on,” said Morgan. The others watched me as well. “You have that slightly manic look.”
“Invocations. Gods. The Ancients.” I held up Grandma’s journal. “The Ancients. She kept writing that word. The faeries’ gods. Anyone know about them?”
“The Sidhe?” said Hazel, around a bite of sandwich. “The ones old enough to remember. Nobody in this realm would know, I wouldn’t think.”
“According to this, the Grey Vale used to be the gods’ own realm,” I said. “Until the Sidhe kicked them out, and ripped a piece of their own realm away to do it. That’s the Vale.”
Hazel and River both looked stunned. Morgan shook his head. “So what? They’re devious monsters, we know that. It’s no surprise that they killed their gods, considering all they want is to be worshipped on a pedestal.”
“It gets worse,” I said. “The Vale—it’s created as a place with no magic.”
“And?” said Morgan.
“No magic,” I said. “Doesn’t that imply the gods had magic, just like the Sidhe do?”
“Not necessarily,” Hazel said. “I mean, sure, let’s go with it. They’re still dead. Long gone. It’s another strike against the Sidhe, but I really don’t see what difference it makes to us.”
“Their magic still exists in some form.” I held up the talisman, and the glowing symbol on the cover.
Morgan dropped the coke bottle on the floor, where it rolled under the desk. “Are you saying one of them is in the book?”
“No.” I put the talisman back in my pocket. “But their magic is. Think about it. It’s clearly not faerie magic, but it’s way beyond necromancy too. Maybe the gods had their own type of magic. I think someone might have bound part of this god’s magic to the book the way the Sidhe bind their own magic to talismans. Ivy’s talisman is the same. It’s not man-made at all, but it’s not a Sidhe creation either.”
River continued to stare at me. “The gods’ magic… it’s possible, but I’ve never heard of such a thing in the faerie realm. Summer and Winter magic are all there is. Life and death. They balance each other. A force beyond death… no wonder this talisman wasn’t intended for use in Faerie.”
“Whether it’s true or not, we still need to get back into the Court and root out their traitor,” Hazel said. “And I have a way in.”
“How?” I asked. “Holly’s gate?”
She shook her head. “Walking into Winter without magic… it’s a bad idea. But I know the wild fae near Foxwood, and there are rumours about shortcuts into the borderlands. That would take us directly to the Court.”
“The borderlands are easily as dangerous as the Winter Court,” River said. “They’re lawless at best and deadly at worst.”
“Not if you know where you’re going,” Hazel said confidently. “I know this way in, and it leads straight to Summer.”
I picked up what was left of my sandwich and took a bite, though my appetite was gone. There was no safe route back into Faerie without risking our necks, and selfish though it may be, I couldn’t get Ivy’s talisman out of my head. Going to Edinburgh would bring us allies. But I wouldn’t kill the others’ hopes of rescuing Mum, however much I suspected that our chances of finding her were low.
“If you know the wild fae, then we’ll follow your lead,” River said. But he it was plain he thought there was a catch. So did I. I’d never been invited to go along with her and Mum to negotiate with the wild faeries, those who lived apart from the Courts, but there was usually a good reason they’d chosen to leave.
Half an hour later, we left the house, armed and ready for any kind of trouble. I checked the spirit realm before leaving, but nothing stirred. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Hazel led us down the hill in the opposite direction to the village, past fields of heather. Snow coated the distant mountaintops, while a harsh breeze reminded me of the oncoming winter. We veered off the path after several minutes, and Hazel stopped walking beside a rabbit hole.
A man appeared from nowhere. Morgan and I both jumped violently. The man was red-skinned and bearded, peering at us with curious eyes. “If it isn’t the Gatekeeper’s daughter.”
“Hey,” Hazel said. “We seek passage into the borderlands of the Summer Court.”
The man gave a low chuckle. “You truly want to enter the borderlands? You’ll never walk out alive.”
“We seek passage,” Hazel repeated. “What payment will you accept?”
I gave her a warning look—making a deal with any faerie wasn’t wise, but on the other hand, Mum had trained her for this.
“Bring me four buttons after your return,” said the man.
“Okay…” She glanced at us, her expression bewildered. “Thanks.”
He grinned and raised a hand. There was a flash of light, and the hillside vanished.
Tangled forest extended in every direction, larger and more extensive than I’d ever seen. I couldn’t even see the sky.
“That was it?” Hazel said. “I thought he was going to ask me to answer an impossible riddle. The first one did.”
“Who was he?” asked Morgan.
“Little Person,” Hazel said. “They live between realms, or so Mum says. Harmless, but they usually ask for more than that.”
“What’s the catch?” whispered Morgan. “Ever
ything here wants to kill us?”
“Not if I can help it,” Hazel muttered. “This place is divided into territories, some from each Court, and I don’t know the boundaries by heart. But if we keep walking this way, we’ll reach the main path to the Summer Court.”
River looked up at the canopy blocking out the sunlight. “The catch is that he brought us to Lady Hornbeam’s territory.”
“It was hers or someone else’s, and they’re all equally bad, to be honest,” Hazel said. “This is the closest to the Court.”
River swore under his breath. “Be on your guard.”
The borderlands stood in total contrast to the open fields and bright sunshine of the main Summer Court. Here, while it was warmer than back home, a canopy of branches blocked out most sunlight, casting everything in eerie shadows. Tangled undergrowth marked out paths winding through the trees. No signposts or landmarks, and while Summer’s magic remained in the air, it wasn’t as overt here.
It was impossible to watch every tree and shadow at once. I kept thinking I saw people in the branches, hidden from sight. Every rustle and whisper set my teeth on edge. Walking softly and quietly over a bed of branches and brambles was a tall order, too, especially with four of us. River walked quietly and lithely, using his magic to clear particularly tangled bits of undergrowth out of our way, but Morgan kept tripping over tree roots and I wasn’t exactly a master of stealth either. Even Hazel nearly face-planted into a pond before Morgan caught her at the last moment. We saw no signs of life around, so I damn near screamed when a faerie warrior appeared soundlessly on the path in front of us. I stopped dead, my heart sinking. He’d moved without so much as stirring the branches, like a ghost.
The man wasn’t Sidhe. Half-blood, judging by the fact that I could look directly at him without my brain seizing up. He was dressed in dark-coloured armoured clothes with a crossbow strapped to his back, and had shoulder-length dark hair and a faint scar on his right cheekbone, the one flaw to his eerily pretty appearance.
“Humans,” he said, his voice lightly melodic. “Do you know what Lady Hornbeam does to human trespassers?”
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