Never mind that if it weren’t for me, Thorn would have been just as it was when I’d first met Tremaine: a dying land without a queen, due to a curse wrought by a particularly clever and vindictive human, Grey Draven. But Draven was the Fae’s prisoner now, and the balance between the Lands had been restored. To the satisfaction of the Fae, anyway.
Handing Draven over and breaking the curse had bought me a little freedom to roam the Winter Court. No matter what my mother thought, there’d once been an Aoife who was meek and polite and would have never dreamed of defying her mother and running off. But she was long gone.
I liked the new Aoife. She was more like the me I’d always wanted to be, the me who did things and took charge and wasn’t afraid. Or at least pretended she wasn’t, though her hands shook against the dead bolt meant to lock herself inside.
“Going somewhere?”
I let out a scream, and my pack, stuffed with everything I’d brought from the Iron Land, tumbled to the dusty stone floor.
Queen Octavia glided into the sliver of moonlight streaming through the grime-caked windows. In broad daylight she could scare you speechless. At night, in the glow of the moon, she was a spectral entity, terrifying beyond measure.
Her pointed teeth flashed as she grinned. “Tell me, Aoife—are you a little human spy?”
I forced myself to look somewhere other than her face—at her brass-ribbed corset, worked with spikes that rode atop her breasts like guns at the prow of a battleship; at her thin, paper-white arms, which bore even paler scars in swirling patterns; at her skirt, which was more tatters woven with crow feathers than fabric; at the cat-skull pendant against her throat.
Anywhere but at her eyes. Fae have dead silver eyes that will drown you as surely as a black, bottomless pool.
“No,” I whispered.
Octavia gestured. Outside, a colony of bats that lived in the hollow trunk of one of the great, ancient trees lining the courtyard took flight, black blood droplets for a moment against the canvas of the moon’s face, and then winked out. “Is this place not to your liking? You want for nothing.”
“I want to go home,” I blurted, deciding that when the Queen of Winter catches you out, all you can do is be honest and not curl up in a ball on the floor and scream.
“Home? But this is your home, child. You are Fae.”
“I’m a changeling,” I said. “And you might tolerate it in my mother, but we both know I’m not welcome here.”
“True,” Octavia said. She reached out and brushed her silver-tipped nails across my face. They left tiny, jagged furrows that stung and sprouted pen lines of blood. I touched my cheek and my fingers came away red. “I confess, I do find you curious. I like curiosities. I have a wing full of them. Two-headed hounds, a man with hair all over his body, a frog that sings in a human voice. But you, Aoife—you are the most curious of all.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re like a closed box of cogs. I haven’t yet figured out what makes you tick.”
“I lost someone,” I said. “I have to go to the Deadlands and see him.”
“Why?” Octavia looked genuinely confused. “If he is dead, he is dead. His soul can be with you no longer.”
I looked at my feet. I’d changed out of my Fae slippers and dress and into the clothes I’d been wearing when I’d arrived. They were musty and mud-covered but irrevocably human. I needed them, to remind me where I was going. “I have to see him again. To apologize, and to bring him back,” I told Octavia. “It’s my fault he’s dead. It wasn’t his time.”
“Well,” she drawled after a moment, stretching like the reptilian creature she was. “I can’t have you running off. Even if you can rip holes in reality. That is by far the most curious of all my curiosities, and I think you’ll remain right where you are. At least, if you want your mother to stay healthy.”
Octavia gripped my arm before I could protest, and dragged me out of the room and through the corridors. The few Fae still awake stared as they stepped to the side. My stomach lurched as we passed through a half-rotted door, twice as high as me, and started down a set of steps carved to look like skeletons holding up the treads.
“Where are we going?” I ventured. Octavia smiled at me, her teeth more like blades than ever in the low light of this subterranean place.
“I’m practiced at witchery,” she said. “I can make toads trip off your tongue and make you dance like a puppet, but I’ve found that nothing cements a lesson quite so well as a real-life example.”
The room was dark and, from what I could tell, empty. Octavia yanked me to a stop in front of a small black cage. I wasn’t sure what sort of metal it was—it couldn’t be iron, but it appeared strong and the bars were woven to look like a thorn thicket. Probably constructed by Erlkin slaves, the goblin race the Fae caught and forced to work their mines and metal shops so they could avoid contact with anything poisonous.
“Have fun,” Octavia hissed in my ear, then turned and stalked back to the staircase, her long blue and silver robe kicking up dust and the shells of dead beetles.
The door slammed and I heard a bolt click into place. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, to stave off anger more than panic. I didn’t know why she’d left me here, any more than I knew what was inside the cage, and I had no doubt that my confusion was part of Octavia’s plan. Fae loved to leave you off balance. It was how they tricked you.
“You look like I feel.” The voice was low and raspy, but I felt an instant spark of recognition. The cage was largely held in shadow. I stepped closer and squinted through the fist-sized holes in the mesh.
“Excuse me?”
“That expression. That hate. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost that.”
A hand flashed out and wrapped around mine, and I jerked involuntarily, the hot flush of shock pulsing through me. The grip was strong, and when I looked down I saw that the flesh was the sort of pale that skin becomes when it sits too long in the dark and damp, veins standing out like road maps. The nails tipping each finger were shredded and bloody, and the knuckles crusted with dirt.
“I’m just glad to see you, Aoife,” Grey Draven hissed. “Glad to know you’re as miserable as I am.”
“I …” I stopped trying to talk. I’d hoped to never see him again. Honestly, I’d thought the odds were good that Draven was dead, tortured for Octavia’s amusement. I’d never expected us to be having a conversation, certainly. Draven stared at me with glee burning in his eyes.
“Don’t look so alarmed. This is what happens when you don’t behave like a good little pet. Nothing compared with what happens when the queen’s in one of her moods. Care to see the scars?”
I jerked my hand free in disgust. Draven’s fingers left red marks around my wrist. Even half-starved and caged, he was still strong. And even crazier than when I’d last seen him. I didn’t see this ending well, for either of us.
“Leave me alone,” I whispered. “Don’t talk to me. We have nothing to say to each other.”
Draven laughed. He sounded like a frog trying to talk. “I don’t bear you any ill will, Aoife. You did exactly what I would have done. You protected yourself, and you got your revenge.” He coughed, a deep, wet rattle that revealed sickness dug far into his lungs. The air was cold against my skin, and I could hear water dripping off the stones. “It’s my own fault I let myself be outsmarted by a teenager.”
“How long has Octavia kept you down here?” I rubbed my arms against the cold. If her plan was to lock me up with Draven as punishment, it was working. One might hope their mother would notice they were gone and raise a fuss, but only if one didn’t have Nerissa for a parent. I doubted she’d notice until she got irritated with me for something and didn’t have anyone to yell at.
“Always,” Draven said. “Unless I’m trotted out at parties for her courtiers to view, or tortured by that pale-faced horror Tremaine for her amusement. Always in the dark.” He coughed again, and I saw blood fleck his lips. “Always.”
“I saved her life,
” I snarled, angrier than ever at Octavia. “I broke your curse, and she puts me down here with you like I’m no better than a prisoner.”
“You stupid child,” Draven said. “You are a prisoner. Even worse, you’re a prisoner who doesn’t know it. You think everything will be fine as long as you stay out of the queen’s line of vision. But sooner or later you’ll be in this cage with me. And then I’m not going to be so understanding about you putting me here.”
“You’re so generous,” I muttered. I knew, though, deep down, that he was right. My time in Octavia’s good graces was limited. I had to get out of here, and out of Thorn, before it expired entirely.
“I’m nothing of the sort,” Draven said. “Maybe I’m just curious as to why you’re still here, the girl who has the power to bend worlds together as if you were folding paper.” He raised a finger when I opened my mouth to retort. “Either you don’t have the nerve to make a run for it, or you’re waiting for something. So which is it?”
“Why do you care?” I said. Draven grinned at me—that same grin, tinged with insanity, that I’d had nightmares about since the first time I’d run afoul of him, back in Lovecraft.
“Because if you’re waiting for something, there are only a few things. Your mother is happy as a crazy little clam here in the Thorn Land, and your human family has gone on without you just fine, so it must be … the dead kid? Dean?”
I turned away from him, partly so he wouldn’t see my tears and partly so I wouldn’t reach through the mesh and wring his neck.
“You don’t want to talk to me about Dean.”
“Oh, but I do,” Draven said. “I know that someone must have told you there are ways to visit the dead. My research, shall we say … outside … of the norms of the Proctor laws told me plenty. And I bet your dear old dad knows all about it.”
I snorted. As if my father would ever discuss that sort of thing with me.
“Not Dad, then. Mother.” Draven hit the bars as if he’d just solved a great mystery. “Your mother told you how to reach the Deadlands and now you’re darting off to rescue Dean.”
“Why do you care what I do or don’t do?” I said wearily. Draven made me tired. Nothing was ever direct with him. There was always an angle, always a scheme.
“Ah,” he said. “Mother didn’t tell you, then. You’re just running off half-cocked, as usual.”
I gritted my teeth, hating that I was so transparent to someone like Draven. “I asked you why you care,” I snarled. “You hate me. Why do you care if I run off and get myself hurt?”
“Because, Aoife,” he said, “you’re my ticket out of here, and if you want to get to the Deadlands, I can help with that. But only once we’re safely back on human soil.”
I stared at him for a long time, and he huffed. “I know the way, Aoife. It’s not very hard. All I want in return for the information is a ride out of here. Even someone as scatterbrained as you can realize that’s a good deal.”
“I hate you,” I told him, turning my stare to a glare.
“Good,” Draven said. “Then the feeling’s mutual. But you don’t want to stay under the yoke of the Fae, and neither do I.”
“Even if I did trust you and take you with me—and I don’t trust you,” I said, “I’ve never used a Fae Gate. I can’t just plop us back into the Iron Land. We could end up anywhere.”
“Anywhere’s better than that silver-eyed bitch’s torture room,” Draven said.
I considered for several heartbeats. My mother wasn’t telling me anything, and she never would—she was even more stubborn than I was. If I did manage to make it home, my father would likely have the same reaction. He’d want to keep me out of danger. He’d want me to move on with my life, and carry my grief like a stone on my back. That was how my father coped with his sadness over my mother, so why, in his eyes, should I be any different?
Draven was untrustworthy, that much was apparent, but he was also a survivor. When he wanted something, he’d make any deal, with anyone.
I walked to the ring of keys hanging on a hook by the stone steps and came back to Draven. I held up the keys, yanking them back as he snatched for them through the bars. “Don’t make me regret this,” I said, “or I’ll send you through a Gate to somewhere so black and cold you’ll never crawl out.”
“Done,” Draven said as I unlocked his cell. He burst out with surprising speed for somebody the pale, sickly color he was. Then he grabbed my arm. “Let’s go.”
We were back up the steps before I managed to break free of his grasp. “Stop!” I hissed. “You can’t just run out of here.”
Draven looked at me, his lips compressed to a thin line. “Don’t make me take you out of here as a hostage,” he said. “Because if I have to hold a sharp object to your neck to get free, I will. The queen needs you. She doesn’t want you dead.”
“I do want to leave, all right?” I said. “But the halls are patrolled and the hexenring is out in the open. We’ll never make it if we just bolt.”
“That’s the difference between you and me,” Draven said. “I don’t care if I make it or not. Anything is better than here.”
He banged loudly on the door, and then looked at me. “Call to be let out,” he said. “Call or I’ll throw you down those stairs.”
I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to carry out his threat. Draven never made a threat he wasn’t perfectly prepared to act on, and that scared me. He was as ruthless as Octavia. In a different world they probably would have been good friends.
“Let me out, please!” I shouted, not needing to fake the fear in my voice. “I’m sorry, Octavia. Please let me out.”
Nothing happened, so Draven banged and I yelled for a good five minutes. At last a small voice penetrated the door. “Aoife?”
“Nerissa?” I said.
“Aoife, what on earth?” I heard her fumbling with the door and grumbling to herself. “How could you sneak out and go running around the court at night? Don’t you know it’s not safe? You don’t have the sense of a kitten, Aoife, you know that?”
The door swung open, and I tried to get between my mother and Draven. Pure panic drove me. I didn’t know what he’d do to her. He was desperate, and desperation makes people crazy.
He knocked me forward. I slammed into Nerissa, and we both tumbled to the ground. Draven’s hands were instantly on my collar, lifting me off my feet. He was strong, and I was smaller than I’d been when we last met. I’d barely eaten since arriving in Thorn.
“Sorry, Mommy,” he said as Nerissa blinked up at us, not understanding. “But I need to borrow your darling daughter. I promise I’ll keep her in good health.”
“Aoife!” Nerissa screamed, trying to catch my ankle as Draven dragged me down the corridor.
I looked back at her. “I’m sorry,” I managed to say before we were around the corner and gone. The agonized look on her face was like a knife to the gut. She thought I’d betrayed her, not because Draven had caught me but because she knew if I’d gotten caught out of our rooms, I’d been planning to run away in the first place. I just hoped I lived long enough to tell her I was sorry, that it couldn’t be any other way. And I hoped she’d be able to forgive me.
Draven and I made it to the hexenring, where a solitary Fae soldier stood watch, nodding to sleep.
The ring itself was made from nothing more than luminescent mushrooms that glowed softly against the blackened grass. A dead tree, branches reaching skeletal fingers to grasp the moon and cradle it, drooped over the mushrooms, and the guard leaned against it, humming under his breath.
“Stay here,” Draven said, crouching low.
I tried to stop him, but he came up on the soldier before I could do anything, and wrapped an arm around his neck, cutting off his air supply. I heard the man gasp and struggle for a second, before a crack like a twig snapping echoed in the still night air.
The soldier dropped in a heap, and Draven stood, chest rising and falling rapidly.
“It’s been a while since I
got my hands dirty,” he said. He pointed to the ring. “Your turn, Aoife. Show me what you can do.”
I walked to the ring, careful not to crush any of the mushrooms. The part of me that was connected to the Gates, the pathways that linked one world to the next, came to life and lit up behind my eyes.
Draven stood with me and put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes clouded and he frowned, no doubt feeling the gut-wrenching pull of the magic that linked the Gates to the fabric of the universe.
“What is that?”
“Gates slow down time,” I said. “You get used to it.” I didn’t tell him that if you lingered too long inside a hexenring you could lose years, decades even. I figured that was best kept to myself.
Draven’s grip became a vise, grinding the bones of my shoulder, and I gasped in pain. “Get moving,” he growled in my ear. “I never want to see this muddy hellhole again.”
I opened up my mind, and there was no resistance before the Gate rushed in to fill it.
2
The Encroaching Sky
I CAN’T EXPLAIN WHAT it’s like to travel by Gate. Not really. Imagine your entire body being stretched, loose and wobbly, and then snapping back and falling an infinite distance. You feel all this at once, and see everything there is to see, and then you hit the ground as if you were made of lead.
Using my Weird always took a heavy toll. There was intense pressure in my skull, and my nose usually bled at least a bit. Mostly, though, I felt the echoes of the Gate inside me, the vastness of it, and it made me curl on the ground and lie very still until I realized I was being pelted by a light rain. I fished in my pack for my slicker.
I raised my head, seeing low rolling hills bordered by stone walls, a small white farmhouse in the distance, and the cotton-wool sky overhead. I smelled earth and mud. It was spring in the Iron Land. I’d been gone for at least four months.
That thought spurred me more than anything. I had to find out where I was and devise a way of getting home. My accuracy with the Gates wasn’t the best—I could generally hit close to a target, but sometimes I’d be radically off and have to try again and again before I stepped out where I meant to.
The Mirrored Shard ic-3 Page 2