She couldn’t have survived. She shouldn’t have.
Icy water rose to drench me, and I gasped, spluttering, legs flailing. The cold sky of an autumn day wheeled above me as I heaved myself out of the shallows of a loch. I spat out a mouthful of water. Fresh water.
“Couldn’t you have brought us somewhere dry?” said Morgan, who’d landed in a heap in the shallows. Hazel picked a frog from her hair and stood up.
“Sorry,” I said, teeth chattering. The icy water had blasted away my exhaustion. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
I pressed a hand to my mouth. Holly… did Holly know? Had we unintentionally handed over information to the enemy after all? I wasn’t ready for this. Nobody should have the power to bring her back, but the fact that she’d survived at all…
“She’s there,” I whispered. “The Winter Gatekeeper. She’s behind Death’s gate. She saw me.”
14
Once we’d waded out of the loch—luckily without running into any of the resident kelpies—we began the long walk home.
“We’re clean of swamp water now,” said Hazel. “Look on the bright side.”
“The not-so-bright side is that our nemesis is alive. Or not dead enough,” I said.
“It’s not possible for her to come back,” said River.
“I don’t understand either.” My vision was splotchy, and my head pounded. “She’s there, but not on this side. Yet. I don’t know what she’s doing, but she still had her power when I banished her.”
And she was waiting for me. Whether she was behind what was going on in the Courts or not, I had no idea. But her survival meant things were seriously messed up with the Vale.
Wait—had I somehow been responsible for bringing her back, considering all the times I’d used the book? The necromancers were clear about the limits of accessing the realm of the dead, especially on the Ley Line. But I had no choice in the matter. The others would be dead if I hadn’t used it, and more would die if I didn’t stand between the Winter Gatekeeper and this realm.
Just putting one foot in front of the other was tiring enough. I stumbled forwards, and River put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. His green eyes were concerned. “Ilsa. Are you hurt?”
“No. I think the gate took something out of me.” I fell against him, and Hazel caught my arm from behind.
“Don’t overdo it. C’mon, we’ll get back home.”
“I’m fine.”
“Now you know how we feel with you mothering us all the time,” Morgan said.
“Someone has to,” I mumbled. “The Winter Gatekeeper… not just her. How did the Seelie Queen end up being the villain?”
“Of all people, I can’t believe it was her,” Hazel said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never met her before. But she has power, prestige… there’s nothing she can gain from working with the outcasts. We never even found out who died.”
“She can gain immortality,” I said. “For some, I’d guess anything is worth that. And if they kill their rivals, they don’t come back and tell tales. They stay dead.”
“It sounds like they’ve known for a while,” River said. “Maybe most of them wouldn’t agree with her approach. Some might want their lives to end after so long.”
“I think you’re being overly optimistic about the Sidhe’s attachment to being alive,” I said. “Not to mention their magic. Though most of them probably wouldn’t ally with outcasts because they’d end up losing their magic if they were caught. That’s worse than death for them.”
River nodded. “I think you’re exactly right.”
“But some of them would take the risk,” said Hazel. “Nobody’s going to question the Seelie Queen’s loyalty, are they? It’s the perfect setup. She hides behind her status while the others accuse one another.”
“But she’s not after the book,” I added. “Otherwise she’d have tried to take it from me. She’d also have known I could use it against her.”
Which made little sense. She couldn’t have sent Mum into the Vale, right? The Winter Gatekeeper and the ghost had both had personal grievances with the Gatekeeper and they’d wanted the book for power alone, but the Erlking’s wife had power.
The Winter Gatekeeper’s face flashed before my eyes again. Might she still be influencing people, even though I’d banished her where nobody could survive? Surely she couldn’t communicate with the Sidhe, at the very least. But those half-faerie ghosts could move anywhere.
Exhaustion dragged at my limbs, but I forced myself to keep going. Hazel groaned in relief when the house came into view. Only River looked remotely awake. I wished the book had given me healing abilities rather than draining the life out of me, but you couldn’t have it all. It’d got us out of the Vale, and that was enough.
Hazel unlocked the door, and we more or less fell into the Lynn house. Getting from the hall to the living room was a blur. I half-lay on the sofa, completely spent. “Remind me not to drag four people between universes again.”
“Remind me that all Sidhe are double-crossing bastards,” Hazel said, planting herself in the armchair. “For god’s sake. What in the world do we do now?”
“Go to Edinburgh and find someone in a position of authority who doesn’t want us dead,” I said, closing my eyes.
“I meant about the Seelie Queen,” Hazel said. “We can’t tell them that.”
“I can tell Ivy,” I said. “She knew the Sidhe weren’t immortal before they did, so she knows all about secrecy.”
“Might that be why the Seelie Queen’s doing this?” asked Hazel. “God—can you imagine accusing her of a crime? If any of us so much as insinuate it in front of any Sidhe, we’re dead.”
“Precisely,” River said. “The best course of action is to do as Ilsa said, and find allies on this side.”
“While they plot against us?” Morgan said.
“You saw how quickly the Sidhe will retaliate against you for perceived wrongs,” said River. “There is no way to safely pass on that information without putting our own lives at risk. If a fellow Sidhe made the accusation, perhaps, but there were no other witnesses. We need evidence.”
“Yeah.” He was right, unfortunately. To the Sidhe, power won over anything, even truth. Our word meant nothing at all. Even Hazel’s.
“It’s not like we found any in the Vale,” Hazel said. “Obviously. The Sidhe can walk in and out of that place whenever they like. Any of them might be traitors as well. And the Erlking… isn’t exactly keeping an eye on things. She already is ruling. Nobody will ever believe us.”
I woke up on the sofa, cold and aching, but more alert than before. My hair was still damp from the soaking in the loch. I must have passed out mid-conversation.
River sat in the armchair, his eyes closed, exhaustion written into his every feature. No sign of Hazel or Morgan. From the light streaming inside, it was dawn. I’d slept for at least twelve hours. Probably more. My body felt like it’d been… well, thrown into the Grey Vale, dragged through a swamp and then thrown into a loch.
The Vale.
The Seelie Queen.
The Winter Gatekeeper.
Panic clawed up my throat. I took in a breath, slowly, fighting to maintain calm. Okay. So nobody else has ever faced this before, and nobody will believe us on either side, and I’m pretty sure we’ve lost most of our allies… but other than that, things are absolutely fine.
Points in our favour: we’d survived. My family was still alive, if a little battered. I’d tapped into the limits of my power and used it in places even cut off from death. And the Seelie Queen thought we were dead. She wouldn’t come after us again… for now.
River’s eyes opened. I’d been too exhausted even to tap into the spirit realm, but he’d been watching me all the same.
“Hey,” I rasped. “Is it morning?”
“I think so.” He still wore his torn, mud-splattered clothes from yesterday. So did I. My jeans were torn from grindylow claws and grasping branches, and t
he witch spell hiding the mark on my forehead was the only survivor from my weapons stash. Everything else was broken, missing or damaged. Even the container of iron filings.
But not the book. I’d been sleeping with it clasped to my chest, my hands tight around the cover.
“You look awful,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. That book is destroying you, Ilsa.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing wrong with me. How else should we have got out of that realm?”
“We never should have been there in the first place,” he said. “That talisman’s magic is both inside you and inside the book. If you keep pushing it to its limits, you’ll break first. The magic is too much to be contained in a human.”
“Ivy has faerie magic. Ancient’s magic. Whichever.”
“I don’t know Ivy.” Frustration laced his voice. “I know you. You know how many times you disconnected from your own body while you were sleeping? We’re not even on the Ley Line here. You could have drifted off, and the book would have let you.”
My heart jumped. I didn’t know he’d been watching over me in more than one sense, let alone that my necromantic powers had been activating while I’d been unconscious. I had no memory of it. Just blurred dreams, some of which River had featured in. I was pretty sure I hadn’t floated off into the spirit realm, because in those dreams we’d both been safe and warm and happy, not freezing and tired and scowling at one another.
“I can’t control what I do in my dreams, can I?” I said. “I don’t know, maybe I got shaken up because the evil spirit I banished appeared and stared at me from behind the gate yesterday. You should worry about her, not me.”
“I am worried about her,” River said. “But I’m more worried about what this magic is doing to you.”
“I didn’t plan this. It’s not like I found the talisman on purpose.” I pushed up onto my elbows. “But you know, if I hadn’t been there—if I’d ignored the message and stayed in Edinburgh, I’d be living that same life, drifting around like a ghost. I wasn’t happy, and the book opened my eyes. More than the Sight ever did. I can’t regret that. And I can’t imagine things being different. The person I was before—she doesn’t exist anymore.”
Some events shook up the world. You felt the shift. I’d felt it when I’d opened the window in Edinburgh and Arden had flown in, bringing the scent of magic. I’d felt it when I’d picked up the book and its power had roared through my veins, changing me.
“You have to want this power for you,” he said. “Not because you think the book wants you to use it. I might not know that type of talisman, but I know that if you’re constantly fighting against it, it’s no part of you. It’s a separate entity.”
A sour taste filled my mouth. “Why can’t it be both? Your sword clearly isn’t physically attached to you.”
He lifted the blade and put it down. Then he stepped away, magic flowing to his hands. The blade didn’t glow at all, but the magic dancing over the palms of his hands was undiminished.
“The magic is inside me as well,” he said. “I keep the talisman with me in the interests of safety, but it doesn’t bother me when I’m not touching it. I control the talisman. Not the other way around.” He stepped forwards, lightly tapped the blade’s hilt with his foot, and it leapt into his hand.
“You’ve made your point,” I said. “I don’t know why my talisman is like this. I can’t give it up, though. It’s not an option. Do you really trust something so powerful in Morgan’s hands instead?”
“It should be sealed away where it can’t control anyone.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “You want me to be a helpless human?”
“You’re the opposite of helpless, Ilsa. You were before the book claimed you.”
Before the book claimed you. Not before I’d claimed the book. Maybe that was my problem, but ditching it wasn’t an option. And I wouldn’t put up with its side effects to prove a point to River.
I rose to my feet and stepped up to him. His eyes glowed faintly green in the dawn light, and his mouth was curved down at the corners. I wrapped my arms around the back of his head and kissed him. “Chill. I’m not about to take a permanent dive through the gates anytime soon. There are a lot of things I want to do here on earth.”
He exhaled and kissed me back, holding onto me like I was made of glass. “Don’t go where I can’t come with you,” he murmured. “Please.”
Oh, River. “I’ll try not to.”
His hand trailed through my hair, sparking a current of warmth in my blood.
“Hey, Ilsa!” shouted Morgan from the hallway. “You alive?”
“She’s fine.” Hazel peered around the door. “She wants to be left alone with River.”
“No, we need a plan,” I said, taking a step back from River as she and Morgan entered the room. “It’s time to get to Edinburgh and find Ivy. Unless… I don’t suppose you managed to find Holly’s house?”
Hazel shook her head. “No. I don’t know if the Ley Line moved, or if it’s because my magic is fading, but I couldn’t find her. I was sure she was on our side this time.”
“She might be,” I said. “She turned on her mother in the end, you know she did.” And she’d given me the books. But how long had the Winter Gatekeeper been lurking out of sight behind the gates?
“Maybe,” said Hazel. “Doesn’t mean she won’t be manipulated.”
“I’ve never met her,” said Morgan, leaning on the door frame. “So I’m assuming everyone connected to Death or Faerie is an enemy until further notice.”
“Good idea,” said Hazel. “At least we have Agnes and Everett on our side.”
“And Ivy Lane,” I put in. “If she’s there, I reckon she can threaten the Seelie Queen. Maybe. Her talisman’s on the same level as theirs, and she might have some tips about handling this situation.”
Maybe she could explain the dichotomy between what I wanted and what the book wanted me to do. But I wouldn’t stop using its power. That wasn’t an option.
For the Sidhe, power was enough. But power didn’t mean truth, and besides, I couldn’t outdo the Sidhe through sheer brute force. They could break me in a thousand ways. But for all their pomp and ceremony, they had the same vices as humans did. They weren’t infallible, and they had gaping holes in their knowledge, especially concerning humans.
The person who’d created the book hadn’t wanted the Sidhe to know. If the Seelie Queen did, she hadn’t said so.
Hazel gave an unsteady laugh. “You know I’m fucked if we all actually make it out of this alive and Mum expects me to interact with the Sidhe as though they deserve respect. They tried to kill us.”
“I knew what they were the instant I first saw one,” Morgan said. “Maybe that’s why the curse skipped me over.”
I shook my head. “Well, Mum apparently had an invitation to meet with this council in Edinburgh, but I guess it came after she went to Faerie. Seems a good time to crash their party.”
15
Before going to Agnes’s place, I stopped at the Lynn family mausoleum and checked the spirit realm to see if Ivy was around. If she hadn’t told the council we were coming, we’d have a much harder job explaining ourselves. Then again, there was someone else I could send to pass on a message.
This time, the others all came with me to the mausoleum, where River and I set the candles up again.
“It’s fine,” I told River. “I stayed too long last time, but I’ll only be five minutes this time. If time’s up, both you and Morgan have my permission to zap me awake. Deal?”
River nodded. His scowl betrayed his belief that I wasn’t taking the danger seriously.
“Come on, I have to warn them we’re coming,” I told him. “I don’t even know what day it is, or if the council is still there.” I stepped into the circle. Then I drifted into the spirit world, and looked around the endless grey smoke. “Graves?”
No sign of him. The local necromancers had been quiet since t
he half-faerie ghosts’ attack, probably recovering from the humiliation of not being able to do a thing about them. I rotated on the spot and made for the closest key point. Then the next. The silvery line beneath my feet disappeared in a blur. How much ground had I covered in the mortal realm? Miles, probably. I kept moving, from one point to the next, until the land beneath the line grew familiar. Edinburgh, and the Ley Line, were close by. Maybe I’d find Ivy on the line itself—
I stopped, hovering in the air. Someone else floated close by, an old man in a suit with grey hair.
“Hey, Graves. What are you doing out here?”
The man turned around. “Graves? The name is Lord Sydney, and you must be one of these infamous Lynns.”
Oh, crap. Easy mistake to make, considering he and Greaves looked like they might be related. His accent was English, though.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
He looked at the glowing silver light at my feet as though to confirm I was actually there. “I have an unfortunate partnership of sorts with your distant relation, Ivy Lane.”
“Wait, you’re Frank the necromancer?”
“The name is Lord—”
“Yeah, yeah. Have you seen Ivy? Tell her I’m on my way, and I have epically bad news.”
There was the slightest chance Lady Montgomery would lock me in jail again, or the mages would, if I told the entire council about the Seelie Queen being evil. Or worse, I’d be hauled into Faerie and put on trial for lying. There was no way to prove I told the truth, not when the Sidhe were the masters of trickery and glamour. All I had were words—but I of all people knew how powerful words could be.
“Bad news?” said Frank the necromancer. “Is it to do with the downright alarming stories I’ve heard about you from the necromancers at Edinburgh’s guild?”
“Yes, but worse. Is the council still there? I’m coming to speak to them, now. In person. But I need someone to warn the council that the Summer Gatekeeper needs to talk to them without the Sidhe knowing.”
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