“Yeah,” she said. “It says… watch your step, amateur.”
“Seriously? Dammit, Arden.”
I couldn’t hate Arden, despite his keeping the truth from us up until the last possible moment. I could only imagine navigating the wave of vows and promises to keep our family safe. And he had done so, really.
As Ivy turned to speak to the Mage Lords, Hazel dragged Morgan towards me. “He’s being… Morgan.”
“I only dozed off for two seconds,” Morgan protested.
“You left your body and kept wandering around as a ghost,” Hazel said.
“I didn’t see,” I said honestly. “Since when did you have the spirit sight?”
Hazel shook her head. “No clue. I only saw Morgan, anyway. It’s not fair that two of you get to be honorary necromancers and not me.”
“Hey, you get to start actual Summer Gatekeeper training soon,” Morgan said.
“Soon. There are still a few things I need to talk to the council about, but I think Mum’s trying to make up for lost time.” She gestured across the room, where Mum was in conversation with several mages. And Lady Montgomery.
“Oh.” Crap. Despite what I’d told Mum yesterday, I wasn’t quite ready for this.
“Relax,” River said from behind me. “She’s not saying anything bad. Singing your praises, actually.”
“Has Lady Montgomery told her the part where Morgan and I broke you out of jail to stop the apocalypse?”
He grinned. “No. But you’re still in one piece after telling her the rest of it, so I assume there’s no danger of any of us being turned into trees.”
“Not unless the Sidhe turn up,” Hazel said. Her forehead gleamed with Summer power. “Actually, I can do that now. Hmm.”
Morgan scowled at her. “Don’t you even think about it.”
I glanced around at the crowd. “I didn’t expect this big an audience.”
“The whole necromancer council showed up,” said River. “To hear you speak.”
I blinked. “What? Have they forgotten how I nearly got them killed?”
“I think they have the full story by now.” His hand slid into mine. “It’s fine. You have an open membership at the guild for as long as you need it.”
Morgan frowned. “You’re not staying?”
I shrugged. “For now? Sure. What about you?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m staying at the guild.”
“But you’ll come and see me,” said Hazel. “Both of you. I’ll need a distraction from the Sidhe’s gruelling trials.”
“Of course we will.” I looked at River, who’d squeezed my hand meaningfully. “Be back in a minute.”
I walked after River, out of the room. The moment we were alone, he wrapped his arms tight around me. “Ilsa.”
I sealed my mouth over his. “Thanks for not giving up on me.”
“It was out of the question.” He stroked my hair with one hand, the other wrapped around my hips. For a moment we just held onto one another. I felt him exhale. “You didn’t give a definite answer to your brother’s question.”
“About whether I’m staying here?” I pulled back from him a little. “That depends on whether you decide to take up the council’s offer or not.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Because obviously, my choice will involve the easiest and quickest way to be right next to you whenever I feel like it. In person, not in the spirit realm.”
“Then you’re not going with Ivy? I thought—she told me she intended to help train you.”
“I don’t need to go with her,” I said. “I can use the spirit line… stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to die, and besides, I don’t need to open the book whenever I have a problem to solve. I’m in control of this. Everything I did was intentional.” I kissed him on the mouth, and the spirit realm briefly unfolded around us, muting the world to grey. Another second, and the waking world came back. “See?”
I jumped as his lips traced down my neck. “What if I gave you an incentive to stick around?”
“You don’t need to. I’ve always felt more at home here than anywhere else. I assume you’re not leaving.”
He shook his head. “No. Considering the state of things in the Summer Court, I’m intending to tell them I won’t be taking on any more assignments.”
“Wasn’t I worth it?” I winked at him.
“Of course.” He trailed a hand through my hair, tucking a loose strand behind my ear. “I only want to bodyguard one person now.”
“I thought you were going to try to compete with Ivy on who gets to finish my necromancer training.”
His mouth quirked. “At this point, I think we’d be hard-pressed to get Lady Montgomery’s permission for me to mentor you.”
I pretended to pout. “I thought she liked me.”
“She does. Our relationship would be very much against the guild’s rules, however, and I don’t think either of us would want to go back to keeping our distance.”
“I quite liked sneaking off for dates in coffee shops, but no thanks.” I leaned in to brush my lips against his. “Speaking of. Want to go there now, before they drag us back in?”
“I’d like nothing more, Ilsa.”
I took his hand and pulled him after me into daylight, where the sight of transparent ghosts hovering around couldn’t kill my good mood. Even when they zoned in on the mark on my head.
River looked at me. “Are you sure you want to wear the mark everywhere?”
“I think it’s going to be tricky to hide that I’m Gatekeeper by now.” The book began to glow in my pocket, and I pulled it out. The swirling mark on the cover had changed… to a picture of a raven.
“Someone had to get the last word in.” I rolled my eyes.
The bird winked.
***
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Hazel’s trilogy is in the works now. Read on for a preview of Hidden Crown, Book 1 in the Gatekeeper’s Trials trilogy!
Preview of Hidden Crown
If faeries loved one activity more than they loved enthralling mortals, it was admiring their own reflections.
Elegantly dressed faeries occupied the entire row of mirrors in the Ladies at the nightclub, touching up the glamour on their already-perfect faces. Shifting colours, bright flowers woven into curling hair and glittering wings caught the garish lights above the mirrors, while in the background, a lilting tune played through loudspeakers at top speed, like a modern remix of a traditional faerie ballad.
On another night, I might have come here looking for a good time, not a murderer, but I made a point of preparing for both possibilities. Ducking into a vacant stall, I reached into my bag for an iron dagger and carefully slid it into the sheath on my thigh, hidden under the hem of my dress. Then I threw on a glamour of my own. My blond-tinted hair darkened to black, my face altering imperceptibly. I kept my rounded ears—passing as a regular human would be an asset for once—and trusted the neon lights in the nightclub to hide my magic-tinted eyes and the swirling silver mark on my forehead beneath my newly glamoured curls.
My phone buzzed with a message from my sister—where are you?
Right. I was supposed to be meeting Ilsa at the pub across the road, but the instant I’d heard the lilting music from inside the nightclub, I’d known someone was up to no good. Suppressing a sigh, I turned my phone to silent and left the cubicle.
Nobody noticed I didn’t look like the same person who’d walked in, but glamours were second-nature to the fae. As prey walking among predators, I had to be alert for every small change in my perception, but the fae had the luxury of taking what they saw at face value. A lilac-haired half-faerie with furred fox-like ears looked up, her confused gaze flicking from my glamoured reflection to my rounded human ears, but I was already walking away.
The thrum of the music swallowed me up along with the h
eaving, sweating crowd. Glamoured half-faeries danced with humans, the latter distinguished by their glazed, vacant expressions. Nobody could say they hadn’t been warned. Every human these days knew not to dance with the fae, but peer pressure was as powerful as the faeries’ ability to play on human desires like a well-strung harp. Even half-faeries weren’t immune to the magic of their Sidhe brethren, though they liked to think they were.
All it took was one promise, one detour into the wrong part of the forest, one dance—and then you were theirs. Forever.
On the stage, DJ Thorntooth cranked up the music to twice its previous speed. The screeching ballad mingling with modern auto-tune created an eardrum-melting combination even by nightclub standards, but I resisted the impulse to buy a round of shots to numb the oncoming headache. I needed to be at my sharpest if I wanted to take down my target without more bloodshed than there needed to be.
As his name suggested, DJ Thorntooth wasn’t human, even if he was wearing the skin of one. Damn unhygienic, if you asked me. Since most people in here were either drunk, stoned, couldn’t see through glamour or just plain didn’t give a crap, they had no idea how much danger they were in. On the plus side, that meant I’d have less panicking to deal with.
The music sped up, and so did the crowd, their movements turning jerky, robotic. They would dance until their screams drowned the sound of the bass and their blood soaked into the beer-drenched floor. I wove through the haze of magic, pretending to be enthralled, while my own magic lurked beneath the surface. It didn’t make me completely immune to the effects of the music, but the green glow at my fingertips helped me focus on what I needed to do.
I inched closer to the stage, creeping up behind the DJ. Then, threads of magic lashed from my hands, yanking him off his feet and onto the filthy floor. His startled cry was lost in the clamour as I aimed my next attack right at the stage. Thorny stems burst from floor to ceiling, cutting off the music with a spluttering crash.
“Show’s over, folks,” I shouted into the microphone. “DJ Thorntooth will be taking a long-term sabbatical.”
The DJ wriggled free from my magic and dove off the stage, knocking humans and half-faeries aside like skittles. The bewildered clubbers hindered his escape entirely by accident, allowing me to grab his wrist and drag him towards the back door.
“You can’t have magic!” he yelped. “You’re human.”
I didn’t argue that I wasn’t human, because I was. Instead, I pushed my curls aside with my free hand and let the symbol on my forehead do the talking.
The mark of the Summer Gatekeeper.
He gave an uncomprehending blink. Then the pieces clicked into place. “I wasn’t doing nothing wrong! I’m an innocent bystander!”
“And that human skin you’re wearing just leapt off of its own accord, did it?”
“They planted it on me!” He squirmed, fighting me all the way out of the back door and into the alley behind the nightclub. “I’ll tell on you to the Seelie Queen. She’s a good friend of my mum’s, she is.”
I dropped my voice. “Really? Because I’m in the employ of the Summer Court, and if you’d ever set one foot there in your miserable existence, you’d know the Seelie Queen is currently in jail for treason. And you—” I jabbed him in the chest—“Will soon be joining her.”
“I didn’t do anything!” he shrieked. “You’ll never get away with this.”
I pulled a pair of iron handcuffs from my purse. “Time for a one-way trip to the Ley Line.”
He screamed as the iron made contact with his skin, latching his wrists together. His face turned greyish, his knees giving out as the iron ate away at his magical defences.
“Hazel!” My twin sister’s voice came from the mouth of the alley. “What are you doing? I thought you were supposed to be meeting Morgan and me at the pub.”
“I was.” I gave a sharp tug on the DJ’s wrist, and he whimpered. “Before I got side-tracked by this lowlife human-killer.”
“Ugh.” Ilsa pulled a face at the sight of the DJ’s human-skin coat. “Are you taking him to Faerie?”
“Unfortunately.” Human prisons might have upgraded since the faeries had revealed themselves to the world, but the Sidhe were supposed to be responsible for punishing their wayward kin, even if they made every effort to evade that responsibility most of the time. “I’ll message you when I’m done. This won’t take long.”
“Sometimes I think you go looking for trouble on purpose,” Ilsa said.
“I don’t need to look too hard, do I?” For all that the faeries claimed our realm was a poison to them, they were the ones who’d let their outcasts invade earth and spread chaos and destruction over the past two decades, and since humans were woefully behind on effective methods for dealing with fae criminals, it fell to me to dispense justice in my own way.
I dragged DJ Thorntooth through the cobbled, winding streets until I came to the shimmering line that divided our realm from Faerie. The Ley Line was invisible to most, including the DJ himself, and he gasped in surprise when the cobbled street vanished from sight.
An instant later, we appeared on a country lane outside the Summer Lynn house. Ivy cloaked the walls of the manor, giving it a dark and forbidding appearance without the usual soft sunbeams highlighting the garden’s vibrant colours. The house might be stuck in perpetual summer, like the Seelie Court, but the clocks ran on the same time as the human world outside, and a crescent moon hung in the sky overhead.
DJ Thorntooth eyed the wide gardens, their flowerbeds bursting with night-blooming flowers. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
I gave him a smack on the back of the head. “Shut it.”
I opened the gate and pushed him through into the garden, steering him around the side of the manor towards the black mass of trees towards the back of the lawn. Behind those trees lay the forests of the Winter Court, and the house belonging to the other branch of the Lynn family.
Don’t let the Seelie/Unseelie divide fool you. The Summer Court is as ruthless as Winter, and its inhabitants just as devious. I should know, because I dealt almost exclusively with the little bastards.
I reached the tall, wide gates that marked the end of our garden. Flanked by eternally blooming flowers, the Summer gate was one of the only known passages from the human realm directly into Faerie. Legend told that the gate—and its Winter counterpart—had sprang into existence in the same spot where my ancestor, Thomas Lynn, had crossed into the faerie realm for the first time.
Unlike most humans, he’d walked out again. Some stories said the Sidhe themselves had gifted him with extraordinary powers. Others claimed he’d fled with the Wild Hunt snapping at his heels. Whatever the case, all the versions of the tale I’d heard told me Faerie’s influence had remained, lingering over his shoulder as he re-integrated into the human realm, married his childhood sweetheart, and had children.
That’s when the Sidhe came back. Thomas Lynn, it seemed, had sworn to come to the aid of the Courts whenever they needed him, and the Sidhe had taken him at his word. They’d woven a spell so deep that it filtered through the bloodline of any person born into the Lynn family, choosing one host for each Court with every generation. His twin daughters became the first Gatekeepers: one for Summer, one for Winter. And now, centuries later, it was my turn.
I rapped on the moss-covered bars of the gate, which made a hollow, echoing noise. “One criminal, coming right up.”
The Sidhe had made no secret of their disapproval of my using the gate as a depository for their rule-breaking brethren, but since Mum had been forced into early retirement by an attempted coup in the Summer Court, they’d been in no rush to officially crown me as Gatekeeper. As far as I was concerned, that meant they’d have to deal with any criminals I tossed their way in the meantime.
I pushed the gate inwards, and the DJ made a desperate bid for freedom. Handcuffed hands outstretched, he leapt headfirst into the hedge with surprising agility, vanishing in a shower of leaves.
“Hey!” I ran to the gap between the neat hedges that led into the Inner Garden. The unfortunate DJ flailed upside-down for a moment before crashing into the glowing pool of water in the grove’s centre.
Crap. That’s probably bad luck. The pool contained healing magic from the heart of the Summer Court itself—not that it would be of any use to the DJ when the Sidhe got hold of him. I grabbed his flailing arm and fished him out of the pool, dragging him after me with a firm hand.
“What magic was that?” he spluttered, his hair sopping wet and his skin glistening with droplets of silvery water.
“There’s no point in asking. You’ll be dead in five minutes.” I gave him a sharp kick through the gate, and he landed in a heap beneath his human-skin coat.
“You said I was going to jail!” He scrambled upright, his eyes wide with alarm. “Please—”
I slammed the gate closed, cutting off his pleading. As far as I was concerned, cowardly shits who murdered innocent people deserved no leniency. I turned my back and headed home to get a drink.
Even cast in darkness, the Summer Lynn house was impressive, its ivy-curtained walls resembling a fairy-tale cottage blown up to manor-size. I entered through the back door and conjured up a glass of wine. Whether it came from inside Faerie or was simply a creation of magic, I hadn’t a clue, but with the faeries, it was usually better not to ask.
Light glimmered in the corner of my eye. I lowered my glass and damn near threw it at the person standing in in the darkness like a living statue. The mark on my forehead pulsed with magic, alerting me to the threat. Little too late there.
“Your Gatekeeper’s Trials will begin tomorrow,” the man said, his voice soft and yet precise, layered with the hint of a threat.
My grip tightened on the glass. I could have layered the house in a thousand alarms and tripwire spells and none of them would have kept out a Sidhe messenger from the Summer Court. They owned the place, after all.
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