“Augh!”
Lightning shot through my arm, but I didn’t let go. Not when it felt like my shoulder was ready to pop right then and there. Not when that thing’s claws dug into my leg, threatening to rip it free.
“Get off!” I screeched, slamming my bare foot into its face.
Bone and cartilage crunched under my heel. The claws dug into my legs, but I couldn’t feel it anymore. My bloody fingers began to loosen. I kicked again. Teeth scraped against my foot. The drone slipped, its claws pulling down my leg.
“GET OFF!” I howled, and with one final kick, I sent it flying back down, crashing among its fellow abominations in a heap.
My arms shook as I heaved myself up. The drones snarled below, clambering against toxic walls they could not climb.
I sucked in a lungful of air and clambered to my feet. Machinery stretched out around me, a wealth of hiding places. This probably wasn’t even remotely where all of this would be in a real steel mill. But it was what I needed. This was my dream.
I staggered forward as gingerly as I could, minding the blood-slick floor beneath my injured leg.
“You’re doing very well, Bryn. Though I hate to see you put yourself through such unnecessary pain.”
No!
I knew better. I knew she was trying to slow me down. But I whirled around, and came nose to nose with Mab. The rip in her dress had already been repaired. Like I’d never managed to hit her at all.
“I do hate to do this by force,” Mab said tartly, grabbing my wrists with hands like shackles.
The mill faded, like a transparency sheet set over a picture of a forest. The distant sounds and smells of the feast crept in, pushing back against the reek of burning iron and the hisses of the drones below us.
No! No, this was my dream. I squeezed my eyes shut and, with everything I had, I pushed back against the woods. Against the Unseelie. Against every horrible second of my life this heartless bitch had ever controlled.
“You can’t control me!” I shouted, and the smell of the feast faded. “This is mine!”
The world shuddered around me. The ground lurched. I crashed back against the control panel.
My eyes flew open. Mab lay in a heap on the ground, staring at me with mixed surprise and horror. The steel mill rearranged itself underneath us, iron pipes writhing like snakes as the great, glowing crucible floated expectantly toward us. Drones scurried like ants.
“Bryn,” Mab breathed, her large eyes locking with mine.
I rose slowly, reaching for the controls. This was a dream, so it probably didn’t even matter what I hit. It was the intent that mattered.
Mab wrapped her arms around her middle, her huge mane of hair shifting as she cocked her head, her lips curling into a smirk as she extended her arm for the second time.
Mab pushed herself to her feet and took a small step forward, like a hunter trying not to startle a deer.
“Child,” she breathed.
I slapped my hand blindly against the control board.
The floor let out an ear-splitting screech as it ripped open beneath her. Awareness sparked in Mab’s eyes a split second before she plunged down into the molten iron. There wasn’t even a scream. Just a horrible hiss and plumes of steam billowing out from the pool of glowing metal that had been the queen.
My hand dropped from the control panel. Sweat beaded on my skin, chilling it in the evening air as I gasped for breath. I’d finally done it. Mab was gone. The glowing mound of iron began to cool to a steely gray … and Mab was trapped inside of it. Poisoned or burned, whichever got her first.
I sagged into the control panel. I didn’t know what to think or feel. There was too much to process. Too much she’d slung at me at once. I felt like a computer program with a flood of operations running at once, forcing me to freeze. Maybe that had been her intention. Overload me with information until I couldn’t move.
But it was over. I just had to wake up and I could go home. A hysterical thought entered my mind. Did this make me the Unseelie queen? I’d killed Mab. Did that mean I’d overthrown her by their logic? A manic, whimpering laugh slipped out, and I clenched my fists, squeezing my eyes until tears leaked out. God, that would be the stupidest thing ever, wouldn’t it?
The world rippled around me. I hugged my arms to my chest, my breath coming in short gasps.
The distant strains of a halting hymn penetrated the dark haze. Choir practice nearby. Somebody was off-key. The intermingled smells of must and old stone pulled me away from the filth and reek of the mill.
I took a deep breath, then another. My head ached. Soft fabric pressed into my cheek.
Seventeen
I jerked awake. The dull, stone room swam around me. Every muscle in my body ached. My heart pounded. Hot sweat cooled against my skin until, at last, the truth of it began to settle in. I had defeated Mab. In her own territory, with iron.
I blinked through the dark, but nothing felt real. The haziness of the dream still clung to me like smoke after a bonfire, but I was awake.
I scrambled out of the bed, and that’s when the pain hit. Tiny stabs at the soles of my feet. Bigger ones at my legs. And something ripping at my shoulder. I bit down on my knuckle and waited for the pain to fade away. After a minute, it softened enough for me to look at it. My feet were filled with tiny rips. Splinters from an old ladder, only there was no actual wood to cause the wounds. Thick scratches wound like veins down my legs, already scabbed over where the drones had grabbed me.
The damage was real. They’d really hurt me. For just a moment, the thought wrapped around my chest like a python, but it loosened with the realization that it was real. They’d hurt me. That meant I’d hurt them, too. It meant Mab was dead.
I stumbled to my feet, not even bothering to pull on socks before I shoved my feet into my boots and pulled on my jacket. The shadeling stirred in the shadows by my bed, but I didn’t wake it. It deserved to sleep peacefully.
Hard to say what it meant that I could slip out at God-even-knows what hour of the night without triggering a single alarm, and maybe I should have been a little more concerned about living there, but for the moment, it suited me.
The night air nipped at my exposed skin, but it was a peripheral feeling, like a growling stomach when you weren’t really hungry. I hobbled into the woods on burning, stinging legs. Everything blurred around me. If anything lurked between the trees, I had no reason to fear it. On a night like this, I was invincible.
“Gwen,” I called, squelching my way into the shallows of the pond. The cloudy night offered no glimpse of the village under the surface. Water seeped into my boots and bit at my feet. I splashed farther. “Gwen! I need you. It’s important!”
Under all my splashing came the soft sound of pouring water, like a little brook somehow making itself known above a waterfall. Gwen rose from the pond, hands clasped together, her face pinched as the water ran down her face in thin rivulets. It was the first time she’d ever been anything less than perfectly composed. I must have just woken her.
“It’s very late,” she reminded me crisply. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“It was Mab,” I gasped. “She came to me in a dream. She was the one behind all of it, but I stopped her.”
Gwen’s eyes widened, her hands flying to her shift to grip it tightly.
“Come, sit on the bank, this water is too cold for you,” she instructed, gliding over to the muddy grass. I trudged behind her, my boots squelching with every step. I plopped down on the grass beside her, my wet nightgown sticking to my shins, and for the life of me I didn’t know if the little shivers that ran down my back were from the cold or the excitement.
“My mum’s been reaching out to me in dreams. It wasn’t the gray lady, it was Mum. And she kept saying the same things over and over in Welsh and I looked in the book and they were spells—”
“Bryn!” It was the closest Gwen had ever come to a biting word. “I told you not to try it.”
“It’s okay
. My mum—”
“Your Welsh is poor. You don’t know enough to speak those spells. You don’t know the cost.”
“But I did it!” I flexed my palms, fighting off the chill that tried so hard to settle into the bones. “And I saw Mab. But I won! I tricked her into a steel mill. I trapped her under molten iron. No Fae can survive that. Especially not one who lives in dreams like she said she does.”
Gwen pursed her lips and glanced away. “I believe you may have wounded her,” she murmured. “But I cannot imagine her being so swiftly defeated. That is a fool’s fantasy.”
“I buried her in iron, Gwen.” I grabbed her hand and brought it to my scratched legs. “She did this to me. What happened in that dream was real, and I buried her!”
Gwen’s eyes darted toward me, bright and fearful in the night. The cool feeling of water washed over my legs. I caught my breath as my skin knitted itself back together, leaving behind only faint, red lines to suggest anything had been wrong at all. When it was done, Gwen nestled her hands in the folds of her shift and gazed over the water.
I scooted closer to her. “Tell me that, even in a dream, that wouldn’t be enough to kill anything. Especially a Fae.”
“It should,” she mused. “But was it not also a dream that told you what spell to use?”
“I…” My stomach clenched. I didn’t want to think too much about it, but there was that other bit of information Mab had given. But if she was gone, maybe I wouldn’t have to think too hard about the implications. “I think my mum knew how to reach out through dreams. That’s why I can believe it was her. Mab said that she belonged to her and learned from her. Like a changeling, only Mab seems to think she owns our bloodline or something.”
Gwen went still. Pale as she was, for just a moment, she looked like Lot’s wife. A lovely, silent pillar of salt. A stronger shiver ran down my spine. I pulled my knees up to my chest, not daring to speak.
After what felt like forever, Gwen lifted her chin to the cloudy sky. “The woman in gray stood before a red banner with a gold dragon.”
I frowned. “Yeah. Wait. Do you think she’s the one who promised us to Mab? Maybe her bloodline didn’t die out after all. Maybe … maybe it’s us.”
“It doesn’t matter. Her power is nothing now. And you have bigger concerns.” Gwen turned to face me. “Samhain is still coming. I cannot believe Mab is gone, but even if she is, whatever plans she put into place may still come. The Seelie court will not help you here. Be cautious.”
She leaned forward, pressing her cool lips to my forehead. Something like ice washed over me in waves, flooding from the burning spot where her lips touched my skin. My teeth began to chatter.
“W-what was that?” I gasped, finally giving in and wrapping my arms around myself.
“Protection,” Gwen murmured, but her words came out stiff and unsteady. “Keep your head down, Bryn. But for now. Go home. Be warm. And do not do this again. I will have to speak to my sisters.”
I stumbled to my feet as Gwen crept back into the water. The last I saw of her was her frown before the pond closed up over her head. Uncertainty curled in my gut. I think that was Gwen’s equivalent of being pissed at someone … but she’d get over it. She’d felt my legs. She’d seen the damage. She couldn’t ignore it.
I staggered back through the woods, my skin a ripple of gooseflesh in the crisp air. The cold dragged at me like an anchor and very nearly stole my breath. Gwen might have been nice enough to give me some sort of magical blessing that felt like hot cocoa or fuzzy blankets.
Back in the convent, I couldn’t bundle up quickly enough. My wet, muddy things were banished to the corner where all of my dirty clothes had been slowly accumulating while I changed into a pair of threadbare long johns complete with faded pictures of reindeer stamped all over them and some truly garish and deeply comfortable wool socks. Warmth began to creep back into my bones, but I couldn’t get comfortable just yet. A buzzing energy kept me on my feet. Somehow, the shadeling still slept soundly at the foot of the bed. The whole world might have changed tonight, and nobody even knew.
I slipped into the hall and padded as silently as I could from room to room. Dad lay sprawled across his bed. A to-do list was taped to the wall next to him, half the items scribbled out in blue pen. Maybe, with Mab gone, the next order of business would be to force the Unseelies to back off completely and take his curse with them. It’d be nice to lighten his load.
In his room, Jake was bundled up and sleeping with headphones on. I could faintly detect some movement on his phone as the song changed. Jake stirred for a moment, but didn’t wake.
As I pushed Ash’s door, however, I was met with a flurry of movement. A history book flew to the ground as a light was shoved under a pillow. I wasn’t sure how clever he thought he was being, but I couldn’t bring myself to be annoyed by it at that moment.
“If you need help with homework, just tell me,” I said. “You don’t need to stay up all night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m asleep” came the muffled voice from under the covers.
I smiled and closed the door.
Eighteen
The familiar, tattered chairs in the library felt like plush, fraying thrones. I curled up in one, plucking at the little bits of foam sticking out from the ancient tweed. Jasika sat on a matching chair. Dom lounged in a beanbag—the school’s admittedly feeble attempt at feeling relevant and relaxed. When I was sure that nobody was watching, not even the hawkish librarians, I told them everything. About Gooding and the book, about Mab and the steel mill. And Gwen’s warning.
Dom rubbed his hands together with a frown.
“Gwen’s done well by us this far,” he pointed out. “Maybe she knows what she’s talking about. Maybe we can practice some more spells. I’ve been trying to get a spell for good luck working. I think I’ve almost got it.”
Jasika remained notably quiet, drumming her fingers on the chair’s armrest and sending little bits of frayed tweed dust floating up in the air, but there was just a shadow of a smile tugging at the edges of her lips.
“What about the wild Fae?” Dom pressed. “And the courtiers. Sooner or later there’ll be some other ruler and all the trouble will start over.”
Jasika’s smile faded. My heart thumped, and I shifted in my seat. “You remember when I told you about them taking my mum?” I took a breath. “Mab said that she owned us. Some ancestor made a deal with her.”
Dom struggled with the beanbag a moment to sit up, his eyes wide. “Did she say who?”
The woman in the gray dress. The mystery banners that led to a lot of Medieval Times logos. My gut clenched. Someone had so much lasting impact on my whole life and I didn’t even know who she was. But now that Mab was gone, maybe that snake in my dreams would go away, too.
“All Gwen would tell me is that she was probably powerful and untrustworthy,” I muttered. “She wasn’t exactly eager to draw pictures of the family tree if she knows for sure. But maybe we can figure it out and see if there’s any other threat we didn’t know about.”
“You know me. Big research guy.” Dom spread out the side of his brown paper lunch bag and pulled a pen from his backpack. “Shoot.”
“Whoever it is, she’s pale with dark hair.”
Dom scribbled “Looks like Bryn” on the side of the bag. Well, he wasn’t wrong.
I cleared my throat. “But I think the key’s in the banners. She keeps showing up with red flags that have golden dragons on them.”
“Red flag with a golden dragon,” Dom mused, his pen tap-tap-tapping against the table. “That sounds kind of familiar.”
“Still, it sounds like the primary threat is gone,” Jasika pointed out. “All we need to do is keep things stable until after Samhain.”
“But we still don’t know what caused all of this to pick up,” Dom insisted. “Why did Mab strike now? I think there’s more that we aren’t seeing.” He jabbed his pen at the notes on the sack. “If you coul
d kill Mab in your dream like that, don’t you think she’d have taken precautions?”
“Maybe.” I picked at a bit of fluff and frowned. “But even if she did survive, she’ll be weaker from last night, probably for a while. We’ve got a chance to start putting the whole puzzle together.”
“So, even if she is still out there, she’s been weakened enough that she can’t get to us for a bit,” Jasika pressed. “You think she won’t notice anything we do.”
“We should go talk to Gwen about all of this,” Dom said, pushing himself to his feet.
“I already did.”
“And?” He arched a brow.
I picked at the chair fluff a bit more. And she absolutely wouldn’t approve of us going and looking into the mystery woman. “And I think we should only talk to her once we have a little more information of our own.”
The bell rang to mark the end of lunch. Dom hesitated, then shrugged. “All right. If you say so.” He grabbed his backpack and made his way out.
Jasika hadn’t moved. She just stared forward at the reference section like it had insulted her GPA or something. The second the door closed behind Dom, she sat straight up and turned to face me, her dark eyes wide and bright.
“So, using the spell from the book, you were able to pull together enough power to knock her down.”
“Um…” I hesitated, glancing at the clock and back at her. “I think so. I mean, yeah. Pretty sure.”
My stomach clenched, though I wasn’t totally sure why. Because this was Jasika. She was going to suggest I help her tutor or that we should volunteer at cleaning up the church or whatever it was that Type-A choir girls did.
“I need you to help me with something.” Jasika grabbed my wrist and squeezed it like a lifesaver. “A spell.”
“I … You’re better at that sort of thing than I am,” I said uncertainly.
“Not one of my spells. One of yours.” Jasika picked at the hem of her blouse. “My cousin. William. He’s always been sick but this summer he just … He slipped into a coma. The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
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