It was impossible. But something about the hatred in her voice cemented it as surreal truth in my mind. The sister of King Arthur. Her son, Mordred, who’d killed him and changed the fate of the entire kingdom, maybe the world. My head swam with questions. Did that make us royalty, or just a line of illegitimate bastards spawned from killers? Had Mum known? Had Dad? Whatever the what-ifs, the reality of what this meant settled in front of me like a puzzle piece finally fitting into place. King Arthur and Morgan le Fay were real.
I was their descendant.
And Morgan had royally screwed us all.
I balled my hands into fists. “If that’s true, help me now. How can I protect our family from her?”
In the creak of the tree branches in the wind, I heard her response.
“Hide.”
“No. I have people to protect.”
The figure dipped her head until dark hair fanned over her face, hiding it from view.
“Then you will have to salvage victory from loss. You could be more powerful than any of them.”
“Because I’m the firstborn?”
“What else do fairies want?”
My heart pounded and, in the dreamscape, it seemed to thrum all around me. That was how fairy tales went. Rumpelstiltskin. Rapunzel. It was always the firstborn lost in the bargain. That had to be at least as powerful as twins, if not the very thing Mab had been after all along.
“She was after me all along.”
The fire. The changelings. All of it was because of me. But why? Couldn’t she have just kidnapped me with a drone? Why the game?
“Mab likes things just so. You didn’t suit her purposes before.”
I caught my breath. “So what? If I make sure I’m not what she wants, she leaves us alone?”
“She will mold you. It’s what she did to my son.”
Right. Mordred. One of the great villains of British mythology. Just thinking that I was descended from that particular figure made my skin crawl. But I was nothing like him … was I?
I swallowed. “So does this mean a firstborn is more valuable to her than twins? She might leave the boys alone?”
Morgan raised her head again and moved her lips, but nothing came out. Then, like a light flickering, the figure disappeared.
“Come back!” I spun around, my hand going to my throat. No nail. In Mab’s territory. And with my own ancestor basically guaranteeing Mab would win. Not a great start.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to wander into the ancient forest. Each tree towered over me, marred by that strange, scribbled symbol carved into their trunks. And each one burned for it. There were no flames, but I could feel the heat and energy and power radiating from them. I took a deep breath, brushing my fingers against the torn bark. Something like an electric pulse shot through my fingers. I yelped and jumped back, heart hammering.
“Dangerous to touch that, sweetheart,” Mum breathed.
I whirled around, holding my burned hand to my chest. Mum smiled at me and tilted her head. Leaves tumbled from her dark waves of hair, fluttering to the ground. My heart skipped a beat. Mum. Maybe she could help.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Mum frowned, reaching over my shoulder. For a moment, I thought for sure she was going to touch the symbol, too, and I almost grabbed her hand, but she stopped just shy of the bark and tutted softly.
“It’s quite a curious mark, this one,” she murmured. “Did you know that not everyone can see it?” She pressed her fingers to the bark and traced the outside of the symbol, never quite touching the spot where the wood had been sliced.
“Why not?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away. Where was she going with this? “We need to go. I’ve got questions but it isn’t safe here.”
“Not just yet.” Mum smiled. “It’s a Fae mark. Not at all intended for humans. It can create doorways when a human carves it in their own world, but by a Fae hand, it has quite a different effect. Think of it as creating a doorway in yourself. For Fae, of course.”
“Yeah but … but humans can see the writing in the book. And that’s Fae magic.”
“Did they really?” Mum turned to face me, her pale lips pulled into a coy smile. In the dark space of a blink, the wood was gone. The sickly smell of antiseptic washed around us.
I opened my eyes. We were in William’s hospital room, but his bed was empty. The monitors shut off. Mum rested on the bed, one hand on her hip as she watched me. Something felt off. There was something I was supposed to remember. Something we’d figured out about Mum.
“There was a girl with you when you read in here, wasn’t there? Tell me, when was she truly able to help you?”
“Well it was … after she touched my shoulder.” I frowned and blinked, turning around just to make sure. And there was a transparent, ghostly version of me, reciting the spell. But it didn’t sound like me. Unintelligible words hissed and spit out of my lips. I sounded like I was possessed. Jasika watched me with wide eyes, and she looked like she’d be sick. Then she took two deep breaths, knelt down, and took my hand. Just like that, the horrible, hissing words were coming out of her, too.
“She is powerful, but her gift is human magic,” Mum explained patiently. “Humans can’t use Fae magics so easily.”
“I did.” I blinked. “Is that because of Morgan?”
Mum gave me a sad smile. Then, without any explanation, she sat up and started drawing right on the milky white sheets, big, bold strokes with delicate little embellishments at the corners. It took me a few seconds to realize she was drawing the symbol from the trees.
I rushed forward, just as she was about to press her palm right onto the symbol.
“No, Mum, it’ll burn you!” I cried, just as my fingers closed around her wrist.
Dark, cold eyes locked onto mine, dark and deep as the sky on a moonless night. Eyes that were too big for her delicate, impish face. No. This wasn’t Mum.
I jerked back and tried to run, but my foot slid against something slick. I slammed to the floor, and for just a second, all I could see was red streaked across the tiles. My blood. My back! Not again, not … no. This had happened before. It wouldn’t happen again. Not the same way. Gwen had been right.
Mab rose from the bed as nimble as the air itself. She was tiny, maybe four feet tall, and delicate, but somehow, she managed to look more threatening than a tiger.
“Bryn,” Mab said, and her voice was so saccharine sweet that I wanted to gag. In spite of everything she’d done, everyone she’d hurt, she managed to shove enough warmth and gentleness into her voice that my blood curdled.
I swallowed and forced myself to stand, blood dripping from my clothes.
“Where’s my mum?”
Mab’s perfect, heart-shaped lips twitched as she folded her hands in front of her. “Are you asking if she’s alive?” she purred. “Don’t worry about her. She’s quite comfortable. I’d say we should be more concerned about our other interloper, but I suppose she’s already come and gone with no harm done.”
My heart skipped a beat. Mum was alive out there, somewhere. She had to be. Fae couldn’t lie. I knew it. I’d always known it deep down. Mum was alive, which meant that somehow, someday, I could find her. The hospital room flickered to our old house, then the woods back in Wales, then back again, like a frenzied slideshow around me. Mab glanced about her, looking bored.
“My dear, you really must learn to control that,” she mused. “You do wear your heart on your sleeve. I’m growing weary of the blood you spill in your anger.”
Blood? I glanced down, and the red blood on my clothes had turned to blue. Bendith blue. I winced and sucked in a deep breath.
“She threatened my town.”
“After you attacked her. For simply doing her job as I instructed her to do.”
“Well, I couldn’t very well get to you.” I glanced around, searching for something. Marshmallow had said that the Fae rules applied in dreams. Maybe if I could find something iron … but the
n what? What could take her down when molten steel had failed? Maybe I needed to be simpler. More direct. A blade between vertebrae.
Mab strode around the hospital room, her long skirts swishing against the tile floor. She looked like an unearthly specter, prowling the edge of the room like that.
“Very soon, my dear, you will see that what I do is for the best. You don’t belong in this place.”
For just a second, her back was to me. I reached under the pillow and by the magic of dreams, my fingers curled around the cool hilt of a scalpel. I slid it up my jacket sleeve before she turned, facing me again.
“I told you before and I’ll tell you again. We don’t. Belong. To you.”
Mab heaved a heavy sigh. “Your tedious bloodline. I hope your generation will be more compliant, in time. Moreso, at least, than the witch. Or, heaven forbid, your mother.”
My mother. My heart throbbed. “You took my mum.” I shifted, keeping the sleeve with the scalpel on the other side of my body, away from her.
“She abandoned me,” Mab heaved an exasperated sigh, completing her circle of the room. “And she’s made it a real effort to collect the rest of what is mine.” She ran her fingers over the splotchy, black mark on the sheet. “It was luck, really, to see the boy. Human medicines are advancing. Our magic is hard to disguise, but elf-shot can be so easily mistaken for a blood clot. I never imagined he would baffle his doctors.”
I froze, the scalpel still nestled in my sleeve. “You … you put William Witters in a coma.”
“Not me directly. My court is cunning in ways that impress even me.” Mab let out a laugh like a tinkling of bells. “But you and your human did very well for him. Congratulations.”
Cold realization washed over me. “You wanted me to use the book.”
Mab smiled puckishly at me. “I’m surprised it took you this long, dear. I needed to prepare my future pupil.”
Her future pupil. Soot filled my mouth. Morgan was right. Mab was trying to mold me. She had nearly killed William Witters so she could. Everyone in this town was a pawn for her … which meant it wasn’t going to stop. Not until she got what she wanted.
I whipped the scalpel out and plunged it into her hand, pinning her to the bed. Mab’s lovely face contorted with horror, and she shrieked as purple blood spurted from between her knuckles. The hospital room wavered around us, black spots dancing against the immaterial walls like the vision behind closed lids after staring too long at the sun.
“We don’t belong to you,” I snarled.
The darkness enveloped everything in the room except the bed I’d pinned her hand to. For a shadow of an instant, we were surrounded by dark trees curling over us, threatening. Fae skulked between the trunks, watching us with bright eyes. And in the distance was a dark-haired woman. My heart jumped into my throat. Mum!
“You will suffer,” Mab hissed. “You think you know agony, child. But you are as ignorant as you are young.”
“What are you planning?” I shouted, twisting the scalpel in her hand.
Mab screamed like a thousand crystal glasses shattering, and just like that, we stood in the middle of the high school gym. The largest venue in town. And there in the center of the crowd, clutching identical masks in their hands, were the boys.
Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed eight.
Darkness fell over the gymnasium. Screams rose in the air, first from surprise, then from horror. And the sounds. Shattering glass and something liquid hitting the ground. Sobs and shrieks and feet pounding in chaos.
The lights returned … to carnage. Bodies littered the floor, human and Fae alike, their blood pooling against the basketball court. Glassy eyes stared up at me, their mouths hanging open … but the boys weren’t among them.
The scene rippled again, the blood-streaked gymnasium shuddering between the carnage and the hospital. Mab had regained control.
“I will do whatever it takes to claim what is mine,” Mab crooned in my ear. “If not you, I will take your brothers. They are of the same bloodline.”
No!
I wasn’t even sure when the bed had disappeared, but the scalpel was no longer in my hand and she was behind me, and oh God, she was going to slaughter the entire gym and I didn’t know what to do I couldn’t stop it they were already dead oh God oh God this was all my fault and I couldn’t even think. My body moved on its own.
I whirled around, fist raised in the air. But before it could connect with her cheek, Mab raised one hand and caught it effortlessly.
“It’s best not to fight this, child,” Mab crooned.
She gave my wrist a squeeze and forced it down onto the symbol on the bed. My fingers, still stinging from the burn from the tree, lit into a blaze. My already pale skin began to lighten even more, as though bleach were being poured down my fingers until my entire hand was bone white. Fae-drone white.
“Time to open the doorway within yourself,” Mab hummed, pressing her lips to my fingers. “Sweet dreams, child.”
* * *
I JERKED AWAKE, my scream muffled by a pair of slender hands pressed to my lips and oh God they were here. They already had me. I almost swung at my assailant before I smelled the telltale odor of moldy cheese. I never thought I’d actually be relieved to smell it.
I sagged against my pillow, tears burning in my eyes. I started shaking, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I curled onto my side, squeezing my eyes shut and giving in. Just for a minute.
“I’m sorry, Missy. I’m sorry. You were making noise, see, and I knew you didn’t want to be disturbed so I had to keep you quiet.”
It took a few tries before I managed to choke out: “It’s fine. It’s fine. You did good. You did wonderfully…” I swallowed, then took a few deep breaths. Just a dream. I’d known it might get bad. But I was alive. I was still alive.
I rubbed my face into the pillowcase, smearing away most of the tears before I pushed myself up.
“Marsh, can … can you hand me my nail?” I whispered. “Be careful. Just touch the cord, okay?”
The shadeling scrambled off the bed. There was a clatter as she went through my things. I shivered, gooseflesh rippling up my arms. Just as I pulled the blanket up around my shoulders, she hopped back onto the bed. The nail dangled from her hand, swinging on its cord. She stared at it as though it might bite. Well, for her, it very well might.
“Th—” I caught myself and smiled. “Good job.”
I grabbed my nail … and jerked back. It felt like a wasp had stung me on the palm, right where the iron touched my skin.
Twenty-Seven
I stared down at the angry, red rash that spread out from the little welt on my palm, where the iron had stung me like a jolt of electricity. My own iron.
No. Iron was my ally. It always had been. It always would be. This was another one of her tricks.
I sucked in a sharp breath and blinked back the tears as I tore through the book, my hands trembling. I searched for the English and Welsh spells for doorway, but all I found were little ways to keep hinges from needing oil or discouraging unwanted visitors. None of them had the strange squiggly symbol Mab had forced on me. The one she’d been trying to force on me all along.
“Missy, breathe!” Marshmallow squeaked, bouncing from foot to foot as she reached out, hands hovering just inches from my arm.
“I…” I scrubbed a hand over my face and shook my head. “Mab did something. I don’t know … Have you seen those symbols in the woods? I scratch them out whenever I see one.”
“It’s hard even for a shadeling to get in and out of here, Missy.” Marsh tugged on one of her ears. “What did the nasty queen do?”
What did Mab do? I didn’t know. Because what it felt like wasn’t possible. I swallowed, showing her my burned hand.
Marshmallow recoiled.
“Missy, that looks…”
“I can’t stay here.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and shoved my feet into my boots. “I’m going to find Gwen.”
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“I thought—”
“I’m going to try.” I pulled on my jacket and grabbed the book, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to go. Suddenly, the thought of being alone right now was more horrifying than anything. I held out my hand. “Will you come with me?”
Marshmallow nodded and scrambled onto my shoulder. She felt like a weird, hairless cat and smelled like mildew. It was more comforting than anything else in the world at that moment.
I didn’t even bother trying to be quiet. Everyone was asleep. And I needed to go. I needed to move. Marshmallow clung to my hair, tensing as we passed over the boundary of the church grounds. The faint sprinkle of a drizzle before a storm pricked at my cheeks until I plunged into the woods. Twigs and leaves snapped and crunched as I plowed through. Sharp yips of wild fairies or foxes pierced through the air as many fled.
“Missy should be careful!” Marshmallow gasped.
My heart hammered as thoughts struggled to worm their way into the front of my mind. Exactly where they couldn’t be right now. My eyes stung. But it would be fine. I just needed to find Gwen. Gwen would know what to do.
The trees gave way to open air. I shivered and dropped to my knees at the water’s edge. Mud soaked my knees and nightgown.
“Gwen!” I called. “Gwen, please! I need you!”
Marshmallow tugged at her ears and let out a soft keen before she leapt off my shoulder. Cold seeped into my bones. I hugged the book tighter.
“G-Gwen, I…” I took a shaky breath. “I think I messed up. And I need you to tell me how to fix this.”
The first drops of rain fell to the pond, rippling into the surface. And that was all. No glimpse of an underwater village or a head of golden hair.
Gwen was gone. Just like the shadelings. Just like Mum.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there. The drizzle gave way to fat, pelting droplets smacking against me like even the weather knew what I’d done. I shivered for a while, until I couldn’t feel the cold anymore.
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