I sucked in a sharp breath. My heart slammed into my ribs. I shoved myself off the table and scrambled toward the woods, but arms caught me. I flailed, kicking, scratching, biting with all the energy my ragged breath could spare. Where one hand let go, another grabbed me, pushing me down to the ground. I bucked against them, but they were stronger than I was. I was still just human enough to be no match.
“Bring her,” Mab ordered coolly.
The prince stepped out, looking tall and lovely as before, save for the purple splotch still staining his cheek. I hoped it was from my blood. Clearly, it healed slowly. I hoped it hurt him.
He waved a hand behind him, and a new figure emerged from the woods. She shone like the moon in the night, but her pale hair had been strung with ribbons and flowers the color of twilight. Her billowy shift had been replaced by layers and layers of colored silk so delicate it must have been woven from spiderwebs.
Gwen’s lily-pad eyes brimmed with tears as she met mine. “I told you to be careful.”
“Gwen, what are you doing here?”
“She is here because she struck a bargain with me. Her service in return for the protection for her sisters. They did work, after all, to keep you from me.”
Tears slipped down Gwen’s cheeks, but she did not lower her head. The prince twitched his hand, and a crystal blade slid down his sleeve and into his waiting palm.
“No, wait!”
“She is mine to do with as I will, Bryn.” Mab swept in front of me and folded her tiny hands in front of her.
Gwen didn’t so much as flinch as the prince grasped the back of her head and pressed the tip of the blade to her throat.
“NO!” I screeched, surging forward, but there were arms on me, dozens of inhuman hands holding me back. The courtiers served their queen. Gwen didn’t tremble, but she did bunch her fingers up in her silks as a single drop of aubergine blood welled up on her throat. Gwen, who never hurt anyone, who couldn’t. Gwen, who’d healed my wounds and kissed my tears and welcomed me into her home day after day.
“I’m sorry, Gwen,” I gasped. “Please. Don’t hurt her. She didn’t do anything to you.”
The world went hazy at the edges, but one thing remained in sharp contrast. A small smile at the corner of Mab’s lips.
And there it was. She had already won. Maybe she meant to kill Gwen. Maybe she didn’t. But this wasn’t just a threat. Mum, Dad, William, Gooding, now Gwen. She wasn’t afraid of collateral damage. But I was. As long as I was playing her game, I would lose.
Mab’s shimmering skirt rustled against the dried leaves on the ground as she strode in front of me. As she knelt down, she sighed, folding her hands over her knees.
“Bryn,” she cooed. “You have lived a life that has never been your own. Caring for your family, ostracized from your peers. You fight so hard for those who have always prevented you from reaching your full potential. Imagine the freedom I offer.”
My full potential.
Salvage victory from loss.
One way or another, Mab wasn’t getting the boys. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to hurt anyone else I cared for. I sucked in a shaking breath and forced myself to meet her gaze. This was the creature who had tricked Morgan le Fay. The horrible, otherworldly thing that had owned my mother, lost her, stolen her, then lost her again. This was the bitch who’d hurt Gwen. In her mind, the game was always going on. Even if I somehow managed to fight her off here, it wouldn’t make a difference. She’d keep coming. She’d burn the world down to win.
Time to clear the board and start a new game.
“Consent,” I choked out.
Mab frowned but, with a little flick of her hand, the courtiers let up their grip. I sucked in a shuddering breath and pushed myself up.
“The magic is stronger with consent,” I wheezed, forcing myself to meet her eyes. “I’m the firstborn of my generation. I’ve been training for years. I know magic and I…” I swallowed against the bitter taste settling on my tongue. I wasn’t a Fae. I wasn’t bound by their rules. I could still lie, and Mab couldn’t. “I’m not completely human anymore. Just like you wanted, right?”
Mab cocked her head, a slow smile twisting her lips into something lovely and awful. She raised her hand, and the prince removed his blade. Gwen shivered and closed her eyes.
“I’m so glad you finally came around,” she mused. “I was afraid I was going to have to do something truly drastic.”
I shuddered. If everything that had already happened didn’t count as drastic, I hated to think what did.
My throat ached as I forced myself to meet her eyes. Somewhere in the woods, the boys were still wandering. Dom and Jasika didn’t know where I was. My dad was gone, totally unaware that any of this had happened and still cursed. Still vulnerable. Father Gooding was fighting for his life in a hospital while Marshmallow looked over him, scared and alone. The water wives hid. With one deal, I could save all of them and start a game of my own, where the damage could be done in her territory, not mine. If she thought Mum had been trouble, she wasn’t prepared for me.
Mab rested her hand on top of my head, gentle as a feather. “Understand. I will not lose this night. If you’re holding on for your friends, your priest, your water witches, or your once-cursed father, understand that it is in my power to remove the temptation from your very heart. Once you come with me, you are mine.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Hold your horses,” I croaked, feeling as though glass was ripping at my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and caught my breath. This was a big moment. I couldn’t let her distract me. With the Fae, the wording mattered. “I will go with you. But you must swear you will leave my family, my friends, and all of my town alone. In those exact words. No tricks.”
Mab clapped her hands and let out a little giggle. “Very well. I swear I will leave your family, friends, and your little town be. If you come with me this night, no harm shall befall them so long as I hold the throne of the Unseelie. Are you satisfied?”
Not until I’d stuffed her throat with iron. But that would be a long-term plan. In the short term … I nodded.
“Splendid. Now, my dear, if you would?”
I forced my eyes open just in time to see him. My wretched, damned prince kneeling before me, holding out a bowl of pumpkin seeds, his purple welts pulling on his cheek as he sneered. Nice to know he was that breakable. He was right under Mab on my list.
Mab stood behind him, chin raised, staring down at me like the queen she was.
“Eat,” she instructed.
I swallowed against the foul taste still in my mouth, staring down at the bowl. Anywhere but at the queen and the prince before me. I reached out with a shaking hand, grasping at a couple of seeds and sliding them into my mouth. It felt like eating tasteless stones. My whole head throbbed as I forced myself to crunch down on them, breaking their shells, swallowing them like chips of bark. They settled like chalk in my stomach.
“Could use a little garlic,” I rasped.
The prince smirked and retreated, leaving only Mab in front of me, beaming from ear to ear like a proud mother. She held out one of her small, pale hands.
“Come, child. Time for us to return home.”
I stared at her hand. If I had to spend the rest of my life fighting her, it would be worth it to keep her away from the others. But I hoped it wouldn’t be long until I could return home with her head in a box.
Mab’s hand tensed. “You ate our food, Bryn,” she reminded me, her voice deceptively kind. “You made me a promise. You can live with me and save them all, or you can die and take them with you.”
The chess game stretched before me. The prince. The drone. The fires. The book. The dreams. Every move, every strategy. But it was time to start a new game. Once I saw the new board and the new pieces, I could make up a few new rules of my own. Mab thought she’d won. All she’d done was raise me up to her level.
I let her drag me to my feet and tried not to jerk my han
d away too quickly. It wouldn’t do to insult her. Not immediately.
As soon as I was on my feet, the guilt began to gnaw at my belly. Penn State. Family. Duty. Friendship. Love … I wished I’d told Dom how much his friendship meant to me. How glad I was that he’d come here. I wished I’d had enough time to take Jasika to a proper movie or a nice dinner. That I’d had time to give in to that feeling. I wished I’d had the chance to make sure Marshmallow and Gooding were going to be okay. I wished Dad had seen me walk across the stage at graduation. I wished I could have seen Ash and Jake do the same and introduced them to the shadelings before I went to college.
I wished for so much more than this. But maybe a normal life was never an option for me.
“Gwen will be your maid, Bryn, as you will be mine. Gwen, attend her.” Mab made a vague gesture with one hand before she turned heel and made her way into the deep woods. I threw one last glance over my shoulder, but Easterton, Pennsylvania, was long gone. I forced one foot forward, then another as I followed behind Mab.
Gwen fell into step beside me, looking paler than ever in the dark. I took her hand.
“Bryn, I wish you hadn’t—”
“Hey.” I gave her a wink, because it was better than letting on to the fluttering in my chest and the wriggling in my belly. Selfish as it was, I was glad to have someone going with me into the dark. “Remind me sometime to tell you a little bit about yellow jackets.”
Gwen frowned, but she squeezed my hand and swallowed. And, together, we walked into the dark.
Epilogue
The air was different here. Tighter on my skin, like wading underwater, but too thin to suck in a lungful. My vision swam as Mab dragged me soundlessly through a dark land of night. Gwen had been taken somewhere else, but she hadn’t looked frightened. I shuddered to think she was somehow already used to this place. Bright eyes followed us, shining like headlights in the dark. With every breath, a burnt honey smell clogged my nose and throat. My knees trembled, but Mab’s iron grip kept me on my feet.
“This will be your room,” her saccharine voice cooed. “Gwen is next door if you need to call on her. I’ll fetch you when I’m ready to teach you your duties.”
At last, the steel grip loosened, and I dropped back. Plush down pillows and silky furs caught my fall. Dust puffed around me, filling my lungs. I wheezed until, at last, I managed to suck in a sharp breath. Spots of darkness and color danced before my eyes until the room solidified around me.
Silvery walls undulated like crooked trees all grown together, but when I reached out to touch them, the smooth, firm texture of bone greeted me. I jerked back, wrapping my arms around my middle as the sickening taste of Mab’s pumpkin seeds flooded my mouth. This was only temporary, but I didn’t get to leave until the job was done.
I pushed myself up onto my jelly legs and staggered around the room, my bare feet silent against the earthen floor.
I forced myself to touch the bony walls again, to feel for anything that might function like a handle, but one twisting column was much like another. No door. No windows. No escape. My prison had only the pile of pillows and, in the far corner, a shallow clay bowl decorated with pictures of berries and ivy.
I crept forward, ready to dart away if the contents turned out to be something sinister. But the bowl held what looked like a liquid mirror, reflecting the intertwining bone-branches that made up the ceiling of my prison. Mercury. It had practically been set up for scrying. Why would Mab leave something so potentially useful to me?
No. Not Mab. This was the sort of thing Gwen would do.
Bracing myself against the wall, I lowered myself to the ground. Best to get my bearings while I was here.
A shiver stole down my spine. The mercury in the bowl trembled, ripples dancing up to the rim. I sucked in a shuddering breath and leaned down. “Ash and Jake?” More ripples. Tiny shadows danced across the surface. settling into a clear picture. The boys sat on the ground next to a police cruiser, shock blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders. They looked dirty and miserable, but safe. An officer next to them had a phone pressed to their ear. Dad would know about things by now. Maybe, now that the Unseelie had withdrawn, things would be a bit easier for him. My heart pounded. I wished I could have gone back and explained things to him. I wished I’d left a letter or something to let them know I was alive. All I could do was tell myself that I’d make it back to them eventually and explain myself.
“F-Father Gooding?” The ripples shifted, shadows dancing across silver. Father Gooding’s chest rose and fell. Marshmallow curled up on it, her ears perked up. After a moment, Gooding’s eyes fluttered open and settled on the thing sitting on his chest. The monitors next to him began to flash in alarm. Thank God. Both okay, if confused.
I swallowed. “Dom? Jasika?”
They sat on a floral couch in the Witters’s living room, each holding a mug of something steaming. Their lips moved, but I couldn’t make out the words. There were streaks on their cheeks. Had they been crying? Dom reached out and wrapped an arm around Jasika’s shoulder, pulling her into a loose hug.
My skin crawled. I forced myself to look away. I’d broken promises to all of them. I didn’t expect they’d be able to forgive me even when I did return. But they would be safe.
“All right. One more,” I murmured, leaning in so close my nose almost touched the quicksilver. “Where’s Mab keeping my mum?”
The quicksilver undulated in the bowl, the surface rippling. A shadow rolled across the surface until, like a golf ball had been dropped right down the center, the mercury splashed out of the bowl.
I jerked back as the little silver droplets beaded on the wall and floor. After a second or so, they firmed up and rolled back toward the bowl, mocking gravity as they settled inside. Okay. So clearly some questions wouldn’t be so easily answered. Not too unexpected. If they were, I wouldn’t be here.
Very suddenly, this place weighed like sand on my back. I staggered to my feet and shuffled across the room, careful not to look too closely at the walls, and threw myself onto the fur-covered bed. Dust puffed up around me and hung in the air this time, drifting down in slow motion. I reached up. The dust pushed away from my hand, like magnets repelling each other. Maybe there was just ambient magic here. Dimly, I wondered if Gwen’s room was anything like this. Or Mum’s. Had she ever spent nights lying alone like this staring up at the ceiling, dreaming of the human world?
I had no doubt she’d be upset if she knew I’d done this. But maybe she’d understand. After all, she’d once been forced to serve Mab under this stupid curse. She’d escaped once. Maybe on that awful day back in Wales, she’d handed herself over to protect us the way I did. But the point was that she’d escaped in the first place. Changed her name. Found love. I could, too. But not until I found a way to break whatever contract Morgan made. Without that, there was no point to running away. Mab would just come again and again.
I let my hand drop. The dust floated down to settle around me. The bony walls seemed to squirm in the corner of my eye, and I didn’t dare look right at them, just in case it wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
I squeezed my eyes shut and began reciting all the weaknesses I’d learned over the years. Iron burned them. Saint John’s wort, rowan, rue, yarrow, and holy water repelled them. Lies were impossible for them. They couldn’t cross through running water. I’d heard, though it had never been confirmed, that maybe red could hide me from some of them. Somehow, somewhere, something had to be the key to getting one up on Mab. I just needed time to observe her. Figure out where she was weak.
There was no way, really, for me to guess how long I’d be here. But this wasn’t a job to rush. Mab had raised hell for us for years.
Time to return the favor.
Acknowledgments
IRONSPARK IS A novel that was ten years in the making, but twenty years of learning, adapting, and working toward this one goal. As such, there are far too many people who have helped me on this journey to th
ank each and every individual. Some people know the impact they had on me. Others may never realize. But my gratitude to them remains all the same.
To the family that wouldn’t let me quit when life might have distracted me, whether they understood my passion or not.
To the countless friends who listened and inspired, and who read draft after draft.
To the SCBWI Critters, who never accepted anything less than my best and, when it just wasn’t working, reminded me to Just Change Everything.
To the authors who mentored me over the years at conventions and cafes and in their homes.
To the teachers along the way who inspired me by exclaiming and encouraging and celebrating. Who treated me as a young professional. Who reminded me that, counterintuitively, my acting classes could help me hone my writing.
To my agent, Ann, who held my hand through the excitement and terror of a debut.
And to Holly West and everyone at Macmillan for selecting Ironspark, and patiently working with me through this whole crazy process of preparing this novel.
Words cannot express my relief and gratitude at the support from so many incredible people.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Glossary
Banshee—A wailing Irish spirit whose mournful cries are said to foretell imminent death.
Bendith y Mamau—Also known as the Tylwyth Teg, Bendith are known to cause mischief and steal human children, leaving behind changelings. They are widely considered to be a cross between a goblin and a Fae, often using glamours to appear lovely, hiding a hideous face.
Boggart—A shape-shifting spirit generally (but not always) considered to be malicious.
Bogle—A Celtic spirit similar in many ways to a poltergeist, Bogles enjoy terrorizing humans and spoiling their food.
Brownie—Benevolent, goblin-like Fae noted for their unique tendency to inhabit and work in a human house. They will accept gifts of food from humans, but are easily offended at the notion that they are in any way employed by them. If something is offered to them to serve as payment rather than friendship, they will become offended and abandon their home.
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