“Why?” I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me, like I was plummeting down a hole.
“They spread magic!” Goodie Rootdigger called and beside her Goodie Baker muttered agreement.
“There are children in that wagon,” I said appalled, planting my free hand on my hip. “Are you going to arrest children, Olen Chanter?”
I turned to fix him with my gaze and he still wouldn’t meet my eyes. There were eyes in his breastplate, though. And they met mine just fine.
“Tangled is as tangled does, Little Hunter,” Scouvrel said from the reflection on the breastplate. I swallowed and tried not to look. I really was going insane! I was seeing him everywhere.
“You’re a child yourself, Allie,” Olen said. “What do you know of laws and duties?”
I felt my own cheeks growing hot – but not with shame, like his. I was all fury.
“More than you, it would seem, Sir Chanter. I know not to persecute the innocent or harass peaceful people in wagons painted with sunshines and rainbows!”
“They’re to be detained and their goods and possessions seized,” Olen said quietly. The crowd had grown quiet, too. I heard someone drop a coin and heard it roll down the street until it hit a stone wall. It was shockingly clear in the silence around us.
“And then what?” I could hardly see I was shaking so hard. I wanted to hit someone. Preferably, Olen.
“And then he’ll feel your wrath,” Scouvrel’s image said from Olen’s breastplate, eyes bright.
Please don’t go crazy now, Allie. Get a hold of yourself.
“And then Sir Eckelmeyer will pronounce judgment when he arrives,” Olen said stiffly.
“Which will be?” I looked at the Travelers in the cart, looked at the hopeless gazes as if they couldn’t even summon the energy to fight back.
“They love the Fae, Allie,” Olen said as if he was the one being reasonable. “They trade in magic or with those who do. They don’t belong here. This isn’t their land and we aren’t their people.”
“Is that jealousy I detect?” Scouvrel whispered. Almost, I believed he was real. That was exactly something he would say.
“What will Eckelmeyer do?” I pressed, refusing to be drawn in by this madness.
“Last time, he sentenced the adults to death.”
“And the children?” I asked, and though my voice was quiet it seemed to echo over the quiet crowd. I expected to see their faces look as shocked as mine, but my breath caught in my throat when I looked at them. They were not silent in shock. They were silent in grim determination.
“Those, he took with him,” Olen said.
I leaned over and slapped him across the back of the head. His helmet rang with the blow.
“Olen Chanter, you are such a disgrace!” I let the fury I felt pour into my words. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” I turned to the crowd, jabbing my finger at them to punctuate my words. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves! That’s not the kind of people we are!”
Scouvrel hissed excitedly. “Bring him to me, Little Hunter, and I will pay disgrace with disgrace. We could have so much fun teaching him to grovel, you and I.”
Stay sane, Allie. Please stay sane.
“But they’re Fae lovers!” someone called, and like a dam bursting there were mutters and shouts all around as the crowd came back to life.
Fae lovers! What a silly epitaph. The Fae were cruel and vicious. They’d bargain your life away and they’d nail you to a tree and steal your children – but at least they didn’t pretend to be good while they did it.
“You’re worse!” I yelled back. “They are evil. But you’re choosing evil when you could choose good. Isn’t that worse? Aren’t you all just that much worse?”
“You need to go now, Allie,” Olen said, leaning across the horse to grab the collar of my coat. “Before I have to arrest you, too.”
“You’re madder than your father,” I said, holding his furious gaze through my blindfold, my lower lip trembling.
“Don’t make me start to suspect that you sympathize with the Fae, too,” he said, shoving me hard so that I fell from the horse into the crowd. “Or I’ll have to hang you along with them.” He turned to the horses. “Ha!”
He flung my cloak from the heads of the draft horses and slapped their necks, leading them thundering toward his house in the city square. The crowd parted for him, boots kicking me from every direction as they left until I was nothing but a ball of mud and pain, my bow broken, my arrows scattered, only the cage still intact, protected by my curled up body.
I pulled myself painfully from the mud, clutching my aching midsection and watched them go into the center of Skundton. There was a flurry of yelling and then a plume of smoke rose. They’d lit the covered wagon on fire.
“The Court of Mortals is more amusing than I gave it credit for,” the Fae in my cage said. “Here I thought you were all dull, but the mortals love pain as much as we do. They torture innocents just as easily. I think they’ll welcome the Lady of Cups when she comes in her glory and makes them an offer.”
I shivered at her words because she was right. Oh, she was right. And it was breaking my heart.
Maybe it didn’t matter if I trapped my sister or not. Maybe the Court of Mortals deserved some of the judgment of the Fae. Maybe, I’d even help them get it.
Chapter Ten
Goodie Chanter was an untidy housekeeper – a fact I was grateful for as I swiped her small mirror from the mantle, tucked it into my cloak and slipped outside and into the woods.
I found a sheltered place in a tangle of willows and drew out the mirror, my hands shaking.
“So vain?” the Lieutenant said from where she sat in her cage chewing on a slice of apple I’d given her.
“Quiet,” I hissed.
Did I want to prove I was insane, or prove I wasn’t insane? I didn’t know, but my heart was pounding like a drum as I huffed over the surface of the cloudy silver mirror and rubbed it with my sleeve.
The moment I lifted it, biting my lip with tension, I saw his face.
“Mirror, mirror, in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” he said with a smirk.
“Scouvrel?” I whispered.
“Well done. You guessed it with your first try!” He winked.
I fixed him with my darkest look and began to whisper yell. “I don’t care how you’re doing this. I don’t care what magic this is. I don’t even care if I’m actually insane, but I have something to say to you!”
“And I have an ear to hear it with, though sadly, only one.” His eyes burned as he spoke, as if to remind me of his grisly sacrifice. If he thought that would change my intentions here, he could think again!
“You married me! You tricked me into it.”
He laughed. “It was hardly against your will, Little Nightmare. You spoke the words.”
“Because you tricked me!”
“I thrive on lies and trickery. You knew that about me.” His smile was far too infectious for someone I was furious with.
“What in the world possessed you to do it?”
“Ah Nightmare, you kept looking at me with such marked desire that I saw no way forward except to grant you your darkest desire – me.”
I shook my head. Of course, he thought that. In his mind, the whole world was always looking at him with longing.
“And see how that turned out?” I shot back. “I sold you away because I didn’t know I possessed you!”
He laughed, a wicked gleam in his eye. “And now that you do know, what would you do with me, Nightmare?”
I wanted to cross my arms over my chest, but I was holding the mirror. I settled for jutting my chin out defiantly.
“Don’t try to distract me. Tell me what was in it for you? You know I’ll wither and die in seventy years if not more. I have not the charms or glamor of your people. There’s no reason to marry me.”
“You should know by now, Nightmare, that I give nothing away for free. Not even inform
ation. If you want something from me, you will be forced to bargain – and hope that I do not take something dear to you.” His eyes twinkled. Was this fun for him?
“You married me without a bargain!” I spat. I stopped, looking around. Had anyone heard? Even in the forest, I had to be careful. “What did I get out of that?”
He looked appalled. “Me, Nightmare. I am your great prize. This is rather like the discoverer of a gold mine objecting to the need to dig. I find it most perplexing. Need I remind you how great a prize I am?”
I pulled the mirror close to my face. “Remind? You’ll need to prove it in the first place. You’re a horrible, twisted creature and while I’ve become ... your friend ...” It felt strange to admit that. “I wasn’t planning to marry you! You took my freedom from me when you married me. I think I at least deserve to know why. That should have been part of the bargain!”
“Is it not enough that I wanted you as a permanent ally? A destroyer of worlds, a causer of havoc that even I as the Knave of Courts can respect? Is that not enough?”
“Is that the reason?” I challenged.
“Don’t you want to find out?” he asked smoothly, seductively. “Your sister wanted to know. She traded her mortality for Cavariel’s answer.”
“I would have thought that immortality was the thing a person would consider valuable, not mortality,” I whispered.
“See? You have much to learn from me,” Scouvrel said, taunting. “Isn’t that worth the price of marrying me? And you have already received my alliance and undying friendship. Your bounty exceeds that of mortal Queens.”
“Yes, I’m feeling so fortunate,” I said dryly.
“As you should,” he agreed, radiating satisfaction.
“But what do you expect from me. You can’t mean to ... you can’t want to ... you don’t expect me to bear your children do you?”
His laugh was cruel. “Fae don’t bear children. We steal children. You know that.”
“So what is it that you expect from me?” I hissed.
“Everything,” he said in a solemn voice that terrified me. “And now, Sweetest of Nightmares, I may not tarry any longer. Thanks to your cruel bargain, I must serve another even crueler than I. And he does not like to be kept waiting.” He paused. “Oh, and whatever shiny thing you found to speak to me through, do keep it. I’ve missed our verbal sparring over these long months. Truth or Lie? You love being my wife.”
A look of desperate panic flooded his face before I could answer and then he disappeared from view and the mirror went dark.
“Months?” I asked, but he was already gone.
“Don’t you know that the Faewald works differently from the mortal world?” the Lieutenant said, flicking an apple seed out of her cage. “It’s been months for him but days for you. Imagine all the fun I’ve missed while you kept me captive here.”
“We’re all prisoners,” I muttered. “Didn’t you hear? I was tricked into marriage.”
“And have you finished the game?” she asked disinterestedly.
“Finished what game? You Fae play so many that it’s hard to keep up.”
She rolled her eyes. “The Marriage game. If you don’t finish the game in a year’s time, then it will be like you were never married at all.”
“And if I do finish the game?” I asked, feeling cold all over.
“Then the marriage can only be ended by death.”
“You’re so faithful to each other?” I asked, surprised. Most marriages stayed permanent in Skundton. In a town our size there were few options. But even so, some couples lived apart. Some even formalized the arrangement, discarding their former marriages and choosing new lives with other people. It struck me as odd that the Fae didn’t do the same.
She snorted. “You misunderstand. If you change your mind later, one of you may end the marriage in death – the death of your partner – with no fear of the Kinslayer coming to rip your beating heart from your chest.”
“How lovely,” I said dryly. “I can see why you’ve avoided marriage, Lieutenant.”
She sighed. “I suppose you can call me Vhalot since you’ve been feeding me. It’s what I’m known as. I’ll keep your secret in exchange for the food. A rare bargain with the Twilight Court.”
She sounded resigned.
“My secret?” I asked.
“Anyone who knows you are wed will try to disrupt the union before it can be finalized. It’s a game of sorts. A fun way to see if deception and trickery can prevent what you intend before it’s complete. It’s hard to resist that kind of challenge. It’s why most Fae keep an unresolved marriage a secret.”
“And if I don’t resolve it? What then?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It goes away. If someone disrupted it, you might owe them a prize.”
“A prize? What kind of prize?”
“Well, a game isn’t fun without a prize. You can usually bargain for what it will be, but it should be something of equal value to your life.”
“You’re kidding!”
She raised an eyebrow and her lip curled. “Do not mistake me for your precious Knave. I do not joke. I am made to bathe in blood and drink the life of my enemies. I am rippling muscles and biting teeth. I am blade and arrow. I am deadly violence.”
I nodded, schooling my expression to neutrality. She was serious. Deadly serious.
“Of course,” I agreed. “My mistake.”
“Yes. It is.”
I felt very guilty for slipping Goodie Chanter’s prized possession into my pocket as I gathered up Vhalot’s cage, but that didn’t stop me from keeping it. Which was crazy, because who purposely invites trouble into their life? And Scouvrel was always trouble. I’d thought our marriage could just go away. That we could just say it was a mistake. Which meant that I hadn’t had to think until right now about what it might mean to be married to one of the Fae. About what might be expected. About what might be forced on me.
I shivered, suddenly cold to the core.
Chapter Eleven
I waited until nightfall because that’s when you do bad things – or at least things other people might think of as bad.
If I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t sure if I could really harm someone from my town – a human with a family and friends who were likely also my family and friends – but at the same time, I was certainly angry enough to want to.
I hadn’t been able to repair my bow – not after the way it had been cracked – and building a new one took time. Which was why I had my hunting knife strapped to my leg and the old bow I’d found on the paths. I’d had to restring it and I wasn’t confident in the draw with how weathered it looked, but I hoped it was good enough to be painful if I shot someone at close range. And that was going to have to do.
I stashed a parcel of food – as much as I could take without my mother or Goodie Chanter noticing – and a pile of blankets I’d pilfered from laundry lines around town. Okay, so it wasn’t a very honest thing to do. I wasn’t feeling all that honest right now. It was all rolled up in a hollow log just west of the town because if I managed this, then that’s where I was going to take these people – west, over that winding, twisting mountain trail to that half-ruined cart and through the oak tree. It was my only chance to get them out of here. And I wasn’t going to watch some pompous knight with inflexible rules execute people just for being linked to the Fae in people’s minds. Not while I was here, at any rate.
“Why go to so much trouble for those not of your Court, Mortal?” Vhalot had asked me.
“Because right is right,” I said as I made preparations.
“Those others in your town don’t agree,” she’d said with an edge to her voice. “And I’ve been watching you. You steal and lie. You take and choose. You are no better than they are and no better than we are.”
“That’s your opinion,” I’d spat.
“What if we only judge you by your own conscience? By your own morality?” she’d asked, still calm despite my rising em
otions. “Would you even be able to stand up to that much scrutiny?”
I ignored the question. I didn’t like being reminded that I wasn’t living up to even my own idea of what was right or wrong. But this – this one thing could help. Couldn’t it?
“I’m going to leave you here,” I’d said before I left her stashed in the eagle nest tree. I put a cloth over her cage to keep the birds away. “Where I’m going, arrows might fly, and I don’t want you damaged in the crossfire.”
“I mistrust altruism,” she said, muffled through the fabric.
“Distrust all you like. I’m doing this for you.”
“Then let me return the favor. There are four things you must do to complete the marriage game. The first is to take his hand in return – in any way, it matters not. If you haven’t done that, then you haven’t even started the game.”
“Thanks,” I’d muttered. But my heart was already sinking. I could remember – clear as river water – how I’d taken Scouvrel’s hand and kissed it right before he’d pushed me through the stone circle. No wonder he’d looked so surprised.
It was all I could do not to pull the mirror out of my pocket and look for him again before I left. Which was crazy, because he’d probably trap me into doing whatever this second thing was. Caring about what he thought was like a moth caring about the flame. Stupid and dangerous.
I pushed the urge aside and steeled my nerves for what was coming.
The night guards were sloppy. Sneaking into town through the shadows outside the light of their watch-fires was laughably easy. If this town was the same as the one I’d left, then people probably did it all the time to sneak off into the woods and meet up with lovers or friends. Even if you didn’t take the roads, there were enough small gaps between houses and fences to move with ease into the town.
And now here I was outside the barracks or jail or whatever that was next to Olen’s house. I slid through the shadows with my back to the rough stone of the wall of his house. Heldra’s voice filtered down from the open window.
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