by Lucy Tempest
“Then I’d best step away from the balustrade, in case you’re here to finish off her line.”
I waved off his mock-serious caution. “Please, I’d at most poison your tea.”
“Save that for your stepmother.”
That sly jab, delivered with such a straight face, caught me so off guard I let out a loud “HA!” before clapping my hand over my mouth. But my humorous outburst seemed to defy my attempt to stifle it, echoed mockingly in the freezing night air around us.
His gaze locked with mine until it died off, and only the ethereal music floating from inside the ballroom filled the space between us.
Then he huffed that almost laugh again. “Poison seems too tame, too discrete a way to be rid of someone, though. Such a missed opportunity for drama. Around here, more flamboyant methods are preferred.”
“Which are?”
“Throwing someone off a cliff, impaling them with an icicle, or the even more elaborate method of causing an avalanche only for them to get caught in, and freezing to death.”
The grim absurdity of the topic would have been enough to tickle my sense of the grotesque. But his macabre humor delivered in such solemnity was infectious, making me giggle. “Tying them to a boulder and rolling them down the mountain seems like a quicker, easier alternative.”
“Having them be eaten by wolves is also one.” He let out a shaky wheeze, as if he was trying to laugh, but wasn’t physically capable of truly doing so. “And it serves a double purpose. Ridding the realm of them, and feeding the wolves.”
I shook my head as I spluttered. “Too messy. Cleaning up after wolves is a nightmare, and I speak from experience. Best to bury them and let the maggots dispose of the body for you.”
“Decomposition is good for the soil, the best way to give back to the earth,” he agreed, shoulders shaking with his raspy huffing. “Only one method of execution is better for the environment than that.”
“And that is?”
He pointed down, across the dark green river and to the snowy bank stacked with gnarled, twisting, grey trees that looked like flailing people. “Turning them into a tree.”
Chapter Thirteen
Why was I laughing?
Even before we’d veered into the grisly zone of assassination methods, and the most disturbing one of turning people into trees, everything we’d been discussing had been painful. It had stirred up so many horrid memories and bleak feelings. Yet, for the first time ever, I found that I wanted to talk about them. Found it even a relief.
And whatever I said, he fired back with the full understanding of similar experience, similar suffering. Then somewhere along the way, our bitterness had transformed to snark, then into morbid humor.
Never would I have thought that something like this could happen to me. That I’d find myself—bonding with anyone, let alone a fairy king. But here we were.
Bonding. That was what this was. This was why discussing my life with him carried less pain but had more meaning. Prior to this, I’d just been faced with pity from Bonnie and her friends, teasing from Keenan, and indifference from Etheline and my father.
But Yulian wasn’t humoring me, wasn’t mocking me, or pitying me. He understood, empathized, and somehow that changed everything.
I wanted to keep talking with him about it, airing out all that I’d kept within my heart, like cleaning a dusty house, opening the windows and letting it breathe for the first time in years.
And the most encouraging bit wasn’t just the mutual understanding. It was that the more we talked, the more he changed right before my eyes.
His face grew less stiff, his skin warmed with a purplish blush, and more depth appeared in his eyes, like vapor had been wiped off a window, allowing me to see inside.
“Can you leave?” he suddenly asked, any sign of merriment he’d been able to exhibit gone. “Your family, I mean.”
My laughter ended on an abrupt hitch. “No, not yet.”
As if summoned by the topic, I felt my ankle begin to warm.
I’d thought with my stepfamily around the castle, the anklet wouldn’t kick in, since it wouldn’t consider me attempting to escape them. But what if it didn’t only activate by distance, but also after a certain time passed with me away from the house?
Judging by the rising heat, I didn’t have long before the anklet burned my foot off!
Heart booming in my throat, I frantically looked up into his darkening eyes. “I have to go!”
“Wait!” Yulian’s hand missed me by an inch as I lifted my layered skirt and scurried out the balcony. His deep voice, calling my name, was drowned by the music yawning louder, and the staccato of my glass heels clicking on the opalescent floor as I waded back through the dancing guests.
Spotting Keenan twirling a pink-winged pixie, I pounced on him, pulling him away by his coat belt.
“If you want a dance, Cinders, you need to wait your turn,” he complained as he let me drag him away from his annoyed companion.
I only dragged him harder, pointing urgently at my anklet. “We need to leave!”
Alarm dawned in his grey eyes, replacing the teasing. He at once switched our positions, taking the lead in dragging me out and down the staircase. “Is it midnight already?”
“I had to leave by midnight?” I exclaimed. “And you knew but didn’t tell me?”
He tossed me a look over his shoulder as we flew down the stairs. “I’m only assuming here, since there’s no other reason the anklet should be acting up. Many spells break at midnight since it ushers in a new day. They must have made it so that even if you didn’t run far enough to activate the anklet, you can’t hide, and are forced to be back at the beginning of each new day.”
“You mean the transformation spell might also expire at midnight?”
That seemed to be something he hadn’t considered. And from the way he eyed me, it might have already started expiring.
He grimaced. “Ugh—Etheline should have found a way to give you more time with both spells.”
“She should have warned me at least! And what exactly did she expect me to do in a couple of hours?” I panted as I slowed down after him as he breezed past the entrance. “And you didn’t seem to be doing much, either!”
“Subtlety is an art you’re clearly unfamiliar with,” he scoffed. “I was interrogating people while Sorcha and Simeon watched the guests for signs of suspicion or maliciousness.”
“And did you find out anything?” I hissed, more with annoyance with those two fairies, than with the rising discomfort.
He waved for the guards to bring us our carriage. “Nothing conclusive. I got the same unhelpful answer from twelve separate people.”
“And that was?”
Looking over his shoulder to respond, Keenan’s mouth dropped open on a dull groan instead. “Oh, no.” Before I could swing around to see what he was groaning at, he yanked me down the remaining steps. “This is bad—this is really bad.”
I stumbled after him, struggling to gather up the skirt. “What are you going on about?”
“Wait! Come back!” Yulian’s darkest winter-night voice boomed behind us. My head snapped back to find him running towards us, with Simeon and a handful of guards and castle courtiers stumbling in his wake. “Stop them!”
But our pumpkin carriage had arrived, and before the nearby guards could do anything, Keenan picked me up and tossed me through the door. In blinding speed, he hopped onto the driver’s seat, whipping the reins to launch our steeds into an explosive gallop.
As the carriage almost hurtled off the ground, I stuck my head out the window, watching with a tightening throat and thundering heart as Yulian ran down the steps of the castle.
He finally stopped at their bottom, watching us go, tall, majestic body tight with a stance of frustration. I kept looking back until he disappeared from view, the howling, freezing wind whipping past my flaming face.
Once we’d finally descended the mountain, a chime carried through the racket o
f wheels and wind, a clock tower declaring it fifteen to midnight.
But I didn’t need it to tell me how close we were to a new day. The searing pain in my ankle was keeping me accurately apprised of the passing minutes.
“What did you do?” Keenan shouted once we were heading into the city.
“What do you mean?” I shouted back.
“The man was running after you, that’s what I mean! Running, Cinders, when he’s been oozing around like a frozen ghost for years. And he talked nonstop to you since he saw you, when he says a sentence or two a month if we’re lucky. I saw him do something like smiling, and at one point even laughing. Simeon almost keeled over from that sight.” Keenan laughed raucously, as if he found the whole thing hilarious, which with his twisted sense of humor, of course he did. “Did you drug him?”
“Yes, Keenan,” I yelled over the din, glad to have a way to vent my rising pain. “King Yulian was having a funny reaction to the smell of soot and sawdust.”
“It was probably the cinders, Cinders. Whatever you did, you surely made an impression.”
“Wasn’t that the point of me being here?”
“No! You were supposed to be like me! Chatty, distracting, annoying, ruining whatever focus he has, and throwing off his attention to others and to his surroundings—not charming him.”
“Why didn’t you do it then?” I shrieked.
“Because he had the ball specifically to meet girls. And even with a spell, handsome men like myself don’t make pretty girls—think of it like the fate that befalls daughters who take after their fathers. Also, the last time I impersonated a woman, it got me into big trouble—and not the fun kind. Sorcha was to blame, of course. If I did it my way, it would have been fun all the way!”
Any curiosity about that escapade along with the burning around my ankle were forgotten as I looked behind us, and realized what the rhythmic noise rising behind us was.
A cavalcade of castle guards on horseback!
And they were approaching steadily. They’d catch up with us in a minute!
“Keenan, the cavalry is after us!”
He growled in frustration. “Hold on to your magic wig, Cinders. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!”
Before I could shout back “How could it be any bumpier?” he made a violent turn, steering us off the path towards a fenced road.
When the reindeer leaped over the fence, the carriage became airborne for a second, before crashing down hard enough to reignite my every ache and bloom new bruises.
Arms flopping over the window as I clung to it with all my strength, I watched in horror as we slid down a snowy slope. “What are you doing?”
“Throwing them off! They can’t follow us here!”
And it seemed to work. I watched the guards rush back and forth across the road above us, unable to follow. Looking back ahead, I found that we’d ended up on the outskirts of Midnight, and were approaching a smooth, icy stretch of land.
He made a left turn once we reached the middle of the area, and that was when I realized something that made my heart plop into my guts.
The crackling sound I’d been hearing wasn’t the stomp of hooves on a frozen ground—it was that of breaking ice.
This wasn’t land! This was a frozen lake!
And I screamed, “Keenan, turn back!”
“Are you kidding?” he bellowed. “I found us a shortcut back to the house. I have to get you there before the anklet burns off your foot or something!”
A deafening crack exploded beneath us, rattling every bone in my body.
“Forget the house, this is a—” My furious shout became a terrified screech as another crack tore through our path, shattering the ice beneath us.
Before I could fill my lungs again to scream, the whole carriage plummeted through the ice, and into the water.
Chapter Fourteen
Submerged within a heartbeat, dread gave way to the stab of marrow-freezing shock.
The overwhelming cold enveloped me as the carriage sank faster than I could think or move. All reaction was arrested as the freezing water burned my skin, hardened my flesh, and froze my eyes until I felt they would burst.
Then another horror stuck me. The carriage was shrinking. It would soon revert to its original pumpkin size. I could die squashed before I even had a chance to drown.
Panic finally surfaced through the shock, giving me the rabid strength to kick open the door. Shafts of moonlight speared through the hole in the icy surface, rippling around me in an eerie dance. I couldn’t see Keenan, but saw the reindeer tearing away from the carriage, swimming up and away, leaving me behind in the inky depths.
Heart almost booming out of my chest, I started kicking and clawing through the water—but only felt myself sinking deeper.
Why couldn’t I float up? I knew how to swim!
My enchanted skirt! Waterlogged, it felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. And the magic hair seemed to be coming alive and wrapping around my head and neck. Why weren’t they reverting to my flimsy rags and sheared hair, already? Under their hindrance, no amount of kicking or flapping would propel me up.
Soon I could no longer feel my feet in my hard shoes, as I just struggled in place, growing weaker and heavier, the stabbing pain in my head and the burning in my chest magnifying as I ran out of trapped air.
Panic started to seep out of my limbs, numbness rushing in to fill its receding tide. Drowsiness was an inexorable wave putting out the fire of survival in my every cell, invading my mind and lulling me, soothing me, pulling me into the deep.
I heard a muffled shout. It could have been in my own head, some desperate instinct clinging to life, no matter how miserable or pointless it had always been.
But I no longer cared. A darkness like no other was spreading from the edges of my awareness, promising peace, an end to all my struggles.
Just before I succumbed to its inexorable lure, a white hand tore through the darkness, rippling like starlight on the black silk of eternity. A set of long, pronged horns followed as the hand reached for me, then the rest of a body emerged, framed by the ever-shifting void.
The skeletal head of a stag on a humanoid body draped in a deep purple cloak banged the gong of fear, reverberating through the recesses of my numb mind.
The Horned God was here for me.
In one hand, he clutched a silver bident, and in the other he had my wrist. He tugged at me, leading me towards the swirling portal he’d appeared through—and I screamed.
At least I tried. I had no more air, no more voice—no more anything.
There was nothing I could do to fight the pull of Death.
Then, something else pulled me in a different direction, I couldn’t tell which way, until the vicious tug loosened Death’s grip on my arm.
Sensation returned to me, trickling through the numbness, dull and distant, but enough to sense my body floating up, to see light tickling my eyelids.
Awareness blinked in and out as I felt weightlessness vanishing, cold air flaying my skin then something solid meeting my back. I teetered on the edge of consciousness for heartbeats—or forever.
Somewhere, sometime, I found my eyes open, and one thing filled my vision.
The blurry form of King Yulian looking down at me.
He was drenched, his short, white hair weighed down, water droplets frozen on his face.
“Can you hear me?”
“Guh,” was all I managed, too depleted, too paralyzed to move my frozen lips.
But even through the deep numbness, I felt his gloved hand touch my cheek. “You’re safe now.”
I lolled my heavy head from one side to the other. We weren’t on the lake, but on the ground—shore?
The sound of snow crunching followed by sniffling startled me back to some deeper awareness, then a thick, smooth, warm tongue licked my face.
Oscar the reindeer, brown fur damp, was half kneeling by me. Keenan and his deer were nowhere in sight.
Idiot. Nearly got m
e killed.
“I saw him,” I wheezed, trying to lift my head.
“Who?”
“Him.” My teeth chattered, not just from the agonizing warmth of blood creeping through my numbed extremities again, but from the memory of my literal brush with Death. “Horns—skull—he caught me—then—then…” I stared up at Yulian, wet, frozen and unfazed by it, face scrunched in unmistakable worry, his sleigh behind him, floating. “Y-you pulled me away…”
His frown deepened. “I was barely in time if you had started seeing him.”
I blinked, dazed. “Wh-what?”
“Near-death experiences, not uncommon here, are arguably where we get all our sightings of the Horned God.”
Carefully, he stuck his hands under my arms and lifted me off the snow. As he rose to his feet, I felt the ground beneath my feet but my legs wouldn’t straighten, couldn’t carry me. He didn’t let me try, swung me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing, and took me to the sleigh.
He set me down on the upholstered seat, and wrapped me in a thick, woolen blanket. When he kneeled to bundle my feet, he paused, frowning at my glass slippers, which miraculously hadn’t cracked or slipped off my feet during my struggles.
“Where did you get these?” His voice was deeper and darker than the depths of the frozen lake.
“G-gift.”
After staring at me for a long moment, without further comment, he wrapped another blanket around me. Somewhere, the clock tower rang midnight and my anklet’s burn punched its way to the surface of my awareness, for once a welcome sensation, warming my freezing leg.
Since nearly drowning hadn’t killed me, Dolora would when she returned to find me gone. But I couldn’t care about her now, or about what she’d do. Only one thing filled my mind.
Yulian. He’d come after me. He’d saved me.
He was asking me something, but I heard nothing through my own dumbfounded, sinking realizations as I said it out loud, “Y-you saved me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I could,” he said blankly. “I’m the only one who could.”