Brightly (Flicker #2) (25 page)

“I know,” he said finally, and she believed him. “I know it’s bad. I know how scared you are. But you’re going to be fine. I promise. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t—” With effort, she sucked in another breath. It hurt. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Her body felt too small, her skin too tight, like she was going to burst out of it. At last, she heard herself babbling, her voice rising: “I can’t do it again. I can’t stay here. I’ll die this time. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

“You’re not going to die. You’re not staying here. Nobody is staying here.”

But she could barely hear him. His voice was a distant rushing in her ears, drowned out by the pounding of her heart. Lee could feel her pulse through her whole body. Her heart was going to explode. She wrapped her arms around herself like she could hold her chest together.

Nasser was still speaking, repeating himself over and over, until something finally broke through: “Look at me,” he was saying. “Look at me.”

She lifted her face. He knelt in the grass before her, his face level with hers. Everything about him was still and steady.

“You need to breathe,” he told her. “It’ll pass. I swear it’ll pass, but you have to breathe.”

She took gulp of air. For a moment, she forgot to let it out again.

“Slower,” he said. “The same as me. Here, we’ll do it together. Are you ready?”

Nodding, Lee forced herself to inhale when he did. He counted on his fingers—one, two, three seconds—before he exhaled slowly. Matching his pace, Lee took one breath, then another, then another. She felt like she sat there for ages, looking at him, breathing with him, before her heart began to slow its mad gallop.

Her hands still trembled and her insides still hurt, like something sharp was twisting in her guts, but her chest had opened and the pain that squeezed her heart was subsiding.

Nasser smiled gently. “There you are,” he said, brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. “You’re going to stay with me, right?”

“Right,” she whispered. She still felt faintly dizzy and sort of like she might throw up, but she could manage it. She had to. She had to stay in this moment, or she would be lost.

Lee became aware of the eyes on her. On the other side of the cell, the others were all staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” Lee said, feeling heat rush to her face. “I’m so sorry. That was—”

“Don’t apologize,” Davis said. “You don’t ever have to apologize for things like that.”

Lee just nodded. She felt like her voice had been stolen.

“So what do we do now?” Henry asked, after a while.

“There’s nothing
to
do,” Alice said, letting her orb of light dim a little. “Except wait for our audience with the Lady. This place is crawling with knights and hounds and probably a lot of other things. Even if we could get out of this hole, we wouldn’t make it far.”

“We don’t even know what she wants yet,” Nasser pointed out. “It could be…” He trailed off, looking helplessly to the others for some support.

“Maybe she wants to grant us some wishes,” Clementine said wryly. She was leaning against one wall, studying her hands. Pale orange tongues of magical flame licked around her fingers, their glow flickering across her face, dancing madly on the ceiling. “I mean, faeries only throw you into a hole in the ground when they want to do something nice for you, right?”

“Clem,” Henry said, sounding like he’d been awake for a decade. “Please.”

She let the fire writhe for a moment more. Then she clenched her fists, extinguishing it. She slid down until she was sitting on the ground, her back against the wall.

They sat in silence until the knights returned for them.

Lady Merrin held court on a large platform suspended far above the ground, higher even than the tree houses. The circular platform wrapped around the massive trunk of a tree that grew in the middle of the settlement. Merrin’s wild-looking throne seemed to be made from living vines that had been encouraged to grow a certain way, much like the bridges.

A soft carpet of ferns, flowers, mushrooms and moss covered the platform, growing from a layer of earth that had been spread over it. Jewel-like flowers grew along the edge, trembling in the wind. Five bridges connected this platform to smaller ones on surrounding trees.

On the other trees, the platforms were stacked, with four levels of rings wrapping each one and ladders woven from sturdy, silvery vines connecting the levels. Lee noticed long, empty wooden benches on each platform, presumably so the court could be observed.

Twelve knights stood silently along the edge of the main platform, facing Lee and the others, who had been herded into the center, in front of the throne. The only sound was the wind sighing through the trees.

Lee was glad she couldn’t see the ground from here. The ascent had been bad enough: a series of birdcage-like elevators that were, like practically everything else, woven from vines, and apparently powered by magic. Just knowing where she was made Lee’s insides do a series of flips; she wasn’t sure how she would handle seeing exactly how far she had to fall.

Three faerie girls crossed from an adjacent platform, dressed similarly in loose-fitting trousers and sleeveless tops. As they drew closer, Lee saw that the pants had been sewn from large petals and the tops were made of layers of tiny leaves, stacked so closely together that they resembled a pattern of scales.

When they reached the center platform, two of the girls immediately went to sit beside the throne. Handmaids, Lee thought. Umbriel had attendants, too, she recalled, though he hardly asked them for anything. With his encouragement, they drank and danced with Umbriel and the other courtiers. In all of Lee’s smeared memories, the only one who ever ordered the attendants around was Carrick, Umbriel’s personal guard.

The third girl sat upon the throne. She clasped her hands in her lap as she surveyed the group of humans with dark, focused eyes. Faeries could live thousands of years, Lee knew, and most could change their appearances at will, so it was nearly impossible to determine their ages based on their looks… but Lady Merrin of the Summer Court looked barely older than Clementine or Alice.

Her dark hair was cropped short, falling to her chin. Little shells weighed down several thin braids, which swayed when she moved her head. What looked like the beginnings of antlers grew from her forehead, and a white circlet rested on her head. It was made of bone, Lee realized: two curved pieces of bone that had been fused together—ribs, maybe—and were now decorated with curling vines and dark red flowers that Lee couldn’t identify.

Merrin’s hair and olive skin had a faint golden glow, like she was collecting sunlight and reflecting it back. Lee couldn’t guess if she had to concentrate to achieve the effect or if it happened on its own. Merrin’s glow wasn’t anything like Umbriel’s fierce, beautiful light—the essence of summer he carried inside him and could not contain—but it was warm and lovely and it made Lee’s hands itch for her sketchbook. The Bright Lady, indeed.

When Merrin looked at them, for a moment, she just beamed. Her smile set Lee on edge: It was wide and hungry, a predator’s grin.

“I am so happy to see you,” she said in English, apparently assuming they didn’t speak Old Faerie. “I was sure you were lost forever. Every time I thought I’d found you, it turned out to be someone else. But you’re here now, and that’s what matters.”

“My Lady,” Filo said slowly, keeping his eyes down and his shoulders hunched, so as not to appear aggressive. “I’m not sure we follow.”

“Oh, not any of
you
.” Merrin wrinkled her nose and looked to Henry. “Him. The horses have been acting strangely since the moment you set foot in my forest, boy. They haven’t shown such excitement since the last time you were here.”

Henry risked a glance at her. “The… last time?”

“You were just a little thing,” Merrin went on blithely. “You had hardly any magic. The horses weren’t interested in you back then. They were responding to someone else. But if I had known you would develop so well, I would’ve fought harder to keep you.”

“I’m… I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Henry said.

Merrin smiled again, thin and knifelike. “Come now. I can see you trembling. If your head doesn’t remember me, your bones do.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Henry insisted, avoiding her eyes.

At that, Merrin gave a disappointed little huff. “No matter. I can show you.” She glanced at one of the faerie girls. “Nell, fetch my mirror.”

A girl with waves of long lilac hair dipped her head to Merrin, then darted across one of the bridges to the next platform and disappeared. She returned a minute later carrying a large, round mirror, which she placed at Merrin’s feet.

Merrin sat on the grass, gesturing for them to do the same. “Come, all of you,” she said impatiently. “Come and see.”

Hesitantly, they all lowered themselves, sitting nervously around the mirror like spooked horses, as far from Merrin as possible. Lee crouched uncertainly. Her skin was prickling, every nerve in her body screaming at her to leap up and run—but there was nowhere to go.

When Merrin tapped the mirror with one finger, the surface rippled like water, flashing in the sunlight. Lee saw shapes flickering below the surface like darting fish.

“Once upon a time,” Merrin said, looking down at the mirror, “there was a human girl named Magdalena. She had an unearthly voice, too beautiful by far, and she used it carelessly. The first time my fey heard her voice, she was wandering the forest paths alone, singing to herself with no thought of who might be listening. She was irresistible.”

From the depths of the mirror, a scene emerged. Colors bloomed, spreading from the center like droplets of ink billowing across water. A teenage girl with black hair and brown skin stood among the trees, surrounded by faeries on horseback. She looked very small. The figures in the mirror never quite solidified: They wavered in place a little, trailing color like wisps of smoke, giving the scene a dreamlike quality.

Merrin swept her hand in a smooth arc and the scene evaporated. Now Merrin and her courtiers lounged on mossy cushions, drinking and laughing, as the girl sang for them, her eyes glassy and dull.

“She was the best singer we’d had in ages,” Merrin said. “Far from the liveliest, though. We could hardly get her to
move
when she wasn’t singing. Some humans don’t respond well to life in Faerie. Sometimes their strength goes and they just die, nothing for it. But this one’s voice was so lovely. I was determined to keep her alive as long as possible. One night, I sent for her—and she was gone. Vanished, as if she’d never been. The only trace of her…”

Several black feathers drifted across the mirror’s surface. Crow’s feathers. Beside her, Lee felt Filo stiffen.

“Neman and Morgan,” Henry breathed.

“So that’s what they call themselves these days,” Merrin said. “And they
did
tell you some of this story.”

Henry dropped his gaze and muttered, “Not them. Someone else.”

Merrin didn’t reply. Her dark eyes glittered as she gazed into the mirror. “My property had been stolen,” she went on. “I knew who had taken it, but not where it had gone. I thought my best singer was lost forever. And then, years later by human reckoning, a voice floated through the trees. At the same time, the horses and hounds grew restless, as if something called to them that they could not reach. Imagine my surprise when my knights came to me with my own Magdalena. Your masters stole her, but she found her way back to me in the end… and she brought a wonderful prize with her.”

A woman dashed through the mist, clutching a wrapped bundle to her chest. Her long black braid swung against her back. She was older now, but Lee recognized her as the girl in the first scene. One of Merrin’s knights grabbed her by the hair and caught her around the waist as another knight wrestled the bundle away from her.

The surface rippled, and then the knight was kneeling before Merrin’s throne, head bowed as he raised the little bundle toward her like an offering. When Merrin accepted it, smiling greedily, the bundle squirmed—and Lee’s gut wrenched as she realized it was a baby.

“Magdalena was never quite right after that,” Merrin said. “She could hardly sing and she would not eat. But it was no matter, because her child was the better of the two. Magic stirred in his blood, a magic we prize more highly than music.”

When the scene shifted, Merrin reclined in her throne, watching a trio of human musicians. She peered over the side of her throne at the wooden cradle that sat in the moss beside her. The baby’s little arms waved, hands grasping. Merrin wrinkled her nose in annoyance, like the baby was crying, and beckoned one of her handmaids, who scrambled to scoop up the baby and whisk him away.

“I adored that baby,” Merrin said. “His magic would’ve served me well. I would’ve cherished him all his life for it. I cannot imagine a better life for a human. Soon after I took him in, my fey captured another human. The hounds refused to touch him, but my knights did not. The moment he was brought before me, I felt his magic. He was the reason the animals had been behaving strangely. I knew what he was—an animal talker—and he made it clear why he had come, with iron and salt in his pockets.”