Authors: Sierra Dean
I climbed the stairs and waited for Desmond to follow, which he did slowly while continuing to watch the fae surrounding us. The whole group held their collective breath. The moment Desmond slipped by me I heard an audible sigh.
The shine of the palace vanished as soon as we stepped inside. The highly polished floors were marble with veins of quartz seemingly lit from below, but they were almost the only form of illumination. The walls were dark—not painted black, but made of shadows instead of raw material.
The ceiling swam with pink and green light, muted into near oblivion, but much like the Northern Lights on a smaller scale.
It should have been beautiful. It should have made me feel awed and dazzled and all those pretty, charming things. Instead I felt cold, uneasy, and the smell of the interior reminded me of a funeral home. Not dead, but devoid of warmth.
This was the last place I wanted to be.
My wolf stirred, whining internally, begging me to turn around and get the hell out of dodge.
Usually I didn’t take her at her urges, but I couldn’t help but think she was right about this one. Regardless of what my wolf suggested, I held my ground and stood inside the entrance hall, letting the shiver of uneasiness skitter over my skin like a million tiny bugs. I liked the outside much better than the inside.
“Follow me, please,” Ghillie directed.
“Does it get darker?” I asked, not liking the hitch in my voice.
“Everything must get dark before there is light. His Majesty is the light.”
“And we must pass through darkness to reach him?”
Ghillie pointed to the end of the long hall where the light from the floor and ceiling faded away and the bleak nothingness was complete. Pitch-black.
“Go that way.”
“Didn’t you say follow you?”
“To the end…then you will go alone.”
“Awesome.” I touched my gun and sword, reminding myself I had protection.
“Are you afraid of the
dark
?” Holden interrupted.
“No. But I’m not too keen to learn what’s hiding in the dark in a place like this.”
“Come along,” Ghillie said, moving ahead as though he hadn’t heard me.
I got the feeling it didn’t matter whether or not I wanted to go into the pitch. I was going. “Look,” I said, turning to Holden. “This isn’t your problem. Kellen is nothing to you. You could stay here with Desmond and wait—”
He raised a hand, cutting me off mid-sentence. It was probably for the best. I wasn’t good at big heartfelt speeches, and being selfless wasn’t my strongest character trait.
“If you think I followed you into a different goddamn reality just to sit in the waiting room, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“But—”
“And what’s more…do you have any comprehension of how much trouble you tend to get yourself in when you go running off on your own?”
My brain told my mouth to retort, but my mouth was smart enough to stay shut.
“Can we
go
please?” Desmond added. His voice was getting gruffer and less human every time he spoke. We needed to hurry the hell up before it was too late for him.
“Okay.”
Ghillie was already waiting for us at the end of the hallway, and in spite of the sudden leaden quality of my feet, I managed to guide my motley crew up to his side. “Any last words of advice before you throw us to the lions?”
“Lions?” He cocked his head to the side, his green eyes appraising me thoughtfully. “Certainly not lions. But depending on the mood of His Majesty, I wouldn’t bet against arm-wrestling an ogre.”
I gave him a dumbfounded stare in return and waited for the punch line. There was no
haha, gotcha
or a
just kidding
. He merely smiled as though he had a secret and nodded into the abyss. “Good luck to you, my lady, and those who follow you. I hope the Lady Calliope has foretold a long and healthy future for you all.”
Oh, well, didn’t that sound promising?
I clenched my hands into fists and pretended not to think about his creepy omen and how it might apply to me. I had a socialite to collect and next to no time to do it in. I’d worry about my mortality when I was back in New York and hunting for my psychopath-with-a-death-wish mother.
Fairies had nothing on the werewolf bitch out for my head.
I threw my shoulders back and gave Ghillie a terse nod. “I just go right in?”
“If you’d please.”
I did not please, but I walked into the murky void nonetheless. It didn’t feel like passing through the door of Starbucks into Calliope’s mansion usually did. There was no tug or swirling sensation of being moved from one plane to the next. But there was no air, either. A gasping, hollow void greeted me in the blackness, sucking the breath from my lungs and striking me cold with the realization that if I were to stand still for too long, I would die on my feet. It felt strange to me—as someone who confronted fear and death on a daily basis—that something as simple as one breath to the next could be the difference between life and death.
I felt small.
A hand nudged me forward, and soon I was on the other side, sucking in air like it was going out of style. Holden, who had no need to breathe, followed me out, and was tugging Desmond along behind him with the grace of a parent leading a bratty child through the mall. He looked disgusted in spite of the fact Desmond was behaving very well for a man about to yield to his inner beast.
The new room we entered was quite unlike the hall we left behind.
Every wall shone in gold tones, rendered alive by thousands of cream-colored candles lighting the round chamber. The floor looked like it was made from pearl, and the shifting illumination caused our shadows to creep and dance over the pale ground.
In the center of the room, on a gold throne carved to resemble the twisting branches of a tree, sat the single most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on. And that was saying something, taking into account the company I kept.
His features were delicate, and on another face might have looked too feminine. But with his dark hair curling past his ears and the fierce expressive tilt of his eyebrows, he did not look like a girl in the least. His brown-eyed gaze met my own, and for a long moment all we did was stare at one another, my poor heart rattling with each passing second he did not blink.
“Calliope sent you,” he stated.
Though his words didn’t demand a response, I dipped into a low curtsy—I couldn’t believe I remembered how to do one—but did not drop my gaze. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Behind me I heard the rustle of material and knew Holden and Desmond were following my lead. Thank goodness.
The man on the throne waved his hand from side to side and let out a disgusted sigh. “Don’t patronize me. I know who you are. You’re royalty in your own right.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Queen, yes? Of the
wolves
.” The way he said the last word let me know what his opinion on
wolves
was, and he wasn’t about to start writing sonnets about how delightful my pack was.
“Queen of the Eastern Pack,” I elaborated. “For now.”
This, of all things, was what made the fairy king smile. “What marvelous insight for one so young.”
“Oh?”
“Yes… To know everything in life is fleeting. Even life itself.”
What was it with the fae loving to give me the heebie-jeebies with their foreboding one-liners? Was I supposed to quake at his feet with a sentence like that? Not bloody likely.
“Maybe, but I think I’ve still got some time on my hands.”
“We’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Calliope should have told me that when a fairy king says
we’ll see
about the fate of your life, it’s not a
good
thing. Even without his warning, I was smart enough to know any uncertainty about my future well-being wasn’t something to take lightly. So when the king used those words, I decided it was time to play it cool.
“Your Maj—”
“Call me Aubrey, please.” He smiled in a cool way that I was sure made the fae ladies get wet in their gossamer undies, but it only gave me a worried shiver. “Aubrey Delacourte.” The expectant stare following his introduction told me he was waiting for a name from me, although I knew he had to be perfectly aware of who I was since he’d said as much earlier.
“I’m Secret McQueen.”
“I know.”
Of course he did.
“I’ve come because someone who…belongs to me has been brought here against her will.”
“
Oh?
”
Fairies were notorious for kidnapping. Babies sometimes, changelings. But their real bread-and-butter was women. I’d seen true fairy women before, and it had astonished me that the men of the realm felt any need to look outside their own species until Calliope explained the reasoning to me. Fairy women were delicate, and not just in their appearance. Pregnancy was not as simple for them as it was for humans, and the gestation period for a full-blooded fairy baby was a whopping thirty months.
Months
. Considering how much the babies drained from their mothers in terms of food and energy, it was sadly often the case that the mothers died before babies came to term.
Human women were a heartier lot, and their gestation was only nine months. To a fairy male looking to spread his seed it was often easier to father a half-breed than it was to wait out the lengthy birth of a full-blooded fairy child.
But the human women they took to incubate their spawn weren’t always willing. Kellen had been brought over as part of an owed debt, but I had even money it was her youthful uterus the fairy had been after and not her whole person.
“Aubrey, can I be honest with you?”
“It would be a lovely change of pace for me.”
“The girl who was taken, she doesn’t belong here. She isn’t going to be a warm cavity for one of your fairy lords to put his face-hugging progeny into. She’s coming home with me.”
“
Face-hugging progeny
?” He looked mildly amused.
“Wrong audience for an
Alien
reference, I think,” Holden whispered from behind me.
On the plus side, I found my absurd outbursts tended to endear me to people rather than make them want to order an instant death. I was eternally grateful Aubrey was at least a wee bit endeared. In fact, he was regarding me in an entirely new way, his cheek resting on his folded hand as he watched me with careful interest.
“You’re an unusual woman. Unlike any queen I believe I’ve ever known.”
“Understatement…of…the…year,” Desmond wheezed, still holding his stomach. I’d probably wasted my
Alien
reference too soon, since he looked like his chest was about to burst any second. Worry twisted in my guts when I saw Desmond’s ashy, sweat-streaked face. He was in
bad
shape.
My focus was renewed. “Aubrey, I need my friend back.”
The fairy king sat up straight, leaned forward on his knees and laced his fingers together. “My, my.
Real
honesty. That
is
a welcome change.”
“Does my refreshing honesty get me any bonus points?”
“It wins you my regard.”
“And what does your regard get me?”
“It gets you a chance.”
“A chance at what?”
“Winning her back.”
Win her. Like she was a poker hand or a door prize. I hadn’t been expecting them to hand her over pretty as you please, but I was taken aback at the notion I’d have to champion my cause to bring her home.
“Win her
how
?” In a physical challenge I might be okay. A challenge of the wits, I’d stand a sliver of a chance. Fairies were tricksy devils, and you had to think like a crazy person in order to beat them at their own game, but it wasn’t impossible. A test of patience, though, and we’d all be screwed.
“You and your companions will stay with us a brief time. While you are here I will observe you. Once I am satisfied with what I’ve seen, you and I will come to the terms of Miss Rain’s release.”
“Are you promising me you’ll let her go if you and I can come to an agreement?”
Ah, the careful selection of the word
promise
. When it came to the fae, there were two words you had to take pains to use only if you absolutely must:
thank you
and
promise
. To thank a fairy meant they would hold you in their debt for as long as they chose. A thank you was tantamount to saying
I owe you big time
, and fairies didn’t take that shit lightly.
Promises were equally loaded, because a fairy’s word was everything. They never lied. Sometimes they would skirt the truth so expertly it would feel like a lie, but it never was. Words had to be chosen with painstaking care when speaking to a fairy. So I had picked the word promise for good reason.
Aubrey knew it too because his beautiful face lost the amused mask it had previously shown and was now tightly drawn with displeasure.
“I said, do you promise—?”
“I heard you.”
We stared at each other while he considered my question. Then he smiled again, and as before, I didn’t like the gesture one bit. Something told me I was going to be played at my own game. “Yes, Miss McQueen. I promise I will release Miss Rain should you and I come to an agreement of terms. Does that make you happy?”