Pale Queen Rising (14 page)

“Frank?” he asks dully.

“Ludwig Fennhaven,” I reply. Henry’s eyes tighten. “Yes, I knew his true name. Just as I know yours, Alistair. I’m just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here. How did you two know each other?”

He opens his mouth. No words come out. Just a thin trail of smoke.

“Fuck,” I curse. I jump to my feet and step back, standing next to Eli.

Henry coughs and another plume rises from his lips. The truly terrifying thing is the vacant expression on his face and the terror behind his eyes, like he’s watching it all but isn’t close enough to do anything about it.

“Cross a line in the contract?” Eli asks.

I nod as we watch Henry sputter. “Must’ve been the true name thing. Damn it.”

“Don’t worry, there was nothing in there anyway.”

Henry gasps loudly, as though he’s just now regaining control over his body. He locks eyes with me, even as his irises burn up from within.

“My goddess will rise,” he wheezes through the smoke. “And when she does, even your Winter Queen will tremble.”

And before I can get anything else out of him, he collapses in on himself, his skin and bones disintegrating into ash as the fires of his contract consume him.

“Well,” I say after a while. “That’s just great.”

“Less to clean up,” Eli replies. “Just get a waste bin . . .”

Despite myself, I chuckle.

“How about this—I clean up and you go tell Mab that there is, in fact, someone out there opposing her rule.”

“No, thank you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

My goddess will rise.
Great. Not only are we dealing with a rogue ruler, she thinks she’s a god. And so do her followers.

Mab is
not
going to be pleased.

Nine

I don’t tell Mab about Henry’s dying words. I think too highly of my own life for that. Instead, I tell her the rest of the truth—that her fears were founded, that there is a new figure out there vying to take control. She takes it better than I thought. She doesn’t even scream.

All told, the interaction takes about two minutes, and then I’m headed back into the streets of Winter. A small part of me wants to go check in on Roxie, but I won’t. Not tonight. Not so soon. She has to think she’s on her own, that I’m not playing savior—because that’s not a role I can play full-time, even if it’s something I’m gravitating toward. I have to keep my eyes on the job. The job I’m currently failing at.

I head down the main avenue from the castle, not really looking where I’m going. Until I get to the statue of the Oracle. Something about the waver of fire reminds me of watching Henry burn, and I pause there for a moment, looking up into the blank face. I brush my hand against the plaque, wondering what “The Oracle’s Sacrifice”
actually was, what the whole war was about and why Mab won’t talk about it. I can’t tell anything from the statue itself, but it’s definitely feminine. Maybe my age. What did she do that was so important she got a statue, when here I am saving Faerie from apparent destruction and no one even knows it’s happening?

Maybe, when I die in the midst of all this, I’ll finally be deemed important enough to recognize.

I continue down the avenue, suddenly embarrassed for feeling sorry for myself out here, not that there’s anyone around to see it. But as I go, I get a flash of memory, the faintest hint, probably from the flicker of fire in the statue’s stone hair. It reminds me of the girl in my hallucination, the blonde chick with bloodstained knees. I glance back to the statue, trying to compare the two. Maybe it’s something in the cheekbones? I shake my head. I’m losing it, trying to pull connections where they don’t exist, and it doesn’t even matter—the Oracle has nothing to do with this. She’s dead. And the lost girl I saw with Mab in that vision wasn’t exactly world-saving material. She wasn’t even wearing leather.

I don’t encounter anyone on my way to the Lewd Unicorn. The bars I pass only have a few patrons lounging inside, and the usual sound of faerie music and pleasures are muted, distant. Maybe people actually are feeling the Dream shortage . . .

Celeste’s bar is practically empty. Only a few regulars scattered throughout, keeping to the shadows. No one’s talking, so she’s got some ambient rock playing through the house speakers. Apparently everyone’s had one of those days.

“What’ll it be?” Celeste asks when I sit down.

“The usual,” I say. Because I never say anything else in here. This interaction is basically rote.

This time, though, there isn’t a tumbler immediately in front of me.

I look up and see the hesitation in her aura, the faint flicker of light like clouds over the sun.

“Can you pay?”
she asks in my head.

I actually laugh.

What?
I ask.

Another pause. She starts pouring the drink, but there’s definitely a bit of a tremble there.

“You know I hate to ask this,”
she says. “
But things are kind of tight around here.”

Wait, seriously?

I’ve never paid for anything here. I don’t handle Dream; everyone knows that. As a mortal, I’m not allowed to use it as currency. “My tab” is just a running joke. I assumed she billed Mab for whatever.

She slides the drink over without answering.

Celeste, how bad is it? I know you told me things were getting rough but I thought you were just making small talk.

“You haven’t heard? No, of course you wouldn’t. Mab keeps the castle stocked.”

I play it cool. I don’t even think about knowing anything, because I want her to keep talking.

What’s going on?

“There’s a Dream shortage. People are starting to leave the city. Some are even forswearing their allegiance and heading into the Wildness.”

That would explain the empty streets.

“You have no idea. Have you been outside the central district?”

I shake my head and take the tumbler, making a mental note to get my hands on some Dream to pay her back.

“It’s a ghost town.”

Where’s the Dream going?
I ask, playing dumb.
I mean, why would everyone go to the Wildness? They don’t have any stock in the Trade.

Another hesitation.

“
That’s not what I hear,”
she says quietly, as though Mab can hear our thoughts.

You mean someone’s pulling in Dream? Someone not tied to the kingdoms?

It’s nearly impossible to keep playing stupid, but I’m tired enough that it’s working.

“
That’s not all,”
she says.

What are you talking about?

She doesn’t answer. Just pours me another shot and hides the bottle back behind the counter.

“I can’t say. You should go see for yourself.”

So, after finishing my drink and promising to bring her back some Dream the next time I’m by, I make my way to the outer edges of Winter.

The city stretches on for miles within the great wall separating civilization from the frigid wasteland beyond. Tenement-style flats line each side of the narrow cobbled street, their facades black and covered in shadow. There are only a few stragglers out here, and even they seem to walk with a purpose, with the desire to get away. Needless to say, no one’s talking, and the farther I walk, the fewer people there are to talk
to.
A few blocks down and the flats surrounding me don’t just feel empty like Winter usually does, they
are
empty. I walk up to a door left slightly ajar and push it open, peering inside. The place is dark, but my eyes adjust quickly as the runes along my spine flare into life.

The flat is tiny, nothing more exciting than your average one-bedroom. There’s a sofa and table and, in the other room, a rather uncomfortable looking bed. Some Fey are lavish in their abodes, but whoever lived here clearly had a more Spartan outlook—no art on the walls, no personal objects. Just a vacant room ready for someone else to move in.

I don’t know what I’m looking for. It’s not like there’s going to be “Come to the Wildness” propaganda posters lying around, and there’s no one here to question. I also know that no one in their right mind would ever admit to having heard of some sanctuary offer from faeries in the Wildness, let alone consider moving there themselves. But I wander through the room anyway. And when there’s nothing there, I leave and continue down the street, peering into the houses as I pass. None of them holds any answers. They’re all empty. No one on the streets, no lights in the windows, no music in the air. The place is completely dead.

It’s maybe my sixth or seventh house when I actually find something interesting. And that’s still pushing the idea of “interesting.”

I almost miss it. Really, it’s just dumb luck and not skill that I see it poking out of a leather-bound book on the nightstand. There’s no light for it to catch, no rustle of intuition. It’s just a bookmark, and if I hadn’t been so bored from all the other rooms, I probably wouldn’t have opened the book in the first place.

But it’s not a bookmark. It’s a ticket. It’s about the size of a business card, and the front is covered in fleurs-de-lis—I can’t make out the colors in this darkness—and
Admit One
in swirling script. I turn it over. It’s for the Cirque des Immortels.

I can feel the magic laced through the card. It’s infinitesimal, but it’s there, lurking in the ink, waiting in the fibers. I can tell it’s one of those dormant spells, the type that requires just a little magic to open. Faerie magic, most likely, judging from the taste.

Thankfully, that’s what I’m good at.

Faerie magic is fueled by Dream, which is why it’s such a necessary resource. My own supply is linked to Mab’s, seeing as I’m not allowed any of my own.
You don’t need it to survive,
Mab had said,
so why would we waste any on you? You may take what you need, when you need it, and only the barest minimum.
I use only the tiniest amount. Seeing as Mab is in charge of my supply, she also knows when and where and probably why I’m using it. She won’t be happy to learn it is to track down why her own people are willing to risk exile or death to flee—I don’t think she wants me to know people are abandoning ship. If anything is to be her downfall, pride would be my number one guess.

The moment my power touches the paper, my vision shifts. It’s not images, per se, but lights and colors and shifting shapes. It doesn’t make sense. Flickers of orange and red, flashes of yellow, and curls of shadow, everything moving like light through a jungle’s branches. It’s strange and dazzling, but it’s not the fireworks that make my hair stand on end and my heart race—it’s the smell. For any other human it would be unnoticeable, but I can taste it: cloying, rich and powerful, a scent that fills my lungs and my blood with heat and power, a scent I know all too well. Dream. Pure, unfiltered, undistilled, unadulterated Dream. Whatever or wherever this place I’m seeing is, Dream is rampant there.

I could float in this forever.

Then a voice—feminine, ageless, and terribly angry—twines from the scene and roots into my skull.

“Come home,”
it whispers.
“Come and take back all that should be yours.”

Another flash, the image of Mab’s castle from on high, the wooden gates of Oberon’s kingdom. The smoke and flame of war.

Then the vision’s gone.

I drop the card to the floor and lean against the wall, staring at my hands, which burn and tingle with power.

“Well shit,” I whisper, looking past my fingers to the card on the floor.

People aren’t just leaving Winter because they’re hungry. They’re leaving because they’re being recruited.

I don’t bother exploring further, and I hesitate for a very long time over whether or not I should bring the ticket back to my room. Mab’s not going to like it, but she’s going to want to see this. I slip it into my pocket and hope the next time I see her, she’s in a good mood. When I leave and make my slow way back to the castle, I actually start to feel the weight of our situation.

Why the hell is someone sending tickets from Mab’s circus from the depths of the Wildness? How are they circulating without the higher-ups noticing? It’s not until I reach the castle and am heading toward my room that a dangerous question arises . . . What if Mab sent me to the circus because she already knew about these tickets? She’s always been one step ahead, even when she pretends not to be. So what in the world could her angle be?

None of it makes any sense, and once more my tired thoughts drift to Roxie, and I realize that for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I want to talk to her about this. The fact that I’m even thinking that makes me pause—I’ve known her for all of a day.

But that’s also the longest time I’ve ever spent around a mortal.

“You shouldn’t be thinking about her,” I mutter. “She isn’t important.”

And yet, she’s tied to this Henry guy. So maybe, in some purely business way, she is. I reach the door of my bedroom and press my head against it. I don’t want to go in there, not for another empty night waiting for the morning to come. My body is completely thrown off from all these time jumps—I don’t know if I’m hyper or exhausted or what. All I know is that I’m ready for this job to be over and done with. Back to your regularly scheduled killing, thanks.

There are dozens of enchantments that make my door accessible only to me. And Mab, I guess, but that’s obvious since she owns the place. Which is why, when it opens without me turning the knob, I go from introspective to attack mode in a heartbeat.

My blade’s against the neck of whoever opened the door—whoever is
inside my room—
before the shadow becomes clear.

“Were you planning on waiting out there all night?”

I don’t remove the blade. It’s the magician. Kingston.