Authors: Maddy Edwards
“If you would all follow me?” Terry asked coldly. Her jaw was clamped together and her words came out as a growl. She was furious. She didn’t acknowledge what Seth had just done, but it was a universal no-no to use magic in others’ Fairy Courts. Of course, it was also a no-no to try and freeze your guests to death while you smiled. Tit for tat, so to speak.
We followed Terry and Teegan, who were now walking ahead of us and talking quietly to each other, into yet another massive room.
I felt my breath leave my body as I saw that the room was a ballroom and it was full. Dinner my butt. This was a full-blown party with every Marchell Court member in attendance. Not only that, but we were the only ones not dressed in black, so we stood out like blood on snow. I tried not to glare around the room, but I couldn’t help it.
This was overwhelming, and it was about to become more so.
Just as we moved into the ballroom I heard a creaking overhead. Then every light in the place went out.
That was fine, totally cool, I was just afraid of the dark. But no big deal. I could handle it if I kept a good hold on myself.
Then Katie screamed and my calm was shattered.
There was only one appropriate response in this situation. I screamed too. I hated the dark, and my fragile calm had been shattered by Katie’s fear. I felt rough hands—they must have been Teegan’s—grab my arms and pull me back against a hard chest.
“Stop it,” he murmured. “It’s all part of the show. You’re fine.”
I gulped, forcing my panic down. “Are you kidding me?” I breathed, but even as my eyes adjusted to the dimness I saw that he wasn’t lying. I should have known this was coming, since we were visiting Fairies from another Court. Mrs. Cheshire would have put on a similar display if the Arsenals had visited her Winter Court.
I took heart that Katie must have seen similar demonstrations before and was still frightened. But she also had more reason to be. An ice ghost had floated up and brushed her arm, and that’s what had made her scream.
I was not a fan of ice ghosts. They were basically a certain type of moving water, not actually dead ghosts that were frozen, because that would be too weird. They were a way to show off power, since freezing that much water vapor while still allowing it to float around the room wasn’t easy. Plummeting a ballroom into darkness and illuminating what must have been twenty of the spooky things to float around and impress guests was even harder.
Surely Samuel could make an ice ghost if he wanted, but I had never seen him bother. They were too showy for his down to earth and practical tastes.
I glanced over at Katie. Seth had his arm reassuringly over his sister’s shoulder, but his face was hard. Terry was smirking behind him. I would have bet anything that this was her idea.
“Pretty,” I breathed. I was still crushed against Teegan’s rock hard chest and I let out a huff. The rise and fall of his breathing against my back set me blushing, and I was grateful he couldn’t see my face. With my eyes still focused on the ghosts I whispered, “Did you talk to your mom?”
I felt him shift a little uncomfortably behind me. “No, not yet. Like I said, her memory is bad. Sometimes she just stays in her rooms all day.”
I nodded my understanding and returned my attention to the show. The dark shapes wheeled and danced in front of us, sometimes flying into the air and illuminating the dark ceiling above, at other times flying together and creating waves of light in their wake. The crowd gasped and murmured at all the appropriate moments, which only fueled the show to more amazing displays of Glamour.
When it was over I joined Mae and the Arsenals in clapping. Slowly, the lights came back on.
Terry turned around, her eyes alight with malice. “Oh, are you all right?” She moved toward Katie, but Seth put his body between his sister and her tormenter. His face was unreadable.
“She’s fine,” he said.
I pulled away from Teegan and he instantly let me go, but not before Seth saw us. “I didn’t think you would scare so easily,” Teegan remarked.
“You should have seen the morning I had,” I muttered, trying to regain some of my dignity. It was a major effort. I felt humiliated and my red face didn’t help. Everyone knew what a fool a member of the Roth Court had just made of herself. Katie and I were the only two who had screamed.
“You didn’t need to scream like that,” Terry sneered, eyeing me. “It was very loud.”
Ignoring her, I turned to Teegan. “I need a drink. A big one.”
“Of course,” he said. “But first I must introduce you to the King and Queen.”
Just my luck that I would meet the King and Queen of the Marchell Court when I was wobbly-kneed from fright, but nodding curtly I followed Teegan as requested. Seth and Katie, who already knew the Marchells, went in search of food, while Mae fell into step beside me.
“There were an awful lot of those things,” she muttered. I agreed. It had required a whole lot of power to make that display. I wasn’t sure the entire Cheshire Court had that much power, but if you’d asked me ten minutes ago I would have said the Marchells didn’t either.
The faces I walked past were a blur. I kept my head down so that I didn’t have to look anyone in the eye, but I could feel the judgment in their gazes. I realized that I should have known what I’d be walking into. The Fairy Courts were superficially cordial to each other, but they weren’t always nice. There was hostility and competition everywhere, and the Marchell Court had long resented the Cheshire Court as larger, stronger, and more powerful in the fairy hierarchy. The Supreme Council listened to the Cheshire Court above all others. Since I was closely associated with the Cheshire Court, it shouldn’t have surprised me that the Marchells were testing me. With Holt gone, those tests were only going to get worse.
Logan wasn’t powerful, and no one viewed me as anything very powerful either. Maybe my position was respectable because of my associations, but I knew other Fairies thought of me as silly and frivolous. Before, I had never really cared. Now I did. I didn’t want to be known as some girl who only liked to party and shop. Granted, I knew people also thought I was kind; Autumn had been very appreciative of how much I had helped her. Now that she would become the Winter Queen, provided they could find a way to untie her from Holt, my involvement with Autumn had helped position the Summer and Winter Courts to help each other more in the future. It mattered to me now to think that people didn’t take me seriously.
I pulled my head up. I didn’t want the Marchell King and Queen to think I was weak and that the Roth Court was therefore weak as well—even if right at the moment it was. In fact, at this point it was almost crippled, but I wasn’t going to let them know that. I couldn’t let them read on my face the distress that was churning inside me.
“May I present Susan and Mae of the Roth Court?” Teegan asked, his voice formal. My hand, resting lightly on his arm, felt the muscles under his sleeve twitch. He was nervous.
I met the eyes of the Winter King. He was older, in his eighties, while his wife was in her seventies. They had ruled for a long time, seeing other Kings and queens come and go. I knew they were well respected, but also a little eccentric. It was common knowledge that the Arsenals had never been big fans of theirs, and from the way Seth was acting, like a cornered animal, it didn’t look like that had changed much.
The throne was resplendent in dark velvets, and both the King and his Queen were covered in jewels. Each wore a crown, which I thought was a bit much. In all my years with the Roth Court I had only ever seen Mrs. Roth wear a crown on a handful of occasions, and they were all large, official gatherings. Yes, the Arsenals were visiting, but since they were the Marchells’ twin court, not to mention close neighbors, it really wasn’t necessary for the Marchells to be so decked out. But in a way I was glad they looked different from anything I was accustomed to seeing at the Roths’ gatherings. If the scene had been more familiar, I might have cried.
“Your Highness.” If I was good at anything, it was the intricacies of court etiquette. In fact, I had spent hours with Autumn, training her in every last detail. She had been a quick study, eager not to offend anyone, especially since she offended Mrs. Cheshire simply by breathing. Mae followed my lead but stayed quietly in the background.
“I trust you are enjoying your visit?” The King’s voice was raspy, as if he didn’t use it often.
“I am,” I said. “Far more than I expected to.” At least that much was true, since I hadn’t planned to visit at all and then had originally thought I’d been kidnapped.
He smiled, but it looked more ghoulish in his gaunt face than anything else. “Good,” he intoned, with no more feeling than if he had been talking to the wall.
And just like that I was dismissed. I knew there would be more later, but at the moment he was letting me go. It was unexpectedly kind of him. Maybe he could tell that I was still shaken.
“How about those drinks?” Teegan offered as we walked away. He smiled reassuringly at me and my heart fluttered a little. It was the same smile I remembered from when I was young.
We followed Teegan toward the bar, but it was taking forever because so many people came up and greeted us. They wanted to know all about what I was doing there, and they also had questions about the Roths and Logan and Holt—that’s what everyone really wanted to know about—but I got fewer of those than I had expected.
The surprise, for me, was that many of the questions were about the Arsenals. Apparently Katie was seen only rarely and Seth wasn’t seen at all. The questioners painted a far darker picture than the one I had been imagining, filled with deep secrets and pain.
Seth’s mother, people said, had died under unusual circumstances, and his father had disappeared to Europe, not to return again. In public Seth had told a story of how his father was sick of the States and just needed a change, a more relaxed lifestyle away from the pressures of being a Summer King, but the Marchells didn’t believe it. Instead there were wild rumors about why he had really left, or if he had left at all. All the Winter Fairies knew about Seth’s special garden, and one set of rumors went so far as to propose that Seth had killed his father and buried him in that garden, and that’s why the flowers, like the white ones that Katie wore now, glowed specially; they were enhanced with a king’s blood.
Obviously I thought the rumors were nonsense, but I felt bad at the thought that Katie might have heard them. No one wanted to hear that members of their family had killed each other, and Seth was clearly carrying around a very private, very personal pain.
It soon became clear that we were never going to make it to the drink bar, so Teegan left Mae and me to fend for ourselves while he disappeared to get drinks.
While he was gone another woman came up to us, older than Terry, maybe in her thirties. She introduced herself as Cressa, whom I knew to be the wife of the Prince of this Court. In other words, she was the future Queen of the Marchells, married to the heir.
I had never heard much about her except that the Prince, Rout, had married unexpectedly. It was one of those cases where the Rose chooses for you and the choice surprises. He had met Cressa on an airplane, flying to see friends, and it was love at first sight. She was a very distant cousin of a Fairy Princess, but she barely had any fairy blood herself. She had not known who he was or had any ability to sense his fairy powers. She was surprised when he had explained everything to her and even more so when he offered her his Rose. I had heard she was weak. I hoped that was wrong.
With long brown hair that looked like the color of tree trunks, and pale brown eyes, she didn’t look like much. She was about Katie’s size, very small, with hollow cheeks and a beaked nose. She was far from beautiful, and it didn’t surprise me that nasty rumors were spread about her. The Fairies could be very cruel, especially when you considered the likes of Samuel’s cousins Lydia and Leslie. It didn’t help that those cousins were stunning, even if their personalities made them about as attractive as dried up bark.
Cressa smiled, revealing white teeth, but it was a tremulous smile.
Without any pretense or the “Hi, how are you?” that had accompanied everyone else’s comments, she said, “What are you doing here?”
I raised my eyebrows. Several Fairies had already asked me that, not that I minded answering, but Cressa, as this court’s Fairy Princess, should have had access to that information without having to ask.
“We got stuck at a bar and Seth offered to let us stay with him for a few days,” Mae said, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do—and probably for anyone but Seth it was.
Cressa nodded distractedly, then glanced nervously over my left shoulder. I turned to look. Her husband, Rout, was coming.
Logan, as a cool teenage boy who didn’t care what anyone thought of him, had once said Rout was a total waste of space. Seeing him coming, I tended to agree. He had a cocky walk and was almost simpering as he moved. He was tall, with thinning brown hair and pale skin that looked even paler against his black clothes.
I turned back to Cressa, but she was standing so close in front of me that it was an effort not to jump backward in surprise. Her eyes were huge and her voice was urgent as she said, “Get out of here. Get out of here while you still can.”
Another warning.
Then she was gone.