17. The Court of Pretty Little Human Things with Sharp and Nasty Tongues
Chapter seventeen
The Court of Pretty Little Human Things with Sharp and Nasty Tongues
“ Y ou brought me into a war zone ?” I hissed, as Wren marched with purpose up the three stone steps towards the mansion’s black oak door.
Carved in the middle, the Belgrave—and the Court of Light—insignia was painted in white-gold and sat above a brass door knocker shaped like a cauldron. Wren bypassed it, reaching for the handle instead. I glanced behind us in time to see Elera trotting around the side of the house, deliberately excusing herself from the brewing argument as the door swung back without so much as a creak. It opened into a long, dimly lit hallway lined with a tasselled mahogany floor runner. Candles burned in their sconces upon the walls, and a huge chandelier was hanging at the end of the corridor, right before a grand staircase.
It was not a homely sort of mansion, but nothing like an ominous castle, either.
Definitely a haunted house .
Wren held the sturdy door open and beckoned for me to go inside. His eyes were molten gold again—not quite as bright as they had been in the bookstore but more radiant than they’d been during our travels. I studied his nonchalant expression for a moment longer before I took a step over the threshold.
The door closed, plunging us into a moody gloom and eerie quiet, and Wren leaned against it with his hands in his pockets, wrists fitting between glinting silver weapons on both sides. He suddenly looked very much like a butcher.
“If you dedicate enough of your few remaining human brain cells to trying, you may recall that I told you about the Malum and their diabolical plans.”
Eyes flashing, I crossed my arms over my waist and bent my head forward as I whispered, “You didn’t tell me that they’d waged a war .”
Clicking his tongue, he waved a hand at me dismissively as he pushed away from the door and began to stride down the hallway. He took exceptionally long steps. “Details, details,” he muttered.
Wren was bad enough on his own, but something about being left alone in the corridor of the haunted house felt worse, so I hurried to keep up with him.
Although there were no signs of life elsewhere, I tucked my hair behind my ears and attempted to straighten my clothes. No longer stained by the blood of my apparent enemies, they were still wrinkled and smelled like horsehair. I desperately needed a brush, some toothpaste, and a shower.
The hallway was lined with polished wooden consoles—some cleared, and others hosting vases and age-stained candelabras—and had about a dozen closed doors dotted on either side. We passed all of them, heading straight for the staircase at the end.
“Honestly,” Wren grumbled, shaking his head as he began the ascent. He took the stairs two at a time, forcing me into a near-jog to keep up. “What did you think was going to happen when I said the High King might want to summon all of faeriekind to his behest?”
“Not an all-out war,” I snapped breathlessly. “Maybe a threat or something, but—” I huffed, pushing my shoulders back. “I really don’t give a damn about faerie politics.”
“A threat against the High King is as good as a declaration of war,” he countered evenly. “Nobody’s slumming it in the trenches yet, but things are all amiss on the Map.”
I stopped when we reached the next landing and made to grab for the sleeve of his shirt, but he moved so quickly that my grip snagged on his wrist instead. He grasped my hand as if on instinct, and my fingers slipped through his as I pulled it back, biting down on the inside of my cheeks to keep them from going red.
Wren gave me a strange look.
A stream of sparkling daylight pooled over him from the reinforced window behind me. The top of his blond hair glowed silver like a halo. With Wren’s strong features, mesmerising stare, and boyish haircut—not to mention his sheer height —one might easily mistake him for an angel.
An angel cast out for never taking anything seriously enough, of course, but an angel, nonetheless.
I felt it again at that moment—the magic, brushing against me with an invisible hand, asking to be let in.
No.
Wren’s eyes bored into mine, the colour of absolute bliss, darkening slightly as he searched my face for something. “Yes, bookworm?” he purred.
Space.
The haunted house had plenty of space. I simply needed to get through the initial induction, and then I could move far away from Wren and work the last nagging traces of him out of my system.
“The Map?” I queried in a voice weaker than I would have liked.
He lifted his head, expression smoothing over into cool disinterest. “The Map of Faerie. Ancient, powerful thing. Handed over to each High King at the start of their reign. Very important in the grand scheme of things. Not important right now.”
I didn’t know why, but I pressed. “What’s amiss on the Map?”
He studied me intently for a moment, lips pursed. “Blythe, the High Lady of the Court of Darkness, went missing some seven odd years ago. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since, and nobody has dared to go looking for her because her Court seems to have vanished from the Map.”
One of my eyebrows rose. “There’s a Court of Darkness?”
“There are six Courts.” He began listing them off on his fingers. “Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light and Darkness. The Court of Darkness was formally called The Court of Pretty Little Human Things with Sharp and Nasty Tongues”—he paused, wiggling four of his outstretched fingers in my face before I swatted his hand away—“but much like their namesake, they didn’t understand the very serious concept of war, so they succumbed to the enemy quicksmart.” He gave me a self-impressed, crooked smile.
“Oh, is that so?” I folded my arms over my chest, smiling back saccharinely.
His lips pulled back into a grin at that. “Blythe’s Court has been blacked out on the Map. It was all shady and shadowy before, but now it’s just gone . Malum infestation,” he added. He made a comical face and shuddered, brushing invisible muck off the sleeves of his shirt. “And now the Court of Earth is acting suspicious, which is an issue because they border against the Court of Darkness, and even more of an issue because Gregor’s the second most powerful High Lord and won’t need much convincing to cause a scene.”
I fell into step beside him as he nodded towards the last flight of stairs and began to move again. “Who’s the most powerful?”
“The High King, naturally.”
Studying his profile as we climbed, Wren taking the stairs one at a time, I did my best to put the pieces together. “So, the High King—and or Queen—is decided based on power?”
Actual, raw power—more than the perceived power of human leaders. In my world, we often bowed to jokers, fools, and conmen based on smoke and mirrors. I couldn’t imagine the danger of a man like that with any measure of material influence. I’d have to tread very carefully indeed.
“Yes,” he agreed, and he started to move his hands in animated gestures as he elaborated. “The most powerful High Lord or Lady at any given time is crowned the ruler. It’s not even a conscious choice but a demand from the High Mother. Nobody can wear the crown if someone possessing more power is alive at the same time. The land rejects them. We don’t get a choice.”
That sounded to me like a recipe for disaster, but I wasn’t about to get into a debate with him over the morals of faeries and their politics. “And what does this have to do with the Malum?”
“The Malum desire a seat amongst the High King’s inner circle and have been denied, so they’re resorting to other means.”
Wren came to a stop at the next floor, leading me towards a wide corridor lined by a tall row of bay windows overlooking the rear of the property. I drifted towards them, unsure where to let my eyes wander first.
Rich, finely mowed grass covered the land in green with spots of turquoise, and a bubbling water fountain sat in the stone-paved courtyard below. Thickly padded chaises and lounges were positioned next to glass tables beneath plants that looked like gigantic palm fronds, with faeries of all different shapes, sizes, and colours pottering around with broomsticks and silver trays of sparkling lemonade glasses.
Beyond the courtyard, the land was mostly bare, though bone-coloured rocks began to appear a fair way out as the property descended into a dip towards the horizon between two towering ridges. Glimmering in the distance was the sliver of a sapphire-blue lake or ocean.
Remembering Wren’s warnings about Merfolk, I immediately turned my back on the glass and redirected my train of thought. “I didn’t think Lesser Fae would even consider asking for something like that,” I mused.
Wren barked a laugh. “Lesser Fae?”
Shaking my head vaguely, I gave him a questioning look. “Not—Lesser—?”
“It’s the twenty-first century. High Mother spare you, Aura.” He resisted the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “We’re civilised and quite progressive, you realise. We don’t use that term anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“Nobody does.” His lashes fluttered, barely concealing the caustic roll of his eyes. “We call them by their names, or if it’s not personal enough to warrant a name, we use their origin race or simply the word faerie. High Fae is a heritage, a race of its own—descendants of the first High Mother-blessed—but Lesser Fae was a derogatory, blanket term coined afterwards and used to discriminate long ago when they were enslaved to us. They aren’t now.”
I rolled my tongue around in my mouth, embarrassment pooling in my gut. “So, you’re telling me—”
“I’m not telling you anything that you don’t need to know,” he cut in, sliding a hand through his hair. “But you really should do yourself a favour and visit the library. Read some books by faerie authors. Brush up on your myth and legend. Reconsider taking an interest in faerie politics, perhaps.”
Out of every comment that Wren had ever made to me, that one might have been the fairest, so I nodded and swallowed my pride.
“If the Malum aren’t considered…unworthy,” I began, making a visible effort to choose my words with more care, “then why have they been denied? Don’t all races of faeries have the right to a seat amongst the High King’s inner circle?”
Wren grimaced. “Not quite. It’s complicated. The Malum are—or were —High Fae.”
“What? Like…you?” Shock contorted my features. I’d expected the Malum to look like Malum—whatever that was—but certainly not like Wren.
He dragged both hands down his face, the fabric of his wide shirtsleeves straining against the tension in his muscles, and he pulled his lower lids down until I could see the whites of his eyes.
“Let me guess,” I murmured, and then I sighed. “I should look this up in the library.”
He cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “No. You won’t find this in there.”
“So…tell me what I need to know.”
A long pause stretched out between us, our locked gazes thickening the tension in the atmosphere.
“It was during the Gift War,” he began, mimicking me with a sigh. “A particular faction of High Fae decided to use the distraction of pandemonium to slip into the night unnoticed and begin heinous experiments with Witch Covens—an idea they’d brought before the High King, and he’d rightfully shut down. For centuries,” he went on, leaning back on his hands against the console behind him, “the Witches have refused to consort with us, preferring to practise what they believe is pure magic derived straight from the land, rather than the gifted magic the High Fae were blessed with by the High Mother. These idiot deserters believed we would lose the war, so they thought to give themselves an advantage by trying to merge their power with that of a Witch. They convinced themselves that if they could harness the essence of the Witches, then they could not be rendered completely powerless if we were defeated and lost our gifted magic.”
“And the Witches cursed them?” I guessed. I was certain that my mother had read me the same story at bedtime before.
Wren’s throat bobbed, and he looked away from me, towards the window over my shoulder. “No. A horde of fucking Banshees tricked them. The whole of Faerie was a burning, bleeding mess at the time, and magic was in a state of utter panic, leaking across the land like melting snow. A tribe of Banshees went trawling through battlefields, picking at the lingering remnants of fallen High Fae like vultures, and used the collected power to temporarily transform themselves into beautiful creatures. The similarity they bore to true Witches allowed them to get close enough to the rebels, and they gutted the magic right out of them. Banshees are like leeches where magic is concerned.
“But they should have known better,” he said, swearing under his breath as his gaze fell upon the floor beneath his feet. I could have sworn that a line of silver tears glimmered in his eyes. “Witches are too smart to be trifled with, and there was so much madness going on. I—” He broke off abruptly, glancing up as if he’d just remembered that I was standing there. “The Banshees have wanted to infiltrate the High King’s inner circle for millennium, but they’ve proven time and time again that they can’t be trusted. Each time they’re granted a seat, they violate the agreement and kill someone for their magic. They have no natural-born powers of their own, and they can’t control themselves around us. They’re drainers, and once they start, they can’t stop. The rebels should have known better.”
Drainers .
The Banshee on the lane didn’t want to eat me. It wanted to drain me.
I stiffened against a stomach-twisting shudder and wrapped my arms a little tighter around myself. Wren was oblivious, his eyes glazed over as if he were miles and miles away from me as we stood together in the corridor.
It was strange to see him like that; a statue, no different from the carvings of soldiers in the front yard, or an illustration in a book. I had already suspected that Wren was probably hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, but the way he told the story had confirmed it. He was there when it happened a long time ago, and he’d seen things that would probably give me nightmares.
“The Banshee on the road here wasn’t beautiful,” I murmured. I didn’t know what else to say.
It was not quite a question, but Wren nodded his understanding, simmering golden eyes still trapped somewhere in the past. “When the High King found out what they had done, he confiscated their stolen magic and banished them to the Ruins,” he explained. “And then tried to return it to the High Fae—even though many members of the inner circle were not convinced they deserved it after their treachery—but couldn’t find a way to do it. And so, the race of Malum was born.”
“Born?” I repeated, a dull sense of nausea knotting in my stomach. “Or created?”
He grimaced again, opening his mouth as he twisted his head away. “Uh, they were born. Or as close to it as they could get after what they’d done.” His eyes darted back to mine apologetically. “The rebels mated with the Banshees—a sacrilegious abuse against our true mating rituals—and whatever was conceived during the process devoured them from the inside out within days, but it left enough of them behind that they…suffered. Conscious the whole time but without their autonomy or magic.”
It was my turn to grimace. A stomach-churning, spine-warping shudder came over me at the thought.
“The High Fae can’t interbreed,” he admitted in a low voice. His eyes flicked back to mine and then quickly darted away. “Not…us. We can, but not with any others.”
It took me far longer than it should have to realise that he wasn’t talking about him and me, but rather the High Fae and humans. I wanted to ask what made humans different from other faeries—however, I wanted to stop thinking about breeding and mating more.
“Out of shame,” he continued, promptly changing the subject, “the Malum went into hiding, and it seems like whatever anti-magic disease the Banshees passed onto them has worsened over time. They’ve adapted but decayed. No longer do they bear resemblance to their former selves, yet they still remember their homes—though I’m not convinced they remember anything else.”
I couldn’t put my finger on the feeling that swept between us in the moments of silence that followed his story.
Like a tendril of his magic had stretched out to greet me, I was overcome by a profound and hollow sense of loss, sadness, and…guilt. But for the life of me, I could not understand why Wren would feel so personally responsible for what had happened to the Malum. Even more perplexing than that, I could not understand why I related to what had happened to the Malum so well. Why I felt like…
“What is it?” he whispered, and his voice was hoarse.
My heart began to bob up and down in my chest, undecided between sinking and swimming. “I need to go home.”
It was Wren’s turn to give me an inquisitive look. “You—why?”
“Because of the Malum.” Glancing away from him nervously, I sucked on my lower lip and braced myself for the impact of his outrage that he had just spent two days trekking through the Court of Light at human speed for nothing.
It didn’t come.
“You’ll be safe here,” he told me quietly. “And your family will be safer with you here.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
The pinprick of welling tears tickled the backs of my eyes. I tried to take a calming breath, but it came out like a sniffle. Tension clutched the cave of my heart. “I don’t want…to become the Malum.”
“Unless you’re planning to mate with a Banshee, bookworm, that’s rather unlikely.”
“No.” I sniffled again, turning my head towards the row of windows. “Symbolically.”
There was a long pause, and then, “I’m sorry?”
My eyes were stinging, but the pain was dulled by irritation at having to explain myself—even though he wasn’t being rude, for once. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and whirled around. Wren was studying me intently, like he was annoyed that he couldn’t pluck the answer straight out of my mind.
“I’ve wanted to run away from home since I was eight years old,” I confessed, dropping my eyes to his boots because I couldn’t bear to meet his questioning gaze. “It was always my plan. As soon as I was old enough, I would leave and go somewhere else. Somewhere safe . And so, when my mother told me she was pregnant again, I was furious. I stormed out of the house and went and sat down by the docks for hours, trying to work up the courage to stow away on one of the boats. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
I took a deep, unsteady breath. “I was so mad at her for bringing another child into that life and for forcing me to remain in it for the sake of a younger sibling. I sulked throughout the entire pregnancy, told myself that I would wait and see the baby safely delivered, and then I would leave. But I saw Brynn that day, and I… I knew I couldn’t abandon her. I knew that I couldn’t leave her to witness and experience the horrible things that I had, all alone. Even then, though, I was desperate to run away and build a new life for myself somewhere else.”
Wren politely averted his gaze as a few stray tears leaked down my cheeks, and I scrubbed them away ferociously, snivelling like a child.
“That feeling never entirely went away,” I admitted, clearing my throat as I straightened my spine. I watched charcoal-coloured storm clouds rolling in from the ocean in a thick, angry swirl. “I mean, when you showed up blabbering nonsense about faerie fathers and demon hunters, I didn’t think twice before I agreed to go with you. I didn’t think about it at all. I just… left. I left Brynn like I thought you had left me on that lane, and I keep telling myself that it’s to keep her safe like it always has been, and part of it is —but part of it isn’t about her at all. It’s about me.”
Wren stared down the corridor, clenching and unclenching his fists around the edge of the table. He gave no indication that he saw the parallels I was drawing between myself and the Malum—that he saw how much my fear might cost me, how I might also be punished for abandoning my post in the middle of the night.
And how I had been selfish and cruel long before I learned that it was my birthright.
I whispered, “I’m sorry for what happened to the Malum back then, and I’m sorry for what you’re saying is going to happen now. But I don’t want to know who my father is or what kind of magic I may or may not have. I want to go home before it’s too late. Before I forget who I really am, before too much time has passed, and while they still might recognise me. I never should have left them in the first place.”
Wren gave me a sidelong glance, one eyebrow arched speculatively. “I could force you to stay here, you know.”
Blood rushed straight to my head. I gaped at him in horror.
Immediately, I wished that I could take it all back, the feeling like desperately trying to put the flood of spilled water back into its jug with nothing but my bare hands. The guilt, the confession, all the broken little pieces of me that I’d offered up to him as payment. My skin tingled with shame, simmering beneath the surface, threatening to engulf me and leave nothing except charred remains behind.
I shouldn’t have trusted him with anything else that belonged to me. He already had too much. I should not have admitted to any of that out loud, not even to someone like him. Panic began to set in, seizing the blood in my veins on its mad rush back to my heart.
“It’s not your fault,” Wren said suddenly, his voice barely a whisper. He cleared his throat. “Faerie has an… allure to humans. Even more so when you’re part-faerie. I don’t think you would have been able to say no to me, regardless. And I don’t think you’ll feel the same way about it tomorrow, but I’ll take you back to the gateway if you do.”
I managed to roll my eyes at the arrogance underpinning his tone, and then I nodded vaguely. An act of kindness from the High Fae, however small or self-serving, was a rarity to cherish. I willed the tears to stop trickling over my lower lids.
“And if I’d known that a little history lesson would put you in such a state, I wouldn’t have bothered,” he quipped, shaking his head at the floor. “You’re polluting my air with the tang of salt, so if it’ll help you get yourself under control again, you may as well know that your family will not forget you.”
My eyes turned dry. “What?”
Wren peered at me, studying the slow evaporation of moisture on my cheeks. He rose from his perch on the table and closed the distance between us, bringing his hands up to cradle the sides of my face. I tensed, but I let him hold me there.
“Your mother believes she received a call from a hospital in the next state, claiming that your father had been admitted for alcohol poisoning,” he stated, wiping the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. “They wanted to discuss his condition with his next of kin and arrange placement in a rehabilitation facility should he make a full recovery. You offered to go so that she can keep Brynn at home, and you’ll be staying there in nearby accommodation until further notice. I spelled it so that she’ll think you’re keeping in touch with her every couple of days, though she won’t be able to remember exactly the last time the two of you spoke or what was said.”
Gratitude rose to my lips, stronger than any feelings of surprise and confusion, but I stopped myself from forming the words as Wren’s thumb swiped across my mouth, gathering the last traces of salt from my face.
He returned to his perch on the table by the wall as if he hadn’t noticed the way my eyes had softened. “No faerie fathers or demon hunters, as requested. You’re free to return to your old life whenever you wish. However, I strongly advise against it.”
The question stumbled up my throat, snagging on numb lips. “And—”
“No, your father will not be going back to them. Not any time soon.”
Wren had given me a way home. In my paranoia and desperation, I hadn’t asked him to do that. I’d done the total opposite; I’d asked him to erase me, but he’d made a loophole.
I didn’t ask why my father figure wouldn’t be going back. I didn’t care.
They were safe. My mother and Brynn were safe, and I was—
I was free .
It took every last ounce of my strength not to show him how I felt. To keep my gratitude and vulnerability to myself. I needed a reality check.
Free, but he could still force me to stay. He still kept a man trapped in a basement or a dungeon and tortured him. He was still High Fae, and I was still a human in Faerie.
Taking a deep breath, I forced my features to smooth over into bored curiosity as I asked, “What do you think prompted the Malum to want to come home now, then?” I turned back towards the window, keeping my gaze low. He was dangling a carrot in front of me, and I would not bite. “You won the war ages ago.”
A deep voice, rough with a slight accent, answered in his place. “Actually, we lost the war.”
I whirled, and my eyes fell upon the most prepossessing and intimidating man I had ever seen in my life. He commanded the air in the room with his presence—and commanded Wren, too.
My jaunty escort practically leapt from his perch against the wall and crashed to the floor, boots squeaking against the hardwood as he inexpertly fell onto one knee before the speaker.
“Your Majesty,” he hummed, looking up from beneath slightly furrowed brows. The absolute commitment he displayed, the dedication he offered to that man with his eyes was unnerving to witness. Even his voice was exaggerated when he spoke. “Auralie, please say hello to the High King of Faerie, Lucais Starfire.”