54. Surprise, Bitch
fifty-four
Surprise, Bitch
A kaleidoscope of onyx and glitter monopolised my vision while the carriage sped over the flat, dirty landscape of the Court of Fire. The stress was getting to me, and yet I suspected the sweat dampening my skin was caused by the rising temperature. With it, the smell of smoke intensified.
Are you okay? I whispered to Lucais through the darkness in my mind, over and over again.
He did not reply.
The carriage jostled us around a bend, taking up a steep incline, and the sensation made my stomach flip like a rollercoaster as we climbed.
I was grateful that Wrenlock didn’t try to speak to me again.
Even though I had questions—like what had happened to the High King, where we were going, and why he had betrayed us—I couldn’t bear to hear the sound of his voice.
I was so categorically furious that I trembled uncontrollably from head to toe—little tremors that seized my muscles and shook until I felt my bones rattling—and I genuinely didn’t think I still had the ability to speak.
Hands wrapped around my wrists before the carriage came to a stop, and I opened my eyes to glare into Wrenlock’s expectant gaze as he urged me to move ahead of him.
I wanted to punch him in the throat, to slap him until he undid everything he was doing to us, to find my voice and use it to shred his eardrums until they bled, but I was in a nightmare, unable to do anything but breathe, listen, and obey.
The landscape took my breath away when I stepped outside.
Vengeful as I was, I had to admit that there was a cruel and mesmerising type of beauty in the expanse of obsidian streaked with cracks of molten ochre.
In the air, there was so much ash that it turned the entire sky grey in clouds that circled the peak of a tall, single mountain before us.
We were at the base of a volcano.
It towered high above us, proud and menacing, with ribbons of smoke dancing into the sky from the crater.
Lava trickled down the sides, snaking into rivers that hissed and bubbled in various sizes and depths all around us, like veins of fire that fed into the atomic bomb of a landscape upon which we had intruded.
Every so often, a tiny fire caught alight when a dribble of lava overflowed onto the burned earth, or a piece of rock fell into the magma.
But the sounds were soothing—a calm soundtrack of white noise inspired by one of the most incredible natural wonders I had ever witnessed.
Fighting against the desire to ogle for longer, I wiped the sweat from my brow and turned in search of Lucais.
For some reason, Wrenlock stood back patiently and allowed me to take in the monstrosity of fire and ash, but as soon as I altered my focus, he grabbed me and spun me into the aether through a wall of heat so intense I felt like it grabbed for us with proper hands.
My eyes closed on instinct, and when I opened them, I found that he’d taken us inside the volcano—
No . Inside the palace .
The volcano is a palace, I realised with no small amount of horror, and the crater was a throne room.
We stood in the centre of a large, circular platform, surrounded by the rough interior walls of the crater’s peak—a fatal drop straight down into the magma chamber below us that flowed in waves like an ocean of fire.
Sizzling, red-hot lava climbed the walls like vines in a forest, alight with an orange glow that made me extremely uncomfortable.
A small, narrow bridge crossed the gap between the circle in the centre of the volcano and a door built into the far wall, extending behind an enormous wooden throne with six heavenbound spikes carved into its back.
Soldiers from the Fire Army flanked it, one on either side, large pitchforks clasped in their hands before them, and an emptiness in their eyes as they stared straight ahead at absolutely nothing.
With painstaking slowness, I turned around as other faeries appeared on the platform with us.
Two additional soldiers brought Lucais in—unconscious—and threw him onto the ground.
I lunged for him, but Wrenlock held me back, and I couldn’t find the strength to make even a sound of protest. I was stuck in a lucid dream, trying to wake up, to push through the wall of glass from the other side and feel the tassels of my throw blanket in my hands again—a tether to the reality I needed to reclaim before it was too late.
Because it couldn’t be the one I was in.
Shoving Wrenlock’s hands away, I stepped out of his reach to make a statement, and as I did so, my eyes fell upon a figure hunched beside the wooden throne. His head was lowered like he was trying to make himself invisible, his hands and feet bound in irons.
Despite my state of mind and the horrors that were seizing control of my reality, I recognised him. I took two careful steps forward, squinting to get a better look at his face. He shuffled backwards, aware of my presence, so I ducked my head and—
“ John? ” I blinked. Heatstroke symptoms aside, I recognised the old man.
He was unmistakable with his large hands, greying hair, and the dark eyes that reluctantly rose to meet mine as I took another step forward.
“John Dante,” I gasped. “What in the blazes are you doing here? What have they done to you?” Why have they done it?
He hung his head, the manacles around his wrists fizzling as he tried to retreat. “Wasnae the plan, lass.”
The sight of John cracked the surface of the dream, bleeding one reality into the next, and I felt my voice humming in my throat as if it had never been suspended. “Wrenlock—”
A figure emerged from behind the throne, stopping me in my tracks.
She had long, brown hair, brown eyes, and a chocolate bar half covered in the wrapper in one hand.
My head fell forward so fast it might have rolled clean away from my shoulders, and my eyes became saucers while my brain struggled to reconcile with the sight of my childhood best friend standing inside an active volcano in Faerie.
“ Amelia? ”
She rolled her eyes between long lashes and gave me a less than friendly wave. “Surprise, bitch.”
“What…” I trailed off into stunned silence as the pieces of the puzzle clashed. Amelia looked exactly the same age as she had when I left for Faerie, but that was more than eight years before in the human world. “What the hell are you doing here?”
As if on cue, Lucais began to stir. He groaned as he sat up, rubbing his temple, and blinked his golden eyes a few times before they found my face, and his eyelids stilled. Awareness lit his gaze as he processed my expression, then immediately searched the room for the cause.
Finding John cowering beside the wooden throne, he frowned—the crease on his brow would have been adorable under any other circumstances—but when his gaze landed on Amelia, there wasn’t even a hint of recognition in it.
“John and Amelia are here,” I stated, wildly thrusting a hand towards them. It was equal parts confusing and inconvenient for me, and it showed.
Lucais’s head swung towards me. “Who’s Amelia?”
“My best friend.”
He screwed up his nose, eyes flicking back and forth between us with a strong dose of judgement and distaste evident on the surface. “Your best friend is a Hobgoblin?” he asked.
Every part of my body was hanging on by a thread—from the air in my lungs to the blood in my veins. Especially my eyes as I whirled on Amelia once more, confusion and anger blurring until all I could see was a wall of black and red adamant. “You’re a Hobgoblin ?” I screeched.
My best friend sighed, popping the last piece of chocolate into her mouth before she floated the wrapper away on a phantom wind. It spiralled over the edge of the platform like a leaf falling from a tree, and the lava below hissed as the flames devoured it.
“Well, I’m certainly not a fucking human,” she replied, licking the corners of her mouth clean with a tongue that suddenly looked a little too long.
“My old man couldn’t get as close to you as he needed to get the information for the job, so I came to the rescue. ” She sketched a bow. “You’re welcome.”
I blinked a few times, stupefied. “ Job? ” I exclaimed. “I was your best friend!”
“Oh, please.” Amelia waved me away, her expression as animated and overly dramatic as always. “Did you even think of me once after Prince Charming whisked you away to his House?”
Irritated as I was, the question loosened another chunk of guilt free from the graveyard of mistakes I kept locked inside of my heart.
She was right. I hadn’t thought of her at all after leaving Belgrave, but that only stirred up more of the confusion lingering like a cloud of smoke in my head.
We had been so close. We spent so much time together.
Her family knew mine. She was my only friend in the entire world for a long time, and vice versa, yet we had nothing in common.
My best friend—and I hadn’t missed her for a second after leaving home.
“Exactly.” Amelia shrugged with her shoulders and hands.
“Don’t take it personally. That was the job.
I had to follow you around, make sure you stayed alive, and report back on your magical abilities.
Which, spoiler alert, were practically nonexistent your entire life because you are actually the most boring person on the whole planet. ”
I felt a tingling sensation beneath my skin as if my soul was separating from my body, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to defend the connection.
“What did you say to Brynn?” I demanded, eyes narrowing.
I noticed it then. For the very first time, there were faerie traits in my best friend’s demeanour; the way she smiled like a serpent, the nonchalant gestures, the callous expressions reshaping her rounded features, and the pitch of her laughter an octave too high for a normal human being.
There was an evil glint in her eyes as she taunted, “You should really be more concerned about what she said to me. ”
“Alice?” I pressed, barely able to string a proper question together.
Amelia picked some melted chocolate out from underneath one of her nails with her teeth.
“Not related,” she said offhandedly, as if pretending to have a sister for the last couple of decades was really no big deal.
“A glamour here, a glamour there. I had to get deep enough to stick around for the long haul, you know?”
Swaying on my feet, I nodded foolishly, light as a feather and yet impossible to lift.
Desperate to avert my gaze from the face pictured next to mine in the photos of every birthday party I’d ever had, I looked away only to find that Wrenlock was standing next to me with his attention on the owner of the bookstore, still chained on the ground.
Wrenlock was staring at John Dante—staring like he knew him.
I shook my head, trying to remember which direction was up and which was down as my entire universe tilted on its axis. The worst part was that John returned Wrenlock’s familiar stare, but to my knowledge, they’d never met.
Has Wrenlock ever been to Belgrave? Has John done something to the Court of Fire?
“Why is one of you in chains and the other isn’t?” I questioned, fatigue slipping through.
“Simple,” an unfamiliar voice replied, booming throughout the volcano. “One committed a crime and the other didn’t.”
There was no opportunity for me to enquire after the details of the crime.
Lucais climbed to his feet with a sense of urgency, hands still bound in irons, and two guards closed in around him as the doors opened on the far side of the volcano and a tall, broad-shouldered man with flame red hair strode into the room with a huge smile on his face.
“Aura! Lucais!” He clapped his hands, and the sound was like volcanic lightning. “Wonderful to see you both conscious and standing upright. That will save us time.”
“I have a bone to pick with you, Owain,” Lucais seethed.
The High Lord of the Court of Fire.
Owain shuddered theatrically, his dark eyes alight with a wild thrill. “Then by all means, Your Highness, let’s open the closet, shall we?”