Chapter Twenty-Six
Zyr
True names were important. Zyr didn’t need the half dozen books open in front of him to know that. They bound one to an oath, could be used in a summons, and triggered certain set magics, such as Hollow charms.
But they had no real efficacy after death. Very few fae could interact with the deceased. And those who could had heavy taboos around the practice. One might use a true name to summon a ghost, but other than conversation, there was no point.
You could not, for example, use the energy of souls to channel a Gate’s sacrifice.
Then what was the point? Why steal a book that offered the true names of pre-convergence fae? If Kesk and Veroni wished such a conversation, they had the ear of the Monarchs. No theft or summoning required.
Pre-convergence fae. Six still lived. The Monarchs. Names. The thought caught in his mind, nagged at him. But before he could pin it down, he felt the yuki-onna’s now-familiar magic slipping through his wards.
Irritated, he scribbled the not-quite idea on his notes, there beside the piles of books on true names he’d been studying.
The Monarchs predate the convergence.
A half thought, one he’d return to as soon as he dealt with his unwanted visitor.
“Beithir?” her voice called out, as he reached his front door. “They do not have Robin.”
Of course they didn’t. He was safe in the human realm, dealing with matters there while time allowed.
Growling, Zyr pulled open the door and stared down at the ice-white fae. She had the sense to step back. “What do you want?”
“I said I’d bring word if I found anything,” she answered in a rush, staying out of range of his tail. “Kesk and Veroni have your books. I saw them at the Monarch’s estate.”
The relief that sang through him. What was his had been stolen. Even if apathy had initially lessened the blow, that apathy had been shattered by Robin’s arrival.
Zyr pointedly settled his tail against the floor, away from the yuki-onna. He didn’t smile, but he doubted such an uncharacteristic expression would put her at ease.
“Well done,” he said, thinking of Robin. The way his sharpness was calibrated. Cruel bird, who knew when to offer praise. “It’s probably too much to hope that recovering them would arrest their plans. And still…”
Winter, but he wanted his fucking books back.
“Even if it doesn’t, I hate them,” she said, blunt in her anger. “Were I of their House, I’d have walked through Veroni’s wards myself and fetched them for you. She sets them so only Linden oathsworn or the Monarchs can enter. But you are of their House. I can get you there.”
Zyr’s smile was brief and unpleasant. The yuki-onna’s desire to hurt another, not for Zyr’s benefit, or even the world’s, but simply out of pique, fit what he knew of her. And, as it aligned with his own motives, he could hardly fault her.
“What price?”
“You’ll find a small blue notebook near your own books. Give that to me.”
“I accept,” Zyr said. He would have offered significantly more for the retrieval of what was his.
And, while he didn’t enjoy visits to the palace, there was no great risk to them.
All fae were permitted within those grand halls.
“Now, would be best. Time runs down, and there may yet be something in those texts that would assist us.”
“It has to be now,” she affirmed, stepping further back. “Dinam is busy, weaving something complex. He wouldn’t approve.”
Almost, Zyr could sympathize. He wouldn’t welcome Robin’s disfavor any more than she’d welcome her consort’s. Though that she sought the approval of the fucking cat…
Never mind.
He touched the hem of her sleeve, all that was required for her to travel with him. This trip was easier, without rage beating in his ears. She took him through the side passages, where he still recognized individual murals and turnings. Everything the same as it always had been.
Finally, she stopped at the same sitting room where he’d last met the pair, when they’d had Robin, only days before. The yuki-onna glared through the doorway, pulling her white furs close.
“I saw them on the small table near to where the human sat.”
He could feel them. His books, calling out to him. Asking to be returned to their place. Fantasy or no, it added urgency to the moment, had him stepping forward without due caution.
“Wait for me.”
One step. Another. An odd scent in the air. Seelie blood. Scorched feathers. Nothing that pertained to his books, which were exactly as she’d promised. There on the table, waiting for him.
He reached out a hand.
The wards of the room snapped. Closed like a noose.
Foolish.
To trust the yuki-onna. To tell no one of his intentions. (Who would he tell with Robin away?) To allow his obsessions to guide him, instead of guiding his obsessions.
Veroni stepped through a shimmer of magic, smiling, her hand resting lightly on the treasures she’d stolen.
“You made it,” she said. “Such irony. One of their first projects standing witness to their noble sacrifice.”
Zyr growled, skin crackling. He struck out with his tail. Too late. The barb slid harmlessly off of the ward that enclosed him.
Calm. Be calm. Close your eyes and count.
He threw himself against the ward. Snarled. His chest tightened with the next fruitless attempt. Thin air. Sylph magic.
“You’re going to fail,” he snarled. “You can’t hope to channel the power of a Gate’s death.”
“Of course not. That would take true power. The power of a Monarch.” Veroni flipped open the record book, gaze dropping to the page.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of King Kaeyth and Monarch Zyrast. Date and time, so on. ‘Male sphinx - Beiros. Female zana - Ysandri. Bonded with blessings of Monarch Zyrast of the Summer Court after presenting them with trinkets from the mortal realm.’ And their true names, of course. But that’s not for you.
You’ll learn your part soon enough. Best sit down so you don’t crack that thick skull open when your vision goes dark. ”
Zyr couldn’t fly. He was a being of storms but not of skies. He could dive deep, and hold his breath, but he wasn’t made for the thin air of the upper reaches.
There was no air.
Sylphs were such harmless creatures until they weren’t. Until they were the very air you didn’t breathe, each inhale more shallow than the last.
He made himself think.
Tried to make himself think.
The Monarch’s true names. He had known. Almost known. Had scribbled a note to that effect. But names alone were not strong enough to compel. Would not give the pair the power of the Monarchs. For that they would need to…
Oh.
The realization slipped away and all other thought with it.
“Clever tying, love.” Distant words in the floating dark. Zyr climbed toward it, up the spiraling stair of his own thoughts, though pain and rage waited at the top. “Though we might need to bind her by the middle, lest I miss my mark on the first strike.”
Pain, yes. Fresh enough to still be sharp.
Rage, sharper still, an electric burn and lightning erupted within the ward before he even managed to open his eyes.
“You’re right.” And this voice had hooks, dragging Zyr the rest of the way into waking. “I’d thought she’d have a little pride left. Not behave like a mewling coward.”
“Did you? You’re a generous man. Giving even those who won’t see reason the benefit of the doubt.”
Light, and then the room came into view. As white and gilded and clean as the rest of the palace, making the gray stone altars at its center all the more imposing.
The Monarchs were bound by golden chains and silken cords, with Hollow charms for gags, glinting against their skin. Everything still so pleasant.
There was a vase of sunflowers in the corner.
Sometimes, Zyr did hate the seelie.
Unimaginable power. That’s what it would take to channel a Gate’s sacrifice. The power of another Gate, or the Monarchs themselves. And as Robin’s research had shown, anyone could rule, if they were willing to shed the necessary blood. Capable of it.
The capacity was what had eluded them.
True names and Hollow charms. He should have seen it. Idiot. They’d been so close. And the world would end because he hadn’t been close enough.
His arm ached, bleeding sluggishly. Looking down, he saw the cause. They’d sliced into his forearm, the cut tidy but deep. He healed it, torn skin slowly knitting together.
“Unseelie blood to seal a sacrifice?” he asked, voice a thunder-haunted growl.
“Sacrifice is a dearly beloved and well-respected tradition,” said the murderous bitch.
“It’s your own fault as much as it is theirs.
You’ve proven bothersome. Beiros and Ysandri, unwilling to see reason.
” She handed a sun-emblazoned blade to Kesk, along with a vial of red liquid.
Zyr’s blood. “Will you anoint my blade, love?”
The sphinx Monarch, bound and gagged though he was, roared.
The walls shivered with it. Still fae. Still ancient and powerful, even cut off from the very source of that power.
Zyr stared. The Monarchs were as close to gods as the fae had, aside from Faerie itself.
And for Zyr, they had been more powerful yet still, carving the unseelie into the shapes that best suited their imaginings of the world.
He had plotted their deaths. It may well have gone down similarly, though with less sanitized trappings, if Metara held the blade. He could not grieve it. Would have given blood willingly, if someone else held the knife.
“Which Gate?” he asked. “Whose throat do you plan to cut to kill us all?”
He was under no illusion that he might reason with them. But he had always wished to know things. And he could think of no greater breach of Faerie’s sacred mores and stultifying Protocol than killing a Gate.
An expression flickered across the bastard’s face. Regret?
“It doesn’t matter,” Kesk said, as he returned the blood-wet dagger. “The Gates will all cease once the veil is destroyed. We will have a wall in its place, and Faerie will finally be safe.”
“We’re doing what we must,” Veroni added. “We would have been more than content with the House, if only Faerie weren’t left vulnerable.”
She stepped toward the zana Monarch, her expression mournful, but the blade in her hand steady.
“You really should have listened to the people.”
Another roar from the sphinx, desperate to reach his bond. Tied as he was, locked in his human form by the Hollow charm that gagged him, he could do little but jerk at the chains, but still, he tried.
They had always loved each other. It’d been obvious to anyone who saw them together. Even now, they loved each other, the sphinx’s attention not for his captors but his consort. Perhaps he realized how futile beseeching the pair would be.
“Faerie will not survive it,” Zyr said. “You’re not building a wall, you’re building a tomb.”
“Faerie will not survive without it,” the fanatical idiot corrected, blade shining in his grip. “The lies of the ancients do not sway us as they did our predecessors. We will build Faerie anew, unsullied by humanity’s taint.”
The zana shrieked, twisting in her ties to look at the sphinx, as he did her. She reached for him, as best she could while bound.
Two blades, held in two hands. A silent nod.
Zyr, watching. Tore at the ward with his claws, while knowing it would be fruitless.
“So mote it be, love.”
The daggers rose in tandem, drove down into ancient, timeless flesh.
The world roiled. Magic. So much magic, wild and whirling. Zyr nearly lost his footing as the ground beneath him buckled. So close to the source, it was blinding. A light that wasn’t light. Growth that wasn’t growth. The crisp white room flickering between possibilities.
Antlers or flowers.
Sun motifs or stark white walls.
Air rich with new growth or crisp as a mountain’s summit.
The blood remained constant, though. The blood and the two corpses.
Laughter filled the room, the sound smothering.
Faerie’s gods were dead.
Faerie’s gods were standing right in front of him.
“Oh,” one of them said, within the blaze of power. “This is… Kesk.”
“It is. It’s done, my queen.” Kesk nodded toward the door, an unspoken intention.
“It’s not,” Zyr said, voice thin. Even with the weight of everything, he couldn’t contain his disdain. “You eat the hearts. When the throne is taken by force, the previous monarch is sacrificed on stone, and the new claimant eats the heart. Even a seelie should be able to manage that.”
“As one of the Monarchs said, fallen dragon, we’ll not be swayed by the hedonistic acts of our ancestors.” Veroni, Faerie’s new Monarch, smiled over her shoulder at him. “You are a creature of death. Twisted chaos is not a foundation of our new reality.”
“Your reality only lasts until you sacrifice a Gate.”
“We shall see. Enjoy your final hours. In honor of proper tradition, we must take our respite before claiming what is ours.”
Twenty-seven hours, that was what Protocol demanded. Time enough for the magic to settle into place, for Faerie to fully integrate with its new rulers. Zyr said nothing, turning from them to watch the Monarchs’ blood drip down onto stone.