FIFTY-TWO
It was like a dance, his body remembering the motions even as his mind fractured into a thousand fears. For Sorcha, whom he could follow through the movement of his knives, and for Aly, whom he couldn’t.
And for himself, because if the puppeteer recognised him, he’d wish the sluagh had killed him.
One of the fae drove a glacier blade towards Calum. He parried with his sword, ducking low to drive a knife up below the creature’s armpit. It came apart in a shower of glittering crystals, and then there was another fae grabbing for him.
Hack, stab, slash, parry—he carved a path through the sluagh, his four remaining knives swirling around him like autumn leaves caught in the wind.
Then he saw her.
A daoine sìth, standing by the harbour with her eyes closed and her fingers twitching as she controlled the sluagh.
Calum summoned one of his knives from where it lay on the ground, feeling the hilt slam into his palm, and sighted towards the fae.
He took a steadying breath, pulled his arm back, and let fly.
His aim was true—it was always true, when he had magic to guide the knives as they sailed through the air along the channel he carved for them—but at the last moment, the fae’s eyes snapped open and she stepped aside, letting the knife fly past her and into the harbour.
Calum swore, driving his shoulder into another of the sluagh and shoving past the creature. He stumbled over the uneven cobblestones, calling another knife from where it had fallen and sending it directly at her.
Again, the daoine sìth slid to the side, like water parting around a rock, and the knife clattered uselessly to the ground. She twisted, her pale eyes searching, and then she saw him.
The sluagh fell back to either side, opening a passage for Calum towards the daoine sìth.
His heart pounded as he walked over to her, keeping his sword trained on her.
She was tall, like all daoine sìth, almost as tall as him, but whip-thin.
She wore no armour, not even a helmet over her intricately plaited hair.
But she carried a broadsword, beneath the flared skirts of her coat, and she drew it as Calum approached.
“You’re not fae.” She spoke in accented Eskalian, and it wasn’t a question.
“No, I’m not,” Calum answered in the fae language.
She cocked her head, her expression searching. “Yet you speak our language,” she said in the fae tongue, “and fight with our weapons.” Calum had reached her now, and she levelled her sword at him. “Explain.”
Calum swallowed, his throat constricting.
The words were reluctant, and he pushed them out, though it flayed his heart to say it.
“I learnt from Caoimhe, Duchess of Gleannbhròn.” He could have given another answer, any other answer, but none would be so shocking to a fae, and he hoped the surprise would throw her off-balance.
It worked. She frowned in confusion, and Calum took his chance, lunging forwards and driving his sword straight at her heart.
Bronze clanged against bronze as her sword shot out, knocking his own from his hand and slicing down his thigh. Pain bloomed in his leg and he stumbled, his knees crashing to the ground. He fought to rise, but his leg collapsed beneath him, agony pulsing through it with the rapid beat of his heart.
The fae’s approach was slow, leisurely even, as she sought out his three knives and clasped them tightly in her hand—too tightly for Calum to unleash them.
Calum felt around for the others. Two were with Sorcha, still fighting at the other end of the close.
The third was in the harbour, faint as a whisper against his consciousness.
Calum scrabbled back towards the wall as the fae stalked closer, her sword pointing at his throat. His breath sawed in and out, ever faster as she neared.
“Where did you hear that name?” The fae’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but it echoed in Calum’s ears.
“Take me to her.” The words made Calum dizzy with fear, but with the blood pulsing out of his leg and her sword before him, he had little choice. “She knows who I am. She’ll be happy to see me.”
He felt again for the knife at the bottom of the harbour. It stirred, but didn’t rise. Cold sweat broke out on his brow, the agony searing his leg making it difficult to think.
But she had trained him for this. Cruel as her methods were, they had worked. He could reach the knife through the pain.
“Gleannbhròn loathes mortals,” the fae spat.
“She does,” Calum agreed. “Too weak and fragile for her liking.” The knife began to rise through the water—slowly, so slowly, like it was being dragged through mud.
“But surely”—he inhaled sharply, the pain stabbing through his leg—“you recall her human pet? Or were you . . . not close enough . . . to the court?” His presence had led to a brutal falling out between Caoimhe and Méabh, the sort of thing the entirety of Faerie would have talked about.
The blade was out of the water now, flying up through the air. Calum’s grasp on it was stronger, his mental vision of it so much clearer.
“That was you?” the fae said, raising her sword. “Then I’m sure my queen will reward me for dispatching you.”
The sword arced towards Calum. His knife sped through the air, ever faster as he urged it on, and buried itself in the fae’s throat.
Her sword clattered to the ground as Calum slumped against the wall, breathing heavily, and then the world went dark.
Colours swirled around Aly, bright as summer, flowing past her like water in a stream.
The hair rose on the back of her neck as she walked, her muscles tightening at the presence of the man beside her, though she couldn’t think why.
She was in a shimmering world, meandering past a door with bronze hinges shaped like tree roots before passing a throng of people in structured garments, their tailored waists supporting collars made of ivy and raven’s wings and giving way to diaphanous skirts that swirled like mist.
It was beautiful.
The salt breeze off the sea stirred her hair around her face. She blinked, feeling as though she was waking from a dream. Her captor’s—that was who he was—hand was tight around her arm, leading her through broad streets of white buildings that sparkled in the sunlight.
She jerked her arm out of his grasp, her other hand already sliding under her coat for the handle of a knife. Her fingers met nothing but soft wool. “What did you do to me? And where are my knives?”
He reached for her again, his fingers closing in a vice around her wrist. “Just a wee cantrip to make you behave.”
Aly’s stomach roiled. Flashes of dark water and slick stones appeared in her mind, dissipating almost as quickly, as though she tried to hold onto water with her fingers. “‘Behave’?” she repeated.
The fae sighed. “Yes. Just enough of a spell to make you follow me without objection, though I see it’s worn off.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a twist of paper. It smelled of rosemary and sage.
Aly recoiled. “Please don’t. I’ll do as you say, just please don’t enchant me again.”
“It’s not an enchantment,” the fae snapped, but he put the twist of paper back in his pocket.
Aly’s hand trembled as she reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear—she didn’t recall unfastening her plait, but her hair was loose around her shoulders—her fingers sliding over smooth metal.
She closed her fingertips around the device and tried to slip it off, but her captor held up a hand.
“Don’t take that off.”
Aly opened her mouth to ask why, but stopped herself, realising that she’d heard all his speech with no trace of any fae timbre.
When he’d captured her in Mossburgh, his speech had been heavily accented, lilting over the vowels and rolling over the consonants like a burn bubbling through the forest. Now his cadence was, well, exactly as hers was, with the crisp consonants and flattened vowels trained into the upper classes of Mossburgh.
“It’s a translation device, isn’t it?”
Her captor said nothing, but she knew she was right. He gripped her arm again, leading her through a gate with hinges shaped like dragonfly wings and up a tree-lined path to a house.
“Where are my knives?” she asked again, pawing at her pockets. Her lockpicks were gone, too.
“I dealt with them,” the fae said shortly. “You can’t carry iron in Faerie.”
Aly’s gut convulsed. It had already been obvious from her surroundings, but to have it so clearly stated made bile rise in her throat. She was in Faerie, the place that haunted Calum’s thoughts.
Her chest caved in, her legs weakening beneath her. She’d been kidnapped by a fae, the one thing Calum had feared happening to her above all else. Her feet caught on the edge of a paving stone, sending her stumbling.
Her captor caught her, helping her to her feet. “You can call me Torcall,” he said. “And you?”
“Aly,” she croaked. Calum had escaped. She could too. She knew how to deal with dangerous, powerful people—she could stay alive until she found a way home.
They arrived at a glossy black door and Torcall reached for the door knocker, an ornate brass piece shaped like a seal’s head.
Aly’s heart leapt to her throat. She didn’t trust Torcall, not with what she knew of his work with Grant, and she certainly didn’t trust a fae who would enchant her to make her do as he wished.
And she most certainly did not trust whoever might be on the other side of the door and who she had no doubt held her fate in their hands.
The door swung open, and on the black-and-white chequered floor stood a butler, dressed in an immaculate black suit. His black hair covered cat-shaped ears, and his green eyes had slitted pupils.
“Hello, Ranalt,” Torcall said. “Could you please let my grandfather know I’m here?”
Ranalt tried to keep his face impassive, but there was a slight tightening around his eyes when he next spoke. “And who may I say is calling with you?”
All Torcall said was, “Someone he’ll want to meet.”