Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ORION
Aguard pinned me to the wall with his weapon, the blade about to pierce my heart.
I closed my eyes, my life on Earth flashing before me. Unraveling, tainted with so many regrets.
I’m sorry, Miko.
I’m sorry, everyone.
If Miko was set to die, then maybe I’d see him again in the afterlife soon. Assuming fae and werewolves shared a space beyond the veil of death.
A high-pitched wail stopped the blade, driving the guard back. I covered one ear with my hand, going to put Wendy away to spare my other.
Stars!
The wailing reduced as if earplugs had slipped into my ear canals. The king and his assbugs were backing off, the sound clearly still a problem for them.
My palm filled with heat, golden light blinking across my fingertips. I tried opening my hand, more of that light shining through the gaps between my fingers.
My hand stayed closed.
“Wendy?”
The crystal room disappeared, everything turning gold and sparkly.
Before I had a chance to gasp, my feet connected with a forest floor. Dead leaves crunched underfoot as I staggered back, falling onto my backside.
“Crap!”
My hand opened, Wendy rolling onto dead, frost-painted leaves.
The cold hit me hard. I wrapped my arms around myself. My teeth chattered as I took in my surroundings.
I was in a dense forest, every tree dead, ice patterns crawling up their trunks. Gnarled branches clawed at the gray sky or bent to paw the ground.
“What in the name of the stars?” Condensation wisped from my lips.
This forest was caught in the perpetual winter of Faery’s coldest region. Unlike the evergreen trees of the Frost Glades, these dead trees meant I was inside a place of sadness.
A place where no one ever ventured.
The Forest of the Lost.
Why did it have to be here?
A hole was carved into the biggest tree—wide enough for me to squeeze into. I might have to try crawling inside to get warm.
Goodness, this place was bitter, a heavy sorrow in every particle I breathed in.
Beep.
I reached for my pet.
“Wendy?”
No longer encased in plastic orange, but a glittery gold glass. Dazzling, the bee on the screen also gold.
“Wendy?”
She slept, tiny z’s floating above her head.
“Wendy?” I gently tapped the screen. “What’s going on?”
She didn’t beep back at me.
But realization unfurled in my mind.
“Replicating bees,” I muttered.
No. A silly thought.
Many years ago, the replicating bees thrived in this forest. Busy as bees tended to be, pollinating, making honey of the deepest gold.
Everyone wanted a taste of their honey. If used correctly, the honey could replicate anything to be an exact copy of itself. It was how they increased their numbers, only ever requiring one queen to keep the hive alive.
Fae came here with dreams of replicating jewels, lovers, all sorts of things. At first, everything was fun, if not frivolous. The bees didn’t mind providing their honey, for the fae always brought them flowers.
Over time, however, greed infected the fae. It soured them, turning them into thieves and liars, even bee killers. Those bees who tried to protect their stores from greedy hands were slaughtered in the thousands, a fire almost wiping out the colony.
One day, the queen disappeared. The hive died without her, the honey drying up.
The gift of replication was lost without the golden queen. The forest died, the air cloyed with sadness and regret because of rabid greed.
According to the story, which happened five-hundred years ago, some fae from that time lived on in an undying limbo. Their years unnatural, bound to the sorrow of the queen bee’s loss. To this day, they wander the forest, searching for a sign of the golden queen.
All unsettling, enough to keep anyone with any sense out of this place.
Apparently, the worker bees were supposed to be bronze in color. The soldiers of the hive silver, the queen a radiant gold.
Gold, like Wendy.
He comes, this scarlet-haired man, bearing a golden gift in his hand. For you. It is for you. It is for hope. He is hope.
Golden. Gift.
I picked her up with shaky hands, floating on a cloud of uncertainty. “This is impossible.”
Replicate.
Replicate Miko.
Oh. My. Stars. If this were real, if Wendy really was the lost queen bee, then this could change everything.
“Make a copy of him,” I said. “He doesn’t have to die.”
But how? Wendy wasn’t a bee, she was a digital pet. She might have, somehow, got us away from the king, but she wasn’t in the business of making honey or teleportation.
Was she? She’d certainly teleported us to this dead forest.
Stars. Stars. Stars.
“Please wake up.”
She slept.
He comes, this scarlet-haired man, bearing a golden gift in his hand. For you. It is for you. It is for hope. He is hope.
Could this really be true?
Could this really change everything?
“I wish you would wake up.”
Wendy slept on as snow began to fall.
“Please just wake up.”
“Who are you talking to?”
I spun at the sound of the voice, the cold diving deeper into my bones.
A gray-skinned, gaunt fae stepped out from between trees carrying a huge axe. By the looks of his painfully skinny form, skin stretched over his skeleton, he shouldn’t be able to wield that weapon. And no way were those brown rags keeping him warm.
“Well?” the fae said, his wispy black hair rippling in the bitter breeze, snowflakes landing on his hooked nose.
I shivered, slipping Wendy into my pocket.
Undying fae. A wanderer.
Crap.
The man’s milky blue eyes flashed, focused on my pocket. “What was that?”
I backed off, wiping snowflakes from my face. “Nothing.”
“I saw gold.”
“It’s nothing. I shouldn’t be here.” The edges of his axe were seriously sharp.
If only I had mine.
“I—”
“Is Her Majesty in your pocket?” He pointed the weapon at me. “Are you holding my lost queen prisoner?”
My mouth opened to answer, no words falling out. Minus any weapons or a sense of direction, I was up the poopy creek with no paddle.
“Give her to me.”
A waft of sweet decay struck my nostrils.
“I don’t—”
“Liar!” he hissed. “You are a liar! Give me the queen!”
With no other choice, I ran to the left, leaping over a fallen tree.
“Thief! Queen thief!”
I ran as fast as my frozen legs could manage, the dead trees closing in around me.
“Thief!”
Now would be the perfect time for another moment of teleportation.
It didn’t come.
I tripped on a dead tree and staggered, almost dove headfirst into the frozen ground, but managed to stay upright.
Phew!
The undying fae crashed through the trees behind me. “Thief!”
Black ichor leaked from his mouth and eyes like something from a horror story.
“Thief! Thief! Thief!”
He reminded me of a speedie.
“I didn’t steal your queen!” I bellowed uselessly.
“I’ll feed this cursed soil with your insides!” he screamed and charged.
Wonderful.
I braced myself for a fight, falling into a battle stance. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I must restore the queen!” He charged, brandishing the axe above his head.
Preferring my head fixed to the end of my neck, I rushed him, spinning out of his trajectory at the last moment. He took a heavy swing, missing me by inches. I seized the moment he stumbled to kick him hard in the spine.
Something cracked inside that scrawny body as he went down face-first, landing in a star shape.
He dropped the axe.
Yes!
I went for the weapon, snatching it away. Lifting it while he got to his knees.
“Thief…” He turned his head, spitting broken teeth and black blood. The fae blinked, oily tears oozing down his sunken cheeks.
“Thief…”
I took off his head in one swing. It rolled across the forest floor, bouncing off a small boulder. His body collapsed, gushing blood staining the ground obsidian.
Stars, it really stank of that sweet decay now.
The snow fell harder, the freezing bite of the forest seeping deeper and deeper. I had to find shelter and warmth. And without Wendy being forthcoming, I’d have to hunt for myself.
The queen of the replicator bees.
My goodness.
Laughter to my left, sounding like the undying fae.
It was.
My stomach rolled, the head on its side, blackened lips spread into a grin.
I mean, it was an undying fae. So…
“Foolish king behind his gate. Foolish king while I wait.”
He repeated the words six times, the black blood dripped off the axe in time to the fae’s words.
“What—”
“Thinks he can hide in these lands. Keep them safe. Keep his people safe. He is not safe. They are not safe. I slipped in. Here all this time. Sleeping. Waiting. I change. I feed. I grow. I will be free.”
No rhymes this time.
“Wait. Wait. Sleep. Sleep. I change. I feed. I grow. I will be free.”
A lick of fear slid across my soul. “What… What is this?”
Those black eyes turned a vibrant pink, the black ichor leaking from it flooding with the same shade.
My throat closed up. “No…”
“I change. I feed. I grow. I will be free.”
“Who… Who are you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The head laughed before screaming the answer again and again and again, shrill enough to wake the long dead.
“Dawn! Dawn! Dawn! Dawn! Dawn!”