Chapter 4
Chapter Four
When the guards disappeared, they took the light with them.
Fae lights winked out one after another and plunged the dungeon into darkness. Here, there were no slatted windows to let in pearly light. Or hope.
A slow drip separated itself from the dull drone of panic in my head. Cold stone pressed closer, the walls and ceiling crushing in, filling the space with water and despair.
My stomach dropped and my head spun with dread. Once realization came trickling in as adrenaline rushed out, it all hit at once, the zombie curse reaching up to cradle me again.
Was Noren okay?
Was Mike?
Sighing, I folded into a seated position and my head fell to my manacled hands. I gritted my teeth against a groan.
“Tavi? Is that you?”
Poppy’s voice whispered out of the gloom with the whiskey-smoke tone I always associated with her persona as Barbara.
I pulled up fast. “Barbara?”
A second passed before she chuckled. “Sure, if you want to call me that. But I think we’ve come far enough for you to call me by my real name. Right, girl?”
We were in the exact same cells we’d been in the last time, separated by a wall of stone.
I scrambled closer to the chinks whittled out by other hapless prisoners to hear her better. “The king said you’re here because you broke into the castle. Apparently the Elders will convene at the end of the week for your trial.”
She sighed. “I broke in to reach Laina. They got me for trespassing, those fuckers. Didn’t touch a single strand of Tywin’s magically-sustained hair but they seem to think I was aiming for decapitation. Who knows.”
Was it true? We’d changed the past enough for me to grasp at cords and threads and patterns that might not exist in this timeline.
“Just so you know, I’ve never had to go by Barbara, although I saw that future when I mucked around in your head,” she added. “This time around, it’s Poppy.”
“What do you mean, you never had to?”
“I never faked my own death or left Faerie,” she clarified. “I’m still called Poppy here. It’s good to hear your voice.”
The awful taste in my mouth returned. “As good as it is to hear you too, I’m not sure I’m in the right frame of mind for a happy reunion.”
“Oh, no. You don’t get to deny me this after I’ve waited almost three hundred years to see you and my grandson again.”
The spinning in my head wasn’t natural. Neither was the way my stomach contracted and my organs seemed to fold themselves into smaller and smaller forms. Something about the dungeons, or being cut off from my full magic, gave Madam Muerte’s curse more room to grow.
I swallowed away the bitterness and grave-dirt taste as I worked my jaw.
“What did you do this time? To land yourself here, I mean?” Poppy asked. “The warrior of EverRose reduced to a prisoner. Knew it was coming. Still sucks to be right. Especially when you went and got yourself written into all those history books.”
Ugh.
I wanted to see her desperately. The wall separating us and the cuffs made it impossible to even reach out. My memory recreated her face for me until the sickness took even her rueful grin.
“I tried to attack Tywin,” I admitted. “As a shifter. Changed into a big old bear and went for his head. So if anyone was planning decapitation, it was me.”
Poppy couldn’t disguise her sigh. “Not your brightest move.”
“No, definitely not. But long story short, he hurt Noren. Oh, do you know anything about the Augundae Imperium?”
In the old timeline, I’d gotten my shifter suppression potion from Barbara in exchange for a favor in the mortal world—I had to steal an artifact for her. She’d used it to break into the castle to stop Tywin.
But the last time I’d seen it, the pixie queen Elfhame had it in her tiny hands.
“The Imperium? No one knows where it is.” Poppy’s confusion was apparent. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“So you didn’t use it to break into the palace?”
“Goddess no. I broke in with my wits and skills, thank you very much. I wanted to find my daughter because my lousy ex-husband finally told me what he’d done with our baby. Then I got here and found out my Laina fled the palace with her son.”
Okay, so some things were still the same. Maybe time worked to right itself in whatever way it could, to get back to whatever course was plotted. Although who did the plotting, I had no clue.
But Laina had lost her mother, and Poppy lost her baby, and we were in the same place.
I coughed, fisting my hand in front of my mouth as my body seized. Something hot and wet splattered against my skin.
From bad to worse. Was I surprised? Not really.
The dungeon had a way of taking a person down to their basest level and leaving them with nothing but their own frailty. Mine was just a little deeper than others’.
“You okay, Tavi?” Poppy asked. “When we met in the past, you were fine. But now, in this time, I smell the rot and magic on you.”
Rot, that was a good way to describe this. “It’s the zombie curse.”
I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned it to her or not. Sighing, I adjusted my spine against the wall and pushed my ear to stone.
“I was bitten by the reanimated corpse of a murdered gypsy Seer.” Talk about the start of a bad joke. “Thus the magic and rot, and why I needed the morsana flower. It was extinct in our time.”
I’d restored the burned fields around the pixie capital of EverRose when my full powers unlocked. But I hadn’t had a chance to make the cure in the present moment. Things had gotten away from me.
“You stupid girl!” Poppy lashed out with more force and acid than I thought was warranted. “I told you the first thing you needed to do when you got back was use the morsana blossom to break the curse. You haven’t done it? Do you have a death wish?”
She remembered what she said to me? Centuries had passed for her since we’d last seen each other. For me, it was only hours.
“I know. But we got dragged into a fight,” I replied. “Plus Bronwen is the one who had the morsana in her pocket. I don’t know what to do to get it now.” I cleared my throat but the froggy sensation remained. “I’m fairly certain Mike will come to get me out of here. And we’ll get you out, too.”
Poppy huffed. “I wouldn’t bet on it. King Ty-wimp doesn’t like to let his toys out of their box. Once he’s got you in it, there you stay.”
She was right, of course, but I wasn’t going to remind her. We both understood the severity of the situation.
I let out a sigh, forcing my muscles to relax. The tension stayed in my neck, but my arms went numb and I wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or not.
But as hours passed, my exhausted body spiraled into a restless sleep. By the time I roused, the dizziness had increased and rot coated my tongue.
I’d forgotten how bad it could be. All the days of living without the curse had given me a buffer. Now, I was sicker.
“You awake?” Poppy asked.
I grunted. “I wish I weren’t.”
“…Makes two of us. You sure that boyfriend of yours is coming? Is my grandson usually tardy?”
“I didn’t realize you were a comedian.” My body had frozen into position and when I moved, something cracked.
“You’ve been out cold for two days straight. What do I have left except for comedy?”
Two…? No. Two days?
My gut heaved but nothing came out except a garbled gag.
“Talk to me, girl. Tell me about my grandson. A tardy, lazy bum, isn’t he? Didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him the last time we were all together. What’s his truth?” Poppy pressed, and her insistence gave me a rope to cling to.
“No,” I forced out. “He’s not tardy. He’s kind, too kind. Too forgiving. He had some trouble with his magic when I first met him.”
Fear that Mike wouldn’t ride to the rescue settled along familiar pathways in my head. They were there, so I followed them, the insecurities I’d always felt about him and our relationship crowding closer.
“Figures he would, when he’s got my blood pumping through those veins. Don’t go quiet on me.” Poppy had the same sort of ragged tone to her voice I knew well. “You focus on me and not those deep thoughts over there. On Love-ville.”
But she wouldn’t feel sorry for me. Poppy wasn’t the type to coddle. She’d tell you the truth even if it hurt you, unforgiving and brutal.
I rolled over searching for a comfortable position but found none. This place was the antithesis of comfort. The more miserable we were, the happier the king and all his minions became, as if the dungeons sucked out any good feelings and fed them straight to those above.
Mike will come.
And a second, nastier voice retaliated with You’re out of luck. This time, he’s done for good.
“Things are never really happy in Love-ville,” I finally said.
“Why?”
It was much easier to talk to someone in complete darkness and through a wall. I could almost convince myself it didn’t matter. It wasn’t real. Only the sickness, the blight, the constant push to get through to an end that didn’t exist.
“I’ve kept a lot of secrets from Mike, and I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven me completely for them. Now with this disease, and with a fated mate and a soul tie…how can I expect him to really love me again? I disgust him.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and drew them tighter to my chest.
Those secrets had stacked on top of one another and buried our relationship. How did we come back from it?
Short answer? We didn’t.
It was too much to ask from a person.
Poppy scoffed. “Are you kidding? The boy is madly in love with you. Will you stop working yourself up?”
“Madly in love is a gross overstatement,” I corrected.
He stayed because he wanted to help people. But I knew as well as anything that if we hadn’t gotten into the fray at the Academy, he’d have left me.
My chest caved and made breathing difficult, so I curled up into a smaller ball, tighter and more constricted. Poppy’s assurances were flat and one-dimensional, and this time, perhaps for the first time, she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I might not know the two of you well, but I spent enough time watching you even when you didn’t think I was. So you quit your bitching. My grandson loves you. Focus on getting yourself well and out of this damn dungeon, Tavi.”
For a moment my heart warmed with hope. But it passed quickly. My insecurities were too hungry. They nipped and gnawed at the vulnerable pieces until there was nothing left to hold on to. Those shredded segments would never fit together again.
I must have drifted off with the sound of Poppy’s voice telling me how crazy I was. It was a familiar enough melody to have me relax into the darkness.
But when I woke up, blinking against the total darkness and feeling nauseated, I had no clue where I was.
“Tavi? Tavi!”
Poppy called my name but even the panic in her voice wasn’t enough to rouse me. My muscles screamed with the slightest movement. I must have managed a grunt because her exhale was equal parts relief and worry.
“I thought you were dead.”
I…wasn’t dead. Not yet. Just too out of it to do more than sit there and try desperately to get my bearings. The sickness had taken root in my stillness and expanded until I barely exhisted.
“You’re in bad shape,” Poppy said, then let loose a slew of curses. “I don’t have my magic to help you.”
She must be in cuffs too. That, or there was something special about these cells. Perhaps they stunted magic so no one could use their powers to escape.
I swallowed convulsively but something in my throat wasn’t working right. Damn that Madam Muerte. And damn me for putting myself in her path.
I’d let her bite me when I should have been more cautious.
“Hold on. A few more days and they’ll pull us out for the trial,” Poppy urged. “Hold on…”
By this point, the darkness had blurred into endless night. Time meant nothing. Hours, days, weeks… Eventually even Poppy fell silent.
And I slept again.
* * *
“Wake up, filth.”
The words echoed around the cell before landing between my ears. I jerked awake and knocked the back of my head against the stone wall.
Fae light bobbed from the tunnel leading to the cells, the glow brighter on its approach. Someone clanged their armor against my cell in a discordant din.
“Filth!” The curse rang out louder this time.
“Don’t talk to her like that.”
They ignored Poppy. “It’s time to stand trial before your king,” a male guard announced. “Get up. And may Faerie have mercy on your soul.”