Chapter Fifteen
W ell, I didn’t know you were a friend of Prince Emrys, did I?” Honcho said, striding down a corridor that branched off from the back of the kitchen. He was talking to Alphonse but kept shooting me little looks over his shoulder as if he didn’t enjoy having me behind him.
Or maybe he was looking at Pritkin, who was scowling from beside me. “Damn it, Rhosier,” he said. “I’ve told you a dozen times to call me John.”
“I’m not calling you that!” the man almost shrieked before getting hold of himself. “They’d have my head.”
“Rhosier?” I said because that was Pritkin’s dad’s name.
“Welsh form of Roger,” Pritkin said. And then he noticed my expression. “No relation.”
“We mostly choose names from Earth, Lady,” Rhosier said, averting his eyes from mine. “Or choose dark fey ones. We are not permitted to call ourselves after the light fey.”
“Why would you want to?” I muttered, which won me a surprised glance.
And then I guessed he decided that comment deserved something more and stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. But not to look at me, which seemed to genuinely pain him. But at Pritkin, who he pulled aside without the fake cravenness he’d been showing us.
“Why did you bring her here?”
“I didn’t.” Pritkin’s voice was flat.
“Do you know what they say?”
“Heard some rumors.”
“She’s dangerous!” That was whispered.
“You have no idea.”
“Can we go see the girl already?” Alphonse said, and he wasn’t talking about the poor thing with the bonked head.
Honcho had been hiding his waitress, something he’d readily admitted to Pritkin, who seemed to be everybody’s fair-haired boy. But he didn’t like the idea of letting me talk to her. Which was rich, considering that he didn’t have the same problem with Alphonse.
And the day that I was seen as scarier than Mr. Sinister over there. . .
Well, I guessed that day had come.
“They say she’s mad,” he said after dragging Pritkin down the hall a little further. He’d also put up a silence spell, but I’d aged it out of existence without him being the wiser.
“She isn’t mad. Usually,” Pritkin amended, shooting me a glance. Because he’d noticed what I’d done.
“They say she brought down Issengeir’s shield all on her own! They say she wiped out an entire legion of Aeslinn’s men, powdering them away into nothing and eating their souls! They say she wields the power of Artemis and has increased it in unholy congress with a fell beast of a vampire and. . .”
He abruptly stopped.
“And?” Pritkin said archly.
The man glared at him for a moment, then squared his shoulders and manned up. “And you! The things they say about the two of you—”
“What do they say?”
“I won’t repeat it! But they’re horrible—”
“And you don’t think that might have something to do with the fact that I’m here, competing for the throne, and everyone hates it?”
“Of course I do!” The man shoved limp blond bangs out of his eyes. The rest of the shoulder-length cut had been scraped back into a sad little ponytail, I guessed to keep it out of the food. “But some of the rumors began before that—”
“Imagine,” Pritkin said dryly. “A court who feared, admired, and hated Nimue in equal measure, gossiping about another demigoddess. One that none of them have ever even seen before today. One who is on my side—”
“Is she? Is she on your side? Or does she want the throne for herself?” And then Rhosier went off , to the point that the passion and venom in his voice were literally spine-tingling. “You know how they are! All of her kind—not just some of them, all . They see us as nothing but tools to snatch up when they like and throw away when they choose. They don’t care about us, about you , any more than their creatures do, those with but a drop of godly blood in their veins but all their cunning, their greed, their treachery .
“They and the gods are the same. They will toss you aside when you are old and broken in their service and never even bury your bones. You’ll be lucky if they don’t feed them to their dogs, who they treasure more than you! So, I say again, how sure are you that this isn’t a play to put a crown on her head and make another Nimue to scourge us? I won’t help with that! Do you hear me? I won’t help to enslave another generation of—”
“Why don’t we ask her?” Pritkin said suddenly, cutting him off.
“What?”
“She’s been listening this whole time. Cassie?”
I swallowed pie, which I’d been scarfing down while I had the chance. “I don’t want the throne,” I told the horrified man, who had turned to look at me with the dawning realization that his silence spell wasn’t so silent. “Well, crap,” I said when he suddenly hit the floor, prostrating himself just as the girl had done.
Alphonse looked at Pritkin. “That wasn’t funny.”
And when the resident fiend tells you that, you know you’ve gone too far.
But Pritkin was already helping the shaking guy up, who hugged the wall across from me with the look of someone headed to slaughter, just any second now. And goddamn, was I already sick of that! “I’m not going to hurt you!” I told him. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but—”
“W-what?” he looked gobsmacked.
“—it’s the only way to find out anything around here. When people won’t even look at me—”
“Looking at Nimue was death! At least for one of us!”
“I’m not Nimue! I didn’t even like her—”
“And you apologize? To me ?” He stared at me some more.
“Well, Alphonse was right,” I said awkwardly. “I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m, uh, I’m sorry. . .” I broke off because the guy had collapsed again into a huddled heap and was doing something that sounded like sobbing.
I looked at Pritkin, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching his friend but making no effort to help him. And then I realized the guy wasn’t sobbing; he was laughing. Or maybe it was half in half; I couldn’t tell.
It looked like he’d lost it, and Alphonse was running out of patience. “Should I slap him?” he asked seriously.
I honestly didn’t know. But I guessed not, as Pritkin was helping him up and bringing him over. And sticking out the guy’s hand because he was as limp as a ragdoll and seemed incapable of doing it himself. “Remember what I told you about shaking hands?” Pritkin asked him.
“I—I—I—” The man seemed incapable of talking suddenly.
So, I took his limp hand because Pritkin was making little gestures with his eyes, and I didn’t know what else to do. “Hi,” I said, feeling like a fool. “I’m Cassie.”
“Cassie,” he gasped and then stared around fearfully.
“God damn, does everybody have PTSD around here?” Alphonse asked.
“They won’t behead you over me,” I pointed out to the guy, who I really didn’t want to call Rhosier or any variation on that.
Along with the blond hair and fey height, he had a muscular build if you looked past the chef’s paunch and handsome features that seemed familiar, or maybe I was imagining things. Since Rosier’s kids had all died in the womb after draining the life out of their mothers, that seemed a safe bet. Pritkin was the only one who had survived.
And, thankfully, this guy’s eyes were brown. “They don’t like me around here, anyway,” I reminded him.
“Don’t like you,” he wheezed desperately and then kept repeating it like some kind of mantra. “Don’t like you. Don’t like you. Don’t—”
Pritkin slapped him.
It seemed to help.
Rhosier put his free hand over his eyes for a moment, then took it away to stare at our still joined hands. Mine was worse for the wear, it having been a while since my last manicure, and was also greasy from the pie’s buttery crust. But he didn’t seem to mind.
In fact, its less-than-perfect state seemed to reassure him. “I—it’s an honor,” he whispered and bent over it.
Right before someone started screaming.
He promptly forgot about me and tore down the hall, and we followed. It wasn’t that far of a run, but it felt like ages, especially with us scrambling together in a relatively narrow space. Except for Alphonse, who wasn’t with us anymore but had slipped away during all the drama.
Which was why I was only slightly surprised when we showed up to find him facing off with two redheads, one of whom had caught him in a spell that had him splayed against the wall of a small storeroom as if a giant, invisible hand was holding him there.
Surprisingly, it was the kitchen maid, who I hadn’t taken for a badass. But I guessed so because she threw another spell at us a second later, some kind of shield, and screamed something at the other girl. Something that my useless translator didn’t know but which was probably the local vernacular for “run.”
Another door was at the back of the small room, but the waitress didn’t run for it. Instead, she helped to fortify the shield while arguing with her friend. But then Pritkin took their protection down with a flick of his wrist, and all hell broke loose.
I got clocked by an invisible fist to the jaw, sending me reeling backward; Alphonse hit the ground snarling, jumped up, and shoved me behind him; and Pritkin swore and yelled something that the girls weren’t listening to because they were busy pummeling me.
Or they were trying to. But the blows landed on an already pissed-off master vamp instead, and that wasn’t good. He was gonna go off any moment if they didn’t—
Yep, right on cue.
Alphonse threw himself into the fray, ignoring the hits like they weren’t even there, and snatched the waitress away from her buddy. And got a hand around her throat, squeezing hard enough to make her yelp and causing the kitchen maid to go ballistic. A human would have been dead under the hurt she put on him, and why the hell was someone that strong a kitchen maid?
But she had clearly never met a master vampire before because her eyes got big as the long, bloody, knife-like rents that another spell put in his body closed up almost as fast as she could make them.
Alphonse grinned at her. “I can do this all day.”
“What are you, Captain America?” I asked, picking myself up. And keeping Rhosier between me and the girl because I couldn’t heal like that.
“Don’t know. Always thought I had the ass for it—”
“And don’t hurt her!”
“I ain’t planning to hurt her. But the more I gotta heal, the hungrier I’m likely to get,” he said, and those terrible fangs re-emerged.
They made even me shudder, and I’d grown up with vamps. But what they were doing to her was . . . nothing. What had happened to the delicate flower that had passed out in the kitchen?
I was beginning to suspect that that had been an act to get out of there quickly and find her friend, since the only thing that happened when Alphonse got scary was that she snarled back at him.
“Touch her and die, vampire,” she spat.
He looked at the waitress, who he still had in one hand. “I’m already touching her.”
“Then let her go, and perhaps I will spare your miserable hide!”
“Miserable?” Alphonse looked down at himself and then glanced back at his ass. “That why you were ‘mirin’ earlier?”
“What?” she looked confused.
“You were checking out the bod when you had me splayed up there on the wall. Which good one, by the way. I couldn’t move for a second.”
This time, she was the one blinking, as if she didn’t know which of those statements to answer first. “I was not!” she finally said.
“Was not what?” he asked, like they were having a casual conversation over coffee. “’Mirin’?”
“That—that’s not a word,” she said, looking flustered.
“Is so.”
“It is not! I know your tongue!”
He grinned. “Not yet, but maybe we can work something out later.”
Pritkin cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt—”
“Then don’t,” Alphonse said and widened his grin at the girl, who did not appear to know what to do with that. Since he hadn’t retracted the fangs first, I wouldn’t have, either. I decided to get involved because I hadn’t done anything stupid in a couple of minutes now, so I was due.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” I told her, peeking out from behind Rhosier and pushing him forward a little. “Go on. Tell her.”
“They . . . may be trustworthy. Lord Emrys vouches for them—”
“And how do I know that he isn’t under a spell?” she demanded, her eyes flashing.
And I suddenly understood why Alphonse was flirting, even in the middle of a fight: she really was a beauty. Her sister was cute in the same way that I was. Nobody was likely to kick us out of bed, but we wouldn’t be gracing the cover of Vogue anytime soon, either.
But in another world, this one might have. Intelligent hazel eyes were set in a face that a Renaissance master would have loved: a pale oval with high cheekbones, full lips, a perfectly straight nose, and teeth that looked like someone had photoshopped them. I couldn’t see the hair very well, as everything but a few tendrils had been stuffed under a mob cap to keep it out of the food, but I didn’t need to.
She would have been stunning bald.
Considering how superficial this bunch of fey were, I had to wonder why her sister had been serving and she had been relegated to the sweaty kitchen. And, of course, my stupid mouth had to ask. “Jealousy?” I guessed before I could stop myself.
It was just one word, but she understood immediately. And in a second, so did I, when the glamourie she’d been using fell. Guessed I knew why she hadn’t looked flushed in the kitchen, I thought, gazing at what happened to anyone prettier than the highborn fey they served.
I sucked in a breath, I couldn’t help it, and she smiled bitterly. “Does this please you, goddess ?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Lady Adira caught her husband looking at me a little too long. I was twelve. The scars were bad then, but they stretched out as I grew, becoming even worse. She said they would, that they’d get prettier right along with me. But that nobody would ever see them, nobody who mattered, as I’d be in the kitchens from then on.”
I didn’t say anything, still trying to take in the ruin of that perfect face. Her glamourie had been flawless—I hadn’t seen a crack, even this close—but I guessed she’d needed to get good at it. The right half of her face was a mass of scars, ones that looked like they’d been made by someone’s nails slashing first in one direction and then in another, over and over until deep ridges had formed in the flesh.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but my apology didn’t seem to have the same effect on her as on Rhosier.
“Answer me!” she yelled at him. “How do I know the prince isn’t under a spell? For that matter, how do I know that you aren’t? I told you this wouldn’t work! I’m taking my sister and going.” She shifted her glare back to Alphonse. “Now, get out of our way!”
To my surprise, he did as she asked after releasing the waitress. And with the added flourish of a gesture that he must have picked up from one of the old movies he loved. It looked like the motion a courtier would have used with a queen, including a little bow.
She regarded him suspiciously, but his gaze never wavered, and his eyes showed something like respect. Alphonse had been born with a face like the one she’d been given. He knew what it cost a person.
“You won’t make it out of the castle alive,” Rhosier told her, grabbing her arm as she passed. “These aren’t the only ones looking for you. I had no less than three sets of visitors tonight—”
“What visitors?” Pritkin asked sharply.
“Lord S?tórr—”
“S?tórr?” Alphonse interrupted, pronouncing it Sigh Thor. “That prick?”
“—Lady Véfreyja, and Prince ?subrand—”
“?subrand,” I said. Because I’d thought he would have had better things to do. Like bind up that broken nose he’d gotten when he hit the floor. “What does he want?”
“Generys, like everyone else,” Rhosier said. “He declined to say why.”
“Who’s Generys?”
The waitress slowly raised her hand. And then, to my surprise, she looked me straight in the eyes. “I didn’t try to kill you, Lady—beg pardon, I do not know what to call you.”
“Cassie.”
“You can’t call her that!” Rhosier broke in while her lips were miming the unfamiliar name.
“Of course, she can,” the kitchen maid spoke up. “Goddesses don’t have titles. They are above that sort of thing,” her lips twisted. “Would you call Freya “lady”?
“Well, yes. That is what her name means,” Generys said, looking confused.
Her sister rolled her eyes. “Then pick another! The point is, they don’t need titles! Everyone already knows who they are.”
The bright hazel eyes turned on me, and they weren’t friendly.
“What’s your name?” I asked suddenly, realizing that I hadn’t heard it yet.
Those perfect eyes slitted. “Why?”
“Stop it,” Rhosier said to her. “She isn’t going to spell you—”
“How do you know that? How do you know anything about these people? You met them the same time I did!”
“Not him,” he nodded at Pritkin. And then he paused, sniffing, and his face crumpled up in a by-now-familiar way. “What is that ?”
“Oh, no,” Alphonse said, getting a whiff. “Oh, hell, no.” He looked at me. “Send them back!”
“Enid,” Generys gasped, looking at her sister. “What is it?”
“You just told her my name!” her sister raged.
“Send them back!” Alphonse said to me. “I am not dealing with that shit again!”
“Shit would smell better,” I gasped, my eyes watering, but I did nothing. I was out of juice, being between cycles of the portal, so I looked at Pritkin.
“You fed them,” the infuriating man said. “Now they’re attached to you.”
“Fed who?” Enid demanded, looking about wildly.
“I’ll introduce you,” I said dryly, facing up to it. “In here, Pinkie,” I called, and a moment later, someone came through the door.
But it wasn’t Pinkie.