FOUR
Ace
The clatter of metal hitting the floor, followed by a string of curses, was like the crowing of a rooster startling both Ace and Shelby awake. Ishaan was down in the kitchen baking and apparently, dropping the bread.
The thin blanket that hadn’t done a good job at keeping Ace warm throughout the night slipped off her shoulders as she stretched and groaned. Her whole being ached from the day prior, making each movement she took feel like she was being punched in different parts of her body. She was certain there was bruising even if she didn’t peel back her clothes to look.
Shelby had a hand held against his chest, his fingers tracing his new scar. One of Ace’s hands drifted up to her neck. Was he reliving his death? Ace had lost track of how many times she’d replayed hers inside her mind.
“We need to be quiet but if we are careful we can climb down and start out toward your grandma’s?”
“Yes.” A clipped answer. Ace expected as much. Mina had warned her that Shelby would hate her. Could she live with this?
Ace watched him as he tried to straighten the blankets he’d ruffled in the night, as if that mattered in this borrowed apartment with these ratty pieces of fabric. She hoped she’d find some sort of sympathy or a sign that maybe one day he would forgive in his gaze. Not once did he look up toward her, though Ace wondered if he could feel her attention burning against his skin.
When the blankets had been successfully laid back out flat on the old floorboards, Shelby walked to the window and looked out into the empty backyard. He nodded more so to himself than her as he grabbed the window frame and yanked it up.
“Ladies first,” he grunted, extending his arm in a flourish toward the exit.
Her lips curled down into a frown as she fought not to roll her eyes. Still, she managed to slip her legs out of the window and onto the ledge. The leaves of the vines that grew along the lattice would occasionally make the descent feel almost slippery if her footing wasn’t placed just right. She kicked the leaves away and climbed down.
When she reached the ground she had half a mind to holler at Shelby to warn him to be safe but with Ishaan not far away in the kitchen, she couldn’t risk the noise. Crossing her arms over her chest, her eyes unfocused as whispered prayers found their way into her thoughts.
People were scared. Many of them asking Malek for safety as they also asked for him to watch over their queen. Malek was a god that rarely spoke. Their prayers to him felt foolish to Ace who knew the god rarely decided to answer.
Word had spread and what exactly the public now knew was easy to decipher from their requests. Shelby’s boots hit the ground with a soft thump, making Ace blink her eyes open. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them.
“What is it?” he whispered. “The gods?”
Ace held up a finger to stop him as she walked toward the gates, the prayers on the street growing to a steady hum. People wanted guidance. Someone was asking for wisdom to know who to trust and who not to trust. They prayed for their queen to return to the castle and for...for friends who’d worked in the castle too.
The queen was dead right?
The queen is dead, Greshta confirmed. Power is shifting. Power must continue to shift.
Ace flipped the gate latch and stepped out into the small alleyway between buildings, Shelby trailing close behind. Blood was still settled in the creases of her fingers and thick under her nails. She wanted it gone. She wanted any evidence of Shelby’s death washed from her body. Evidence of what she’d done.
Death is still on its way , Sylik whispered to her in answer to her worried thoughts. That didn’t help her any; it only made her more nervous for what was to come.
“Quit ignoring me,” Shelby hissed as they both leaned into the shadows.
“People are scared,” Ace finally said, “but it sounds like they don’t know the queen is dead.”
“We didn’t see the queen die so we don’t really know either,” he pointed out.
Have faith, Greshta chided though Shelby couldn’t hear her.
Ace gave a snort. “Greshta thinks you need to have faith. The gods have confirmed that she died.” And the orange eyed man...he’d said it was done. Was he talking about the queen? Had he beaten Ace to the one job she’d been brought back to do?
Shelby exhaled loudly. Muscles were already chording along his jaw. Ace knew that feeling well, the feeling she watched Shelby struggling with now. Anger toward the gods for such painful resurrections. Frustration that she’d been ripped from peace.
She’d ripped Shelby from peace.
Oh gods. The thought tore all the air from Ace’s lungs. Every day the reminder would re-open the wound and make everything feel fresh again. Ace had been selfish and lonely. Shelby deserved peace and she’d taken that away from him. She hadn’t even let him have a chance at death before she screamed at the gods to give his soul back. Shelby’s death, those moments after she realized he was gone, had hurt more than any betrayal. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly why but she knew then just as much as she knew now—perhaps she had always known— their souls belonged together. Even if they hated each other.
“Ready?” Ace asked.
“Let’s be fast but avoid drawing attention.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun.” Ace didn’t fight the eye roll this time. She stepped out in the sun, the heat hitting her bare skin. Her white scar was exposed but if she kept her head down maybe it would be less noticeable.
“I’m rarely ever your version of fun.”
The streets were dotted with people out shopping and running their morning errands. Ace and Shelby made sure to give them space as they weaved around them.
“Did you hear about the castle?” a woman gasped as she strolled into the open doors of a small dinner. “Yes, it’s nothing but rubble!”
Ace kept her head down though she so badly wanted to look up at Shelby who’d shoved his hands deep into his pockets and hunched forward. He didn’t slow his pace to eavesdrop like Ace had and kept moving forward through the crowd. It wasn’t like she could lose him when he was a head taller than everyone else.
“I heard Queen Sienna had taken leave for a holiday in the country with her new husband. Do you think she actually made it out in time? What do you think happened?” the friend responded as they took their seats next to the opened windows, giving Ace the best opportunity to listen. She stopped completely, bending down to pick up an imaginary coin and fiddle with it in her hand.
“Probably faulty construction. It was built so fast and you know you can’t trust warlocks.”
She said that as if she had any experience with a warlock. Ace trusted Shelby...mostly. They continued the conversation steering it more toward what they thought they should do this afternoon. Ace took several long strides to catch up to Shelby, moving closer to his side.
“They think the queen left and the castle fell due to bad construction,” Ace said under her breath.
“Bad construction?” Shelby huffed, then lowered his face as they continued through the crowd. “I helped build that. There was no bad construction. It was sturdy until...”
“Until the Fae,” Ace finished for him when he stopped talking.
The conversation didn’t continue on as they both became absorbed in their own thoughts. Ace continued to listen to prayers, trying to discern anything helpful.
The farther they made it through town the less and less the prayers became, giving way to the rumble of gods. Ace’s concentration was constantly split between watching every street corner for guardsmen—who were as absent as the queen—and listening to the gods. Their words became a chant. They became her motivation as she surged forward and the pair went from the well managed walkways to the dirt path of the forest.
One queen’s dead.
Three more to go.
Nature must be corrected. Nature will be corrected.
Ace can do it. Ace will do it. If she can’t, another will.
Kill the queens. Kill the queens. Kill the queens.
Kill.
The.
Queens.
It was those words, their words, that followed Ace through the forest. The pair only stopped once at the river bank to scrub away any evidence of the day before. When they passed the river, the late evening sun poked through the trees and the small cabin finally came to view. Shelby’s grandma’s house was a modest one room —two if you counted her small washroom— cabin, where the old woman managed to be self-sustained.
There was still the small stool that sat on the porch like the last time they’d been there and no smoke was coming from the chimney. Silence always seemed to wrap itself around the home, making Ace wonder how his grandma lived like that and remained sane.
Maybe having lost some of her sanity was the answer.
Upon seeing the cabin, Shelby’s pace quickened. He shoved through the last bit of brush and all but sprinted to the doors. Ace’s shoe caught a fallen branch, scuffing her new boot and causing her to fall behind. That didn’t keep her from listening to Shelby’s quick knock or from seeing his grandma’s face appear in the crack of the door.
The old woman flung the door open, the gray in her black curls somehow greater than the last time they’d been here, only a day ago. No, it had to be longer than that. Her eyes crinkled heavily around her eyes and a series of wrinkles curved across her cheeks. All of it faded as she pulled his face down to her level, several feet below Shelby’s natural height.
It was his grandma’s gasp, the heartbreaking confusion and worry that suddenly contorted her features that made Ace want to die where she stood. She came to a stop several feet away from the porch. Her stomach clenched with the familiar feeling of nausea that crept up her throat.
“No,” the old woman rasped. “No!”
“Grandma—“ Shelby whispered but the old woman pushed his face away from her with surprising strength as he stumbled away. Her steps were heavy as she crossed the porch. Ace swore when she met the earth those same steps were like small earthquakes that shook her where she stood. His grandma raised her hand—
Ace’s head cocked to one side, her cheek burning from the sudden strike. She squeezed her eyes shut. The pain in her cheek was already passing but her chest was throbbing with the painful reminder.
“Grandma!” Shelby barked from behind her.
The old woman didn’t back down. She wrapped her hand in Ace’s hair and yanked her to eye level. Air scraped down her dry throat, as Ace met her dark gaze.
“You know not what you’ve done! You know not what you’ve done!”
There seemed to be a lot of that going around , Ace thought, remembering the way the Fae had asked Shelby if he knew what Ace was or what she could do.
“I know what I did.” Ace had wanted the words to come out strong and confident but her body betrayed her and the sentence was a weak whisper.
“You thought you saved him? You damned him!” she yelled, startling birds from a nearby tree. The grip in Ace’s hair tightened. “He is tied to you. He will die with you.”
Ace didn’t even know if she could die, and she hadn’t a clue what his grandma was even saying. The gods, as usual, were vague.
“I’m sorry.” Ace hadn’t even said that to Shelby yet, but she muttered it now to his grandma. Whether she actually meant it or not, she wasn’t sure.
“Ugh!” His grandma let go of Ace’s hair with a dramatic fling. Her gaze drifted up and down Ace’s body before she turned back toward the cabin. “Both of you, get inside and sit down! We need to talk.”
“That’s why we are here,” Shelby started as he gave his grandma plenty of space to enter the cabin before him. His eyes flicked up to Ace’s face, where she could still feel the imprint of the old woman’s hand. His expression didn’t change. “The Fae have made it back into Pasia. They destroyed the queens—”
“You don’t think I know there are Fae sniffing around these parts?” Her voice carried to Ace as she entered the door. “Is that how you died?” She pulled out a chair from the table and pointed a demanding finger at the seat.
Shelby carefully lowered himself into the chair. His grandma glared at Ace all the way from the door to where Ace settled herself at the table. She averted her gaze, not able to hold the woman’s intensity anymore.
The cabin itself looked the same. A small kitchen tucked into the corner, a fireplace with nothing but ash in the hearth, a single couch where Ace had once slept, and Shelby’s grandma’s bed in the opposite corner. It even smelled the same, like wet earth and herbs. But it didn’t feel the same.
“How could you be so foolish?” The old woman’s arm rose to pop Shelby in the back of the head, the excess skin of her arms jiggling with the movement. He flinched and then sighed as he leaned his cheek into the hand of the arm he’d propped up. “Getting mixed up with the Fae! If you’d been raised properly, you’d be able to recognize their nearness just like I do.”
“But I can’t. And I didn’t. We didn’t know there was going to be an attack on the castle the same day we’d planned to be there. We had no control. No warning,” he tried to explain.
Not even a warning from the gods. Ace scrunched her eyebrows as she realized it. Normally there was something, from someone…
They’d say something or she’d get a chill…or…or…
They’d done nothing this time. Had they wanted Ace and Shelby to be surprised? Did it have to do with the man Ace had seen?
“And you...” Shelby’s grandma was focused on Ace again. “What sort of bargain did you make with the gods?”
“I didn’t make a bargain.” She shook her head and Shelby lowered his face into his palms.
“You had to have.”
There would be no trying to get around the truth of it. Ace knew she should tell them what she knew. Even if what she knew didn’t really make much sense to her.
“I just didn’t want to be alone,” Ace whispered. “He was dying. I didn’t know what to do. He—he is the first person to really see me in a year. I couldn’t give him up and this whole thing, his death, was all on me. I’m the reason he was even there.” Words were just spilling out of her now, without any grace or fluidity, she stuttered over her sentences consumed with raw emotion. “The Fae asked if we knew what I am. Apart from a monster—“
His grandma narrowed her eyes and nodded her agreement.
“Apart from a monster, I have no idea what I am, just that I am connected to the gods and that I shouldn’t be here with the living. Then there was the man with eyes like mine and he said that it was done. I was so scared that he meant Shelby’s life.” She kept her eyes trained on the table now. She hadn’t told Shelby any of this yet, not that it changed anything. “I told the gods they had to give him back. All they said was that someone else would die in his place.”
Ace’s shoulders rose and fell as she continued. “The gods can have anyone else. I don’t know anyone else that I care enough if they live or die.”
“Pffft.” The old woman pinched her nose. “And what am I? Chopped liver?!”
Ace glanced up from under her lashes but neither Shelby nor his grandmother was looking directly at her. “They can have anyone else but Shelby’s mine.”
Cups, sitting on the table, rattled as Shelby’s hand slipped from his face and slammed against the wood. His brows bunched and his lips curled. “I am not yours and I am sick and tired of being owned .” He leaned back in his seat, gripping the edge of the table. His mouth quivered as he turned to look away.When he spoke again his voice was hushed and low. “I was already coming back. I died, yes. I left my body, yes. Somehow, I still had consciousness.” He swallowed. “I had a choice. And I—I was coming back to you until…”
“Until she gave you part of her soul,” his grandma ticked.
“What?” Ace straightened.
“Warlocks and witches are not human . We do not have souls like humans do. When he died he was released from his fleshy prison.” She reached out and pinched Shelby’s arm as he tried to squirm away. “If he says that he was coming back then he could have healed himself.” His grandma pointed a finger at Ace. “You made a fool’s bargain.” She turned her attention back on Shelby, her voice laced with anger. “And you. You betrayed your people. You know it’s forbidden to refuse your death date.”
“I don’t understand.” Ace could feel her heart beating inside of her ears.
“You gave Shelby part of your soul which would have pulled him through the holy fire to bring him back instead of how he would have returned on his own, if he wished. I don’t know why he would want to come back and hang around trouble like you...but it sounds like he did.” She rubbed at her chin. “Did you go through holy fire?” she asked her grandson.
Shelby gave a single short nod.
Oh, no. No …Ace had…. oh, gods . Ace folded her arms on the table and dropped her face into them. She’d forced Shelby through holy fire and there hadn’t even been a reason for him to feel that pain.
“You were coming back?” Ace half said, half sobbed into her arms, her voice muffled against the table.
“What?” Shelby asked.
“She’s asking if you were really coming back. Clean out your ears, boy,” his grandma tutted.
Shelby was quiet as Ace tried to keep herself from melting into a puddle. Gods, she wished she could just disappear altogether. Being selfish might have felt like the right thing then and there but it was proving to be just as sinful as she’d always been told.
The table shook slightly. Chair legs squeaked as they were pushed against the floor. Shelby stood and gave his signature dry laugh. “I was coming back for you.” His heavy steps told Ace that he was walking away, toward the couch. That was confirmed as the old piece of furniture groaned at his weight.
“And what of the man like you?” His grandma walked the space between her and Shelby. “Do you know him?”
“No,” Ace tried to blink away the tears that made her vision blurry as she sat herself back up. How was she supposed to live with herself? She sniffled. “I’ve never seen him but he had orange eyes like me so I assumed he too had been raised from the dead.”
His grandma stopped walking and planted her hands on her hips. “Well, you know what you have to do now don’t you?”
Ace shook her head.
“You have to go and find him. Perhaps he can give you all the answers you seek as well as assistance in this mission of yours.”
How could she find someone she didn’t even know? How was she supposed to find a ghost?