Chapter 6
IN PIECES, I am nothing. Fractured. Falling. Caught between feathers and buffeted by great wings.
I have no body, but my soul panics.
The scattered pieces of me can’t possibly come back together.
This is death. Oblivion. And I’m alone.
I reach, but I have nothing to reach with.
There is only darkness. Chaos. The glinting eyes of ravens. I am them. I’m between them. I don’t know, and that’s the most frightening part of all.
Please. Someone. Something. Save me from this, because I can do nothing.
Then, like a giant’s breath, the air shifts, expands, there’s light between the wings and I can suck in cool, fresh air. I gasp at it, drag it down, half-sobbing as I realize I’m whole.
It takes a while with my eyes screwed shut to understand I’m clinging to something. And it takes a while longer to register it’s cloth with warm flesh beneath.
The fae.
I’m clinging to him.
With a sound of disgust, I push, but it does nothing—his arm holds fast around me. When I look up, I find him watching me with an icy smirk like this is all terribly amusing.
I have never in my life been violent, but if I don’t slap that look off his face one day, it will be a fucking miracle.
As my steaming breaths return to something like normal and the cold snaps at my toes, I take in my surroundings—anything’s better than looking at his horrible, beautiful face.
Snow carpets the ground. There are no footprints leading to us, though my feet sink inches into the crisp white. We must have… landed here, just as I’d seen him land at our garden wall. It was no illusion, then.
Snow even clings to the walls that surround us, piling high on the roof, looking like it could slump to the ground at any moment with an exhausted sigh. No cozy lighting shines through the narrow windows overlooking this courtyard. Icicles cling to the eaves, as sharp and glittering as spears.
Black branches stretch overhead, cutting the gray sky into shards as jagged as the pieces of me as we traveled here.
Two ravens perch among them, and I swear they’re watching us with interest. Then again, after everything that’s happened in the past hour, I shouldn’t really dismiss the possibility that they are. The gleam of blue-black on their feathers is the only color.
Even the tree’s bark is gray, its branches utterly bare, making me think it’s dead and not simply waiting out the winter.
But as I frown at its bleakness, I note the strangest thing of all.
The sun is black.
I swallow, throat tight. This is not home. Not Albion. Not even earth.
I’m truly in the Underworld.
The fae jerks his chin up. “Can you walk?” His lip curls as he speaks, as though he doubts I’m capable of anything.
I clench and unclench my fingers, trying to reconnect with my body after it was ripped apart. Trembling, only slightly. Cold. As always, it sends my heart racing—worse thanks to the hurried dose of belladonna. My toes are growing numb. But I appear to be whole and my legs seem steady enough.
Nodding, I press again on his chest and he lets me go.
“Good.” He turns on his heel and strides through the snow, opening a door with a gesture.
Before I follow, I squeeze the pocket of my dressing robe. The two bottles are a reassuring weight—my medicine and the powdered belladonna. I slide Lowen’s parcel in the other pocket and hurry after the king, tying to keep to his footprints to save myself wading through the thick snow
But his steps are too long for me, and by the time I get inside, I’m soaked from the hips down. My sodden nightclothes cling to me, and I fold my arms to try and ward off the inevitable goosebumps.
At the edge of my vision, I glimpse a shape at one end of the corridor, but when I turn, there’s nothing. Once I’m sure no one’s lurking, I follow the fae.
The two ravens swoop past me, one landing on his shoulder, the other continuing ahead, landing on the orbed light of the wall sconces. They’re joined by a third—a smaller, white raven, which perches on a windowsill. Light catches on its feathers with a violet sheen.
They definitely watch me pass. The white one blinks its pale-lilac eyes slowly, and I find myself pulling my dressing gown tighter and hurrying to catch up to the fae.
“So good of you to join me,” he says without sparing me so much as an instant of his brooding look.
“Your legs are a touch longer than mine.”
He barely slows. “I expect my future wife to be able to keep up with me. Though, perhaps that’s an unrealistic expectation when my mother has chosen a human to tether me to.”
So that’s why he’s such an insufferable prick—he hates me because I’m human. Well, that isn’t about to change.
“You could always take me home and then choose someone else to marry.” There’s a bright note in my voice, but deep down I know it’s hopeless. Whether you’re a fisherman or a demi-god King of Death, you don’t deny The Morrigan.
Even if my parents’ attempts to keep us safe from this fae had worked, it would only have been a matter of time before she had come to see the bargain fulfilled.
Though at some point, it has to “count,” right? There will be some moment we can say the bargain is technically complete and if I leave then, they have to allow it, because we’ve carried out the agreement to the letter if not the spirit. I need to know more about the bargain.
This place gives nothing away. The walls are a polished gray stone that gleams coolly in the unnatural light coming from the orbs. The floor is bare, and my slippered feet pad across it, but his booted steps are silent. We pass ebony doors with black handles.
The white raven flies over my head and circles repeatedly as though fascinated.
Much as this place and these birds are strange, their master is familiar. “You’re the one from my dreams, aren’t you?”
“Dreaming of me already? So declining to marry me was just playing hard to get.” He speaks with a detached amusement, like nothing is serious or important. It raises my hackles—no doubt exacerbated by events of the past hour and the dull exhaustion setting in.
“You came into my dreams. And they certainly weren’t pleasant ones. More like nightmares.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself. I know your kind can lie and do so readily.”
“Lying would be me saying you are a delightful prospective husband and I can’t wait to be married to you. The truth is that you came into my dreams. It’s really quite creepy when you think about it. Why? Spying or just trying to get me to come to you willingly?”
He huffs a sigh like I’m the infuriating one. “Don’t flatter yourself, Nameless. Just as you didn’t choose to dream of me, I didn’t choose to appear in your dreams. Thanks to the bargain our parents made, our fates are tied. We’re Fatebound. Not even iron can block such threads.”
“Then you didn’t influence my brother to break down the wall around our home?”
“Oh, no. That I did. The mirror let me bypass your primitive iron boundary.” His gaze grows distant for a moment as he shakes his head. “They truly thought they were safe.”
“Until you raised a damn army, yes, we were safe. And happy.” But questions nip at the edges of my irritation, chasing it along. “So… do you rule over the dead, like the ones you set on us?” I glance at a window, expecting to find more of those hollow eye sockets watching.
“Not quite.” He says it in this way that makes me feel like the most ignorant creature that ever lived. “The kingdom of Mordren is home to unseelie fae. Perhaps your backward kind have stories of how we were banished from the surface many ages ago.”
My smile is gritted and accompanied by a sarcastic toss of my head. “We have an alphabet and everything.”
“Only thanks to us.” Before I can ask what he means, he goes on.
“You will find the Underworld different to the surface. It is not a soft place, and I have no doubt you will consider our ways equally harsh. But as my future bride and this land’s future queen, you are expected to follow our rules.
The first of those is that my word is law. ”
I expect another smirk or for him to preen that he holds such power, but his expression doesn’t falter, not even as the third raven flies past, disturbing the smooth lengths of his hair.
“Here, names hold power. Asking for a name is seen as rude at best, an act of aggression at worst. You must offer yours freely and wait for one to be offered in return.” His gold eyes slide to me.
“Since I already know you are Nameless, nothing, I offer mine. Drystan. Though you will refer to me as ‘Your Majesty.’”
“Will I, now?” I mutter under my breath.
His lip curls, though I hesitate to call it a smile—it’s much crueler than that. “Just like you will mind your manners while you are in my court. These rules are vital, Nameless One. Mock them, break them and be prepared to live—or die—with the consequences.”
The raven on his shoulder caws and peers past him to give me an accusatory glare.
The cold already biting into me deepens, like my body understands the warning. The sun isn’t the only thing about this place that’s different.
Still, I can’t help pursing my lips as I meet the fae’s—Drystan’s—strange, glowing gaze. “You want me to be a good girl, is that it?”
That one, simple question is what makes it all hit me. I’m in the Underworld, under his rule. Alone. Stuck. Bargained away. My eyes burn and my vision blurs. To think I was upset about a notebook being burned, and now…
“Your emotions are a weakness, and here weakness is deadly.”
I swallow and quickly look away. Not only because of my threatening tears, but because my illness must be considered a weakness, surely? I may be dying anyway, but I have no intention of being killed here, alone, a world away from my family.
If I must go, I will do it on my terms.
I’ll have to hide my frailty. Somehow.
As for my feelings… Well, haven’t I been hiding those for years?
With a deep breath, I will the tears down and straighten my back. The tincture’s effects are still with me, so I can at least move easily, though that will stop if I stay in these cold clothes much longer. I wish I’d grabbed the tincture bottle before I left, but there wasn’t time.
Lifting my chin, I hold his unnerving gaze. “What else?”
His eyes narrow for the barest instant and he makes this soft sound that might be something like approval. “Generosity is never as it seems. Accept no gifts and give no insult.” We turn down another corridor with large double doors at the end. “Beware any debt.”
I want to ask questions, but the need to mentally note every rule wins out. I will not die here. I will see my family again, even if it’s the last thing I do.
“Fatework is the consort’s gift and duty. You are expected to apply yourself and learn the skill.” There’s a slight aquiline curve to his nose, refined and haughty, and he looks down it at me. “Especially since as a human you lack any natural talent for it. My dear mother is clearly punishing me.”
I can practically hear him holding back a sigh. He hates this arrangement almost as much as I do. Perhaps I can use that.
“Here.” He spreads his arms and the double doors sweep open revealing a bedroom decorated in shades of gray and white. “There are more rules for you to learn, but it’s late. You will sleep until sunset when Min will come to prepare you.”
The raven on his shoulder takes flight and circles. Its sharp caw sounds right behind me, making me gasp and lurch across the threshold.
The room is the biggest I’ve ever been in, with a seating area around a fireplace, a dining table to one side and a large bed at the center surrounded by dark drapes.
The biggest room, but probably also the bleakest.
Joy.
I turn, ready to ask who Min is and what I’m to be prepared for, but he’s already gone.