Chapter 22
REGRET BURNED IN my chest.
Whatever feelings he might’ve had for me before this, I’d ruined it. There was no way he still felt that way now.
But Soren was clearly unwilling to talk about it any further. He headed toward the nearest tunnel.
“Keep your expectations tempered,” he warned over the music and voices, refusing to look at me as he led us through the dark room.
He’d tamped down all emotion, speaking in a flat tone as he added, “Cosmo often employs a staff of at least fifty. And his guest list is usually three or four times the number of his staff, if not more.”
If Cosmo’s home was aboveground, it’d qualify as a mansion for sure.
I told myself I could apologize later, when we weren’t surrounded by loud music and fae who shouldn’t be listening.
For the first time since my family had disappeared down that hole, I felt like I was close despite Soren’s warning. They could be right around the corner, even. “Where should we look?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He gestured toward a tunnel to another room, then headed that way. “Cosmo’s never allowed me in his home before. I doubt he would have today either if not for your prince.”
I cringed. “He’s not my prince.” I really needed to find a way to apologize, but the mention of Caius made me glance back. Nowhere to be seen.
“All we can do is make our way through one room at a time,” Soren continued as if I hadn’t said anything, putting his hands into his pockets like we were taking a stroll instead of sneaking around a strange fae’s burrow.
We found a dark storage room for fae wine and a fae version of a toilet line, then took a spiral staircase that led down to a hallway.
I imagined the room full of fae we’d left behind. They’d be right above us. This ceiling held more glowing stalactites. I pictured heavy footsteps making them fall and reached out to grip Soren’s arm. “Should we be worried about a cave-in?”
“In some burrows, that’s a real concern, yes.” Soren’s eyes skimmed over where my hands lay on his arm, and I pulled back. He smoothed down the front of his vest. “Not Cosmo’s burrow though. He’s called the Stonemason for a reason. Every floor and room in here is reinforced.”
I blew out a breath. At least I could remove “getting squished” from my list of worries.
As we snuck down the hall, we peered into dark bedrooms. One was occupied by a group of fae playing a game that looked like a mix between cards and dice with too many sides.
Another had two girls around my age dusting and making the bed.
The sight of them flooded my body with adrenaline, which unfortunately didn’t go away even after seeing their faces were unfamiliar.
With my heart still pumping, we ascended a different staircase that curved around and unexpectedly poured us back out into the original room where we’d first arrived. Completely disoriented, I gestured to another tunnel with a heavy sigh. “Maybe this one?”
As we moved away from the party a second time, I expected the noise to die down, but on this level, the music bounced off the walls, following us along. Whenever it started to fade, a new song picked up ahead.
We searched room after room. Without any windows for a point of reference, I was all turned around.
As we traveled down yet another staircase, the music softened a bit, and fae mingled as they admired different kinds of art on display.
In a large room, a life-size painting of a cheetah running shifted suddenly, turning into two painted human bodies.
A few more moves and they locked into a new pose that turned them into a parrot.
A couple fae murmured brief approval before accepting drinks from a human server.
Squinting at both the painted people and the one serving drinks, I blinked back tears of frustration at not recognizing any of them.
I kept thinking I’d turn around and see Rissa or Olive, or that Dad would be the one walking by. But they were nowhere to be found.
This party didn’t seem to have any limits.
As we wandered down a long quiet hallway, we passed another statue, posed on one foot with arms stretched in an O overhead, like a ballerina. When I glanced at it, it blinked.
I squeaked and leapt back.
It was a living, breathing person, painted to look like a statue.
Pressing a hand to my chest to calm the panic, I thought back to the statues scattered throughout the rooms upstairs—had they all been human as well?
Though I peered hopefully through the face paint, it wasn’t Rissa or Olive. Her arms trembled, and sweat dripped down her face.
“Hey,” I whispered. “You know you can take a break, right? There’s no one else here.”
She didn’t move.
I couldn’t even tell if she’d heard me.
“Soren.” I said his name for the first time.
He turned abruptly from where he’d been surveying the other side of the room. “Yes, Brynn?”
“I—” I gave myself a mental shake. “The girl . . . We need to help her. Can you do something?”
Shifting his gaze to her, he took in the way she refused to move despite her shaking. “I can try.” Though her eyes stayed lifeless, Soren crouched low enough to catch her gaze. “What’s your name?”
As he talked to her, I kept an eye on the rest of the hallway to make sure no one was coming.
“Your name,” Soren demanded in a sterner tone.
The girl slowly surfaced enough to say, “Rosa.”
“Rosa,” he repeated. And the single word drew her eerie gaze to his with a tiny spark of awareness. “You’re done working for the night. Go find a quiet, safe place to rest.” Soren enunciated each word.
Her leg and arms lowered ever so slightly.
And then they gave out.
We caught her just in time, one of us on each side, and gave her a minute to compose herself.
Then, without a word, she pulled away and shuffled off, obeying Soren’s command.
I watched her until she turned the corner and disappeared.
“Will that work?” I whispered. Thin strands of music tickled my ears from somewhere upstairs, adding a weird upbeat soundtrack to my nervousness.
“Temporarily.” He turned in the direction where the girl had gone, and I followed. “Using her name helped, but her master’s commands will override anything I say eventually.”
And it might be worse for her if she gets caught disobeying. I was smart enough to know we’d only created more problems but not smart enough to think of a single solution.
“We just went in another circle,” I exclaimed as we entered a dining area for the second time, music growing louder.
“So we did.”
In the next large room, I scoured every single face we passed but recognized none.
As we circled yet another human zombie mopping up a spill while the fae around him laughed, a question burst out of me. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Just . . . walk by them when they’re suffering?”
His voice came out quiet, bitter. “Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of practice.”
It could’ve been a great opportunity to mention the two hundred contracts. To say something like, “I didn’t know you were freeing them. I’m sorry I thought the worst of you.” Except, that sounded terrible, and he’d already moved on down the hallway anyway.
We reached what felt like a basement. Dimly lit with orange-toned lights, it had pillars separating the space into smaller rooms with much higher ceilings.
The walls spotlighted art in decorative cubby holes, but it wasn’t all eye level.
Some displays were by my knees, while the occasional pot or painting was also placed above us.
“Are there trolls down here somehow?” I asked Soren, pointing at a strange-colored liquid in a diamond-shaped glass dangling high above our heads. I automatically searched for a large tunnel that would let them in. The ceiling was certainly high enough.
He shook his head. “No. Cosmo isn’t friendly with the trolls.”
Well, that hadn’t answered my question at all, but now I wanted to know. “Who is friendly with the trolls?”
“Come to think of it, ‘friendly’ isn’t the best term for their relationship with anyone,” Soren replied thoughtfully.
“Since they tend to eat anyone small and defenseless.” My expression made him quickly add, “That’s actually one of the upsides of your family being sent here to Cosmo.
They should be safe from the trolls, at least—”
When he cut himself off, I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I did anyway. “At least? Are you saying there’s something else that could hurt them here?”
Though Soren tugged at his vest like he wished he hadn’t said anything, he sighed and nodded. “There are many things here that humans should fear. Fae too, though not to the same extent. But at least there are no trolls within these walls.”
I scowled at the way he tried to distract me. “Tell me.” Glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one was nearby, I added, “I’m human too. I should know what to watch out for.”
We reached a doorway. On the other side, the hallway split left, right, and up another staircase that probably led back the way we’d come. Or not. Hard to say.
Glancing at each other, Soren and I both shrugged a little and went left.
“I suppose to start, the fae wine here is dangerous,” he began.
“You’ve told me that already.”
“No, you misunderstand,” Soren corrected me.
“Fae wine is generally unsafe for humans with a variety of different results that could occur, but Cosmo brews the most potent batch in the Hollow Court. It doesn’t merely lower your inhibitions—it annihilates them.
King Mordeus and Queen Daja actually bargain with him for a collection. ”
“It’s extra dangerous. Got it.” Hopefully if my family was serving here somewhere, they wouldn’t be allowed to drink anything.
“Extra dangerous,” he muttered under his breath, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose like I drove him crazy.
“You certainly have a way with words.” After we passed a group of fae, he continued, “You know about the toddy wobbles and the toadstools, but you should also steer clear of hobgoblins and, you know what, regular goblins too.”
As if I could tell the difference. “Sure.”
“Within a dwelling such as this, it’s highly unlikely you’ll encounter a boggart, or a banshee either—though if you do, I suppose it’s too late.”
“Obviously,” I agreed sarcastically. My tone went right over his head.
“Then there are phookas and redcaps—”
“Okay, you realize I have absolutely zero idea what any of these fae look like, right?”
Soren’s brows rose. “Ah, really? I suppose that makes sense. Well, phookas have the body of a horse. You can’t miss them. And you didn’t know Gwen is a redcap? The tattoos give them away.”
“If a redcap is bad, why are you friends with her?”
“They’re not ‘bad,’ Brynn.” Soren snorted.
“We’re not a children’s fairytale with good and evil.
We’re merely a different species. The redcaps as a whole do gravitate toward violence though.
They’re known for their strategy and general bloodthirst. But Gwen left her kind behind years ago.
You really didn’t know she was a redcap? ”
Since we were alone, I pointed at my face. “Human, remember?”
“Right.” He blew out a breath like he’d actually forgotten. “Well, we may not have much time, so I guess I will bypass the water folk, like the kelpie, selkie, and rusalki . . .”
“I’ve got a better idea. How about I just stay away from all—” I broke off as the sight of a gray-haired man stopped my heart. But then the older man turned around.
It wasn’t him.
Human, yes. Serving drinks, from the looks of it. But not Dad.
He shuffled around the room with his tray of fae wine like a zombie with dull eyes.
Soren’s gaze followed mine. The corners of his eyes creased. “You can still find him, Brynn. You haven’t run out of time.”
I nodded, but my eyes had misted over.
The older man gave away the last glass of wine. He tottered toward the tunnel on the far side of the room. Blinking, I swallowed the thick tears and waved for Soren to hurry. “Come on, let’s follow him. He might lead us to more people.”
I was right.
Entering a new part of the burrow on the man’s heels, we found a large kitchen with three other exits.
A couple cooks worked along the counters, while others used long-handled pans to place food in something that looked like an oven mixed with a fireplace.
As smoke wafted up, it was sucked into a vent that I guessed led to the surface, though how far away that might be at this point, I couldn’t say.
The people didn’t react to our presence. They just moved back and forth like robots with their different tasks.
I gasped.
Gripping Soren’s arm hard enough to leave marks, I pointed at the dark-haired girl in dirty gray sweatpants disappearing into the tunnel on the opposite side of the kitchen. “That’s Rissa!”