Chapter 27
O rek tosses a bundle of feathers, which lands with a wet thud at our feet.
A sinking feeling blooms in my stomach as I stare at it.
It’s not just feathers. A clouded, glassy eye stares up at me, not far from a sharp beak.
One wing is sprawled out, clearly broken either before or after it was killed.
“Another Seelie spy,” Orek snarls. “This one just across the valley from this very gorge.”
Katiya’s grip on me tightens, and I sink back from Orek’s vitriol.
“It looks like a tasty meal to me.” She gently nudges the corpse with her boot. “Better roasted over a fire than thrown on the floor.”
I nearly gag at that. I’m never one to turn down chicken, but I don’t have to see them dead…on the ground…accused of being a Seelie spy. Not to mention this bird is—was—a good bit more majestic looking than its fowl cousin.
“How do you know it belongs to the Seelie?” Katiya asks before bending down for a closer look at the fallen bird.
“We tracked it,” he snaps, voice booming. “Found the usual signs. Circling without hunting. Rarely resting.” He thrusts an accusing finger my way. “This human is bait. She is leading the Seelie to us!”
“What!” Vada and I blurt simultaneously. First, I’m bait, and now I’m leading the Seelie to them? “I would never!”
I may have come to their land under dubious pretenses and with noble but misguided plans, but those have changed.
And I would certainly never bring war down upon a city filled with the innocent.
Besides, the Seelie have no way to know where I am.
Madeline said the Seelie would be watching the door.
And maybe that bird that Orek killed in the wilds when he tried to abduct me was a Seelie lookout, but this?
Not possible. Or if it is Seelie, it can’t possibly have anything to do with me.
Katiya leans forward with a snarl of her own. “My brother has claimed her! She is under his protection.”
“Yet she does not bear his mark.” He sneers. “Perhaps it is one-sided?” The feral gleam in his eyes is a challenge if I’ve ever seen one.
“It’s not,” I insist, my face heating with both fury and embarrassment. If there is one side more interested than the other, it’s likely me.
Vada steps forward, head raised high. “Any accusations should be brought before our king.” The silence that follows her words is deafening.
“Take this carcass.” She gestures to the dead bird.
“And get out of my workroom!” Despite her slight size, she manages to look down upon Orek, scolding him like a child who just walked through her living room with muddy shoes on.
“This human is—”
“Under our protection,” Katiya snaps, angling herself further in front of me. “Perhaps you have not the confidence to bring this accusation to my brother yourself, so you dump your kill at our feet instead.”
His snarl deepens. “The king is busy.”
“Then you can wait.” In a move only Katiya could make look graceful, she bends over, grabs the dead bird, and flings it at Orek.
It hits him in the chest with a sickening plop and nearly tumbles back to the stones before he manages to get a hold of it.
“Go to him, if you dare. Perhaps he will shorten your other horn for you.”
With a look that promises painful vengeance, he turns and stalks from the room.
Immediately, the tension permeating the air ebbs. Vada calls one of her assistants over to clean the blood and feathers off the floor.
“He hates me,” I say, still staring at the empty threshold where Orek had stood.
Katiya slowly unlatches her fingers from around my wrist. “He hates the Seelie,” she says, staring after him.
“And all connected to them.” She glances back at me, and the intensity of her gaze makes me take a step back.
“Few of us have known humans as anything other than the allies of the Seelie. To him, you are an enemy.”
I hug my arms around myself. Way to make a girl feel good about herself.
She lays a hand on my shoulder, dark nails drumming gently. “But not to most of us.” Her fingers still, and her head tilts to the side in appraisal, her ears twitching. “I have questions for you though, if you will answer them.”
“Yes, I will if I can.”
A grin stretches across her face, exposing her white teeth. She trails her hand down my arm to my wrist before resuming her previous grip and turns to Vada. “Excuse us. I must have a word with the human.”
She holds my arm and leads me down a corridor, past a room that bears numerous Unseelie on cots and others who must be healers tending to them, and around a bend.
She throws open the door to a dark room and pulls me in with her.
Panic roots my feet to the stone before Katiya summons a small magical light in her hand and sends it drifting to the ceiling above.
The room is stark and bare, with only a narrow cot pushed against one wall for furniture.
The stone walls still bear coarse chisel marks that have not been smoothed, and not a spot of paint or decoration has been added anywhere.
“What is this place?” I ask.
Katiya releases me. “A room for injured prisoners.”
The blood drains from my face, my mouth falling open.
A cackle of laughter bursts from her lips before she doubles over. “It is not for you.”
Oh, thank God. I literally sigh in relief.
“But it is a room where we can speak without others listening.”
“Right,” I say, though she could have found a less intimidating spot. “What questions do you have?” The sooner I can answer them and get out of this uncomfortable box of a space, the better.
She reins in her humor, turning serious once more. “You intend to brew a potion to help your brother. But he is in the human world.”
Katiya pauses, only her tail moving behind her.
“Yes.” I have a sinking feeling I know where this is going.
“How do you plan to get it to him?”
Deep breath. There were bound to be more questions about that sooner or later.
“I hoped to return through the door I used to get here. There are humans I know on the other side who will open it at sunrise every day to check if I am there.” It’s as much as they could reasonably do, given the strain the magic requires and how few humans have any magical power at all.
I don’t bother to mention that, after a month of opening the door, they will stop, assuming I’ve failed.
“Otherwise,” I say with a swallow and hang my head, “I would have to try to get home through the Seelie territory.”
It’ll be the only option left if my time runs out.
She is thoughtful for a minute, hand gripping her chin, the other propped on her hips. “These humans, would they be friendly to us?”
“No,” I say at once, feeling some of the burden the coven placed on me lift. They’ll be furious, as will the Seelie, but I cannot lead Elias or his sister into danger, my own fate be damned. “They are not. If any of you were to come with me, or even be near, it would be dangerous for you.”
Katiya falls into another thoughtful silence, nodding slowly. “And if you return to your brother, these humans who do not like us would let you come back?”
It’s the question I was afraid of, the one I should lie about but can’t bring myself to. It feels like a fist has reached under my ribs and grabbed my heart.
Instead of answering, I shake my head.
Her lips thin. “You have shared these things with my brother?”
The scalding tone of her voice makes it hard to look at her. I shake my head again. “He asked about the door when we first met, but I did not trust him. I told him about the humans on the other side who would open it to look for me. But not the rest. And he has not asked since.”
She crosses her arms, pointed nails drumming.
“He likely knows but fears your answer.” A heavy sigh falls from her lips before her arms swing loose.
“You are smart enough. Someone who goes to such lengths for a potion would have a way to get it to the person it is for. My brother is soft for you. He would let you go, even if it would damn himself and the rest of us with him.”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” I say quickly.
Her answering grin is anything but warm. “Intention matters little, only the effect.”
Elias had said something similar. They really are quite alike in some ways.
Some of the viciousness in her eyes dims. “I am not Orek. I do not think you are aligned to the Seelie or a spy. But I have done, and would do, many things for those I love, and I love my brother most of all.”
I take a step back from her. “You would keep me here.”
“Do you know how my brother came into his power?” she asks instead, gaze narrowed.
I shake my head and retreat farther.
“It was to protect our mother and me from the wrath of our father.” She glances away to stare at the wall.
“My power was just budding. I tried to stop Kedrak, our father. I failed. He may have killed me if not for my brother stopping him.” After a thick silence, her attention returns to me.
“I owe him my life, and I will never stop using it to work toward his goal of safety and a future for our people. I vowed to protect him, and I will, even from himself. Surely you, who came to this land for your brother, understand.”
Much as I may hate to admit it… “I do.”
“Good. Now, come.” She holds out a hand to me. “We must prepare and be ready to leave when my brother says it's time.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask where, but then I remember. Sliandu. With everything else, I’d almost forgotten.
“You don’t have to hold my arm.” I flick my gaze to her outstretched hand. “I can walk.”
“You can, but yes, I must.” There’s a twitch of her nose before a smirk pulls at her lips. She moves faster than I can blink, grabbing my wrist and hauling me toward the door.
“Why?” I ask, half whining.
“Because I am a null.” She stops so suddenly in the hallway that I bump into her side. Her eyes twinkle with humor again. “No one can shift you away while I am touching you.”
I blink at her. “You think someone would?”
She shrugs. “To be unprepared is to regret. To trust blindly is dangerous.”
And with that, she tugs me after her down the hall.