Chapter 19 Pretty Fear, Pretty Terror
Pretty Fear, Pretty Terror
It is nothing like falling. There’s no air whooshing past, no drop in her stomach, no rampant flailing of the arms.
The Maw simply swallows her.
Her arm is around Nugau’s waist, where she grabbed him to save him from the cannon. Her other arm is around the second elf’s, with the third elf trapped between them, all four of them a tangle of limbs and strained squeaks of alarm.
Darkness presses in around them, tight and heavy and cold.
Mere seconds have passed and yet Sascia is already struggling to draw a breath.
Her skin stings. Her arms are going numb; consciousness threatens to abandon her.
In the moments between panic, she thinks: What a fitting death for a girl in love with the Dark.
An endless fall into the bottomless black.
But then, Mooch flutters across her vision.
In the pitch dark, its Darkprint is doubly vibrant, a kaleidoscopic gleam of light with every snap of its wings.
It soars in a circle around the four bodies.
At every fall of its wings, the Dark splits.
A rip of light cuts through the black right beneath their feet, and between one moment and the next, the Maw disappears.
Sascia drops like a sack of potatoes onto smooth concrete. Stabs of pain splinter down her left hip. She rolls to her back and rubs her thigh, gritting her jaw to keep her cry in. She is aware of movements around her, words spoken in a strange language, angry questions from the three elves.
Reality comes crashing down: she just jumped into the Maw. To save three elves clad in armor and carrying weapons and looking all-around very hostile. What the absolute hell was she thinking—except she wasn’t thinking, as per usual, and now she has to face the consequences.
Hastily, she fumbles for the nova-sword Danny gave her and points it away from the Darkhumanoids, so as not to hurt them.
It flicks on with a lightsaber type of whoosh.
A needle of a blade emerges from the hilt, dotted with hundreds of tiny nova fairy lights.
They coalesce into a long, thick beam of solid light, which casts a bright glow on her surroundings.
It’s a subway station. The vibrant white of the sword reflects on the turnstiles a few feet away.
Posters peel off the walls and glass shards dust the floor, as though the station is some great serpent, shedding its human skin to welcome the onyx scales of the Dark.
The walls have surrendered to a mural of ivy.
Moss coats the tiles, weaving the cold concrete into a tapestry of black stitched with the neon colors of the Darkworld.
A blue-and-green tile names the station: 23Rd Street.
After the Darkgriffin tore a hole into Manhattan, the city discontinued this section of the subway, redirecting lines to run around the Maw.
But deep in the bowels of Manhattan, the abandoned stations still stand.
In the absence of light, the Dark has overrun the place, claiming it as its own.
She sweeps the blade to her left—
A stunned scream rips through her throat.
The face of an elf hovers inches away from her own.
It’s the scariest of the three she just saved.
Two thick ramming horns, like those of a buffalo, carve their temples and frame their cheeks in a crown of ivory.
Yellow eyes flicker beneath menacing brows.
Their mouth is open; a long tongue swings from side to side, so fast it becomes a blur.
In an instant, Mooch is on Sascia. It batters its body against her chest, pushing her back with its impossible strength. She knows what this means, she knows what it’s trying to tell her: Run.
The elf bares their fanged teeth. A snarl splits their mouth, echoing down the walls of the station.
Sascia’s knees buckle. Rational thoughts scatter—she is only instinct, only flight, only terror.
She scrambles up and runs, but her limbs are not responding fast enough.
She stumbles on the jagged cement and drops to her hands and knees.
Her sword skids across the tiles, landing on a thicket of Darkmoss.
The echo of feet pounding sends her heart hammering. The elf is scampering after her. She twists and aims a kick at their head, but the elf easily sidesteps it and, within seconds, scrambles over her fallen body, pinning both her wrists to the ground.
“Pretty fear, pretty terror!” the elf screeches. “Too bad it has to die.”
Their face leers inches above her own, yellow-eyed and bare-fanged. Saliva drips from their mouth to her cheek.
Frenzied whimpers torrent out of Sascia’s mouth. “Get off, get off, get off!”
Then their weight on her eases. She scrambles back until she hits a wall and lunges for the nova-sword—an elegant leather boot lands on its hilt.
Nugau stands above her.
On his cheeks, the swirls of his Darkprint glow a deep purple, as they did in Times Square.
His tall frame imposes against the backdrop of shifting shadows; he’s dressed in a breastplate inlaid with floral designs over a tight jacket and pants.
His hair is in the careless shag she first saw in Times Square, yet his neck is bare of the scar he had when he attacked her then.
There is no gash on his forehead like when he arrived poisoned in her bedroom.
This is a Nugau before the attack, before the poisoning.
But is it a Nugau who knows her? Who trusts her? (Who cares for her?)
He holds the horned elf suspended in the air by the back of their collar. Behind him stands the third elf, short and slender with long white-blond hair and a metal mask over the lower part of their face. Nugau and the horned elf are going back and forth in low, hissing tones.
The horned elf bursts out in English, “Spy! Assassin!”
Nugau answers in rapid words, of which Sascia only catches one: itka. His hand flourishes in the direction of Mooch.
All three elves study the moth now sitting on Sascia’s chest.
Itka, Sascia thinks. An ancient leader to the other moths. A god to the Darkworld. She doesn’t need to know the language to realize Mooch’s affection for her just saved her life.
“Human,” Nugau says. “Who are you? Why did you push us back in?”
His eyes slide to the ceiling. The concrete is smooth now, no evidence of the rip Mooch created or the searing black of the Maw beyond.
Human. Not Sascia. Not little gnat. Nugau doesn’t know her yet.
Stricken and befuddled by her own thoughts, Sascia takes too long to answer.
Nugau releases the horned elf. In a flash of movement, they have pinned Sascia’s arms to the wall and dug their knee into her chest. “Answer, pretty,” they hiss. “But no lies. The prince of Itkalin does not like lies.”
Pain is crushing into her torso. Her lungs struggle; her mind fills with terror. “I was trying to protect you! They would have struck you with the nova-cannon—it would have killed you!”
Nugau cocks his head. “And what interest do you have in our well-being, human?”
The horned elf’s knee rams into Sascia’s rib cage—
“I know about ymneen! About knotted time!” Sascia shouts. “I have met you before. A version of you from the future. You told me a war is coming that neither my species nor yours can survive. I am not a spy or an assassin. I’m just a student who works with Darkmoths—what you call itka.”
Her revelations ring around the empty station. The pressure on Sascia’s chest eases as the horned elf glances at Nugau over their shoulder.
“You know the human?” the elf spits at Nugau.
Their tone is accusatory; in response, a frigid mask slides over Nugau’s features.
He replies in their language with well-measured, confident words, but the horned elf still looks suspicious.
Sascia’s senses are alert, all too aware of the threat closing in around her.
Is it a crime to know her? Do these elves hate humans?
“The itka,” Nugau says. “When we were traveling between our two worlds just now, you were freezing. You would have died. But the itka protected you. It brought us back here to the tunnels. Why?”
“I don’t know. I have always had an affinity to its kind.
This one just appeared one day—” Sascia stops.
If knowing her is a reason to suspect Nugau, perhaps she shouldn’t reveal exactly how Mooch came to her, at least not in the presence of the horned elf.
“I protect it,” she says instead. “And it protects me.”
The statement must carry some gravity in their world. Matching expressions of disbelief draw on the faces of the three elves.
Then, without warning, the horned elf slaps her. “Liar!”
Sascia’s head flattens against the wall.
Her skull rings with the force of the strike; she can taste blood in her mouth.
Slowly, her senses recover—when she opens her eyes, the horned elf is sprawled on the floor halfway across the room.
Their arms are up, and they are squeaking and cursing against a battering of blows from Mooch.
Nugau stands before Sascia, his back to her, legs splayed and chest heaving, as though he’s the one who just tossed the other elf across the room.
The tension is broken only by the white-haired elf, who is chuckling at their comrade’s squeaks against Mooch’s assault. Leisurely, they nudge their head in Sascia’s direction. “We cannot leave the human here,” they tell Nugau. “We will bring them to the Queen. Let her decide their fate.”
Nugau gives an almost reluctant nod. “Stand, human. You’re coming with us.”
Sascia gathers herself up as best she can. Her cheek blazes hot with stinging and shame. Her jeans are wet and her Doc Martens caked with black mud. A patch of moss has attached to her elbow; she flicks it off and tugs her hair behind her ears. That slap has morphed all her terror into anger.
When Nugau makes to take her by the elbow, Sascia snaps her arm away.
“Walk, human—”
“Sascia,” she cuts him off. “My name is Sascia.”
If he recognizes the name, he doesn’t show it.