Chapter 6
Water dripped behind me as I stalked away from Earth House.
My hair had been ripped loose during my near drowning and hung wet against my bare back, and my sodden skirts stuck to my legs.
Oriana probably could have made my return journey less damp if she’d felt like it, but any kindness towards me likely would have counted as breaking neutrality in her head. Or maybe she’d been feeling petty.
The outline of a hidden door gleamed gold in my peripheral vision, and my own petty heart took pleasure in that small victory. I would need to be careful about when and where I accessed them, but those catacombs were still mine.
The corridor looked empty, but paranoia bit at me, and I rubbed a hand over the prickling at the back of my neck. Who had my assailant been, and where were they now? How was I supposed to defend against someone invisible?
An invisible faerie still had a body, though.
I reached for the well of my magic and imagined casting a net out, seeing if it would catch on bones, muscles, or the pump of a heart.
I became aware of heartbeats pattering in the distance, but it was hard to pinpoint anything besides general direction, and they vanished as soon as my concentration wavered.
I’d relied on my eyes and ears my entire life. Now they might lie to me.
My breath shallowed, and I ducked into an alcove, pressing a hand to my chest. A servant was vulnerable in so many ways, but a princess was at risk in new ones.
There were probably hundreds of faeries who wanted me dead, and unlike me, they had full command of their magic and the experience of centuries.
Everyone dies , Caedo said in my head. A princess approaches death more frequently than most.
I made a face. “That’s not comforting.”
Comfort won’t keep you safe .
Wonderful. If I had to be saddled with a sentient, shape-shifting dagger that had a direct connection to my thoughts and demanded frequent blood sacrifices, the least it could do was offer emotional support.
Not wanting to speak my fears out loud, I switched to thought communication.
This scares me, Caedo. I don’t want to die.
The dagger hummed at my neck. It was still shaped like a serpent—sharp teeth, scales, a ruby crown. An implied threat I’d imagined would keep me safe, but there was nothing a dagger, magical or not, could have done against what happened today. You already died once , Caedo said. It created you.
The words startled me. What?
In the maelstrom , the human part of you died. Now you are better.
Fear surged again, sending my pulse racing. The maelstrom of the Shards…No, I hadn’t died in there. It was impossible.
The memory of that storm filled my head. Whirling and terrible, shot through with light as the Shards had discussed my fate. It had felt like I was being ripped apart piece by piece. My body had dissolved as my soul grew thin and ragged.
The Shards had saved me, though. Blackness had fallen, but I’d opened my eyes again a few moments later. Still Kenna, just with new powers.
There had been that period of darkness, though. The candidates who had succeeded had walked out of the maelstrom with their magic on full display. I’d slumped out of it, collapsing on a pile of corpses.
“Oh,” I said, less a word than a whimper. Every part of me rejected the idea. Because if I had died, really died…what had been brought back?
Blood House always walks with death , Caedo said. It is good to know the feel of it.
I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said out loud. The sound of my own voice felt essential. Confirmation that I was still here, still real, still me .
The thought sparked another. There were humans in Mistei who couldn’t speak, but were they any less real because of that? Their tongues had been cut out, but they spoke with their hands and their laughter and their eyes. They still lived vibrantly, despite the Fae’s efforts to crush them.
My breath hitched. Did they know the wards surrounding Mistei had evaporated with Osric’s death? Did they realize the outer bars of their cage were gone?
A new purpose filled me. I hadn’t been able to sway Oriana, but there was more to changing Mistei than that.
The human levels were dark, dirty, and cramped. No crystals shone from the ceiling to mark the passage of the distant sun. Instead, torches guttered in wall brackets, leaving streaks of soot against the stone. There were no doors to offer privacy, and the air stank of sweat and excrement.
My wet hem picked up fragments of straw that had fallen from someone’s basket.
The first few rooms I passed were empty, and the main workroom—a large chamber with areas for mending, polishing silver, splitting grains, and other menial tasks—held half of its normal occupancy.
Triana and Maude, my closest friends down here, should have been working at this hour, but they were nowhere to be seen.
I hesitated in the doorway, watching the workers. “Excuse me,” I said.
Heads snapped up at the sound of my voice. A young man carrying a ceramic teapot stumbled into a table. The pot tumbled to shatter on the floor, and he followed it down with a sound of distress, kneeling to pick up the shards. Other humans bowed or curtsied, looking terrified.
Because I was Fae now, I realized sickly. My skin had a shimmer to it, and they’d likely heard the rumors. Yesterday I’d been one of them—luckier than most, and held at a slight distance because of it, but part of their number. Now I wasn’t.
“Is Triana here?” I asked using sign language, hoping that would make them less afraid. “Or Maude?”
They stared at me mistrustfully.
“Did they run away?” I signed when no one volunteered any information. If so, I was glad. Anyone who could escape Mistei should, and quickly.
Still, no one replied.
My signing was slow and rudimentary in comparison to how the other humans spoke, since I was new to it and had had less opportunity to practice, but I kept going. “The king is dead. The wards are down. You can all run. You can go home.”
A woman dropped her cloth and wrapped her arms around herself. She sobbed and shook her head.
“I can help you,” I signed, confused by the refusal. We could cross the bog together, moving during daylight to avoid the will-o’-the-wisps. As a faerie, I might be able to see the path without help, or Caedo could show it to me again.
A princess should not leave her house , Caedo whispered. You cannot abandon the ones who rely on you.
Which ones? I wanted to ask. But there were only two other citizens of Blood House. They can go, too , I said stubbornly. And then we’ll come back together .
Except no, we wouldn’t, I realized with a tumbling in my gut. Anya should return to Tumbledown. She should run far away from this cruel kingdom, and as her friend, I should help her.
Would I ever see her again?
I couldn’t think about that now. I focused on the people before me. “You can leave. I’ll help you escape.”
A bald man with a white beard glared at me. Bruno, one of Maude’s friends, who was normally full of jokes and smiles. “You’re lying,” he signed.
The air rushed out of my lungs. “No,” I mouthed, shaking my head.
“The Fae always lie.”
There was a knocking sound behind me, and I turned to see Maude rapping the handle of a broom against the arched entranceway.
She wore a brown dress and a stained apron, and her graying hair was scraped into a tight bun.
She looked at me grimly, mouth pressed into a thin line.
Then she pointed down the hall and jerked her head, instructing me to follow.
I did, feeling bruised internally. These had been my people a day ago, and now they looked at me like I was the enemy.
Maude led me to a scouring room. There were three women inside, scrubbing delicate silver cups that were washed separately from the more functional cookware. At the sight of me, they dropped the cups into the basins and fled.
Maude set the broom aside and leaned against the wall. She always looked tired, but today was worse. The wrinkles on her face seemed deeper, and her brown eyes were reddened. “What are you doing here?” she asked, hands moving quickly.
“The wards are down,” I replied in sign language, much more slowly. “You can escape.”
She scoffed and looked away—an insult on the human levels. She was telling me she didn’t want to see my next words. “You lie. The Fae raised you from the dead, and now you’re here to torment us.”
Raised me from the dead. Cold prickles danced over my skin.
“No, I’m not lying,” I said out loud, feeling guilty even as I did so.
It had always seemed unfair to open my mouth down here, to remind everyone I hadn’t been mutilated the way they had.
“I killed the king last night, and the border spell vanished with him.”
That got Maude to look at me again. “ You killed him?” Disbelief was evident on her face.
“Triana was there,” I said, switching back to sign language.
Maude’s eyes grew sorrowful. “She ran as soon as blood was spilled. After she saw you lying dead on the ground.”
Triana had been one of the humans sent in as entertainment by King Osric—along with Anya.
I felt sick remembering how both of them had trembled, utterly terrified.
They’d been set free from the brothel they’d both suffered in, but Osric had thrived on torment, and he’d forced them to return to that misery just because he could.
At least the fighting had broken out before that particular entertainment could come to its twisted conclusion.
Everyone had run, except for Anya. Which meant they hadn’t borne witness to my resurrection or the cataclysmic events that followed.
“What are people saying?” I asked. “You must know the king is dead.”
“The king is dead,” Maude confirmed. “And it does not matter.”
“How can it not matter?”
“Our lives will be the same no matter who rules.”