20. Carter
20
Carter
“W hat’s going on?” Ivy asked, trailing after Ashley. The question had been on the tip of my tongue since we rounded the bend and saw her standing in front of the same ruins where we’d once married each other.
Ashley shook her head. “This was a bad time to come asking questions, Ivy.”
Two years ago, she’d given us the orientation on Killwater and the surrounding area. I remembered the tattoo of the vines going up her arms. Now, I wanted to shake her to get her to spill her secrets. I wanted to know what her sister had done to us and how to undo it.
“You chased me in my dreams,” Ivy said.
“I did,” Ashley agreed, apparently nonchalant about the whole thing. “I’m glad to see you again, but I do wish you had come another night.”
The last time, I’d been too drunk and high to notice when we crossed over into Faerie. Now sober, I discerned the shift immediately. A strange warmth settled on my skin as my chest tightened, suddenly full of the heaviness in the air that wasn’t there before. There was no door, no portal, no jilt in the atmosphere, only the acknowledgment of the magic inside my body balancing the magic outside of it .
The world had changed, and yet…stayed mostly the same.
“What do you want with us?” Ivy asked, bringing me back to the conversation.
“That ring, for starters,” she said. “When you leave here, you’ll hand it over and never return to look for it.”
Ivy raised her eyebrow as if to suggest, That’s what you think.
“It’s a key to the portal between realms,” Ashley said, scowling as she glanced over her shoulder. “My sister and I created it together. She was never meant to give it to you.”
“Where is Siobhan?” Ivy said. “I need to talk to her.”
“Hmm. Gone.”
“Gone?” Lex glanced between me and Miri.
“After she cast the gift on you four, she was banished from Faerie,” Ashley explained, a hint of despondent sadness in her tone. That didn’t sound good. “Fae aren’t supposed to meddle. Not anymore.” She shrugged and frowned. “I love my sister, but she always was a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
“Hey,” Ivy balked. “I wasn’t a damsel in distress.”
Ashley raised an eyebrow and pursed her pixie lips. “She overheard your sob story and after that, she couldn’t leave you alone. She said you were important.”
“How?” I asked.
“No clue.” Ashley turned and continued walking, leading us farther into the woods. “Siobhan has amazing instincts, and she’s never wrong. But the queen had forbidden it. Siobhan knew the consequences. Now, she lives with them.”
That rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn’t figure out why—something about her being banished yet turning up only a few miles away. Still, I ignored it to continue listening to Ashley’s story.
“Now, I have to deal with the fallout from her decisions.” Ashley stopped walking and turned back to us, folding her hands. “My lady queen will want to meet you. After that, she’ll decide what happens.”
I thought back to what Miri told me last night, about the queen killing Smythe’s girl because he didn’t have permission to touch her. I thought of every story I’d ever heard about faerie monarchs. None of them were great. Either she turned into an old crone, hell-bent on punishing the mortals that wronged her, or she tricked them into life everlasting here in Faerie. I didn’t want either of those options, and that was to say nothing of the fairy king.
“Normally, it would be customary for me to take you right to her,” Ashley explained, “but tonight is our Samhain ritual. Our queen is…indisposed.”
Oh…
Ashley smiled and led us over the crest of another hill lined with fairy sentries every few feet. I admired their metal armor and heavy swords hanging from leather scabbards. The one on my left eyed me up and down, but quickly returned his attention to the forest.
I wanted to ask why they had the army on red alert, but the sight in the valley made me pause. Crawling with life and vibrancy, bodies moved around dozens of tiny fires, fairies and their consorts, preparing for whatever tonight’s ritual would bring. Big white tents had been erected, dotting the landscape like a mini-city. In the far distance sat a platform with the biggest tent on top, two enormous chairs… thrones… were off to one side, opposite a huge table of food on the other.
“Samhain is a time of great mourning,” Ashley continued, gesturing to the commotion. “But it is also a time of great hope. For there can be no happiness in life without sorrow in death.”
She led us into the chaos, but instead of the jovial celebration we’d encountered two years ago, this was a much more somber affair. No one shoved condoms and lube in my face, no one forced me to drink magic-laced ambrosia wine. Groups of people huddled together around individual fires, some laughing, some playing music, some singing and slurring, already heavily intoxicated. The smell of campfires and spiced cider hung in the air, sweet and smoky. It seemed oddly comforting, like a coming home, like we weren’t supposed to leave the first time.
“In honor of life itself, our queen selects a lover to pleasure her for one complete cycle.” Ashley gestured to the giant tent on the platform. “They don’t stop until she is fulfilled, so we don’t stop until she is fulfilled.”
“I’ll be plain,” Miri said. “We only want the gift lifted. We didn’t ask for it, and if Siobhan wasn’t supposed to give it to us, perhaps it’s best for everyone if it’s gone.”
“Right. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Ashley nodded before stopping outside of a white tent and holding out her hand for us to go inside. “This is my space, but I have a friend I can stay with. Make yourselves comfortable.”
“Wait,” Lex said. “You’re leaving us?”
“Yes.” Ashley seemed confused. “It’s the Samhain ritual. I must attend to my duties.”
“We have to get back to the real world,” he argued. “We can’t hang around all night.”
Ashley’s gentle smile turned sinister, her stare growing more intense. “You came to me, human. If you want my help, you’ll wait until I can give it.”
Lex glared and clenched his jaw, but didn’t say anything else.
“Now,” she said, her tone much lighter, “there’s wine in the bladder and food on the table. Help yourself to whatever you like. You’re my guests. No one will harm you, not until you’ve seen my lady.” I didn’t like the sound of that, especially knowing what I did about guests in Faerie. “I’ll check on you in a bit.”
Then she left us in the medieval-style tent in the middle of a different realm, all alone in a sea of magical creatures. Candlelit lanterns hung from several posts throughout the large space, and big wooden beams held the tent up. Bloody hell, it was made of leather, actual leather.
The bed on the other end was enormous, certainly big enough for the four of us, and covered in animal furs. When I peeled back a few layers, foamy straw stuck up from the top of the mattress. The candles burned a bright shade of rosy pink, making everything seem more dreamlike, almost like the night sky on Midsummer.
“I don’t like this,” Ivy said.
“Yeah, no shit.” Lex anxiously ran his palms over his face before reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes.
Miri stood at the entrance to the tent, hugging her body, hesitant eyes wide as she took in the crowd.
“How you doing, Princess?” I stood next to her and wrapped an arm over her shoulders, trying to hold her close to let her know she wasn’t alone in her uncertainty.
“It’s not as bad as I thought.” She shivered but straightened her spine anyway. “Either that, or the worst hasn’t happened yet.”
I wanted to be optimistic, but every part of me feared the latter. We were strangers in a strange land, and the rules we thought we knew no longer applied. My stomach growled as I eyed the roasted turkey and ears of corn at the dining table, remembering it had been hours since I’d eaten.
Lex heard it and looked at me, eyeing me up and down and raising an eyebrow. “Don’t touch anything. That’s what got us fucked-up last time.” He handed me the pack of cigarettes.
“Shit.” I didn’t think I’d make it, especially not when the food smelled so amazing and looked even better. I grabbed a cigarette and lit it, letting the nicotine soothe away the hunger ache. Inhaling deeply, I tried to get my shit together but hearing ghosts in the forest earlier had messed with me. After Miri had taken off, Lex went after her, leaving Ivy and me alone by the creek.
I’d heard my grandfather first. Pop had called me, the voice so accurate, it could have come right out of my memories. I’d paused to consider the fact Pop had died ten years ago, but Ivy set off before I could stop her, calling out for Marcus. It made me despise these motherfuckers even more. What kind of monsters used people’s grief to draw them into a realm on a night when they might not return?
I took another deep inhale on the cigarette.
Minutes passed like hours, hours like centuries, and the sounds from the crowd grew louder and more intense—moans mixed with laughs and cries of mourning. People wore ruby-colored robes, and a few had animal skulls over their faces like masks. At Midsummer, we had jumped over a fire and drank endless wine from leather chalices. Tonight, the revelers of Faerie chanted in tongues and sobbed in low tones among each other .
“We need to demand our answers tonight,” Ivy said, clawing the nervous rash on her neck.
“We should get the fuck out of here.” Lex paced back and forth, chain-smoking and pulling his hair. “This was stupid, even for us, X.”
They’d been arguing about what to do for the last few hours, going in circles, arriving nowhere in the conversation.
“If we do that, we don’t find out the truth,” Miri cut in. “We came here for a reason.”
I agreed with her. We were already here. But there was another, more desperate part of me that also agreed with Lex. I wanted to book it out of this hellhole like my ass was on fire. Everything gave me the creeps—the medieval decor and the shifty-eyed looks from everyone else around us. It wasn’t like the last time, and I wondered if that was because my perspective had changed or if it was because the festival had a different meaning.
Perhaps we had been tolerated two years ago. Tonight, I felt like an intruder.
I walked to Miri, who still stood at the entrance to the tent, watching the world go by. She hadn’t moved since we’d arrived.
“What’re you looking at, Juliet?”
She nodded toward the stage. “I can tell which are human and which aren’t.”
I followed her line of sight to a blond child on the stage. She couldn’t have been more than five or six, but the way her hair frizzed out around her head reminded me of Lizzie.
“She’s human.” Miri raised an eyebrow at me, curling her lips into disgust. “A lot of them are.”
If the queen liked your company, she might keep you forever.
I watched the girl on stage hold a plate of grapes while the queen drank and laughed and picked her fill of fruit.
What was her story? How had she gotten here? What events in her life went so wrong that she’d become a servant girl for a fairy queen?
Fire swelled in my gut, and the urge to protect her had me rooting my feet in the grass to keep from launching myself at the stage. But Miri and Ivy were right. We were here to get our answers, and I needed to behave myself until then.