23. Carter
23
Carter
S ometime later, my sore throat and my grumbling stomach woke me. We’d had a long night. Day? Year? I had no concept of time anymore. Centuries could have passed while we took each other, and in the aftermath, I knew only two things: unquenchable thirst and unmatched hunger.
My body ached from the exertion, but I wouldn’t change it. We came together, over and over and over again. In that connection, our bond rebuilt itself. I didn’t know what would happen when we returned to reality, but I’d make damn sure I kept my promise this time. There would be no running away to LA and never seeing them again. There would be no late nights, trying to contact them. This would be different.
I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, but a figure at the tent door startled me, and I froze.
Ashley— standing with her hands folded over her stomach and a pleased, smug look on her face. I shoved at the body next to me. Lex groaned and cursed, sitting up with his hair all mussed and that adorable pout on his lips.
“Fucking what?” He squinted up at me with that characteristic sneer.
“Get up, DC.” I shoved him again.
“Jesus.” He rubbed at his eyes and followed my gaze. When he saw Ashley, he nudged Miri and Ivy on the other side of him.
“Good morning,” Ashley said. “I trust your accommodations were…to your satisfaction?”
I cleared my throat and reached for my boxers, tossed on the grass in my frenzy to get them off last night. I yanked them up and stood. “You said you’d come back for us.”
“And here I am.” Ashley swept her gaze over my spouses, now groaning to themselves and searching for their clothing. “Get dressed. Eat. Then come with me. My lady wishes to have a word.”
“She’s ready to answer our questions?” Ivy asked, yanking her shirt over her shoulders.
Ashley raised an eyebrow, widening her creepy smile. “The ritual has ended. She’s exhausted, but you are her guests. Please. Do not keep her waiting.”
Ashley turned to leave, and I met Ivy’s hesitant gaze. A conversation with the queen sounded ominous, and the look in Ashley’s eyes only raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
This was it. If the queen didn’t like us? Poof. We’d be dead in seconds.
“It’ll be fine,” Miri said, slipping her sweater over her head. “Like Ivy said, if they wanted us dead, they would have done it when we got here.”
Lex lit a cigarette and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m more afraid of her never letting us go.”
Valid.
“Some of the people here aren’t fae. I can feel it.” Miri took a few steps closer to us, lowering her voice as she spoke. “Smythe told us the fairies treated humans like thralls, that there’s a long history between humans and fairies we don’t know about.”
I finished getting ready, now more anxious about this meeting than hungry, so I grabbed a few pieces of toast to hold me over before we met Ashley outside the tent. She led us through the bodies piled on each other in the meadow, most sleeping, some whispering in hushed tones while the sun rose over the horizon. A misty fog floated in the distance, making the world seem like it had been on fire last night and now sizzled with the embers in the gaining light.
“My lady,” Ashley murmured when we reached the platform and climbed the stairs to the tent’s opening. Bodies rustled inside before the child appeared, a young blond girl with big brown eyes and rosy pink cheeks. Far away, she had reminded me of Lizzie, but up close, God, it yanked at my heartstrings.
“Hey there,” I said, leaning closer to her. “What’s your name?”
Intelligence flickered behind her eyes, but she said nothing, just darted her attention between us.
A tall female fairy with ivy vines on both arms appeared next, her long, ashen hair hanging in thick waves down the front of her body. She wore a white robe, which she hugged tight as she looked at us. But it was her eyes that held my attention. Piercing. Incinerating. Like she could murder us with them between blinks. I wasn’t entirely sure that she couldn’t.
“Ashley,” the queen said, staring down at us. “You have brought my guests.”
“Yes, my lady,” Ashley said with a bow. “May I present Ivette, Alexei, Miriam, and Carter.”
“Ahhh.” The queen walked to her throne and slowly sat, her movements fluid and graceful, like she’d had thousands of years to practice. They seemed so alien and unnatural.
I wanted to like her. I wanted to trust her. Any hesitation I’d had melted away in response to the soothing energy emanating from her aura. All the fairies had an appeal to them, but she made me want to buckle at the knees so I could pay her homage.
“Yes,” she said. “And which one is the recipient of our blessing?”
Ashley nudged Ivy forward.
“Ivette,” Ivy said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Are you?” the queen said with a wry smile. “ How pleased?”
Ivy opened and shut her mouth, seemingly unsure of how to reply. “It’s just a saying.”
“Hmm.” The queen glanced at Lex next. “And this one? Quite beautiful. I adore your markings.”
“Thank you.” He held his arms out so the queen could look over his tattoos.
Once satisfied, she focused on me and smiled, causing a shiver to race down my spine. I didn’t know the intentions behind that grin, and I didn’t want to guess. It would probably terrify me either way.
“But here is the real gem,” the queen murmured, leaning closer to the child. “What would you do with such a gift?” The child shrugged and shook her head, giggling softly as the queen whispered something I couldn’t hear. Then she sighed and rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed already. “Right. Why have you come?”
“Siobhan gave me—gave us—a gift,” Ivy said. “One we didn’t ask for.”
“Well,” the queen cut in, “you must have asked for it in some way. Fairies are not in the habit of bestowing magic on humans for no reason.”
“I think Siobhan favored me,” Ivy said. “In any case, the gift has taken its toll.”
“How so?” The queen tilted her chin up, hands fisted around the arms of her throne. She seemed defensive as if any gift from a fairy couldn’t possibly be that bad.
Tread lightly, I wanted to scream.
“We have to be together. Or else?—”
“What is wrong with being together?” She raised an eyebrow, her tone bordering on annoyance. “Do you not love each other? Ashley tells me you married in our sacred ruins.”
“Yes, but—” Ivy fisted her hands into tight balls.
“You made the sacred vow. It is etched in your hands.”
A blush crept up Ivy’s neck, into her cheeks, radiating that vibrant X over her pulse. “It is, but?—”
“Then I do not see the problem.” The queen straightened her shoulders. “You wanted to be together, so now you are together. The consequences of your separation are yours to handle.”
“If you could only lift the gift…” Miri started, taking a step forward.
“Just like the English.” The queen scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You have been trying to tell my kind what to do for millennia. What makes you think I will listen to you now?”
“We don’t want any trouble,” I added. “We want our lives to go back to normal.”
“Normal?” The queen shook her head and leaned forward, perhaps trying to get on our level. “What is normal? I have lived long enough to know it is nothing. Even if it was, who would want such a boring existence? Better to be happy with what you have than mourn the loss of something that was never yours in the first place.”
“Please,” Ivy said, putting her hands together while she begged.
The queen waved her fingers at Ashley, flippantly gesturing to take us away.
“They may stay until they are replenished, but then see them home,” the queen said. “Be sure you have the ring before they leave.”
“Yes, my lady,” Ashley said, wrapping an arm around Miri’s shoulders to attempt to lead us away.
“Wait,” Lex cut in, widening his eyes as panic took control. “ Tell us the truth.”
A wave of power poured out of him as he said it. Ashley gasped and Ivy froze, looking to the queen to see her reaction.
Why? What is he thinking?
For all the years I’d known Lex, he hadn’t gotten comfortable with authority. We made a plan, but if it didn’t work in his favor, he did what he wanted. Any idiot would know better than to try to use magic on the queen of fairies.
For a moment, she didn’t do anything, just sat there and stared at us. Then she let out a high-pitched, tinny laugh like she thought he was absurd for even attempting it.
“Did you think your fairy gift would work on me, boy?” She shook her head and narrowed her eyes into evil slits, clearly apathetic about us now. “I am older than anything you have ever seen. I am the Great Source. All of it. Everything. It lives within me.” Her features grew serious and deadly, gaze like a laser about to turn him to dust. “If you attempt to enchant me again, I will rip that pretty head off your shoulders and mount it on my wall so I can kiss those lips every day before I break my fast.”
Lex paled as he took a step back.
“Do you understand?”
“Come.” Ashley put herself between us and the queen, nudging me away from the platform.
“Get them fed and out of my realm,” the queen said, pushing to her feet.
“Yes, my lady.” Ashley ushered us back to her tent, wringing her hands and glancing over her shoulder as we walked through the crowd of appalled Faerie residents.
Well, that was a shit show.
* * *
“I told you it was a bad time for a visit,” Ashley said once we’d returned to her tent. “She’s tired from the ritual. If she were better rested, she might have helped you. As it is…”
“Can you just—can you give us some answers? Please?” Ivy sounded desperate. “What is this gift? Why did Siobhan give it to us?”
“It’s not really a gift,” Ashley explained. “It’s an old trick fairies used to play on humans. It’s sort of like a love spell. If you don’t stay together, you’ll hurt until you are. You won’t be able to get excited about anyone else.”
Rage raced through my veins, and I ground my teeth as my pulse pounded in my head. A trick? How cruel. These assholes played with human lives like they were nothing, like rotten children with ants and a microscope.
“But,” Ashley continued, looking back and forth between us, “whatever is going on with you is different.”
“What do you mean?” Ivy narrowed her piercing stare at Ashley.
“I thought Siobhan enchanted you and made you perform the sacred vow on hallowed ground. But this?” She focused on Lex with suspicion dancing behind her expression. “What were you trying to do to my lady? Did you think you could make her reveal more than she did?”
Lex pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes on Ashley while he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. He lit one and inhaled deeply, but he didn’t answer her question.
“Yes,” Ivy responded, taking a step toward Ashley. “I can see inside people’s minds. Miri can make plants grow by touching them. Carter is lucky, incredibly lucky.”
Ashley took a deep breath and straightened, tilting her chin higher. “Siobhan should not have done that. I’ve only seen this once before.”
“Only once?” I raised my eyebrows. “The myths are filled with fairy curses and gifts. You told us about them yourself the first time we met.”
“Yes, those are tales. Legends. My lady commanded that her followers make the vow hundreds of years ago. No more interfering. No gifts. No enchantments. In one night, Siobhan both enchanted you and endowed you with magic. She allowed it to spread to all four of you.” Ashley shook her head, rubbing her hands over her face. “Siobhan claims to have the knowing, an instinct about what would happen. She’s what’s called a banshee.” She glanced at each one of us before returning to the folded hands in front of her. “She predicted the king would leave.”
“Is that why she did this to us?” Ivy asked. “Did she have a knowing about…about me?”
Ashley sighed. “I don’t know, truly. But the only one who can undo this is Siobhan.”
“What?” Ivy said. “Why?”
“That’s the rules. The caster is the only one who can break it.”
“Well, where is she?” Lex asked, flicking ash onto the grass floor. “Let’s track the bitch down and make her undo it.”
Ashley gave him a nasty look at the curse. “After she was cast out, I lost touch with her. Last I heard, she had joined forces with the king.” She sighed and went to the table, slowly lowering herself into a chair so she could take a drink from the chalice. “They used to be together, the queen and the king, for centuries. Eons. As long as I can remember. But very recently, they had a falling out over the child.”
“Why?” I asked. “Who’s the child?”
“Poppy. She’s named after her mother, one of my lady’s favorite human consorts. She labored for days trying to bring her into the world, and finally, just as the child tore its way out of her body, she departed this life.” Ashley wiped at tears falling down her cheek, her breaking voice indicating how much the elder Poppy must have meant to her. “The queen took the infant as her own; it was one of the last things my lady promised her friend. How could she not?” Ashley shook her head and took a drink of mead. “She’s raised Poppy ever since.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Poppy seems more like a servant girl.”
“The child serves at the pleasure of our queen,” Ashley said. “As do we all.”
I pursed my lips but didn’t argue. Poppy didn’t know there was another world out there, one with her own kind, one where she could go to school and live however she wanted. If she did, would she still choose this? Would she still hold grapes and pour wine for a fairy queen that kept her kind locked away in this fantasy realm?
“The king doesn’t believe in the mingling of humans and fairies,” Ashley continued. “If it were up to him, he would have cast all the humans out of Faerie after the last Great War. Humans are destructive and violent. If they found out about this place, they would consume it.”
She wasn’t wrong. Look at what humans were doing to the planet in their own realm.
“As my queen’s lady lay dying, birthing the younger Poppy into the world, my queen tried to revive her. She put her hands on the woman’s belly, but whatever happened did not save the dying mother.” Ashley looked between us. “Instead, whatever she did passed through the mother into Poppy. And now—” Ashley shook her head, perhaps realizing she’d said too much. “Poppy is special.”
“How?”
“Your gifts, my gifts, they’re elemental. Organic. Poppy’s are from space and time.” I wanted to ask what Ashley meant by that, but she continued before I could. “Our seer had a vision about Poppy—that she would use this gift to bring peace to the realms and reunite the humans and fairies. Once the king found out about that, about what she could do, he wanted to kill her. In his mind, there doesn’t need to be a reunion. He can be terribly superstitious.”
“But the queen doesn’t believe it?” Ivy asked.
Ashley rolled her eyes. “My queen does not believe all prophecies should be taken literally. The seer’s exact words were ‘reunite the humans and fairies.’ Which humans? Which fairies? All of them? Or only a few?” She raised an eyebrow as she looked between us. “Prophecies are notoriously vague. Besides, Poppy’s a little girl. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She barely talks. She’s the sweetest thing.”
My heart melted for Poppy, but at least the queen saw reason. This king sounded like an asshole.
“As you can imagine,” Ashley continued, “this caused a rift in their marriage. They’ve been living separately ever since…which is a problem.” She downed her drink and poured herself another one. “One cannot survive without the other. They are equally powerful. Where she is light, he is dark. Hence my lady’s irritability. This cannot go on much longer, or we will all suffer for it.”
“Where’s the king?” Ivy asked. “If he hates humans so much, what’s stopping him from going to the other side of the woods and killing us all?”
Ashley took a deep breath as if gearing up for a twisted tale. “A long time ago, he tried. He almost succeeded. It took a powerful fae to banish him back to Faerie, and now he can’t get out. Neither of them can, not without a key.” Her gaze landed on Ivy, suggesting my wife held the very thing that could allow the king to wreak whatever havoc he wanted.
“The ring,” Ivy murmured.
“Exactly,” Ashley said with a solemn nod. “This is why I’ve been hunting you for it. This is why I wanted you to give it back to me. Siobhan knows you have it, and if the king finds out Siobhan knows where it is, he could use it to get out.”
“And if he gets out?” I asked, a slice of panic shooting through my sternum.
“Well”—Ashley whistled—“I can’t imagine anyone in the human realm would be able to stop him.”
“I don’t understand. I lost the ring in the woods.” Ivy squinted and shook her head. “It was smushed under moss or whatever. Why would Siobhan give it back to me?”
Now it was Ashley’s turn to be confused. She furrowed her brows and narrowed her focus on Ivy. “What do you mean?”
“She came to me,” Ivy said. “Six months after Midsummer. She told me about the gift and, when I woke up, the ring was in my lap. If she’s working for the king, why wouldn’t she give the ring to him? Why would she give it back to me?”
Ashley didn’t have a good answer. I couldn’t think of one either.
“That’s why we came to find her,” Ivy said. “She owes me an explanation.”
“Well, she’s gone,” Ashley said. This time, her voice sounded cracked and jaded. They were sisters, after all. Siobhan’s loss must have hurt. I hadn’t seen my sisters in months, and the absence ached more than I’d ever admit.
“No,” Ivy said. “No, she was seen not far from here a few days ago.”
“What?” That got Ashley’s attention, and she snapped her attention Ivy. “How do you know that?”
“That’s why we came now,” Lex explained. “She was at a gas station a few kilometers outside Killwater.”
Ashley launched to her feet, eyes wide and fists clenched. “You’re certain of this?”
“I wouldn’t have traveled all this way if I didn’t think I’d get my answers,” Ivy said.
A moment of silence passed between us where the weight of this realization hung like smog. Then Ashley rushed out of the tent. We followed her.
“My lady,” Ashley called, ducking and weaving through the crowd. “My lady.”
“Yes, Ashley. What is it?” the queen said, coming out of her tent again, twisting her features into annoyance when she saw we were still here.
“Siobhan is here.” Ashley held her skirts up so she could run faster. We chased her, my heart pounding at the increasing panic in her tone. “Siobhan…she was…”
She didn’t get another word in before everything around us faded to a dark glow like an impenetrable cloud had moved over the sun. When I looked up, big puffy clouds of obsidian twisted through the sky, and a scream ripped through the atmosphere from somewhere behind us. Power settled in my gut, overwhelming and sickening, turning my knees to jelly. My hair stood on end like I’d stuck my finger in an electrical socket, except the entire world was a conductor and the very air could kill me.
“Hide!” a fairy shouted as they rushed by.
“He’s back,” came another cry. “Hide! Hide!”
Another scream. Another shout.
“Quick! Under the stage,” the queen shouted, thrusting Poppy into my arms. “Go!”