Chapter 33
When Noctua played a tune of mourning, the folk wept. The shadows called for more music and grief to feed them.
—OLD ONES, ANCIENTS, AND THE FOLK
Thea tried to save them.
Night after night, new folk came to Iluna. In the ballroom of Damon’s castle—now the king’s—they danced and cavorted in front of the throne. On the first night, they were merry. The second night, their cheeks were too red, their eyes glassy. By the third night, they didn’t know their own names.
“Who is bringing them here?” Thea asked one morning after the folk had left by root. She had given up trying to persuade Erebus toward mercy. Her fury and disgust only amused him. And her vow gave her no recourse to defy him.
“They are drawn to the power you have brought me,” Erebus said. “You, my First of Shadows.”
Thea fought the urge to gag at his implication that it was her fault. She didn’t believe him, anyway. She knew someone had to be luring people here.
Every night, she approached the creatures who had come to join the dance, one by one. “Leave,” she told them bluntly. “Save yourselves! If you don’t leave now, you never will.” Erebus didn’t stop her, only laughed at her folly. Time after time, they looked at her, smiled, and kept dancing.
One night, there was a Sylvan girl, perhaps from one of the villages, who looked like Rozie, though a few years older—ginger hair, freckles, curious eyes. It made Thea sick, the thought of her being trapped here.
“Why did you come?” Thea asked, gripping the girl’s slim shoulders harder than she intended.
The Sylvan drew a breath and turned startled eyes up to Thea’s. “He asked.”
Thea forced herself to loosen her grip, though she wanted to shake answers out of the girl. “Who asked?” Had Prospect been rounding up folk to bring here?
She blinked, as if struggling to remember. “The prince.”
Thea paused, her pulse jumping. “The king, you mean?”
The girl shook her head, her eyes wide. “The young prince in the woods. He invites us here to dance. My mother warned me not to go, but the prince seemed so agreeable. So handsome.”
Thea’s head reared back as if she’d been struck. No! Damon could not still be using his powers to lure new spirits to his father’s realm. Not when he had won his mother’s freedom, and his own as well. It was sick. Twisted. Unforgivable. Could she have been that wrong about him?
“Go!” Thea shook her. She was ready to slap the girl if that might wake her up. “If you don’t leave now, you’ll be trapped here forever. Save yourself!”
The girl frowned in confusion. “Maybe. I…”
A deep voice crooned from behind Thea, making her tense in revulsion.
“Calm, my dear,” said King Erebus, putting on his best charm. “Is it not a fine night? Dance with me.” And he put out a hand to the girl, inviting her.
“No!” Thea turned on him, despising him more than ever.
“I won’t let you.” She reached for him, her nails talons that would rake the skin from his face.
But the shadows held her wrists and forearms in a fierce, painful grip, lacerating her arms until blood poured down.
She managed to break free, but more shadows snaked out and held her fast.
“Get off me,” she seethed, spitting at the shadows in her fury. They twitched, as if her outrage excited them.
Through all this, the girl’s eyes stayed on the king as if she could not pull them away. “But I love to dance!” And she took his hand.
In nine days, the Sylvan girl was a delicate silver tree.
Thea’s free hours were spent devising ways to kill her sworn liege. None of them were viable, but it was the only thing that gave her satisfaction.
When she slept, she dreamed of a pair of lying midnight eyes.
As days wore into weeks, the sky of Thea’s mind grew darker. No one who came to the dance seemed able to resist the king’s spell. She stood beside the throne as the same scenes passed before her. Dances. Endless dances. And more silver trees, trees, trees.
Thea could almost feel her inner fire dimming, her confidence in herself ebbing away like a tide that never rolls in again. She could hardly remember how it felt to stand in the sun.
Had she ever? Maybe everything was an illusion. Perhaps, in the end, nothing was real.
Over time, her enemy became hope. It was by far more painful than despair.
As she left her cottage one night to make her way to the dance, something rustled in the silver trees.
“You look terrible.” It was a voice she knew.
A pixie voice.
Thea gasped and turned but saw no one. “Winter?” she whispered, searching the silver trees.
A tiny head popped out from behind a trunk, a small hand waving at her. “I hardly recognized you, Giantess.”
Thea half worried she was imagining him. “How are you here?”
“That’s a long story filled with my bravery.
No time for that now.” He flew toward her, and she saw that he was dressed all in silver, his hair and clothing blending in with the trees.
“Scarhamm has been in an uproar since your mother returned. Everyone is determined to find a way to help you. The Sylvan queen insists you will rise up against him.”
“I’d love nothing more than to murder him,” Thea assured Winter. “But his shadows are too strong.”
Winter gave her a critical look. “Your mother tried to tell you: Take them, Giantess. Take them for your own.”
“I’ve tried,” she said, suddenly furious. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’ve tried nothing else since the moment I made that cursèd vow of allegiance.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve tried to bully them to your side with your signature bluntness. But have you tried wooing them?” He gave her a coquettish look.
She crossed her arms. “With what? Blood and pain and suffering? I can’t outdo Erebus in that way.”
Winter’s lips twisted. “Surely they like something besides cruelty.”
She had already tried that with Damon and hadn’t even won his shadows to her side. But she recited the options in a deadpan voice. “Desire. Revelry if it’s out of control. Wildness. Chaos.”
His eyes widened, a smile curving his lips. “Then be desire. Be wild. Be chaos.”
For so many years, she’d had to keep a secret so great that she could not allow herself to speak unguardedly, even for a moment.
She’d spent years learning how to be efficient, controlled, precise.
And she’d already tried to win the shadows through every method imaginable.
It hadn’t worked. “I’ve tried using desire. As for the rest, I don’t know how.”
“Well, you have to find a way,” he said, one hand coming to his hip, though he was still afloat, wings flapping. “Where is the vaunted tactician when we need her?”
Thea felt as if Winter had hit her with a pine needle arrow in the center of her chest. He was right. She had all but given up. That wasn’t like her. And she realized she hadn’t even asked about her sisters.
“My sisters are well?” she asked anxiously.
“As well as can be. They said to tell you they’ll never rest until you’re free. I’m told your youngest sister, Rozenna, has snuck out to try to find you no less than four times.”
Thea had to blink against a sudden moisture in her eyes.
“Did…” She swallowed, remembering the last time she’d left Scarhamm. “Did my father have a message for me?”
Winter’s face froze. “He is concerned, too, of course.”
Something about the look on his face screamed lie. “What are you not telling me, Winter?”
The pixie looked away for a quick second, then back at her, his face serious.
“I haven’t seen your father myself, but there are reports he is ill.
And more and more silver trees are appearing in the forest. Your mother has explained how the shadow king is trying to take over Thirstwood.
He is weakening the forest, and that is weakening King Silvanus.
Your father has not risen from his bed in days. ”
A new fear rose up in her heart. “I can’t believe I’m trapped here when they need me most. I hate this.” But despite that, Thea felt a surge of pride that she’d freed her mother, who was now home, safe. She put her finger out in something of a handshake. “Thank you, Winter. You’ve given me hope.”
“Everyone wants to help you,” Winter said. “Not only the Sylvans but all your forest allies. Most importantly, the pixies.”
A lump of emotion lodged in Thea’s throat.
They were all fighting for her. Of course they were.
Why had she ever thought otherwise? She was angry with herself for considering giving in to despair.
Her sisters would never stop searching for her, even if she never saw them again.
And if her father had lost faith in her, well, she had faith in herself.
“Someone is coming.” The pixie backed away, floating into the branches of a tree where he blended in. “Find a way, Giantess.”
A moment later, footsteps sounded nearby.
Thea turned and straightened, her stomach dropping when she saw that it was Erebus.
He was as impeccably dressed as ever, his white cravat only a few shades lighter than his pale face.
The perfection of his features struck her as that of a poisoned moth, the beauty of its colors a warning not to touch.
“My First of Shadows,” he said, and his magic swirled around her, searching for cracks in her mental armor.
“Am I First of Shadows?” Thea challenged. “Because if so, why do I not have any of my own?”
His lips tightened at her demand, his eyes sharpening on hers. Perhaps he sensed the change in her. “You are needed at the revel. It isn’t the same there without you.” The cloying, false gentleness set her off as much as his dismissal.
“No.” She crossed her arms. “You only want to torment me because you know I despise it. I’m not going to attend that sick dance ever again.”
Storm clouds moved through his eyes. “You swore not to defy me.”
She stood firm, bracing her feet on the ground, reminding herself she was strong. “You yourself said Noctua can’t enforce vows in this realm.”
“You are going the revel,” he snarled, grabbing her upper arm in a biting grip and shoving her against a tree.
After a moment of shock, her years of battle experience rushed forward.
She had his throat in her hand before his shadows could react.
A heartbeat later, they swooped in, prying her fingers off one by one, but she held on as long as she could.
She met Erebus’s stare even as he choked and gasped.
Finally, when he was free, he stared at her with undisguised hatred. “You’ll pay for that.”
“What’s worse than what I’m already enduring?” she asked. “I watch night after night as you turn those poor souls into trees, and I can’t do anything to stop it. You don’t think that’s bad enough?”
“Clearly not. You need to learn respect.” He waved a hand, and suddenly Prospect was there, stepping from the shadows. “Take her to the cave,” Erebus said, his hand massaging his throat.
Prospect moved forward immediately, his hand reaching out toward her.
“Don’t touch me,” Thea warned, weighing whether Prospect’s shadows would be strong enough to hold her.
Her blood was up, the need to fight pounding through her veins.
But she remembered that Winter was nearby, and if she was in real danger, he might be rash enough to come to her aid.
She could not bear the thought of him dying for her.
Prospect merely put his hands up, palms out. “I am certain there is no need. I’ll show you the way.”
“I hope,” said the king, “by the time you return, you will be in a more reasonable frame of mind.”