Chapter 36
I pace the room, frosty breaths falling heavily from my lips. I feel so… exposed. Ice floods my veins and I let out a ragged screech.
He can control me. Always. Entirely. He can drag out any secret and command any action. He can crawl inside my mind and make it his.
He doesn’t even need the fruit.
Can other Faeries do the same thing? No, no, otherwise they would have done it during those early weeks.
The earth tugs on my stomach. Tree and root calling to me. Again. I shake them away. Nothing is worth returning to that wretched power.
A nap. That’s what I really need. Before I end up doing something really stupid.
I jerk awake as a small, tentative knock raps at my door. I gaze over at the window. It’s still a few hours until the day.
I don’t answer, but Dae opens the door anyway.
“I just wanted to check you got back safely.” Hands fiddling with the door, Dae glances down at the bed.
“I did.”
“Right, well, I’ll be right outside.”
“What do you mean, outside?”
“I told you I’m not leaving you alone. I respect your need for space but respect that I’m not leaving. I’ll sleep on the floor outside our room until you let me back in.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” I say and Dae raises an eyebrow. “We both know you’ll get someone to bring you a bed.” He laughs, but makes no moves to leave, his deft fingers continuing to fiddle with the door.
A lump gets stuck in my throat—maybe he really will leave. And then… then I’ll be alone again for hours.
“So, the animals can’t speak?” I ask.
Dae’s eyes widen for a brief, flickering moment, before he takes a step inside our room, closing the door behind himself. “Yeah, it’s part of a wider issue, earthquakes, that kind of thing. People say magic is dying, I don’t know if I believe all that.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
He shrugs. “Faerie’s close to the borders of the human realm. If anything really catastrophic happens in our realm, most of us could escape in time, and we could live with the humans again.”
“So you just don’t care if you have to uproot your entire kingdom and move to a completely different world?” I nibble the skin around my nails—what would the state of Earth be if all these Faeries swarmed in?
“Obviously I care and it would be a complete failure of my rule if I’m the king who loses Faerie. But I’m a young ruler. It weakens me to worry about unproven theories when we’re facing genuine threats. Besides, I’m sure Lilith or Micah will step in if it becomes a problem.”
I still don’t understand the relationship between Faerie and Hell. The way Dae says Lilith’s name, it’s as though he would trust her with any project, but the way he talks to her, it’s almost with disdain. “What kind of genuine threats?” Silence. “Fine. Well, what if we look into it, but secretly?”
“How?”
“Don’t you have a library? I mean, you have a zoo. Surely you’ve got a library somewhere.” Maybe a library will have information on how I can break a curse with a demon prince, or free the humans with Dae’s approval, or stop Dae from being able to control my mind at the drop of a hat.
“Yes, I do, but it’s not in the castle. It’s about half a day’s walk away.”
“It’s not like I’m doing anything better here. I’m sure we can fight just as well in a library as we can in your castle.”
Dae smiles, long fingers dancing between dust particles in a song only he can hear.
“You have a really beautiful smile, Elly.” Dae says quietly, gazing up from under long eyelashes.
“Pack it in. Are we going then?”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Fine.” Dae turns towards the door.
“But promise you won’t do that thing.” He doesn’t respond. “Promise, or I’ll make life impossible for you. I’ll fight at every turn.”
“Fine.
I try to conceal a smile. It’s the bare minimum, but it still makes me happy. I wish I could help it. “Really, just like that?”
“Yes,” he says, before leaving the room.
I glance around our room, some forgotten remnant of my human life telling me I should pack. But what is there to pack? These aren’t really my clothes. I slip into my horn-embroidered pyjamas and duck around the door to spy on Dae. The corridor is empty.
Nibbling my bottom lip, I sit back down on the bed and wait. And wait. And wait.
I yelp as Dae comes back in. “There,” he says, “Abnehor’s in charge of the kingdom. We’re free to go.” Dae thrusts a small bag into my hands, keeping the larger one slung over his back.
“You’ve got two hands. And why do I get the smaller one?”
“Do you want the bigger one?”
I shove past him with a smile.
“You get the smaller one,” Dae chases after me on long legs, “because it’s filled with food, and if I carry the smaller one, I’ll finish all the food long before we get there.”
“You placed your trust in the wrong person.”
“Maybe I like you well fed.” His long fingers reach forward and pinch my hip from behind. I slap his hand away. Me and Dae, on an adventure, just the two of us—no Jinn’s, no manipulative air pulling thingy, no conflicted feelings towards a sort-of friend.
Besides, maybe I’ll find something in the library that can help Ellyllon or Mum.
“It’s there.” Dae points towards a large circular tower in the distance, the sky shining with the orange light of morning. I almost sob with relief.
Will the library contain a bath? Will the bath ease the blisters currently growing on my blisters? Is there food? I fucking hope so. Turns out, we’re not actually allowed to eat the bag of snacks Dae insisted we bring.
We stop before a large metal gate as it becomes clear that the library isn’t so much a tower as it is a series of buildings stacked on top of each other. Red and green climbing ivy swallow the buildings, holding them together, giving the appearance of one solid foundation. Tiny windows peek out from each of the clustered houses, rows and rows of books filling the rooms in each window.
Dae pauses, glancing at me, his foot bouncing on the ground. I smile encouragingly, unsure why the King of Faerieland needs encouragement. Lifting a lavender covered hand, he knocks on the gate three times.
A tiny, two-foot-tall man in long purple robes topped with a large velvet hat peeks around the side of the door. “You knocked?” The small man wiggles his pointed nose—a nose far too large for the rest of his face. Grey hair curls under his hat, almost indistinguishable from the grey hair growing from his moustache, his nose, his ears, and his chin.
“Yes, we’re knocking for the knockers,” Dae replies, his back straight and a formal tone to his voice.
“Well, you’ll find no knockers here.” The small man ducks his head back behind the door, slamming it shut.
Dae fidgets and knocks again. No answer. I spot movement and glance up at the book-filled windows. Small eyes peer out at us keenly, tiny forms ducking and swinging away from the windows as they catch my gaze, tripping over each other to get away from my line of sight. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Can’t you just order them to let us in?”
“You really don’t have a diplomatic bone in your body.” Dae shakes his head, barking out a quick laugh. “Give me a Cornish pasty.”
“Where am I supposed to get a Cornish pasty in the middle of Faerieland?”
“The bag I gave you, the bag filled with food, I need the Cornish pasties out of it.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” I grouch, my fingers riffling around inside the small bag, finding three Cornish pasties, soggy and cold from the long trip.
“Common sense.” He grabs the pasty, ripping off the worst part—the crust.
“Hey, how’s he supposed to hold the pasty if you’ve ripped off the crust?”
“They don’t eat the pasty.” He throws the rest into a bramble and I almost cry at the cruelty. Right on cue, my stomach rumbles. “They eat the crust. Don’t they teach you anything in Devon? What would you do if you got caught down a collapsing mine, feed the knockers raspberries?”
“We don’t go down mines anymore.”
“Ah, that explains it,” he says, as though it really does. “I’ve brought your favourite,” he calls out in that sing-song voice and I almost panic, but this time, the air doesn’t vibrate.
The small man pokes his head out of the gate again, his eyes shining brightly. “What was the pasty made of?” He licks his thin lips.
“Your favourite, cheese and onion,” Dae replies, sticking the crust closer to the small man’s face. I frown, the knockers clearly have terrible taste.
He lets out a moan. “One moment.” The door slams shut as frantic whispers begin floating through the cracks. My sticky, sweat-drenched skin screams out, desperate for a bath—surely a library shouldn’t have so many rules for entry? A heated debate rages on within the tower until, finally, the small man pokes his head out again.
“How many have you got?”
“Three, one cheese and onion, for you,” Dae winks, “two normal, meat on one end and jam on the other.”
My eyes dart towards Dae, mouth salivating. “These lot get to eat meat and I don’t?” I seethe.
Dae smirks. “I don’t have to kiss the knockers.”
And just like that, all my irritation is replaced by a tightening between my legs. “You still owe me friend chicken,” I snap as a way to cover up my blush.
The small man nods, closing the door again, whispers resuming in full force.
“What does it matter what flavour the pasty was if they only want the crusts?”
“The crust still has the taste of the pasty in it,” Dae whispers back.
“If they want the flavour so much, why don’t they just eat the whole pasty?”
Dae’s open mouth closes before I can get an answer as the small man swings open the gate warmly, a wide smile across his wide face. “The knockers would like to welcome you, your companion and your three pasty crusts into the library.” He beams up at us, thrusting his hand out. “We’ll take those crusts now.” The small man snatches all three crusts from Dae’s hands and hides them inside his long robe.
The gates open up to a large, tiled circle, surrounded by stacks of houses on top of each other. Two-foot-tall men and women scuttle about on tiles made of cerulean and alabaster.
“You know where your room is?” the small man asks, walking into one of the houses without another glance.
Dae nods.
“Wait, you’ve been here before?” I run after him, my blistered feet raging against all the silliness.
“Of course, how else would I know the way?” Dae plucks a key out of his bag and uses it to open a door wedged between two houses.
“And you have a key?” I groan, following him into the small door. We trudge up a series of very narrow stone stairs. “If you’ve been here before why did we just have to go through all that to get in, shouldn’t they have just let you in?”
“Just because you’ve been somewhere before doesn’t mean you’re allowed in the next time. It’s like you’re never been anywhere.”
“I’ve been lots of places,” I lie.
“Haven’t you had to knock each time you’ve arrived?”
It’s a good point. I stop talking, both to prevent any more confusion and to conserve my breath for what is turning out to be a tremendous climb.
Five more stacked houses and a lot more climbing later, we stop at a slightly larger pink door. Not quite human sized, but taller than the rest. We duck inside, the room expanding wider than I would think possible given the teeny tiny staircase. A king-sized bed fills the centre of the room.
I grin, sprinting to the bed as fast as I can and leaping on, before stretching my limbs out like a starfish.
“Hey, get your sweaty outdoor walking clothes off that nice clean bed,” Dae scolds. “And don’t run or jump in here. You saw how the tower’s made, you’ll tip us all over.”
“What?” my eyes widen, pulse quickening in horror.
“I’m joking… Well, I’m joking about the tower tipping over. I’m not joking about your outdoor clothes. Just because you wore pyjamas on a long trek, doesn’t mean you get to sleep with them on. Here.” He pulls out a long white nightgown covered in floral prints. “The bathroom’s through there.”
I jump off the bed, grab the nightgown, and sprint towards the bathroom. It is made entirely of tiny tiles, each more vibrant and colourful than the last. Turning the taps on, I play with the water as it runs out of the tap, and then I take a long, long bath, finally stepping out with a heavy yawn on my lips.
Curling up under the sheets next to a sleeping Dae, I edge much closer than necessary and fall asleep, feeling completely and utterly at peace.