Chapter 24
Idisarm one of them before they reach Ruskin. They may be High Fae, but I trained with Halima and a High King. In comparison to them, it’s not too difficult to yank the blade from the grip of a redheaded fae with a jaw like a battering ram. He goes comically slack-faced for a moment, trying to understand how Ruskin managed this without lifting a finger, then his face contorts in rage and he pulls a knife from a brace at his thigh.
Kasgill goes straight for Ruskin, their swords colliding with a violent clashing sound.
“Get the girl!” he grunts at the redhead. His lackey obediently charges towards me, knife raised, but then his horse squeals and I see a thin root tugging at its foreleg. It’s nothing like the huge trunks Ruskin had springing out of the ground in our training practices, but I remember we’re not in Seelie anymore, and his magic has to be simpler here, not to mention discreet—his power is fairly recognizable, after all.
It’s enough, however. The horse rears up, throwing the redhead. Antlers is close behind him, her blond hair whipping behind her as her horse leaps over her fallen friend. She levels her sword at me and I put the force of my magic into mine to parry her powerful blow. My horse backs up a few steps, neighing unhappily, and I release one hand to grab nervously at the reins. We never practiced fighting on horseback, and I feel too unsteady.
That’s when I see the silver rings glinting in her braids.
Pretty, I think, then wrap my magic around them and pull.
Her head snaps back and she screams, scrabbling at her braids with her hand, trying to understand what force is wrenching at them, ripping them out by the roots. It means she’s not exactly concentrating on her sword, and I release my hold on the rings just as I seize the bronze of the blade, sending it spinning upwards.
It arcs through the air and I aim the tip downwards, slicing towards the redheaded fae still trying to right himself after falling from his horse. Just as he eases himself up onto his elbows, the sword pierces through his shoulder and pins him to the ground. He releases an agonized groan.
I glance over to see the fourth fae prone beside where Ruskin is still sparring with Kasgill. He’s taken care of one, and I can see he has the long-haired Kasgill on the back foot, leaving a cut across his cheek and blood dripping from his side.
“Kas!” The blonde female urges her horse towards him, tugging on his arm as if to draw him away from the fight. Ruskin pulls his sword up, allowing his opponent to back away, but Kasgill looks furious.
“Kas, we cannot beat them,” the blonde says, yanking on his arm so hard I think she might pull it from its socket.
“Death before dishonor,” Kasgill snarls.
“Unless you can show me the honor in all four of us dying because you picked a fight with someone we don’t even know, then shutup,” she bites back. Kasgill looks startled for a second, but then he seems to finally take in the state of his friends. With visible reluctance, he allows her to lead his horse back up the track.
Ruskin gallops towards me, taking the reins from my hands.
“We should leave.”
I can see we’ve reached a kind of stalemate, with two Unseelie lying prone between us and their friends, but I don’t understand why Ruskin isn’t chasing them off. The blonde herself just acknowledged we were winning, but Ruskin’s dragging my horse in the opposite direction.
I glance over my shoulder. Kasgill still looks seconds away from charging at us for a second time, but there’s a spark of relief on the blonde’s face as we ride away.
I turn to Ruskin.
“What was all that about?”
“The Unseelie find it almost impossible to back down from a fight,” Ruskin says. “It’s not in their culture. By leaving first we are doing everyone a favor. We don’t have the added complication of leaving murdered Unseelie in our wake, and they don’t have to finish a fight they’ve realized they’d lose.”
“So what now?” I ask. “They just go on their merry way?”
“It depends how much of a threat they believe us to be and how often they frequent the court. Since I’ve said I’m of royal blood, they might not think anyone needs to be warned of our presence.”
“And if they do decide to warn the king?”
“Then we need to reach the court before news of us does.”
We ride on at a faster pace. After several hours I’m dreaming of the time when I’m no longer trapped in this saddle. The mountains loom up around us, forming a tight wall of pocked stone. Eventually I can pick out more than just crags and seams in the rock. There are architectural features: windows, cloisters, and balconies.
The wind whips between the peaks as we ascend towards a vast rock face on a winding track.
“That’s the Unseelie Court?” I ask.
“One and the same,” Ruskin says. Like its Seelie counterpart, it seems the structure houses a complex of High Fae residences. But rather than being linked by bowers and courtyards, this place is carved deep into the mountainside. The sun shines less strongly here, obscured behind a bank of gray clouds. When I glance at Ruskin, I see he’s donning a crimson cloak I don’t recognize.
“Where did you get that?”
“One of our Unseelie friends,” Ruskin says, and I remember that the fae he’d felled was indeed wearing a red cloak when we encountered them. “It should be enough to mask my scent against anyone else with too keen a nose,” he murmurs.
We slow as we pass under a magnificent archway carved with the phases of the moon, which opens onto a paved thoroughfare where scores of Unseelie mill about, passing with carts or carrying goods. No one looks our way, and I assumed Ruskin’s cloak is working.
We trot on, down a street that runs along the side of the mountain. When I glance over the low wall marking out the edge, I can only see sheer rock face below. It would be so easy to fall, I think, shuddering at the thought of the impact.
“Now, if I remember right, Magister Cragfoot lives somewhere around the Quartz Quarter,” Ruskin says, glancing up at the corners of the buildings as we pass, looking for something.
“You don’t think he would’ve moved in all this time?”
“Ha! Never. Old Cragfoot is a creature of habit, and he never stopped going on about the place…There it is.”
He points to a street shadowed by rocks punctuated with cloudy white crystals, making it look like the rock has developed haphazard rows of teeth.
But before we can turn down it, a tall, High Fae woman steps from the shadows. She has yellow eyes that flash like a viper’s and waist-length, black hair, which parts at the top to show a pair of small black horns that aren’t dissimilar to Ruskin’s. She twitches her wrist, and for a moment, I think she’s reaching for the knife strapped to her thigh. Then a swarm of Unseelie surround us and I understand it was a signal.
At least up on our horses we’ve got a clear view of everyone, and I scan the group. It’s not just their sharp teeth and claws that make them seem ferocious. A male to my right has a scar running deep across the center of his face, taking out a chunk of his nose and one of his eyes—it looks like he was almost cleaved in two. Another is missing a horn, the curling bone severed at the root, and another lurking behind Ruskin has a sharp hook where a hand should be. I try not to let it scare me, but I wonder exactly how brutal a place the Unseelie Court must be, if this is the average state of their nobility.
“Prince Ruskin Dawnsong,” the woman says. Her face is neutral, reminding me of Halima’s usual business-like expression, but there’s a hint of something in her voice: curiosity, maybe.
Ruskin inclines his head, but I notice he keeps his eyes fixed on the fae around us.
“Magna Lunis.”
“And may its light bless you, Your Highness,” the woman says, surprising me by addressing Ruskin by his royal title. “His Majesty King Lisinder would like to invite you to an audience, now he’s heard that you’ve traveled all this way.”
Her manner isn’t exactly hostile, but it’s still very clear to me that the invitation isn’t optional.
“Then we can hardly refuse,” says Ruskin. His tone is light, but the double meaning of his words confirms my own thoughts.
“And may I ask after your companion?” the woman says, tilting her head at me. I can feel her snake eyes probing at the shadows of my hood, wanting to root out my secrets. I swallow, but push back the hood of my cloak, showing them that I’m both human and have nothing to hide from them.
“Eleanor Thorn,” I say, introducing myself before Ruskin can answer.
The yellow-eyed woman examines me, and I meet her gaze, unwavering. Again, there’s the hint of curiosity in her manner, and I think she’s trying to decide if I’m a threat or not. The fae we skirmished with on the road must’ve gotten word to the court, but whether they worked out I was the source of some of the magic that attacked them, I can’t say. I think some fae would look for a hundred different explanations before they considered that a human might have that kind of power.
Eventually, the woman nods and gestures to the fae around us, who part to allow her to take the lead. Ruskin dismounts and I follow suit. We lead our horses through the streets in a kind of procession. The viper woman takes a left, down a passage that feels more like a tunnel than a road. The stone rises up around us, like a great mouth swallowing us up, and I can tell we’re heading deeper into the mountain.
“Should we be worried?” I whisper to Ruskin, checking the nearest Unseelie for a reaction, but I don’t think he hears me.
“That depends,” Ruskin murmurs back. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my uncle.”
Not exactly comforting.
“What happened to them?” I ask even more quietly. “Why do they so many have scars?”
“They’re war wounds,” he says. “From the Great Divide.”
The images of the battle at Amethyn Valley swirl at the edge of my memory. What I saw of that day certainly lines up with the brutality of the Unseelie’s scars, but Halima always made it sound like the war was evenly stacked—that no side had a clear chance at winning.
“But the Seelie don’t look like this,” I say.
“Oh, there’s plenty of Seelie with battle scars. They just don’t show them.”
I look at him with confusion.
“Illusions, Eleanor. Many of the older fae wear them. They don’t want their scars on display.”
I know the Seelie place a high value on beauty, but I hadn’t imagined they were using magic to change their looks on such a scale. Is it just vanity, or do they simply not want a constant reminder of those dark days? I could see it being either reason—or even both at once. The Unseelie however, choose to wear their scars out in the open, with pride. To demonstrate their strength and resilience? Or is the reason more gruesome? Maybe they liked the brutality of war. Maybe they miss it.
Still, whether they’re brutal at their core or not, there’s a strange kind of beauty to the space the Unseelie lead us into, after asking us to leave our horses at the door. The chamber is huge—a hall carved out of the heart of the mountain. A hundred faerie lights set it alight with a pale blue-white glow, though far up in the heights there also hangs a huge, black chandelier.
Banks of seats rise on either side of the cavern, stone pews etched with scenes of battle and victory, I think, though I’m more focused on the people sitting in them: a sea of High Fae with all manner of beastly features—bright animal eyes, sharp teeth and horns in many varieties. They survey us like predators examining their prey, as our guide brings us forward in front of a dais supporting a throne. The man sitting in it is unmistakably related to Ruskin—he has the same black hair and dark, ridged horns, and I get confirmation that the yellow in Ruskin’s eyes comes from his father’s side of the family. The man’s claws scrape across the arms of his throne as he sits up straighter, his crown of bone tilting as he looks down at us.
King Lisinder is ready to meet us, and he’s gathered the whole court to watch.