Chapter 7
Ashiver dances down my spine. “You won’t come with me through the gatehouse?”
He shakes his head. “Only the halo gets you in there. The lowly peasants like me are supposed to go through separately with our portal keys. The one you were bringing me.”
He holds out his palm, and I dig into my pocket to hand it to him.
“Then what?” I ask.
“You go straight in while the servants are vetted, I believe, and I very much hope there is no torture involved, unless it’s the fun kind.”
“Will you have time to tell Avalon Tower about the change of plans?”
“I’ll send a message, yes.”
I clear my throat. “Tristan, there’s another thing. The baroness’s body isn’t hidden very well. I dragged her behind the rubbish tip under the abandoned tube station on Minories. There’s blood everywhere.”
“You know, part of me is enjoying the fact that you’re the one fucking up for once.”
“I fuck up all the time, but thank you for pretending otherwise.”
“I’ll take care of the body. But I need to get you dressed in something more appropriate first. You look too human and far too poor for the Veiled Court.”
“Okay, first of all, thanks.” I look down at the cartoon computer T-shirt I’m wearing. “But those two Fey already saw me dressed like this. They assumed this was the best anyone could do in the Waste Land. Remember? I think it will look more suspicious if I waltz in wearing a new frock.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Right. You’ll have to go in as you are, then, I suppose, looking like you’re wearing the ratty clothes you slept in.”
I glare at him. “Nobody sleeps in jeans.”
Though, as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I remember that I actually had slept in these jeans last night because my room was cold, and I don’t have pajamas.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll join you as soon as I can. Just make sure you can convince them that you’re posh. Let me hear your accent.”
I lift my chin. “You must fill me a bath, then scrub my back, but do it gently, you know, with that rose soap,” I say in the clipped accent that I remember from Auberon. “Use your hands, not the rough cloth, and get all the crevices and folds.”
His eyebrows rise, and he blinks. “Where did that particular idea come from? Is this a request?”
“The accent was good, though, right?”
“Very. I felt like Auberon himself was asking me to bathe him, and I’m horrified to say it slightly turned me on.”
I touch his arm. “When you go through the portal, Vero will still be waiting there for me by a willow tree. Let her know I’m fine, but not to wait for me.
Just tell her…tell her that I have a spy job to do with you.
She’ll understand she can’t get more details.
And maybe you can find her a horse? She can hardly walk. ”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Try to help her find some food. She’ll be hungry by now, and I was going to help her get dinner once we got through, but I won’t be there. Make sure she knows how to get to the Melian Forest.”
He nods. “You know she’s an adult, right?”
“Barely. She’s only eighteen.”
And I still think of her as the little girl I brought over from Brocéliande, the one who woke up screaming at night because someone murdered her parents.
I still think of her as the eight-year-old who slept next to me for months, snoring on my shoulder.
To me, she’s still a child who needs to be fully covered in stuffed animals to sleep, who uses her shirt sleeves as a tissue and gets excited by the wonders of chocolate milk and ice cream.
“Syn, I want you to know—” His gaze lifts over my head, and he goes quiet. I turn to see a faint flicker of movement in the shadows.
A dark shape shifts there, and a cowl sweeps over a pale face. The Cloaked Ones.
Ice sweeps down my spine.
Tristan whispers in my ear, “Time to go, Syn. Do not let your accent slip for a moment.”
My pulse hammers.
Time to become someone else.
As Tristan stalks off into the night, I turn back to the Tower. Acutely aware that I’m being watched, I strike a haughty pose and stride along the cobbled road.
My vision blurs again as my throat tightens. Bordering on hysteria once more.
Gods above. Get it together, Syn.
Whatever this meeting holds, surely I’ve been through worse. Right? And this is all for the grail.
And yet, my nerves flutter as I slink up to the gatehouse, its pale stone walls looming over a cobbled path.
As I draw closer, the halo around my head tingles and grows brighter, reflecting on the stones at my feet.
I take another tentative step, and the portcullis rises with a groan that echoes over the stone.
Normally, I feel completely comfortable at the Tower of London.
I visit whenever I can. I suppose it reminds me of home and the castle whose shadow I once lived under.
But tonight, it feels different—otherworldly.
Shadows coil around me, slick and cold, twining over my limbs like serpents.
Already, a strange and ancient magic is at work.
Distantly, the sound of a clanging bell resounds off the stone, sending a chill up my spine. The Tower is beautiful, but it’s also a place of death.
When I pass beneath the gatehouse arches, darkness envelops me. The gray stone dims, and I breathe in the scent of soil, damp stones, and moldering bones.
Around me, the Tower of London dissolves, sliding back into a castle old enough to remember the gods. I step into utter, primordial darkness.
Magic tingles over my skin, raising goose bumps.
So, this is how I leave London forever.
Tristan and I arrived in this city long before the war broke out. We were refugees, fleeing King Auberon’s purges of demi-Fey. Anyone with mortal blood automatically became a “traitor” to the king.
Anyone who annoyed him could also be a traitor. I was both.
And for fifteen years, we were safe here. Nobody cared that I was mostly Fey, part mortal.
That all changed a year and a half ago when the war began.
Driven by a famine, the Fey army slammed into the UK and turned this country into a living nightmare.
Dragon fire seared the skies. Fey swords cut down anyone in their way.
Auberon’s soldiers raided the cities, stole food from every corner of the kingdom, and left the British starving.
Mortals here finally saw what Fey violence looked like and how ruthless we could be.
I reach out, touching slick, rounded walls on either side. I bring my foot down slowly, not sure what I’m stepping into, and encounter smooth, worn stone. It’s uneven beneath my feet, compressed by legions of shoes over thousands of years.
Steadying myself on the cold stone walls, I slowly mount the perilous, slick steps.
As I climb higher, thin rays of light start to pierce the gloom, and I reach a window in the curving stairwell—a jagged, gaping aperture, like a dragon ripped a chunk out of it.
The view is dizzying, a few stories high with nothing to stop me from falling if I stumble in the narrow stairwell.
And I remember now: Brocéliande isn’t like the mortal world. Its beauty will leave you breathless, but there are no modern comforts and protections here to keep you safe, no safety nets or caution cones.
I gaze out at the starlit, rolling fields spread across the Fey realm. Beyond them, the sea glitters, reflecting the light of the two strange moons, silver and red, the latter dappling the water with crimson sparks.
I breathe in the briny air of the ocean, sweetened with the scent of sea thrift and lavender. My chest twinges at the familiar smell. I thought I’d forgotten it, but it all comes back to me. The scent of my golden childhood.
I resume my climb, taking care not to slip, past narrow windows that let in the silver-red moonlight.
The higher I ascend, the more the stairwell seems to be shaped and polished by magic—smoother now, with straight stones of pale gold.
Now, the walls are carved with ornate shapes: twisting vines and serpents, ravens and antlers, each carving shimmering with magic.
On I climb, and I can almost forget Owain and the poem he once wrote me, one casting himself as an alder tree and me as the rain he needed to live.
I can almost forget that Vicky will be lying next to him in silken sheets tonight.
At last, I reach a landing with a towering ceiling and an enormous oak door. A triple spiral shape is carved into the wood. Below it are letters in the ancient Fey language:
Whosoever pulleth this sword from this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all Fey.
My skin prickles with the words, my heart fluttering.
I push through the doors of the Veiled Court at last and cross into a glittering, dangerous kingdom, a beautiful world filled with those who would tear my heart out if they knew the truth.