39. The Keep
39
THE KEEP
I t was a surreal, unsettling reminder that Saffron had once already crossed through the center of the King’s Keep courtyard. Previously had also been on the heels of Taran leading him, though Cylvan and Copper had also been alongside him. That night Ryder first tried to overpower and take him away, and would have, had Cylvan not invaded the Finnian Ruins to steal him back just in time. Where they’d sought shelter in that one stone building, where Taran showed them the veneer through the back door that would take them through the King’s Keep in the Winter Court, then back to Avren again through the cold woods on the other side.
Saffron squeezed his amethyst pendant at the thought. Warmth responded. Another reminder—that when the time came, he may still be able to return to Avren through the exact same way.
He emerged from the veil passage in a frozen stone corridor, barely within reach of the mouth of it. Leaving him breathless, frost crystals forming on the inside of his lungs as in a snap, he stood within the arms of the coldest mountain peaks of the Winter Court. Of the oracle monastery of Fjornar, where folk like him were never supposed to step foot.
Walking to the end of the chilled corridor, Saffron paused at the top of a set of snowy steps left unbrushed as most of Fjornar’s oracles were still gone to Avren. He gazed across the snowy monastery in front of him, unable to help but hold his breath, as if the thick steam on every exhale was as loud as speaking.
The buildings in front of him were not the same ones he’d once crossed through with Taran into the veneer, leaving him wondering where exactly he would have to go to find it. Deeper into them, at the very least. His heart thumped apprehensively.
At least, once he found it—he would be back in Avren by morning. Just like he’d promised Cylvan. In an instant, hardly any different than passing through the veil of the mirror at his back.
It was the only thought that could possibly bring him comfort, standing there in a place he was not welcome. A place he would be executed on sight for crossing, even if he wasn’t a human. Even if he wasn’t a witch, a rowan witch. Even mere common fey were prohibited from crossing those boundaries meant only for appointed oracles and their pupils. It made him wonder—had oracles spotted their footprints the night they passed through the king’s keep? How they crossed through the untouched snow in the direction of the woods, where they vanished through the veneer? Had they ever found out who left them? Had Ryder told them, before or after he destroyed the passage in the Finnian Ruins, where Saffron had escaped him that night before the Midsummer Games?
“Me first,” Taran said as Saffron took a step down, passing him to float his nose over the top layer of still-falling snow to sniff.
Saffron kept close as they walked, breathing quietly, walking silently, straining his ears to listen. It was deathly silent there, the same sort of liminal silence that fell over Luvon’s estate when thick cloud paired with a blanket of mist, muffling every living thing. Until there was only the ringing on one’s ears and the sound of tufted snow kissing the earth.
“Was it always like this?” Saffron asked. Taran huffed a little crater into the snow.
“No,” he said. “There was never a lot of raucous noise, but, there was always someone within earshot. While I was here, at least.”
Saffron bit his lip, but nodded. “When you were a child.”
“Yes,” Taran answered shortly, clearly wishing to end the swelling string of questions at the back of Saffron’s throat. Of all the times Saffron would take the hint, it would be that one. It felt wrong, it felt strangely blasphemous, to speak in such a silent, sacred place. Even if nothing about it was sacred to him, specifically. He would have preferred to burn it down.
They followed a paved walkway barely visible beneath the snow, as the remainder of the grounds were buried beneath countless previous storms that had rolled through. In some areas, the snow reached nearly up to Saffron’s shoulders, walls of the cleared corridor carved with long, icy genre illustrations down their lengths. Depicting scene after scene of myth, or what Saffron assumed to be other moments in history significant to that place. To the Winter Court. To the veiled queen.
Cailleach and her staff striking the earth; the old crone passing over a Samhain festival on the back of her wolf; who he assumed to be Queen Proserpina nursing a baby fawn in a circle of mushrooms; depictions of the queen and King Clymeus dancing in a circle of cheering high fey, outside what Saffron thought to be an ancient church. He tried to resist—but accidentally stumbled and dragged his hand through those illustrations, ripping off a thick layer of polished ice on the surface and crunching the queen and her little fawn under his boot. Taran said nothing, only snorted in response.
"If Ryder is still here, where would he be hiding?” Saffron asked after they passed another collection of stone buildings, dark and weathered and icicle-adorned.
“We’ll start in the chapel,” Taran said. “It’s the same place they kept me when I was a child, the sacristy at the back of the chapel. There are false doors, false rooms—if he’s trying to find a place to disappear for a while, it’ll be there.”
“Eias studied here too, right? Did they stay in the same place?”
“No. There were separate dormitories for oracle apprentices.” The wolf tilted his head toward a building as they passed, and Saffron understood by the rows and rows of latticed windows set within more stonework, though far less ornate than that on the chapels and other practice buildings.
“Queen Proserpina liked this style of architecture,” Saffron said, as if Taran didn’t know. So when the wolf actually glanced his way, he was surprised. “It’s no wonder all of her buildings are designed this way. I wonder if Clymeus designed it to purposely match her preferences, too.”
“It’s a human style of architecture, isn’t it?” He muttered in response. “Ironic, how comfortable they are bringing human aesthetics to this side of the veil before kicking humans back out again.”
“‘Ironic ’ is being generous,” Saffron said first, before frowning. “I’m surprised someone like you would be able to utter all those words in that order, without dying instantly.”
“Hush, beantighe,” Taran snapped. “I don’t hate humans any more—or less—than anyone else. You should know that by now. The amount I despise all living things has nothing to do with opulence or aridity.”
“How equitable.”
The wolf sneered, but something about it was humorous. Like even Taran thought it was funny.
All the way to the back of the monastery sat the king’s cathedral, similar in its structure to the queen’s in the Finnian Ruins. Saffron could tell there was a little more further back, through a metal lichgate in the stone barrier around the proximity, and hidden behind the width of the massive church—something telling him it was the inner sanctum of the king’s keep, where he would find the veneer. Soon. Only when he needed it.
Before Saffron could speak again, Taran came to a halt and gazed at where the grand front door to the cathedral hung open a crack. Saffron held his breath, then searched the ground below his feet. Sure enough, half-covered footprints hurried up the path and into the building.
“Let’s go,” Taran urged under his breath, starting forward. Saffron followed, though the sensation in his chest was no longer full of hopeful butterflies. Instead, he reached into the front of his doublet, and pulled out his obsidian knife.
That time, Saffron went ahead, as he would be able to slip through the open door without needing to creak it open any further than it already was. He poked his head in first, searching the empty rows and rows of pews on the other side, holding his breath to listen but hearing only his own heartbeat in his ears. On the stone floor leading from the door, compacted snow in the shape of heeled boots hurried up the center of the nave, and Saffron knew exactly who they belonged to.
Saffron’s boots lightly echoed off the stone walls, the interior of the cathedral not nearly as ornamental as the one in the Finnian Ruins had once been, but still impressive in its own right. Meticulously-woven tapestries hung from the clerestory bannister on either side of the wide aisle, muffling Saffron’s footsteps as well as a thick wall of mist would. To his disappointment, they only depicted the same scenes as those carved into the icy walkways outside; Cailleach and her staff, riding her wolf; a portrait of Proserpina clutching a fawn to her chest, as if posing for a royal painting; her and King Clymeus hand in hand donning crowns on their heads as a bright moon and starry landscape spread out far behind them; the queen in her black veil, posed on the back of her wolf king with a bloody crimson circle beneath them, giving birth to hundreds of little flowers. Saffron wished to accidentally trip and tear each and every one of them down as easily as he tore the face off the snowy carvings of the walkway.
“Who is the fawn supposed to represent?” Saffron asked once Taran slipped in through the doors behind him. “Ryder’s mask at your sister’s fete was shaped like a deer, as well. Though technically a stag.”
“I was always told the fawn was a symbol of hope,” Taran said. “Take that what you will.”
“Hope for what ,” Saffron mumbled bitterly, not actually wanting an answer. Mostly, it made him question why in god’s name Anysta would put Ryder Kyteler in a mask that clearly symbolized something so deeply rooted in the veiled queen and her old lore. But then something else tugged at Saffron’s mind, clearly tangling enough that even Taran sensed it.
“What’s on your mind?”
“It’s just…” Saffron paused, trying to piece it all together. “Back in Morrígan’s temple, in that plea from Proserpina we found, it specifically mentioned someone named Deimne .”
“And?”
“Deimne was another name for Fionn mac Cumhaill, who married Sadhbh, a lady cursed to take the form of a doe. Later, they had Oisín, whose name means fawn in Gaeilge, and maybe even Old Alvish… I’d forgotten about Proserpina’s letter to The Morrígan until now, thinking it meant nothing, but now I’m… confused.”
“Perhaps her Deimne was a mere pet,” Taran mumbled. “What does it matter? She wrote that note centuries ago.”
“Then why would they still be depicting her with a fawn even all this time later?” Saffron hissed in response. “Clearly it meant something.”
“If it meant something about a fawn, why wouldn’t she have used the name Oisín in her plea, then?”
“How in god’s name am I supposed to know why she would or wouldn’t do something?”
Taran suddenly shushed him. Saffron kicked him in the back of the leg, making the wolf snarl and snap around to him, before Saffron heard it, too. Muttered curses. The sound of scraping, clinking metal from the end of the nave.
Saffron held his breath, refocusing himself. He met Taran’s eyes a moment, offering the wolf a brief nod and grasping at his knife a little tighter. Walking together, they crossed the remaining length of the aisle to an open door at the very back, a plaque reading Sacristy over the top. Saffron noticed how Taran’s fur prickled the closer they went; he sensed the ebb and flow of anxiety, then anger, then, even, panic as they approached closer, though every taste of it felt as old as the stonework overlooking them.
Tastes of Taran’s childhood memories, striking him sharply enough that they reverberated even through Saffron’s body. Making it hard to focus, hard to keep his eyes looking straight ahead. Overcome with the constant urge to reach out and touch Taran’s back. To place his hand between the wolf’s ears. To comfort him, as if they weren’t on the verge of confronting someone right on the other side.
Even as Saffron peeked around the edge of the open door, though, where Ryder was on the other side fighting against the cuffs on his wrists—Saffron barely saw him at first. His eyes instead went straight to the silver-inlaid feretory uplifted on an altartable in the center of the room. Painted with detailed imagery of the wolf king, both as a beast and as a fey king; a vessel for storing sacred parts, shaped like a coffin.
Just to the side of it, in a glass bowl far less ornate, even left dusty and unkempt, a pile of young white bones dropped in once and forgotten. Saffron knew without knowing—Taran’s instincts told him in an instant.
Those were his bones—his fey bones, before they were replaced with those made of silver.
Saffron wanted to be sick. His world spun, despite knowing it wasn’t his own reaction to the sight. It was Taran’s, reverberating off him like trumpets and thunder and an avalanche, silent as the bones abandoned in the glass dish, like refuse from an uninvited guest.
Ryder noticed Saffron in the doorway, then. He turned fully, exposing the red marks and bloody scratches on his wrists from where he fought to remove the cuffs by force. On the altartable next to him, the silver ring that controlled them, just like the one Kaelar used to wear to dominate Saffron’s own in Danann House. Perhaps even one and the same. Ryder had taken it, not knowing the wearer of the cuffs could not also command them off.
“A little help, your highness?” He asked, voice cracking beneath the weight of his unweaving sanity. “Aren’t you curious how they work? I’ll show you. Come here, Saffron. Put this ring on.”
Ryder scraped the silver ring off the table with a heavy hand, extending it out. Not knowing that Saffron knew more about them than he did.
“Where are they?” Saffron asked, instead. “Asche. My friends.”
“What?” Ryder asked, verging on shrill. “What—Why in gods’ name would I tell you that?”
“This is the last chance I’m going to give you, Ryder. I’m done playing games, and playing nice. Tell me where my friends are.”
Ryder barked a hoarse laugh, thrusting the ring out again. “Take the fucking ring, Saffron, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”
Saffron did, but only after extending his knife in warning. He took the ring without a word, and slid it right on.
“Now, I want you to command the cuffs to release ?—”
“Where’s the daurae?” Saffron repeated, interrupting him. By his side, Taran stood stiff as ever. Crashing waves of his emotions continued to slam against Saffron’s mental fortifications, anxiety and fear and repressed terror, again and again as he stood in that same room where his bones were taken. His very bones just within reach.
“The fucking— daurae!” Ryder snarled with a wide, exasperated grin. “Is exactly where I fucking left them! Even Anysta can’t fucking find them! Now, do as I say, you worthless ? —!”
“Restraint.”
The cuffs slammed together with a ringing crack. Ryder stared down at them in a long, frozen state of disbelief, before slowly lifting his eyes back to Saffron.
“You—”
“Tell me where they are,” Saffron commanded, holding the knife out again. Making sure Ryder saw exactly how the light passed through the blade, and how expertly Saffron held it. Without a single tremor in his hand. “My friends, too. Tell me where all of them are.”
Ryder attempted to lunge, but Taran snapped out of his distraction, leaping in front of Saffron with snarling teeth. Ryder stumbled back into the feretory, making the king’s coffin rattle on the table.
“Funny we should meet here again like this—” he said, that time to Taran. “You know—these are your bones, here? Useless and ashen—I could hear you screaming the entire time they pulled them out and put the new ones in, years ago. It really was a miserably long night for all of us, wasn’t it?”
Taran’s nose wrinkled, baring his teeth. Waiting for Saffron to make the call, but Saffron was fighting against the surge of frayed memories cresting over him from every direction. Frayed images from Taran’s time spent there, where his bones were replaced, where he was taken as a child and made into what the mac Delbaiths wanted of him. Saffron felt the ache in his being, he felt the stretching of muscles—he felt the briefest snap of a moment where his bone was taken, and then replaced. In the fringes of the recollection, he even knew they used veil circles to do it. One at a time, for every single piece.
“Good thing I pulled all those memories out before you left for Avren, huh? Would’ve recognized me right away, otherwise,” Ryder went on breathlessly. “Sorry your engagement didn’t work out. Much prefer you like this, though. Much prefer Prince Saffron to you, too?—”
Keep talking , Saffron thought. Taran claimed another snarling step toward Ryder, who pressed himself back against the altartable again, nearly kicking the wolf in the nose in apprehension.
“You were such a cute kid, too—a shame you turned out so ugly. Not to mention—a lapdog to a rowan witch. What would mother think, to witness her king obeying every word of?—”
“Restraint!” Saffron exclaimed the moment Ryder’s wrists parted. He’d been attempting to burn time, clearly, not expecting Saffron to have anticipated that—and the man was instantly flooded with rage the moment the cuffs locked back into one another.
“Enough, Ryder,” Saffron said. “You’re going to tell me where my friends are. Where Asche is. Or I really will let Taran tear you apart.”
“Your guard dog is a coward, your highness?—”
“I’ve seen what he can do,” Saffron answered. “He’s far from afraid to kill someone standing in his way. Or mine.”
Ryder’s eyes frantically flashed between Saffron and Taran, back and forth, before the weakest of smiles twitched on his lips.
“Alright—alright, fine. You got me, your highness. They’re in London. In a place called England. Got them a nice shared flat and even jobs to keep them busy. Y’know it’s only been a few days there? Hardly enough time for me to do anything worse than make Letty cry. ‘Bout as easy as making you cry, you know. I’ll take you right to them, if you’d like.” He extended his hands, still clasped. “I’ll show you how. I’ll even let you take me prisoner that way, if you want. You still have that pixie ring your fox-pet stole off me? I’ll show you how to use it.”
“Restraint.”
“Oh, for gods’ sake!” Ryder shouted. “Careful you don’t really piss me off, highness—I’ll have Hollow and Letty both tied up and tossed into the Thames. I’ll have that mermaid slit up the tail and thrown in after them, if I don’t boil it into a fucking stew first! I’ll throw everything you’ve ever loved into places you’ll never find them, on that side and this one—your dear prince, first and foremost. How many apples will it take for him to choke on his own vomit?”
Saffron moved before he processed it—suddenly only a few inches from Ryder’s face, staring at him, unblinking, as something hot and thick bubbled out over his fingers. Between them, Saffron still gripped the handle of his obsidian knife—the blade buried inches into Ryder’s stomach.
He knew where to find them, with those threats. Exactly where to look once he passed through the veil to the other side—no longer needing Ryder even for that. Capable of it himself. No longer needing Ryder for anything, ever, ever again—especially not threats on his raven prince.
“You won’t lay—a fucking finger on him,” he said, breathless. Ryder only stared at him, eyes wide and bulging. Like he truly hadn’t believed Saffron was capable of such a thing—but Saffron had taken lives to protect the people he loved before, more than once. And he would continue to do so, as many at it took, until every living soul knew better than to take what was his ever again.
Yanking the blade out again, Ryder grunted, buckling forward as his clasped hands flew to the wound. Pressing hard against it, though blood still gushed out between his fingers.
“Rowan—bitch,” he choked, sinking to one knee. Saffron took another step back. Ryder’s blood dripped from the end of the knife, trailing behind him. “I’ll kill—all of them, and then—I’ll make you mine, whether you like it or not. I won’t give you any choice, ever again, you goddamn—moon-eared?—”
“You can try,” Saffron told him. That time, his voice trembled slightly. “I dare you to try, Ryder Kyteler. Ryder O’Daire, whatever the fuck your name really is. But only if you don’t bleed to death, first.”
He turned. Ryder reached out to grapple for his cloak, but Taran’s teeth clamped down over his arm, hard enough that bone crunched. Ryder shrieked, throwing himself back and slamming his heel into the side of Taran’s head, kicking him, shouting and cursing even as he slumped onto his side, writhing in his own growing puddle of blood. Saffron left without glancing back.
Through the gates at the back of the monastery, Saffron crossed into the private sanctum of the wolf king. A familiar sight, though it filled him with no relief. He’d been there once before; he knew it would take him back home. Back to Avren, where he could fall into Cylvan’s arms, and plead for his forgiveness for failing to find Asche despite it all. To find a way through, despite it all. At least, at least—he could assure his raven that Ryder Kyteler was dead.
The oracles of Fjornar must have once seen the unexplained footprints through the snow of the king’s keep, because they put up a stone fence around the cluster of buildings to keep access to the veneer in the woods closed-off. It didn’t matter—through another metal gate, leading into an arched stone tunnel, Saffron could see the snowy woods right on the other side. It took no more than a simple arid spell to unlock the latch, and step through.
Saffron would walk back into Avren with nothing gained—except Ryder’s blood on his hands.