46. Chapter 46
Chapter 46
T he screaming was immediate. I hadn’t expected him to scream quite so loudly as I leapt from his lap, dodging his impotently grasping hands. He was pinned firmly and soundly to the chair, but I did not spare him a single glance as I darted to the door and threw it open.
It was now. The time was now. I could almost taste the freedom on my tongue as I bolted as fast as my unnaturally long legs could carry me through the twisting passages of the palace. I had them all memorized. The way the roots of this castle grew and formed was like a map etched into the very flesh of my brain. I could see it all unfolding before me as I ran for the gardens.
Fae passed me as I did, none of them concerned with why a daoire was running. All of them content to think that no daora could escape. All of them satisfied that the only reason a daora could be running could be because they were trying to outrun their punishment. To them, it was a simple game for their amusement.
To me? I was outrunning the breaking dawn. I was trying to outrun the setting sun. I was chasing down my freedom and nothing would get in my way.
His screams had died out behind me long before I nearly slipped, turning at the edge of the hallway that would lead out into the gardens. Violet, Emerald, and a disheveled-looking Green Man, whose leaves were wilting at the edges as he paced, and Goose, who was idly chewing on a stick, were waiting for me at the landing. Four pairs of eyes turned up to me as I burst down the stairs.
“Goose! The bag!” Goose snorted his disappointment with my behavior and nosed a small rough woven bag into my path. I snatched it as I skidded to a stop, shoving my hand into the bag and pulling out the shard of my mother’s body. “Listen closely and don’t ask questions. Put your hand on this stone. And say, ‘My name was once’—then say your true name, the one you were born with—‘and I renounce my name. From now, until I claim another, my name is . . .’” I turned to Emerald. “You are ‘Nothing.’” I turned to Violet. “You are ‘No One.’” I turned to Green Man. “And you are ‘A Secret.’”
I swallowed a lungful of air. “Emerald, yes, I know you cannot speak. Say it in your mind. It should still count.”
She had already been trying to flash warnings and questions at me.
I had thought this through. Turned over every story and fairy tale I had ever read as a child in the long, lonely nights left to my own devices with nothing but time to think and hours to do it in.
One by one, they did as I said, Green Man going last. “My name was once Ailill, and I renounce my name. From now until I claim another, my name is A Secret.”
I quirked a brow at Green Man’s strange true name, no surname at all like Violet, but I let it pass. There was no time to dally on small details that didn’t matter.
“Good. Now, come on. We have a date with a viper.” I tossed the bag over my shoulder, took the newly dubbed No One’s hand, and plunged into the gardens, pulling her along with me.
I might need to pick her up. Her small legs were not going to keep up with us as we ran.
I knew exactly where that bitch would be waiting for us, in the exact place that we had made the deal. It was too fitting. I was pleasantly surprised as we rounded on the quiet area of the gardens that Oaken Rose was alone, pacing in her signature midnight-blue gown with the bright bloodred roses crowning her impossibly long hair.
Gods, I hated her. The two of them deserved each other more than anything else in this entire fucked-up realm .
She turned when she heard us running for her, a slimy smile reluctantly pulling at her lips. “You’ve made it. Good. And just in time.” Her cornflower-blue eyes turned up to the sky and then fell back on me as I let go of Violet’s hand.
“You said the orchards are full of spiders, and you promised a safe exit,” I said, crossing my arms.
“I did. Both. This is merely the place I knew you would come looking. I don’t have the time to explain either. You’re more of a burden to this court than a benefit anyway. It behooves me to get rid of you. Shame about the other three, though. But such is the price of business.” She took a piece of chalk from her sleeve and stepped up to the nearest tree. The chalk skipped and jumped along the uneven surface as she drew a door and then turned on me, fishing a key from her cleavage. “It’s a simple enough thing. Just unlock the gate and walk through it. And don’t come back.”
“No problem there, sister,” barked Green Man as I handed him the key.
“I’ll have them all through safely before I go.” I nodded to Green Man, who plunged the key into the chalk outline of a keyhole. It sunk in as if it were always meant to be. His vines creaked as he twisted the key, and a wooden door wavered into view. I nodded to him, and he opened it. On the other side was a forest like the one I had watched from The Raven’s window. “Go ahead.”
One by one, Green Man, Emerald, and Violet passed through the door. Goose stayed at my ankle, unwilling to move until I did.
The Oaken Rose smugly crossed her arms over her chest and turned to look at me. “Your friends are through, and with you stepping through, our business will be done. I will have my payment.”
“Fine. What do you want? I’ve got a hair comb, a rock, a book—” I looked up, and the smile working its way through her orange-and-purple sunset tinted face made me stop as fear took hold of me once more.
My heart stuttered, spitting small chunks of itself up as it tore at its enclosure to stumble away from the horror before us .
“Did you truly think the price would be something so small? Something so insignificant?” A delicate, practiced, aristocratic chortle rolled from her rosebud lips. “You humans truly are the dullest of creatures. I knew exactly what I wanted when I made that deal with you.”
Her hand whipped out and tossed the bag through the door as she stalked me. Goose began to rumble the sound like rocks tumbling over a great chasm and crashing against glass below. “Growl all you want, beast. Not even you can stop this. Snap and bite all you want, but she will not slide through that door without paying me.”
My eyes slid between her and Goose, who was bristling and growing with his ire as she herded me toward the door.
“You have something of mine. Something that rightfully belonged to me all along. I want it.”
“I don’t know what you’re fucking on about. I don’t have anything of yours!”
“The moment I saw him look at you, I knew what you were to him. I have plans for him. I’ve always had plans for him.”
“Oh, Jesus, fuck, you can’t be serious. All this over a dude? You’re pathetic. You can have him. I don’t want him. And as soon as I leave, he’ll be all yours. You’re engaged to be married for fuck’s sake!”
Her smile grew larger, cutting into the angelic cheeks into a demonic twist as she chortled again. “You truly don’t know, do you?”
My back was up against the open frame. A single poor move, and I’d be pushed through. I didn’t want to think of what magic would do to me if I managed to make it through that door without settling my debt.
Her hand lazily stroked my braid and caught the black-and-gold ribbon, slowly teasing it out. “A Fae’s anam cara is the most sacred gift from magic. Only one is given every lifetime, and when a lifetime can stretch out longer than the life of mountains, to have one is to have the greatest power magic affords our kind. Finding them is younger Fae’s sole focus. I had him beaten down enough to not even bother looking. Resigned to his marriage with me, but you . . . You had to show up and rekindle his hope, and I cannot have that. ”
My brain could not process what she was saying quick enough. Could not put the disjointed pieces of what she was saying together to make sense of it all as cornflower-blue eyes met mine.
“So, I will take it from him again.”
The black-and-gold ribbon slipped free of my hair and color leached out of the world. My heart stopped for but a single second, everything around me ceased existing all except for the grey landscape that swallowed me and darkened at the edges. My lungs would not pull in air, I was desperate for it, but they would not draw no matter how my brain screamed at them to do so. Everything within me was stone and ice built around a void that not even pain could escape.
I could barely hear the cackling of The Oaken Rose as she dangled the simple ribbon in her fingers over the pitch of the abyss. Goose was barking. I could see him snarling and snapping at her, but she was ignoring him. He could do nothing after all. She had taken something from me. I could feel the lack of it, but it was like being aware that you had clipped your toenail too short but not feeling the depth at which you had truly missed the mark yet.
Goose turned his head to me, concern warring over his shaggy muzzle as I could feel my jaw working, trying to draw breath around the emptiness within me. He yelped. I could barely hear it over the sucking hollowness as he leapt at me, knocking me into the doorway.
I collapsed on the damp leaf litter on the other side. Sound and sensation came rushing back to me, but color did not. Oaken Rose’s cackling through the doorway, even though it was but a foot away sounded miles away.
“Have fun traipsing through the direwood at night, bitch,” she hissed, leaning into the open doorway so I could hear her.
Behind her, the sound of a great beast howling in pain, loud and piercing mixed with the bellowing scream of a desperate man drew her attention away. Fear flashed across her face for but a moment before spite and hatred replaced it, and she slammed the door on us.
“What was that?” whispered Violet at my side as she and Emerald helped me up .
Green Man was shaking behind them, the leaves of his body rattling and shivering as if he were in the middle of a blizzard. Goose was whining and pushing me with his muzzle as I got to my feet and collapsed again no strength or feeling in my legs.
“What was that !” hissed Violet again, as none of us answered her.
I had never seen fear live in her porcelain doll face. It sat within the tight lines of her countenance like a balloon at a funeral.
Emerald was flashing something, but I could not yet recognize it. Without color to define the edges of her images, they all blended into a mishmash soup of shapes. I tried to concentrate on them, tried to figure out what she was saying, but I felt like everything I did was held back by an unseen sludge that swirled around me.
“Just . . . give . . .”
I could barely draw breath. Every time my desperate lungs filled with air, it leaked out into the emptiness within me. I could hear it wheezing into the sucking void.
“What’s wrong with her?” Violet fired off at someone and then she was back in my view again. “A Secret, what’s wrong with her!”
“I . . .”
I could hear the terror in his voice even though all I could see was the grey spikes of the grass in front of me.
“She . . . warned . . .” I wheezed around the tiny shard of glass in my chest.
Pain was starting to return to me. I welcomed it. Anything was better than the nothingness, the sheer lack of anything and everything within me. It was torment to go from a life aware of all senses and the movement and sensation of your guts, the twitch and hitch of ligaments and the swirling cacophony of constant thought to utter stillness. The emptiness was a keen blade that sliced away everything but the awareness of it.
“What’s she saying?” Violet lobbed at Emerald.
Panic was running through her, and I was aware that I should probably be feeling that as well. I should probably feel the same level of panic and fear that the others were. I knew that it was supposed to live in this moment, but I was fumbling in the achromatic fallow within myself.
I couldn’t think. I could only stare ahead of me as the shard of glass grew within me. It was the only sensation I could feel, this strange dull sharpness wedged between my consciousness and the world around me. I had to focus on it, anything, even the dull slicing of me trying to grip it was better than the emptiness.
“Give her a minute, No One,” Green Man murmured, and the three of them found a seat next to me as my eyes bulged around the colorlessness that it refused to process properly.
Time stretched out around us, and I was vaguely aware of its passing being marked solely by the growing blade within me. Sensation rushed in, overwhelming and intense, as I cut my mental hands against it. Pain, exquisite and without end, filled every cavity left within me. It flowed, hot and brutal, into the cavity left by that golden warmth that I vaguely remembered. It filled up the spaces between where each color had lived within my mind. It scoured out new holes and crevices to fill until I was just meat stretched around a cruel, throbbing agony that stretched on and on without end.
I tipped my head back and screamed. I screamed from the bottom of my belly to the corners of my soul and shredded my voice and heart against it as the pain poured through me and held vigil in the sound.
Gone. That golden thread that connected Emrys and I was gone. My soulmate. My one anam cara.
Gone.