Chapter 11
Finnian
Sleep eludes me.
I’ve catalogued the reasons. The location, borderlands magic sits wrong against my skin, neither Seelie nor Unseelie nor Wild. The wind outside howls stories I can’t quite translate. The bed that smells like dust and strangers.
But if I’m being honest, which I try to be, even when it’s inconvenient, it’s none of those things.
It’s the not knowing. The complete and utter uselessness of everything I’ve spent three centuries learning.
The Crown pulses beneath my temples. Uncertain. Lost.
That makes two of us.
There’s no historical precedent to search. No ancient text to decode. Only the ability to live through this moment and surface on the other side. Only the ability to survive long enough to tell the tale.
If we survive at all.
When I close my eyes, I see the Trial of Truth. Ash standing before three courts. The way her knees buckled. The way she looked at the crowd like she was searching for someone to help her. And me, useless in the crowd. Watching. Doing nothing.
I knew what Amarantha was planning. Suspected, at least. I had pieces of the puzzle scattered across my desk for weeks. The ward-work designed to kill guardians. The way she kept pushing Ash toward the trials before she was ready. The cold calculation behind every “kindness” she offered.
I didn’t put them together fast enough.
And now Ash is in Moros’s court, and I’m in a dusty tavern, and every time I reach for the bond it’s like pressing my hand against glass. I can feel her warmth on the other side, faint, distant, alive. I can’t reach her.
The Crown pulses again. Failure, it seems to say. You had the information. You didn’t act.
As if I needed reminding.
I roll out of bed, yanking on trousers and a shirt before slipping my feet into boots. I can’t lie here anymore. Can’t stare at the ceiling cataloguing my mistakes while the gods treat us like children sitting in the corner with our shame.
But who is even to blame, really?
All of us. None of us. The system that made us pawns before we were born.
I swing open the door and come face to face with Whispen.
In his adult form. It’s an interesting choice, a blend of the three of us. Smaller than Orion but with the same broad build. Curly hair like mine. And oddly enough, Kieran’s jawline.
I’m not sure if it’s flattering or unsettling.
“Whispen.”
“Morning!” he chirps, and I’m not entirely sure he slept. If he even sleeps. I’ll have to ask Orion.
He also doesn’t move.
“Whispen, is there something you need?”
“Oh, I thought you’d never ask!” He bounces from floor to ceiling before settling back down, grinning with those sharp little teeth.
I wait.
He says nothing.
I inhale the patience I don’t have because I didn’t sleep. “Whispen.”
“Yes?” He leans in, eyes bright with mischief.
This time I push past him. Through him, actually, which we usually try to avoid. It’s an unusual sensation, like diving into pudding. Unpleasant in ways I can’t quite articulate.
I drag my hands down my face, yawning as I head down to the quiet tavern. I have no idea when Donn opens, but since he’s not here, off waking ancient goddesses, apparently, I’m going to make coffee.
The bastard has a stash of the human import. And there are days like today where I crave it with an intensity that borders on pathetic. Only humans have those contraptions that plug into walls and produce coffee on demand.
I do not have that luxury.
I have to start a fire. Which means getting wood. And going outside.
Twilight is just beginning to crest the horizon, where it will sit for hours before sliding back down.
Faerie doesn’t rotate like Earth, it wobbles.
Tilts. There are lands here so dark that no one dares enter.
Places where tales are told of portals deep inside the black forest. Where creatures dwell that even gods avoid.
“What are we doing?” Whispen follows me outside to a woodshed where Donn keeps an axe and stacks of timber.
I pause at the axe. Glare at it. “Making coffee.”
“And that involves an axe.” He gets very close to the tool in question, examining it like a particularly interesting specimen. “How intriguing.”
“Whispen.” I grip the handle, testing its weight. “Did you know Donn was Dagda?”
“Oh yes.” He tries to grab the axe. Fails. His translucent fingers pass right through. “Whispen knows many, many things.”
I breathe in patience. Out impatience. I’m beginning to understand Orion’s constant threats.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I cannot.” He straightens, and for a moment the mischief fades. His eyes, those strange, shifting eyes, go ancient. Tired. Like he’s seen this game play out a thousand times and already knows how it ends.
Then the grin snaps back. “You must ask. I can only give direct advice to my soul-bound.”
But I saw it. That flash of something older than courts. Older than Fae.
I file it away with everything else I don’t understand yet.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Whispen. How many other forms did the Dagda take?”
“Many.” The sharp-toothed smile returns. “Now you’re understanding the game. I’m so excited.” He zooms in a circle around my head. “Cut the wood.”
Why—
No. I grab the axe and begin splitting timber, trying to think of every question we’ve missed. Which are probably hundreds. But one question. Just one.
I pause, axe resting on my shoulder.
“Can you get to Ash?”
He rolls his eyes. Scoffs. Grunts. “Maybe.”
“Whispen.” I groan. “All this time you could have gone to her? Kept her company? Fed us information?”
Now I truly understand why Orion threatens to kill him every five seconds.
“I had an assignment.” He blinks innocently and transforms into his child form. Wide eyes. Cherubic face. Absolutely evil.
“What assignment?”
“You three.”
“Who gave you an assignment that overrode your bond to Ash?”
He smirks at me. Leans close. “Morrigan,” he whispers.
Another manipulative ancient playing games with our lives.
I grab my wood, ignoring the little blue demon, and head back inside to work on the hearth. I glare at Whispen every five seconds while I stack kindling and coax flames to life.
“Morning,” Orion grunts from the stairs.
He lowers himself onto a bench with more care than usual. The wound in his chest, the one Dagda left when he ripped the Cauldron free, is still angry and red beneath his half-open shirt.
He catches me looking. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to offer to examine it. Again.” He stretches out on the bench, wincing only slightly. “It’s healing. Leave it.”
He’s snoring within thirty seconds.
I don’t know how he does that, drops into sleep like falling off a cliff. My mind won’t stop cataloguing variables long enough to rest for an hour, let alone thirty seconds.
“Coffee?” Kieran appears in the doorway. Shadows under his eyes. Snowflakes melting in his dark hair.
We don’t look at each other for too long.
Three weeks since I told him if he’d warned us about his father’s plan sooner, we could have stopped this. Three weeks since he said nothing back. Which was worse than if he’d argued.
He wasn’t wrong to keep his father’s machinations close. I wasn’t wrong that we needed to know.
We’re both right. We’re both wrong. And Ash is paying for it.
“Coffee,” I confirm, because it’s easier than saying any of the things that matter.
He moves to the far end of the bar. I stay by the fire.
The space between us used to be comfortable. Now it’s a demilitarized zone neither of us knows how to cross.
I push the kettle over the fire and turn back to Whispen, who’s now sitting on the bar top in child form, legs swinging.
I’m no longer fooled by the innocent appearance.
“Whispen has been holding out on us,” I tell the others. “Seems he can go to Ash but is on assignment. From The Morrigan.”
“Told you he was evil.” Orion’s voice is dreamy, half-asleep. Only partially invested in the conversation.
Kieran’s jaw tightens. “What else has he been keeping from us?”
“I suspect everything.” I stare at the wisp. “The question is whether we’re asking the right—”
My chest ignites.
Not the Crown. The Seelie Court mark I’ve carried since birth, the one that brands me as hers to summon, hers to command, hers to break if she chooses.
“No.” I yank my shirt down. The mark is glowing gold, searing through my skin like a brand pressed fresh. “No, no, no—”
“Amarantha.” Kieran’s voice goes cold. He’s in front of me before I register him moving.
Orion’s on his feet, wound forgotten. “Summons?”
“Summons.” The mark burns hotter. Hooks dig into my chest, dragging me toward somewhere I don’t want to go. My knees buckle. I catch myself on the bar, knuckles white, every muscle screaming against the pull.
“What do I do?”
My voice comes out cracked. Pathetic. The voice of an eleven-year-old boy watching his parents burn while the woman who ordered it brushes dust from his hair.
“Go.” Kieran grips my shoulder. “It’s the closest we’ve gotten since they shut us out.”
My stomach twists. Kieran was exiled. I left the Academy when my research dried up. Orion searched the wilds until the Cauldron was ripped from his chest.
This is the first time any of us have been summoned to court after the trials, after banishment. The first door that’s opened.
“What if—”
“Go, you fool!” Orion bellows.
I stop resisting.
“There he goes!” Whispen giggles. “Luckily, it’s not the Seelie Court.”
I don’t have time to question what that means.
My body is sucked through time and space, compressed and stretched, reality folding around me like paper being crumpled. I’m spat out on cold stone floor, palms slamming down hard enough to sting.
Unseelie Court. The shadows. The cold. The wrongness of the magic here.
And standing above me—
My body knows before my mind does. Every muscle locks. Every instinct screams run, hide, disappear, the same instincts I spent a century trying to unlearn.
“There he is.”
Amarantha’s voice slides over me like oil on water. Sweet. Poisonous.
Her fingernails pinch my chin, tilting my head up until I’m forced to meet those crystalline eyes. The same eyes that watched my parents burn. I was eleven. She made me watch, too, said it was educational.
The same smile that told me I’d learn to love her eventually.
Everyone does, she’d said. You’ll be no different.
“I knew you’d come when I summoned you.” Her thumb traces my jaw, and my skin crawls. “You always were obedient, Finnian. It’s one of your better qualities.”
My stomach turns. But I keep my face blank.
“What game—”
She presses two fingers to my lips.
My voice dies in my throat.
Gone. Not muffled. Gone. Like she reached in and plucked it out.
That’s new.
That’s impossible.
I’ve read every text on Seelie power. Memorized the throne’s limitations. The crown grants authority over court members, not abilities. Not this. This is something else entirely.
This is wrong.
But as I look at her now, really look, I see it.
Hidden under the familiar cruelty. Threaded through the crystalline perfection of her features. A darkness that wasn’t there before. Something borrowed. Something stolen.
Something that doesn’t belong to the Seelie Court at all.
The Crown pulses a warning beneath my temples. Flashes of knights dances behind my eyes. It’s warning me of…something. And I can’t quite put my finger on it. She shouldn’t hold this much power over me. Yet she does.
Oh, Amarantha.
What have you done?