Chapter Seventeen #2
He runs so very cold, it took some time to notice it.
But he is angry, consumed with a desire for vengeance over being locked out of his own world, angry at being trapped in this one.
Angry because of who his people once were and who they have become, casualties washed away by the tide of expanding humanity.
I feel a current of fear at the thought of what his anger might do once he regains his full power.
“Am I to make my report?” I say, hiding my unease in brusqueness. “Or have you further exposition you’d like to impart?”
He blinks, my words shattering his little reverie. His eyes, when they dart to mine, are icy shards.
“Go on, then.” He turns and begins walking back to the castle, his strides so long I must nearly jog to keep pace with him.
“I found the stone circle, and the wards that guard it.”
He nods. “I told you it would be defended.”
“Yes, that is one of the precious few things you did tell me,” I return dryly. “Lachlan, who is the faerie queen?”
He stops short. I take three more steps before I realize I’ve left him behind. Turning, I see his face set in grim lines. The night is only getting colder, and I shiver and wait for him to make his answer.
Then he sighs and flicks his fingers. “Come here.”
I frown, immediately on guard.
“You’re freezing, Rose. Come here.”
Uncertainly, I step toward him. Then gasp as he takes his hands in mine, and the air around us stirs and sweeps in a whirl, whipping up his cloak and hair and my skirts.
That wind is as warm as a summer day and melts the frosty chill from my skin.
As far as I can see, Lachlan has woven no knot, but his pupils turn as silver as mirrors, reflecting my own wide eyes back at me.
Then his gaze clears, and the wind settles, but I remain as warm as if I were hunched over a fire.
“What . . . ?” I look around, then pull my hands from his.
“Better?” he asks.
“Where . . . where are your threads?”
“We didn’t give you mortals all our secrets,” he says.
He resumes walking, his hair tossing about his shoulders. The castle is filled with whispering fae and candlelight; they incline their heads to Lachlan as he walks past them.
He is trying to change the subject, distracting me with summer breezes and threadless magic. With a low growl of annoyance, I hurry to keep up with him. “The faerie queen, Lachlan. Who is she? What happened to the moorwitches?”
His lips twitch into a wry smile. “She rules Elfhame, and she ruled it when the moorwitches were slaughtered, their blood running thick over the fields of faerie. The queen of the fae is a fickle shadow, my dear, and if she catches you in her realm, she will make your death painful and slow.”
I swallow hard; fear and anger fill me with a chill no amount of conjured wind could dispel. “Why didn’t you tell me this in the beginning?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
My lips twist. “I would have liked to know what I was getting into! What if I’d charged into Elfhame with no idea what awaited me?”
“I could talk for days of my world, and you’d still have not an inkling what awaits you there. Forget this queen; she will never know you were there, if you play this right. Just don’t charge in like a crazed ox.”
“Well I can’t charge, sneak, or so much as turn a jig into Elfhame if I can’t even open the door. I found the stone circle—so what spell will open the way?”
“I don’t know. It will have changed since I was last there.”
“You must know something!”
“I know that to open the way to the faerie green, you must pay homage to its queen.”
I grab his arm, stopping him. It is like grabbing hold of a tree in winter. “I ask you for help, and you give me nursery rhymes?”
He gives me look of a long-suffering teacher at wit’s end with a slow student. “That has always been the way of Elfhame. There will be a spell to open the way, and it must be a spell of homage. What form that will take, I cannot say, having never paid homage to this queen.”
“But that makes no sense! You’re speaking in riddles!”
“It’s not something that can be explained, silly mortal girl.” He smiles, snatching a lock of my hair and coiling it around his finger. “If I had all the answers, I wouldn’t need you.”
“And how much happier we both would be.”
He cocks his head, his lips slanted into a cunning smile. “Really? Do you believe that?”
I stare incredulously. “Of course I do!”
“You ought to look in a mirror then.” Taking my hand, he spins me around, and there is a mirror, a massive thing in a gilded frame.
Where the Fates did it come from? Lachlan holds me in place, his hands on my arms and his chin hovering by my ear, our reflections gazing back at us.
“Look at her. She is not the same shivering, wretched thing I found in that boarding house. That Rose’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes shine.
She has come alive in this place, like an ember that required only a bit of wild wind to burst into flame. ”
Blinking, I try to think of a barbed reply but find none. I can only stare at myself in his inexplicable mirror, and to my surprise, I see the change he describes.
I am not who I was mere weeks ago. I am more alive, more driven. Perhaps some of that is desperation, the dread of losing my magic, but not all of it.
“Remember, sweet Rose,” he breathes into my ear, sending a shiver down the back of my neck. “The whole world overlooked you, but not I. The world expected nothing of you, but not I. I see who you truly are and how dazzling you could become.”
His hand traces down my arm, over my palm, leaving a tingling trail of ice.
“Sir Faerie,” I say shakily. “Unhand me.”
With a soft laugh, he steps back, his hands falling to his sides. “Who knows? Perhaps at the end of this, you’ll wish to remain at my side.”
“What?” I whisper, turning to face him.
“Clearly something here has awakened you. Is it my company?” He leans closer, until his face is inches from mine, tilted as if for a kiss. My skin prickles. “You are not like other humans, are you, my little witch? You see deeper. You feel the currents of the world.”
“You’re speaking nonsense, as usual.”
But my heart beats fast against my ribs, with panic, revulsion, or intrigue I cannot tell.
One moment, I feel like his plaything, a foolish pet he holds on a string.
And then there are other moments . . . like now.
His winter eyes are fixed on mine, probing and curious, and I feel for the first time as if he is truly seeing me.
It is a startling sensation, to be seen by him, to hold the whole of this immortal being’s attention.
His gaze scours me to the depths of my thoughts, until I feel suddenly very exposed.
And even though I want to look away, I find I cannot.
It’s as if he’s cast a spell, another clever threadless trick.
It is strange. All my life, there has been a part of me longing to be seen, to be understood and valued. Now here is this beautiful faerie, saying all the words my soul has craved to hear.
And I find I want nothing more than to hide.
“When this is over,” he says, his voice soft as falling snow, “where will you go?”
My breath flutters in my lungs. “Back to London, of course. To my classroom and my students.”
“And if you find you have outgrown such a humble position?” His jeweled eyes flicker, touching every part of my face. “What if—”
He is interrupted by a chorus of shouts across the ruins. His head snaps up, and the spell is broken.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, but he’s already walking away, moving with swift steps.
The fae are gathered around one of their own, a willowy creature with a mass of black braids hanging over his shoulders, dressed like the others in a mourning cloak. But he kneels and clutches his side, and even in the dim light, I can see that he is wounded.
“My lord!” he gasps out, when Lachlan reaches him. “I nearly had him! But he came at me through the boundary, with a pack of wolves at his heels! One of them bit me!”
“What are you talking about, Tarkin?” Lachlan demands, kneeling to inspect the faerie’s wound.
“The queen’s Gatekeeper! He was near the boundary line, and I thought—I thought to make him pay for Lorellan. They should all pay, every last one—”
“Fool!” Lachlan hisses, leaping upright, his lean form whip-fast and his teeth bared in a snarl. “You know the orders I gave! No one—no one—was to interfere!”
The other fae shrink back, eyes wide, leaving the bleeding Tarkin to grovel alone. “My lord! I—I thought if he were out of the way—”
“I’ve told you how delicate this endeavor is, you idiot.” Lachlan pinches the bridge of his nose. “What happened?”
“I tried to burn him, but it got out of hand. The wood was drier than it seemed, the blaze spread . . .”
“Oh,” I breathe, grabbing hold of Lachlan’s arm again. “There!”
In the distance, on the eastern edge of Blackswire where the wood meets the moor, smoke rises thick, black, and angry, lit by the red glow of flames below. I realize at once, with a thunderclap of horror in my chest, that the fire is rushing west, toward Ravensgate.
“I have to go!” I cry.
“Rose, wait!” Lachlan says, but I am already gone, running back across the ruins. Lachlan calls my name, but I ignore him, throwing myself through the tapestry and landing in my bedroom in Ravensgate.