Chapter Thirty-Five
Lachlan is dressed in armor, his silver breastplate exquisitely engraved with stars and moons.
His hand rests on a sheathed sword, and his white hair hangs down his back in a long, tight braid.
He is glorious and terrible with all trappings of the human world cast aside.
And with the ward destroyed, he wasted no time closing in on us.
His host of exiles are also dressed for battle, silver and shining all, like something out of a story.
They carry scarlet pennants that snap in the lowering wind and magic torches with silvery flames.
Sylvie sees Lachlan and gasps with remembrance, the sight of him enough to shatter the fog of the memory spell he’d put on her.
She pulls close to me, and I put an arm around her as we both rise.
Captain plants himself in front of us, his fur coated in ash, his hackles high as he snarls.
The MacDougals stand to the side, solemn and pale, looking between us and the faerie king.
Lachlan steps forward and slowly claps, his eyes black ice.
“Well done, my little witch,” he says. “Well done indeed.”
I reach behind my back to grasp the Dwirra branch. I wonder if he knows it is withered and dry thanks to Sylvie’s channeling. I wonder if that will matter to him.
“You enchanted her,” I spit. “She nearly died for it!”
“Nonsense.” He looks at her, his eyes greedy. “My niece is strong, despite her regrettable human blood.”
“Niece?” Sylvie whispers.
“Did you know who she was all along?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “She was the one variable I hadn’t accounted for, and it was cleverly done for Morgaine to hide her here, in the mortal world, with her magic suppressed to hide her.
But the moment I touched her, I knew. I felt the fae in her stir, her blood weak and undernourished, but beginning to awaken—thanks, I believe, to your influence, Rose. ”
A cold hand grips my heart, as the threads connect in my mind, the full pattern of events finally coming together.
I understand at last why Conrad has so vehemently denied Sylvie her magic.
Her faerie blood must be tied to her power, and as long as she did not channel, it remained dormant.
Then I came along, thinking I knew what was best for her, seeing too much of myself in her eyes, and in teaching her to Weave, I unwittingly exposed her. I look at Sylvie in dismay.
“Now,” continues Lachlan. “I believe you have something for me?”
Yes. The reason Conrad sacrificed himself. The only hope I have of saving him. I take out the branch; its white bark has turned gray and the leaves are gone. Will it still be enough to restore his power so he can stop Morgaine before she hurts Conrad—if it isn’t already too late?
“Give it here,” Lachlan says. “Give it to me, and your debt will be paid.”
But something pulls at my mind, a whisper of hesitation. There is more to this pattern. He always has schemes within schemes. Nothing is what it seems with him.
“Rose. It is minutes to midnight.” He holds out his hand. “What are you waiting for?”
The whisper grows, the unfinished pattern wild and desperate and screaming to be understood, louder and louder until, in a burst of clarity, I do understand.
Sylvie.
Horrified, I step back.
The pattern’s final thread snaps into place. I see at last the terrible twist hidden in his words and how he has trapped me yet again.
According to the deal we struck, if I give him the branch, he will be unable to harm Conrad. But I remember all too well his words: I will not harm your precious mortal Norths.
I look at Sylvie. If I’d known then what she was, I’d have seen his words for what they were, and the poisonous barb he’d hidden in them.
If I give him the branch, I might save Conrad and myself.
But the cost would be Sylvie, with her immortal blood. I see that as plainly as the ring of thorns engraved into Lachlan’s breastplate. When his full power is restored, nothing will stop him from killing her or bending her to his dark purposes.
Once again, I find the cost too high.
The only hope she might have now is to escape while he is still in his weakened state. And I made a promise to Conrad, and I will keep it.
Looking the faerie in his silver eyes, I unwind the sea silk from my wrist and wrap it thrice around the branch.
“Rose . . .” he says, his tone warning. “Give me the branch.”
“No.”
I channel fast, my heart clenching at once, but I force the energy through my body and into the precious sea silk even as my fingers are still Weaving the fire knot.
The branch ignites at once. I drop it and step back as it blazes up, then crumbles to ash. A thin trail of smoke curls up between us, sinuous and pale.
“Foolish,” sighs Lachlan.
“I won’t help you conquer Elfhame.” My heart begins to writhe, the pain returning with hungry vengeance, creeping from the edges of my vision, his anger in every stab.
“You’ll remain weak and your power broken, and you’ll diminish and fade like a .
. . a mortal, like a—” I gasp and clench my breast, my strength draining from me.
Lachlan only laughs.
“You ought to have given it to me,” he says.
“Without your power—”
“My power? Witness my power,” he scoffs, then spreads his hands. He begins to channel the way Sylvie did when she put out the fire, his pupils silvering over. Wind stirs; the ashes and soot layered over the ground shiver and then begin sweeping toward him. Captain barks, snarling like a wild wolf.
Hearing a sudden crash behind me, I whirl and see vines springing from the earth.
They grow up and over the half-destroyed manor, thick as ropes, then thick as trunks.
They push into the broken windows and wind over the eaves like the tentacles of a kraken consuming a ship.
Mrs. MacDougal cries out, and Sylvie gasps.
“You still don’t understand,” sighs Lachlan, still channeling, as his vines wrap and weave over Ravensgate. “It was never the branch I needed, it was the breaking of the branch.”
I remember the way the queen’s palace had begun to splinter apart, red sap leaking from the walls.
“The Dwirra,” I realize.
“It is dying,” confirms Lachlan. “Such was the weakness of the Dwirra—that no mortal should harm it, lest it wither like a blighted stalk. Morgaine’s fragile haven is collapsing, and she and all her fae will soon be driven out into this world.
The Dwirra will fall, and with it, the World Below will be destroyed entirely. ”
“How can you rule it if you destroy it?” I cry.
“Oh, Rose.” He smiles. “I never wanted to rule it.”
Understanding dawns; of course I should have seen it sooner. The way he spoke of Elfhame, with disgust and disdain, disparaging his people for withdrawing beneath the world and hiding like rabbits. It is not Elfhame he wishes to conquer at all.
It is our world.
The World Above, London and Edinburgh and Liverpool and these moors.
The lands the fae once reigned over as near gods, their original kingdom. That is what Lachlan covets most—the glorious lost days of his people’s zenith, when mortals existed to bow and serve and sacrifice themselves for their beautiful and terrible overlords.
I gaze at him, feeling horror and anger, but most of all, surprisingly—pity.
I feel, for the first time, as if our positions were reversed.
Even as I stand dying before him, the weight of his cursed debt crushing my heart, I look at him and see that for all his might and beauty, he is small and desperate and destined to fail.
It is a strange thing, to look on a god and see only a fool.
But he is a fool who will kill thousands of people before he realizes how impossible his dream is. And I will be the first casualty.
“You have to know that will never happen,” I cry. “There are not nearly enough of you, even if you were all at the height of your power. We have rifles and bullets now, Lachlan. We have iron enough to nail down the sky. You said it yourself—magic is fading from the world.”
He glowers; I’ve angered him.
“There is still time to change that,” he snarls. “The tide can yet be turned.”
Looking down at the broken bits of the Dwirra branch, I realize it doesn’t matter whether I can talk him out of his mad venture.
The damage is already done. By destroying the Dwirra, he is forcing the other fae to join him.
With nowhere to retreat to, they’ll have to either fight with him in hope of taking back their old lands, or else die like the mortals they despise, sickened and poisoned by our iron world.
In destroying the one safe haven they had left, Lachlan has thrust all his kind into a battle for their survival.
That is what he meant by restoring his strength—his strength of numbers, all the fae united under his banner, and Morgaine left with no one to rule at all.
Would she join him, I wonder, seeing no other alternative but a slow and painful demise?
Likely he would kill her outright no matter what, and Sylvie too.
I sink to my knees and cry out, my vision blackening, my consciousness slipping. The pain is sharp and pointed, and this time I know there will be no more fending it off. My heart is shattering piece by piece, and the shards drive into my lungs.
Lachlan’s eyes move on to his niece, as if I am already forgotten, as if he considers me already dead.
“Come here, Sylvie North,” he says.
“No!” She blazes with defiance, holding fast to my hand still. “Fix Rose now! Whatever you did to her—”
“You’ve awakened to your immortal self, beloved niece. Don’t you know what you are? Pledge fealty to me, spin a vowknot of loyalty, and you will reign as a queen.”
“I don’t need to bow to some nattering old fool to be queen,” she snaps. “I’ll be and do whatever I please, and right now, I’m thinking I’d like to smash your ugly nose in.”
He blinks, looking taken aback, and that is all the time Sylvie needs, apparently.
She’s been Weaving all the while, I realize, pulling thread from a tear in her skirt, hands behind her back. It is the knot I taught her to animate a broom, which makes sweeping a dusty floor a moment’s work.
But Sylvie doesn’t use it on a broom.
Instead she turns and channels fast, before any of us have finished digesting the fact she wove it at all.
From the rooftop of the manor, a dozen stone gargoyles launch themselves from the eaves with stony rumbles. They dive, shrieking, at Lachlan. Captain barks and lunges at the faerie too, but Sylvie shouts his name, and he turns back to us.
While the faerie scrambles to fend them off, drawing his silver sword and knocking one from the air with a metallic clang, Sylvie pulls me up and the MacDougals run forward.
The old couple help drag me into the house, and Sylvie slams the doors shut behind us and the dog. The air here is still smoky, and everything is charred and covered in soot, but now great swollen vines twist through the house as well, like fat snakes.
“He’s coming!” Sylvie shouts, glancing out a window then pulling back as a silver-tipped arrow slices through it and impales a vine with a squelch.
Leaning heavily on Mr. MacDougal, I follow Sylvie and Mrs. MacDougal up the stairs, clambering over vines and spaces where the steps burned through entirely.
Charred bits of wood fall from the ceiling, the house groaning as if it is doing all it can to hold itself together.
Captain snuffs the doors and singed drapes, his hackles still raised.
The front doors crash open, one coming entirely off its hinges, and I catch a glint of silver armor in the doorway before we turn down another corridor.
“It’s no use,” I gasp out. “There’s nowhere to run.”
“We’re not just giving up!” Sylvie says.
We press deeper into the house, hearing the fae advance behind us. They hack at vines with their swords and kick down doors. I hear a crash and hope the ceiling caved in on Lachlan, but then I hear him shout out, “You cannot possibly elude me, niece!”
“Is he really my uncle?” Sylvie asks Mrs. MacDougal.
“Aye, lass.” The old woman shoulders open another door and ushers us all through. “It’s why your brother withheld your magic from you. He and your mother knew if you began channeling, it’d only be a matter of time before your faerie blood stirred.”
Sylvie looks delighted, even as her murderous kin pursues us deeper and deeper into the ruined bowels of her house. “My faerie blood! I knew it! I knew I was terribly special!”
Mrs. MacDougal groans and drags her down another corridor, then up a stairwell. I’m so racked with pain, my eyes dancing with dark spots, I cannot even tell where we are. Lachlan is getting closer; I hear him knocking at the walls, sweetly calling out my name and Sylvie’s, toying with us now.
In my fevered, anguished mind, his voice warps into a gross imitation of my aunt’s; his sword hilt thumping on the walls becomes the rap of her heeled boots.
Terror courses through me, tangling the years into a great, impossible knot, until it seems I am eight years old again.
Where is my hidden passageway now? Where is my tunnel through the walls that will carry me to safety?
Then I realize: I know exactly where it is.