4. Puck
Chapter 4
Puck
I stride through the vast hallway toward the queen’s quarters, fighting the urge to glance over my shoulder. The Sluagh bested me. But all is not lost. I still have the Hunt. Styx could have killed me, but he didn’t. Perhaps he is as impotent as the others.
The sense of being watched comes from within, that is all. It is the dragon clinging to my soul with his blackened claws.
“You can’t outrun me, fool,” the Baleful Hunt’s mocking laughter in my mind grates like nails on a chalkboard.
“Perhaps not. But I can send you to your nest at the Cabinet,” I retort, suppressing a shiver.
“Oh, but then who will keep you safe? Who will strike fear into the minds of your enemies?”
I focus on the murals hiding behind wild vines on the walls. The longer the queen slumbers, the more feral her magic grows. By spring, thorny botanicals will smother the artwork completely. Tittering wild, tiny faeries hide behind trembling leaves, their laughter mocking my failure.
“Be gone, leeches.” I stomp my boots and snarl. “Leave Her Majesty’s magic alone.”
At their inaudible, sing-song taunts, I dash a hand through the vines.
“My, my, how far you have fallen, Puck,” the Baleful Hunt taunts.
“Don’t call me that.”
“But that’s what they all call you, hmm? That’s what She calls you.”
My steps falter as I pass her favorite scene. The first Puck, the original Robin Goodfellow, stands on a rock playing the panflute, his eyes alight with mischief. Flowers adorn his stubby horns, and tiny Folk dance around his furry, cloven-hooved legs. Puck was a prankster, a whimsical practical joker. Always the life of the party. Always making her laugh.
“And when have you made her laugh lately, hmm?” the Hunt mocks.
“Shut the fuck up.”
It’s not until tittering tiny Folk erupt in peals of laughter that I realize I spoke aloud.
“I would rip that mortal tongue from your throat for your impudence.”
“Why don’t you?” He thinks to threaten me, but he needs me. Unless another Radiant bonds with him, he is without a host.
“Watching your imminent self-destruction is all the more entertaining.”
I inwardly snarl at my baleful passenger and press on. “You seem so sure of that, but you’re wrong.”
“And why’s that, fool?”
“Because I am a survivor.”
“Oh, yes, you survived death from that Sluagh rather dexterously. Sheer talent.”
Fury simmers in my blood, but I resist the bait. “We are more alike than you think. You should be welcoming me, not threatening me.”
“You and I can never be alike, mortal.”
“I am mortal no more!” I roar and rip a chunk of thorny vines from the wall. Blood drips from cuts in my hands, but magic knits my flesh. “See? I heal.”
“If you say so.”
This is pointless. I am the master. He is the dragon. I am?—
My gaze snags on the mural I revealed behind the vines. The pearlescent painting depicts a circular table of dragon-bonded Radiants surrounding the queen. They are the Shining Host, the trusted inner circle who counsels her. Each has eyes of a different color, reflecting their elemental dragon. The bonded beasts themselves rise behind each noble, their wings spreading like incorporeal angels.
The Baleful Hunt’s presence at the council reminds me that I now have a seat at that table, not the House of Stone. In fact, so long as I have my position ratified, nothing can stop me. I may have connived my way into this role, but don’t all faerie revere trickery and devilry? Don’t I deserve a place among them?
“Not if you can’t stabilize the security of Avorlorna while she slumbers,” the dragon scoffs. “Need I remind you who takes over from the Shining Host if the threat to our safety is deemed too high?”
The Knights of the Queen’s Hive.
Hatred simmers in my gut.
Setting off again, I shut out the stony quips from my mind until I arrive at the open, intricately carved double doors leading to the queen’s sleeping chambers. The two guards, both Keepers of the Cauldron, are absent.
I glimpse a flash of pink, yellow, and white and quickly duck behind the door. The light, sing-song chattering of Titania’s ladies-in-waiting filters out to me.
“Oh, whimsical winds and dancing moonbeams, Moth! When your whispers reached my ears, I nearly mistook you for a changeling of the Unseelie Court.” Tinkling laughter ensues, and then she continues. “Your tall tales sound like you have sampled too much faerie wine.”
“By my heart, dear Cobweb. I swear it is true.”
“A dragon, you say? Bonded to our dear, chaotic Puck? Why, the very stars must have shifted in their celestial dance to allow such an unlikely union.”
“Ah, but consider the Puck of old, the true Goodfellow. Now, there was a spirit who might have danced with dragons!”
“Indeed, this pale shadow is but a firefly to our dear Goodfellow’s blazing star.”
“Tut-tut, ladies,” Cobweb says. “We mustn’t gossip.”
A pregnant pause. Then laughter erupts like silver bells, cascading their mirth about the room.
My fists clench so hard that I reopen the wounds, but I hold my breath. There is more to witness here for me to use.
“Heed my words, sisters. Our impudent imposter has pirouetted into a tempest he cannot fathom. The House of Stone seethes with fury.”
“They say the newly crowned Earl, his blood as old as the deepest caves, means to challenge our faux Puck to a duel.”
“No! Surely not! Even the moon would hide her face from such a spectacle!”
“’Tis it not a riot of possibilities? He wouldn’t accept the duel, would he?”
“If he does not, he may lose the queen’s esteem.”
“But the ancient laws are woven into the very fabric of the Old Code. The duel must be walked on two feet alone, from first light to last shadow. Neither claw nor paw may touch the sacred ground. No wings may lift, no winds may carry, and even the gentlest breath of a dandelion’s wish is forbidden. Two-legged they must start, and two-legged they must end.”
“Then our hapless pretender’s fate is sealed, as surely as winter follows autumn.”
Hapless pretender?
Never before have I felt so different, inferior, and mortal than this moment, listening to these ladies-in-waiting faeries. I remind myself Titania plucked me from nothing to be her Shadow. I won the trials on my own merit, and she rewarded my bravery with transformation.
“She hardly had a choice, hm? The gods themselves enforce the prize of a dream come true,” the Hunt sneers.
The dragon’s scornful silent remarks grate on my last nerve. Who gives a fuck how I came to be here, or if I don’t speak in riddle or rhyme? I have eons to learn. Time is fluid for me now, despite what those fucker Subterranean Sluagh think. They are my true purpose, my vow to the queen. I promised her I would neutralize the threat of their true identities becoming public, and even if things didn’t turn out as I’d planned, I succeeded.
Fox is stone, regardless of his missing public confession about Sylvanar’s death. Styx has been released, but there’s no indication he is unsealed. If he had access to his full powers, he wouldn’t have thought twice about wrenching my soul from my body.
I will keep a close eye on him, but he sounded too confused to be the threat Titania fears. With that dispensed, I can focus on eliminating the Wild Hunt or investigating why the queen fears a silver-haired mortal.
“A mortal with fae ears,” the Baleful Hunt reminds me. “Who seems to have suddenly broken the curse Her Majesty placed on her countenance?”
“Shut up.”
Holding my head high, I barge into the room, satisfied when their tinkling bells clatter into a gasping chorus of discord.
Standing nearest to me by Titania’s briar-throttled bed, Cobweb raises a hand to her lace-covered throat. “By the stars! Your arrival, my lord, is as subtle as a pixie in a china shop.”
I quickly check my beloved to ensure all is well within her eternally twilight-lit chamber. Gossamer curtains of spider silk shimmer in a nonexistent breeze, casting ever-shifting shadows. She remains unmoved, her hands clasped as she dreams.
It has been only days since her presence graced me, yet the greenery smothering her bed now emits a pungent scent of wild herbs and moonflowers, making my nose twitch. And those tiny, luminescent pesky creatures flit among the leaves, tittering and mocking, their glow pulsing in time with her slow breaths.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Lord Goodfellow, rolling in like an unexpected storm on a midsummer’s eve.”
I whip my gaze to Mustardseed where she stands, hips cocked, charm-encrusted skirt askew. Her fists clench around wild weeds. One of the tiny Folk buzzes into her yellow coiffed hair, and she swats it away, never once breaking the formation of her genial smile. Despite what the Baleful Hunt thinks of me, I am no fool. I detect the barb hidden in her voice like a thorn beneath a petal.
“Have you perhaps misplaced your manners in some mortal’s pocket,” she queries, “or did you trade them for a pair of muddy boots to trample our delicate mushroom circles?”
I glance down and lift my boots. She is right. Mushrooms have grown overnight.
“Yes, my lord,” Moth adds as she daintily sidesteps the sleeping Weaving Hunt, now also wrapped in brambles. “Pray tell, what gale of chaos or whirlwind of folly has blown you into our queen’s tranquil chamber with such . . . unseemly haste?”
One only needs to glance at her sugary pink wispy hair wrapped in a beehive to know where Fairy Floss found its name. Only she utters words laced with poison, not sweetness.
I let the Baleful Hunt shine through my eyes and enjoy watching their charms tremble as they quake with fear. “You three are obviously failing in the one job you have. Look at the state of this room. Soon, she will be swallowed by the very nature that feeds her.” I give a dramatic pause, then tap my chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is time for Peablossom to return to the palace. She has, after all, heeded my instructions to the letter since she was banished.”
Their bevy of apologies sounds like water gushing onto a tin roof. Their attention to my beloved disgusts me. But for them to toe the line, I can’t push them over it. I must tread carefully to wake without a thorn wedged between my shoulder blades during the night.
“Leave us,” I demand. “I will fix your ineptitude myself.”
They curtsy and lavish me with empty compliments. As they reach the door’s threshold, I say sweetly, “Oh, and ladies.”
“Yes, my lord?” They face me together, their arms linked, their faces holding no hint of the respect they owe me. I was going to let them off with a warning for gossiping, but it’s clear they need a reminder of who Titania left in charge.
I summon magic, feel it gush into my veins, and then flick their eyebrows from their bewildered faces. Lumps of multicolored hair land like caterpillars on the greenery. Before their shock morphs into outrage, I waggle my finger and smirk. “Tut-tut, ladies. You mustn’t complain or gossip. It lowers the tone, does it not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
An irritating itch crawls across my cheek as I wait for their curtsies. I scratch at it absently, feeling something gritty beneath my nails. Frowning, I examine my fingertips, finding a fine, sand-like substance. For a moment, unease trickles down my spine. But no—it must be nothing more than dried sweat or debris from the overgrown vines.
To the ladies, I gesture for them to leave.
“Ensure you return daily,” I remind them. “Our queen would be horrified to wake in such subterranean conditions. And ladies . . . we are smiling, yes?”