3. Aldrin
I am falling, falling, falling, through a blackness so thick I cannot see beyond a few spans.
The snarling, rasping voices of demonic creatures are all around me.
Those horrifying monstrosities have fangs and claws as long as my fingers.
Leathery wings, branching horns, scales.
I swear they keep changing forms—sometimes beasts on four legs, at other times almost humanoid.
It is not the glimpses of those Nightmares that turn my blood to ice and set my heart racing. That have my mind reeling with a spiral of dark thoughts.
Keira is at the mercy of my enemies.
And I have no way to save her from their cruelties.
We have been crashing in and out of inky darkness for hours now, perhaps the entire night, darting from one point in Spring to the next.
This magic allows fae to teleport between locations cast in shadow, but each move takes time as we are broken down to darkness itself and reformed, plummeting across great swathes of space.
It is an impressive ability, especially considering only a few of this party hold it and bring the rest of us along with them, even if it feels like leaping off a cliff each time and dropping through open air.
The blackness evaporates around me in receding tendrils of shadow as I hurtle toward the ground. I manage to get my feet beneath me and land in a crouch before I drop on my ass. These bastards have caught me off guard enough times.
I find myself in a territory of twilight, caught right before the dawn.
I look around warily when we are not immediately whisked away to another location.
A heavy mist hangs over this place. The sky is suspended in a silvery glow with the stars and twin moons shining faintly through.
A hint of the sun’s rays peeks out from behind mountain ranges that stretch to the horizon.
We are in the unclaimed lands between the Starlight and Sun Courts. Both are strange to me: one in perpetual night, commonly cursed as the Shadow Court, and the other in perpetual day.
Those horrendous beasts that accompanied me to this gods-forsaken place lick at the air with forked tongues and scurry past on four legs, their slick black exoskeletons or pale, saggy flesh making me shudder. Some have no eyes, and slits in place of their noses.
My senses go on high alert as I prepare for an attack from uncontrollable demons.
I pull away from one that has an exposed skull for a face and bony, branching antlers.
Its entire jaw unhinges, revealing three rows of needle-thin teeth as it…
laughs. As it jokes with another creature that is half snake and half man.
Gods, they all look primed for death and dripping with venom. Maybe, despite these low fae being a horrid sight, they are no more mindless beasts than Kai or any other kelpie…just foreign to me. I run a hand through my hair as I watch them warily.
Assassins of Belladonna rise from crouches around me, their dark indigo robes kicking up in the breeze, their faces hidden beneath their hoods. There are both high fae and the demonic forms of low fae among them. I suddenly realize those monsters around me are skilled members of this order.
The four horsemen of the Wild Hunt are the last to materialize out of the shadows that still curl low around us like the thickest smoke.
Little is known about them, only that they are a force to be reckoned with and can turn the tide of battles with their mere presence.
I don’t know if there are only four members or more, and only recently discovered that they are linked to the Assassins of Belladonna.
Perhaps the Wild Hunt members are their elite force, or their leadership. I will find out soon enough.
One of the equines rears up, kicking front legs in the air that are nothing but exposed bone, matching the ribs and skulls visible through their shaggy black hair.
They are similar to the horses of the human realm, if the latter were discovered dead in a ditch after months.
I wonder if horses were bred with demons to create these.
I stand my ground, ignoring the cold sweat that slides down my spine as the damned horsemen prance in circles around me.
Their faces are hidden, but their armor is enough to inspire fear.
It is of polished metal with snarling, demonic skulls for helmets and the ribcages of their conquered enemies for ornamentation over their breastplates.
I could have majorly miscalculated this move.
They could easily cut me down where I stand.
A single member of the Wild Hunt is famed to have unrivaled power and skill, and I am facing four of them.
“Aldrin. Exiled King of the Spring Court. These are your trials,” a strong, feminine voice rings out from behind a horned helmet that hides her identity. “These are the rules: pass the trials or die. There is no turning back. The Assassins of Belladonna move forward or perish.”
My blood runs cold. No one truly knows what the trials entail. By the darkness, no one even has an inkling of where their base is located, including me. We could be anywhere.
“Your first trial is to scale this mountain to our Haven of Death.” I turn sharply to the masculine voice behind me.
“You will find the bones of those who have failed scattered up its heights. Everything you encounter will try to kill you. The trees, the poisonous water, the vermin, and especially the flowers.”
He raises a long arm coated in metal plate and long bones, pointing to the peak of the smallest mountain, whose foot we stand upon.
Clouds hug jagged rock faces, sheets of ice and sporadic forest alike.
Flowering plants cling to every nook and cranny—not the kind I am used to.
The kind that is designed for death, not beauty and fertility.
“Do you accept this challenge, or do you yield to your fate at the end of our blades?” a third voice asks.
I raise an eyebrow.“It is not much of a choice you give me.”
The female speaks again and I whirl around to her.“You had more choice than most. Either we hunt you for the rest of your life under the commission made against you, or you take the trials and join our order.”
She doesn’t need to mention that it was Titania’s bottomless purse that purchased their services to assassinate me.
Or that, since they take conflicting commissions, I could have hired them to attack the High Chancellor as well, and waited in the human realm until the job was done.
But I will not make that woman a martyr to her cult-like following.
They would use the excuse of her death to rally behind a false injustice.
I don’t have the time to waste, not with Keira in my enemy’s clutches.
She could become collateral damage.
I will turn this order of assassins upside down. I will pass the trials that very few survive, then challenge their leader for ultimate control over the elite force. When I return to the Spring Court for my woman and my retribution, I will have this deadly army at my back.
I spread my arms wide, a false, cocky half-smile spreading across my lips. “I accept the trial.”
The words are hardly out of my mouth when inky shadows pump seemingly out of nowhere. They wrap thick claws around each member of the party, who disappear in a blink, except for a single hooded assassin.
“Well, that was rude,” I mutter.
The assassin tilts their head, then a reverberating sound escapes them. I scowl at that laughter targeted at me.
“You are either incredibly confident or incredibly stupid. I can’t decide which it is.” He pulls back his hood to reveal a mess of long, dark curls, penetrated by two thick ram’s horns. The low fae has navy-tinged skin, with dark indigo runes marked all over it.
“That makes two of us,” I grumble. “Probably both. Desperate, too.”
“Ahh,” he says with a smirk. “All who come to us are desperate.” He grabs me by the shoulders and swings me around to face the mountain with surprising force.
“Remember, the plants here are either poisonous or release hallucinogenic drugs, especially if disturbed. Earth magic won’t help you.
A touch is still a touch. Their compounds leach into the soil and the waterways, so don’t eat or drink a thing.
The trees are sentient and fucking sociopaths.
They have serious anger management issues because no nymphs venture here to tend to them.
I probably would too if I were rooted to the ground.
Oh, and watch out for the nixies. They have a hell of a bite and turn frenzied on high fae blood. ”
“Why are you helping me?” I ask.
“Contrary to popular belief, we want candidates to pass the trials and join our ranks…if they are worthy.” He slaps me hard on the back and I stagger forward a couple of steps.
I run a hand through my hair, but it freezes halfway across my scalp as my eyes roam up and up and up all those leagues of deathtraps to the temple at the apex. “Thanks?” I mumble with uncertainty.
“No worries, and good luck…ah…what was your name again? It doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t know my name?” I scowl at him.
“Why learn a dead man’s name?”
He damn well knows my name. I’m sure he learned all sorts of things about me when he was commissioned for my death.
“Get to the top of the mountain and prove yourself worthy of my time, and I will learn your name.” The assassin laughs at his own joke, revealing massive canine teeth.
“My name, though—that is important…if you survive. I’m Dante, and I will be your guide through your trials. Hopefully, for more than this one.”
Then he winks out of existence. One moment he is there, and the next, completely gone, no shadows or slow transition.
Some fucking guide.
I stand there with an impossible task ahead of me and no idea how to begin.