Despite myself, I laugh. Not because it’s funny, because I’m startled. Then I feel awful, especially when she hisses.
I squat down, wincing at the pulling of my stitches. “Don’t panic. I’m sorry. You just took me by surprise. This is why I warned you to keep that charm on you.”
She makes another hissing yowl.
“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “No one likes to hear ‘I told you so.’ Don’t worry. Whatever jerk thought this was going to be a fun prank is about to have a lot of regrets. Come on.”
She follows me, shivering. When I try to put an arm around her, she flinches away with another hiss. At least she remains upright. At least she is human enough to stay with me and not run off.
We plunge into the hedges, and this time the maze doesn’t mess with us. In three turns, we are standing among guests. A fountain splashes gently, the sound of it mixing with conversation.
I look around, searching for someone I know.
Taryn and Locke aren’t there. Most likely, they have gone to a bower, where they will make private vows to each other—their true faerie marriage, unwitnessed and mysterious. In a land where there are no lies, promises need not be public to be binding.
Vivi rushes over to me, taking Heather’s hands. Her fingers have curled under in a paw-like manner.
“What’s happened?” Oriana demands.
“Heather?” Oak wants to know. She looks at him with eyes that match my sister’s. I wonder if that was the heart of the jest. A cat for a cat-eyed girl.
“Do something,” Vivi says to Oriana.
“I am no deft hand at enchantments,” she says. “Undoing curses was never my specialty.”
“Who did this? They can undo it.” My voice has a growl to it that makes me sound like Madoc. Vivi looks up with a strange expression on her face.
“Jude,” Oriana cautions, but Heather points with her knuckles.
Standing by a trio of flute-playing fauns is a boy with cat ears. I stride across the maze toward him. One hand goes to the hilt of my sword, all the frustration I feel over everything I cannot control bends toward fixing this one thing.
My other hand knocks the goblet of green wine out of his grip. The liquid pools on the clover before sinking into the earth under our feet.
“What is this?” he demands.
“You put a curse on that girl over there,” I tell him. “Fix her immediately.”
“She admired my ears,” the boy says. “I was only giving her what she desired. A party favor.”
“That’s what I am going to say after I gut you and use your entrails as streamers,” I tell him. “I was only giving him what he wanted. After all, if he didn’t want to be eviscerated, he would have honored my very reasonable request.”
With furious looks at everyone, he stomps across the grass and speaks a few words. The enchantment begins to dissipate. Heather begins to cry anew, though, as her humanity returns. Huge sobbing gasps shake her.
“I want to go,” she says finally in a quavering, wet voice. “I want to go home right now and never come back.”
Vivi should have prepared her better, should have made sure she always wore a charm—or better yet, two. She should never have let Heather wander off alone.
I fear that, in some measure, this is my fault. Taryn and I hid from Vivi the worst of what it was to be human in Faerie. I think Vivi believed that because her sisters were fine, Heather would be, too. But we were never fine.
“It’s going to be okay,” Vivi is saying, rubbing Heather’s back in soothing circles. “You’re okay. Just a little weirdness. Later, you’re going to think it was funny.”
“She’s not going to think it was funny,” I say, and Vivi flashes me an angry look.
The sobbing continues. Finally, Vivi puts her finger under Heather’s chin, raising her face to look fully into it.
“You’re okay,” Vivi says again, and I can hear the glamour in her voice. The magic makes Heather’s whole body relax. “You don’t remember the last half hour. You’ve been having a lovely time at the wedding, but then took a spill. You were crying because you bruised your knee. Isn’t that silly?”
Heather looks around, embarrassed, and then wipes her eyes. “I feel a little ridiculous,” she says with a laugh. “I guess I was just surprised.”
“Vivi,” I hiss.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Vivi tells me under her breath. “But it’s just this one time. And before you ask, I’ve never done it before. But she doesn’t need to remember all of that.”
“Of course she does,” I say. “Or she won’t be careful next time.”
I am so angry that I can barely speak, but I need to make Vivi understand. I need to make her realize that even terrible memories are better than weird gaps or the hollow feeling that your feelings don’t make sense.
But before I can begin, the Ghost is at my shoulder. Vulciber, beside him. They are both in uniform.
“Come with us,” the Ghost says, uncharacteristically blunt.
“What is it?” I ask them, my voice sharp. I am still thinking about Vivi and Heather.
The Ghost is as grim as I’ve ever seen him. “The Undersea made its move.”
I look around for Oak, but he is where I left him moments before, with Oriana, watching Heather insist that she’s fine. A small frown creases the space between his brows, but he seems otherwise utterly safe from everything but bad influence.
Cardan stands on the other side of the green, near where Taryn and Locke have just come back from swearing their vows. Taryn looks shy, with roses in her cheeks. Folk rush over to kiss her—goblins and grigs, Court ladies and hags. The sky is bright overhead, the wind sweet and full of flowers.
“The Tower of Forgetting. Vulciber insists you ought to see it,” the Bomb says. I didn’t even notice her walking up. She’s all in black, her hair pulled into a tight bun. “Jude?”
I turn back to my spies. “I don’t understand.”
“We will explain on the way,” Vulciber says. “Are you ready?”
“Just a second.” I should congratulate Taryn before I leave. Kiss her cheeks and say something nice, and then she’ll know I was here, even if I had to go. But as I look toward her, evaluating how swiftly I can do that, my gaze catches on her earrings.
Dangling from her lobes are moons and stars. The same ones I bargained for from Grimsen. The ones I lost in the wood. She wasn’t wearing them when we got in the carriage, so she must have got them…
Beside her, Locke is smiling his fox smile, and when he walks, he has a slight limp.
For a moment, I just stare, my mind refusing to acknowledge what I’m seeing. Locke. It was Locke with the riders, Locke and his friends on the night before he was to be married. A bachelor party of sorts. I guess he decided to pay me back for threatening him. That, or perhaps he knew he could never stay faithful and decided to go after me before I came back for him.
I take one last look at them and realize I can do nothing now.
“Pass the news about the Undersea on to the Grand General,” I tell the Bomb. “And make sure—”
“I’ll watch over your brother,” she reassures me. “And the High King.”
Turning my back on the wedding, I follow Vulciber and the Ghost. Yellow horses with long manes are nearby, already saddled and bridled. We swing up onto them and ride to the prison.
From the outside, the only evidence that something might be wrong is the waves striking higher than I’ve ever seen them. Water has pooled on the uneven flagstones.
Inside, I see the bodies. Knights, lying pale and still. The few on their backs have water filling their mouths as though their lips were the edges of cups. Others lie on their sides. All their eyes have been replaced with pearls.
Drowned on dry land.
I rush down the stairs, terrified for Cardan’s mother. She is there, though, alive, blinking out at me from the gloom. For a moment, I just stand in front of her cell, hand on my chest in relief.
Then I draw Nightfell and cut straight down between bar and lock. Sparks fly, and the door opens. Asha looks at me suspiciously.
“Go,” I say. “Forget our bargains. Forget everything. Get out of here.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asks me.
“For Cardan,” I say. I leave unsaid the second part: because his mother is still alive and mine is not, because even if he hates you, at least he should get a chance to tell you about it.
With one baffled look back at me, she begins to ascend.
I need to know if Balekin is still imprisoned, if he’s still alive. I head lower, picking my way through the gloom with one hand against the wall and the other holding my blade.
The Ghost calls my name, probably because of Asha’s abrupt arrival in front of him, but I am intent on my purpose. My feet grow swifter and more sure on the spiral steps.
I find Balekin’s cell is empty, the bars bent and broken, his opulent rugs wet and covered in sand.
Orlagh took Balekin. Stole a prince of Faerie from right under my nose.
I curse my own shortsightedness. I knew they were meeting, knew they were scheming together, but I was sure, because of Nicasia, that Orlagh truly wanted Cardan to be the bridegroom of the sea. It didn’t occur to me that Orlagh would act before hearing an answer. And I didn’t think that when she threatened to take blood, she meant Balekin.
Balekin. It would be difficult to get the crown of Faerie on his head without Oak putting it there. But should Cardan ever abdicate, that would mean a period of instability, another coronation, another chance for Balekin to rule.
I think of Oak, who is not ready for any of this. I think of Cardan, who must be persuaded to pledge himself to me again, especially now.
I am still swearing when I hear a wave strike the rocks, hard enough to reverberate through the Tower. The Ghost shouts my name again, from closer by than I expect.
I turn as he steps into view on the other side of the room. Beside him are three of the sea Folk, watching me with pale eyes. It takes me a moment to put the image together, to realize the Ghost is not restrained nor even menaced. To realize this is a betrayal.
My face goes hot. I want to feel angry, but instead I feel a roaring in my head that overwhelms everything else.
The sea crashes against the shore again, slamming into the side of the Tower. I am glad Nightfell is already in my hand.
“Why?” I ask, hearing Nicasia’s words pounding in my ears like the surf: someone you trust has already betrayed you.
“I served Prince Dain,” the Ghost says. “Not you.”
I begin to speak when there is a rustle behind me. Then pain in the back of my skull and nothing more.
PART 2
22
Iwake at the bottom of the sea.
At first, I panic. I have water in my lungs and a terrible pressure on my chest. I open my mouth to scream, and a sound comes out, but not the one I expect. It startles me enough to stop and realize that I am not drowning.
I am alive. I am breathing water, heavily, laboriously, but I am breathing it.
Beneath me is a bed shaped from reef coral and padded with kelp, long tendrils of which flutter with the current. I am inside a building, which seems also of coral. Fish dart through the windows.
Nicasia floats at the end of my bed, her feet replaced by a long tail. It feels like seeing her for the first time to see her in the water, to see her blue-green hair whorl around her and her pale eyes shine metallic under the waves. She was beautiful on land, but here she looks elemental, terrifying in her beauty.
“This is for Cardan,” she says, just before she balls up her fist and hits me in the stomach.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to get the momentum needed to strike someone under water, but this is her world, and she connects just fine.
“Ouch,” I say. I try to touch where she hit me, but my wrists are restrained in heavy cuffs and won’t move that far. I turn my head, seeing iron balls anchoring me to the floor. A fresh panic grips me, bringing with it a sense of unreality.
“I don’t know what trick you performed on him, but I will discover it,” she says, unnerving me with how close her guess comes to the mark. Still, it means she doesn’t know anything.
I force myself to concentrate on that, on the here and now, on discovering what I can do and making a plan. But it’s hard when I am so very angry—angry at the Ghost for betraying me, angry at Nicasia and at myself, myself, always myself, more than anyone else. Furious at myself for winding up in this position. “What happened to the Ghost?” I spit out. “Where is he?”
Nicasia gives me a narrow-eyed look. “What?”
“He helped you kidnap me. Did you pay him?” I ask, trying to sound calm. What I most want to know is what I cannot ask—does she know the Ghost’s plans for the Court of Shadows? But to find out and stop him, I must escape.
Nicasia puts her hand against my cheek, smooths back my hair. “Worry about yourself.”
Maybe she wants me only her for reasons of personal jealousy. Maybe I can still get out of this.
“You think I performed a trick because Cardan likes me better than you,” I say. “But you shot at him with a crossbow bolt. Of course he likes me better.”
Her face goes pale, her mouth opening in surprise and then curling into rage when she realizes what I am implying—that I told him. Maybe it’s not a great idea to goad her into fury when I am powerless, but I hope she will be goaded into telling me why I am here.
And how long I must stay. Already, time has passed while I was unconscious. Time when Madoc is free to scheme toward war with his new knowledge of my influence over the crown, when Cardan is entirely free to do whatever his chaotic heart desires, when Locke may make a mockery of everyone he can and draw them into his dramatics, when the Council may push for capitulation to the sea, and I can do nothing to influence any of it.
How much more time will I spend here? How long before all five months of work is undone? I think of Val Moren tossing things in the air and letting them crash down around him. His human face and his unsympathetic human eyes.
Nicasia seems to have regained her composure, but her long tail swishes back and forth. “Well, you’re ours now, mortal. Cardan will regret the day he put any trust in you.”
She means me to be more afraid, but I feel a little relief. They don’t think I have any special power. They think I have a special vulnerability. They think they can control me as they would any mortal.
Still, relief is the last thing I ought to show. “Yeah, Cardan should definitely trust you more. You seem really trustworthy. It’s not like you’re actually currently betraying him.”
Nicasia reaches into a bandolier across her chest and draws a blade—a shark’s tooth. Holding it, she gazes at me. “I could hurt you, and you wouldn’t remember.”
“But you would,” I say.
She smiles. “Perhaps that would be something to cherish.”
My heart thunders in my chest, but I refuse to show it. “Want me to show you where to put the point?” I ask. “It’s delicate work, causing pain without doing permanent damage.”
“Are you too stupid to be afraid?”
“Oh, I’m scared,” I tell her. “Just not of you. Whoever brought me here—your mother, I presume, and Balekin—has a use for me. I am afraid of what that is, but not of you, an inept torturer who is irrelevant to everyone’s plans.”
Nicasia says a word, and suffocating pain crashes in on my lungs. I can’t breathe. I open my mouth, and the agony only intensifies.
Better it’s over fast, I tell myself. But it’s not fast enough.
The next time I wake, I am alone.
I lie there, water flowing around me, lungs clear. Although the bed is still beneath me, I am aware of floating above it.