The Frey Saga Book IV Read online

  Worse, I thought. Every moment, worse and worse.

  15

  Chevelle

  Chevelle had three days to return to court, three days until the moon was solid and the fates would decide.

  It was too long, and it wouldn’t be long enough. He wanted to strangle Liana, wring her cursed changeling neck.

  “Hush now,” she told him, apparently aware of his building aggression despite the fact he’d thus far managed to bite his tongue. “Let us get clear of the plain first.”

  She’d known the price she would cost him. From the beginning, she’d led them all to this point. Not everything could be accounted for, and he suspected a few circumstances had simply fallen into place of their own accord, but Chevelle didn’t believe in luck. Liana had known what Freya meant to him. Even when he hadn’t been her Second, even before she’d become Lord of the North. It might have happened unexpectedly and without preamble, but it wasn’t chance. This was not the fates at play.

  He’d been taken prey by a changeling, and it was going to cost him everything.

  “She was not part of the gamble,” he hissed at Liana. It had been signed into their bargain expressly. He would never have risked her so.

  Liana glanced at him sidelong, her strides outpacing his as Grey and Anvil lagged behind. “I told her not to go after them. I said to leave the halfling to her fate.”

  “You knew she’d never let that happen. This is worse”—he faltered, refusing to imagine what would take place at the end of these three days—“this is worse than before.”

  Liana’s skin flickered an ugly shade of green. “If you would simply stop her from making ill-met decisions and twisting the fates around—”

  Chevelle’s grip on his sword tightened and Liana spoke softer, flipping her hand through the air as if it was all of no consequence. “What is done is done, it doesn’t matter. We have what we need to restore her. The boy, he’s got the key to get her back.”

  The boy. Steed. Chevelle’s jaw clenched before he spat, “That boy is lying near dead in the castle. It’s a day’s ride from here, even if he were well.” He was losing his cool with this changeling; he thought there might only be one fey who tested him worse. He wouldn’t think of the other, the one who had Freya now. The one who was carrying her the opposite direction of the path he walked. Leaving her.

  Liana’s grin was wry. “Have you learned nothing from me, Vattier?”

  Chevelle recognized something in her tone, and it caused him to draw short on his anger. It made him think, even for a moment, that maybe they did have a chance. In all of his years, Liana was the only person who pronounced his family’s name so, as if it were just a designation and not a nasty series of events to be mocked or scorned, to be whispered. As if it were not the things that Asher had done, the rumors and secrets that surrounded a mother who had been cast out by the crown, the shame of a father who had pledged fealty to that same crown. Liana wasn’t elven, she didn’t truly care about their politics or who he was. She wanted something, simple as that, and restoring Frey to the throne was the only way to get it.

  That didn’t mean he trusted her. “It will stay in my possession. Until the moment we make the trade.”

  Liana smiled, and this time it seemed genuine. “I would hope so. I’d never be fool enough to trade with a fey at court.”

  16

  Ruby

  Ruby woke with a splitting headache and two sharp needs. The first was the desire for water, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to drink.

  The second was the strongest of the two, but she’d have to tamp it down, because that was the desire for revenge. And once she’d done that, well, there was no telling when she’d get a drink.

  The ring of trees surrounding them was dark, their jagged leaves blocking sight of the moon. It was there, she knew it was, and it would be nearly full. “Rhys,” she hissed, her voice hoarser than she thought it should be. She hoped that didn’t mean she’d been asleep longer than she’d estimated.

  “Rhys,” she hissed again, throwing an elbow into his ribs before the ropes tying her stopped the move. She’d made contact though, and Rhys groaned and coughed. “Shake it off,” she whispered, nudging him further awake. “We have two days, three at most.” His head lifted, eyes puffy and nearly closed. He didn’t speak, but his expression asked, Three days to what?

  She jerked her chin toward the sky. “The solid moon. When the fates dance.”

  Rhys flinched, his squinted eyes finding the circle of stones, their elf-like forms turned down, curled in among themselves, hands covering their faces and mouths in eternal screams. Shadows shifted among them, lesser fey skittering into the cover of oversized leaves when their guards made any sign of movement.

  “We have to get out of here,” Ruby told Rhys. “And it has to be by tomorrow’s dawn.”

  A screech came from the trees above, lesser fey suddenly jerking on the ropes and woven chains that bound them together and in the air. Acorns plinked off the stone beneath them, bouncing toward the guards’ feet. The air smelled of moist earth and ferns, of lilac and lavender and deep forest moss. Ruby breathed in every scent, searching for any that might be of use. All she caught were more and more of the feylings, acrid and pungent and itching for what was to come.

  They were well and truly done for this time, and it made the venom bite at her tongue.

  One of the guards stood, his glossy skin covered in sturdy armor. He narrowed his eyes at the offending sprite in the trees above, and then the sound of scuffling laced with broken grunts cut short. It didn’t fall to the ground, so Ruby could only assume the guard had tied the thing in place. One more acorn plinked onto the stones, but the forest was otherwise silent. He must have gagged it as well.

  “What are your orders?” Ruby called to the closest guard. “I mean, aside from watching us hang?”

  He ignored her, as he’d done to the various high fey spectators waiting in the trees. Twenty of them, she estimated. Watching and hoping to catch some glimpse of the action to come.

  To see the halfling fey.

  Her mouth tightened automatically, and she could feel the burn of her skin against the spelled ropes. She’d never get out that way, anger would only get her hurt. Fire wouldn’t win any battles here.

  “You know, I’ve trained for this,” she told him flatly. “For all my years, I’ve known this day would come.”

  The guard’s head didn’t turn toward her, but she could tell he listened. He said so in the cock of his chin, the tension of his spear arm.

  “That bit with the others, that was just for show. I wanted to get here, needed to be near him. You see that, don’t you, can sense it in your bones?” She whispered the last bit, letting it feel like their secret.

  The guard stood still, breathing slow and even. He didn’t scan the treeline, didn’t skirt the stones, only stared into the distant shadows.

  She was getting to him. No one wanted to anger the keeper; they’d all be tense, second-guessing their every decision.

  This was too big a game, the stakes too significant.

  “No matter,” she told him. “It’ll all be over soon.” She sighed, as regretfully as she could muster, and glanced at Rhys where he hung beside her. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so annoyed. She grinned and bumped him with her elbow.

  Her eyes returned to the guard, that smile the only weapon she had left. “Personally, I cannot wait.”

  Rhys sighed and straightened, apparently resigned to follow whatever path she had in mind. His armor had been stripped off him, likely dumped in the forest along their way. His black cloth shirt had weathered it well though, neatly crisscrossed rope in place of a once well-supplied array of leather weapon-holster straps. She was glad their captors had tied her and Rhys so closely, and that the dried latticework of vine behind them allowed her to see movements that he or the guards made, but knowing what else was behind the trees would have helped. It was dark night in t
hat forest, the most dangerous stretch of time in fey lands. It made it hard to make a good assessment regarding their escape, and right now, she wished she had a better idea what awaited them behind which tree. Because Rhys’s hand shifted against the knotted twine, and she had the feeling things were about to get sticky.

  “Ha!” she shouted, hoping to distract at least one of the guards, but before she got another word out, she was suddenly falling, twisting, hurtling through the air upside down. She had a moment of weightless panic, and then she was laughing, realizing what Rhys had done. He had a weapon and it wasn’t just metal; it had been spelled against fey magic.

  Her Seven had been ready for battle. She was breathless, and the laughter was real—a full thrill of the hunt had taken over and instinct threw her hands skyward into a flip as Rhys cut the last rope free. She landed in somersaults, tumbling toward the closest guard within reach. Her slim boots wrapped around him, hands slithering under his arm and over his neck as they dragged tangles of broken rope along. The tug on her raw wrists was background noise to the rest of her senses. Her eyes counted the dangers, picking off guards one by one. Her hearing had gone sharp, singling out threats in the cheering crowd. Rhys was moving now, sliding down the web of ropes with the slender blade he’d somehow managed to keep at his side. The forest was screaming around her, lesser fey screeching and squawking like a river of birds. The trees came alive with fire, but it wasn’t Ruby’s. This was their theatre, the halfling fey their prize.

  “Behind you,” Rhys shouted, drawing her free of that single-minded focus and the fury of the gathering multitude. She was of the Seven now, she didn’t fight for herself alone. She slid over the guard she’d been holding, leaving his back where hers had been. She was moving, arms and legs and fire both shield and weapon as the need to escape and the call for revenge spurred her on. A conflagration had lit the clearing, the stone structures dark and eerie as their shadows danced in flame. This was why they were leaving. This was not how she would end, not as stone frozen for eternity in this dark mirror of the fey high court.

  “Three!” Ruby shouted over her shoulder, warning Rhys of the new guards who seemed to materialize out of the trees. He moved, but not as fast as he should have. The flame was too hot for him, the smoke clouding his eyes and filling his lungs. She cursed and spun backward, edging close to him while fighting her own way through. Two of the high fey took flight, but she couldn’t tell if they were headed for backup or a better vantage point to fight. There were too many, more and more and more. She needed her magic. She needed a true weapon.

  Rhys’s blade was slick with blood, his unarmored chest and legs soaked with both his and that of the fey. She reached for him, pressing a hand to his side as they fought back against back, and urged him toward what was left of those burning trees. It was dark night in the cover of forest and there were too many fey here to make a clean break, but none of that would matter if she didn’t keep Rhys alive. Her own eyes began to water, the smoke in the clearing thick and noxious, but a cold wind swept through, bringing air scented with violet and lily blossom. It was entirely out of place, and swiftly overtaken by horehound and amaranth.

  “Move,” she told Rhys, reaching out with her magic to the pulsing energy that lay beneath the earth. She’d tried before, but she couldn’t draw on it, and she spat a curse, a little blood, and an order for him to lie flat on the ground. He obeyed her—or passed out from lack of air, she wasn’t sure—as she pulled a living vine from the canopy beyond them that had yet to burn to its death.

  It was a whip, hard and fast and laced with thorns when she shoved her magic within it. Her wrist was battered, her body weak, but she snapped it, hooking the vine around one guard’s leg to yank it solidly from beneath him and then again as soon as it curled free. A staff struck out, barely missing her, a spear grazing her leg. She swung the whip above and beyond her. Though it lacked the bite of her own and its metal spikes, it could pull a fey from the air, it could give her a breath and a second to plan ahead.

  It could get them off the blasted ground and into the trees.

  She flicked the whip upward, rolling down and over Rhys’s form. The whip struck the fey above her, biting at them only enough to annoy and infuriate, and she wrapped an arm and a vine around Rhys’s body. Her power pulsed through her, shoving the vine and its claws high into the trees. It caught a limb and dug in, and Ruby was moving once more. Two fey sliced at her magic, but the vine grew swiftly with the last of her effort. She would get them to safety. She would do at least this one single thing.

  Ruby was panting and gritting her teeth, but the air had become cleaner, and Rhys choked in full breaths. He shoved the short handle of his blade into her palm and took hold of the vine, drawing them both higher into the trees. She wrapped a quick knot around the dagger, and her new whip was suddenly a true weapon. Spelled metal. Magic and steel. She grinned again, certain it was an ugly thing, and then swung.

  She’d nearly started to believe it might work when the air was swept from the clearing.

  She gasped, gulping for a breath that wasn’t there, watching with sinking hope as all the smoke and fire was swallowed into nothing, sucked into some invisible space that left their battlefield dark and silent. When she finally got her breath again, she had nothing to say.

  Rhys said it for her. “Pitt.”

  It was the way one said an epitaph. But Pitt wasn’t dead, he was there, cold and colorless, the most beautiful and terrible thing Ruby had ever seen. Her grip went slack on the makeshift handle of the vine; there was no need for a weapon now, not when your opponent could not be beaten. The chatter of the feylings had died with Pitt’s entrance, but now it rose again, a giggling current of celebration and half-formed words. It didn’t matter how things went, they were in for a show. The high fey were quiet though, not as careless with their actions in the presence of this new creature. A good show was well and fine, as long as they weren’t the ones punished at the hands of the keeper.

  The changelings were fey, Ruby supposed, but she had never felt any sort of kinship to their line. She couldn’t imagine it, if she were honest. Couldn’t believe that part of her blood could in any way be similar to a being like this.

  “Halfling,” Pitt mused. “I hope you don’t intend to leave before the festivities even begin.”

  Ruby swallowed her first response. If Veil was attractive, Pitt was pure temptation. There was no strut to him, no grandeur or show. He didn’t need it. He was fascinating, captivating, a specimen of pure pleasure and allure.

  Ruby despised him.

  She wiped her bloodied palm on her pant leg. It was not fear. She wouldn’t be afraid of him, not this thing. “What do you want of me, changeling?”

  He laughed, a broken huff of air. His dark eyes never came away from her, never took notice of the watching crowd, never cared that Rhys, an elven lord’s high guard, stood at her flank. Pitt’s head tilted to the side as he examined her, far longer than was strictly necessary. She shook her head. “Swine.”

  His skin flicked a few shades warmer, mirroring Ruby’s fair tone. His spiky white hair slowly went metallic, somehow making the slant of his ears and the line of his neck more interesting. Subtle as it was, the action seemed to say he could be like her, he could be fire. But he would never be like Ruby.

  And that was why they wanted her.

  “You know I’ll always have the upper hand,” she told Pitt. It was true, but only by the farthest stretch, and only with regard to her gift, because everyone knew a changeling fey would rather be strung inside out from the trees of Hollow Forest than allow themselves to be bested. He would turn her to stone and keep her forever before he let her win.

  She refused to look at the monstrous sculptures scattered through the clearing. Instead she stared at Pitt, the dark eyes that narrowed and shifted as she watched them, the long fingers that curled around his oaken spear. He was all lean muscle and form, but Ruby knew talons waited beneath. “I have something you don
’t,” she continued, the weight of Rhys beside her making her less brave. She could not lose him for her own loose tongue. “Stringing me up won’t get it.”

  Pitt waited, expression eager. Ruby couldn’t know if it was for her words or her blood.

  She straightened, facing him full-on. “I propose a trade.”

  17

  Steed

  Steed’s thoughts were slow and sticky. He’d been injured a time or two before; he knew Thea’s healing method, and this was not it. There was something terribly wrong with that, but he couldn’t quite bring to mind what.

  “Thea,” he started, pushing against the solidness of the table. What am I doing here? Why aren’t I in my rooms?

  Where is everyone else… anyone else?

  He wobbled, and Thea’s hand shot out to catch him. His skin tingled with reminders of tonic and potions, recently rinsed clean. He remembered Thea doing so, and in turn the question he’d drawn short on only heartbeats before. But there was something else, some nagging, urgent compulsion that he couldn’t quite place.

  Something he needed to do.

  He shook his head, reaching gingerly for a shirt as she held his arm. He glanced down at her, the height of the table putting them closer to eye to eye than he’d ever recalled being. But no, it wasn’t merely the table causing that. Thea had grown.

  His hand reached out to touch her, brushing the skin over her cheekbone. The scar that sat below the corner of that eye had faded, feather light and probably not noticeable to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. But Steed knew Thea, had known her. It had been ages, hadn’t it?

  “Why are you here?” His words came out harsher than he’d meant them, such a juxtaposition to his touch. I’m touching her. He snapped his hand back, an apology, and he shook his head again. He needed something to drink, anything to wash this poison away.