The Frey Saga Book IV Page 9

  “I’ve come to visit you,” she told him. Her voice was low, somehow an apology in itself, and then she turned to pour clean water into a smooth stoneware cup. “You weren’t well, so I offered to stay with you.” She handed him the earthen mug, its surface too smooth, too cold against the haze that surrounded him. “To help you get back on your feet.”

  He sat the cup on the table, sliding the shirt over his head. It was a thousand blades in his side, a spiked chain being dragged from chest to shoulder.

  “May I?” she asked him, indicating the laces of his shirt with a tip of her head. It was only a courtesy, as she’d apparently already done far more with whatever treatments had him so deep in this fog.

  Her fingers were thin and nimble, making quick work of the ties. She handed him the cup again, as if she simply knew he needed to drink. He held it longer this time, taking in the narrow room and its scents and the bars on the door.

  “I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” he told her. “But there’s something I need to do.”

  He’d be damned if he could figure out what it was at the moment.

  She placed her fingers over the skin of his forearm, and the touch seemed a thousand degrees warmer than the cup in his hand. “Stay with me a moment longer,” she said. “I’ve come all this way just to call on my old friends.”

  His eyes fell to her hand on his arm, not yet a restraint, but a ready grip. He sat the icy cup on the table beside him. “No, that’s not why you’ve come.”

  She blushed—or flushed, it was hard to tell with Thea. He suspected anger over chagrin, despite the lightness of her tone. “You’re right,” she confessed. Her voice went gentle, all honest concession to anyone who didn’t know better. “I got restless.” She sighed, absently brushing a long, dark lock away from her neck. He couldn’t remember when she’d taken her hair down. Or how long he’d been holding her hand.

  “I wanted something different,” she told him. Her eyes were deep brown, framed by thick lashes. She used them well, lowering her head to look through them. He remembered Thea’s eyes, the way they sometimes smiled when she didn’t.

  Steed liked a girl who could smile, one who could cut your heart with her laugh.

  “Didn’t you ever feel that? The need to fit in, to be useful. To make your mark.”

  The cup was in his hand again, but this wasn’t that he’d forgotten the scent marking it. This was Thea. This was sleight of hand.

  “You’re lying, Thea. I may be under a tonic, but I know you at least that well.”

  She colored, definitely a flush of irritation. Her eyes narrowed. “Take your medicine, Summit.”

  He knocked the cup to the floor.

  Her gaze never left his. “There’s more where that came from.”

  He stood.

  She straightened.

  He fell.

  Thea grunted, going forward and nearly to her knees to catch him in time. “Oh for the love of—why can’t you just behave, you stubborn—”

  He leaned on her hard, closing his eyes against the spin. “Don’t talk to me like your livestock,” he murmured. There was no vehemence in the words, not now. He needed her.

  He needed—something.

  “I have a thing I need to do,” he told her. It was important, wasn’t it? Enormously important.

  “Aye, I suppose you do,” she answered. She hefted him up, propping them both against the table, and leaned back to appraise him.

  His mouth pulled up into an unsteady grin. An assurance that might have been a lie.

  She pointed a finger at him, at the grin. “You’d better behave, or it’s right back on the table with you, potion and all.”

  “Water,” he said. “And I promise.”

  She glanced at the cup again, but Steed stopped her with a word. “Ruby.” He meant to explain, but he was bringing up the past to someone who’d known them both. It felt good to say it though, important somehow. “All the tonics and elixirs. She’s been sneaking them in my drinks for years, a bit in food, a bit on my skin.” He laughed. “Oh, but we had a row of it, fighting and bickering every spring when the plants were new and her mixes at their strongest. You have to trust me, she’d say. It’ll be worth it in the end.”

  Thea’s mouth had gone slack, but it wasn’t at the description of Ruby building up Steed’s tolerance to potions.

  It was the something else.

  “Ruby,” he said. “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby.” That was the thing, the nagging something he needed to do. But Thea’s face. “Where is she?”

  Thea’s jaw snapped shut, eyes darting the room, but it was too late. His memory was returning.

  The tonics were too weak.

  Which meant they weren’t Ruby’s tonics.

  Thea must have seen the realization in his face, for her hands went up, palm out, and she backed away slowly. Corralling him. “Stay calm,” she told him. “Just wait here for a bit and—”

  “Thea,” he started.

  “No.”

  He took a step forward, unsteady despite his advantage against these drugs. “Where is Ruby? What happened?”

  The pain in his side was suddenly sharper, jolted in the move, and he remembered a golden fey and a knife tipped with poison.

  He remembered the scream. The armored forms of seven spiders. The library. The book.

  His sister.

  “Ruby,” he said again. “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby.” He forced the memories to come back, for every terrible image to lead him to another. And he had it, the awful, awful truth.

  They had her.

  “Water,” he ordered. Thea didn’t move straight away, and he could tell she was considering another attempt at sneaking him the drugged drink. “We need to help her. We have to go; we have to—”

  Thea shook her head. “You don’t understand. While you were injured, Liana—”

  Steed stopped her again. “Liana was here?”

  Thea’s shoulders came up, her face in a helpless grimace. She pointed at his side.

  “Liana placed this tonic on me.”

  Thea nodded.

  “For Frey.”

  “What?”

  Steed shook it off, waving a hand toward the basin. “That doesn’t matter. Clean water, now. We need to go.”

  She did as he asked this time, but questioned him as she went. “Go where? You don’t even know where to look for her. What are you planning to do?”

  Her implied in your condition was the least of his concern, but a plan, some idea of what he actually did intend to do… He considered for a long moment, the fog still heavy in his mind and through his senses. “Junnie,” he said. “We have to find Junnie.”

  18

  Thea

  They shouldn’t have left the castle.

  She should never have let them leave.

  It was too late now, even as she glanced nervously over her shoulder, even as the other sentries—a few dozen of Edan’s most experienced men—watched the forest for them.

  “I don’t understand,” Steed told her, “how it is that you know where Junnie is.”

  Thea’s attention came back to her charge. Her patient. Her superior, now that she was a castle sentry. In training no less.

  How did she get herself into these situations?

  “I know a lot of things, Summit. You’re not the only one with spies.”

  He eyed her over the rim of a metal cup as she finished working on his side. “I don’t have spies. If you mean Ruby, she never tells me anything.” He put down the cup. “Anything I understand until it’s too late, anyway.”

  He’d been chugging clean water from a hefty supply of canteens since they’d left the castle, but he’d still managed to fall from his horse twice due to the effects of the medicines. For any other man, tumbling from a moving animal might seem reasonable given the situation, but this was Steed. He was as comfortable on a horse as his own feet.

  “Fall one more time, and I’m not going to be able to stitch you back together. You’re starting
to look like shredded leather here.”

  He took a deep breath, shrugging his shirt back into place. He wore no plate or armor, but if they ended up where she was afraid they were going to end up, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Armor wouldn’t be enough.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What do you know of Junnie and how to find her?”

  She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face, gathering the sides to run a quick plait. She’d had no more than a second to prepare at the castle, not even a chance to draw breath for an explanation for Edan. “She’s going with me,” Steed had ordered. There wasn’t much room for argument after that.

  Steed snatched a piece of leather from her belt, offering it up as he watched her tie the end of her braid. “You asked me why I was here,” she answered, tucking the strip into itself and securing the hair in place. “That’s why. Rumor of Junnie. Rumor of the rogues. Rumor of halfling fey. Something was coming, and though I didn’t know what precisely, I knew I had to come.”

  Steed didn’t seem surprised at the mention of the rogue bands becoming restless or the talk of halfling fey, so she knew he must have heard the same. But how would he not know of Junnie? Because those rumors were true?

  “They are worried about the child?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “So, now you know my secrets, tell me yours. I’m about to risk my neck here, Summit. I’d like to know why.”

  “Ruby,” he said simply.

  “This isn’t just over Ruby.” She found herself pointing that blasted finger at him again and forced it down. “The truth. I deserve it.”

  He trusted her, she knew he did. If he’d had a doubt, she’d have never asked him to share it with her. But Steed wouldn’t risk her safety. He’d tell her if she was in over her head.

  “You know how Ruby was brought into this world, about my father and a particularly devious fey.”

  Thea nodded. She remembered Ruby’s mother, even though she’d never met the fire fairy personally. It had been such a legend in Camber that she suspected anyone even passing through would have known. It wasn’t just that that the fairy had seduced a recently widowed horse trader, that she’d managed one of the only successful halfling births in recent history, but that the child she’d brought into this world had come with a special gift. She’d been venomous, and the fey woman had paid for the treachery with her life.

  “By all rights,” Steed told her, “my sister never should have survived.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a leather-bound register wrapped in cloth. “But she did. And her mother named her Ruby.” He patted the book, his strong hands dwarfing it in size. His eyes met hers. “Because she knew.”

  Thea opened her mouth to ask what it was the woman knew, but Steed was back on his feet. “Let’s go,” he told her. “We have a long ride to get there, even if Junnie has moved as close as you say.”

  Thea straightened to standing, shrugging her belt back in place and twisting her lip. “I hope you’re right, Mister Summit. Because we’re getting farther and farther from the castle with every galloped step.”

  Steed looked toward the mountain, the height of it disappearing beyond heavy fog. “It isn’t the castle I’m worried about.”

  19

  Chevelle

  Liana screamed. It was not the screech of an angry woman, it was the soul-splitting scream of an ancient changeling who had planned and plotted and lost the key that would allow her to win. It was anger spelled to life.

  Chevelle couldn’t say he disagreed with her.

  “How long have they been gone?” he barked.

  Edan glanced at the sky. “They could be near the base of the mountain by now, as long as the Summit boy keeps his seat.”

  Chevelle’s eye narrowed on Edan, who quickly realized his mistake. Steed had taken to spending leisure time among the sentries, playing cards and betting stakes. They’d all become too casual. Despite his apparent charm and easy humor, Steed was no boy.

  He was High Guard. He was one of their Seven. It was bloody well time he started acting like it.

  “We’ll never catch him,” Grey said. “It’s an extra day’s ride, and even if they’ve stopped…”

  “We could go on to court,” Anvil offered. He gestured toward Liana, whose screaming had ceased and glass-breaking had commenced. “She could fly down there, grab whatever she needs from Steed—”

  Liana picked up a stoneware pitcher and slammed it onto the library floor. “Is it so easy?” she chided. “Flit down there like a reeking pixie and snatch whatever I need? Are you a fool?”

  Anvil shrugged. “I’m not the one who let him—”

  Liana’s finger shot up, pointed dangerously at Anvil’s broad face. “Don’t you say it.”

  “I’m going without you,” Chevelle told her. “Do what you will, but I won’t abandon her to the fey.” They knew he meant Freya, he didn’t need to say her name.

  He wasn’t certain he could, in any case.

  “It’s a fool’s errand and you know it,” Liana shot back. “If you don’t have the key, there’s nothing for you to bargain.”

  “So what is the key?” Grey asked her. “We fake it; we do whatever needs to be done.”

  Liana sighed, her fingers curling into claws and then free again. She was green beneath the eyes, the rest of her barely retaining silver-gray. “It can’t be faked. It isn’t possible.”

  “You underestimate us,” Grey said.

  She smirked, testy fidgeting momentarily ceased. “That I do not. It isn’t something you can fake. The key is laced with fey magic, with a particular fey’s magic.”

  There was silence for a long moment, the hard truth of it sinking in. You couldn’t counterfeit that kind of marking. It could only come from a few of the most powerful high fey. Chevelle had seen it once…

  “The diary,” Chevelle said. “The key is the diary, marked by Ruby’s mother. The fey want that journal.”

  Liana’s eyes shot to Chevelle, apparently unaware he had knowledge of the fey markings and appalled that he’d so easily named the key.

  “Wait,” Grey said.

  But Chevelle was moving, quick and deliberate.

  “Do you mean the one we carried with us, the one you bartered the stone for?” Grey said, hurrying to keep up. “That diary?”

  “No,” Chevelle answered. “Not Freya’s. Ruby’s.”

  He’d said it. He’d said her name and it had not crushed him. Because he had a plan. It wasn’t over.

  Liana rushed in front of him, confusion slipping through her mask. “It isn’t here, the Summit boy—”

  “Anvil’s right,” he told her. “We go on without Steed. We don’t have time for anything else.”

  “But you’ll never—”

  “We’ve tried it your way,” he answered. “It’s done. You lost.”

  Liana drew up short, the entire procession stopping to keep from running her down.

  “Stay here if you want,” he offered. “Heal Rider. Keep out of harm.” He leaned forward, making it clear he was done playing her games. “It doesn’t tally, Liana. We do this our way, because it’s the only way they can’t win.”

  “There isn’t another diary,” she whispered. “It has to be that which is marked.”

  Chevelle smiled. “And that’s why I trust only Ruby.” Curses, she must have planned this ages ago. Even as she fought beside them for her own life. She’d kept it so much a secret, even Grey hadn’t known two books existed. His chest was alight; he was ready to run all the way to the fey court. It hadn’t been a lie. He did trust Ruby. There was a promise in his stare when it met Liana’s. She would not win this bargain.

  He trusted Ruby. “Even the half that is fey.”

  20

  Frey

  Dawn broke at the edge of the great forest, tipping the leaves with gold and red. I wasn’t sure I had slept at all, my eyes raw and muscles weary. My boots felt heavy on the glass-tiled floor, the rising sun throwing reflections across every surface of the room.
>
  Veil’s home was all elegance, every bit of it impressive and lovely. I wanted to hate it, I wanted to be miserable and violent and curse him to his ruin. But I was tired.

  I felt beaten. Fooled into capture, submission, a slow and painful death.

  All I could see was sunshine, bright and blinding and touching every space of the open room. It was too warm. Too alive.

  “I’ll send for some food,” Veil offered.

  He’d been quiet all night, knowing I wasn’t asleep as I sat rigid against a plush amber chair. He hadn’t spoken though, leaving me be but not leaving me alone. It wouldn’t be safe here. Not for an elven lord. The lure of having their own lasting legend would be worth the cost of death—or whatever horrible punishment was meted out by Veil—to too many of the fey.

  “You know I won’t eat it,” I told him. “Not even from your private reserve.”

  He nodded and I forced my gaze to move from the windowed view of the treetops to focus on him instead of that empty skyline. Empty of mountains, empty of the place I called home. Empty, that was how I felt.

  Hollow and alone. Like everything we’d been through had been for nothing.

  Like I’d lost every single thing that mattered.

  Flora and Virtue had left us, probably posting new patrols at early light, but the basin and supplies they’d brought in waited on a carved ivory table. “Clean up,” he said. “We have work to do.”

  We would, wouldn’t we? The coming days would be filled with preparation, with planning. That was what the fey did. We would be seen, there would be presentations, the phases of the ceremony, and right now my skin was caked with remnants of river clay and signs of battle.

  I couldn’t make myself care.

  “There is still a chance,” he told me. “If you come with me now, let me show you—”

  “A chance for what?” I snapped. “For you, for this court?” Life was suddenly returned to my limbs and I was standing, fists clenched and feet ready to fly. “For your kind to destroy everything on our side of the boundary?”