He stalked off. I didn’t know what else to do but grab a drink. My eyes stung, and I was desperate to have something to do with my hands other than twirl my new wedding band around my finger.
The faerie wine was strong, and I should have known better. I had a glass, maybe two, and came to my senses as I twirled on the dance floor, swept up in a crowd of courtiers.
But this was nothing like the revel I remembered from my first night here. It was rotten, like milk that had gone off. The music was in a strange minor key, the laughing faces of the folk looked suddenly like jackals, and the dance floor was smeared with blood.
I looked for the source, concerned that someone had been injured and needed my help, and that’s when I saw them. The first humans I’d seen in the better part of a year. There were a dozen or so of them, all gaunt, wearing rags. Their faces were blank, their eyes glazed over, like they hadn’t even realized that they’d danced their feet bloody. They’d been enchanted by faeries, who stood in the corner laughing uproariously at their torture. And there, on his throne, laughing along, was Bram.
I ran out of the room, back to my bedchamber, but I didn’t lock the door behind me.
Unable to sleep, I waited until the sun rose. I ripped off my wedding dress, pulled on the dress I hadn’t worn since I’d arrived, and left my wedding ring on the vanity. I crept through the castle, whosewalls I now knew well, and followed the spiral staircase around and around until I reached the damp darkness of the dungeons.
The humans from the revel were locked up there in tiny stone cells, covered with filth. They were so emaciated they could stick their entire arms through the bars, their dirt-crusted fingernails reaching for me.
They begged me for help in strange accents, some I could hardly understand. “How long have you been here?” I asked. They couldn’t even remember. But every single one of them had been born in the 1400s. Can you imagine? In that basement for over four hundred years? “When is it?” they asked. I hadn’t the heart to tell them it was now 1848. Or was it? Time there seemed such a slippery thing.
They came from an England where sightings of the folk were common. Parents warned children to stay away from tall strangers in the woods and to never follow music that seemingly came from nowhere. They did not heed the warnings, and they paid the price. Now they were brought up during revels to be used as nothing more substantial than a hit of faerie wine.
They begged me to help free them. I was the first other human they’d seen in four centuries. And what could I do?
The key to their cells was hanging right there on a hook, like it had been hung in their eyeline just to torture them further. I passed it through the bars, but they made such a clatter unlocking it that the guard awoke. He lunged for me, but one of the other humans swung the prison gate hard enough that the guard stumbled backward and I got away.
I ran, as fast as I could, until my legs were burning and I couldn’t catch my breath, out of the palace and back to the woods where I’d first arrived. I shoved my hands at every tree until they were bloodyand raw, and then finallysomethingopened and I was spit back out in the middle of London, my memory wiped clean. I loved him.I loved him.But I couldn’t stay.
There are two truths I didn’t know then that I know now.
The first: there is no greater insult to a faerie than tricking him.
The second: once they love you, they will not let you go.
The fire poker clatters to the floor, and I cross the room to my vanity, not in defeat, but with the knowledge that this will be a different kind of fight. My wedding band lies right where I left it. It glints in the dying daylight, somehow not blanketed in dust like everything else. There’s another flash of metal, and I reach up to find a necklace hung atop the pointed peak of the vanity mirror. My breath catches as it falls into my hands, cool against my skin. I hold it up to the light, and a strangled cry leaves my lips. It’s a necklace with a golden chain, and a smallIcharm,made of pearls.It’s missing one stone, a tiny golden crater, right in the center.
My hands shake asI tuck it down the front of my bodice, where it rests against my heart, then I slip my wedding ring back onto my finger and wait.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I turn to Emmett, nearly fainting in his arms. When I look back up, Bram is nowhere to be seen.
My mother is sitting in the front row, completely still, staring at her hand, where her pinkie finger, the one that has been absent my whole life, is suddenly back.
I turn to my left, to where my attendants stand, and see Olive staring down at her fingernails. I prod at my teeth with my tongue and find that my molar has returned, which explains the blood in my mouth.
A footman reaches for me, but his hands don’t close the distance. They turn to dust, and the footman collapses in a heap, leaving nothing but a crumpled livery on the ground.
Hysterical screams go up as a dozen footmen float away on the wind.
Suddenly, from all sides of the garden, the Queen’s Guard pours in, weapons at the ready. I expect them to surround Queen Mor, protecting her, but without warning, they attack.
Queen Mor struggles against them, her magic flares, dropping five to the ground all at once. Emmett’s father throws his bodyover hers. I can’t tell if he’s trying to take her down or protect her. He lets out a strangled cry and pulls back, his white shirt suddenly crimson with wet blood. It’s spreading quickly, and he’s growing pale. He looks down to see a knife with a golden hilt, buried in his stomach.
Queen Mor snaps her fingers and two guards turn to dust, but she doesn’t see the ones behind her. In their hands are thick chains, and the moment the metal touches her skin, it’s as if she deflates, all the magic suddenly snuffed out. She hisses, like the chains are burning her skin, and is quickly taken to the ground. The guards haul her writhing body through the garden and down the path, out of sight.
The crowd is in such chaos, I don’t think even half of the guests saw their queen being hauled away.
Emmett rushes to Edgar. “Father!” he cries into Prince Consort Edgar’s shoulder. “Father?” Emmett pulls back, his hands dripping with blood.
Edgar wheezes in a wet breath.
“Help!” Emmett screams through the chaos. “Somebody help me!”
