After everything he’d shared with me.
“You don’t need my forgiveness, Norah. You need a way to protect your mind from the darkness.”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s fine, Norah,” he said. “It is nothing to fret about. Focus on the task at hand. The Wilde Fae will not be easy to deal with, and we need to be on our guard.”
The Wilde Fae. The banished members of faerie society. If a changeling failed to pass at the Academy, they were forced to join the Wilde Fae. I’d been warned about them. Kael had told me they were violent and vicious and cruel. And now we were walking straight into one of their villages with nothing more than the weapons on our backs.
But, hours later, when we arrived at the wooden gates of the village, the snarling, mangy-haired guard would not let us through with our swords.
“You want to come into Yarinya? You’re going to have to surrender your steel. No fancy fae outsiders allowed in here with weapons. We’ve made that mistake before. We won’t make it again.”
The fae guard peered through the small square hatch. He had one green eye and one blue, and his teeth were sharp and pointed. He looked nothing like any of the fae I’d met before, and there was a wildness in his eyes that unnerved me. It felt as though it was impossible to predict what he might do next. In fact, I had the strange certainty that evenhedidn’t know what whim might capture him.
“We mean no harm. We’re just here to visit Grim and talk to the shopkeeper there. Won’t take long.” Rourke’s voice was smooth and calm, but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the guard.
“The shopkeeper, huh?” The guard narrowed his mis-matched eyes. “You’re going to have to hand over your weapons then. Otherwise, you can trot back off to your fancy Autumn lands.”
Rourke frowned. Clearly, the Wilde Fae held a grudge against the Autumn fae just as much as the Summers did. We could stand here and talk all day, but this guard was never going to budge. If we wanted to get inside and search for that stone, we were going to have to lose the swords, a fact that did little to steady my unease about coming here.
“If you’d like to turn back now, Norah, then I—”
“No.” I gave a nod and pulled the sword from my back. “It’s fine. We need to speak to that shopkeeper. So, we’ll let you hang on to our swords until we leave.”
A strange smile spread across the guard’s lips. “Very well then. It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors.”
I slid my sword and my dagger through the opening in the wooden wall, and Rourke followed suit just behind me. His expression was a mask of pure calm, but there was something in his eyes that told me he wasn’t thrilled about the situation. But neither was I. After we’d handed our weapons to the guard, the gates shuddered as he cranked them away from the ground.
Moments later, Rourke and I were inside the village. It was a small, dark, and dreary place. There were about forty buildings in total. From a quick sweep of the premises, I spotted a tavern. No, wait, that was three taverns. There was some kind of butcher shop, a place that looked as though it sold weapons and clothing, and then there was a small squat little building in the corner. Wooden blocks had been tacked to the front, spelling out the word ‘Grim’.
All the windows were lit up by torches or candles, beaming a strange orange glow into the dark of the night. It was a glow that highlighted our surroundings, almost too well. Wilde Fae milled around the dirt-packed ground, cackling and shouting and pounding their fists on their chests. There was a blur of a fight just outside the front steps of one of the taverns, and I swore I saw a trail of blood that led from right where I stood to the front doors of Grim.
“Is it always this lively at night?” I turned toward the guard, but he’d already disappeared back up his little tower overlooking the front gates.
Rourke edged closer to me and gently placed his hand on my elbow. “The Wilde Fae are awake at night. They sleep during the day.”
I stared at him blankly. “So, they’re like vampires.”
“If only.” He tightened his grip on my elbow and steered me toward the little hut in the corner of the village. For that, I was at least grateful. We wouldn’t have to stroll through the throngs of revelling fae. If we were quick enough, they might not even realize we were here.
Ha!Unlikely.
When we reached the shop, we strode up a creaking set of stairs and reached a door that was covered in claw marks. Deep grooves had been etched into the surface, as if some wild animal had been desperate to get inside. I swallowed hard when Rourke reached out and trailed his fingers down the wood, and my spine trembled at the thought of walking inside.
Something didn’t feel right. But of course this place would feel wrong. There was something twisted about the magic of the Wilde Fae, as if their power had corrupted them into what they had become.
“Stay just behind me,” Rourke muttered beneath his breath. “And if I tell you to do something, do it.”
I swallowed hard.
“Promise me, Norah. You’ll follow my commands no matter what.”
“Rourke, you’re scaring me,” I whispered.
“Does that mean you’ll do what I say?”
I nodded.
