Why doesn’t Nandin want his people talking to me? Or perhaps it was the planebender in particular.
I didn’t have a chance to ask. Not that the harpies were likely to tell me even if I did. The hawk-feathered harpy used the claw at the joint of her wing to pull a circular handle, and the wooden door swung open.
The suite they showed me into included three rooms, two of which were each as large as my entire apartment and more opulent than my father’s mansion. The hawk-feathered harpy walked Falin and me through the whole suite while the raven-feathered one waited at the door. Once we’d seen the entire suite she turned back to me.
“Do you need anything?” she asked and then eyed my completely inappropriate ball gown. “Clothing? Food?”
“I’m good,” I said, and then glanced at Falin. He shook his head, which was fine with me. I’d rather not accept any gifts from the fae, and my goal was not to eat while in Faerie—which meant I hoped I found Holly and the accomplice soon.
The harpies nodded and then left without a word. It wasn’t until the door shut and I heard it latch that I realized there was no doorknob on the inside. Falin and I were locked in the suite, the rooms our cage. While it might have been the nicest prison I’d ever seen, a gilded cage is still a cage.
Chapter 33
PC had thoroughly investigated the suite to his own satisfaction and curled up in the very center of a bed that looked big enough to sleep ten, but I was still pacing. I’d told Falin the basics of what I’d learned since he left me at his apartment. I didn’t tell him everything—the shadows in the room whispered, and I was afraid they listened too—but I told him about Holly and the gist of what the accomplice was attempting. Then it was my turn to demand some answers. “So why are you here? In Faerie, I mean. I was more than a little shocked to see you at the winter court.”
“If you stop pacing, I’ll tell you.” He patted a spot on the bed beside where he sat on the edge.
I didn’t join him. If I crawled onto that bed I’d end up asleep. Hell, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t fall fast asleep still standing, but I wanted to talk before I surrendered to sleep. I did stop pacing, though, forcing myself to be still.
“I might have shocked you, but you scared the hell out of me.” He stood and walked across the room to join me, since I wouldn’t go to him. “I returned to my apartment and, well, I imagine you know exactly what I found.”
The aftermath of the gryphon attack.
“The police and the FIB were already there. At first I thought they’d already grabbed you and shuttled you away to Faerie. When I learned they hadn’t, I went out searching for you. I spent most of the night searching any spot I could think of that you might go. Where were you, by the way?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I replied, which was probably true, but again, with the shadows whispering in the corners, I didn’t want to reveal too many secrets, even if these secrets belonged to my father.
“Well, sometime after midnight I returned to your apartment and these wooden blocks flung themselves at me. Then a pen lifted itself and started scratching out letters.”
“Roy.” He’d actually managed to find Falin and get a message to him. Of course, it sounded like it was the wrong message. “So if Roy told you I’d been nabbed by the skimmers, how did you end up in Faerie?”
“It took him thirty minutes to write ‘Alex kidnap,’ and once he got that far, I just assumed . . . Incorrectly, apparently.” Falin looked away.
“It worked out,” I said, and shrugged, but the movement went off course somehow and ended up a slight sway.
“Come on, let’s get some sleep,” Falin said, his arms moving to mine to steady me. “You can’t save the world if you fall over from exhaustion.”
I let him lead me toward the bed, but as we walked I muttered, “I’m not trying to save the world. I’m just helping my friends and—” I cut off as we passed a large ebony desk. In the center of the desk sat a five-inch dagger with an ornate hilt. A dagger that looked suspiciously like my dagger, which I’d last seen when Caleb had dropped it in the hallway of the winter court. I shrugged off Falin’s hands and moved to the desk, the sight of the dagger pushing back my exhaustion, at least a little. “How did this get here?”
The dagger buzzed lightly as I picked it up. It was definitely my dagger.
“Any number of ways,” Falin said, looking at the blade from over my shoulder. “It’s enchanted. This is Faerie and things move unexpectedly. The dagger likes you. Maybe a combination of all that. Maybe something else entirely.”
Right. I fought the layers of skirt in the gown and shoved the dagger back in its holster. However it got to me, at least I was armed again. Like that will do me a lot of good if I need to draw it fast. What I wouldn’t give to have my hip-huggers back, even with the pink chalk print. I resumed my pacing, using the energy that the short adrenaline burst had given me. Falin sighed as I passed him.
“If I could figure out how to open a rift like the planebender’s door, I could search all of Faerie for Holly,” I said, fidgeting with the amulet attached to my bracelet. I’d seen the boy close the rift. Could I open a door as easily? The accomplice could be preparing to attempt the next ritual while we were stuck as guests of the shadow court.
I stopped, rocking back on my heels. I could try to open a rift. I could think of several worst-case scenarios, but none quite as bad as the land of the dead merging with mortal reality, and preventing that was one of the items on my to-do list—once I got out of this room. I lowered my shields. I hadn’t been able to completely drop my shields outside a circle or heavy wards for years without grave essence reaching for me. Hell, even inside a circle, the world always decayed around me and chilled wind tore at my skin. But there was no land of the dead in Faerie. I dropped my shields, and it was as if I’d shrugged off a weight I’d been carrying so long I didn’t even notice it until it was suddenly lifted.
No wonder Rianna prefers staying in Faerie. I could get dangerously used to this freedom. There wasn’t even Aetheric energy to entangle my psyche or for me to accidentally pull into reality. Of course, that also meant I had no magic except the energy stored in my ring, and I couldn’t draw on the grave. The feeling of freedom washed away in a sense of powerlessness, though there was still magic in the air, just not a magic I was used to. But I could feel it, which meant I could touch it.
That didn’t mean I should. I thought back to the skimmers standing around the rift by the river, drawing down energy they never should have been able to touch until one skimmer actually ignited.
I would leave the foreign energy alone.
Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on the space directly in front of my face. There was no Aetheric, no land of the dead, but there were multiple realities. I could feel them. Okay, here goes. Lifting my hands, I focused my will on parting the air in front of me as I forced my hands farther apart.
Reality moved but it didn’t open.
I frowned at the air in front of my nose. I hadn’t managed to open a rift, let alone a door. And I’ve been opening rifts by accident all week. It was just my luck that trying to do something I’d been doing by accident would lead to utter failure.
Well, not utter failure. The space in front of me was empty, as in, no other realities existed inside it. I’d actually cleared a space so nothing but Faerie remained. I reached out with my power and shoved. Reality moved again, bunching around the edges of empty space like a sheet shoved away from the edge of a bed. I waved my hand through the space, using no power.
Nothing happened.
I pushed with power, and reality shifted. Which is weird, but not helpful. Moving layers of reality didn’t help us get out of this room. I reached out again, and then swayed as my knees buckled.
Falin caught my shoulders. “Okay, now I’m insisting that you go to sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re trembling and you can barely stand.”
Okay, he had me there. I leaned back against his chest, my eyes heavy. “You just want to get me in bed.”
He chuckled, the sound vibrating through me where we touched. “I won’t deny that, but I don’t think you’ll be much fun until you get some sleep.”
True.
He leaned down and scooped me off the floor. I lifted a heavy arm around his shoulders and leaned into him.
“Do you love her?” I whispered the question so softly I wasn’t even sure it made a sound, but Falin went stiff around me, every one of his muscles locking as he froze.
“What?”
If he’d heard me, he knew who I was talking about, so I didn’t ask again. As the silence stretched, my chest tightened as if the dread I felt had become a hand pressing down on my lungs, slowing my heart.
Finally Falin said, “Once, I think that I thought I did.”
“Do you still?”
“She’s cold, calculating, and cruel, except for when she wants to be kind,” he said, which I noticed wasn’t exactly a “no,” but he did start walking again.
“Why do they hate you? The other fae, that is?” Caleb, my father, and Nandin all disliked him, and I hadn’t seen much evidence that the members of his own court liked him any better. “And why do they call you the queen’s bloodied hands?”
“Your second question answers your first, at least in part,” he said as he set me down on the edge of the bed. Then he took a step back, and conflict showed clearly in the hard angles of his face. He stared at me for a moment before he reached some conclusion, though it didn’t seem that he liked what he’d decided. He closed his eyes and peeled off his glove. He opened his eyes again as he opened his hand, palm out so it faced me, but he kept his gaze down, not looking at me.
Thick, dark blood coated, or more accurately, saturated, Falin’s palm. That didn’t completely surprise me. I’d seen Falin kill before. Hell, he’d killed, or at least mortally injured, a gremlin to rescue me before we were even friends. The depth of the blood did shock me, at least a little. I could almost see it pooling on his skin, as if it would drip at any moment. How many had to die at his hands for there to be so much blood?