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Rhodri
Eight dead abominations, one necromancer melted into a pus puddle on the floor, and one brave warrior whose body and separated head we will take back to Faerie so that his essence has a greater chance to pass freely to the next life than it would were his remains to stay in the human realm.
My mother’s list of horrors grows longer by the moment.
Sickness invades my gut, to the point that I have to concentrate hard not to bring up my breakfast.
My nausea has nothing to do with the smell of the dead necromancer at my feet, though that is bad enough. It has everything to do with knowing my mother—my own flesh and blood—is so sick and twisted that she would laugh while an innocent person is torn to pieces in front of her. Not to mention that she would deliberately poison a whole bunch of innocents to ensure they do her bidding.
My blood. I want to flush out any trace of her from my veins.
But I can’t. The only thing I can do, is stop her.
The rest of the rogues may think they got away with the other necromancer, but this time, things are different. This time, we know where they went. And we know how to find them.
Maewen directs her team to commence the clean-up, in the way of humankind, arranging for lots of taped off areas, and calling for forensics and photography teams to be contacted.
She gingerly hands over the bracelet to a male police officer, who places it in a plastic bag. She then accepts a new gun and what looks like a double holster from the officer. She speaks quietly with him, gesturing at her sisters. The man nods and walks over to the two banshee women.
Indie and Aleah are clutching one another, quiet now. Is Maewen planning to try and protect them here in the human realm? She must know she cannot do that effectively. Not anymore. The stakes have just been raised, on both sides of the equation.
Mother and Targon will know I’m coming for them.
I move to Mae’s side and clear my throat to gain her attention. She turns to face me and her eyes soften with what looks suspiciously like pity.
I clamp down on my emotions, reining everything in tight. I refuse to let her see anything in me, that might lead to pity. I will not tolerate that. Especially not from Mae.
“You and your sisters need to go to the Winter Court.” My voice is colder than necessary, but the only way I can contain my feelings is to call on the ice of home. “You won’t be safe here—and you can’t keep them safe, either.”
I point to the banshee sisters who are now standing, their arms around each other’s waists. “My mother and Targon are banished, which means they cannot cross over from the Badlands on the outskirts of Faerie into Winter Faerie itself. You could all stay with Lady Renna until we catch Rhiannon and Targon. They cannot reach you, in Faerie. I promise.”
“You want us all to go stay with my mother? She’d hardly like that, Rhodri, I’m sure.” Her tone is incredulous.
“Your mother is... not without her faults,” I say. “But she does love her children. She definitely wants you all safe and well, and I have no doubt whatsoever that she will enjoy having you there for a visit.”
Maewen stays silent while she removes a small holster from her thigh and hands it off to someone. The action flashes her long legs, and I try not to look. I try not to imagine those long legs wrapped around me. Instead, I focus on the larger holster she fastens around her hips, and the two different guns she inserts in the pockets. The dark leather looks incongruous against her white robe, but also somehow quite sexy.
“Please, Maewen, for your own sake and that of your sisters. Go to Faerie.”
I cannot afford to stay here and argue with her. I need to get to the Badlands before my mother and Targon can relocate yet again. Mother might be able to move castles with her magic, but she won’t be able to do it instantly.
Aleah approaches us.
“I can get us there, to the Winter Court,” she says. “When I was there before, Mother told me how to do it.”
“So can I,” Indie pipes up, straightening her white robe and strolling over. “I can get us directly in to Tarrien’s place. We can contact Renna when we get there.”
“Good idea,” I say, as Tarrien calls out across the room.
“Do it, Indie, please. All of you.”
“Good. That’s settled.” I turn to Tarrien. “Time’s running out. They’ll be making plans to move the castle, yet again. We need to make haste.”
He nods, grim-faced. He likely feels as sick as me. From the sound of it, his father and my mother are practically interchangeable in their level of evil.
“Agreed, Your Highness,” Tarrien says.
“You’ve been to her original castle in the Badlands before,” I say. “Lead the way.”
The remaining warriors in the room rally at my side as I mentally communicate with them about where we are heading. An advantage of being a member of the royal family is that winter army warriors are automatically tuned in to my thoughts, whenever I wish them to be.
There are not as many here as I would like, but haste is everything at the moment.
I will call the others forth—those warriors on stand-by at the Winter Court—as soon as I know the exact location of Rhiannon’s castle.
One of the warriors lifts our fallen comrade Annerley in his arms. The severed head rests on the body’s chest.
“Leafor, you head directly back to the palace,” I command. “Take Annerley to the General Council, and explain what has happened. They will know what to do for him, to help his essence pass on. And tell them to reach out to me. We’ll need more troops. I will confirm how many once I assess what we’re heading into and pinpoint the precise location.”
Leafor nods and I lean across and open a portal for him. The rest of us line up, creating a short arch of honor with our swords. Lefor walks beneath the arch, carrying Annerley, and disappears into the light.
“Now, the rest of you, I hope you are ready,” I say. “We are going monster-hunting.”
I signal to Tarrien, who opens a new portal. We prepare to jump, but Maewen rushes forward.
“Wait. I’m coming with you.”
She is still barefoot and dressed only in her robe.
“Definitely not!” I almost growl the words at her. “You need to go to Faerie with your sisters and—”
“Oh, Rhodri. Aren’t we over this by now? You might be the almost-boss of the winter fae, but you’re not mine. Indie and Aleah will go to Renna. I’m coming with you.” She rushes past Tarrien and leaps into the circle of light.
“Maewen, no!”
I reach out to her, grabbing her dark hair streaming out behind her, and follow her through to the Badlands.
***
Maewen
I shouldn’t have done that, is my first thought when I fall out the other side of whatever we were squeezed through into a snow-covered clearing in a forest.
I especially shouldn’t have done that in a robe and bare-ass feet.
“Let go of my hair!” I lunge away from Rhodri and turn on him. “That really fucking hurt!”
“Are you insane?” Rhodri’s voice is equally fierce and he glares at me, shaking his fist. “You could have ended up anywhere! If you haven’t travelled the faerie paths before, you won’t know how they work. You can’t just jump in and let the magic gently carry you along to wherever you want to end up. The paths don’t work that way!”
Once again, he has a point. Still, my scalp stings where his grip pulled far too hard.
I rub my head. “All right. Well, we’re here now. Speaking of...”
I stare around. The atmosphere of the place seems very sad and forsaken. The trees ringing the clearing are leafless, the branches a dull black, as if they died without even having the energy to keel over.
I shiver, and not because of the cold. “Where, exactly, are we? I know you said the Badlands, but where is that? Is it still part of Faerie, but outside the Winter Court? I’m not sure how it all works.”
He opens his mouth and takes a deep breath, then releases it slowly, as if trying to control his temper.
“The Badlands exist on the very edge of Faerie. Near the Nothing. These are not called bad lands without reason. You should never—ever—travel here alone, Maewen. Fae, and other creatures, often end up here when they have nowhere else to go. And the Nothing?” He shudders. “If you accidentally end up there, you will never return. You will simply blink out of existence.”
“Hmm. Sounds like a place to avoid, then.”
A strangled groan emerges from Rhodri. “Maewen, you drive me to distraction.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, and he blinks as if in shock.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard, surely. You have fae ears.”
“I do. And I did. But I want you to repeat it.”
My mouth tightens, but he’s right. It was crazy to jump without thinking.
“Sorry,” I say again. “But I’ve been on this case so long I just want to see it through. I want to help.”
After a moment he nods. “All right. Just stay close.”
“I can do that.”
Nothing I can do about my bare feet, though, so I tighten the belt on my robe and double-knot it in place.
Damn, this snow is cold. I wiggle my toes, trying to get circulation into them. My newly orange-painted toenails look weirdly bright against the white ground.
The painful pang that comes with being in contact too long with something cold is already starting up in my feet and I bite my lip to avoid mentioning it. This is your own fault, I remind myself.
I still have my netting gun which has three more rounds. It isn’t much of a weapon, but it’s better than nothing.
I also have my usual issue pistol with the exploding bullets, thanks to one of my team who handed me the weapon when I was arranging for forensics. I feel much better with that one in hand, though who knows what we’re about to face.
Tarrien and the warriors mill around, waiting for Rhodri’s lead. He stares across the clearing, toward a building that looks like a small castle. It shimmers weirdly. Almost transparent, but not quite. That would be where they brought Indie, before they held her down and tortured her.
She must have been terrified, even before they took her inside. The atmosphere of this place is dark and forbidding, as if danger is lurking just out of view, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm my racing pulse. I tune in to Rhodri, who is speaking to his warriors.
“That’s an illusion. What did that necromancer say about the portal? Outside the entrance? I guess that means over there somewhere.”
He strides off across the field. I’m shocked to see that he leaves no trail of footprints in the snow. None of them do. Instead, they seem to float across the top, moving with a surety that I lack as I stumble after them.
If I’m half winter-fae, surely I should be more in tune with the snow than this? I hope I don’t end up being a liability instead of a help.
Halfway across, Rhodri stops and turns. His hands go to his hips as he waits for me to catch up.
My breath puffs out in a cloud of white in front of my face.
“I don’t know how you do that,” I admit when I reach him, adding when he frowns quizzically, “Run over the top. My feet just sink down into the snow.”
“Ah. We’re winter fae, Maewen. We’re used to it. You would be too, if you chose to accept your banshee heritage.”
Well, that explains why I’m struggling. And it is probably a conversation for another day. He seems to agree with my unvoiced thought, shrugging, before studying my attire as if seeing it for the first time.
“I’m going to do something now, and I don’t want you to get mad,” he says.
I narrow my eyes. “Can’t guarantee it. Depends what you do.”
“This.” He lifts a hand and waves it in an intricate pattern, and my robe unravels and drops away.
“Jesus fucking Chr...oh.” He hasn’t undressed me, as I first thought. Instead, he has dressed me, in a pair of tight-fitting black trousers, thick warm boots, and a loose shirt that retains a remarkable amount of my body heat considering its thin fabric. I even have my own neat holster wrapping my hips once again.
“Well. Thank you,” I say awkwardly. Everyone else is studiously avoiding looking at me. I flash him a quick grin. “My feet, in particular, thank you.”
One of his eyebrows quirks up. “Can’t have you holding us up anymore, can we?”
He turns and continues on before I can respond. It is far easier to move through the snow with proper boots on, even though I still can’t manage to skim across the surface.
When we near the other side of the clearing, our party slows. Rhodri paces partway around the perimeter and back, a look of intense concentration on his face. After a minute or two of searching, he halts.
“Here.” He gestures at the snow, before using his booted foot to clear a space. It doesn’t look any different to me. At least it doesn’t, until I squint and focus hard, and finally discern the faintest trace of a warping in the air above the snow. It looks almost like the warping of air when heat rises up from tarmac.
“The portal is here,” Rhodri says. “Mother set it in place. I am familiar with her magical trace, which contains elements that are very similar to mine.”
As if that last thought is unpalatable, grim darkness descends over his features. The lines on each side of his mouth become more pronounced, and his chin lifts as if about to face a challenge.
He glances around at all of us, his blue eyes icy and pale. “When we travel through this portal, we will find her at the other end. We will find them,” he corrects, shooting a glance at Tarrien. “I don’t know how many of us will survive whatever ensues. You have served our Court well, warriors, over many years. But I will not blame you if you wish to turn back now. This is my fight, not yours, and I will see it through to the end.”
“Not going anywhere, Your Highness,” one says, and the others all follow suit.
Tarrien just rolls his eyes, and pulls his sword from the scabbard. “Let’s do this, sir.”
The prince turns that glacial expression my way. “And you, Maewen... I cannot state clearly enough, that I do not wish you to—”
“Enough talk, Your Highness,” I say, following the more formal address of the others, but also trying to soften my words with a grin. “As if I’m going to let you leave me in the snow where I might accidentally wander into a place called the Nothing and fall off the edge of existence or something. I’m coming with you. I’m tougher than you think.”
He nods. “So be it.”
There is one thing I need to do before we enter. Just in case he’s right, and one or more of us doesn’t come back, there is something I want him to hear. I step up to the prince, resting both of my hands on his muscled forearms.
“You are not like her, Rhodri,” I whisper. “No matter what happens, please remember that, my prince. You’re a decent man, with inner fortitude you are only just discovering. You’ll make a good king, when it’s your turn.”
His eyes flare with light as he stares down at me. Suddenly, I don’t care about the others watching. One or all of us could be dead, shortly. I rise up on my tiptoes and press a gentle kiss to his beautiful mouth. He remains motionless, as if shocked by my action, before returning my kiss briefly and with a wealth of passion.
I wish there was time for more.
More words; more kissing. More everything.
We share a look, a deep look that hints at so much, before I step back and once again pull out my gun.
“Come on, lads. Let’s go monster-hunting,” I say, repeating Rhodri’s earlier words. “Only this time, I promise to hold on to His Royal Highness through the faerie path.”
I grab the prince’s wrist and feel the skip of his pulse beneath my fingertips before it settles into a strong and steady beat.
Against all the odds, every single one of us enters the portal with at least the semblance of a smile on our lips.
