THE SEVENTEENTH

 

A bruise purpled Zane’s jaw when they brought him back to me. I didn’t have time to ask what had happened before they grabbed me by the fur of my hood. Zane spun, but the heavy door slammed shut between us.

My fingertips tingled on the walk to a snowy cove behind Timber Castle. The gray Winter skies toiled overhead, swelling and darkening to a murky sea. I jumped at a pop in the forest.

I was shoved toward a stump-chair next to a table and told to sit. The Evergreen Host questioned me about being a Trite, about my knowledge of the King of the East, about my desire for the Crown of Pines.

I admitted as much as I could: No, Eliot Gray was not an emissary, and he was not my husband. Yes, I was a common-blood. When asked how I’d entered Winter, I cracked a smile and said, “That’s a long story.”

A woman with intense, olivine eyes watched from the side of the cove. Every so often, she hummed, and the snow quivered. I felt the sensation of needles pressing in the sides of my head, and I squirmed in my seat. My hands slapped the tabletop when I couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop!” I begged, blinking through moisture.

“Melody…” the Queen of the Pines emerged from the shadows, twirling a silver dagger and eyeing my shaking fingers.

The olivine-eyed woman paused her song, but the foggy breath from her lips curled toward my skin, leaving a trail of prickles. I worried they’d done this to Kaley.

“Try another one,” the queen insisted with ice-and-stone eyes.

A cruel smile formed across the singer’s mouth, and she parted her lips. This time, the hum carried words. It was like they were embedded into the tune, playing through my mind:

 

You’ll have a place around our table mount

All the food you like

Plums and sweets, cakes, and pies

All the food you like

Come and join the feast

 

Something tugged in my abdomen. Deep hunger growled, and my gaze tapped off the cove’s surfaces, looking for the food she spoke of. I imagined a great feast, a colourful display of sweets, cakes, and pies. My empty stomach groaned, and I wrapped an arm across it.

A platter appeared before me and I sprang back from the table, tripping over the stump. My eyes widened at the glistening white apples, the bowls of ice berries with drizzled syrup, the steaming pile of herbed meat, and the hot cup of soup.

“Is that…real?” I whispered, inching closer on my knees.

The queen appeared past the platter, the needles of her dress sharpening into view. “Feasting. Gluttony. Greed. That is how my people are controlled, common-blood,” she admitted. “I just keep feeding them.”

My eyes wandered to the singing woman. I watched her lips barely move, vapour spilling from her mouth. “It won’t work on me. I’m not greedy,” I objected, but the queen’s palms hitting the table caused me to jump.

“Yes, you are,” she said, and my vision filled with bright light bursting around a rectangle. My breathing raced as the rectangle shifted, the creaking of an opening door filling my ears. Through the opening I saw a familiar hallway—and Grandma.

My grandmother grabbed the wall for support, tilting a framed portrait of Sylvia and Quinn. She dropped her cane, her hand flying over her chest.

“Grandma!” I screamed, but the door slammed shut. “Wait, please let me go through—”

Tears fell on my fingers as the door swung back open, slicing my words. A boy appeared; his shaggy blond hair was drenched from the pounding rain where he sat against a brick wall. He was alone until a man encompassed by dark, curling smoke approached and knelt down. The boy lifted his head, revealing the face of my brother, but on a skinny, poorly dressed body I hardly recognized. The man murmured and held something toward Winston. It looked like a needle, and my chest tightened. As soon as Winston accepted it, the darkness around the man spread into ribbons like serpents, all rounding on where Winston was curled into a ball.

“Is this a real door?” I cried. “If it’s real, please let me go through…”

The entire scene vanished, leaving me back before the queen. The singing woman’s song became a screeching set of nails on metal, and I cringed.

There was no ripping of fabric in the heavens, no light bursting over my path, no paint-like colours swimming in the air, or white birds with rainbow eyes. But I dug deep for an old memory of being tempted once before in a dark forest, and to a being of music and light that had found me then…

“Stop.” My threat halted the last note on the singing woman’s tongue. “Or I’ll start singing back.” My lashes lifted, my eyes narrowed, my orb heated beneath my shirt.

She looked at me like I’d turned into a bear. I raised my trembling hands, gold and silver words forming across my flesh down to my fingertips. I could have cried. I wanted to shout at the words, “Where were you?!”

I stood, coming around the stump, eyeing the queen.

Suddenly, the queen grabbed her dagger and sliced. My hand flashed up and ice tore from the ground, a cold handle latching around my wrist as the shards constructed a shield. The dagger slammed into it, and she gaped.

I did too.

Our eyes met.

An eerie tune tore through the cove, filling my head with flickering visions of the rectangle door, and my stare fired to the singing woman as mutated, gray flesh covered her face. A bone-shuddering growl ripped from her throat, releasing a swarm of flies that blotted out my light like a dark mouth coming up from the ground to swallow me.

I didn’t remember passing out.

 

 

 

 

My heels landed on damp stone. Wails of fallen faith chilled my skin. Everything smelled of rain, rot, and death. It was too dark to make out forms, but the appetite of the feastbeggars was palpable through the tunnels.

I extended my hands—this was it. This was my chance to free the believers…

My face fell.

The gold and silver words were gone.

I flipped my hands around to see, but both sides were the same: plain, pale skin.

I looked around the tunnel, blinking at the dark turns.

Wake up, Helen! I tried.

A sound scraped around the tunnel’s corner, and I flattened against the wall.

“She’s here!” A collection of echoing whispers rushed right and left, coming from everywhere.

“Find her!” The same slew of a thousand whispers.

The scent of sour gnome flesh filled my nostrils, and I slapped a hand over my gagging mouth. Shouts bent around the tunnel. I felt needles—in my head, on my skin, stabbing my heart.

I slid down the wall and pressed my palms against my eyes. “Wake up,” I tried again. “Wake up!” My nails dragged down my cheeks.

When I dropped my hands, my eyes fixed on someone, and a scream drove up my throat.

Asteroth Ryuu’s silver eyes had turned black. Gray patches spotted his skin; his once-diamond white hair was stained with black speckles like burns. He was silent, staring like a lifeless doll. I trembled as I used the wall to stand.

“Found you.” His beastly whisper sailed into my chest. Asteroth’s mouth hadn’t moved.

I ran, catapulting around the corner, jogging up a set of stairs, following the shouts from those in iron bars. I slowed by a shredded curtain where a tall, black stone reached high into the darkness, covered in carved names. Many of the names were stroked out, but two rested at eye level inside a deep, engraved circle:

 

 

Summons of Death for:

Edward Green

The coward

&

Cane Endovan Crimson-Augustus

The renounced

 

 

Pounding footsteps filled the tunnel, and I leapt through the tattered curtain, tripping down a triad of stairs. I skidded to a halt right in the middle of the Patrols’ cages.

Cells on either side of me erupted with surprise, questions, and cries:

“Carrier!”

“Trite! Run!”

“Get out of here!”

I spun to the boys in raven-black and lifted my hands, trying to summon the power I knew was in my veins. I shook them.

Feastbeggars crept toward me in torn robes, reaching with crooked fingers. But smoke drifted into the tunnel, and they halted. Their onyx eyes swam. “The master has come!” Their whispers rushed like wind as they bowed to someone behind me.

Mirkra cried, “Run!” and a feastbeggar pounced toward his cell.

I couldn’t move.

Nightflesh was silent, like he wasn’t breathing.

My watery gaze fell to my Revelation Orb flickering light beneath my shirt. A quiet hymn touched my ears; a tune I knew.

“Zane?” I rasped, spinning. I blanched when I realized what I’d done.

Hidden in the darkness, a tall shadow watched me from behind a metal helmet.

 

 

I gasped awake, the warmth of my orb dissipating at my chest. Someone held me, the scent of pine and mint flooding my senses.

“What did they bloody do to you?!” Zane yelled.

I blinked at the log room, the slat ceiling, the hanging chains. I flung around and pressed my ear against Zane’s chest, listening for the sweet, slow tune. A hot tear spilled away as my fingers curled around his jacket.

“Helen, I thought you’d been whipsteamed to death when they tossed you in!” Zane’s arms tightened around me; I could feel his heart slamming against my cheek.

Slowly, I unpeeled my fingers. It took me a few tries before I was able to speak. “You got treated worse than I did,” I rasped. “I don’t have any bruises.”

Zane grunted. “They didn’t hit me to make me talk, Trite. They hit me because that soldier spoke to me in a scotchy, condescending tone. So I slapped the snooty pine sipper.”

I laughed through a mix of tears, lip quivering.

Zane tugged me off him and held me out, squinting to look me over. “Lucas and your sister are still untouched. I’ve been tossing cutlery with the sputtlepuns since you left. The fork and spoon keep coming back, so they must still be over there.”

As he said it, two pieces of brass cutlery soared through the gaps in our ceiling and clanked off the log wall.

I crouched and dragged the spoon to myself. “I saw him.” My voice dipped. I bit my lips together so I wouldn’t whimper like a child. “Nightflesh.”

After a long moment of silence, Zane picked up the fork and twirled it slowly in his fingers. He dropped to a knee and tilted the spoon in my hand so that I could see myself in the warped, oval mirror.

“It’s no brush,” he said, holding up the fork, “and I’m no Apple Dough. But if it’ll bring you a pinch of cheer, Helen, I’ll fix you up best I can.”

Zane took a lock of my frayed, knotted hair and began combing through it.

He told me short Winter tales while he worked. Over the hours, I watched his almost-dimples appear in the reflection of the spoon, until the dark skies drained to a hazy gray, hinting that morning was crawling over the forest.

“All done,” he said, crawling around to see his work.

“How do I look?” My voice was still raw.

Zane stared for a moment. His gaze dropped to the fork on his lap, and he twirled it with dexterous fingers.

“Time to check on the sputtlepuns.” He stood and hurled it back over the wall. I handed him the spoon, and when he tossed it over, we waited.

Sure enough, the fork and spoon sailed back a few minutes later.