2

princess of urban decay

Nix

A blazing inferno stretches endlessly before me. The objects in its path, lit with fire and bending like the long, withered stamens of giant azaleas, look familiar somehow. I can’t quite make them out. My eyes sting from the blaze. Scorched sweetness and burnt-plastic fumes sizzle along my olfactory nerves. Smoke saturates my lungs and I gasp for breath.

As the curling embers spindle down in a rain of light, a dark shadow prowls at the edges. It’s like I’m looking through someone else’s eyes, someone who’s angry and vengeful.

Where am I? I almost have it, I almost know—­

“Come, Phoenix. It’s time you rise from the flames.” The Goblin King’s voice breaks through, and my surroundings fade and change. The blaze gradually disappears, until the glassy walls and floor shimmer around me like black mirrors.

My eyes fully adjusted, I find Perish standing over my wrought iron bed. He’s just as I saw him when he came by earlier to check on me, still wearing a half-buttoned shirt in a sleek brown fabric tucked into fitted black trousers that graze his bared humanoid feet. His graceful toes wriggle as I study them; they’re the one unthreatening part of him, making him seem almost approachable . . . unguarded.

But it’s a lie. He’s devious, sly, and selfish. Keeping me locked in this sterile chamber within his tungsten castle, holding me captive at the cost of my human identity, is proof of that.

Bringing satiny covers to my chin, I frown. The chill permeating my bones confirms I was only dreaming of a fire.

“How did you know?” I ask Perish, my voice raspy and raw as if the figmental smoke layered soot across my vocal cords. Another glance around reveals my reality. Vines pierce through the mirrored floors, flowers and greenery tumble over the bed frame, and moss drifts in dusty green clouds across the slick, silver fabric of my sheets.

These living chains of Mystiquiel have been with me since I swallowed a vial of Perish’s blood and a handful of goblin fruit seeds to free Lark, since that fated moment my uncle, my twin sister, Clarey, and Flannie were forced to step through the veil and leave me behind.

Pressure crushes my chest at the thought of them, igniting a cherished memory of working side by side with Uncle in his bakery—using a mortar and pestle to crumble nuts and grind spices into powder for a spice cake on my last birthday, which I mistakenly thought was in August due to falsified birth certificates. I never could’ve imagined that a year later, I’d actually turn eighteen on Halloween, the same day I stepped through the veil and ended up in a rusting fairyland. All those fake birthdays with Uncle as my guardian, and now I may never see him again, just like I won’t see Lark or Clarey. Another squeezing pain behind my sternum convinces me to stop thinking of them; here, nostalgia is the pestle that pulverizes my heart and all the hopes, aspirations, and certainties it once held safe.

“How do I know what?” Perish’s rumbling voice repeats my drowsing question and shakes me from my pity party. His pointed ears and antlers imprint a blurred shadow across the shimmery moss-and-vine-coated sheets, reminiscent of a stag lurking in a moonlit meadow. The image looks like it could belong in my Goblin Market picture book, which has fallen to Lark’s keeping back home, or to the stag who caused my father’s fatal accident. The stag who was in fact another Goblin King—King Talon, Perish’s own father—enforcing an otherworldly contract that’s imprisoned the girls and orphaned countless boys in my family for over a century.

“How did you know what I was dreaming about?” I answer against the prick behind my sternum, folding down the sheets to snuff out reminders that bring nothing but anguish. I sit up—spine straight and legs strung over the mattress—to appear less vulnerable. Although it’s futile; I watch Perish savoring every raw emotion that crosses my face, and I’m helpless to stop him.

He drags a metal chair to my bedside and perches his powerful body at the edge, propping his elbows on his knees so we’re at eye level. He studies me from under glistening gold lashes, white double-pupils dancing across burgundy irises as he gorges on the grief-flavored appetizer I’m offering.

His thick eyebrows—a frosty shade that matches the white strands woven into the deep wine stain of his long ombre hair—rise to an inquisitive slant. “Me, trekking through your dreamscapes. Wouldn’t that be a marvelous power to wield?”

I suppress an urge to claw the pleased expression off his face. “I was dreaming of fire. You told me to rise above the flames. How else would you have known? You already glut on my emotions. Now you get to see inside my head? Nothing I have is private here!”

He brightens at my outburst and his fanged smile appears, somehow captivating despite the injury it could unleash with just a snap. Those full sangria-dark lips look like velvet against teeth that are no longer steel-tipped, but white, calcified points. My hatred felt more convincing when he was marred with metal and dependent on candle wax. It’s harder to despise him when he’s robust and perfect. When he’s exactly the way I would’ve drawn him without Lark’s influence.

The moment I took my sister’s place, with nothing more than smears of color streaming from my fingertips, I corrected all of the toxic flaws she’d given Perish—removed the machinery and electrical pulses poisoning his flesh. I even changed his complexion to what I wanted it to be; whereas it once resembled a seashell’s pearlescent lining, it’s warmed to a gold as shimmery as the jagged crown upon his head. He’s pure luster without the metal scabs and scars marring him.

I can’t deny the surge of pride that he’s finally my creation—through and through. Organic, beautiful, dangerous, and malignant as cancer though he is.

He leans back in the chair and crosses his arms and ankles, binding the dark clothes around his muscles. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t see your thoughts or your dreams. Even the elves, with their gift for telepathy, have no access to such things. My queenly mother can hijack the inner workings of a human body and learn its secrets, but other than scrubbing out memories, our magic can’t invade the fortress of a human’s mind. So the only dreams I’ve ever seen are those you sketched on paper, fed by your sister’s imagination as she shaped our world. When you sleep, that time belongs to you and Lark alone—as was intended.”

My frown deepens. “As intended? Intended by whom?”

His long, regal nose fidgets. “Are all human girls so flippant? Changing the subject before I’ve answered your original question. About the fire . . .”

As annoyed as I am by the brush-off, I concentrate on the reminder that Lark and I can connect on some level when we’re both asleep; it’s how I drew Mystiquiel and its denizens for almost three years with startling accuracy before I even realized they truly existed.

Since this is the first dream I’ve experienced in the two weeks I’ve been here, I’ve finally glimpsed inside Lark’s subconscious. Did something happen when they returned home on November first, some catastrophe she’s replaying in her sleep? It’s a terrifying possibility. Where was the fire? Is everyone okay?

Or . . . ​was it her suppressed emotions finding an outlet? When I took her hands in mine before she crossed through the portal back to our world, I joined our pinkies to transfer my thoughts to her—my regret that she took my place, my remorse for all the time she spent here when it should’ve been me. In return, I felt only rage from her. I assumed it was because she tried so hard to protect and lead me out of Mystiquiel even while I cut her cords in the underground maze; because I ruined her plan to defeat the Goblin King and destroy his reign forever.

But surely she’s forgiven me for those things, especially now that she’s living the life she was meant to have all along.

“You can rest assured”—Perish’s gruff timbre disrupts my anxious musings—“my mention of flames had nothing to do with your dreams. It was in reference to your namesake. Isn’t that what a phoenix does? Gathers life from the remnants of devastation. Reconstructs a soul out of nothing but ash. I’ve given you time enough to grow your proverbial wings back. You’re rested and replenished. I’ll get you some food; then we’ll explore your canvas and put Mystiquiel back to rights.”

My canvas. The answering rumble in my stomach barely registers as I note the copper chandeliers dangling overhead, their candles unlit. The cottony light falling over the room comes from outside, filtered through the diamond-shaped windows. It’s an opaque shade, neither white nor blue and not day or night but a suspended effulgent fog; the sky is waiting to be painted into place . . . by me.

The full impact of such responsibility splashes hot like acid in my empty belly.

After I completed the Goblin King’s underground maze and subverted my sister’s plans for ruining his kingdom, I unleashed a wave of nothingness to clear out the infectious rust she’d woven into the streets and terrain here. In effect, to save the world I first had to erase it. The soil and cement, the buildings, the trees and foliage, the entire setting—which under Lark’s direction had been a decaying blueprint of our hometown, Astoria—washed away, leaving a world undone.

Today I’ll be expected to rebuild it from the ground up because I’m the Architect. Such a task feels insurmountable, even impossible, when my own life has been leveled to desolation.

Perish shoves the chair aside as he stands. All it takes is his singular movement toward the wall, and a familiar scrape announces the appearance of a triangle. With a successive chiming clink, the shape reconfigures to squares then octagons, growing wider and wider until it’s a doorway the perfect size for him to exit. He stalls in the doorway, his broad back facing me.

I stand, cautiously hopeful.

“You are to wait here,” he commands.

I prickle at the words. The glass floor’s iciness along my bare soles further frustrates me. As much power as Perish insists I have, it’s obvious my effect upon the setting is fickle. Even with my toes touching the cool, glossy floor, or when my hands tap the wrought iron headboard, nothing changes. Not the style, not the substance, not even the color.

I’ve hardly had time to contemplate the chill along my feet when a fresh crop of ivy spins them up in pale green slippers, shielding my skin. I growl, wondering what use shoes are anyway. Perish is keeping me confined here until he’s ready to escort me out. For fourteen days, I haven’t had a single visitor, being denied the chance to see even little Bonbon, the pack rat faerie I purged of any metallic taint, much like I did Perish.

In removing the electrical cords and machinery that punctured Lark’s flesh and manacled her to this world, then replacing them with roots, vines, and ivy attached to me, I spent too much of my power. I blacked out within moments of the veil closing behind my family and friends. I don’t remember riding in a bubble when Perish brought me to his castle and tucked me away in this room. Upon waking, I discovered he’d enchanted the doors not to work for me, so I couldn’t escape and accidentally tap into any more magic. He wants me to preserve my strength for Architectural duties.

“Another meal alone in my prison cell, then?” I ask.

His fingernails, manicured to sharp points, tap the door-frame, though he refuses to look at me. “Your solitude will end today. And let me be clear: You’re not a prisoner. I’m protecting you.”

An itchy annoyance scrapes along my gut. “Right. Then let me be clear.” I mock his condescending tone. “My first order of business will be changing this castle into something more hospitable . . . ​something with doors that will answer only to me. You know, like that dagger you’re so proud of does for you.”

I can’t tell if it’s tension or laughter twitching his broad shoulders as he rests his fingers on the dagger sheathed at his waist. The unicorn horn handle lights up like a lava lamp, and his palm reflects the prismatic rotations. He turns a smirking profile to me—balanced somewhere between mischievous and malicious.

“Think again, Phoenix of the Flames. You need me to master the settings and landscapes. You may soon become the heart of this world, but I am the arteries. Which makes me the key to your power. Not one piece or parcel will respond to you without my bridging the gap. So, your magic enacts where, when, and how I choose . . . much like this dagger I’m so proud of.” With a self-satisfied grunt, he crosses the threshold.

A snarky quip teeters at the edge of my tongue. I hold it silent as a soft, fluttery sound catches my attention from somewhere in the room. Even once the door shrinks to solid black glass again, the flapping continues. Yet I don’t see anything . . . ​ nothing but my own warped reflection.

As silence resumes, I continue to stare at myself, willing Lark’s likeness to ogle back at me. I sigh when she doesn’t appear. Such bitter irony, that the same angry glare I used to dread, I’m now forever damned to miss. I only saw her for an instant before she was taken from me again. I wonder if she misses me as much as I do her.

I groan and rub my face, finding the absence of my facial piercings almost as foreign as the webby roots—fine like spider silk—that shift my pajamas to a flowing gown across my chest, arms, torso, and legs, grazing my ankles and fanning out in a train at my heels. Singular flower petals, woven through the enchanted garment in pinks, periwinkles, oranges, and blues, appear to glisten with dew. I pause to admire the effect. After suffering a mental block for months in Astoria, unable to see anything but shades of gray, I can’t help but be grateful for this saturation of color; I crave it every minute of every hour of every day.

I hold out my arms, fanning the elegant sleeves so they look like fragmented wings. The first night I was here, the plants ate away my earthly clothes and fashioned pajamas on me while I slept, leaving my skin scrubbed clean and scented with a floral perfume. The process repeats each time I sleep. It’s a hollow comfort, like taking a bath without the warm, soaking pleasure to rejuvenate muscles, bones, and spirit.

Today, as if the plants have realized something special is in store, a wreath of blossoms and leaves braids itself through my cropped black hair, coated with fluorescent dots that remind me of firefly dust. The same golden speckles shimmer along my cheeks and the bridge of my nose, trailing the pattern of my white freckles.

The result is refined yet untamed, in an elfin-princess sort of way. Not exactly my style, but I have to admit, as an artist, I’m fascinated by the concept. It’s as if I’ve dozed for years and nature has reclaimed my body for its playground without my consent—urban decay at its most decadent. Yet the truth is, it’s only been days, and I took this role voluntarily. To free my sister . . . ​to save Uncle Thatch and Clarey.

The pestle inside my chest grinds harder, eroding the walls of my heart. Maybe, if I’m lucky, the misery of missing my loved ones will end once the organ is finally ground to dust. Somehow I doubt it.

I trace a finger along my lower lip absently, embracing one last painful memory . . . ​the kiss I shared with Clarey, sweetly intimate and the closest I’ve ever felt to anyone—despite the mask that stood between us. It was the first kiss I had with him, and the last one I’ll ever have with anyone. At least until I’m escorted through the veil some future Halloween night to find a boy who will father a daughter and then be cast out once he’s enchanted to forget—all so I can continue the line of Architects for this eldritch world.

How am I supposed to do that? Give myself to some stranger? Then again, how could I ever ask someone I care about to entrust me with a part of himself he’d forget he ever lost?

Yet that’s exactly what my mom did, before she found her way back to Dad and they tried to escape with their infant twin daughters; before everything blew up in my parents’ faces. In my dad’s case, literally. But as for my mom’s . . . ​I still don’t know what became of her before Lark was brought here, and every time I bring it up with Perish, he changes the subject. I can only assume her fate was as tragic as my dad’s.

A ragged sob breaks free and I slump against the wall, my heart finally leveled to dust by one indelible moment imprinted on my brain: the unwelcome visual of a car exploding around my father. Tears crawl down my face and I let them gather on my lips and along my jaw. I used to hate showing any weakness, but today I embrace it. It’s the only remaining proof that I’m human . . . ​ that I’m still the daughter my parents fought so hard for.

The fluttering I noticed earlier stirs the hair where my nape presses against the slippery wall. I spin around and gawk, open-mouthed, as a shadow peels free from the black glass and two murky wings, a tail, and a beak take form, sylphlike and smoky.

At the sight of it, the particles of my crushed heart shake and shudder, reassembling. My pulse pounds, strong and eager—a phoenix rising from the ash.

In contrast, the small, smudged shape hovering between me and the wall isn’t a phoenix; it’s a lark. I know because I drew it, because I stamped my flesh in tribute to my sister when I thought she’d died. It’s my tattoo, the one that broke free of my shoulder and came alive to rescue me in the final test of the maze. The one I found perched on Lark when I discovered her seated atop the tungsten throne, hooked up to the world like a moribund motherboard. The last I saw of the tattoo, it was absorbing Lark’s final electrical currents before she came unplugged.

“You . . . ​stayed?” I ask the creature, because what else does one say to an indelible pigment as alive and untamed as its organic counterpart?

As if in answer, an orange current pulses through it—voltaic fingers stroking inky feathers. The bird comes to rest on the palm I offer, and its glow spreads through me, warm and nurturing, as though my twin were here, hugging me. The sensation fills my spirit so full of hope it brims over.

Perish was wrong. There is a piece of this world immune to his rule, because it was conceived outside, in the human realm—because it’s one part my sister interwoven with one part me. Maybe, since it was born here, for all intents and purposes, it might be interconnected enough to have an impact on our surroundings.

Positioning the wispy shape beside the glass where the king exited, I focus on our shared reflection. “Can you get us out of here, little Tat?”

Perched on my fingertip, the lark leans forward so its sooty beak dips into the wall, like a dribble of ink joining a puddle of oil. When it draws back, its beak stretches as long as a rubber band then snaps free. Cued by the popping sound, a geometric door appears, clicks from one shape and size to another, then opens to the rest of the castle.

Tat lifts off and flitters midair, waiting for me to join it in the empty corridor.

Stepping out, I allow myself a tenuous smile. I’m not as alone or helpless as I thought, and Perish isn’t the only key to my magic after all.