CHAPTER 11

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We didn’t wait for dawn.

The night was still black when we packed up our gear and camouflaged it with leaf litter. I wore my sword; Joey carried his blade at one hip and his nail gun at the other, and he pulled his duster on over the top to hide the bulges on his body. Moving as quietly as we could, we made our way through the woods until we reached the narrow stream separating the wilderness from the end of Coileán’s expansive lands, then paused to inspect the terrain.

As far as I could tell, Oberon hadn’t redecorated the parkland. I recognized the grounds, even by starlight, and saw no indication that he had redone the gardens. More importantly, I saw no sign of guards, at least not on our side of the palace. Almost all of Coileán’s court lived to the south of him, down through the low hills and along the coast. There was nothing of consequence along the northern border to defend against—after all, no one lived in the woods. Seeing nothing to give us trouble, Joey and I waded through the cold stream and ducked into the ancient orchard on the far side, taking shelter among the fruit trees as the sun began to rise.

And that was when we heard a woman singing.

Joey’s eyes widened, and he jabbed his finger at the apple tree beside me. I nodded and jumped up into the branches—an easier climb than my last, given the gnarled trunk—and Joey took the one to my left. There we sat, holding our breath as the stray bits of stone in the dirt below us flashed pink in the dawn, and listened as the singing intensified.

The singer was female, that much was clear, but she seemed to be either making the tune up as she went or forgetting her place every few bars and trying again in a different key. I began to sweat, even in the cool morning, but I willed myself to be still as the voice crescendoed—and then, through the leaves, I spotted Astrid.

One of the perks of Coileán’s position was having a staff to make life easier for him. In particular, he had put out a call for kitchen aides. Sure, he could will a feast into existence with a snap of his fingers, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a great feast. Astrid and the others who kept the table set were culinary masters, either by luck or through experience. Most of them, like my brother’s guards, were half fae and had spent at least a few years in the mortal realm. I didn’t have résumés on all of them, but I’d lurked around the kitchen long enough for Astrid to tell me about the decades she spent in Paris and Rome and New York, moving from café to restaurant for the sheer pleasure of cooking. That fact alone showed her passion for the practice—it took a rare faerie to willingly work in a room whose primary decorative element was stainless steel. She also had a soft spot for doing things the hard way, which explained the basket over her arm.

I waited a moment longer to be sure I’d identified her correctly, but the strengthening light made me certain. Astrid’s hair, so blonde it was almost silver, shone in the sunlight that filtered through the peach trees across the aisle, but the clincher was her apron: full-length, bleached white, and covered with laden pockets. I couldn’t see Joey, but as she stopped below his tree to pick an apple, I decided to test my luck and leapt.

Astrid whirled about and gasped when I landed at her feet, then dropped her basket in shock. I held up my empty hands, ready to plead with her for silence, but her face broke into a wide grin, and she threw her arms around me. “My lord!” she whispered into my hair. “Where have you been? We thought you dead, and…” She pulled back and wrinkled her nose. “Moon and stars, child, when did you last bathe?”

Before I could begin to answer, Joey landed behind her and thrust the point of his sword toward the base of her neck. “Astrid, I don’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly, “but if you give me any reason to imagine that you might be thinking of doing something—”

She’d stiffened in the presence of so much steel, but she released me and lifted her hands in surrender when she heard his voice. “Joey? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

Astrid sighed, her face washed with relief. “Put the sword away, you silly boy. I haven’t been so excited to see anyone since I met Julia Child.” She turned to look at him over her shoulder, and he sheepishly lowered the blade. “Oh, gracious,” she muttered, “you’re a mess, too, aren’t you? What crawled onto your chin and died?”

“Want to tell us what the hell’s going on?” he countered.

“Gladly,” she replied, stepping clear of his sword. “But might we go somewhere a little less open first? And for my sake, at least, might I tidy up the two of you?”

 

After a month on the run, I could have done with a nice, long soak and a deep-tissue massage, but getting magically willed clean was a better use of our limited time. If we were going to be stealthy, it wouldn’t do to announce our presence via stench. Astrid took care of the basics as soon as we’d retreated behind a thick holly hedge, but she fretted when Joey insisted that the beard stay. “Why not just put a flashing sign over your head, then?” she protested. “Mortal right here, take your best shot.”

He rolled his eyes. “The court knows me already—”

“Oberon’s doesn’t, and they’re all over the palace. Looking the part might buy you a moment.”

Joey didn’t like it—I think the unkempt moonshiner look was beginning to grow on him—but he knew Astrid was right, and the beard vanished.

When we were no longer so offensive to basic notions of hygiene, she scanned the area again for signs of motion, then pulled us close and dropped her voice to a whisper. “He came in the middle of the night,” she began, continuing to glance over our shoulders as she spoke. “With his court. Not all of them, but a fair number. They swarmed the palace, overwhelmed the guards…” She grimaced at the memory. “The king was asleep. They caught him unawares.”

My guts felt like she’d thrown them in a vise. “Is he—”

“He lives,” she said, saving me the question. “But he’s trapped. Oberon put some sort of enchantment on him—he’s in an unbreakable sleep.”

“Stasis,” I said. “There’s a spell for that, too.”

“I don’t know the workings,” she replied. “But whatever he did, it’s strong enough to bind your brother.”

Joey frowned in confusion. “Colin’s got the same power Oberon has. I thought the realm gave them both a little something extra.”

“That’s my understanding,” said Astrid, “but consider Oberon’s age—Lord Coileán is powerful, but against him?” She sighed and briskly shook her head. “They’re close, I suppose, but the difference, plus the surprise…”

“And I’m sure our loving siblings didn’t complain,” I muttered.

Astrid’s face tightened, and she hesitated before replying. “My lord…I don’t want to distress you more, but your siblings…”

“Joined Oberon?”

“Are dead,” she said quietly.

I stared at her for a moment, not quite comprehending what she was saying, and Astrid wrung her hands. “He killed them the first night. They were trapped in the cells—they didn’t have a chance. When no one could find you, we feared the worst.”

I leaned against the hedge, letting that sink in, and mumbled, “All of them?”

“All but the king. And some of their children,” she added. “Some of their line have fled the realm, some went into hiding, but the ones who remained—”

“Why?”

She offered a little shrug. “If you overthrow a ruler, you’re wise to take out any potential contenders to the throne who could avenge him.”

I rubbed my face, fighting the pounding in my head. “So that leaves Moyna and me. Unless he’s killed her, too.”

“Oh,” Astrid muttered, “she’s very much alive.” My head shot up, and I saw that her lips had become a thin, white line. “Word trickles down,” she said bitterly. “The girl joined forces with her grandfather. More than that, I can’t say.”

But Joey’s eyes widened as he turned to me. “When Vivi called, the faerie activity outside the Arcanum…”

“You think?” I said.

“I don’t know, man, but if they thought the Arcanum was sheltering us…”

He let that hang, and my stomach knotted at the implications. “And what about you?” I asked, turning back to Astrid. “You swore allegiance or something?”

She looked pained. “We were given a choice: swear fealty or be locked away until he decided what to do with us. I thought I might be of more use to the king on the outside. I’ve been hoping someone would come,” she continued, looking at us both, “though…well…”

“Well what?” asked Joey.

Astrid seemed almost embarrassed. “I’d rather hoped it would be Toula. Or, um…you know…”

“Someone with talent,” I finished, and she nodded. “Last I heard, Toula was tied up with the Arcanum situation. Unless the Arcanum has killed her by now—let’s just say we left a mess back there,” I explained, hoping Astrid wouldn’t push for details. “But since our rescue team is only Joey and me, will you help us?”

She clasped my hand and dipped in a slight curtsy. “However I can, my lord. What’s your plan?”

“You say there’s some sort of enchantment binding Colin?” said Joey. “First thing we need to do is break it.”

Her face clouded. “Would that I could, but I’m not that strong. I doubt all the staff together would be able—”

“Exactly. So we’ll go about this indirectly,” he said. “What’s the easiest foolproof way to break a spell or enchantment?” We looked at him blankly, and he smirked. “Drag the affected person into Faerie. The barrier takes care of it. We just need to get him out, then pull him back through.”

“Well,” said Astrid, “in theory…”

“Do you know where he’s being kept?” he asked. “Can you, like, gate us in there?’

“Yes and no,” she muttered. “He’s been left in a room on the ground floor of the palace, but it’s open. I think the old bastard is using him as decoration, to be frank.” She folded her arms and glared into space. “The room is warded. You can walk in, but you can’t open a gate into it or from inside it—Misha tried that, and the guards got him. They aren’t stationed there at all times, but they make regular sweeps of the halls. And I’m sure there would be an alarm if the king were to be taken from the room.” Astrid looked at Joey and shook her head. “So no, gates are useless.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “What if you got us to him, let Joey and me handle dragging him out of the room, and set up a gate down the hall? Oberon hasn’t warded the entire palace, has he?”

“Not to my knowledge…” She mulled this over, then nodded. “Yes. If we were quick about it and quite lucky…I could get you in between rounds. That would give you a few minutes to grab him, but you would have to be fast, and I don’t know how close I’d be able to stay.”

Joey looked at me, and we silently reached a decision. “Sounds like our best shot,” I said. “Unless Val is hiding around here and wouldn’t mind adding a little muscle.”

“Valerius?” she scoffed, then turned and spat in the grass. “He sits at Oberon’s right hand. I wouldn’t look to him for help.”

“What?” Joey cried. “That’s…that can’t be right, he’s Colin’s friend—”

“He got us out of here in the first place,” I said, frowning at Astrid. “If he were working with Oberon…”

“Perhaps he had a change of heart once he saw the new regime,” she muttered. “I don’t know his mind. But he keeps company with Oberon and his ilk, and I’ve not seen him on the guard rounds in weeks. Dresses like a proper lord now.” She sniffed her displeasure. “Everyone knows he’s one of Mab’s. I don’t mean any disrespect to the king, but he was a fool to trust Valerius.”

The news came as a sucker punch, but I pushed it aside. “Fine. We’ll deal with him later. How do we get into the castle?”

Astrid looked around again for safety, then murmured, “Will you trust me?”

“Not like we have much of a choice,” said Joey, but I saw the hurt in his eyes over Val’s betrayal. “What do we do?”

She stepped back a pace and smiled tightly. “This won’t be painful.”

I saw the magic flash around her, and then a bluish cloud enveloped me. Too surprised to cry out, I closed my eyes in preemptive defense…

…and when I opened them again, I was staring at Astrid’s boots. My eyes were at the level of her toes, yet I was standing.

I looked around until I saw Joey some distance away, half-hidden in the lush grass. Before I could run to him, something scooped me off the ground and into the air—a hand, I realized, seeing its twin descend toward Joey. At the end of the breathless ascent, I found myself looking up at Astrid’s face from the hollow of her palm. “Temporary, I promise,” she whispered. Her plosives were gusts of wind in my hair, and I held on as she lowered me into the darkness of her apron pocket. Her other hand shook Joey off beside me a few seconds later, leaving us trapped in the warm darkness of her clothing. Without another word, Astrid began to walk—but where she was taking us, I couldn’t tell. At least Kuni had been able to see from his seat in my palm. Astrid’s idea of transportation left much to be desired.

“You know,” Joey muttered as he made himself secure in the corner of the pocket, “this plan might have a few holes we should have considered ahead of time.”

 

I’m not going to say that the day I spent being bumped around in Astrid’s pocket was the strangest of my life, but no matter what happens to me in the future, it’ll probably remain in the top five.

Unless you’re riding in a pocket, you don’t think about how much your clothing moves when you walk, especially something like an apron, which shifts with every step. The particular pocket in which we’d landed hit Astrid at mid-thigh, making our ride feel kind of like a hammock from hell. Adding to the general misery were the fact that Joey and I couldn’t really talk—we didn’t want to draw attention to Astrid with mysterious squeaking—and the disorienting task of trying to figure out where we were in the palace by smell and sound alone. The latter was easier to work around, since Astrid spent most of her time in the kitchen. Mercifully, she stopped by the counter at one point to peel and core the fruit she’d picked that morning. Every so often, her hand would slip into her pocket and drop a few crumbs for us—a bite of apple, a sliver of ham, a crust of bread—and so Joey and I passed the time by gorging ourselves. In retrospect, this might not have been the brightest idea we’d ever had, since a swaying apron and a full stomach don’t exactly mix, but we held it together and even managed to doze in shifts.

For her part, Astrid went about her day as if nothing were out of the ordinary. She spoke little but did so politely, making herself as inconspicuous as possible. I heard unfamiliar voices laughing a few times—Oberon’s people almost certainly—but Astrid said nothing to them, and they paid her no attention.

As the hours passed, Astrid moved back and forth between the kitchen and the dining rooms until the night grew late and she finished her work. Joey and I bumped along as she walked upstairs to her quarters, and then, after a large jostle, the movement stopped. He started crawling over to me in the dark, but before we could speculate together, Astrid’s eyes appeared at the top of our pouch. “I’m going to bed,” she whispered. “You’re on a hook on the back of my door for the moment. We’ll wait for the palace to quiet before we do this, so try to get some sleep.”

At a loss for a better idea, Joey and I divvied up the last of the food and stretched out, making ourselves as comfortable as we could. I know I dozed off, because when I opened my eyes again, it was still pitch-black, but we were moving once more. Joey reached out and squeezed my arm, offering reassurance in the darkness, and I fumbled until I made contact with his shoulder. It would be all right, I repeated to myself. All we had to do was drag Coileán out of bed and through a gate. Piece of cake. We didn’t even have our backpacks to slow us down.

After a time, there came a heavy click, our movement stopped, and the only sound I could hear was Astrid’s breathing. Something descended into the pocket, and I realized it was a crooked finger when the short nail brushed against me. I climbed aboard and held on, and following a long rush of wind and a plunge like a roller coaster, I found myself on the carpet. The finger retreated, but it returned a moment later with Joey—and with another flash of enchantment, we shot back to our proper sizes. As we checked ourselves over for missing pieces, Astrid lit a tiny flame in her hand, silently showing us where we were: a seldom-used sitting room tucked far in the eastern wing of the palace. “He’s down the corridor and around the corner, the third closed door,” she whispered, and extinguished her fire. “The guards will pass shortly. Once they’ve gone, you’ll have no more than ten minutes to retrieve him. Are you sure about this?”

“No,” said Joey, “but I think we’re long past that.” He patted Astrid’s shoulder and slipped to the door, then pressed his ear to the crack. “Footsteps in the far hall,” he muttered as I joined him. “On stone. Give them a second to get by us.”

We waited in silence for a minute that stretched into a month, and then Joey slowly depressed the brass door handle and eased into the hallway. I followed him with my heart hammering in my throat, straining for any sign that the guards had decided to vary their rounds for the fun of it, but the wing remained dark and quiet, and we reached the door without being discovered. Joey softly exhaled as he worked at the handle, and with a little snick that seemed to echo all around us, we were in.

Joey closed the door to cover our tracks, but I had eyes only for the four-poster bed in the center of the room. A tall taper had been lit on a stone pillar at each corner of the bed, clearly revealing the identity of the immobile man laid out on top of the blankets. I hurried to his side and looked him over, checking for damage, but Coileán seemed uninjured—at least from what little I could see of him that wasn’t covered by his T-shirt and sweatpants. He really had been taken unawares, I thought—unprepared, barefoot, and still wearing his makeshift pajamas.

“Coileán,” I whispered, bending to his ear, “it’s me. Joey’s here, too. If you can hear me, we’re going to get you out of here, okay?”

He remained still, but I noticed his eyes darting back and forth as if he were dreaming. He frowned in his sleep, and a little wrinkle had formed between his dark brows. Whatever was going through his mind couldn’t have been pleasant. I tried patting his face to wake him, but he remained insensate, locked in the stillness of sleep.

Joining me, Joey watched my useless efforts for a moment, then muttered, “If you think we can wake him, there’s one other thing we could try.” I arched my eyebrow in query, and he reached under his shirt for his silver crucifix. “Pain might rouse him.”

I didn’t like it, but I stepped back while Joey lifted his necklace off over his head and wrapped the chain around his fist. “Sorry, boss,” he whispered, then slowly lowered the tip of the cross toward Coileán’s exposed hand.

As I watched, Coileán’s eyes picked up speed, his wrinkle deepened, and his breathing, which had been slow and regular, sped up into shallow gasps. “Stop,” I said, catching Joey’s wrist. “He knows what’s going on, he just can’t do anything about it. See?”

Joey pulled his hand back, and Coileán’s face relaxed a degree. “Shit,” he whispered, and slipped his necklace back on. “Okay, we’re going to have to do this the hard way. I can probably get him in a fireman’s hoist, but to be safe, let’s each take a side. Help me swing his legs around.”

I began to do as he asked, but before I could take two steps, the world went black and formless, and I was falling.

 

I tensed, expecting a hard landing, but whatever I hit was soft and formed itself to my body—honestly, it felt kind of like room-temperature Jell-O. With the initial shock past, I managed to get my knees under me and stood, and found that the soft ground had suddenly firmed. Then again, there was no ground to speak of, nothing but darkness in all directions, and I was on the verge of panic when I heard a familiar voice behind me say, “We haven’t much time, Aiden.”

I spun around, and there she was: the glowing stranger from my dream, now wearing a long blue gown with lacy sleeves, her luminescence the only light around. She stepped close to me, then caught my chin between her finger and thumb and tilted my face down toward hers. “Poor child,” she said softly, reaching up to pat my cheek. “I know you’ve struggled of late, but I had to see if you were strong enough.”

I stuttered in spite of myself. “You…wait, you’re…”

“I answer to many names,” she said with a grin, “but yes, you’re correct. You’ve come to rescue Coileán?” I nodded frantically, and she clasped her hands as her face grew serious. “You’ll never get him out of this room alive. You haven’t moved, by the way,” she added, seeing my expression. “I mean, you’re on the floor now, but this place…well, it’s outside of normal time and space, really. We need to talk.”

“But we’ve got someone waiting, all we have to do is carry him—”

“Straight through the wards around the door,” she interrupted, “which will kill all three of you. And Oberon, too, though I could be mistaken about that. It would weaken him, surely, but you’d have no guarantee of taking him with you. I assume you’d rather live to see the dawn, yes?”

I frowned down at her. “Astrid didn’t say anything about that.”

“Because she doesn’t know. She’s still very much a child.” Faerie folded her thin arms and watched me try to work around this new wrinkle. “You cannot take him out that way,” she said as I began to pace. “Or out the window. He’ll have to break the enchantments himself—the one holding him, and the one on the room. For him to do that, someone will need to distract Oberon.”

“What do you mean?”

Her smile returned, but with an edge. “A bind like the one Oberon has made isn’t a static thing. Oh, the boy’s adept at binds, I grant him that, but he’s unaccustomed to binding someone who fights back.” Seeing my confusion, she explained, “Coileán is nearly Oberon’s equal. Not quite his match, but close. When I transferred to him the gift I gave your mother, I amplified it to make up for his relative youth. Do you follow?” I nodded, and she said, “An enchantment like a bind is always tied to its maker. For a bind like…well, for example, the one Coileán placed on Moyna, the maker seldom feels it—the object of the bind is too weak to fight it off. But Coileán is struggling with everything he has, and Oberon must fight to keep the bind intact. It requires a certain degree of concentration.”

I thought of Ilunna, who had been unable to distract the old king with her charms. “So if he were forced to take his mind off Coileán…”

She nodded. “I have a proposal for you, Aiden. Will you hear it?”

“Anything.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I think she was pleased at that. “Some time ago, I made a compact with Oberon, Mab, and your mother,” said Faerie. “I gave them power beyond their imagining with the understanding that they would abide by several conditions, one of them being that they would no longer seek to kill each other. Mab broke our covenant, and Titania met her fate, but Oberon, for all else that he has done, has kept the letter of our bargain. Not its spirit, evidently,” she muttered, “but the letter. I will not break my word to him and withdraw my gift. But given his behavior, I would be willing to empower someone else to challenge him.”

She looked up at me in silence, waiting, and I took a step backward. “Who, me?”

“If you’re willing, child.”

“But…but I can’t,” I said in a rush, “I’m a witch-blood, I can’t do anything with magic, it…I mean, I see it, but I can’t do anything…”

She let me babble for a moment, then held up one hand to stop the flow. “Your mother’s and father’s gifts war within you,” she said gently. “What I can do—and what I am willing to do—is upset the balance. I can suppress your father’s influence.”

I stared at her, replaying what she had said. “You mean…”

“From a functional perspective, you would be no different from the rest of the half fae,” she finished. “With everything that entails. And until such time as Coileán is able to resume his duties, you would carry power equal to his. I can do this for you, child. But before you decide,” she cautioned, “know that the process cannot be undone. If you make your choice”—she spread her hands—“you’ve made your choice. Is that clear?”

Somehow, I managed to nod.

“Very good. Are you willing, then?”

A million thoughts ran through my mind, but in the midst of the hurricane, I heard myself whisper, “Yes.”

Faerie smiled. “This will hurt. Best if you close your eyes.”

 

Hurt doesn’t begin to describe what happened next. The blackness beneath me gave way, and I tumbled into the abyss. A split-second later, something broke my fall, but it felt like I’d been caught in a net made of barbed high-voltage wires, and then like every cell of my body decided to explode at once. I would have screamed, but I’d forgotten where my mouth was supposed to be. This wasn’t pain, this wasn’t agony—this was something red and sharp and nameless, and at that moment, I wanted nothing more than the mercy of death.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, the torment ended, and I felt hands on my shoulders.

“Aiden!” Joey whispered as he shook me. “Aid, come on, wake—”

He released me suddenly, and I opened my eyes to see the room around me suffused with white light. Squinting at the unexpected brightness, I eased myself into a sitting position and spotted Joey crouched halfway across the room, goggling at me. “Joey—”

“You’re glowing,” he said, wide-eyed and tense. “Why the hell are you glowing?”

Dazed and unsure of what had just happened, I looked at my hand and realized the light was coming from me. “Realm made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” I mumbled, flipping my hand over to see that, yes, the light came out the other side as well.

“What happened to—”

“We can’t drag Coileán out of here,” I interrupted, wiggling my fingers experimentally. “She said it’d kill us all. Got to distract Oberon. She gave me the power.”

Joey scrambled upright and gripped his sword. “Mother of God,” he whispered, “I’ve seen that light before.” He pulled his sword out and flipped the hilt toward me. “Can you take it?”

Sure, I started to say, but as I reached for it, I felt a tingle race along my hand and arm, and I paused. Puzzled, I reached toward it with my other hand, but the tingle began there, too, and it strengthened to an unpleasant buzz as I got closer. “What—”

“Draw yours,” he said, locking eyes with me.

I unsheathed my blade with no difficulty—even if I was still glowing—and stared at the bronze. “I don’t under—” I began, but snapped my mouth closed as the realization hit.

Iron and silver, dangerous to the fae, lethal if used correctly.

Joey’s hilt was wrapped with leather, but there was good steel hiding beneath.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, looking back at him in shock, “I’m a faerie.”

“I can see that,” he muttered, putting his sword away. “And what do you mean, we can’t take Colin out of here?”

“Door’s warded, we’ll all go boom,” I mumbled, only half-listening to him. This wasn’t right, I was the dud, this couldn’t be happening…

Joey shook my shoulders, pulling me from my chaotic thoughts. “We’ve got to get out of here. Turn your highs off.”

“Huh?”

“Stop glowing.”

“I don’t know how!” I protested.

He considered this for a second, then stepped back and lowered his hands in placation. “It’s okay, Aiden, just focus. Breathe for me. Think about…you know, not glowing, yeah?”

I took a deep breath, then another, pushing down the rising fear…and suddenly, the light died away. “I…I did it…”

“Fireball,” he said calmly, holding out his palm. “Come on, you can do this, just think about it.”

Remembering what it had looked like when Coileán pulled off that trick, I tried to imagine a similar flame in my hand—and an instant later, there were green flames dancing all around me. “Joey!” I yelped in panic.

“Breathe,” he ordered, and as I fought the surge of terror, the fire, like the corona, vanished. I stood there by Coileán’s bed, trembling and blinded by the after-images, and Joey cocked his head toward the door. “Time to go. Let’s get back to the woods, and we’ll figure out our next step from there.”

“But Coileán—”

“Aiden, listen to me,” said Joey, stepping between the bed and me, “we can’t help him like this. We’ve got to get out of here before they catch us.”

“But…but all I have to do is distract Oberon—”

“You can’t even control yourself! Pitting you against Oberon right now would be…I don’t know, like giving a Cub Scout a rocket launcher and directing him toward a bear. No.” He pointed to the ground. “They’re coming. Punch a hole in the floor.”

“What?”

“Floor. Hole. Do it.”

I started to protest that there was roughly no way in hell that I could punch a hole in anything, let alone a stone floor, but as I jabbed my finger toward the ground to drive the absurdity of Joey’s suggestion home, the flagstones flew up around us in an explosion of gravel.

“Okay, maybe do it a little more quietly next time,” said Joey as surprised voices rose in the hallway. Grabbing my wrist, he pulled me after him into the pit.

That turned out to be a rough landing, and I gasped after the floor knocked the wind from me. Joey had managed to release me and roll into the impact, and he was on his feet before I’d remembered why I was hurting. “Dungeon,” he said, looking around at the torches on the walls, then pointed down the vaulted hall to the left. “Out that way. Come on, move.” He pulled me off the floor and half-dragged me to the other end of the room, ignoring the shouts that echoed down from Coileán’s room. “Hole there, do it.”

I barely thought about it, and the stonework exploded again. Yanking my arm, Joey pulled me through, straight into the ornamental moat, and up the far bank. Dripping, we sprinted for the gardens and the distant tree line. My lungs burned, my heart pounded like a jackhammer, and with the night, I could barely see five feet in front of me, but Joey seemed to intuit the smoothest path through the flowerbeds and around the orchards, and he caught me each time I stumbled. Finally, as my battered body cried for mercy, we crested a hillock and dodged a thicket of brambles, and my exhausted legs gave way. I went down hard in the dirt, and I didn’t care.