“No. Caleb, I—” I had a job to do. And PC was here. And—
Caleb didn’t give me the option to protest. His arm around me tightened and he lifted me off the ground, running with me in tow as he dodged dancers.
“Stop them! Bring them to me,” the queen’s voice yelled just before Caleb dove through the doorway.
The music went silent, the sound of dancers disappeared, and the smell of food vanished as the stillness of the hallway settled around us. Caleb set me on my feet, glancing first to the right and then to the left. Both directions looked exactly the same, and he cursed as he grabbed my arm and dragged me down the corridor to the right.
I tried to pull away, bracing with my feet. “Caleb. Let go. I have to stay.”
He just tugged harder. “No. We have to get out of here, Al, before—”
He never got to the next word. I expected the guards I’d seen earlier to catch us, but it was the ominous statues along the wall that lumbered into action, and I had a good idea what he’d been worried about.
The guardians each carried a huge, three-foot-long sword. Who the hell carried a sword? Of course they were more “whats” than “whos,” and there were a lot of them. Caleb skidded to a stop as three guardians barred the passage in front of us. We both twisted around, but there were more guardians behind us, and more were stepping forward from the walls, their swords lifted. Surrounded.
“How do we fight them?” I whispered, and Caleb shook his head.
Great. I could see the glyphs on the guardians, but I didn’t know anything about the fae glyph magic, and I certainly didn’t know how to dispel the enchantment. My ability to peer over the planes wasn’t showing anything useful either. They weren’t like the constructs I could disbelieve out of existence, but ice given purpose. Even the dagger in my hand, which was always eager for a little action, felt unsure.
The guardians pressed closer, until Caleb and I were forced back to back just to keep from being skewered.
“Stand down,” a familiar voice yelled. Falin rounded the corner at a dead run.
“No,” Caleb whispered.
I spared a moment to glance at Caleb before focusing on Falin. The chain was gone, and he was alone. Or at least he was far ahead of anyone else pursuing us.
He reached a row of guardians and, grabbing two by the shoulder, jerked them back to open a path with no pointy ice swords between him and us. The guardians turned, and then as one, stepped back. They didn’t lower their swords, but at least I had room to breathe.
“We’re not going back,” Caleb said. He grabbed my dagger, wrenching it from my hand.
I yelped, my wrist smarting. “Hey!”
Caleb lifted the dagger, pointing it at Falin.
I grabbed his arm. “Caleb, stop.”
Falin stepped closer. “I don’t wish to hurt you.”
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t. I’d seen Falin kill before. That had been the bad guys, but I guess “bad” was a matter of perspective.
Caleb lifted the dagger higher.
Falin glanced at the ice guardians. Two advanced, faster than I would have thought possible for automatons, and grabbed Caleb’s arms, dragging him down.
“What do you think you’re—” I didn’t finish because suddenly I was wrapped in warm, strong arms.
Falin pulled me tight against his chest, holding me close. “I was so worried,” he whispered, his breath dancing through my hair.
He was worried. So he told me here. In a hallway. Away from her. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
Falin jerked back, as if my words scalded him. “Alexis . . .”
“No. Don’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him. A nerve twitched under my eye. “Just don’t, okay? Now tell them to let go of Caleb.”
Falin’s shoulder sagged. “I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“My queen commanded I bring you to her.”
Well, that proved it, didn’t it? If I’d needed any further proof of where I stood, he’d just provided it. That conclusion must have shown on my face because Falin stepped forward again. He lifted his hands as if he was going to touch me, but then he dropped his arms by his sides.
“Try to understand. I must obey her commands. I have no choice.”
He couldn’t lie, I knew he couldn’t, and yet the hurt part of me couldn’t believe him. I glanced at Caleb, who’d finally stopped struggling with the guardians. He wore a sour look, but he gave one curt nod, confirming Falin’s words.
He has to obey? I shook my head. The rules seemed to keep changing, and I barely understood the game. But the stakes were high. Deadly.
Falin stepped forward until the hem of my dress brushed his legs. “Alexis, I would reorder all of Faerie for you if it were in my power.”
The “but it isn’t” went unsaid everywhere but his eyes, where I could almost see the words echoing. He reached out, his warm hands sliding over my bare shoulders. I didn’t pull away, but I didn’t move toward him either. He leaned forward, closing the distance between us. Still I held my ground, and his lips grazed mine, the touch light enough to be a kiss from the wind.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. He meant the words, meant them so much that the imbalance that swung between us made us both flinch. Then his hands slid from my shoulders to my wrists. His fingers locked around me like manacles.
What?
“Oh, now isn’t this touching?” a crisp female voice said, and I jumped.
Falin released my arms and whirled around, dropping to his knees in the same movement. “My queen.”
The Winter Queen stood in the middle of the hall, her hands balled into fists at her waist. PC, who had apparently followed her, rushed past the ice guardians. I scooped him up and clutched him tight as the queen strolled forward, holding the skirt of her long dress. She stopped directly in front of Falin’s kneeling form.
“Did you really think you could keep secrets within my own halls, knight?”
Falin didn’t answer, and she slid her hand into his hair. The movement started as the caress of a lover and ended with her fist clenched in the hair at the back of his skull. She jerked upward, and he rose with the motion. She was petite, so she had to release him before he reached his full height. She stepped around him, dragging him by the front of his shirt until he faced me.
“I had wondered,” she said, running her hand down his chest. Not a muscle in his body twitched. “I called my knight home, and he came, as he should have, even though he knew I was angry that he’d failed to kill the body thief in a timely manner. And then, when he knew I would have forgiven him soon, he went and broke out of my prison, at great personal expense to himself.” She jabbed her fingers into the side where he’d been sliced open when I’d found him. The edges of his eyes betrayed his wince, but he gave her no other reaction. “We had just heard rumor of a planeweaver. I thought that perhaps he’d gone to retrieve the planeweaver himself. Perhaps to present her to me as a gift to regain my good graces. But that did not happen. Now I can guess why.” She rounded on me.
Falin was injured escaping the winter court? To get to me. I didn’t know what to say, so I met the queen’s eyes, saying nothing.
She hissed under her breath. Then she turned to Falin. “Take yourself to Rath.” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “That would be the court torture chamber. Since you have no interest in my banquets, perhaps a visit there would interest you more.”
“My queen—” Falin started, and she dug her fingers into his side again.
“If you beg for yourself, knight, I will forgive you. But if you beg for her, you will not like the results.”
He glanced at me, and then he squeezed his eyes shut and remained silent.
The queen turned toward the guardians holding Caleb. “Take him to the dungeons with the rest of the resistant independents. You”—she pointed to two more guardians—“take her to a chamber where she can await the return of my patience.” She turned to me, the frost in her glare deadly, hateful. “You should hope it returns quickly. A planeweaver who will not join my court is of limited worth.”
Chapter 31
I struggled to keep a safe grip on PC and not trip and fall over the damn gown as the ice guardians dragged me away from the queen, Falin, and Caleb.
“Slow down,” I yelled, stumbling. PC squirmed.
They didn’t slow. They didn’t even pause to let me get my feet under me. I twisted, glancing back at the queen. She watched, looking regal, delicate, and utterly smug.
“Are you holding a Sleagh Maith not of your court against her will?” a deep masculine voice asked in the corridor ahead of me. A corridor that had been empty a moment before.
I turned around.
In the center of the hallway stood an unfamiliar fae—another noble Sleagh Maith, from the look of his almosttoo-handsome-to-look-at features. He had black hair pulled back tightly behind his head, so I couldn’t see how long it actually was, and a dark beard that formed a sharp point at his chin and probably saved his jaw from looking too delicate for a man. Behind him, the hall vanished into a large room shrouded in deep shadows. But the shadows were only in a diamond-shaped area around the fae; the ice cavern was visible everywhere else, as if a doorway had been torn open in the center of the hall.
“You.” I couldn’t see the queen, but her voice held all the warmth of a glacier. “You have no business here.”
“I beg to differ.” He made a motion with his hand and a scream crashed through the chilled cavern.
Two inky black forms surged forward. Wraithlike, in tattered robes with their hair streaming in tangles behind them, the newcomers swung swords that trailed darkness in their wake, as if they leaked shadows. Of course, the wraiths appeared to be little more than animated shadows themselves. The ice guardians released me as they reached for their swords.
The cavern shook with the impact of the guardians and shadows. I clutched PC, stumbling back a step. The clang of swords rang in the air, and I ducked as an ice blade was deflected straight toward me. Not good.