Brightly (Flicker #2) (26 page)

A tall, bearded man with sand-colored hair stood before Merrin’s throne. She regarded him impassively, resting her chin in her hand. Like Lee and the others, his hands were bound with looping vines.

“He was Magdalena’s husband and the baby’s father,” Merrin said. “He wanted them back. When it became clear that he could not convince me to part with my pets, he tried a different approach.”

The man set his jaw—and a heartbeat later, the cu sith that ringed the platform turned on the knights. Lee watched the knights collapse before they could reach for their weapons, paralyzed by the howling of the hounds. The man held his hands out, and one of the cu sith chewed through his bonds with its massive teeth, careful not to hurt him.

Merrin shot to her feet. The hounds began to circle her throne, snarling. The man hardly looked at her; he went straight for the cradle. But before he could pick up the baby, an arrow struck him in the shoulder with enough force to spin him around. On the next platform, one of Merrin’s knights had managed to grab her bow and fire.

Now the man was sprawled on the platform. The wound in his shoulder sprouted leaves and vines that coiled around his chest; he twisted and arched, screaming.

Henry flinched, looking away from the mirror. Davis wrapped his fingers around Henry’s wrist.

“How I longed to feed that man to the hounds!” Merrin grumbled. “But they would never touch him. In the end, it made no difference. He was struck with elfshot. It burrows straight to the heart, and Summer elfshot sprouts roots that dig into the flesh. He wouldn’t be much longer. I was content to watch. And then…”

Two faeries appeared in the middle of the platform, coalescing from a whirl of smoke and wind and feathers. Lee’s breath caught: Neman and Morgan. They looked a little different than Lee remembered them. Morgan’s hair was longer, raying out around her face, while Neman’s hair was tied into a thick, shining braid that fell to the small of her back. Tongues of black smoke clung to them, licking down their arms and across their shoulders, rolling off their folded wings.

Merrin scowled. “I should have expected them. How they love to insert themselves into my games to relieve their own eternal boredom.”

In the mirror, Merrin stood between Neman and Morgan, clearly arguing with them. They were surrounded by paralyzed knights and cu sith that paced around the man’s still-struggling form, occasionally nudging him with their snouts.

“They remembered stealing Magdalena from me all those years ago,” Merrin said. “And they remembered that, in doing so, they had taken ownership of her. She belonged to them.”

Lee suppressed a shudder. She had belonged to Umbriel for seven long years. Sometimes her time in the revel felt distant, like it happened a million years ago. Other times, it felt like she still wasn’t really free, like some part of her would always belong to Faerie.

“By extension,” Merrin continued, “her child also belonged to them. They had no interest in Magdalena, but her boy intrigued them. They had come to claim him. Had anyone else dared to make such demands in my forest, it would’ve meant their death. But you can imagine my position. Keeping the boy would’ve been more trouble than it was worth.”

Merrin sounded bored, like she didn’t care one way or the other, but Lee suspected she was masking her own embarrassment. Once again, she got the sense that Merrin was young, in faerie terms, at least. She was a young, petulant noble who didn’t like anyone to take away her playthings.

Lee watched Merrin lift the baby from the cradle and carry him to Neman, who was careful with her talons as she accepted the wriggling bundle. When Morgan looked at the man, her black eyes were pitiless.

“As he died, they offered him no comfort, save one simple promise,” Merrin sighed. “They promised that his son would live, but neither he nor his wife would ever see the boy. And then they were gone.”

The two faeries burst into twin clouds of black smoke that streaked up into the canopy, trailing feathers. Merrin went to stand above the man, to look down at him as his struggling grew weaker and weaker, until it finally stopped.

“I had his body burned that night.” Merrin smiled at the mirror, as if this were a fond memory for her. “Magdalena expired soon after. She’d refused to eat or drink since she came back to me. She couldn’t even sing. Eventually, I stopped ordering my fey to work so hard to keep her alive, and she finally went. All that trouble and nothing to show for it. A shame, really.”

Merrin waved her hand again and the scene rippled into an indecipherable mess of color. Lee watched as the color seemed to sink, as if the mirror were actually deep, until it disappeared entirely and the surface looked like a normal mirror again.

“Of all the things that man said to me, only one bit stuck out,” Merrin said. “Once, I heard him call the baby
Henry
. You have your father’s eyes, you know.”

Merrin smiled again, and Henry shrank under her gaze, looking down.

“How much did you know before today? And if your masters did not tell you, who did?” Merrin’s smiled stretched wider, thinner, crueler. “I am endlessly curious.”

“I knew enough. My mother always said that monsters live in Deception Pass.” Slowly Henry raised his gaze to meet Merrin’s. His eyes were shiny, but his mouth was pressed into a hard line. “I guess she was talking about you.”

Lee thought of Anna Heartstill, the woman Henry always called his mom, and realized for the first time that she could not have been his biological mother. She remembered the photo Henry had picked up from the kitchen table, the two teenage girls who grinned and hugged. She remembered the dark hair, the laughing eyes, and her breath caught in her throat.
Anna and Maggie waiting for the ferry.

She had wondered what became of the girls in the photo. Now she knew.

A frown flitted across Merrin’s face. “You are impetuous. But I will forgive you, sweetling. I would hate for us to get off on the wrong foot.”

“What are you talking about?”

Merrin stood. “You should have shown your masters more respect and not offered yourself up to me so freely by returning here. They claimed you, went quite out of their way to keep you from me—yet here you are, and so powerful already. I would be a fool to let you walk away.” Merrin looked as smug as a cat with a mouse pinned beneath her paw. “I am always looking for someone to care for my animals.”

The moment the words left the faerie woman’s lips, Lee felt a deep, painful spasm inside her, like a knife was being dragged through her—but at the same time, she felt weirdly calm, as if she were experiencing a moment that had already passed.

Nasser, Filo, Henry and the others scrambled to their feet, but Lee rose slowly. Her body felt strange, like it didn’t belong to her. Part of her had known what Merrin would say. Deep down, she had known from the beginning. She’d been through this before.

“The others,” Henry managed finally. “You can’t keep them here.”

“I can do what I like,” Merrin purred. “They are mine now, just as you are.”

“You have no reason to keep them! They can’t do anything for you!”

“That remains to be seen.”

For a moment, Henry just stared at her. He looked even worse than he had when they stumbled up the hill in the rain. He was so pale, his eyes dull and ringed with shadows. His shirt was crusted with dried black blood. The bandages visible through the tears at his shoulder were spotted with fresh blood.

“I will do anything,” Henry whispered, his eyes never leaving hers as he approached her, step by step. “Anything you want, if you would…”

Merrin’s smile silenced him. She cupped his face in her slender hands. “You will,” she cooed. “Oh, you will. I already have you, sweetling. There is nothing else to give.”

She looked to one of her knights and nodded. As one, the knights moved forward, converging on the group standing before the throne. Everyone froze, hands half-raised in submission, save one.

A flash caught Lee’s eye: Clementine’s orange fire, burning in her raised hands, curling around her arms, bright and hot. She could see Clementine’s eyes ticking back and forth, calculating, gauging.

“Clem,” Henry started, reaching for her, a note of panic in his voice. “Please.”

“Don’t tell me not to,” she whispered fiercely, above the hungry crackling of her flames.

In a moment, one of the knights had drawn his sword and pressed the curved blade against Clementine’s neck. She didn’t move, but she didn’t let the flames die, either. Her face was calm, but her chest was heaving. Her eyes were locked on the knight’s face.

Davis made a pained noise low in his throat. “
Clem
,” he pleaded, and nothing more. Just her name.

Watching Clementine, Lee felt a crack inside her chest, spilling something hot and bitter through her veins. Her heart was beating wildly and she was shaking again, not with terror, but with fury.

“That’s enough!” Lee shouted, her voice echoing loudly. “Stop it!”

For a second, everyone did, taken aback by her outburst. Lee felt every eye move to her, even Clementine’s, as she turned to face Merrin.

“None of us are staying here,” she said, squeezing her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. “You’re going to let us walk out the way we came.”

“And why would I do that?” Merrin drawled, with exaggerated patience.

“Neman and Morgan went through so much trouble to keep Henry away from you all this time,” Lee said, surprised at how confident she sounded. “Do you think they don’t keep track of him? Do you think they won’t come again, just for the satisfaction of taking something you want? You said yourself that it’s fun for them. They like to do it.”

Merrin lifted her chin, a gesture that told Lee she was willing to listen a little more.

“But that’s just Henry,” Lee went on. “They’ll spirit him away, just like they always do, and they’ll probably leave the rest of us to rot. But I know someone who won’t.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sure you remember the…
trouble
surrounding King Umbriel’s coronation.”

“Word of it had spread all through the Court weeks before the coronation,” Merrin said.

“And you attended the event, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then surely, My Lady, you remember the human girl at the center of the trouble. The girl who dueled the dryad Byrony before the Court and won. And certainly you remember her companions, four human Seers.”

Merrin’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak.

Taking a deep breath, Lee drew herself up to her full height. “My Lady, I haven’t introduced myself properly. I am Lee Capren, former artist of the Summer Court, greatly favored by Umbriel, King of Summer.”

At first, Merrin just pressed her mouth into a thin line. Then she clasped her slim, elegant hands together and gave Lee a long, appraising look. “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, that pretty copper hair of yours. I remember now. You are the one who dueled before the coronation.” She smirked. “You put on quite a good show for such a little creature.”

Lee didn’t smile. What did Filo always tell her?
Say it like you mean it.

“Since we’re on the same page now, I’m sure you can see why keeping me, or any of my friends, would be a mistake,
My Lady
,” Lee said, her voice flinty. “When Umbriel’s lover traded me away, he banished her to the human world and ordered her to return me to him. He convinced Queen Feronia to let me and my companions go free after I killed one of her fey in that duel. I am dear to the Summer King, and now everyone here knows it.”

As she spoke, Lee felt her insides squirming and hoped it didn’t show on her face. She wasn’t lying: She’d been one of Umbriel’s favorites, and he had always been kind to her. During her time in the revel, he’d looked after her with special care. He taught her the steps of the circle dances and brought her fresh paints and canvases himself. He protected her from the other fey. Even after the duel with Byrony, he’d treated her with tenderness.
I was worried about you,
he’d said.
My heart is glad to find you well.

Still, her relationship with the Summer King had always been that of a master and his pet. She may have been a beloved pet, but at the end of the day, that was all she was to him. A prized lapdog. A bird that knew some fancy tricks.

But it was the only card she had to play. She plowed ahead.

“Even if you release me,” she said, “if you keep even one of us here, I want you to know that I will get word to Umbriel
myself
. He’ll know that you held me, threatened me, stole people I care about—people he once freed because
I
wanted him to. How many faeries do you think would be willing to spread that message, hoping to curry favor with their king? How furious do you think Umbriel will be?”

Merrin gave a startled laugh, a sound like birds taking flight, but Lee could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. “You dare to threaten me?”

“I’m just painting a clearer picture for you,” she said demurely. “If you’re really bent on keeping us here, I can’t stop you. But…” She stepped toward Merrin and held her chin up, swallowing any hesitation. “If you think Umbriel won’t find out eventually—if you think he won’t come for me
himself
—then you’re mistaken.”

“You are forgetting the other option,” Merrin said. “The one where one of my knights throws you from this platform and nobody is the wiser.”