Grave Dance (35 page)

Chapter 33

P
C had thoroughly investigated the suite to his own satisfaction and curled up in the very center of a bed that looked big enough to sleep ten, but I was stil pacing. I’d told Falin the basics of what I’d learned since he left me at his apartment. I didn’t tel him everything—the shadows in the room whispered, and I was afraid they listened too—but I told him about Hol y and the gist of what the accomplice was attempting. Then it was my turn to demand some answers. “So why are you here? In Faerie, I mean. I was more than a little shocked to see you at the winter court.”

“If you stop pacing, I’l tel you.” He patted a spot on the bed beside where he sat on the edge.

I didn’t join him. If I crawled onto that bed I’d end up asleep. Hel , I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t fal fast asleep stil standing, but I wanted to talk before I surrendered to sleep. I did stop pacing, though, forcing myself to be stil .

“I might have shocked you, but you scared the hel out of me.” He stood and walked across the room to join me, since I wouldn’t go to him. “I returned to my apartment and, wel , I imagine you know exactly what I found.”

The aftermath of the gryphon attack.

“The police and the FIB were already there. At first I thought they’d already grabbed you and shuttled you away to Faerie. When I learned they hadn’t, I went out searching for you. I spent most of the night searching any spot I could think of that you might go. Where were you, by the way?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I replied, which was probably true, but again, with the shadows whispering in the corners, I didn’t want to reveal too many secrets, even in the corners, I didn’t want to reveal too many secrets, even if these secrets belonged to my father.

“Wel , sometime after midnight I returned to your apartment and these wooden blocks flung themselves at me. Then a pen lifted itself and started scratching out letters.”

“Roy.” He’d actual y managed to find Falin and get a message to him. Of course, it sounded like it was the wrong message. “So if Roy told you I’d been nabbed by the skimmers, how did you end up in Faerie?”

“It took him thirty minutes to write ‘
Alex kidnap,’
and once he got that far, I just assumed . . . Incorrectly, apparently.”

Falin looked away.

“It worked out,” I said, and shrugged, but the movement went off course somehow and ended up a slight sway.

“Come on, let’s get some sleep,” Falin said, his arms moving to mine to steady me. “You can’t save the world if you fal over from exhaustion.”

I let him lead me toward the bed, but as we walked I muttered, “I’m not trying to save the world. I’m just helping my friends and—” I cut off as we passed a large ebony desk. In the center of the desk sat a five-inch dagger with an ornate hilt. A dagger that looked suspiciously like
my
dagger, which I’d last seen when Caleb had dropped it in the hal way of the winter court. I shrugged off Falin’s hands and moved to the desk, the sight of the dagger pushing back my exhaustion, at least a little. “How did this get here?”

The dagger buzzed lightly as I picked it up. It was definitely my dagger.

“Any number of ways,” Falin said, looking at the blade from over my shoulder. “It’s enchanted. This is Faerie and things move unexpectedly. The dagger likes you. Maybe a combination of al that. Maybe something else entirely.”

Right.
I fought the layers of skirt in the gown and shoved the dagger back in its holster. However it got to me, at least I was armed again.
Like that will do me a lot of good if I
I was armed again.
Like that will do me a lot of good if I
need to draw it fast.
What I wouldn’t give to have my hip-huggers back, even with the pink chalk print. I resumed my pacing, using the energy that the short adrenaline burst had given me. Falin sighed as I passed him.

“If I could figure out how to open a rift like the planebender’s door, I could search al of Faerie for Hol y,” I said, fidgeting with the amulet attached to my bracelet. I’d seen the boy close the rift.
Could I open a door as easily?

The accomplice could be preparing to attempt the next ritual while we were stuck as
guests
of the shadow court.

I stopped, rocking back on my heels. I could
try
to open a rift. I could think of several worst-case scenarios, but none quite as bad as the land of the dead merging with mortal reality, and preventing that was one of the items on my to-do list—once I got out of this room. I lowered my shields. I hadn’t been able to completely drop my shields outside a circle or heavy wards for years without grave essence reaching for me. Hel , even inside a circle, the world always decayed around me and chil ed wind tore at my skin. But there was no land of the dead in Faerie. I dropped my shields, and it was as if I’d shrugged off a weight I’d been carrying so long I didn’t even notice it until it was suddenly lifted.

No wonder Rianna prefers staying in Faerie.
I could get dangerously used to this freedom. There wasn’t even Aetheric energy to entangle my psyche or for me to accidental y pul into reality. Of course, that also meant I had no magic except the energy stored in my ring, and I couldn’t draw on the grave. The feeling of freedom washed away in a sense of powerlessness, though there was stil magic in the air, just not a magic I was used to. But I could feel it, which meant I could touch it.

That didn’t mean I
should
. I thought back to the skimmers standing around the rift by the river, drawing down energy they never should have been able to touch until one skimmer actual y
ignited.

skimmer actual y
ignited.

I would leave the foreign energy alone.

Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on the space directly in front of my face. There was no Aetheric, no land of the dead, but there were multiple realities. I could feel them.
Okay, here goes.
Lifting my hands, I focused my wil on parting the air in front of me as I forced my hands farther apart.

Reality moved but it didn’t open.

I frowned at the air in front of my nose. I hadn’t managed to open a rift, let alone a door.
And I’ve been opening rifts
by accident all week.
It was just my luck that
trying
to do something I’d been doing by accident would lead to utter failure.

Wel , not
utter
failure
.
The space in front of me was empty, as in, no other realities existed inside it. I’d actual y cleared a space so nothing but Faerie remained. I reached out with my power and shoved. Reality moved again, bunching around the edges of empty space like a sheet shoved away from the edge of a bed. I waved my hand through the space, using no power.

Nothing happened.

I pushed with power, and reality shifted.
Which is weird,
but not helpful.
Moving layers of reality didn’t help us get out of this room. I reached out again, and then swayed as my knees buckled.

Falin caught my shoulders. “Okay, now I’m insisting that you go to sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re trembling and you can barely stand.”

Okay, he had me there. I leaned back against his chest, my eyes heavy. “You just want to get me in bed.”

He chuckled, the sound vibrating through me where we touched. “I won’t deny that, but I don’t think you’l be much fun until you get some sleep.”

True.

He leaned down and scooped me off the floor. I lifted a He leaned down and scooped me off the floor. I lifted a heavy arm around his shoulders and leaned into him.

“Do you love her?” I whispered the question so softly I wasn’t even sure it made a sound, but Falin went stiff around me, every one of his muscles locking as he froze.

“What?”

If he’d heard me, he knew who I was talking about, so I didn’t ask again. As the silence stretched, my chest tightened as if the dread I felt had become a hand pressing down on my lungs, slowing my heart.

Final y Falin said, “Once, I think that I thought I did.”

“Do you stil ?”

“She’s cold, calculating, and cruel, except for when she wants to be kind,” he said, which I noticed wasn’t exactly a

“no,” but he did start walking again.

“Why do they hate you? The other fae, that is?” Caleb, my father, and Nandin al disliked him, and I hadn’t seen much evidence that the members of his own court liked him any better. “And why do they cal you the queen’s bloodied hands?”

“Your second question answers your first, at least in part,”

he said as he set me down on the edge of the bed. Then he took a step back, and conflict showed clearly in the hard angles of his face. He stared at me for a moment before he reached some conclusion, though it didn’t seem that he liked what he’d decided. He closed his eyes and peeled off his glove. He opened his eyes again as he opened his hand, palm out so it faced me, but he kept his gaze down, not looking at me.

Thick, dark blood coated, or more accurately,
saturated
, Falin’s palm. That didn’t completely surprise me. I’d seen Falin kil before. Hel , he’d kil ed, or at least mortal y injured, a gremlin to rescue me before we were even friends. The depth of the blood did shock me, at least a little. I could almost see it pooling on his skin, as if it would drip at any moment.
How many had to die at his hands for there to be
so much blood?

so much blood?

He looked at me, just a quick cut of a glance, and whatever he saw in my face made his shoulders tighten so fast his hand jerked back an inch. I don’t know what I’d shown him, or if he’d only seen in my expression what he expected, but as he started to pul on his glove I jumped to my feet. I reached out for him, for his bloody hand. Yeah, the blood freaked me out, the fact he’d kil ed that many people scared the hel out of me, but I trusted that they needed kil ing. And besides, I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge anyone for the blood on their hands.

When I reached for his hand, he jerked away from me.

“Don’t.”

“I know it doesn’t spread or wipe off,” I told him.

He took a step farther back, stil out of my reach, and studied my face as he pul ed on his glove. “That’s right, you touched the Shadow King.” He shook his head. “I would never touch you with these hands, Alex. Not here.”

I stared at him. Then I rol ed down the top of one of the long opera gloves the queen had created for me and pul ed it off my fingers. I held up my own bloody hand.

Falin’s eyes flew wide. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head. Then he grabbed my hand in both of his gloved ones.

“No, Alex. Who—” He stopped. “Coleman.”

I nodded. “I’m not exactly lily white either.”

He gently pushed my fingers until they curled over my palm, then closed my entire fist in his hands. “You shouldn’t be stained by this. Let me take it from you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me take the stain from you.” He led me back to the bed as he spoke, which was good, as I was starting to get that electrical vertigo that happens every time you blink when you’re real y, real y tired. I covered a yawn with the back of my stil -gloved hand as I sank down onto the bed, and he said, “I don’t know if I can take it from someone outside my court, but let me try.”

I blinked at him, my exhaustion making the conversation I blinked at him, my exhaustion making the conversation harder to fol ow. Then a very important fact from what he said hit me. “Wait—so the blood on your hands, it’s not al from people you kil ed. You took the stain from other people?”

“I have kil ed enough, Alex, believe me. But no, only a drop of it is blood that I personal y spil ed. I carry al the victims of the winter court. The taint from every duel, every monarch who kil ed to rise to or ensure power, and every soldier who kil ed in every war since the very first winter came to the world.”

My stomach gave a little somersault. “How old are you?”

“Not so old as you’re thinking right now,” he said, and he smiled for the first time since this conversation began. “I was born after the Magical Awakening, and I took on the role of the queen’s bloodied hands only a few decades ago. There have been many more before me who kil ed at the queen’s bidding and carried the court’s taint.”

“So, circling back to my original question, they hate you because you have the worst job ever?”

He smiled again, but this time it was not a happy one.

“Some hate. Some fear. Some are simply repulsed. I carry a lot of death on my hands. Nearly immortal beings do not like to be reminded of their mortality. The blood also gives me some benefits that make the other fae distrustful. Any weapon that I wield is deadly, even if it might not normal y be so to fae. Wounds that I inflict are more likely to be fatal, while I can survive wounds that would normal y kil —”

Yeah, I’ve seen that one firsthand.

“—The blood also passed to me knowledge and skil s from the warriors who came before me, so despite the fact that I am little more than a child according to many of the fae, I can battle the ancients and possibly win. That scares the fae, and makes me rather unwelcome.”

I could see why. I crawled farther up on the bed and Falin fol owed.

“Let me take this taint from you. It would make no

“Let me take this taint from you. It would make no difference to me, but al the difference to you.”

“No.” I pul ed my hand from him and fought the opera glove back over my fingers. While I wanted the blood gone, it wouldn’t be right to give it away. I’d been the one who kil ed Coleman. Hel , I’d more than kil ed him, I’d cannibalized his soul
,
which had to be worse. While Falin might be able to take away the blood that Faerie forced to manifest on my hands, he couldn’t remove the fact that I’d taken a life. I’d made a decision, and even if it haunted my nightmares, I stil thought it was the right decision.

Once I’d pul ed on the glove, I col apsed in the middle of the bed beside PC. The pil ows were down and soft, the sheets under me silk and smooth. My eyes closed.