The Treachery of Beautiful Things (18 page)

Jack? She opened her eyes, tried to jerk back, but the harpist wouldn’t release her. His hungry lips pressed to hers and his eyes, wide open, gazed on her, terrible in their greed. He held her against him, locked to him, body to body, mouth to mouth. Blue light blossomed deep inside his eyes, unnatural and horrifying. The sound of the waterfall thundered in Jenny’s ears. She tried to scream, but her lungs could not draw the breath. Deep
inside her something vital strained like taut tissue paper.

It held for a moment as she struggled to escape, her desperate eyes catching a glimpse of Jack sprinting toward her, his stone knife drawn, his face stretched tight in fury and fear.

It held for just an instant longer, one in which she realized that he would never reach her in time.

And then it tore.

As the river creature broke his kiss, some vital part of her was wrenched from her body into his. He flung what remained of her toward Jack. Her limp frame tumbled, unfeeling, into the long grass. It took a moment for her to realize she wasn’t falling. She just wasn’t there anymore. She was spinning in a void, lost and untouchable. Locked away, like a firefly in a jar. She was inside the harpist, trapped. He turned and dived into the water. She heard Jack scream her name, saw him gather her body in his arms, but she was far away now. Water roared around her. Water flooded her senses, drowned her, deafened her and blinded her. The harpist arced through the river like a pike, down to the darkest depths, where she knew no more.

P
uck came running from the trees, but Jack didn’t see or hear. He knelt over Jenny’s body, calling her name and rocking her back and forth. Though she still breathed, her consciousness was not there anymore. Jack knew it. A hollow ache followed the certainty, a pain so deep it seemed to be gouged inside him. This was his fault.

Puck gave a cry. He came up short behind Jack.

They had both seen enchanted slumber before. There was rarely a cure. Cursing beneath his breath, Puck closed his hand on Jack’s shoulder. He was trembling.

“What happened, boy?”

Jack opened his mouth and faltered. What could he say? He’d found her in the forest, hurt, bleeding, and he’d lost all control. The thought of her in danger, the thought of her hurt, of Puck hurt, of what the Kobold might have done…

Of Puck’s betrayal of them both.

Jack rounded on Puck now. “You—
you
set the course for these events. You betrayed me. Her. You went to Oberon.”

Puck shied back.

“You told the king.” Jack’s voice scraped along the sides of his tightening throat.

Puck paled, took another step back. “I had no choice, Jack. You know how it is. How
he
is. You could no more keep it from him than I could.”

But Jack hadn’t gone off in search of Oberon to greedily spill the tale of a May Queen in the forest. He’d been trapped. Forced to leave Jenny unprotected. Except for Puck, whom he had foolishly relied on.

And then the greenman, as Jenny called it, had run riot.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut. A sound escaped his throat. He opened his eyes to realize he was clutching Puck by the arm, his fingers tightening. The hobgoblin’s eyes stared back at his, wide and shining, but he didn’t make a sound.

Jack released him and looked away. At the waterfall, at the forest, at anything but Puck. He finally raised his eyes to the hobgoblin’s, struggling to keep his gaze steady.

“It was the Nix,” he said. “He lured her to the water’s edge. I was too late.” Answer given—not a full answer perhaps, but true enough for all its brevity. Jack shook Jenny again, searching her face for a response. It was empty.

Something in Jack’s chest staggered as if struck from behind, an unfamiliar, unwanted sensation. The echo of a feeling that wasn’t his anymore, no matter what he might
dream. Dreams were just pieces of cloth tied to a tree and then scattered to the wind.

“He didn’t take her body? Didn’t drown her?” Puck asked quietly.

“No. I surprised him. But Puck…” Jack looked up at the hobgoblin, aware that his eyes pleaded like a child’s. “Puck, he kissed her.”

Puck groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Then she’s lost.”

“Just help me wake her up.”

“You can’t, lad. There’s no waking her now. He didn’t take her to be a servant in his halls. He did worse. He stole her soul. He’s probably bound it in a golden cage deep beneath the water. She’s gone, lad. As surely as if he had simply drowned her. Now the queen can collect her body whenever she will. And the Nix will hand over her soul for the reward. Her heart and soul together would keep her free of the queen. But this way—body and soul separated—Jenny is helpless.”

“Titania…” The queen’s name was fluid music and a bitter curse. “This was her plan all along. The Nix is her favorite, isn’t he? Has she arranged all this, Puck?”

And why? Because she doubted him. And was she wrong to? How high a price would he be willing to pay for his heart? Perhaps Titania feared the price she asked was too high. Jack feared the same.

But Puck didn’t answer. He touched Jack’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I was to have watched her.”

Of course it was his fault. If he hadn’t told the king…Anger like a lick of flame ignited again inside him, and he glared at Puck.

“I’d give anything to take it back,” Puck babbled. “I’d do anything if I thought it would help!”

“How do I get her back?”
Jack’s voice cracked like ice on a winter’s night.

Puck stared at him in disbelief. “From the Nix? Jack, no one so taken returns. Had he pulled her in bodily, to be a servant or a concubine, perhaps in seven or twenty-one years, she’d come back, but he took her soul, boy. Look at her!”

Jack’s gaze dropped back to her pale face, and grief etched lines in his skin. He glanced at his friend to see it reflected there. Puck felt some form of it himself, Jack realized, though he would never have dreamed it, not for a mortal. Neither of them should feel anything like this.

It was as if she slept, but from this sleep there was no awakening. Her lips were already turning blue. Her skin looked like marble, traced with indigo veins.

“How do you kill a Nix?” Jack asked.

Puck sank to his knees at his side. “The river isn’t your place, Jack.”

“Just tell me.”

“You’re an earth creature, a forest child, like me.”

“If you won’t tell me, someone will. Rusalka perhaps, or
Greenteeth. I’ll find someone and pay the price. Even if I can’t bring her back, the least I can do is kill him for her. I can let her soul go so the queen can’t have her. Puck, I promised to protect her!” It was that more than anything. He’d promised and he’d failed to keep that promise. He’d failed Jenny. The thought left him shredded inside.

And yet it was still more than that.

What would Oberon do to him for his failure? What would Titania do? Any hope of his own freedom was gone, that was certain.

Those worries were pale ghosts compared to the one overwhelming truth.

He’d failed Jenny.

The hobgoblin said nothing. Enough that it was a promise. Enough that Jack had failed. Anything more would mean facing things that neither of them wanted to face, not now, not in anger.

“Steel,” Puck muttered, as if even the word were a poison to him.

Jack looked up.

“You need steel for preference. Iron at a push. But a sword, not haggled for, given in fair exchange. And there’s only one place to get it. Out there, along the Ridgeway between worlds, in the place of metal and fire from a hand that hates us and everything we are. The touch of impure metal is as foul to you as it is to me.”

Jack swallowed down a breath and stepped over the Edge. The mortal world was wreathed in darkness, and a chill, constant drizzle misted the hilltop on which he found himself. He walked through a place called the Vale, crossing a road and climbing the steep incline, heading for an ancient pathway running through the sloping countryside. Beneath the mud, smears of pale chalk that formed the foundations of the land hereabouts were visible, like bare bones exposed. There was no sign of the folk anywhere. Neither mortal nor fae. But then, as Puck had warned him, the fae had no place here anymore. Not in the human world. Not in the places between.

“You’ll have but one chance,” Puck had said. “Oberon’s protection is all that will keep you safe. And he didn’t give it with good grace. He doesn’t relish the thought of you stepping even a foot outside his power, no matter how much he wants the girl. He’s turning your enchantment upside down for this one night so you can walk in her world.” Jack had stared, unable to believe that. “Don’t mistake me,” Puck continued. “It’s no favor. You owe him a great debt, Jack. He wants your word that you’ll renounce what was yours, and your right to it, for once and for all.”

Renounce what was his. Jack gazed down on the fields below, edged with hedgerows, a final line of wildness clinging to the edges of the mortal world, and the squat and
flat-topped hillock where he had crossed through. There, Puck had said, a hero killed a dragon. Jack knew better. Dragons weren’t killed so easily, certainly not by mortals. Not even by him. Another failure. More likely this hero was buried there.

Jack pulled the collar of his dappled green coat up around his neck against the rain. Beneath it, he wore a simple green shirt and loose britches. His boots were a sturdy leather fastened with synthetic laces. Puck’s glamour was impressive. If he did encounter any mortals, they’d hardly give him a second glance.

Renounce what was his.
The words rose again. It had been so long since he had even considered what was once his. And yet he never ceased to long for it. Titania’s recent offer had made it more real by far. But he knew the truth. He was meant to protect the Realm. Yet he couldn’t even protect Jenny. What was once his? That was a joke. Freedom? Knowing he could never take it back, or win it for himself, all this was a small thing to renounce.

No more dreams or hopes.

No more wishes.

His wishes had been torn from the tree. Puck had told Oberon everything and despite his regret, would probably do it again in an instant. The queen could come for Jenny at any second. With her soul in the hands of the Nix, there would be nothing she could do to withstand Titania. And
Mab. This one chance was all he had—and a slim one at that. He had failed in every way, in his servitude to the king, in his attempts to placate the queen, in his tattered friendship with Puck, his broken self-control, but most of all, he had failed in his primary duty—to protect those who wandered in the Realm. He had failed Jenny. He’d failed her from the moment he met her. His efforts to send her home had just served to entangle her in the Realm. To trap her there.

Better their paths had never crossed.

Resigning his claim to the last particle of his old self was a little thing in comparison to helping her now, a vain attempt to restore his honor perhaps, but the only thing he could do. And that meant approaching yet another king. A fallen one.

And then what?
A voice whispered within him.
Win her back and hand her over? And to whom? There is no way to win this. Whatever you touch turns to ruin. That’s your true curse.

White Horse Hill lay dark beneath the clouded sky. And Titania’s ward—the great White Horse itself—was blind without the moon. A small relief. Jack hurried past it as rain fell in gray waves, whipped up by gusts of wind that seemed to scratch at the sky. The clouds shifted then, and moonlight broke through. Almost at the summit of the hill, all Jack could do was stare. He lifted his face.

The moon hung high in the night’s sky, cut by clouds, full and so very bright. He’d never seen it. Never thought to see
it, not with these eyes. It was beautiful and vast, hovering so far above him.

The moonlight fell on him, and it fell on the horse. The White Horse.
Titania’s ward.
He was a fool. So very much a fool. Jack cursed, pulled his hood up over his head, and hoped Titania wasn’t watching. She’d no reason to notice him in this place, no reason to suspect that he was here or why. He prayed that the White Horse was not so mystical a thing after all, just a chalk outline carved into the living landscape. Someone had dug it out of the earth, clearing the grass to reveal the white chalk beneath, thousands of years ago. People, just people, he tried to tell himself. It looked like a sketch done by a child, and yet at the same time, profoundly powerful, as if a great hand had reached down from the sky—or up from the earth—to scour its mark into the land, long brush strokes that glowed with light when the moon spilled over it. He feared it. No simple thing of humankind. It was a ward. It kept things away. Things like him.

The moonlight called to him now. Almost as strongly as the trees. He’d never seen its light falling about him, never seen it silvering his hands. It made them like stone, strong and reliable. Hands that did their own work.

Jack thought of what Puck had promised on his behalf, and it made the pit of his stomach plummet. And yet, he would have done the same if he’d been the one to bring
the news to their king, if he’d been the one to beg for help. That Puck had gone in his stead said much for their ruined friendship. Jack would never have asked it. He wasn’t quite sure he should have allowed it. But Oberon now had his promise. It served them all.