Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (32 page)

Tess looked at him, her fingers wrapped around a silvery chess piece. "They're inside, Thomas. Their souls. I could see them when I looked through the stone. She's taken away their lives to make more fairy earth."

So much magic, crammed into such tiny things. No wonder their release was overriding the binding on his arm, around Hunter's brow. No doubt the same thing was happening in the Queen's bed, where Aaron lay in his stupor, drained by his Queen. Thomas looked from Tess's hand to the Queen's face, avid in its focused attention.

The Queen spoke, still softly. "I will kill him. Choose, sister of Stephen. Life for Thomas, in exchange for the rest of my things. It seems an easy bargain, if you truly love him."

"You don't know what love is," Tess spat. "You haven't the first idea. You're mistaking greed and power for love. Just because you can make someone choose doesn't mean you should." She turned to Thomas, tears streaming from her beautiful ghille dhu eyes. "I'm sorry." The wheat-colored leaves fell from her birch-girl branches as she upended the bag. Her roots clutched at the skittering, precious little things, stamping and crushing them all at once. Her boots, pierced by her roots, thumped awkwardly on the floor, but they did the work. "I love you, Thomas, I'm so sorry!"

In the chaos of rising soul smoke and bluebell scent, Hunter laughed. He held in his hand the one trinket that had escaped Tess's destruction, the fir cone. The Queen rushed at him, her hands like claws, and Hunter spoke, blood pouring down his face where now only a single thorn held the crown on his head, cruelly plunged into the flesh above his right ear.

"Get your own meat, Queen of the Unseelie," he said, and crushed the cone in his fist.

The Queen froze.

In the silence, the severed golden thorn sang a thin, brittle note as it broke from the crown. It rang upon the floor bouncing, then settling, its tinkling notes fading only gradually. They all stared at it.

Thomas recovered first. He grabbed Tess's hand and dragged her to the chamber door, where the pixies were squeezing through the crack at the bottom. The Queen's attention and magic must have faltered, because Thomas was able to open the door a foot or so, shoving himself through the slender gap and pulling Tess after him, bending her branches, scraping her roots. Outside, the kelpies were milling, big-eyed at the chaos, leaving the floor wet and slippery with waterweed. Their eyes locked on the crack of the door and what else might burst through it, unconcerned once they recognized Thomas.

"Aaron!" Tess cried, hanging back, but Thomas took hold of her, staring into those dark, drowning eyes, ignoring the wild fury of the dance in the large cavern beyond the Queen's chamber.

"We've all made choices tonight, Aaron included. You and I are leaving while we can. We're going
now
."

"Will she come after us?" Tess wanted to know, her branches flailing.

Thomas didn't answer, because just then Hunter's broken, bloodied crown crashed against the doors and fell in the open gap. Inside the chamber there was an awful silence. Outside the chamber, a stillness fell over the dancing crowd in the crystal hall. All eyes turned toward the Queen's chamber, and light poured down from the ceiling far, far above as the trees opened the mound to the moon.

Allantide was well and truly upon them.

Tess looked at the crown, then to the place beneath his oilskin where Thomas's armband still circled his arm, held by no more than two or three strands of gold.

"All that, and you're still
hers
—" Her voice was loud in the uncanny silence.

"So are you," he said. Bitter, so bitter.

Inside the chamber, Hunter spoke. "Long and long I have waited. Long and long did you deny me, did you bind me. No more. Come to bed, or come to war. It makes no difference, but no longer shall you rule
me
."

"War, then," snarled the Queen.

A fresh stream of gibbering pixies spewed out the gap in the doorway, and inside the Queen's chamber there was a massive crack, as if the room had split. Hunter's staff, Thomas thought.

Thomas bent, picked up Hunter's crown, and flung it into the stilled mob. The eyes of all watched it rise and begin to fall, making way for it as it dropped. It struck the floor with a discordant jangle.

"There is your meat!" Thomas shouted into the hush. "Your Queen keeps not her faith with those she rules. The Wild Hunt bows to another now. Be ye warned!"

Silence reigned for another moment, then with a mighty roar, the fae began to move again. The spiral fell apart like leaves blown in the wind, and in its place clots and clumps of fae began to form.

The denizens of Forest Park were choosing sides.

Thomas caught Tess around the middle, lifting her from the ground. She would never be able to keep up with him on her new roots, with her ruined shoes flopping. "Hang on, and keep your branches pulled in tight. I'm going to run as fast as I can, and the ceilings will be low." Thomas laughed crazily as he bowled over one of the Queen's kelpie guards and fled into the darkness of the nearest tunnel.

As he ran, Thomas wondered whether Hunter or the Queen would summon him next. Both would kill him, so it made no difference. For now, it was all he would ask of Allantide, to survive until dawn and get his love to daylight outside the mound.

T
ESS
FOUND IT LESS SICKENING
to close her eyes and not watch their perilous passage through the tunnels of Forest Park. Thomas ran so swiftly and changed direction so often that she was immediately confused. Instead of paying attention to the route, she concentrated on clinging to Thomas as best she could, lifting her feet—her roots—from the floor and keeping her branches from scraping the walls and ceiling. It wasn't easy, and it hurt.

Everything hurt, her heart most of all. While they ran, she wept. For Stephen, for Aaron, for Thomas, for herself. For all the souls whose possibility of restoration to life she had destroyed. Somewhere in Portland, the hearts in several people's bodies, soulless and empty, had probably ceased to beat at last. She had killed them as surely as the Queen would have done. But better to be fairy earth, she supposed, than to be imprisoned forever. In her own way, the Queen had the truth of it, even if it was not the truth Tess would have chosen.

After a time, it seemed that their path climbed steadily. A little after that, she thought the air might be more fresh, dew-damp, and chilly. Thomas burst out of the tunnel at last, racing past an ugly lump of something gray-green in the moonlight. The lump turned slowly to stare at them.

"
That's
a troll," Thomas panted. "You can see the difference for yourself." He put distance between them and the lumpen being, then slowed a fraction, his head turning from side to side as he ran. He mumbled to himself.

"Put me down," Tess said.

"It's here—right here somewhere—"

"What is? Put me down."

"The ley."

"The what? Thomas—"

"A fairy road. Like I said, we're leaving. There'd better not be anything coming this way on it, or by God I—there!" He turned sharply, headed once more uphill in the dark, moon-silvered forest. He halted in front of a monstrous Sitka spruce, one of the kind the Native Americans called council trees, using them as landmarks for meeting places or rituals. In its early youth, several of its branches had been trained outward and down before being permitted to grow upward. Others called them octopus trees, with their limbs reaching skyward like an enormous candelabra. Tess had never heard of one so close to Portland before, yet here it was. Thomas set her down, but didn't let go of her.

He pointed at the bowl-like base of the spruce. "The road starts here. This tree anchors this end. The ley will take us over the top of Forest Park and down the other side. We'll end up somewhere near the Columbia River."

Tess saw no road, just the black shape of the tree and the bone-white moon above. Around them amongst the dark trees were other birch girls, pale swaying forms who looked at her curiously, beckoning her to join them. The world was different, and it frightened her. Everything about this world frightened her—her new self most of all. She turned away from the birch girls to the only safety she knew: Thomas.

"No," she said to him, uncertain what she was objecting to, but feeling she must deny
something
this terrible night. Thomas merely took her in his arms, looking up into her branches for a long moment, and then he kissed her woody lips. She felt them soften beneath his, becoming tender, perhaps even human lips, and sobbed against his mouth.

He lifted his head and drew a finger down her cheek. "Trust me just a little longer. You saved my life from the Queen, now let me try and save yours." He took one step to the side, pulling her along.

An uncomfortable sensation, like a flood of ants crawling over her skin and biting, made all her hairs—
leaves, twigs
, she thought crazily—stand on end. Then they were whizzing through the black forest at a speed even greater than that of the Wild Hunt as it tore through Portland.

A massive fir tree came straight at them. Tess fainted.

––––––––

W
hen Tess opened her eyes, she lay across Thomas's lap, her head and branches cradled in the bend of his arm and shoulder. The moon still shone on them, though from much farther west and lower on the horizon. The air smelled of fresh water, river weed and wet sand, and, somehow, dawn. Something lumpy was between them, and as she stirred, she realized it was her purse.

"I still have it," she mumbled. "Cross-body bags are the best." She picked a drooping bluebell off its strap and flung it away with distaste.

Thomas opened his eyes and gazed down at her. His back was against a large boulder. He looked unutterably weary in the moonlight, his skin gray and rough. The night was quiet around them.

"Did I wake you? I'm sorry."

"Still have what?" he asked her.

"My purse." She tried to sit up, and he let her. "Where are we?"

"At the far end of the ley, somewhere near the town of Clatskanie, I think." He gestured with his chin, and she glanced where he was looking. Not far from them an expanse of dark water rippled slowly past from right to left—east to west, she thought. "That's the Columbia. The fairy road ends here. It can't cross that much running water."

"Clatskanie!" It was still Halloween night, yet somehow on foot they had traveled more than sixty miles. She got to her feet and stumble-walked to the edge of the river. Her boots fell off as she went, but after one glance, she left them behind. Roots weren't meant to fit inside boots. The soft sand was soothing to her scraped and bruised roots, and as she got to the wetter sand, she realized she could
taste
its moisture through them. The Columbia tasted of tannins, green riverweed, marsh grass and the basalt gorge through which the river flowed. There was also a chemical tang she didn't recognize. She backed up quickly, thinking of fertilizer run-off from farms, storm water from drains, and who knew what else.

Birch girl.

She turned to look at Thomas, who still leaned against the rock, watching her. As tears welled in her eyes, she reached to brush them away, and smelled root beer. Birch sap, she thought crazily. Birch beer. She cried root beer tears now.

"Will she come after us?" Tess asked Thomas. "Will she chase us?"

"I don't know. If we can get to dawn without being caught, a lot of things will be different. Hunter will have to give up, for example. But he owes you a life debt because you set him free. That's one thing in our favor."

"It's not long until dawn. I can smell it."

He smiled a tired smile. "Can you now?"

She stretched out her branches, all of them, to their very tips, where the old-gold leaves trembled, and two or three fluttered loose. The fabric of her shirt and jacket snagged on her rough bark skin, but though the stretching hurt, it also felt good, even where her bark had been scraped away from their flight through the tunnels.

"So beautiful," Thomas said.

She looked at him for a long time, thinking of nothing, but feeling everything.

"I love you, Tess."

She covered her eyes with her hands, and this time, when the tears fell, they tasted of salt and her hands were soft human hands. So she was like Thomas, half fae, half human, and her glamour came and went without her bidding. She wondered if she'd fall into the wintersleep Thomas had mentioned as the Wild Hunt carried them along the mound, or if her half-human state would somehow make her different.

"Why did you do it, Tess? You worked so hard to save those people. Why did you crush the Queen's trinkets?"

Tess felt a rash of rough bark flaring along her jaw line, with anger and a terrible, bitter regret. A tired autumn birch leaf crackled against the lapel of her jacket where her ponytail lay over her shoulder.

How to explain to Thomas what she'd seen through the hole in the stone as she looked at the smoky soul trapped inside the snail shell? The desperate need of the residue of the person to be freed; her certainty that the person's corporeal body was long gone, and for the soul remaining inside, to be slowly drained like a battery when the Queen began to make new homes for her fae creatures, was the purest torture imaginable. Better to destroy them all, hopefully freeing them, and run the risk of crushing a trinket that held something of Aaron or Thomas in it, than leave those trapped souls to wither as Stephen had done.

She shook her head, asking instead, "Why don't you hate me, Thomas?"

"What, because your heart was true? Because you were still yourself, even under all that birch bark? Still the woman I fell in love with?"

She looked at him, the ugly trow, strong and beautiful to her now, all because he was Thomas. "Because I would have let you die if part of your soul had been in one of those trinkets. I chose—" she choked a little. "I didn't choose
you
."

"You did choose me. You just didn't realize it." He touched his arm, where only a few strands of the Queen's binding remained. "You freed me."