I stood ankle-deep in a swamp, the Mage Lord at my side. A circle of iron surrounded us. The blade in my hand was iron, too, as were the swords Vance could grab at a moment’s notice and the daggers sheathed at my waist. Considering we were here to meet a faerie who’d tried to kill us once already, we had good reason to be laden with as much protection as possible. Assuming she showed up at all.
I tapped a foot. “She’s late to her own appointment.”
“Maybe she’s hiding.” Vance studied the oak tree in the clearing’s centre. “Can you see anything unusual?”
I tilted my head but saw no weird shimmering that usually indicated a faerie glamour. “No.”
Unlike me, Vance didn’t have the Sight. In fact, I didn’t know any other humans who had the ability to see through the fae’s illusions, as mine had come about as an unintentional side effect of stealing a Sidhe Lord’s magic during my escape from captivity in the faerie realm. Not exactly a common human experience, though my accumulated wariness around the fae hadn’t stopped me from getting myself ensnared in a bargain with the Lady of the Tree. I owed her a favour in exchange for her offering me information on how to find a pair of missing human children, and while the lead she’d given me had nearly ended in my death in an old station, she’d kept her word in a roundabout way. Therefore, I was bound to hold up my end of the bargain, and typically, she’d decided to call in her favour when Vance and I were making out.
You could always count on faeries to have the worst sense of timing.
“What manner of faerie is she?” he asked. “Not Sidhe?”
“A dryad,” I said. “An ancient one. And powerful.”
Her roots had nearly skewered me to death during our last encounter, but in Faerie, words were power, and it was the vow I’d sworn to her that had come back to bite me. The Sidhe—the highest class of Faerie, with egos to match—could literally command the world to rearrange itself on a whim. Their promises gained a life of their own. The Lady wasn’t quite on that level, I didn’t think, but she’d still managed to drag me halfway across the city on the strength of a vague agreement we’d made weeks ago and that I’d almost forgotten about, given the sheer tsunami of crap the universe had thrown at me since then.
Among other things, I’d nearly died twice, and I’d nearly witnessed the end of the world as we knew it. Okay, I’d spared us from near-catastrophe when I’d killed the half-faerie Calder and sealed the magic he’d unleashed, but the Lady of the Tree hadn’t given me long to recover before she’d decided to give me an unpleasant reminder that no favour from a faerie came without a knife in the back. Or branch.
“Didn’t she claim to be dying?” Vance said.
“We should be so lucky.” I scowled at the giant sprawling oak tree. This area, once the Botanical Gardens, had turned into wild forest when the faeries invaded, and it was easy to forget we were in the middle of the city. “Guess it was too much to ask for the universe to give me a break.”
Or a proper date with Vance. Standing in the mud waiting for a foul-tempered tree to deign to speak to us didn’t count. Recent rain had turned the ground to marsh and while Vance’s polished shoes were covered in the usual dirt-repelling spell, I had to balance on top of a raised part of the ground to stop the water leaking into my boots. My ears picked up on every small noise and I kept reaching for the sword strapped to my waist each time a leaf fluttered to the ground. Irene’s blade gleamed in the weak sunlight streaming through a gap in the grey cloud cover, and I idly wondered if giving the tree a firm poke would be worth the risk if it brought an end to the monotony.
As I pulled the blade partly from its sheath, the nearest tree root began to stir. I knew she was here. I glanced down to check that the iron ring surrounding us remained unbroken.
Then I looked back at the tree and damn near fell out of the ring. A face stared back at me. Not the broken old faerie woman I’d seen last time, but a complete stranger. This face was youthful, beautiful as any faerie queen, with high cheekbones and velvety green eyes. Her full lips curled in a smile. Curly brown hair framed her elegant features, though as before, the rest of her body had merged with the wizened oak tree.
“Ivy Lane,” she crooned.
Whoa. This was the Lady of the Tree—but not as I’d seen her before. A young and beautiful stranger, not an ageing crone who’d told me she was dying.
“Did you get a facelift or something?” Shock had obliterated my filter. Not that I was usually the epitome of politeness, least of all when it came to the fae, but I hadn’t thought it was even possible to reverse the effects of being trapped in the mortal realm long-term. Not without going back home.
She smiled, disregarding my rudeness. In the corner of my eye, I saw Vance shift on his feet as though preparing for an attack.
“I have my immortality back,” she said, “thanks to the veil opening, and allowing me back into Faerie.”
My jaw hung slack. “Uh… what?”
No way. The path to Faerie had opened to the Grey Vale, not Summer or Winter. The Courts existed on another plane entirely to the dark forest where the Sidhe sent outcasts and exiles. The faerie who’d opened the veil—Calder, son of Avalin—hadn’t known the difference. Neither did most half-faeries. Probably for the best they didn’t. The Grey Vale was a life-sucking death trap, and I’d been lucky to escape on the two occasions I’d ended up in there myself.
“I was able to return to my home,” said the Lady of the Tree. “When the veil opened, the layers between the realms thinned enough for me to cross over, but in the process, I learned that something is gravely wrong. The heart of one of the Great Oaks of Summer is missing.”
“What… in Summer?” My heart sank when her beautiful face crumpled, and tears streamed from her bright-green eyes. Their brightness told me her magic was at its peak—or as powerful as it could be here in this realm, anyway—yet that only made her expression of utter devastation more pronounced.
Not that there was any guarantee it was genuine. Faeries might not be able to lie with words, but they could deceive in other ways, and it made zero sense for the Lady to have made it to the Summer Court where no other outcasts had ever achieved the same, as far as I knew.
“My home is dying,” she whispered. “I am the Lady of the Great Oak. I know when a heart is torn from one of my fellow trees, and I need the help of someone who has ventured beyond this realm to retrieve it.”
“You need…” Ah, shit. “Look, I’ve never been to Seelie territory. I physically can’t, and I thought you couldn’t, either. Isn’t there someone else you can ask? Someone actually in Faerie?”
“The heart of a Great Oak Tree of Summer was stolen.” Her vibrant green eyes locked onto mine. “And it was brought into this realm.”
“This realm?” I repeated. “How do you know?”
“I know.” Her voice rose higher, gaining a grating edge that set my nerves afire. Her story had more holes than my old jeans did, but the dangerous undercurrent to her voice warned me that our bargain remained intact, and that she wasn’t the weakened creature she’d been during our first encounter.
“Er… how exactly am I supposed to find this missing heart? I’m human.”
“You carry the magic of a Sidhe Lord.”
Ice slid through my veins. “Who told you that?”
Half the city probably knew by now, but I didn’t want my circle of enemies to grow any bigger when it could have filled an auditorium already.
“He told me,” she whispered. “Before you killed him.”
My spine stiffened. “What… Calder? Or Velkas?”
“The boy came to me for a favour,” she said mournfully. “The poor soul was desperate to return home, but that was a gift I couldn’t give, and now it’s too late for him.”
“You do realise he tried to kill everyone in this city, don’t you?” Between this and how she’d looked the other way when those children had been taken, there were few people I was less inclined to offer a favour to. Damn. How to get out of this bargain? “How long were you working together?”
“I merely offered him a bargain, as I did to you.”
“What, you sent him into a creepy train station and nearly got him killed?” I spat at her. “Yeah, I’m not doing you a favour. You can forget it.”
“Our promise is binding,” said the Lady of the Tree. “If you fail to bring me what I desire, you will die.”
Well. There is that slight issue. “How am I supposed to find this… this oak tree’s heart? I don’t even know what it looks like.”
“You will know it when you set eyes upon it,” she said. “That I guarantee.”
“And what’s stopping you from searching for it?” I kept one eye on the root snaking along the ground as I spoke to her. “Sounds like you just want me to do your dirty work for you. There’s no reason why you can’t find the heart yourself.”
“Wrong.” The ground trembled underfoot, and I unsheathed my sword, feet braced. “You and I are bound, and you will bring me what I desire.”
Beside me, Vance hissed out a breath. The roots circled him, close enough to press against the iron barrier where he stood. A jolt of alarm hit me. The Lady might need me, but she didn’t need the Mage Lord.
I’ll kill your mage first, Calder’s voice whispered in my ear.
The ground burst open beneath Vance’s feet. He leapt aside, out of the iron circle, as two roots rose upward from where he’d stood.
“Hey!” I yelled. “That’s not playing fair.”
Vance extended his blade to point at the Lady of the Tree. Anger suffused his expression, manifesting in the form of black scales spreading from his weapon hand down to the hilt of the sword.
The blade disappeared from his hands and rematerialized in midair, slashing at the tree’s root. A shrill, furious scream rent the air as a jet of bluish red sprayed out. Time to go.
I ran to join Vance and smacked into another tree root. My sword bit into the bark before it could get a grip on me, but the blade didn’t cut all the way through. At another diagonal swipe, red-blue blood spurted out of the root, and a shrill scream came from the Lady of the Tree.
“I can’t help you if you keep attacking us,” I shot at her. “That includes Vance, too.”
A root latched around my ankle like a whipcord, hoisting me up into the air. Not again. I swiped and slashed, freeing myself and flipping to land on my feet. Vance, meanwhile, was surrounded by roots rising from the ground like giant earthworms. His blade appeared and reappeared, leaving a trail of blue-tinted faerie blood wherever it struck.
“Hey!” I ran at them, brandishing my sword.
A thick root blocked my path, and a crooning laugh echoed from behind. Anger sparked, and I whipped one of Isabel’s explosive spells from my pocket and hurled it at the Lady’s face.
A shimmering green barrier appeared, and the spell dissolved before it made contact with the trunk. Her Summer magic might not be at its peak in this realm, but she’d acquired some new tricks since our last fight.
The tree roots continued to circle Vance, slicing and stabbing, but the Mage Lord moved quicker, cutting off any attempts to grab him. As I tried to reach his side, a tugging sensation lurched through my body, pulling me towards the oak tree. I stumbled, no longer in control of my own limbs.
“Shit!” I yelled. “She’s using the vow.”
“Cease your attack,” said the Lady of the Tree, “or I will bind you to me for life.”
I had zero doubts that she would. All she had to do was twist the vow slightly and I’d be reduced to nothing but her puppet, doomed to do her bidding for the rest of my mortal existence.
Vance halted, his sword held defensively between himself and the tree roots. The tugging sensation released me, and my feet stopped moving forward of their own accord.
I glared at the Lady of the Tree. “You’ll get what you asked for, but if you hurt either of us, you’ll regret it. And if you kill me, I’ll make a point of coming back to haunt you personally for the rest of your immortal existence.”
A deafening shriek rang through the forest as the Lady threw back her head and released a cry of anger. Roots stabbed upward and blue light flared as my own magic reacted to defend me, but before the Lady’s attack hit, Vance’s hand closed around my arm and the world disappeared in a whirl of motion.
I staggered away from Vance and caught my balance against a fence. We’d landed on a road, not one I recognised at first.
“Damn,” I said, shaking bits of soil off my clothes. “That was a close call. Where are we?”
I scanned the detached houses lining the street. Judging by the neat lawns and the fancy cars parked in front, we’d ended up somewhere on mage territory. Vance’s mouth was a tight line, and black scales covered his wrists and hands.
“Vance?”
He shook his head. Gradually, the claws replacing his hands began to recede, until the sharp scales disappeared into skin.
I peered at his unmarked hands. “Does that hurt? The scales?”
“No.”
I raised an eyebrow at the slightly dismissive hint to his tone.
“Not anymore,” he elaborated. “Shifting is… uncomfortable, at first, though no more so than magic is.”
“Magic,” I said. “Yeah. Mine pulled me into Death, so I get it. Anyway, I don’t know how to use it to do what the Lady asked. What does the heart of a tree even look like?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say I know, but a source of pure faerie magic in this realm wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.”
“There is that.”
Vance’s grey eyes darkened. “Unfortunately, the sort of people who will be inclined to seek out this object are no doubt the ones we least want to get their hands on a store of Faerie’s power.”
“Tell me about it.” My thoughts flickered back to Calder. “Guess we’ll have to talk to the Chief again. He might know.”
The guy had barely begun to regain control over his territory after Calder’s power play had sent him on an unexpected misadventure into Death, but that wasn’t my problem.
“That should be our first move, yes,” Vance said. “I would hope the last two weeks have opened his eyes to the serious damage that can be inflicted if he neglects his duties.”
“Better hope so.”
I re-sheathed my blade, then brushed some stray bits of dirt from my new jeans. The whole outfit was new, in fact, down to the leather jacket and boots. Vance had—completely without my permission—replaced all my clothes the other week. I hadn’t begun to consider how I’d repay him for it, though I appreciated how he’d respected my taste rather than forcing me to adopt the style of the mages. I’d look ridiculous in a smart suit, though Vance managed to make formal attire work in pretty much any scenario.
“The Chief has been occupied with arresting people involved in the recent incidents,” Vance said. “But I’ll try to secure us a meeting.”
“He’s Seelie,” I said. “Well, half of one. Maybe he’ll be able to sense where this source of Summer power is. I sure as hell can’t.”
“Perhaps,” said Vance. “Regardless, he can no longer bar us from accessing his territory. His refusal to accept my help cost many lives. He has blood on his hands, and he knows it.”
“Yeah.” What with spending the last week in recovery mode, I hadn’t seen the full aftermath of the chaos when a bunch of his people had fallen under a drugged spell. “Doesn’t mean he’ll be pleased to see us, though. Last I saw of him, we were both dead.”
Vance’s eyes darkened. “No, you weren’t. And I won’t let that happen again.”
Damn if it didn’t warm me all over to hear the protective undercurrent to his voice. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.” I checked that my sword and the daggers on the sheaths inside my sleeves were in place. I generally carried two at a time, secured so they wouldn’t get dislodged when, say, a faerie dangled me upside-down.
“Ready?” asked Vance.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Which is to say, not at all. What an absolute mess. If the Lady of the Tree had gone back to Faerie when the veil cracked open, had others, too? Had someone sneaked into Summer and stolen the tree’s heart, or had the thief already been inside Faerie itself? I’d always thought the human and faerie worlds were far enough apart that people in this realm, even faeries and half-bloods, were generally unaware of anything that might be occurring on the other side of the veil.
Except them. The outcasts, like Velkas and Avalin. Might other Sidhe have come here, like they had during the invasion? More to the point, why the hell would anyone steal a powerful magical object and bring it into the mortal world? The Sidhe hated our realm, and their power sources were all but useless this side of the veil.
Unless someone wanted the Sidhe to lose their power.
Someone like… a lord of the Grey Vale.
