Grave Destiny Read online

  The gray hand vanished inside his cloak, emerging a moment later with a fist-sized yellow stone. Topaz? Or maybe a yellow citrine? It was large and uncut, and yet it glowed with golden light. He bent his cowled head over it, muttering something. I caught a syllable or two, but it sounded like he was speaking in that lyrical fae language I probably needed to learn. A deep red light flashed from the jewel, seeming to blot out the entire clearing for a moment, and I jolted. Falin’s arms tightened around me.

  “What’s wrong?” He breathed the question into my hair.

  “What was that light?”

  We were pressed too close for him to turn to look at me without pulling away, but I could all but feel his puzzlement. He hadn’t seen the nearly blinding flash of red light. A glance around the other nearby fae revealed that no one else had been startled either. As if no one else had seen what I had.

  I focused on the golden-cloaked figure again. He was still bent over the large stone clutched in his thin hand. The bloodred light was gone now, the unpolished stone glowing a gentle honey yellow again, but at the center of the stone, I caught sight of a swirling cloud of darkness before the fae tucked the gem into his cloak once more.

  I cracked open my shields, hoping to catch a look at the fae. Nothing changed. The cloak was real, not glamour. Without another glance in my direction, he shuffled by, moving with a distinct limp.

  I shivered after he had passed. He was involved with all of this. I was sure of it.

  “Are you quite finished?” a deep voice asked beside me after the cloaked figure had vanished among the crowd.

  I turned to see Dugan watching us. He didn’t sound jealous that his theoretical fiancée was in another man’s arms, just disappointed.

  “No, far from finished,” Falin answered, looking up to give the prince a meaningful smile, but I was already stepping back.

  “Did you follow her all night?” I asked, stifling a yawn. I’d thought I was exhausted before, but now I felt close to falling asleep on my feet.

  “Yes, and it’s been a waste of a revelry.”

  “The shortest day has barely started. You can still go . . . revel.” Was that a word? I rolled my head on my neck and eased back my stiff shoulders. I couldn’t catch my yawn this time.

  “I could,” Dugan said slowly. “If someone else is going to note her contacts. She’s horribly boring, but rather well connected. She appears to be friendly with nobles from nearly every court.”

  “Winter?” Falin asked.

  Dugan shook his head. “Aside from my own, the only other court she hasn’t stopped at to converse with some courtier or another.”

  Considering the only noble present in shadow besides himself and the king was one militaristic Sleagh Maith, I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t met with any shadow fae. I was more than slightly disappointed she hadn’t scuttled off to converse with any winter fae. Discovering her contacts inside the court would have been helpful in narrowing down how she’d gotten inside—if she was involved with the murders. We still didn’t have any proof of her guilt. Just a possible identification of her voice by one of the victims.

  “Also, if we hoped to surprise her, that has certainly passed,” Dugan said. “The fact that we traveled to the summer court looking for her has been frequent gossip.”

  Both Falin and I nodded. We’d overheard some of those whispers as well.

  I yawned again. My head felt too heavy, and a deep ache was forming in my body. “Would it be horrible if I yell ‘not me’ on the whole spying thing at this point? I think I’m going home. I’m exhausted.”

  Dugan raised an eyebrow. “You’ll lose not only the day but also the hours you then sleep that could otherwise be useful. Would it not be smarter to rest here?”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, you see, I’m not really into bedding down in snow forts.”

  “You could use one of the tents.”

  I’d been looking around, trying to find the hawthorn path that would lead me to the door, but I stopped at his words. “Wait, what?” I turned toward Falin. “There are tents?” And he hadn’t thought to mention that before?

  Falin scowled Dugan. “Yes, but they are for the monarchs.”

  “Technically, they are for all royalty,” he said. And as a prince, he apparently counted. It was good to be a prince. He bowed to me. “I would be honored to allow my lady betrothed use of my tent. Rest, and if Lunabella does not leave the revelry early, perhaps we will have time to corner her after sunset when the truce ends.”

  That sounded like a good plan to me. Falin’s scowl could have frozen the sun, but I wasn’t about to look a gift fae in the mouth. I turned to indicate that Dugan should lead the way. Then everything seemed to tilt. I thought I caught an echo of the red flash of magic I’d seen in the yellow stone. Then darkness swooped over the world, taking me with it.

  Chapter 14

  I woke in a bed filled with satin-covered pillows. Had Ms. B acquired new bedding? The castle didn’t typically have satin, and certainly not black satin.

  I blinked.

  It also didn’t have dark fabric walls.

  I sat up, and immediately regretted it as my brain ricocheted in my aching skull. I lifted a hand to my head, trying to make the room stop spinning. There were faces in the spinning kaleidoscope that whirled in my vision, but I couldn’t focus on them.

  Everything went red and then black. Again.

  * * *

  • • •

  I woke for the second time, still on the black satin sheets.

  I didn’t try to sit up this time. My head was pounding, but at least the room wasn’t spinning. Yet. Magic hummed around me, pressing into my skin. I opened my senses to decipher it, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I snapped my shields back in place and was glad I was already lying down.

  Somewhere I could hear voices talking in a low murmur. I turned slightly, and my vision didn’t cloud over. That was a good sign. What the hell was going on?

  “Hello?” My voice cracked, coming out barely louder than a whisper, as if I hadn’t spoken in a long time. I needed water. And to figure out what was going on.

  The hushed voices fell silent. Snow crunched under feet. A lot more feet than I expected. I had a moment of uncertainty, wondering if I shouldn’t have called out, and then the tent flap opened, revealing a cluster of worried, but welcome, faces.

  “Al! How do you feel?” Rianna asked as she hurried into the tent.

  “You had us scared,” Caleb said, a few steps behind her. Holly rushed in at his side and crossed quickly to the edge of the bed, taking my hand.

  Falin said nothing as he entered and crossed to the foot of the bed. There was tension in his shoulders, in the way he stood so still, watching me with eyes that betrayed worry.

  Dugan entered last, but he remained by the tent flap, his arms crossed over his chest. That was fine; the better part of my inner circle of friends was around the bed already, and he didn’t actually fit into that category. I’d question why he was here at all, except this was probably his tent, so he got a free pass.

  “What happened?” Holly asked, placing a palm over my forehead as if to check for a fever. To me her hand was scaldingly hot, but I didn’t stop her. Holly was a hugger type and the physical contact seemed to reassure her, even if it told her nothing.

  “I was going to ask the same thing.” My words came out a croak, and I grimaced.

  Rianna turned to a table beside the bed and poured a crystal-clear glass of water from a pitcher. I pushed up to my elbows. The world didn’t lurch or gray away, but the movement did cause several objects balanced on my chest to slide down. I glanced at the odd necklace of twigs, pinecones, and rocks. I hadn’t had those earlier. They hummed with magic, much of it familiar enough that I didn’t have to reach to recognize Holly, Caleb, and Rianna’s work. I couldn’t tell what the spells did without exa
mining them closer. That could wait. I didn’t want to get hit with vertigo again like when I’d opened my shields a few minutes earlier. I could guess they were healing charms. They had that type of feel to them. I frowned. That was a lot of healing charms, and clearly cobbled together from whatever they could find quickly in the festival clearing.

  Rianna handed me the water and I accepted it gratefully, draining half the cup in two large gulps. I could all but feel the water branching out, filling my parched body, which meant I was much more dehydrated than I should have been. I’d had almost no alcohol during the revelry and had stopped for water several times throughout the night. So why did I feel hungover?

  And what happened? Had I passed out? It seemed that way. But why? My mind circled to the flash of red light that only I seemed to have seen. It was magic. It had to be. Had it caused this? There had been several minutes between seeing it and when I’d blacked out, but it was the only suspicious thing to which I could attribute this sudden sickness. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, not a little flash of light.

  As partially sitting up had gone well, I struggled all the way up. The corset made it harder than it should have been, and Caleb grabbed my elbows, helping to pull me up. He cut his gaze over to Holly, who was biting her lower lip. She looked to Rianna.

  I frowned at them.

  “Anyone know what spell I was hit with?” I asked, but they looked away as I tried to meet their eyes. I looked up at Falin. He didn’t look away, but with the way his hands silently worked the empty air at his sides and the way his jaw clenched tight, I had the feeling he was barely resisting the urge to walk out of the tent and start killing things he could blame for whatever had happened. “What?”

  It was Rianna who finally answered. “You’re . . . unwell, Al.”

  “Injured?” I seemed to have all my normal limbs. My head was throbbing, and I was disoriented and exhausted. A concussion, maybe?

  She shook her head. “Ill.”

  I frowned. “What, like a Faerie flu?”

  “Not a flu,” Caleb said, looking down at his hands.

  It was the sorrow in his voice that scared me most.

  I glanced around. My friends weren’t meeting my eyes again. Except for Falin, who still hadn’t said anything. So I turned to Dugan. He watched me with an expression I couldn’t read. There was some emotion in his face, just nothing deep enough to betray itself.

  “Your magic is infected,” he said, and he sounded sorry for me. Not devastated like my friends, but the sad you feel for an acquaintance that is terminally ill. I was a political investment for him, not an emotional one.

  “A magical infection? So like a curse? Or something that can be dispelled?” I asked, looking around. Why was everyone acting like they were already attending my funeral?

  “Not a magical infection. It’s your own magic. It’s infected,” Rianna said, as if that clarified everything.

  “Considering we are in a strange tent, I’m guessing the solstice festival is still happening. Almost every court is represented outside that door. Surely there is a healer who can—” I started, but everyone was shaking their heads.

  “Every court sent their best healer,” Caleb said.

  “None could do anything?” My voice sounded small in my ears, but all in all, considering what I’d just been told, I was proud I wasn’t screaming. If the fae healers could bring fae back from the dead, surely they could heal infected magic.

  “They. Wouldn’t. Try.” Falin ground each word out, as if each threatened to break the self-control that was holding him together.

  My eyes flew wide and I looked to Caleb.

  “This infection, it’s been seen before,” he said. “It is called the basmoarte. It’s contagious, spreading from magic to magic. And it is fatal.”

  Fatal. The word slammed down on me, knocking the air from my body.

  “How long?” I asked, my gaze lost, not seeing anything.

  No one answered. I blinked and looked around. “How long do I have?”

  Again. No answer.

  I turned my gaze on Dugan. He was the least emotionally affected, and the most likely to answer. He stared back at me, blank, unexpressive. Then he sighed and shrugged.

  “Nightfall, maybe? It is consuming you extremely quickly. I’m surprised they got you conscious again at all.”

  Nightfall.

  No.

  No, that couldn’t be right. I swung my feet around, aiming for the side of the bed—and was promptly hit by a dizzying press of blackness.

  “Shhh. Be still, Al,” Rianna whispered, her hands moving to my shoulders, holding me up when the darkness in my vision would have knocked me back again.

  “I have to go.” My voice didn’t sound right. Too high. Too thin. I didn’t care.

  “Shhh. Slow. Calm. Deep breath.” It was Holly who spoke this time, her voice light. Sad but soothing.

  I shook my aching head. “You don’t understand. I can’t die here. Souls don’t leave here. They are stuck. I have to go home.” Because if I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be in Faerie where I’d be just another soul stuck in an undecaying body. Death and I hadn’t left on the best terms, but he’d promised he would always come for me. He wouldn’t leave my soul to waste away. But he couldn’t reach me in Faerie.

  Hell, maybe he could even help me. He had before. Of course, that was a huge reason why we weren’t together anymore—too many rules and too much rule bending. But even if he couldn’t, he would at least help my soul transition. That was his job. I couldn’t die in Faerie.

  I struggled against the hands that were both helping me and trying to hold me down. I managed to get my feet under me, but my head spun, my balance fading, and I found myself crashing back onto my ass. Still I struggled. I had to get out of Faerie.

  “We won’t leave you here,” someone said, but I was beyond listening.

  Something cool and round pressed into my forehead. Magic pulsed over my skin, soothing and feeling of Rianna’s energy. A calmness spread through me, making my limbs heavy. I took a deep breath and blinked. The panic was still there, buzzing at the edges of my thoughts, but my head felt clearer. I looked around at the worried faces of my friends and took another breath, forcing myself to stop struggling.

  “We won’t leave you in Faerie,” Caleb said again.

  I nodded slowly, trying to let his words reassure me. They helped, though the charm Rianna pressed into my forehead helped more, the spell spreading the artificial calm through my entire body like a magical Xanax. I took another deep breath. It hurt. Not just because of the corset either. My whole body ached.

  Infected magic. A contagious infection that would have spread to the healers if they’d tried to purge it. I glanced at the odd necklace of cobbled-together healing charms I wore. They made much more sense now. A charm was safe. Once completed, it no longer tied back to the witch who created it. But a healing charm could only do so much.

  “They’re sure it is this ‘basmoarte’ thing? I mean, shouldn’t tests be run or something?”

  “No.” Falin spat the word, his hands clenching. I wasn’t sure which question he was answering.

  I looked to Caleb. He sighed. “They aren’t sure. There hasn’t been a basmoarte outbreak in hundreds of years. But the symptoms are well documented. You have them.”

  “I lived through the last outbreak. There is little doubt,” Dugan added from the door.

  “What, fainting at a revelry?” I barked out the question, hearing the anger in my sarcasm. My friends didn’t deserve that, but now that the initial panic after being told I had some disease I’d never heard of had been silenced, all I could find underneath was anger.

  Caleb shook his head, and Rianna turned to look at Holly. She nodded and opened her purse. After digging around for a moment, she pulled out a compact mirror and handed it to me.


  I accepted it, but then stared at the small compact for a moment without opening it. I didn’t want to know. Maybe if I didn’t look, whatever I was supposed to see wouldn’t be true. But even I couldn’t make that logic work. I opened the mirror.

  Then I almost dropped it, shrinking back from my reflection in shock.

  Purple lines snaked across one side of my face, reaching up all the way to my temple and crawling down over my jaw to my neck. Around the purple lines, my face looked pale, drawn. Deep blue half circles ringed the underside of my eyes, as if I’d been sick for a long time. Except I’d looked fine when I’d dressed for the revelry.

  I moved the mirror, following the purple lines where they traveled over my throat, down my collarbone, and into the front of my corset. More, thicker and darker lines webbed over my shoulder, and I cringed. Months ago, before I’d even known I was fae, I’d gotten infected with a soul-eating spell when I’d been injured by an infected shade. The spell had been stopped, the skin had healed, but the damage to my soul was healing more slowly. The basmoarte had found that weak spot and dug in deep. The scars that had faded to thin white lines were now black, bubbling slightly. The skin around them was gray, dying. More thick purple lines of infected magic ran down my arm, disappearing into the cuff of my long glove.

  I closed the compact, ignoring the fact that my fingers were trembling. With very deliberate motions, I placed it carefully on the bed beside me, saying nothing. Everyone watched me, not seeming to breathe, and yet there didn’t seem to be enough air. I ignored that feeling; it was my panic trying to overcome the calming spell Rianna had put on me. I couldn’t afford to surrender to the panic again.

  I had seen all of these symptoms before.

  Peeling off my gloves, I held my hands up in front of my face. My palms were coated in blood, but that was no surprise and it wasn’t mine but Faerie’s very literal interpretation of the term “blood on her hands.” It was the rest of my hands I was interested in. One was fine. The other . . . The web of purple lines ran all the way down my arm, growing thicker and darker. The thin scars where I’d shredded my hands while weaving reality were bluish. Not yet black like my shoulder, but definitely changed. The beds of my fingernails were deep bruises, and the tips of my fingers were black, the skin nearly necrotic. While my shoulder looked bad, this was the true infection point. The place the fouled magic began. I stared at my dark fingertips.