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  So she might have relapsed. Or been dosed again.

  “Why isn’t Ryese locked up already?”

  Falin paused and shot a furtive glance down the long hall. Aside from the melting golems, we were alone. “The queen summoned him, but she didn’t ask him directly, so his answers were slippery at best. It didn’t matter. He had no blood on his hands, so she wouldn’t believe his guilt.”

  I glanced at my own gloved hands, and at Falin’s. I’d killed in defense of myself and those I cared about more than once, and I wore the dead’s blood on my hands because Faerie took things very literally. As the queen’s knight, Falin was her bloody hands—the one who killed if it must be done but also the one who carried the taint of every unnatural death through the court’s history. It made him powerful, but also reviled in the court. Not that other members of the court had never killed—the queen had dueled to the death to gain her position so very long ago—but in the winter court, members passed the blood off to the knight, leaving everyone else’s hands lily white—or blue, or green, or whatever color they happened to be naturally. You could cover the blood with gloves, but you couldn’t hide it with glamour.

  Ryese should have Icelynne’s and the other fae’s blood on his hands—if not the humans’ who he killed indirectly with Glitter.

  Of course, just because Faerie tended to be literal, that didn’t mean it assigned guilt the same way I would. Ryese had surely orchestrated the kidnapping of the drained fae, but Tommy Rawhead and Jenny Greenteeth might have delivered the death blow to the fae. They’d also chosen to whom to distribute the Glitter. I hadn’t seen Jenny inside Faerie, but Rawhead’s hands had been saturated with blood.

  “So how do we convince her?”

  Falin shook his head. “It may not matter. She will not hold the court at this rate.”

  I stopped. “Doesn’t someone have to defeat you in a duel before they can challenge her directly?”

  “Yes.”

  “A duel to the death?”

  A muscle bulged above his jaw, but he nodded.

  Shit.

  “But if her madness deepens and she cannot gain control of this”—he waved a hand to indicate the sleet, the melting walls and golems, maybe even the discordant notes thrumming through the air—“then Faerie itself will reject her as queen. With no designated heir, the scramble will become a free-for-all. The fighting knowledge, speed, and quick healing the court’s blood grants me would be a boon to any potential contenders.”

  “And let me guess—unless you pass it on willingly, the easiest way to acquire that is to kill you?”

  Again a tight nod. “After the queen is dethroned, at least. Before that it will revert back to her. A fail-safe to help her protect her seat of power. And as to passing it off, I can only do that with the queen’s blessing.”

  And no queen, no blessing. Great. So there was a higher than average chance any change in power would involve Falin’s death.

  Reaching out, I squeezed his hand. He glanced down at where my gloved hand touched his, and the smallest smile tipped the edges of his lips as he squeezed back.

  Behind me, the fake Death began screaming again. “Are your emotions so fickle, Alex Craft? I’ve proven willing to sacrifice my everlasting soul for you, and your heart still wanders?”

  I jerked my hand out of Falin’s as if a snake had lunged at me. Then I whirled on the fake Death.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I yelled at him. “You aren’t real.”

  The fake Death smiled his very un-Death-like mocking grin. Anger washed through me, tinged with guilt. A second fake Death appeared, this one spouting off rhetoric about my inability to commit as the other returned to goading me about how little I knew about my own lover.

  Dizziness crashed over me with the second hallucination’s appearance, and I swayed. Only Falin’s hands steadying my shoulders kept me from falling to the sleet-encrusted floor. That gave the Deaths even more fuel to work with.

  “Alex, stay calm,” Falin whispered. “The drug is triggered by your anxiety and fear and it’s feeding off your energy. You don’t have much to spare. So try to stay calm.”

  I nodded, knowing he was right. But even knowing something was true or for my own good didn’t make it easy.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned my back on the two fake Deaths and tried to ignore them. Falin watched me a moment longer, as if afraid I’d collapse if he looked away. Then he also turned, striding through the slush once more.

  We’d rounded two corners in the seemingly never-ending corridors when I drew up short. Falin stopped, studying me with one cocked eyebrow. The question in his expression was clear, as was a hint of irritation. Me and my hallucinations were slowing us down and Ryese was out there. Somewhere.

  Still, I waved him off, trying to concentrate. I felt . . . something. A kind of change in the space around me. It was similar to the magic trail I’d followed when I’d found the amaranthine tree. But that trail had felt warm, good. The disturbance I felt this time was . . . wrong.

  Like a wound cut into the very fabric of Faerie.

  I glanced around. There were doors on either side of the corridor. I’d stepped into the trail, and it led forward, so whoever or whatever had caused the disturbance in reality had originated from behind one of the two doors.

  “Where do these go?” I asked, pointing from one to the other door.

  Falin frowned at me. “Currently?”

  Right. Faerie and its shifting doors. I sighed. Then I started forward again, motioning Falin to lead on. There was no telling if the disturbance I felt was even real.

  The sleet fell harder and faster as we walked. I balled my fists and tucked them under my armpits, trying to get some warmth back into my fingers. The disturbance also seemed to grow rawer the farther we walked. I wasn’t sure if we were actually following a trail or if my hallucinations were damaging Faerie. Or maybe it was another symptom of the queen’s loss of control.

  Maybe the queen is also hallucinating.

  If Ryese had been dosing her with Glitter, and he got an opportunity to slip more to her, he may well have given her the critical amount to reach hallucinations.

  The sleet-slush had built up to ankle-deep by the time we turned the next corner, but soggy paths had been trod through it already. Falin frowned at the indistinct footprints, but I tried to keep my steps in line with those who’d cut the path—my boots were water resistant only up to the point the laces started, and as my feet were the only part of me still dry, I wanted to keep them that way.

  Falin paused in front of one door. Based on the runnels in the sleet, a lot of fae had passed this way, and recently. The trail dragging across realities was stronger here as well. Sharper, almost, and deeper.

  And oh so very wrong.

  If it had been something I could see, I would have expected an infected wound, open and dripping with pus. The trail led directly into the doorway Falin was about to step through. I grabbed his arm, making him hesitate.

  “If Faerie rejects the queen’s right to rule the court, would that cause a wound in the fabric of Faerie?”

  He tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving over my face as if he’d find the answer there. “What kind of wound?” he asked, his voice low, cautious.

  I tried to think of a way to describe the raw sensation, but I was cold and exhausted, and I wasn’t even sure it was real and not another Glitter effect. Instead of answering, I shook my head and dropped my hand from Falin’s arm. He studied my face one more moment before his gaze shifted to the screaming Deaths behind me and then back. Reaching out, he pressed a hand to my forehead.

  “You’re burning up.”

  “I promise you, I’m freezing,” I told him, wrapping my arms around my middle in an effort to slow my trembling.

  Falin didn’t argue, he just gave me a look—a sad, knowing look—and said
, “Let’s get you your tie to Faerie.”

  Then he stepped through the doorway.

  Chapter 33

  I’d grown accustomed to the bone-chilling sleet that had accompanied me since I woke in Faerie. I was not prepared for a full-on blizzard, but that’s what awaited us through the doorway.

  The throne room was a blur of white. A howling wind tore around the room, pelting me with wet snow from every direction. Fae huddled in clusters around the door, snow piling up on their hunched shoulders and bowed heads. Sleagh Maith and lesser fae alike clung to one another, fear all but radiating off their trembling forms. But as close as they were to the door, they didn’t move, didn’t dare bolt. Some sense of self-preservation telling them that the first to move wouldn’t be moving for long.

  And the reason for all that fear raged in the center of the storm. The queen, sword in hand, stalked across the center of the room, raving in one of the fae languages. A body at her feet.

  Dark blood stained the hem of her gown, splashes of the blood dotting the tattered garment up to her high waistline. More blood soaked into the icy snow all around the body, like the nightmare version of a snow cone.

  The queen whirled around as we entered. More blood had spattered her pale skin, momentarily distracting me from the madness burning in her eyes. Until that gaze landed on me like a hot iron in the blizzard.

  “You.” She pointed the sword at me, and I froze. “Are you satisfied now? I’ve killed him. I. Killed. Him.”

  I glanced at the body again, I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop myself. It was at an angle, the face turned away from me, blood mixing with hair that glistened even in the storm. I couldn’t positively identify the bloody shape from this angle. Not by sight. But by her words, I knew who it had to be.

  Ryese.

  Relief flooded through me, despite the queen’s growing rage, but something nagged at my senses. I tried to chalk it up to the drug, or my exhaustion, or maybe the impending hypothermia, but it persisted, drawing my eye back toward the body even as the queen stomped through the mounds of ice and snow, straight toward me.

  Ryese wore a flamboyant court outfit, similar to how he’d dressed at the ball when I’d first met him. The shirt with its frilled collar and sleeves was soaked in blood all across the chest and up over the shoulder, but the flowy sleeve closest to me was hardly touched. Despite that, blood coated his palm.

  Blood that hadn’t been there when I’d last seen him.

  It was possible that he’d touched his own blood as he died, but Falin had said seeing Ryese’s bloody hands would likely be the only way the queen would believe he could be behind the plot against her. She’d killed him before I even presented what I’d learned. Something had changed her mind.

  I peeled back my shield, gazing across layers of reality.

  The body changed. A soul glowed from within, but the form was no longer Ryese. The form slimmed and curved into feminine lines. The hair darkened to a chestnut brown, twined with bits of mistletoe.

  Maeve.

  I saw both images overlapping. The glamour that wrapped the dead fae kept trying to push forward, make itself true. I’d seen fae disguised with glamour inside Faerie before. While Faerie tended to accept strong glamour and make it part of its reality, it couldn’t change a sentient being from one thing or person to another, but this one was trying to in a way glamour never should have done.

  Which I guessed meant Ryese had finally given the queen enough Glitter that her fears were taking form. She stalked forward, clearly unaware that she’d slaughtered her council member by mistake.

  But if the butchered form in the middle of the courtroom wasn’t Ryese, he was still in the court. Still waiting to spring his trap.

  Someone in the huddled mass of fae straightened, and Faerie buckled, a new gash tearing open in reality. It felt like something cut straight through the magic of Faerie, draining it away in the areas it touched. And I could think of only one thing that would do that.

  Iron.

  The queen was still striding toward me, sword pointed at my heart. Falin had edged forward, not quite putting himself between us, but trying to draw her attention. The wound in Faerie grew.

  I had no special fear of iron. It hurt when touched, and I knew it was dangerous, but I wasn’t afraid of it. Which meant, this wasn’t likely my drug-addled imagination.

  It was Ryese’s trap.

  A hooded figure lifted a small blowpipe loaded with what had to be an iron dart. My first instinct was to yell to Falin. But even as the warning rose in my throat, I realized what Ryese had meant when he’d said I was Falin’s weakness: it wasn’t that I was the key to defeating Falin, but that Falin would defend me. He stood now, in front of half the court, between the queen and me. Everyone was watching them, watching him lift his blades to a defensive position to fend off her sword.

  And when Ryese’s iron dart took the queen in the chest, all would assume Falin had turned on the queen. In one blow, Ryese would take out both queen and knight.

  My scream of warning still only just beginning to bubble out of my throat, I dove forward, tackling the queen like a demented linebacker. The move was sloppy, but she wasn’t expecting it, and I knocked her off her feet, taking her to the ground.

  Heat exploded across my back as I felt Faerie rip apart in the space we’d occupied. The queen hit a snowdrift with a loud ooaf, her sword dropping beside her. I landed on top of her, and tried to roll away, but dizziness exploded in my head, filling my vision with dancing black dots.

  “What is the meaning of this, planeweaver?” the queen bellowed, but she wasn’t doing much better at regaining her feet than I had.

  I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t even get close. “Ryese,” I managed to get out between wheezes. “Iron.”

  “Impossible. I killed my nephew with my own hands.”

  I shook my head. “Glitter,” I said, not sure she’d understand. But Falin would. Then I turned, trying to touch the burning line radiating across my shoulder blades. My gloves came away with a thin band of blood. My blood.

  The dart had grazed me, nothing more, but the pain clawed at my back, the burn much more than was warranted by the grazing cut.

  A cut made by an iron dart.

  Shit.

  Iron disrupted Faerie’s magic. It could kill a fae exposed to it for too long. In the mortal realm, touching it cut off a fae’s connection to Faerie, and drained the life-sustaining magic from their body. What happened to an already fading fae?

  I had the feeling I already knew. I was so exhausted. So cold. I hurt, and not just my back. As if the iron had poisoned my very blood, the pain traveled through me like daggers dragged against my skin. And the two Deaths kept yelling at me. Or were there three now? Yes, a new one had appeared, telling me it was time for him to take my soul. At least he didn’t scream.

  I could curl up in a ball in the snow and let go. Give in to the fuzzy feeling in my head, close my eyes, and sleep.

  But no, if I did that, what would happen to Rianna? To Ms. B? The garden gnome? No, I had to get up. To do . . . something.

  Thoughts were getting harder to string into coherent ideas. I needed to stop Ryese. I needed the queen to grant me a tie to Faerie. I needed to protect Falin. I needed to make Faerie stop screaming. . . .

  That last one made me stop. The Deaths were screaming. Some of the gathered fae—those not frozen in shock—were screaming. But Faerie itself wasn’t, was it?

  Not exactly, but it was in pain. I could feel it, sense the pain in unraveling layers of reality.

  The dart.

  I could feel the trail it had sliced through Faerie. More than that, I could feel the disturbance it still made, like a festering wound, blistering reality around it. The blowgun Ryese had smuggled the iron into Faerie in must have had some hard-core spells on it, because the iron hadn’t been doing this muc
h damage before. Now the layers of reality felt like they were withering.

  I twisted, looking for the projectile, and beside me, the queen sucked in a breath.

  “Planeweaver, what? No. Someone send for a healer.” She reached for me, but her hand stopped before she touched the bare skin on my shoulder.

  Falin stepped closer, his eyes wide, fear reflecting in his gaze. Then his jaw clenched and he whirled around, marching through the huddled fae and shoving them aside.

  I couldn’t see the graze the dart had cut across my back, but it was barely bleeding, and couldn’t have been much more than a scratch. Still, I twisted, trying see what they saw. Unfortunately, I could. Gray tendrils spread under my skin, crawling over my shoulder.

  Iron poisoning.

  I stared at the graying skin. The third Death, the one that wasn’t yelling, knelt beside me.

  “It’s time, Alex,” he said, holding out his hand.

  I looked from him to my shoulder and then back. “You’re still not real.”

  With that, I concentrated on searching for the dart again. The blisters in reality were right in front of me. It had to be in that snowdrift.

  Behind me, I heard a loud yelp, and I twisted around in time to see Falin’s hand clasp around the throat of a fae. He hauled the fae off the ground, one-handed, and the fae’s hood fall back to reveal Ryese’s crystalline hair.

  “Don’t kill him, my knight,” the queen said, an edge of panic in her voice as she pushed herself out of the snow. “I killed him once already today. I can’t see it again.”

  Rational or not, desperate or not, a command was a command, and Falin’s killing dagger thrust stopped, inches from Ryese’s chest. The man in his arms sagged, a smug smile slithering across Ryese’s face. Oh no, he wasn’t just walking away from this.

  I thrust my hand into the snowdrift, searching. More than the feel of something harder than snow, it was the sudden stabbing pain that rushed down my fingers, even through my gloves, that told me I’d found the dart. Trying to insulate it with inches of snow, I scooped it out.