Page 61

ALICE

Y arain holds out his hand from the doorway, and the chain unclips from the wall, floating into his grip like an obedient dog.

“The queen wishes to see you.”

I don’t reply, instead standing and holding the other end of the chain in my hand to save my wrist. The queen could just raise a finger and have me appear in front of her, but it seems she prefers to have me dragged around in chains.

I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of thinking it bothers me.

Yarain takes a different route from last time, as we don’t pass through the guardroom again.

Instead we enter a long passage which, after what seems like forever and I’m wishing I’d had a chance to have a wee before we left, a door pops us out into a formal garden.

The sun beats down on the box hedges so beloved of the Faerie.

All too bright flowers exude their artificial scent, and re-animated insects flutter brokenly around them.

Ahead of us is a circular fountain, set in the centre of a low maze.

The queen, along with a number of other Faerie, male and female, are gathered.

They are fawning over her, and she looks bored.

“Ah, the entertainment,” she says as Yarain brings me up to them.

I yawn. She needs me.

I don’t have to play along.

Pretty sure she’ll get bored really quickly.

Yarain hands her my chain with a low bow.

With a strength her delicate form doesn’t appear to have, she jerks it until I stumble forward and land on my knees in front of her.

“Open wide,” she says, picking up a blue coloured ball of something from a beautifully laid out platter.

“I already ate,” I respond.

“This is not a request,” the queen says, her eyes hard.

“Eat.”

She pushes the coloured ball at my lips, and given what she can do to pull me to my knees, I decide I’d prefer to keep my two front teeth, and I let her put the food in my mouth.

It doesn’t taste of much, perhaps a hint of processed strawberry.

“As you can see, the human appreciates nothing about the Yeavering,” Queen Mab says imperiously to her surrounding courtiers.

They titter and clap as if she’s performed some impressive act.

“I don’t appreciate being kept prisoner either,” I say.

Her eyes darken. “Please, help yourselves.” She gestures to the platter as she gets to her feet.

“I need to deal with my pet.”

The Faerie fall on the strange coloured balls like they’re some sort of treat as the queen pulls me to one side.

“You’ll have no doubt noticed your mate is not coming for you,” she says with the nastiest of smiles.

“Who says I want him to come? Not if you’re going to enslave him or whatever it is you want to do,” I respond.

It doesn’t stop my heart squeezing in my chest at the mention of Fenrother.

I’d do anything to see him again.

Except he lied to me.

He drew me in with his innocence and lack of guile and then, just at the point I fell for him, he pulled everything out from under me.

Everything I thought was the truth.

Now I’m living my truth with a queen who will kill me if the whim takes her, and I have nothing to fight back with.

A mere, un-magical, human.

“You”—she swallows, her eyes popping—“mated with him.” Her mouth turns down at the corners in disgust. “You let him…touch you. Doesn’t that mean something to humans?”

“To humans, yes. To a Wyrm, what do you think it means? He acted on instinct. You threatened me. There was nothing more.”

I know this is not true, but I still want to protect Fenrother, if I can, even if he didn’t tell me the truth.

There’s no reason everyone should suffer at the hands of the queen.

“He will want you back. His kind cannot stop themselves.”

“His kind?”

“Monsters of the Yeavering,” the queen spits.

“Foul creatures we have to share our lands with. Uncontrollable.” Her head swings back to me.

“But there is one way of getting what I want. You are to call the Wyrm to me.”

“Call Fenrother? How?” I have the mental image of him in his Wyrm form attempting to text with his huge claws.

The queen sinks viciously clawed fingers into my arm, the sharp points slicing deep into my flesh.

Unable to help myself and despite gritting my teeth as she hits bone, there’s nothing I can do to stop the scream which she rips from me.

The noise appears like a cloud.

With her free hand, she directs it into a bottle where my scream hovers behind green glass.

“Your call to your mate.” The queen pulls her claws free, and my arm runs with blood.

“One he will be unable to resist.”

The bottle disappears with a resounding pop.

“Whatever you think, Fenrother isn’t stupid. He won’t fall for one of your tricks,” I say hoarsely as Queen Mab washes her fingers in a golden bowl which has appeared by her side.

“On the contrary. I don’t intend tricking him. He will be unable to stop himself once his instinct kicks in. Then I will have you, him, and the Wyrm which grows within you. I will have control and I will have order,” she snarls.

“I doubt it. When he comes, Fenrother will rain down violence like you have never seen.”

Because it occurs to me, the tapestry in the great hall of Fenrother’s castle, the one I thought showed Wyrms killing and eating humans…

all of the figures within it had rather long, pointed ears…