Page 5

CHAPTER FOUR

“ Y ou called the bartender?” Carys followed Duncan, who was following Dru, with Laura at her side and Cadell at her back. “If he’s here, who’s watching the Four Crowns?”

Dru glanced over his shoulder with a smirk. “You don’t even realize what a question that is.”

Dru—no last name given—was a dark-haired fae of mysterious origin who made his life in the Brightlands for a reason Carys didn’t know. He was the owner and keeper of the Four Crowns pub in Scone, which as far as Carys could tell, had no magical connections except for Dru.

“Four Crowns pub,” Carys said. “Four crowns of Briton. Trust me, I got the connection months ago.”

“Ha!” Laura smiled. “That’s clever though.”

Night had fallen in the Brightlands and they were as rested as they were going to get, so they were headed to the mythical Shadowlands of London via a troll gate accessed via a Chinese restaurant on Knightsbridge’s main road.

It was only a fifteen-minute walk from Duncan’s family home, but the wind was brutal and Carys was already chilled to her skin by the time they turned left and the pedestrian traffic picked up.

“Not far now.” Duncan glanced over his shoulder. “How you doing, dragon?”

“I’m ready.”

“Ready?” Duncan’s eyebrows went up. “No. Pick a different answer, because I don’t like that one. Calm. Calm would be an excellent answer.”

“I’m not calm,” the dragon muttered. “I’m ready.”

He rolled his shoulders under a large wool coat that Carys had forced on him after he tried to leave the house in nothing but his sleeveless leather armor.

Her dragon was ready to return to the Shadowlands. Carys could tell by the set of his jaw. He’d been in human form far longer than he liked.

Of course, he’d have to remain in human form until they passed through the gate and arrived at her uncle’s house unless he wanted to create an international magical incident.

“Attention to the humans.” Dru fell back as Laura and Carys gathered on either side. “A short lesson about where we’re going.”

Carys pulled her coat closer around her body as a gust of wind cut through the street, which was bordered by town houses. She glanced to the right and saw a man in a black overcoat leaning against an archway and smoking a pipe.

Belgrave Mews.

“The London you’re going to encounter on the other side of this gate is nearly as diverse as the one in the Brightlands,” Dru continued. “Whatever you think you know from movies or popular books, you would be better to forget it.”

“Tell us about the trolls,” Carys said.

“They are mostly harmless as long as you remember what they’re there for,” Dru said. “They want to trade, they want to eat, and they want to not be noticed.”

“If they didn’t want to be noticed, seems like a bad idea to start a giant black market right in the middle of London,” Laura said.

Dru stopped walking and stared at her. “Why are you here, human?”

Laura lifted her chin. “Because Carys is my best friend, and I have a really good bullshit detector no matter what magical species I encounter.”

Dru nodded. “Very well.” He started walking again. “Don’t look into a troll’s eyes. Glance, don’t stare, no matter how strange they look. Unless you’re buying what they’re selling, do not linger.”

Glance, don’t stare. Glance, don’t stare. Carys repeated it like a mantra because this was going to be really hard.

Trolls were a fascinating mix of contradictions. Old Norse in origin, it shouldn’t surprise her that there were trolls in Anglia, considering the Norse influence through both blood, conquest, and trade.

In some legends, they were small and fae-like. In other tales, they looked almost exactly like humans. And in others, they were tall and monstrous.

Basically, Carys was trying to prepare herself for anything.

The traffic as they turned onto Knightsbridge was bustling as the main road filled up with cabs, buses, and cars inching along, passing elegant hotels, and tooting their horns when the automobile in front of them didn’t go as fast as they liked.

They continued through a busy intersection and walked through a construction tunnel before the road suddenly grew much more quiet and the lights seemed to dim.

Duncan muttered, “They feel him coming, for sure.”

“What did you expect?” Cadell said. “If you wanted to slip in unnoticed, you shouldn’t have invited him .”

Carys glanced at the back of Dru’s head and noticed that he seemed to grow taller before her eyes.

Light fae were usually taller than the average human, but the dark-haired bartender did such a good job blending into the human world that she hadn’t noticed before.

Dru’s chestnut hair fell in waves around his face, covering his pointed and gold-pierced ears, and his manner, unless you were talking directly to him, was mild.

Laura leaned toward Carys. “Who is this guy?”

“As far as I know, he’s a fae guy who owns a pub in Scone.” But Carys was starting to feel like there was more to the story than what she knew.

“Here.” Dru stopped at the glass door of a Chinese restaurant. Unlike the bustling pub next door, the restaurant was dark, and the red lanterns hanging in the windows were not lit.

Despite the darkness, Dru pushed the door and it swung open. He walked through, leaving Duncan to hold the door for the rest of the party.

A moment after they walked through the door, a stout Asian woman in a yellow dress appeared from a hallway at the back of the shadowed restaurant. “We’re closed!” She gasped a little bit when he saw Dru. “You.”

“It’s me.” Dru hung his hands in his pockets and stared at the woman. “I’ll be taking them downstairs.”

The woman appeared to grow in stature before Carys’s eyes. No longer a forgettable middle-aged restaurant proprietress in a yellow dress, she was nearly as tall as Duncan, and when she shook her head, Carys could see gold rings lining her pointed ears. “He won’t like it.”

“He won’t know I’ve crossed over unless someone tells him.” Dru’s gaze drilled into the fae woman. “Is that going to be you, Lian?”

Lian cocked her head and looked at the dragon, the three humans, and the fae standing in her dark restaurant. “I didn’t see you, but he will.” One dark eyebrow lifted like a bird in flight, and then she disappeared back into the dark hallway from where she’d emerged.

Dru watched her leave, then turned to Carys and smiled. “My people. So dramatic.” He walked to a hallway that Carys hadn’t noticed before, pushing aside a red beaded curtain before he disappeared into the shadows. “Come, Carys Morgan. Day is dawning in the Shadows, and the market is waiting for you.”

The maze of passages beneath the restaurant was eerily quiet. Nearly as soon as they descended from street level, Carys could see the weeping blue lights of the wisps begin to glow overhead.

“The fae built this gate long before the city was established.” Dru spoke quietly as they walked. “It was only marshlands then. But the tides of the ocean shifted, and the old god who was this river retreated into the Shadowlands. Over time, the humans changed the course of the river, but the gate stayed.”

Carys saw nothing in the blackness, but she listened for the sound of Dru’s voice and followed him, her right hand grasped in Duncan’s and her left clutching Laura’s.

She couldn’t say exactly when the shift came, but she felt the claustrophobic press of brick and mud give way and the air around her expanding. The wisps danced and sighed in her ears. There were dark whispers in the distance, and when the first glow of light finally touched the horizon, she didn’t see trees but the shadowed silhouettes of figures walking to and fro.

The ground beneath her feet turned from brick to mud to cobblestones, and she could hear water flowing in the distance.

“I’ve never seen a gate like this,” Laura whispered behind her. “What is this place?”

They emerged into an alleyway where the fog was so thick Carys could barely see Dru’s head as he led them into what looked like a cross between the Alemany Farmers’ Market in San Francisco and a flea market.

It was early morning, and the air smelled of fish, mud, and damp wool. Along the banks of a slow-moving river, she saw figures of every shape and size setting up shops.

There was a barrel-chested creature with a forked black beard, piercing eyes, and a plaid kilt setting out leather goods. Belts, bags, and what looked like an ordinary backpack with a pair of mouse ears silhouetted on the front pocket.

Across from the leather shop, a tall, willowy female figure with bright white hair that resembled cotton candy was setting out glass bottles filled with potions of every color. Beside her, a shorter version of herself was setting out comic book playing cards from the Brightlands in a single row.

Laura’s eyes went wide. “Is that allowed here?”

“Shhh,” Dru whispered. “Don’t stare.”

“Not technically,” Carys whispered. “But you see more crossover here than in Baywood.”

Carys had never seen a hint of the Brightlands in the Shadowlands of California save for some clothing styles and Shadowlands takes on things like lunch boxes and modern fashion. But artifacts from one world crossing over? Not a single one.

She put her hand on the stash of treasure in her coat’s inside pocket and hoped no one could read her mind.

What are you hiding, Nêrys?

Oh right. Dragon. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Cadell was wearing the hint of a smile.

No shifting yet, she thought at him.

I know.

Mental communication had become second nature to her in the months she’d been training with Cadell.

Do you still have my bow?

I do.

Cadell had been the one to suggest Carys take her compound bow with her. It had no steel or iron and was made exclusively of carbon fiber and aluminum, both materials that the fae allowed in the Shadowlands, though aluminum wasn’t common.

Cadell had packed her bow in the large bag he carried on his back, and as the market grew more and more crowded, Carys drifted closer to the safety of her dragon.

“Pike,” a thick man barked from the riverbank. “Fresh pike and perch today.”

She glanced at the fishmonger’s swarthy face, a silver beard covering the lower half and a pair of pointed ears peeking from a red cap.

“Pike,” he called again. “Fresh fish from the river.”

As more and more creatures arrived at the market and more stalls were set up, Carys could see why the mythology about trolls was so varied.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of them.

The trolls setting up in the market were tall and short, stout and slender. There were creatures that reminded her of trees and ones that seemed completely made of moving rock. The only common feature appeared to be a certain roundness to the face and nose, larger-than-average pointed ears, and a wild aspect that Carys couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“Wood and stone,” Laura whispered. “They’re elementals.”

Carys nodded. “Maybe that’s it.”

Unicorns had elemental magic too, but they were otherworldly in their beauty while the trolls that ran this market looked like they could melt into a forest or mountainside in the blink of an eye.

There was a stall selling comic book T-shirts and another selling vegetables. There were fishmongers with scales on the backs of their hands, and a thin fae woman sat under a tent surrounded by a stack of books, some of which appeared to be reading themselves.

Once again, Carys was overtaken by the ordinary strangeness of everything in front of her eyes.

“Looks like most of the more… interesting stalls have closed up for the day.” Duncan fell into step beside her. “You happy, Cadell?”

“I’ll be happy when we get to King Dafydd’s estate.” His eyes scanned the street in front of them, sweeping back and forth as a red fire glowed at his throat. “Surely you feel it, human. Even though you’re mundane.”

“Mundane,” Laura said. “My all-time favorite word. Cadell, you do know how to make a girl feel special.”

“I was talking about the blacksmith. There is nothing mundane about you.” Cadell’s eyes never stopped scanning, and he stepped in front of a short rocky-skinned vendor who walked toward Carys, holding a bright paper flower. “No,” the dragon growled.

“Rude.” The small troll backed away and disappeared behind a table draped in brightly dyed wool.

“There’s no need to be hostile,” Carys said. “He was just offering me a flower.”

“Nothing in this market is offered freely,” Dru said. “The dragon is right. He probably smelled your coffee and was going to try to pickpocket you.”

Duncan looked at Carys. “You didn’t.”

“Listen, I have heard your warnings about introducing geographic anachronisms,” Carys said. “But whatever crazy things are about to happen to me, I am not facing them without coffee again.” She put her hand on the contraband in her inside pocket, the prize she’d been hiding from Cadell. “I have enough instant to last me and Laura for a week. Don’t test me.”

“I knew you were my best friend for a reason.” Laura grasped Carys’s hand again.

“Do you see the bridge?” Dru pointed to a steeply arched stone bridge that crossed the river. “That’s our way across the Cye Bourne.”

They climbed stone stairs and walked up and over the bridge, stopping at the peak of the arch to survey what they had just passed over.

Duncan smiled at her. “London looks a little different here, doesn’t it?”

Carys smiled and nodded. “Yeah. A little bit.”

Instead of skyscrapers and townhomes, the London of the Shadowlands was a flat city of wooden buildings and thatched roofs. Two- and three-story buildings hugged the banks of a massive, wide river that twisted and flowed slowly toward the sea.

“The Cye Bourne is only one of the rivers that flows into Great Tamis.” Dru leaned on the edge of the bridge and looked into the distance. “There it is, Carys Morgan. The oldest god of Anglia.”

Flowing steadily through the middle of the city, the Tamis River slugged along, bordered by thick reeds and rock walls that shored up embankments on either side.

There were wide pathways and markets like the one they’d just passed through, and in the distance, poking its head from the low wooden buildings, stood a great stone tower that overlooked the heart of London.

Carys looked down at the slow-moving Cye Bourne as fishermen in wide, flat boats threw out nets and poled slowly downstream. Small fae creatures with bright wings fluttered from one side of the river to the other, and otters played in the thick green verge.

“We should keep walking,” Cadell said. “We’re starting to attract attention.”

Dru pulled a black cloak up and over his head. “Come then. Just on the other side of the bridge, there’s a fork in the road.”

As they crossed over the bridge and saw the wide green embankment, a few market stalls selling morning snacks to passersby, Carys saw that Dru hadn’t been joking.

She nearly laughed out loud.

Past the bridge there was an intersection of two paths, one that led into a dense forest and another that led farther along the river on the other side of the Cye.

And at the juncture, there was a large stall selling brass cutlery.

Forks. There were forks in the road. Someone had a sense of humor.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Duncan growled. “He didn’t.”

“Who didn’t?”

The tall Scotsman stalked past Dru and marched over to the cutlery stand, leaning over the counter-height table and looking at someone on the other side. “Who the fuck let you two out of Alba?”

From behind the counter, Duncan’s mirror image stood up, and Carys’s heart started to race when she saw her former boyfriend for the first time in over six months. “Lachlan?”

The russet-haired prince shot her a beaming smile and happiness lit his eyes. “Carys!”

“Well,” a growly voice came from behind a curtain before it swung to the side and a grey-haired, stony-faced creature emerged. “This should make things more interesting.”

Duncan, Cadell, and Carys spoke at once. “Angus.”