Page 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

N os stared down at the unconscious form of Ava. Being in the home of the Seelie sisters made him uncomfortable. He did not trust them. They were dangerous—namely because they were, on the surface, not dangerous.

To be honest, he preferred dealing with creatures like Braega or Rig. Unseelie had the dignity to show others precisely what kind of monsters they were. They did not wander about masquerading as kindly things, only to consume their victims from the inside out.

The mother had asked him to carry Ava out into the garden, where she might sleep underneath the large oak tree that shadowed the house. The oak tree would keep her safe from any other dreamlings that would try to crawl into her mind, the mother explained.

Nos simply wished to leave. He wished to go home, take Ibin with him, and let Ava and her blasted book of lies sort this all out on their own.

But, as always, he did what was asked of him.

He also did it because Ibin was hovering over Ava nervously. Ibin was growing increasingly fond of the sharp-tongued human. Nos was suspicious he knew why, and hated what it meant, if he was right. But he could never, ever speak his suspicions out loud. That left him standing under the branches of a massive old oak tree, listening to chickens cluck away in the distance, and watching a foolish, deeply irritating human sleep in the grass.

With her head atop his folded-up peacoat.

“Oh, do not look so put out.” Ibin chuckled. “Your faces might get frozen that way.”

Faces. He smirked. Ibin was the only one allowed to tease him about his, well, condition. He knew she did it out of affection. “I do not want her to bring harm to you.”

“I can handle myself.” Ibin stretched out her long legs in front of her and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. “Don’t forget I was a Lieutenant Pilot before I was sucked into all this magical hoopla.” She waved a hand idly at the world around her. “I’m not a wilting wallflower, even if I look like one now.”

“I was not insinuating otherwise.”

“I know. I appreciate that you’re always looking out for me.” Ibin smiled, but it faded fast. “I’m just afraid that…Look, I wasn’t around for Gregor, when he wasn’t, well, a corpse—so correct me if I’m wrong, but Ava feels different.”

Nos stared down at the young woman again. She was peacefully sleeping. The crone had left her mind, said the debt had been paid, and Ava slumped over, nearly collapsing to the floor.

But she was alive. And whole. Just sleeping off the exhaustion of what had transpired.

“It feels like she…” Ibin trailed off.

“Might stand a chance of succeeding where the others all failed.” Nos had been thinking the same. He had not known the other humans before Gregor. But he had heard tales of them. And no one had even made it through gathering the first shard.

This was the farthest any of Serrik’s attempts had ever gone.

It troubled him deeply.

“We have to convince her we should all be allowed to live. It’s the only way.” Ibin toyed with the hem of her gossamer gown. “And right now, we’re all doing a right terrible job of it. If I were her, I’d be eager to wipe us off the face of all the planets we’ve managed to inhabit.”

“We live within a prison of the most undesirable and insane creatures the fae could not otherwise dispose of.” Nos rolled his eyes. “How do you plan to convince her? We are likely the most harmless creatures within this place, and she barely tolerates us. You hear how she cusses.”

“She barely tolerates you , Nos. She likes me.” Ibin snickered. “And she barely tolerates you because you act like you despise her.”

“I do not.”

“You do too.” Ibin laughed harder. They had no fear of waking Ava. She was in a deep, hard sleep. “It’s painfully clear that if you had your druthers, you’d have snapped her neck by now.”

“It would do no good. She cannot die by those means.” Nos folded his arms over his chest.

“And that’s the only reason why you haven’t done it.” She waggled a finger at him. “Not exactly the greatest way to make friends.”

“I don’t need to be her friend, I need her to agree not to help the mad bastard kill us all.” They were arguing in circles. Again. “But neither does that mean I despise her. I do not. I simply wish her matter resolved with neither of us coming to harm.”

“If she sides with Serrik, we will all come to harm, Nos.”

He knew she was right. He knew what she was saying made sense. He simply did not like it. “What are you proposing, then? I insist that there is no one here within the Web who can serve as a shining example of the value of our race.”

“Then we find a way to get her out of the Web. And as far from Serrik as possible.” Ibin was smiling like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Oh, yes, let us simply escort her out of this unbreakable prison. Why did I not think of that earlier? Thank you for this wonderful epiphany.” Ava’s sarcasm was rubbing off on him. That was all he needed. “Forgive me, Ibin. I am exhausted.”

“No, that’s valid. We’re both tired. And I never said I had a plan on how to do that. I simply said that’s what we should be striving for. It would solve all our problems.” Her face lit up. “Perhaps even permanently!”

“What do you mean?”

She gestured down at the grimoire. “With her, goes the book. And without the book?—”

Without the book, Serrik would never be able to break the prison door.

It was a terrible idea. An absolutely horrible one. A gamble, above all others. “I do not know if what you are saying is even possible. Do you believe our wardens will want a human running about with access to…” Nos furrowed his brow. How would that even function? Would that even work? He stared down at the grimoire in the grass and shook his head.

There was so much Ava did not know. So many truths that were hidden from her. Ones that Nos could not tell her—or Ibin—if for very different reasons.

“Then, they’ll have to decide which risk is worse. Her unlocking the door, or her running about with the book, dropping trains on people.” Ibin was clearly trying not to laugh at the notion of the chaos Ava would cause outside the Web. “I’ve never understood why they put the book in here with Serrik in the first place, seems like a terrible idea.”

He kept quiet on the subject and went back to the more important one. “They are already hunting her, I am sure. The reverberation of her magic has drawn attention.”

“Well, if she hasn’t already gotten their attention”—Ibin looked down at the shard of broken mirror lying beside Ava and the book in the grass—“something tells me she’s about to.”

Ava came to, standing in Serrik’s library. She was dreaming again—or still, perhaps—it all ran together. She was going to wake up feeling like she had been hit by a truck.

Or a train.

But she probably felt better than how Serrik looked. He was leaning on one of his long tables, his head lowered, his long green hair shrouding his face.

“Serrik?”

He straightened up all at once, pulling in a hiss of breath. He hadn’t known she was there. His golden jewelry glimmered in the light of the candles that burned in rows down the length of the table and on the surfaces around him.

Even exhausted, even with bags under his eyes and a strained expression, he was beautiful.

“Are you okay?” It was a stupid question to ask him. No, of course he wasn’t okay. That was obvious by looking at him. And he’d just had a memory ripped out of him. She couldn’t imagine what that did to a person.

But she almost did have to imagine it.

Because she’d almost lived through it.

“I am fine.” Serrik composed himself.

“I—I know we’re not supposed to say this, but I’m already bound to you so it doesn’t matter, so I’m going to say it anyway. Thank you. For what you did.” Cautiously, she walked up to him.

They weren’t friends.

She didn’t trust him.

But he’d taken a bullet for her.

“It is no loss to me. I will sleep better now that it is gone.” He didn’t look at her, instead focusing down on the papers in front of him. “But you are welcome.”

She didn’t know why but she reached out to touch his arm. Serrik turned from her and walked toward his fireplace in the same moment, leaving her hand hanging in mid-air.

Her heart broke. For whom, she didn’t know.

“You should go. Get some r—” His knees buckled.

Ava ran forward as Serrik collapsed, catching himself on the edge of his long table. She grabbed him, and learned that Serrik was heavy. Way heavier than he ought to be, even for a man pushing six and a half feet and broad at the shoulders.

“Fuck—” She grunted as she did her best to help him to his feet. Really, she suspected she was just helping stabilize him.

Serrik clearly leaned as little of his weight on her as he was capable of doing. “My chair by the fire.” He seemed dizzy, suddenly. Woozy.

She helped walk him over there, one arm around his waist and one of his over her shoulder. It was strange to be so close to him. But she couldn’t focus on it. Not when he could keel over at any moment—which would definitely take her with him.

Setting him down in the chair, she went to the bar where she’d seen him fetch his alcohol from an earlier visit. Getting a glass and the whole bottle, she came back with them and poured him a double, wordlessly handing it to him before setting the bottle down on the table beside him.

“It is my turn to offer thanks,” he muttered into the rim of his glass as he took a sip. Leaning his head back onto the upholstery of the chair, he let out a long, tired sigh. “You should go now, Ava.”

“I thought you brought me here.” She knew she’d pulled him into her memories. But now she could follow him? Weird.

“No. It seems you were not done with me yet.” He glanced at her with those faintly glowing golden eyes. “A new ability I find mildly alarming.”

Huh. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Precisely why it is alarming.” He took another sip. The silence stretched between them for a beat. “Go on, ask your questions. It is why you are here.”

“I—” Was it? She did have a ton of questions after what she’d learned. But it felt wrong to pester the man. Fae. Monster. Spider. Thing. Whatever he was. “I mean. It’s clear you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No. I do not. I would rather speak of anything else, Ava. But you want to know the answers, and I would rather you learn the truth from me, rather than those two insipid fools filling your head with slander and rumors.”

She smiled sadly before sitting in the other chair by the fire, twisted slightly to face Serrik. “Nos and Ibin aren’t that bad.” Okay, maybe Nos. But she really didn’t blame the grumpy Frankenstein- esque fae. He’d clearly earned his right to be a bit persnickety.

“We shall see.” He shut his eyes. “Regardless. Go ahead. Ask your questions, little butterfly. And I shall answer them.”

She watched him for a moment in silence, thinking over where to even begin. “You said you’ve been locked up in here for eighteen-hundred years.”

“I have. Give or take.”

“How old were you, when that happened?”

“It was my first day of fae adulthood. I was one hundred years old, to the day.”

Oh, god. She watched him in stunned silence for a minute, trying to process what that would have been like from her point of view. Congratulations on your eighteenth birthday. Now go live in your room and never leave it. “Why did you design a prison for the Morrigan?”

“I knew even then, living under the cruelty of King Dagda and King Bres, that something must be done about the fae. That our species should not be allowed to live freely. But at the time, I did not think extinction was necessary. I thought, perhaps, that it was better to simply reduce the damage they could cause. The Morrigan meddles. Pulls the strings of the world and lays the fault of her disastrous actions upon the altar of fate. ” He scoffed.

“You were trying to cut off the head of the snake?”

“More or less, yes. I thought with her safely contained in a place where she could play her games ad nauseam— ” He let out a breath. “She could be content, and our worlds would know peace. I told her this place was a game for her. A diversion. A toy. But she saw through my ruse. She already knew of my disdain for my people. They had not been kind to me.”

Watching the fire burn for a moment, she decided to be daring. Rip off the proverbial bandage. “Was that how you…lost a leg?”

“Yes.”

And that was all she was going to get out of him. The silence after hung heavy in the air. A spider with seven legs. She wasn’t going to ask for more. It was cruel, and he’d done her a huge favor that day.

“Who was your father? Did you ever meet him?”

“I do not have one, nor have I ever.”

She turned to watch him again. “Like, a Zeus-Athena thing? Immaculate conception, or?”

He chuckled. “I did not spring fully formed from my mother’s head, no, though I am glad the old legends persist. I suppose, if you wish to hear the whole story of my making, we should begin where it makes sense—at the beginning.”

“It is a very good place to start.” She grinned. She couldn’t help but pop out a quote now and then.

He eyed her curiously, then shook his head, understanding that he was clearly missing something, but not caring enough to stop for clarification. “My tale begins in the ancient city of Hypaepa…”