Page 4

Chapter Four

H arm stumbled after the fee?n warrior woman and her dog, his mind reeling.

Someone had poisoned Gijs with a fee?n poison. And that enemy was still out there, with his father and brother unaware and unprepared.

Had it been a fee ? A human who bargained with the fee?nvolk ? And how had that mysterious fee known about all of this to set up the bargain with Queen Mab?

Harm’s stomach churned. Hang the bargain. He needed to escape. Now.

The fee?n girl leading them halted before what looked like a yellow tulip bloom, except that it was the size of a small cottage and rested directly on the ground instead of on a stem. The girl gestured to it. “Your room.”

The warrior woman nodded. “Deliver food at midday.”

With a bob of her head, the girl spun away, not giving Harm a glance. As if he didn’t even exist .

Perhaps he didn’t. Not here in the realm of the fee?nvolk .

The warrior woman brushed aside one of the petals, then stepped into the flower, her dog trotting at her side.

Harm had little choice but to follow, tied to her by the cord as he was.

The inside enclosed them in yellow folds, the floral scent thankfully faint. A small round space held several spindly wooden chairs with moss cushions while what appeared to be two more petal doors filled the far side.

As soon as the flower petal door closed behind them, Harm tugged at the knotted cord at his wrist. The knot was a mere slip knot. He should have been able to loosen it and slip the cord off.

But no matter how much he tugged and pried, he couldn’t seem to make the cord budge.

“Why won’t it come off?” Harm tugged even more frantically. He needed to leave. To go home. His brother and father were in danger.

“It’s a threefold cord crafted of moonlight, silver, and the fleece from a golden sheep.” The fee?n warrior faced him, crossing her arms. “Once it’s put on, it won’t come off until the bargain is complete. And before you get any ideas…”

She lashed out, a blur of black hair and brown leather, and gripped his wrist. Before he could even think about fighting back, her knife was out, swinging toward his arm.

Harm cried out, flinching away even as the knife came down .

But instead of slicing off his hand, the knife slammed into an invisible something , halting only a breath away from his arm.

“Why would you do that?” Harm yanked at his hand again, but he couldn’t free himself from her grip.

“You can’t cut off your hand or arm to free yourself. Nor can you cut off any of my limbs, so don’t even think about it. But…” Her blade flashed as it whipped up from his arm to rest beneath his chin, the point digging into his skin. “You can still be killed, and I would be left dragging around your rotting corpse until you were delivered.”

Then if he killed her…

She must have read the thoughts in his eyes for the knife dug harder against his skin. “Don’t even contemplate killing me. First of all, you’d never manage it. Second, you’d end up hauling my corpse around with you for the rest of your miserable life, short as it would be. Third, you’d still have to keep the bargain your father made, otherwise you’d take the perils of a broken bargain back with you to your kingdom. Trust me, you don’t want to do that. I’m your best chance of surviving long enough to fulfill the bargain, understood?”

Harm stilled, swallowing against the point of the knife. Even if he freed himself from the cord, he was still bound by the bargain. His first impulse had been to ignore it but…he couldn’t.

From his research, a broken bargain would be more of a risk than whatever danger his father and brother were in. One of the merchants Harm talked to mentioned that a kingdom to the south had experienced a severe drought for nearly a decade thanks to a fee?nvolk bargain.

Harm couldn’t risk that, loath as he was to abandon his family to the peril they faced. “I understand.”

Strangely, her words also implied that she couldn’t get this cord off any more than he could. They were well and truly stuck together by this cord until he was delivered to Queen Titania.

“Good.” She stepped back and sheathed her knife. “And don’t even think about drawing that knife you might have up your sleeve.”

Harm froze, a chill dousing him. He and his father had been so careful passing that knife. But if she knew about it…if she took it…then Harm would never escape.

“Look, I don’t care if you have a knife. I did my job and searched you for weapons. If you acquired another weapon after my search, that’s none of my business.” She shrugged and turned away from him. “Just don’t let me see it.”

In other words, as long as she didn’t see it, she officially didn’t know about it. It was a strangely compassionate gesture from a fee?n woman who hadn’t shown him a lot of sympathy so far.

Or perhaps she just plain didn’t care. About him or about whatever fee he might ambush with the knife down the road. Maybe she expected the same lack of caring from him when it came to prying into her business.

“Now I’m going to get some sleep. I don’t care what you do, but we’ll be heading out when I wake whether you are rested or not.” She marched toward one of the tulip petal doors and pointed first at the other door, then at the one in front of her. “That’s your room. This is mine. If you try to come in, I will kill you.”

No chance of that. He wasn’t the type to press those boundaries. Besides, sharing a flower-house like this was already beyond the pale when it came to Tulpenland standards of propriety between an unmarried man and woman.

With that, she stepped inside, the petal door falling shut with a soft shushing sound. Strangely, the cord connecting their wrists didn’t go around the petal door. No, the strand of silver and sparkles went through the door.

Daisy, the sometimes-three-headed dog, curled up on what appeared to be a moss rug, though she eyed Harm with such big, liquid amber eyes that he couldn’t help but stagger the few steps to kneel beside the dog and pet her. She rolled onto her side, presenting him with her belly.

As cute as she was, Harm just patted her side. He didn’t want to risk bringing out those two spare heads again.

His pack and exhaustion pressed heavily on Harm’s shoulders. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept.

With the dog still watching him hopefully, Harm gathered his remaining strength and pushed to his feet. He glanced from the cord on his wrist to where it stretched through the fee?n woman’s door.

With a shrug, Harm shuffled across the strangely springy floor of the tulip house and gripped the petal door to the room she’d assigned to him. The petal was soft and smooth beneath his hand, exactly like a tulip petal back home. If a tulip were the size of a small windmill.

When he stepped inside, he found a bed formed of mounds of flower petals against the inner wall. A basin and pitcher of water set on a spindly wooden stand stood by the outer wall where it curved in the shape of the flower.

The yellow petal door slid shut behind him. When he glanced down at the cord, it ran through the wall that separated him from the fee?n woman’s room.

Such a strange magic. Where it passed though the wall, the cord appeared more light than fiber. And yet on his wrist, it was as firm as an iron manacle, though thankfully far softer.

When he slid his pack off his back, the strap went right through the cord. Same when he shrugged out of his black coat. But when he tried to pass his hand through the tether, it remained solid.

Mind-bendingly strange. All Harm could do was shake his head, too weary to puzzle over the oddness of this place, and collapse onto the flower petal bed.

Dogs who only had three heads occasionally, cords that were sometimes solid, sometimes not, and tulip bloom houses were the least of the bizarre things he would face in the realm of the fee?nvolk .

Harm was dragged from hazy, outlandish dreams of pink frogs and talking tulips when something jerked his arm so hard that he was yanked from the petal bed. He fell to the springy floor with an oomph that was more a startled exclamation than pain.

“Get up, pup, or you’ll be dragged.” The fee?n woman’s voice came harsh and clipped from the other side of the door.

“At least give me a moment to wash up and change.” Harm pushed himself off the floor. “If you drag me through the door now, I’ll be in a state of undress.”

Granted, he was only lacking his jacket and boots, but she didn’t know that. The fee didn’t seem as bothered by such things, but Harm was betting she’d still be reluctant to drag him from here if she thought he might be unclothed.

“Fine. Hurry up.” Her tone rang even more brusque.

Harm rushed through splashing his face with water and changing into his set of more practical clothing, which included thick canvas trousers stuffed into his boots, a plain shirt, and a leather overcoat.

The last thing he did was strap the iron knife his father had given him to his lower leg, tucking it underneath his trousers, then inside his boot. It was a clunky weapon, with a rounded knob at the top and a hilt that lacked any sort of grip over the iron tang. The knob would surely give him a bruise.

Hiding it like that didn’t make it very accessible, but he shouldn’t draw it until it was time to escape. Until then, it would be safely out of the warrior woman’s sight .

With that settled, Harm took out some of his salt pork, repacked his nicer clothes around the blue-and-white pottery items in his pack, shrugged on the heavy load, and strode from the room with his head high.

The fee wore the same leather outfit and weapons as she had that morning, though her hair was now tightly done in a single braid down her back. She stood in the center of the room, munching on what looked like an egg on toast—except that the egg was green and the toast was pink.

She jabbed a finger down at the tray of food sitting on what appeared to be a toadstool table. “Eat. These foods should be safe.”

More of those green eggs and pink toast sat on the tray, along with an assortment of other strangely colored food. Her should be was not enough reassurance, given the odd colors.

Harm held up the unappetizing salt pork. “I have food.”

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged and kept eating, even as she headed toward the door. “We might as well eat and walk.”

She didn’t have a pack or seemingly anything to gather besides her dagger, which she already wore. She snapped her fingers for her dog, and that was that.

Harm trailed after her. Not that he had much choice, given the roughly ten feet of glimmering cord stretched between them.

She set a brisk pace as she wound through the towering blooms. Various fee?n meandered around them, though the court seemed strangely quiet for the middle of the day. Then again, it had been bustling late at night. Perhaps these fee?n were more nocturnal creatures.

Harm finished his meat, but he didn’t say a word until they were back in the fern forest. Only once they were well away from all the other fee?n did he ask, “How far of a walk is it to Queen Titania’s court?”

“Too long.” She all but growled the words as she stalked through the fern forest.

“We won’t arrive tonight, will we?” Even with his long legs, Harm struggled to keep up with her quick pace.

“No.” She rested a hand on her knife’s hilt but didn’t look at him.

Harm nodded. That confirmed something he’d been mulling over. He chose his words carefully. Saying the right thing now could be the difference between life and death. “I understand that you don’t want to play tour guide or act as my friend. I’m not asking you to do so. However, given that we will be stuck together for a while and that dragging around my dead body would be a hassle, I think it’s in your best interest to explain a few basics of this realm to me so that I don’t die before we arrive.”

He'd worded it so that it wasn’t a bargain but an obligation of captor to her captive.

For long moments, she kept marching forward as if she hadn’t even heard him. Her dog disappeared into the surrounding foliage, sniffing along a trail.

When she finally spoke, her voice had that aggravated tone that seemed to be her default. “Fine. But only because showing up with a dead body would be a hit to my reputation.”

“Ah, yes. I can see how a mercenary’s spotless reputation would be important for business.” Harm worked hard to keep a straight face, his voice bland. No annoying the prickly fee?n lady, no matter how tempting it was. “What should I call you? I’m not asking for your name or whatever is dangerous to share here in this realm. Just something to call you.”

“Val.” She crunched through a patch of smaller ferns that were an odd counterpoint to the otherwise enormous ferns stretching over their heads. “Call me Val.”

Well, proper addresses would go the way of proper attire, it seemed. “And you can call me Harm. If you get tired of calling me pup .”

The look she shot him said that she wasn’t going to stop with that moniker anytime soon.

“Did you have strange dreams last night?” An impertinent question, perhaps. But his dreams had been…odd. Too odd to be normal.

“This is the Court of Dreams.” One of her shoulders lifted in a semblance of a shrug. “Be glad we were guests last night. Our dreams tonight might not be as pleasant.”

Good to know. Harm suppressed the urge to grimace. He didn’t want to imagine what a nightmare induced by this place might be like. Better to move on to asking his next question.

“Where are we? Queen Mab has a court, but this Queen Titania also has a court?” No matter how much Harm had researched, he’d come up with very little information on the politics and kingdom-structure of the realm of the fee?nvolk . If he were to escape—especially since he wouldn’t be in the court attached to his human kingdom—he would need this knowledge.

Val glared at him, as if she knew this question had more to do with his eventual escape than keeping him alive now. Yet she sucked in a breath, her shoulders rising and falling. “There are many Courts throughout the Fae Realm. Each Court belongs to the broader Spring Court, Summer Court, Fall Court, or Winter Court, where the weather is perpetually that season. Right now, we are in the Court of Dreams, which is a Spring Court. We’ll be walking to the Court of Revels, a Summer Court.”

That sounded like a complicated system. “And we’ll be walking the whole way? There isn’t a public coach or river barge we can catch?”

Val huffed and rolled her eyes. “We don’t have such things here in the Fae Realm. We do have the Anywhere Doors, which is how most fae travel between courts, but those are inaccessible to us.”

“Anywhere Doors?”

She gave another huff, as if she was frustrated she had to explain something this basic. “They are doors that are magically linked to each other. By stepping through a Door, you can step from one place to another no matter how far apart those two places are.”

“Huh.” Harm tried—and failed—to wrap his mind around such a thing. He probably shouldn’t find it so mindboggling. He was currently walking through a forest of ferns that stretched taller than the tallest trees in Tulpenland. “And we can’t use them because…I’m human?”

“No. Humans are allowed to use them if they are a part of a court, just like any fae attached to that court.” Val shoved aside a six-foot-tall stalk of grass with violent force. “But I’m not a part of any court.”

“Queen Mab mentioned that last night.” Harm swept a glance around the sunlit fern forest, the sky bright overhead, the moss beneath their feet dappled with shadows and light. “What does that mean?”

“All the fae here in the Fae Realm are pledged to one of the Courts. Well, nearly all of them. There are a few independent islands.” Val shrugged, her jaw working. “But I’m not pledged to any court. When I’m not on a mission, my home is in the realm beyond this one. The Realm of Monsters.”

Something called the Realm of Monsters didn’t sound very habitable. No wonder she walked with violence wrapped around her like a cloak.

“The Realm of Monsters doesn’t seem like a pleasant place to live.” Harm spoke carefully, not sure if prying into this part of her life was a question too far.

“It isn’t.” She kept marching forward, not looking at him, her tone quelling. But at least she answered his question. That was more than she had been willing to do the evening before.

Perhaps it had something to do with the look that had bordered on respect that she’d given him after he’d bargained with Queen Mab. Or a good night’s—well, morning’s—sleep had vastly improved her mood.

“Then why live there?” Harm tromped around one of the trunks of the ferns and adjusted the straps of his pack where they were cutting into his shoulder muscles.

“Most of us don’t have a choice.” That growl was back in her voice, her shoulders stiffening. “We’re banished from the Fae Realm or cast out for various reasons. Some of us chose to live there rather than swear allegiance to a manipulative ruler. To survive, we join the scattered bands of the Wild Hunt. As a part of the Wild Hunt, sometimes we ride in force to raid the Fae Realm or Human Realm. Sometimes we hire ourselves out as mercenaries. But we’re free, and that’s enough.”

He had the sense that was all she would say on the matter. It had already been more than he expected, though he hadn’t missed the fact that she’d never clarified her particular reason for living in the Realm of Monsters.

As she was so fond of saying, it wasn’t his business. Time to switch the subject back to something less personal.

“Last night you claimed the Law of Hospitality because you’re on a mission for the Court of Revels. Wouldn’t working for a court and gaining the rights of that court also transfer to the Anywhere Doors?” Harm needed to understand how the complicated laws of this realm worked. It could be the key to his eventual escape.

“No. The Anywhere Doors are pickier than the Law of Hospitality.” Val grimaced, flexing her fingers on her knife. “Nor would claiming the rights of the Court of Revels help in this case. The Court of Knowledge, which controls the Anywhere Doors, has banned members of the Court of Revels from using the Anywhere Doors. They’ve also banned any use of the Doors that involves the transport of humans into captivity.”

That would explain why they were walking instead of just using the magic of these Anywhere Doors.

The Court of Knowledge sounded intriguing. He would have to learn more as that sounded like the place to go for help, should he manage to escape.

“I have a question for you.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Where did you learn to bargain like that?”

“Like I did with Queen Mab?” Harm just shrugged, the motion reminding him of the weight of the pottery on his back. Heavy as it was, he didn’t regret bringing the items along. “Every Tulpenlander learns to haggle from the cradle. Getting a good bargain is a way of life. The bargains are more monetary and less binding, but the concept is still the same.”

“Hmm.” Her hum held something that almost bordered on grudging approval. As if for the first time, she had some hope that he wouldn’t get himself killed off through sheer foolishness. After a moment, her face hardened again. “Don’t get used to such success. Mab is a pixie. She can be bought with any pretty bauble. Other fae aren’t so easily bribed.”

Harm sighed through his teeth, hoisting his pack high to try to relieve the strain on his shoulders. So much for bonding with the prickly fee who was attached to the other end of his rope.

A shrill, animalistic scream pierced the air, coming from a stand of brush ahead .

Harm reached for his boot before he stopped himself, his heart hammering in his throat. “What’s that?”

“Our supper.” Val strode forward without so much as a hitch in her stride, even as the animal shrieked again.

The animal’s cries ended a moment before Daisy crashed through the brush, all three heads making an appearance. The dog gripped something brown and furry in the mouth of her middle head. She halted, then whipped her head back and forth, the muscles all along her sturdy frame standing out, as she made very sure the creature was dead.

Harm swallowed and forced himself to straighten.

Val strode to the dog. “Drop it, Daisy.”

Daisy whipped the dead creature back and forth yet again, as if it was her new favorite toy.

Val slipped her hand into a pocket, pulled out what looked like a dried piece of meat, and held it out. “Sit.”

Daisy sat, the eyes of all three of her heads focused on the meat Val held. After a moment, the dog dropped the animal carcass and tipped her noses up, her ears going back in a seal-pup appearance that would have been cute…if she hadn’t had three heads.

Val tossed the treat, and Daisy raced after it. As soon as the dog’s back was turned, Val snatched up the animal carcass. Even as Daisy’s two spare heads merged back into the middle one and she snarfed down the treat, Val stuffed the animal carcass into a pocket without so much as a flinch. Strangely, her clothes didn’t bulge with the size of the animal. It just…disappeared.

Harm adjusted the fit of the straps on his shoulders and gave himself a good shake. This strange fee?n woman and her dog weren’t on his side, exactly. But right now, that was as good of allies as he was going to get.