Page 13

Chapter thirteen

The Solarium

“ K eep them alive?” I murmured. “With all of these, he could keep the queen alive.” I paced with heavy steps to grab an apron and the shears that hung beside it. “He could send a fraction of these to her and still have too many plants.” Selfish, jealous monster. I tried not to take out my blossoming frustration on the plants around me and focused on my new job. At least I wasn’t idle. At least it wasn’t dark.

As I trimmed, watered, and repotted small saplings, the blood rushing in my ears slowed its throbbing rhythm as the surrounding sounds caressed me, warm and familiar—birds chirped, insects buzzed, leaves clattered. When I closed my eyes, I was almost back in the forest, below the castle, away from the barren battleground. The Shade’s solarium was a world of its own.

A woman muttered something behind me, and I whirled to see who approached. But the room was empty.

“… climbing all the way along, just—Klay, no, not there.”

There were only racerbristles. There was no one there. I was losing my mind.

The woman’s voice spoke again. “ You’re a dear. Over here, please.”

A young voice whined, “ But Moooooom.”

A bush shook and rustled. Stepping closer, I pulled the branch away with a trembling hand. A black and white spotted creature was digging at the base, and three miniature creatures scuttled between the stalks. They froze, their black shiny eyes fixing on mine.

A baby lifted a single paw. “ Mom, should we run?”

“Don’t move. Let’s see if it goes away ,” the mother’s voice cautioned.

I frowned. Their mouths didn’t move. Our stare down continued.

A baby’s tail twitched; this one’s voice was higher. “ I have an itch!”

“ Freeze, Lolo.”

I cleared my throat. “Um. Hello.”

Terrified, the three babies squeaked and rushed to hide under their mother. She bared her teeth and lifted a black-and-white tail, turning her rump toward me.

“ Hold together, dears. I shall spray her, and then we shall run.”

Wait, spray? I took a step back. “I mean you no harm. I’m…” What am I doing talking to more animals? “I’m Aelia. The Shade brought me here.”

“She smells nice.” The high voice…said. But the sound didn’t come through my ears.

“She has white hair like us.”

“Do you think she’s a skunk too?”

A sharp chirp. “She’s a human,” the mother scolded.

Skunks. Okay. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I’m not a skunk.” Six tiny eyes peeked from under the mother. One teetered out and bumbled toward me. He squinted an eye. We studied each other for a moment before I leaned forward. “Hi.”

“ Hi. ”

Frowning, I crouched. The mouth of the skunk definitely did not move as it spoke.

“How is it I can hear you? ”

The baby turned back to its mother, who answered, “The Shade understands us. Why shouldn’t you?”

Huh. Perhaps the magic of the manor?

“If you would excuse us, we’re already up too late ,” the mother continued . “We need to finish up our work and get to bed. If you’d like, you can trim that side for the spent blossoms.” Her nose twitched. “Come, Lolo, Klay, Jarlz. Go snuggle in.”

“ Yes, Mama.” Two trundled after her.

Jarlz, the one closest to me, stayed a moment longer and bared his tiny teeth. “ I’ll be watching you.”

I bowed seriously but couldn’t prevent a smile as he rushed after his mother. Perhaps the Shade was evil, the manor frightening, and the magic unusual, but these little babies were joy in a black-and-white package.

I stood up and turned slowly, taking in the room thick with healthy plants. I hadn’t seen plants like these…maybe ever, certainly, not this many so close together. The racerbristles at the castle were small, spindly, and anemic, the green was more yellow, and the leaves on each branch were infrequent. Here, the plants not only grew larger but also sprouted dense, healthy branches and plump, dark green leaves. The flowers were such a bright yellow they rivaled the sunlight through the windowpanes. The flowers burst with six broad petals and orange stamens, wafting the vanilla scent through the entire room.

In this solarium, temperature controlled and protected, the racerbristles were shielded from the rapid temperature changes and even the castle’s heat. Surely, he had to know the queen was sick. Did he truly not know that the racerbristles could help her? But if he knew, how could he be so merciless toward the queen? How could he turn his back on his leaders? Guilt twisted in my chest. Wasn’t this what I had also done—abandon my queen and my kingdom ?

It was too painful to consider. Brushing my hands free of this painful thought, I started to trim off the dead flowers where the mother skunk had indicated.

Snip. Dead flower.

Snip. I should have died.

Snip. The queen was dying, and I wasn’t there to save her.

Snip. Perhaps the Shade should be the one dy—No, I refused to think such horrible things and make myself just like them.

I froze, whirling in the mire of emotion as a single tear dripped down my cheek. I had no mother. I had cared for the queen and thought she cared for me as well. How could I abandon her? Was my life worth more than hers? Did I do what was right and good for anyone but myself? My father was inconsistent at best, and…and heavy-handed at worst. He had become increasingly unreliable, volatile, and distant since we’d arrived in this land. Chef was a friend, certainly, but my hours spent beside the queen, chatting and storytelling, wrapped her around my heart tighter than the vines along the windowsills. I would have said I would lay down my life for hers, but when it came down to it, I failed. I was not the helpful, selfless person I thought I was.

I moved to another table, and my toe clipped on something that made the sound of clinking glass. Ducking, I found a box with a large pot, several glass potion jars, a stirrer, a hot clay plate, and a mortar and pestle.

Perhaps…perhaps I would make some potions on my own and convince the Shade to bring them to the queen. Perhaps he just didn’t realize the treasure he had in this room and how it could save her. Making the potions was the least I could do for now. I could only hope it would be enough .

I tucked the box back under the table. Either convince him…or sneak out and bring them to her myself. Maybe I could still help her. Sneaking around the Shade would be the second boldest thing I’d ever done in my life, but I couldn’t abandon the queen. Not when I was able to help. With a sigh of relief, my guilt somewhat assuaged, I returned to my work.

Hours passed, and the day grew hot as the sun beat through the windows and evaporated the pools that ran through the gardens. Between the misting humidity and labor, sweat beaded on my brow. The third floor was so massive that I had only finished trimming a third of it before a sound clattered through the walls—like fingernails clicking on the table or hail clacking a staccato rhythm on stone, the sounds were rapid, frenzied, and growing louder. I turned as the strange clicks slowed. They were coming from the inner corner.

I stepped closer, wondering if the skunks had awoken, but when I moved the fronds of an enormous arcing fern tree, eight red eyes, set in a twisted, writhing, armored face, glared back at me. The creature stepped forward on six legs, each twice as long as its body and ending in whip-like feet. Two more legs angled around its twitching mandible with red-spiked pinchers that pulled invisible things toward its toothed maw. Too many legs rattled forward, and a thorned knee knocked aside a racerbristle pot, smashing it to the ground. The deformed spider’s body was much larger than a forest coyote.

A spyring.

It jumped. One moment it was six feet away on the table; the next, it was right before me. I staggered back, nearly tripping over my dress. More noise came from above, and I dragged my eyes up to a gaping hole in the corner of the wall. Dozens of pairs of eyes glowed in the darkness. I was going to die .

“ Mama, what was that?” a small voice asked behind me. I dared a glance at the small skunk that bumbled out from under the branches near the pool. “ Mama, I’m thirsty.” The little one—Jarlz, I thought—sat on his haunches and blinked blearily around him, his tiny paws rubbing his cheek as he stared unseeingly ahead. The monster spider spotted the baby and turned in its direction with a slow tap tap tap of its legs. The pincers snapped twice, and it crouched backward like the tightening of the rope of a trebuchet.

A hissing voice whispered, “ Hungry.”

Oh no.

I flipped around and dove just as the spider leaped for the baby skunk. But I was closer. My hands clutched the tiny, warm body of the baby skunk, and I dashed toward the stairs. The monster slammed into the table and stumbled under the falling plants. My spine prickled as it released a discordant wail, sounding somewhere between a woman screaming and a goat dying, accompanied by a burst from the others. The glass jar beside me broke from the sound. The other spyrings flooded into the room, their clatters becoming a roar as they rushed toward us.

“ Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.” Again, the voices. Again, they were inside my mind.

Get down. Get out. Get down. Find help.

The narrow stairway gave us only a slight lead as the spiders rushed down en masse, almost too large to fit their legs, each fighting the next for solid footing on the stairs and railings. They funneled behind us. The ones that got through clambered up onto the walls and windows.

“ Mama !” Jarlz cried.

“I got you. I got you!” I grabbed the pot of a plant I didn’t recognize, which was labeled as poisonous, and threw it at the closest spider. It hit the monster’s head, broke, and knocked the spyring to the ground. The pot did more damage than any toxin from the plant. I grabbed a nearby rainboss mushroom pot and threw that instead. Violet gore splattered as the bulbous mushroom ruptured over three spiders, who collapsed in a soul-ripping wail. Their legs writhed, and the whiplike ends took out another couple of spiders as they lashed about.

The others’ chants continued, “ Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.”

I sprinted down the second stairwell and onto the main floor. Spiders spilled behind us—so many that it seemed the walls and the floors were shifting like water rather than solid stone.

“SHADE!” I yelled, wondering if he was even awake. I ducked and squatted on the ground as a spyring jumped and flew at my head, the skunky bundle squeaked as I tucked him closer against my chest. Rising, I looked behind me again as we turned the last corner before reaching the doors. Grabbing a handle, I lunged forward and ran headfirst into a hard chest. The smell of pine and the cool sensation of enwrapping shadows swept past my legs. I collapsed into him, pressing my cheek to his warm shirt. “Oh, thank the stars.”

His arm wrapped around me, and I tucked the baby skunk between us. His growl rumbled like thunder and vibrated through his chest before his right hand flashed forward. “Now.”

I peeked under his black billowing sleeve as creatures of the night tore into the room. Five wolves, several raccoons, owls, big-beaked birds, and bats whipped past us. The screams of the spiders became pitiful wails as twitching legs were removed from bulbous bodies, shadows guided by the Shade’s subtle hand movements speared right through them, and the wolves bit a pincher and spikes clean off. The smaller bats dropped bulbous potions on the creatures as they flew above, a hissing green steam and killing them more quickly than my mushroom had. Great black arms of magic whipped around, protecting the animals from leaping spyrings, rending the monsters in pieces, and even blowing up portions of the stairwell. The Shade tucked me behind him as he ascended. I tiptoed around the carnage, mindful not to slip on monster gore. Racoons, once cute, now screeched around the room, taking down spiders twice their size in a rabid frenzy.

The cacophony lasted for several minutes before everything went silent. The Shade was breathing harder, likely from expending so much magic. I huddled against his back, held tight by a broad shadow, and I felt…safe, a feeling I should not be feeling with someone like him. I pushed a hand against him, definitely not noticing the strong cords of muscle on his back, and he loosened his shadow’s hold to allow me to step away.

The aftermath of the battle was chaotic. One raccoon washed what must have been a spyring leg in a pool before happily crunching through it, and the other animals sat back on their haunches, cleaning themselves. The bats swirled around the ceiling while others hung from it, waving their wings with self-satisfied grins.

“Is it safe yet?” the small skunk in my hands asked.

“Yes,” the Shade and I said at once. He smirked as he glanced at me.

“So I can go home now?” Jarlz asked.

I pursed my lips. “Should I…get a basket and gather his family?” I scratched the little one’s chin. Worry made my voice wobble. “I didn’t see them as I ran.”

The Shade pulled his hand from my back, leaving the place cold, and tightened his cravat as he addressed the animals. “Clear the room of this filth.” They all swung into motion, pulling the remains down the hall and through another door. “Then go back to sleep.” My brows furrowed, and I took another step away. The Shade didn’t speak that last bit aloud .

He inhaled slowly, then swept past me into the greenhouse. He paused for only a moment before his shadows took off around the room, righting pots, sweeping the steaming slop from the spiders, placing it in a large glass container, and moving the bodies toward the door.

“The mushrooms were a good thought.” His voice startled me, as quiet as it was.

I pulled the end of my hair forward and tugged it. “It was the only thing I thought might work at the time. It just didn’t work as fast as I’d hoped.”

“We use the same component in the potions the bats used, just dried and reconstituted with brynlan paste.”

My mouth formed an O . “Clever. The acid would help it penetrate more quickly.”

“And through shells and exoskeletons and armor.”

Curiosity bloomed in my chest. “Why did the spyrings attack you? Aren’t they yours?” We moved up the stairs, his shadows a constant moving force. One pressed against my middle, guiding me to the side as another shadow righted an overturned potted tree and moved it back into place. Then the shadow arm repositioned me so we could climb the final stairs.

“The manor is plagued here and there by various beasts,” the Shade said finally. “More come with each moon-cycle. These slipped through. But the spyrings are not mine. They are usually independent and don’t work well with other creatures.” He studied the mess of racerbristles. “I’ve never seen them coordinated before.”

Did that mean he had tried to befriend them? A frisson of fear raced through me, and I shuddered at the thought of breakfast with a spyring. The wolves were enough for me .

Glancing around the room of the beautiful racerbristles, I worried my lip. “I’m so sorry,” I started. “I can fix this and pick it up.”

The Shade’s eyebrow tucked up into the hair that had fallen forward. Without breaking eye contact, his shadows swept the room and put it to rights. One even dragged a new pot over and swept the dirt back around the bush.

I cleared my throat. “Okay, well then, I will just…return the boy.” I ducked around the Shade and his overwhelming presence and went to the table. “Mama Skunk?”

“Mama Mae? You can come out now ,” the Shade called as well.

A bush shook, and the mother skunk rushed forward. “ Dark One! Have you seen my—” Her voice cut off in a high-pitched, worried squeak.

The young kit in my arms started writhing, and I set him down quickly before I dropped him. “ Mama!”

The two reunited with more purring and chattering until the two other babies also arrived, their questions almost indecipherable. “Where did you go?” “Did you die?” “What were you thinking?” “Hide–Spray–Live, as I’ve always told you.”

I smiled. A flush of relief flooded me, followed by a feeling of warm contentment. I was wrapped in his piney scent as he stepped up behind me.

“Let’s see to this weakness of my defenses, Dayspring. Where did you first see the creatures?”

All warmth fled as I strode with false bravado to where I’d first seen the spyrings. The shadows shifted the plants, the table, and finally the fern tree aside, revealing the cavern entrance. On the distant wall of the tunnel, eggs and spiderwebs clung to the opening of a hole in the room. Dust and rocks filled the floor .

“I see.” He took a cloth from his pocket, wrapping it around a stone and igniting it with a match. Then he threw the whole lot down the sloping tunnel, surrounded by waves of shadow. The light diminished as the distance grew…and grew. The tunnel was enormous. The Shade’s frown deepened. He brought a hand forward and swept the eggs and rocks that had fallen into the room back into the tunnel. With a slash of his palm before him, the shadows formed a grate-like barrier at the entrance.

“This will be annoying to clear.”

“You think there are more down there?”

He turned, his shoulders low. “There are always more.” He strode past the skunk family and gestured for me to follow. “Come, let’s rest. It’s been quite a day.”