“I still don’t get why you need my help.”
“Every little piece of the puzzle helps. You’re in danger, too, you know. And if something happens to you, this one’s rage might help him weaken me further. If he saved you once, he’ll want to save you again. Even I know this much.”
“How am I in danger this time?” I asked scornfully. “Unless the danger is you.”
“You can keep my hands clean. That might be the only thing stopping me from taking the throne again. My enemies are numerous. Some come from blood, others from ambition. Many want this throne. Many helped end the reign of the tainted sisters. Most would do the same to me in a heartbeat. You’re an easy target. You’re human, weaker than I am, with no magic or allies. No protection.”
“You’re an arse.”
He grinned, looking less like Drake. “I’ve been called worse in my lifetime.”
“So… what? You were dead and brought back to life?”
He shook his head. “I was sent somewhere much worse. Death means peace. This wasn’t peace. This was… limbo. I watched and waited and learned. My second reign will be far greater than my first. Watch out, Cara. The fae are restless, and if you don’t help me, they may be permitted to do worse by the next successor to the throne.”
“How can you stop them?”
His expression turned cruel. “I have my ways.” He leaned forward to touch my hand across the table. “Will you help contain them?”
I sat back in my chair, pulling my hands out of his reach.
“Maybe if you understand more. My name is Brendan. When my family ruled, we had peace.” He cocked his head to the side. “As much peace as the fae can manage. But I was betrayed and cursed and trapped for centuries upon centuries. My faithful ban sídhe kept my memory alive while they worked to restore me.”
“They sound loyal.”
“They are. The right night came. The Winter Solstice was held at the disgraced Irish court on the most sacred of grounds, on the most sacred of nights, the end of an age. A boon granted to the Irish fae, but it was intended as a mockery. Reliving the glory days. My banshees cast out their magic and used you to test the queens until they broke the peace treaty. When enough blood was shed, the ritual could begin. They lined up all of the males and performed the ritual.”
He laughed. “The only unwilling subject was too stubborn to leave me alone in his body. You were on his mind, and that was likely his connection. His anchor, if you will. I haven’t figured out all of the details.”
“Could you fade away?”
He looked surprised by the question, as if he had never considered it. “He’s a stubborn little solitary thing, but I’m a king, Cara. Royal blood is the strongest blood. This one has morals, a sense of pride and fairness. I would accept his fealty if he could give it, but his destiny isn’t to live on instead of me. His destiny is to sacrifice himself in service to his king, whether he likes it or not.”
“Screw destiny. I didn’t ask to be dragged into the middle of any of this. I don’t owe you anything. If I can help Drake, I will, but you? You’re the body thief who screwed up everyone’s lives.”
“Watch,” he said. “See what happens when the fae are without a leader. You’ll beg to help me.”
“You wish.”
He allowed me to walk out of there as if I had won something, but I knew he wouldn’t let me go so easily.
Chapter Seven
“It’s terrible.” Mam’s worried voice broke through my reading and drew my attention. She stood before the television, furniture polish in one hand and cloth in the other, shaking her head.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Watch.” She pointed at the screen. “The world’s going mad. We can’t escape it.”
I focused on the news anchor’s voice. She was talking about some sort of crime wave in the centre of the city. “Just your average cokeheads acting the fool.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But the Dunphys and the Hoolihans around the corner had a bust-up over a hedge yesterday. Windows were smashed, and the police were called. And Mrs. Murphy’s house was burgled last night. The poor woman was locked in her garden shed until this morning. She almost froze.”
“What’s that got to do with this?” I gestured at the TV. The screen flashed to a reporter standing in front of a vandalised school.
She shrugged. “Just seems like the world is going to hell lately.”
A key in the front door made her flinch, and she dashed out of the room like a terrified animal. Sighing, I headed upstairs. I skipped dinner and fell asleep. I dreamed of winged angels that turned into devils and set the country on fire. I awoke abruptly and lay in the dark, trying to figure out what had happened.
I heard voices. Someone was in my room. Frozen in my bed, I stared until my eyes adjusted to the darkness, but then a blast of light blinded me for another few seconds.
A lightning bolt flew around my room, shifting from red to orange to gold. When the light dimmed, a small, perfectly formed faery appeared. A book fell, and my attention was drawn to her companion. He was small and bald, and when the tiny faery flew over his head, I saw the scarring on his skin and recognised him as the Seelie queen’s living footstool.
I sat up straight. “You were there! At the festival with one of the queens, right?”
He fell to his knees, his head bowed.
“Sorry,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He looked up at me with a mixture of awe and fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “You surprised me is all.”
The other faery flew down and landed on the floor in front of him. His back instantly straightened as if he drew strength from her. She puffed out her chest and danced toward me, her light turning bright red. The light emanated from her hair and skin, red and gold all over. Even her eyes were red beads that might have appeared evil if she didn’t wear a mischievous grin.
“I am the sprite, Realtín,” she said. “This is Grim. We have been ordered by the king to stay with you. To protect you.”
I made a face. “Go tell your user of a king to leave me alone. I don’t need any protection.”
“Oh, but you do.” Grim shrank back.
“Do you dislike our king?” Realtín asked.
“He stole my friend’s body. Of course I dislike him.” Maybe it was a stretch to call Drake a friend, but he felt like more than the word friend could cover.
She flew into the air and patted Grim on the head. “See? This job won’t be so bad.”
“I’m not your job,” I said. “You have to go before my parents hear you.”
“Oh, they’re both deaf,” she said airily, flitting about my room and staring at the faeries on my shelf. “So ugly,” she muttered, despite the fact at least a few of them looked a little like her.
“We’ve been ordered to stay with you, but we can remain outside your house if you wish,” Grim said hesitantly. He looked ready to flee. “If it makes you more comfortable, we can cloak ourselves so you do not have to see us. But we must protect you with our lives. We don’t have a choice.”
I glanced at the window. It was pretty cold outside. I couldn’t in good conscience leave them out there just because some bossy faery king had given them a few crappy orders. I wasn’t that heartless. “He’s not even a king,” I muttered.
“Once a king, always a king,” Grim rattled off.
I heaved a sigh. “You can sleep here tonight, but nobody else can see. Not my family, not my friends. Understand?”
Grim nodded solemnly, but I didn’t trust Realtín’s dark smile.
“And tomorrow,” I continued, “you can go back to your king and tell him I said, ‘Hell, no.’”
Realtín giggled, but sweat rolled down Grim’s temples. He was so anxious, like a dog who had been beaten every day since it could walk. I pulled out one of my drawers and made a makeshift bed for the two fae. Grim reached my knee, but he curled up neatly in the drawer and was joine
d by the tiny sprite. I gave them an extra blanket, but they looked at me like I was crazy.
“Sorry about this,” I said. “I don’t have anything else.”
They exchanged a glance, but I couldn’t tell what they were thinking. I heard them whispering to each other as I fell asleep, and all I could do was hope they weren’t planning on murdering me before morning.
***
I awoke to two red jewels sparkling in front of me. The jewels became eyes a couple of inches away from my face.
“Mother of…” I sat up abruptly, my hand on my thudding chest. “You scared the absolute crap out of me.”
Realtín gave me a lazy grin. “Whoops. We’ve been waiting for you to get up for ages. There’s a man snoring down the hall. I wanted to ask for your permission to suffocate him.”
I stared back at her. “I need coffee for this,” I said. “Wait here,” I added when they both made to follow me out of the room. I ran downstairs, wishing I had been dreaming the night before. Two miniature fae were living in my room. Did things like that happen to other people?
And yet, little tendrils of glee curled around my body with every moment that passed. A secret that nobody else knew, danger that nobody else experienced, it was all for me. Mine.
I made some tea and toast for the faeries, unsure of what they ate. Even the smallest cups were too large for Realtín to hold, so I made do with the lid from a bottle of mouthwash and hoped to God I didn’t poison either of them with human food.
I brought them my offerings. The sprite kept nudging Grim, who nibbled at his toast like a wild animal, glancing around fervently as if someone were about to steal it out of his hands.
I ignored the resulting lump in my throat and sat on my bed with a cup of coffee, ready to get some answers. “So you work for Brendan. Why?”
Realtín choked on her tea in her hurry to answer. “We’re slaves, human. We don’t have a choice.”
My mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? He’s only just been brought back, and he already has slaves?”
She nodded. “A long time ago, the Irish fae were the most powerful. When the king was overthrown, many fae were captured and made slaves to the new courts. Grim and I were unfortunate enough to have been born from the Seelie queen’s slaves, but when she died, the king claimed us as his own servants. We thought we were free, that’s why we—”
Grim nudged her into silence.
“What?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Grim said. “It was all for nothing. We’re still slaves.” He gave Realtín a strangely hesitant smile, as if smiling had never been allowed. “At least we’re together now.”
I smothered the aww sound that threatened to pop out of my mouth. “So you’re a couple?”
Grim’s expression changed to one of worry. “Please don’t tell.”
“I won’t,” I said, disliking Brendan more and more every minute. “Realtín’s a sprite, but what are you, Grim?”
“I’m a brownie,” he said quietly.
My cheeks burned. “When I was a kid, I used to leave bowls of milk out for brownies. That’s… that’s what the stories said to do anyway.”
He bowed his head, treating me with a small smile. “You honoured us, my lady.”
“I’m not a lady, Grim. Call me Cara. So you’re faeries, but just different kinds?”
“Yes. We’re all fae, but some of us have more power than others, such as the royal fae. My kind are generally solitary fae who live in your world. I was just unlucky.”
“So solitary fae are the ones who are free? They don’t have a king or whatever?”
“Sort of.” Grim hesitated. “Your Drake hadn’t sworn fealty to either throne, which made him solitary, but he wasn’t free. None of us are truly free. We’re all tied by ancient laws and traditions and the whims of those with more power. The solitary do have more freedom than the rest of us, but they also have less power. That’s the trade-off.”
“You know Drake?” I asked.
Grim gave me a shy smile. “He’s shown himself to us several times. He’s headstrong enough to appear whenever the king tries to punish someone.”
I smiled back, strangely proud of the faery I barely knew.
“I like him,” Realtín said. “He’s angry. It’s lovely and chaotic.”
Grim sighed. “A peaceful life is so much more satisfying.”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t slaves?”
Grim frowned at Realtín. “I would live in a quiet home with a nice family, helping them in the shadows. I would teach Realtín how to be good.”
“And I would teach Grim that being bad can be fun.” She pulled his nose then kissed his forehead before flying dizzyingly fast around the room.
“Sometimes she forgets that isn’t her job anymore,” Grim explained as the sprite filled the room with colour and light.
“She was one of the lights over the queen,” I said. “You were her footrest, and Realtín had to provide light.”
He shrugged. “I was there to be kicked whenever the queen felt an urgent need. Realtín was there to make the queen glimmer like the sunset. She was a vain, cruel woman. I’m glad her reign is over.” His fists tightened, his knuckles turning white.
I remembered that the fae had different rules and ideas about life and death. “What are you supposed to do with me, Grim? Will he leave me alone?”
“We’re supposed to keep an eye on you,” he said, “make sure nobody hurts you, and watch out for enemies.” He cleared his throat. “And we’re to tell you how wonderful the king is.”
I spat out some coffee. Realtín fell from the air, giggling hysterically.
“Wonderful, my arse.” I checked the time. “I have to go to work. I take it you’re both going to follow me?”
“Sorry, but yes,” Grim said.
“You can’t let anyone see you,” I warned.
He shrugged. “They couldn’t even if we wanted them to.”
“Then why can I?”
“Your eyes must have been opened,” he said. “That’s beyond our magic. But you have taken all of this quite well, as if you aren’t surprised at all.”
“Oh, I’m surprised. I’m just… it makes sense to me. Like I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.” I grew uncomfortable under his unreadable gaze. “Um, Brendan said he needed me to get his throne back, that the fae would keep messing up until someone took control. Is that true?”
He hesitated. “It’s technically true.”
“Is that all there is to it?”
He lowered his voice. “Nobody knows what he’s thinking. Not even the banshee. The king is not himself, in more ways than one. They’re trying to keep quiet about Drake. People think the problem is that the king wasn’t brought back into a warrior’s body, that the weakness of Drake’s body threatens the power of the throne, but it’s far more complicated than that.”
I leaned forward with interest. The alarm on my phone went off, causing all three of us to jump with fright. “I really need to get to work,” I said, regretting that I had to go while Grim was in a talkative mood.
He clammed up, as if realising he had said too much, and while I got ready, Realtín decided to wreck my room. The pair followed me to work, and for a while, they were good, but then Realtín grew restless.
“She doesn’t like to be trapped inside for so long,” Grim explained.
I gave a quick nod, smiling at my manager while I restocked a shelf. The fae could talk to me, but I couldn’t speak to them unless I pretended I was on my phone so people wouldn’t think I was an absolute nutter. Phones weren’t allowed on the supermarket floor, so I had to wait until my break to chastise Realtín about knocking over a display of chopped tomato tins.
“I have to clean that shit up,” I hissed.
“If you played nice with the king, he would send slaves to do it for you,” the sprite said smartly. “And then we could go back to his house, where the warriors would
watch over you.”
“Hey, I’m not thrilled about your mission either,” I said, lowering my voice when I heard footsteps nearby. My manager poked his head through the doorway, gave me a funny look when he saw I was alone, and left.
“You really are in danger,” Grim said.
“But why?”
“You helped change things that weren’t meant to be changed, and the king has been oddly insistent about keeping you safe. This makes you a target. His allies will want to kill you as soon as you’ve helped him in order to permanently silence you and to… make sure the king continues to make good choices. His enemies will want to kill you before you can help him. When word gets out about Drake’s soul lingering with Brendan’s, and that it’s because of you, then it will only get worse.”
Drake’s lingering didn’t have anything to do with me. It was because Drake had unfinished business of some kind, but I would let them all think otherwise.
“The death threats don’t bother me so much. The wings will be a dead giveaway,” I joked.
Grim’s expression didn’t change. “You won’t see them coming. You won’t hear them unless they want you to. You will die before you even realise there’s a threat. You must take this seriously.”
“And if I die?”
“Your friend won’t have you to anchor him to his body. The king will grow in strength, but his word might not be enough when it comes to the final vote. Many fae will turn against him in a heartbeat, and the next leader might be worse than the queens.”
“Is that even possible?”
He stared at me solemnly. “You haven’t seen what creeps in the dark, Cara. You don’t know, and I hope you never have to learn.”
My shoulder blades itched. My dreams were bad enough.
“The king will win even if he loses you,” Realtín said, sounding confident. “He’s paranoid because of the betrayals that sent him away. He needs everything to be perfect now. I think he’s lost his mind.”