Why her? Why had fate chosen her to become queen of this place? She was the most sensitive person in the realms, and she was supposed to rule over a race of evil bastards?
She glanced back over her shoulder to see Titania holding up a tray of desserts for one of the guests, but the fairy’s gaze was on Minerva. There was worry in her pink-purple eyes.
Minerva knew the fairy could tell what she was thinking, how she was feeling. But she’d sent Titania away, also knowing that she needed to appear strong here and now if this queen thing was ever going to work. Titania had wanted to object. But Minerva was fairly certain the fairy agreed with the sentiment. Sometimes you had to be strong.
“My lady.”
Minerva turned fully when a female voice greeted her. The woman who’d approached her was a Tuath beauty by the name of Dahlia Kellen. The Tuath fae were a very rare fae race, very powerful, and every king of the fae kingdoms had been a Tuath, including Avery the Seelie King, Damon the Goblin King, and Caliban. Thus, sometimes the Tuath were simply referred to as “Nobles,” and every Tuath in existence served in the royal courts.
It was also the Tuath who had originally declared war on the Wishers, ringing in what was now referred to among the fae as the Time of the Slaughter, and saw the near complete end of Minerva’s entire race.
Minerva had met Dahlia and her sister, Violet earlier that night at the archway as the two had arrived. She’d instantly liked Violet – and instantly disliked Dahlia. There was just something about the woman.
“Lady Dahlia,” Minerva greeted, forcing a friendly smile to her face. She’d had her whole life to practice.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” Dahlia said with a sweet smile that would have flirted past any male defense in the mortal realm, “but I saw that you were standing here alone and thought I might come check up on the new queen, so to speak.”
“That was thoughtful of you,” insisted Minerva. “But I’m fine. I’m just taking in the view.” She turned and gestured to the open air beside her at the edge of the platform.
Dahlia took a few steps to the edge of the platform and looked down. “Ah, yes,” she said. “The Unseelie Realm in all its glory.”
Moonlight cast the land below into picture perfect contrasts, creating roads of white on glass-like rivers and lakes, and lending a blue glow to the leaves of treetops. It seemed to go on forever, like the mesmer of a dream.
Dahlia looked sideways at her. “You must be very proud to have been granted its sovereignty.”
Something about the way she’d said that gave Minerva a strange chill. She turned from the night view to watch the Tuath fae with the wariness of a mouse watching a cat.
“We’ll be reaching the Twixt soon,” Dahlia continued. “I’m sure you’ll want to see how its fairing after all that has happened to it.”
Minerva frowned and asked, “What do you mean?” She only realized after she’d said it that she probably shouldn’t have. The queen should probably know everything that was transpiring in her realm.
Dahlia faced her fully and looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. “Why, the Massacre Between Realms, of course.” She blinked, oozing more of that faux innocence that left Minerva feeling a little nauseated. “I just assumed… I mean, since you’re the one who caused it…. I’m sorry,” she pretended to back-pedal. “I thought you were aware.”
Minerva’s gaze narrowed. She rolled her shoulders back and squared the other fae with a hard look. “What?” she asked very firmly, “am I supposed to be aware of? What massacre are you referring to?”
Dahlia then pretended to look a little taken aback or even hurt by the harsh tone of her queen. But she, too, rolled back her shoulders. And in a cold, calm voice, she said, “When you left the mortal realm several days ago, you were taken to the Twixt. There, your rampant magic killed nearly a hundred fae who were native to the land between the unseelie and seelie realms. That is the massacre I am referring to.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
There was only so much a mind could handle. Like a circuit flooded with too much electricity, or a server attempting to take in too many messages at once, there were limits. Minerva’s mind was in Black Friday, a chaotic push and shove that held up the neurons and brought the system down.
People experienced this when they lost someone they loved. Sometimes, they felt it after a storm or a fire, when all they possessed lay before them in ashes or splinters. It was a black cloud of doubt that effectively blocked out the rest of the world, slamming shut all five senses, and most importantly, the doorway to the mind.
Minerva experienced that now. There was a vague knowledge that she needed to escape, and perhaps her body knew this more than her consciousness did, because she was moving. She was fleeing. Maybe she had more magic than she’d known she possessed, or maybe she could do what she was doing because she’d taken Caliban’s magic.
But portals opened and portals shut and she was running. She didn’t know where she was going. But she also did. And though she was terrified to get there, she also desperately needed to arrive.
*****
He’d left Malek’s side and was swiftly striding toward Dahlia when the Moving Platform suddenly and jarringly tilted beneath Caliban’s feet. His legs slid out from beneath him, and his magic swelled, reaching for stability. All around him, revelers and guests began screaming, tilting off-balance along with food platters, pitchers filled with liquid, musical instruments from the band platform, and odds and ends that went sailing through empty air.
The platform made a terrible groaning sound, and its normally invisible boundaries began sizzling with energy like an electrified fence. One man slammed into it, as the platform tilted more mightily, and his body jerked in silent agony as those electrical currents rushed through him. More screaming erupted, terrified and frantic.
Caliban righted himself against a table that had slid into the band platform, then concentrated on gathering his magic around him. Once he felt there was enough there for what he wanted to do, he rose above the platform, hovering in space and sent out a pulse of that power, drawing the immediate attention of everyone on the platform.
They clung to the columns in the room or braced themselves on overturned furniture. But his magic wrapped around them, steadying them and holding them in place.
“All of you,” he commanded, amplifying his voice with the same magic, “Transport at once back to your homes. Warn anyone who may be in the Mover’s path, and evacuate necessary buildings.”
The people on the platform were the members of his court, and attending to impromptu disasters was a part of their jobs. They nodded, seemingly at once, and one at a time, they began transporting away from the platform. It was harder for them than it should have been; Caliban could see the swell and spark in their magics; it was draining them far more than it should have. Whatever spell had been cast upon the platform was very strong, and magical discord seemed to be at its heart.
But the court members eventually managed, escaping through portals that appeared one after another. As they fled, Caliban’s eyes scanned the tilting, chaotic crowd, searching for a shot of white hair and a white dress. It was all he wanted to see, and he’d never wanted to see anything so badly in his life.
Not in ten thousand years had anything gone wrong with the Mover. He wasn’t stupid. There was no way he could go without linking this mishap to his queen’s sudden disappearance.
He changed tactics, now searching the crowd for a scarlet red dress and waves of brown hair.
There.
He tossed out a stabilizing load of magic, and watched as the platform leveled out a bit and stopped moving. Caliban landed, broke into a determined run, and grabbed the Tuath fae by the wrists, yanking her back out of the portal she had just opened. Dahlia Kellen screeched in surprise, stumbling into the Unseelie King. Caliban waved the portal shut before roughly spinning the beautiful woman around to face him.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
He
didn’t know how he could have missed it before. All those times that he’d taken this woman to his bed, all those exchanged words and looks and touches, and he’d never noticed what he now saw so clearly, as if it were written in massive scrawling letters and she were an open book.
Dahlia stared up at him in a way that she never had before. The corners of her lips curled upward, and a single brow arched. He grabbed her upper arms and squeezed them tight. Electric currents of rage-fueled magic sizzled through his fingertips just like the ones encircling the platform. “Where did she go?!” he bellowed. He could feel the woman’s evil draped over her like a cloak, and he knew good and well that she’d done something to Minerva. She was the reason for the queen’s disappearance.
Hell, she was probably partly responsible for what had happened to the Mover. Though, he doubted she’d worked alone. The spell was powerful; even as he stood there before Dahlia, his magic worked against the rogue spell, and the truth was, he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to hold the platform aloft.
“I didn’t do a thing to the little queen,” Dahlia ground out through gritted teeth behind an uncaring expression. “And she didn’t see fit to tell me where she was going.”
Caliban’s grip on her arms tightened. He was trying with all his might not to outright kill what could be his sole source of information, but the platform was draining him, and his fear for Minerva was testing his patience with a grating kind of cruelty. He’d never wanted to destroy a life as badly as he did in that moment.
“Perhaps she would be more forthcoming if she were to spend some time with me,” came a calm suggestion from a familiar voice behind Caliban.
He glanced over his shoulder to meet Lord Malek’s ice blue gaze. Dahlia stiffened in Caliban’s grasp. He looked back down at her. The color had drained from her face.
Caliban realized in that moment that she harbored real fear for the Taal. Most likely, she knew that given the opportunity to feed from a Tuath fae such as herself, they would not kill her outright. They would “allow” her to live as their slave. She would suffer blood drain after blood drain, possibly for years or even centuries, before she eventually gave in to the weaknesses of her body and died.
There were a thousand ways for Caliban to kill someone that were far worse, far more painful, and even far slower. But maybe Dahlia thought Caliban wouldn’t kill her. Perhaps she didn’t fear him as much because of what they’d shared. Maybe she thought it actually meant something to him.
Whatever her reasons, they didn’t matter. Caliban needed to know what happened to Minerva, and Dahlia clearly knew. If fear was going to be her motivator and Lord Malek had to be the source of that fear, then so be it.
Caliban released her and took a step back, coming in line with Malek.
The two men stared long and hard at the single woman, and moment by moment, little by little, she shrank further into herself. Her eyes grew wide and her lips parted in mounting terror.
“It isn’t me,” she finally stated, her tone not nearly as sure as it had been a moment ago. “If it had been my choice, I would have just killed her. But he wants noaivareogij oonignaan lidkif….”
Caliban’s brows knit together as Dahlia’s words began to scramble, coming out as gibberish. He glanced at Malek, but the other man appeared to be hearing the same thing, his expression just as confused.
Dahlia continued, her gaze flitting back and forth between Caliban and Malek, but the volume with which she spoke then began to cut in and out as well, as if she were on a radio frequency in a building storm. “Aweonlscoirg coowlekn woijankejedfinc wistram….”
On instinct, Cal reached out to grab her. But his instincts, though dead on, were simply not quite fast enough. Dahlia’s form flashed in and out, like a hologram losing dimension. An odd smell filled the air for a split second, one Caliban vaguely recognized.
And then Dahlia Kellen was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Minerva Trystaine,
Would not hurt a soul in the world,
So she hurt a hundred,
Somewhere just outside of it.
A sing-song poem to the tune of Lizzy Borden’s eulogy mimicked madness in Minerva’s brain. She almost smiled. Almost. Lucky for her, she wasn’t yet that far gone. When the unthinkable strikes, it takes the ground out from underneath you. Everything you once thought you knew or understood is replaced with a static kind of uncertainty. It’s numbing and nauseating and you float after that, and let life take you where it will.
Life had taken Minerva to the Twixt.
The final portal closed behind her and she stood in the dark, in a clearing, where a stream trickled peacefully nearby. Star and moonlight bathed the clearing in a blue-white glow, highlighting small blooms that, during the day, were probably pink and red and yellow and orange, but now were muted into different shades of gray.
Trees surrounded the clearing, leading to dark and tangled forests of the kind found in fairytales, or maybe in Germany. Here and there, mushroom rings sprouted from the ground, sporting caps of spots, stripes, and even squiggles.
Nothing moved in the clearing. There was only the sound of the creek and Minerva’s breathing. If there had been bodies there at one time, they were gone now. She hugged herself as a shiver of reality racked through her at the thought of those bodies.
“They’re long gone,” came a voice from behind her. It was male and calm and polite, but Minerva didn’t recognize it. She spun to face the stranger.
He smiled. “I’m guessing Dahlia has only told you half of the story.” He shrugged, his smile spreading. “Typical jealous Tuath. Hell hath no fury, eh?”
Minerva stood frozen to the spot, her eyes glued to the grotesque figure before her, the air trapped in her lungs, where it began to ice over in fear. Lungs full of frost. That was the sensation that swept through her.
She’d heard the urban legends, and she’d seen the images on the internet. The Slenderman, as he’d been referred to, was normally portrayed as a very tall, exceedingly thin man with a white, almost featureless face. He stood in the shadows, half hidden by the shapes and angles around him. Sometimes, he could only be seen upon close inspection. And the moment you realized what you were looking at, a coldness would scrape through you. You’d retreat from the screen and suppress a shiver.
The Slenderman, however, was merely a modern fairytale, created by a man named Eric Knudsen several years back. Minerva had read all about it one day, as she and her sister shared a common curiosity about the supernatural. It had been made for some sort of contest, then incorporated into countless other stories, mythos, and games, including Minecraft, which sported its own version of the Slenderman, the Enderman.
It was a myth, though. That was all. It was pretend.
But then again – there was the man standing before Minerva at that very moment.
So very, very tall. So very, very thin. Dressed in a black suit that would fit no mortal, with arms that stretched nearly to his knees, a face so white, it looked like paper, and features so smooth, they were barely there. He had eyes like pin points of coal. He was a stretched out, skinny, well dressed snowman.
She could only stay where she was and look up, her entire body encompassed in a kind of palpable terror. She could taste it in her mouth, like metal, like iron. Distractedly, she felt something trickle above her top lip, and realized her nose was bleeding.
Who are you? she asked, almost knowing without a doubt that he would tell her he was, in fact, the Slenderman. But she hadn’t actually asked the question out loud. No air would leave her frozen lungs to give voice to her query.
As if he’d heard her anyway, the man said in his polite, calm, and utterly normal voice, “I am not a who, but a what.” He turned, his elongated movements strange and disjointed. It was like watching a nightmare. He took a few steps to the right, circling her. “I am merely a part of something. This is the most I can materialize on this plane without the proper vessel.” He stopped and turned back
to face her. “That is why you are here, Wisher.”
*****
He’d been king of the Unseelie Realm for a very long time, hence Caliban was well practiced in the art of thinking quickly in desperate situations. The fact that this was the most desperate situation he’d ever been in was one he forcefully pushed to the back of his mind so that he could concentrate.
Someone, somewhere knew where Minerva was. One of those people was Dahlia Kellen. But Dahlia had been taken, most likely by the very same person responsible for Minerva’s disappearance.
Cal had already tried a location spell on Minerva. Given that he possessed some of her magic and she some of his, he’d hoped the spell would be even stronger and more successful. However, either landing the platform safely had drained him more than he’d thought, or she was being hidden by someone far more powerful than he’d wagered, because the spell failed.
His best bet would be to locate someone who knew where she was, instead. They might not be as shielded. Then he could ransack that person’s mind and retrieve Minerva’s location.
Caliban was just turning away from the mess of the platform, fallen columns, and felled trees, when he was approached by a very out-of-breath Tuath fae female.
“Violet!” he exclaimed. She was Dahlia’s sister! She might know!
“Your Majesty, please listen. There isn’t much time,” Violet started right in, stopping before him beseechingly. “I overheard my sister speaking with him in the shadows. I wasn’t able to stop them, but I know where the queen has gone!”
“Where?” He couldn’t help himself when he took her by the arms just as he had her sister. All he could do was not squeeze and shake her.
“She’s gone to the Twixt,” Violet told him at once. “I went to Titania, and she’s gone to tell Pi. He has to get the others, because,” she swallowed hard and shook her head, “you’re going to need all the help you can get!”
Caliban released her and stepped back. His mind was spinning.