They were at the top of the hill, and we were still too far away. Julian lay down on the stone, his face turned toward the vanishing stars, and closed his eyes.
Humans would have performed a ritual, with runes and candles and chanting. But these were sidhe, and they did not work magic like we did.
One of the Unseelie raised a stone knife into the air.
I couldn’t even muster the focus for telepathy. The command came out raw with desperation. “Neeya, do it!”
I couldn’t save Julian. She might. If she was as good as she claimed.
Neeya stopped dead, her body going loose and serene. Her gaze fixed on Julian, and through our link, I felt her lips curve into a sad smile. Every shield on her faded into nothingness.
Forgive me, she said to Julian—and to me.
Then she was gone, and Julian was there on the hillside next to me; but Neeya was on the stone, and the knife arced downward and plunged into her heart.
Chapter Sixteen
A scream tore from Julian’s throat and was echoed from all around the hill.
Kim fell to her knees beside him, clutching her head. With a sensation like ripping cloth, the geas tore into shreds, into wisps, into nothing. There had been pain when the Unseelie removed it from him; this would be worse, the binding not picked apart with care but annihilated in an instant. Of course the Fiain would scream.
But that wasn’t why he cried out.
Forgive me. The words echoed in his head, a farewell whose meaning he couldn’t miss. He’d sworn to Neeya that he would remove the shield, and he’d found a way. But she wasn’t willing to let him die for it.
She’d come here not just to rescue him, but to die in his place.
The Fiain fell silent. All around them, the battle stuttered to a halt, rocked by the psychic earthquake that was the destruction of the geas. The only sounds were the wind and the gasps of the Fiain. Julian couldn’t even weep. Gutting was nothing next to this, the void in the world where Neeya had been.
He sank to the ground next to Kim, clinging to her out of reflex. She trembled like a candle flame beneath his arm. When she turned her face up to him, her eyes were wide in the growing light, dizzy and lost. “Gods,” she whispered. “Oh, gods. You were right.”
She wouldn’t believe him before. She couldn’t. The geas prevented it, binding her to come up with all kinds of plausible-sounding reasons why he had to be wrong about the two Courts. But there was no faking the change, no pretending that what she felt now was something imposed on her too subtly to notice.
The Unseelie weren’t their friends. But neither were the Seelie. Both Courts were alien and untrustworthy—and the only reason Julian had trusted the Unseelie this far was because he knew this ritual would benefit their Court as well as his own people.
The Fiain, free at last from the chains laid upon them by humans and sidhe both. Wild cards, random factors whose actions could no longer be controlled . . . but at least they were no longer the blind puppets of the Seelie Court.
He’d been willing to die for that.
He hadn’t been willing to let Neeya die.
Kim knew it, too, because he hadn’t done anything to restore his shields, and there was nothing to hold him in. She clung to him and he to her, while all around them the other Fiain of the strike team picked themselves up from that bone-deep shock and stared at one another, speechless. Each knowing, beyond a doubt, what had just happened.
“Grayson.” Kim didn’t let go of him, but she called out over his shoulder, and Grayson came.
She was limping, and the hand that gripped her athame hung at her side, as if lifting it was only to be done as a last resort. “What the hell just happened?” Grayson asked quietly, keeping her gaze on the Unseelie.
Kim’s arms tightened around Julian. “I was wrong. They weren’t misleading him. Everything I told you Julian said to me—it was true.” She twisted slightly, looking at the Unseelie, who were slowly gathering around Ravel, their leader. She also still held a knife, this one wet with Neeya’s blood.
Julian met Ravel’s golden gaze. The Unseelie woman shrugged slightly. Of course she didn’t care; her goal had been the destruction of the geas. It made no difference to her which wilder died for it.
He hated her for that.
It gave him enough strength to rise. His voice thick with tears, he said to Ravel, “You know why they tried to stop me. Will you let us go in peace?”
To a human, it would have been an absurd question. Sidhe lay unmoving on the hillside, many of them riddled with iron that poisoned the air. But the Unseelie wouldn’t care that their people had died, except as a pragmatic matter. They didn’t have the heart for that. All that would matter to them now was what came next.
Kim had risen with him, and gripped his hand hard. She said, “You should let us go. Most of the Fiain back home have no idea what just happened, or why. All they know is that the shield is gone, and they don’t trust the Seelie anymore. You need us to explain.”
Ravel’s smile was thin. “I am sure they will figure it out soon enough.” Then she turned one slender hand palm-up. The one that wasn’t holding the knife. “But if we were to kill you all for the damage you have inflicted tonight, it would only give your kin reason to maintain the alliance they have already begun to build. Behold our generosity: we will forgive you this destruction, and allow you to depart.”
An arc of Guardians and SIF agents was forming behind the three of them, weapons and wards on a hair trigger. At a word from Grayson, the battle would resume—and maybe it should. The Unseelie were allies of convenience, nothing more, and all it would take was one shift in the wind to make them enemies again.
And they had killed Neeya.
No, Julian thought, sick at heart. She killed herself. For me. For all of us.
Grayson was too cautious to continue the battle. There wasn’t enough to be gained by fighting here, and far too much to lose. She nodded and said, “So be it.”
“Wait,” Julian said. He had to swallow before the words would come. “We can’t leave Neeya here.”
The Unseelie faded back, opening a gap through which he could walk. Kim and Grayson went with him, two steps behind, giving him a measure of privacy. They expected him to break down — but he was too sick at heart for tears. Laid out on the sacrificial slab, Neeya looked tiny, childlike, far younger than her actual years. She’d been his little sister, and that meant he was supposed to protect her, guide her through the challenges of being a wilder. But Neeya wasn’t a child anymore; she’d grown up and made her own choices. If she’d died in battle as a Guardian, he would have grieved, but with pride. Instead he bled inside, because his own determination had blinded him until it was far too late.
The sidhe watched with mocking golden eyes as he carried her body down the hill. The humans withdrew beneath the trees, retreating a half-mile or so, then formed a temporary perimeter while Grayson and the senior SIF agent conferred.
Julian was crouching next to Neeya’s body, trying to restore his shields and failing, when he heard Kim draw in a sharp breath.
It was enough to pierce the fog of his grief. He managed a thin telepathic wisp to Kim, a wordless question.
She sank down next to him and answered in a whisper that was little more than an articulated breath. “We have to get out of here.”
“Grayson’s working on it.”
“No.” Kim’s gaze flicked to Grayson, then away, as if she didn’t want draw attention. “I mean we have to get away. I just saw—Julian, what do you think they’re going to do with us when we get back?”
He hadn’t thought that far. Hadn’t expected there to be a future for him to think about.
She’d said she saw. “A vision?”
Her nod was minute. “The geas is gone from everybody, and it took the shield with it. They didn’t leave that thing on us solely as a means of control . . . but it was a nice little side benefit for them.”
One that was now gone. From the
perspective of anyone who had ever worried about the powers a wilder could command, the major defense against the Fiain had just irrevocably fallen.
As had the means of protecting the Fiain themselves. Right now the Centers would be in a panic, every staff member scrambling to shield the youngest children. The big brothers and sisters would be organizing the rest, keeping order, helping their charges focus and maintain control until the crisis passed—but it wouldn’t.
They didn’t have a replacement yet. The project that started with Robert and Liesel was larger now, but not large enough; they hadn’t had sufficient time. Julian knew that when the Unseelie persuaded him that the only feasible option was to tear the geas from everyone at once. Any slower approach would have been countered by the Seelie before it could get very far. With the geas no longer clouding his mind, Julian had looked at the trap the mortal world was walking into, and had judged the price acceptable.
But again . . . he hadn’t thought he would live to see it.
Part of him wanted to go back and suffer whatever consequences Kim had foreseen. They would put him on trial, maybe execute him; that would be all right.
It wouldn’t just be him, though. It would be Kim—and Neeya, too. They couldn’t hurt her anymore, but they could drag her name through the mud, and they would. The world would make sure she went down in history as a dangerous rebel, rather than the hero she was.
Julian bent his head over Neeya’s limp body. Her uniform was too dark to show the blood, but it was sticky and stiffening beneath his hand. He whispered, “Just tell me what to do.”
~
The Fiain were too disciplined to drift toward where Julian and I knelt. It would have drawn attention. But we were all in contact with one another, a secondary linkage formed below the web that connected the whole strike team.
Through the protected confines of that channel, I shared with them a condensed glimpse of my vision. Prisons, armed guards, walls of iron to replace the shield we had gotten rid of forever. Riots against wilders, a frightened populace catching wind of what had happened and drawing all the wrong conclusions. Getting our freedom wasn’t the end of our struggle — it was the beginning.
Inola was the closest. She came and sat beside me. “Grayson and Harlow are discussing what to do with us,” she murmured, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “It doesn’t sound good.”
Not staring at my former professor was a struggle. She’d given Julian and me the keys to unlock the shield . . . but that didn’t mean she supported a total break. Would she turn on us? Not maliciously, I thought; she would advocate for us to be treated with kindness. It would end more or less the same way, though: with imprisonment, punishment, backlash.
“We have to run,” I said. “Not when we get back. All of us, now, before they expect it.”
Inola’s breath hissed between her teeth. “That will only convince them they’re right—that the Fiain can’t be trusted.”
“We can’t be trusted if they aren’t willing to trust.”
The geas had bound every wilder to the side of the Seelie, but also to the side of humanity: it had told us to protect them, to be their guardians against the threat of magic and the Unseelie. I’d told Julian that I believed in the goodness of the Fiain, that if the geas vanished tomorrow they would still do their duty.
Inola shook her head. “I won’t run.”
Agreement echoed from all around us, some a bit swifter than others, but one wilder after another nodding or sending a wordless pulse. They knew they’d be walking into a conflagration. But even without an ancient compulsion driving them forward, they were willing to go.
Call it peer pressure. Call it Fiain honor, and my determination to be worthy of the people I had joined. Whatever it was, I couldn’t bring myself to break ranks.
Until Inola gripped my arm and brought me around to face her, heedless of the attention it might draw. “But you aren’t wrong. We’re going back, but you and Julian—they’ll crucify you. The two of you have to run.”
Julian roused from his vigil over Neeya’s body. “Where will we go?”
“Better if I don’t know,” Inola said.
Because then they couldn’t take the knowledge from her mind. I’d said we should flee, but I’d hoped somebody else would suggest where we should flee to. The Seelie would be out to get us, the Unseelie couldn’t be trusted, and pretty soon there would be a manhunt on through the entire mortal world.
Grayson turned to look at us. Her expression was cool as stone, giving nothing away. I knew what awaited us if Julian and I went back; she couldn’t save us from that.
If we ran, whatever lay ahead might be just as bad.
But at least we would have a chance.
I gripped Julian’s hand. Harlow, the head SIF agent, finally noticed what was going on; he frowned and started our way. There was no time for anything subtle, no chance to slip away while his back was turned and hope Grayson could persuade him to take the wounded team home to safety instead of pursuing us. The Fiain were linked, and our massed power blazed up like a sun. Harlow acted on instinct, flinging out little matrices that had to be shield triggers; he’d learned them before we came out here, because he wanted to be ready to gut us all if he had to.
But it was too late—had been too late since the moment the knife pierced Neeya’s heart. The shield couldn’t stop us anymore.
The power flooded into the two of us, Julian and me. In the mortal world this would have been impossible, but we were in the place magic came from, and there was no one here who could match our strength. I focused the power and passed it to Julian, and he wove a circle around the two of us with no sigils or ritual components to help, nothing but raw force of will; the world went nuclear white around us, and we were gone.
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About Marie Brennan
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Memoirs of Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and In the Labyrinth of Drakes). She is also the author of the Doppelanger duology of Warrior and Witch, the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), and more than forty short stories.