Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

I squinted at Queen Hyacinth, having just made it inside the glitter-sickening explosion they called an entrance to the palace.

“When you said rawmouths, I expected two . Not a flock of them.” She paused and pursed her lips. “Family? Herd?”

“Pod,” I supplied.

She seized the word with spirit. “ Pod. The lake you put them in wasn’t nearly big enough. Distributing them through our other lakes required twenty fae per rawmouth. They tried to eat our people at every turn. If it weren’t for that flying city that you call a dragon reminding them that you’d ordered no attacks, then we’d have dead fae on our hands.”

That would be their faults for trying to move a rawmouth, in my opinion.

“Be grateful you only had to transport rawmouths this week,” I interrupted her. “Or ordered it so.” I’d had plenty more to deal with, from sacrificing thousands of fae to save Sigella’s life to a face-to-face confrontation with Andas.

“A week? I’m only complaining about a day.”

I paused. “Only a day has passed here?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because an entire week usually passes here when I spend one day in Underhill.”

The queen focused on me. “The realms are…equalizing or something?”

Equalizing. That might be the perfect word for it. “Equalizing as unbalance grows stronger.” Would it then reverse? Would one day on Earth become a week in Underhill? I couldn’t say—and yet the lack of time difference between the realms was a small relief. “So you’re only complaining about one day?”

Cinth sniffed, tilting her chin, which made her ample bosom jiggle and highlighted the burns on her cheek. “I got my hands dirty, don’t you worry about that. I’ve been curious about cooking rawmouth after you returned covered in their stench that time. I let them know as much, and they decided to play ball.”

I frowned. “They did? That would be a sight.”

The queen sighed. “To be helpful, that’s what I mean.”

She should just say what she meant then. While I’d decided to adopt earthspeak, I refused to use words that weren’t actually the right words. Maybe using earthspeak had started as defiance to my mother, but I could see that speaking this way would build bridges between fae on Underhill and Earth.

“Is everyone settling in?”

“Settling in?” she screeched. “I’m dodging calls from the president, sultans, ambassadors, you fucking name it. Our only saving grace is that they have no idea of the scale of fae you’ve let in. By the time human authorities had arrived at the Alaskan Triangle, most of the creatures you’d let through had scattered. The humans only have snippets of satellite footage to go off of. But they’ll find out, Silver. Please tell me this is temporary.”

That Andas would shut down the fae realm had seemed a certainty before, but I could still feel its magic within me. “Most likely, yes,” I hedged.

I strode past her as she half-screamed, “Most likely?!”

Luckily, I walked faster than the queen and quickly lost her in the halls. I needed time to think about my next step. There were so many factors to consider.

My helpmates. I should gather my helpmates. Four brains were better than one.

I considered gathering Sigella, Peggy, and Orry in the same room, then grimaced. Perhaps I could hold individual meetings with them. Peggy blamed Sigella for Kik’s death, so she and Sigella would probably lock in a battle to the death. Orry was a sly one, though, I could see her strangling them with their own hair to emerge the victor.

My weary grin dropped as I kicked open the door to my bed chamber.

A woman stood on the balcony, smoothing her hands over a silver dress that draped over her many curves. Red hair massed over her shoulders, lit from behind by Earth’s setting sun. Her blue eyes demanded attention, and all-in-all, I thought that this alluring, powerful fae might be the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“Orlaith?” I hushed. “Is that you? How?”

She smiled nervously. “I didn’t know whether you’d recognize me in this.”

My bat-turned-two-legged-fae gestured at her body as I might leather trousers. “I saw you once before, when our magics first touched.”

I tossed my cloud bow on the bed, followed by the quiver, careful not to touch the iron tips dipped in Gavala root. “Did you make any harmful deals to get your body back, Orlaith?”

The nickname Orry didn’t quite fit this woman. She might have smiled nervously just now, but in this form, I could tell the gesture was designed to make me feel powerful. I knew enough of my friend’s past to have figured out that she’d been the mastermind of some kind of criminal circuit, which she’d referred to as ‘being good at networking.’ These little studied gestures had worked to make her powerful in life, just as Old Man’s fire made him powerful. The subtle manipulations didn’t concern me. I’d get used to Orlaith in this form in time.

“No,” she shook her head quickly, just like she had as a bat. I tucked away a smile.

“If we need to work some impossible magic to break a curse, let me know now.”

Orlaith blinked. “I’m telling the truth, Silver. I woke up like this, and I’ve been trying to figure out why ever since. H-how?”

She combed her fingers through her long hair, and I gathered that she’d actually been doing that since waking in her old body.

My mother had trapped Orlaith in a bat form and sent her to the prison realm long ago for actions that aligned too closely with the darkness of unbalance. She’d then asked Orry’s father to deliver his gold daughter bat to me hours after I was taken from Underhill. A bat hadn’t seemed like much of a weapon at the time, but Orlaith had proven herself time and again. She was still standing, after all, and both the child thief and the sluagh had fallen. Size didn’t always equate to power.

I unstrapped my dagger holsters. “The scale realm was shut down and the prison realm was inside of it, so that’s shut too. I’m guessing that had something to do with your change.”

Pausing to tap into my magic, I studied the threads around the woman, both ahead of her and immediately behind her, and nodded afterward. “Yes, that’s correct.”

I peered down. Naga shit. I had dirt all over me, along with tiny rocks in every bodily crevice I’d known of—and some I hadn’t. This would be the perfect camouflage to spear a grunga lizard for dinner, but as it was, perhaps I’d take a bath.

Orlaith closed the gap and took both of my hands in hers. “You’re gonna need to back up on that one. What in Underhill’s name happened to your braid? That was my best work yet.”

“Wrestled with Andas.” To say the least.

Her blue eyes widened to saucers. Everything in her posture and expression told me to confide in and trust her. Humans could take a lesson on survival from this woman. Still, the change from when she’d been a bat was pronounced and I would need to get used to it.

“Were you guys naked?” she demanded.

“Not this time.”

“Not this time! What do you mean?”

I strode to the adjoining bath chamber and used the plumbing system to deliver water from somewhere into the bath. I hadn’t figured that one out yet. “A male fae made Sigella blush.”

Orlaith sucked in a breath as she followed me. “No. Wait, you were going to murder Sigella in cold blood. What happened? But tell me how she blushed first. No, wait, you were telling me about naked wrestling with Andas. That’s what I’d like to hear about first.”

I decided against adding the soap that bubbled up and masked my scent and set to unlacing my leather vest. I rolled down my trousers afterward, then kicked them aside. “Do you like having hair again?”

“Every time I’m set on getting answers out of you, you ask a really good question to distract me,” she said mournfully. “I love, love, love it. Going to the prisoner realm was not great, you know, but losing my hair hit me right between the legs. I mean, in many ways the prison realm wasn’t that different from what my life had been. I just wasn’t the CEO for a while—you know, the apex predator, so I really had to work on myself.”

I stepped down in the bath. “You were a criminal mastermind, Orlaith. You can say it.”

I glanced back to watch as she pressed her lips together.

She released a breath. “I have my body back and the prison realm is shut. Okay, fine. I, Orlaith, was a criminal mastermind. But I had the purest intentions when I started pimping. Just a select few of the most stunning women around.”

The fae touched her chest, and I noticed a silver ink pattern there. Raindrops. I had a feeling that Orlaith had a habit of revealing her real thoughts with subconscious touches. They were her tells more than any expression on her face. “The markings on your chest, what are they?”

“Rain, hail, or shine,” she answered, sweeping a hand down her front. “If you were lucky, you’d see the rain. If you were lucky and rich, you’d see the hail.” She rested a hand low on her stomach. “Lucky, rich, and powerful, then you’d see the shine. They used to be black, but I guess the silver is your influence on me. I named my business after them anyway. Then I realized most of our clients were too stupid to appreciate a beautiful, meaningful brothel name, so it became Harlots for Rain, Hail, or Shine. A few decades later, everyone called it Harlots For, which pissed me off a little, and then men kept merging the words together because of the way they muttered it under their breaths to their friends so their wives wouldn’t hear. After fifty years, my business was called Hore. So in case you ever wondered where the word ‘whore’ came from, it was all me. You’re welcome.”

I considered that, and wasn’t sure whether to feel grateful to her or not. Still, there were worse legacies to leave behind. “You ran your criminal operations through Rain, Hail, or Shine then.”

“Criminal operations, such strong wording.” She laughed, then swept her silver gown aside to dangle her porcelain, unscarred legs in the enormous bath.

She hadn’t answered my question.

Orlaith sighed. “Silver, what do you suppose happened to my father?”

I lifted my head. “Your father was still in the prison realm. I didn’t even think to ask about him.”

“He was one of thousands in there,” she reprimanded. “They might’ve been prisoners, but they were fae too.”

A drifting feeling came over me then, as if I were deep in the purple ocean with no idea which way to swim. When had I become so tunnel-visioned that I could simply forget thousands of fae.

Maybe around the time I’d sacrificed several more thousand. This is why I needed my bat pimp. She’d help ground me when the enormity of my decisions made me lose touch with reality. Though perhaps I shouldn’t rely on an ex-criminal mastermind as my moral compass…“I’ll find out. About your father and the others. I should already know, and I’m sorry that I didn’t bother to find out before now.”

Orlaith shrugged a shoulder. “You can be forgiven the occasional oversight, Silver. You have a lot on your plate.” Her gaze drifted to my hair. “What do you say? Would it be weird for me to still do your hair when you’re in the bath?”

There was a crackle in the air.

I had a dagger of silver magic at the ready when Sigella appeared. I swallowed the magic back up. “Where’s your man?” I asked.

“I don’t have a man.”

“Not yet.”

Her prim and proper form disappeared, and her savage, grimy, tattered alter ego flashed toward me, sharp teeth bared. In a flash, the tea-drinking version of Sigella was back. I hadn’t seen her savage alter ego in a while, and I’d assumed her darker side had disappeared when I’d freed her.

“Not at all .”

I smirked in reply. “That’s why you had him turn and then move back three steps. Because you’re not interested at all.”

Sigella straightened her back. “As to that. It’s good to view the goods. You young ones could learn a lot from me.”

“I liked to crack a whip at their heels and get them dancing around,” Orlaith said.

Sigella glanced at her for the first time. “You… are?”

“Orry the bat.” She stood and curtsied, and her silver dress tightened in just the right places to hint at her curves and…shine.

“Ah, from closing the prison realm.”

I cut the ancient being a look. “What of the occupants of the prison realm? Where did they go?”

“They were squeezed out. Either to Underhill or Earth.”

Squeezed out. I raised my eyebrows, then decided to move on to the larger issue. Thousands of unbalanced fae could be running rampant around Earth. I blinked into my magic, mentally waving aside the lattice of threads arising from all the fae on Unimak. I could see the enormous cocoons of magic that formed Old Man and the rawmouths dotted around the island. The feeling of millions of threads beyond them was a heady and overwhelming sensation. I could feel my power over them. I could feel my duty to them.

But I couldn’t sense anything other than vibrant silver threads from fae creatures. Nothing like what a fae from the prison realm would feel like—a mixture of black and silver magics.

I opened my eyes. “They’re not on Earth.”

“Then Unbalance has them,” Sigella said conversationally.

Orlaith gasped. “Father.” She hugged her body and sank to the ground.

I wasn’t sure how to react to the news on a larger scale. An entire realm of prisoners in Andas’s power was nearly as bad as having them wreaking havoc on Earth. “I’m sorry, Orlaith. I’m so sorry.”

Her father had been in the prison realm and was probably already lost. It was too late to help him. I’d tried to burn darkness from fae in the past, only to accidentally kill them. A fae possessing darkness couldn’t be saved, or at least I hadn’t figured out the means. They had to save themselves. No doubt that was why mother or her predecessors had formed the prison realm in the first place. Only under the right circumstances, as Orry had discovered, would a fae feel inclined to ‘work on herself.’

Tears slipped over her porcelain skin. “There’s nothing you can do?”

“I could try to search for him?—”

“Snap out of it,” Sigella snarled at her. “Underhill doesn’t have time to carry out sentimental little missions for you. You lost a parent. Get in line.”

And this is why I’d decided to hold individual meetings. I’d recently lost a parent—one I could barely depend on, who’d put me through hell in a bid to make me resilient enough for my future. If I missed her after that steaming pile of turd called my childhood, then Orlaith must be torn into shreds over the loss of her father, whom she’d loved very much, and who had, by all accounts, loved her very much.

Orlaith cried, and I dunked myself a few times, then climbed out of the bath, dripping water over the stone floor.

I pulled on my magic to dry my body, then crouched to wrap my arms around her. “I wish things had been different. I didn’t stop to think of the consequences for you, and I should have. You’re my dear friend.”

Sigella scoffed. “You didn’t even know the prison realm would shut.”

“Y-you consider me a d-dear friend?” Blue eyes peeked at me from between her hands.

There was a calculated edge to them that reminded me of the way Kik used to look at me when assessing how much to insult my mother before she’d set the tarbeasts on him.

This was Orry though, so I rubbed her arm. “I do.”

I left her and strode into the bed chamber.

Sigella trailed after me. “Just because you dip yourself in water, it doesn’t mean you’ve bathed.”

They were one and the same to me, but I didn’t bother responding.

Orlaith followed us, wiping her pale face. She didn’t speak as she made her way to the small breakfast table by the window and sat.

A pull of silver magic tugged me toward the balcony. I withheld a groan when the beating of wings signalled the arrival of Peggy. She landed on the balcony and stuck her head in through the door.

She and Sigella locked gazes.

“Here we go,” I muttered.

“Pegatheoria,” Sigella said politely.

Peggy dipped her beautiful white head. “Lady Sigella.”

Their civility didn’t fool me for a second. Both were scoping out the other’s power.

I cleared my throat. “While you’re all here then. We need to figure out how to reach Cormac and Aaden through Unbalance to weaken him and drive him back into the smallest presence possible. We don’t have a scale realm to use against him, but he doesn’t have it either. He’s stronger than me for now. Probably for centuries if I live that long. And he has the power to shut down Underhill and kill or control all fae through the loss of their connection to Underhill. What ideas do we have?”

The three fae stared at me.

“Use your body,” Orlaith said.

“Your magic can reach them,” said Sigella.

“Unbalance is a predator like any other.” Peggy put in last. “Use your intelligence in such things against him.”

My body, my power, or my mind. Talk about conflicting advice.

Sigella’s mouth twisted in a wry grin as she took the seat opposite Orlaith, leaving me to perch on the bed, still naked.

Peggy shook her gleaming mane, and her deep, amber eyes reminded me of Cormac. “Your outlook has changed. You’d dismissed your mother’s orders. What changed?”

My mind returned to the moment Andas showed me mercy. He could’ve killed me, but he hadn’t. He couldn’t. “I believe that Cormac and Aaden wield some power over Unbalance from within him. Andas had a chance to kill or seriously hurt me earlier and didn’t take it. Couldn’t take it, I suspect. But reaching them seems impossible. Besides, to do that, I would need to spend time in Andas’s company, and that’s a great risk considering the power imbalance.”

“What does your magic tell you?” Sigella said, already pouring tea from who-knows-where. She shoved a cup to Orlaith, who—rightly so—sniffed the contents.

“Nothing. I can’t see any way forward in this, which leads me again to suspect that reaching them is impossible.”

“Is there some?—”

Peggy was cut off at a knock on the door.

“Enter,” I called.

Sigella lowered her teacup as Keefe entered.

The male fae appeared confused. He’d taken off his hat to wring it in both hands. “Mistress, forgive the intrusion. I was called here.”

He didn’t seem uncomfortable with my nudity, and that was a mark in his favor. “By who?”

“Your magic.”

As had often been the case with Keefe in the short time I’d known him, I got the sense he knew far more than he let on. And yet he’d closed a realm with Sigella’s help that had strengthened me in the battle against Unbalance. “You’re sober.”

“Unfortunately, mistress. And hopefully that’s short-lived, if you get my drift.” He threw me a charming smile, but then his eyes darted to where Sigella sat. He did peer at Orlaith for a time, but his focus promptly returned to Sigella.

Smart man.

“Keefe,” I said. “I have a problem for you to solve. There is a man, he is made up of two other men. The first man is a gatekeeper of sorts, and I must get past him to reach the two men within. How do you propose I do so without hurting them?”

The fae whistled and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “That’s a doozy, Mistress. Can’t say I’ve come across that in life. You can’t see ahead?”

“I can, but not in this.”

He tapped his temple and winked. “There’s another who’s rather good at glimpsing the future. The Oracle is a servant to Underhill. Use her as the tool she is.”

“I wonder how my sister would react to being called a tool.”

He blanched, but another knock at the door interrupted the impromptu meeting of my helpmates and Keefe.

“What is it?” I snapped as Keefe swung open the door and executed a mocking bow to the administrative fae in the hall.

“Humans have arrived. They came in a fleet of aircraft,” the fae stuttered. “Queen Hyacinth is requesting that you attend her urgently.”

At least I got a bath. Sort of.

I strode to the door.

“Clothes,” Sigella called.

I paused to jerk my clothing to me with magic.

“No. Clean them first. Use your magic. It will only take a second! Surely you won’t…” Sigella blurted, then moaned low when I yanked on the filthy garments. “I can’t believe I used to live in you.”

I’d intended to clean them, but I’d happily stay dirty to mess with her. That was just the kind of person I was.

I walked past the wide-eyed fae in the hall. “Where is she?”

“Throne room,” he shouted after me, then said frantically into his mouthpiece, “Mistress of Underhill incoming. Code ten-two-eighty. Did you hear me? Code ten-two-eighty!”