Shadow Faerie

Chapter 13

Thirteen

When Clarina wakes me the following morning, I feel a little as though someone shoved a stake through my eyeball. And a screwdriver through my other eyeball. Someone must have also turned up the brightness of the sun; I can only peel my eyelids apart for about half a second before having to squeeze them shut again.

“Your lunch is in the sitting room, my lady,” Clarina says. “Everyone is eating alone today, as some are still recovering from last night.”

“Lunch?” I ask in a croaky voice.

“Yes, it’s almost midday, my lady.” Her footsteps move closer, and she adds, “The drink beside your bed will ease your headache.”

I push myself slowly up and squint at the crystal goblet of clear liquid. I almost ask how she knows about my aching head, but I suppose she’s been here long enough to be fully aware of the many hangovers that follow an event like last night’s ball.

“Your pool has been filled,” she adds.

“Thank you.” I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stare at the floor for a while as my brain runs through the events of the previous night. I remember that Dash is here now. I remember that Chelsea and Georgia are … dead.

I pick up the goblet, and my eyes fall on the outfit Clarina has chosen for me today, hanging on the outside of the wardrobe. A double-breasted coat-dress type thing, aquamarine with floral patterns of white, green and mauve. The queen’s birthday celebrations continue with a tea in the gardens this afternoon, so Clarina was obviously told to choose something appropriately festive for me. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t feel right to wear something so … alive.

“Clarina?” I call, hoping she’s still in the next room.

“Yes, Lady Emerson?” She hurries back to the bedroom.

“Would it be okay if you choose a black outfit for me today? Or grey, perhaps, if black is too depressing for the queen’s tea party?”

“Uh, certainly, my lady. That should be fine. I believe there’s a charcoal-colored item with silver embroidered details. Will that do?”

“Yes, thank you.”

I don’t feel any kind of deep sorrow for the loss of Chelsea and Georgia. I’m still shocked, barely able to believe they’re gone, but I know there was no love lost between us. Still, it feels wrong to simply move on with life and forget about them. I need to do something, and if wearing black or grey is the only thing left to me, then that’s what I’ll do.

The concoction in the goblet works remarkably quickly, and my pounding headache is soon gone. Though I’d like to soak in the pool of purple bubbles for a whole lot longer, I should probably find out where Dash is and make sure he hasn’t got himself into any trouble.

After drying and dressing, I do up the buttons of my charcoal outfit and pad barefoot into my sitting room in search of some food. I select the most normal-looking sandwich and head back to my bedroom to choose a pair of shoes.

At the sight of a figure sitting on the edge of my bed, I freeze. He turns his head—and I realize it’s Dash.

“Jeez, Dash. Are you trying to give me a heart attack? How did you get in here?”

He gestures over his shoulder to the window where the curtain ripples gently in the warm breeze. “Your window was open. I climbed up to it.”

I want to tell him he’s as bad as I am, climbing palace walls, but I’m too frightened that someone important might discover he’s in my bedroom. “You can’t be here,” I whisper. “If Roarke or his father find you in my bedroom, of all places—”

“No one saw me, don’t worry. I didn’t leave my room through the door, so anyone watching will assume I’m still inside. And I found your room quite easily. Didn’t have to look into too many others.”

“Dash!”

“What?”

“What about whoever might be listening right now?” I hiss.

Dash frowns. “You’re joking, right?”

I shake my head. “There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Yeah, but in your bedroom? That’s crossing the line.”

I step closer to him and lower my voice further. “After everything you told me about these people, you really want me to believe there are lines they won’t cross?”

Dash hesitates. “True.”

“I mean, I don’t know for sure whether anyone’s listening, but Aurora told me to be careful of what I say, no matter where I am.”

Dash raises his finger to his lips, indicating that I should remain silent. He begins to walk slowly around the room, looking, listening, even, at times, sniffing. “The only other magic I can sense in this room is coming from your bed,” he whispers. “Which is totally inappropriate, if you ask—”

The duvet moves, a shape slides toward the edge, and a black cat lands on the floor.

“Oh,” Dash says, his voice no longer a whisper. “Is that Bandit?”

I open my arms and Bandit leaps up, shifting into a bird to help him gain height, and landing in my arms as a cat once more. “Yes.” I hug him close to my chest. “I wanted him to stay at the—um, where it was safe. But he must have come with me in a form too small for me to notice.”

Dash smiles and comes closer so he can scratch Bandit behind the ears. “Jack will be relieved. He’s been so worried about Bandit.”

“So you don’t think anyone’s listening?” I ask.

“I don’t, but even if someone is listening, so what? It’s not as though I’m acting improperly toward the future princess. You and I are just talking. If you’d prefer, we can do it in your sitting room instead of your bedroom.”

I roll my eyes. “As if that makes any difference. You’d still have to explain how you got past the guards outside my door. And climbing in through the window makes you look awfully suspicious.”

He heaves a breath and sits on the edge of the bed again. “I just thought you might want to know about … you know. The funeral.”

The funeral.

Chelsea and Georgia.

Dead.

“You were there?” I ask.

Dash nods. “Yeah. You may or may not remember that some of the people in Stanmeade were actually my friends. Not true friends, of course, since I could never be fully honest with anyone, but … yeah. I have friends there, and I felt like I should be at the funeral. Just, you know, to support anyone who was friends with Georgia.”

I nod and murmur, “Of course. Yeah. I still can’t believe she and Chelsea are gone. They were always just there, you know? My horrible cousin and aunt that I couldn’t wait to get away from. Then I finally did get away, and now …” I shake my head. Now, because Ada was after me, they’re both dead. Dash may try to convince me I shouldn’t blame myself, but I know I’m responsible. Indirectly, perhaps, but still responsible.

I let Bandit jump out of my arms before walking to the chair in the corner of my room. It’s the type of fancy chair that no one actually wants to sit in—an overly embellished wooden frame with cushions too firm to be comfortable. Nevertheless, I perch on the edge of it and clear my throat. “Was it, um, were there lots of people there? At the funeral?”

“Yes. Almost everyone in town was there. I guess Chelsea knew a lot of people, seeing as she ran one of the only hair salons in Stanmeade.”

I frown. “She was such a huge fan of gossip and rumor-spreading that I would have thought there’d be a lot of people who didn’t like her.”

“Well, you don’t have to like someone to go to their funeral.”

I look across at him. “Did people say horrible things?”

“No. Only good things were said about her. About both of them. It was all very …” He rubs a hand over his face. “Very strange. So tragic, on the one hand, and yet so false hearing all these lovely tributes about two people I personally witnessed being spiteful on multiple occasions. And it seemed wrong of me to think those things, but how could I not? I couldn’t suddenly turn Chelsea and Georgia into something else in my memory just because they’re now dead.”

“I … just …” I shake my head. “I don’t know what to say or think or feel. What does everyone think the cause of death was?”

“A gas leak.”

“I assume the Guild is responsible for that story?”

“Yes. It was the easiest story to go with.”

“Do you think … do you know whether …” I hesitate, wondering if I even want to know the answer. “Did they suffer? Did the magic in their bodies cause them to suffer as they were dying?”

“I don’t know, Em. I honestly don’t know. I hope not.”

I lean my elbows on my knees. “Before you told me what happened to them, I was starting to think that all this time Chelsea was also some kind of faerie just like me and Mom, and that the herbal remedies she made were magical. But if they contained magic, they wouldn’t have helped anyone in Stanmeade. People would have ended up sick and possibly dead, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So Chelsea was definitely human.”

“Yes.”

“Which means she and my mother can’t have been sisters.”

Dash shakes his head.

“I wonder if Chelsea knew. I wonder if my mother knows, or if she thinks Chelsea was like her. Someone with magic that couldn’t be accessed.” I rub my fingers in circular motions against my temples as I stare at the floor. “I have so many questions still. So many gaps in my family history that I need Mom to fill in for me.”

“Well, I hope your genius plan works out and you get all the answers you’re looking for.”

I direct a frown his way. “This isn’t just about answers. You know that. Even if Mom knew nothing, I’d still want to wake her and heal her mind.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”

I watch him closely for a while. “Why are you really here? I mean, I’ve …” I push my embarrassment down as my cheeks heat up. “I’ve never been nice to you. Surely you don’t care enough about me to take the kind of risk required in coming here.”

He lets out a short laugh devoid of humor. “It wasn’t a question of how much I may or may not care about you. This isn’t just about you, Em. It’s about what the Unseelie King will make you do. How many lives might be ruined because you’re forced to use your Griffin Ability against your will?”

“I … I don’t—”

“And I thought you were a prisoner here. I thought I was saving both you and all the people you might be forced to hurt in future. I never guessed that you chose to come here. That you’d refuse to leave once I found you.”

I look away from him. “I’m sorry. Like I said last night, you weren’t supposed to find me. You were supposed to stay far away and never get hurt again because of me.”

“That was never going to happen, Em. I’m not the kind of person to sit by while the Unseelie King gets his hands on the latest powerful weapon in the fae realm. And I didn’t think you were the kind of person to just hand over that power either.”

I swallow past my shame. “Well, I guess I am,” I say quietly, staring down at the floor. “Like almost everyone else in the world, I’m only looking out for myself and the people I love. I’m not brave or selfless. I’m just doing what I have to do to get by.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Dash shake his head. “You can tell yourself that lie all you want, but I know you’re more than that. I know what you did in Stanmeade. You stopped Ada’s glass from consuming the entire town. You didn’t have to do that. You could have kept your mother’s location a secret and let that place splinter apart. But you didn’t.”

“And what good did my selflessness do then?” I demand. “I gave her what she wanted, but did she stop her attack on the town? No. I had to figure that out myself, and it was a fluke that my Griffin Ability switched on at just the right moment. So what difference will it make now if I refuse to give my power to the king? Nothing. He’ll commit the same evil acts he plans to commit. It might just take him a little longer.” I feel sick at my own words. I don’t want to help the king do anything. But really, the world is a sucky place and this is the way it works. This is the way both worlds work. Life’s a b***h and then you die—just like that old song Chelsea used to listen to sometimes. “Only a few people get to be heroes, Dash,” I quietly tell him. “And you may be one of those people, but I’m not. I’m just trying to play the best hand from the cards I’ve been dealt.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and all I can see in his eyes is sadness. “At some point, you’re going to realize that this”—he gestures around him—“is most certainly not your best hand. I just hope you figure that out sooner rather than later.”

“And I hope you get away from here sooner rather than later. There’s no need for you to get hurt.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You know what I am, right? Getting hurt is part of the job.”

And dying? I almost ask. But I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to talk about death when he’s already come so close to it. Not when the deaths of Chelsea and Georgia are still so near.

“Besides,” he adds. “I don’t think it’ll be nearly as easy to leave this palace as it was to get inside.”

Bandit jumps back onto my lap. I stroke his sleek black hair and, in an effort to turn the conversation away from such heavy topics, I ask, “Was it true? The story you told Roarke last night. About getting into the palace in place of the clothes caster.”

“Yes. Well, mostly. It wasn’t supposed to be me who came here.”

“Oh.” I look up. “Who was it supposed to be?”

Dash gives me a pointed look. “I’d rather not say her name, just in case. But I’m sure you can figure it out, given her particular talent for … concealment.”

Ah. Calla. I nod. “I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“It would have been much easier for her to blend in. But the clothes caster arrived earlier than expected to pick up the dress from my mother’s studio, so—”

“Wait, your mother?”

“Yes. She’s the one who designed your dress.”

My hand stills on Bandit’s back. “Your mother is Raven Rosewood?”

“Yes. I told you she’s a fashion designer, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but … I never thought … Wait, is your surname Rosewood?” That doesn’t seem right, but now I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually known Dash’s surname.

“No, it’s Blackhallow.”

“Oh. Dash Blackhallow,” I say slowly, trying out the name.

“Dashiell Blackhallow, if we’re going to get technical.” He rolls his eyes. “Lots of l’s, I know. Anyway, my mother was still a Rosewood when she began designing. That’s the name people knew her by, so she kept it.”

“So out of all the designers in this world, the queen ended up choosing your mother. That can’t have been a coincidence.”

Dash smiles. “Of course it wasn’t. My mother heard the Unseelie Queen was looking for a particularly special dress. Not for herself, though, and not for her daughter. The rumors suggested that a new young lady had arrived at the Unseelie Palace, and the queen and princess had taken a special interest in her. Normally my mother would stay far away from anything to do with the Unseelies, but she knew you’d gone missing. She told me about the rumors and this unofficial ‘competition’ to design the best dress. I was almost certain this girl was you, and so I told Mom that one of her dresses had to be chosen, no matter what. So we enchanted her designs. A simple spell that made anyone who looked at the pages want to keep coming back to them. And it worked. She was chosen.”

My mouth is hanging open by the time he’s finished speaking. “It was really that simple?”

“Yes. And then the guy who came to pick up the dress arrived way too early. I was hiding, watching my mother hand the dress over on her own, as she’d been instructed. I hoped she’d keep him talking or something until Ca—um—until our friend arrived, but the clothes caster said he was on a tight schedule. Seemed quite agitated to be there. He kept looking around as though terrified someone might spot him in this upstanding establishment. When he said his carriage was enchanted to turn around and leave in under five minutes, I did the only thing I could think of: knocked him out and took his place.”

“So you jumped into his carriage and it all worked out fine?”

“Well, I changed into his clothes first. And Mom found me an appropriately colored wig from her many supplies. And I took his stylus and amber, which was a good thing, since the carriage door wouldn’t open until I held his stylus up against it, and I was almost out of time by then. Oh, and there were two guards inside the carriage, but they were disinterested enough that they didn’t notice my face wasn’t the same as the guy they’d just been traveling with.”

“Seriously? No way. No guard is that inattentive to detail. They must have noticed a difference.”

Dash hesitates, a guilty smile stretching his lips wide. “Ok, so I might have discreetly spritzed some contentment potion when I got into the carriage.”

“Some what potion?”

“My mother adds it to dresses sometimes, at her clients’ request. It’s a weird one. Some of these people she designs for are super stressed out and high-strung, and when they go to these fancy events, they just want to relax a bit. Be content and at peace, you know? I was in a rush, and the little spray bottle was right there, so I just grabbed it on my way out.”

“And the guards ended up so content they didn’t notice you weren’t the right guy?”

“Yes. I, uh, may have sprayed a little too much. Fortunately, I put a shield bubble around myself, otherwise I probably would have been so content I’d still be sitting in that carriage.”

I blink, not sure what else to say about this half-baked plan that actually worked.

“Look, it wasn’t my most elegant undercover operation,” Dash admits, “but everything turned out fine. The carriage brought me right into the palace grounds and straight up to one of the doors. It took a bit of work figuring out where to go, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I pretended to be a little tipsy and confused, complimented one of the girls I found in the kitchen, and she showed me where to go. I dropped off the dress with a note saying the pickup went fine, and then hid until the ball began.”

“Wow. I’m amazed that didn’t go horribly wrong.”

He shrugs. “I’m good with improvising.”

My mind backtracks to the beginning of his story. “So they—the people I was staying with—” I don’t want to say the words ‘Griffin rebels’ out loud “—know that you’re here?”

“Yes.”

I lower my voice and lean forward. “Do you think they’ll come here?”

Dash hesitates, then says in a normal voice, “No. They don’t know where this place is. That’s why one of us needed to come with the clothes caster. The Unseelie and Seelie Courts are hidden, so not many people know where they are.” The way he’s looking at me though, his eyes boring intently into mine, strongly suggests he lying. It also suggests he’s not entirely convinced someone isn’t listening to us.

“Crap,” I whisper to myself. The Griffin rebels probably do know how to get to the Unseelie Court, and once they realize Dash isn’t on his way back with me, they’ll probably come straight here and do everything they can to get us both out. And while I’m sure they’re all amazing magical fighters, the chances are high they’ll wind up injured, dead or imprisoned.

“Em?” Dash asks after several moments of silence on my side.

“That’s, uh, that’s good that they won’t be able to find this place,” I say loudly. Too loudly, probably. I make an effort at sounding normal. “I know they would only be trying to help, but as I said to you last night, I’m not in need of any help.”

Dash raises an eyebrow. “If you didn’t want anyone’s help, you probably should have mentioned that before you ran away. We would have stopped working so hard to figure out the mystery that is your life.”

A shard of guilt stabs into my chest and twists. “I’m sorry. But I—”

“You asked for our help, remember? Or at least …” Lines crease his forehead as he frowns. “We offered, and you said yes. Something like that. So you can’t exactly blame us for looking into your family history.”

“I know, I was only going to say that I assumed you guys would forget about me once I was gone. You have plenty of other people to help, don’t you? And—wait, what did you say about my family history?”

He sighs. “We tried to find out about your father. Since your mother isn’t awake to shine any light on your strange situation, we figured your father might be able to help—if we could find him. The only thing you mentioned about him was that he paid the medical bills for your mom’s hospital, so Chase went there to take a look at the records. He’s the only one who knows how to use a computer,” Dash adds with a roll of his eyes. “He grew up in your world, in case you didn’t know. Anyway, he said your mom’s file had some kind of glamour over it. He could see Chelsea’s details and all your mom’s details, but anything related to the person who first checked her in and was paying for it every month was just … blank. The humans working there would probably see something when looking at it, but Chase couldn’t see anything.”

“So … no one was actually paying for her?”

“I don’t know. The point is, it was a dead end. We couldn’t find out anything about your father.”

My shoulders sag a little. “It’s okay. That’s why I’m here, remember? This union is going to lead to Mom’s mind being healed, and all the answers hidden inside her will finally be unlocked.”

Footsteps cross my sitting room. I clutch Bandit to my chest and stand abruptly—just as Clarina stops in the doorway. “Lady Emerson—Oh!” She stares intently at the floor. “I beg your pardon, my lady.”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” I say immediately. I’m not actually sure what it looks like, but it can’t be good.

“I’m sorry, my lady. I knocked on the other door, but—”

“I didn’t hear you, I’m sorry.”

“I won’t say a thing, Lady Emerson.”

“There’s nothing to say,” I assure her with a high, breathy laugh. “We were just talking.”

“Of course,” she says, bobbing in a brief curtsey and keeping her eyes on the floor. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but Prince Roarke would like to speak with you.”

My fingers tense around Bandit’s cat form. “Okay. Thank you. Where must I meet him?”

“He’s waiting outside your rooms for you, my lady.”

“Oh.” I look at Dash.

He grins. “Well, I guess I’ll be leaving the way I came in, then. Good thing I enjoy climbing.”