Chapter 32

“Wait,” I said, jerking my arm out of Falin’s grasp and stumbling backward.

If Falin was another illusion, I couldn’t follow him anywhere. Things were dangerous enough trapped in one room, but what would happen if I left? And who else would my hallucinations endanger? And if this wasn’t another mirage, what kind of danger was I putting Falin in?

Ryese had said I was Falin’s weakness. If I was the bait, where was the trap?

“How did you find me?”

Falin frowned. “I received a note. It said you’d left your quarters and were in trouble. Then it told me how to find you. I’m assuming Ryese sent it and I should watch my back.”

Well, that seemed plausible. And coming here was definitely something the real Falin would do, but the fact I thought so meant my imagination could have conjured up the explanation.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Falin’s frown deepened. “What?”

“To prove you’re real. Tell me something I couldn’t know about you.”

Falin stepped back, evaluating me, or maybe the request, I wasn’t sure which. Then his gaze cut to the fake Death still yelling questions at me. “Why does he keep asking you his name?”

“Because I don’t know it.”

“But aren’t you . . . ?”

He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to. I knew what he was asking. Wasn’t I Death’s girlfriend? His lover? His something, at the very least? Hell, he was my oldest and dearest friend before he was . . . whatever he was now.

And I knew nothing about him.

After several moments of only the fake Death speaking, Falin sighed.

“If I tell you something you don’t know, how will that prove anything? You won’t know if it’s true or not.”

Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I pressed my palms against my eyes. Then I stopped.

My eyes. I hadn’t been able to pierce the hallucination of Rawhead, hadn’t been able to disbelieve him away, but his lack of soul had betrayed he wasn’t alive.

I dropped my hands and opened my shields. I blinked, looking around. Death remained exactly the same as I opened my mental sight to the other planes, but Falin had a hazy silver-blue glow haloing his form. A soul.

I smiled in relief. He was real.

Unless of course, my mind could conjure up a soul glow around a hallucination. Why did I have to think about that possibility? I hated my brain right now.

Falin watched my thoughts shift with my expressions, and then asked, “You want me to tell you just anything you don’t know?” He paused. “You know that I was switched with a human and grew up outside Faerie, right? Well, maybe the spells they wrapped me in weren’t quite good enough, or maybe I was just unlucky, because I was abandoned by the family who should have raised me. I don’t know. I was too young to remember. I grew up in foster care, but never really fit anywhere. I’d stay in a home for a few months and then they’d send me away, off to a new family. When I reached puberty, the spell began breaking down, my fae nature emerged, and a FIB agent brought me to court. I felt like I belonged for the first time. Faerie felt like the home I’d never had. The home I’d missed.”

I studied him. I’d asked him for something I didn’t know, and he’d given me a doozy. I hadn’t known him when he was younger, and I knew very little about his past, but this information fit. In unguarded moments, I’d recognized the part of him that had spent too long without a home, that wanted to belong and be valued. It resonated with me, and had since I first met him.

Well, okay, not when I first met him. The first few times we interacted I’d thought he was a major jerk.

But after that.

The story made me want to hug him, even though the pain he’d revealed was decades old and likely well scabbed over. I hadn’t grown up in foster care, hadn’t bounced around houses, but I’d felt unwanted. I’d felt alienated from my family because of my wyrd ability. Because my father had shipped me off for most of my childhood. Had made a point of disassociating himself from me. So while I couldn’t understand exactly what Falin had gone through, I could commiserate on some level.

I could also understand what he meant about Faerie feeling like home. As terrifying as I found the courts, something felt right when I was in Faerie. It was like a drug I knew was dangerous, but craved. Since my awakening, I’d felt Faerie’s absence when I was in the mortal realm, but my healthy fear was strong enough to keep me away. So I could imagine what it must have been like for him as a teenager.

And the fact that I could, and my reaction to his story, made me leery.

Wouldn’t an illusion my drugged imagination had conjured want to make an emotional connection? And my own mind would be the best to provide the perfect outlet. The fake Death was proof of that fact.

Oh hell. How was Falin supposed to prove if he was real or not? He was acting like the real Falin, my mind’s eye told me he had a soul, and he’d given me a believable story when I’d asked. None of it was definitive, but I had to trust something.

Yeah, so let’s trust the guy who has told you point-blank to never trust him.

But I did. With a healthy dose of caution maybe. But for better or worse, I did trust him.

The sleet continued to fall around us, coating every surface and clinging to my wet, icy hair and clothes. If the drug didn’t kill me, I might die from hypothermia before I got out of the winter court.

“Be on the lookout for Ryese,” I said, approaching the threshold that had reappeared when Falin entered the room.

“Isn’t it usually me telling you to be careful?” Falin asked, a wry smile touching the edges of his lips.

True. But I didn’t say it as I walked through the door, Falin at my heels. We emerged in one of the icy hallways, though at this point, it was more of a slushy hallway. The fake Death followed me a moment later, still yelling.

I scowled at him, hating my own mind that had summoned him and made my insecurity public. Chewing at my bottom lip, I turned to Falin. “That spell you used on the queen earlier . . . ?”

He glanced between me and my illusion. Then shook his head. “It wasn’t a healing spell, and it won’t help you.”

I almost asked him what it was then, but he couldn’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. Hanging my head and doing my best to ignore the verbal barbs from the fake Death, I followed Falin down the corridor.

Ice golems lined the hall. Once before I’d seen them come to life at the queen’s whim, but I wasn’t sure these particular golems would ever wake again. Their carved ice faces had melted, as had much of their heads and arms. I looked away from the misshapen forms. The winter court was dying.

“Have you seen the queen recently?”

Falin shot a grim look at the golems. “Not too long ago.”

“Since the sleet started again?” I asked, and his silence was answer enough. No. He hadn’t.

So she might have relapsed. Or been dosed again.

“Why isn’t Ryese locked up already?”

Falin paused and shot a furtive glance down the long hall. Aside from the melting golems, we were alone. “The queen summoned him, but she didn’t ask him directly, so his answers were slippery at best. It didn’t matter. He had no blood on his hands, so she wouldn’t believe his guilt.”

I glanced at my own gloved hands, and at Falin’s. I’d killed in defense of myself and those I cared about more than once, and I wore the dead’s blood on my hands because Faerie took things very literally. As the queen’s knight, Falin was her bloody hands—the one who killed if it must be done but also the one who carried the taint of every unnatural death through the court’s history. It made him powerful, but also reviled in the court. Not that other members of the court had never killed—the queen had dueled to the death to gain her position so very long ago—but in the winter court, members passed the blood off to the knight, leaving everyone else’s hands lily white—or blue, or green, or whatever color they happened to be naturally. You could cover the blood with gloves, but you couldn’t hide it with glamour.

Ryese should have Icelynne’s and the other fae’s blood on his hands—if not the humans’ who he killed indirectly with Glitter.

Of course, just because Faerie tended to be literal, that didn’t mean it assigned guilt the same way I would. Ryese had surely orchestrated the kidnapping of the drained fae, but Tommy Rawhead and Jenny Greenteeth might have delivered the death blow to the fae. They’d also chosen to whom to distribute the Glitter. I hadn’t seen Jenny inside Faerie, but Rawhead’s hands had been saturated with blood.

“So how do we convince her?”

Falin shook his head. “It may not matter. She will not hold the court at this rate.”

I stopped. “Doesn’t someone have to defeat you in a duel before they can challenge her directly?”

“Yes.”

“A duel to the death?”

A muscle bulged above his jaw, but he nodded.

Shit.

“But if her madness deepens and she cannot gain control of this”—he waved a hand to indicate the sleet, the melting walls and golems, maybe even the discordant notes thrumming through the air—“then Faerie itself will reject her as queen. With no designated heir, the scramble will become a free-for-all. The fighting knowledge, speed, and quick healing the court’s blood grants me would be a boon to any potential contenders.”

“And let me guess—unless you pass it on willingly, the easiest way to acquire that is to kill you?”

Again a tight nod. “After the queen is dethroned, at least. Before that it will revert back to her. A fail-safe to help her protect her seat of power. And as to passing it off, I can only do that with the queen’s blessing.”

And no queen, no blessing. Great. So there was a higher than average chance any change in power would involve Falin’s death.

Reaching out, I squeezed his hand. He glanced down at where my gloved hand touched his, and the smallest smile tipped the edges of his lips as he squeezed back.

Behind me, the fake Death began screaming again. “Are your emotions so fickle, Alex Craft? I’ve proven willing to sacrifice my everlasting soul for you, and your heart still wanders?”

I jerked my hand out of Falin’s as if a snake had lunged at me. Then I whirled on the fake Death.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I yelled at him. “You aren’t real.”

The fake Death smiled his very un-Death-like mocking grin. Anger washed through me, tinged with guilt. A second fake Death appeared, this one spouting off rhetoric about my inability to commit as the other returned to goading me about how little I knew about my own lover.

Dizziness crashed over me with the second hallucination’s appearance, and I swayed. Only Falin’s hands steadying my shoulders kept me from falling to the sleet-encrusted floor. That gave the Deaths even more fuel to work with.

“Alex, stay calm,” Falin whispered. “The drug is triggered by your anxiety and fear and it’s feeding off your energy. You don’t have much to spare. So try to stay calm.”

I nodded, knowing he was right. But even knowing something was true or for my own good didn’t make it easy.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my back on the two fake Deaths and tried to ignore them. Falin watched me a moment longer, as if afraid I’d collapse if he looked away. Then he also turned, striding through the slush once more.

We’d rounded two corners in the seemingly never-ending corridors when I drew up short. Falin stopped, studying me with one cocked eyebrow. The question in his expression was clear, as was a hint of irritation. Me and my hallucinations were slowing us down and Ryese was out there. Somewhere.

Still, I waved him off, trying to concentrate. I felt . . . something. A kind of change in the space around me. It was similar to the magic trail I’d followed when I’d found the amaranthine tree. But that trail had felt warm, good. The disturbance I felt this time was . . . wrong.

Like a wound cut into the very fabric of Faerie.

I glanced around. There were doors on either side of the corridor. I’d stepped into the trail, and it led forward, so whoever or whatever had caused the disturbance in reality had originated from behind one of the two doors.

“Where do these go?” I asked, pointing from one to the other door.

Falin frowned at me. “Currently?”

Right. Faerie and its shifting doors. I sighed. Then I started forward again, motioning Falin to lead on. There was no telling if the disturbance I felt was even real.

The sleet fell harder and faster as we walked. I balled my fists and tucked them under my armpits, trying to get some warmth back into my fingers. The disturbance also seemed to grow rawer the farther we walked. I wasn’t sure if we were actually following a trail or if my hallucinations were damaging Faerie. Or maybe it was another symptom of the queen’s loss of control.

Maybe the queen is also hallucinating.

If Ryese had been dosing her with Glitter, and he got an opportunity to slip more to her, he may well have given her the critical amount to reach hallucinations.

The sleet-slush had built up to ankle-deep by the time we turned the next corner, but soggy paths had been trod through it already. Falin frowned at the indistinct footprints, but I tried to keep my steps in line with those who’d cut the path—my boots were water resistant only up to the point the laces started, and as my feet were the only part of me still dry, I wanted to keep them that way.

Falin paused in front of one door. Based on the runnels in the sleet, a lot of fae had passed this way, and recently. The trail dragging across realities was stronger here as well. Sharper, almost, and deeper.

And oh so very wrong.

If it had been something I could see, I would have expected an infected wound, open and dripping with pus. The trail led directly into the doorway Falin was about to step through. I grabbed his arm, making him hesitate.

“If Faerie rejects the queen’s right to rule the court, would that cause a wound in the fabric of Faerie?”

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving over my face as if he’d find the answer there. “What kind of wound?” he asked, his voice low, cautious.

I tried to think of a way to describe the raw sensation, but I was cold and exhausted, and I wasn’t even sure it was real and not another Glitter effect. Instead of answering, I shook my head and dropped my hand from Falin’s arm. He studied my face one more moment before his gaze shifted to the screaming Deaths behind me and then back. Reaching out, he pressed a hand to my forehead.

“You’re burning up.”

“I promise you, I’m freezing,” I told him, wrapping my arms around my middle in an effort to slow my trembling.

Falin didn’t argue, he just gave me a look—a sad, knowing look—and said, “Let’s get you your tie to Faerie.”

Then he stepped through the doorway.