Chapter 26

“Kill him now, Knight.”

I didn’t even see Falin’s arm move. One moment the blade pressed against Rawhead’s throat, glinting in the strange light. Then the blade vanished.

For several long heartbeats, Tommy Rawhead looked stunned. Then his head toppled forward, and tumbled down to roll through the puddles on the throne floor. Falin released Rawhead’s body a moment later, and it crumpled to the floor in a lump.

I screamed. It wasn’t a conscious decision, the sound just burst out of me as an arc of blood gushed from the now-headless neck. I scrambled back, but the puddles of melted ice and sleet diluted the expanding blood pool, mixing and spreading it far beyond the body.

“Now we will get our answers. Planeweaver?” The queen turned to me, and bile bit at the back of my throat.

I doubled over, my stomach heaving, but nothing but dry hacking came up. Falin was suddenly at my side, his warm fingers brushing my sleet-encrusted curls away from my face.

“Don’t show her weakness,” he whispered, his hand moving to the back of my neck and then down, between my shoulder blades.

I stepped away. I didn’t want him to touch me. Not now. Maybe not ever. He’d just killed someone in cold blood. I’d seen him kill before—hell, I’d killed in the past—but it had always been self-defense. Yes, Rawhead was a bad guy in folklore. He ate children. We knew that. And we suspected he was involved with Glitter, which meant he was at least partially responsible for the deaths of the fae who it had been made from and the mortals who had used it. But we had no proof of his involvement yet. He’d been executed on suspicion alone. He’d already been captured. He’d been no threat to anyone anymore.

I stepped away from Falin, forcing myself to straighten. Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I avoided looking at the body. I didn’t like blood or gore at the best of times, and I’d seen bodies in much worse condition, but no one had ever been murdered simply so I could question their shade before.

“I can’t do this,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone in the room.

“What was that, planeweaver?” the queen asked, but the sharp tone of her voice said that she’d heard me.

I could almost feel the stiff stillness of Falin at my back, like a warning. Ryese smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. The look told me that if I refused the queen, he would enjoy dragging me to Rath, the queen’s torture room, just as much as he would have enjoyed hauling Tommy Rawhead there. Ryese was an equal opportunity pain dealer. Beside him, Maeve looked away, but Lyell gave a minute shake of his head, a small warning that refusing was a bad plan.

I swallowed and forced my shoulders back. Lifting my head, I met the queen’s crazed gaze. “I said, I can’t do this. Here.” I waved a hand to indicate the throne room. “No land of the dead, remember?”

She raised an eyebrow full of sleet, but she didn’t call me on the cover. “Knight, transport that.” She gestured to the body. “Ryese, assist him.”

“Dearest aunt, perhaps I should stay here and organize the restoration of your throne room?” He gestured to the blood, which had been carried in the puddles to spread across most of the room.

I was going to have to burn my boots.

“Fine.” She waved a dismissive hand, and then turned to me again. “After you, planeweaver. I want my answers.”

•   •   •

I stared at the body in the center of my circle. I’d considered trying to duck the queen as soon as we’d returned to mortal reality. But, unless I planned to run off and join the shadow court, the only way for me to stop myself and my friends from fading was to find the answers the queen needed. Not questioning the shade due to moral outrage was suicidal. Rawhead was already dead. The damage was done. If he revealed the alchemist, at least some good would come out of this mess. Besides, while Rawhead was almost certainly involved with Glitter, he wasn’t the mastermind of the operation. We had to stop the production of the drug.

So here I stood. But there was one major issue. A huge complication that made me hesitate even after resigning myself to performing the ritual.

Rawhead’s soul was still inside his corpse.

Just like with Icelynne, because there were no collectors in Faerie, Rawhead’s soul hadn’t passed on. I was fairly certain that if his body was left in the mortal realm long enough, a collector would eventually stumble over him and take care of the oversight, but we didn’t exactly have time to wait for that to happen. I could eject the soul as I’d done with Icelynne. But while she’d emerged scared and confused, she hadn’t had any reason to blame me for her demise.

Tommy Rawhead did. I had no doubt he’d hold a grudge.

And I’d be trapped in a circle with him.

“What is the delay, planeweaver?”

I ignored the queen. She was on the outside of my barrier and not my biggest concern, currently, at least. Kneeling, I drew a second circle close to the body, but I didn’t activate it yet. If I timed this right, I could eject Rawhead’s soul, and then erect the second circle around me and the empty body. The ghost would be left trapped between the two barriers. If I then dropped the outermost circle, Rawhead would be free to leave. The question was, would he? And if he didn’t, how long could I keep the smaller circle intact?

I mentally tapped into the raw Aetheric energy stored in my ring. There wasn’t much. I prayed it would be enough.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped over the waxy line of my inert inner circle. Then, without releasing my connection with the energy in my ring, I opened my shields, and as the chill of the grave blew through me, I pushed it into the corpse at my feet.

The silver-blue soul of Tommy Rawhead exploded from the corpse. I had hoped he’d be disoriented. That would have given me time to get him away from the body so I could raise the inner circle. But Rawhead lunged toward me before his form solidified.

I stumbled, throwing out my arms to guard my face.

The ghost locked his jaw around my forearm, and cold pain sliced through me as those pointy teeth sank into my flesh. I screamed, blood welling up on my arm.

Outside my circle, yelling erupted, and I felt something slam into my barrier. The force reverberated through my magic. The idea of dropping the circle flitted through my mind, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to break the spell—Rawhead was still attached to my arm.

He locked his jaw, and I swore I heard his teeth grinding against my bones. Screaming again, I pushed against him with my grave magic. The ghost seemed to drink down the magic, becoming more real.

Damn it.

Rawhead released my arm and stepped back. He grinned, spreading his legs and arms like a wrestler preparing to tackle his opponent. Not good, as I was that opponent. He’d manifested exactly as he’d been in life, with blood running down his face from under his hat. But as it was now only an idea of what he’d been, that blood was pale, slightly translucent. The blood running from his mouth was mine, and very real.

I cradled my arm against my chest and backed away, but the circle wasn’t large. I had nowhere to go.

Rawhead’s bloody grin grew.

On the other side of my circle, Falin, the queen, and her council were yelling. What, I didn’t have time to listen to now, but at least no one was trying to break down my barrier anymore.

Rawhead lunged, but this time I managed to duck to the side. He slammed into the edge of my circle, and it shuddered, the barrier sparking. I yelped as the backlash tore through me. If the circle took another hit like that, the ghost would win this fight without even having to catch me because I’d be unconscious. I had to turn the tables.

Ghosts were just will and energy.

There had been nothing I could do about the fact that Tommy Rawhead had been a nasty bogeyman in life, or that he blamed me, at least in part, for his death. But energy? Yeah, that I could affect.

Lifting my uninjured arm, I reached for Rawhead with my ability to touch the dead. But this time, instead of pushing magic at him, I pulled.

Energy leapt from Rawhead to me.

Most of the magics associated with the grave were cold, but ghosts weren’t actually of the land of the dead. They were souls trapped in the land of the dead when they left their body without transitioning to wherever collectors sent them.

So as the energy slipped under my skin, it was the warm life energy of a soul that I absorbed, not the chill of the grave. I had drawn energy from souls twice before. The first time from Coleman, who’d used so much dark magic his soul was stained black with it, and the second from a creature native to the land of the dead. Both of their essences had been tainted and sludgelike. Rawhead, as reprehensible as he’d been in life, hadn’t actually damaged his soul. I drew on his energy and it rushed into me, warm and sweet as a spring breeze. It felt good. Which was so wrong.

But I didn’t dare stop as he reared back to charge again. He rushed toward me, and I pulled with all my might, drinking down the pure energy. Rawhead faded with each running step he took, his form becoming hazy, less solid. He crashed into me, but it was too late.

He dissolved, like morning dew in the sun. Then I was alone in my circle.

I collapsed to my knees, panting, but honestly, aside from the pain burning along my gnawed-upon arm, I felt better than I had in days. A fact that made me queasy.

I hugged my injured arm to my chest and pushed off the ground. Only then did I look around and take stock of what was happening beyond my circle. The queen was right on the edge of the barrier, Falin physically restraining her from slamming her fists into the circle. It said something about her mental state that she didn’t command him to release her. Maeve had backed away from both queen and circle. Lyell had a small scythelike weapon in his hands, but his arms were lowered as his gaze swept around my circle, searching for an enemy he hadn’t been able to see.

“What have you done, planeweaver?” the queen asked, struggling in Falin’s arms. “What injury have you inflicted on yourself? Are you attempting to skirt finding the answers I demand? Are you part of this conspiracy against me?”

I looked into her fevered gaze and felt hate, cold and pure, for this queen who regarded the value of others’ lives on a sliding scale of what she could gain from them. And yet, I also felt the smallest amount of pity for her. Something was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure if she’d snapped under the stress of her position or if something more malicious was at play, but this hateful queen was out of her mind.

“Rawhead’s ghost was present. It is gone now.” The words came out flat, with no inflection. “I’m ready to raise the shade,” I said, and then turned my back on her. I had a job to do and I didn’t want to look at the woman who’d ordered the execution of the body in front of me, and so, indirectly forced me to cannibalize a soul.

Or maybe I just wanted to stop thinking because it had been so easy to do this time. And it felt good. Which scared me. After all, even if it was in self-defense, how many souls could I consume without destroying my own?