Chapter 27

With Rawhead’s ghost gone, progressing with the ritual was little more than a familiar exercise. After the last several rituals with shades so depleted that I’d had to pour far too much energy into them to raise a mere shadow of my typical shades, the ease of which Rawhead’s shade rose from his body was a relief.

I glanced at the shade I’d raised and grimaced. Well, maybe relief was the wrong word. Falin had covered the body before I’d drawn my circle, and the ghost had more or less resembled Rawhead in life, but the shade resembled him in death, complete with neck ending in a bloody stump and his severed head in his lap. I looked away.

“What is your name?” I asked the shade.

“We know that already,” the queen all but spat from outside my circle.

I shot a frown over my shoulder at her, but she was correct. We knew that information, but I always started my interviews with the question. It was a habit.

Physics—or maybe biology—would insist that a head separated from its body couldn’t speak, but Rawhead was dead, a projection of memories, and the magic didn’t really care in what condition that projection appeared. So, the shade’s response of his name was clear and strong.

Behind me, the queen muttered something about moving on and asking the alchemist’s name, but I hesitated before asking my next question. I needed the alchemist’s identity, without a doubt, but in the queen’s frantic state, she’d likely demand an immediate end to my ritual as soon as we had a name. I didn’t want to be called to any more scenes with glamoured fires or homicidal clowns, so I needed a little more information about Glitter before I lost access to Rawhead’s shade.

“Have you been distributing the drug Glitter?”

“Yes.”

Well, at least I knew we had the right fae. I still felt sick that he’d been killed so that I could question him, but the reassurance that he was responsible for at least half a dozen deaths was something. Oh, and according to legend, he ate children. Major strike against him there.

“How many vials of Glitter did you distribute?”

“Seven.”

I blinked. Seven vials? I was expecting the number to be in the dozens if not the hundreds. I had assumed that our victims had overdosed or had a bad reaction to the drug, but if I assumed Gavin Murphy had used the drug—and Death had indicated that he had—I knew where five of the vials had ended up. That left only two vials unaccounted for. They could still be unused, or the results might not have been outlandish enough to warrant attention, the users dying in seemingly mundane ways. The operation Icelynne had described sounded, if not large, than at least as though more than seven vials had been produced.

“What was the point?” I said under my breath. It wasn’t really a question, or at least not one directed at anyone, but the shade answered anyway.

“Fear.”

“What?”

“Glitter was distributed to create fear among the humans and disorder in the court,” Rawhead said.

“Ask for the name now,” the queen yelled from outside my circle. “Or your head will be the next I send my knight to retrieve.”

Right. No more delaying. I would have liked to get a little more information, but at least I knew the operation was small. Once the alchemist was caught, production would stop. But where is the rest of the drug now? Icelynne had seen several other fae in the place where she was held, and she’d been held for days, slowly drained of her glamour. There must have been more than seven vials created.

I was out of time.

I turned toward the shade. “To which court do you belong?”

“I’m sworn to a noble of the winter court.”

As expected. “The name of that noble?”

“Ryese.”

The world hung for a moment on the silence after the shade spoke. Then a shriek burst from the queen and she threw herself at my barrier.

Pain crashed through my senses as she slammed into the circle. I fell to my knees, trying to ride out the backlash.

“Stop,” I said through gritted teeth. Not that she could hear me over her own wails.

“He lies,” she screamed, bashing her fist into my circle.

I squeezed my eyes shut as explosions of pain ripped through my psyche. The circle still held, but barely, and each reverberation felt like barbed wire scraping against the inside of my skull. My circles did a good job of keeping out ambient magical forces and keeping my own magic inside and separate from the distracting pull of grave essence beyond my barrier, but I wasn’t a strong enough spellcaster to erect a barrier that could withstand an assault by magical entities. And all fae were innately magical. I had to get the circle down before it overloaded and snapped.

“Rest now,” I told the shade as I pushed it back into its body.

Falin wrapped his arms around the queen, dragging her back and buying me a moment of peace to reclaim my heat from the corpse. Releasing my hold on the land of the dead, I narrowed the hole in my shields, but I didn’t close it completely—I wasn’t ready to be blind at the mercy of a raging queen.

Climbing to my feet, I approached the edge of the circle. Reaching out with my good arm, I dispelled the barrier. The haze of blue magic separating the rest of the world from my small circle of protected space popped. The sudden assault on my senses was jarring with my shields still open, but I was prepared for it, and forced my breathing to be measured, controlled, as I adjusted to the magical change.

“Bring him back,” the queen bellowed, struggling in Falin’s arms.

He held her firmly, but with a tenderness that caught me off guard. Usually it was easy to forget that they had been lovers once. Most of the time, when he looked at her, I saw barely restrained resentment. Now, with his arms crossed over her chest, pinning her back to his front, I saw only concern and pity.

“Bring him back this instant, planeweaver,” she yelled again, her voice echoing off the concrete walls of the mostly empty parking garage walls. “He lies.”

Now it was my turn to find this mad queen pitiable. Her nephew was behind the plot against her. That had to hurt. “Shades can’t lie, your majesty.”

“We have only your word for that fact.” She leaned forward against Falin’s arms, not exactly struggling, but moving toward me. “Maybe you are mortal enough to lie.”

I wasn’t, but saying as much would prove nothing. Ever try to prove to someone you can’t lie? Yeah, it doesn’t work. Now proving you can is easy enough, you just have to claim the sky is orange or some nonsense, but proving you can’t lie takes years of truths. So, I didn’t bother attempting to prove my own truthfulness.

“Rawhead was fae,” I said, ignoring the fact I was stating the obvious. “Even if human shades could lie—which they can’t—wouldn’t it stand to reason that fae shades couldn’t because fae can’t lie?”

She didn’t even pause before retorting with, “Death breaks oaths. Perhaps fae can lie after death.”

I sighed. A rational argument wasn’t going to work with an irrational person. The queen didn’t want to believe Ryese could be behind the plot against her. So she wouldn’t believe it.

Falin said something in a lyrical language I didn’t know. The language of the fae was beautiful and terrible all at once. I couldn’t understand the words he said, but I could feel the power in them. The words slid around my senses as smooth as silk—but with a cutting edge.

The queen sagged in Falin’s arms. She released a long breath that sounded wet with tears she hadn’t shed. I shot a questioning glance at Falin, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was whispering, the words that same language, but they had lost their edge, and now simply sounded gentle, comforting.

“Release me, Knight. Release me,” the queen said, her voice level, calm.

Falin had no choice, it was a direct command. Lyell moved to my side. His weapon had vanished, and his posture seemed relaxed, but his eyes betrayed his worry. I wasn’t sure if he was showing me support—or just making himself at hand if the queen instructed I be apprehended.

I tensed, but the queen remained still as Falin dropped his arms and backed away. She took several deep breaths before straightening. When she looked up, she appeared more like the distant, frosty queen I’d met during my first visits to Faerie. Oh, she was still disheveled, her skin still sickly and pulled too tight as if from a prolonged illness, but the fevered madness in her eyes had dimmed, her icy gaze cold and calculating once more. She nodded to Falin before scrutinizing both me and the sheet-covered corpse.

“My nephew is spoiled and lazy, but he isn’t without ambition,” she finally said. “I will carefully consider what has been revealed here, but I will not move forward against my own blood without more substantial proof. You are all forbidden to speak of this until the matter has been resolved.” She met the eyes of everyone there—which was difficult, as Maeve had drawn even farther from us and seemed to be avoiding eye contact.

I frowned. Not speaking of it would make further investigation difficult. I was running out of time. Even after consuming the energy of Rawhead’s ghost, the short ritual to speak to the shade had taken a lot out of me. I needed my tie to Faerie cemented.

Which meant I needed the queen to accept that I’d completed my task of revealing the alchemist sooner rather than later.

“Your majesty, do you dine with your nephew often?” I asked. After all, seven vials of Glitter couldn’t be all Ryese had concocted. Creating a panic among the humans helped damage her credibility and put pressure on her, but what if Ryese had made damn sure she’d break down under that pressure? If a full dose of Glitter caused humans to manifest their fear, what would prolonged small doses of the drug do to a fae? Paranoia, perhaps? A loss of control of the magics governing the court?

The queen bit her full lips, making them disappear into an uncertain line. “I am, perhaps, less than my normal self.”

She glanced down at hands that shook slightly. She flexed her fingers, staring at them as if not completely sure they belonged to her. Then the hilt of a sword appeared in her hand.

“Come. I will question my nephew.”