she looks down and smiles. “Your vision told him where she is, and now he is gone. He will not return before sunrise. Melody is far, far away.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“He told me to stay here. Keep you safe.” She looks at me and cocks her head to the side. “Weak, Vivienne. You are very, very weak.”
I struggle to standing and sway on the spot. I ignore her words and scan the field, though I can’t see anything past the edge of the circle.
“Where is he?” I ask again. “I have to find him.”
“You won’t,” she says. Everything in her voice says that this is precisely where she wants me to be. Dread creeps through my veins like ice. Is she teamed up with Penelope? Was this just some elaborate ploy to get me out of the way?
Lilith puts Poe on the ground and stands in one fluid motion. Even though she’s still in her white dress, even though she hasn’t grown and her hair is still tied back with a ribbon, she looks different, looks more in control of something I can’t place. And whatever that is, it’s terrifying. She steps right up to me, staring up into my eyes, pinning me like a serpent. “He told me to keep you here. Keep you safe. Safe with me.” She sings the last bit, the childish tune frighteningly at odds with her somber stare.
Rage boils inside of me, burning away the fear. Anger at him, anger at her, anger at all of them for fucking me over. Everyone’s been playing with me. Everyone. I’m not going to be played like this any longer. Fire burns.
I don’t think. I swing.
My fist connects perfectly with Lilith’s cheek, knocking her backward a couple steps. She staggers and Poe is hissing at her feet, but Lilith flicks a hand down in a
“There’s the fire,” she says. “Let’s watch it burn.” She lunges forward and tackles me.
She knocks me to the ground and we roll. Stars flash across my vision as she punches me in the face. I gag as her knee connects to my gut. For having a twelve-year-old’s body, she fights like a heavyweight. But the rolling momentum carries and then I’m on top of her, slamming my fist into her face over and over before she flips us over and elbows me in the jaw. In one frighteningly smooth motion, she pins my arms to my chest. There’s more blood on her face, but she’s laughing. There’s a madness inside of her that makes my rage flicker. I know that look. There’s no amount of pain in the world I could inflict on her; she will always, always come back for more. Until one of us is dead.
“Oh, Vivienne,” she says. “This is why he’ll never choose you. You’re nothing. Mortal. Weak.” She sniffs and stretches her neck. “It would be so easy to fake your death, you know. A tragic accident. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d never even suspect.”
I try to swallow the blood in my mouth but the iron makes me want to gag. She leans in close to my ear. “You are very lucky we are currently on the same side. Otherwise it would be so, so simple to dispose of you.”
Poe hisses by our side and Lilith jerks her attention to the field. Something rustles in the undergrowth. Something chuckles. The sun has set, the horizon fading to hues of fiery pink and orange.
Then, something takes flight, a streak of fire that arcs high overhead. We both watch it fly, watch as it curves to the other horizon. There’s a flash of light when it falls out of sight and then another flies a similar path. Then another. Arrows.
Lilith and I look at each other. Her eyes go wide and the fire inside both of us vanishes.
The Summer Fey have arrived. We’re already too late.
Chapter Seventeen: ’Til The World Ends
We run through the corn, Lilith in the lead, me right behind her, cutting a straight line toward the tent. As we get closer, I can hear the screams. We burst from the field into a scene that makes my blood run cold.
The chapiteau is in flames.
Streaks of arrows are flinging down toward the tent like burning birds, the whistle and howl of arrow and flame growing louder by the moment. The grey and blue canvas is peeling and ripping as flames eat it alive. Lilith and I stop and stare in horror. Arrows are ricocheting off the trailers, sticking into the ground like fiery voodoo pins. Others have found flesh. There are two bodies in flames on the ground, but we aren’t close enough to see who they are. I don’t want to know. I don’t want those memories burned into my head.
Everything is chaos. Everything is fire.
Then I hear a voice, one that roars over the inferno and turns the air to ice.
“WHO DARES?”
Mab appears in front of the tent in a swirl of blue light and smoke. She hovers above the ground, easily three times her normal height, the top of her head level with the flaming pinnacle of the big top. Shadows swarm around her in a serpentine dance and her eyes are emerald coals. She is every nightmare combined. Just the sight of her pulls at the darkest corners of my imagination, makes my skin crawl and fills my blood with the need to flee. I nearly drop to my knees.
“WHO DARES ATTACK THE COURT OF QUEEN MAB?”
A gust of wind answers, the sound of chimes and summer breezes.
I turn around to see a golden apparition floating above the cornfield, a man made of liquid light with a halo of brilliance behind his head. His eyes are sapphire, and when he speaks, I feel my veins pulse with life, feel the very earth shiver with expectation.
“I am Oberos, prince of the Summer Court. I am here on the king’s behalf to deliver this message: Queen Mab — you and your Court are under direct violation of the Blood Autumn Treaty. You have knowingly harbored the daemon known as Kassia. As such, the Treaty is broken, and your Court shall pay in blood until Kassia is released or killed.”
“IF IT’S BLOOD YOU WANT, IT’S BLOOD YOU SHALL HAVE. WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL THE FIELDS ARE SOAKED IN SUMMER’S TEARS.”
The sky above us darkens at her cry.
“So be it,” Oberos says. The fields erupt in screams and howls.
More arrows fly through the air, but Mab’s on top of things this time. She raises a hand to the sky, flames of blue shadow leaping from her fingertips and dancing above the tent. The arrows strike the shield and vanish. A second later she disappears from the sky, appearing in front of me in the blink of an eye.
“Where is she?” she asks.
“Who?”
“Melody!” she yells. Her face is pale as a skull and her teeth are razor sharp. I want to curl up and die.
“I don’t know,” I say. A Summer Faerie leaps out of the corn behind us, humanoid and stick-like, a sickle in its hands. I duck as it swings for my head, but in a flash of light, Mab freezes it solid. It shatters in a thousand pieces when its foot hits the ground. “Kingston…he went after her. He used my visions to find her.”
Mab’s eyes flare in anger and I wait for the finishing blow. It never comes.
“We’ll speak of this later. If you survive,” she hisses, and then vanishes.
Next thing I know, there’s another mob of Summer Fey scrambling from the corn behind me. I don’t wait another second; I run. Lilith’s right ahead of me as we gun it toward the trailers and the illusion of safety, though I have no doubt in my mind that we are royally fucked. The Summer Court is closing in on all sides, fey of every sort running toward the troupe with bloodlust in their eyes. They take all shapes, from centaurs and twiggy dryads to floating balls of light and winged pixie girls. Even the ones that look like they should be stuck in someone’s garden have bloodlust in their eyes and make my blood run cold. We’re outnumbered. Horribly.
