The Nightmare Garden

crackled and crunched as emaciated Fae walked about the room. From the stone platform rose a throne woven from long, curved bones and crowned with the three-inch pointed teeth of some predatory animal. I stared, unable to look away. Atop this vicious creation, on a pale blue silk pillow, sat the small, fair-haired figure I recognized as Octavia—the Winter Queen.

When I’d last seen the queen, lying in her cursed glass coffin, she’d looked around my age, but with her eyes open she looked like some sort of alien creature, eyes ancient and fathomless as a piece of meteorite. She had the same unearthly skin as the girls, and hair so fine it looked like spun wire. It trailed from a high pompadour to hang down her back in a long braid woven with some sort of thorny vine. Her crown was more bones, bones and blackened teeth that were not pointed, but rather, looked human. I elected to stare just behind her instead of looking at that unearthly oval face for one more second. If I stared into the queen’s eyes much longer, I knew I’d simply start screaming, as mindless as anyone locked in a madhouse.

She raised one delicate hand and beckoned me closer. Her nails were pure white and clawlike. Her teeth, like Tremaine’s, were needles, and a droplet of silver sat on the end of her tongue when she smiled wide at me. Her tongue was shockingly red in comparison to her complexion; the whole effect made me think of a sleepy predator that had just woken and scented blood. My blood. I didn’t move—there was no way I was getting closer than I absolutely had to.

The same kind of silver jewelry ran up both ears and sat in her delicate white eyebrows as she raised them in displeasure at my insolence. “Tremaine,” she said, and though we were at least twenty feet away and she wasn’t shouting, I heard her bell-clear. She beckoned with one talon-tipped finger. “Bring her here.”

Tremaine shoved me forward, hissing, “When the queen calls, you obey.”

It was the last thing in the world I would have done willingly, but having been commanded, I walked to the end of the dais, drawing the stare of every Fae in the cavernous room. Whispers went up among them, but I focused on the Winter Queen. Those terrible eyes never blinked, not once. Her lips were the only color on her face, stained to the exact red of blood. When her silver-crowned tongue darted out and licked a spot of the color away, I realized that at least some of it was blood.

Fear was something I was getting used to pushing away, to be felt later, when I could deal with it on my terms. But I couldn’t push this away. What I felt looking at the Winter Queen wasn’t like a cut or a scrape but a mortal wound.

I’d never felt such a vibration rolling off a living creature—if Octavia was alive. She didn’t look it, not really. Something was filling up the beautiful vessel sitting before me, making it walk and talk and gesture, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was only renting the space, not inhabiting the flesh.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Aoife,” Octavia said. One slippered foot poked from under her voluminous, airy white, black and red skirts. The foot shoved a silken floor pillow toward me. “Sit.”

This seemed more like exposing my throat as if I were a vulnerable animal than sitting, but I did as she said. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I was openly defiant.

The pillow silk felt cool, and the marble against the backs of my legs nearly burned with cold. I looked up at Octavia, who was even more terrifying from this vantage point. “I know what you said, but I have to ask: are you going to kill me?”

“Kill you!” she exclaimed, and let out a laugh like the croaking of a crow. “Why would I do such a thing?” She looked at Tremaine. “You haven’t been nice, have you? You’re never nice.”

“Aoife is only a changeling, Your Majesty,” he said. “I’m not required to be nice.”

“She’s a beautiful present, is what she is,” Octavia said. “And you’ve done well by bringing her here. But if you lay a hand on her again, Tremaine …” Her perfect, frozen face moved into a frown that made her look like a wild animal. “I won’t be happy. Do you understand?”

Tremaine tensed, leaning away from her anger. “Yes, madam.”

All at once, she was back to being regal and expressionless. “Good.”

I watched the exchange, fascinated. So there was something Tremaine was afraid of, someone he had to take orders from. I didn’t blame him for his fear—Octavia would be intimidating no matter what the context, never mind when she was perched on her throne like a carrion bird atop a tombstone.

Octavia turned to me once more. “My dear, you must be calm. You saved my life, and I have no intention of harming you in return. Contrary to the stories, my sister the Summer Queen is the one who keeps changelings as pets.”

I must have frowned, because she let out another laugh. “Oh, you didn’t know that, did you? Yes, the Summer Court builds wonderful things that gleam and glitter in the sun. But to do that you need silver and gems, and to get them you need slaves.” She gestured at the room. “Do you see one goblin—pardon me, Erlkin—enslaved here?”

“No,” I said softly, not knowing where this conversation was going, but fairly sure it was nowhere pleasant.

Tremaine rapped his knuckles against the back of my head. “No, Majesty,” he snarled. “Show some bloody respect to your betters.”

I whirled on him, furious, but Octavia beat me to it, rising to her feet with a sound like a dozen crows taking flight. “Enough,” she growled at Tremaine. “Your temper is your undoing. Every time.”

Tremaine scrambled back, dipping his head. “Forgive me, Majesty. I was only thinking of your position.”

I saw my chance to perhaps buy myself a little goodwill with the queen, here where Tremaine was cowed and couldn’t smirk or talk over me. “I know Tremaine told you I broke the Gates on my own,” I said. “That I screwed up when I destroyed the Engine and sent the power to Thorn to break your curse.” I stood as well, even though Octavia towered over me when she was upright. If I was going to meet my fate, it would happen while I was standing. “But I didn’t know,” I said. “And all I know now is that if they aren’t fixed, soon the Proctors will have control of the Gates, and complete supremacy over all the Iron Land. They’re already figuring out how to use them. How long until they start trying to conquer Thorn? As it is,” I said, realizing that this, more than anything, might get me out of Thorn, “any of your people, your creatures who come through the cracks, will be trapped there.”

Octavia raised one of those almost invisible, perfect eyebrows, but she didn’t make a move to shut me up, so I kept talking. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tremaine’s face heating to crimson with rage, but I ignored him. Octavia was my chance to get out of the Thorn Land unscathed.

“Permanently,” I rushed on. “Forever. The Proctors and the Brotherhood of Iron used to work together, and if another Storm happens, it’ll unite them again. They’ll close the Gates for good and trap whoever is still there, and the creatures of the Mists besides. Your hexenrings won’t work, because the Proctors are smart enough to lace all their vulnerable spots with iron. Your people wouldn’t be able to travel anywhere. You’d have Thorn and Thorn only.” I stopped, my heart thudding, and waited for Octavia to either rip my throat out or pass her judgment.

Octavia cut her eyes to Tremaine. “Truth?”

“Of course not!” Tremaine sputtered. “Majesty, nothing of this nature is certain. The problems with the Gates, the issues we’ve had casting hexenrings, they’re almost certainly aberrations that can be fixed.” He jabbed a finger at me. “Besides, I know for a fact this little half-blooded bitch lies as easily as she breathes.”

I glared at him. Nothing he said could touch me now. I’d taken the leap off the cliff, and I’d either fly or fall. Name-calling didn’t matter.

“This ‘half-blooded bitch’ saved my life,” Octavia snapped at Tremaine. “She saved all of Thorn from devastation. Or have you forgotten so quickly the very wheels you set in motion?” She pointed one of her bony fingers at him. “And when you talk of half-bloods, Tremaine, you are talking of the offspring of my dear sister. The loss of whom, as you know, I mourn every day. I look harshly on those who would criticize her.”

“You can’t only take the word of this—” Tremaine started.

“I am the queen!” Octavia jumped from the dais in a fluid motion and advanced on Tremaine, who scuttled backward faster than any bottom-feeding ghoul exposed to light. “And you, while loyal, are nothing more than a servant. Do you understand me, Tremaine? You got Aoife to help us, and therefore you are responsible for what she’s wrought.”

Abruptly, she turned from Tremaine and moved toward me, folding her arms and looking almost conciliatory. I just stayed as still as possible, the way I would have if I’d been faced with a hungry wolf.