The Nightmare Garden

Draven, one chance to hope that I hadn’t accepted his vile compass and doomed everyone in the Brotherhood for nothing.

I’d visited the nightmare clock. I’d done what I’d come back to the Iron Land to do. Now where the hell was he? He’d always had a flair for the dramatic.

Draven pounded on the hull, and a black-clad Proctor slid open a small hatch, extending a set of steps that I guessed ran straight to Draven’s personal quarters. The Proctor shivered in the harsh wind sweeping across the glacier. “W-w-welcome back, sir.”

Draven reached back to pull me inside, and I decided all was lost, just before the vertigo gripped me and I fell to my knees.

Another gust blew snow across my eyes, and when they cleared, Tremaine stood before me. “Aoife …,” he started, and then his eyes fell on Draven and the gaping Proctor. “Oh.”

I stayed still, watching. Waiting to see what would happen. Draven stared, absolutely still, as did Tremaine. The Proctor was the first to move. He raised his rifle and aimed it at Tremaine, but the Fae was too quick. I watched, almost awed at his fluid movements as his silver knife slipped from its hiding place in his sleeve. He ducked behind the Proctor and drew the knife soundlessly across his throat.

The man dropped to the snow, a fan of crimson spreading from under his body and freezing on the ice. I stared, shrinking away from the corpse. Tremaine’s savagery always came as a shock—his face was so beautiful, you couldn’t see the cruelty in it until you looked into his eyes.

Draven raised his chin. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you, silver-blooded freak?”

“I don’t know,” Tremaine said with a grin. “Are you a smart man or a stupid one, human?” He wiped his knife on his sleeve, twice, and tucked it back into his sheath.

“Oh, come on, Draven,” I said, sensing my opening. “Surely you’re not going to let this Fae get away with that. After all …” I looked to Tremaine, hoping he’d pick up my cue. “The Head of the Proctors would never be worried by one Fae.”

Tremaine grinned at that, thin and cruel. “Oh,” he said. “So clever, Aoife, well done.”

Draven pulled his pistol, but it was already a losing proposition. The Fae was faster, stronger, angrier, and I watched the same way you’d watch a frog strike a fly. Tremaine pulled Draven close, disarmed him with a wet cracking sound in his wrist and spun him around, front to back. “I think we’re going to have a fine time together, Grey Draven,” he hissed. “My queen will be so pleased to meet you.”

“No.…” I watched Draven struggle, all the color draining from his face. “No, you can’t.…”

“See?” I told him. “I told you I wouldn’t help you. You should listen to me, Draven.” I stepped closer, looked into his eyes. “Maybe you’ll actually stay alive for more than a few minutes when I see you in the Thorn Land.”

Tremaine laughed when I stepped back from Draven, showing every one of his pointed teeth. “You’re more Fae than you admit, Aoife. And pursuant to that, you’d better get moving.” He gestured at the Dire Raven. “Go south and find your mother. The two of you belong at home.” He pointed to the sky, and far off, I saw a great blackness surrounded by a crimson corona, as if a blot had appeared on the surface of the faint Arctic sun.

The Old Ones. I hadn’t expected what I’d done. But I was also elated as I watched the tiny black dot in the sky. That meant the clock had worked. Somewhere, my mother was safe.

I looked back at Tremaine. “I told you, you’ll get us when I’m finished.” I could see from his frown this wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but I didn’t care. Everything Crow had said had been true. I did matter. I had the gift of the Gates, and all that implied. And it was a truth as vast as the encroaching objects in the sky, a truth that I was going to need time, possibly all the time I had left, to accept.

Now, however, I had to find Dean.

Tremaine dragged Draven back into the swirling vortex of magic that led to the Thorn Land, but I didn’t stay to watch. I didn’t need to be told twice that I’d made a miraculous escape from Draven. Feeling the soft whump of displaced air as Tremaine used the hexenring, I ran through Draven’s quarters toward the bowels of the ship, toward the cell where I’d last seen Dean.

Draven had gotten what he deserved. I didn’t feel sorry for him, and I never would.

“Aoife?” Dean stuck his hands through the bars when he saw me, and I ran up to him, clasping them in mine. “Hell, I thought I might never see you again,” he said.

“Course you would,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’d try for a snappy comeback, but I’ve waited long enough,” Dean said, and pulled me to him, kissing me through the bars. I took my time, the relief at seeing him alive and well making me feel like a puppet with its strings cut.

“You’re freezing,” I said when we finally broke apart.

“Funny, what with this being the Arctic and all,” Dean said. I searched the small brig until I found a spare set of keys for the cells, and a pair of mittens, goggles and a coat for Dean. He raised an eyebrow when I unlocked the cell.

“No magic tricks?” he asked.

I shook my head, tucking the keys into my coat. “It’s a long story. I can’t do the things I used to.” At least, not without possibly scrambling my brains like an egg, and that was a chance I’d be just as content not to take.

“Are you all right?” Dean said, staring at me anxiously until he pulled down the goggles over his eyes and obscured his gaze behind reflective glass.

“I think I am, actually,” I said, and reached out to take his mittened hand. I didn’t know how we were going to get home, and I didn’t know what we’d find when we got there, but for once I’d done something right.

“Good,” Dean said. “Can we please get the hell out of here? I’ve been in that cell for days.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s probably a good idea.”

Dean flicked a glance at the sky when we were outside. “You hear that? The droning? It’s been going on for a while now.” He turned his eyes back to me. “What in stars is going on here, Aoife?”

“I’ll tell you everything, I promise,” I said. “As soon as we’re away from here.” When the sun came up, the Dire Raven could probably fly. Probably. It was a big ship, and getting enough lift in the freezing air would be a trick. I wasn’t too worried about the remaining Proctors. Whoever was still alive would just be grateful to be headed away from this terrible, barren place and away from the slowly spreading stain in the sky. I would be, if I were them.

“Not soon enough for me,” Dean said, and shivered. I tugged at him.

“Come on. Let’s at least get back inside the ship, until it’s warm enough to try and fly out of here.”

“Right behind you,” Dean said. “Just glad to be breathing free air again.”

Nobody in the prisoner line paid us much attention, nor did the Proctors, who were all running around trying to find Draven. Good luck on that one, I thought, not without happiness. The Iron Land was a better place without Grey Draven in it.

Harold Crosley saw me again, pointed at the sky with his shackled hands and screamed, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You stupid girl! You’ve killed the world! All the worlds!”

It happened so fast that I wouldn’t have had time to react, even if I’d known what was coming. I played it over and over in my head during the next few days, but I could never find any other conclusion.

Crosley snatched a gun from a nearby Proctor with his manacled hands. He aimed at me, screaming wordlessly. A weight hit me from the side, throwing me down onto the ice, and there was a blinding green flash as the pistol spoke. I screamed, thinking I’d been shot, but when I looked down expecting a burnt hole in my guts, there was just my dingy white coat, my mittened hands clutching the fabric.

“No …,” I whispered, looking to Dean.

He said, “Aoife,” and I turned to see him fall, not all at once but first to his knees, and then to a curious, folded position, his mittens pressed against a dark, wet spot on his stomach. I screamed again, and kept screaming as I rushed to him and tried to cradle his head. Behind us, the Proctors disarmed Crosley and beat him savagely with their truncheons, but it didn’t matter. Dean was still bleeding, and I was still screaming.

Dean coughed, a small sound against the wind, and I pushed his goggles up before pulling off my mitten with my teeth to stanch the bleeding. Dean had gone white, and a thin line of blood so dark it was nearly black dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

“You’ll be all right,” I said desperately. He had to be. Had to be all right, despite the ghostliness of his