Chapter Twenty-Nine - Teresa

  Inside me, the vast thing rustled. Something about Agatha’s words had echoed down into the hole inside me that it had nestled within. It glanced out, sending a pulse of sadness shooting through me, before it pulled back. A vague image of Grandpa came from it, complete with a garbled rendition of our first and only ‘conversation’, before it shrank deeper down inside me. There, it shut whatever equivalent it had to eyes.

  It was…

  It was definitely mourning. I kept my eyes down as we trudged along the paths – focusing on the floor and trying to calm down and ground myself in my own emotions. Putting that little remove between what it was feeling and what I was feeling had to be my next step - building on the disconnect the armor and spear had started.

  The process was a little bit difficult. Something qualitative had shifted, here, and the mood pressed down from outside, instead of just welling up from within. Even the few shining, terrifying, nauseating Faeries I could see in glimpses from the side had gone quieter.

  Even withdrawn and shut away like my passenger was – they felt heavier. Spreading out from the little hole they usually sat in, like they wanted to be here but couldn’t bear it. It made them feel more real, more present. Like there was just that little bit more weight in each limb, more oomph to each movement, and a touch more impact on the world. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn that ash drifted down whenever I swung my arms, or that my feet left small burns that faded away before I could focus on them.

  Agatha and the girl whose name I still didn’t have – they didn’t do anything like that. They walked without a sound or a trace. The part of me that wasn’t busy trying to wall off my mind tried to think rationally about what it meant that everyone we passed, and everyone else behind the intermittent curtain of amber sap, was watching me.

  The emotions and tepid, feathery warmth seeping up through the connection in my chest threatened to drown me with guilt. Reminding me how I’d snapped at the girl, threatened her, and never apologized. She had to be in a situation just like me. I’d turned on Agatha who’d only tried to help. She wasn’t right - she couldn’t be, because none of the facets of me could stand if he was in the right - but that didn’t make it her fault.

  Everything wrong - from the stuttering beat of my heart to the pain in my left hand and on through the scars I could still feel stretching just that slightest bit differently under the armor - it all went back to him.

  The Faerie we were moving to meet.

  A probing, questioning, half formed impulse bubbled up from my passenger. My…friend?

  Fire. For a heartbeat, before I reacted and swatted it away, red rimmed in gold was all I could see. All I could think about. It was hot, so hot that I broke into a sweat until something in the armor clicked. A chill rippled out from the chestpiece, goosebumps racing behind it as whatever nested inside me sank back into sulking or grieving or mourning.

  This place belonged to it. Or it had belonged to this place? I didn’t know, but it wasn’t my place. Extra distance gave me the space to finally partition things in my head and push down the fear and anger I’d been running on. I could be strong. I could make it through this. This thing, this tree, it had survived whatever happened, and so would I. Tammy could manage it - even now, I trusted her. After everything, I couldn’t forget the look in her eyes as things fell apart. The terror, the pain, the desperation.

  She wouldn’t just abandon me. Reaffirming that and my resolve - it was like a weight fell off my chest. Breath came easier as I finally looked around.

  It wasn’t totally silent here – the river of sap below us gurgled in thick tones and off-tune sloshes. The size of this was well and truly stunning. This was a wound that had killed, or doomed, or something the House. A giant tree, like a world or a city on its own. As big or bigger than what had loomed on the horizon during my run.

  So massive that even now, it still hadn’t truly died. Not completely, or in ways that mattered. The paths, the platforms, the half-walled rooms – whatever had burned this place away wouldn’t have spared them. Maybe they weren’t new growth, since the charred surface covered everything – but they still emerged seamlessly from the walls.

  It made me wonder if the thing inside me was even alive, by my standards.

  The internal musings, the sadness, and my passenger’s attention all faded when we left the gallery. It was just a simple archway, nothing magical in it that I could see, but stepping through sent the somber acceptance and philosophy to the back of my mind.

  What took its place was a hollow, queasy acceptance. It wasn’t so easy to trust in Tammy and my own strength now. Especially not as we stepped up to a massive pair of glittering, untarnished silver doors.

  “It will be ok, Ma’am. Just follow instructions and they won’t hurt you.”

  Agatha put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel it even through the armor. Like her fingers were pressing into my bare skin as I twitched away.

  Deep breaths. Deep breaths. I was strong.

  The other girl went up. There was no way she could even move a door that size, but the second her hands touched the wrought handles it swung inward. Like a breaking seal, everything hit at once.

  A wall of sound and shifting, dancing light poured from the opening. The juxtaposition from the silence to this made it almost painful, rather than just startling. I stumbled back, off balance, and slammed the butt of my spear into the ground on instinct. The wood parted around the base and it sank in, jerking me to a stop as the sound died to a distant, dull rumble.

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  When I raised my head, I was staring down six Fae. The two servants were frozen in deep bows while I stood here like a deer in the headlights. Or maybe a fly, caught in a spider's web. Thick strands of magic bound me to each one of the inhuman things, like links in a chain that burned white hot like they’d just been pulled from a forge.

  My stomach lurched as I tried my best to school my face and shut off that painful layer of the sight. That was when one of the Faeries began to clap. This close, not running – I could tell this one was just ever so slightly feminine. So were three of the others – only the last one and him were masculine.

  “Excellent! The Grower’s list of failures grew so long – I thought I’d not see such a sight again!”

  I couldn’t hide the flinch at her voice. It was ingrained into me from the chase that when they spoke – I should run.

  Their smiles, collectively, began to show teeth as I fought back that instinct.

  “I believe mortals are wont to say, ‘history repeats itself’.”

  “No no, that’s not right. It has something to do with rhyming.”

  “Feh – as if mortals could see more of the Weave than their own arses.”

  They still, mostly, wore the same colors – silver and black and dirty brown – from before. Their clothes, though, had changed. Before, they’d been in shifting silk and charred leather like a foxhunter. Nearly interchangeable, by intent. Now, they'd made themselves distinctive.

  As they devolved into more bickering, it struck me that the faded roar in the background was people. Talking, singing, laughing. Drowning out faint strains of music and the rhythmic thudding of feet. The new outfits – they were dressed to impress. With me, they just hadn’t cared. Now they were here to show me off. And the thing that stood out most?

  Was my stage fright. All the compartmentalization and armor in the world couldn’t change that I was terrified of being the center of attention.

  Two were in dresses that cascaded to the ground and rippled in a wind I couldn’t feel. One, a silvery silk run through with black veins. The other, their inverse – silver veins shooting through black. Their arms were wrapped in strands of pebbly leather, either dyed or burnt to match. Dark, twisted wood curled around their eyes, the branches or roots or whatever they were snaking back and into the complex braids of their hair to rise into wing-tips that didn’t look like any bird I’d ever seen.

  Somehow they still felt familiar. Something inside me ached at seeing them.

  The other two feminine ones – I think – were in something similar to me. Strips of leather and wood formed cages around their torso that, if I squinted, looked kind of like a breastplate. Drooping vines that were charred to the point of falling apart wove together into a skirt on each of them, nearly dragging the ground. The same wooden masks as the first two adorned their heads, and all that told them apart was their hair. The one furthest left had a ribbon of what looked like the sky threaded along theirs. It was robin’s-egg blue, complete with wisps of cloud that shifted as I watched. The other’s ribbon was the roiling grey and purple of a thunderstorm, complete with flashes of lightning that lanced out soundlessly.

  I could smell just the faintest hint of ozone, as if it were a real storm. A thin trickle of wetness ran down from its lower point, an aesthetic trail of dark fluid that never made it out from under their mask.

  The masculine one was closest to me. He sat out the bickering argument, mouth set in an amused line. What he wore was a full suit of plate armor. All of it was tarnished silver, shifting filigree and engravings writhing across it. They seemed to favor trees and wings, but at least once I saw a screaming, desperate face stare out at me. The only things he wore that gleamed were the bare metal of a massive sword on his back and the spikes of silver intertwined with his own mask of wood.

  When I blinked, I saw that wasn’t quite true. On his right wrist – in fact, on all six of theirs – the hall’s light glinted off an intricately grown or carved or something crystal. Every time I blinked; it changed colors. I tightened my grip on the spear when I saw it. It looked like his hands, except the colors were there and vivid. Living.

  The last one I avoided looking at. It was Him.

  Fearghal.

  “Satisfactory work, once more. You are dismissed, Chosen Agatha and…other.”

  Their bows deepened, though the girl wobbled on her feet. She didn’t meet my eyes as she hustled away. Agatha just gave me a small nod as she vanished through a small wooden door that hadn’t been there before.

  “Just a single finishing touch to add, and then we may begin.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I liked it even less when I tried to turn my head back towards the Fae and it didn’t move. That, by itself, was enough to warn me that something was going to happen next. Something I just knew I’d hate – that they’d do specifically to belittle or humiliate me. Dominance games that he’d decided to play after earlier.

  “This Seedling is a fine representation of the Corpse Grower’s work, wouldn’t you all agree? Proper polish and presentation, my friends, have ever been able to perform wonders. It may be a shallow portrayal of what it pretends to be in the armor so generously gifted to it, but even a seedling can come into bloom. Now it just needs to be made clear who owns it.”

  There was no warning. No reaching hands, no footsteps, no sign that he’d moved. Just the cold, hard touch of something on my neck.

  Then a click.

  The cold vanished after a moment, alongside the pressure. All that it left was a vague weight, an assurance that something I couldn’t see was locked tightly against my skin. It was so obvious, though. I’d seen some of Tammy’s porn, before. That click, the pressure, the clinking…

  It was a collar.

  “Perfection, if I dare say so.”

  The other Fae chorused their agreement. Their smiles didn’t twist this time. The seemingly genuine emotion on the faces I was used to seeing twisted into violent sneers felt wrong. Worse was the way I couldn’t even bring myself to feel angry, or scared, or ashamed. All of that – it was overshadowed by acceptance and resignation. This had happened and was going to keep happening, until I figured out something I could do.

  “Are you ready, little Seedling?”

  I stood up a little straighter. Moved my spear into an upright position. Doing that – it felt right. Filthy and like I was admitting defeat, but right. Fearghal himself came into view as I did. In one hand, he held a loop of braided silver. From it, a fine silver chain sloped down. Then up.

  A twitch of his hand and I felt myself bow. That was forced – I couldn’t stop it if I tried. My lips moved almost of their own accord. Almost.

  I felt sick doing it, but I was sure the words were mine. I had to play along with his rules. Even when doing it made me die a little inside.

  “Yes, Master.”