Page 33 of The Iron Sword

“Ash.” Meghan’s voice was quiet, not disapproving, but concerned. “We can’t harm any humans while we’re here,” she said. “Even if they have the Sight, or are working with these new type of fey. We can’t start killing mortals. Not when there are other ways to deal with them.”

I didn’t answer. Years ago, before I’d met Meghan, human lives meant very little to me. As the Unseelie prince, I had killed mortals with the same callousness that I’d shown the beasts I hunted. That all changed after I met the half-human daughter of Oberon, fallen in love, and gained a soul, but I still remembered how easy it was to kill a mortal. How I could snuff the life from them with a flick of my hand. In the years of ruling the Iron Realm with Meghan, that ruthlessness had faded, but, I was quickly discovering, it wasn’t completely gone.

Puck sighed. “Well, like ice-boy said, we’re not gonna learn anything standing out here,” he stated. Glancing at InSite’s glass doors, he gave an exaggerated shudder and rubbed his hands. “Let’s do this thing. The sooner we go in, the sooner we can see how badly we need to panic.”

Nothing stopped us as we walked up the front steps of InSite to the glass doors of the building. Nightmare piskies hissed and fled from us, their wings buzzing like giant wasps as they disappeared around the walls and over the roof. I did spot a security camera tucked away in a corner, watching the front entrance, but mortal technology couldn’t pick up the fey, even unglamoured; it certainly wouldn’t see us now.

The sliding glass doors were locked, as it was fully dark now, though lights still glowed from somewhere inside. The only evidence that this was, indeed, InSite’s headquarters were the letters on the doors indicating such.

“Locked, huh?” Puck muttered, observing the glass barrier critically. “Good thing it’s glass, then.” He glanced at Nyx, standing silently behind him. “Just out of curiosity, were you around before glass was invented? You know how to get through this, right?”

Nyx gave a tiny smile. “I know what glass is, Goodfellow. I am notthatold. Incidentally, I know what salt is, too. Though it appears that putting a line of salt across the windowsill has fallen out of favor.”

“I know, right? Lucky for us.” Puck rubbed his hands together, and the air around him shimmered with magic. “Let’s see. Been a while since I’ve done this, but I think the human expression is: like riding a bike? Once you learn how, it never goes away—”

“Stop talking and just go, Puck,” I growled at him.

At our feet, Grimalkin sniffed. “I would save your breath, prince,” he sighed. “I have been saying the same thing for millennia, and he only seems to get worse.”

“Jeez, impatient much, you two?” Puck raised his arm and pressed a palm against the door. Glancing at Nyx, he grinned conspiratorially. “These are also the two that are constantly annoyed when I leap before I look. I don’t think they know what they want, really.”

“Puck...”

“Keep your frosty hat on, prince. I’m going.” He took a step, and for a moment the doors rippled slightly, like heat waves in the sun, as Puck passed through the glass and stepped into the building.

Nyx followed, though I noticed she briefly closed her eyes as she went through, an older technique where the belief was that if they didn’t see the barrier, it didn’t exist. I pulled my glamour to me and passed through with Meghan, my magic leaving patterns of frost against the glass for a few seconds after we were through. Grimalkin sauntered in behind us like the door wasn’t even there.

As soon as we were through the door, the building changed.

I jerked to a halt as we stepped through the glass and saw the rest of the group stop as well, gazing around in wary confusion. At first glance, the inside of the building was just as drab and unremarkable as the outside. The front lobby was brightly lit, and there was a human sitting at a welcome desk, though, of course, he didn’t see four faeries and a cat pass right through the front doors. It wasn’t the room itself that caused the shiver down my spine, but what lay beyond.

Just past the desk and the walls, the vague outline of stony ruins, covered in trees and vines, entwined throughout the room, like two photographs that had been merged together. They flickered and rippled like mirages, not completely there, shimmering in and out of existence. You couldn’t see them clearly; if I stared directly at the desk, all I saw was a human hunched over a computer screen. But from the corner of my eye, I could just make out the existence of another place, like a sunspot that kept moving the more you focused on it.

There were also nightmare piskies everywhere, in both realities, it seemed, perched on fake plants, crawling along branches, and clinging to the ceiling. Several hovered around the single human at the desk, who was currently not paying attention to the door or the bizarre half-real landscape around him. His eyes were glued to the computer screen, his shoulders hunched in concentration, as the sounds of shouting and artificial gunfire echoed over the speakers.

Meghan gazed around in confusion and shock. “What’s happened here?” she wondered. “What is this place?”

“No idea, princess,” Puck muttered. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and that’s saying something.”

I stared at the two realities, as Meghan continued to gaze around the room. “Are we back in Faery?” she asked. “It’s like we’re in two places at once.”

Nyx suddenly drew in a breath. “Two places at once,” she whispered. “This...this is the site of an anchor. We must be on the mortal side. The other place—” she gazed around in wonder “—must exist somewhere in the Between.”

“Yes,” Grimalkin said solemnly. “I believe that is correct. What we are seeing now is the reflection of both worlds, overlapping because the anchor exists in both places at once.”

A shout rang out from the human behind the desk. Abruptly, he straightened with an extremely violent expletive, throwing the mouse to the other side of the desk, where it clattered loudly against a pen holder. The piskies surrounding him hissed and chattered in seeming glee, and the rest of the piskies in the room buzzed their wings, giving the disturbing impression that the building was full of wasps.

I felt the anger of the room spike, felt my own violent nature rise up in response. For a moment, the fury was suffocating; my head was suddenly filled with images of stalking up to the human, grabbing his skull, and slamming it into his keyboard.He works for InSite, whispered the dark voice within.He’s an enemy, a threat to everything you care about. Destroy him.

I pushed down the urges. Attacking a hapless human employee, even if he did work for InSite, would get us no closer to our objective. Even if part of me was sorely tempted.

“Well, he seems fun,” Puck commented, as the oblivious mortal retrieved his mouse, muttering under his breath the entire time. The piskies in the room, however, stared at us balefully and bared their fangs at his voice. “Playing games on company time, how shameful. Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to know anything about our Evenfey friends.”

“Probably not,” Meghan agreed. “So, there are humans working for InSite that don’t seem to know about the fey, even though they’re sitting in the Between.” She observed the human for another moment, then shook her head. “Something is definitely here, though. The glamour aura of this place is scary. And there’s something...below us.” She paused a moment, as if sensing something we could not, then shivered. “I think we have to go deeper.”

“I only see one hallway,” Puck pointed out, nodding to the corridor beside the security desk. “Probably going to lead us right into a death trap, so that’s something to look forward to.” A swarm of nightmare piskies suddenly fluttered from the hallway, buzzing around the room and making him wrinkle his nose. “Oh, this is gonna get so much worse, isn’t it?”

Cautiously, we moved down the hall. The dim corridor stretched before us, flanked by wooden doors that probably led to offices or conference rooms. But from the corner of my eye, I saw crumbling walls choked with moss and vines, and stone pillars lying shattered against the walls. The scene flickered in and out, like the horror movies Meghan was still fond of.

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