Page 7 of The Iron Sword

I could feel the menace in the air, the violent glamour flickering around the humans, prodding my own anger to life. On the girl’s shoulder, the piskie-esque creature crouched like an enormous winged spider, dark wisps curling from its body to writhe into nothingness on the breeze.

Suddenly, its head jerked up. The tiny eyeless face swiveled in our direction, and its waspish wings buzzed in alarm. Curling its lips back, the creature bared thin, needle-like teeth in a snarl that stretched all the way around its head, then darted into the air. Zipping over the roof of a building, it vanished from sight.

The second it left, the air of tension and anger around the trio of humans faded. The girl stood there a moment, blinking, then stepped forward and grabbed the boy’s arm, trying to tug him away. Almost in relief, the males backed down. Though they continued to threaten and posture, it was just to save face now, and gradually, the gap between them widened as they moved away from each other. Finally, the humans turned and went in opposite directions, leaving Puck and I to gaze after them in rising concern at what we had just witnessed.

“Well, that was...highly disturbing,” Puck remarked as we returned to Meghan and Nyx. “Did you guys see what I did, or am I just imagining things?”

“That creature,” Nyx mused, staring in the direction the piskie thing had fled, “was both radiating anger and feeding off it. When it left, the humans both backed down.”

“Just like the Monster we fought,” I added darkly. “But now they’re here, in the real world.”

“But where did it come from?” Meghan wondered. “That creature wasn’t anything from the Nevernever. Is this an entirely new breed of faery no one has noticed until now?”

Once again, Nyx frowned, looking both thoughtful and frustrated. “Itwasfey,” she admitted. “I could feel it. And it was...familiar somehow. Like I’ve seen it before, though I can’t remember from where.” She thought a moment longer, than shook her head. “Or perhaps not. I can’t seem to recall anything about it.”

“I think,” Grimalkin said from somewhere behind us, “that these are questions that we need to pose to Leanansidhe. Perhaps she knows about the comings and goings of these fey in the real world and can tell us more. Which is what we were planning to do in the first place before you all became predictably distracted. This way.” The cat yawned, waving his tail as he glanced back at us. “If you are finished talking and would follow me, the trod to her mansion is not far.”

4

LEANANSIDHE’S ULTIMATUM

“Hello, darlings,” the Exile Queen greeted from atop her double grand staircase. Tall and pale, in a glittering evening gown and holding a cigarette flute between two gloved fingers, Leanansidhe the Dark Muse beamed down at us, strands of copper-bright hair floating around her face. “My goodness, today is a momentous day indeed. The Iron Queen, the son of Mab, Robin Goodfellow, the Lady’s assassin, and Grimalkin all decide to pay me a visit at the same time?” She gave us a brittle, razor-sharp smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I stifled a flare of impatience. Dealing with the Exile Queen would be the same as dealing with every powerful faery in the Nevernever: with bargains and word games and each player trying to one-up the other. There was always a price. Always a deal to be worked out, no matter how simple or vital the information. I was growing tired of it. Furthermore, that Unseelie part of myself, the side I hadn’t felt in a while, was growing tired as well. In the past, I’d made bargains with Leanansidhe and paid her price because I had to. Now, with Keirran’s life on the line, I wasn’t nearly as inclined to be patient.

“I think you have an idea, Leanansidhe,” Meghan stated, walking forward. “The Between is your kingdom, much as the Iron Realm is mine. You know that something strange has happened.”

“Something strange?” The Dark Muse feigned ignorance, twiddling her cigarette flute as she glided down the stairs. Her gown and hair billowed behind her as if in a breeze, though the air in the mansion was perfectly still. “Whatever could you mean, darling? This is Faery. Strange things happen every single day.”

Impatience ticked ever so slightly to anger. Setting my jaw, I stepped forward. “We are not in the mood for games, Leanansidhe,” I said, which caused Leanansidhe’s slender eyebrows to arch. “Touchstone was recently attacked by a new kind of monster, and Keirran was forced to flee the Between with the survivors of the city. No one could tell us where he is or where he has gone. We were hoping that you might be able to shed some light on these events, both in Touchstone, and on this new creature we’ve been dealing with.”

“Right to the point, as always. That’s not a good way to tell a story, darling. You lose all your dramatic punch.” The Exile Queen pursed her lips, then sighed. “Oh, very well,” she grumbled, tossing back her hair, which drifted lazily behind her in a defiant rejection of gravity. “This way, if you would. If we are going to discuss such matters, I would rather do it out of earshot of every gossiping faery in this place, which is all of them. Follow me, and Puck, darling—” she gave the Great Prankster a smile that was sharper than a blade “—if anything mysteriously vanishes and ends up in a bizarre location, for any reason, I will be very cross. The redcaps nearly broke their skulls, and my bust of Mozart, trying to get it down from the roof.”

Puck gave her his innocent “who, me?” look, but didn’t comment this time, and we followed Leanansidhe down thick carpeted hallways, through elegantly decorated rooms, and past countless musical instruments hanging on the walls or propped up in corners. I knew from past visits and dealings with Leanansidhe that this impressive collection didn’t just stem from her love of music. Some were unfortunate humans or fey who had displeased the fickle Exile Queen and ended up on her wall.

We entered a smaller, cozier room with a crackling stone fireplace and a variety of plush sofas and chairs surrounding it. Several paintings hung on the wall, and an easel sat in the corner with a human in front of it, the man humming loudly as he moved his brush back and forth. Though his movements were frantic, the painting itself was quite detailed and beautiful. Leanansidhe snapped her fingers as we swept through the door, and the human’s head jerked up.

“Out, Charles,” the Dark Muse commanded, and the man fled. His brush dropped to the floor and left green spatters against the red carpet. Leanansidhe wrinkled her nose at the stain, but then turned to us with a smile.

“Now, darlings, have a seat, why don’t you?” She waved a slender arm at the sofas arrayed around the fireplace. She stode to the largest one, then sank down into it and crossed her legs. “Make yourselves comfortable, and I will tell you what I know about what is happening in the Between.”

Meghan calmly took a seat across from the Exile Queen, sitting up straight but looking confident and unruffled. I did not sit but took my normal place behind her, while Puck slouched on the other end of the sofa, looking the opposite of regal. Nyx also chose not to sit, sliding into a darker corner of the room with her back to the wall. Grimalkin sauntered over to an empty chair, curled up with his tail over his nose, and appeared to go to sleep.

“So, our darling Keirran is in trouble again, is he?” Leanansidhe sniffed. “How terribly shocking. That didn’t take long at all, did it? No offense, darlings, but that boy of yours is almost a bigger headache than Robin Goodfellow. At least Puck hasn’t managed tocompletelydestroy my house and collapse everything I’ve built over the past hundred or so years.”

“Yet,” Puck added with an evil smirk. Leanansidhe ignored him.

“Keirran was exiled from the Nevernever and is paying for his crimes,” Meghan replied in a far calmer tone than I knew she was feeling. “That is not the issue today, Leanansidhe, and it is not the reason we’ve come. Do you know anything of what has been happening in the Between, and the new threat we’re facing now?”

“I do.” Abruptly serious, Leanansidhe took a long drag on her cigarette flute, then blew a puff of green smoke into the air. It coiled into the wispy image of a dragon before writhing away into nothingness. “Possibly more than you want to hear, darling. The Between is getting...well,angrieris the best way to put it. You already know it has the ability to sense your emotional state and churn out manifestations that are the representations of your feelings. But lately, it feels like there is such an excess of negative glamour, it’s starting to affect the Between itself. I don’t know what it is or where its coming from, but all this anger, rage, fear, and hate is seeping into the Between like poison. If it continues, it might start affecting the Nevernever as well.”

“Do you think our big nasty is the one causing it?” Puck wondered after a moment of tense silence.

In the corner, Nyx shook her head, the movement barely visible in the shadows of her hood. “The Monster leaves a trail of corruption behind it,” she said, “but it doesn’t feel powerful enough to taint the entire Between. Whatever this is, it is bigger than that.”

“I did feel a large, shall we say,emptyingof the Between several days ago,” Leanansidhe went on. “A mass exodus of sorts, many creatures going through the Veil at once. If you say Touchstone was attacked recently, that was probably the moment when they all fled the city.”

“That matches what Elaith told us,” I mused. “She said Keirran opened a gate in the Between for the Forgotten to escape the Monster. Do you know where they came out again?” I asked Leanansidhe.

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