A Little Night Muse (7 page)

They could only run away as the wisps clearly longed to do.

But the Queen wouldn’t even allow that. Adelyn wondered why she
had ever wanted to come back to this place. Had she been that blinded? No, she
had just been that small. Less than the faintest of wisps.

No longer. Josh had opened her eyes and made her see what she
could do, really do. And she would never be merely someone else’s inspiration
again. She would make her own way, be her own
phae
.
Be her own woman.

She would be Josh’s woman.

She smiled to herself as warmth slid through her, chasing away
the chill of the
phaedrealii
. But when EveStar’s
grip on her hand tightened another notch, she refocused.

“...This cannot continue, my
phae
,”
the Queen was saying. Under the white marble chandelier, her blackness was even
more fearsomely stark. “Since the Iron Age, the
phaedrealii
has kept its distance from the sunlit world, withholding
our presence from the humans, except for our treasured few.” She ran her hand
over William’s head where he sat on the step beside her chair. He stiffened, but
his eyes were full of floating wisp light.

The Queen cast her dark gaze around the room. Adelyn quickly
lowered her face, letting the shadow of her veil fall forward.

“My
phae
.” The Queen’s whisper
swirled through the room on a chill breath though Adelyn tucked her shoulders up
around her ears. “If you run, I will find you. And when I find you, I will tear
you apart.”

In the stricken silence, the infinitesimal hum of the wisps’
wings sounded menacing.

And even more faintly yet, came a whisper all around them:
“Adelyn...”

Her head snapped up. “Oh no. Josh, no.”

EveStar shuddered. “You gave him your name?”

“I didn’t believe he would follow me. Or even remember me.”
Adelyn took a step forward, unbuckling the belt as she went. “The spores are
behind the stones in the belt. There aren’t many. Use them well, and maybe
someday we’ll meet in the sunlit world.” She tossed the belt to the other
phae
.

EveStar thrust it back. “Open a gate. Run while the Queen is
distracted.”

Once she’d been too afraid to run, and now, when she most
wanted to...”I can’t. Not without him.”

In the space by the throne where she had been standing only
moments ago, a ring of mushrooms sprouted with unnatural speed. And then Josh
was there. In the court. Standing tall beside the deadly
phae
Queen.

Chapter 11

His head spun, like a middle-of-the-whisky-bottle
moment, but Josh blinked hard to clear his wavering vision. No, not wavering.
The vision in his scarred eye was eerily intense.

For a second, he thought he had landed in a movie set.
Everything was so...Too much. The outrageous visuals—pointy ears, giant
butterfly wings, glowing glowering eyes—made him wonder what kind of mushrooms
exactly had been growing in his bedroom.

But he hadn’t imagined Adelyn. He hadn’t. He still felt her in
the tips of his fingers, still tasted her on the back of his tongue. And Adelyn
wasn’t the sort to run from make-believe.

He lifted the iron-tipped spear, and the figures nearest him
pulled back with a murmur of dismay.

One moment he had been standing in his empty bedroom and now he
was surrounded. And if at one time, he entertained the notion of fairy
princesses, these beings destroyed that childhood illusion forever. He had come
upon a mountain lion once, feasting on the remains of a calf. While the cow
lowed plaintively in the distance, Josh had stared at the beast. It stared back:
ferocious, deadly, and utterly indifferent to him.

He had shot at it, but it had been too quick. And though it had
run
away
, he knew it could just as readily have run
at him if it believed him weak prey.

These
phae
were the same.

With the pistol in his right hand, the spear felt strange and
unwieldy in his left, but he cut it in a slow circle around him, forcing them
back another step.

He strained for a glimpse of Adelyn in the crowd.

And caught a glint of emerald eyes. She lingered behind a
distant pillar. He wanted to call out to her, but she’d said names could be
dangerous.

“Poor man, you seem to have lost your way.” The voice was silk
over steel, slicing and beautiful, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from rising to
the dais nearby.

He had registered the throne-like setting, but in his need to
find Adelyn, he hadn’t paid attention. He did now.

Adelyn had called her a Queen, and even in the heart of his
rugged individualism, he understood. She exuded a sheer power that made his legs
tremble with the urge to lower himself.

Not likely. He locked his knees and swung the spear across his
body, partly to make sure the tip wasn’t pointing at her—no sense angering a
reigning monarch, after all—and partly to aim the pistol more discreetly.

But he couldn’t run, not without Adelyn. He wouldn’t let her
walk away without knowing if he was the only one to feel...

But the Queen had him in her sights now. The blackness of her
eyes cracked with fissures of scarlet like the coals in a hot forge. “What have
we here?”

Shit. Even the giant cat with its mouth full of blood hadn’t
wanted to toy with him like this. He wished he hadn’t whispered Adelyn’s name
aloud as he stepped through the fairy ring, but his heart had been in his
throat—pushing her name to his lips—as he longed for her.

Too late. “I am...” Standing in this chamber of beautiful
horror, he felt less than nothing. But he had let too many he loved walk away
without a word. This time he would speak. He straightened, locking his elbow so
the spear filled the space between them. “I am a prince from the land of Oregon,
and I have come to reclaim my love.”

With a hushed gasp, the crowd drew back another step, even
farther than the iron had pushed them.

The Queen did not flinch though. “How tiresome that your love
left you behind. Not even your iron could keep her in place.”

He didn’t flinch either, but he knew she’d seen something of
the remembered pain in his face because she smiled. He pictured the mountain
lion’s bloody fangs when it snarled at him.

He straightened. “In truth, she might not have known how I felt
when she left.”

“Ah, truth.” The Queen swept a hand to encompass the room.
“Then by all means, proclaim yourself now, and let her step forward if she feels
the same.”

The way the Queen said
feels
raised
his hackles, and Josh shook his head. “And have you kill her where she stands?
No. I’ll find her myself.”

He took a step forward and the crowd fell back again. His heart
thudded hard. Would Adelyn be willing to come through the pain and the exposure
of having her glamour stripped away by the iron? Should he even ask it of
her?

He did not say her name aloud, only whispered it in his head
with longing. Could she hear him somehow? Did he believe in such magic?

He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.

Question was, would she believe?

“There she is,” murmured the Queen from behind him. “Take her
if you will.”

And as the crowd edged back, she was revealed. In the fall of
silky crimson around her, she was every bit the erotic fairy princess. She held
out one hand to him and he let the iron spear waver to one side, so he didn’t
hurt her.

The eyes were too pale, a blue almost white with coldness.

He snapped the spear ahead of him and the fake Adelyn recoiled
with a growl. The illusion wavered and he caught a glimpse of bristling fur.

Behind him, the Queen pealed with cruel laughter. “At least
that one would keep you warm at night, human. The
musetta
can offer you nothing of herself. After you strip past the
veils, there
is
nothing to her, only a reflection of
what you make of her.”

Josh gritted his teeth. How did the Queen know who he was
looking for? And how could he be sure when he actually found Adelyn if these
lies were all around him? He had done a terrible job of spotting such illusions
before:
I promise...To have and to hold...’Til death do us
part...

He wavered.

Another
phae
waited in his path.
She also looked like Adelyn, with her veils in a simple drape around the body he
had come to know in such a short time. But what could he really know after such
a short time? Could he believe even what he saw? Though his scarred eye seemed
clearer than his good eye in this place.

He kept the spear point out, but the one ahead did not flinch.
She stared at him over the half-mask of her veil. “Why did you follow me?”

It was Adelyn. He didn’t have to see her. He could
feel
it. “Because I had to know...” He had to know if
what they had was real, if anything that had been whispered or shared had been
true, or all just one of her illusions.

He took another step toward her and still she did not back away
from the iron. Around her form, the air seemed to flicker, alive with
secrets.

Did he want to know? The tip of the iron spear hovered at her
breast.

“Now you’ll know,” she said. “You’ll see what I really am.”

She took one deep breath, and the iron touched the curve of her
breast. A twist of smoke marred her skin, then her glamour fell away in a
blink.

Dozens of snakes circled her head and shoulders. They struck at
the spear with sibilant hisses, and it was his turn to recoil.

Though he pulled out of range, the silky dark locks he had run
his fingers through did not return. Her serpentine hair writhed around her,
revealing the delicate pattern of scales that spread over her shoulders and up
the sides of her neck to her temples.

She stepped closer, so close the bright scales sent glimmers of
jeweled color dancing over the spear’s gray iron. His heart pounded and his
suddenly sweaty grip slipped on the spear, but his gaze locked on the
phae
before him.

Behind him, the Queen laughed. “Did you not know the truth of
your own love, poor man? Every inspiration can turn around and bite you. Which
is why every
musetta
is a
medusa
.” Her laughter edged higher, and the black veins in the white
marble thickened.

He dragged his gaze off the hypnotic sway of the snakes to meet
the
phae
’s eyes.

Her emerald eyes sparkled diamond-brilliant with unshed
tears.

“Josh...” she whispered.

He swung toward the Queen, angled the pistol upward, and
fired.

The Queen shrieked as the chandelier shattered.

Pierced by the iron round, the illusion flew apart in a stink
of ashes. A thousand tiny lights scattered in all directions, chiming like
miniature cowbells.

Phae
scattered in all directions
too, with less musical shrieks.

Josh shoved the pistol into his pants and grabbed Adelyn’s
hand. The scales across the back of her hand slid under his thumb. “I always
wondered how fairytale princesses kept their hair so lively and full of
bounce.”

“Josh, you shouldn’t have come. Now you’ll be trapped too—”

“If I shoot the Queen, will that free us?”

She hesitated. “No. And her power holds
phae
here that should never be freed.”

“Something worse than snake-women who can turn men to
stone?”

She lifted her chin. “The other side of inspiration has always
been paralysis.”

“That’s not going to be me.” He pulled her toward him and
kissed her, hard. “Which way do we run?”

Chapter 12

Through the chill of exposing her true nature, Adelyn
felt the heat of Josh’s unfailing grip. It roused her where she thought nothing
would again.

“This way.” She tugged him into a stream of
phae
fleeing toward the nearest corridor.

Behind them, the throne room was in an uproar. The
will-o’-the-wisps, freed all at once from their marble prisoner, shot through
the room like sparking bottle rockets. Tiny fires flamed in their wake.

The Queen screamed, a furious cry that cracked through the
stone illusion more thoroughly even than Josh’s iron bullet.

The whole structure of the
phaedrealii
trembled at the Queen’s rage, and in the corridor, the
phae
cowered.

Josh hauled Adelyn around them—beings strange and stunning—as
if they were nothing more than inconvenient boulders in his field. Her heart
thumped with painful pride at his determination. She supposed a man who worked
with unyielding metal and recalcitrant cows wouldn’t allow himself to be
sidetracked by mere
phae
.

They sped through the corridors where the walls were
terrifyingly blank. The Queen’s power should have held her illusions in place,
even against an intrusive iron bullet. She ruled for a reason.

Something had the
phaedrealii
more
rattled than a bullet overhead.

But it was no longer Adelyn’s concern. Whatever inspiration she
had given the
phae
, it was no longer her place. She
had shed that illusion with her glamour.

Her true place was here, beside Josh, for as long as they
had.

Which wouldn’t be long.

She squeezed his fingers, interlaced with hers. “Josh, we don’t
have a way out.”

“There’s always a way out.”

“Not from the
phaedrealii
,” she
said grimly. “Do you know what Vaile had to do to escape with Imogene?”

“No, but whatever it was, we can do it too.”

From behind them, a dog bayed. In another heartbeat, a
multiplicity of eerie howls echoed it. The sound carried up the corridor, lacing
the stark walls with curls of crimson that dripped down like blood.

Josh slowed to point the tip of the spear at the warning. The
bloody streak curled back, as if pushed by an invisible force but did not
disappear.

“The Queen appears to have recovered from her shock.” Adelyn
tugged him onward, anywhere farther from the throne room. “And she has set the
Hunters’ hounds on our trail.”

“I take it we’re not talking wannabe Wollys.”

“If Wolly had three heads, and all three wanted to dig your
bones from your flesh.”

“Ah.” He slanted a glance at her. “You seem every bit as
dangerous.”

She blinked. Did she? She’d never thought of herself as
dangerous. She touched her hair with her free hand, the one not linked to Josh,
and the serpents twined around her fingers. Their tongues flicked her skin with
a cool caress.

“Only some of them are venomous,” she said modestly.

“You’ll have to show me which ones. After you show me a way
out.”

Her little burst of happiness that he still wanted to know her
evaporated. “I told you, there is no way out, not without gate spores, and I
gave mine away.”

“Can we get them back?”

“Not soon enough to save ourselves.” She hesitated. “And we’d
make escape impossible for anyone else.”

His jaw worked, and she knew he was torn. But of course he
would not sacrifice others for himself. “You can’t tell me the Queen sprouts
mushrooms from her dustbin every time she wants to mess with us humans.”

She flushed at the note of exasperation in his voice. “She has
her own rings, but of course those may not be used upon pain of death.”

“Pain of death? I think we’re well past that risk, don’t
you?”

She turned at the next corridor and sped into the darkness. A
few wisps had caught up with them while they debated; a bad sign, since the
black dogs would be following the same trail. But the faint light let them move
faster.

“There are places in the
phaedrealii
that remain the same no matter how the illusions of the
court change,” she told him. “One of those will be a permanent gate, our way
out.”

“Find the closest.”

The featureless hallway turned sinuous, curving so that they
could see neither far ahead nor far behind. The gray walls echoed with their
footsteps.

From behind, the hounds bayed again, an eager note that
threaded through the curves to taunt them.

Josh grimaced. “Not good.”

“We’re almost there.” Adelyn pulled them around another
curve.

Raze the Ruiner stood in the way, almost—but not
quite—invisible in his gray robes.

Adelyn gasped. “No.”

Josh sprang ahead, spear raised.

The vizier slashed out. The wide-bladed athame shone in his
hand and knocked the spear aside.

Josh staggered toward the wall but instantly whirled, the
pistol in his hand. “Back off,” he snapped. “Unless fairies fly faster than iron
bullets.”

The vizier paused, hand still raised with the dagger exposed.
“I am not here to fight you.”

“Really?” Josh challenged. “The knife must have confused
me.”

Raze chuckled. “Such a simple human.”

“But better armed.”

Slowly, the vizier lowered the athame and sheathed it at his
belt. “As humans have always been.” He turned his fathomless gaze on Adelyn. “I
take it you found the missing Hunter.”

She lifted her chin. “You might stop us, but not him. And he
will find a way to free others who weary of the Queen’s reign.”

Raze sneered with scorn as withering as Josh’s iron. “Who do
you think will reign in this Queen’s stead?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“The walls of the
phaedrealii
are
crumbling, and what the Queen holds, she holds only with the power of her
madness.” The vizier shifted his gaze to Josh. “Your world stands to lose even
more, should the
phae
break their bonds.”

Josh held his hand out to Adelyn. “Whatever I lose, I won’t
lose her.”

Raze smiled thinly. “You think your world is ready for a
snake-haired girl who cries a king’s ransom in jewels?”

With the warmth of Josh’s hand over hers, Adelyn took a step
forward. “His world is cows and dogs and stars and other runaway
phae
. They take me as I am.”

The vizier’s lips twisted toward a laugh. But in the end he
only sighed. “Then take this too: a message to the Hunter and his
sylfana
who would fight a war against the Queen. Tell
him there are battles even a
phae
cannot
imagine.”

Closer now, the black dogs howled, as if in agreement.

Raze lifted his head. “You are more of a menace here than gone.
So go.” He stepped aside.

Without another word, Josh dragged her past the vizier.

She glanced back once before Raze vanished behind the curve of
the hall. Gray on gray, he should have seemed part of the corridor itself.
Instead, he seemed to float, cut off.

She shuddered. She had been that lonely too. But no more.

She gripped Josh’s hand as they fled.

A blast of light from behind them rattled the hall and she
stumbled. Josh dropped the spear to haul her upright. Before he could grab the
weapon again, a chunk of the ceiling fell toward them.

She yanked him onward as the corridor shuddered with crashing
debris.

There was only one way out now. They ran.

Until the next curve brought them to a wall of steel.