Summer

Praise for

Winter

Indie Reader
calls
WINTER

“…an intriguing and suspenseful page-turner, with complex characters, political manipulation, magic, and a wry sense of humor…a fine urban fantasy, well worth a read.”

Publisher’s Weekly
says:

“Remy’s world-building is substantial and her premise interesting, with memorable characters . . . Her take on the Fae is worth exploring.”

The Portland Book Review
gives WINTER five stars and says:

“Sarah Remy’s Winter is the captivating opening chapter to a new young adult fantasy series called The Manhattan Exiles…Remy’s descriptions are as unique as her prickly characters…the startling non-conclusion will leave you checking book stores for the next installment.”

For Katherine, who’s never afraid to try.

As the birds sang their heavenly song in
Tir naNo
g
.

~Van Morriso
n



Madison Place Press

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Summe
r©
2015 by Sarah Remy

ISBN:
978-0-692-46173-0

Cover Art by Candescent Press

The Manhattan Exiles

- Volume Two -

Summer

Sarah Remy

Dramatis Personæ

The Exiles:

1. Siobahn: by blood right queen of
   Tir na Nog
   .
   
2. Malachi: Siobahn’s husband (deceased).
   
3. Gabriel:
   aes si
   and advisor to the queen. Also Winter’s guardian and mentor.
   
4. Barker: Malachi’s right-hand man, now Siobahn’s bodyguard and muscle.
   
5. Morris: ex-warrior, now Siobahn’s driver and butler.
   
6. Carran: Malachi’s page who once drugged Gloriana
   
7. Katherine Grey: royal Mender, banished for her part as Siobahn’s reluctant ally.
   
8. Alice: once Katherine Grey’s lady’s maid.
   

The Mortals:

1. Bran Healy: detective, MPDC.
   
2. Richard Lorimer: Winter’s compatriot and best friend. Regularly manages to make the universe forget he exists.
   
3. Lolo: runaway plagued by an internal clock and too much wit. Idolizes Winter.
   
4. Bobby Lorimer: drug dealer, veteran, and explosives expert.
   
5. Brother Daniel: Franciscan friar with an apparent education in fay antiquities.
   
6. Willa Francis: Aine’s grandmother. Raised Hannah as her own.
   
7. Aine: human changeling raised in Gloriana’s Court, all the while believing she was
   sidhe
   .
   
8. William: wright banished with the
   sluagh
   .
   

The Dread Host:

1. The Prince: leader of the
   sluagh
   army.
   
2. Miach One-Eye/Water-Bearer:
   aes si
   , member of
   Tir na Nog
   ’s Wild Hunt.
   

The Weapons:

1. Buairt
   : rapier forged for the purpose of driving
   sidhe
   from Windsor Forest and consecrated by the Catholic Church.
   
2. Nightingale: human changeling made deadly by royal wrights and
   sidhe
   magic.
   
3. Finvarra’s Horn: silver horn powerful enough to Summon every
   sidhe
   within reach of its call.
   

The Youth:

1. Winter Murray: born in Manhattan to Siobahn and Malachi, he’s determined to return the exiles home, but not at humankind’s expense.
   
2. Summer Murray: Winter’s younger sister. Manhattan princess to the bone, now she’s been handed a cursed sword and sent on a dangerous quest.
   
3. Hannah Francis:
   sidhe
   changeling, Gloriana’s daughter, raised as human in Aine’s place.
   

Winter

1. Lost

2. Broken

3. The Queen

4. Forbidden

5. Promises

6. Crush

7. Reign

8. Infection

9. Cornwallis

10. Nightingale

Winter

11. Threshold

12. Amputation

13. Poetry

14. Bromeliads

15. Machine

16. Swordplay

17. Spark Plug

18. Cèilidh

Winter

The moment I stepped into
sluagh
-world my lungs rebelled.

I’d hoped to hold that last, deep breath of fresh air I’d inhaled before stepping through the portal long enough to Gather starlight and get a quick look around, maybe even manage a hasty Cant for warmth.

But the atmosphere was as bleak as the landscape, and it came at me like a punch to the gut, squeezing the good air from my lungs, hissing as it sizzled against my skin and snuck in through my nose.

I collapsed, gagging, curling into a ball in the sand, my arms pressed against my face. The poison air seared the inside of my nostrils, my tongue, my lungs. Even squeezed shut, my eyes overflowed with bitter, caustic tears.

Don’t come home until you fix the problem,
scolded a voice from the recesses of my subconscious. It sounded exactly like my mother.
Don’t
die
until you fix the problem, Geimhreadh.

My mother’s the last true Fay Queen. She’s also a supremely cold-hearted bitch. She’s nothing if not stubborn. I’m her eldest child, her only son, and I know better than to let her down.

I didn’t die, not then, not there on the gray, gritty sand. I shook and groaned and coughed foul-tasting liquid down the front of my coat and onto the ground. Slowly the fire in my lungs eased. I could breathe, if I inhaled and exhaled shallowly.

My tongue felt numb and tasted awful.

I rolled carefully onto my side, then to my knees. I dashed still-flowing tears from my face and realized my nose was bleeding. In the inky light my blood looked black. I tried to stop the flow with the cuff of my sleeve.

Then I remembered the mouse in my pocket.

“Gabby!” It hurt to talk. I dug into the lining of my coat, searching for the warm little body.

My pocket was empty. I checked every other possible place in my coat, in my shirt, in my jeans. Nothing.

My burning eyes made everything blur and waver. I huddled on the ground, shaken. A cold wind blew up off the lake. The wind moaned as it slipped around drab boulders. It scraped across my shoulders. I’ll admit I sat for longer than you’d think, butt planted in the strange sand and knees under my chin, before I understood.

I hadn’t heard a single sound other than the mostly frantic muddle of voices projected into my skull for ten years. Ten years, three months, and fifteen days, and I don’t need marks on a calendar to keep track. The day my mother placed her punishing yellow jewels into the lobes of my ears is a day I’ll never forget.

Gaping like an idiot, I put my hands to my ears.

They popped, loudly, and suddenly I could
hear
more than just the angry wind. I could
hear
the thump of my heart in my chest, the scratch of the grains of sand beneath my jeans, and the distant splash of waves on the shore of the lake.

The cold burned my face, but the growl of the wind made me bare my teeth in a disbelieving smile.

I walked my fingers along the curve of my ears. The jewels were still there. I was eight when Siobahn attached them. In ten years I hadn’t found a magic that would remove their torment. I’d spent a lot of free time looking. Once, on a particularly bad Christmas Eve, I’d tried to cut the fairy amber out of my skin.

Needless to say, it hadn’t worked, and there’d been so much blood Richard had made me swear never to try it again.

“Pog mo thoin,”
I muttered. “I can hear.” My voice was deeper than I remembered, more alive than the flat timbre I’d grown used to in my head. “I. Can. Hear!”

The last was a howl, as loud as I could get, until my lungs hitched and my throat cramped. I rose on my heels in the sand, laughing. I felt light and bubbly and drunk, just like the time Lolo had snatched a bottle of prime
Moët & Chandon from the Capitol Hill Hotel and the three of us had spent an evening sharing it as the stars rose in the Reflecting Pool.

I put two fingers to my mouth and whistled, long and low and sharp. The whistle bounced off the rocks around me, then echoed across the lake. The clear beauty of the sound made me shiver. It also chased some of the fizzy joy from my head. Common sense awoke.

In that strange, empty landscape any sound was loud and I was pretty damn sure I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

I stood up, wincing because the bare skin on my hands and face was already chafing in the harsh cold. My eyes ached and burned. I pulled the collar of my coat up around my throat, then tucked my fists into my armpits. I turned around and looked back the way I’d come.

My portal was still there, undulating about four feet above the sand. The Way between worlds was about the size of a refrigerator, wavy at the edges, like too much heat over an asphalt road. I could see clearly through back into the pit. It would be easy to step right through again, back into the Washington Metro, back home.

Instead I swiveled on my heel, dismissing the rift. I’d come to rescue Aine and Richard. I didn’t have time for regrets and second guesses. I’d made my choice. I wouldn’t change my mind.

My eyes were watering buckets. I squinted, trying to get a better look around. The moon or sun—I wasn’t sure which—hung luminescent in the sky over the lake, but the light it shed seemed to shred away into nothing when it hit the sand. Rocks and low, jagged hills rose out of the ground, one-dimensional in the strange light.

The shadows and planes seemed off. I couldn’t tell if the rocks hid
sluagh
or something worse. And my nose, which usually served me well in the mortal world of sweat and stink, was useless in the acrid air.

I started walking toward the lake. The ground slanted gently downhill toward the water. As I walked I scanned the sand around my feet. A small part of me hoped I’d find Gabby, maybe thrown from my pocket as I fell out of the portal. A bigger part hoped I wouldn’t, because I was pretty sure the
aes si
had been near death when we crossed over, and I didn’t want to find her corpse.

As I got closer to the lake the fine gray grains of sand thickened and became small pebbles. They slipped beneath the soles of my boots, rattling. It took me a few steps to identify the sound, and a few more steps before I could stop obsessing over the scrape of pebble against pebble.

I wondered if every new sound would be the same way: a delicious, all-consuming taste of a feast I’d forgotten.

My stomach growled, reminding me that it had been hours since I’d had anything more than a cup of coffee and a danish, and even that small gurgle almost sent me into a frenzy of celebration. Except every time my heart lifted it fell back again to that place behind my ribs where trepidation lurked.

As I drew nearer to the water, the air worsened. I pulled my knitted cap down over my forehead, almost past my eyes, and pressed my arm over my nose and mouth. Still, every bit of naked skin stung and burned. The atmosphere grew heavier, humid.

Literature’s my thing, dead poets—mortal and
sidhe
—are my hobby. I’m no science geek. But I figured out pretty quickly it was the lake poisoning the air, whether through evaporation or osmosis or just the rush of wind over surface water. Waves tossed dingy foam up into the air and onto shore. Where the foam hit, steam rose. The boulders nearest the water line were eroded, melted things etched into strange, ugly shapes.

I stopped walking. The black lake spread left and right, mirroring the horizon. I couldn’t see the other side, only the sun/moon reflected on the water. And either that orb was growing less bright, or my eyes were failing in the mist, because it was getting harder to see where I was putting my feet. I kept slipping on pebbles and shale.

“Damnu air,”
I muttered, one of my mother’s favorite Gaelic curses, just to hear my own voice again, and because I was starting to get worried. I’d had no real plan when I stepped through the Way. I’d been thinking only of Aine, and of the monstrous
sluagh
, and how they’d bleed her into a shell then snack on her bones.

I looked over my shoulder, back up the rocky slope the way I’d come. I couldn’t see the portal any longer, but I could feel it. The magic thrummed in my bones and in my teeth. It was still open. I could go back, before the tainted air ruined my lungs and skin, before I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

Instead I continued parallel along the shore, the moon at my left shoulder, in what I thought of as a sort of southern direction. The beach was pretty level. The slope rose up alongside my right shoulder. It looked like the lake had formed at the bottom of a crater, from rain or run-off. I knew I’d probably be wiser to climb my way out of the hole, away from flesh-damaging spray, only I’d noticed something about the shore.

I had to go down on my hands and knees to be sure. The grit was damp, the sand beneath wet. The moisture immediately blistered my palms. I hissed, rocking back up to squat, barely remembering not to stick my fingers in my mouth. I hated to think what the lake water would do to my already numb tongue.

My watering eyes hadn’t deceived. What I saw made me forget the pain in my hands. Drag marks in the gravel, and where the sand was brushed free of shale, bare footprints, but not your ordinary pleasant-stroll-on-the-beach picture-book prints. Deep, wicked-looking claw marks scored the ground.

“
Found you!”
Triumphant, I Gathered starlight for a better study.

Only the starlight didn’t come. For the first time in my life the Cant failed. I could feel the magic buzz on the tips of my fingers, but instead of exploding into life it fizzled away, like a Fourth of July rocket with a bad fuse, all anticipation and no explosion.

I tried three more times before I gave up.

“Well, crap.”

I’d been born a fay prince in a mortal world. I’d never been without the reassurance of innate power. Maybe I’d felt a little sorry for humans, that lesser race who couldn’t summon fire with a word, or turn an especially annoying family member into a frog, if only for a few hours.

The
sidhe
are a prideful folk. What had Aine called humans?
Insects
. And
useless
.

Now it appeared I was no more than a useless bug, and shit-out-of-luck.

“Okay. Okay, right.”

Maybe I panicked a little. Maybe it was growing way too dark to see, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe, and if I couldn’t have my magic, I really wanted my Glock. But I’d left the both my pistol and my fairy knife on the other side with Lolo, because I hadn’t planned ahead.

Rookie mistake. Real rookie mistake, Win.

I always plan ahead. It’s how I survive.

I crouched on the sand, arms wrapped around my chest, maybe shivering a little, maybe trying to convince myself that it wasn’t magic or iron bullets that made me fierce. That it was quick thinking and a thick skull that’s kept me alive in the D.C. underground for the last decade, the Dread Host on my tail.

Only, I’ve never been particularly good at pep talks, and I just couldn’t get this one to fly. Truth is, I might have shuddered there on the beach until the fog etched my skin from my bones and my lungs bubbled with poison, except as the moon gleamed its last effort, somewhere down the shore someone sounded the Horn.

It felt like my heart jumped into my throat, and not because the sound was clear and lovely and
real
. It rang in my ears, loud as I’d always imagined the carol of church bells, but it was more than music I’d forgotten, it was a family legend, and it was a call no
sidhe
could ignore.

The Fay Queen’s Horn. Once Finvarra’s, it was herald and threat and summons all at once. Even without my magic it was a trumpet I couldn’t resist. My blood pounded in response.

I staggered to my feet and half-shuffled, half-ran toward the repeating blast. In the dark I stumbled, falling several times, scraping my already tender palms. I don’t know how long the call lasted, or how many times the Horn sounded. I do know the spell lasted even after I couldn’t run anymore and I had to crawl like a worm over the shale, helpless to refuse.

Eventually my strength gave out. I lay curled on the ground. The Horn still pulled, a string to my very center. I had just enough sense to do what I should have done in the first place: I yanked my coat over my head, pressing my fists hard against my ears, stuffing fabric into my ear canals.

It worked, the way biting the inside of your cheek works when you can’t reach into your boot and scratch that insane itch on the bottom of your foot. Which is to say, I managed to muffle the sound, but I couldn’t block the Horn completely.

I’m not sure how much time passed before the dark landscape grew silent. I know when I came back to my senses I was face down on rock, my fingers still stuffed in my ears. Cramps knotted every muscle in my body. I had sand in my mouth; I could feel the poisonous grains eating into my tongue.

“Winter. Get up.”

Something grabbed me under the elbow and hauled me upright. The part of me that had grown up in the Metro chasing ghouls knew it was time for heroics. My adrenaline surged, but I could barely sway on two feet. I couldn’t see at all. Simply breathing was an impossible, painful task.