The Iron Knight (21 page)

The Wolf growled low in his chest, the fur along his spine beginning to rise. “Something is coming,” he rumbled right before Grimalkin vanished.

I drew my sword. “Puck, get some light back there
now.
”

Faery fire exploded overhead, a flash of emerald-green, lighting the passageway behind us. In the flare, hundreds of shiny, eight-legged creatures scuttled back from the sudden light. The tunnel was full of them, pale and bulbous, with bodies the size of melons and multiple thin legs. But their faces, elven and beautiful, stared down at us coldly, and they bared mouthfuls of curved black fangs.

“Spiders,” Puck groaned, and drew his knives as the Wolf’s growls turned into snarls. “Why does it always have to be spiders?”

“Get ready,” I muttered, drawing glamour to me in a cold cloud, feeling Puck do the same. “This could get messy.”

Hissing, the swarm attacked, dropping from the ceiling with muffled thumps, legs clicking as they scuttled over the deck. They were surprisingly quick, leaping at us with bared fangs, legs uncurling as they flew through the air.

I hurled a flurry of ice shards at the attacking swarm, killing several in mid-leap, and raised my sword as the rest came on. I cut a spider out of the air, ducked as another flew at my face and speared a third rushing at my leg. Ariella stood behind me, firing arrows into the swarm, and the Wolf roared as he bounded and spun, ripping spiders from his pelt and crushing them in his jaws. Puck, covered in black ichor, dodged the spiders that sprang at him and kicked the ones that got too close, sending them flying into the waters below.

“Aggressive little buggers, aren’t they?” he called, yanking a spider from his leg and hurling it over the railing. “Kinda like redcap spawn, only uglier.” He ducked as a spider flew overhead, hissing, only to be snapped out of the air by the Wolf. “Hey, prince, remember that time we stumbled into a hydra nest, just as all the eggs were hatching? I didn’t know hydras could lay up to sixty eggs at a time.”

I sliced two spider creatures from the air at once, black ichor splattering my face and neck. “Now’s really not the time to reminisce, Goodfellow.”

Puck yelped and cursed, slapping away a spider on his neck, his hand coming away stained with red. “I wasn’t reminiscing, ice-boy,” he snapped, angrily kicking the spider away. “Remember that cool little trick we did? I think we should do that
now!
”

The spiders’ numbers were increasing; I’d cut one down only to have four others come at me from all sides. They were everywhere now, crawling over the railing and skittering across the roof. Ariella and I stood back-to-back, protecting each other, and the Wolf was going berserk, bucking and rolling as spiders crawled all over him like monster ticks.

“Come on, prince! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!”

I hadn’t forgotten. I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. It was risky and dangerous and would take a lot out of us both, but if the spiders kept coming, we might not have a choice.

“Ash!”

“All right!” I yelled back. “Let’s do it. Ari, stay close. Everyone else, take cover now!”

I stopped fighting for an instant, feeling several of the creatures land on me, their slender legs scuttling up my clothes. Ignoring them, I knelt and drove the point of my sword into the wooden floor.

There was a flash of blue, and ice spread out from my blade, covering everything. In an instant, it had coated the deck, the railings, the benches, even some of the spider things, freezing them in place. It covered the branches of the thorns around us and spread a thin sheet of ice over the water around the boat. Though the spider things continued to pour out of the
brambles, dropping onto the deck, for a moment, there was absolute, frozen silence.

“Now,” Puck muttered, and I pulled up my blade.

The ice shattered. With the sound of breaking glass, it fractured into thousands of razor-sharp edges, glinting in the darkness. And at that instant, Puck unleashed the whirlwind.

With a roar of Summer glamour, Puck’s cyclone whipped through the thorns and surrounded the boat, shrieking and causing the small craft to lurch sideways. It picked up debris in its wake, branches, spider bodies and thousands of fractured ice shards, spinning them through the air with the force of a tornado. I grabbed Ariella and pulled her close as the Wolf hunkered down beside us, hunching his shoulders against the wind.

When the winds finally ceased, we were surrounded by twigs, branches, melting ice and spider parts, oozing over everything. Icicles stuck out of the benches and walls like crystal shrapnel, and black ichor was splattered everywhere.

“Yes!” Puck cheered as I sat down on the floor, leaning against the railing. “Home team, one—spiders, zero!”

Ariella looked at me with wide eyes. “I never saw you two do
that
before.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said tiredly. “Before we ever met. When Puck and I …” I trailed off, remembering the years when Robin Goodfellow and Prince Ash thought they could take on the world. Reckless and defiant, spurning the laws of the courts, they sought out new and greater challenges, always reaching for more, and got into more scrapes than anyone had a right to come out of alive. I shook my head, dissolving the memories. “It was a long time ago,” I finished.

“Regardless.” Grimalkin abruptly materialized, sitting on a bench with not a hair out of place, his tail curled around himself. “If the two of them have any more tricks like that,
they would do well to remember them. Summer and Winter glamour, when used in conjunction instead of against each other, can be a powerful thing. Thankfully, neither of the courts has ever figured this out.”

The Wolf shook himself, spraying ichor and spider parts everywhere, making Grimalkin lay back his ears. “Magic and parlor tricks,” the Wolf snorted, wrinkling his muzzle, “will not get us to the End of the World.”

“Well, duh,” Puck shot back. “That’s why we’re on a
boat.
”

The Wolf gave him a sinister look, then stalked to the front of the boat, not caring about the spider parts scattered about the deck. For a moment, he stood there, sniffing the air, ears pricked forward for any hints of trouble. Finding none, he curled up in a relatively clean spot and closed his eyes, ignoring us all.

Ariella looked down at me, then at Puck, who was yawning and scrubbing the back of his head. “That took a lot of power, didn’t it?” she mused, and I didn’t argue. Releasing an explosion like that would leave anyone drained. Ariella sighed and shook her head. “Get some rest, the both of you,” she ordered. “Grim and I will take last watch.”

I
DIDN’T THINK
I
WOULD SLEEP
, but I dozed fretfully as the ferry made its way through the endless tangle of brambles. Despite assurances from Ariella and the Wolf that nothing followed us, I found it impossible to relax. Often, I would be jerked awake by a splash or a snapping of twigs somewhere in the thorns, and every once in a while the scream of some unfortunate creature would echo through the branches. Eventually, everyone gave up trying to rest and spent the journey in a constant and exhausting state of high alert. Except Grimalkin, who vanished frequently and made everyone nervous while he was gone.

The Briars went on, never changing, never still. I caught glimpses of various doors through the thorns, trods to places in the mortal world, doorways out of the Nevernever. Creatures seen and unseen skittered through the branches, furry or shiny or many-limbed, peering at us through the thorns. A giant centipede, over twenty feet long, clung to the roof of the tunnel as we drifted beneath it, close enough that we could hear the slow clicking of its huge mandibles. Thankfully, it didn’t seem interested in us, but Puck kept his daggers out for several miles afterward, and Grimalkin didn’t reappear for a long, long time.

Hours passed. Or days—it was impossible to tell. The Wolf and I were standing at the rear of the boat, watching an enormous snake glide through the branches overhead, when Ariella’s weary voice floated up from the front.

“There it is.”

I turned as the tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern made of thorns, the branches shutting out the sky. Tiny lights filled the cavern, floating in the air and bobbing over the dark waters like erratic fireflies. Torches stuck out of the river, some bent or leaning at odd angles, flickering with blue-and-orange flames. They lit the way to a massive stone temple looming at the end of the cavern. It rose from the dark waters past the ceiling of the cave, extending through the branches farther than we could see. Vines, moss and thorny creepers covered the crumbling walls, winding like possessive talons around pillars and laughing gargoyles. Even in a place as ageless as the Nevernever and the Deep Wyld, where time didn’t exist and
ancient
was only a word, this temple was oldest.

I took a deep, slow breath. “Did we make it?” I asked softly, unable to take my eyes from the massive wall of stone that loomed before us like the side of a mountain. “Is this the Testing Grounds?”

Beside me, Ariella shook her head. “No,” she whispered, almost in a daze. “Not yet, though I’ve seen this in my visions. The Testing Grounds lie beyond the temple. This is the gate to the End of the World.”

“Big gate,” Puck muttered, craning his neck to look up at it. No one answered him.

The River of Dreams continued, past the temple, into the thorns that surrounded the cavern, but the boat drifted lazily until it bumped against the huge stone steps that led up to the doors, and stopped.

“Guess this is our stop,” Puck said, and practically leaped out of the ferry onto the steps. “Whew, it’s nice to be back on solid ground again,” he mused, stretching as the rest of us followed, easily crowding onto the platform at the bottom. Grimalkin appeared from under one of the benches, minced to the bottom of the steps, and began rigorously washing his tail.

Gazing up the long flight of stairs to the temple, Puck shook his head and sighed. “Stairs.” He grimaced. “I swear there must be like some secret code.
All mysterious ancient temples must have a minimum of at least seven thousand steps to the front door.
”

I followed his gaze, frowning as I realized we weren’t alone. “Someone is up there,” I said quietly. “I can sense it. It feels … like it’s waiting for me.”

The rest of the group exchanged glances, except for Ariella, who stood a little apart, staring back at the river. “Well, then—” Puck sighed with exaggerated cheerfulness “—I guess it would be rude to keep it waiting.”

He and the Wolf and Grimalkin started up the stairs, but paused when I didn’t follow. “Uh, prince, aren’t you coming?” Puck said, glancing back at me. “Seeing as this is, you know, your party and all.”

“Keep going,” I said, waving them on. “We’ll catch up. Yell if something comes at you.”

“Oh, believe me, I will,” Puck said, and continued up the stairs, Grim and the Wolf leading the way.

I turned to Ariella, who still gazed out over the River of Dreams, not looking at me. “Ari,” I said quietly, stepping up behind her, “what is it?”

She was silent for several heartbeats, and I was beginning to wonder whether she’d heard me at all, when she took a shaky breath and closed her eyes.

“We’re almost there,” she whispered, and a shiver went through her. “I didn’t think it would be so soon. I guess … there’s no turning back now.”

“Ari.” I stepped closer, putting a hand on her arm. “Talk to me. I want to help you, but I can’t if you won’t let me in. I could—”

She turned suddenly, and before I could react, framed my face with her hands and pressed her lips to mine.

I froze, mostly in shock, but after a moment my body uncoiled and I closed my eyes, relaxing into her. I remembered this; the feel of her lips on mine, cool and soft, the touch of her fingers on my skin. I remembered her scent, those long nights when we would lie under the cold, frozen stars, dreaming in each other’s arms.

For a second, my body reacted instinctively. I started to pull us closer, to wrap my arms around her and return the kiss with equal passion … but, then I stopped.

I remembered this perfectly; every shining moment with Ariella was forever etched into my mind. What we’d had, what we’d shared, everything. I’d built a shrine to her in my memories, carefully tended with grief and anger and regret. I knew every inch of our relationship, the passion, the feeling of emptiness when we weren’t together, the longing and, yes,
the love. I had been in love with Ariella. I remembered what she’d meant to me once, what I’d felt for her then …

… and what I didn’t feel for her now.

Gently, I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back, breaking the kiss. “Ari—”

“I love you, Ash,” she murmured before I could say anything more, and my stomach dropped. Her voice was quietly desperate, as if she was rushing to get it out before I could speak. “I never stopped. Never. Even when I knew you would fall for Meghan, when I was so angry I wished we were both dead, even then I couldn’t stop loving you.”

My throat closed. I swallowed hard to open it. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I won’t get another chance,” Ariella went on, her eyes filling with tears. “And I know, after your promise to Meghan, after everything we went through to get here, I know you can’t turn back, but …” She pressed close, gazing up at me. “Do you still love me? I can’t … I need to know, before we go any farther. I deserve to know that much.”

I closed my eyes. Emotions swirled within me, guilt and sorrow and regret, but for once, my thoughts were clear. “Ariella,” I murmured, taking her hands in mine, feeling her pulse race. This would be hard to say, but I needed to get it out, and she needed to hear it. Even if she hated me in the end. “When I lost you that day, my life ended. I thought I would die. I wanted to die, but only after taking Puck down with me. The only thing I was living for was revenge, and I nearly destroyed myself, because I couldn’t let you go. Even when I met Meghan, I felt I was betraying your memory.

“But it’s different now.” I opened my eyes, meeting her starry gaze. “I regret a lot of things. I wish I could’ve been there for you, and I wish that day had never happened. But
the thing I don’t regret, the one good thing that came out of it all, is
her.