There were no humans to protect anymore. Just me. Worry over what the witch might do if I freed her made me hesitate before I pulled my gun—and it was one hesitation too many. I reached under my T-shirt, and two of the queen’s people grabbed my arms. The gun fell on the ground, and the fairy queen kicked it aside—well out of the witch’s reach.
“You misunderstand,” she told me. “I will take your life, and you will give me the book with your death.”
“I thought I had to own the book before that worked,” I said in a puzzled voice.
The fairy queen stared at me. “Did you give the book to someone before you came down here?”
“Not the way you mean it,” I answered.
“How would you mean it?” she said softly.
“Why would I answer that?” I asked. The fairy queen gave a sharp nod, and the witch reached out and touched me.
I CAME BACK TO MYSELF LYING ON THE BED WHERE Phin had been. At least it smelled like Phin, but the room was made of roots and dirt rather than marble. I was confused for a moment, but then I woke more fully and realized that I’d never seen it without the glamour—just smelled it.
My whole body hurt, though I had no additional bruises. I’d held out as long as I could, to give Samuel and Adam time to make everyone safe. I didn’t know if it was long enough. I’d expected to be dead when it was over. But I could work with unexpected results—even if it involved using a chamber pot. That had to be what the white porcelain vessel under the other bed was. The fairy queen had a kitchen with fridges and everything and didn’t have a bathroom? I considered it a minute and decided that maybe she just didn’t have a bathroom for prisoners.
After a very long time that was probably no more than an hour after I woke up, the door opened, and the queen walked in with two female attendants, and two male.
The first man was the fae who had seen Samuel and the rest out. He was tall, taller than Samuel, with seafoam eyes. For the first time, I realized he was the water fae who’d broken into the bookstore. The second man was short by human standards but not oddly so. His skin was green and rippled like the waves of an ocean at sea. Like the fairy queen, he had wings on his back, though his were grayish and leathery and less insectlike.
One of the women was carrying a chair. She was nearly human in appearance except that her eyes were orange and her skin pale, pale blue. The second woman was covered, head to toe, with sleek brown hair about two inches long, and her arms were a third again as long as they should have been. She was carrying a narrow silver ring just big enough to fit around my neck.
At the sight of the silver ring, I tried to run. The tall man caught me and sat me in the chair while the woman who’d carried it in tied me into it: wrists, elbows, and ankles.
Then they put the silver collar around my neck.
Once she has them in thrall, only she can release them.
“It took me too long to find your secrets, Mercedes,” she said. “Phin was the owner, but Ariana has him safely guarded in the reservation, where none of mine can get him. You gave it to your friend, but he has given it over to the werewolves, and we cannot go there either.”
How long had I been out, and what had I told her? I didn’t remember all of it, and that worried me.
The fairy queen was wearing a different dress than she had been. This one was blue and gold. Did that mean it was a different day? Or just that she’d gotten things on her dress and had to change?
“They have left me only vengeance for now.” Her eyes gave that weird flutter. “Eventually, they will not guard the Silver Borne as diligently, and I will have it. Until then, I’ll take what I can get. I hope you enjoy your victory.
“Mercedes Athena Thompson,” she said, putting a hand on my forehead. Look at me.
The “Look at me” part was inside my head. It reminded me of the way Mary Jo’s voice had entered my head in the bowling alley. Maybe without that experience, the queen’s voice wouldn’t have seemed so clearly foreign.
You want to serve me. Nothing else matters.
Adam mattered.
If I didn’t make it out of here alive, he’d think it was his fault. That if he’d been in better shape, I’d have brought him with me, and he’d have saved the day. He’d take responsibility for the world if someone (like me) wasn’t around to shake him up. So I had to survive—because Adam mattered to me.
The fairy queen had continued to talk in my head, but I wasn’t paying attention to what she said.
“Whom do you serve?” she asked aloud, pulling her hand away from my head. Not as though she were interested in the answer.
“ ‘Choose this day whom you will serve,’ ” I murmured. “ ‘But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ ” It seemed appropriate to quote Joshua at her.
“What?” she asked, startled.
“What were you expecting me to answer?” I asked, feeling a little let down. Some of the very old fae react poorly to scripture, but this one didn’t seem to mind—not the scriptures anyway.
“Bring her to the hall,” she said, her eyelashes beating her cheekbones with the force of her temper.
The men picked me up, chair and all, and hauled me back to the hall. I had only vague memories of what had happened to me there at the hands of the witch—my mother once told me that childbirth was like that. All that pain, then nothing. But if my mind had blocked out the worst of it, my body seemed to make up for it. As we got closer and closer, my stomach clenched, and I broke out in a sweat. By the time we made it into the hall, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the men carrying me could smell my fear.
They brought me right up to the throne before setting me down.
“What did you do?” the queen hissed at the witch, who shrank back from her. “What did you do that she resists me?”
“Nothing, my queen,” the witch said. “Nothing that would allow her to resist you. She is only half-human. Perhaps that is the problem.”
The queen released her and stormed back to me. She took a silver knife out of her belt and cut my arm right over the bite Samuel had given me. The bite marks were still fresh-looking, so I hadn’t lost a lot of time.
She rubbed her fingers in my blood and put them in her mouth. Then she cut herself and dribbled three drops into the open wound on my arm.
She was going to use old magic to bind us together. This was the stuff the wolves got out to make someone pack.
I had a sudden panicky thought. If she got me, could she get to the pack through me? Zee had been worried about her enthralling the wolves.
“My blood to yours,” she said, and it was too late to do anything about what she was doing. “My silver, my magic, our blood makes you mine.” Because it was done.
A fog rolled over my head.
I struggled and struggled, but there was nothing to struggle against; it was only fog that seemed to cover everything and muffle my thoughts.
Chapter 15
AFTER STRUGGLING AND STRUGGLING, I FOUND MYself alone, standing on a great barren field of snow. The cold was so great that it froze my nose when I breathed in, but, although I was naked, I wasn’t uncomfortable.
“Mercedes,” Bran’s voice was breathless. “Here you are! Finally.”
I turned all around and couldn’t see him.
“Mercedes,” he told me, “I can talk to you because you are part of Adam’s pack and his pack is mine, too. But you need to listen because I can’t hear you. All I can do is show you what I think you need.”
“All right,” I told him. It felt lonely knowing he couldn’t hear me. Lonely because it wasn’t Adam who’d found me there in the snow. I shivered though I still wasn’t feeling the cold.
“The biggest weapon in the arsenal of a fairy queen is enthrallment. As a member of a pack, you should be all but immune to that. But yours is a special case, and I am told that no one thought to teach you how the pack magic should work for you. Apparently my son and Adam, who should know better, assumed that it would all be instinctive because that’s how it works for a wolf. When Adam found that it was not the case, he chose to wait so he could find out who had been messing with you—instead of making you safe.”