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That’s not my name. Neither is Elle.
I’m freaking Helen Andrews and if I have to take that name to my grave to avoid Dusk reaching for me with his slender, pale fingers, I will.
3
The next morning, I wake up all at once. One second I’m out, the next my eyes are springing wide open. There is no in-between.
Something’s wrong.
“Fourteen,” I whisper to myself before kicking my thin blanket off of my feet. The fabric gets tangled around one of my ankles and I yank it before tossing it to the floor.
The first thing I notice is the ringing noise. It’s a high-pitched keening, worse than the expensive car alarms that blare outside of my window back in the city. It keeps rising, one long, unbroken note, before it chirps and starts again.
The fairy lights outside of my cell are flickering. On. Off. On. Off. It looks like some kind of symbol, just one I don’t get.
What the hell is going on?
With a whoosh, the sealed doors on either end of our wing dissolve into a shower of sparkles. That’s a first. The guards usually only activate the partitions when they need to, and never both at once.
I run to the front of my cell, peering down the center strait. I’m not the only one, either. Rys is already up, doing the same thing I’m doing.
And that’s when the first rush of guards come tearing down our wing. If they were humans, I’d think it was like a stampede. Since the guards are all fae, they move easily, gliding at a pace that’s way faster than anything I can pull off. Their long hair streams behind them, and most of them are clutching their drawn swords.
Yeah. This is definitely new.
I take a few hesitant steps away from the bars.
Not Rys.
He reaches past them. The air crackles with magic, the small amount of iron tucked in the crystal enough to burn the length of his forearm as he fishes for one of the guards running by our cells.
He snags one and, Jesus, he’s stronger than his delicate beauty suggests. The grip on the guard’s collar stops the Seelie in his track, gagging as the material of his uniform cuts into his throat. His body snaps and he stumbles. The only thing keeping him upright his Rys’s tight hold.
He jerks his hand. The guard reminds me of a marionette, the prisoner manipulating his strings. Rys sets him on his feet before demanding to know what is going on.
Too stunned to do anything but react, the guard chokes out, “The Summer King has returned.”
Rys immediately lets go of his collar. To my surprise, the guard doesn’t retaliate. Neither do the other ones who continue to fly past us. At least twenty have thundered down our wing, heading toward the heart of the prison, and those closest to Rys’s side swerve around the Seelie guard that he grabbed.
This is crazy. I didn’t even know Siúcra had that many patrolling at once.
What is going on, I wonder again. The Summer King? Last I heard, Faerie was ruled by the Fae Queen.
Rys doesn’t seem to buy what the guard’s selling, either. “You’ve got to be wrong. Oberon is dead.”
“He lives. It’s the queen who has lost her head.”
I watch as Rys’s fingers twitch, like he wants to grab the guard again but it’s not worth another burn. Even from across the way, I can see the raw, shiny patch of burned skin covering the entire inside of his arm.
“What about the Shadow?” he demands. “The Shadow Prophecy, Vale. What about that?”
The Seelie shakes his head. “All that’s come down is that the Reign of the Damned is over. Melisandre is dead. Hail Oberon!”
It starts with one voice. As soon as Vale says that, the fae guards hurrying past repeat his cry. It becomes a chant.
“Hail Oberon!”
Rys clamps his mouth shut, the edge of his jaw going hard. I want desperately to ask if it’s a good thing or a bad that the Fae Queen—ah, jeez—lost her head and now there’s a new ruler in place.
