***

  I came to in fits and starts. It was like flipping between channels on a television. One second black, the next trees above me, their bare branches stretching up until it looked like they might brush against the low hanging storm clouds, choking the night sky. Then black again. Flutters of white snow. Boots moving around me. A near crushing grip on my ankle.

  When I finally jolted back to full consciousness, it was just in time for the huge, shaggy Fae to casually toss me by my right leg by which it had been dragging me through the snow. I slammed into a mound of snow, all my breath knocked out of me. The whole side of my face throbbed, the skin pulled tight and hot. It had been joined by a lump at the base of my skull, and various other bumps and bruises. I was pretty sure the Fae had dragged me halfway across Haven Hollow.

  We were in the woods outside of town, not far from the cemetery. I knew the area, more than I wanted to. Knew it well enough that my stomach dropped.

  I propped myself up on my shaking arms, just in time for a pair of white boots to step in front of me. My arms shook, muscles feeling loose and useless, but I managed to push up far enough to see who was glaring down at me.

  Lady Evergreen, one of Janara’s most loyal supporters, always reminded me of a slightly bitchier version of the White Witch from the Narnia books. She was dressed all in white, from her hair, to the hem of her elaborate gown, all of it trimmed in thick white fur. There was a delicate pattern of frost dusting her cheeks and eyelids the way most people would wear makeup, and her ears rose through the elaborate braided hairstyle she wore, the tips coming to graceful points.

  She looked down her perfect nose at me, elegant, and ethereal. Then one of her boots snapped up, and she kicked me in the chin hard enough that my teeth slammed together and I was sent sprawling on my back into the snowbank.

  My whole head throbbed, teeth aching, and a hot trickle of blood snaked down my chin before I could stop it. My tongue burned where I’d bitten it, a horrible stinging throb.

  Lady Evergreen looked down at me like I was something unpleasant she’d stepped in, her beautiful face twisted with disgust and disdain as she drew back and smashed her boot into my side.

  My ribs shrieked, and I curled around them on instinct, trying to cover myself as best I could, to avoid another cheap shot. My vision swam, and bile burned in the back of my throat. The thick taste of copper in my mouth was nauseating. My ribs howled every time I drew in more than a shallow breath. I was pretty sure they were possibly cracked, but hopefully they weren’t broken.

  While I tried to blink the shadows out of my eyes and to think through the pain, I could hear Lady Evergreen speaking in a rolling, lilting language that sounded like broken music. It set my teeth on edge, and I tried to curl away from her even as I realized she was casting a spell or something similar.

  The cold had never much bothered me, even when I’d thought I was human. And now, with my faerie heritage awakened, I could have walked out the door in the middle of a blizzard wearing a bikini and never even felt uncomfortable. But the icy, numbing cold that snaked through me when Lady Evergreen bit off the end of her spell, that was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  ‘Cold’ didn’t even begin to describe it.

  It slipped through my veins like poison, coiling up around something deep inside me and locking it away. My magic, I realized with a dazed horror. She was binding my magic.

  Strength rushed out of me like water from a cracked bowl. Pain spiked in my skull, my vision graying out again as my body stopped healing itself—yes, I realized as I thought about it, that’s exactly what that strange little humming sensation had been—my body healing itself. Now that feeling was nowhere to be found. Much like my magic.

  My limbs flopped, feeling like so much useless flesh. I hadn’t realized until just that moment, how much my body relied on magic. And now that it was suddenly gone, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to lift myself up and out of the snow that was still falling around us.

  Eventually, even the pain started to retreat. Everything felt as soft and numb as newly fallen snow. My eyelids drooped, pulled down by lead weights as the dark tried to suck me back under.

  I flinched instinctively when the toe of Lady Evergreen’s boot nudged my chin up. Her face was colder than the heart of winter.

  “Now, now,” she purred. “None of that. I want you to stay alive, Olwen. At least until we reach the circle.” There was nothing kind in her smile, just a baring of teeth that were like little chips of ice. “Queen Janara will want to see you killed, personally.”

  “No,” Cardinal said, her voice shaking as she stumbled forward. She wrung her hands, fingers twisting together as she looked between Lady Evergreen and me. “She was only supposed to be captured, not killed. You were just going to put her in the circle.”

  Fae were mostly ageless, but Cardinal looked terribly young, standing there in the snow without all her elaborate costumes and makeup. Her blue eyes were wide as she bit her bottom lip.

  Lady Evergreen laughed, and somewhere above us, a tree branch froze and shattered. It popped like a gunshot as the sap inside suddenly turned to ice.

  “Are you really that naïve, or just that stupid?” Lady Evergreen spat. “What do you suppose Janara will do to her in the circle?”

  “I thought,” Cardinal started, but then swallowed her own words.

  “Did you believe Janara would allow her only competition for the throne to live, child?” She spat a quick look at me. “Olwen would be a rallying point for the fools who still cling to a dead tradition. She is a complication that cannot be tolerated.”

  Lady Evergreen eyed Cardinal in a way that made my still twitching hand curl into a fist. The Lady turned her back on Cardinal then and waved a dismissive hand.

  “As are you,” she said, coldly.

  Before Cardinal could do anything other than blanch completely white, one of the Fae who was dressed in black ice armor, stepped forward and drew their sword with a practiced motion.

  Cardinal gave a choked, gurgling gasp before the Fae slit her throat in one neat motion, and bright red blood sprayed across the snow. Cardinal immediately collapsed to the ground, and I stared into her terrified eyes, my body shaking with helpless fury.

  Even though she’d obviously stabbed me in the back, what had happened to her wasn’t right.

  She didn’t deserve to die.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I tore at the binding spell.

  I would have chewed my way through with my teeth, if I could have. Anything to stop that horrible, terrified choking. It sounded like Cardinal was drowning on her own blood, the scalding wash of it melting the snow around her like a halo.

  She might have been a traitor, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to die for it. She was just scared. I understood that. I couldn’t even blame her, much less help her. But all my magic was bound, just a useless lump inside me. There was nothing I could do to help her.

  My arms flailed, and I tried to drag myself closer. Maybe if I could put pressure on the wound, she might last until she could get help. But my fingers twitched uselessly, sinking into the snow. I could barely feel them, and tears of sheer fury and frustration burned at the corner of my eyes.

  There was nothing I could do.

  My gaze landed on Jonathon. He was leaning back against a bare maple tree, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked bored, the way he almost always did—like all of this was an unengaging play he was unlucky enough to have to watch. How had I ever thought he was handsome? He was nothing but a petulant, narcissistic jerk.

  “Jonathon,” I begged. My voice came out as a dry whisper, but I knew he could hear me. “Jonathon, please… help her. She’s your girlfriend, for God’s sake.”

  He glanced at me like I was an idiot before his eyes flicked to where Cardinal was lying so very still on the ground. Then he glanced at Lady Evergreen’s turned back, at the alabaster staff in her hand.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jonathon straightened up and smoothed out his coat. He glanced over his shoulder at Cardinal again before shaking his head and starting to walk away. “She meant nothing to me.”

  The creak of his shoes in the snow faded, and I promised myself, if I ever saw him again, I would kill him. I would avenge Cardinal and all the women he’d used and discarded.

  I was trembling with fury, my fingers twitching with it. I wanted to fight back, so, so badly. To punch Lady Evergreen right in the middle of her perfect face. How dare she treat people like this? Like they were nothing more than garbage to be discarded? Was this how faerie royals did things? And people wondered why I wanted no part of it?

  I fed my fury, wanting it to burn stronger. Anything to help me chip away at the bindings holding me. If I could get my power free, I might at least have a chance. And if not, then I could go down swinging, and take as many of them with me when I did.

  Lady Evergreen didn’t even glance at Cardinal as she walked away, gliding over the snow. She made an absent gesture to the nearest Fae with an unconcerned hand.

  “Bring her.”

  Two Fae grabbed my arms, hauling me upwards. The sudden change to upright caused the blood to rush out of my head, and darkness crowded into my vision again. Nausea surged up the back of my throat and my skull and ribs throbbed with the movement.

  I tried to fight, but my body was mostly dead weight, and they half marched, half dragged me after Lady Evergreen.

  My legs thrashed in the snow behind me. If I could just get to my feet, I could fight back. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. But all my muscles felt like they’d detached, like they’d rotted away like useless strings. Even that much effort left me panting for breath. The side of my face burned, and my ribs shrieked in protest with every twist. Something might have broken, after all.

  We finally came to a stop in a small clearing, and my stomach dropped. Even through the snow, pale stalks of mushrooms pushed up, the red caps gleaming like drops of blood.

  Janara’s prison.

  The two Fae holding me up let me drop to the ground, and the snow was the only thing that kept my face from smashing into the earth. Holding my head up felt obscene, like trying to balance an ostrich egg on a teaspoon. So, I didn’t even try.

  Lady Evergreen strode forwards, her fur cloak snapping dramatically on the wind as she approached the circle. She looked so pleased with herself, so smug in her assumed victory, that it was practically radiating off her in waves.

  I wondered if I could work up enough energy to spit some blood on her pretty white furs.

  “At last,” she hissed and raised her staff to the winter sky.

  That same language came again, somehow lilting and grating to my ears at the same time. As she chanted her spell, the winds howled, thrashing the trees around us. Snow fell in stinging sheets, whirling around the clearing in a circular pattern just above the circle of mushrooms that delineated Janara’s prison. The air inside the circle shimmered, distorting it like the surface of the water when someone throws a rock at it.

  She was doing it. She was really going to free Janara.

  Lady Evergreen was going to bring down the prison, and there was no one here to stop her, because my magic was bound and even though I barely could use it at all, apparently my body needed it more than I’d ever imagined. So that meant I had to lie here, helpless, while this murderous bitch freed her murderous, child abducting queen.

  No.

  No way.

  I couldn’t just lie here and do nothing.

  I’d never just give up—not while there was still breath in my lungs. And though I might have been down for the count, there was still breath in my lungs. I hadn’t given up when Jonathon had tried to destroy my life, and I’d be damned if I’d give in to that bargain basement snow globe witch now.

  They were all so sure that they’d beaten me that they weren’t even paying attention to what I was doing. All just standing around in awe, gaping like idiots as Lady Evergreen worked to bring down the circle and free their, gag, queen.

  I convinced my breathing to slow, gritting my teeth as I forced my muscles to tense. I might be magicless, but I was hardly done. I had one shot (not a literal one because someone had had the forethought to disarm me). But whatever energy I had left to me, I had to make it count, or it was all over. And there was no way in hell or any other realm, for that matter, that I was leaving Haven Hollow, and my kids, to Janara’s non-existent mercies.

  The chanting got louder, until it sounded like Lady Evergreen was shouting to the sky, commanding, demanding. The circle sparked, light flickering between the mushroom caps, and the shadow of three figures appeared at its center.

  The Fae around me gasped almost as one.

  With whatever life I still had within me or maybe it was that adrenaline burst you always hear about in emergencies, whatever it was… I pushed up from the ground and charged Lady Evergreen’s back.

  My attempts ended up being more of a lurch and a controlled fall, but if I could even crash into her, and get the staff out of her hands, I might have been able to delay things until someone else noticed what was going on. I’d alerted the Council; Maverick had warned the coven. Someone with some kind of actual magic or supernatural know-how would show up, eventually. I knew that. I just needed to buy them the time they needed to fight their way through the warzone the town had become. If I was really lucky, I could knock Evergreen into the circle with her would-be queen.

  One step.

  Two.

  The Fae around me realized that I was suddenly up and moving, and one of them reached out to grab me but missed.

  I closed on Lady Evergreen, my hands coming up to grab for her staff.

  Without even stumbling over her words, she turned in an insultingly graceful arch.

  And slammed me across the side of my head with the butt of her staff.

  The world disappeared in a bright white flash of sudden agony.

  ***

  When I managed to pry my eyes open, I was lying face first down in the snow again, while Lady Evergreen stood over me, her face twisted in ugly triumph as she spat the last words of her spell at me.

  For one heart-tight moment, nothing happened.

  The wind stopped. No one moved. An eerie stillness settled over everything like a smothering blanket.

  And then with a huge thunderclap of sound, the circle broke.

  Three figures picked their way out of the circle, looking a little worse for wear. They’d been trapped for nearly a year, so I supposed that even faeries might get a bit ragged.

  I swallowed hard. The air tasted like metal.

  The other Fae swarmed me, tying my hands together with something that moved like rope, but looked like it was made out of ice. It was flattering that they thought I still could pull something else, but my head was ringing like a bell from the last hit. I bared my bloody teeth at them though and focused my attention on the people emerging from the faerie circle.

  Poppy had told me about the fight that had happened between Janara and the rest of the town after she’d decided it was a good idea to kidnap a bunch of supernatural children as bargaining chips to force Haven Hollow to hand me over.

  From what I could remember of Poppy’s explanation, the faerie that looked like a little girl was Wren, Janara’s sorceress. The tall, slender man, was Rime, the seer who had apparently messed up my arrival date by an entire year. And that left the woman in the center, with her white hair and aristocratic features that would have been considered beautiful if they weren’t so twisted up with malice. That must have been Janara.

  “Evergreen.” Janara glanced down the length of her nose.

  Lady Evergreen bowed. “Queen Janara.”

  Janara sniffed. “It took you long enough.”

  The bow stayed absolutely flawless, but a line of tension shivered up Lady Evergreen’s back. “There were complications. But I have brought you a gift, to make up for my tardiness, my Queen.”

  Janara followed the graceful line of Lady Evergreen’s arm, and her glacial eyes fell on me. Instantly, her entire face brightened with a vicious kind of glee that made me want to spit.

  Janara’s voice dropped into something that was close to a purr. “Lady Evergreen, I thank you for your loyal service, and for your thoughtfulness in granting me the gift of ending the brat once and for all.”

  I bared my teeth. If someone would just loosen the ropes, I’d be happy to show her who was a brat.

  Lady Evergreen straightened, turning to look down on me again. “I am honored. Would you prefer me to continue to bind her in place, my Queen? Until you have the opportunity to recover your strength?”

  My heart hammered. Would Janara go for it? Every second they spent gloating was more time I had to hopefully get my body back under control. And it was more time for the rest of the supernaturals of Haven Hollow to arrive.

  “No,” Janara spat, before her features returned to the calm, haughty mask she seemed to prefer wearing. “No, Lady Evergreen. Enough delays. We must deal with this immediately.”

  Well, crap. Either way, I wasn’t going to lie down and die. Not a chance.

  “As my Queen commands.” Lady Evergreen stepped forward, and offered a knife to Janara, holding the hilt out for her to grasp.

  Janara took the offered hilt, grasping the knife with an eager light in her eyes as she walked slowly across the clearing towards me. I focused on the way in which she was moving, even as my heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to hurt. Even with my hands tied together, I could use my arms like a club. Or kick her knee when she came in range. I wasn’t totally helpless. I wasn’t.

  At least, that’s what I told myself.

  Janara studied my face for a long moment, and a terrible smile twisted her lips. “It really is you, Olwen. No counterfeit this time.” Her eyes narrowed in fury.

  “Counterfeit?” I managed, thinking only of dragging this out for as long as I could, hoping upon hope that someone would arrive soon.

  “The last time, a witch pretended to be you. But not this time. Now I can finally rip the weeds up by the root and take my rightful place on the throne.”