Is this happening at my other courts, too?

  Sighing, I invite the earth to suspend them indefinitely, freezing them in battle, many once again mutilated and deformed, as solidly as Winter’s iced statues littering the grounds.

  Postulate, Barrons demands.

  One: the old earth gods got revenge somehow and did something to make the Fae turn on themselves.

  Good for the old earth gods, Barrons enthuses, dark eyes gleaming.

  I cut him a look. One, I’m their queen, remember. I’m responsible for them, and we still don’t know where my mother is. Two, someone got the Unseelie king’s power—

  Although the king abdicated power, he still has not chosen a successor. That power roams, undecided, watching.

  You didn’t tell me that. How do you know?

  It lurks in the bookstore on occasion.

  Watching him. Of course it would. The mural on the ceiling of Barrons Books & Baubles that I could never see clearly until a few years ago, mortal-time: Barrons as the Unseelie king, me as the queen and concubine.

  Three, he presses.

  I shrug. The Song was sung, reinvigorating the magic at the core of the planet. Anything might have happened. I have no bloody idea, Barrons. You? Can you sense my mother?

  He slices his head to the left in typical Barrons economy-of-motion fashion. He’s the most self-contained man I’ve ever known. Not yet; we need to continue walking. But if she’s in this mess, you’ve restored her.

  Assuming she was alive to begin with. Although I want my mother alive with every ounce of my being, I hope the queen’s power isn’t capable of reanimating the dead. For humans, death is the natural order of things. The universe will always exact a price if you defy that order.

  You might get them back. They might even be resurrected in good condition, but I suspect those are the rare cases. Most myths hold some basis in reality, and there are countless zombie myths.

  Still, you’d lose them again, one way or another, because they were meant to be dead.

  My mother is not meant to be dead.

  A cruel smile curves my lips.

  If she’s dead, I know exactly what I’ll do.

  I’ll unfreeze the Seelie and leave them just like this, maiming and disfiguring one another for all eternity.

  And I’ll never look back.

  16

  Who am I? Can I conceal myself forevermore?

  LYRYKA

  For the first time in my life, there’s no cork in the neck of my bottle.

  My father (assuming he has a way of finding me, even though I’m no longer where he put me) remains absent.

  Choice is mine.

  The world is right there.

  The Hall of All Days, within reach.

  I’m desperate to leave the bottle, plunge headfirst into all the experiences I’ve read about, meet people and not-people, have sex, and taste and touch and feel everything.

  Yet, on my first foray into the world, with whom did I have my virgin encounter?

  Death.

  It’s enough to give me pause.

  There are countless of my species, billions of mortals, myriad mythical creatures. What are the odds I’d come face-to-face with the one and only Death on my first excursion beyond the bottle?

  Astronomically and inconceivably small.

  One in an infinity.

  I know what that means.

  Events of epic proportion, rife with internal and external conflict, are never wasted on secondary characters.

  I’m one of the heroes.

  As both librarian and reader, I’m steeped in metaphor and analogy, coincidence and fate, foreshadowing and red herrings, theme and motif, emotional currency and twist of plot.

  And, like any astute reader, I’m deeply suspicious of the narrator.

  I know the precise element that sets a hero on his or her most significant journey often leads to his or her untimely demise.

  Few stories in the Library end happily ever after. I’m not certain who gathered them. I’d have assembled a collection harboring a bit more optimism.

  I wasn’t even graced with the subtlety of a metaphor.

  Death was my liberator.

  There’s a stone upside the head for you that reeks of karmic mischievousness and implies a dreadful fate may well await me.

  “I’m one of the heroes,” I murmur wonderingly. Then I groan and drop my aching head in my hands, lightly massaging my temples. Death said the aftermath of drunk lasts about thirty minutes. It’s time for my headache to be gone already.

  “Lyryka.”

  My head whips up, and I gasp. “Father!” So much for thinking he could no longer find me.

  “Omniscient, remember?” he murmurs with a playful smile.

  I feel an answering smile tug at my lips. For so long, I lived for the times he would appear, planned conversations, verbal tidbits to charm him into staying longer, selected the forms that I would wear for him with great deliberation and care. His company was my greatest joy, the only change in a monotonously unchanging environment from which there was no escape.

  I hate him for that.

  I love him.

  And I hate that.

  “You did well,” he says, starry eyes gleaming.

  Wait, what? Blinking, I shake my head and instantly regret it. “You mean I was supposed to escape my bottle?”

  “Of course.”

  Was nothing my choice?

  “I might have placed the bottle before his boot. I did not, however, fling myself into the side of it until it fell and shattered. You did.”

  So that part was my choice. Or was it? I despise how easily he confuses me. Anything could be true. Anything could be a lie. He is my only source of information about the world. It’s exceedingly dangerous to permit a single person to shape your reality.

  Why did he choose these two specific forms for me? What mischief has he put me up to? “I’m not certain I understand what you want of me, father. Will you tell me more about what I’m to do?”

  He shrugs. “Merely get to know him and his friends.”

  “Why?” I regret the word the moment it’s out. My father arches a brow, regarding me too intently for my comfort. There’s a palpable stress in his regard. I’ve never asked him why before.

  “Consider it a test preceding your eventual freedom. Prove to me how well you will obey me, that my faith in you is not misplaced.”

  Nodding, I smile, careful to betray no other emotion.

  Yet, I wonder why I have to prove anything to him.

  He proves nothing to me. I demand nothing. Ever. I have no rights.

  “I can’t stay,” he says then. “There are countless pieces in motion that require my attention. I came to tell you you’re doing well. Carry on and stop second-guessing. The time nears when you will finally be free. When I will, at long last, bring you home. Have faith, obey, and all will become clear in time.”

  I study him as perhaps I have never studied him before. Who is this being to insist I lose my entire life waiting for what he deems the “right time”? Is he even really my father? Is anything I think I know about myself true? Why do I hear no knell of truth in his claim that he will set me free?

  One thing I do know from reading billions of stories sprung from the myths of billions of worlds.

  There is no right time.

  There’s only now.

  “I’m free to leave the bottle?” I press. “Do as I wish?” As I await his reply, I wonder if anything is truly my wish. I wonder if he’s so clever, king to my pawn, that he sweeps me about his chessboard, prepared all along to sacrifice me at a critical moment to achieve whatever endgame he seeks, if I’m one of thousands of pawns he’s positioned during the eternity he’s been free and I have not.

  “So long as you obey the instructions I gave you, yes. But, Lyryka, if you show him your true form…”

  He trails off, and I blanche, breath hitching in my throat, heart freezing in my breast. He didn’t speak. He showed me what would happen to me inside my head. I never, ever want that to happen to me. There are worse fates than my bottle. An abyss of monsters, dark, dank, and terrifying, with no way out. Would he really do that to me?

  My father is gone.

  Leaving me to ponder the perfect conundrum he’s created for me.

  I can be free, but only if I never reveal my true form.

  And Death, whom I find so attractive, and hope will be my friend and give me sex, will trust me only if I reveal to him my true form.

  It’s a vise of mutually conflicting and dependent conditions, a trap, a dilemma employed by an author of events to make or break a character.

  I push to my feet, prepared to leave my bottle.

  Oh, yes, I’m definitely one of the heroes. I will not be broken.

  Then I drop right back down with another groan as a second, highly distasteful possibility occurs to me.

  In all fairness, by such criteria, I might also be one of the villains.

  17

  Run, you little bitch, I want your power

  IXCYTHE

  High in the North Tower, Ixcythe gazed down at the battle frozen below, lips drawn in a snarl, faceted eyes glittering with lust.

  Rage and desire warred painfully in her breast, enough to rend flesh from bone. She hungered so intensely she was the hunger, a maddening, unquenchable craving for more of everything but most especially possession of the power that was meant to be hers, but had been thieved by a mortal.

  The shields barring the ingresses to her castle were opaque from without, translucent from within, defying prying eyes, allowing her to spy.

  The bitch queen was in her kingdom.

  Headed straight for her door, escorted by the beast that served as her consort and guard.

  Ixcythe coveted the beast, lusted for him with every atom of her being. He was a weapon as deadly as the spear of destiny and the sword of light, a living creature that could kill the Fae.

  Were she to seduce him, he would be the dagger she’d thrust deep into the human queen’s duplicitous heart. It would be dangerous to have him near; it would be thrilling to have him heel at her side; death on a leash, the end of any Fae that dared so much as whisper against her.

  The beast of voracious appetites was legend. He’d lived among them for a time. He could be ruthless, he could be cruel; she could feel his hunger for all things simmering beneath his flesh, barely restrained. He was merely a dog that needed to be retrained, encouraged to once again savor his basest instincts and desires, rewarded each time he succumbed. Together, they would be unstoppable. With him, she would gain command of many such beasts, and her reign would never be overthrown.

  Ixcythe had deliberately not yet summoned the queen; she meant for her to stew in debilitating emotions before commanding her presence at the Grove.

  But the bitch had sauntered in, uninvited, unwelcome, with the beast heeling at her side, as if she had every right to be in Winter.

  When the queen restored her subjects, Ixcythe held her breath, praying the mortal possessed the power to restore them completely, return their reason and immortality as well as their forms.

  For a few moments, she’d thought the queen succeeded.

  Then they’d fallen on one another again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Now her entire kingdom was filled with nothing but statues.

  She was princess of none.

  Well, not quite…

  There was another inside the castle with her, but that one was little better than the grotesque statues below.

  With an icy smile, she turned to gaze at the human she’d abducted to coerce MacKayla Lane to obey her slightest whim.

  It was still alive.

  Barely.

  She’d chosen to damage it in precise ways, and when she was done, she’d infected it with a slow-acting poison.

  There was only one thing that could save it now.

  The Elixir of Life.

  18

  You should see me in a crown

  MAC

  In order to ascertain that my mother is not somewhere on this gruesome battlefield, we’re forced to walk it. “Slow-mo-Joe it,” as Dani would say. Trudgery—trudging drudgery—I would say. Sifting has spoiled me. There are things I prefer not to see, but a ruler can’t afford that luxury, so I force myself to inspect the Fae we pass. No beings deserve the kind of brutality they’ve inflicted upon one another. I’m stymied, unable to fathom what could have driven them to it.

  The moment we pass the final suspended mutation, I sift us up the absurdity of one thousand steps, framed by an elaborate pair of carved iced bannisters that lead to the towering door of the fortress.

  As all things Fae, Winter’s castle is an overblown creation. Numb to sensation, the Seelie believe the bigger and grander a thing, the better, ergo one thousand steps that no sifting Fae of a higher caste will ever place cosseted foot upon, and one thousand steps non-sifting lower castes will be forced to manually ascend, reminding them of their lesser status each time Winter commands their presence.

  The door is wide, fifty times our height. Not because Fae are tall—they have a few feet on mortals—but because it’s bigger and grander, therefore better. More waste. I live in a cozy, if spatially challenged, bookstore and, if I have anything to say about it, always will.

  The surface of the door ripples with whatever fluid silver element Winter used to bar the entrances to her castle. Intricate runes rush up the door in hundreds of columns, reach the top and vanish. I realize they’re looping, traversing the front, over the lip, and down the back of the door before reaching the bottom and rising up the front again, doubly securing the entrance against us. This is what I smashed into when I tried to sift to my mom. This is the magic capable of barring the Faery queen herself from one of her royal’s castles.

  Clever, Barrons murmurs. I’ve not seen this before.

  That worries me. I drift inward, searching my files on wards, which I’ve organized and keep readily accessible. I spent a great deal of time studying all manner of protection while sequestered. Enemies abound, and I’ll have to sleep sometime.

  There’s no mention in my files of a looping ward that encases an object, no tips on how to shatter it. I contemplate trying spells at random, starting with my all-powerful crimson runes, but random magic is dangerous. If you break a rune badly, you can turn it into something else. Adding blood to the wrong kind of rune can turn it into a living guardian. My crimson runes, once used to reinforce the prison walls, intensified them so the more violently an Unseelie struggled trying to escape, the stronger the walls grew. They were also recently used to cocoon two staggeringly powerful Unseelie Princes, operating on the same principle. The harder they fought the cocoon, the tighter it bound, and the more undefeatable it became. If I placed one on the door, it would likely only solidify the barrier.

  How does she possess a method of warding that I know nothing about, that’s capable of keeping even the Faery queen at bay? I hold all the files of the Fae, I say to Barrons.

  Not quite. You hold files from the second queen onward, and it’s possible there are eras of omission. The first queen died without passing the lore, leaving their origins secreted in the mists of time. We don’t know if all subsequent queens chose to pass the power forward. Only that, on occasion, they did.

  Still, the Fae drink from the Cauldron, repeatedly, shortening their memory to a lesser span of time.

  Barrons goes motionless (a difficult feat for a man whose innate posture is still as death), and I can practically see him sorting through countless possibilities before alighting on what he deems the most probable one.

  Fuck, he growls.

  What? I demand.

  Dark eyes narrow, nostrils flare as he scans the frozen Seelie. Again, I can see his mind whirring, chewing over whatever he’s struck upon. He’s lived so long, seen so much more than I, analyzed the nuances of events as power play after war spun out, and he often gets to the crux of things before me. It’s irritating and incredibly useful.

  The Seelie slowly grew more powerful, he finally murmurs, after the Song was sung. The old earth gods were reinvigorated, substance restored, unique abilities amplified. What if those aren’t the only things that changed? What if additional changes continued to occur in Faery, as they have in the mortal world?

  What continued to change in the mortal world?

  Mirrors, for one. They might reflect you, they might not; some even serve as limited doorways. Toasters once returned toast. Now it’s anyone’s guess what you get back, if anything. Commodes consistently flushed down, not up. The laws of human physics have been growing increasingly unpredictable. Fae and mortal are bleeding together.

  One more reason I needed to get the walls back up between realms. Toasters were keeping toast and toilets were flushing the wrong way? What else did I miss? What are you saying? I practically snarl. I don’t need more problems. The Seelies’ reinvigorated power is problem enough.

  What if the Song began undoing and restoring other things as well?

  Such as? I do snarl this time because I’ve begun to see where he’s going and I don’t like it one bit. It implies the advantage of long memory isn’t mine at all—but theirs. No, I insist.

  Denying with emotion what reason postulates is illogical. What if the Song restored their memories? My theory explains the ward you encountered earlier, as well as this one.