Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court)

I keep my voice light. “I will repeat my question, then. Where is my elder brother Sláine being held?”

Nothing. He rocks back and forth, lips moving in a silent argument with himself. I wait. Then I pull out my watch. It’s my talisman, a physical reminder of the promise I made to Smith. Time passes differently in the sídhe, but it can’t affect the iron in this timepiece. It’ll keep me on schedule. Minutes tick by, precious moments I need if I hope to get back to Smith in time.

I click the lid shut and stand. “Very well. You refuse to share your knowledge.”

He pleads with my back, promising me anything his desperate mind can think of. I return to the door and knock twice, a signal that I want to speak with one of the guards.

“Yes, Prince Lyne?”

“Fetch me a cup of tea, Nickgut. And please tell Mother it’ll be at least an hour before I’ll need her. I only got to question four.”

The redcap bows to me, so low that blood sloshes from his hat onto the ground. “Of course, Your Highness.”

Business concluded, I turn back to the prisoner. His pale green skin is pasty from fear.

I stretch, rolling my head from side to side, flexing my shoulders and releasing them. I whisper the words of the hex and smile when ice traps his legs and crawls higher. When it reaches his stomach, I wave a hand and the ice changes direction, crawling inward instead of upward.

“Let’s start again, shall we?” I ask, returning to my chair. “This time, we’ll see if you can answer all my questions before I manage to find your liver. Have you been forbidden to return to your Court?”

Chapter Seventeen

Phineas

Friday morning and campus is abuzz with rumors that war councils have convened in both Courts. All the Seelie have left campus. Unseelie whisper about their parents being given orders to return to the sídhe. Gumba and Sebastian are unusually dour.

No one mentions Roark.

I go through the motions in my classes. They’re fairly quiet, with the fae either absent or trying their best to be invisible. That night, I pack my bag for the weekend while my friends watch a movie and eat pizza. They make sure to hug me and say goodbye when they leave. Sebastian tells me to call if Monday’s traveling spell back to the school doesn’t work and I need a ride to the apartment. Gumba programs Roark’s number into my phone.

He chuckles when I can’t bring myself to delete it.

Saturday morning, I break the seal on the bottle storing the potion for the first half of the traveling spell. Professor Liddel walked me through it weeks ago when I put the request form in to the university’s transportation department. Keeping his warning in mind about the smell, I plug my nose, press the bottle’s mouth to my lips, throw it back, and think of home.

There’s a deafening noise and the world spins by like a sped-up country fair ride. The ground shakes under my feet and I wonder if the spell will keep working if I hurl up the potion and—

A fence post collides with my elbow. I swear and stumble away, blinking to clear the triplicate from my sight. My mouth tastes like burnt rubber and stale airline pretzels and the air around me feels charred somehow, like I came through it so quickly I left some kind of scorch mark in my wake.

Sweet mother of the Blue Angels, maybe springing for a plane ticket back would be safer.

The aftershocks fade quickly and the ley line squirms in glee at the fields spreading out in front of me. I know this place. Love it. I’m home.

I hike my bag higher on my shoulder and take a wobbly step toward the dirt road on my right. It’s not far to the house, maybe half a mile. The breeze gusts around me, rustling the pods of soybeans making up this year’s crop.

When I hit the base of the driveway, I cup both hands around my mouth and bellow a hello. For a moment, nothing. Then the screen door of the house opens and my mother steps onto the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She starts laughing and rushes down the steps toward me.

“Finny! You got here so early!”

My mother’s hugs are one part sugar, six parts steel. She’s never the first to let go. I can’t bear to let her go either, not when I know this could be my last time home unless we make enough from this harvest to save the farm.

My father breaks up the reunion. He emerges from the house, tips back his baseball hat, and grins at me. “Just in time,” he says.

“I figured you’d need some help,” I say. He claps me on the back and walks me and my mother toward the house.

It’s not fancy. The screen door sticks and you have to haul on it to get it open. The kitchen’s cramped with the dining room table in it, but Mom refuses to let us eat dinner anywhere else. The stairs to the second story creak, and I still bump my head on the doorway into my room unless I remember to duck.

They’ve started packing. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else, but this is my home. I have the shadows and dust motes memorized. A picture taken down here, a set of books missing there. Small pieces of furniture moved or gone.

My room is mostly untouched, but the stack of cardboard moving boxes peeking out of my closet reminds me that soon this space will also be neatly put away.