As they walked up to the door, Keenan scowled. He didn’t pause or knock. He slid the door open and strode inside. He looked ready to strike someone.
Rage.
“Keenan!” She grabbed his arm. “We need to talk to them. Remember? That—”
“Ash-girl, you’ve finally come calling.”
; Aislinn looked upward. Bananach was perched on a rafter like a nightmarish vulture. Her feathers were expanding as she sat there, building themselves into sweeping wings that would span two body lengths if they were spread wide. With a crackling sound, she fluttered those wings, stretching them.
“You are good to me,” Bananach crowed. She dropped to the floor in front of them. “Come now. The Dark King will be irritating if I keep you to myself.”
Aislinn started, “We’re here to see you. I need to know—”
Bananach’s hand clamped over Aislinn’s mouth before the sentence was finished. “Shhh. Mustn’t ruin my fun. No more speaking from you if you want speech of mine.”
Aislinn nodded, and Bananach pulled her hand away, scratching furrows into her cheek in the process.
They followed Bananach into a gutted concrete abyss. A sickly smell, like burned sugar and musky bodies, lingered in the air. The floor was sticky underfoot, so that each step was accompanied by a squelching sound. Aislinn had the almost irrepressible urge to run. She kept her arms close to her body in an attempt not to touch anything or anyone. They weren’t all misshapen, but many of the faeries seemed ill made. Others looked closer to what she was accustomed to but were equally frightening.
Red-palmed Ly Ergs grinned, too wide, gleeful in the funereal atmosphere. Vilas turned their gray gazes on Aislinn and Keenan. Jenny Greenteeth and her cluster of nightmarish kin spoke softly, like gossips at the gate. Spreading a cloud of fear, the Gabriel Hounds moved like sentinels throughout the crowd.
Aislinn looked back at their own guards. They were fine for individual skirmishes, but a full-out war would be devastating. The Summer Court wasn’t ready for fighting, not truly. The Dark Court was wrought of violence, among other things. This was their domain.
“Do you like it?” Bananach whispered. “How they want to eat you alive? You took away the last king’s mortal. You make the new king mourn for both of his mortals.”
“His mortals? Seth is my—” Aislinn started.
But Bananach crowed. Her shadow-wings stretched out behind her and she dragged her talons over Aislinn’s arm in a feigned caress. “Pitiful little ash-girl. I wonder if he mourns falsely. Pretending to blame you for taking the boy?”
In front of them, Aislinn saw a shadowed tableau. Unlike in the park when the image had looked real, this was an obvious illusion hanging in front of them. A battlefield spread out of the image. The ground was ravaged. Faeries lay broken and bloodied. Shades of the dead drifted in the smoke from funeral pyres. Mortals were tangled in the mix—horror-stricken and mad, dead and empty.
In the center of the carnage was a table of sun-bleached bone. Skulls were stacked high for legs; ribs and arms and spines were woven together with sinew to make the flat of the table. Bananach sat at the head of the table—and Seth was stretched out on it in front of her.
The shadow Bananach in the image caught Aislinn’s gaze and said, “If I were queen, I’d eat his entrails at my table just to make you ache.” Then she plunged her talons into Seth’s stomach.
He screamed.
It’s not real. It’s not real at all. But the war faery’s earlier words made Aislinn’s fear grow. Is this a “what-if”? Is this what will happen if I make the wrong choice?
Keenan pulled her to him. “It’s not real, Aislinn. Look away. Look away now.”
The image shattered then as one of the Vilas spun through the room. Her delicate shoes, held to her feet with silver chains, made an unpleasant clattering noise as she moved across the cement floor.
“It’s an illusion,” Keenan said. “Seth is not here.”
“Are you so sure, little kingling? Can you be sure of anything?” Bananach reached out and laid her hand over the site of Aislinn’s now-healed stab wounds. “Stirrings, beautiful stirrings that will bring me my violence…”
Aislinn had to remind herself that she was not a mortal to be daunted so easily. She put her hand on the raven-faery’s taloned hand. “Do you have Seth? Did you take him?”
“What a good question,” Niall said.
The Dark King had come up behind them. He paused beside Bananach. “Well?”
“They were in my nest; they are in your presence. The mortal isn’t here. But you know that….” She leaned on his shoulder and let her wings curl forward to embrace him. Her wings were still shadowy, not fully tangible, but they weren’t illusory anymore.
“Don’t.” Niall walked over to a throne on a raised platform. Unlike the Summer and Winter Courts, the Dark Court actually had a dais. The Dark Court embraced a bizarre mix of old-fashioned manners and disturbing perversities.