The Iron Traitor (The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten 2)

I took a deep, steadying breath, realizing my hands were shaking, and glared at Keirran. “What the hell was that?” I whispered.

“Someone, or something, who’s become lost in the Between,” Keirran replied in an equally low voice as Razor gave a weak, garbled buzz and leaped to his shoulders. “Time and space don’t really exist here, and sometimes fey or humans become stuck between the worlds and can’t find their way out again. So...they wander. For eternity.”

I shuddered. “Then maybe we should get out of here.”

He nodded. “Follow me.”

The eerie landscape continued, an endless plateau of mist and fog, shrouding everything in gray. It never let up enough to see the surroundings, but one time I nearly walked into a stone archway that loomed out of the mist. Frowning, I peered around and could just make out the ruins of some strange castle, crumbling and ancient. It seemed out of place, surrounded by complete nothingness. I mentioned this to Keirran.

“It’s an anchor,” he replied, glancing back at the towers as they vanished from sight behind curtains of fog. “Abandoned, by the looks of it, but was once tied to the mortal realm. The Between is constantly shifting, but if you have a tie to the real world, something that exists in both places, you can shape the spaces Between into whatever you want.”

“Like Leanansidhe’s mansion,” I guessed. Keirran nodded.

“Or you can use the Between to slip between the mortal realm and the Nevernever, without a trod. No one does it, because they don’t know how to part the Veil, and because if they become lost for even a moment, they’ll wander the empty spaces forever.”

“How do you know all this?” Kenzie asked, surprising us. She’d been unusually quiet up until now, barely looking at me. I figured she was still furious at my abandonment but was trying to focus on the larger problem at hand. Keirran hesitated, then said in a quiet voice:

“The Lady told me.”

Annwyl flinched and drew away from him. Razor hissed, and I glared at the back of his neck. Keirran noticed all our reactions and sighed, looking out into the mist.

“I know,” he murmured. “And I know what you’re thinking. You have every right to be angry. That night in the throne room...” He closed his eyes. “Ethan, I never apologized to you. My actions that night were inexcusable. I don’t know why you’d even come for me, after what I did.”

Annwyl frowned, looking at him strangely, and he shrank even further. “What happened when you were with the Lady?” she asked. “What did you do, Keirran?”

“Nothing.” I broke in before he could reply. “It was a misunderstanding. I barged into the throne room, the Lady’s guards attacked and I got kicked around a bit. Keirran stepped in right before they would’ve killed me.”

That wasn’t the whole truth, of course. I left out the part where, when the four heavily armored knights had attacked, I’d yelled at Keirran to help me out, and...he hadn’t. He’d just stood there beside the Forgotten Queen, watching me get my ass kicked. Watching as they almost killed me. I remembered the look on his face as I’d fought for my life—cold, blank, impassive—and it made me very nervous. I’d seen that same look tonight, in Mr. Dust’s back room. That dark, icy stranger hadn’t gone away; he was still here.

I didn’t know why I was defending him now.

But the look Keirran gave me was neither cold nor impassive; it was just relieved. Suddenly, he paused, gazing thoughtfully at a portion of mist that looked identical to everything else in this place. “The Veil is thin here,” he announced, running a hand through the air, like he could push it aside. “And I don’t sense my father anymore. I think we’re safe.”

He lifted a curtain of mist away, and I could abruptly see the real world through the gash: a New Orleans street and a familiar building on the corner, orange lamplight flickering beside the doorway. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.

The sidewalk was deserted as we stepped out of the Between into the real world again, the streets empty and still. I checked my watch, frozen at 12:12 a.m., waiting as the numbers flickered and reappeared as 3:48 a.m. Better than I could’ve hoped. With the screwy time differences between Faery and the real world, we were lucky this whole crazy adventure happened in the same night.

“Where to now?” Keirran asked, looking at me. I rubbed tired eyes and tried to get my brain to function.

“Home,” I said. “Back to my town. Guro is the one who can help us.”

“The human we met before,” Keirran said. “Your master. Are you certain he can help?”

“He said he’d be willing to try. And he’s the only one I can think of.”

The Iron Prince nodded, looking weary. “I’ll try anything. I hope you know what you’re doing, Ethan. All right...” He glanced at the spot where we’d walked out of thin air, then raised a hand again. “Let’s go.”

I blinked. “Through the Between?”

“Of course.” Keirran looked back, confused. “How did you think we would get there?”

“Uh, with my truck?”

“It’s much faster to go through the Between,” Keirran explained. “Just like Faery and the trods, it doesn’t conform to normal space. You can walk from one end of the country to the other in a few minutes, if you know where you’re going and if you can find a place where the Veil is almost transparent.” A faintly horrified look crossed his face then. “You didn’t...drive Annwyl up, did you? In a car?”

“How did you expect us to get here?”

Keirran shuddered, then slipped his hand into the air again and parted reality like a pair of drapes. I shivered, too. Call it what you wanted, that was just creepy. “Fine,” I muttered, bracing myself for more shadowy Between and coiling nothingness. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Wait,” Kenzie said.

We all turned to her. “Before we go anywhere,” she began, gazing especially at me and Keirran, “I have to go back to my dad. I want to tell him where I’ll be this time—not that he cares, but I don’t want to worry Alex or my stepmom.” She gestured to the buildings around us. “I can’t just vanish in a strange city, with them having no idea where I am. Even Dad will freak out.” She pushed back her hair, suddenly nervous. “So, can we make one quick stop at my hotel before we head out? It won’t take long, I promise.”

I held my tongue. I knew, by the stiff set of Kenzie’s shoulders, the tension lining her jaw, that she was waiting for me to protest, to tell her to stay behind. She was gearing up for a fight, and I...had no desire to argue with her anymore. I still wanted to keep her safe, but her last accusation had shaken me up pretty bad. Kenzie had gotten the Sight knowing exactly what it meant. She wasn’t afraid, though she knew the dangers just as well as I did. And I had shut her out, trying to keep her safe. As if I hadn’t heard everything she’d told me about wanting to live, and people treating her differently, and not having time to be safe. She’d told me all that before; I just hadn’t listened.

God, I was a jackass.

I looked at Keirran, nodded, and he sighed. “All right,” he agreed, and Kenzie relaxed. “One more stop, but then we really should go. Ethan, what about your family? Do you need to tell them what’s going on?”

I shook my head. “They already know. Well, they know I’m here and that I won’t be back for a couple days.” I just hoped we could figure this thing out quickly, that Guro would be able to help and that we could avoid crossing the Veil into Faery. I couldn’t keep this part of my life from my parents anymore. And if I had to vanish into the Nevernever again, I was not looking forward to that conversation.

Not surprisingly, Kenzie had been staying at one of the nicer hotels close to Bourbon Street, a luxurious old building so far out of my price range, I felt scruffy just walking through the front doors. The receptionist behind the desk eyed me suspiciously as I followed Kenzie into the lobby, not seeing the two fey at our back. Keirran had glamoured himself invisible, and Annwyl seemed more spirit than flesh now, so no one even looked at them. Or Razor, jabbering nervously from Keirran’s shoulder, his teeth flashing blue-white in the dimly lit room. Me, however—a teenage thug stalking into a nice hotel in the dead of night—they definitely noticed. Kenzie gave the receptionist a bright smile and received a nod in return, but I continued to get the evil eye all the way down the hall.

At the elevators, I sneaked a glance at Kenzie, knowing that if I had to do this—explain to her father what was going on—I would be far less calm. “Do you want us to wait here?” I asked, making her frown. I continued quickly, wanting her to understand I wasn’t abandoning her this time. “It might not be a great idea if you show up at four in morning with...me, and have to explain that I’m driving you home.” I was going to say your boyfriend, but I wasn’t certain where I stood with her now. “We could wait outside, if you need to talk to them alone.”

“No,” Kenzie said quietly, facing the elevator doors. “I want you there. Dad needs to understand why I’m doing this, even if I can’t tell him the whole truth.” She flicked a glance at me, and maybe she caught the apprehension on my face, because she added, “But you don’t have to come, Ethan. I understand if you want to stay here. It’s not a big deal. I can talk to him by myself.”

Right then, I would’ve liked nothing more than to wait in the lobby. I could just see Kenzie’s father glaring at me as his daughter told him she was taking off with the guy who’d just recently dragged her off to New York for a week. If he didn’t ground Kenzie for life, he would definitely blame me, maybe have me arrested and thrown in juvie for real this time. Even if that didn’t happen, I couldn’t imagine he’d be very fond of me after this, and Kenzie’s father was someone I really didn’t want to piss off.

But I caught the underlying fear in Kenzie’s voice and realized she was just as nervous, though she would never show it. And now that she was here, I wasn’t going to let her do anything alone. Even if it meant facing her dad, I would suck it up and share the responsibility. It was my fault she had come, after all.

“No, I’m coming with you,” I told her softly. “But you know your dad is going to hate me after this, right?”

“He’ll get over it,” Kenzie said, though her voice had gone soft and bitter, and she stared at the elevator doors as if she could will them open. “Don’t worry. If he’s going to find fault with anyone, it’ll be me. He’s blamed me for everything else. Why would this be any different?”

I wondered what she meant by that, but a second later, the elevator doors dinged open, and Kenzie stepped into the box. I followed, glancing back at the two fey. Annwyl watched me, looking a little dazed, as if she didn’t quite know where she was. I was about to say something, but she blinked and glided over the threshold, standing in the very center of the box with her arms around herself, as if trying to keep from falling apart. Keirran eased behind her, looking worried, but didn’t say anything.