Also, her old desire to please Ryland—the power of his effect on her—was simply gone.
For a moment she wondered at herself. After all, Ryland was inches away and only yesterday—mere hours ago—she had craved him and his approval like a flower craves sun and rain.
It was as if, deep inside her, an electrical switch had been thrown. Emotions clamored inside her, but not one was about him. For Ryland, for her ex-boyfriend, for the love and understanding she had believed in and now understood to have been false, her own body had just delivered the final verdict. As, indeed, it had tried to do all along, if she had been able to listen.
She spared a second to be glad, glad, glad that she had never actually made love to him. It was worth the horrible things he had said to her about it, to have that knowledge now.
She straightened and looked Ryland in the eye. She was aware of the volume of things that were unsaid between them, but she felt the need to speak only one. And she said it simply and quietly and surely.
“I never loved you.”
He said, “True.”
“I thought I did.”
“Yes.”
“A magic potion, something like that?”
Ryland looked thoughtful. “Glamour, we call it. But it was hardly necessary. There was willingness. You wanted to love me.”
Phoebe winced. “Because of Mallory.”
It wasn’t a question, but he answered as if it were. “In part.”
Despite herself, Phoebe was curious. “And the other part?”
“It was time for you. It’s not as if any man would have done—not quite—but after all, you are a normal young woman.”
“You mean an ordinary young woman.” Phoebe had not meant to let bitterness escape, but it did. However, Ryland only nodded and shrugged.
“In this case,” he said, “they are just the same.”
That was all. He could have been a complete stranger. In fact, Phoebe thought, he was a complete stranger. She knew nothing about him as an individual whatsoever, and did not care to learn. She was done with him.
Except for the pesky little business of effectively being his prisoner.
In the silence that followed, Ryland offered Phoebe a handkerchief. It was a silk handkerchief from another century; pretty, delicate, meant to be dabbed gently in the corner of a lady’s eye. But the handkerchief was faded and fraying with wear, fragile as an ancient cobweb. For all Phoebe knew, it was indeed a cobweb in disguise. After a second she shrugged and accepted it anyway, and used it to wipe her mouth. She then took a vicious little bit of pleasure in handing it back to Ryland, even though he took it without a flicker of disgust and, incredibly, simply tucked it away in the pocket of his pair of remarkably threadbare—and dirty—linen pants.
Phoebe looked at him, then, really looked at him. First his clothes and body, and then his face. She frowned, because this was not the gorgeous, carefully dressed Ryland that she had known. He was alarmingly thin, and his clothes hung on him as on a scarecrow. And his face was drawn and gaunt, and, well, yellowish.
Mallory hadn’t looked well either, come to think of it.
Huh.
“Are you finished?” Ryland made a vague gesture toward the flower that Phoebe had assaulted by throwing up on it.
“Yes,” she said politely. “I think so.”
“Then we have to leave. But we go by boat, which might upset your stomach more.” Phoebe followed his gaze back toward the lake and the dock that he’d been standing on when she first saw him.
“I’ll be fine.” Deep inside Phoebe, an unexpected emotion joined the orchestra of anxiety and humiliation and rage and bitterness and terrible, terrible fear.
Curiosity.
Ryland offered Phoebe his arm to walk down the dock; she ignored it and instead walked just ahead of him, feeling the dock’s wooden planks give dangerously beneath each step, for it, like the handkerchief, seemed to be on the verge of falling apart. When they came to the end of the dock and found the shabby little rowboat tied up to it, Phoebe allowed Ryland to hand her into it. He did this expertly, so that not a drop of water touched her, even though the boat sat a little too low in the water for her taste.
Phoebe sat in the stern and watched Ryland untie the boat and slip into place facing her. He began rowing them across the lake. Despite his thinness and the appearance of weakness, Ryland’s movements were strong and smooth. Shoulders, arms, working together. Once upon a time, she’d have taken pleasure in watching. Now she wondered if his human-like appearance was even real. Would he, like the faeries in the story Mallory had told about Mayer, prove in his real form to have skin of tree bark? Or would there be horns on his head?
What did Mallory really look like?
Were the handkerchief, the dock, and the rowboat too, all illusions that were cracking?
Neither Ryland nor Phoebe spoke for a time. With the back of her mind, Phoebe identified the chatter of a kingfisher coming from somewhere nearby. That made her wonder if birds crossed freely between the human and faerie realms, and if so, how. At least the landscape itself, around them, seemed firm and healthy.
“You don’t have any questions for me?” said Ryland, when they’d reached halfway across the lake and Phoebe had still not spoken.
“Yes,” said Phoebe. “As it happens, I do. What about my mother? You were responsible for what happened to her, right?”
“Yes.”
“So will she wake up now, and be able to go on with her life?”
Ryland glanced behind him and reoriented his rowing. “That is a question,” he said, “that you will have to discuss with the queen.”
“But—”
“Because I don’t actually know the answer,” said Ryland.
“Even though you were the one who harmed her.”
“Yes.”
Phoebe chewed on the inside of her cheek.
“We could try another question,” said Ryland, with that same tone of careful courtesy.
“That’s okay,” said Phoebe.
She kept her eyes open. She tried to take in everything she saw, just in case it proved useful.
But as they rowed onward, a fog descended on them, hiding the view, so that Phoebe couldn’t see the land around the lake, and then could barely see a foot in any direction around the rowboat. When the boat finally bumped gently up against another dock, she started, and then strained to try to see where they had landed. But all she could see was the gray dock itself. It seemed to be a very long dock, built over shallow, murky water.
Ryland helped Phoebe out with continued civility. She glanced up at him, wondering if he could possibly be nervous. There was tension in him, she could feel it.
“I have a question now,” she said. “What happens next?”
“Just come.” Ryland offered Phoebe his arm.
She took his elbow, grasping tightly on purpose, and now she could feel the vast difference in his arm from how it had been before; the lack of muscle, the bone directly beneath the skin. He was a walking skeleton. By contrast, Phoebe felt plump and round and healthy . . . positively juicy. And this even though she had lost some weight to anxiety, these last weeks with Catherine so sick.
She reached again for her curiosity, to wear it as she would armor.
She let herself be guided down the dock. With each step, the fog grew denser around them, limiting visibility. Phoebe could literally feel the tiny droplets of water massing in the air. Goose bumps formed on the skin of her exposed arms. After a time, the dark was complete.
“I can’t see anything.” Phoebe tried but failed to keep an alarmed squeak out of her voice.
Ryland pulled her in closer, and kept her walking by his side, and she let him. Another few moments of walking carefully in the dark, and the soft, rotting wooden boards of the dock ended. Now they were on rock; it was hard beneath the thin soles of Phoebe’s ridiculously high-heeled shoes. And the air felt distinctly colder.
“Is this a cave?”
Ryland didn’t re
spond. He put his arm fully around Phoebe’s shoulders now, guiding her in what had become pitch-black, not allowing her to slow down and move as carefully as she wanted to. The slope of the rock below their feet changed too, heading downward, and he quickened their pace. She could both feel and hear his breathing now, and it was ragged—more so than her own.
Even though Phoebe could still walk upright, Ryland was now stooping. He had one hand over the top of her head as if ready to push her lower too. The rock beneath their feet tilted even more steeply downward—their pace increased—and they took an abrupt turn to the left, and then another, and then one to the right, and then Ryland was making her duck down low, and then there was another turn, and another, until Phoebe became completely disoriented, turning, stooping, walking, stooping, turning, walking—faster, faster, faster.
And Ryland’s breathing near her ear, was nearly as bad as Phoebe’s once had been.
She was healed, but he had sickened?
Some primordial sense told Phoebe when they emerged from the tunnel into a wider, more open space. Though she still couldn’t see, she could feel the openness ahead, smell it in the air. Then Ryland’s hand slid from the top of her head to her shoulder. She felt his harsh breath on her cheek as he said, “Almost there.”
Then they were out again in the open air, though still standing on rocky ground, and directly ahead was a circle of nine standing stones that reared high against a brightening sky as the sun began to come into view above the horizon.
It was dawn? Phoebe was bewildered. Where had the day and the night gone? What day was it?
But she could not dwell on the puzzle for more than a second. Surrounding them were figures, numbering at least a couple of dozen. Phoebe took the group in with a single comprehensive glance, getting a vague impression of heads and bodies that were human-like but definitely not human. She saw horns and animal ears and extra limbs and fur and feathers. But she was too frightened to look closely, because they were all looking right back at her, and the impact of their hungry and desperate gazes was immediate and unspeakable.
But then Phoebe gathered herself. She gritted her teeth together and she straightened her shoulders, and then she looked at them all, straight on, in the beautiful growing light of the rising sun.
And then she saw with shock that the faeries were like Ryland, only worse. They were thin and frail and shaking. They were as skeletal as end-stage cancer patients or as—the thought sprang compulsively into Phoebe’s mind—concentration camp victims.
All of them.
CONVERSATION WITH THE FAERIE QUEEN, 16
“So this is the girl at last.”
“Yes, my queen.”
“Thank you, Ryland, for your good and faithful service. We all thank you. It is hard to believe we shall have relief at last. The knowledge of that has strengthened us somewhat, for the moment. It is interesting. She looks nothing like Mayer. She—”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!”
chapter 35
Phoebe’s ferocious tone crackled across the rocky landscape, surprising even her with its force. She stepped forward, her fists clenched involuntarily.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. This silly advice from childhood had inexplicably popped into Phoebe’s mind, and though she couldn’t run, since Ryland still had firm hold of her arm, she could at least shout, and she had. It was something to do while she figured out what to do. Which she would. Soon. Any second now.
“Don’t you dare,” Phoebe continued rapidly. “Don’t any of you dare talk about me as if I’m not here.” She was suddenly truly indignant about it, not faking. She sent a separate glare to each and every one of the skeleton-like creatures who were gathering more and more tightly around her. She ended by locking eyes with the extraordinary female figure who sat directly before her, and who had been speaking to Ryland about Phoebe as if Phoebe had no ears or mind or will of her own, as if that were the measure of an ordinary girl.
Which it was not. At least, Phoebe thought, it was not the measure of her, ordinary or not.
This female was unmistakably the faerie queen. Yet, how different she looked from the way that Mallory had portrayed her, from the way that she had been when she met Mayer. She wore a crown of vivid tiger lilies, but the flowers’ beauty and vibrancy served only to emphasize that the queen herself was neither. The unearthly, waving, living, colorful hair that Marllory had described now hung lank and thin; the skin that had once been formed of the green and soft leaves of early spring was now brown and cracked. And though the queen was seated on a throne-like chair, one that was not dissimilar to the throne that Phoebe had seen when she first invaded Ryland’s bedroom, this throne was much smaller and lighter, woven from the flexible living limbs of a young willow, and sized as for a child.
It was hard for Phoebe to picture how she could ever have been the stunning, regal creature that Mayer Rothschild had supposedly worshipped. Indeed, it was hard to believe that this tiny, shriveled figure was any kind of threat at all. Phoebe felt almost as if she could simply shout her to death. Just now, when Phoebe yelled, the queen had visibly winced.
But now, at least, Phoebe had her direct attention. She decided to assume this was progress.
Automatically, she moderated her tone, and continued speaking as words came to her. She was trying to buy a little more time in which to think. “Also,” she said, “Ryland does not speak for me. Neither, by the way, does Mallory.” She could not resist a quick, compulsive glance to reaffirm that Mallory was not among the group of faeries, that she lacked even the dubious comfort of her ex-friend’s familiar presence. It was so.
“I speak for myself,” she went on. “Also, my name is Phoebe, not ‘the girl.’”
Vaguely, she was proud of herself. Mallory had told her to behave with dignity. She was trying.
But the skeletal figures drew even closer. They were listening, but more, they were watching. Without looking at any of them directly, Phoebe could sense their fixed gazes almost as tangibly as she could feel Ryland’s cool fingers tightening around her elbow.
Then one of the fey shuffled into her field of vision just to the left of the queen. He—or she—or it—was a short, thick, curiously stump-like being covered with grayish, drooping fronds, each of which was tipped with a tiny lidless eye. For an instant the fronds parted and Phoebe had a glimpse of a large opening edged with bark, and within, a long flexible pink tongue that flicked out between sharp teeth.
Phoebe clamped her own mouth shut and glared even more ferociously at the queen.
“Phoebe, then,” said the queen. Her voice, though weakly pitched, had the brittle quality of an icy wind as it threatened to break a tree. This made Phoebe reconsider what she had just thought about the queen’s powerlessness. “You understand that you are promised to us, Phoebe Rothschild. The bargain with your ancestor was explained to you.”
The queen had come directly to the point, without camouflage or pretty talk. Phoebe’s stomach clenched. She had to respond, but how?
She must do, must say, the right thing.
If only she knew what that was.
She could feel the fey eyes on her. All their hungry eyes.
What would Mayer do? What would Catherine do?
She wasn’t either of them. They were extraordinary; she was not.
Still, Phoebe dredged up a courteous smile. “No,” she said. “I don’t understand that. What I understand is that I have been betrayed and manipulated. What I understand is that my mother has been made sick. But I have promised nothing to anyone here. And I won’t.”
“The promise was made on your behalf by your ancestor.”
“A story,” said Phoebe. “A fairy tale.”
“The truth,” said the queen formally. “We gave much to Mayer, to his family. We helped him change his destiny. And now, Phoebe”—the queen pronounced the name strangely, overemphasizing the second syllable—“his family must give back what was promised
.”
It sounded so logical. So final. Phoebe looked into the desiccated face of the faerie queen, met the deeply brown round eyes that contained no hint of white, and no hint of mercy, either. The circle of fey around her was tight, close. Ryland’s fingers had turned viselike.
What if she could break free of him? What if they were all as weak as they looked and she could somehow escape, despite their numbers? What if she ran? What did she have to lose? Since she was not Mayer or Catherine, she wasn’t going to be able to talk herself out of this.
She wrenched her arm suddenly, breaking free from Ryland—
Then she staggered, off balance. Thin strong bands of spring willow had come from nowhere and twisted themselves around her torso like living rope, binding her arms to her sides and her legs close together. She was saved from falling to the ground only by Ryland’s hands.
“Phoebe,” said the queen again. Her voice was patient, even kind, and she looked very small and very frail upon her throne. “You have declared yourself ordinary. You are a Rothschild daughter. There is no more to be said, and no reason for delay. Tonight, at moonrise, we shall rebalance the debt. You will either be willing, or shall be forced to perform the ceremony. To us, it can make no difference.”
“Wait,” said Phoebe. “What about my mother?” She lifted her chin. Where the strength to speak came from, she didn’t know. Despair had filled her, crowding out disbelief. This was real. She knew it was real. But still—
“My mother,” she said urgently. “You put my mother in a coma. If you—if I do what you want, what happens to my mother? Will you release her? Will she wake up and be all right again?”
The queen’s eyelids closed briefly and then opened. “Yes,” she said simply. Was there a hint of compassion now in her eyes? “We will then have the strength to reverse your mother’s injury. I will be frank. If the ceremony does not occur, we will not, and she will remain as she is.”
“You promise?” The words came from Phoebe’s lips like bullets.
The queen nodded. “Yes.” She seemed to gather strength into herself, enough strength to speak more fully. “It is a promise. Your mother will awaken and be herself again. This we will do.”