I try to make it look like I’m taking a leisurely walk through the garden. I can’t see Barnabus’s huge frame bumbling around, which means he’s probably underground. I found out he could do that the first day I went looking for him out here - his whole body rising up out of the dirt as easily as water. He says it’s easier to ‘hear’ what’s going on while he’s down there.
Hopefully he won’t hear Quinn and I.
I make it to the magnolias and search for Quinn’s blue hair, thinking it’ll stand out against the pink. He’s nowhere to be seen, but I hear a faint bird’s call in the distance.
Birds don’t come to the Monster Garden.
I follow the sound warily, my feet taking me beyond the garden’s perimeter and to the sea of grass. The sound’s coming from inside the grass, and I wade into it, unable to see over the top of it. My vision is just a curtain of lush green grass in every direction, parting with my body like the Red Sea.
The bird call again, this time loud and to my right. Am I even following the right noise? Is this really Quinn? Or am I about to be eaten by a shadow fae tricking me?
The grass starts to blur into one green banner, and I recognize this blurriness now - this is the same way it blurs when one of the high fae takes me to the human realm.
Black, gray, white swirls, and then the world solidifies into view - there’s no more grass, my feet standing on what looks like fine white sand. And all around me are twisted, black rock formations, like a volcano spewed lava straight up in big plumes and the lava cooled in mid-air. The shapes are like nothing I’ve ever seen; at some angles they look like people screaming, at some angles they look like snakes curling around each other, and at others they just look like plain weird rocks. And that’s it, for miles until the horizon - just white sand and a forest of black rocks as far as I can see. Just like Monster Garden, there’s no sound at all, no birds or animals or even bugs. And the worst part is the sky is a dark slate gray, with no sun or moon or stars to be seen.
“Quinn?” I whisper hopefully into the non-existent wind. It smells like old rusted metal here, hanging in the air like a miasma.
A flash of blue, and Quinn emerges from behind a rock and I’ve never been so happy to see a human - uh, fae - in my life, and I rocket towards him and hug him tight.
“Oh thank God - I thought I was dead and in hell.”
“Limbo would be more accurate,” He says flatly, removing my arms from around his torso with mechanical precision. “This is the nether realm - the border in-between the fae realm and the human realm. It’s what we take you across every time you have to go to work, or some such.”
“Why is it so…naked?” I wrinkle my nose at the rocks.
“Who knows,” He sighs. “It was created long ago, when the fae realized humans would only try to pillage and plunder.”
“So this whole reality limbo thing was created?”
Quinn nods, soft curls bobbing. “By the First Fae, millennia ago. But we’re not here for a history lesson - come. We must make this quick, before Vil realizes I’m missing.”
The idea of a fae powerful enough to create a whole realm - I shudder. That’s like, God-status, isn’t it? I shake my head and follow Quinn’s steps over the sand, the two of us weaving through black rocks and almost immediately I’m lost - every way looks the same. But Quinn apparently knows where we’re going, because soon the rocks start to get smaller and smaller, and finally they’re nothing more than pebbles littering the space around a house.
A house, standing in a perfect circular clearing among the tall rocks. It’s made of white wood with black trim, a little path of rocks leading up to the front door. I’d call it a hut, but it’s a bit bigger than that; more like a cottage you rent on a campsite for a weekend when you don’t want to rough it. Quinn turns to me abruptly as we walk up the stone path.
“If she asks you a question about yourself, do not answer unless I tell you it’s alright. I’ll do the talking.”
“Uhh, sure. Is this ‘she’ like, dangerous?”
“All fae are dangerous,” He mutters. “But this one most of all.”
Suddenly nervous I pick at my sweater as Quinn knocks on the door. It looks like a human house, so why is it here in the middle of nowhere? How did she build it, and with what wood?
The door opens, and my eyes widen. There, in the doorway, is the most brilliant splash of pink I’ve ever seen. A little old woman wrinkled to the bones and with bright blue eyes smiles the sweetest grandma smile up at us, wearing an extremely eye-searing pink cashmere dress, with a darker pink sweater on top and a giant pink bow pinned to her mass of white, curly hair.
“Quinn! Oh it’s so nice of you to come see this old bag of bones,” She reaches up and squeezes his cheeks together like a little kid, and I swallow my laugh when her attention turns to me. “And who is this shining young lady?”
“My friend,” Quinn clears his throat. The woman nods knowingly.
“Of course - a friend. Well, do come in you two, I’ve just put a pot of tea on.”
She motions for us to come in, and the second I cross the threshold I’m stunned by how pink it is - pink furniture, pink walls, pink shag carpet. There’s a pink grandfather clock and a bright pink set of stairs leading up and pink-framed pictures hanging on the walls of what looks like her kids and grandkids. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’d just stepped into an eccentric old grandma’s house instead of a fae even Quinn’s scared of.
The woman leads us over to a small living room with - you guessed it - bright pink couches. The pink table holds little pink teacups and she eagerly pours two more cups, offering me a plate of pink cakes as I sit.
“Oh no, thanks. I just ate,” I smile.
“So polite!” The woman squeals, looking to Quinn. “Where did you find this one?”
“I didn’t, actually - Dane and Altair found her.”
“How quaint! I love the romanticism of pure chance, don’t you?” She smiles at me, two of her teeth missing but the rest remarkably well-kept. I flash a look at Quinn, but he nods in approval, so I answer.
“Oh yeah, definitely. Keeps things interesting.”
Her laugh is so warm and sweet I can’t help but smile when I hear it. I never knew my grandparents, but I like to think they’d be like her. Minus the rabid obsession with one color, obviously.
“Now Quinn,” She says. “I’m not so vain as to believe you’ve come here with company just to see me. I’m very pretty, but not that pretty.”
She bats her eyelashes at him, and he makes a forced smile - the professional one I’ve seen him use when he’s bartending.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Clear as a bell,” She chimes. “Oh, how rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Caelthea.”
“This is Miss James,” Quinn introduces me, and I nod. Miss James is what Vil calls me. Does he not want to say my first name or something? Caelthea looks equally confused, and a little hurt.
“Come now, Quinn. I’d never. Not with something as cute as her. It’d be a terrible waste.”
Quinn doesn’t say anything to that, drinking his tea with a dignified sip. Finally, Caelthea sighs, disheartened. I almost want to blurt my name at the look on her face, but I hold myself back.
“Very well. What’s the issue this time then, hm?”
Quinn puts his cup down, brushing his curl out of his eyes as he leans forward. “I want to break a binding.”
Caelthea raises one sparse eyebrow. “The price for that is a high one.”
“I’m aware,” Quinn agrees. “And we’re prepared to pay it.”
I do a double-take at him - we? Wait one hot second, what price am I paying?
Caelthea looks me up and down appraisingly, business-like instead of soft grandma, and then takes a sip of her tea, her hands like gnarled tree branches.
“Just the one binding?”
“Just one.”
“Whose
?”
“Dane’s.”
Her eyebrows raise even higher this time, and she grabs a cake and stuffs it into her mouth in one impressive swoop. She thinks as she chews, wiping crumbs off her pink dress carefully before saying;
“A binding is equal to a life. You’re aware of this?”
“Yes.” Quinn’s hands clench on his lap, and my heart skyrockets into the roof of my throat. A life? Does she mean -
“Darling,” Caelthea turns her blue gaze to me. “You know Dane too, don’t you? I can remove his binding, it’s true. But it comes at the cost of a life.”
Not mine. Quinn didn’t bring me here to kill me, did he? I can’t breathe all of a sudden, but Caelthea reaches out her gnarled hand, resting it on my knee.
“Not yours, sweet thing. Your firstborn’s.”
The word echoes in my head like my skull’s gone hollow all of a sudden. “Firstborn,” I repeat. “Like…a baby?”
She nods. “The first baby you birth will be mine.”
“But I’m not…not especially planning to have kids. I’ve got a career, and -“
“You will have a child,” Her voice isn’t commanding, or imperious. It’s just…there. Even and soft, like it’s the undeniable truth, like it’s already come true. “I will break Dane’s binding, if you agree to the terms I’ve set before you.”
I snap my eyes to Quinn and he stares into his teacup plaintively. I haven’t even - I haven’t even planned my life that far. I’m only in college; love and a husband and a house and a family - all of that seems ages away. Decades away. It hasn’t even crossed my mind other than a vague ‘oh, that’d be nice when I’m old and successful with a lot of money and a job I adore’. Love’s always been on the back burner for me.
My brain feels like it’s draining out of my ears, the whole concept of me being a mother shrinking everything to one panicked pinpoint. This is like something out of a faerie tale, no pun intended - a firstborn promised to a fae. Would they live here in this little pink hut for their whole lives? Or would Caelthea just eat them whole with butter sauce?
She must see the worry in my eyes, because she smiles comfortingly. “It’s alright, dear. I promise I will take good care of them. They will grow strong, and headstrong, and strong of Brightness. They will be loved, and they will find love. I can assure you of that.”
“Can I…” I swallow. “Can I have some time to think about it?”
“There is no time,” Quinn presses. “Van Grier is looking for us as we speak.”
“But -“
“I know,” He squeezes my hand suddenly, his skin cool and smooth and his thin, beautiful face tortured. “I know it’s difficult. For you most of all. But you are the only one who can make this end of the bargain.”
“It’s true,” Caelthea says sadly. “Humans are my only currency.”
I stare at the swirling sugar crystals in my tea, following their spiral as my own life spirals. My future child - given to this fae.
“What happens if Dane’s bond is broken? Other than him not getting tortured anymore and ordered to kill fae.”
“He can turn on Van Grier,” Quinn says immediately. “And kill him, thereby voiding every other binding he’s made with other fae.”
“I-I could,” I blurt. “I’m not under Vil’s control, I could just kill him instead of this -“
“Could you?” Quinn snaps, and the truth rises in me. No. I couldn’t. The mere idea of taking someone’s life turns my stomach. It always has. I’ve lied awake at night with random thoughts popping into my head, and asked myself if I’d be willing to kill someone. And the answer I reached in my bedsheets was always no, every time. I’d regret it. Forever.
“Dane’s a fae,” Quinn says. “Dane kills to live, and Van Grier has tortured him for years. He would do it without hesitation. I’ve researched every other option, Miss James. And this is the only one in which you don’t die for us.”
“One of my kids is just stuck here,” I say. “For all their lives.”
“Not all,” Caelthea chimes. “Just until their seventeenth birthday.”
“And then they’d be free to go?” A spark of hope. Caelthea nods.
“Free as a bird, to go to whatever realm they wished. You could even see them, if you so chose.”
So it’s not the baby’s whole life - it’s seventeen years of being raised by Caelthea in this strange wasteland, in this stranger house. But after that we could be together. It wouldn’t be forever, and that’s what convinces me. That, and the image burned in my brain of Dane’s back, and his scars.
“Okay.” I nod. “I’ll do it.”
Caelthea claps her hands as Quinn relaxes next to me. “Fantastic! Let me just go draw up the paper work, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
She disappears in a cloud of pink sparkles, and I slump against the couch cushions feeling like I’ve made yet another mistake in my life by signing a contract.
“I just hope this contract isn’t as underhanded as Vil’s,” I breathe.
“She’s very fair,” Quinn says. “Always has been.”
“Always. So you’ve been here before?”
He nods. “I needed her services, once upon a time.”
“And did you offer up another human for it?”
“No,” He says wistfully. “She offered up herself.”
His words are heavy with a past I can’t see, something monumental and weighted lingering in every syllable and it hits me just then like a punch to the gut - the high fae have lived for so long, so much longer than me. I’ll never know what almost-eternity is like, or what it’s like to have so much past it wells up inside and only leaks out in your memories. Caelthea’s return breaks the quiet, and she plops down a single pink parchment sheet in front of me, placing a pink ostrich quill beside it.
“Sign on the bottom if you would, darling. After you read it thoroughly, of course.”
So I do. Top to bottom, line between line, I read. It’s in clear, easy-to-understand language, nothing like my law classes. My baby lives with her until seventeen, and then they’re free, and in exchange Dane’s binding will be nullified completely, upon completion of a ‘ritual’.
Every swirl of ink as I sign feels like the end of the world, somehow.
Caelthea sees Quinn and I off, waving madly as we walk back into the rock forest. I turn to him when the last scrap of the pink hut disappears behind the wall of black rocks.
“Who is she, anyway?”
Quinn’s strides are hard to keep up with. The world around me blurs all its colors together as he transports us, but I hear his words clearly and crisply as ever.
“A death fae.”
-14-
If I wasn’t so freaked out about everything else, I would’ve been freaked I just visited a death fae. All the pink threw me off, but I should’ve known when she said ‘humans are my only currency’. Of course. Fae rarely die. But we die all the time.
And my kid’s gonna live with her. Grow up with her.
I clench my fist under the water of my bath. Quinn and I got back and I immediately sought the refuge of a good soak. I’ll miss this when I’m gone in two months.
No - not two months anymore. Dane’s going to kill Vil soon. He doesn’t know it yet, though, and he can’t know it. Murder is a sin. Quinn said if we tell him the plan, his sense for sin would relay it to Van Grier and everything we bargained for would be over.
But that’s not the worst part.
I sink down in the bath and let the water try to drown me. But underwater it’s easy to hear my own thoughts beating in my veins, so I surface again, the memory lingering.
“So what’s the ritual entail?” I walked alongside Quinn through the sea of grass. “Do you have to bite me, or something, like the linking ritual?”
“Rituals usually include only the people directly involved,” He sighs. “You and Dane, in this case.”
“So Dane has to bite me.”
/>
“Not quite ‘bite’.”
He went quiet, and an unease started to claw up my throat. “Are you gonna explain, or…?”
Quinn flinched minutely, but immediately regained control. “The payment for the death fae’s services involves your womb. Death fae crave life. These sorts of things are…cyclical. Rituals reflect the payment.”
“Meaning what?” Cold sweat creeped down my neck. “Just tell me, goddamnit, I’m not as smart and old as you are!”