Pale Queen Rising Read online

  “Long day?” someone asks. I look up from my daze to see a banshee floating toward me. Her hair is brown and wild and her dress way too sheer for the cold. But, being half-dead and half-faerie, she doesn’t seem to notice the chill. Her bare feet hover an inch or so off the ground.

  “Something like that,” I reply. I have no idea who the girl is, but everyone in this city seems to know me. The joys of being royalty. And feared. Not that the first was historically ever exclusive from the last. The Winter Kingdom cultivates their stock of Dream in any way possible, and that doesn’t always mean flights of fancy or magic tricks. Fear is as good a source as any, and—unlike publishing or reality TV—it never goes out of style. “How’s haunting?”

  The banshee shrugs. “Fair. Just met my third exorcist. I really love screwing with those guys.”

  “I bet. Keep up the good work.” And before she can try to make any more small talk, I start walking again.

  I’m not certain if I’m a loner because of my job or if I’m in my job because I’m a loner, but it doesn’t make a difference. I hate small talk. It means pretending to be interested. Right now, being social and pretending to give a shit about anyone else is beyond me.

  The street I turn down is part of the club district. In many ways, it’s like a darker Bourbon Street, with bars and dance halls crammed side by side on the ground floor and balconied flats above. None of the places serve alcohol, of course, but distilled Dream is as potent to the Fey as any liquor. I walk past a hookah bar, the front patio filled with patrons blissed out on vaporized Dream. A man in a sharp burgundy suit is passed out on a cushion, his head resting in the lap of the winged nymph beside him. She gives me a salacious grin as I pass and waves the pipe invitingly, but I shake my head and keep going. Definitely not the time, though the idea of spacing out on a Dream high is tempting.

  Just then, a crowd of young satyrs bursts from the club opposite, the owner—a tiny, fluttering ball of light—screaming obscenities behind them. The satyrs just laugh and stagger drunkenly down the road. Unlike their Summer cousins, these guys look more like Krampus clones, with mossy black fur and glowing eyes and wickedly hooked horns. Not creatures you’d want to meet in a back alley, though their bark is definitely worse than their bite. I bite harder.

  “Wanna take care of them for me?” the owner asks. She hovers up beside me, and I have to look away. Her violet light—normally cool and serene—is blinding with rage.

  “You know the deal, Celeste,” I say. “No murders within the Court.”

  “I don’t want them dead,” she says, watching the half-deer, half-college-jock drunkards leave. “Just roughed up a bit.”

  “I’m not so good at straddling the line between the two,” I say.

  Celeste chuckles. “From what I’ve heard, you’re good at straddling other things.”

  Despite everything, that manages to pull a small laugh. “I’ve had my practice.”

  “Come in for a drink,” she says, her light dimming to a more bearable intensity. “On the house. You look like you need it.”

  I want to. I’ve gotten triumphantly drunk at the Lewd Unicorn more times than I can count. At least her bar has high enough ceilings to allow me to table-dance. Celeste is one of the few people in this city I speak to, and one of the fewer still whom I actually consider an acquaintance. Friend might be an overstatement, but it’s close. I suppose her being a bartender helps, as does the fact that she keeps a stock of bourbon behind the counter, just for me. She even puts it in one of those fancy bottles she keeps her Dream in, just so the other patrons don’t stare.

  “No thanks,” I reply. “Tonight’s hit went south.”

  “Then you definitely need a drink.” There’s a pause as she studies me. Faeries are notoriously good at judging mortal emotions, which is why I try to keep mine under lock and key. Tonight, I’m not so good at it. “What happened?” she asks. “I haven’t seen you this upset in ages.”

  I glance away.

  “He knew I was coming and was ready to die. And he had a message for Mab.”

  “Not a good one, I take it?” she asks.

  “Not at all. And she won’t want to be kept waiting. I’ll catch you after.”

  Celeste knows me well enough not to push the subject. She pats me on the shoulder consolingly—which, her being a ball of light, is more of a telepathic thing—then heads back into the bar. I look around at the mess of drunk and high faeries, the revelry that will continue for eternity. I really wish I could join them. But Mab hates it when I enjoy myself on the job.

  The street twists and rises, the black cobble slick and worn from centuries of boots and talons and heels. After a few blocks the place becomes more residential, with towering tenement flats and broad windows, everything looking like some masterpiece of basalt and ice. A few Fey wander the street, those interested in a more urban existence. Many, like the water-dwelling naiads or treelike dryads, live on the outskirts of the city. There are parks and icy streams and miles upon miles of frozen wilderness for the Fey that need a little nature to survive. Not that it’s necessarily verdant out there. Winter isn’t just a title—this place is frigid. Always.

  Finally, the street widens into a boulevard lined with wrought-iron lamps. Great marble and obsidian statues stretch along the center, some static, some moving slowly. Years ago, Mab brought me down here and taught me the histories of each: A dragon devouring a knight. An oak dryad successfully locking Merlin within its chest. A plague doctor in his beaked mask delivering disease and feeding off the fevered nightmares of his victims. I pass them by without so much as a second glance. Until the one at the very end. It’s newer than the others by a few hundred years at the very least, though the plaque attached to the base gives no indication of its year or purpose. That’s partially why I like it—there’s an enigma, a mystery.

  It’s a girl, maybe in her early twenties. Her features are hard to make out, and not from an error on the sculptor’s part but because of the live blue flames that lick up and around her like a veil. Her arms are outstretched, and only one pointed foot rests on the pedestal. The plaque reads simply “The Oracle’s Sacrifice.” When Mab brought me to this one, she pursed her lips and said the Oracle was responsible for saving us all. No clue why she included me in that statement, since apparently the event was years before my time, but she refused to say anything else. It wasn’t the first time Mab had made a point of withholding information from me, but it was—for some odd reason—one I found maddeningly annoying.

  I pause before the girl, wondering if her sacrifice involved having to deal with frustratingly lock-jawed witches, before continuing up the boulevard, up the wide steps that lead toward Mab’s castle. Two guards stand at the ready on either side of the massive door. They each wear gunmetal-grey armor and have halberds at the ready. Neither moves when I near; they know me by sight, and I’m pretty certain they’re actually just pieces of armor enchanted to look like people. I’ve never seen them move. I’ve never seen them have a reason to move.

  The door is probably the only thing in the castle that isn’t stone. Instead, it’s a thick, dark wood studded with steel and covered in intricate filigree. It’s easily three times my height and twice as wide, but the moment I near it, the fleur-de-lis inlay before me glows silver and curls in on itself, the vines and knot work twisting away to reveal a small door hidden in the ornamentation. It opens silently. I sigh. Every single time this door opens, a part of me wishes there’d be a rush of warm air to accompany it. Nope. The air within the castle is just as cold as the air without. And sometimes, when Mab’s throwing a shindig (or pissed), it’s even colder.

  No one greets me inside. No servants rush to and fro. The entrance is stoic and imposing, just as Mab intended it to be. About the only thing welcoming in here is the plush carpet that stretches from the door to the main chamber ahead. Everything else, just like the rest of the city, is black st
one and sharp ice. Even the snow that occasionally piles up in the corners is gone. She must have had someone sweep.

  My usually silent footsteps are somehow even quieter as I walk toward the main chamber, the carpet and the vastness swallowing up my very presence like a vacuum. It makes me feel small, insubstantial. Just how Mab likes all of her guests to feel before seeing her.

  Then, the walls and ceiling of the hallway disappear as I enter Mab’s throne room. My body immediately shifts into business mode—I stand up straighter, shoulders back, chin high. Just like Mother taught me.

  Mab sits on a throne raised fifty feet in the air, the structure balancing on a pinnacle of twisted ice. Her throne is ebony and planes of crystal, a dark snowflake made of daggers and despair. Mab’s black dress trails down the edge of the throne, dangling mere inches above the floor, its hem lined in white and silver fur.

  “Back so soon?” she asks. Her voice is rich and deep, like a jazz singer’s, and it fills the chamber like moonlight on snow.

  “It didn’t go to plan.”

  One doesn’t mince words with the Faerie Queen. She’s good at spotting lies, and to her, small talk to avoid the truth is just as bad as a falsehood.

  Even just saying those words is enough to make the room go colder. My next breath comes out in a cloud of white, and there’s a band around my chest, a constriction of frost that wasn’t there a moment ago. It’s not just nerves, either.

  “What do you mean, not to plan?”

  She slides from the throne as she speaks, drifting slowly down to the floor and landing a few feet before me. Even though she only comes to my chin, she holds herself high. I feel myself shrinking down from the sight of her. Her skin is pale porcelain, her hair black nightmare, and her expression unreadable.

  I don’t back down, though. Intimidating though she may be, I’m still her daughter, and she raised me not to cower; I look straight into her emerald eyes as I deliver my report.

  “I did what you told me to. The guy’s dead.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But he wasn’t supplying to Oberon.”

  My statement is met with silence. One black eyebrow rises, but she is otherwise impassive.

  “And you are sure you killed the right one?”

  Okay, I know she’s the queen and I know she could kill me without blinking, but her words are incendiary.

  “Who the hell do you think I am?” I ask. My fists tighten in my bomber’s pockets. Don’t hit her. Don’t hit her. Whatever you do, don’t hit her. “Of course I killed the right one. You’re the one who trained me.”

  That eyebrow rises just a little higher, and my chest warms. It gives me insurmountable pleasure to know I can still get under her skin.

  “You’re sure he was mortal?”

  “He died like a mortal.” I raise a hand still smeared with blood, forcing it inches from her face. If anyone else in the Court did this to her, they’d be dead. Instantly. She just looks at my bloody palm with perfectly composed calmness.

  “Then where was the Dream?”

  I drop my hand and shove it back in my jacket. So much blood. I think this jacket’s past saving.

  “He didn’t have it,” I say. “His apartment was clean. But he was definitely the guy. I could smell it on him.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That the Dream was going to someone else.”

  She sighs. “You are sure he wasn’t bluffing?”

  “Positive. But the bastard killed himself before I could get on with the torturing.”

  For a while she just looks at me, and it’s impossible to read what’s going on behind those eyes. That’s more dangerous than rage. With Mab, it’s the hooks you think you’re avoiding that will impale you later, when you think you’re safe.

  “There have been rumors,” she says slowly. It kills her to divulge any information, especially gossip that makes her look like she isn’t in control of everything. No wonder I’m the way that I am. She seems to reassess her words and continues on in a completely different direction. “If someone else is buying Dream, I need to know who is selling and how much is going unaccounted for. I need you to investigate.”

  “Whoa, hold on. I’m an assassin. I kill things. I don’t do private investigation.”

  “You do now,” she says. She steps closer to me. I half expect her to rise on tiptoes so she doesn’t have to tilt her head back. She doesn’t. When she speaks again, her voice is just above a whisper. “There are few people I trust in this world, Claire. At this moment, you are one of them. If someone besides Oberon or me is buying Dream from outside, I need to know who it is before the Trade is thrown off. And for that to happen, I need that mystery person to keep buying Dream so you may track them. If I hire anyone else, word will leak and the buyer will flee. We are already suffering from a decreased harvest. We cannot handle any more slipping through the cracks.”

  I blink, trying to absorb all this, because A) she doesn’t usually divulge information, and B) I’ve not seen any hint of that within the city, or heard any rumor in the streets. Not that people really talk to me, but still, I have ears.

  “So hold some more concerts or something,” I say. “Frank wasn’t pulling in that much Dream. What’s it matter if that little bit goes to Oberon or someone else?”

  Her lip quirks up to the side.

  “I don’t keep you around to ask questions,” she says. Despite the grin, there’s zero humor in her voice. “Or must I remind you of your place once more?”

  Definitely not. The last time I crossed the line—and I mean really crossed the line, seeing as I take a step or two across it almost daily—she’d dropped me in her labyrinth without weapons or magic. The minotaurs had not been happy to see me, and I still have the scars to prove it.

  “What do you need me to do?” I ask. I keep my voice as level as possible. It’s not a trait I excel at.

  Her whole face shifts into a smile—there’s nothing natural about the movement. It is just a mask like all her other expressions. “I need you to ensure there is no leak in our main supply chain. Think of it as a reward for tonight’s job well done. Tomorrow, you’ll visit the circus.”

  Three

  “Who am I going to kill?” I ask. Because, you know, that’s sort of the name of my game. I can’t actually remember a time when my trip was purely for pleasure.

  Mab’s smile doesn’t slip, which somehow makes her more imposing.

  “It’s the Immortal Circus, Claire. I highly doubt you could kill anyone. And I highly recommend you don’t try. I need you to go and check in on them for me. Make sure there are no Dream leaks, that sort of thing.”

  Great. A job I’m completely not cut out for.

  “Why can’t you do it yourself?”

  Again, I feel that small note of pride for getting under her skin with no consequence to my livelihood. The twitch of her eyebrow is the only sign I get, but it’s enough.

  “Didn’t I just tell you not to ask questions?” she says. “If I show up, it will raise a red flag. I haven’t been in the show for years, and my appearance would not go unnoticed. The Dream I’ve received from them has been lacking lately, and I need you to ensure that someone isn’t stealing from me.”

  “Is that even possible?” I ask. “Shouldn’t it be against their contracts?”

  She looks at me, really digs into my skull with that gaze, and waits a few uncomfortable seconds before speaking. “Even contracts can be manipulated. Which is why it must be you who does the investigating. You will sneak in as though it is a normal, routine checkup.”

  “One I’ve never done before,” I say.

  “And once you have made sure everything is running as it should, you will return to me for your next assignment. I need to speak with Oberon and see if he has heard of this new threat. Besides, I have a kingdom to run and you have nothi
ng better to do. It is clear you can’t even handle a simple hit without cocking it up—consider this your second chance to prove yourself.”

  “Not my fault.”

  “He died by your hand. Thus, it is your fault. If he were still alive, we could have questioned him and learned the identity of his buyer. Until we find another seller, we are dead in the water. And until that time, you will prove yourself useful by ensuring that there are no other leaks. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I mumble.

  “Good. Now, go clean up. I expect you there in the morning.”

  The morning, of course, was subjective, seeing as the barrier between Mortal and Faerie made timing as fluid as water. But I got the gist. She was giving me a chance to unwind and sleep before sending me out again, however long that took. No matter when I left this realm, I’d ensure it was morning in the mortal world.

  A part of me expects her to call out as I leave, some final words of wisdom or warning, but when I turn and stalk out through a side hall, she remains resolutely silent. It isn’t until I glance back that I realize she has vanished.

  I make my way back to my room, through a series of twisting halls and tunnels that—like so much of this world—changes by the hour. Tonight the trip seems to take an especially long time, and I wonder if this is the castle’s way of expressing its own displeasure at my failure. I pass through a hall I’ve seen only once before, the carpet here blue and the walls of ice glowing as if the sun is beaming overhead, before heading back into the darkness of obsidian walls and flickering sconces. No doors here. Just an endless tunnel of wavering shadows.

  “You don’t have to punish me, too,” I mutter to the castle. There’s a distant groan, the sound of settling foundations. Which is just the castle’s way of telling me it hears me and probably doesn’t give a shit.

  After one more turn and a spiral staircase that somehow leads to the same landing I just left, I find the door to my room. It’s at the end of a long hall that is completely identical to the rest of the castle save for the tug in my chest that tells me it’s mine. I lay my hand on the gilt frame. The stone is cold and smooth under my fingers, the door inlaid with ivy and twining dragons.