Page 45 of What Lurks Between the Fates

I strode down the stairs, passing the doorway to the dungeons that had housed Estrella and me for a week. Pushing on the hidden spot on the wall, I watched as the single panel of limestone retracted into the wall. The wall groaned as it slid against the floor; the part hidden beneath the alcove of the stairs retreating and sliding to the side to reveal the passageway to the dungeons of the forgotten.

I grabbed a torch off the wall as the door slid back into place behind me, sealing me into the depths and darkness of Tar Mesa. I stepped out of the entryway and into the place that rivaled Helheim itself.

The ceilings in this part of the palace were high, carved beneath the ground of the rolling hills of Faerie itself. My father’s statue emerged from the wall at my right, half his face revealing the skeletal form of his true nature. This was the place where the Court of Shadows imprisoned humans, where they went to waste away until they died, and he and Mab had modeled it after the entrance to Helheim.

It was a mockery for his statue to be here, for the woman who had slain him to put it in the one place in Alfheimr that mimicked the place of his true dominion.

The skeletal form cut a line down the center of his nose; the other half of the stone carved into a smooth, polished surface of his skin. The skin he so often wore when ruling over his court, before his wife had taken over. Before she’d beenfurious to find her husband had a mate, and that she was the Queen of the Winter Court.

The two of them together would have proven unstoppable at the time, and Mab would have been forced to return to her brother in the Summer Court. She had no claim over my father’s court outside of their marriage, and the moment that dissolved, she stood to lose everything.

Everything she had fought to achieve. Everything she had killed for.

In one of my father’s hands, he held the exact replica of the sword that was normally strapped across my back. The one remaining part of him I was allowed to carry. Mab had stripped it from me when I returned to court to save Estrella in that throne room.

I hadn’t seen my favored weapon since. I doubted I would until the moment she needed to send me away from her court on whatever mundane mission suited her fancy.

In my father’s other hand, he clutched the head of a cyclops by the hair. The enormity of it always stole the breath from my lungs, grateful that the remaining of their kind had long ago been locked within the confines of Tartarus. Its eye was still open, centered in his massive forehead, even though Sephtis had severed his head from his shoulders. The skin around that eye it was folded, creased with wrinkles that seemed to follow a path from his enormous pointed ears. The rest of his mouth was occupied by a massive mouth, his rotting lips peeled back to reveal a wide line of jagged teeth. His mouth was twisted into a hysterical smile to accompany the fact that the cyclops were always laughing.

Laughing as they brought their feet down upon the Sidhe, crushing them beneath legs as thick as trees. Moss grew offtheir backs, fading into thin black hairs that trailed up their necks and stopped just below their heads. The cyclops’ tongue protruded from his open mouth, ready to catch his next prey and make a morsel out of him.

I turned away, determined not to dwell on the fact that my father had never been given the privilege of meeting my mate. He’d never know what it was to see me happy, to know that the love he could never hold for himself had rested within my arms.

That she would do it all over again, and that I would do whatever it took to make sure that was our norm.

The walkway was smooth until it dropped off the side, plunging into the depths below. The valley was filled with smoke, the result of the fires burning to keep the prison warm. It was too hot, nearly suffocating as I made my way to the crude steps carved into the cliff face. The rocks shifted as I stepped down them, hurrying as quickly as I dared and only casting a brief glance over the edge.

Mab waited at the bottom, turning her pale face to look up at me as I continued down the steps. She’d summoned me to do my duty, to deliver the souls of her prisoners into the afterlife, but I hadn’t stopped to consider who she might have housed in the worst part of her prison.

There was no iron down here, nothing to prevent a Fae from escaping. The cells found in this part of Tar Mesa were intended for the lesser beings, the ones who weren’t strong enough to escape regular shackles and chains.

The bodies of Mab’s latest slaughter lay spread throughout the ante chamber, scattered around the fire at the center. The dirt floor had long since turned to mud, the blood of her victims soaking into the ground beneath my feet as I stepped off the last of the stone steps.

There were nearly a dozen dead, but the crying from the narrow passage told me that the cells were still far from empty.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mab said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. I didn’t know why she bothered. We both knew she couldn’t see past the cloud of smoke that lingered at the mouth of the valley. “This wouldn’t have been necessary if that mate of yours wasn’t so infuriatinglygood.”

“My mate would never have wanted this,” I snapped, sighing as I realized where Mab had found the humans to slaughter. They were some of what remained of the group who joined us on our journey, what remained of Adelphia’s companions and those who had welcomed Estrella to join them in their revelry before the Veil fell.

The children of the witches who had left to try to find her when Brann had stolen her from the rebellion in the night.

“Exactly! Her humanity makes her weak when she could be powerful beyond our wildest dreams. Instead, she worries over the lives of creatures that will die in the blink of an immortal eye. Their lives are so short, nothing in the wheel of time. Why does she care what happens to these irrelevant creatures?” Mab asked, pressing the toe of a black boot against the hand of the closest corpse. The man didn’t twitch, his throat ripped out by Mab’s shadows, the gaping hole still bleeding.

Mab’s undertaker waited against the wall, leaning against the stone and holding the three-pronged pitchfork he would use to shove the corpses into the flames the moment I left with their souls. There would be no careful burial, no return to the earth for those who died in this place.

It was perhaps the worst of all of Mab’s crimes against them.

Drawing my coin purse from my pocket, I pulled two pieces of gold out and squatted beside the first corpse. The man stared at the ceiling, his eyes blank and unseeing as I deposited the first coin onto his eye, pressing it deeper into the socket so that it might stay long enough for me to see his soul to the ferryman. I tucked the other into my pocket, tethering the soul to my being as he appeared to me.

Barely there, he swayed in the breeze that came off the river entrance as I proceeded to repeat the process with the other prisoners.

“Because every life matters. Every soul matters in this world. I doubt you care what my mate thinks of others, but I could tell you exactly why I think she infuriates you so.”

I moved to the next body, placing a golden coin upon the woman’s eye as I turned to look over my shoulder at Mab. Her lips pursed, her tongue running over her teeth as she rolled her eyes.

“And why is that, my darling stepson?”

“Because Estrella is living proof that you can be both powerfulandkind. She is your reminder that you didn’t need to sacrifice your soul to be granted the power you have. After ruling for centuries, Estrella is your penance. She has the potential to be everything you have fought to become, everything you have clawed your way through life to achieve. She has been given that for merely existing, and where your people hate you for what you have forced yourself to become…” I paused, watching as Mab’s eye twitched. It was the subtlest sign that I’d struck a nerve, that I’d been correct in my assumption.

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