Page 26 of The Iron Raven

“Not anymore, it seems.” For a moment, Nyx looked melancholy, a shadow crossing her face for just a moment. “But yes, at one point, I was part of a family. My clan—my Order—was a group dedicated to serving the Lady, no matter what she asked of us.”

“Yeah, she must’ve been all kinds of fun to work for.”

“I knew what I was,” Nyx said softly. “Even if I disagreed with her, my loyalty would never come into question. Even if she ordered me to kill my own blood...” She shook herself. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We still have to get to the Iron Realm. That creature could be anywhere by now.”

“Right,” I agreed. “And we will. But first, we have to getyousomething so that your face doesn’t melt off while we’re in Mag Tuiredh. Fortunately, I’m in good with the border guards, so it shouldn’t take long. Then, it’s off to see the queen. And ice-boy, of course. I’m sure he’ll be especially thrilled that I’ve come to visit.”

“What is she like?” Nyx asked as we headed into the perpetual murk of the wyldwood. “The Iron Queen. Are there protocols that I should follow? I don’t want to offend anyone while I’m in her court.”

“Don’t worry.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “Meghan isn’t like Mab, and she’s definitely not like Titania. She’s not going to turn you into a rosebush or freeze you inside a block of ice for saying the wrong thing. Meghan is half-human, and she was born in the mortal realm. So, she knows about not fitting in, probably more than anyone. My advice is to just...be yourself. Trust me, you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

Golden eyes regarded me curiously. I realized I had been speaking about the Iron Queen, one of the most powerful faeries in the Nevernever, in a very casual manner. “Besides...” I grinned and jerked a thumb at myself “...you’ll be with me, and I’m at least in her top three favorite faeries in the entire Nevernever, so you’ll be fine.”

“Really.”

“Can’t say it if it’s not true.”

“Yes, but all fey are masters at bending the truth, Robin Goodfellow,” Nyx said, giving me a pointed look. “I might be new to this era, but I was not born yesterday.”

“Well.” I shrugged. “Then I guess you’re going to have to trust me.”

“I guess I will,” Nyx agreed in a quiet voice that, for some odd reason, made my stomach squirm. With a faint smile, she gestured to the surrounding trees. “Lead on, then. I’ll follow you to the Iron Realm, and then I’ll see what the Iron Queen is like myself.”

8

THE BORDER

Well, I would’ve liked to say that we made it to the border with no further incidents, but that would be a lie. It was the Nevernever, after all. Couldn’t walk a mile without something jumping out trying to scare, eat, rob, or have their way with you. Thankfully, the goblin party that attempted to ambush us on the trail underestimated how very lethal the “snow-hair elf” really was. I didn’t even have to lift a finger as Nyx decimated the half-dozen squat green creatures with no effort at all. The last goblin, a runty thing with the tip of an ear missing, squealed in terror as Nyx turned on him, the rest of his troop scattered around her in small goblin pieces.

“No kill!” Dropping his spear, he cringed back, looking like an ugly green dog that was about to get kicked. “No kill! Mercy, snow-hair, mercy. Pooga leave. Leave now, see? No kill Pooga.”

I rolled my eyes, but Nyx lowered her arms, the shining crescent blades fading to moonlight in her hands. “Get out of here,” she told the last goblin, who immediately leaped to his feet and scampered into the bushes. Nyx watched until the sound of rustling branches faded into the distance, then turned to me with a wry grin.

“Nice to know some things never change. No matter how many goblins you exterminate, there are always more somewhere.”

“Goblins, the cockroaches of the Nevernever,” I agreed. “Though I was sure you would skewer that last one. You know he’s just going to scurry back and tell the rest of his friends about us, and then we’ll have to deal with the whole tribe.”

Nyx gave a shrug that was somehow elegant and careless at the same time. “I’ve lost count of how many I’ve killed,” she murmured, “how many lives the Lady ordered me to cut short. If I can avoid it, I try not to add to that number.”

“An assassin with a conscience,” I remarked, surprised. “That must suck. How’d you end up with one of those?”

Faeries have no souls. It’s one of the key things that separates the fey from mortals. Well, besides the pointy ears, wings, hooves, horns, et cetera. It’s how, after centuries of murder, scheming and debauchery, a faery can continue its merry life without succumbing to the guilt of what it had done. No soul equals no conscience. Throw immortality into the mix, and you have a bunch of bored, capricious beings who are constantly looking for their next form of entertainment and don’t care about the mess they leave behind. I know of only one true fey who managed to earn a soul, and the whole process nearly killed him. It was only his love for a certain half human that kept him sane and alive through the whole terrible ordeal.

However, there are a few of us who, though it happens very rarely, develop something that passes for a conscience. Sometimes, a faery is cursed with one, though this is one of the most terrifying things that can happen to a fey, and the poor sap who finds himself saddled with a conscience usually gets himself killed trying to undo it. But occasionally—and no one knows how it happens—a conscience develops on its own.

Some say humans are to blame, that the more time you spend with mortals, the more in danger you are of being infected with their “human morality.” Some suggest that the more famous you are, the more stories, songs, and poems people tell about you, the more you start to take on aspects of the character in those tales. However it happens, slowly or all at once, it’s life changing. A faery can suddenly find himself feeling guilty about actions that meant nothing to him in the past. The games he found hilarious before now make him cringe.

When this happens, there are really only two choices a faery can make: continue on as before until the guilt eventually drives him to end his existence once and for all, or adapt. Find a way to deal with it, to make up for past mistakes, and do better. Though the rest of Faery will never, ever let him forget.

Nyx hesitated, a haunted look briefly crossing her face. “It did...suck...sometimes,” she admitted. “Being the Lady’s assassin... I had to accept that part of me, the part that was a killer, the me that reveled in the hunt and the blood and the fear. I had to come to terms with that shadow self, otherwise, it would’ve destroyed me.” She shot me an exasperated look, then sighed. “It’s a long, morbid story,” she finished. “And one I really don’t want to get into at this moment. Ask me again some other time?”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Then I suggest we move before we’re drowning in a few dozen vengeful goblins. We’re not far from the border now.”

The Crossing, as it was oh so creatively called, sat at the edge of the wyldwood, right before you crossed into the Iron Realm. It was a massive stone bridge spanning a gulf that stretched for miles in either direction, separating the Iron Realm from the rest of Faery. A squadron of Iron knights were stationed here, and a pair of them stood on either side of the enormous copper-and-iron gate, blocking the way into the Iron Realm.

Upon seeing the guards, Nyx stopped walking and drew in a slow breath, her moon-colored eyes wider than I’d ever seen. “Those are...the Iron fey you mentioned?” she said in a near whisper. Her awe was understandable; she had never seen an Iron faery before, and the knights were decked out in their shiny metal plate armor, a torturous death sentence for any traditional fey. Even the iron-tipped spears they carried would make a traditional faery cringe.

I nodded. “Yep, and those guys aren’t even the weirdest of the lot. Wait’ll you get to Tinkerport, the town on the other side of the chasm. Pro tip—gremlins are the goblins of the Iron Realm. They’re everywhere and unavoidable, so it’s best to ignore them. Give them any attention and you’ll have a whole swarm trailing you.”

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