Page 40 of The Iron Raven

He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his wrinkled nose and carried an enormous pile of junk on his back. Kitchen utensils, broken appliances, several clocks, and a few shattered phones all balanced precariously between his hunched shoulders. He was a packrat and, like his name implied, hoarded all kinds of junk that, somehow, he was able to carry on his back. The larger the junk pile, the more respected the packrat. By other packrats, anyway. This one had a truly impressive hoard, reaching past the top of my head. In fact, I was pretty sure it was bigger than when I’d seen him last.

“Robin Goodfellow,” the packrat wheezed, waddling forward. His enormous junk pile swayed and clanked as he walked, and from the corner of my eye I saw Nyx watching it dubiously, ready to leap back should it topple. “You have finally arrived.”

I grinned. “Hey, Fix. I didn’t know Meghan was expecting me. I’m guessing socket-head let her know I was coming?”

“I am not privy to the decisions of the first lieutenant,” Fix replied, ignoring the rather casual nickname for the commander of the Iron Queen’s army. “Nor do I question the ways of my queen. I am certain you can ask her yourself. Now then...” He paused, squinting up at me with bleary eyes.

I crossed my arms, waiting for him to say something about the pair of protuberances that hadn’t been there before.

The packrat hesitated, then took off his glasses, polished them with a rag, and stuck them back on his face with a sniff. “If you would kindly introduce me to your companions,” he said, as I got the impression that the glasses were purely for show. “I must at least know their names so that I can announce them to the queen before going in.”

Nyx bowed, formal and graceful, even in her condition. “I am called Nyx,” she said, as the packrat turned his beady gaze on her. “I am here as a messenger from His Majesty Keirran, King of the Forgotten.”

Fix sobered immediately at the name. “Keirran,” he repeated, almost a whisper. For a moment, he looked wistful, almost sad, before shaking himself and glancing up at Nyx again. “Well met, Nyx of the Forgotten,” he said formally. “Tell me, how is our former prince these days?”

“Keirran is a fair and just king,” Nyx replied, and she was being completely honest. “He puts the safety of the Forgotten before anything else. He misses the Nevernever, but he doesn’t let that stand in the way of his duty.”

“I see,” the packrat murmured. “Well, I am sure the queen will be happy to hear it. And what of you?” he went on, gazing up, and up, at the hulking Coaleater behind me. “You are one of the Iron herd, am I correct? From the Obsidian Plains. You have come far... Do you also wish an audience with the queen?”

“I do,” the huge Iron faery replied, and put a fist over his heart with a clank. “I am Coaleater, second in command of the Iron herd. I am here at the request of our leader, Spikerail. There is something the Iron Queen must be made aware of.”

Fix bobbed his head. “Of course. Any of the Iron herd is welcome here. Well, then...” He stepped back, beaming placidly at us all. “If you would follow me. The Iron Queen is waiting for you.”

The Iron Palace had always amazed me. It was like taking a medieval castle from King Arthur days, dropping it into a blender with an H. G. Wells novel, and hitting Puree. The ancient and the modern intertwined seamlessly throughout the halls and corridors of the palace, with more than a few hints of Victorian steampunk scattered throughout, just like the city. Gears, cogs, and wires were common decorations, and the corridors were filled with a soft but constant ticking. Sometimes gothic stone passages gave way to giant arched windows where the sun streamed through the glass, but then we would turn a corner to see a pair of ivy-covered statues sitting under a streetlamp.

Bizarrewas a good word for the Iron Palace, and that was coming from yours truly; I practically invented the word. Iron fey roamed the halls and corridors of the queen’s castle, seeming perfectly at home here, more than any other place in the Nevernever: Iron knights, clockwork hounds, hacker elves, cog dwarves, and the ever-present gremlins, trailing us down the hallways like cackling, bat-eared spiders. Even the massive Coaleater looked almost normal against the backdrop of the palace, blending into the surroundings like he’d been born here.

Nyx and I definitely stood out.

I had been to the palace a few times before, so for the most part, the Iron fey knew me. Still, the amount of stares I was receiving was disquieting. Maybe it was the horns. Or maybe it was the cloaked Forgotten walking beside me and making no more noise than a shadow. In any case, it was a little unnerving. When a faery with the body of a metallic centipede stares at you in abject fear and then goes scurrying around a corner, that’s kind of a hard pill to swallow.

“Here we are,” Fix announced at last, coming to a stop before a pair of double doors. Not the throne room, I noted, which would be full of Iron fey all demanding the queen’s attention. This was probably a private meeting room, as indicated by the pair of Iron knights standing guard at the entrance. They nodded to Fix, then reached out and opened each of the doors, granting us access to whatever lay beyond.

Fix smiled at us and waddled through the doors. We followed him into a bright, well-lit room with glass doors that led to a marble balcony and a stunning view of the courtyard below. The doors were open, and a figure could be seen at the railing with her back to us, gazing out over the palace grounds.

Her long, silver-blond hair rippled behind her, held back by the thin iron circlet atop her skull. Per usual she was dressed in modern, human clothes, though over the years I’d noticed she had abandoned the faded jeans and T-shirt look for something a bit less casual and more businesslike. At least in public. You’d never catch her in a gown outside of Elysium, but the scruffy, awkward teenager who’d claimed she would rather be comfortable than popular had vanished, and the Iron Queen was all that remained.

“Your Majesty,” Fix announced as we stepped through the frame, the guards pulling the doors shut behind us. “Robin Goodfellow and his companions, Nyx of the Forgotten and Coaleater of the Iron herd, have arrived.”

The figure on the balcony turned, and my stupid traitor heart still gave a weird little flutter whenever I saw my former princess.

Meghan Chase, the Iron Queen, met my gaze through the balcony doors and broke into a relieved, genuine smile. Without hesitation, she strode forward, stepped into the room, and threw her arms around me in a hug.

Standard greeting, really. And one that had made my heart soar whenever it happened. But this time, something sour flared to life at her touch. I remembered, suddenly, the image of her turning away, of following another through the portal to the human world and leaving me behind. A kiss, shared in a secret bedroom, that meant the world to me and nothing to her. The agonized confession that she did love me, just not as much ashim.

All those memories flickered through my head like a strobe light, and in the next blink, they were gone. It happened so quickly, I didn’t know what to think. Or feel. Though I could sense the stunned gazes of both Nyx and Coaleater at my back, their eyes wide and staring. A queen hugging a jester was definitely something they did not see every day.

“Hey, princess,” I whispered, as I always did. “Did you miss me?”

“Puck.” Meghan pulled back, gripping my upper arms. Her sapphire-blue gaze was intense, which made my instincts bristle a warning. This definitely wasn’t normal. “Keirran,” she asked, her voice threaded with worry. “What happened? Is he all right?”

I relaxed, though at the same time, that strange bitterness trickled through my thoughts. Of course, Meghan would want to know about Keirran; he was her kid, after all, and just like she had been. Stubborn, defiant, with no concept of self-preservation.

I smirked. “He’s fine, Meghan. Last I saw, he was blasting a big bad with enough glamour to shred a cement truck.”

Meghan relaxed. She seemed about to say something else, when her gaze suddenly went to my forehead, and her eyes widened. “Puck,” she whispered, as her hand rose to my hair. “What...?”

“Ah, right.” I took a step back, wincing a little. “These things. Well, that’s part of what we came to discuss. Well, this and the big ugly that caused it. So, did Glitch already tell you we were coming?” I went on, changing the subject as Meghan’s worried gaze lingered on my forehead. “Keirran sent us here with a message to warn you about this nasty new threat that’s popped up, but you already seem in the loop.”

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