Page 8 of The Iron Raven

“Robin Goodfellow. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

She pondered that a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said clearly. “I don’t think I have.”

“What?”

I almost choked on the word. Nyx continued to watch me, completely serious and straight-faced. I waved a hand at an imaginary me off to the side. “Robin Goodfellow. Puck? The famous trickster from stories, poems, andA Midsummer Night’s Dream? The one who gave Nick Bottom a donkey head and made Queen Titania fall in love with him? Everyone knows who I am.”

“Robin Goodfellow.” She made a point of thinking it over for another moment, then firmly shook her head again. “No, I’m afraid it’s not a name I’ve heard before.”

A coughing sound echoed beside us. Keirran’s face was red, one fist pressed against his mouth, as he clearly tried very hard to hold in his laughter. I scowled at him, and he immediately took a quick breath and sobered, though his mouth still curled at the edges. “Sorry, Puck. Let me introduce you properly. Nyx, this is Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, personal servant to King Oberon of the Summer Court. He is...rather well-known, in Faery and the mortal world. That part isn’t exaggerated.”

“My apologies.” Nyx gave a graceful, formal bow. “I meant no offense, Robin Goodfellow, but I have not been back in the world very long. My memories are fragmented, and I fear I have lost a great deal. Keirran has attempted to explain what has happened in the time I was gone, but the mortal realm has changed so much. Even Faery is unrecognizable.” Nyx shook her head, a haunted look going through her golden eyes. “Everything is so different now,” she murmured. “The last thing I remember is being with my kin in the Lady’s service.”

“The Lady?”

“The Queen of the Forgotten,” Keirran said.

“Then...” My brows shot into my hair. “Wait, you’re telling me she was around when the Lady ruled the Nevernever?” I asked incredulously. “As in, before the courts? Before Summer and Winter even existed?”

Keirran nodded gravely, and I let out a breath in a rush. Nyx wasn’t just old, she was primordial. True, I had seen the mortal world change, and Faery with it, but I had been awake through the whole process. I’d seen the great forests cut down and replaced with cities. I’d seen humans’ belief in magic fade away as they turned to science, computers, and technology. I’d adapted, as had all fey—the ones who’d survived. I couldn’t imagine waking up and finding everything and everyone I knew gone, and the world a vastly different place than the one I left.

Honestly, she was handling it far better than I ever would.

Though, her being a servant of the Lady, the Forgotten Faery Queen who had tried to take over the Nevernever a few years back, was mildly concerning. If Nyx was a Forgotten, Keirran would be her king now, but only because he’d killed the Lady in the war with the Forgotten several years back. That was probably another shock: waking up and finding that not only had the world changed, but the queen you served was gone and three new courts had taken her place. I know I’d be shocked if one day I woke up and Oberon was no longer king. If Titania was gone, I’d be devastated; who would I play all my hilarious pranks on then? I didn’t have to worry about her, though. That basilisk would live forever on spite alone.

“Nyx,” Keirran said, interrupting my musings. “Why are you here? Last I heard, you were going back to Phaed to check on things. Did something happen?”

“Yes.” The faery turned to Keirran with a grim expression. “You must come with me to the Between, Your Majesty,” she implored. “Something terrible has happened. The town, the fey there...they’re gone.”

3

HOUNDS IN THE MIST

Keirran straightened. “Gone?” he repeated. “Did they all Fade away?”

I repressed a shudder.Fadingwas the term for a faery who was slowly ceasing to exist. It happened sometimes to fey exiled from the Nevernever, as the magic and glamour they needed to survive was cut off. But it could also happen if mortals simply stopped believing in us, when our stories and tales were replaced with shiny new distractions, when our names faded from memory. The Forgotten were faeries no one remembered anymore, and before Keirran had become their king, they’d been in danger of quietly vanishing from existence, with no one the wiser.

It was a pretty sucky situation, but at least with Keirran as their king, the process seemed to have slowed, if not halted completely.Heremembered them. The Forgotten King made sure to know each and every one of his subjects, making sure they did not Fade away through sheer force of will. And maybe because he was partly human, or because he was just as stubborn and willful as his parents, it seemed to be enough. For now.

“I don’t know,” Nyx replied, her voice somber. “Perhaps? Most of the Forgotten left town with the Lady when she woke up, but a few remained. The Fade has always been a slow, inevitable decline—many of us linger and drift in and out of existence for years. I find it difficult to believe they all vanished so quickly, and at the same time. Please.” She took a step toward Keirran, imploring. “You’re our king now. The Lady is gone, and the other courts won’t help. We can depend only on you. Will you return with us to Phaed?”

“Yes.” Keirran raked a hand over his scalp. “Of course.”

“Wait wait wait.” I held up a hand. “Us?Are you using the royal we or did someone else come with you?”

A loud, despairing sigh echoed behind us.

“How very typical,” said a slow, contemptuous voice that could belong to only one creature in the entire Nevernever. “I was hoping that, were I not present, a decision could be made quickly and we could get underway. But even in dire circumstances, it seems nothing can ever be decided without having to talk it to death. I will never understand.”

I saw Keirran wince, and even I stifled a groan as we turned around. “Oh hey, Furball,” I said, meeting a pair of slitted golden eyes watching us from the shadows. “So, you’re here, too, huh? Fancy that. Well, ifyoudecided to show, then things must be serious.”

The eyes blinked, and a large gray cat materialized on a fence post where nothing had been before. “I am uncertain you know what that word means, Goodfellow,” Grimalkin said, plumed tail twitching behind him as he met my gaze. “The Nevernever could be crumbling under our feet, and you would make a joke about it.”

“Well, duh. It would be my last chance to. If I have to stare Death in the face, I’m gonna do it laughing at him.”

“Grimalkin.” Keirran stepped forward. “I take it you came here with Nyx?”

The cat yawned. “She was looking for you,” he said lazily. “I happened to know where you were, or where you would be going.” His gaze slid to me. “Isupposeit is fortunate that Robin Goodfellow is here as well. The journey will be entertaining, if nothing else.”

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