Page 29 of Cheshire's Smile
The arachoi inclined its head and then gnashed her sharp teeth together. “I will not go back there. Never. I will die first.”
“Woah, we aren’t here to take you anywhere.” I waved my hands in front of me. “We’re just trying to get to the reception desk. The queen blocked off all the portals when she evacuated her court.”
“Reception. Is that way.” She pointed a finger toward a spot in the distance. “Why?”
“Why?” My brows bunched together. “Why are we going there or...?”
“Why evacuate.”
I gestured with both hands up and down Cheshire. “The sickness, of course. It’s spreading across the Underground. Anyone who stays here is susceptible to catching it. You should think of leaving the Underground, too.”
She shook her head. “No. There is no place for me. Humans. Fear.”
I supposed she had a point. The humans were barely tolerant of the fae as it was. If a spider creature like her came out of the Underground, all hell would break loose. It would only give the naysayers more ammunition to attack us.
“Where will you go?” Cheshire asked, pulling his tail back over his shoulder. “You can’t stay here forever.”
The arachoi’s large eyes swept around the area. “Here. Better. No fae. No prison.”
I couldn’t fault her for that. Fae weren’t my favorite people to be around either. All my time with the humans has made them high up there as well. Also, the Between’s nothingness was much better than going back to the Hall of Mirrors.
“Alright, good luck to you then.” I grabbed Cheshire’s arm. “Let’s go. We’re wasting daylight.”
Cheshire arched a brow at me.
“It’s a human saying.” I waved at the arachoi, but she had already skittered away.
Oh well.
Chapter 13
It took what felt like hours to walk through the Between. Our shoulders were tense, and our eyes shot around us, jumping at our own breathing. Finally, the reception desk finally came into view.
“Oh, thank the Reaper, we have finally arrived.” I paused, my shoulders sagging. All the tension melted away at the sight of the four doors circling around the wooden desk.
“Let’s not linger, pet.” Cheshire’s head moved from side to side, watching our surroundings. “We aren’t safe until we’re between those doors. Anything could still come after us.”
I gave a curt nod. “Right.”
My hand curled around Cheshire’s. We were almost home free, and I wasn’t taking the chance of losing him to whatever still lingered in the Between.
A part of me should have been worried about how easy it was to reach this point without another confrontation. There hadn’t even been any voices trying to call us off the path. To be honest, the silence was creepy, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.
Had the sickness gotten all the fae creatures living in the Between? Or had they run off to the Human Realm? Both options were concerning.
For us, the first was the better option than the creatures rampaging all around the Human Realm. We didn’t need another catastrophe to deal with when we weren’t even finished our current problem.
However, if the sickness had gotten so bad that it was taking out the monsters that even the average fae feared, then it was gaining strength and fast. It meant we were running out of time, and I didn’t like that for Hatter or Cheshire.
“Where are the guards?” Cheshire asked once we stepped between the doors and stood before the reception desk.
There were guards here before. I knew there were. I remembered dealing with them several times already during my journey. The Seelie and UnSeelie both had guards for their doors, keeping out unauthorized visitors from wandering into the Fae Realm.
“Maybe they evacuated with the rest?” I mused as I stepped away from Cheshire to investigate.
There were no signs of a struggle or any indication of where they might have done off to. The doors were the same as they had always been. Tall. Foreboding. And, as I discovered after a jiggle of a door handle, locked.
I spun away from the doors that lead to the other realm to stand before the one we needed—the Shadow Realm. I didn’t need to check the doorknob to know that this one was locked. The chains wrapped around the wooden door were locked firmly in place. No one was getting through without the magic to undo the binding.
