Page 73 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
Not that I want any of them. Riordan is my brother, for fuck’s sake, and Caer is too jittery and wild for my taste, and Jasper—well, I think if I were around Jasper too much, I might kill him one day, simply for being too sweetly, dreadfullynice.
But why should pasty little Alice with her silvery-blond hair have all ofthem, and yet want to take away theoneperson who desires me?
My heart knows the answer, of course. West’s deadline for me coincides precisely with the Wizard’s deadline for this task, and when that deadline passes, West is going to torture me to death. He’ll enjoy every minute of it, and when it’s over, he’ll keep living his life. He might miss my cunt on occasion, but he won’t missme.The similarity in our souls isn’t enough to dissuade him from his revenge.
“Your shoes and the scrying stones are not the only family heirlooms belonging to this dynasty,” Riordan says, jolting me out of my thoughts. Fiero startles awake in his basket.
“Oh?” I say idly, petting Fiero’s silky fur until he settles back down. “I saw something about that, yes. But it didn’t pertain to me, so I didn’t read it.”
“There’s a golden cap as well, and a belt, and a pair of bracelets,” Riordan continues. “The belt gives the wearer great strength, far beyond that of a normal Fae, and the bracelets enable their owner to build anything they can imagine. It says here the South Witch inherited the belt, and North Witch inherited the bracelets.”
“Great strength didn’t help the South Witch,” Caer comments.
“Maybe the Green Wizard didn’t build the roads and the Emerald City after all,” Alice says. “Maybe the Queen of Hearts did, before she was cursed and banished.”
“That means West has the cap. What does it do?” Alice asks.
Riordan’s voice is hollow with awe. “It calls the Wild Hunt.”
Alice gasps, and I’m struck speechless. Even in the human realm, there are stories about the Wild Hunt—dreadful spirits who gallop across the sky on mystical horses, usually during times of unrest or on holidays like Midwinter Glee or the Bone Festival. They are drawn to the extremes of human emotion—greed, anger, love, grief, and joy. Sightings are rare, and when they do occur, people go missing and are found later, either dead or wandering mad through the forests and fields.
The idea of anyone calling the Wild Hunt on purpose is shocking—impossible.
Alice clutches Riordan’s arm, peering at the page. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“I have not. But it says here that the owner of the cap may call upon the Wild Hunt once in their lifetime, to purge injustice from the land. And there is a warning to the one who calls: ‘Let them be guiltless, or their life will be the first one taken.’”
Caer scoffs. “Which is no doubt why the West Witch hasn’t called upon them to rid his kingdom of the Green Wizard. He’s afraid they’ll take him, too.”
There’s a bit more lore about the Wild Hunt in the book, which Riordan reads aloud to us. Alice is noticeably lagging, and after a while Riordan hands the book to Jasper and picks her up, cradling her body against his broad chest. We continue like that, with her dozing in his arms and the rest of us trudging along, until dawn tints the sky.
With the pink light comes the awareness that we’ve been passing through farmlands dotted with houses and barns. Some of the cattle in the pastures are strange to me—tall, lanky creatures with long necks and scaly wings. Others are squat and roly-poly, like cows, but less able to stay on their feet, more prone to lolling in the deep lavender grass. We pass fields strewn with rotting logs, from which sprout colorful crops of mushrooms, and bushes heavy with small golden berries, like drops of honey. There’s corn, too, similar to the cursed fields outside the Village of Crows, and that crop, at least, is familiar.
The houses are low and small, as if hunched down against an incoming blow, or shrinking to escape notice. The few people we see in the fields and farmyards are dressed in varying shades of green. They work doggedly, without paying us much notice, but they don’t seem as dazed and enthralled as the servants of the Emerald City.
Riordan insists we leave the main road, since that’s the one West will expect us to take, so for the first half of the day we travel by other paths, with me running ahead to survey the route and then transporting back to grab the others and bring them along. Alice screams the first time we transport together, and when we land, Fiero throws up on Caer’s blousy shirt. He doesn’t seem to mind, though—he strips it off, declaring he prefers going shirtless anyway—a state Alice and Jasper also seem to prefer for him. Riordan mutters, “Nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times,” but he keeps stealing glances at the Cat’s toned body as well.
Around noon, we pause at a roadside market for a little food. No one is particularly hungry, but Alice insists we all need our strength.
I stand on a jutting rock by the road, staring ahead. We’re approaching the foot of a mountain range, and West’s stronghold is clearly visible now—a castle that looks as if it grew directly out of the dark-gray rock, half-camouflaged by the charcoal cliffs behind it.
So far there’s been nothing to stop us. No poisonous green mist, no fields of poppies, no green flames leaping up to bar the path… nothing.
Even if he can’t see us through the scrying stone, he knows we’re coming. Why hasn’t he stopped us?
Caer walks out from behind a nearby rock, grimacing. “I think I just shit out the orb I swallowed. Who wants to go and check?”
“Not possible,” Riordan says. “They’re magical, idiot. They will stay put until you purge them, or until they dissolve in a few months’ time.”
“Oh. Good.” Caer swings up into a tree and perches on the branch above my head. “What’s the plan, then?”
Jasper looks up from where he’s feeding Fiero strips of meat. “You turn invisible and climb the walls, then let us all in through a side door. If anyone runs to attack us, Dorothy will speed-run them into a wall or a tree and knock them out.”
We all turn and stare at him. He gazes back with innocent blue eyes. “What?”
“It’s a really good plan, Jasper,” Alice says.
“A bit simple,” I add.
