I grabbed Knut's arm, readying to flee, knowing for certain that he was looking directly at us. At me. I could feel his power rake across the skin of my face. He was Titania all over again...his very being shouted the same silent threat...but it was somehow worse. I felt like I'd drown in those eyes...like a violent sea would swallow me up if I so much as breathed.
The prince blinked, turned, and strode away. I breathed the most relieved sigh I ever had in my life.
"Something's happening. Let's follow them." Knut lurched forward.
I yanked him back so hard he almost fell. "No. He saw us. I know he did. I don't know why he let us go, but I'm not pressing my luck."
"Don't let his glaring fool you. He may have power, but he doesn't know what to do with it yet." There was a joke in there somewhere, but I wasn't in the mood to laugh. "Lysander is the smart one. He knows better than to start a fight over nothing. He won't do anything unless we give him a reason to." He laid his hand on the crown of my head. "If you truly believe in my conniving little mind," he tapped at the temple of his skull mask, "then trust me."
I took a deep, steadying breath. Why was I letting one boy get to me when Mab barely even fazed me? "I'm sorry." I relented. "I'm just...worried I guess." He pressed the brow of his mask to the brow of mine. We shared a breath. "The Seelie unnerve me a bit...I don't know why." I confessed, hating every syllable.
"I understand." Knut whispered. "The Unseelie flaunt their power loudly, but the Seelie are quiet. They don't need to shout their dominion over us from the rooftops. You can just look at them and know just how small you are compared to them." He took my hand and placed it over my iron pendant. My fingers immediately curled around it and held it tightly, letting the hunk of metal bite into my palm. "But you have iron and with it, you can make them bleed. Don't be afraid. It is they that should be afraid of you."
I squeezed my fist around the metal. "Let's go," I muttered and took my first step forward.
"I enchanted your cloak. Draw up the hood and ask it to hide you and it will, even if I'm separated from you. It's not as strong as usual though. We can't risk doing too much big magic while we're skulking about. You'll become shadow, rather than air, so be careful. Keep to the darkness. Don't get caught in direct light."
"You do think of everything, Darling." I drew my hood over my hair as he chuckled and I whispered the command beneath my breath.
With light steps, Knut and I crept through the forest, my cloak and his magic helping to keep us hidden. We followed the sound of the bigger brother's heavy steps, keeping a healthy distance.
We could just see their forms trudging onward through the thick growth. I kept a wary eye on the smaller man. He kept his head slightly turned, as if he were listing for pursuers, but never turned to us fully nor warned his brother of our possible presence.
Slowly, the scent of smoke wafted into our nostrils. Fire. Where there was fire, there were probably people...and a camp.
As the smell grew stronger, so too did the sound of a myriad of male voices, commingling with one another. Laughter, teasing, boasting and dirty jokes.
A woman's scream.
My blood went cold. My feet quickened.
"Matilda, don't rush ahead." Knut pleaded in my head, but my feet wouldn't listen. I forgot what I was doing as my mind focused solely on the woman's cries. Woman...no...it sounded more like a girl. A child. I had to get to her. I had to save her. I had to. I had to.
"Matilda!" Knut shouted in my head. A firm grip stopped a dead run cold. I blinked back to reality. I was at the edge of a tree line, barely hidden. So close to stepping into the fire's light where an un-owned shadow was sure to be noticed. Just inside the light, the princes stood looking back at me.
"What was that?" The bigger faerie asked. His eyes scanned the tree line, passing over me. Thank you, precious, beautiful Knut for this glorious cloak.
His brother's gaze, however, was fixed on me as if I weren't even wearing the cloak. It was over. We were done. We'd been caught and it was all my fault.
"Must've been a rabbit or something." The smaller faerie, Lysander, said. A soft wind I couldn't didn't feel blew his dark curls back from his brow. Again, he turned and strode off, dismissing the pursuers he knew good and well were there. "Come. Let's get this over with." He walked on towards a large tent that sat in the clearing. After a pause and another sweep of his eyes across the tree line, his brother followed.
Knut yanked me down behind a heavily flowering branch. "What got into you? Why'd you go running off like that?" He hissed in my head. "Lysander is one thing. Demetrius is quite another. If he catches us, we'll have a battle on our hands."
"The girl," I answered mentally. We couldn't afford to speak out loud so near to the camp. My eyes took in the full expanse of Kieran's hiding place, searching for the scream's source.
There was no doubt in my mind that Knut was correct. Kieran was here. The brothers had led us straight to him. Like with our own kingdom and the elves' villages, the camp was centered around a bonfire. Dozens of soldiers, clad in black leather and silver armor milled around the camp, talking and eating together by the fire. Over on the left-hand side were carts, not unlike the one that had taken my brothers and me to the gallows. There were four of them. All of them were packed with human women of various ages... even small children. They crowded together into a jumble of quivering limbs, crying and trying to comfort one another.
"And they call us uncivilized beasts." Knut hissed in my mind. He bared his teeth at the scene, but his eyes were not on the captured women. They seemed focused on something in the distance, something beyond the massive tent.
A pair of guards patrolled the perimeter of the tent and as they turned the corner to continue their circular pattern, the stars they held in their firsts lit the tree line beyond the camp, revealing the true depths of Kieran's depravity. From what seemed to be every branch hung hundreds of girls, their bodies bloody, bruised and mutilated.
There I found the source of the scream. A human child still kicking at the end of the rope. Choking while crimson blood poured from deep gashes across her back. Gashes that almost matched the scars Knut had washed away the night before our coronation.
I turned my head from the awful sight. My belly twisted painfully, filling my mouth with a horrendous taste as I struggled not to vomit. I grabbed his fur cape to keep from crumbling to my knees. I tried not to remember Rolland and Rhys swinging from their matching ropes or father's legs kicking as he fought for breath, but those memories bubbled up nonetheless, pulled up from the depths of my mind to haunt me once again by the horror that surrounded me.
I pulled my hood down more over my eyes, silently begging it to work its magic...to help me do the thing I had to do. "Knut, I need you to stay here and act as my lookout. If something happens...if I'm caught...we'll have to fight our way out of here." I thought at him, tightening my grip on the fur at his shoulders.
"What are you planning?" He asked. His eyes, deep within the rat skull mask squinted at me questioningly.
"I'm a thief, aren't I?" I backed away from him, being careful of my foot placement. "I'm going to steal his shit starting with his favorite toys." I glanced over at the caged girls.
As my hand slipped from his arm, he snatched it back, hesitant to let go of me. "Matilda, you know we can't save them. Right? Not without risking our mission."
I looked down at the ground, clenching my teeth so hard they ached.
Knut bent low and tilted his head so that I had to look at him. "Even if we did free them, where would they go? We're here to kill Kieran. That's the best way we can help them. They won't be free, but at least they won't end up like the others." Those dead girls loomed over us like a storm cloud.
"I know you're right." I thought. Normally, I wouldn't shed a tear for anyone other than myself or those close to me, but this...this I couldn't ignore. I had to do something even if I would sorely regret it later. "But I can't leave them here. I just can't."
"Hits too close to home, aye?" He sighed. Knut reached behind my ear and produced a thin piece of metal. A grin stretched my lips. A lockpick. "You're going to need one of these to get the locks open." I snatched the lockpick from him, practically giddy.
"Listen to me carefully." He motioned towards the camp. Many of the guards were just sitting around, passing around flasks of wine and eating faerie fruit to their heart's content."It appears the guards have been relaxing up here. They think they're perfectly safe here so close to the Summer Branches. It's been a nonstop party for them, I'm sure." He made a disgusted noise in his throat. He jabbed a finger towards the forest. " The cages are turned so that the doors are on the side facing the forest. You may be able to get at least a few of them out before any of these drunk fools notice anything amiss. I'll provide a distraction if you need it."
"Thank you, Knut." I hugged him, squeezing him tightly. "I promise to be careful."
"Good. Now go." He gently pushed me away. His nails dug into the branch we hid behind in an effort not to reach out for me again. "Go before I change my mind."
I tucked the lockpick into my boot and, after making sure that my mask wasn't askew, I pulled my cloak in around me and began a low crawl around the side of the camp, keeping to the darkness of the tree line.
I kept one eye on the guards as I moved, trying to keep track of their positions. The two guards patrolling the perimeter were on the far side. The rest were eating some sort of stew by the fire.
Just as the first cage was in reach one of the guards got up from his seat. "This is the sixth time. When's someone else gonna take a turn?" He whined.
One of the other men handed him a heavy pale. "When you stop acting like a spoiled brat." The man said snidely. They all laughed at him. "Now go feed the slaves before I let Lord Kieran know about your insubordination."
"Yes, Sir." The guard turned from the group. "Assholes." The guard muttered under his breath, lamenting the unfairness of the world as he stomped towards the cages.
I ducked down, shying from the light he held in his other hand.
"I've got a goblin in place, ready to distract the guard. Just give the word." Knut said in my head.
"No. I can handle it." I replied. It was too soon to blow our cover. The beautiful sound of jingling keys graced my ears and a wicked smile spread beneath my mask. I could use this setback to my advantage. I had the lockpick, but picking locks was time-consuming. If I had the key, it would make things a lot easier. The faster I got them out of those cages the better. "Don't do anything yet. I'm good."
The guard walked around the cage, absently unhooking a ring of keys from his belt. "I always get stuck with feeding duty."
He was only three feet from me but was clueless of my presence. Again, I felt that uneasiness about Lysander. How powerful did a faerie have to be to see through Knut's magic? Enough, I scolded myself. You have a job to do. Focus.
"Keep back." The guard growled. He opened the cage and the women inside obediently moved away, allowing him to pour slop into a trough like he was feeding pigs.
If there were no other guards, I could have taken him out and freed them right then, but I couldn't risk them hearing him struggle. I needed to be patient and wait. Maybe he'd slip up and lay them down...or I could lure him deeper into the woods.
Locking the first cage, he moved on to the second. I sneaked along beside him, matching his heavy steps with my soft ones.
"What's taking you so long, boy!" His fellow guards jeered, cackling stupidly. "You're not looking for a roll from those lot, are ya?"
"If he's that desperate, he should just yank one off the tree." Another snickered.
My belly turned sour. Clearly, Kieran's nastiness was rubbing off on his men. I couldn't wait to stick every last one of them.
The young guardsman grew flustered. "Shut yer mouths! I ain't doing no such thing!" His gray skin turned darker across his cheeks.
"Don't talk back to us, boy! Hurry it up!" They shouted back.
Beyond agitated, the guardsman slung slop in the general direction of the troughs in the remaining cages without bothering to open the doors. Most of it went on the ground. He turned to go back, clicking the key ring back onto his belt.
This was it. I had to do something if I wanted the keys. I found a dry twig on the forest floor and snapped it in two. He whirled towards the sound and setting the pale down, relit a star in his palm. As expected, he didn't call out to his fellow guardsmen for help, his pride getting in the way of his common sense. He entered the treeline, investigating the sound on his own.
Creeping ahead, I brushed my hand along the leafy branches, guiding him in deeper.
"Hello!" He called, raising his light higher. "Is someone out here?" His voice cracked. His free hand gripped the hilt of his sword at his waist. "Alexander, if that's you, I swear I'm actually going to strangle you this time. You aren't funny."
Stupid little faeries. So sure in their might. It was like they didn't even realize that they were at war. The idea that the enemy could attack them at any moment hadn't even crossed their tiny little minds, but they'd know it soon enough. Removing my iron pendant, I wound it around my dagger.
I picked a faerie fruit and tossed it behind him. He turned with his light, looking to where it fell, rustling the leaves on the forest floor.
I slipped up behind him, clasped a hand over his mouth to muffle his scream and stuck my iron poisoned knife through his throat and dragged it across.
The boy flailed, struggling in my grip as the iron nulled his power. It seeped out of him with every heartbeat just as surely as the silver blood wetting my hands. I let him fall to the ground and crouched over him, watching him choke on his own blood. I asked my cloak to release me from its shadowy embrace. I wanted him to see me. I wanted a goblin queen's war helm to be the last thing he ever saw. As I revealed myself, his eyes widened even more. He couldn't speak, but I knew what he was saying, what he was screaming, just by the look. You!
That's right, me. The queen of those people you and your queen don't consider a threat. "You're the first Unseelie casualty of this war. Congratulations." I whispered. He was the first, but he certainly wasn't going to be the last.
Smiling beneath my helm, I plunged my knife through his eye and into his brain. He twitched a few more times. Death throws. But soon he went still, and I had the keys I sought.
It was an effort not to rush back to the cages. I was so pleased with myself. It had been too long since I last stole something. I'd forgotten how good it sometimes felt.
I crept back to the edge of the camp and readied my new keys, wet with Unseelie blood as they were. The rest of the guards were lazily lying about the camp, unaware that their favorite toy was lying dead in the forest.
I approached the first cage. The women inside sat around the trough, digging out handfuls of muck and stuffing it into their mouths, suckling their fingers as if the stuff were the most delicious thing they'd ever tasted. But it wasn't the taste at all. It was desperation. I knew it when I saw it.
I'm going to get you out of here. I swear it. I thought bitterly. I didn't know what would happen to them once I freed them, as Knut had said, there was nowhere for them to go. Knut could open up a door to the human world, but even if they made it back to their families, there would be no place for them. According to Ib, faeries replaced the people they took. Without their families, they'd be returning to a life a poverty and more than likely end up in a brothel or a grave. Still, anything had to be better than this.
I slid the key into the lock and felt a cold blade jab into my spine.
"So you're the one that's been scurrying around out here." I recognized the voice as Lysander's. Of course, it was him. I stiffened. My eyes darted towards the fire. The certainty that the guards were about to seize me filled me with icy dread, However, the men still sat there by the fire, unmoving and silent. Their expressions and gestures were frozen in time. One held a spoon to his lips but never sipped from it. They were stuck. The flow of time had come to a screeching halt and a single moment had been made to last until this faerie boy saw fit to release it. "Don't worry about them. They won't come for you until I allow it. Now, show yourself. I know you're there. There's no use in hiding anymore." Reluctantly, I asked the cloak to undo its magic. "Raise your hands where I can see them and turn around. Slowly." Lysander commanded.
I slowly raised my hands and swiveled around to face him. His sword's tip pressed again at my chest as he glowered down at me. He really wasn't very tall. He was taller than me, but not nearly the size of Knut. He was kind of short for a man. It was sort of funny really. For one with such obvious power to be so small.
His stormy sea-colored eyes swept over me from head to toe and back again, noticeably lingering a bit too long on my upper torso. "A woman?" He said, furrowing his brow.
"Don't sound so surprised," I muttered. I was screaming in my head for Knut but wasn't getting an answer.
"Who are you?" Lysander demanded.
"Didn't the helm give it away?" I sneered. "I am Matilda the Goblin Queen, wife of Knut the king and master of the Underground," I answered with a flourish.
His eyes narrowed at me with suspicion. "Take off the helm. Show me your face."
"We only just met and already you're already asking me to take off my clothes." I brushed my hood back and slipped the skull mask from my face, tossing it aside as he asked. My eyes flicked to his, daring to meet his gaze. A smirk twisted my lips. "Are you happy now?" I noticed a bit of movement behind him and had to swallow a squeal of joy. Knut crept towards him, his body bent low to the ground. He held a finger against his lips and gave me a wink.
Lysander's lips parted and his eyes widened as recognition dawned on him. Apparently, my face was one he'd been made to know. "It really is you." He breathed.
"It is. If you still don't believe me, just ask my husband."
Knut seized him from behind and pressed the blade of his dagger against the faerie's throat. "I suggest you lower your weapon, boy, before I boil your insides," Knut growled in his ear.
Lysander made a disgusted face, his nose crinkled like he smelled something rotten, but showed no fear at Knut's threat. "I have no quarrel with you, Knut." He lowered his sword from me.
Knut released him and moved to be at my side.
"What took you so long?" I hissed.
"You said you could handle it." He grinned at me crookedly
"The guard. Not the bloody faerie prince. I was screaming for you. Couldn't you hear me?"
"I didn't hear a thing, Precious. I swear it."
"You wanted to see what I'd do, didn't you, you smelly rat. I know you too damned well. Don't even bloody deny it."
He looked away sheepishly. "Well...maybe."
Lysander sheathed his sword. "What brings the goblin lords this far north?" He interrupted our squabble. "You do realize that you're on Seelie land currently, don't you? You're trespassing. That's a capital offense. It could even be considered an act of war since the Seelie and Unseelie have now joined forces."
I crossed my arms defiantly over my chest. "It's none of your business," I said. "If you really want to know, go ask your mother when you get home."
His brows furrowed. "My mother?"
"I was about to ask you the same. What would make a couple of Seelie princes come to The Boughs? Demetrius is the crown prince now, isn't he? I doubt your mother would ever let him out of her sight if she were given a choice in the matter." Knut said, bending over him. "Are you under orders from your father to guard your future brother-in-law?"
"Far from it. This mission is our own." Lysander replied softly. His gaze shifted between us, stopping my breathing every time it fell upon me. "Am I right to assume that you and I are here for similar reasons?" The way he looked then...it was so similar to that of his mother. His expression was calm, beautiful, but hid a terrible rage beneath it. He hid it well, but I could see a glimpse of it in his subtlest of movements. The clenching of his jaw, the tightening of his grip on his sword, the way his hair and clothing moved slightly in a wind that didn't exist. "Are you here to kill Kieran as well?"