City of Fae

I knew where they were, the hundreds of London fae. I didn’t need eyes to see them. We were connected by the strings of her web; the queen poised at the center, and me … I was there too, caught in the center of the pulsing network. Ancient fae burned brighter in my mind, while the younger ones barely flickered at all, but they were all there, all tied to the queen by silken threads. No amount of mental denials would change the facts. Telling myself it wasn’t real wouldn’t alter the truth. I was hers. I’d always been hers. And as I listened to her voice, I heard the fearful whispers from her subjects. They knew she was close to escape. Fear and anticipation strummed her web, and she wanted it, soaked it up. Nothing could stop her. She’d waited centuries. Waited in the dark, under London, sending her younglings, her spies, her constructs, out into the world to weave their magic through the heart of the city. She would rise up, and the fae would follow. I knew all of this because I was one such construct. I knew it as surely as I knew I would carry out her desires, because pleasing her was the only thing that mattered. I was hers. Alina O’Connor didn’t exist. She never had. The memories in my head were nothing but a jigsaw puzzle, a model the queen had constructed to strengthen the illusion, to allow me access to the wayward Reign and the world he inhabited. I knew that now. I wasn’t human. I hadn’t lost my job a few days ago, I wasn’t a reporter. My apartment wasn’t mine. It was lies, a beautiful tapestry of lies … spun by the queen. But everything would be all right. She’d given me one last chance to prevail. And I was honored. I would see her rise up, see her curl her legs around London and crush the city inside her influence.

“You see now,” she said. “Good. Go. Be quick. Be clever. They sense you are different. But they do not know … not yet. Kill the last keeper.”

I dipped my head and turned away from my maker. Spiders rippled over my bare feet, and I welcomed their touch, for they were of the queen, and so was I.





Chapter Seventeen


I walked Under and felt as though I’d returned to a childhood home, a place familiar, but different in ways I couldn’t fathom. No, I was different, I had changed. Each twist and turn I knew like the back of my hand. Some chambers swelled to impossible proportions, others had crumbled to little more than dust and debris. Tunnels flowed through intersections, forgotten ticket halls, and dead-end tracks. As though someone had stirred up neglected parts of London’s Underground system, stations and all, and buried them. Some of it was real and solid beneath my bare feet. Other parts seemed deeply wrong; with shadows so thick they might swallow me whole. Things waited in the dark, hideous, unseen, forever hungry things sent here from Faerie, discarded and forgotten.

The tunnels changed, softened, warmed. Light filtered through in places, in others bare electric bulbs fought off the dark. My palm itched, seeking something. I curled my fingers into a fist. I needed weapons.

What must I look like? A young girl, barefooted, dressed in pink leggings and a silly top; nothing really. My outer shell was camouflage. I was the most deadly thing in these tunnels, besides the queen herself. Her draíocht, her desires, her thirst for freedom. It all flowed through me, pooled clear intent in my mind.

A spider scurried over my shoulder. I swept it off, and broke into a jog. The ancient thread I followed was older than these tunnels, older than Under. I could see the last Keeper clear in my mind. He wouldn’t expect me. If I was quick, and clever, he’d never see the killing blow.





***





My feet carried me toward the holding area where disobedient fae were detained while the FA decided their punishment. The remaining keeper was inside, his thread aglow with ancient draíocht. Did he know how the queen watched him? It didn’t matter, not any more. I entered the chamber. Empty cells capped with iron bars hugged the wall to my left. Iron had no effect on me, but it did them. Warren stood outside a cell dead ahead, leaning heavily on his good leg. “Can’t trust that girl. She’s not real.”

“She’s hers …” Sovereign said, out of sight inside his cell. “The queen is using her. C’mon, Warren, how did I get her down here? Humans can’t get inside Under. I’d still be walking the Chancery Lane platforms with her if she was human.”

Warren whipped his head around and fixed me in his unforgiving glare. Doubt widened his eyes, but only for the slightest of moments, before suspicion and realization contorted his face into a savage scowl. His scar cut deeper, tugged to one side by a crooked snarl on his lips.