City of Fae

Shay hugged her legs close, pinched her lips, and bowed her head. She almost looked to be praying. Who do you pray to when your gods are monsters?

The curtain whipped back. Shay let out a cry as a hand locked around her ankle and tugged. She reached for me, but the fae tugged her out of our hiding place as though she weighed nothing. One of the warriors dove in after me. I kicked out. My heel smacked into the bridge of his nose. He snarled like an animal, speared me with those gray eyes, and grabbed for me. I kicked again, but he caught my ankle and tugged. Dagger in hand, I rammed it down, plunging the blade through his wrist. A terrible cry burst from him. His mouth gaped, sharp teeth glinting, and then he recoiled, pulling back. The tapestry fell between us, hiding me once more.

“Come out, Alina O’Connor,” the general said, “or we’ll slit her throat …”

Shay’s muffled cries confirmed it. They’d kill her. I couldn’t let her die because of me. She’d alluded to knowing something about Reign’s hound … A cure? But there was a good chance I’d die if I went out there. Twenty thousand people needed me to kill the queen. Bigger picture, Alina. All of those people would die if I failed. More. The queen wanted London. Once she’d feasted, she’d be unstoppable. She’d turn London into her larder.

“Get her on her knees.” The general ordered. Shay’s yelp followed.

I locked my hands into my hair. I couldn’t let his happen. Shay had tried to help me. I couldn’t listen to her die. My humanity may only be skin-deep, but I still had a heart.

I lifted the tapestry. Hands gripped me and tugged me out of the hole, dropping me facedown on the floor. A knee planted itself in my spine. The fae worked to tug my arms back. Shay knelt a few strides away, tears wet on her pale cheeks, and behind her, the general loomed, hand fisted in her hair, dagger hooked at her throat, drawing a little blood. He smiled a savage lust-drenched smile, and for a second I thought he’d kill her anyway.

“Lock them up. I’ll deal with them personally later. There is much to be done.” He shoved her forward and backed away, wiping the blade on his thigh, but the leer lingered. This wasn’t over.





Chapter Twenty-four


So much for my grand plan. I sat on the floor at the back of my cell, knees drawn up, and listened to Shay’s sobs from the cell next to mine. I really must have been an idiot to think I could walk right up to the queen. I could feel her claw-tipped legs reaching, hooking into my thoughts. I fought her, drove her back with happy thoughts, but it wouldn’t last. I had only a handful of good memories, and they would fail me soon enough. Here, in Under, I was hers. It was just a matter of time.

“Alina …”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for stopping the general.”

I closed my eyes. She didn’t need to know it’d been fifty-fifty for a while or that her hint about Reign’s cure had helped tipped the scales in her favor. “Don’t thank me. You don’t know me.” I sounded like Reign. She fell silent for a while, her occasional sniffing the only reminder that I wasn’t alone.

“I feel I may have judged you unfairly,” she said.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.” Shuffling to the front of my cell, I leaned against the bars. The lock looked to be some chunky mechanical device that would need a key. Maybe I could pick it. If I had a pick. And a clue how to pick locks. I guessed the queen hadn’t thought to download that useful piece of information into my head. Reign had mentioned I was made of the same potent draíocht as his hound, so maybe I could figure out how to jump myself out of the cell? The problem was, I had no idea what I was doing. I could no more jump myself out of there than I could pick the damn lock.

I sighed. “Thanks for trying to help me back there.”

“I returned for some personal items. They said to leave it all behind, but I couldn’t. I wanted something. A reminder, I suppose, of the time before everything changed.”

“You aren’t part of their plan?”

“No. Some of the darker ones, they were never going to be content with stealing the little amount of draíocht we harvest from people.” She must have moved closer to her bars too, because her next words were hushed, but I heard them clearly. “You have to understand. Faerie is draíocht. It’s the air we breathe, the food we eat. It’s life. But here, draíocht is difficult to find, we’re suffocating, starving. And ever since the Trinity Law was passed, we’ve struggled to survive. We don’t want to be here, but we are, and that will surely never change. The dark ones, the older ones, those like Warren, they remember the freedom they had in Faerie. They want back what they lost.”