Great. A castle, really? I turned away. “Wel , then, I guess I should head back.”
“You haven’t even looked around yet. Aren’t you curious?”
I was, but I’d just found out I owned a castle in Faerie, complete with house-and groundskeepers; I wasn’t up for much more yet. “It’s claimed. Everyone can get inside again.” Which was what I was assuming was the real issue.
Homeless in Faerie land—it sounded like a bad TV show.
“You don’t real y need me for anything else right now, do you?”
“You’l need to choose a court,” she said, quickly adding,
“eventual y, of course.”
“What happens if I want to stay in the mortal realm and be independent?”
Rianna threw out her hands to stop my words, her head swinging back and forth and her gaze sweeping over the castle like she was afraid it might jump up and run. “Don’t say that,” she hissed. “Faerie might listen. Doesn’t happen often, but once in a while, Faerie wil try to move the independents’ holdings to the mortal realm. I don’t think anyone wants this castle to suddenly force itself into Nekros City.”
Oh, yeah, I could see trying to explain that. And with the way reality tended to bend around me, it would be my luck that my castle would appear downtown—probably in the middle of the statehouse lawn.
“I’l look into courts,” I said, though I had little intention of looking quickly. From what Caleb had said, if I wanted to remain in Nekros, I’d have to align myself with the winter court, but when that court moved on, I’d have to go as wel .
court, but when that court moved on, I’d have to go as wel .
Not a good option. “So, you’re good here?”
She nodded. “For now. Come on, I’l lead you back.”
She headed toward a smal arch in a cavern wal , which I assumed was what we’d stepped out of despite the fact it looked like solid stone. As before, she took my arm and we stepped through the arch. Guards once again met us in the deserted hal s of the winter court, and after Rianna once again produced the pendant—did I want to know what she’d gone through to acquire that?—we found ourselves with a snow-cloaked guide leading us through a maze of icy corridors.
As we walked, I leaned closer to her. “So, what do you do here?”
“I’m guessing you don’t mean ‘here’ as in the winter court.
In Stasis, there isn’t much to do, and most of the fae won’t have anything to do with me. Inside the courts, there are bal s—lots of them—games, arts, legal proceedings. I don’t know, faerie stuff.”
“And you never leave?”
She shrugged as we reached the large ice pil ar I’d seen after I left the Eternal Bloom. “There is no decay in Faerie.
Practical y no death. That means no shades to raise, and you know what it’s like if you don’t raise shades on occasion.”
I nodded. It hurt. A grave witch ached from the inside out if she didn’t raise shades on a regular basis. And grave essence tended to slip through even careful y maintained shields, the magic reaching out and fil ing corpses that the witch had no intention of raising. But if there was no grave essence . . .
“I slip out every once in a while, just long enough to raise a shade.” Noise and light fil ed the air as we stepped through the winter court and into the Eternal Bloom. “Wel , I guess this is where I leave you.”
I held up a hand to stal her. “Wait. Do you remember your last year at academy when we mingled our magic and last year at academy when we mingled our magic and raised that ancient shade? The one whose body had been found mummified in a bog and was believed to be a witch or a priestess but no one else could even sense it?”
“The one that turned out to speak absolutely no English, so even though we raised it, we couldn’t get an intel igible thing from it?” She smiled—a slow, creeping smile, like the memory had reminded her how to make her lips do it.
“What about it?”
“This is going to sound strange, but feet have been washing up from the Sionan. A single foot isn’t enough for me to raise a shade, but if we mingled our magic . . . I thought that together we might have more luck.”
The smile fel from her lips as I spoke. She was frowning by the time I finished. “I would have to leave Faerie for that.”
“You said you’re able to leave,” I said, and her hand dropped to Desmond’s coat. She did that whenever a subject she wasn’t comfortable with arose. I stuck my hands in my pockets and stepped back. “Never mind. It was just a thought.” Sharing magic was personal, and not always comfortable or safe, which was why I hadn’t thought about it when I’d first been unable to raise the shade. But Rianna and I had successful y merged our grave magic before. I shrugged. “I’l see you around, okay?”
I turned to go, but Rianna cal ed after me.
“That’s it?”
I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”