She was not well.
Her dark hair hung in damp, stringy strands that clung to her face and shoulders. Her soaked dress was tattered where she’d pulled at the seams, and lacked any of her normal ornamentation. She was usually as pale as freshly fallen snow, but now that pallor was sickly, like a corpse, and her flesh seemed to be pulled too tightly over her sharp features. And her eyes? Her eyes were fever bright with madness.
No, something was definitely not all right with the queen. And her Faerie court reflected that fact. Of course, I probably didn’t look much better. The exhaustion that beat at me weighed me down, even in Faerie, and I’d seen the visible toll fading was taking on my appearance. Add to that the slime and muck encrusted in my hair and clothes—of course the muddy puddle around my boots suggested that sleet had washed at least some of that off—and I probably looked pretty sick myself. But it was more than the queen’s body that was unwell. It was her mind.
In the past she’d struck me as manipulative, narcissistic, and cruel. But never mad . . .
“My queen,” Falin said, kneeling between the Winter Queen and me. It was unlikely that she had failed to notice the fact he’d physically blocked her access to me, but he hurried on before she could rage about it. “Alex has been a friend to our court. She discovered an amaranthine sapling and has brought it to your court. She’s also brought a traitor’s conspirator for you to question.” He motioned to the bound bogeyman, who had very wisely remained still and hadn’t drawn attention to himself while the full weight of the queen’s fury had been focused on me.
Now, she finally turned to the bogeyman. Her pale lips curled back in a disgusted sneer as she studied him. “What say you, you repulsive little man? Are you sworn to a member of my court?”
Tommy looked up and smiled at the queen. It was a disturbing expression with his mouth of pointed teeth and the blood dripping down his face, tinting the water around him.
“I will never say, Queen of Ice.”
Her fist balled in her once full skirt, ripping at an already frayed seam. “To whom are you aligned?”
“You may ask until your last breath, but I will give you no names.”
If he’d been human, I’d have applauded his bravado, but guessed it wouldn’t have held long. But he was fae, and he promised it with such conviction of truth, that I guessed he was bound not to reveal the alchemist.
“There are ways to loosen your tongue, hobgoblin.” The queen motioned to Falin, who drew his two wickedly long daggers. They flashed in the unearthly light and I gulped. I wanted answers. Needed them to complete my bargain with the queen, to stop the influx of Glitter on the streets, but I hadn’t signed on for torture. Of course, what had I really been expecting? An interrogation room with a table, a couple of chairs, and a two-way mirror?
“Shall I take him to Rath?” Ryese asked, making a step toward the bogeyman. “We could start him on the rack.”
My stomach flipped and if the late breakfast I’d eaten hadn’t been quite so long ago, I might have been revisited by the food. Instead I just felt queasy. The urge to run out of the room and disassociate myself with the whole thing was strong, but I was a part of this. If I wasn’t going to protest, I wasn’t going to wash my hands of it either.
The queen pursed her lips. “No, I don’t think that will do. While I have no doubt he will eventually break, I do not wish to devote that much time in the creature.”
“Will you truthseek, Ice Queen?” The hobgoblin asked, still grinning that terrible grin.
“By your gloating expression, I’m assuming that would be a fruitless exercise as you are oath bound to reveal nothing.” She leaned down until she was eye level with Tommy. “Funny things about oaths—they bind only until death. Knight, kill that creature.”
Falin, who couldn’t disobey a direct command from his queen, jerked the hobgoblin to his feet and pressed a blade against the smaller fae’s exposed throat. For the first time, the smile fell from Tommy’s face, the whites of his eyes flashing as his eyelids drew back as if he could manage to see more of the danger that would somehow show him a way out of it. But it didn’t. Had he so much as breathed hard, the blade pressed against his throat would have bitten into flesh.
While Falin couldn’t directly disobey, he could stall. “My queen, are you certain? If I kill him we will not get the answers you need.”
“Do not question me, Knight,” she snapped. Then she turned and fixed her fever-mad gaze on me. “And we will most definitely get our answers.”
Chapter 26
“Kill him now, Knight.”