Pale Queen Rising (25 page)

We don’t make it far. Ten steps down the aisle, I’m grabbed by one of the audience members. I try to fight them off but they’re strong, too strong, and their skin is cold and hard like stone. I punch them in the face without tearing my eyes from the stage, but the only thing that happens is a resounding crack of my knuckles on marble. Not a person at all, then, but another one of Laura’s creations. Three more lurch from the aisle seats, grabbing Eli and me before we can even try to fend them off. For being made of stone, they’re ridiculously fast.

My fist feels like I’ve broken a few bones, but I push down the pain and focus on the stage, where the Constructs are dragging us. Well,
dragging
might be a misnomer—my feet are dangling off the floor, and Eli’s hoisted over one shoulder. The moment I stop struggling, I’m hit by how silent the room is. No other actors come onstage. There’s no crying from either of the girls. The only sounds are the Constructs’ footsteps and the slow clap of the man in the suit.

When the Constructs finally get us both onto the stage and set us upright, pinning our arms to our sides, I try to find some sort of feature in the man’s face that I can recognize. He doesn’t look particularly devious or swarthy: fair skin, light stubble, clear blue eyes. The only tell that he’s Fey is the energy I read off of him.

Otherwise, I’m positive I’ve never seen him before in my life.

“Who are you?” I ask. I try not to sound angry or breathless—I craft my voice into the cool control of Mab, as though I’m questioning a prisoner brought to my feet. Clearly it has zero effect.

“Oh, Claire, still playing that game? My name will tell you nothing. But you may call me Ed.”

“Ed? Seriously?” It’s Eli who says this, and the man pays him no attention.

“What is this all about, Ed? Why are we here?”

“For a show, of course. My queen always did love a good show.”

“Who?” I ask. “The Pale Queen or whatever? If she’s so important, why isn’t she here?”

“Oh, but she is,” Ed says. “She is everywhere.”

Eli grunts. “He means she’s dead.” His voice is gravelly. “Or something like it.”

This time Ed does glare at Eli. “Silence would suit you well, I think.” He nods to the Constructs holding Eli. One loosens her grip and shoves her fist wrist-deep in Eli’s mouth. Eli gags, but he doesn’t scream. I don’t know if he feels pain. I sure as hell hope not.

“Now,” Ed continues, “where were we?”

“You were about to let the girls go,” I say. “They have nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, but they do,” Ed says. “They have done so much for my queen’s cause. Without the Dream they have helped gather, she would never be able to rise.”

“You’re the one behind all of this? The mastermind drafting people from Winter?”
It doesn’t seem possible. The guy’s so . . . short.

He bows dramatically. “I consider myself more of a messenger, but yes.” He smiles. “I sense you have found one of my invites.”

“The Cirque ticket? Yeah, I found it. Though how you got your hands on discontinued stock is beyond me.”

“That was my mistress’s doing, not mine,” he replies. “I just help relay her message. And draft in those with an artistic inclination to help her rise to power.” He looks to the girls when he says it, and yes, he does sound like a creep.

“Let them go,” I say. I’m going to kill this bastard, and that should nullify their contracts. But I want more than that, just in case he passed the reins to someone else. “Then we can talk.”

“No, Claire,” he says, walking over to put an arm around Roxie’s waist. She towers over him, but she still shrinks under his grasp. I want to punch him now more than ever. “I think I will keep them. They will continue to gather Dream for my queen. For
our
queen. And when she rises, they will be rewarded for their obedience.”

“Fuck your obedience,” Roxie says. And then, before I can even register that she’s spoken out, she jabs him in the side of the neck with her microphone.

“Roxie, don’t!” I yell, because I know that’s going to cause a serious backlash. But Ed doesn’t retort. He doesn’t kill her on the spot. No. He goes rigid and falls flat on his face, his blood leaking a thick emerald green. And that’s when I notice the tape wrapped around her microphone, holding the knife I’d given her in place.

I expect the Constructs to attack the girls, but the only person who moves is Renee. She kneels at the man’s side and puts her hands on the guy’s chest, her ear to his heart, and there are tears in her eyes. I struggle but the Construct holding me doesn’t budge. Roxie just watches the girl and the body with contempt on her face.

“How could you?” Renee asks, looking straight at Roxie. “How could you do this? You ruined everything!”

“No, my friend.” Roxie kneels down. “I have saved you.”

“But he promised . . .”

“I know, I know,” she says, rubbing the girl’s back. “I understand.”

“Roxie, can you get us—” I begin, but before I can finish the statement, Roxie stabs Renee in the back.

Renee screams as the blade rips into her lung, but the death isn’t fast, not like Ed’s. She’s not Fey, and that little blade won’t kill her in one go. Roxie stabs again and again, and this time it’s not just Renee screaming, but me, trying to get her to think straight, to stop. She doesn’t pause. She doesn’t stop stabbing until Renee falls atop Ed’s body, her red blood turning his green blood black.

“What the hell, Roxie!” I scream as Roxie examines the two of them. “She was your friend!”

“Yes,” Roxie says. Her voice is distant, but when she stands, there’s no hint that she’s possessed or under enchantment. She looks fully in control of her actions, and that’s what makes my stomach drop. “She was my friend. As were the others.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“A spell,” Roxie says. “One you’ve helped set in motion.”

She walks over to me as she speaks, and she’s no longer the girl I tried to protect from the big bad world. She’s the woman I saw onstage that first night, full of power and confidence. And she’s been in control all along. My world falls apart as things begin to click into place.

“What is going on?” I repeat. “Why did you kill her?”

Roxie smiles. “I suppose you deserve some sort of explanation. After all, you’ve done so much to try and save me.” She holds up the bloody dagger/microphone. “Thanks for this, by the way. You made that last part so much easier—I’d been wondering how I would kill him.”

“But why? I mean, I know why you’d kill him. But why Renee?”

“Because that’s what she wanted,” Roxie replies. “That’s what they all wanted.”

“Your friends?” I ask.

“They weren’t my friends,” she hisses. “They were idiots. Henry snared me into that stupid pact and the rest of them just followed along like blind little children. I was stuck. Stuck working for
Ed
for life. That’s why she came to me. She knew I wasn’t one to blindly follow. She knew I could lead.”

“Who?” But I already know—I know the sound of a zealot when I hear one.

“The Pale Queen,” she says, and her voice gets a little misty when she says it, and she looks like she’s staring into some far-off corner of the world.

I narrow my eyes.

“All of them said they were working for the Pale Queen.”

“Yes. But through
him.
” She looks back at Ed’s prone body. “
He
drafted them into their contracts, promised them eternal life and resurrection if they served. They were stupid, though. Never read the fine print. They’d serve forever, be revived if necessary, but they would never leave their contracts. They’d live as slaves. And it isn’t just us. He isn’t the only one doling out contracts. There are dozens of slave drivers, and thousands of slaves. I was a tiny cog in their machine.”

She shakes her head. “I felt trapped. Which was why, when she came to me in the night and offered me a way out, a way to serve her directly and not through some fool, I knew I had to take it.”

“By killing him?”

“By ensnaring you,” she says. “My queen has taken a particular interest in you. You’ve been a part of this from the very beginning, from the moment you killed dear old Frank. That was the first blood that set her spell in motion. And now, with all of these offerings, the spell is nearly complete.”

“What spell? What are you even talking about, Roxie?”

“The spell to bring her back,” she says.

And I remember what Eli had said, about how this Pale Queen sounded like she was banished or dead. That’s what they meant by her rising—it wasn’t about coming to power. It was about coming back to life.

Roxie turns from me and heads back to the bodies. If she’s about to weave some sort of spell, I have to stop her. Stall her. Think of
something
because right now my mind is spinning with the realization that she was working as a double agent.

“That doesn’t explain why you killed Renee,” I say.

Roxie doesn’t pause. “Renee was weak. And without her contract giving her purpose, she would have died eventually anyway.”

“And all that time I had you locked in your apartment, trying to keep you safe . . .”

“Was necessary, of course. You played your part well, just as my queen said you would. Ed never knew I’d taken another offer. We both worked for her, you see, but she chose me specifically. To rise above him, to serve as her hand. Ed was very intent on getting me back, which provided the perfect cover for me.” She smiles. “I do wish you could have seen it, when he finally broke in and stole me away. I’d been dreaming of that moment for days.”

Roxie kneels at her dead friend’s side and dips her hands in the spreading pool of blood. There’s no smile on her face—this isn’t a sadistic act—but she definitely isn’t sad either. There’s something businesslike about her, like she’s just running the cues she’s been practicing for years.

“What the hell are you doing, Roxie?” I ask.

“The final part of the spell.” She glances up and nods to the dead audience. “All we needed was a great amount of Dream and some mortal souls. And your blood, of course. You know what they say—all astral creatures need blood. And my goddess was quite intent on receiving yours. Now, she can rise.”

I push against the Construct still holding me fast, but make absolutely zero headway. Roxie’s drawing a circle in blood on the floor, ringing it with runes and wards she shouldn’t know. Not even
I
know them. Eli, however, does.

He gasps and struggles and chokes, which makes me reexamine the symbols. Finally, with a noise I don’t ever want to hear again, he dislocates his jaw and frees his mouth.

“Roxie,” he says, “you don’t want to be using those.”

She doesn’t respond, just keeps drawing glyphs in the blood. I use the distraction and try to grab for the Tarot deck hidden in my pocket. I only brought a few cards, but they should be enough. If only I could twist farther . . .

“Roxie, maybe you should put the blood down and we can talk about this.” Even
I
know the words are stupid, but I say them anyway.

She just laughs.

I struggle for the cards but can’t get to them. The statues have me held tight, and I can tell the circle she’s drawing is nearing completion. There’s a power to it, a wrongness, like a bruise on the skin of reality. Dream swirls around us, caught in a whirlwind just waiting to be released. We don’t have much time.

“Eli,” I begin, hoping he will catch my drift. He can’t look over, of course, but his eyebrows furrow. “Don’t be an ass. One minute. I release you for one minute.”

I squeeze my eyes shut in preparation for the onslaught. But nothing happens. No burst of light or hellish screams. Just the all-consuming silence of the theatre.

“You didn’t think that would work again, did you?” Roxie asks. I peer through one eye at her. She’s still working away, and Eli’s still very much in his body.

“Well, I was hoping it would.”

I look to Eli.

“Why aren’t you going crazy?” I ask. “Did I say it wrong?”

For the first time since I’ve known him, Eli actually looks afraid.

“He’s bound,” Roxie says for him. “My guards are specifically enchanted to prevent his release. We saw what you did to Laura’s other creation. We couldn’t let him interfere again, not at such an important moment. Consider it a binding circle, if you will.”

Roxie stands then and saunters over. Even now I can’t take my eyes off her, although I know it’s all an illusion. A lie. Just like every other piece of her, every word she said. This is what I get for showing weakness.

“Now,” she says, holding up her bloody knife, “I’m afraid this may hurt a bit.”

She jabs the knife into my side.

Pain explodes. Thankfully, the magic has worn off, unraveled in Ed’s and Renee’s corpses, but it still hurts like hell. She presses her hand to my side and doesn’t break her eyes from mine as my pulse drips through her fingers.

“See, Claire? You were necessary after all. Not as useless as you thought.”

Then she turns and walks back to the circle.

But in that exchange, one of the Constructs holding me shifts, just a little, and I’m able to squeeze my hand into my pocket enough to clutch at a card. I don’t know what it is, but of the four I brought, I can only hope it will do what I need it to do. I don’t wait. I pulse a small amount of magic into the card and pray.

I should have kept my eyes shut. My hand burns with power, and the moment it does, light floods the room. It’s not a gentle light, either. This is the ferocious light of fire, of heat and destruction.
The Sun
.

Roxie screams at the heat, and I hear Eli hiss with pain as well but he’ll just have to deal. The statues holding me stagger, just a bit, and I don’t know if it’s the light or the heat or just the shock of it, but it’s enough. My eyes shut tight against the blinding light, I twist out of the mannequins’ grasps and, in that moment, grab a handful of gems and throw them toward my captors. The gems hit flesh and implode, pulling whoever they hit into the netherworld, and I can only hope my blind aim was good and Eli’s still here, because I have no doubt I’m going to need him.