The Faery Keepers (9 page)

             
I give a bloodcurdling scream. I yell out, “NO!” even though I know he can’t hear me. Liquid hot tears pour down my face. Even though I know it’s the past. It can’t change.

             
He falls to his knees, red running down his chin in a thin line from his parted lips.

             
The murderer takes the switchblade from my
father’s
back and wipes it on some cloth.

             
As he leaves, I see that
Z
shape on his cheek. Eardrum piercing screams escape my lips as the vision begins to fade. The image of his dead body, his glassy eyes staring unseeingly skyward is imprinted on my brain as the Faery Queen comes into focus.

             
Sharp pain shoots through my kneecaps and I find that I’m kneeling on the wooden floor. My lip tastes like iron and salt, blood, so I guess I’ve been biting it. I’m sobbing uncontrollably.

             
The Queen on the other hand is smiling, a cruel curl of her blood colored lips.

             
“You vile, malicious old toad!” I cry. “You’re actually enjoying this!? Does torturing mortals please you?”

             
“Now, now my dear. You forced my hand when you did not concede to me. Will you cooperate now?”

             
“Don’t you
my dear
me,” I hiss, standing up. Which is easier said than done when my hands are bound. I back away from her and her table several paces. “How do you know how my father died?” I demand, my voice still trembling from tears. Most of me is trembling, actually.

             
“Answer my questions and I will tell you.”

             
“I’ve told you already.
I don’t know.
”

             
“I am afraid I do not believe you.”

             
“Whatever.”

             
I make a break for the door
.

             
“SIEZE HER!!” Queen Chrysantha bellows.

             
I’m wrenching the door open when it explodes inwards in my grasp.

             
The one person I don’t want to see in the whole world is on the other side.
Derek
.

             
“Take her to her quarters.”

             
“Yes, your majesty,” he says, catching me in his iron grip and scooping me easily into his arms. I kick at him to no avail. More frustrated tears stream down my face, strangled sobs heave at my chest.
How could I let this happen?

             
“AAHHHHGG!” I scream.

             
Derek winces, his eyes meeting mine as he carries me down the corridor. I try to pry mine away but the fight has been sucked out of me. He’s mouthing something that I don’t hear until we’re back at my “quarters.”

             
“Shh, Katie, shh,” over and over again.

             
He says something to the guard outside my door and the Faery leaves.

             
“Can you walk?” Derek asks.

             
I mumble something that vaguely sounds like, “I don’t know.”

             
The door opens and he carries me to the bed, deposits me gently on it, then goes to shut the door.

             
“Are you OK?” he asks, sitting on the edge of the mattress, like he’s hesitant to come near me.

             
Good
, I think as I scoot farther away from him. His keen eyes don’t miss it. They don’t miss anything.

             
“How can you even ask me that?” I inquire, scrubbing a hand hastily across my eyes to chase away any stray tears. “After all, this is
your
fault.” Why does he care, anyways? Why is he here?

             
“I know,” he mutters lowly. “I can’t explain right now, they’ll hear. But I promise I’ll be back later.”

             
He reaches across the gap between us and rubs a thumb under my eye, catching a lingering tear. I flinch back from the touch.

             
“Right, right,” he nods, brown eyes distant. “I’ll be back.”

             
And he leaves through the door.

             
I let out a huff of a sigh, collapsing sideways on the bed. I curl into a tight ball, trying to hold myself together with my arms. The images I’d just witnessed replay across my mind in an endless loop. I squeeze my eyes shut in hopes of eradicating the memory. But no matter how hard I try I can’t chase it away. I keep seeing his face in the last seconds of his brutally shortened life. It feels like my body is being torn to pieces and the only thing that’s keeping me whole is the pressure of my own arms constricting my torso.

             
Eventually I fall asleep through silent tears. Don’t ask me how because it seems impossible even to me but I do. I try to wait for Derek to distract myself, but apparently it doesn’t work. Whatever, I am asleep. That is until I wake up to the sound of the door opening quietly. I think I have sensory overload because I never wake up at such a light noise.

             
A Faery walks in bearing a tray of strange looking food. It’s a woman this time. She’s pretty, as
Faeries
go. A plain brown dress goes to her knees and grass green wings jut from her back.

             
“Supper,” she says, setting the tray on the bed. Her jade green eyes never quite meet my face; they flit around the room, anywhere but on me.
She probably thinks I’m a grade-A criminal.

             
“I’m not hungry,” I shove the food away. It’s probably chock-full of poison anyways. The fruit looks unnatural, not like anything I would find in our local grocery store. At first it looks like ordinary grapes by the size and shape. But where grapes are usually red or green these are a candy corn orange. Definitely not normal. It also had a hunk of grainy bread and a cup (that was wood of course) of some sort of liquid. It sloshes over the rim as she sets it down, yellowish fluid puddling on the flat, wooden tray.

             
“Starve then.”

             
She leaves with an agitated twitch of her wings.

             
I scowl after her, propping myself up on an elbow.

             
Part of me wants to eat something, the rumbling stomach part. The other, more careful half of me is screaming at me that if I touch the food something incredibly bad will happen.

             
How harmful can it really be?

             
I pick up the hunk of bread—the least dangerous looking thing on the plate—and take a bite. Its course on my tongue, riddled through with a kind of nut unfamiliar to me. It tastes alright, so I take another bite. Then another.

             
Pretty soon it’s gone, sitting happily in my stomach.

             
I’m thirsty but don’t trust the cup and its questionable contents, so I deal with it as best as I can.

             
I lie back down and stare at the ceiling. They’d re-lit the candles while I was being interrogated but there was a dried puddle of wax where they had fallen before.

             
Vertigo overtakes me. I clap a hand over my eyes to stop the room from spinning.

             
I knew I shouldn’t have touched that food!
I scold myself as my vision is plagued by faces. My father, mother, Maggie, Derek, Parker. . . All of them disembodied, floating, opaque above my head. I turn to face away from their piercing eyes but they follow in my line of vision.

             
“They’re not real,” I tell myself, blinking rapidly to get them to go away. “Just my imagination.”

             
Their mouths open in a great yawning hole, distending into an impossibly sized gap no real human can accomplish in their wildest dreams. Each one seems like it is going to suck me into its abyss.

             
I squeeze my eyes shut but not before flames erupt from their eye sockets, each face becomes corpse-like, more skull bone than warm, live, flesh. If something that’s nearly see through can be warm or alive.

             
A whimper escapes my lips.

             
I can’t bear it any longer; I cover my head with the scratchy blanket. I take deep, slow breaths, inhaling the wooly scent of the fabric.

             
I’m trembling uncontrollably albeit I keep telling myself that the faces aren’t real. Just some grotesque side effect of whatever was in that food. But the knowledge of my father’s death is still too fresh in my head for that particular image to not strike a nerve.

             
I kick my leg blindly at the tray and hear it hit something solid that gives a masculine, “Ow.”

             
I throw the blanket off of me and look around for the source of the culprit, plaintively ignoring the shapes clouding my vision.

             
“Why’d you do that for?” it demands. “Now I’m wet all over.”

             
I squint.

             
Derek stands by the bed shaking liquid from his hair and eyes.

             
“Sorry,” I mumble, swaying unsteadily as the room starts spinning again.

             
“Come on, let’s get you out of her—” he pauses, scrutinizing me. “What’s wrong?”

             
I grimace as one of the skull-like faces comes too close for comfort. “I—”

             
He picks the tray up. Looks from me to it. “
Please
tell me you didn’t eat something on here.”

             
“Derek?”

             
“Oh, you idiot. What a stupid thing to do.”

             
He takes my wrist, feeling for a pulse before I can protest. Worry lines his face.

             
“What? What’s wrong?” It comes out slurred. Like I’ve just woken up from a long, deep sleep.

             
“Exactly why would you—” His head swivels around to the door.

             
It’s beginning to open.

             
He swears an oath. “Lay back down!” he whispers.

             
Then he’s gone.

             
“Derek?”

             
“Under here,” comes his voice from beneath me.

             
“Oh.”

             
“Hush. I shouldn’t be in here.”

             
“Oh,” I repeat stupidly.

             
“
Kate
,” a low growl.

             
Any words that may have come from my mouth next are swallowed by the entrance of Queen Chrysantha. She’s alone, in the same gown as earlier. The expression on her face tells me that she isn’t all that thrilled that she’s here. Her crimson lips are pressed together in a thin, angry line. Her elegant wings are tucked close to her body.

             
“I was hesitant to do this before, but I am afraid you have given me no choice.”

             
She steps closer to the bed. I shrink back.

             
“What do you mean?” I ask, alarmed by the severity of her words.

             
“That food you ate has been laced with a poison that will kill you slowly and painfully unless you ingest the antidote which,” she holds up a vial of clear blue liquid, “I happen to have upon my person.”

             
I gasp, piercing her with the strongest glare I can muster. I guessed it would be something like that, but didn’t want to believe it.

             
“You will tell me the truth. If I am satisfied with your answers, you live. If not . . . well you know the rest.”

             
I knew then that only one answer would please her. She wants me to condemn her own
sister
to death. She wants me to lie to her. She wants a credible reason to get rid of her own flesh and blood. My question is,
why?

             
I’m not buying it, though.

             
“I’ve already told you everything I know. My answers stay unchanged.”

             
“Very well,” her fist closes over the vial, knuckles white on her already pale skin. “Consider this your last chance. I have acted amiably thus far. Do not expect me to be gracious any longer.”