“By Nimue, if you must know. Showed up with a whole cadre of fey. Wouldn’t even let me speak to her. Said they had to rush her off to die in Faerie, where her spirit could be absorbed and reborn—or whatever their bizarre religion is, I don’t know.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, quietly furious. “But you told him she was dead.”
“Because she is.”
“Because you wanted him with you! You made him think there was nothing for him in Faerie!”
“There isn’t!”
“His mother—”
“Is dead. And if she isn’t, she never came back to see her darling boy, did she?” Rosier asked spitefully. “He’s better off—”
“That’s not for you to decide! I don’t see—”
Anything, because everything abruptly went dark.
“Got her!” a strange voice said, just as strong arms went around me from behind. I stared around, processing the fact that somebody had just dropped a bag over my head.
“And look what I’ve got,” another voice said, laughter threading through it. “Oh, ho, yes. We are about to be paid.”
“Hang on. Let’s get a look at her first.” The bag, or whatever it was, was abruptly pulled up, and a grinning fey peered in at me. One blue and one black eye surveyed my face for a moment, and the grin widened. “Oh yes, she’ll do. She’ll do quite well.” He looked up at his companion. “Told you I smelled something.”
And then the world winked out.
* * *
I woke up to the cadence of a man’s long strides, the ache of a sore stomach pressed against someone’s shoulder, and the light of a flickering torch as seen through wool. And the eerie tramp, tramp, tramp of what it took my brain a moment to recognize as the army I’d seen earlier. The one that sounded like it was all around us now.
“What’s this?” someone asked, and my ride stopped abruptly.
“Runaway. From the earlier attack.”
The bag was pulled up, and another fey peered in. A soldier, judging by the helmet, and by the lack of emotion on the coldly handsome face. At least what I could see of it before a torch was thrust into my eyes.
But I guess I didn’t look like much of a threat, because the perusal didn’t take long. “All right. Let this one through.”
We started moving again, but the fey had neglected to pull the wool back over my eyes, giving me a view of a bunch of equally impassive faces in tight formation, closing up behind us. And what appeared to be some kind of checkpoint, composed of hastily felled trees, which we’d just passed through. And of my captor, who put me down a little distance away, for a rest.
It gave me my first good look at him, and what a sight it was. Bifurcated hair, ebony dark on one side and silver bright on the other, fell around a face with a noticeable pigmentation change right down the middle: half swarthy, and half pale as milk. It fit the mismatched eyes, leaving him looking like two people had been stitched together to make one. And they were both staring at me in annoyance.
“You’re heavier than you look!”
“Then don’t . . . carry me,” I gasped. “I can walk—”
“And have you break for the tree line at the first opportunity? No.”
“I promise . . . I won’t do that—”
“Not to mention that if I set you down for too long, you’re anyone’s prize.” He glanced suspiciously around at the surrounding troops, then reached for me again.
I held out a hand. “Wait.”
“Cargo doesn’t talk,” he informed me. “Much less give orders.”
“I’m not cargo!”
“One more word and I put you back to sleep.”