Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(94)

I could also understand what he meant about Faerie feeling like home. As terrifying as I found the courts, something felt right when I was in Faerie. It was like a drug I knew was dangerous, but craved. Since my awakening, I’d felt Faerie’s absence when I was in the mortal realm, but my healthy fear was strong enough to keep me away. So I could imagine what it must have been like for him as a teenager.

And the fact that I could, and my reaction to his story, made me leery.

Wouldn’t an illusion my drugged imagination had conjured want to make an emotional connection? And my own mind would be the best to provide the perfect outlet. The fake Death was proof of that fact.

Oh hell. How was Falin supposed to prove if he was real or not? He was acting like the real Falin, my mind’s eye told me he had a soul, and he’d given me a believable story when I’d asked. None of it was definitive, but I had to trust something.

Yeah, so let’s trust the guy who has told you point-blank to never trust him.

But I did. With a healthy dose of caution maybe. But for better or worse, I did trust him.

The sleet continued to fall around us, coating every surface and clinging to my wet, icy hair and clothes. If the drug didn’t kill me, I might die from hypothermia before I got out of the winter court.

“Be on the lookout for Ryese,” I said, approaching the threshold that had reappeared when Falin entered the room.

“Isn’t it usually me telling you to be careful?” Falin asked, a wry smile touching the edges of his lips.

True. But I didn’t say it as I walked through the door, Falin at my heels. We emerged in one of the icy hallways, though at this point, it was more of a slushy hallway. The fake Death followed me a moment later, still yelling.

I scowled at him, hating my own mind that had summoned him and made my insecurity public. Chewing at my bottom lip, I turned to Falin. “That spell you used on the queen earlier . . . ?”

He glanced between me and my illusion. Then shook his head. “It wasn’t a healing spell, and it won’t help you.”

I almost asked him what it was then, but he couldn’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. Hanging my head and doing my best to ignore the verbal barbs from the fake Death, I followed Falin down the corridor.

Ice golems lined the hall. Once before I’d seen them come to life at the queen’s whim, but I wasn’t sure these particular golems would ever wake again. Their carved ice faces had melted, as had much of their heads and arms. I looked away from the misshapen forms. The winter court was dying.

“Have you seen the queen recently?”

Falin shot a grim look at the golems. “Not too long ago.”

“Since the sleet started again?” I asked, and his silence was answer enough. No. He hadn’t.

So she might have relapsed. Or been dosed again.

“Why isn’t Ryese locked up already?”

Falin paused and shot a furtive glance down the long hall. Aside from the melting golems, we were alone. “The queen summoned him, but she didn’t ask him directly, so his answers were slippery at best. It didn’t matter. He had no blood on his hands, so she wouldn’t believe his guilt.”

I glanced at my own gloved hands, and at Falin’s. I’d killed in defense of myself and those I cared about more than once, and I wore the dead’s blood on my hands because Faerie took things very literally. As the queen’s knight, Falin was her bloody hands—the one who killed if it must be done but also the one who carried the taint of every unnatural death through the court’s history. It made him powerful, but also reviled in the court. Not that other members of the court had never killed—the queen had dueled to the death to gain her position so very long ago—but in the winter court, members passed the blood off to the knight, leaving everyone else’s hands lily white—or blue, or green, or whatever color they happened to be naturally. You could cover the blood with gloves, but you couldn’t hide it with glamour.

Ryese should have Icelynne’s and the other fae’s blood on his hands—if not the humans’ who he killed indirectly with Glitter.

Of course, just because Faerie tended to be literal, that didn’t mean it assigned guilt the same way I would. Ryese had surely orchestrated the kidnapping of the drained fae, but Tommy Rawhead and Jenny Greenteeth might have delivered the death blow to the fae. They’d also chosen to whom to distribute the Glitter. I hadn’t seen Jenny inside Faerie, but Rawhead’s hands had been saturated with blood.

“So how do we convince her?”

Falin shook his head. “It may not matter. She will not hold the court at this rate.”

I stopped. “Doesn’t someone have to defeat you in a duel before they can challenge her directly?”

“Yes.”

“A duel to the death?”

A muscle bulged above his jaw, but he nodded.

Shit.

“But if her madness deepens and she cannot gain control of this”—he waved a hand to indicate the sleet, the melting walls and golems, maybe even the discordant notes thrumming through the air—“then Faerie itself will reject her as queen. With no designated heir, the scramble will become a free-for-all. The fighting knowledge, speed, and quick healing the court’s blood grants me would be a boon to any potential contenders.”

“And let me guess—unless you pass it on willingly, the easiest way to acquire that is to kill you?”