Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4)(29)

The queen frowned at me and we stood in silence for several minutes, glaring at each other. She took a step closer. I had the urge to back away, but I held my ground.

“Find out who killed my subject and created that monstrous display in my throne room, and I will grant you independent status for a year and a day,” she said, and I nearly laughed in a mix of relief and surprise—I’d demanded it three times, but I guess I hadn’t really expected her to grant the request. She wasn’t quite done yet. “During that year and a day, you will agree to continue to reside in my territory and at the end of it, you will inform me before swearing allegiances with any other court.”

I almost blurted out “deal,” but bargains with fae are binding, so I forced myself to examine the conditions she’d laid out. A year and a day wasn’t much time in the grand scheme of things, but it was more time than I had now and I was unlikely to get another Faerie monarch in the position of needing a favor from me before Rianna and I had faded out of existence. The extension would give me time to arrange something more permanent. And while she’d stipulated that I inform her if I’d be joining a court other than hers, she hadn’t said I’d need her consent. Of course, if she learned I was leaving her sphere of control, she might just have me killed when I told her, but what was my choice? Die now or die later? At least I’d have time to try to come up with a better plan.

I nodded and held out my hand. “I agree to your terms.”

“It is settled then.”

“Witnessed,” Falin said from where he stood. Each council member also repeated the phrase. It was a formality, as I could already feel the small binding our agreement had created. The queen pressed her palm against mine in a surprisingly firm but not crushing handshake. I realized it was the first time I’d ever touched her and her skin was cold, even to my low body temperature.

With that settled, I focused on the matter at hand again, namely the ritual I had to perform to finish this deal. I motioned for Falin to place the knapsack in my circle. He was frowning, but he said nothing as he placed the bag where I’d indicated. He opened it, clearly intending to lay the skeletal corpse out.

“Just leave her in there,” I said, glancing away before I caught sight of the ghastly bones again.

“Her?” The queen asked.

I nodded. Now that we were back in mortal reality and I was once again in touch with the land of the dead, the corpse sang soft lullabies just outside my range of hearing, as if tempting me to listen in and learn all her secrets. Without even thinking about it, I could feel that she had in fact been female. Usually I could guesstimate the age a corpse had died at as well, but not with fae. The body felt old, very old. But what did that mean for a fae? Two hundred years? Two thousand years? I didn’t have the experience to gauge how long she’d lived before someone had done . . . Well, whatever had happened to her.

Falin retreated, leaving me alone beside the bag. I glanced around, ensuring the thin line of the circle hadn’t gotten scuffed or broken. It looked complete, and I tapped into the raw magic stored in my ring, channeling it into the line in the grass.

The magical circle sprang up around me, strong and solid. Satisfied, I removed the shields on my charm bracelet and opened my mind. I kept my eyes closed—while touching the grave I tended to see the world slightly rotted away, and I didn’t want to catch a glimpse of the bones crammed into a decaying bag. Besides, I didn’t need my eyes to reach with my magic.

I could feel the corpse in my circle, but the grave didn’t claw at me as viciously as expected. Cold wind danced across my skin, but it didn’t rip at me, didn’t try to crawl under my flesh. I’d never raised a fae before. A couple of feykin, but no full-blooded fae. So at first I thought that might be the difference.

Then my magic touched the corpse and I knew I was mistaken.

My eyes popped open, and through the rotted material of the bag, I could see what I already knew I’d find: a silver shimmering soul clinging to the now-dismembered bones. A shiver crawled down my flesh, making my hair stand on end. Her soul was still in there, trapped in the bones. Aware.

I swallowed around the sick taste that crawled up the back of my throat. I knew nothing about this fae, but I ached for her. I’d never considered the full ramifications of the fact the collectors couldn’t enter Faerie. How long had a living soul been stuck inside a dead body? How much of what happened to that shell had she been aware of? I cringed again, catching sight of how very small the bag was where her bones had been shoved.

But guilt and sympathy were not the only issues I had to deal with. Her soul presented a very big complication.

I couldn’t raise a shade while the soul was still inside the body—my magic just didn’t work that way.

As long as the soul was inside the body, it was somewhat alive and protected. I could eject the soul, but it would become a ghost and be stuck inside my circle until I broke the barrier. Ghosts couldn’t interact with the mortal world, but I was a crossover point for realities, and they were very physical to me. I didn’t know what kind of fae I was dealing with, or how well she’d cope with being dead. But even if she didn’t go all poltergeist on me, to eject her, trap her in a circle with her desecrated body, and then raise her shade in front of her would be a type of torture.

I turned to where the others waited outside my circle. “We have a problem. She’s still . . . in there,” I said and the queen raised one dark eyebrow, not understanding. “Meaning her soul hasn’t been collected and moved on yet.”