“Toby?”
May’s voice was soft but still pitched to carry. I turned toward it, starting in her direction. “What is it?”
She was standing next to one of the decorative crystal fixtures on the wall. They were shaped like ice cream cones, held to the wall by thin copper loops. I remembered them lit, burning with a calm white light that never flickered or dimmed. She didn’t say anything. She just pointed a quivering finger at the fixture, face gone pale. I blinked at her, confused, before reaching out and unhooking the offending fixture from the wall.
There was a glass dome tucked inside, where it would be normally hidden from view. I unscrewed it carefully, tipping the cone so I could see what was inside.
The dried-out husk of a pixie fell out.
It hit the floor before I had a chance to try catching it, shattering on impact and sending tiny, broken limbs and bits of wing in all directions. I jumped in surprise, cone and dome slipping from my hands and shattering next to the pixie’s remains. Given what they’d contained, I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry that they were broken.
Raising my head, I gaped at May in horror. “How do you think it managed to get trapped in there? The poor thing must have starved to death. And why didn’t the night-haunts come?”
“They couldn’t get through the glass,” said May. Her voice was just as soft as it had been before, and her eyes were distant, not quite focusing on me. “I don’t think it got trapped in there by accident, Toby. I’m still a Fetch, even if I’m not exactly yours anymore, and I can feel their deaths all through this room. Dozens of them . . .”
Her words sank in slowly. I swept my horrified gaze along the wall, taking note of the crystal fixtures set at regular intervals. She was right; there were dozens of them, once you made a full circuit of the courtyard, and if they’d all contained live pixies at one point . . .
“But the knowe’s been sealed since Evening died,” I said. My words seemed distressingly loud. “She would never have allowed something like that.”
“You always saw the pretty side of the nobles, Tobes,” said Danny, looking back to us. He paused, then added, “No offense, kid.”
“None taken,” said Quentin faintly. He had walked over to stand next to me, staring down at the broken pixie on the floor with horror that mirrored my own. “I’ve . . . I’ve heard of people doing this. Before. It . . . they . . .”
“Pixies aren’t covered under Oberon’s Law,” I finished for him. He nodded, very slightly.
Oberon’s Law forbids the fae to kill each other. It’s the only absolute rule he ever made, and it’s enforced in every Kingdom. Of course, there are loopholes. Killing is allowed during an officially declared war. Changelings aren’t protected by the Law. Cait Sidhe are allowed to kill each other, since that’s a major part of their succession process, and the Law is enforced on the killer of a Cait Sidhe only if the local King or Queen of Cats requests it. Monsters, like Danny’s Barghests, and small folk, like the pixies, are completely exempt from the Law. Kill them all you want. No one will stop you. No one will punish you.
Most of the fae won’t even care.
Kneeling, I scooped the remains of the pixie into my hand. There was no way to avoid all the broken glass. A chunk sliced my forefinger. I stood quickly, hissing through my teeth. I wasn’t fast enough to keep from bleeding on the floor—just a few drops, but every one of them seemed to glow like a tiny star. The Daoine Sidhe work with blood. The Dóchas Sidhe are blood, in some way that I still don’t quite understand.
“Hold this,” I said distantly, pouring the pixie’s dusty remains into May’s hand. It didn’t occur to me to question how she knew to be ready. She was my Fetch for a long time before the bond between us was broken, and she knew how I was likely to react to almost anything. Even things that had never happened to me before.
Kneeling, I lightly pressed my fingertips against the blood that had spilled onto the floor. I was still bleeding, gleaming, sluggish drops that fell to widen the stain. I still didn’t feel the knowe, not really, but when I reached through the blood, I felt something. It was as if Goldengreen were stirring, becoming aware of our presence on a conscious level for the first time.
Of course, I had no way of knowing whether that was a good thing. I pressed my fingers down with a little more force, speeding the flow of blood. The knowe was definitely waking up, some deep, slow process that was too strange and too old for me to really understand.
“Uh, Toby?”
“Hang on, Quentin. I think I’ve got this.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” said May, voice carefully lowered.
I turned toward her, raising my head just in time to see the flock of pixies that had been massing in the hallway door swoop down on us, their wings buzzing in the confined chamber like a million pissed-off mosquitoes on the warpath. I had time for a startled, wordless shout, and then they were on us, blocking out even the faint ambient light with the pressure of their bodies.
NO ONE REALLY knows where the pixies came from. Unlike Faerie’s larger races, all of whom trace their ancestry back to Oberon, Maeve, or Titania, the pixies simply are. Some people say they’re the natural by-product of magic, and I can believe it. Not much else explains the existence of an entire species of tiny, semisentient humanoids with a fondness for roast moth and clothes made out of candy wrappers.
Most pixies are wild and occasionally vicious, but it takes a lot to goad them into actually attacking something the size of a Daoine Sidhe, much less someone as big as Danny, who practically qualifies for his own ZIP code. These pixies were something else. Their clothes were made from scraps of silk and pieces of old tapestries, not garbage scavenged from the mortal world. Their weapons looked handmade, carved from pieces of ash and rowan wood. We had no way of knowing if they were dipped in equally handmade poisons, and I didn’t want to find out.
The pixies chattered rapidly in high-pitched voices as they swept down on us, incomprehensible words almost drowned out by the buzzing of their wings. Danny’s Barghests barked at them for a few seconds, distracting the flock. Then the Barghests turned, running full-tilt for a door in the far wall.
“Get back here!” Danny bellowed, swatting at the pixies that were dive-bombing his head.
“I have a better idea!” I shouted, straightening up and grabbing hold of Quentin’s hand. “Follow those Barghests!” I ran after them, towing Quentin in my wake. May and Danny followed close behind, the pixies diving and weaving around all four of us as they lashed out with their tiny but potentially deadly weapons. The fact that we were running away didn’t seem to be lessening the fury of their attack; if anything, it increased their enthusiasm, since now they were winning.
The Barghests ran through the door and down the hall, making a sharp left after about twenty yards. The four of us followed, speeding up as best we could in our effort to escape the flock of pixies, which seemed devoted to stabbing us. May yelped in pain but kept running. Good girl. When we reached the place where the Barghests turned, we did the same, and found ourselves in a small, rounded room with tapestry-cushioned walls. There was another skylight set into the ceiling, filling the room with cool moonlight.
It was pretty, but I was more concerned with getting the massive oak door shut against the pixie influx. I shoved against it; it didn’t budge. “Danny, a little help here?” I asked.
“On it.” He reached over and gave the wood a small, almost dismissive shove. It swung away from me so fast I nearly fell, and slammed shut with a concussive boom that echoed through the entire room. “Better?”