Instead, the room was bare, containing only a broad metal table and a long swath of black velvet curtains covering the back part of the vast, echoing chamber.
The Wytch King himself sat in a swivel chair with his back to us, pale hands with pale fingers tapping against the dark, rough leather of his chair. He turned to face us, and I felt my stomach drop as if Windhaven had plummeted from the sky.
The Wytch King’s gaze was silver and pupil-less, glossed over with a mercury sheen that seemed to slip and slither across the surface of his eyes. His lips were black, and his teeth were filed to sharp points. He wore a high-necked black uniform that looked eerily like those the officers among the Proctors wore. He sniffed the air with flattened nostrils, and those silver eyes locked on me. They were the same color as Dean’s, but where Dean’s burned with life and warmth, the Wytch King might as well have been made from clockwork.
I felt a million things in that moment—fear, disgust, the urge to scream. Those were the initial tidal wave of panic, and then my engineer’s brain kicked in. The logical, impassive side that didn’t get scared or confused. I tried to assess how much danger I was actually in, and what I could do to get myself out of it. Not much, came the rapid answer, which started the panic all over again.
“Sir,” Skip said. “The human girl.”
The Wytch King stood, extended his hand to me, and smiled. “Hello, Aoife. I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
I looked at the hand, the nails blackened at the edges with some foreign substance I couldn’t identify. I recoiled at the thought of touching him, but I knew I couldn’t risk angering the Erlkin further. I put my hand in his and gripped it firmly.
His fist closed around mine like a bear trap, and while I struggled, all my fantasies of being resolute and a good ambassador for the Iron Land slipped from my mind and were replaced with the same low-frequency hum of panic that had been present since I’d left my father’s home.
“You aren’t soft,” he said. “Your hands are calloused. Not what I’d expect from a Fae spy.”
“I’m not a spy!” I said hotly, nearly at a shout. Skip’s hand dropped to his weapon and I turned my eyes on him, raising my voice to a real yell. “You want to shoot me, you pasty-faced freak?” I yelled. “Go ahead. Go ahead and do it so you can tell your friends how you stopped the dangerous Fae spy who hasn’t done a thing except try to stay alive.”
I ripped my hand from the Wytch King’s grasp, and his nails left tracks of blood across my palm. My chest was heaving, my vision was tunneled in black, and I could hear my heartbeat roaring in my ears. I didn’t even realize I’d balled up my fists and started for Skip until Dean caught me and spun me into his arms.
“Aoife,” he said against my ear. “Aoife!” again, louder, when I reflexively fought back against his embrace. “You’re bleeding,” Dean murmured. He released me and uncurled my hand to show three long furrows in my skin, oozing blood. “Let me take care of that for you,” he said softly. “Just cool your jets, all right? This is not the place. I know how you feel. But it just isn’t.”
“You know and I know we’re not leaving here,” I said, trying to still the shakes running through me. “They’ve already made up their minds that Conrad and I are working against them.”
The Wytch King began to laugh. It was an eerie sound, more like static crackling over the aether than a sound borne from a living throat. He wheezed for a moment and then slapped his knee. “I like your girl, Nails. Like her very much.” He turned those flat doll’s eyes on me, and once again I felt the chill of something cold and older than I could imagine sweep over me. The Erlkin might not have had the iron affliction or cruel, spiteful streak of the Fae, but they weren’t human, and things like me were prey to them. I was acutely aware of that as the king stared at me.
“It doesn’t change the fact,” he said, “that your brother consorted with slipstreamers, smugglers who weaken our borders by bringing your kind through. And I will not let that go unanswered. I can’t. My people rely on me to keep them safe, just as you rely on Nails.”
“I keep myself safe,” I said, steel creeping into my tone. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.” How dare he imply I was some helpless, sappy girl, cowering in fear unless she had a boyfriend to protect her? The more time I spent with the Wytch King, the more his unpleasantness reminded me of Grey Draven’s. The former Head of Lovecraft, the man who’d tried to use me to lure my father into a trap, had the same single-minded coldness as the Wytch King. I didn’t know if that made the Wytch King more human or Grey Draven less so.
“You welcome some humans,” I challenged the king, spurred by the memory of Draven and his cold-blooded threat to find and exterminate my father, Conrad and anyone else of the Grayson line he could get his hands on when I wouldn’t cooperate with him. “You helped my father.” Maybe if I could convince the Wytch King I wasn’t his enemy, I could wheedle my father’s location out of him. The thought made me stand a little straighter and try to act as if I weren’t a knock-kneed mess. During my life at the Academy, I’d gotten good at pretending such things.
“I did,” the Wytch King agreed. “I helped Archie Grayson, because the enemy of my enemy is my ally, and Archie has never crossed an Erlkin widdershins, which is more than I can say for most of your kind.” He took his seat again, leather and springs creaking under surprising weight. “But you’re not your father, little miss. And if the Fae and that human-shaped stain on the world who calls himself Grey Draven have their say, you’re never going to follow his footsteps through the Gates either.”
This time, the chill I felt had nothing to do with his stare. “How do you know him?” I demanded. Were we in even worse trouble than I thought? Had Draven somehow snowed the Erlkin into an alliance to bring me in, use me as the bait he needed to lure my father?
“We do not voluntarily shut ourselves in a cocoon of superstition like the Fae, Aoife,” said the Wytch King. “Don’t look so alarmed. I’ve heard of what happened in that iron city, the one called Lovecraft. Draven’s made sure your face is plastered across every newsreel there is, and your name spoken hourly on the aether waves. Your disappearing act has become something of an embarrassment to him now that he’s used the disaster to rise through the ranks, according to my spies.”
I had never imagined that Draven would use the destruction of his own city, the city he’d been responsible for, to leverage a promotion with the Proctors, but in retrospect I felt stupid for being so naive. Of course Draven would seize the chance—a supposedly mad terrorist attacks his city, and he, stalwart, picks up the pieces and puts on the brave face. Of course the Proctors would promote him, give him all the power he needed to hunt down the person responsible: me. It fell into place like the worst sort of war machine, efficient, sleek and deadly.
“Draven’s in charge of the Proctors now?” I whispered.
The Wytch King chuckled. “The director, from what I hear. Head of the whole business, making sweeping changes. There’s chatter that he’ll be president someday.”
I felt numb, dizzy, as if I were plummeting. Draven had the ear of the current president of the War Council. Only Inquisitor Hoover, who’d founded the Bureau of Proctors, stood above him.
If I’d thought getting back to Lovecraft would be hard before now, it had just taken on a whole new dimension of impossibility. Never mind the city—I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in the Iron Land where the Proctors had eyes.
Dean squeezed my hand gently, and I could tell by the lines between his eyes that his thoughts had followed the same track. I just felt worse—not only had I destroyed Lovecraft, I’d catapulted Draven into a position of even more power.