City of Fae (9 page)

“Ah, my Sovereign … You are late. One might think you intended to avoid me. Is it done?”

I flinched and tucked myself against the arch, out of sight. The voice was female, but strange, brittle, as though the words had fractured somewhere between her throat and lips. I could see Reign. Ahead of him, shadows rippled.

“You know it is.” Reign’s voice sounded as smooth as silk in comparison, making hers all the more abhorrent. “Your spies have surely told you.”

“I feel your doubt, youngling. Do you not trust your queen?”

There, movement in the shadow hugging the archway in front of Reign. Something clamped onto the bricks between the arch and ceiling. But it didn’t make sense. A bulbous body. Eight arched legs.
That’s not possible
. A spider, but huge. One of her eight needled-legs clicked against the bricks. Her swollen abdomen bobbed, drawing my eye to the jagged saw-toothed pattern of crimson on her black lacquered exoskeleton. Red on black: a warning. A scream lodged in my throat.
No, no,
this can’t be real. I pushed against the bricks, hoping they could somehow hide me from that thing. Her abdomen bobbed again and her back legs worked a silvery thread from her spinnerets, knitting with a
clitter-clack
. My gut heaved, adrenalin surged, fight or flight …
Run!

“You almost failed. Need I remind you of your options? You are one of my many eyes. My web stretches far, a tapestry of spies, youngling. You are not my only loyal servant. Have you forgotten I hold your reins?”

“No.”

“I control you. Never forget that.”

“Oh, I haven’t.”

She dashed out of the dark and reared up over Reign in all of her monstrous glory. Fae and spider. Her upper body resembled a human woman, but from the waist down, she was all spider. The tapestry I’d seen earlier; the monsters tearing into each other; the spider, the hound, and the harpy. I clamped a hand over my mouth and bit back the scream. Reign stood before her, unmoving. She crowded him. He didn’t flinch as those branch-like legs encircled him. “My youngling, you are weak. You walk among them, and yet you starve yourself. It will be your undoing. You should not fear yourself. You have the potential to be glorious.”

“Yes, my queen.”

A chittering rattle emanated from her throat. “Do not mock me. I tire of your delays, your insubordination. How can I trust you to finish this?” She reached out a leg, and this time Reign did move his face away. She pulled back, black forelegs flared, her masklike face twisting with rage. “How dare you turn your face away?”

I almost bolted from my hiding place. Reign dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “I serve you, as I always have. I’ve obeyed every order. I have not failed you.”

His submission seemed to placate her. I huddled tighter into the arch. “And you will not fail me, will you? You know I alone control you. It is my draíocht which speaks to yours. We are of the old world, you and I. You are an old spirit, residing in a young soul. I caught you, brought you here. I am your queen.” She moved back on rippling legs, her slick body twitching, legs tapping out a beat.
Tap- tap.

Reign lifted his head. “There’s a girl—”

The queen sliced Reign a glance. “The girl … Do not worry yourself with the girl. She is mine.” Laughter trickled from her lips. Candlelight licked across dripping fangs. She scaled the archway, returning to her shadows. “Beware the last keeper. He suspects we are close. What will you tell him?”

“Only that I serve my queen,” Reign replied, tone flat, level, void of any emotional distraction.

A scuttling tickle ran across my neck. If I hadn’t already clasped my hand over my mouth I’d have yelped. I brushed at the spot, knocking something brittle to the floor. Looking down, I noticed—thoughts oddly calm—how the floor around my feet glistened. The hissing I’d heard earlier flooded into my ears; a horrible, monotonous white noise. A spider, fat but fast, scurried across my hand. With a gasp, I flicked it off and staggered back. The ground crunched underfoot. I reached for the arch but recoiled as a coating of black undulated up the bricks.
Spiders.
The floor rippled. The puddles had swollen to flood the chamber.
It’s not water.
It was never water.

The flow of spiders surged. I clamped a hand over my mouth and bit back a scream
. God, no … Please, please, wake me up from this nightmare already.
You can’t die in dreams. You always wake up. I will wake up. I have to wake up.
A trickle of spiders spilled around my leg. At first they didn’t appear too interested in me but their numbers surged, and the flow spiraled up my calf, over my knee, my thigh. They came fast and hungry then, surging as one. I screamed, twisted, desperate to be free, and fell. The swarm of black devoured my arm, shoulder, neck. Hundreds of legs scurried across my skin.
No, no, no …
“Reeeign—” They tumbled over my lips, my tongue, and plunged down my throat.

I shot from my bed so fast that my legs failed. I fell, hands out, face first, to the floor.
Spiders, spiders everywhere…
Scrambling anywhere, just so long as I was away, I bumped against the wall and blinked reason back into my mind.
Bedroom. No spiders.
Something delicate and nimble tickled my neck. I yelped, lunged sideways, lurched to my feet, and brushed at my shoulder, while spinning, trying to get the damn thing off. My hip found the dresser’s edge with a dull thud. I froze, blinked at my reflection in the mirror, and saw the stray tendrils of hair that had worked free of my band. No spiders. Holy crap, I looked like I’d been run over. Twice. Not a dream. My shoe was missing. And the other was caked in mud, bits of grit and tunnel debris, just like the rest of me.

Yanking at my headband, I freed my hair and shook it out. A spider tumbled to the floor. I squealed and stamped on it. A second fell free. Dead, its legs curved inward. The first one might have been dead but I’d not given it the benefit of the doubt. A third fell free. I stomped on it and fled to the safety of the shower, tearing off my clothes, dry heaving, suddenly terrified I had hundreds of the critters against my skin.

Only when scalding hot water blasted my pale skin did I feel halfway to normal again. The spiders were real, Under was real, ergo the conversation between Reign and that
thing
had been real too. The spider was the queen? My skin prickled, even under the pummeling jets of hot water. I snatched the soap up and lathered everywhere, taking off a layer of skin if I had to. If the spiders were real, then had I really been smothered by them? I assumed Reign had brought me home, but I had no memory of him doing so. How he’d saved me didn’t matter, not in that moment. I was alive. I was home. Back in reality. But, what I’d seen had been real. The queen … How was I going reveal something like her to the world? It would sound like the ramblings of someone losing her mind. Or someone lost to fae bespellment. I needed evidence. I couldn’t write about a giant spider living under London. It went against everything we knew about the fae. They were beautiful, not hideous. Damn, I’d have to go back. I needed proof.

“Alina … ?”

I jolted and made a tiny yelping sound. The bar of soap flew out of my hand, shot between the shower-curtains and bounced on the floor somewhere outside the bath. “Damn it! Get the fuck out of my bathroom, Reign.” My heart beat against my chest and throbbed in my ears. I’d had enough. He was lucky I was trapped in the shower, had I been dressed, I’d have slapped him and kicked his ass out. Forget that he’d saved me; he was the one who walked me into that nightmare without a warning.

“Alina.”

“Don’t! Just don’t. Unless you’ve come to tell me it was a trick, an illusion?” I knew it wasn’t, but would happily convince myself otherwise.

“No, she was real.”

I splayed my hand on the cool tiles and bowed my head under the water.
It was real
. Tears fell, hidden by the streams pouring over my face. If she was real, what else lurked out there? What other horrible things lay in wait beneath London? Were the scenes depicted on those tapestries real? Now I knew the truth, I almost didn’t want it. This was bigger than me. I was an out-of-work reporter with no clue how to handle the ugly truth.

“Are you okay?”

I laughed, and I didn’t care that it sounded maniacal. “I am so far from okay, I think I might be crazy.”

Reign’s hand poked through the shower curtain, soap cradled in his palm.

I glowered at it. “Drop it.” He did. I scooped it up. “Pervert.”

“I thought you said
pervert
, but my ears heard
thanks
.”

“And I thought faeries had excellent hearing.” Through the opaque curtain I could make out a black smudge in the bathroom doorway. He wasn’t moving.

“The word you’re looking for is
selective
,” he said.

I rinsed my face under the water, counting to five in my head. When I opened my eyes, he was still there. I wanted to rage at him, to scream and accuse him of lying, of misleading me. I wanted to demand answers, to shake the truth out of him if I could, but most of all, I didn’t want to be alone. “Don’t go.”

His outline shifted, torn between loitering in my doorway and leaving. I replayed my words in my head and realized they could have been taken to mean something else entirely. “I mean, uh, ya know, I need to talk to you; can you please wait? Outside.”

“Sure.”

“Reign …” I called, just as he was about to close the door behind him. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“Are you like her?” I asked softly.

“No more than you are, Alina.”

“I’m human, you’re not. What are you?”

“Royally fucked.” The door closed with an abrupt click.

***

Once I was out of the shower—seconds later, as the thought of showering while he loitered in my living room seemed wrong in ways I didn’t want to think about—and dressed, Reign asked if I knew of somewhere we could go and talk where he wouldn’t be recognized and where we’d have witnesses. He looked at me as though I might start throwing things. I realized why, when I caught sight of my wild-eyed reflection. In all likelihood I would start raging at him; perhaps somewhere public was a good idea.

As we walked to a nearby café, I took in his hooded top, casual chinos, and boots and wondered if there was anywhere on earth he wouldn’t be recognized. Even dressed-down he gave off celebrity vibes. He plucked a pair of shades from his pocket and popped them on with a dazzling smile. Yeah, they didn’t help. Now he just looked like somebody trying not to be famous.

We stopped at a café the Mile End locals called a greasy spoon; famed for its sausages swimming in cooking fat. Reign wrinkled his nose but kept his comments to himself as we found a booth right at the back and well away from the windows. The handful of customers peered into their French fries and dishwater coffee, oblivious to our presence, just as Reign had asked.

We’d walked the block to the café in silence. The encounter with the queen probably weighed heavily on him, as it did me, which was why I’d chosen to postpone my verbal lashing. If he stepped out of line, said the wrong thing, or tried to blow me off with lies, I was more than ready to rage at him. Too much had happened. I
needed
him to be honest.

I ordered coffee at the counter and kept Reign in my peripheral vision. Sprawled in the booth, arm draped over the back, he’d removed his shades and gazed into the middle distance, seeing but not seeing, likely lost in thoughts of the queen. He couldn’t pull off normal if his life depended on it. Even at rest, he exuded predatory arrogance. All fae had the same deadly allure, but Reign seemed to have it in spades. Was it just part of his faeness or something else? I’d wrongly assumed him to be a spoiled attention junkie, not helped by the fact he seemed to encourage that impression. But he was more than that. There were layers to him I had yet to understand. Like the fae themselves, I’d barely scratched the surface.

His lithe fingers teased a ketchup packet, and I found my mind wandering to what it might feel like to have those fingers on my skin. I already knew his touch simultaneously burned and numbed, but I guessed he could do a lot more with those quick hands of his.
Damn bespellment.
With an internal growl I shoved the thoughts aside, collected our drinks, and set his coffee down in front of him while settling into the booth.

“I should have warned you—”

I grimaced. “Had you told me we were going to see a half-fae, half-spider queen, I’d have laughed in your face.” A TV chatted to nobody in particular from behind the counter and the air conditioner hummed loudly enough that our conversation wouldn’t be heard. I leaned in, across the table, and spoke softly. “Are you going to explain
her
to me?”

He lifted his gaze up, then away. “I can try, but something like her … she defies explanation.”

“Try.” I urged, hoping he didn’t erect a wall of vagueness again. He looked like he might try it, and then he caught the less-than-patient expression on my face.

“You’re not going to like it,” he said.

“Really? Because everything you’ve told me has been a bundle of laughs up until now.”

“Sarcasm suits you.”

“Stop stalling and talk.”

He pinched his bottom lip between his teeth and looked down, focusing on the tease of the sachet between his fingers. All at once he looked vulnerable, and lost. When a muscle twitched in his cheek, a delicate flutter of apprehension skittered through me. Whatever he was about to say, it was big.

“The queen is part of the world I come from, part of Faerie.” He plucked a second ketchup packet free from the collection of condiments on the table, avoiding my wide eyes and ignoring the gasp that hissed through my teeth.

“Faerie?” I spluttered. “But it’s not real.”

He flinched.

“It’s real?”

“Yes.”

The apprehension bloomed into full-blown fear. “There’s another world out there? Full of fae, like you, like the queen?” My screeching drew a few concerned glances. I swallowed quickly and spread my hands on the table.
Okay. Don’t panic. Let him talk.
“Reign,” I whispered, hunched low, “you’re kidding, right?”