The Moth King sits back in his throne, radiating smug satisfaction. “Veradis will take you to your unit.”
The gray man grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet before I have a chance to give anyone a look of defiance, which probably ultimately works out in my favor. When I do spare a look backward at the Moth King, he’s already become distracted by a monstrous, humanlike creature with Fabio hair and a sharp-toothed grin that splits his face from one ear to the other.
I’m practically shaking with relief when I find my sword exactly where I left it. I buckle it back onto my hip and imagine cutting down as many fae creatures as possible in what would probably end up being the last fifteen seconds of my life.
Gray Man Veradis marches me through the woods, grumbling to himself as if I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. Only then does my brain put the king’s words in the right order.
I will tell you what I know of your brother.
He hasn’t promised to take me to my brother, or release my brother, or even tell me where he is. He’s only promised to tell me what he knows. And he never admitted to knowing anything.
I’ve sworn myself to him for nothing. On pain of death.
I go over every choice I’ve made from the moment I took up sword fighting to the moment I found myself marching through the Evernight with whatever Veradis is and decide that I have been both very, very stupid and very, very arrogant.
Veradis leads me down a paved road lined on both sides with what at first seem to be lamp posts topped with oddly shaped, unlit light fixtures, but as we get closer, I realize they are heads. Decapitated monster heads.
I drop my eyes so I’m looking only at my feet and Veradis’s gray heels. The air fills with the smell of roadkill and the sound of buzzing insects.
I swallow hard and beg my meager stomach contents to stay put.
Mercifully, Decapitation Row does not stretch on for miles and miles, and we pass onto a dirt trail and into a tunnel with bramble walls and thorns the size of my thumb. I obtain two or three significant scratches and plead with Veradis to slow down.
“I can’t see as well as you.” He glares backward and calls me some names that seem disproportionately colorful based on our very brief relationship, but he does slow down.
I edge past the last couple of thorns as the tunnel opens up into a Thomas Kinkade painting.
A lantern-lined cobblestone walkway winds invitingly through a little garden that smells of roses and lavender, plants that definitely don’t bloom without sunshine, but whatever. The walkway ends at a stone cottage with glowing windows and white shutters painted with stenciled purple flowers.
It’s Grandma’s cottage, I think. And there’s a nightgown-clad wolf in there somewhere.
Veradis avoids the lantern-lit walkway and plows right through the garden. The front door opens and I flinch, expecting to see something sinister on the other side, but the figure standing in the firelight is definitely human. I have a wild thought that maybe Veradis has led me to my brother before realizing the figure is female.
I’m shocked by disappointment, and then deeply annoyed at myself for imagining it might be that easy.
The woman in the doorway is wearing a tunic and leggings with lace-up boots made from soft leather. Her light brown hair is bound up into a military-style bun. She looks like half the people who go to Renaissance fairs. I try to keep the emotions off my face as Veradis delivers me over to her with a grunt and skitters off into the thorn bushes with a speed that is half mouse, half monster from the black depths of hell.
I stare over her shoulder into the house and experience a sense of relief so profound I have to resist an urge to sweep this strange woman up into a desperate, tearful hug.
There’s no sign of Grandma or her wolfy alter-ego. The room is furnished with a settee-style sofa upholstered in green, a trio of matching chairs, and a battered wooden table. A fire roars in a stone fireplace against one wall. Most importantly, the room is filled with light. Not artificial light, but enough light to lift me at least halfway out of the well of despair I’ve been in since leaving the palace.
The woman smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve seen since I got here that isn’t either sharp-toothed or rotten or otherwise menacing.
“I’m Victoria,” she says.
“Sunday,” I tell her. “Is this …?”
“This is a mortal house,” she says.
“A mortal house? You mean …”
“A house where mortals live,” Victoria says, as a man emerges from a hallway to my left. I immediately know he isn’t Leo just based on his dark skin and hair, but it’s only a momentary disappointment. My excitement at being in the presence of one fellow human being in this land of monsters has evolved into giddiness now that I’m in the presence of two.
The man scratches his head and yawns.
“New soldier,” Victoria tells him. “Sunday.”
“Like the day of the week?” he asks, because of course he does.
My enthusiasm takes a minor nosedive. “Yes,” I say, trying extra hard not to be irritated.
“Marco,” he says. “Sit down. You look tired.”
It takes some effort not to collapse into the chair he’s pointing at. I guess I am pretty tired.
Victoria plops into the chair opposite.
“I’m looking for my brother,” I say. “Maybe you know him? Leo Hale.”
Victoria shakes her head. “There are many humans in the Evernight. This is just one of dozens of mortal houses. Your brother doesn’t live here.”
The news that this place has a large human population is only slightly less astonishing than the news that Leo might be living comfortably in another Thomas Kinkade house and all I have to do to find him is knock on a few doors.
Maybe there’s a mortal house map around here somewhere. I could go door to door during whatever off-time I’ll have from my new job as the king’s fealty bitch.
Marco takes a seat to Victoria’s right. He has a pleasant face with high cheekbones and eyes that aren’t soul-sucking pits of horror, which immediately elevates him above some of the other people I’ve met here.
“What did Veradis tell you?” Victoria asks, as if I’m a new hire in whatever fucked up faerie employment opportunity this is.
“He mostly just grunted.”
“Well, what are your skills? Where were you stationed before?”
Yep. Fucked up faery job interview. If she asks me where I see myself in five years, I’m gonna lose my shit. “Um … nowhere? I only arrived a couple of days ago.”
Marco and Victoria exchange a look. “You mean you just got here from the palace?” Victoria asks.
“No, I mean I’ve only been here, in … what did you call it?”
“The Evernight?”
“Yeah. I’ve only been in the Evernight a couple of days.”
“Oh,” says Victoria. She looks genuinely perplexed.
Marco furrows his brow and runs his fingers back and forth across the pile on the arm of his chair. I’m about to divert the conversation to mortal houses and why and how there are so many humans in the Evernight when he balls his hand, taps it on the definitely solid wood, and watches with zero surprise as his entire fist sails right through the arm rest.
What the hell.
Victoria goes on as if nothing weird just happened. “You came here voluntarily?”
“Yes?” I feel like I should ask her why that matters but I’m too distracted by Marco and the fist that appears to defy space and time. I’m mentally bouncing between pretending it’s perfectly normal to have a transparent fist and asking for a verbal explanation of said transparent fist when Victoria says, “You came here voluntarily, as an adult?”
My curiosity is more assertive than my desire to answer Victoria’s questions. I point at Marco’s fist. “Why did your hand just go through that chair?”
Victoria seems to not hear me. “Sunday?”
“Yes. Voluntarily. Two days ago,” I say, impatient, because now I really have to know about the fist thing. I point at Marco’s hand again with what I hope is not crazy overzealousness.
“The Evernight is not for the changeless,” Victoria says. She looks at Marco.
I shake my head in confusion. That sounds like a riddle. I dislike riddles about as much as I dislike talking foxes.
“What does that mean?” I’m slightly irritated. “I’m not super familiar with Evernight lore.”
“Sorry,” Victoria says. “Most people are brought here as children. Everyone, in fact. Adults aren’t usually … open-minded enough.”
“So?” I’m not sure I understand why being open-minded is relevant.
“If you don’t believe in fairy tales, you can’t just walk into one,” Marco says. “So you must believe in fairy tales. That’s an unusual quality in an adult human.”
His words ought to make me feel childish, but they both look a little awestruck, so I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his intent.
“My hand went through the chair because most humans in the Evernight exist half in and half out of two worlds,” Marco says.
My brain scrambles to make sense of that. “You’re sitting on that chair,” I point out.
“Yes,” he says, as if I’m stupid. Victoria has a curious look on her face, like she’s never seen anything quite like me before. My face heats. All the bizarre and horrible creatures I’ve seen since I got here and these two apparent humans are somehow making me feel like I’m the freak.
“Humans can phase through things in the Evernight,” Victoria says.
“Phase through things?” I parrot with what is probably unveiled delight. I study the arm of my chair for a second before I decide to try out this new and interesting skill I’ve just been told about. I slam my fist down on the armrest and am for some reason shocked that it hurts and the wood remains stubbornly solid.
I feel tricked and foolish, but then I see the look on Victoria’s face. It’s like that look on a movie hero’s face when she’s just discovered that the sweet little old lady who lives in her building is actually a witch.
“Can I see your sword?” she says carefully.
I draw my sword and lay it flat across my hands. She reaches for it almost hesitantly, as if she’s about to grab something red-hot. Her fingers close around the hilt, but then they go limp and the sword clatters onto the floor.
She shakes her hand as if trying to rid it of some distasteful sensation.
“Holy shit,” I say. I look down at my sword, half expecting it to be glowing or emitting steam or something, but it just looks like a sword.
“Yeah,” Victoria says. She’s staring at the sword as if she thinks it will rise from its place on the floor and impale her. When she looks at me again, her eyes are like moons.
“I can’t use that sword,” she says. “My hand can’t lift it. My fingers won’t grip it. I’ve never ... seen anything like that here. I mean, I’ve been told, but … ”
She seems pretty ruffled, and I get the feeling she’s not the sort of person who’s easily ruffled.
I look at my sword again, as if it has some magic I didn’t know about. Why wouldn’t Victoria be able to pick it up? I literally bought it on eBay for 300 bucks. I’m pretty sure it isn’t magic.
“Every human I know was brought here as a child,” Marco says. He doesn’t seem stunned at all. He seems excited. Giddy, even. “People who grew up here become like Evernight people. We can’t handle or use objects that come from the mortal world.”
“Most things,” Victoria says. She’s still staring at my sword, but a smile is spreading across her face.
“Most things,” he agrees. “Natural things cross worlds. Things like plants and stones and food. We can touch anything that other Evernight people can touch, but we can’t touch or use most objects manufactured in the human world.”
That explains some things. It explains why the schrats made me put my sword down instead of taking it from me. It explains why it was still there after my disastrous audience with the king. But …
“Wait, does this mean my sword is useless?”
“Your sword is not useless,” Victoria says carefully. She’s looking at me as if she’s still not 100% sure she can trust me, but there’s something else in her expression. Something eager, maybe even hopeful. “If you can hold it, you can fight with it.”
“Because you’re not like Evernight people,” Marco says. “You don’t belong here.”
This is boggling my mind, and it probably shows. “So, you’re human but not totally human.”
“Yes,” they say in unison.
“Shadow people,” Victoria adds.
“Which makes you—” says Marco, nodding towards my sword, “and that—very valuable to the king.”