Queen Among the Dead Read online

  He’d never actually seen a real demon before, but—having studied under the harsh tutelage of the Druid priests since he could barely walk—he knew the wraith would feed on any living thing it came into contact with and, unchecked, grow stronger and more deadly. Just like the thunderstorm bearing down on the valley. Eventually, the Druids would have to be called upon to banish the ban sidhe back to its forsaken realm.

  And, in the meantime, that would cut into his profits. Maybe even his life expectancy …

  The girl screamed again. Ronan raked his fingers through his dark hair in frustration, then dropped back down into the dugout. He reached for his satchel and rifled through his bounty of sharp-edged stone strips, careful not to nick his fingertips. Spilling even a drop of blood into that bag full of magic would have been … unwise.

  As he’d pilfered spells from the óglach’s barrow earlier that evening, he’d noticed that one of them had borne the mark of a fuath—a particularly nasty kind of water demon whose name literally meant “hate”—which, under normal circumstances, was not something to be trifled with. And even if the boy were reckless enough to want to trifle, the barrows were too far from any water source normally required for a successful conjuring. But circumstances that night were hardly normal.

  As Ronan held the spell stone up in front of his face, and the girl screamed again, the skies opened up and the fury of the thunderstorm poured down upon them both.

  Plenty enough water.

  Now, all he needed was the hate.

  Ronan peered at the slashes and knots chiseled on the stone and hissed through his teeth to think that some “mourner” had placed such a vile spell stone in someone’s grave. Designed not to soothe or protect, but to torment the soul of the barrow’s inhabitant. It would fetch him a good price if he sold it in the dark market of Blackwater Town—

  Focus! Time enough to think about profit later. If he managed to survive.

  “Good thing I’m a quick study,” he muttered, scanning the lines of symbols. The incantation was crafted with a complexity beyond what the boy had learned from the Druid priests. “I hope …”

  Lightning lashed the underbellies of the thunderheads as Ronan heaved himself up out of the trench and ran, throwing himself in front of the girl right as the ban sidhe demon lunged for her.

  The demon’s taloned hand scraped Ronan’s shoulder, sending agony rippling down his arm. The girl shouted a startled warning, and the sound was enough to distract the monster for an instant—barely—but a string of word shapes plucked from the carvings on the spell stone was already forming on the boy’s tongue and in his mind.

  “Fuath!” he cried, his voice cracking. “Hear my summons, Hated and Hating!”

  Above Ronan’s head, the torrential rain twisted into tortured skeins, winding and weaving into a monstrous shape—half horse, half serpent, all malevolence—a feral creature of darkness and evil. Rage given form and purpose. A shriek split the air as Ronan’s conjuring became reality, and the fuath’s head canted on its sinewy neck, fixing a baleful glare on the boy. Ronan knew in that moment he was meddling with forces beyond what even a skilled Druid should. He wasn’t even quite sure how he’d managed it. But he had, and he only had a moment to act.

  He swallowed the tight knot of fear in his throat. Now, to set the fuath upon the ban sidhe like a hungry beast on a baited trap, he thought. With any luck at all, the two demons would duel to their mutual destruction.

  “Obey my command!” he shouted. “Release your fury on one deserving of it!”

  Ronan swept his arm in the direction of the ban sidhe as it loomed over the girl. The fuath shrieked again and charged. The ban sidhe’s head whipped around, green-fire eyes peeled wide, howling as the ghostly serpent-horse bore down on it. Flickering veins of indigo darklight raced across the fuath’s sickly pale, scaley hide, crackling in its mane and tail as it pawed at the air and reared back to strike at the ban sidhe.

  In that moment, the boy ran for the girl and grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her out of the way of the two spectral combatants. They ran, stumbling, across the grass, slamming into a moss-robed stone. The boy threw his arm up to shield them from both storm and spells and, in the gloom, he saw the girl’s face—a handsbreadth from his—and was caught, suddenly. Snared like a rabbit in the circles of her dark golden eyes.

  She stared back at him as large glistening tears spilled down her cheeks. Without thinking, Ronan reached up and caught them on the pads of his thumbs.

  “Stop that!” he said. “Do you want to summon another one?”

  Then he squeezed his fists shut around his thumbs. He stared in wonder as her tears sizzled and vanished, sending tiny flares of indigo light sparking between his fingers. In that very same moment, the ban sidhe shrieked and exploded into nothingness and a sudden void of silence.

  The girl’s mouth fell open, and Ronan blinked in astonishment at the demon’s sudden demise. His masters had always told him that strong human emotions—manifested in blood or tears or even, sometimes, sweat—were keys to unlocking powerful enchantments. At least they were safe now. From the ban sidhe, at least …

  The fuath was another matter. Ronan tensed as he felt the flickering threads of the enchantment that held the demon bound—just barely—to his will begin to fray. The bonds were snapping, one by one, and in another moment, the boy’s own conjuring would turn and devour them both.

  “Run!” Ronan scrambled back as the serpent-horse struck at him. Missed shattering his skull by a hairsbreadth. Reared back to strike again—

  And then, suddenly, the girl was there.

  With a shout, she brought down Ronan’s pickaxe with all her strength onto the serpent-horse’s head. The boy watched, frozen, as the sharp iron spike pierced between the thing’s eyes, stabbing down through the roof of its gaping mouth.

  The fuath shrieked and writhed …

  And shattered into sparkling dust blown away by a gust of wind.

  Ronan collapsed onto his knees. The thunderstorm quieted down all around them as if it, too, had been fueled by some kind of demon energy now banished. Ronan offered up a brief heartfelt prayer to whatever god watched over blacksmiths. Iron was not only an exceptionally rare commodity but also one of the only material elements that could disrupt a magical conjuring. That morning, Ronan had, on impulse, stolen the pickaxe—a fine tool, clearly intended for a rich patron—from a blacksmith’s hut on his way to the necropolis. He offered up a second prayer to the protector of thieves.

  “How …,” he panted, “how did you know that iron would disrupt the fuath spell?”

  The girl shook her head, equally winded. “I didn’t,” she said. “I just thought I’d try hitting it with something sharp.”

  The two of them looked at each other and burst into laughter.

  “What’s your name?” he asked when their laughter subsided.

  When the girl hesitated, he held out his hand.

  “I’m Ronan,” he said. “Apprentice Druid priest. One day I’ll practice real magic in the stone temples and oak groves, and I’m going to have to remember that fuath spell. It’s a good one.”

  “You’ll have to get it right if you want to serve the gods,” she answered, but not in a dismissive way. Just sort of matter-of-factly, as if she believed that one day he actually might. “I’m Neve,” she said, reaching for his wrist. “And if you ever tell anyone ever that I was crying, I’ll summon another demon and command it to drag you down into the darkness and fires of Teg Duinn.”

  He stared at her and she turned away.

  “Now where’s my pony gone?” She put her fingers to her lips to whistle. There was an answering neigh from behind the near barrow, and she started in that direction.

  As he watched her go, Ronan felt a sharp sting pulsing on his palm and glanced down to see a thin line of crimson welling up. A few paces away, he found the fuath spell stone lying in the grass where he’d dropped it. His heart stopped cold when he realized that the shard bore a brig
ht trickle of blood along its jagged edge.

  Ronan held it up in front of his face, not daring to move or speak or even think until the rain had washed the stone clean.

  When he looked around, Ronan realized he stood all alone in the darkness and the dying storm. No girl, no demons.

  It would be many years before he would see either girl or demon again. And when he did, Ronan would come to realize that once he’d managed to conjure one, the other would soon follow.

  II

  Seven Years Later

  THE THIEF SMILED disarmingly. “Forgive me, but … have we met?”

  Neve’s gaze flicked from the young man’s face, framed by wavy black hair tied back in a tail, down to the laces of his worn sandals. He was half a head taller than she was and wore only a tunic and simple woolen kilt with a travel bag slung across his chest. There was nothing in particular that would mark him as different from any other peasant. Still, she knew he was a thief—not because of how he was dressed, but because she had just watched him expertly cut a coin purse from another man’s belt while the man haggled over a bolt of brightly checkered cloth at a market stall.

  She tilted her head as she regarded him. “I can’t imagine under what circumstance I would have ever come into contact with the likes of you, thief.”

  “I’m a thief?” he asked. “You’re the one holding the knife and demanding money.”

  “Is stealing from a thief really stealing?” Neve grinned and tightened her grip on the blade that she held against the thief’s throat. “Now hand over your coins.”

  The long walk to the bustling marketplace of the town of Blackwater had made Neve thirsty for a tall mug of cool mead but she didn’t have any money. Why should she? She was a princess. She had no need of coins. Unless, of course, she’d sneaked out of her father’s palace without permission that morning … which was why she’d followed the thief and his purse of ill-gotten coins and cornered him in this alley.

  Neve slid the blade right up under the point of his jaw, where she could see his pulse beating rapidly and looked him directly in the face.

  “Wait!” he gasped. “We have met—I remember now. I remember your eyes. It was years ago and there was a storm rising. You were little and scrawny and your name was, uh … Neve!”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are,” he interrupted her, something Neve wasn’t used to. “You were. I’d spent that day, uh, selling prayers for the dead at the necropolis. You were crying and there was a—”

  The knife bit into his throat. Enough to draw blood and a hiss of pain from between his teeth.

  “I don’t cry.”

  “That’s what you said that night.” The thief swallowed, the muscles of his throat moving against the edge of the blade. “You see? I do know you, Neve—”

  “Princess Neve.”

  He blinked, his jaw drifting open. “Prin … cess …”

  “Everyone knows me.” She grinned coldly at him. “I’m the daughter of the Dagda. Beloved of the Wolf. She for whom the sun sets and the moon rises—”

  “You told me you’d kill me if I ever told anyone!” he interrupted her again. “About you weeping. And I didn’t.” The thief shook his head, as much as the blade at his throat would let him. “I mean, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had, because I didn’t know who you were then. You neglected to mention the princess part.” He glanced down at her knife and then back up to her face. “Princess Neve. I kept your secret. Surely that counts for something, right?”

  Neve looked at him more closely. His eyes were a stormy shade of dark gray—flecked with silver like the blade of her fine iron dagger—and his face … his face had lost the childish softness of that night. He’d been young then, too, and she had cried in front of him, she remembered.

  “… Ronan …”

  Behind the shock of black hair that fell in front of his face, Ronan’s gray eyes went wide with surprise. “You do remember,” he said. He smiled, but Neve could discern a hint of wariness in the expression. “That’s flattering.”

  “It was a rather memorable occasion,” she said. “You just happened to be there.”

  “To save your life. You’re welcome.”

  Neve suppressed a shiver as a long-submerged fragment of that night drifted to the surface of her memory—of the ban sidhe, the pale-green fire in its empty eye sockets and the ghostly hands reaching for her.

  She lowered her knife, spun the blade in her hand, and sheathed it at her belt.

  “You were lucky,” she said. “You lost control of your fuath spell and that thing almost killed us both. Are you a full-fledged Druid priest now? I would have thought you’d be a bit better dressed. And less inclined to thievery.”

  “I left the Order.” Ronan shrugged.

  “They kicked you out.”

  “And then I left.”

  “What was your crime?”

  “Curiosity. A restless spirit. Somehow, I get the feeling that’s something you can understand, Princess Neve.” He regarded her frankly. “Huh. I would have thought you’d be a bit better dressed. And less inclined to thievery.”

  “I was thirsty,” she said with a shrug. “And I can’t just walk into any bruidean and demand beer without coin, so …”

  Ronan held up a hand. “Say no more.” He drew the pilfered money purse from the pouch at his belt and hefted it. “Come. I know a quiet place. I’ll buy you a drink. I’m sure the Dagda’s daughter has a fascinating story or two to tell, and my ears are as thirsty as your tongue.”

  Of course, it was against Neve’s better judgement to go with him. But her entire venture into Blackwater Town had already set that boat adrift. It was near impossible for her to resist the place, so different from the confines of the palace. So alive. She found the plain speech and easy laughter of the Fir Bolg villagers much more invigorating than the mannered, measured ways of the Tuatha Dé. Temair was like a vase of carefully cultivated blooms set down in a meadow full of wildflowers. The chaos of the latter spoke to Neve’s restless spirit, regardless of the possibility of weeds or thorns, so the prospect of a drink with a thief was hardly going to send her running home.

  Neve twitched the edge of her long shawl back up over her head and gestured for Ronan to lead the way.

  AS THEY WALKED through the narrow winding streets, Ronan stole another glance at the girl at his side, his chest tightening. He remembered how Neve had disappeared that stormy night, vanished back into the mists almost as if she’d been a wraith herself. Now here she was again. After Ronan had spent the last seven years searching the face of every dark-haired girl in Blackwater and beyond for a flash of those golden eyes. Promising himself that one day he would find the girl from the barrow grounds—and make her pay for what had happened to him.

  Ronan’s fingers curled into a fist around the thin ridge of an old scar on his palm. To be fair, after so long, he’d never really expected to find Neve again. And he certainly wouldn’t have expected her to be the Dagda’s daughter. And not the good one, either. But here she was, walking beside him. At his invitation.

  Mórr’s blessed light! What do you think you’re doing? Ronan asked himself as he led the princess through the twisting alleys and laneways of Blackwater. This girl was trouble back when you didn’t even know who she was. Now?

  Now, she was the kind of trouble that—good daughter or no—would mean his summary execution if any of Ruad Rofhessa’s wretched óglach were to catch him in her company. And thanks to the decrees of his Druid adviser Gofannon—who, if gossip was to be believed, was acting more like a king than the Dagda himself—Blackwater was riddled with óglach, searching out illicit magic practitioners and spell scavengers. One of the reasons Ronan rarely, if ever, turned to dealing these days. He’d lost one too many friends to the jaws of a harrow hound. Coin purses were boring bounty, but safe. At least, on most days, he thought, putting a hand to his neck where Neve’s blade had nicked him.

  They approached the curtained doorway of a thoroug
hly disreputable drinking establishment, the only bruidean in town that Ronan hadn’t been thrown out of recently. Neve had drawn her shawl up over her head and wrapped it over the lower half of her face so that only her eyes were visible, that fearless golden gaze that had haunted his dreams for years—and occasionally his nightmares. She walked with her head held high, chin tilted upward, with an unconscious arrogance befitting the daughter of the Dagda.

  “Does your father know you’re here in Bla—”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” He pushed aside the curtain, holding it for her to pass through before him.

  “No one knows. My father would flay the commander of his óglach alive if he knew. And I like the commander of the óglach, so I’m careful.” She paused before stepping inside. “I know I said everyone knows me, but they only know me when I’m dressed in gold and jewels and traveling in a gilded chariot with a fawning retinue. Even in Temair, no one ever looks me in the face. No one except you.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s actually a nice change. I’m sick of talking to the tops of people’s heads.”

  “Then I promise to keep your secret—again. And keep my bowing and scraping to a minimum.”

  “See that you do. Now. I’m not getting any less thirsty standing here.” She ducked through the doorway, heading for a table tucked away in a corner.

  They sat down and Ronan signaled the bruigu for a round of beer. There was a moment of silence that stretched out between them as he cast about for something—anything—to say. Something that wouldn’t make him sound like one of those poor haunted souls that wandered down by the docks. The ones said to have been touched too hard by the magic of the land and lost their wits to it.

  Ronan prided himself on having kept his wits even if he hadn’t been touched so much as pummeled by magic. A thing only he—and the girl sitting across from him—knew. He felt a surge of long-buried emotion rise up and threaten to swamp his studied indifference. The scar on his palm pulsed, a memory of the fuath spell.