“I could’ve given it a name,” Devlin grumbled.

He’s still upset over the seat adjustments, Barry said with marked amusement. His knees… and head… and perhaps arms are a bit sore, I expect.

Ani wisely didn’t respond to either of them. All she said was, “I’ll be right here. Just outside the door, inside Barry the whole time.”

Helpfully, Barry opened Devlin’s door.

“Why are we stopping? It can—” His seat fell backward. “Barry can drive while you rest.”

“I want a shower. Pillow. Bed.” Ani gestured. “Please? A room for the night.”

“I don’t suppose it matters.” He sounded as exhausted as she felt, and Ani knew then that he was no closer to figuring out a plan beyond “stay moving” than he’d been when they left.

We could kill the raven one, Barry suggested.

Privately, Ani agreed, but she didn’t know if Devlin would go for that plan. Bananach was who she was. If moving and hiding for a while would be enough to make her forget about Ani, that was a better plan than asking Devlin to murder his sister.

Ani closed her eyes to wait for Devlin to return. The grungiest of rooms sounded like a treat just then. Hot water and an actual bed were rarely as tempting as they were in that moment.

They’d be even better if he’d share them….

Chapter 22

Rae had thought that being trapped in the cave was frustrating, but being caught inside Sorcha’s palace made her realize how very fortunate she’d been. In the cave, Rae had been alone, but she’d not been at anyone’s mercy. Here, she was Sorcha’s prisoner; here, she was the only link between Faerie itself and the queen who was to keep the world in order.

And has lost interest in doing so.

Sorcha had retreated to a dream so she could watch her absent son.

One of the veiled mortals sat observing the sleeping queen; the other had left the room to speak to whomever she consulted to find information for the queen. Neither spoke to Rae unless it was unavoidable. They kept themselves far from her, sitting on the step of the dais. Even with the room empty of faeries, they didn’t step on the top of the dais or near the chair of twisted strands of silver that sat there. They remained silent and distant.

Fear of her or me?

The room in which Rae waited was far larger than the cave. It was vast, fading to shadowed reaches on one side and enormous arched windows on the opposite side. The farthest corner of the room was lined with barred doorways, some covered by ancient tapestries. Beyond the mosaics that surrounded the sleeping queen’s glass bed, the floor was of slick black rock, and the whole of the room was interspersed with white pillars supporting a star-scattered ceiling.

Rae stood and approached the queen. The glass had taken on a deep-blue tint; it darkened the longer Sorcha slept. And as it darkened, more and more faeries drifted into sleeps from which they would not awaken. Rae could feel them, feel their dreams beyond the room where she attended the sleeping queen.

Where are you, Devlin? Please, please, come home. But wishes didn’t change the waking world, and hoping to be rescued was as futile now as it had been in her mortal life.

“It is time again.” The mortal spoke. “You must check on our queen.”

Rae had no idea how the girl knew the time or could keep count of the moments that had passed. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Rae needed to go to the High Queen.

“I hate this,” she muttered as she stepped up to the blue glass chrysalis and into Sorcha’s dream.

Sorcha didn’t look away from the mirror. It was the same cloudy glass framed by fire-blackened vines as in the first dream. In it, Rae could see Sorcha’s son, Seth. He sat in a strange green chair drawing in a notepad. As far as interesting visions went, this one didn’t rate at all, but Sorcha was transfixed by it. The High Queen’s expression was one of utter rapture.

“He creates such beauty.” Sorcha lifted her hand and made as if to trace the sketch. “Would that I were so skilled.”

“You create the entire world. That’s—”

“Nothing compared to him.” Sorcha pulled her gaze away to scowl at Rae.

And Rae knew that openly disagreeing was unwise. “Yes, my queen.”

Like Faerie itself, the landscape around Sorcha’s dream was shrinking. In the dream only the two walls of the small room where she sat with the mirror were in full detail. Beyond that, it was as if they were in a painting only partially completed. The dreamscape was a darkening blue void, as if it were some sort of endless sky or sea that wasn’t yet in focus.

Rae began envisioning the fields of Faerie, rebuilding the landscape as it had been when the dream began. The emptiness of the dream was unsettling, more so because the dreamer was the one who built and maintained Faerie.

“No. I want none of that.” Sorcha waved her hand, blanking it all out before the vista was truly even there. It was her dream, so such an alteration was possible—more so, perhaps, because the High Queen understood the particulars of remaking reality.

If she cannot look beyond the mirror in her dream, what does that mean for Faerie?

Rae stood uselessly in the dream room, not quite in the nothingness beyond it, but close enough to that abyss that she had to struggle against her instinct to form worlds there. It was an empty plane with no one’s desires, no one’s horrors, no one’s fingerprints to alter. This must be how Faerie looked before Sorcha. The High Queen, however, was oblivious to the things around her. All that she saw was the image of her son in the mortal world.