Page 52 of Beauty

Our ridiculously obnoxious steed who talks way too much fora horse. “Aren’t you the smart one, Shim? The king is slaughtering Fae andyou’re only now figuring out that there’s something wrong.”

I roll my eyes. “Shut up, phoo.”

Shim ignores the phooka utterly. “A couple of minutes back,I lost touch with Bron.”

“Could she be sleeping?” I can’t imagine it. She has to beterrified. We don’t know what happened after they called her a witch and shelost consciousness. But the humming in the back of my head was there, an oddlycomfortable sensation. I feel bereft without it.

I think I would know if she died.

She can’t die. Not when we’re so close.

Shim shakes his head. “She was sleeping earlier. I couldfeel it. You have to get used to the connection now that it’s strong enough foryou to feel it. When she’s sleeping, the hum changes.”

Yes, I noticed it. “It’s like it’s muted and calm, and whenshe wakes up there’s a liveliness to the sound.”

“That’s right. But now there’s nothing. She was awake andmoving and then nothing.”

I think back to those last few moments. My brother is wrong.“Not nothing. She was confused.”

The phooka huffs and tosses his head back and forth.“Perhaps the princess was drugged.” He sniffs the air. “I’ve heard thatsometimes executioners are kind. They drug the ones they set on fire. Smellslike they’re already at work.”

Panic, pure and unadulterated, races through my veins. Istart to run toward the village, but my brother’s hand stops me.

“Don’t you dare. This is my element, not yours, brother.”Shim’s eyes close briefly. “I can feel it. The fire. Idiots. They can’t kill mymate with fire.” He looks up again, and his normally dark eyes go a distinctreddish orange. “Stay away from it. We both know it can burn you.”

“And we both know that a sword can cut you in half.” I lookto the phooka, who has far better senses than either of us. “How many peopleare out there?”

The phooka takes a long breath. “Many. At least twenty. Bythe horrible smell of them, I would say almost all men.”

And men will have swords. Two against twenty.

Or are we just two? What did Roan say back in Aoibhneas?That the dead I bring back are powerful. Chaos. Perhaps chaos can be our friendfor once.

“Can you grab the fire? Keep it from her?” I ask.

“Already done, brother. Though I doubt anyone knows I havecontrol. I can’t see anything, so I’m simply keeping it in a circle. How do Iknow she isn’t burning already?”

“Because I don’t smell the divine scent of roasting princessyet, Your Highness. No way I would miss that. Control the fire. I’ll see what Ican find out.” The air around the phooka shimmers, and the horse becomes anodd-looking creature. What speaks to me is a combination of a large squirreland a creature I’ve only seen in vampire DLs. A lemur. But lemurs are slow, andthe phooka is not. He scampers up into the trees, using long claws. The leavesabove our heads shake, delicate green shells raining down.

My whole body is on edge. Bronwyn is in that village. She’sclose, so close. It’s everything I wanted since that first moment as a childwhen I closed my eyes and saw her in my dreams. She was a girl, even youngerthan me and Shim. In that first dream, I remember the three of us looking ateach other as though wondering what to do, and then Bron showed us a game. Asilly thing. She threw a pebble and then hopped and skipped to pick it up.Unseelie games tend to involve blood and often death. It was a sweet thing tospend time with the wide-eyed girl.

When we woke the next morning, we laughed about sharing adream.

We were still dreaming of her when we turned sixteen, and Iknew that somehow, someway Bronwyn completed us.

And then I saw a picture of her and set the idea in myfather’s mind to merge the tribes through marriage.

“I can’t stand this waiting,” Shim says.

I hate it, too, but finding Bronwyn won’t mean a thing if wedon’t live through the experience. We need to stay calm. Rushing in might bebad for Bronwyn, too. What we really need is an army.

An idea plays through my brain. I need an army, but myfather ensured our army won’t follow me. He didn’t mean to, but he treated uslike fragile idiots for so long, no one will follow us. No Unseelie alive willfollow a fragile king.

I open my senses and find that cold place deep in my centerwhere my power resides. I can’t have a living army. Roan is in charge of themen we brought. But there are more than the living to consider.

“Damn me, Lach. What are you doing?” Shim’s eyes are wide.

I feel for them. The dead are everywhere, as much a part ofthe land as the living can ever be. The dead are oddly eternal, shifting fromone form to the next. From living to corpse to food and fertilizer, and intheir own way, right back to living.