Page 1 of The Blood Queen

1 Samson

December 1566

Scotland

All my life’s been spent manipulating or lying. Playing on sympathies to beg food off the gullible in Southwark while I picked their pockets, running cons on marks my father sent me after to steal fae magic items, even lying to myself. I’m not scared. I’m not lonely. I’m not hungry. I’m not tired. I’m not any of a dozen different weaknesses that’d see me dead in a place like London’s slum.

Eighteen years, I’ve been lying as easy as breathing.

And it’s all been training for right now.

The horse I was given sways in line with the rest, and I rock with it, huddling tight into my cloak against the bitter Scottish wind. Morning’s barely crested, but the rising of the sun did nothing to chase off winter’s determination; icy air pelts us from one angle, then the next, lashing our group of riders like beats from a whip. The people around me curse it and burrow in their own cloaks, but the fabric gets tugged away, snatched out of grasping fingers and twisted around their bodies like the wind itself is raging against them.

Furtively, I twist in my saddle, faking like I’m looking up and down the line of riders.

Two behind me on a horse connected to Cecil’s by a lead, Alyth lies across the saddle like chattel, her body still bound in some awful spell that makes her immobile. Her head’s down, the hood of her cloak hanging over her, hiding her face.

Seeing her like that, restrained and silent, digs into my belly like a thorn. Every memory I’ve got of her, she’s a force stronger than nature.

So seeing her as a prisoner?

It’s taking everything in me not to blow our cover.

I watch her now, waiting for a detail I saw a few hours back. Or rather didn’t see: The wind isn’t whipping at her.

I turn forward again.

That’s a small comfort. One tiny glowing spark in my otherwise dead, cold, and banked soul: We aren’t alone. The fae, they must know what’s happened to Alyth. They’re helping her. This winter gale has got to be Beira, the Winter Queen we met in the goblin market. She’s protecting Alyth but tearing up a good storm around the rest of us.

Around the Red Cap army.

Hail stings my cheeks, and I flinch at the bite, but when the Red Caps riding around me curse louder in complaint, I settle in my saddle, calm washing over me.

Alyth’s a captive of the Red Caps, the vicious, bloodthirsty berserkers exiled from the fae realm.

I’m lying for both of us by pretending to be the proper and obedient Red Cap son my father expects of me.

But we aren’t alone.

I stare down at the balled pieces of hail that gather on my gloves, tiny, crystalline promises. I hope they’re promises at least. Promises that Beira’ll help us. Promises that we’ll have allies to run to.

To run at all, I gotta get Alyth out of Cecil’s clutches.

My hand clenches into a tight fist. I breathe deep of the frigid, cutting air.

And look ahead at the gray horizon bringing us closer and closer to meeting the High Blade.

* * *

It takes the rest of the day, riding through increasingly angry winds, stopping twice and listening to Cecil’s brigands moan and grumble about the weather, before we make it to a castle far south. Not back in England but close enough to the border it’s nearly in that disputed no-man’s-land. So when we see a massive group around the castle, I think they might be bands of the roving mercenaries that pick through the area.

The closer we get, the more details congeal. Not mercenaries.

An English army.

Sunset’s wrapping up the whole of the land in ribbons of navy blue and snow-swollen gray by the time Cecil leads us past the army and through the castle’s gate.

Alyth’s upright on her saddle now. Has been since the first break, sitting tall and regal, every bit the barrier guardian she was born to be, though she’s gotta be exhausted. We’ve both been up for two days now, what with the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, going stark ravin’ and getting his estate blown sky-high. Alyth’s gaze is as frigid as the wind; she’s glowering at any of Cecil’s soldiers who get too close to her, and most keep their distance. She’s still in a binding spell, her arms stiff at her sides, her face pulsing every so often in a repressed grimace.