A Little Night Muse by Jessa Slade Page B

steel-born
Queen!”
    “Quick,” EveStar hissed. “This way.”
    Hand in hand, they scuttled away from the throne as the Queen’s
goblin chamberlain stepped past the place they had just been.
    Adelyn grimaced. With everyone facing the throne, there was no
way she and EveStar could sneak out. They would draw too much attention. They
could only bow their heads as ordered. No need to arise, of course, since there
were no other seats in the room besides the steel throne.
    The Queen swept into the room in a wave of black tatted lace.
The diaphanous darkness floated around her, supported on the will-o’-the-wisps
caught in the net. Their wistful little lights twinkled mournfully and cast
stark shadows across her white cheeks, leaving her eyes in pools of unrelieved
black.
    Adelyn’s fingers curled into fists and she felt EveStar’s nails
dig into her hand in matching, silent outrage. If the wisps were confined too
long, they would fade to nothing.
    The Queen mounted the three steps to the throne and turned to
sit. From the base of the steel throne, the black occlusions in the white marble
spidered outward. The wisp-lace drifted too outward, trying to escape.
    She was beautiful beyond all phae .
The voracious power of her illusions made her both: beautiful and queen. No
other phae could stand up to her in either
category.
    They could only run away as the wisps clearly longed to do.
    But the Queen wouldn’t even allow that. Adelyn wondered why she
had ever wanted to come back to this place. Had she been that blinded? No, she
had just been that small. Less than the faintest of wisps.
    No longer. Josh had opened her eyes and made her see what she
could do, really do. And she would never be merely someone else’s inspiration
again. She would make her own way, be her own phae .
Be her own woman.
    She would be Josh’s woman.
    She smiled to herself as warmth slid through her, chasing away
the chill of the phaedrealii . But when EveStar’s
grip on her hand tightened another notch, she refocused.
    “...This cannot continue, my phae ,”
the Queen was saying. Under the white marble chandelier, her blackness was even
more fearsomely stark. “Since the Iron Age, the phaedrealii has kept its distance from the sunlit world, withholding
our presence from the humans, except for our treasured few.” She ran her hand
over William’s head where he sat on the step beside her chair. He stiffened, but
his eyes were full of floating wisp light.
    The Queen cast her dark gaze around the room. Adelyn quickly
lowered her face, letting the shadow of her veil fall forward.
    “My phae .” The Queen’s whisper
swirled through the room on a chill breath though Adelyn tucked her shoulders up
around her ears. “If you run, I will find you. And when I find you, I will tear
you apart.”
    In the stricken silence, the infinitesimal hum of the wisps’
wings sounded menacing.
    And even more faintly yet, came a whisper all around them:
“Adelyn...”
    Her head snapped up. “Oh no. Josh, no.”
    EveStar shuddered. “You gave him your name?”
    “I didn’t believe he would follow me. Or even remember me.”
Adelyn took a step forward, unbuckling the belt as she went. “The spores are
behind the stones in the belt. There aren’t many. Use them well, and maybe
someday we’ll meet in the sunlit world.” She tossed the belt to the other phae .
    EveStar thrust it back. “Open a gate. Run while the Queen is
distracted.”
    Once she’d been too afraid to run, and now, when she most
wanted to...”I can’t. Not without him.”
    In the space by the throne where she had been standing only
moments ago, a ring of mushrooms sprouted with unnatural speed. And then Josh
was there. In the court. Standing tall beside the deadly phae Queen.

Chapter 11
    His head spun, like a middle-of-the-whisky-bottle
moment, but Josh blinked hard to clear his wavering vision. No, not wavering.
The vision in his scarred eye was eerily intense.
    For a second, he thought he had