To Bear an Iron Key (19 page)

“Who cares about that? I’m talking about us.”

“Rusty, stop being a fool! This is not the time! Please, I beg you, go get the Key!”

“No.”

She wailed, “What do you mean, no?”

He pulled himself to his feet, and then he brushed off the soil from his knee. “I mean no.”

With a furious screech, she ran over to where he had thrown the Key and scooped it up. It was surprisingly light for such a weighty item; something as powerful as the World Key should at least take two hands to hold. So much trouble, as Rusty had said, caused by something that looked so common. It just proved you could not judge a key by its teeth—chances were it had the sort that bit you when you weren’t looking.

Gripping the Key tightly, she dashed back to where Rusty stood, watching her. “Here,” she said, offering it to him.

“No thank you,” he replied, brushing off his cuffs. “It’ll make my pocket bulge. Very unseemly.”

She stared at him for a long moment, wondering if he truly had lost his mind. “We do not have time for your tantrum.”

“Tantrum?” He chuckled, but there was nothing humorous about it. It was a desperate sound. “This isn’t a tantrum.”

She shoved out her hand. “Will you take the thing already?”

“No.”

“Rusty, come on!”

“You just took it, so if you ask me, that makes you the new Guardian.”

“Ooooh!” She stamped her foot. “You are impossible!”

“No, just insistent.”

“Take it back!”

“Too late. I’ve given it to you. It’s yours, Lady Guardian.”

Her mind whirling, her heart breaking, she cried, “Why are you doing this?”

“To shock you awake.” His face softened, and he said, “Winnie, you can do anything you want. You’re strong and powerful and smart. If you don’t want to marry Brend, then don’t.”

“I do not have a choice!” She meant to shout it to the winds, but her words were the barest of whispers.

“But you do.” Softly, his voice as tender as a kiss, he said, “Come with me, today. Let’s run away from all of this. Let’s go somewhere else and start over.”

“Running away isn’t the answer.”

“Then what is?”

Bromwyn bit her lip, and stared at Rusty, at the boy—no, at the man—who had defended her when her grandmother berated her and who had stood by her side even in the midst of madness, who always made her laugh and feel not like some monster who worked with something dangerous but like a normal girl, someone who wanted to be and was meant to be loved.

She opened her mouth, and if things had been different, she might have agreed to run away with him and never look back.

But that was when the first blues of twilight illuminated the sky, and the sound of fey laughter froze Bromwyn’s blood.

The blue hour had finally come.

INSULTS

The first group of fey burst through the trees, dozens of them, screaming their laughter and buzzing like possessed bees. No longer in their Brend and Jalsa costumes, they were back in pretend-human blond-haired guises, androgynous and fetching, save for the hungry looks on their eager faces.

Bromwyn’s fingers closed over the Key, and she shoved it into the pocket of her gown just before the fey swarmed around her and Rusty, darting near her face and hair, mocking them and jeering at them.

“The challenge!” one of the fey shouted happily.

Bromwyn blew out a nervous breath. At least the fey had not seen that Rusty had given up the Key; that would have been extremely bad. Bromwyn knew enough of fey etiquette to understand that for the Key Bearer to relinquish the symbol of office while he was officially acting as the Guardian would have been a grave insult to the King and Queen. And if one wished to survive an encounter with the fey, one absolutely, positively did not insult them. At least, not to their faces.

“The challenge!” the fey shouted, their voices filling the clearing even as more of their brethren joined them. “The challenge!” Fists pumped, they screamed their demand and their delight, with bloodlust in their eyes and saliva glistening on their lips. Still more of them arrived, hundreds now, adding their voices and banging drums, their words and music blending into a thrumming beat that screamed violence. “The challenge!” they chanted, they sang, they whooped like a battle cry. “The
challenge!
”

Bromwyn and Rusty stared at each other, wide-eyed, trapped in a crystalline moment of pure terror.

Please,
Bromwyn thought desperately, calling out to Nature.
Stay with us. Guide us. Help us. Help him
, she prayed, thinking of Rusty and hoping against hope that he would manage to walk away from this with his mind, body, and soul unscathed.

To help give him strength, she looked deep into Rusty’s eyes and said, “We can do this.” Her words and tone made her sound far more confident than she actually felt, and for that reason, she smiled.

“We can,” Rusty said.

And then he kissed her.

It was a moment that stretched on forever, and though the kiss was just a soft pressing of his lips upon hers, with only the faintest hint of a far deeper passion, to Bromwyn it was more powerful than even the strongest magic. It was perfect.

Too soon, far too soon, he pulled away.

Bromwyn’s mouth tingled from his touch, and she thought she still tasted him on her lips. Rusty stroked her cheek, and she leaned into his touch.

He whispered, “For luck.”

“For luck,” she agreed, her voice breathy. She would have agreed to anything at that moment. She would have done anything for him. She would have given him the world. Around them, the fey shrieked and whooped, but Bromwyn no longer cared. Rusty was right there, smiling at her, and they were together. And that was all that mattered.

But then his gaze left hers to dart upward, and he froze. The smile slid off of his face, and Bromwyn saw him take a deep breath, and then another. They were frightened breaths, the sort one took to keep from screaming.

The King and Queen were coming.

Bromwyn sensed them before she saw them; a cold feeling of utter terror that stole her breath and made her head swim. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she looked up to see two bright dots, like fireflies alight, soaring through the air high above her. Their brightness sliced through the royal blue of the sky as if they fought the impending arrival of the sun.

Around Bromwyn, the fey horde shrieked and capered about, screaming their glee as their sovereign rulers descended. She ignored them as she watched the King and Queen dance in the air. As she did yesterday, Bromwyn again felt a stab of jealousy in her gut. The thought of flying away, of having the freedom to soar through the sky and tickle the treetops, was enough to make her grind her teeth. How she wanted to dance in the breeze, to forget the promises made by others that she herself had to keep, and just go wherever the wind took her.

How she wanted to be free.

I want to tell the woman I love that I love her,
Rusty had said,
and I want her to run away with me so that we can spend our lives together.

Could she do that? If she and Rusty survived the challenge, could she walk (not fly, no, never fly) away from her responsibilities, from her life, and start afresh with him by her side? Could she be something more than Mistress Smith, something other than the next Wise One of Loren?

Could she turn her back on everything she knew, all for the sake of one boy?

Watching the fey sovereigns slowly approach—still dancing and laughing, celebrating their final minutes before the dawn claimed the sky—Bromwyn bit back a sob. Bleakness shrouded her heart, so much darker than resentment, so much sharper than bitterness. So much colder than fear. It was a suffocating thing, a despair so thick that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything other than watch the King and Queen float down to meet them.

She didn’t want to be here. But she had no choice; she couldn’t let Rusty face them alone.

She never had a choice.

Now anger churned quietly through her, absorbing the bleak chill and slowly setting her blood to boil. This was her curse, her own personal doom, brought about not by her grandmother’s magic, or even by Bromwyn’s own hasty words, but by promises and power. To be a Wise One meant never being free to live her own life, never to dance carelessly until she was too dizzy to stand. Never to be with the one who loved her for herself. Never able to choose anything without giving thought to what others needed first. Bromwyn understood, right then and there, that no matter how her grandmother had framed the words, Bromwyn’s was a curse that could never be broken.

She clenched her fists.
Is it so much for me to want something for
me?
Not Bromwyn Darkeyes, granddaughter of Niove Whitehair; not Bromwyn Moon, the cartomancer’s daughter, but me?

All of these feelings and thoughts assaulted her in less than four heartbeats, and she rode the emotions, allowed herself her resentment.

Then she shed her tumultuous feelings like snakeskin. She was Bromwyn, called Darkeyes, and she stood proudly as the magic of Nature resonated through her. Stone settled around her heart. Holding her chin high, she waited for the worst as the King and Queen landed in front of her.

The lord of the fey smiled at her and Rusty, a dark smile full of hidden meaning, and Bromwyn caught his scent: a heady aroma that made her think of spring rain on grass, of flowers blooming, of wild things doing what wild things did. Next to him, his lady laughed, a merry sound like wind chimes tinkling, and Bromwyn smelled honeysuckle—sweetness, like nectar and berries, with an underlying scent of something far sweeter, far wilder. The aromas mixed and caressed her like the most tantalizing perfume, making her feel giddy.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

With the sudden flare of pain, the smells diminished until they were just scents on the wind, enticing without being intoxicating. Though Bromwyn kept her stoic expression, her heart hammered in her chest and she barely restrained a shiver. Even now, just standing there plainly, the King and Queen called to her. And part of her longed to respond.

I am no fey creature,
Bromwyn told herself. Her face was utterly calm, and it gave away none of her internal struggle.
I am a witch, a human witch, and I will not be swayed by fey magic.

Her determination gave her the strength she needed: The longing dissipated, and she quashed the mad urge to dance before the King and Queen.

“Greetings to our host,” the King said to Rusty, his voice echoing in the glade. He slid his gaze to Bromwyn. “And to his loyal and faithful companion.”

He was calling her a
dog
, right there, to her face. Last night, she had been overwhelmed when the fey had insulted her so. Now, at this moment, fury seared her, white hot and insistent. Bromwyn pressed her lips together tightly and said nothing as she raged.

The King’s grin pulled into something wicked. He’d noticed her reaction, and even now was all but laughing at her.

Rusty, either oblivious or intent on moving forward, swept off his hat and bowed low. It was picture perfect, right out of a storybook.

Bromwyn quickly followed suit and curtsied deeply. It wasn’t as smooth as Rusty’s bow, but at least it gave her an excuse to break eye contact.

“Greetings to the lord and lady of the fey,” Rusty said. “Welcome back to the Allenswood.”

“And to the World Door,” added Bromwyn, still curtseying.

“You are prompt,” said the King. “Here it is, the blue hour, and you are before my lady Queen and me, awaiting your challenge. How refreshing that we did not have to hunt you down.”

“Like a cur,” the Queen said sweetly, smiling at Bromwyn.

“And you are dressed appropriately!” said the King, motioning toward Rusty. “A little short in the sleeve and tattered by the ankle, but for a man-child, it is acceptable.”

“He does clean up nicely,” the Queen murmured, eyeing Rusty with clear appreciation. She was looking at him as if she wanted to savor him, feast on him … and not in a culinary way.

Bromwyn wanted to rip the Queen’s eyes out.

“Such a pretty boy,” said the Queen. “Yes, I would have the perfect place for him in my Court.”

“My lady wife,” said the King with a chuckle, “how many pages do you need?”

“As many as suits me.” The Queen’s words were light and yet sharp, like a blade so honed that you didn’t feel it slice you, and Bromwyn wondered whether there was some anger between husband and wife. But then the Queen turned her gaze to Bromwyn. “And look at the witch girl, playing at being a lady.”

Bromwyn blushed, but she held her curtsy.

“Indeed,” the King purred, and Bromwyn felt his gaze sweep over her. “She looks like her mother.”

Holding her skirt wide, Bromwyn’s fingers clenched.

“Her mother?” The Queen pealed laughter. “I think the witch girl looks too innocent to be of her mother’s blood. Her dress is baggy where her mother’s was tight, and she is untouched where her mother was far too accessible.”

Bromwyn’s head snapped up, and her vision narrowed into a circle of red as she glared at the Queen.