Orphic Phantasia

Episode Four

Copyright © 2018 Dary Meredith

All rights reserved.

Foreword

This is a free omnibus of material published on the Orphic Phantasia website. If you came by this document some other way — especially if you paid money for it — then please contact the author at darydith@gmail.com with details. Seriously. I earn bugger all as it is without some anonymous third party selling my work in secret!

Episode Four

An Illusion of Paradise

25: The Morning After

Dante studied the ill-coloured mixture slopping around his mug. It looked less like a cure for early morning nausea and more the result of it. Katrina had thrown the ingredients together while he was in the shower. It was a Theseus Armstrong special, she told him, something he’d picked up during his time in the militia.

Dante had yet to take a sip. He had embarrassed himself enough without needing to regurgitate some strange cocktail over the lounge table.

Opposite him, Byron d’Arcadie raised a mocking eyebrow. Slouched across the sofa, shirt unbuttoned and glossy hair cascading down his shoulder, the verbose poet was everything Dante, with his messy hair, dirty stubble and sleepless eyes, was not. It was hard to believe he had escaped that sweaty throng of anarchy with nary a scratch to show for it.

And then there was Emily. Emily, whose innocent, pale-winter eyes and cheerful crescent-moon smile did not belong in a place like the World’s End, with its depraved crowd of omnisexual polyamorists and wanton hedonists. She was too good, too kind, too pure for such a hovel, and yet there she was in his flashes of drunken memories, her eyes almost seeming to glow in the nightclub’s gloom, her voice like a soothing breeze in the middle of a raucous hurricane. Without her, he might never have escaped.

For the first time since he entered the lounge, she looked his way. Her eyes, so bright in memory, were bloodshot with sleeplessness and her lips, so often a smile, were clenched thin. Ashamed, Dante turned away.

With an obnoxious cough, Phoenix Rogan drew their attention to the end of the room.

“It is not my place to lecture you on tardiness,” she said, fixing each of them with a stern glare that suggested it really was, “but the three of you should know better.”

It was half five in the morning and their ship left in thirty minutes. Phoenix, her hair tied back and tucked into a coat too thick for the current season, was there to provide them with a ‘briefing’, according to Kat. With a silver baton clasped in one hand and an oversized cellular in the other, she looked about ready to deliver a ninety-minute talk on local politics.

With an accusatory frown, her manic eyes settled on Dante. “I would suggest you get that medicine down you, Mr Orpheus,” she said. “You cannot spend your life relying on Malkuthian miracles to make everything better. Speaking of which…”

She gestured her baton and a wave of blue letters traced themselves across the lounge wallscreen, spelling out ‘The Fortunate Isles’ to the sound gentle waves and the squawking of birds.

“This,” she said, “is Avalon.”

The logo faded to a scene of cerulean waves lapping against an ivory beach. It was like something out of a painting, a vision of the world as it might have been, thousands of years ago, before Theia’s descent drove the oceans into a cataclysmic frenzy.

Then, with a gaggle of childish laughter, a young woman stumbled into view, her bronze skin glistening beneath the unseen sun, bare but for the slightest of modesties. A man chased after her, toned and handsome, a paragon of Olympian strength. As the camera moved away, they fell into the sand together, hands groping, grasping one another. Dante turned away, flashes of backroom sofas and awkward fumbling rising from the abyss of forgotten shame.

“Avalon,” intoned a kind, feminine voice, “the paradise you always dreamed of, but never thought real.”

With a slice of her baton, Phoenix paused the presentation just as a flare of sunlight peeked out from behind a towering shard of mirrored crystal. “We acquired this propaganda piece early this morn,” she announced. “Avalon is an isolated holiday resort located some two-hundred forty miles southwest-by-west of here. It has technological advances on par with the Third Terrace of Malkuth and supports a currency-free vendor culture.” She turned her dark eyes on Emily. “Ms Fomalhaut, as an immigrant from the Third Terrace, I figured you might have something to say about this, yes?”

Emily, twiddling her bronze thumbs, retreated behind a sweep of sky-blue hair, her lips clasped so tight Dante worried she might bite them off. Before Phoenix could counter her silence with some self-assured snark, Byron sat forward and gestured to the screen with the end of his pipe.

“The luxuries of the Third Terrace command a high price,” he said, brow furrowed. “I doubt all the citizens of Torsten herself could muster up the karma required for even one person’s entry, let alone near three dozen of us.”

Dante shifted in his seat, reminded of his childish hopes of one day reuniting with his mother in the garden paradise atop Malkuth. In reality, even had he survived the journey south, he would have struggled to escape the suburbs of the First Circle, those dense ghettos of wouldbes and wannabes desperate to earn themselves a foothold on the mountain climb to paradise. To reach even the Third Terrace would have taken him a lifetime—perhaps even several lifetimes.

Because, unlike his mother, he was nobody special.

“Eeexactly,” said Phoenix, nostrils flaring. She twirled her baton at the screen and the video continued at double-speed, bombarding the lowly initiates in their Seelie-grown apartment with images of abundance and luxury, of a world where nobody could want for anything. Pastel villas overlooked streets paved in tiles of gold and silver, water clear as crystal flowed down long canals beneath bridges of starlight, and emerald fields stretched across an infinite horizon, split by trees so vast they could have reached the stars. And then there were the people, the beautiful, perfect people with their sparkling smiles and silken hair, never too many of them to look intimidating, but enough to assure you that you would never want for company or companionship.

It looked impossible, and yet there it was. Sufficiently advanced technology. The Paradise Dante had always dreamed about, and but hours away.

With another slice of her baton, Phoenix brought the presentation to a close. “A high price indeed,” she said, “and one I am reluctant to contemplate. However, I believe it in your best interests to know the truth, so that you can decide your future before it is too late.”

Byron screwed his face up in disbelief—a common reaction to Phoenix Rogan’s proclamations of grand conspiracy—while Emily sat in petrified silence, not even daring to breath. Dante gripped his mug, wishing it were hot, steaming coffee instead of cold, sickly medicine.

Phoenix gave them a moment then, with as grave a voice as she could muster, said, “Seelie uses Avalon as a cadet training facility.”

Byron shook his head. “A cadet training facility? But, unless we have all received a sudden and unexpected promotion to the Academy, we are not cadets.”

“I will let you draw your own conclusions,” said Phoenix. “But do remember that, until yesterday, Seelie did not send Second Class initiates into the Scar.”

Dante stared down at the gunk floating around his mug. Images flooded his aching brain, ideas, conclusions, a torrent of voices and recollections: Emily with her faerie prince, Director Guirlande and his concerns, the Duke’s stories of Aliyah Adel, all of them disconnected but for one, terrible truth: a truth that thrust Seelie’s actions into a harsh and blinding light, a truth that cast everything Dante knew and everything Dante believed into a dark and terrifying shadow.

A truth he had run to the end of the world to escape.

The Erebus was real.

Arided lied.

With a jolt of panic, Dante threw back Katrina’s concoction as if it were another glass of Tiferetian Elixir, another doorway to a world without thought.

He retched as the gruesome cocktail of raw eggs and spices slithered down his throat and only just managed to hold back the contents of his stomach from refilling his mug. Across the lounge table, Byron rolled his eyes, while Phoenix shook her head and buried her face behind her palm.

“Really, Mr Orpheus?” she said. “For your own safety, I would seriously advise you stay here and keep Ms Burn company.”

Emily snapped out of her silence with a gasp. “Lira? Lira’s staying here?”

Phoenix frowned. “Indeed. She graced us with her presence when I was presenting to your fellow housemates. She saw the truth of the matter and declared she would have nothing to do with it.”

“I cannot blame her,” said Byron. “This Avalon troubles me enough—as one who emerged from Malkuth’s shadow, I am well aware of how the vendor culture stymies the creative muse—yet the implications of our heading there, the price we have to pay…” He shook his head. “Emily, might I suggest we follow in Lira’s example and spare ourselves from a miserable fate? We are not soldiers.”

“I…” Emily grimaced, blinked away what seemed like a flicker of tears, then shook her head. “No, I have to go. We can’t run away from the truth.”

Byron lifted a hand in surrender, “Where you go, I shall follow. I would never forgive myself otherwise. Nor, too, will Lira. Perhaps you should inform her of your decision?” He glanced over at the clock on the wall. It was twenty to six. “Time is not on our side.”

“No,” Emily replied, “it never is.”

Phoenix watched the exchange with a stern, almost disapproving frown, then clipped her baton to her cellular and slipped them into a pocket. “Well then, since you have made your decision in full knowledge of the consequences, I shall be on my way. I will see the two of you in a short while, yes?”

She left without the slightest acknowledgement in Dante’s direction. As Emily shuffled downstairs to find Lira and Byron made to gather the rest of his belongings, he returned to his room.

Was it really any surprise? Phoenix had high expectations of her fellow initiates and, unlike Byron, Dante could hardly handle a night in a club, let alone the unending nights of Antarctica.

His mother’s face watched him from her photograph. At his age, she had travelled all the way to Ninth Circle, to the literal world’s end, to face impossible odds against an incredible foe. That was what it took to be a hero of Seelie, yet Dante couldn’t even step out of his front door.

Phoenix was right: if he couldn’t last a night at the World’s End, what hope was there for him in Avalon?

“You should go,” said the voice. He turned, expecting to see Katrina, or even Emily, sitting on his bed.

There was no one there.

“I … I should go,” he said, closing his eyes to picture the clear blue skies and crystal towers, the paved streets and sparkling canals, the people smiling and laughing and loving life as no one outside of Paradise ever could. It was the Paradise the Tablet spoke of, the Paradise that Arided promised his mother, the Paradise he always aspired towards. Avalon would prove, without a doubt, that such a place was real, that Arided spoke the truth, that his mother, now gone for six years, was safe and happy and free.

He was packing light—vendors could produce everything he required—when there was a knock at the door. Three-four-seven, Katrina’s code. No doubt she was there to check up on him. She had already bundled his bed sheets into the washing machine and tided his room while he showered. He trudged over to the door and let her in.

Her face brightened the moment she saw him. “I was afraid you might have done a Lira on us,” she said, bouncing into his room. “I can’t believe she’s going to miss out. Well, I can believe it, but it’s not like any of us could convince her otherwise.”

Her eyes fell on Dante’s satchel and she frowned. “Really, Dante? Don’t tell me you plan to synth on site? We don’t even know if we’ll have access to their vendors. That might be part of the test. You should be prepared for anything!”

Dante ruffled his still-damp hair. “Test?”

“You know, like when Master al-Hakim took us camping last winter? Which reminds me…”

Katrina dropped to her hands and knees and fished out a bag from beneath his bed. He’d last used it when Seelie sent the then-Third Class initiates camping for a weekend as part of their midwinter exams. Now that had been a test—a very cold and very wet test. A long week in a Malkuthian holiday resort just wouldn’t compare.

Kat emptied the bag of some old cereal bar wrappers and an old pair of socks, then started rummaging around his drawers for fresh clothes. It was like being eight years old again.

“You know,” she said, plunging a handful of clean socks into the bag, “Theseus and John are taking this very seriously. Last I heard, they were pulling an all-nighter to try and get that robot spider thing of theirs in working condition.”

“That automaton?” asked Dante. John had brought it over to the Ritches Estate for preliminary trials a few weeks ago. It didn’t look much like a spider, aside from its multitude of multi-jointed legs, but it had managed to climb all the way over the manor and back. “What do they want that for?”

Kat pulled some shirts out of his wardrobe and folded them into the bag. “Theseus thinks he can use it to smuggle weapons past customs. Like I said, you’ve gotta prepare for anything. And on that subject…” She stuck her head into his wardrobe and returned a moment later with his body armour. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said with a scowl, “Theseus said it was a good idea in case things get rough.”

She held the skinsuit up as if to check it for tears and imperfections. “Why is everything you own a shade of black?” she asked.

“It goes with my cloak,” he said with a shrug.

“Well, at least it’s better than what I found you wearing this morning.”

Dante grimaced in recollection. At least Kat was taking it in good humour now. “That was Joel’s idea,” he said.

“Joel isn’t exactly known for his taste in fashion,” she replied, as she slipped the armour into his bag. “It might suit some people, but it’s not you, Dante. It’s not the Dante I grew up with.”

The room filled with an awkward silence. Dante wanted to say “Well, I’m not the Dante you grew up with” or “The Dante you grew up with died six years ago”, but he didn’t have the heart. He’d already seen Katrina on the verge of tears that morning. It didn’t suit her. It wasn’t the Katrina he grew up with.

“And speaking of the Dante I grew up with,” Kat said at last, “I hear you promised Emily some paintings?”

Dante stuck his hands in his pockets and grumbled. He only owed her a painting if she could prove to him that fairies were real, and she had done nothing of the sort.

“You know you won’t be able to synth art materials at this Avalon place, right?” said Kat, back on her knees and rummaging around beneath his bed. “Annie’s brother said places like that don’t really do—ah, here they are!—the whole art thing.”

She emerged with a satchel of materials she had given him as a birthday present six months ago. She gave him the same present every year.

“It will give you something to do when you get bored of looking at the same old beach every day,” she said.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.

She placed the satchel in the larger bag, which she then zipped shut and hoisted over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got, what, ten minutes?” She glanced at her cellular. “Five!”

With a babble of panic, she stumbled out of his room and towards her own. Dante reached for his cloak and pulled it over his shoulders. Just as he was about to head out, he noticed the Tablet, still sitting on his desk, white, innocent.

He reached over and slipped it into his cloak pocket, just in case.

~*~

Emily was about to knock when the door to Leira’s room slid open and a dishevelled mess of golden hair glared up at her with violent eyes.

“I en’t going,” said Leira, “so don’t be trying to ask me otherwise.”

“What changed your mind?” asked Emily. “Don’t you want to stop me from doing anything stupid?”

“Ye can look after yerself already. I ain’t ye mother. Now, if ye don’t mind, it’s six in the feckin’ morning and I need me beauty sleep.”

“Wait! I’ll … it’s your birthday next week! Don’t you want to—”

With a grunt of discontent, Leira slammed her door shut.

So, it was true. The one person she needed most of all, the one friend who could help her escape her Sidhe-written fate, had suddenly and inexplicably changed her mind. Leira Byrne, never one to shy away from trouble, had opted to stay at home and sleep.

A “suggestion”, as he would have put it, a whisper in her ear, the slightest of nudges to ensure she played the part they wanted of her, to ensure Emily played the part they wanted of her.

She wondered how many others they had influenced, how many others had changed their mind because of a whisper, a voice that was not there. Even if Veritas had uncovered irrefutable evidence that this was all some Seelie scheme to drag the initiates into war, they would still board that ship, still surrender their lives without a second thought, all because they knew no better, because higher powers had other plans.

But this wasn’t about war, at least not the way Phoenix Rogan assumed. This was about the Erebus. This was about Emily.

With a whisper of apology to her friend, she returned to her room. Her old backpack was bursting at the seams with the amount of clothes she had stuffed inside, but it was preferable to using some machine to churn out hideous, homogenised fashions. After checking her dyes in the mirror and brushing a few wayward strands of silver where no one would notice them, she pulled on a jacket and hoisted the bag onto her shoulders.

She was about to leave her room when she noticed her knife sitting on her bed, a dash of morning sun along its onyx hilt. It had served the Macha well, but Emily Fomalhaut didn’t have need for such a thing.

She slipped it beneath her skirt, just in case.

Byron and Dante were standing outside the apartment, waiting for her. Byron had managed to fit his things into a satchel, but she was surprised to see Dante with a bag that rivalled her own. The poet was admonishing him about it.

“It seems folly to carry so much when vendors bow to near every whim,” he said.

“I thought you hated vendors?” said Emily, drawing the boys’ attention her way.

“I hate that they reduce art to soulless replication,” he replied. “I do not, however, have such sentimental attachment to my underwear. Books, on the other hand…” he patted his satchel. “No technology can replicate the soul burned into the pages of well-worn text.”

Emily stepped out the apartment’s shadow and surveyed the morning sky. Theia’s waxing crescent had already emerged above the treetops to the east. She wondered how the people of Avalon led such seemingly joyous lives when the harbinger of the world’s destruction rose above their heads on a daily basis. The sight of a peaceful ocean had given her some ideas, and she wondered how Dante might react if they turned out to be true. If she could find the words to say to him, she might have asked what he thought of Phoenix’s video, but all she could see when she looked at him was the trembling, wounded soul in the dim lights of the World’s End. She had seen him at his worst and then used that as an excuse to invade his privacy. That wasn’t the Emily he knew. That wasn’t the Emily she wanted to be.

“I see you have followed Orpheus’s example,” said Byron, bringing her back from that dark, damp place where time had no meaning. “And what might you possess that holds such sentimental value? I never thought you a fashionista.”

“My secrets are off the market,” she replied, thankful for the distraction.

“Perhaps if I offered something of equal value?”

“Your entire life’s work wouldn’t buy you a peek.” She cast a smile in Dante’s direction. “Dante, on the other hand, might get something if he paints me a picture.”

He stood there, hands in pockets, lost in a world of his own. Emily wondered what his looked like and if, one day, he might be willing to share it with her. If Prince Freyr had his way, he wouldn’t have a choice.

A minute later, Katrina stumbled outside with a clatter of pans and panicked bluster. She had a large rucksack strapped to her back, three different satchels wrapped around her chest, and enough bags and bundles to start a market stall. Her automatous cat clung to her shoulder, its happy face watching them with black button eyes.

“You should be prepared for anything!” she blurted.

And yet, despite her burdens—which she refused to share—she was the one who set the hurried pace as she raced to reach the Theatre before the clock struck six.

“She has the stamina of a dozen men,” bemoaned Byron, fumbling to light his pipe as he struggled to keep up with her.

“Says a lot about your own,” replied Emily.

With a huff, he bit down on his pipe and drew a breath of smoke. “Given her lack of presence, I presume you had little luck with Leira,” he said, as they passed Sohrabarak al-Hakim’s tree-shaped tower home. Emily spied figures moving about inside, but nobody that resembled the charismatic archaeologist.

“She was pretty set in her ways,” Emily replied.

Ahead of them, bags bouncing away, Katrina hummed. “Do you think anyone else will stay behind? I did kinda think about it myself, but then I worried it might affect my application to the Academy, you know?”

“I doubt Seelie is so cold as to mark us down for our holiday choices,” said Byron. “Saying that, I, too, shared your indecision, if only for a moment.”

Until he had declared that, if Emily was going, so would he. She wondered if that was his genuine feeling on the matter, or if it was just another of Prince Freyr’s whispers, another of his subtle suggestions. The thought left her cold.

Kat looked over her shoulder with a red-faced smile. “Just don’t listen to Phoenie, okay? There’s no way this is about war or anything. It’s just a test, like that camping trip we went on last winter.”

“If Seelie thought to train their soldiers for war by sending them to a Malkuthian holiday resort, I would seriously consider defecting to an alternative avenue of education,” replied the poet. “I suspect Seelie simply treats this Avalon as an R&R facility for its weary officers. I wager even Azhara’d al-Hakim requires the soft touch of a lady every now and again.”

Emily hid her discomfort behind a mocking smirk. “I guess we know what you’ll be doing all week then,” she said. It felt as if she had taken her own knife and plunged it into her chest. If Freyr had his way…

“Please!” said Byron. “I am not Doyle.”

As they rounded the corner by Ms Thorbjorn’s cottage, Emily expected to see Director Guirlande waiting for them, as he had been the day before. If there was one person who could put a stop to all this, one person whose words could overpower even the suggestions of the Sidhe, it was him—and yet the street stood empty, the Sophists silent in their protests. There was no escape.

They reached the Theatre with moments to spare. The Seelie citadel stood lifeless, save for a few early morning lights. Even the telescreens, so often looping Veritas reports first thing in the morning, were dead.

“Any idea where we’re supposed to go?” asked Emily. She could have closed her eyes and traced the path of their fellow initiates through the aether, but the longer she could keep a hold of her innocence the better. Sure, the mask had slipped a couple of times of late, but never in front of those who didn’t know better.

A red-faced Kat looked around the Theatre grounds with panicked eyes. “Oh no! We’re twenty seconds too late! They’re left without us!”

There was the slightest of rustles behind them, like the sound of a single leaf falling in an autumn breeze. “I can assure you, that is not the case,” said a stern female voice.

It was Captain Espinosa, her eyes more vivid than Emily had ever known—and green, to boot, not brown. But this was no technological trick, no Malkuthian lens, like the one Alonie wore: this was a sign of the aether, of an intentional, controlled projection. Just like the Sidhe, the Captain Espinosa standing before them was an ideal, an image, a conscious form existing in a realm beyond the physical. Like a description in a book, the details were the same for everybody—the dark, wavy hair; tanned, olive skin; defined cheekbones and a thin frown—but everybody saw something different, something pulled from their own memories, their own expectations.

Katrina, oblivious to the artistry at work, just twisted her lips and asked, “Then where’s the ship?”

Ms Espinosa pointed to the far end of the Theatre’s grounds, where the initiates would usually engage in various open-air sports. “You will understand when you arrive,” she said.

Kat gave the briefest of nods and then she was off, pots clanking and buckles jingling as she jogged across the Theatre grounds like some vagrant merchant trying to catch up with her caravan. Emily wondered what she was expecting to happen once they reached Avalon. It was as if she had prepared for some long-term siege or crippling trek across the uncharted wilderness beyond the Seventh Wall, where monsters unknown stalked lands forgotten to the daily pulse of Theia’s tidal wrath. Such horrors seemed almost preferable to the truth.

Then, a short way across the Theatre football pitch, Kat vanished in a ripple of air.

When they reached the area in question, Byron reached out and poked an invisible field with curious finger. The world seemed to distort around it, as if he were disturbing a liquid suspended in the air. “What say you, Orpheus? You are always so eager to divulge your knowledge of Arcologian marvels.”

Dante traced his own fingertips along the edge of the barrier. “It’s a cloak,” he said. Then, with a furrow of his brow and a shrug of his shoulders, he stepped into the illusion.

Byron turned to Emily. “Where would we be without his observational genius?” he said, then followed after him.

Emily glanced over her shoulder and spied the peak of the Ritches Estate in the distance.

I’ll try not to do anything stupid, Leira.

With a heavy sigh, she stepped beyond the veil.

26: Y Ddraig Goch

Dante stepped forward and the world around him stretched out like rubber, then snapped with a silent pop. The field was still there, the surrounding trees, the morning sky, everything as it was and as it should be—except for one very large and very obvious difference.

When Rembrandt Payne’s message had mentioned a ship, Dante had pictured a one of those dull grey bullets with outstretched wings that shuttled goods around the seven circles of Malkuth. When he learned of Avalon, he wondered if the initiates might get to ride on a more elegant vessel, a sleek, silver cruiser with an underside that glistened with the rainbow glow of levitation. He had not, for one moment, imagined something so vast, so elaborate, that it would put all his expectations to shame.

Katrina was already taking photographs. He couldn’t blame her. His mother had told him stories of the great Seelie drakonics, of living ships with piercing eyes and armoured bodies who ferried heroes about the world, but he had assumed them exaggerations, figments of her vivid imagination, used to make her work seem more glamorous, more incredible than it really was.

And yet, if the beast before them was any indication, those stories were true. Hunched over the pitch on four muscular limbs, its blood-red body was the size of a house and its upswept, iridescent wings twice as high. A trail of golden scales, glistening in the morning sun, ran from the tip of its rigid tail to a crowned head, where unblinking, jade-green eyes peered from the shadows of an armoured mask. Living or not, it was a vessel of such incredible design it seemed implausible. A thing like that could not fly.

Technology, he thought, sufficiently advanced.

“She’s quite the beauty, isn’t she,” said a cheerful voice beside them. Dante had been so focused on the ship he had failed to spot the man in the charcoal suit standing there beside them. Rembrandt Payne raised a hand in greeting. “Her name’s Winnifred, though I’m sure she’ll introduce herself once you’re all on board.”

Byron, fumbling his pipe into a pocket before the Seelie chief could notice it, said, “I look forward to meeting her. She is under your charge, I presume?”

Chief Payne shook his head. “Not mine, no. She’s here on my personal request. I thought that, if you’re going to fly all that way, you may as well go in style.”

“How thoughtful,” said Byron.

Judging from the number of initiates gathered beneath the vessel’s golden chest, Phoenix Rogan’s paranoid concerns had fallen on deaf ears. While Katrina hurried over to join the Veritas chief and their closed circle of friends—which now included a knee-high automaton with eight spindly legs—and Byron moved to great Doyle Kennedy, Dante loitered. Besides the lethargic Lira Burn, only seven other Second Class initiates had failed to show up, most obvious among them Astrid Guirlande and her Sophist cronies, Elizabeth and Vesperia. Anticipating their last minute appearance, accompanied by a small platoon of Sophist peacekeepers and a scowling Director Guirlande, Dante readied his cloak for a quick escape.

Across the other side of the crowd, Joel Gibson caught his eye, then looked away with a pained grimace.

It was almost ten past six when Vincent Masters and Blake Osbourne staggered through the cloaking field, the al-Hakim brothers following like a pair of frustrated parents escorting their wayward children to school. While Master al-Hakim stopped to speak with Chief Payne, his younger brother shooed the straggling initiates towards their peers. Now the only ones missing, besides the Sophist girls and Lira Burn, were Ceres Mendoza and Korrie Wedekind, but they made a habit of late arrivals.

“I hope the rest of you had a good night’s sleep,” said Mr al-Hakim, as Vincent and Blake shuffled through the crowd, a stench of stale alcohol in their wake. “You’ve a long day ahead of you!”

“A long week,” said his brother. The tan suited giant looked down on his students with a frown. Gesturing a line in the grass with his wooden sword, he said, “Form a line here. Single file.”

No one, not even Vincent and Blake, dared disobey him. Dante found himself sandwiched between Emily, silently chewing on her lip, and Katrina. Ahead of them, Theseus Armstrong bent down to pet his spider-robot and whisper some reassurance into its audio receptor.

Master al-Hakim drew the initiates’ attention with a sharp cough. “Once you are aboard the ship, you will leave your luggage with me and head for the main cabin.”

His brother added, “We’re taking the scenic route, we won’t arrive until about nine o’clock. If any of you do need to catch up on any lost sleep, you can use the guest quarters once we’re in flight. I’m sure Winnifred will fill you in on the details. Now, since it looks like everyone is here…”

Ahead of them, the ship’s chest opened like a giant, golden trapdoor. Some of the initiates gasped, others gawped, Chris Shaw said “I knew that was coming” and Katrina whipped out her cellular to record a video. Dante, however, shivered, as if the crimson beast had housed all the winds of winter in its chest and released them in one long sigh.

Six years ago, another such beast, much smaller but just as advanced, had taken his mother away.

The opening led into a small lobby, where Master al-Hakim waited for the initiates to dump their luggage before they disappeared into the ship. While waiting for Katrina to unbuckle her various bags and satchels, Dante took scope of his surroundings. Unlike its menacing exterior, the ship’s insides were all light marble walls and pastel lighting, with curved stairways and velvet carpets that reminded him of the nearby Theatre. At the centre of the lobby, a three-dimensional projection mapped out the ship’s various facilities, from the passenger cabin in its neck to the guest quarters that ran along its abdomen and the recreational lounge where it stomach might be. There was even a small park sprawled across the beast’s back. Finally, at the far end of the ship, lodged between the guest quarters and the engine room, was a bulbous structure labelled ‘Central Matrix’.

A poke in the back reminded Dante that it was his turn to offload his things. Feeling a sudden rush of blood to his cheeks, he dropped his bag onto the pile and hurried after Katrina. As he reached the passenger cabin, a Seelie officer in a crimson-and-gold uniform greeted him with a warm smile. She looked little older than Theseus and, judging from the brooch on her lapel, was a junior lieutenant. Dante shuffled past her.

The cabin was a cylindrical room as long as the ship’s neck and almost as wide. Groups of seats, arranged around hexagonal tables, ran along either side, where long windows, invisible from the outside, looked out across the Theatre grounds. Pulling his cloak around him, Dante skulked to the far end of the cabin and found a seat by himself.

The table, it transpired, wasn’t just shaped like a cellular, but acted as one, too. Dante was browsing the ship’s menu, hoping to find a covert coffee he could order behind Katrina’s back, when someone slipped into the seat opposite him.

“I guess we could have worse company,” grumbled Alonie Kent. With a tight frown, Shelley Eoghan sat down beside her, a sweep of dark hair falling over her eye.

Alonie leaned over to study the menu. “Can’t say I was expecting something as fancy as this,” she said. “You?” Her red eye darted up to fix on Dante. He shrugged. “Heard they’re sending us to some Seelie place down south that’s supposed to be all Third Terrace and stuff,” she added. “That’s what you said, right, Shell?”

Shelley mumbled an almost-inaudible “Yeah.”

Alonie managed a hint of a smile. “Looks like we’ll finally see if it lives up to the hype, huh, Orpheus?”

“Guess so,” said Dante. The coffee selection was already overwhelming enough—mocha, espresso, Irish and Turkish, Ketherian Black and Tiferetian Silk, he had never realised so many existed. For him, coffee had always been a spoonful of brown powder and some boiling water.

“Don’t get too excited.” It was Chris Shaw. “The reality never lives up to the fantasy.” With a flick of his feathery hair, he took a seat next to Dante. Lance Algar, as always, was one step behind him.

“Hey, ladies!” he said with a grin. Alonie replied with a scowl.

“Is that why you live out here in the sticks?” she asked the Malkuthian.

Chris navigated his own menu with practised precision. “I’ve little choice in the matter,” he replied, “but rather here than there. Say, would you fancy something to eat? They’ve quite the selection. Cake, perhaps?”

Alonie sat back and crossed her arms. “Not at this time in the morning,” she said.

“Dude, I’ll have some cake!” said Lance. “It’s always time for cake in my world!”

The image of a plain white cake appeared on the tabletop screen. As Chris manipulated various options, it started to change, first in colour, then shape and size. “Is chocolate okay with everyone?” he asked. “I can adjust the sugar and calorie content, if that’s an issue?”

Alonie rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, dude,” said Lance, “I gotta watch the cals!”

“I figured,” said Chris. “How about some extra protein?”

“You don’t get protein in a chocolate cake!”

Chris grinned and tapped in the rest of his order. He knew, as Dante did, that the cake could be anything he wanted it to be. That was the miracle of ambrosia.

Alonie’s scowl deepened as the centre of the table opened up and a cake, dripping with a tantalising chocolate cream, rose from unseen depths. A salivating Lance divided it into five equal portions and wolfed down his own in two bites.

“What’s wrong?” asked Chris, as the girls stared at their own share. “A moment ago you wondered if modern technology lived up to its reputation. Well, now’s your chance to find out.” He picked up a slice and took a bite. “See, it’s perfectly safe.”

Alonie grumbled something, then swiped a finger of cream and tested it with the tip of her tongue. Noticing Chris watching her, as an artist might study the subject of a painting, she swallowed the rest then turned away, shielding her reaction with a sweep of neon-red hair.

Dante claimed his own portion but stopped short of taking a bite. The Tablet claimed ambrosian replications could fool even the greatest culinary masters, but what if Dante wasn’t fooled? What if his superior senses detected a minute flaw that others would miss? If the illusion were just a clever lie?

From elsewhere in the cabin, he heard Doyle cheer as the ship supplied him with a pint of ale and a hamburger.

Dante took the slightest bite of the cake, just enough to chew.

“What do you think?” asked Chris.

Dante swallowed, then took another, larger bite. The sponge had a soft, spongy texture and rich taste, while the cream melted in his mouth with just the right amount of sweetness. If he wanted, he could have eaten a dozen more slices and, unlike the ‘real’ thing, he knew it wouldn’t make his stomach churn with regret half an hour later. It was, in effect, perfect, and yet…

He ate the rest without comment. No, it was perfect. It was precisely what Chris had ordered and, despite appearances, despite everything his tongue told him, it wasn’t saturated with the sugars or fats of an ordinary, homemade cake. He could live off nothing else and still lead a long, healthy life. That was the wonder—the miracle—of ambrosia. Of the Cities. Of technology, sufficiently advanced.

It was getting on for half six when the al-Hakim brothers joined the initiates, alongside Ms Espinosa and Ms Thorbjorn. While her fellow officers claimed a table at the far end of the cabin, Ms Thorbjorn called for her students’ attention. Though a soft-spoken woman in private, she knew how to address a room and everyone stopped their gossiping to listen.

“We would like to thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said, surveying the initiates with pale blue eyes. With long curls of dark brown hair and a light tan, she had changed little from Dante’s childhood memories, save for the design of her Seelie brooch, which now marked her as a commander. “You have all faced some difficult trials this past week,” she continued, “so we hope you will enjoy this opportunity to relax before the summer term begins.”

There was a murmur from the Veritas table before Phoenix Rogan raised her hand and asked, on no uncertain terms, if that implied none of them would be graduating to the Academy. Ms Thorbjorn replied with a reassuring smile.

“I know things have been a little strange of late,” she said, “but yes, you will still be Second Class initiates when you get back.”

Lounging in his seat, Sohrabarak al-Hakim added, “Just think of this as an opportunity to take advantage of Seelie’s gracious hospitality.”

“Gracious indeed,” Ms Thorbjorn replied, before explaining how, as initiates, they would receive full access to Seelie’s local amenities, including sports and entertainment facilities and unlimited vendor use. “I would caution against wandering outside Seelie territory, though,” she added. “It can be somewhat overwhelming. But, if you keep your wits about you and don’t go looking for trouble, then I am sure the week will just fly by.”

“Leave the trouble for us,” added Mr al-Hakim with a sly smile. “You kids are the lucky ones here. We’ve got work to do.”

“Yes, I’m afraid you’ll have to have fun without us,” said Ms Thorbjorn. “Now, before we depart, there’s somebody I’d like you to—”

Before she could finish, a pair of breathless figures stumbled into the cabin. Ceres Mendoza mopped her forehead with her arm and laughed. “Sorry we’re late,” she said, flashing a toothy smile. She was still carrying several bags, which she dumped into a spare seat at Hermia Adelheid’s table before collapsing into another. Korrie Wedekind, babbling a string of hurried apologies, settled next to her.

“If we weren’t expecting you, we would have left already,” said Ms Thorbjorn. “Now, as I was saying, there is somebody I would like you to meet.”

She stepped aside and, in her place, a young woman appeared from a swirl of sparkling starlight. She had a long mane of crimson hair, braided with gold, that seemed to sway with a life of its own, and eyes of jade-green fire. “Hello, Seelie initiates,” she said. “I am your captain, Winnifred Ddraig Goch Eurwen.”

Her name sounded strange, foreign, ancient, and yet, despite that, Dante knew its form without question. He figured he must have heard it before somewhere, maybe in one of his mother’s many stories.

“But you can call me Fred,” she added. “I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you aboard, well, me, and to let you know that my facilities are at your disposal. Should you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. My crew will be happy to assist you and, once we’re in flight, I will be too. We’ll be taking it slow, so please make the most of it!”

After informing them of flight preparations and asking them to remain seated until ‘she’ reached cruising speed, Winnifred Ddraig Goch Eurwen vanished as suddenly as she appeared.

Lance Algar, bronze cheeks flushed red, leaned over to Chris. “Dude, you didn’t tell me they had fairies on this thing!”

Across the table, Alonie’s eye scrunched up in disbelief. “Shaw, I think you’ve got to break the truth to Randy Man here.”

“What truth?”

Alonie raised an eyebrow. “Eh, that what we just saw was a hologram, not a fairy?”

“Well, we don’t know that for sure now, do we?”

Alonie’s eye narrowed to a slit. “Stop taking the piss, Shaw. Of course she was a hologram! What else could she be?”

“Well, as Lance just suggested, she could be what some people refer to as a fairy, although I prefer the more accurate term ‘autonomous suprapsychic entity’ myself. It’s best not to make any conclusive judgements until you have sufficient evidence to support them.”

Alonie fell back into her seat and groaned. “Great. Just great. You hear that, Orpheus? Even the damned Malkuthians around here are crazy.”

Dante kept quiet. In truth, he wanted to pretend the whole conversation wasn’t happening. It was easier that way.

“I can assure you that I’m far from crazy,” replied Chris. “If you like, I could provide you with numerous articles of scientific documentation into suprapsychic phenomena, some dating back hundreds of years.”

“Yeah, Christof knows his stuff,” added Lance.

Alonie waved a dismissive hand. “Save it. I ain’t got time for that crap. Say, Shell, you think they have any decent films around here?”

Shelley might have mumbled something, but it was impossible for even Dante, with his mother’s hearing, to make out. Whatever it was, Alonie took it as an affirmative and started gesturing her way around the tabletop cellular. Soon enough, she was laughing at some dumb, simplistic animation about anthropomorphic animals hitting each other with oversized weapons.

“Well then,” said Chris, producing a small package from his coat pocket. “Would the rest of you care for a game of cards?”

~*~

Doyle Kennedy hoisted his synthesised ale aloft as if it were a trophy. “Awh man, this is the life,” he said, crystal-blue eyes aglow as they admired the miraculous illusion in front of them. Emily waited for him to take a sip and realise the replicated pretender could never hold up to the real thing.

Instead, he smacked his lips with a satisfied smirk and grabbed his hamburger. “Ron, man, you should be giving this a try,” he said through a mouthful of synthetic mush. “It’s well better than Sarry’s!”

Byron, slouched against the window, waved the offer away. “I am well versed in what the Cities pass off as food,” he said. “Personally, I prefer my nourishment natural. It is the flaws that give a thing its character. Perfection is homogenisation, and homogenisation is the bane of the soul.”

“Eh, right,” said Doyle. “Well, your loss!” He turned to Joel, slumped in the chair next to him. “Gibbo?”

On any other day, Joel would have mocked Byron for his overwrought dramatics and ordered a beer and burger of his own, but today he was an unmoving spectre of a man, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes heavy with fatigue. Next to him, Kaori kept a firm and very visible grip on his hand. She eyed Doyle’s offer with a quiet malice.

“Nah, mate,” said Joel, his voice hoarse. “Too early for a brew.”

“Too early? Awh, man, you guys are getting lame in your old age.” He washed down a mouthful of food with his ale. “I were out longer than both of you, and you don’t see me moping about.”

Inside, Emily grimaced. The truth always came to light eventually.

“Out?” Kaori knew how to thread a note of viciousness into her question without breaking her forced smile. “Out where?”

Joel’s face lost what little colour it had. His eyes flicked to Byron in hope of salvation, but the poet replied by pulling his hat down over his face. “We, eh, we had like, a get together, didn’t we Doyle? Like, at my place, remember? A get together.”

Doyle scrunched his face up in confusion, then forced a laugh when the subtext behind Joel’s words sunk in. “Oh, eh, yeah! We had a get together at Gibbo’s. We had a jamming session, yeah. Right, Ron?”

Byron didn’t answer.

“A jamming session?” said Kaori, stroking the back of Joel’s hand with her gloved fingers. “I’m sure that really cheered Orpheus up.”

“Nah, man,” Doyle was leaning on the table now, a half-grin of confidence in his fabrication, “he were too busy with Arachne du Sade. They were, like…”

Poor Doyle, his mouth was too fast for his thoughts.

“So I heard,” said Kaori. “I also heard that Arachne du Sade violently assaulted my boyfriend in a very sensitive area. Do you know why that might be, Doyle? Joel says the memory is so traumatic that he forgot what happened. Of course, if I were to learn he invited some wanton harlot like her to his place, a knee to the groin would be the least of his worries…”

Joel’s face broke under the pressure, splitting with a nicotine-stained grin of nervous laughter. “I—it weren’t anything like that,” he said. “It’s just, like, you know, what you said about trying to cheer Dant up, yeah? I figured he needed, you know, like, something to take his mind off things. So I, eh, I introduced him to Arachne…” his smiled faltered and his words faded to a mumbled whisper of “attheworldsend”.

Kaori continued to stroke his hand. “What was that, darling? It almost sounded like you said you took Orpheus to the World’s End, but that would be a really very silly idea, now, wouldn’t it?”

Joel was lucky that the Theatre staff arrived when he did. As Azhara’d al-Hakim and his younger brother passed by, Kaori even flashed them a cheerful smile. The last thing the daughter of a Seelie empath wanted to do was lose her temper in public.

After a reassuring speech from Ms Thorbjorn—designed, no doubt, to calm any concerns of approaching war—and an unsurprising interruption from the perennially late Ceres Mendoza and Korrie Wedekind, the ship’s captain made her appearance.

Emily had suspected, the moment she stepped through the cloaking field, that the cruiser was more than it appeared. The souls of machines, even those with rudimentary awareness, did not radiate the fire that defined others, yet the moment that beast’s eye had settled on Emily she sensed its acknowledgement, the blazing warmth of its sapient soul.

She appeared now in a show of aethereal fireworks that most would excuse as a holographic light-show, but Emily knew better. This woman, this Winnifred Ddraig Goch Eurwen, was the ship itself, taking human form to address its passengers.

Emily had lived underground long enough to hear the stories of manifest entities and ensoulled monstrosities, of ghosts and spirits and spectres who, through ritual and sacrifice, religion and science, took for themselves physical forms, bodies to anchor them and nourish them, to give them power and influence over matter and over people, power to reshape the world and the aether in turn. Such power, however, did not come without a price and, from Emily’s experience, that price was rarely a pleasant one.

Watching the red-haired Winnifred enthuse about sharing her ‘facilities’, as if she were hosting a party in her apartment, rather than her own body, she wondered what price Seelie had paid. Were she not a Maiden and so in full control of her body at all times, she would have stumbled out of the cabin and retched the breakfast from her stomach.

“Man, she were a bit of alright,” said Doyle, as the ship’s manifest soul vanished in a whirl of starlight. “Might have to ask for her assistance later, if you know what I mean.”

Joel managed the slightest of grins before Kaori’s glare put him back in his place, while Byron, still hiding beneath his hat, said nothing. As Doyle’s eyes, wandering for acknowledgement, fell on her, Emily forced a smile.

“Always with the charms,” she said. Blushing, Doyle gulped back on his ale.

A few minutes later, the ship began to rise. If it wasn’t for the view, Emily would have thought them still resting on the Theatre field. Opposite her, Kaori tugged at one of her pendants.

“Flying makes me uncomfortable,” she said. “I don’t like moving when I can’t feel myself moving.” She leaned in close, lowered her voice to a whisper, “I wish they would teach us how to overcome these things. None of us will ever make the Academy at this rate.”

“I doubt the Sophists would be too impressed if Seelie taught us how to jump around town like legendary heroes,” said Emily. She noted a twitch of a smile on Joel’s face, but the ginger guitarist remained silent, knowing well what the slightest slip-up might cost him. “Maybe that’s what this holiday is all about—getting us away from them so Seelie can teach us all a little suspension of disbelief.”

Kaori sat back, still teasing her pendant. “Let us hope so.”

Outside, the morning sun caught a shimmer of swampland to the north as the ship continued to rise. Beyond it, barely a shadow of a line above the horizon, rose the Seventh Wall, the giant structure that marked the end of Malkuth’s expansion and protected its lands from the violent sea beyond. On the opposite side of the cabin, to the south, Malkuth itself stood unchanging, a lonely mountain watching over the country it spared from chaos.

But at what price?

Once the vessel reached cruising speed, which John Smith estimated at a ‘low’ sixty miles-per-hour, Kaori wasted no time in dragging Joel from his seat and marching him away. Doyle gave Emily the I’m-glad-I’m-not-in-his-shoes look, and she agreed. Byron, meanwhile, had started to snore, so Lysander Goodfellow thought it an excellent opportunity to steal his hat. A ripple of laugher spread through the cabin.

If only they knew what was really going on. If only they knew the price.

Doyle downed his last drop of ale and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “So,” he said, “you wanna check this thing out?”

Emily teased a strand of hair. “I guess I’ve not got anything better to do.” Nothing she wanted to do, at any rate. Were Prince Freyr here, he would be whispering in her ear and urging her to sneak Doyle into one of the private rooms, to start her mission with something—someone—easy. Mark one of twenty-eight.

She needed to find an alternative, and fast.

27: Nothing But Blue Skies

While the other initiates indulged themselves in the ship’s vacuous facilities, Dante retreated to a private room. It wasn’t much bigger than his apartment’s kitchen, with a pull-down bed on one wall and a desk and chair opposite. Its single, oval window looked out towards Malkuth. Noticing a small vendor in the corner, Dante decided to order himself a coffee. Katrina would shake her head in disapproval, but she was too busy with her friends to care.

Once the vendor produced his order—a steaming mug of Ketherian Black—he moved over to the window. Outside, the ship’s portside wing formed a glistening canopy of colours as legions of sufficiently advanced machines worked to counteract the forces of gravity and keep the giant vessel aloft. If this was the technology of today, he thought, then the technology of the future would have no problem circumventing Theia’s fall. So long as the Cities stood tall, there was nothing to worry about. The world was in safe hands.

He took a sip of his coffee. It had a thick, bitter taste, stronger than what he was used to. As he waited for the caffeine to kick in, he traced the path of Malkuth’s expansion, laid out below him in a map of greens and browns, rivers, roads and walls. The Fifth Circle he called home, with its schizophrenic collection of forests, towns and ruins; the Fourth, untamed and untouched, where life could bloom free of human interference; beyond that, the Third, a tapestry of farmland producing enough food to feed a continent; and, finally, a distant blur on the horizon, the Second Circle, the Malkuthian suburbs, the city beyond the City where hundreds of thousands jostled for a place inside the great mountain fortress.

Halfway through his coffee, Dante realised that the caffeine rush wasn’t coming. Returning to the vendor, he recalled his order and studied the list of ingredients. Ambrosia was just a base substance, after all, a could-be liquid, could-be solid canvas that drew its colour from a wide gamut of consumable chemicals. Caffeine should have been one of them.

It wasn’t. Dante delved deeper into the vendor menus for confirmation, right down into the index of basic building blocks, but there was no sign of the drug he needed to keep his mind focused and awake. Nor were there any signs of the sedatives he used to suppress dreams or ill trains of thought. Anything mind-altering, anything that could be deemed ‘unhealthy’ was nowhere to be found.

He paced back over to the window. They had only given him an illusion of choice. With a disgruntled scowl, he drank the last of his coffee and ordered some cereal bars.

It was only a Seelie ship, he told himself. Avalon would be different.

He reached into his cloak pocket and pulled out the Tablet. Somewhere in that endless tome of knowledge there would be something to reassure him, something to confirm Seelie was just abusing the technologies gifted them, limiting their use to control others, spinning lies to make sure their children behaved…

He looked up at the City, unchanging as the world fled by beneath his feet. Even if he commandeered the ship and spurred it towards the distant arcology, he would never reach its summit. He didn’t have the karma. He didn’t have any karma at all.

The stainless white Tablet looked up at him, waiting.

~*~

Emily glanced at Malkuth and hid a scowl behind her glass of water. At least, she thought, the ship had some natural supplies. Opposite her, Doyle sipped at his second pint of the day.

“It’s a good thing they don’t replicate the actual alcohol,” she said with a half smirk.

Doyle spluttered into the ale’s frothy head. “You what? But I can proper taste it!”

She smiled. “Good imitation, huh?”

Doyle wasn’t the only one fooled. Vincent Masters and Blake Osbourne had just ordered half a dozen shots of vodka from the nearby bar, while Oscar Whittlesey was sitting down to a greasy breakfast of sizzling sausages caked in eggs and bacon. Emily shared a knowing look with Hermia Adelheid, sitting across the other side of the ship’s compact, but cosy cafeteria. She had earned some chortled mockery from Vincent and Blake for ordering a simple glass of water, the same as Emily.

Doyle studied his own glass with a furrowed brow. “Why would anyone serve alcohol without the actual alcohol? Next you’ll be telling me that hamburger was tofu.”

“Close enough.”

“Maaan.” Doyle slouched back in his chair and rubbed his stomach. “Bloody synthetic crap. I could proper murder a bacon bush right about now. How’d you stick living in that place?”

“I don’t remember much,” Emily lied. “My parents said it was hell, though.”

“I bet! Do they even have alcohol? Man, no wonder hawks are so straight.”

Emily sipped her water. Alonie called herself a hawk. They considered themselves the polar opposite of ravens, believing that, if they denied their vices, if they refused to drown their blood in drugs and kept their bodies locked behind a titanium wall of chastity, they would earn the right—the karma—to enter Malkuth. Had Dante not spent his life shut away in his room, had he the confidence to go out and meet other people, he might have joined their little cult. In a strange, ironic way, it might have been better if he had. At least that way he would have avoided the World’s End.

“Still,” Doyle lifted his pint as if in toast, “a drink’s a drink, right? At least we ain’t shut off in some bloody computer simulation. Man, I don’t see the point in that crap.”

Emily watched the sky’s reflection dancing in her glass. Across the other side of the ship, her sister was sealed in a simulator identical to those in the Theatre's basement. Verraden Sepulturero’s insidious influence ran deep—and now it was rubbing off on Shelley, too. To think, if Joel Gibson’s gluttonous hormones hadn’t gotten involved, the Daughters of Ernmas would still be a team. Instead, Shelley had shut herself inside a fabricated reality with Emily’s indoctrinated twin sister and Kaori was off disciplining that wayward, wanton whore she called a boyfriend in the naïve belief she would be the one to settle him down.

And Prince Freyr wanted Emily to wade into this drama, this complex web of lust and rivalry, of bridges burning and bonds breaking, irregardless of the consequences. The world that followed, the lies and the deceptions, the suggestions planted and hearts manipulated, all of it would be as fake as the worlds Alonie and Shelley now prowled, as fake as the blue-haired, bronze-skinned young woman she saw in the mirror. There would be nothing left of Emily’s friends but an illusion, and none of them, not even Emily herself, would ever realise.

Doyle, sitting there sipping his pint, had no idea what was really going on. His years in the militia had taught him not to question his superiors. If Seelie told him this was a holiday, then that was what he would believe.

But even a simple man had his secrets. The trick was to know where to look for them, to spot the subconscious signs, the cracks in the confident persona he projected for the public eye. It was in the way he groomed, the meticulous curls of golden hair, the trimmed beard. It was in the clothes he wore, always a size too small to accentuate his muscles. It was in his fingernails, irregular—sometimes even bloody—stumps he tried to hide behind splatters of black varnish.

He caught Emily watching him and, blushing, tried to distract himself with the view outside. “Awh, man, I—I think I just saw a couple of minotaurs duking it out down there!”

How easy it would have been to throw out some excruciating line like “You wanna go duke it out with me?”, to reach out and clasp his hand and thread his fantasies into a single, irresistible spell. Ten minutes alone, and all his dreams would be hers.

She placed her fingertips on the back of his hand. This was the moment, this was when her world came crashing down. All she had to do was smile.

Several tables away, Vincent Masters glowered over a shot glass. Two tables to his right, Oscar Whittlesey sat with half a sausage hanging out of his mouth. Behind them, Hermia Adelheid and Horatio Stark had fallen silent.

Reality resumed with a crash of chairs as Doyle stood up and downed the last of his pint. “I’m, eh, I’m gonna be finding Ron. He should be awake by now, right? Yeah. Right.”

He left her there, sitting alone by the window. If ever she needed Prince Freyr to swoop in and cast his illusions, it was now.

Outside, the world passed by. Or, at least, the illusion of a world.

~*~

Dante stepped out into the sunlight. The ship’s deck stretched from its shoulder blades down to the small of its back, with little to protect it from the blue skies beyond besides a waist-high railing, which Korrie Wedekind had decided made for excellent seating, despite the numerous benches scattered about the small park.

The other initiates were not so eager to risk their lives. John Smith was hunched over a trio of linked cellulars and projected screens, streams of light buzzing across his turquoise visor while, next to him, Theseus Armstrong tinkered with his arachnid companion and Amanda Hartell wove daisies into a chain. Meanwhile, Lysander Goodfellow, still wearing Byron’s hat, was plucking small shapes from a pouch and hurling them in Malkuth’s general direction. Master al-Hakim, standing in the nearby shadows with his hand on the hilt of his wooden sword, did not care to stop him.

Keeping his distance, Dante made for the far end of the deck, where Katrina was busy adjusting the lens on her Old World camera.

“Why didn’t I bring my development materials, Kit?” she asked her automatous cat. “This might be the only means we have to prove none of this is real, but I won’t know for sure until we’re back home!”

As she got to work, snapping a few frames before adjusting her camera, moving to another position, and then snapping some more, Dante leant on the railing and traced the path of the ship’s vapour trail east. Even with his visor’s enhancements, Torsten was little more than a speck sitting on the edge of Torhout Forest, itself but a jutting peninsula of a greater ocean that stretched into the eastern haze. His visor could at least pick out the boundaries between the various Circles. They had just crossed over into the Seventh, which marked the limit of Malkuth’s expansion. At its end stood the Seventh Wall, one of the greatest triumphs of human engineering, and a testament to the Cities’ sufficiently advanced engineering.

He was calculating how long they had to go until the green and gold lands of Malkuth gave way to the cracked grey Malebolge when Emily’s voice called across the deck. For all of a moment, he froze, thinking she might have seen through his cloak, but then she addressed Katrina and asked her how photography was going.

“I won’t know until they’re developed,” a sullen Kat replied.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to use your cell?” asked Emily.

“Cells are fine if you want a quick shot or a video, but they’re rubbish at details.” Kat had explained as much to Dante countless times. “You know, like that old saying ‘one who knows seven trades is a master of none’? Besides,” she moved over to the railing, held the camera out as far as her arms would allow, then clicked three times in quick succession, “unlike a cell, no one else can tell this thing what to see.”

Emily moved into the space between Kat and Dante, putting her within nudging distance of his cloak. “So, you figured it out too, huh?”

“It’s not exactly subtle. Well, if you know what to look for.”

Dante shifted to his left slightly, just enough to put a safe distance between his cloak and Emily. At a distance, its invisibility effect was near flawless but, up close, the seams were obvious—if you knew what to look for.

Much to his relief, Emily did not. “I figured that, if they could hide the ship from the outside world, they could hide the outside world from the ship,” she said, brushing a stray feather of hair from her eyes. “What tipped you off?”

“You not noticed anything missing?” asked Kat.

“The clouds?” said Emily. Save for the sun, it was clear blue skies as far as the eye could see.

Kat clicked the cover over the lens of her camera. “More obvious than that.”

Emily’s gaze wandered the lands below, moved to Malkuth in the southeast, then east, to the horizon, to the clear, blue sky.

“Ah. Aaah.”

Theia was gone. Vanished beyond sight. Where there should have been a demon’s frown, fleeing from the sun, there was nothing but an endless blue. Dante’s heart beat so fast, he was afraid the sound might give his presence away.

“Guess I didn’t miss it much,” said Emily. Reaching into her hair, she pulled out a small clip. “Want to try an experiment?”

Kat nodded and took her cellular in hand. “One thing this has over the classics is a replay function,” she said with a grin.

Once she was ready, Emily flicked her hair clip over the side of the deck. Dante followed it with his visor as it spun through the air, a helpless victim of unbreakable laws, then, for the slightest of moments, slowed, before vanishing from sight.

Dante replayed the moment to confirm what he saw, as did Katrina.

“I’d say that was irrefutable proof,” said Emily.

~*~

Emily watched the footage of her hair clip hitting an invisible wall, then vanishing into the blue sky beyond. “I’d say that was irrefutable proof,” she said. The sort of proof Dante could not deny.

Kat slipped her cellular back into her pocket. “The question now is, why?” she asked. “I can understand them cloaking the ship to hide it from the Sophists, but why would they lie to us about the outside world?”

“Maybe we should ask?” said Emily.

A group of initiates had just emerged from the ship, Sohrabarak al-Hakim close behind them. While Hermia Adelheid made loud protests over Korrie Wedekind’s reckless balancing over the edge of the deck, and Phoenix Rogan thought to interrupt John Smith’s study with her excitable babbling, the dashing archaeologist hurried their peers over to the starboard railing.

“You see?” he said. “I told you it was quite the view.”

Curving around to the north, reddish-gold in the morning sun, was the Seventh Wall, now but moments away. Even as high as they were, the man-made mountain range was an awe-inspiring, if nauseating sight. Standing almost a kilometre in height, it dwarfed everything bar the City itself.

Kat already had her camera at hand. “Just a shame it’s not the real thing,” she said under her breath, before joining her friends. Emily, content with her view, remained where she was.

Beside her, Dante watched the wall trail off to the south.

“As we get closer, you will see that the Seventh Wall is more than just a single structure,” explained Mr al-Hakim, as he paced behind the line of watching initiates. “Although difficult to date, we believe the earliest of these at least five-hundred years old.”

Emily craned her neck over the railing to get a better look. From a distance, the Seventh Wall appeared a single, ominous barrier but up close it was, as Mr al-Hakim said, made of multiple layers. The outermost was a shallow curve, short in height but long, and covered in dirt and debris. Each layer beyond that grew steeper, taller, until they fused into one almighty monolith as deep as it was tall. Emily noticed buildings atop its surface, openings and canals, canyons and reservoirs. The Seventh Wall wasn’t just holding back the ocean—it harnessed it, too.

So it came as something of a surprise when the Great Cliff gave way not to surging tides, to tsunami and tsukinami with power enough to end civilisation, but to a gentle blue expanse shimmering with sunlight. Gone was the hellish Malebolge of late-night stories, riddled with the rubble of ages past, its desolate wasteland inhospitable to all but the most indescribable of beasts. Instead, there was only calm. Only the lie. The innocent, blue lie.

Others had noticed it too, of course. The way Phoenix Rogan was flaunting the truth, anyone would have thought she alone had discovered it, while John Smith, attention still locked to his various screens, was cheerfully pointing out the mathematics involved and how the tides wouldn’t be in for another two hours.

Behind the gossiping initiates, Sohrabarak al-Hakim grinned. Emily wondered if this was the reason he brought them outside. Catching her eye, he started towards her.

“I imagine you figured it out a while back,” he said. His smile gleamed white against his dark skin as threads of thick, black hair danced around his face. He was a slight man compared to his brother, but no less powerful. While the older al-Hakim found his strength in muscle, in discipline and focus, Sohrabarak had charm and wit and cunning. His weathered trenchcoat flapped in the breeze as he stepped up to the railing and cast his eyes across the Malkuthian panorama diminishing into the distance.

“Why would you want to hide the truth?” asked Emily. For once, she had a chance for some straight, honest answers.

“It’s as my dear brother always says: there’s no better training than real life!”

Emily lent on the railing next to him. Dante was still there, an arm’s length away, as silent and unmoving as Mr al-Hakim’s older brother. “Is that what yesterday was all about?” she asked. “All that throwing us into the forest and the catacombs and the Scar?”

Mr al-Hakim smirked. “I can’t say I was expecting something so … blunt. I am used to more subtle methods in your training. Perhaps a little too subtle, I might add, but you can never be too careful with that accursed Aristocracy breathing down your neck.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine they’ll be too happy with you when we get back.”

“I’m willing to believe that, by the time we get back, they will have”—he grimaced—“resolved those issues.”

No doubt a certain emerald-eyed prince would assist them in that. Emily brushed the hair from her face and steeled herself for her next question. It was a rather forward—perhaps even dangerous—one, but Sohrabarak al-Hakim was an archaeologist, a truth-seeker, a man who valued facts over duty, and here, away from the prying eyes of the Sophists, he had no reason to deceive her. “Do you know who they were after that night?” she asked.

“I’m afraid I was elsewhere at the time,” he replied. “I only joined this merry little band of ne’er-do-wells a few years back. After that incident with the Donara, Rembrandt Payne thought it might be easier to creatively disobey orders with people like me around.” He flashed another smile. “What do you think happened?”

“The Sophists invaded the forest in search of Branded,” she replied. It was what she had told Rembrandt Payne and, even if she did trust Mr al-Hakim more than most, she didn’t want to mention Pleiades or her mother—or, indeed, Dante’s. The mere mention of the word ‘Branded’ was enough to make his invisible form tremble. “They want to eliminate it, don’t they? They call it ‘Agnoia’, right?”

“So they say, but who knows what they’re really after? Some want to eliminate it; others would rather learn to control it.”

He was, like Emily, being careful not to mention the Erebus by name. He knew, as well as she did, that Dante was there with them, listening to every word. One slip and they risked him fleeing into another illusion, another world of denial. They had to be—

“You mean the Erebus, right?” It was Katrina, wide-eyed, oblivious. “That foggy stuff inside the Scar? What is it, anyway? Phoe says it’s some kind of ancient cult, or something? Like, the ghosts of its members.” She ruffled her unruly hair. Beside them, Dante remained frozen in place, a cold, unreadable statue that made Azhara’d al-Hakim look like Lance Algar.

The younger brother replied with a friendly laugh. “You could say something like that,” he said. “It is a lot of things to a lot of different people. It can be ignorance and it can be knowledge. It can be strength and it can be weakness, it can be darkness and it can be light. All we know for certain, however—and we do not know very much about it at all, I am afraid to admit—is that it is all of these things and it is despair. It is a fear of the future and a rejection of the world. Those who embrace it have given up on life, but they have no desire to see death, either, so they escape to a place where neither has meaning. The Scar is just a symptom. It is a—I guess you could say it is a bandage that prevents the infection from spreading, yes?”

He was drawing a small crowd now, mainly the Veritas team but also Lysander and Angelo, and Hermia, Korrie and Ceres. Even if Dante wanted to escape, it would have been difficult without brushing up against somebody, revealing his presence. Emily wanted to reach out and take his hand, to reassure him that she shared his anxieties, that she was just as trapped, felt just as exposed before the growing crowd.

“It’s because of Theia, isn’t it?” asked Andromeda Blumstein. “It’s because of what happened sixteen years ago.”

“Ah, you mean the great Battle of the Twelve Pillars, yes? The final battle between Seelie and the Apostles? I assume your siblings have mentioned it?” Andromeda nodded. “Then yes, that was certainly an influence.”

“That the night Theia went all crazy?” asked Theseus Armstrong. “That really messed my old man up.”

“Yes,” said Phoenix, “it had quite an effect on people, though I do wonder how exaggerated their accounts of that night are. You saw it yourself, Commander, yes?”

Sohrabarak al-Hakim turned his back to his students and looked up at the naked blue sky. “For me, it was not night but a day as fine as this one,” he said. “Theia sat upon the horizon but a thumbnail in size. We did not question her cycles then as we do now. We had heard the stories, of course, the tales of the Great Cataclysm and the floods that wiped out all but a fraction of humanity, but we did not care for history.” He glanced over his shoulder to add, “I was about fifteen at the time, you understand. History did not concern me. I was a soldier, a warrior prince warring against the savages determined to bring down the ruins of Tiferet upon our heads. It did not matter to me whether the world was once great, only that I could be, and I would be.”

For a moment, Emily saw the regality in his dark eyes, the reflection of a lost kingdom trying to rise from the ashes of a fallen City, of lands wracked by civil wars and cruel politics, death and violence and fear a world away from the privileged ranks of Seelie, with their gemstone brooches and their dragon-ships and their aethereal Queens.

“And then—and I will save you the details—we saw it happen. We saw the Moon tremble, as if some vast hand had reached out and grasped her in its claws, and we saw her fall.”

His audience stood enraptured by the tale of a time few of them had been alive to see. They had all heard the stories, of course, the whispers, even the mutterings of madness, pleading with Theia to complete its descent, but hearing it from somebody they had all come to respect, from a man who did not hide the truth behind a lie, or distort it to suit his own agenda, gave it a solid grounding, a reality none of them could deny.

Not even Dante.

Dante, who was nowhere to be seen, not even as a phantom.

~*~

Dante watched the view from the cabin window as the blue sky cracked and fractured, splitting in an instant to a grey panorama of storm clouds churning over a bleak and sodden wilderness. Opposite him, Alonie Kent raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Is this it?” she asked.

Below them, clusters of turrets and towers rose into view, storeyed ziggurats capped with lush jungle gardens, and Dante spied people in the streets, many of them in uniform and all with a single glimmer of light pinned to their chest. Then the cruiser furled its iridescent wings and surrendered its body to some unseen hand, reaching out to guide its descent. Outside, a group of bright-eyed and vibrant-haired youths had gathered to watch its arrival. In the blink of an eye, the ship’s holographic avatar was among them.

Alonie turned to Lance, raised an accusatory finger. “Don’t even think it, Algar.”

Just in time, the ship passed into darkness.

28: An Illusion of Paradise

Dante sat at the back of the shuttle carriage, watching the trail of lights map out their journey on a nearby wallscreen. Contrary to initial assumptions, their ship had not arrived in Avalon, but at a Seelie outpost on the island of Dartmoor. Avalon was located some thirty-seven kilometres further west, on the isle of Bodmin. Their shuttle, speeding through the underground, would see them there in ten minutes.

Although similar in design, with clusters of seats around cellular tables, the shuttle lacked the dragon-ship’s luxuries. There were no menus, no offers of nourishment or entertainment, no windows looking out upon a fabricated landscape of calm oceans and blue skies—just simple maps, weather updates, and a news report regarding a conflict between Seelie officers and a rogue synthetic on the island of Exmoor to the north. Sitting at the table next to Dante, Theseus Armstrong, no stranger to the sight of unnatural beasts causing chaos, punctuated the footage with observations of his own.

“That’s a chimaera-class,” he said, gesturing at what appeared to be a bear fused with a scorpion. “Don’t see many of those ‘round Torsten.”

His commentary stumbled, however, when the report cut to a second beast, which looked like a bipedal lion with a steroid problem, answering questions from an off-camera reporter. According to the caption, its name was ‘the Impenetrable Stone’ Keith Rockshard, and it—he?—spoke with a drawl of an accent, its coarse gruffness bringing to Dante’s mind memories of a moustachio’d man with offers of silvery liquor.

Dante pushed the thoughts aside and glanced at a nearby map. They were almost halfway to Avalon. The sooner he could escape the shuttle’s cramped confines and breathe fresh air again, the better.

The next report started up, and this time it was Byron d’Arcadie’s turn to show off. As a spokesman for Seelie’s Antarctic Surveillance Troupe addressed concerns about the snow-laden continent’s perpetual night, the poet jabbed an accusatory finger at the nearest screen.

“This sort of thing,” he lifted his voice to fill the carriage, “is why I find myself questioning the priorities of our benevolent overseers. How often must we hear of these people, be they of Seelie or Cities, with technology to work miracles unparalleled, yet no care to bestow their gifts upon those that need it most?”

It was one of those rants Byron had trialled out on Dante numerous times during poetry critique sessions. Unwilling to upset his one source of sedatives and stimulants, Dante would nod his head and mumble agreement. If their hushed whispers were indication, the other initiates had learned a similar lesson.

Except, that was, for Chris Shaw. Clearing his throat and raising a hand, the Malkuthian drew Byron’s attention his way. “I think you should look into the Prometheus Clause,” he said.

Byron turned on his seat and lifted himself up so he was looking down on Chris, who sat relaxed with his feet on the chair opposite. “And you, of course, would know all about hoarding the miracles of modern science. I wonder, how many impoverished families could you feed with your personal supplies? How many could you clothe and bathe and home? You, living your idyllic life in a manor fit for a king while they cower in the dark, nothing to spare them from the pain of life but the bliss of the daily needle.”

Save for a Seelie weather forecast talking of storms moving down from the north, the carriage was silent. Even the Theatre staff had stopped their private discussions to watch the conflict unfold.

Chris dismissed Byron’s argument with a shrug. “No, seriously, go look up the Prometheus Clause. There are reasons we don’t hand out Upper Terrace technology to anyone who asks for it. Have you seen what happens when you give people that kind of power? It’s not pretty.”

Dante’s fingers brushed against the Tablet in his cloak pocket. He didn’t recall it ever mentioning a ‘Prometheus Clause’, but it had plenty to say about outsiders misappropriating modern technology. That was where all those stories of faeries and magic came from, after all: significantly advanced technology, misused and misunderstood.

“I do not care for your rules,” Byron replied. “You hoard so that others think you saviours when you throw a scrap of food their way, but I see through your lies. People should have a choice. Give them the power to save themselves and, if they squander it on frivolous fashions and cybersphere fantasies, let them deal with the repercussions.”

“And I say we help people live within their means, rather than hand them the power to destroy themselves and everything around them.”

On one side, the self-righteous babbling of his friend, who wanted nothing more than true freedom for the masses, on the other side, the reasoned arguments of Malkuth, the ideology of the Saptamatrikas, strict control, obedience. Both had their truths, both had their lies, and both had their pains, their consequences. Dante couldn’t choose between them. And, judging from their silence, nor could anybody else.

Overhead, a disembodied female voice announced that they had reached their destination and the shuttle, with only the slightest of shudders, came to a standstill.

Sohrabarak al-Hakim rose from his seat with a clap of his hands. “As much as we encourage debate, I think we have more pressing concerns, yes?”

With a chattering of noise, the argument faded from memory as the initiates bundled themselves onto the platform outside. It was identical to the one they boarded at, with curved, featureless walls and strips of daylight lighting that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Torsten catacomb—a long way from the island paradise in Phoenix Rogan’s video. As the initiates reunited with their luggage, some were quick to voice their disappointment.

“Is this it?” asked Joel. “Where’s the beach?”

Doyle Kennedy agreed. “And where’re the babes?”

However, although the station might not have hinted at the world awaiting them, the elevator they rode to the surface did. Where the Theatre used small, featureless cubes to ferry people from floor to floor, Avalon opted for large, luxurious chambers lined with plush white settees and windows playing out a fabricated view of the panoramas to come. While his peers basked in the wonder of it all, Dante retreated into a corner and tried not to think too much about what was waiting for them. For him.

The truth.

The elevator doors opened onto a spacious foyer, its stainless white walls rising to an arched ceiling where the summer-blue logo of the Fortunate Isles welcomed its guests to Avalon. Beneath it, the path narrowed, funnelling guests towards a single stairway bathed in the light of an unseen sky.

Before they could enter Paradise, however, they had to pass beneath the judgemental eyes of its twin guardians, two marble maidens as tall as a house, arms reaching out across the passageway to form a rudimentary archway. As the group approached, Dante noticed the air shimmering between them, a gentle distortion, as if someone had suspended a slice of water between two panes of glass.

“It’s a basic security measure,” explained Mr al-Hakim, stepping forward to pass through the shroud and turning back to gesture the initiates onward. “You are all registered for entry, so do not be afraid.”

Some were less suspect than others were. Alonie Kent strode through without question, as did Katrina, but Phoenix needed some encouragement and John had to perform several ‘preliminary scans’, as he called them. Theseus Armstrong, meanwhile, was discussing the possibility of climbing over the archway, but a well-aimed projectile from Lysander struck an unseen barrier and clattered back to the floor. Grumbling, the former soldier ordered his spider-like automaton through the barrier, then followed after it. If it was concealing weapons, the barrier did not notice them.

Joel was next to step up and poked the barrier with a bony finger. “This feels like something I’d put on me cock!” he declared to groans and grimaces. With a jab from Kaori’s parasol, he stumbled through. Kaori herself had to prod the barrier from a distance before she followed.

Dante would have waited until last, but he recognised the look on Emily’s face, the same anxiety she wore in the forest, back when she proclaimed the trees cursed with Donaran magic. He had to prove himself to her. He had to prove that there was nothing here but technology, sufficiently advanced.

He reached out and pressed his finger against the barrier. It was as if the air itself were elastic, bending around him, thicker than the illusion that surrounded the Seelie ship, but not nearly as solid as the wall he encountered in the catacombs. There was no need to close his eyes here, no need to suspend his disbelief. All he had to do was step forward and surrender himself to Avalon’s whims.

The film pulled against him, seemed at first as if it would resist, throw him back into the foyer, but then it fled, tracing its way along his skull and fixing, for the briefest of instants, on the back of his neck. Then, with a sharp snap, it released him into the passage beyond.

Emily was last to step through. Rubbing her neck, she put on a crescent-moon smile for those watching. Dante turned away. Even now, with the morning’s nausea behind him, he still felt the burn of embarrassment, the flash of scattered memories dancing around his head, images of things he would have rather forgotten, times he would rather erase.

Once again, he met Joel’s eye across the crowd, and once again his friend forced a smile.

And then they ascended the stairs into the daylight, and Dante saw Avalon for the first time.

Avalon, and the truth.

~*~

The doors opened on a stainless white hall leading into a stainless white lounge. Sunlight flooded into the apartment through a single long window, looking out across the streets below. In the distance, the blue ocean sparkled. There was no escaping it.

Oblivious to his friend’s turmoil, Joel slung his bags down and sauntered into the apartment. “Well, this is a bit dull, ain’t it?”

“What did you expect?” asked Chris. With a clear, commanding voice, he spoke to the room, “Computer, activate environment steam sure version three-point-two from my public directory.”

Before Joel could ask what the Malkuthian was talking about, the room shifted around them. Blank walls became polished planks of darkened wood topped with a veneer of flowered green wallpaper, while globules of alchemium rose to form tables and chairs, inviting leather sofas, bookcases and fireplaces and clocks big and small, ticking and tocking even as their bodies moulded around them.

Visor aglow, John Smith ran his fingers along the wallpaper. “A near ninety-nine percent emulation,” he said. “There are even imperfections in the design. Fascinating.”

“I find people get disorientated if everything is perfect,” explained Chris as he pulled up a footstool and sat down. “And besides, the standard designs that come with these places are always so uninspired. There’s no character in them, no imagination.”

Joel plucked a book from one of the shelves, flicked through its pages, then shoved it back with a grunt. “Gonna be party central in this place,” he mumbled to himself.

Although Seelie had assigned their rooms at random, Dante figured it wouldn’t be long until everyone had settled into the same old cliques and couples. The Veritas girls had already swapped themselves about so the four of them shared the same apartment, and it was only a matter of time before Joel snuck his things over to Kaori’s place. Not that it bothered Dante: the less company he had, the better.

In the meantime, Joel had discovered a vendor, whose sleek white alcove and sharp black lines stood out against the antiquated wallpaper. “’ere, Shawty, this thing’ll give us anything we want, right?”

“Anything they have listed, yes,” he replied.

Joel jabbed at the vendor’s small interface. “What the fook is with all this exercise equipment?” he asked. “I don’t wanna start a gym, I wanna play some bass.”

Chris glanced up from the dog-eared paperback book he’d produced from the pocket of his neon-trimmed Malkuthian coat. “It’s important to keep the body fit and fresh. The ladies won’t look twice at an unhealthy slob of a man.”

“Whatever, mate. When was the last time you got laid?”

“I’ve more important things to worry about.”

Dante dropped his bag and shuffled over to the window. He shared Chris’s sentiment. Unless he locked himself in his room and blocked out the windows, he was trapped. The truth was everywhere.

A lithe young woman ran laughing down the gold-paved street, her golden hair billowing in the summer breeze as three muscular men in tight shorts and little else gave chase. Sauntering in the opposite direction, hips a-swaying, a boy with leaf-green hair followed their dance with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. Catching Dante’s gaze, the boy smiled, extending a sepia-brown hand as if to beckon him down from the safety of his apartment.

Dante shook his head and the boy was gone, vanished like a fleeting dream—because that was what Avalon, with its clear, blue sky and calm, gentle sea, was: a perfect, unblemished vision that could only exist in fantasy. A world three steps away from reality. An illusion of Paradise.

A lie.

Joel’s whine cut across the lounge. “Mate, where’re all the instruments? I’ve been through this thing, like, five times over already.”

“Instruments?” asked Chris. “Why would you want something like that?”

“To play music?”

“Why go to all that effort when they have a perfectly reasonable selection for you to consume?”

“Yeah, I looked at that. They don’t even have the latest Death Bastard album.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little violent? You should try something calmer. Something to soothe your soul.” Chris lifted his voice again, “Computer, play Pineapple Fantasy’s ‘Algorithm’?” As an electronic hum filled the lounge, he turned back to Joel and said, “This never gets old.”

It took about ten seconds of the jaunty, uplifting tune, with its synthesised chimes and choral cheer, for Joel to bleat out in abject terror and order the torture to stop. Even Dante, without the slightest care for music, had to agree that he made the right choice.

“Mate, don’t tell me you listen to that crap.”

Chris chuckled. “When I said ‘it never gets old’, I meant that they’ve been listening to that for longer than any of us have been alive.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what they do. They don’t question it. Nobody does. Which is why you won’t find any guitars or drum kits or anything else in that vendor, or any other. They don’t, for one minute, feel the need to challenge the status quo. Welcome to the Future. Please enjoy your stay.”

Joel perched himself on the edge of a chair. His face had drained of what little colour it had. “I thought we were supposed to have everything here? Like, proper Paradise an’ stuff.”

“Give people unlimited choice and they will choose nothing, for when you have everything at your fingertips, nothing has value. Now you know why we don’t go handing out every little miracle.”

“Mate, if this is where you came from, I don’t blame you for coming to Torsten. This place is, like, an actual nightmare!”

While Joel left in search of his girlfriend, Dante slouched upstairs to find his room. It waited for him at the end of a short hallway, his name etched on the stainless white door in black ink. Dante touched it and it slid aside to reveal a room as plain and as empty as the lounge had been. Its sole window, curving from one corner of the room to the other, looked back towards the giant shard of a tower at Avalon’s centre, a monolith of Malkuthian design that dominated the shapes and spires clustered around its base like flowers between the roots of a tree. Even pressing his face up against the window, Dante could hardly see the summit. It must have been at least half a kilometre in height, if not more—but a flower itself, compared to Malkuth.

Dante paced to the opposite side of the room and stared at the empty wall. Why here? Of all the places, why did Seelie bring them here, to a place whose promise of Paradise pushed the boundaries of belief? For six years, Dante had been content to imagine the world the Saptamatrikas promised his mother, to accept everything Arided—the Tablet—had told him as true, so why did Seelie have to ruin things? Why did they have to show him this fabrication at the moment of his greatest weakness?

Or was this holiday itself another test? A way for the Saptamatrikas to judge his worth? What if they had arranged this whole scenario to challenge his resolve? To prove to him their words were true and all other words lies, stories that mothers told their children to encourage good behaviour?

Mothers like Ophelia Orpheus. Or, perhaps, like Merope Maheshvari, Mother of Malkuth. Dante didn’t know what to believe—who to believe—only what he wanted to believe: that his mother had found Paradise and that she had escaped her curse, that she was no longer tethered naked to the Dark, a shadow in a world of nothing.

A three-note chime drew him out of his contemplation. At first, he wondered what it might be—it couldn’t be his cellular, since it had lost its signal the moment they entered Avalon—then, when it rang a second time, he realised it was a doorbell.

“Eh, yo.” Joel, eyes fixed on the carpet, raised a hand in greeting. “You, eh, you busy?”

Dante stepped aside and let him enter.

“It’s not much to look at, is it?” said the raven, still avoiding eye contact. “Kao tried to redecorate, but the bloody computer don’t let her use anything but the defaults, and they’re all proper shite. We figure Shawty must’ve hacked it or something.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, with its stainless white sheets over a stainless white mattress. “It’s not like that ship,” he said. “She were proper friendly, let us do what we want, you know?”

He didn’t, but he nodded in agreement anyway.

“Say, eh, about last night…” Joel forced a grin. “Yeah, that was kinda a disaster, weren’t it?”

Dante shrugged. It was more than a disaster, but getting angry with Joel wouldn’t change anything. In the end, he’d only been trying to help.

“I’m, eh, I’m sorry I left you with the Duke, man. That were way outta character for him, getting you all pissed like that. I’ll be having proper words when I get back, trust me.”

The truth was, Dante could hardly remember anything besides those few fleeting moments of cringe-inducing embarrassment. “These things happen,” he said.

“Yeah. Yeah, they do. Proper shit, though. Still, no point worrying about it now, ey? We’ve got way bigger problems!”

Outside, Kaori, hidden beneath her parasol, swept across the plaza, layers of black lace trailing behind her, while Katrina dragged her belongings from one apartment to another and a bare-chested Doyle strode off in the direction of the beach.

Joel appeared at Dante’s side, all nicotine grins and beady eyes. “For a start, I’m all outta ciggies!”

~*~

Emily paced the soulless lounge. Kaori, after a flustered argument with Joel over his inability to pack contraceptives, had stormed out of their apartment to “survey the local fashions”, as she put it. Emily spied her out the window, striding across the plaza. Doyle was there too, heading in the direction of the beach, no doubt hoping one of the local girls would fall for his blue-eyed charms. Vincent and Blake, Joel, Byron, they would all follow suit, sooner or later—they were young, after all, still victims to the hormones racing through their bodies, the primal need for pleasure, the touch of another. Upstairs, Ceres Mendoza and Korrie Wedekind were probably already indulging themselves in one another. Emily only hoped the apartment walls were soundproof.

Watching one of the local men try to help Katrina with her luggage, she let loose a long, exasperated sigh and shook her head. She’d not been here an hour and already she wanted to burn everything down. Maybe, were she a normal person, it wouldn’t irritate her so much—or maybe it was the irritation reminding her she wasn’t a normal person, that she was special, blessed. Maidens had no need for lust. They found no joy in the touch of another. For what pleasure they gave—and they gave much, so that their victims would never want for another—they received in turn knowledge, information, secrets, for a mind lost to the pleasures of the flesh was a mind open to the scrying of the soul. And here, in Avalon, in this illusionary visage of unscarred skies and gentle seas, where pleasure was a drug to numb the nerves to reality, no one would question her if she suddenly developed a taste for flirtation. If anything, they would simply assume her as lost to the fantasy as everyone else.

As Prince Freyr said, this trip wasn’t his doing, but he would take full advantage of the opportunities it presented—and he expected Emily to do the same.

She clutched her pendant. “But I’m not my mother,” she said. “You hear me, Freyr? I won’t be your tool.” She spoke to the vista of blue seas and golden streets, but she knew he was listening. He always was. This was his game and Aliza Adel his star player.

“Freyr?”

Emily froze: that was Ceres Mendoza’s voice. The Donaran girl was standing at the bottom of the stairs, head cocked in contemplation. “You mean Prince Freyr? Of the Court of Queen Áine?”

Emily fled into a moment, severing herself from the outside world. It was important not to panic, she told herself as the cool waters lapped at her ankles. The Donara had worshipped the Sidhe as deities, so it was natural for Ceres to have heard of Prince Freyr. And it wasn’t as if Emily had kept their relationship secret all this while—just yesterday, she had tried to introduce him to Shelley, Dante and Alonie. Ceres would have found out the truth eventually. The truth always came to light. All ‘Emily’ had to do was act natural, pretend like it was no big deal: a forest-dweller like Ceres most certainly had Sidhe friends of her own, anyway. She’d understand.

Back in the real world, she let the blood rush to her bronzed cheeks and put on one of those awkward, try-not-to smiles, the sort people made when somebody confronted them over a secret crush. “We have a passing acquaintance,” she said. “Nothing serious.”

Ceres’s eyes almost popped out of her skull. With an excited yelp, she scuttled across the room on bare tiptoes and took Emily’s hands in hers. “’Nothing serious’ is more than what most people can say,” she said, looking up at Emily with a breathless wonder in her grey-green eyes. Mumblings and rumours suggested she was—or, at least, had been—some kind of Donaran highborn, the only daughter of a powerful chieftain. Her hair, which she dyed a bright shade of fuchsia, framed a delicate face and high cheekbones before falling over slender olive shoulders and a patchwork of hand-me-down clothes stitched with multicoloured threads. In a normal world, she would have found herself the target of a dozen affections, but in this world blessed with Maidens that podium would always stand a single step of infinite distance away from her. “The only Sidhe I could call a friend is Princess Phantasia,” she added. “Prince Freyr, he’s—he’s one of the greatest Sidhe to have ever lived. Well, if you count them as living, that is.”

“I—I didn’t realise he was so important,” Emily lied. “He just—he just complimented me on my looks and, well…” She made her cheeks flush almost as bright as Ceres’s hair. “He told me I’d be really popular in a place like this.”

“I bet he did. A girl like you could have anyone you wanted.”

“T—that’s not really my thing.” Emily Fomalhaut continued to blush. The Macha contemplated just how she could abuse such power. Aliza Adel curled up and started to sob.

“Shame.” Ceres fluttered her eyelids and shook the hair from her shoulder. “Let me know if you change your mind, yeah?”

No one could resist a Maiden.

The tension lingered in the air a moment more, then popped as Korrie Wedekind entered the room with a cry of “Cerie, are you flirting behind my back?”

“Want to join? The more the merrier, right?”

If there was anyone who could step up to that podium and divert attention away from a Maiden, if only for a moment, it was Korrie-Anne Wedekind. Where Ceres was slender and frail, her partner stood tall and voluptuous, her hair a thigh-length cloak that shimmered a dozen shades of gold, her voice a delicate, intoxicating melody tinged with the same tease of mischief that gleamed in her spring-time eyes. Bouncing across the room with carefree abandon, she took her lover’s hand and pouted like a child. “You could have told me first,” she said.

“Sorry, dear,” said Ceres, “I got lost in the moment. Say, did you know Em here is friends with Prince Freyr?”

Korrie had that same, wide-eyed expression as Ceres when she first found out.

“Passing acquaintance,” Emily repeated.

Korrie turned to Ceres. “Then, do you think she might know Himeros?”

The tension snapped back, catching the breath in Emily’s throat. “Who’s Himeros?” she asked.

The girls shared a look, then Ceres said, “Well, that’s what we’re going find out.” Holding out her hand, she added, “You wanna come?”

29: The Prophecy

Korrie-Anne Wedekind danced from one stranger to the next, her hair a twisting river of sunshine to match the golden tiles beneath her toes. Were they aware of any local spirits, she would ask them with a smile; did they know where she might find Himeros?

Himeros. Emily played the name around in her head. The Sidhe liked meaningful names, especially those with ancient and powerful histories. ‘Freyr’, for example, was the name of an old fertility god dating back thousands of years. Leira had whole tomes filled with lists and descriptions of such deities. Were she able to, Emily would have asked her for help, but their cellulars had lost contact with the outside world around the same time they reached the island.

Two men, their tight muscles bronzed from long days spent lounging beneath the sun, shook their heads at Korrie’s questioning. They had never heard of a ‘Himeros’. They did, however, know of a nice little retreat where no one would bother them, and she was welcome to join them there.

Their ivory gleam of intent was enough to send Korrie scuttling back to Ceres’s side. The men laughed. Her friend was welcome to join them, they said.

Then they noticed Emily and their fantasies, so loud and so vibrant that even a seer trying her best to hide from her powers could see them staining the world, dissolved beneath a curtain of furrowed concern. They learned in to one another, exchanged a hushed whisper. Was she the one the Oracle mentioned? It wasn’t worth the risk, either way.

With a grimace of disappointment, the men made their excuses and continued on their way. Plenty of fish in the sea.

Ceres watched them leave with a curious eyebrow. “Must know they’re out of their league,” she said, taking Emily’s arm in hers and flashing a knowing smirk.

Emily blushed. It was what Ceres expected of her, of the shy young woman uncomfortable with her own beauty and the effect it had on others. Little did she realise that Emily Fomalhaut was as much a lie as Avalon itself.

And what a lie that was! Everywhere Emily looked there were signs of the synthetic, from rolling fields of wild turquoise dotted with ‘herbal baths’ and ‘relaxation pools’, to thick groves of cerulean and silver, pumping copious amounts of aethex into the atmosphere, where it could shape whatever reality its overseers desired. Between that and the implant in the back of her neck, Emily had little choice but to keep her third eye open, to peer into this world’s twisted and amorphous shadow, just so she could tell which parts of it were real and which the product of some digital datastream working to keep her in the dark.

In hindsight, throwing the initiates into the depths of Torhout Forest and asking them to engage in a virtual simulation had been a clever move on Rembrandt Payne’s part. Hopefully, it had been enough to open their eyes to the truth.

Emily wondered how Dante was taking it.

Eventually, the girls’ search for the enigmatic Himeros brought them to the edge of the island, where its white sands rolled up against a shallow promenade. There was an open-air cafe a short walk away and, next to it, a white, sterile building with a tall spire rising from its midst. According to the local map, it was the ‘Sector Seven Cleansing Clinic’. A small group were gathered beneath the arch of its entrance. Emily noticed their attention sweep across the promenade towards the girls, then linger on her for a few moments before the group hurried back inside.

Next to her, an oblivious Korrie-Anne kicked sand into the still breeze.

“So,” Ceres crossed her arms and frowned, “where would you hide if you were one of the Sidhe?”

Emily glanced around the soulless, synthetic wasteland. “Anywhere but here,” she replied. “Are you sure this Himeros is even one of the Sidhe? He could just be an avatar. You know, like they have in the forest?” She assumed that Ceres, being a native to Torhout, knew all about its synthetic overseers.

“Could be,” the Donara replied with a shrug, but she didn’t sound convinced. “What do you think we should do, Korrie?”

Pirouetting about the sand, Korrie-Anne replied, “Let’s find more people!”

~*~

The young couple blushed as Korrie-Anne pulled up a chair and took a seat at their table. Across the other side of the cafe, Ceres watched her girlfriend with a fawning smile, a lazy hand stirring the mug of tea she’d brewed from herbs she kept in one of her many pouches.

“I don’t think she realises how people see her,” she said.

Emily took a sip of water. “It’s probably better that way,” she said. “Until somebody tries to take advantage of her, at least.”

The open-air cafe sat nestled in an alcove between towers, a garden of pastel parasols between mighty trees promoting sports contests and fitness events. The chances of finding a wandering spirit in such a place seemed remote at best.

Ceres grinned over the rim of her mug, a handmade piece of pottery she kept wrapped up in a tattered cloth when not in use. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “There’s a tiger sleeping beneath those pretty looks. Piss Korrie off and you’ll be sure to regret it. Well, once she’s finished lecturing you about your heinous evildoings.”

She sipped her tea, a tint of pink colouring her olive cheeks. Every other moment, her gaze would flutter in Korrie’s direction, her smile would broaden.

“You really love her, don’t you?” As obvious an observation as it was, it was the sort of thing Emily Fomalhaut, innocent and naïve, would say.

“I tried not to, I really did. Told myself I didn’t have time for one person, that I had to go out there and experience as much as I could before I burned at the stake, but Korrie, she…” Ceres looked Emily in the eyes. “You know what it’s like.”

Emily forced a blush of her own, a stammered “W—well, I don’t know. Maybe?” in reply. Of course she didn’t. She had no need to. Maidens didn’t love.

Across the cafe, Korrie stuck her face into another conversation, this time between a man and two women. As she sat down, the man put his hand on hers, a simple, but clear gesture that even Korrie understood. Swiping her hand away, she gestured across the cafe to Ceres.

The man’s attention fell on the girls’ table, first on Ceres and then on Emily. A moment later, he was excusing himself and ushering his companions to leave.

Korrie returned with an exaggerated frown.

“Any luck?” asked Ceres.

“If I wasn’t sure he was real, I’d think Himeros didn’t exist!”

Emily watched as the man Korrie had just accosted greeted a figure by the cafe entrance and exchanged whispers even a Maiden could not hear for the chattering crowd. Judging from her sudden frown, Ceres had noticed it too.

“Korrie, love,” she took her lover’s hand, “you any idea what they’re talking about over there?”

“Oh, just some prophecy the Oracle made,” she replied with a shrug. “Something about a Maiden, bronze and blue, who will bring down the sky and—” Her eyes widened in realisation. “Oh! Emily! They’re talking about you!”

One by one, the conversations around them faded to silence. Slipping one hand into the folds of her skirt, Emily found the hilt of her knife. Then, trying not to draw any more attention their way, she started to rise.

Ceres clasped her arm. “Wait,” she said, her voice seeming to drop an octave, as if all the friendliness and joy had been sucked out of her. “See that passage over by the bathroom? It’s about three feet wide. One of those crazy City tricks. Can’t see it until you know it’s there kind thing.”

Emily closed her eyes and searched the aether. The ideas around her were so shallow, so devoid of soul, that it was hard to see anything beyond a blur. Forcing her mind deeper into trance, her sight further into the world beyond, she peeled back the layers, scried for something—anything—out of place.

And there it was, a shadow in the blur, a slice of certainty in an uncertain world. It had Ceres’s fingerprints all over it, a momentary acknowledgement that would fade as soon as another pair of eyes obscured the passage with their own, false perceptions of a blank wall.

Returning to the waking world, she said, “Let’s hope it doesn’t just lead to the waste disposal.”

As she stood up, a man’s voice called across the cafe. “You! Witch! We won’t let you take this place away from us!” With that, he cracked his knuckles and advanced through the maze of tables. A small crowd followed in his wake.

Ceres and Korrie moved between Emily and the mob. “Leave them to us,” said the Donaran. “We’ll have a friendly word with them, sort this all out, yeah?”

“Can you—” before Emily could finish her question, Ceres replied with a yes-we-can-and-don’t-ask-questions look. Stumbling a little from the table, she started towards the secret passage.

Now she knew it was there, it was hard to believe she had never noticed it before.

~*~

Oracles did not make prophecies. That was the first and only thing on Emily’s mind as she made her way down the alleyway. They gave advice, made predictions even, but they did not make prophecies. The future was not set. Nothing was certain. Even Emily’s life, contrary to how it felt of late, was not preordained. There was always a choice. There was always an alternative.

The alleyway itself was not ready to offer one up, however. Lost in some slice between skyscrapers, Emily found herself moving from one narrow passage to another, little to light the way ahead but a slither of sky high above her. She had fallen into the cracks between the towering spires of Paradise, and now she was trapped there.

Closing her eyes, she tried to find her way through the aether, but this place saw so few visitors, so little acknowledgement, that it barely seemed to exist beyond a spectral haze.

Then, when the way ahead of her took sudden form and substance, she realised she was no longer alone and brought her attention back to the physical world. A breathless figure was approaching her from the shadows ahead, too tall and broad of shoulders to be Ceres or Korrie-Anne. Emily’s eyes, honed through a childhood raised in the lost catacombs of Torsten, picked out a suit and slicked back hair. Without a thought, she drew her knife.

The figure stepped out of the gloom. Emily slipped into a defensive stance.

“A—ah!” The figure staggered back in fright as he eyes fell on the edge of the blade. “I—I’m here to help you! Please!”

Emily relaxed, letting the images of walls with eyes and shadows with teeth retreat back to the dark depths of memory where they belonged. This figure was no agent of Pleiades, but a young man in a crisp velvet suit with matching cravat. He looked like he had just run a marathon. Gasping for breath, he propped himself against the nearby wall. Emily lowered her knife, but did not sheathe it.

“You don’t make it easy on a man,” said the stranger. He had a youthful voice heavy with the City’s accent. “This place is dangerous, you know? People can get lost down here for days trying to find their way out.”

“I’d say it was more dangerous staying where I was,” Emily replied.

“Ah, yes, that prophecy thing, right? Quite the surprise. Especially for you, I imagine.” Having regained his breath, he straightened himself up and tugged on his lapels. “Forgive me. I’m Rorric Yenta, I’m a liaison for the Fortunate Isles. It’s my job to keep an eye on things down here.”

He reached out a hand in welcome. Emily’s stayed by her side. “You have an Oracle?” she asked.

He dropped his hand with a twitch of disappointment. “Of a sort. We rarely see her up here, though you might run into one of her daughters from time to time. I can’t say she’s ever pulled something like this, however. It’s quite distressing.”

“Tell me about it. This was supposed to be a holiday.”

“Ah, yes, you’re one of those Seelie cadets that came in earlier, aren’t you? I’m certain your superior officers will do everything in their power to sort this mess out. I worry, however, that even that might not be enough.”

“How so?”

“Well, you see, the Oracle has a lot of power and influence around these parts, and I doubt people will trust Seelie’s opinion over hers. If she says you are a danger that’s what they will believe.” He reached up to adjust his cravat. “I suggest you come with me. The Fortunate Isles can provide all the protection you require.”

Emily Fomalhaut, like Aliza Adel and the Macha before her, made a habit of never trusting strange men—especially strange men who put on a smile and promised you more than money could buy. More often than not they hid ulterior motives, expected gratitude for their kindness, repayment for their favours...

“Okay,” she replied.

“I knew you would understand,” said the man, stepping forward to take her arm.

Before he could reach her, a voice cut through the passageway like a sharp breeze. “Not so fast!” cried Korrie-Anne Wedekind. “I won’t stand by and watch while the likes of you coerce young women with your lies!”

The man from the Fortunate Isles reached for Emily’s hand. “Who’s that?” he asked.

And then Ceres was between them, a purple-tipped claw sweeping upwards, clutching for his cravat. With an audible snap, she yanked her fist back.

Rorric fell back against the wall, then reached into his shirt. “You!” he began, any hint of a friendly manner vanished. “I suggest—”

“Don’t think you’ll be making many more suggestions,” said Ceres. From her fist hung a blue crystal, shimmering as if somebody has captured a slice of the ocean at the very moment the sun rose over the horizon. “Looking for this?” she asked, dangling the pendant out at arm’s length.

“Give that—” he grasped for the crystal, but Ceres snatched it away. Before he could react, she had a knife levelled at his throat. Leira would have been proud.

Korrie-Anne emerged skipping out of the gloom. She danced around the man called Rorric Yenta, under Ceres’s blade, and curled around to her lover’s arm. “Ooh, shiny,” she said, leaning over to study the crystal with fluttering eyes.

With a twitch of her knife, Ceres backed Rorric up against the wall. A thread of sweat trickled down his temple. “Makes sense you’d have to rely on some bloody enchantment,” said the Donaran. “A creep like you wouldn’t know the first thing about real magic.”

“Please,” he replied, “I’ll give you anything you ask. A penthouse suite. Suites for all your friends. Unrestricted access to our vendor catalogue. Anything, just—just—”

With a flick of her wrist, Ceres clutched her fist around the crystal pendant. “Anything, you say? How about you—”

With a sharp curse, the Donaran stumbled backwards, and the crystal fell from her grasp, colour trailing behind it like stardust. By the time it hit the ground, it was nothing more than a dull grey stone.

~*~

The Daughters of Ernmas would have left Rorric Yenta to contemplate his sins in a pool of his own blood, regardless of his standing in society. Ceres Mendoza, however, was content to leave him in Seelie custody with little more than a bloody nose. Devoid of his magical powers of persuasion, which had riled up an audience with whispers of Oracular prophecies and almost convinced Emily he was an honest man, the alleged representative of the Fortunate Isles shuffled out of the secret backstreet and into the daylight with nary a protest. Sohrabarak al-Hakim was waiting for him.

“We have not even been here half a day, and already you girls are looking for trouble,” he said.

Ceres handed him the dead crystal. “Think it was some kind of mesmeric spell,” she explained. “Water element, very potent. Shattered when I tried to use it myself, so probably had a safeguard.”

Mr al-Hakim held the stone up to the light and hummed. “I am no expert on such things, but it is rare to see such a purity outside of Sidhe magic. I shall have Seelie perform a more thorough analysis and let you know the results.”

He slipped the crystal into his pocket and grabbed Rorric Yenta by the arm. “As for you, might I remind you one stipulation of Seelie’s business here is that we have full jurisdiction over matters concerning our own. If they are threatened or harmed in any way, we are within our rights to take whatever action we deem necessary to protect them. Besides,” he smiled, a veneer of threat behind his usual charm, “I am certain your superiors will be as curious as we are about where you acquired such a powerful enchantment.”

Rorric glowered, but did not resist as the Commander led him away. Once they were out of sight, Ceres slipped her knife back into its sheath.

“Not the holiday you had in mind, huh?” she asked Emily. “Still, at least we know that whole prophecy thing was a load of rubbish.”

“Yeah.” Emily tried to fake some enthusiasm, but the encounter had left her drained. She couldn’t even force a smile.

Ceres took her arm. “C’mon, Korrie’s got a lead during all that commotion. Let’s see what this Himeros character has to say about all this.”

Emily followed. It was what Emily would do, after all. Aliza Adel would have retreated into her dreams, and the Macha would have rallied her sisters to bring the masterminds behind this wayward scheme to justice, but Emily Fomalhaut? She would brush it all aside and get on with her life.

But it was hard to get on with life when, within two hours of arrival, people were targeting her with magic enough to sway a crowd and leave even Seelie concerned. Whoever had organised this holiday had done so for this very purpose: to leave Emily exposed and vulnerable.

No, not Emily: Aliza Adel, the cursed Maiden who could see things no others could. Even here, hundreds of miles from Torsten and its malevolent shadows, she was still a target, still a resource. Still a tool.

Ceres’s curious face curled into her field of vision. “What’s up?” she asked. “C’mon, you can’t let that whole prophecy thing get you down! Those people were brainwashed. Nobody wants you dead. We made sure of it, didn’t we, Korrie?”

“You’re safe with us!”

Emily forced the corners of her lips into a slight smile. She had to keep the illusion alive if only for her friends’ sakes. The less they knew about who she really was and why this was really going on, the better. It was safer that way. It always had been.

Her smile faltered, however, when she realised where Korrie was leading them. The grove of silver-barked trees only seemed to grow larger as they approached, its thick canopy rising to devour the sky and leave the girls wandering beneath a synthetic night. This, thought Emily, was the fate of Torhout Forest, the result of decades of unchecked synthetic growth. Soon enough, there was no sign of the way they came, nor any sign of escape; the trees continued forever, an endless illusion of aethex, frightening in its unnatural silence.

Emily pulled her arms around her chest, suddenly cold at the thought of a whole group of Rorric Yentas sitting atop that tower, watching her every move. “Are you sure this is the place?” she asked.

“It depends on what you’re looking for.”

It wasn’t Ceres, and nor was it Korrie—but instead a figure slouched in the branches above them. An oversized shirt hung loose around his shoulders, unbuttoned to expose a boyish chest. With a twist and a spin that could rival the greatest of Olympian gymnasts, he was standing in front of them, bowing low. “Or, indeed, who.”

The boy stood. He had large, elegant eyes and a sharp face the colour of almonds. His hair was short, but wild, a young tangle of weeds Emily wanted to reach out and ruffle. “I am Himeros,” he said, his voice a sweet melody of childish innocence, “the purveyor of this little slice of Paradise. I am honoured to make your acquaintance.”

Korrie-Anne introduced herself without pause, then introduced Ceres and Emily before they had a chance to do so themselves. Himeros bowed his head to each of the girls in turn. “I heard of your approach. It seems you might require my services. If you would follow me, I would be happy to offer them.”

It was as if the moment they made his acquaintance, the familiar and comforting greens and browns and golds of nature emerged from hiding, and when Emily looked back the way they came, there was no sign of the silver trunks or starlight fruits of the synthetic forest. Even the aether was abloom, a vivid painting of vibrant colours, detailed down to the smallest of strokes.

Ahead of them, the forest opened upon a cottage sitting next to a gentle river, its waters turning a creaking mill. A young woman in a headscarf was working the soil with a fork. She looked up at the newcomers and smiled.

A Maiden’s smile, to match her Maiden’s eyes.

Korrie, being Korrie, danced over to greet her.

“Not bad,” said Ceres. “I take it you don’t get many visitors.”

“Only those I wish to see, or who wish to see me,” said Himeros, as he ushered them over to the cottage. Its bold green door opened without so much as a gesture. “Sometimes the odd individual wanders in by accident, but we soon persuade them to forget about it. Unless, of course, they are interesting enough to pique our curiosity.”

Hearing such words from Lord Freyr would have sent a chill down Emily’s spine, but there was something about Himeros, from the way he bopped and swayed as he led them through a narrow hallway to a cramped, humid kitchen, where saucepans bubbled and ovens baked, that made her feel at ease. Maybe it was the way he smiled: not the wolfish grin of the Prince, but the cheeky smirk of Lysander Goodfellow.

Two teenagers—a boy and girl—swerved through the kitchen carrying dirty plates, which they dumped into an oversized sink bubbling with soap. Korrie-Anne, catching up to her friends after her brief diversion, was quick to corner them while Himeros gestured Ceres and Emily to seats at a wooden table. A plate of various shaped breads floated over to greet them.

“I know you sensible humans prefer your food fresh and natural,” he said, as a knife and pot of butter settled down on the table. “So, please, help yourself.”

Ceres wasted no time in taking advantage of the hospitality, but all Emily could do was nibble at crumbs.

“So,” Ceres swallowed a mouthful of food, “what’s with this place? It’s rather, eh, rustic. No offence, obviously. It’s my kinda place!”

“It is a sanctuary for those seeking freedom from Avalon’s excesses,” replied Himeros. “Not everyone comes to this island by choice, but it is difficult to escape once you are here.”

Ceres wiped her mouth on the back of her arm. “Tell me about it. I’ve not been here a day and I already want to go home. Em here has had it even worse.”

Himeros turned his young eyes on Emily, plucking tuffs of bread from a roll. “Ah yes, the girl who might bring down the sky, or so I heard. Your arrival has caused quite the commotion.”

“It was all a lie,” said Ceres. “There was no prophecy.” She went on to explain about Rorric Yenta and his magic crystal. “We think it might have been Sidhe magic,” she said. “Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

Himeros laughed. “If I did, I would not be here! I am afraid I am not important enough to warrant a place in the Courts. To them, I am but a faerie, gifted of name and purpose, true, but still an inferior kind. That I am here with you and not watching the drama unfold is proof of that.”

Korrie-Anne sat down at the table with them and poked the bread with a long finger, but didn’t eat any.

“Drama?” asked Ceres.

“The greatest of dramas, no less!” said Himeros, his face lighting up like a child asked to explain their favourite toy. “They say it is the most important summons since the Four Queens revived the Court, perhaps even as important as the day the wretched Titania destroyed its forbearer. Right now, Prince Dionysus Serpentarius stands accused of treason and, should the Court find him guilty, everything the Four Queens have worked to create, from the Court itself to Seelie, will end in an instant.”

30: House of the Soulless

Byron d’Arcadie plunged the flame into his pipe, then flicked the smoking match into the fountain. He loosed a cloud of smoke into the air with a sigh. “I did not pack my wares for you to squander,” he said. “I plan to make myself a tidy profit from this place. Those denied the simple pleasures of life will oft pay well for them.”

Dante watched Byron’s discarded match bob along the water’s surface, before disappearing into some kind of filter at the fountain’s edge. Not five minutes into Joel’s little quest and already things looked bleak.

“Awh, c’mon, mate, I ain’t asking for much,” the raven protested, scuffing his boots on the plaza’s ivory tiles. “I’ll hook you up with some brew when we get back.”

Byron laughed, a pompous and condescending chuckle he reserved for moments like this. “You know I have finer tastes than that awful bilge,” he replied. “Make it a bottle of whiskey and I might consider it.”

“For a pack of ciggies? You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”

“Then I am afraid you shall have to conduct your business elsewhere.” With a dismissive wave, the poet turned on his heels and waltzed across the plaza in the direction of the island’s urban centre.

Joel kicked the fountain and grumbled a “bloody ponce” under his breath. Turning to Dante, he hid his frustration behind a toothy grin. “Guess it weren’t ever gonna be easy,” he said. “Fancy a mish into town then?”

Dante shrugged; it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

Although they were headed in the same direction as Byron, Joel followed a different route. As they cut through a neighbouring plaza, identical in every detail to the one outside their apartment, they passed a trio of young woman, slender sheets of silk draped over their bronze bodies. Joel waved a skeletal hand and flashed them a nicotine smile. They replied with hushed whispers and red-faced giggling.

“Can you believe Kao were worried I’d ditch her for some local chick?” he asked as the women passed out of sight. “I’d have more luck trying to pull Astrid Guirlande! You, on the other hand—” He jabbed Dante’s side with his elbow and grinned.

Dante looked away, lips twisting at the thought of repeating the previous night’s escapades. He was supposed to be above such hedonistic cravings. That Avalon seemed so keen to embrace them was proof it was a sham. Just as Chris Shaw had said on the shuttle there, if you gave people technology they were not ready for, they would only end up abusing it.

Ahead of them, an archway welcomed them to the Recreational District, a sprawling nest of interconnected towers and sports arenas. From badminton to basketball, racquetball to rounders, there was a tournament or training program for every level of skill—although, from the feats on display, it was hard to believe anyone here anything but an accomplished master of their chosen sport. Just the sight of them, lean of muscle and quick of reflex, left Dante feeling weak and inadequate. It was like watching Horatio Stark conquer the Ritches Estate training course in record time without once breaking a sweat. All his own effort, all those long mornings training, preparing himself, all of it was for naught.

He scratched the back of his neck. It felt like something had bitten him.

“I know, right?” said Joel, wiping a limp arm across his glistening forehead. “It’s this fookin’ heat. Brings out all the bloody bugs it does. A bloke like me ain’t built for it. I need shade, y’know? A proper underground.” His beady eyes scanned the maze of pathways and promenades. “’ere, what about over there? Looks proper tunnel-y to me!”

The raven gestured to an entrance nestled beneath a walkway. According to Dante’s visor, it led to a Seelie ‘Entertainment Arcade’.

“It’s gotta be better than all this Malkuthian bollocks,” said Joel.

Dante wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what they found. Without the threat of Sophist sanctions to stymie their ambitions, Seelie had converted an underground passage into a multi-storeyed corridor of bright lights and clashing jingles. Overhead, beneath arched skylights filtering threads of sunlight across the tunnel, floating screens played out scenes of explosive battles, physics-defying dances across frozen wastelands, and frantic escapes from rains of fire and walls of water. One showed a duel between a monster the size of a house and what looked like Azhara’d al-Hakim, before a logo crashed onto the screen in a blaze of lightning and shadow: ‘Seelie Fighter VX Ultimate’. Another screen cut to the similarly overwrought ‘Sinthetic Hunter Seventh’, a third, ‘War of the Apostles’.

The lights of the spectacle danced across Joel’s gormless grin. “Now this,” he said, “is my kind of scene.”

Unlike the rest of Avalon, Seelie did not reduce its facilities to automaton. As Joel dragged Dante over to the reception desk, a junior lieutenant greeted them with a knowing smile. “You after an escape?” he asked.

“Mate, am I ever!” said Joel. Leaning on the desk and lowering his voice to a whisper, he added, “Don’t suppose you’ve got any ciggies ‘round ‘ere?”

“I’m afraid not, Mister, ah,” the officer glanced at a volumetric display, “Gibson? However, if you’re looking to take your mind off things, you’ve come to the right place. Let me see…” He swiped through the display, sending panels scattering into stardust as new ones formed to take their place. Suddenly, his eyes widened with surprise. “Well, you cadets aren’t short of kiwis now, are you?”

Joel glanced at Dante in confusion. They weren’t cadets, for a start, and sanctions barred the Theatre from providing them with a bursary. Dante shrugged. Maybe Rembrandt Payne had pulled some strings behind the Aristocracy’s back.

Joel turned back to the receptionist. “I guess we’re not!”

“It’s okay,” said the receptionist, lowering his voice, “Chief Payne’s secret is safe with me. I’m just disappointed he’s not here in person. It must be quite an honour to serve under the man who ended the Apostle Wars.”

“Eh, yeah. He’s quite the character, ol’ Payne is!”

The receptionist smiled. “Aren’t we all? Anyway, with the kiwis you have there shouldn’t be anything you can’t afford. Here,” he tapped a screen and send a ball of light floating their way. “A.J will guide you around the facilities. Enjoy your stay!”

Joel poked the ball of light with a curious finger. As he did, it bulged to life, like a blob of alchemium receiving new identity, shifting to take the form of a floating head, long of face with a quiff of brown hair and lips that quivered half way between a welcoming smile and a sneer of discontent.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” it said, voice thick with theatrical overacting. “Allow me to personally welcome you to the Avalon Entertainment Arcade.”

Joel jabbed the avatar’s face, but his finger passed through it as if it were air. The avatar raised a quizzical eyebrow. If it wasn’t for the obvious fact that it was a floating head, Dante would have struggled to tell the difference between the projection and a real person. Such was the power of technology, sufficiently advanced.

“If you are quite finished, Mr Gibson,” it said, barely hiding its annoyance at the curious raven, “I would like to help you select your entertainment.”

“What’ve you got?”

“What haven’t we?” it replied with a genuine bask of pride. “Looking at your personal records, I see you are something of an action gamer, yes? Perhaps you would like to test your mettle against some of our organisation’s toughest warriors in ‘Seelie Fighter VX Ultimate’? Or would you like to engage in the ever-popular ‘War of the Apostles’?”

Joel looked to Dante for advice. It was clear he had never faced this level of choice before. “You got any ideas, Dant?”

Dante shrugged. Really, he couldn’t care less for such fabricated fantasies.

“Perhaps Mr Orpheus would prefer something a little more cerebral?” offered the avatar. “We have some classic mystery adventure scenarios, or perhaps you would like to engage in a modern recreation of the Old World classic, ‘Magnum P.I’?”

“’ere, you got anything we can both get on with?” asked Joel. “You know, something maybe a little action-y and a little cereal-bry? Something we can work together on, like?”

The avatar furrowed its brow in contemplation, then split its face with a rubbery grin. “Gentlemen, if you would follow me, I think I have the perfect solution.”

~*~

Dante stared at his reflection. The grey suit clung to his body like a second skin. It was almost as embarrassing as the clothes Joel had made him wear the night before.

“At least you’ve got the muscles to show off,” said Joel. “I’m all bones!”

It wasn’t much of a compliment. Compared to someone like Doyle or Theseus, Dante looked just as scrawny as Joel. He went to dig his hands into his pockets for comfort, then remembered his clothes were still in the changing cubicle. He felt more naked than ever.

“So, who d'you think we’ll be up against?” asked Joel as they headed for the simulation booths. “It best not be that bloody Shawty.”

The last they saw of Chris Shaw, he was slouched on the sofa reading from his old paperback book. Dante figured this was the last place he would be. “Could be Byron,” he offered. “Or Denny.” They were the only people he knew who played such games, besides Joel himself.

“Just our bloody luck, eh?” said Joel. “A ponce and a genius.”

The simulation booths gave little clue as to whom their opponents would be, save that there was two of them. A Seelie cadet, her brooch a dull tin with no flourishes of achievement, helped them to climb into the pods.

“Good luck,” she said, as the world closed around them.

Dante lay there, disconnected from the outside world, wondering just what he had gotten himself into. It was one thing to play out a fantasy on a screen, but to actually live it, as if you were there? All he could think of were his dreams, his nightmares of dying forests and falling moons. How would he even know the difference? How would he even know what was real and what was not?

He felt his eyelids flutter and his body drift away, falling into the Dark.

~*~

The door burst open and gunfire filled the hallway. As a shower of brain matter spewed across his face, Dante stumbled back and ducked for cover behind a mahogany cabinet. When one headless body fell twitching, two more staggered forward. The smell of rotting flesh reached into Dante’s nose and down his throat, threatening to yank out his insides across the carpet. His gun lay at his side, fully loaded, its barrel caked in blood.

Joel loosed three more rounds, each one loud enough to leave Dante’s head ringing, then tossed his empty weapon aside and reached for a nearby vase. After a battering of blows from a chair, its broken legs, then a painting, telephone and grandfather clock, the third of the walking corpses collapsed in a bloody mass of pulped flesh and cracked bone.

Joel turned to Dante, still hiding behind the cabinet. A streak of blood ran down the raven’s face like a splattering of misapplied war paint. “You outta ammo too?” he asked, bending to scoop up Dante’s discarded weapon. Realising it was still loaded, he cocked a quizzical eyebrow and slipped it into his own holster, then reached down to help his friend up. “Guess you’re more of a melee kinda guy, yeah? Don’t worry, mate, I know the feeling. If I had RagnaRock, those things wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Dante mumbled an agreement. The truth was, despite those odd lessons where Ms James taught physics using a variety of projectile weapons and explosives, he had little experience with firearms, and even less when it came to firing them at moving, living targets. Not that the reanimated corpses that attacked them were technically alive—in fact, they were little more than lines of digital code, fed into his brain by the simulation program—but it was hard to tell the difference when they were shambling towards you, dirty nails reaching out to claw the flesh from your bones.

In fact, it was difficult to tell the difference between any of this simulation and the real world. The mahogany cabinet behind which Dante took shelter had details down to the slightest of scuffs, scratches and fingerprints, and the ornaments inside looked like they could fetch a good price on a collector’s market, unlike the usual replications. It was enough to make Dante wonder if this was ‘simulation’ was actually a combination of technical effects, actors and automatons, rather than a stream of computerised data hijacking his perceptions.

Joel walked up to the now open door. It was strange seeing him dressed in such a conservative uniform, which had enough padded body armour to give the illusion of muscles he most certainly did not have. “Looks like it leads outside,” he said. “First floor balcony, innit? Should’ve picked up that sniper rifle when we had the chance. Bet there’re loads of nasties out there.”

The weapon in question was locked behind a simple children’s puzzle. It was the sort of set-up that pushed Dante’s suspension of disbelief close to breaking point and served to remind him that, no matter how real everything might have seemed, this was still just a game. The puzzle itself involved sliding pieces of a picture around a board, but some were missing. Dante had two of them stuffed in his pocket, alongside a box of matches, a lock pick and a roll of black tape. Joel had insisted they would all be useful ‘at some point’.

Presently, the raven was inching through the door, gun drawn, gesturing Dante to follow him. Outside, the balcony overlooked a courtyard swarming with overgrown weeds and climbing vines. A low moan confirmed that at least one animated corpse was waiting in the nighttime shadows to ambush any player unwary enough to rush out into the open. Across the other side of the courtyard, a pair of flickering lights illuminated a suspicious door set alone on a concrete-grey wall.

“I bet that leads to the laboratory,” said Joel, as he peeked over the balcony. “That’ll be where they’re manufacturing the virus. Man, what I’d give for a rocket launcher right about now. Could proper blow that place sky high and win the game with a single shot. That bloody ponce wouldn’t know what hit him.”

Joel remained convinced that their rival players—not that there seemed much room for competition in such a game—were Byron and Deneb, if not Chris and Lance. At present, however, the only signs of their fellow initiates had been a few bloody corpses and stray bullet holes in the mansion walls. Without access to modern technology, there was no telling where they were, or even if they were still playing.

Joel slipped back into the shadows and checked the clip of his weapon. “Six bullets ain’t gonna get us far,” he said. “There’s at least as many nasties out there, and they eat these things up like I would a pizza. We’re gonna need that rifle. Think you can get it?”

Dante shrugged. They were still missing a piece of the puzzle after all.

“Right,” said Joel. “I tell you what. I’ll slip down into that courtyard and stealth the shit outta those bastards while you go fetch it. That way, I can draw them out into the open for when you get back. Things get tough, I can just leg it outta there, right?”

It was the sort of strategy that would leave their Seelie instructors palming their faces in despair, but it was precisely the sort of thing Joel’s virtual heroes would do. Were Dante the one calling the shots, he would have suggested further exploration and careful preparation, using all the tools at their disposal to achieve their goals with the minimum of effort. Dante, however, was not calling the shots. This was Joel’s world.

“You ready?” asked the raven, before vaulting over the balcony and into the courtyard below. A moment later, his pained cry reached out into the night. “I’ve done my fookin’ ankle in!” he said, straining through obvious pain. “I—I’ll keep these bastards occupied, all right? You get that bloody rifle!”

Several of the living corpses had started to move in the shadows. Dante glanced around the balcony for anything that might draw their attention away from his friend, but there was nothing besides a solitary potted plant. Below him, Joel lifted his weapon and fired his first shot. Two more followed, alongside a stream of vulgar expletives. Dante, taking stock of the situation and his chances, fled inside.

The room with the sniper rifle wasn’t far away, but every second Dante wasted was a second in which Joel could fall foul of a horrible fate. He found the incomplete picture and slammed the pieces he had collected into the frame, then started to move them about until they formed the image of a naked man with four outstretched arms. The piece depicting his legs was still missing.

Dante shook his head. This was a stupid idea, a childish game. Who in their right mind would lock a weapon behind such a convoluted puzzle? Grabbing a paperweight from a neighbouring study, he tried to smash open the case containing the rifle, but to no avail. He had to find the final piece, and if he didn’t find it soon…

He stumbled from one room to the next, throwing aside furniture and rummaging through every desk and drawer he could find. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. Whoever lived in this mansion had no interest in logic. It was almost as if they knew some hapless fool would come searching for various innocuous items and arranged their living space accordingly. These were people who locked doors with keys they hid inside revolving statues, themselves sealed behind some obtuse puzzle involving a rusty old medal and a crowbar.

Then Dante crashed into a room he hadn’t seen before—and caught the immediate attention of a hunched, blood-soaked corpse with fire for eyes. Turning its attention away from the eviscerated body it had been feasting upon, it started towards him. Dante sidled around the edge of the room, keeping the furniture between him and the beast. He could feel his heart pounding, his blood pumping. This was as real as anything could be. One wrong move and he would find his own innards spread across the walls. He had to be cautious. He had to be clever.

His mother would know what to do. Ophelia Orpheus would close her eyes and focus all the world into a moment, then return certain of victory.

Drawing a deep breath, Dante closed his eyes…

—and opened them a second later as the beast made its move. Without so much as a thought, Dante upended a table into the monster’s path. Before it could recover, Dante bound across the room and flung himself through the nearest door.

He had barely rounded the corner of the hallway beyond when he heard the beast crash through the door. Noticing a door to his right, Dante turned the handle and slipped into the darkness. In immediate hindsight, it was the worst decision he could have made.

From somewhere in the shadows came the sound of hurried breathing, a shuffling of cloth, the scraping of metal along wood. Then a light burst to life, blinding him.

Blinking back the pain, Dante peered over his raised arm. A pair of frightened eyes watched him from the corner of the room, wrapped inside a bundle of discarded sheets. A trembling hand lowered a gun to the floorboards.

Shelley Eoghan turned her flashlight away from Dante and over to the corner of the room, where bottles of brightly coloured chemicals sat amongst shelves of dust-covered crates and boxes.

Dante put his ear to the door, but he couldn’t hear any sign of the beast.

“They won’t come in here,” said Shelley, her voice almost a whisper. “It’s a safe room.” She gestured towards a typewriter sitting by her side. An antiquated device from the depths of the Old World, it was a popular tool with writers, like Shelley, who found cellular technology lacking in ‘soul’. Dante thought it cumbersome and pointless. What was the difference between a word typed on a screen and one typed in ink? They were still words, no matter their form.

He moved over to the bottled chemicals and poked around for signs of the missing puzzle piece.

“It’s fuel,” said Shelley. “For the flamethrower. A—Allie send me after it.”

Dante picked up the green bottle. It was unmarked, save for a bold icon indicating its flammable properties. If he could somehow combine it with the matches in his pocket, it was possible he could save Joel.

His thoughts suddenly turned to that last image of his friend in the courtyard, injured and firing off his last few rounds of ammunition. It must have been five, maybe ten minutes ago by now. If Joel hadn’t managed to escape, he was probably dead by now.

Dead.

The canister slipped from his fingers and hit the floor, its green contents seeping into the floorboards. Dante stumbled back and fell into the storeroom shelves. Tears welled in the corner of his eyes.

He had left his friend to die.

Shelley waved her flashlight in his face. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I—I let him die,” he replied. “I left Joel to die.”

“It’s only a game,” said Shelley, maybe adding an “unfortunately” under her breath—Dante couldn’t be sure over his own panicked panting. “Allie’s probably a goner too. I’m just waiting for the time-out.”

“How do you know it’s just a game?” asked Dante, words coming before he had chance to think them through. “I—I can feel everything. It’s real. All of it’s real.”

Shelley gave him a pitying look, as if he were once again that helpless child crying before Arided as she told him the truth about all the things he once believed in. “And I thought Allie was bad,” she said, more to herself than to Dante.

Dante found her eyes in the nest of sheets. How pathetic he must have looked, crying over something that wasn’t even real. Shelley looked away. And of all the people to see him like this, it had to be her, had to be the girl he once considered a close friend, who he pushed aside in his pursuit of Truth. The writer, the dreamer, the girl blinded by her own fantasies, yet seemingly immune to the fantasy around her.

“How do you—” he started, before cutting the thought short. He didn’t want to know the answer.

“Tell the difference?” finished Shelley. “Isn’t it obvious? None of this has a soul.”

~*~

None of this has a soul.

Shelley Eoghan’s whisper had become a deafening cry, a rallying call against all the lies and the delusions of Paradise. Either Dante accepted what was in front of him as real, from Avalon’s calm seas and clear skies to its vacuous hedonism and sexual freedom, or he saw through the lie and discarded this vision of Paradise as the result of misappropriated technology. But to label it a lie would give weight to Shelley’s talk of souls, to the idea that a person could close their eyes and sense the truth through instinct, see the world through a third eye that could pierce the deceptions of matter.

Either way, the road led to the same, inevitable conclusion: that night, when she appeared to save his mother, Arided lied. Either she lied to him about Paradise, or she lied to him about magic and faeries and the Erebus. All Dante could do now was find out which.

If Avalon’s deceptions bothered Joel, he did not show it. The raven swaggered down the gold-and-ivory pathway with his hands clasped behind his head, his silk shirt blowing in the light summer breeze. “Mate, if I’d known about that flamethrower, we would’ve proper aced that bloody thing,” he said. “Kent got lucky.”

Dante mumbled an agreement to keep his friend content, but figured the end result would have been the same either way. Had Joel a flamethrower, he would have likely burned the mansion down to a cinder, laughing all the way to his fiery death.

“Still, we’ve got all week, right?” Joel slapped Dante on the shoulder. “Plenty of time to get a bit of practise in and set some high scores. Gotta make the most of what we’ve got, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dante replied. Not three hours into their holiday, and already Avalon was working its charms on people. By the end of the week, they might never want to leave.

He had to save them. Just as he studied Theia’s orbit to prove its fall a millennium away, Dante had to scour every corner of Avalon to find the unquestionable, scientifically sound evidence he needed to prove what was real, and what was not.

To prove which was the lie, and which was the truth.

31: Irrefutable Evidence

Dante was about to cast another pebble into the lake when he realised he was no longer alone. He wasn’t sure how he noticed her approach—maybe it was the slight sound of her boots on the grass, or a subtle shift in light and shadow, or maybe it was something else, some other instinct, an intuition he couldn’t explain nor wanted to explain—but he knew she was there.

Kat sat down beside him and pulled a backpack off her shoulder. “It’s lunchtime, and I figured you haven’t had proper food since we got here,” she said, unzipping her bag and pulling out a plastic tub stuffed with sandwiches. She tossed it into his lap.

The sandwiches were Katrina’s handiwork all right, her uneven cuts and sloppy buttering a stark contrast to the precise angles and delicate fillings the vendors produced. Feeling Kat’s eyes upon him, Dante prised one free of its wrapping and took a small bite.

After three days of ambrosia, he almost gagged. The bread was stale. Well, not so much ‘stale’ as ‘yesterday’s loaf’. It wasn’t as fresh or soft as the bread the vendors produced, and its rubbery crust lacked that satisfying, just-baked crispness. A crumb of cheese, its taste almost overwhelming in its richness, tumbled down his chin and onto his shirt.

“So,” said Kat, “what’ve you been up to?”

“Stuff,” he replied. More than stuff, in truth. He had spent the past three days conducting a thorough investigation of the island. Avalon, however, was a cunning adversary.

It began with the ocean. Dante had spent his Saturday afternoon wandering the white sands, taking measurements and noting down observations. At first he had thought to use his cellular, but after it continued to insist the sand genuine and the sea natural saltwater, despite its taste, Dante had turned to the sketchbook Katrina had packed. His own handwriting would not lie to him.

Right now, that sketchbook lay open on the desk in his room, its pages filled with scribbled diagrams Dante had used to try to solve the mystery of the Avalonian sky. Theia, of course, was conspicuous by its absence, as it had been aboard the Seelie cruiser, but there was something off about the sun, too. Dante found that he could stare at it as if it were nothing more than a light bulb—bright enough to leave a dancing afterimage when he looked away, but not so much that it hurt his eyes. Reasoning it as much an illusion as the sky itself, he spent his Sunday tracking its position from multiple points across the island. If it were an aethex projection designed to mimic the sun, then the laws of parallax would give it away.

The figures, however, did not add up. According to his calculations, the sun Dante could stare at without consequence was the sun itself, one-hundred forty-nine million kilometres distant. If it was an illusion, the only way to be sure would be to reach out and touch it.

Naturally, that was easier said than done. The gondolas that floated around Avalon’s towers never once strayed from their preset paths, and the vendors refused to produce anything Dante could have used to build even a rudimentary boat. Instead, he had no other option than to strip down and throw himself at the sea.

A hundred metres out, the waves conspired to turn him back.

Defeated, he spent the Monday trying to ascend the various towers clustered around the island’s Recreational District, but each one turned him away. If he didn’t have the authorisation, he lacked the credentials. Unless he proved himself in some sport or test of strength, he would remain stranded at ground level, forced to forever stare up at the skies and contemplate his weakness. It was just like Malkuth, and the system of karma and kudos that controlled access to its various terraces.

It didn’t help that Horatio Stark and Hermia Adelheid had made quick progress through a number of tournaments in just a few days. Dante was surprised that Theseus Armstrong hadn’t followed in their wake, putting his combat prowess to the test in one of the various martial arts leagues, but he had seen little of the former soldier since their arrival. John Smith had also vanished, as had Chris Shaw, while Joel was spending more and more time with Kaori now that their little bout of drama had blown over. Dante spent his third night in Avalon alone in his apartment, pacing about his room as he searched for the crack he needed to expose Avalon and all its lies.

Now it was Tuesday, and frustration had brought him to the central tower, to that crystal shard looming over the island as Malkuth loomed over its surrounding lands. Dante had assumed it would be some kind of administrative complex, an axis from where the Fortunate Isles controlled their little illusion of Paradise, and thus a place he would stand no chance of entering—so he was surprised to find rolling fields running down to a sparkling lake, all signs of the Recreational District outside obscured behind a veil of blue skies. An illusion within an illusion, and one made more obvious than most by the quartet of giant trees that surrounded the lake, their trunks some fifteen metres thick at Dante’s best estimate.

“What do you think they are?” asked Katrina, offering him a drink from her flask. “It’s tea, obviously,” she said. “No sugar.”

It tasted just the wrong side of tangy. “Supports,” Dante replied, gaze wandering up the trunks to their overshadowing boughs of green-blue leaves. In reality, the tower rose above them for at least half a kilometre, and even the most advanced of materials—the sort that could carry a city into the clouds—had to obey the laws of physics. “They probably run all the way to the summit.”

“Almost.” Kat reached out to fuss her turquoise cat behind its ears. “They’re elevators. We’ve seen them on other levels, though they’re not usually disguised as trees.”

Dante wondered how high she had managed to climb. Like Theseus, he had hardly seen her since the day they arrived. No doubt the blame lay with Phoenix Rogan and her obsessive desire to expose conspiracy and corruption.

Once he had finished with the sandwiches, Kat offered him a slice of apple pie. “Have you noticed anything strange about this place?” she asked, watching him eat with a curious intensity.

Dante shrugged. Of course he had.

“Well, if you do notice anything off, let me know about it, okay?” she said, and started to pack her things. “I’d stay and chat all afternoon, but you know what Phoenie is like when it comes to schedules.”

She stood and hoisted her bag onto her shoulders, then moved to brush the grass from her jeans without realising that, since it was synthetic grass, there was nothing there. “Here,” she said, reaching into her coat pocket and producing a weathered paper bag with red-and-white stripes. “They’re sweets,” she said, handing Dante the bag. “I figured you could do with a little sugar.”

With a final wave and a “See you around!”, Kat sauntered off across the fields, automatous cat trundling along at her side. Dante watched them vanish through the western archway, fading away as if stepping into a thick fog, then popped one of the multicoloured chunks of sugar into his mouth and slipped the bag into his cloak pocket.

His fingers brushed against the Tablet. He had been so focused on his investigation, so focused on jotting down notes and diagrams in his sketchbook, that he had almost forgotten he still carried the collective wisdom of the Saptamatrikas around with him.

Their collective wisdom, or their collective lies.

Dante paced away from the lake, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. Sitting around doing nothing was just asking for those troublesome thoughts to come bubbling back up to the surface. He had better things to do, more important things to focus on.

But all it took was a crack, and one thought led to another until his mind was awash with an avalanche of anxieties, all of them leading back to the same, inevitable conclusion: Arided lied. Dante fled into his cloak, cutting himself off from the outside world, from all those eyes that might see the pain on his face, the fear and the confusion. The denial.

Avalon was a lie, and he knew that not because of gathered evidence, but because of some gut feeling, some invisible instinct. Because, when he closed his eyes and tried to picture the world around him, he saw a vague and ambiguous shadow, a fleeting distortion that could never quite decide on what it was or even if it was.

Without thinking, he had arrived at a balcony overlooking one of the island’s many scattered cafes, where interactive tables served up an endless stream of ambrosian replications on demand. As Dante scanned the crowd through his cloak’s camera feed, he spied a familiar flash of blue.

Emily was sitting in the middle of the cafe with her back to him. Opposite her, Byron swigged the last drop of liquid from his glass, then dabbed his lips clean with a napkin. His hat sat next to him. Dante, invisibility limiting his senses, could not hear their conversation.

Then Emily struck the table with her fist, drawing a startled looked from a nearby couple. Byron steepled his fingers in front of him. His eyes shifted from one corner of the cafe to the other.

“It has been an interesting few days, has it not, Mr Orpheus?” said a voice to Dante’s left. He turned to find Sohrabarak al-Hakim slouched at a table, a vibrant flowered shirt in place of his usual Seelie uniform. He lifted a glass, half full with a rich, cardinal liquid, in greeting. “How are you finding things?”

“I—” Dante paused. He knew his next words would decide his fate. “It’s—it’s all a lie. The sky, the sea, even these towers. It’s like … it’s like something out of a simulation. None of it has—” he took a deep breath, “none of it has a soul. When you have everything, nothing has value.”

He never thought he would quote Chris Shaw on anything, least of all to a Seelie Officer, but the Malkuthian’s words explained things better than he ever could.

“The wise words of those who abandoned the Cities when they realised that a short life filled with hardship was better than empty eternity,” said Mr al-Hakim, sloshing his drink around its glass. “Unfortunately, for each person who sees through the lies, there are a dozen more willing to sacrifice anything and everything for a shot at that blissful immortality.”

Below them, Byron stood from the table, picked up his hat, and made for the bathroom. Almost as soon as he vanished, a man in a smart suit of amaranth purple slipped through the crowd and took his seat. As the stranger leaned over the table to engage Emily in conversation, his hand slipped beneath a frilled cravat.

“If I were you,” said Mr al-Hakim, “I would make sure you are recording this.”

Dante ordered his visor to record his cloak’s information feed just in time to catch Emily fling the contents of her glass in the stranger’s face and storm out of the cafe. The man called after her, “Aliza! Aliza, please, wait!”

When she refused to listen, he reached into his shirt.

“Well,” said Mr al-Hakim, “what did you think of him?”

“Of who?” asked Dante.

“Precisely.” Mr al-Hakim smiled. “Perhaps you should check your recording.”

Dante was surprised to find his visor recording everything he—or, rather, his cloak—saw. As he played it back, his memories stirred. Not a minute had passed but, somehow, he had forgotten all about the stranger harassing Emily. It was as if he was spying on events from an alternative timeline.

And yet the stranger was still there, in the cafe below, one hand playing with something underneath his shirt as Byron weaved through the chairs and tables towards him.

“If you are wondering, this is not Avalon’s doing,” said Mr al-Hakim. “Potent as its technology may be, it does not have the power to erase memories. Now, if you would excuse me…” He rose from his seat and tapped his butterfly brooch, almost camouflaged against his shirt pocket, “I have duties to attend to. I wish you luck with your continued investigations, Mr Orpheus. Remember, the fewer assumptions, the better. More often than not, the truth is the simplest answer.”

As he left, Dante returned his attention to the cafe below, where the man in the amaranth purple suit was making a hurried exit. Byron, clasping his cellular close to his mouth, followed at a discreet distance.

The simplest answer: that man was after Emily.

Dante saw the forest, the scattered remains of dead Sophists, the polite man in the suit asking after his mother. So many things had happened that night because of her, so many forces weaving their schemes around one another, all because she was a Maiden. All because she was special.

Just like Emily.

He wasn’t sure when he started, or even how he knew where he was going, but soon Dante was leaving the Recreational District behind and making for the island’s far reaches. There, a distance ahead of him, he caught sight of Emily, her blue hair bright in the morning sun.

He had to save her. And perhaps, in the process, he could save himself.

~*~

When Dante caught up with Emily, it was at the last place he expected to find her. She was standing on the edge of a synthetic woodland covering at least nine hectares of the western island. Dante had planned to explore it at some point in search of local avatars. He had not expected to follow Emily inside.

A short way in, however, she stopped and turned around. Her pale-winter eyes fell on Dante’s position. His cloak, for all its technological prowess, had failed him. Nothing was truly invisible if you knew what to look for.

“I think I’ve had enough stalkers for one day,” she said.

Dante traced the deactivation glyph onto his cloak and let the hood fall around his shoulders. His cheeks burned with a sudden shame. Emily continued to see him at his worst.

“Cheer up,” she said, flashing her crescent moon smile. “At least you’re not trying to kidnap me with magical powers!”

He didn’t need to question her. The truth was too obvious for that. Burying his hands into his pockets, he felt the cold, lifeless shell of the Tablet and wondered how it might explain a man who could be seen and forgotten in the space of a heartbeat. “Misappropriated technology”, no doubt. It was the Saptamatrikas’ excuse for everything.

Next to the Tablet, he felt the bag of sweets Katrina had given him. Unable to think of anything else to say or do, he offered it to Emily. She plucked one free and studied it beneath the forest’s bioluminescent light.

“You got yourself away from that synthesised junk, then?” she said, before popping the sweet into her mouth. With a wince, she added, “I could break my teeth on these things.”

Dante stuffed the bag back into his pocket and struggled to hold back a twitch of a smile. It almost felt as if nothing, from their previous trek into a synthetic forest to the drama in the Scar and those vague recollections from the World’s End, had ever happened. As if Emily had never seen Dante break down before Director Guirlande, or found him drunk and delirious in an attempt to escape the truth. As if she had never realised what a weak and ineffective man he really was.

Emily raised an eyebrow. “Are you angsting again, Dante?”

No, nothing was truly invisible if you knew what to look for, not even emotions, not even thoughts. His mother had taught him that much. His mother, with her pale-winter eyes and crescent moon smile. His mother, the Maiden.

Emily held out a hand. “Come on,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

Dante wanted to ask her about the man from the cafe, to ask if she remembered him, and to remind her if she couldn’t. He wanted to know why she was in trouble, and what he could do to help her. To save her.

Without a word, he took her hand.

“You saw him too, right?” she asked as she led him through the forest. Dante nodded. “He’s not the first,” she continued. “The fifth, actually, and second from the people running this place.”

“You didn’t forget about him?” asked Dante.

“Please,” she said with a lopsided smirk. “When you’re as popular as I am, you learn to pay attention to these things. Like how all these creeps are using the same magic, and how they all want me to leave the island in some way or another. Almost worked the first time, too, but now I know what to look for they’re pretty much wasting their time.”

All Dante could think about was the night his mother disappeared, mixed with half-remembered fragments from the Duke’s story of Torsten’s oracle, Aliyah Adel. “People will do some crazy shit for a taste of Paradise.”

“It’s not all bad news, at least” said Emily, still smiling despite her troubles. “Just as there are people who can twist your thoughts on a whim, there are those who can hide whole other worlds.”

And, in the space of a heartbeat, they were standing in a sunlight glade, the forest greens and russet browns of nature as far as the eye could see. Dante glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see silver trunks and turquoise leaves, but there was no sign of them. Even the spires of Avalon had vanished. Dante shook his head. They had exchanged one illusion for another, that was all.

With a gentle tug, Emily teased him into the sunlight. There was a small cottage at the centre of the glade, its stone walls a world away from the smooth transmatter of Avalon. Nearby, a young woman with a patterned headscarf tied around her lime-green hair was fishing water from a shallow stream. When she noticed Emily’s approach, she lay down her bucket and hurried over to greet her, delicate feet dancing across the soft grass. She had a smile on her pale face to match Emily’s, and eyes like a winter’s sky.

“Hello, Emily,” she said, as they embraced in a brief hug. “And who have you brought with you today?”

“This is Dante,” said Emily. “Dante, this is Jasmine.”

Jasmine offered him her hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Dante,” she said. “Emily has told me much about you.”

Dante, cheeks flushed, kept his hands buried inside his cloak pockets.

“Where’s Himeros?” asked Emily. “He’s usually first to greet visitors.”

Jasmine’s smile faltered. “He returned to his own world,” she said. “He seemed rather concerned about something. I couldn’t say when he might be back. You know what the People are like when it comes to time.”

“Yeah,” said Emily. “It’s been, what, four days since they summoned the court? For all we know, it’s only been in session five minutes.”

Dante tried not to think about the things he was hearing, but he knew if he stayed here with Emily he would hear a whole lot more of them. If he was going to escape, now was the time. All he had to do was turn his back on the mysterious glade and flee into the forest, back into the world of silver trunks and turquoise leaves, into a world infused with aethex and enslaved to illusion, a world away from all this talk of magic and faeries and the warping of time. It was all just sufficiently advanced technology, misappropriated technology, technology to fool the ignorant. That was what the Tablet would tell him. That was what Arided would tell him.

A familiar voice called his name before he could make his decision. Dante looked up to see Lysander Goodfellow sauntering out of the cottage, Angelo Foley at his side.

“You boys been behaving yourselves, I hope,” said Emily.

“We always behave ourselves,” replied Lysander with a knowing grin. “That’s why Himeros left us in charge!”

Emily raised her eyebrow at Jasmine, who shrugged and said, “Wind elementals.”

Lysander met Dante with a wide smile. For someone who gorged himself on sweets and junk food, he had surprisingly good teeth. Perfect, even. When Joel was his age, he had broken one tooth and chipped several others. “You here to escape that hellhole too?” he asked.

Emily took Dante by the arm. “He’s my guest,” she said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Aah, talk.” Lysander nodded, a glint of mischief in his eye. “You gonna need anything while you’re busy ‘talking’? Something to eat, maybe? A bottle of wine? Ice cubes? Handcuf—”

Emily silenced him with a smile that promised pain if he ever thought to continue that line of suggestion.

They entered the cottage through a wooden door painted a deep green. Emily led Dante through a narrow hallway, its ceiling low enough that someone like Doyle Kennedy or Theseus Armstrong would have to duck to avoid the jutting wooden supports, and into a kitchen crammed with stoves and cupboards. It reminded Dante of the burrow he once lived in with his mother, back when they took shelter with the Donara. Lysander and Angelo, who were following them, paused to check on the contents of a sweltering oven.

“I’m surprised the two of you haven’t burned this place down,” said Emily.

“You mean it’s flammable?” asked Lysander.

In truth, Dante wasn’t even sure if it was real.

Emily continued out of the kitchen and into a lounge where Oscar Whittlesey, of all people, slouched on an old sofa, a plate of biscuits perched on his lap. A woman, who couldn’t have been older than Dante himself, sat at his side. Oscar was telling her of the time he faced down a lion the size of an oak tree and failed to notice his fellow initiates pass by—at least until Lysander asked, loud enough for the whole cottage to hear, if that was the same time Oscar “cacked his pants”. As Oscar spluttered his defence, Emily guided Dante out of the room.

“Oscar’s been here since we arrived,” she said, as she opened a door and gestured Dante down a spiralling stairway. “I think Himeros has a crush on him.”

The stairs were steep and narrow, forcing Dante to clasp the railing to keep his balance. Either side of him a strip of light provided illumination, the first sign of modern technology he had seen since entering the glade.

“He’s got quite the establishment going on here, truth be told,” Emily continued. “I was a little suspicious at first, but the more I’ve learned about Avalon, the more I’m thankful a place like this even exists.”

The stairway stopped about ten metres underground, if Dante’s calculations were correct, and opened out onto a large hall. It was as far away from the cottage’s quaint design as the cottage was from Avalon’s transmatter replications. Velvet drapes hung from rich mahogany walls, while, at the far end of the chamber, a crystal-clear waterfall crashed into a bubbling pool.

“Just think of it as a sanctuary,” said Emily, guiding Dante away from the hall and down a corridor lined with doors. “Even the people who run Avalon don’t know about it. Himeros used their own technology against them—that and a little magic, of course. Not that I expect you to believe me,” she added with a wink.

They stopped by a door at the far end of the corridor. Emily twisted the handle and pushed it open. “If it helps, though, this is the one place in all of Avalon I feel comfortable,” she said.

Dante peered inside. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find, but it certainly wasn’t silk sheets and soft cushions and ornate furniture, or the half-finished game of chess sat beneath a bay window looking out across spring gardens. A pile of clothes, including several of Emily’s shirts, lay scattered over a long sofa. A door in the corner of the room led into what looked like a bathroom.

“Himeros has all his rooms enchanted. They’re sealed off from the outside world.” explained Emily, as she started unbuttoning her shirt. “Anything that happens here, anything we say, anything we do, will never leave these walls. And, if you don’t believe me…”

She pulled off her shirt to reveal a sleeveless skin of black leather covering her from next to waist. Around her shoulders, her bronze skin had turned blotchy as streaks of sweat revealed hints of a snow-white undertone.

Emily bit down on her lip, a grimace of shame. “Dante,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you. You see, I—” She turned away, hiding her face beneath a sweep of sky-blue hair, tinged with strands of platinum. “I’m not from Malkuth. I’m not even the daughter of Malkuthians. I was born in the catacombs. My—my name isn’t even Emily Fomalhaut. It’s…”

She reached up and grasped her right shoulder and, for a moment, Dante thought that was it, that she wouldn’t say any more. But then, with a sad, but resolute sigh, she continued. “My name is Aliza Adel. I am the second and last daughter of the oracle, Aliana Adel, and this”—she removed her hand from her shoulder—“is my curse.”

Dante didn’t need to question it. He realised what it was the moment she spoke her real name. It blazed around her shoulder like tendrils of black fire, invisible to the eyes but somehow there.

The Brand of the Erebus.

32: Acceptance

She ran through the underground, a pale, frightened figure with a dishevelled cloak of silver-blonde hair sweeping out behind her. In one hand she clasped an old lamp, its flame locked behind a frame of grass and twisted copper, in the other the hand of her twin, whose neon orange hair was like a flame itself. Ahead of them, the passageway dropped into an uncertain darkness. The woman with the silver-blonde hair glanced over the edge.

“It’s about thirty feet and pretty steep,” she said. “You want to jump or climb?”

Her sister looked horrified at the thought of either. “What I want is to go home,” she said. “I’m worried about mother.”

“She’s not our mother, Lonie.”

“Shut up!” Lonie’s lips twisted into a vicious scowl. “At least she gives a damn. Face it, Liza, our real mother couldn’t care less what happened to us. That’s why she ran away. She’s nothing but a stupid wh—”

Liza’s slap echoed through the cavern, leaving a mark on her sister’s cheek almost as bright as her hair. “Our parents are dead,” she said. “Pleiades killed them, and if we’re not careful, they’ll come after us, too. That’s why mum sent us to live with Uncle Verraden. It was the only way to keep us safe. The only way to keep you safe.”

Lonie turned away, hiding her face behind a sweep of hair. “D—don’t start that again. I’m not an Oracle or whatever. I—I’m just a girl! A twelve-year-old girl!”

“You don’t look twelve. Now come on, unless you want to try your luck with the Sophists.” Securing the lamp to her belt, Liza started her descent.

I don’t know if they were following us. I don’t know if they even cared. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know who else to turn to.

Lonie glanced back the way they came, then started after her sister. “Why are we even doing this?” she asked, voice trembling on the verge of a sob. “We don’t know anyone down here.”

“I do,” replied Liza as she jumped the final few feet to the ground below. “I know Fomalhaut.”

Lonie landed next to her. “I didn’t come all the way down here just to meet your imaginary friend,” she said.

“He’s not imaginary,” said Liza, unhooking the lamp from her belt.

“You told me he was a fish. A talking fish.”

“What is it Uncle Verraden always says? Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Lonie grumbled, but did not question her sister.

The tunnels continued for what seemed like hours, a network of forgotten catacombs and irregular stairways that twisted in on themselves and under themselves and down, down, down into the depths of the earth. Just when it seemed as if their journey might never end, the way ahead opened upon a cavern, wide yet low, and filled with the sound of sloshing water.

Liza hurried ahead. “Fomalhaut?” she called. “Fomalhaut, it’s me, Aliza!” Reaching the shore of an underground lake, she tossed her lamp aside and started into the waters.

“This is crazy,” said Lonie, picking up the lamp and casting its light over the dark waters. “There’s no one here.”

Aliza ignored her. “Fomalhaut, where are you? We need your help.”

Shaking her head, Lonie sat down on a nearby rock and watched her sister wade into the lake until its waters reached up to her waist. With a look of boredom on her face, she picked up a nearby stone and flung it into the darkness. A second followed, then a third. Each throw was flawless.

Her sister continued to call out into the darkness.

Then another light flashed across the cavern. Lonie turned to its source. A figure was stumbling out of the caves, a man with an electric torch in his hand.

“Father!” Lonie cried, drawing her sister’s attention to the figure. With a look of horror on her face, Aliza turned her back on the lake and started sloshing her way to shore. Her cries of warning fell on death ears.

I was afraid—afraid of what he might do to us.

Verraden Sepulturero did not look a healthy man. His clothes were tattered and caked in dirt, while a gash on his forehead oozed a trail of crimson blood down his panting, sweat-soaked face.

“Alonie?” he said, his voice hoarse with effort. “W—what are you doing down here?”

Then his eyes rolled towards Aliza, splashing through the lake towards him.

“A—Aliana?” he said, staggering forward, pushing aside the niece who called him ‘Father’. “Aliana, is—is that you?”

He was delusional. If I’d know, I might have… But I—

Aliza reached the edge of the lake. “Fomalhaut,” she whispered under her breath. “Please, Fomalhaut.”

Her uncle continued towards her, battered face breaking into a smile. “Aliana! After all this time, I found you again. Aliana!”

Aliza tensed as he fell forwards, arms reaching out to embrace her. “I did it all for you,” he said, tracing his lips across her cheek. “Everything, just for you.”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I did the only thing I could…

They were standing in a garden beneath a starlit sky. Verraden Sepulturero, no longer clasping his niece, staggered back in confusion. “T—this is..” His eyes, bulging from their sockets swept across his surroundings. “The Gardens in the sky. Paradise!”

“This is your heart,” said Aliza, her voice cold, disconnected.

His eyes fell on her, standing alone, a shadow in the sunlight, and his jaw dropped open with sudden, horrific realisation. “Aliza?” he said. “What’s going on? Why are we here? Where’s your mother? Where’s Aliana?”

“My mother is dead.”

Verraden shook his head. “No. No! That can’t be true! She promised me! Arided promised!” Face contorting with terror, he grasped the sides of his head and fell to his knees in despair. “I was going to save her! They—they…”

Then, out of a cloud of sweat and blood and tears, a roar of piercing hatred wrapped itself around Aliza’s throat.

“This is all your fault,” Verraden spat. “You. If only you’d done as you were told, none of this would have happened. But no, you just had to steal the spotlight, didn’t you? Had to show the world how clever you are.” His grip tightened, fingernails digging into Aliza’s flesh. “If she’s dead, it’s because of you! You!”

Aliza rolled her eyes skyward. The Great Eye loomed over them, behind it a scar as black as night with twelve reaching wings.

Verraden’s voice screamed through the dark. “You took everything I had! You—you little—”

A heavy crack cut his words short. Eyes wide with surprise, he fell backwards and into Alonie’s arms as she dropped the cracked lamp to the cavern floor. Tears rolled down her pale cheeks.

“Father,” she said, “I—I’m sorry. I—” She turned to Aliza, her eyes blazing like fire. “This is all your fault. You—you made me do this! He was going to save us. He was going to take us all to Malkuth, and this, this is how you repay him?” Cradling her uncle’s wheezing body, she lowered her voice to a gentle whisper, “You wanted to save mum, didn’t you? Dad forced her to live down here, but you wanted to save her. All this time.”

Aliza took a step back towards the lake, lips trembling, searching for words. A tear streaked down her cheek. “I—is he?”

“What do you care if he is?” Alonie snapped. “You never gave a damn about us! All you wanted was to live in these damned caves! Well, go on then! Be a whore, if that’s what you want, but don’t you ever speak to me again! I’m not your sister. I’m Alonie Kent, daughter of Aureole Kent, and one day I’ll escape this damned hellhole and earn my place in Malkuth, just like…” She gave her uncle a pitying look. “Just like my father always wanted.”

“He’s not your—”

“SHUT UP!”

In a haze of tears, Aliza turned and stumbled into the lake. “Fomalhaut,” she sobbed. “Fomalhaut, please…”

And there he was. As the waters reached her chest, she saw him there in the gloom, a black shape in the shadows, floating on the endless night. As she pulled his body towards her, his eyes blinked open, old, weary eyes ready for sleep.

“Fomalhaut,” she said. “I came back, just like I promised.”

“Y—you…” his voice was thin, weak.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said. “It’s Aliza.”

“Aliza?” He sounded confused. “You—you’re not Aliza. I—I saw you. I saw what you did. You cursed him.”

Aliza fought back tears. “He deserved it!”

Fomalhaut’s eyelids dropped. “Aliza would never say a thing like that. She was … she was a kind little girl who would never hurt anybody. I … I waited for her. She was the last thing … Without her, I…”

“No! I’m still here! Fomalhaut! I’m still here! I’m Aliza!”

“You’re … you’re just a … a monster.”

And, with a final, rattling breath, Fomalhaut’s eyes lost their light and the twelve talons of black fire reached up to drag his soul into the Dark.

He once said it was the fate of all Branded to vanish into darkness. The only thing they can do, he said, was delay the inevitable. So long as they had friends, so long as there was somebody to call their name, the Erebus would never claim them.

Aliza returned to the beach cradling Fomalhaut’s lifeless body in her arms. Alonie, and their uncle, had vanished, leaving only Aliza’s broken lamp behind. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she set about digging a shallow grave in the hard dirt. In the end, however, she had little choice but to bury her old friend beneath loose rocks and stones.

She never noticed the figures watching her, the figures who had followed her all this way, watching as the memory played out, unchangeable.

“And that,” said Emily Fomalhaut, “is the day Aliza Adel died.”

Dante watched the young Aliza disappear into the Dark, her shoulder burning with the twelve-winged scar, and, at last, he knew the truth.

~*~

They lay together yet apart, hands reaching across the gulf between them. Emily’s was cold to the touch, fragile, but her grip did not waiver, even as her voice did.

“It got a little rough after that,” she said. “I was young and naïve. I didn’t realise the lengths some people would go to for the sake of seer.” She turned to Dante and smiled. “But then I met Lira.”

Dante pictured his housemate, the short Fiannan girl with unruly golden hair and a permanent scowl. “Did she make people think twice about coming after you?” he asked.

“Believe me, if she was here now, we’d have at least two corpses on our hands. It’s almost a shame she isn’t…” Her voice drifted off into a sad thought. “That’s probably why she isn’t.”

“I thought she was just being lazy?”

“No,” said Emily. “Lira knew I’d get into trouble without her around. I always do.”

“Then why did she change her mind?”

Emily turned away, tightened her grip on Dante’s hand. “She didn’t. Somebody—how should we put this?—suggested otherwise, and she didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Sounds like those men who are after you.” Dante had burned the image of the man from the cafe into his mind’s eye, just in case he tried to use his power a second time.

Emily chuckled to herself. “Yeah, I guess there isn’t much of a difference, is there?” Turning back to face him, she said, “It’s magic, Dante. Sidhe magic.”

Dante held her gaze. There was a time when he would have pulled on his cloak and skulked off at the mere mention of the Sidhe, but not now, not after all Emily had told him, all she had shown him. Even before he had ever met her, fate had bound their lives together. It seemed only natural that everything was leading up to this one moment of revelation—of realisation.

Hours had passed since they first started talking. In the beginning, after Emily had revealed the Brand of the Erebus that scarred her shoulder, they spoke of their mothers, of Ophelia Orpheus and Aliana Adel, friends who shared in the curse of the Erebus and the curse of the Maidens both, and both of whom vanished that night, six years ago. They spoke too of the man in the suit, who Dante had spied as his mother fled the forest shrine and Emily referred to as ‘Pleiades’, a master of fanged shadows who hunted her mother through the catacombs. Combined with Dante’s own experience, they figured him some kind of machine masquerading as human—perhaps an avatar of aethex, or even alchemium—with an interest in the Branded.

Talk of the Erebus and its invisible mark inevitably led to talk of its symptoms. Emily wondered if Dante himself carried the Brand, but he knew otherwise. Were he Branded, like his mother, then Arided would have taken him to Malkuth with her, but instead she had left him in Torsten. No, he was just the average son of an average man. He wasn’t special, like his mother. Like Emily.

And just as powers unknown had manipulated the Sophists to get at his mother, so too had they brought the Second Class initiates to Avalon so they could capture Emily.

And, just as his father had spent that night fighting to protect his wife, while Dante stood by and allowed her to fall into Arided’s hands, so too had Byron d’Arcadie spent his days in Avalon helping Emily to combat her stalkers, while Dante lost himself to some pointless ‘investigation’ to prove what, deep down, he already knew was true. The realisation felt like a blunt knife through his heart.

Emily didn’t see it that way, of course, despite his mumbled attempts to apologise. Most of the Second Class had no idea what was going on, she said, but Dante knew, had he listened to his own instinct from the start, had he cast aside the Tablet and Arided’s lies instead of clinging to some pitiful hope they might be true, he could have been there for her as Byron had.

“But you’re here now, aren’t you?” she had said. “And that’s what’s important, because no matter how much they try to help me, Byron and Ceres and Lysander and the others, they won’t ever understand the way you do.”

It was because of that understanding she offered to share her past. It was important, she said, for both of them. “So you can see the day Aliza Adel died,” she said, “and the day I realised I was cursed.”

But it was more than that. By taking her hand and entering into that world, into that timeless moment, caught in a dream, Dante Orpheus finally shed the cloak of lies Arided bestowed upon him and saw for himself the deluded man he might have one day become.

Verraden Sepulturero, devoted to earning his place in Malkuth, to a dream of a heavenly Paradise, to his saving a woman thought lost to the Dark. There was no doubt in Dante’s mind that Emily’s uncle had fallen for those same lies, those same promises that Dante himself had. The Tablet’s promises. Arided’s promises.

The woman who had stolen his mother and convinced him that the Erebus was just an illusion. That the Sidhe were just a lie. That magic was not real.

“The aethereal arts,” he said. “That’s what Seelie calls it, at least. They say people don’t take the term ‘magic’ seriously, because they associate it with sleights of hand and coin tricks. Manipulating the aether is more like painting or playing an instrument. It’s creative. That’s why Seelie promotes creativity classes in their training programs.”

He had never spoken so freely, so openly with anyone for years. It felt as if a shadow had been sitting on his chest all this time and suddenly fled. He could breathe again.

Emily smiled. “I can’t say I grew up with Seelie like you did,” she said. “It was always magic to me. I bet Chris has his own term for it too, something pretentious. You know what scientists are like.”

He still found it hard to accept that someone like Chris Shaw could believe in such fantastical things, despite all the laws they threatened to—or, indeed, did—break. Then again, all Dante knew of modern science was what the Tablet had taught him.

“Do you really think they study it?” he asked.

“Well someone from the City clearly does, or we wouldn’t be in this mess, would we?” Emily replied with an amused smirk. “What we need to know now is who they are, and what they’re after.”

Until a few hours ago, Dante had never heard the name Pleiades, but now it lay at the centre of everything. Arided was just a minor piece of the puzzle, a missionary for something much greater, for a force that could win a young boy’s trust and kill a young girl’s hope in the space of a single night.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it just seems so … so big. What can we hope to do against something like that?”

“You say that, but if Pleiades was really that powerful then why did it go to all that trouble just to kidnap your mother? She must have known something, had some kind of power over them, and if she could make a difference, then so can we. It only takes one person to change the world.”

“I—I don’t know,” said Dante. “I need time to think about it.”

Emily squeezed his hand. “One step at a time,” she said. “Speaking of which, how do you feel about faeries now?” She didn’t make the warding glyph—and why would she when they lay in a place sealed from the outside world? “Are you ready to paint me a gallery?”

“Maybe,” he replied.

She grinned. “Well, ’maybe’ is better than ‘no’.”

~*~

Six years ago, one night changed Emily Fomalhaut’s life for the worse. Now, one night had given her more drive and determination than she knew what to do with. She looked her reflection in the eyes and pulled the brush through her sky-blue hair. If one person could change the world, she would be that person—not for her sake, but for her friends’ sake. For her mother’s. For Dante’s mother’s.

“Well, we got into some trouble,” she said in reply to Dante’s query, “so we fled to the surface.”

“The Macha, right? And Badb?” he said, brutalising both pronunciations as only someone who read them on a page could do. Or, she suspected, on a wanted poster at the World’s End.

“It’s ‘Ma-kha’ and ‘Bayv’,” Emily corrected him with a smile. “And yes, that was us. Along with Nemain and Anand—that is, Kaori and Shelley—we were the Daughters of Ernmas. Those two didn’t have our, eh,” she chuckled to herself in recollection, “reputation. And, you know, they’re the daughters of prominent Seelie officers. You don’t put a price on the heads of people like that.”

The cult of Alastor had learned that lesson the hard way.

“But yeah,” she continued, “after that I became Emily Fomalhaut. Figured it sounded Malkuthian enough and, well…” She wanted to be the kind, generous person Fomalhaut had always imagined her to be.

She looked over her shoulder. Dante was still curled up on the sofa, wrapped in his cloak. He had barely moved since he settled down to sleep. Emily wasn’t even sure if he had slept.

She felt his eyes on her shoulder, the warmth of her Brand as it tingled from acknowledgement. She knew what he was thinking. “It was Freyr,” she said. “He offered to hide it in exchange for my”—she grimaced—“services. Not even Seelie can see it. The only way anyone can is if I admit my real name to them, and that’s not something I do very often. You should count yourself lucky!”

She pictured his aura for signs of reaction to mention of Prince Freyr, but it was as dense and unreadable as always.

“Services?” he asked.

“They—” Emily glanced at the door. Despite all Himeros’s reassurances, she still expected to spy those piercing emerald eyes and that wicked, wolfish smile out of the corner of her eye. “They want me to help them investigate the Erebus,” she admitted. “I think they’re searching for Branded…”

She winced, expecting Dante to stand up and accuse her of leading him here just so she could delve into his past—but he remained there on the sofa, dark eyes staring off into some distant, unseen dream.

“So, that’s why they sent us into the Scar,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“They ignored my mother, you know? That night, she called to them, asked them for help, but they ignored her.”

He didn’t say it, but Emily could tell from his tone he held them responsible for what had happened, and she could hardly blame him. If her assumptions were correct, then Ophelia Orpheus and Aliana Adel had their own parts to play in the schemes of Lords Dionysus and Freyr, and neither prince had moved to protect them that night. Either Maidens were expendable in their eyes, or something—someone—had forced their restraint.

And now Dionysus stood accused of treason. Emily wondered if Himeros had returned from the Sidhe realm with news of the Court’s judgement—assuming, that was, they had even begun deliberations.

“I try not to question their motives,” she lied. “They’re … not like us.”

Whilst Emily busied herself with makeup, Dante shuffled into shower, and by the time he re-emerged she was the Emily he remembered. Byron might have implored her to embrace her natural looks, and Kaori would have pestered her to try some different colour dyes, but Dante’s only reaction to Emily’s cracked facade had been a furrowed brow of confusion followed by a shrug. Even that vision of her younger self, when she maintained her platinum hair and pale skin in honour of her departed mother, had done little to phase him. The blessing of growing up with a Maiden for a mother.

Emily watched Dante as he sat down and tied his boot laces with practised precision. The shower had ruffled his hair, leaving it a wild mop of black feathers, and his eyes, a deep, dark brown, saw only the task in front of him, nothing more. It was only his stubble, suggestive of a man five years his senior, his heightened immune system, and his tendency towards considered insights that implied even a trace of the Maidenblood. If Ophelia Orpheus really was his mother—and Emily wasn’t about to question him about it, what with everything else he had to worry about at present—then it went against everything Emily knew of her kind.

But, if he was Maidenblood, then Pleiades had made a mistake in ignoring him—and Emily would make sure they came to regret it.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” she asked, as she gathered her things together.

Dante grunted an affirmative. It was the most she would get out of him. For all he had told her and all he had admitted, he was still the same old Dante. Smiling, she took his hand. The challenge ahead was greater than anything Seelie—even the Sidhe—might ask of them, but the alternative was delusion and denial—and it was time to stop running.

They slipped out of Emily’s room. It was early enough that no one was awake; the House of Himeros did not do six o’clock in the morning. Upstairs, they found a feast of uneaten food scattered about the kitchen. It looked like Lysander and Angelo had thrown another of their impromptu parties. One day, Emily would show up to one as promised. In the meantime, she stole a buttered roll and loaded it with bacon, while Dante pecked at a bowl of cereal.

“Just because we’re of the bloodline, doesn’t mean we don’t have to eat,” she told him, thrusting a roll his way. By the time they left, he had taken about two bites out of it.

They were about to step into the forest when Emily felt a tickle of acknowledgement as a familiar breeze brushed over her.

“I hear you had an engaging evening,” said Himeros. The young elemental sat at the edge of the stream, teasing nearby water lilies with his slender fingers. “You are glowing.”

Dante shifted beside her, hands buried in his cloak pockets. “I heard you returned to your world,” she said. “Was it something to do with the Court?”

“I was invited,” he replied. “Princess Titania Teigr herself escorted me as far as an elemental of my stature can step. I must admit, things are far worse than I imagined. There is barely a soul left among the Sidhe who is not attending the trial. It has enraptured the attention of our entire world. I would have stayed there myself had young Lysander not bid my return. Has he told you of what happened whilst you sealed yourselves away?”

“No,” said Emily. “What happened?”

“We had an uninvited guest.”

Emily felt her flesh pimple with dread. “But I thought nobody could find this place unless invited?”

“Not everyone is susceptible to the words woven into the forest,” Himeros replied, a hint of childish curiosity on his almond face. “In this instance, I do not believe our guest even knew that they were there.”

Emily glanced at Dante, saw the recognition in his eyes. That night, six years ago, Pleiades had passed through the spells of the Donara without disturbing a single thread. “Do you know who this person was?” she asked Himeros.

The faerie shook his head. “I could hardly perceive him, and he was certainly ignorant of my good self. What little I know I owe to Lysander. He confronted our guest with a frown I would have never expected from such a mischievous spirit.”

“And?”

“He was looking for you,” Himeros replied. “Lysander told him you were not here, and he left.”

“I assume everyone forgot he was here after that?” Emily hoped that was the case. Another creep with a magic crystal was preferable to the alternative.

“Oh no, he left quite the impression, I can assure you! Well, for all but myself, of course. Believe me, had he carried the magic of the Sidhe upon his person, even I, a lowly elemental, would have noticed it.”

“Then who was he?”

“I believe the term Lysander used was ‘G-Man’.”

Interlude

Azhara’d ibn Fadil ibn Karim ibn Rashadi al-Hakim stepped into the Sultan’s throne room. It was a vision of the Middle East wrest from the pages of a children’s storybook, a vast and empty chamber with a marble floor and bulbous, ivory-white columns that looked out across a fabricated view of rolling desert sands. It was not the world Azhara’d knew. It was not the world he loved.

The Sultan himself sat slouched atop his throne, an elaborate golden chair perched between the tusks of an oversized elephant skull. His night guard stood fanned out on either side of him, the tips of their gold-encrusted sabres peeking out from beneath their earthen shawls. As had been the case for the previous three mornings, Azhara’d was the first of the day guard to arrive. He did not like to be late.

“Ah, Azhara’d,” the Sultan lifted a hand in greeting, “good morning! I trust you slept well?”

Azhara’d nodded a reply. Much like his surroundings, the Sultan was nothing but a fraud, a man basking in glories that did not belong to him. It was not unexpected; while others had fled underground, abandoning their history and sacrificing their culture to spare their lives from cataclysm, Azhara’d’s ancestors chose to fight for their freedom. While others cowered in the shadows, they rose up against the lies of Kimah and Pleiades, refused the salvation of the Seven Sisters, and saw that the walls of Tiferet came tumbling down. Their name, their history, their customs carried a weight and an influence others would claim for themselves, knowing well that the average person, raised in darkness, was ignorant to the truth. Sultan? A real Sultan would have brought down the towers of Avalon, not supported them. A real Sultan would have freed his people from slavery, not given them the chains to bind themselves. A real Sultan would have joined Azhara’d in his morning prayer, not lazed upon his throne, waiting for the day to begin.

Such ignorance, however, was to Azhara’d’s advantage. It had not taken him long to earn his place at the Sultan’s side. He was a paranoid man who valued strength above all else. Old enough to have streaks of grey in his cropped beard, yet young enough to believe the world owed him some great destiny, Khurshid Sultan (whether that was a title or an awkward attempt at a name, Azhara’d did not want to know) had ruled over Bolventor for all of six months—and, from what Azhara’d had learned, six months was considered an achievement.

Within half an hour, the day guard had taken up their positions and the Sultan’s advisors were kneeling at his feet. As always, the meeting began with talk of finances, of gambling profits and market trends, and vague metaphors for more questionable business ventures. Business was good, they said. Exports were high.

As discussion meandered on recent security breaches, Azhara’d felt the air next to his ear shimmer, the aether bend into the shape of a seahorse.

“I have to admit,” said Natalia Espinosa, her voice reaching into his thoughts, “I underestimated those kids.”

Azhara’d betrayed no outward sign of their conversation. “Or, perhaps, you overestimated local security,” he replied. “Our students play a dangerous game.”

“I’ve got my eyes on them, don’t you worry. We all have.”

And one of them in particular.

The Sultan lifted his goblet and sipped his wine. “Tell me, Teague, has there been any further word on Mr Keller?”

The Sultan’s security chief, Margh Teague, was a scarred man with thick dreadlocks of hair and a missing eye. He was also an undercover agent for Seelie, an old war captain who made sure the lords of Bolventor did not overstep their boundaries. “We’ve heard nothing from Keller since yesterday afternoon,” he said. “If he has not lost himself in the tunnels, he is surely at the Oracle’s side by now.”

“A worrying development,” said the Sultan. “Rorric Yenta’s death was concerning enough.” He turned to Giovanni Veres, his contact with the Fortunate Isles. “Veres, order Seelie to lock down the island. We cannot allow Aliza Adel to contact the Oracle or else we lose our one chance to overthrow her.”

Natalia’s familiar chuckled. “Perhaps you were right about overestimating them,” she said.

He was; Azhara’d did not make unfounded presumptions.

“Perhaps, if I might be so bold as to offer a suggestion?”

“What is it, Mireille?” The Sultan turned his attention to the man furthest from Azhara’d. He was wearing the same velvet suit as Veres, though he was much paler of face. Azhara’d had spied him around the palace, but this was the first time he had attended a meeting of the Sultan’s advisors.

“It’s just that all this waiting around for the perfect opportunity to approach Ms Adel is getting us nowhere,” said Mireille. “We should take direct action, and soon. Today, even. I suggest targeting her friends. Threaten them, and she will do as you ask.”

“I want Aliza Adel at my side, Mireille, not with a knife to my throat,” replied the Sultan. “However, should Ms Adel attempt to contact the Oracle, I shall consider your suggestion.”

He reached down as a black shape slinked out of the shadows beneath his throne. The size of a small panther, it had fur that glistened a midnight black. As the Sultan scratched it behind its pointed ears, Azhara’d glimpsed its twin, nesting in the darkness. Bestes Enys Brenn, they called them, the beasts of Bodmin. The fear in the faces of the Sultan’s advisors was clear for all to see. They knew that any who failed to meet the Sultan’s high expectations could expect a visit from his merciless pets.

“Are you sure that’s wise, My Lord?” asked Teague. “These are Seelie cadets, not debt-evading rats.”

“My associates can be very persuasive,” the Sultan replied. “And what can Seelie do to stop us? If they were as great and noble as the stories say, then why do they allow our operations to go uncontested? No, Seelie are no better than paid mercenaries, and we are the ones footing their bill.”

“Paid mercenaries, perhaps,” said Teague, “but they can spy uninvited guests even the aethex can miss.”

“Is this another story about wayward faeries, Teague? Perhaps the elusive Ketos has come to claim his prize?”

Teague lifted his chin, clenched his jaw. There was a fear in his eyes that chilled even Azhara’d to the bone.

“If it is Ketos,” he said, “you might want to think twice about involving yourself with Aliza Adel. Our newest infiltrator is a gestalt.”

A still silence fell over the chamber. They all knew the word. Everyone who lived as they did, in the carcass of atrocities past, lived in fear of the day they would cross paths with the Shapeless Ones, the False Djinn, the ‘G-Men’.

“Well,” said Natalia, “this certainly makes things more interesting.”

To be Continued…