Lies of Murk by Eva Chase
4
Talia
Down in the subway tunnel, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is—or whether it’s even day at all. The only light comes from the flickering panels and the erratically pulsing glow of what Orion called the Murk’s Heart.
So I’m not sure how many hours I’ve been hunched in the corner at the far end of the huge alcove from Orion’s throne and his Heart, gathering myself. My breaths ebb and stutter, sometimes so shallow I start to feel dizzy. My heart skips beats, racing now and then sluggish and then skittering again, as uneven as the dissonant energy that’s washing over me.
I want to get away from that unnatural thing, but where would I go? Would the Murk even let me wander around, like my kidnapper—Madoc—suggested, or are they just looking for an excuse to punish me even more?
Except they don’t really seem to think they’re punishing me in the first place. Their king talked as if I’d been part of some grand mission. The way he sneered when he talked about the fae of the seasons, maybe it’s hard for him to imagine why anyone would want to go back to them.
No one has paid much attention to me since he stopped talking to me, other than the woman who brought me a plate of food with barely a glance my way. I forced myself to eat as much as I could stomach, knowing I have to keep my energy up, and nothing horrible has happened to me. Someone else snatched up the plate with my leftovers before I’d quite decided whether I could swallow more.
That was what feels like ages ago. My stomach is still knotted with tension, but one of those knots now aches of hunger. My throat has gone scratchy with thirst.
I don’t see any obvious place to get a drink here, though, and I have to admit I’m scared to ask. Madoc left the throne room a little while ago. The only person still in this immense hollow that I’ve spoken to is the king himself, and the thought of going up to Orion again, of pleading for anything from him, makes my skin crawl.
Plenty of others are approaching him. A steady trickle of fae slink in and out of the throne room, all of them with the long, twitching tails that mark them as rats. Some bring small trinkets that he motions for them to add to a pile at the back of the dais. Some crouch low and make requests I can’t hear from where I’m sitting. Others appear to be reporting to him about whatever activities they’ve been carrying out.
I should probably creep closer so I can overhear what they’re saying, so I have a better idea what the Murk are up to and what I might do about it. But then I’d risk drawing Orion’s attention again—and I’d be absorbing even more of that unsettling, erratic energy.
My gaze moves behind the king to the orange glow of the Murk’s Heart. A tremor runs through my body, and my pulse starts thumping hard all over again. Can it be true that Orion managed to conjure a force that rivals the Heart of the Mists?
But then, how else could he have cast such a huge curse on all the summer and winter fae? From what my mates told me, it started out with only a mild effect: an hour of wolfish savagery, ravens falling ill but not dying. But as their distress grew, their pain fueled that awful thing and allowed Orion in turn to strengthen the curse so it got worse and worse… A horrible vicious cycle.
A cycle I’m a part of. I was one of the Murk’s tricks, getting the Seelie’s and Unseelie’s hopes invested in me and then yanking me away from them. All the panic they must be feeling over my disappearance is only making the Murk more powerful.
I had no idea about any of this, but that fact doesn’t lighten the guilt clamped around my lungs.
I only ever wanted to help the other fae, and instead I’ve set them up for even greater misery than they were facing before. And who knows what else, if Orion sees through his awful plans.
Gradually, through my horror and hunger, resolve gathers deep in my gut. I’ve been used as some sort of weapon against the place I’ve taken as my home, against the men I love more than anything, but there has to be a way I can undo some of the damage. I should find out everything I can about this place and what happens here, about Orion’s sadistic plans and what else the Murk are up to. And then I have to find a way out of here so I can warn the fae back home.
I’m just stirring, stretching my limbs before I attempt to stand up and slip out into the tunnel, when Madoc strides back into the throne room. A couple of other Murk carrying large platters of food come in behind him. The spread they’ve brought looks like more of a meal than the collection of scraps I was given earlier. The creamy, buttery scent that reaches my nose makes my stomach gurgle. I tuck my arm around my belly as if I can hold in the sound.
Maybe Orion heard it from across the room—rat ears must be keen too—because he flicks his hand toward me. “Bring her. I’d dine with my human accomplice.”
Madoc steps toward me and motions for me to follow. I straighten up tentatively, studying him.
He tried to reassure me when he spoke to me earlier, but I’m not sure why. He was pretty cold to me when I first woke up in this place. And he’s the one who dragged me here to begin with.
If I’ve learned anything about the Murk, it’s that you can’t trust any of them, no matter how they appear.
I did want to find out more about what’s happening here, though, and who better to hear it from than the king and one of his right-hand men? As much as my instincts might be urging me to cringe away and huddle in a ball until the world rights itself, I know that’s not going to get me anywhere.
I’ve faced all kinds of horrors before. Maybe none of them were quite as gut-wrenching as this one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find my way through this too.
Keeping a careful distance from Madoc, I limp up to the dais. Orion eases off his throne to lean against its base with his legs sprawled out. His tail coils next to him. One of the servants sets the largest platter, which holds several plates, by his side. The other brings around plates to the fae who’ve lingered on the dais around him, who I’m guessing are among his inner circle.
Do Murk have cadres or coteries? Do they even have lords? I have no idea what the hierarchy here is other than Orion clearly rules over them all.
“Sit,” he tells me briskly when I reach the dais. I sink onto the low platform with its scarred wooden slats where I can reach the platter without getting too close to him or any of the other fae. Madoc sits across from me. He waits until Orion grabs a handful of the fettucine that’s giving off the creamy scent before reaching for what looks like a spring roll on one of the other plates.
Orion slops the pasta down on one of the empty plates the servants brought, licks the sauce off his hand without any hint of concern, and then picks up a fork to dig into the noodles. I watch Madoc take a bite of his spring roll and decide those must be decently safe. As delicious as the fettucine smells, I don’t want to eat anything Orion’s fingers have been in.
“Well,” Orion says, peering at me, “you’ve been tucked away taking everything in for quite a while. What do you make of my kingdom?”
I take a bite of the spring roll to give me a chance to think while I’m chewing. A mix of pork and vegetable juices with a tang of spice washes over my tongue, and it’s all I can do not to stuff the rest in my mouth all at once. It’s not August-level cooking, but after the day I’ve had, it might as well be.
I clear my throat, and Madoc sets a bottle of water near me in offering. I guess it’s not too hard to figure out that I’d be thirsty at this point. Orion takes a swig from a bottle of wine with a company label on it, obviously human made.
One thing I’ll say for the Murk: they don’t seem to be as disdainful of anything human as the other fae are. Maybe it’s possible to end this war before it goes any further. I’ve managed to talk down fae who hated me and what I stood for before, managed to help negotiate a peace treaty between summer and winter when both wanted to strike out at the other.
If Orion’s even a little more willing to take my thoughts into account than the fae of the seasons, I might have a chance at swaying him. I just need to know what he wants.
“You obviously have a lot of subjects working to carry out your plans,” I say, measuring my words and keeping a close eye on his reactions. “It’s amazing that you were able to create a Heart of your own. I can see why they’d follow you.”
Orion grins, but there’s a bit of a cruel edge to it. “You have some brains, then. Good. I doubt the fae of the seasons gave you much chance to use them.”
My mates and at least a few of the others did, but I bite back a protest. I need to get on his good side if he’s going to listen to me. “As a human among the fae, I’ve needed to use every skill I do have to survive.”
He hums to himself and gulps down another forkful of pasta. “I suppose I didn’t equip you as well as I could have. The cure and the mate bond—more unusualness than that and it might have become too suspicious. It does seem to have been enough to keep you alive.”
“Yes,” I say, hiding my surprise as well as I can. The cure and the mate bond aren’t the only things unusual about me.
Does he not know about the fact that I can use true-name magic to some small extent? It doesn’t sound like it. Could that talent have been an unintended and unknown side effect from the magic he worked on me?
If that’s the case… I catch myself before my hand reaches for the bronze bracelet Sylas gave me. I have a secret weapon—in more than just the cuff I could transform into a blade. I can manipulate air and light a little bit too.
And I have Whitt’s true name. I can’t reach out to Corwin—the hollow of the muted bond digs into my chest—but I might be able to talk to another of my mates. Tell him where I am, as much as I can determine that. Warn him.
I can’t let that hope show on my face while Orion is watching me. I reach for what looks like a flaky yellow pastry that turns out to be filled with spiced ground beef and take a couple of bites before speaking again. “What are you going to do next, now that you’ve taken me back? You said you want to win the Mists for yourself?”
Orion nods with a careless wave of his hand. “Leave the scheming to us, little girl. It’s our specialty, after all. If you want to stick it to the fae who treated you like dung, you’re welcome to come along for the ride.”
“What are you going to do to the summer and winter fae?” I venture. He can’t mean to kill every one of them, can he?
“They’ll meet the fate they deserve.” The king peers at me more intently. “You’re concerned about the ones you made your mates, aren’t you? Don’t bother yourself about them. You never mattered to them for more than what you could do for their people. You’ll find much better companionship here, and none of my people will shun their own for associating with a human.”
That last point might be true, but my throat closes up with a swell of emotion. I grasp the water bottle and take a swig from it just to have something to do with my hands.
I know my mates care about me far more than Orion believes. The ache of missing them brings a burn to the back of my eyes that I don’t want the Murk king to see.
When I feel like I’ve gotten a better grip on myself, I let myself speak again. “I’m glad to hear that. But why do you want the Mists anyway? It seems like you’ve made yourself really at home here, and you have access to everything the human world offers.” I motion to the food.
Orion snorts. “The Mists belong to the fae—they should belong to all the fae. They’re where we truly belong. Oh, we’d still make our visits to this world when we wanted to, but we’ve been driven to the shadowy corners of our true home for too long. It’s time those tables were turned and we claimed what should have been ours all along.”
He throws back more wine and sets the bottle down with a thump. “Less about that subject while we’re eating. It’s giving me indigestion thinking about the bastards who’ve rooted us out.”
“You seem to have accomplished a lot already,” I say meekly, feeling awkward and like I’m going to swallow my tongue at the sort-of praise I’m offering this man. I’m not going to say I approve of his campaign against the fae of the seasons. I just want him to get the sense that I’m trying to understand. But it sounds like I’ve gotten as far as I can with him right now.
I finish my bottle of water and several more tidbits off the platters. The pangs of thirst and hunger fade away.
Orion lifts his chin toward me. “Don’t feel you need to keep to this room. You’re with us now—almost one of us. Don’t disturb any of my people at work, but they shouldn’t hassle you either.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering how true that actually is. A pinching low in my belly alerts me to a more pressing concern than exploration. “Um, are there some kind of bathrooms down here?”
Orion throws back his head with a laugh and motions to Madoc. “We aren’t animals. Show her to the facilities.”
Madoc gets up without a word. I follow him out of the throne room. As we walk along the dark subway tunnel to the next station over, I find myself trying not to stare at the bobbing of his tail with his steps. The question itches at me too much to keep it in, though.
“Why does everyone have their tails out all the time down here?” I ask. I haven’t seen any of the Murk really using their tails, other than occasionally nudging items closer or holding them steady. “I know you don’t have to.” The Murk who attacked me by the burning patch that let off that awful iron smoke didn’t have a tail, and I don’t think Madoc did when I ran into him in the woods by the Heart.
“Orion likes us to embrace our full nature,” Madoc says. “Too many of us have spent our whole lives hiding what we are so that we can get by without a backlash. He’s trying to change that.”
I sympathize with that reasoning more than I want to. I suppose, no matter how villainous many of the Murk have been, there are probably at least a few who don’t have much interest in playing pranks or hurting anyone, who don’t deserve the treatment they’d get as soon as anyone discovers what they are. I shouldn’t assume they’re all the same any more than it was fair for the summer and winter fae to assume the worst of each other.
I don’t agree with Orion’s intentions or the way he’s used me, but his people have raised him up as a king and supported his campaign for a reason.
That thought sticks with me as I duck through the doorway at one end of the station platform that Madoc points me to. Inside, I find a row of urinals on one side and stalls on the other.
My nose wrinkles at the faint smell of urine, but it’s not as bad as I’d have expected if these aren’t working at all. The toilet I use flushes. The fae must have managed to reconnect them to the sewer system, or else the people who abandoned this stretch of subway forgot to disconnect them in the first place.
I gaze at my reflection in the dingy mirror for a few seconds. My hair is rumpled, my face even paler than usual. I look almost as frail as I did right after Sylas rescued me from Aerik’s cage.
How much of the pain I’ve been through did Orion plan, and how much was simply chance?
Madoc is waiting for me on the platform when I emerge. This station looks a lot like the one where I woke up, with structures that I guess are houses scattered all along the platforms and fae moving around them and across the tracks.
He answered my last question. I might as well try him with another. “How many stations do you have in the—what did you call this place?”
“The King’s Refuge,” Madoc says, and glances toward the next tunnel entrance. “There are five stations all connected and a maintenance area as well. It’s the biggest Murk colony I’m aware of.”
From the number of houses and fae that I’ve seen, it’s probably bigger than any of the fae villages in the Mists.
“Would you like to see more of it?” Madoc asks in a cautious tone. “I could show you around.”
Does he really want to act as my tour guide? I scrutinize him, and he gazes steadily back at me. Maybe he doesn’t have any real animosity toward me, only the fae I’ve associated with. As if that’s much better.
Either way, when I do my exploring, I don’t want company for it.
At my hesitation, he goes on, offering a small, slanted smile. “I know this can’t be easy for you, finding out so much about your life that you had no idea of, losing the home and the people you’d gotten used to. Of course you’ll need time to adjust. And if you want to talk about any of it—I may not be fond of the fae you left behind, but I can still listen.”
I don’t know how to believe his apparent kindness. I swipe my hand across my mouth, and the niggling inside me deepens. “The Murk have been paying attention to what’s happened to me in the Mists, haven’t they? Orion would have wanted to know how his plan was progressing.”
Madoc nods. “We have many people keeping an eye on the realms there. I’ve visited often myself.”
Without the other fae realizing it. With the magic of the Murk’s Heart, they must have developed spells for better concealing their scent and other signs of their presence.
I wet my lips. “But it wasn’t only watching. There were Murk who destroyed part of the Unseelie village in the summer realm. And one who started a fire with iron in the smoke. What was all that about?”
Madoc pauses before he answers. His eyes, which I can now tell are gray, momentarily turn even darker. “Sometimes we just meant to keep them on their toes. But Orion wanted to be sure the fae on both sides of their border cared about you as much as we could encourage them to. The ravens were all but worshipping you with just a little nudge here and there, remarks we let them overhear, but the wolves had taken your blood for granted. With the iron-laced fire, we arranged a bit of a spectacle where you could show what a hero you were to them too.”
The whole problem with the smoke had been a setup—specifically that only a human could stop. And the Murk who’d sprang at me…
My hand drops to my thigh where the lingering wound still aches a little. Unlike the fae of the seasons, the Murk can end their own lives. They’re too separate from the Heart of the Mist’s power for it to stop them the way it has other desperate fae like Corwin’s mother.
“The man who attacked me,” I say slowly, “I didn’t do anything to him at all. He had a spell on him to make it look like I’d killed him, but really he did it to himself.”
The corner of Madoc’s mouth twitches. I can’t tell if it was heading toward a greater smile or a frown. “You catch on quickly. Orion is bringing us out of the darkness we’ve dwelled in for so long. Many of us are happy to give our lives for that cause.”
My arms come up to wrap around my chest. I look out over the fae moving through the subway station again, my heart sinking.
An enemy that committed to destroying my home will be awfully hard to defeat. But will I really be able to convince Orion that there’s another way before it comes to full-out war?
