Thorn Nightwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Thorn had bought her year. Now she needed a map. She had spent months binding fae to an oath sworn on the withered throne of Copsefire, and she had never seen where the throne sat. The old songs said it grew inside the forest somewhere, a dead thing on a living hill. No one she asked would speak the location plain. Without it, her twelve bound followers were kneeling to empty air. She went back to the hollow tree at dusk. The trunk was carved with old faces that opened their eyes when she pressed her palm flat to the bark. The small tribe of hollow-eyed fairies gathered on the roots, lanterns in their hands. Their leader looked at her from the mouth of the tree and waited. "I need the seat," Thorn said. "The throne at the heart. Where does it stand?" The fairy shook her head. "We do not speak that road. The one who sits near it listens. Speak it and he hears his name." Thorn set an iron coin on the root. Then a second. Then a third. The fairies flinched from each one. "I am not asking for a road. I am asking for a direction. One word. Point." Rowan stepped out of the ferns behind her, barefoot, plain. Rowan said nothing, only watched the fairies count the coins with their eyes. The leader's mouth twisted. She lifted one thin arm and pointed north through the trees, past a stand of white birches, toward a rise Thorn had walked past a hundred times without looking twice. "Under the hill," the fairy whispered. "The dead crown is under the hill. But he sits above it. Do not go by moon." Thorn went by moon. She could not wait. Rowan came with her, because Rowan had not been asked to stay. They climbed the rise while the moon rose full and hard behind them, a pale woman's face in the sky. At the crown of the hill Thorn found a ring of flat stones and, at its center, a stump of black wood grown through with roots. The throne. Withered. Real. She reached to touch it. A long shadow stretched across the stones from behind her, ears rising above a narrow head. She turned. A tall figure stood at the tree line, still as furniture, shaped like a man with a hare's skull. Behind him, another figure walked out of the dark between two birches, crowned in black thorns, robed in green and violet. The Fey Dread Monarch smiled at her with small even teeth. "You've found my chair," he said. "Now name yourself, little witch, so I know what to write on the stone." Rowan spoke first, flat and quick. "She is nobody. She is leaving." Rowan took Thorn's wrist and pulled. They ran. Thorn knew where the throne sat now. She also knew who sat above it, and that he had seen her face.