Y'all, I have fantastic news! After coming to terms with the career path I want to do with my life, I was accepted to a graduate program today! My classes begin in early October, and I am so psyched to be doing this! I will continue to work hard on my fan fictions while I attend classes, but this is an excellent step toward my future!

In the meantime, let's get back to the fic!

Poor Shion's having such a terrible time, but now he's been enchanted by the Unseelie King into believing that the things he sees aren't terrifying and that the fact that he's going to be sacrificed isn't something to be worried about! But he's also been given into Nezumi's care, so what will happen?

Let's find out!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Nezumi stood on the Unseelie King's left-hand side, at the same place he'd been assigned since becoming a forced member of the Unseelie Court, his fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms.

Shion had sealed his fate with his innocent voice. He hadn't bothered to look in Nezumi's direction since he'd arrived in front of the Unseelie King—hadn't even tried to get away from the beast that wanted him dead.

Nezumi willed himself to relax. He didn't want the Unseelie King to figure out that the sacrifice had any effect on his emotions. Interacting with a mortal in the first place was so far beyond his normal actions that even the King might have noticed it. In fact, he already had noticed, but if he suspected that there was more to Nezumi's motivations than simple gratitude for the mortal rescuing his life, Nezumi was as good as dead.

Nezumi looked out over the crowd. He'd spent so long among the Unseelie Court that he knew most of them by name. The ones who were still alive, at least. The Unseelie King seemed pleased with that. When Nezumi first arrived as a child, he'd tried to distance himself from the members of the Dark Court. His efforts had meant little. Nezumi's status as one of the King's new knights hadn't saved him from beatings and cruelty. Raised in the comfort of the Seelie Court, Nezumi had been a prime candidate for the larger, sinister Folk.

After the day his wings were stolen, Nezumi—sore and bleeding, his back wrapped tightly with bandaged and covered in a stinging salve meant to reduce the appearance of scars—had stumbled into the middle of the Court in search of food. He'd crossed paths with a nixie boy who'd been particularly interested in testing his might against one of the King's Knights.

The outcome hadn't been pretty.

"Existence is pain," the Unseelie King said after prying the nixie boy's corpse off Nezumi. He'd been alerted by Nezumi's shrieks and sobs as the nixie boy bit his arms and tore at his injured back and, furious that someone else would try and torment his toy, the Unseelie King had snapped the nixie boy's neck and dropped him like a sack of soiled laundry. "You'd do well to learn it. It's the only way you'll survive here."

A soft sound brought Nezumi's attention back to Shion. He noted the bruises and light scratches on his arms and throat, where Scorpia had seized him. The human boy stared up at the Unseelie King with a deep sense of devotion that made Nezumi sick to his stomach. Could he truly not see the Unseelie King for the monstrosity that he was?

Could it be possible that all it took to lure mortals into a world of darkness and torment was a pretty face?

"You needn't worry about trying to amuse him." The Unseelie King looked over and gave Nezumi a smirk that caused him to look away in disgust. "The outcome isn't worth the effort."

Nezumi turned to look back at Shion. The boy smiled over at him, happily waiting to be led down into the underbelly of the Unseelie Court, groomed and adorned for his assassination. Was giving the Unseelie King even a moment of amusement worth this much pain? Nezumi began to wonder as he ascended the steps to come stand at Shion's side.

"Go on," the Unseelie King ordered. "Bring him to the arachne and inform them they are to have him ready for tonight's celebration."

Nezumi pressed his lips together. The evenings before the Autumn Equinox were spent reveling and partying with spiced apple wine. The sacrificial human was paraded around like a trophy, displayed for the entirety of the Unseelie Court to see. The following night, during the Equinox, the human that had been celebrated the night prior was slaughtered in front of the Court that had celebrated them.

In a little more than twenty-four hours, Shion would be dead.

"He'll also need something to wear for the Equinox." The Unseelie King tapped his tattooed finger against his painted lips. "Perhaps something white. Inform them I do not care for the design of the sacrifice's clothing, provided it is elegant and white as snow."

Something white—so that when Shion's blood spilled across the stone floor, it would stand out against his clothing.

Nezumi closed his eyes and swallowed back a wave of disgust. The look of admiration on Shion's face as he gazed up at the Unseelie King—had Nezumi ever looked at the Seelie Queen that way? When she'd come to him, carding her fingers through his hair and informing him through a morose smile that she had a miserable task for him, but if he held any admiration for her, he would tolerate it without question, had Nezumi been as eager to please her as Shion seemed to please the Unseelie King's dark whims?

He couldn't remember.

The Unseelie King snapped his fingers in Nezumi's direction. "Bring the sacrifice to the arachne. That is your task." He paused for only a moment, and then he clarified, "Leave the throne room and bring the mortal straight to the arachne. Do it this instant. Do not take any detours, and do not think of crossing me. Do I make myself clear?"

Nezumi set his jaw.

"Nezumi."

"I understand," Nezumi muttered.

"Then say it."

Nezumi's spine prickled. Hatred bled through him as he clenched his teeth, looked into the King's hideous face and said, with painful conviction, "I will bring him to the arachne. I will make no detours."

The Unseelie King's lips drew back over his serrated teeth. "Excellent." He waved his hand in the direction of the caverns, toward the place deep in the abyss where the arachne thrived in the shadows. "Now, begone with you."

Nezumi descended the steps. He heard Shion's sneakers scuffing on the marble steps. Fury lanced through every nerve in his body at the sound of Shion scurrying after him like a puppy, eager to obey the Unseelie King's commands. He stepped into the collection of courtiers watching eagerly as their Equinox sacrifice descended into their mix.

Nezumi glared at them all, and the closest Folk hurried to get away from him. Nezumi might not have been as terrifying as the Unseelie King to the courtiers, but he'd gained a sizable reputation as someone not to mess with. In regard to the Equinox sacrifice, none of the courtiers would be foolish enough to interfere and wound the mortal. Testing the King's patience was a risk none of them were willing to take.

He marched toward the exit with Shion in tow. He didn't need to haul the boy away the way Scorpia had dragged him into the throne room. The Unseelie King's twisted enchantment made Shion all too eager to do as the King commanded. He clung close to Nezumi's back; when Nezumi glared over his shoulder, Shion had a dopey smile on his face, as if he'd had too much to drink.

Idiot. Nezumi closed his eyes. Fucking idiot.

He no longer knew if it intended it toward Shion or himself.

Nezumi walked away from the throne room, hurrying down the hallways that glittered with solidified bloodstones. The light was much dimmer here. He heard Shion tripping behind him. For a moment Nezumi wondered whether he should give the boy some words of encouragement, or at least offer him a false smile to show that everything would turn out alright.

But those actions would be lies—and besides, Nezumi had never given words of encouragement to anyone.

He guided Shion down the stone pathways within the castle. Embedded in the walls were several bronze torches, flickering with glass baubles instead of flames. The glass spheres held tiny sprites the Unseelie King had captured and kept fed just enough to keep their glow strong. Nezumi had tried to free them, but the King had anticipated his interference and made the glass shatter-proof. Nezumi could still break them, but it would take more time than he was safely allowed. Each moment he spent trying to unscrew the tops and release the sprites was time the Unseelie King or one of his other damnable Knights could happen upon him and spot his "defiance".

Shion admired the glowing spheres as they passed, making soft "ooh" and "aah" sounds as they walked through. Nezumi's stomach twisted with disgust. Seeing the sprites in confinement should have been terrifying. What manner of existence was that? To be incapable of escape, eternally starving and at the "mercy" of a creature that used them only as a source of light.

Nezumi guided Shion down a hallway that sloped down into the cavern, descending to the place within the heart of the mountain where the arachne had set up their workshop in the shadows. There would be dim light sources for Nezumi to find them—the Unseelie King, like the arachne, could see in the dark, but as he knew light bothered the arachne, he ordered them to keep at least a few lights present. Nezumi wondered if the arachne risked turning them off behind the King's back, listening for his arrival before turning them back on.

As they descended into the bowels of the Unseelie Court, the dark, cavernous walls turned into sparkling mica and quartz. Shion's face lit up at the sight of it. The King's enchantment churned through his blood like a powerful wine, and Nezumi's heart clenched as he watched Shion look around his future grave and smile.

"You were supposed to stay inside," Nezumi hissed.

Shion stopped admiring the quartz-speckled walls and turned to look at him. The drugged gleam of his dark brown eyes were like a knife in Nezumi's stomach. One of his palms rested against the smooth stones; a few inches beneath his fingers was a sharp point where the quartz had been broken off by an ogre or some other angry creature. If Shion lowered his palm, he'd scraped it across the spike and smear his blood on the walls.

He was already bleeding, his arm torn up around the bicep. Nezumi had seen Scorpia's sharp nails embedded in Shion's flesh. He must have tripped on their way down the dark paths, and Scorpia must have yanked him to his feet and snarled at him to keep moving.

"I did," Shion insisted. An idle smile played on his lips as he swayed a bit on his feet. Blood poured freely down his bicep, splattering on the smooth ground. If he wasn't careful, he'd slip on it.

Nezumi closed his eyes and forced himself not to sigh in frustration. Back in the Seelie Court, when his mother attended to Court duties for the Seelie Queen, Nezumi and his sister were often left under the care of a baba yaga. Nezumi's sister affectionately called her "Gran", and eventually Nezumi began referring to her as such, too. The baba yaga was a strict, unhappy creature that instructed Nezumi not to sigh, as it put him at risk of allowing others to catch hold of his true thoughts. A lie might never make its way across his lips, but Nezumi's sighs and eye rolls could belay his true feelings.

The baba yaga's strict teachings came back to him in that moment. If Nezumi sighed, Shion would ask him what was wrong. If Shion asked, then the floodgate Nezumi had preventing him from spilling out his frantic thoughts would unlock.

Shion looked over at the light flickering across the quartz walls. "I was in my mother's bakery—inside, like you told me—and a man with a glass eye came inside and knocked me unconscious."

Nezumi flinched as if Shion had taken a swipe at him.

Rikiga. He should have fucking figured. The bakery Shion called home had iron its its walls, and no faerie had been able to penetrate its walls and get to him without writhing in pain due to the stench and the underlying burn of the toxic material.

But Rikiga—he was a human in service to the Unseelie King, and he had no loyalty to his fellow man. If the Unseelie King commanded him to, Rikiga would march into a children's hospital, take the sickest child from their bed, and bring them to the Unseelie King to sacrifice.

Nezumi closed his eyes and drew in a sharp breath.

Shion's hand stilled on the walls. The sharpened spike of the broken quartz hovered near the tip of his finger. As if Shion could sense it there, even with his mind muddled by enchantment, he lowered his hand away from the wall and back to his side. His fingers dangled loosely, his limbs lifeless and still.

Nezumi didn't understand what had become of him. He'd allowed Shion to help him, and yet here he was, at risk of getting eliminated by the King for his treachery. He'd promised Shion a debt—but nothing he could ever do would be powerful enough to rescue Shion from his fated demise. Even trapping him inside his mother's bakery hadn't been a strong enough plan. Once the Equinox concluded, the King would find some way to harm a mortal who possessed the Sight.

Staying trapped inside the bakery wouldn't be enough to rescue him—and even if it had been, it was no sort of life. Shion would have been a pretty ornament in an iron cage, no different than the sprites withering away inside the glass baubles.

Did you believe you might save him? Did you believe a wretch like you could save anyone?

Yes, dammit.

Yes, Nezumi believed he could have saved this one person.

Shion had saved his life.

It was foolish and useless and something no one should have risked for him, but it had happened, all the same. Shion had saved Nezumi's life, and now Nezumi owed him a debt. He owed Shion a chance at life. There's been no real logic behind it—his attempts to save Folk hadn't worked in the past—but Nezumi had still tried to get the King to select a new sacrifice. He'd tried to hide Shion in the safety of the bakery to force the King's hand.

But there was nothing he could do now.

"Nezumi?" Shion's enchantment-induced voice bounced against the crystal walls. His dark eyes were dreamy and half-lidded; his pupils had dilated to the low light, and an eerie smile played at the corners of his lips.

No.

Nezumi couldn't save anyone.

⁂

The arachne lived in the deeper parts of the caverns. Nezumi had gone down to visit them a few times—the arachne he spent the most time around bandaged his wounds and stitched the various rips and tears in his clothing—but he never grew accustomed to the difference between their workshop and the remainder of the Unseelie mountain.

The workshop was decorated with bolts of silk woven from the thread the arachne produced. Satins that glimmered like buttery sunlight hung from the low ceilings, and a rainbow assortment of fabrics were stretched across smooth, marble tables suspended from the walls as if they've been carved straight into the mountain.

A small arachne—no taller than Nezumi, her skin smooth and gray with youth—crouched in front of a table covered with golden bowls. Each bowl held a variety of pins and needles. Spools of white thread lay in unique patterns across the marble, each within reach of the young arachne's four arms. Nezumi had never seen this one before, but he supposed, based on her age and work around the table, that she was an apprentice, new to the craft.

Her spindly legs bowed beneath her as she scuttled to the other end of the table. She more closely resembled a brown recluse than a tarantula. Nezumi knew there were various subspecies within the arachne community, though he didn't know the extent of their variety. The ones with tarantula legs couldn't produce silk, but they compensated for this by being the best weavers out of their species.

The workshop, on most days, bustled with activity. Nezumi could only see the one apprentice. He wondered where his arachne was. Perhaps they were busy with other preparations for the Autumn Equinox.

As one of the Unseelie Court's largest celebrations, orders for new clothes must have been flooding in for the past fortnight.

The apprentice hummed a breathless tune to herself as her spindly legs shifted and carried her across the workshop to a spinning wheel jammed in the corner. It was woven with black thread that closely resembled human hair, and Nezumi wouldn't have been surprised to find it it was. The arachne had a unique ability to transform things into suitable working materials. Sometimes, the most talented ones could even weave clothing out of human skin and nerves.

Nezumi had only seen such a grotesque outfit once. The Unseelie King had it fashioned from the corpse of one of the sacrifices. He'd tasked the arachne with it as a challenge of their skills. The greatest of their weavers was to come forth and create a versatile outfit in a month's time out of nothing but the organic material present on the dead mortal's body. If she could, he would reward her with untold riches. If she couldn't, he would rip her legs off and leave her to bleed out in ridicule in the center of the throne room.

It had been Nezumi's arachne who'd taken up the task. Her limbs were frail, but her skills were sharp as a needle. She took the human's corpse and wove together a suit of armor out of his bones, lining the whole thing with his discarded skin and sinew.

The Unseelie King had been impressed—but he hadn't bestowed her with the riches he'd promised.

"I claimed I would gift you untold riches," he purred, admiring her handiwork. "But I never said when that reward would come."

The courtiers had laughed the arachne out of the throne room as she took the human-bone armor into the depths of the mountain and disposed of it. Nezumi didn't know if she'd ripped it to shreds in rage, or if she'd given it to one of the creatures living in the darkness. There were rumors of a creature that thrived in the shadows that no one—not even the Unseelie King—had faced. Perhaps the arachne had offered that unknown creature the human-skin armor in exchange for protection, as no harm had come to her during her time living among the Unseelie Folk.

Nezumi clicked his tongue in greeting.

The apprentice turned to look at him. Nezumi heard Shion suck in a startled breath behind him. The arachne's multiple eyes flicked from Nezumi to Shion, the pale green of them glinting in the dim light. A tangle of dark green hair fanned around her chin, ragged as if someone had taken a dull blade a hacked through it. A few of the strands were longer in the front than the others.

The apprentice shuffled over toward them, her eyes sliding from Nezumi and locking on Shion. She gestured with her hand, and Shion stepped forward. He paused at Nezumi's side, his spine ramrod straight and his hands trembling.

"This is the sacrifice for the Equinox?" the apprentice asked. Her voice was soft and serrated, like the hairs on the back of a feral cat's back.

"Yes," Nezumi said, the word sitting like poison on his tongue.

"Mm." The apprentice waved her hand toward Shion. "Lift your arms, pretty one. I need to measure you."

Shion's arms rose as if he were dreaming, slow and steady. The apprentice reached out with one of her four hands and pinched his bicep. She was careful around the still-bleeding wound; her lips pressed together, and Nezumi felt a tiny sliver of relief as he realized this arachne would likely patch together Shion's arm the same way his arachne had all these years.

As the arachne measured the width of his arms and legs with her large hands, Shion lifted his eyes and stared at Nezumi. A glimmer of fear cracked through his brown irises, spiking through the King's enchantment.

"Hmmm..." The apprentice poked her black tongue out between her lips. Her six eyes narrowed at Shion's arms, sliding over his shoulders and down to his hips. "He is a small thing, to be sure, but I have such wonderful things in mind for him."

Her tongue ran over her lips as she speculated. Nezumi recognized it as a thoughtful gesture, but Shion must have thought it one of hunger. The enchantment on his mind didn't quell the terror that shot through him, and he took a step backward, out of the arachne's grasp and closer to Nezumi. His expression warred between dreamy calm and feral panic.

Nezumi's stomach gave a painful little flip-flop. Even enchanted, Shion sought him out for comfort. He saw him as a source of safety. Nezumi jammed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and put a few steps of distance between them.

The apprentice tapped her fingers along the length of Shion's neck, tracing the frail dip of his collarbones. She hummed to herself, calculating the distance from Shion's chin to his collar with her eyes.

"Did His Majesty specify a color?" she rasped.

"White for the Equinox," Nezumi muttered.

"I don't look good in white," Shion murmured. Both the apprentice and Nezumi looked at him in surprise, and Shion lowered his head, suddenly bashful by the attention. He wrung his wrists and explained, "It makes me look washed out."

The apprentice waved aside his concerns with a disinterested sound. "Not when I'm finished with you, it won't." She circled Shion once, poking her rotten black tongue out to the side as she crafted an outfit in her mind.

She looked over at Nezumi and huffed, "Did the King specify the color for tonight's clothing? Does he want it in white, as well?"

"He didn't specify," Nezumi spat.

A bright smile spread across the apprentice's lips. The mandibles around her mouth clacked with excitement. "Excellent! Oh, the things I can create for this one!" She clapped her two sets of hands together like a toddler being handed an extra sweet after dinner. "A whole world has opened up before me!"

Nezumi let her words drift around him like fog; present, but not sticking. He didn't understand the excitement the apprentice felt at the aspect of creating an outfit for someone's execution. His arachne would have understood that this, at least for him, was a solemn occasion, and she would have masked her excitement behind a bland smile and her low voice.

If he were asked, he would have preferred the presence of his arachne tonight, but he'd been forced to settle for the apprentice he'd happened upon. He'd been given an order he couldn't refuse, and seeking out the arachne he preferred would be wasting precious time.

Shion swayed on his feet, the enchantment blurring his mind erasing the fact that he was terrified of the arachne. A sleepy smile stretched across his lips. There were indentations on his lower lip, where his teeth had nearly punctured. When had that happened? When Scorpia dragged him through the Unseelie Court to his doom?

No, Scorpia didn't do that.

You did this.

A wave of self-loathing washed through Nezumi as he watched the apprentice instruct Shion to lift his arms again. She draped a swatch of dark purple fabric over Shion's shoulders, but she quickly realized—as Nezumi did—that the shade was too dark for him. She pried it off his shoulders, balled it up, and tossed it into the far corner.

The apprentice muttered to herself, mumbling about color pairings and fabrics that would work best together. At one point she seemed to be reaching for a swatch of silk the color of spilled blood, but thankfully she seemed to second guess her choice.

Her mandibles clacked together, and the apprentice motioned for Shion to step forward. "With me, pretty one," she chittered. "There are fabrics in my hovel that will suit my vision for you."

Shion glanced over at Nezumi, and while part of him ached to follow, Nezumi knew it would be better—for both of them—to put some distance.

He planted himself on top of one of the marble tables jutting from the wall. He clenched his fists inside his pockets and stared at the floor. The stench of blood tickled his nose. Shion's blood. Nezumi's teeth scraped the inside of his lower lip as he forced back the frustration that twisted through him.

He couldn't watch as the apprentice led Shion into the darkness of the workshop. The boy scuttled along beside her, all terror scrubbed away from his expression. His eyes flashed over the rainbow assortment of fabrics, overwhelmed by the magic and beauty of the Unseelie Court's clothing shops. He didn't realize he was dressing up for his own death.

Nezumi tucked his knees to his chest and burrowed his head in them. As the apprentice and Shion vanished, Nezumi became frighteningly aware of just how alone he was in the world. The Seelie Court didn't want him. He had no idea where his sister was, or what had become of her. The Unseelie King treated him like an object. The rest of the Court feared him.

And the one human whose kindness had saved him had been placed on the chopping block.

Nezumi took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His lips tasted like salt.

To Be Continued...