With a Golden Sword (DFZ Changeling Book 2), page 1
DFZ Changeling Book 2
Rachel Aaron
Chapter 1
“Lola Daniels!”
The lady at the vet counter bellowed the name over the din. The office had only just reopened after the Fenrir disaster, and the temporary waiting room was packed with people frantically demanding their pets. Their shouts echoed chaotically off the makeshift metal walls, but all that noise stopped when the woman stepped forward.
She looked like a doll come to life. Her waist-length blond hair was huge, thick, and shiny as glass. It fell in bold ringlets down her back, a stark contrast to her white lace dress, which looked as soft and delicate as a freshly fallen snowflake. Her rounded cheeks were as pink as peonies, and her blue eyes were so sparkly they literally shone in her heart-shaped face. She walked to the vet counter as regally as a princess, flashing a heartbreaking smile at the awestruck assistant holding the cat carrier.
“Is that my sweet kitten?”
The woman nodded, her freckled face red as a tomato as she handed over the meowing crate. She was flusteredly attempting to prepare the release paperwork when the dazzling beauty strode out the door, leaving the entire office gaping in her wake.
Like most DFZ businesses these days, the vet was operating out of a temporary trailer on the campus of Algonquin Tech, the largest of the DFZ’s three magical universities and one of the only places Fenrir hadn’t stepped on. The rest of the city was still under frantic reconstruction, the elevated highways writhing like a nest of snakes as the Spirit of the DFZ raced to put herself back together.
Since the near-total destruction of a city spirit was a once-in-a-lifetime event, magical researchers had come from all over the world to watch. They took turns observing the rising buildings from a spindly construction platform at the edge of the safe zone. The beautiful girl strolled right beneath them, swinging the furiously meowing cat carrier like a picnic basket as she made her way toward a gap in the fence that was supposed to keep civilians out of the reconstruction area. She was only a few feet away when a ghostly blue light lit up the shadows beneath the academics’ observation deck.
The unspeakably beautiful girl turned around with a sigh, placing a perfectly manicured hand on her delicate hip. “You’re stalking cats now?” she asked in Tristan’s mocking voice. “That’s a new low.”
The blue light flickered as the man got off his silent all-black motorcycle, the mirrored visor of his helmet reflecting the beautiful girl’s scowl back at her as he held up a small spiral-bound notebook.
I knew she wouldn’t abandon Buster.
“Yes, well, that’s not your business anymore, is it?” Tristan said, tucking the meowing carrier under the princess body’s slender arm. This freed his hand for the sword that appeared a second later, its blade shining like silver lightning in the dark.
The Rider scrambled when he saw it, writing furiously on the pad with his nubbin of golf pencil.
I’m not here to fight!
“I find that highly doubtful,” the fairy replied, lifting his sword until the point was level with the Rider’s mirrored visor. “You’ve already shown where your loyalties lie. Not that there was any doubt, but even so…” The sword flicked down to the Rider’s leather collar. “The blood mage was a fool to send you to face me without your head.”
Victor doesn’t know I’m here, the Rider wrote. I came by myself.
Tristan rolled the girl’s jewel-like eyes. “Oh, please. You’re a dog on his leash. You can’t go anywhere without his knowledge.”
He’s busy right now, the Rider insisted, his handwriting growing desperate. I’m not here to cause more trouble. I just wanted to tell her I was sorry.
“What does that matter?” Tristan asked in a cold voice. “I warned you the day I taught you the knighthood oaths that you’d regret swearing yourself to that man. You made this bed knowing full well what it was. You don’t get to be sorry now that it’s time to lie in it.”
I can trade, the Rider promised. I wrote a letter. If you could just pass it on to her for me, I’ll tell you what Victor is doing.
Tristan’s pink lips curled in a sneer. “Such a terrible knight, spilling his master’s secrets. But while I appreciate your willingness to betray the blood mage, you have nothing to offer. Everyone already knows what Victor is doing.”
He vanished his sword to point a slender finger over the Rider’s shoulder, and the helmeted knight turned sullenly to face the billboard that loomed over the evacuation camp like a cliff. It was impossible to miss: a dazzling, twenty-foot-tall AR-enhanced advertisement depicting Victor the Hero pointing his golden sword directly at the viewer, daring them to “Avenge your city! Join the Hero’s Army today!”
“I’m afraid your master’s already given away the goods,” Tristan said, moving Buster’s crate back to the girl’s delicate hand. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell Lola I saw you.”
The Rider’s shoulders slumped as the lovely girl blew him a kiss and ducked through the hole in the fence, vanishing down the road that only fairies could see.
~~~
Back in the guest room at Tristan’s barrow, the real Lola was where she always was these days: sitting at her sister’s bedside with a worried look on her face.
It had been three weeks since they’d escaped Fenrir’s vessel at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, and her sister still hadn’t woken up. Tristan and Morgan kept telling her it would happen in its own time, but they were fairies who’d been alive for who knew how long. “In its own time” could mean centuries to them, by which point her mortal sister would be dust.
“Come on,” Lola whispered encouragingly, brushing the dark hair away from the sleeping girl’s forehead. “Just open your eyes. You can do it.”
She reached out with her magic as she spoke, probing for the dream that would take her into her sister’s mind. The connection had happened so easily back in the Sea of Magic, but all she got now was a big fat nothing.
Lola pulled her hand back with a sigh. Aside from that first hand squeeze right after she’d brought her into Tristan’s barrow, her sister hadn’t moved since she’d arrived. She didn’t twitch, didn’t blink, didn’t react to stimuli. She didn’t eat, either, or pee or get bedsores or any of the other things you’d expect from someone in a coma. If her chest hadn’t been rising and falling with her breaths, Lola wouldn’t have said she was alive at all.
It was more like caring for a statue than a person. She got so frustrated at one point that she’d asked Tristan point-blank if he’d trapped her sister in an enchanted sleep of his own, but the fairy had sworn up and down that he hadn’t done a thing. There was no magic preventing Lola’s sister from waking up. She simply wasn’t doing it.
“You know,” Lola said, reaching down to touch the silver thread that wrapped around her sister’s wrist, “when I said I’d wait as long as it took, that wasn’t a challenge. I’m still going to do it, but would it kill you to give me a sign? I’d settle for a nightmare at this point. Just give me something to show you’re still in there.”
She held her breath as she finished. As ever, though, her sister did nothing, and eventually, Lola flopped back in her chair with a huff.
“I’m not giving up,” she said stubbornly as she rose to her feet. “But I am going to find some dinner. Would you like to join me? I’ve got a whole list of places that are absolutely worth getting out of bed for.”
She wiggled her eyebrows enticingly, but her sister remained as still as ever. Shaking her head in frustration, Lola shifted her gossamer, switching out the comfy sweats she wore for sister-watching for a more presentable chunky-sweater-and-jeans combo. She was just tweaking the colors to match the darker complexion of her sister’s face—which had replaced the yogurt lady as Lola’s default form—when she heard Tristan’s musical voice.
“I’m back!”
Lola turned her head just in time to see the guestroom door burst open to reveal the most ridiculously pretty person she’d ever seen.
“What in the world are you wearing?”
“Something fun,” Tristan replied, prancing into the bedroom with a toss of the sparkly-eyed princess’s golden curls. “Also practical.”
Lola glanced pointedly at the tiers of lacy ruffles threatening to crowd her into the corner. “In what universe does that count as practical?”
“Oh ye of little faith,” the knight replied with a dazzling smile. “You are looking at a carefully honed strategy. Alberich’s antics have got everyone thinking fairies are hideous monsters, so, naturally, I went for the opposite.”
“You definitely don’t look like you belong with the Wild Hunt,” Lola admitted, shielding her eyes against the glare of his blindingly white teeth. “But what about what you went out to do? I don’t see—”
The fairy flicked the girl’s delicate hand, pulling a plastic cat carrier out of his gossamer like a rabbit out of a hat.
“Buster!” Lola cried, grabbing the meowing box and hugging it to her chest. “Thank you, Tristan!”
“Thanks are in order,” the fairy said, finally shedding the dazzling girl for his usual—though no less elaborate—appearance of a handsome modern knight, complete with a fencing saber sheathed at his hip, a heavily tailored military-style jacket worn over his shoulders like a cape, a poofy silk shirt, and pants so tight they looked painted on, all in spotless, snowy white.
“You wouldn’t belie ve the line I had to wait in to retrieve that overfed creature,” he huffed as Lola opened Buster’s carrier. “If we weren’t so deep in your debt already, you’d be feeding me dreams for a month.”
Lola nodded thoughtlessly, too busy petting her cat to pay attention to his grousing. She’d been so worried Buster would run from her again, but his eagerness to get away from the vet must have wiped the whole owner-turning-into-a-monster incident from his mind. He shoved his head aggressively into Lola’s palm, giving her his anxious meow in the loudest voice possible.
“My poor baby,” she cooed. “They gave you a bath, didn’t they?”
The cat meowed again as Lola cradled him in her arms.
“Thank you for going out to get him for me, Tristan, and for letting him stay here. It really does mean the world to me.”
“I know,” the fairy said as he pulled another treasure out from behind his back. “But just to gild my lily a little further, I also happened to pick up some takeout from your favorite Thai place.”
He waved the paper bag temptingly in front of her, and Lola’s eyes grew huge. “I could kiss you right now.”
“Please do,” he purred, but she’d already snatched the takeout bag from his grasp. Food in one hand and cat cradled safely with the other, Lola barreled past Tristan into the living room, where the fairy queen was sitting on the sofa.
“I don’t understand how you can eat that… material,” Morgan said as Lola started laying out a grid of paper cartons on Tristan’s glass coffee table. “It’s not even magic.”
“I beg to differ,” Lola said, placing Buster on the sofa so she could eat. “Carbs are the greatest magic, and they’re a lot easier to come by than love.”
“Nonsense,” Morgan said, using her newly regrown hand to change the channels on the wall of TVs Tristan had installed to keep her entertained. “There’s no emotion humans offer up more eagerly than love. If Alberich’s stupidity hadn’t turned the whole world against us, I’d be back to my full power after one night of clubbing.”
“I don’t think that’s love,” Lola said, pulling out a plastic cup filled with bright-orange Thai iced tea.
“It’s the best sort of love,” the queen insisted. “Hot, intense, electric.” She turned to give Lola a predatory smile. “Trust me, changeling. You haven’t lived until you’ve had an entire ballroom writhing at your feet.”
Lola supposed a queen would feel that way. Unlike her terrifying, fear-eating husband, Morgan existed exclusively off human desire. She was even pickier about her food than Tristan, accepting only the freshest, most intense feelings of infatuation.
That wouldn’t have been a problem if she’d been able to go out and hunt for herself. The fairy queen was so beautiful that even Lola sighed sometimes when she looked at her. A face like hers would have no trouble finding willing victims, but the rest of Morgan still hadn’t recovered from her imprisonment inside Victor’s soul.
Thanks to Lola’s help, she’d managed to regrow all of her limbs and digits, but even changeling dreams weren’t enough to rebuild an entire fairy monarch by themselves. Despite three weeks of nonstop eating, the queen’s body was still as delicate as a spring crocus. She spent most of her time lying on Tristan’s couch, watching the news to catch up on the decades she’d missed. At least, that was what she was supposed to be doing. In practice, she mostly just seemed to be making herself angry.
“Look at this nonsense!” Morgan snarled, pointing a pencil-thin bandaged finger at the screen showing footage of nightmarish riders galloping through the skies above Berlin. “Is that fool trying to play right into the blood mage’s hands?”
Lola took a nervous sip of her painfully sweet orange tea. Alberich’s Wild Hunt had been raging across Europe and Central Asia every night for the past three weeks. Those news channels that weren’t showing shaky-cam footage of the Hunt destroying buildings and trampling people with their horses were running constant coverage of the European Union’s decision to reverse their fifty-year ban on blood magic so that the Hero and his army could be brought in to “eliminate the fairy menace.”
“‘Eliminate’ indeed,” Morgan said, glaring at the screens. “Humanity used to write ballads of our splendor. Now, they talk about us as if we were vermin, and it’s all Alberich’s fault!”
“He always was a hunter,” Tristan said, taking a seat beside his queen.
Morgan snorted. “Try ‘selfish idiot.’ Between his circus and Victor Conrath’s propaganda, they’ve got the whole world believing that blood magic is their only salvation from the evil fairy menace, which is utterly ridiculous. Fairies don’t even have blood. It’s a strictly human form of magic, but thanks to that moron giving Victor his bogeyman, the ‘Hero’ has the whole world convinced he’s the solution to all their problems.”
As the queen spoke, one of the news channels began playing a clip showing a knot of humans dressed in the signature red coats of the Hero’s Army taking down a troll in the Paris suburbs. It was impossible to feel their magic through the screen, but Lola knew those gestures. That was Victor’s magic, and it was cutting through the monster like chainsaws through a rotten tree.
“You see? You see?” Morgan cried. “That troll should have clubbed them into paste! But now that Victor’s got his ‘Hero’ on TV every night convincing the whole world that his teachings are the only weapon capable of stopping the fairy invasion he unleashed, blood magic has become deadlier to us than iron.”
“Is iron deadly to you?” Lola asked, reaching for a carton of sticky mango rice. “I thought that was just a story.”
“It was just a story back when everyone had forgotten about us. Now, thanks to my idiot husband, all the old banes are back again.”
“My queen is right,” Tristan said with a troubled frown. “I used to be able to go anywhere in the modern world without care. Now, I feel menace radiating from every wrought-iron embellishment. Crucifixes, too, not to mention churchyards, lines of salt, holy water, and don’t even get me started on the blood magic charms Victor’s got his people selling in every supermarket.” He shook his head. “It’s made going about our usual business highly inconvenient.”
“Try ‘impossible,’” Morgan spat, glaring at the screen. “At this rate, every mage in the world will be stained with blood magic by New Year’s, and we won’t even be able to leave our barrows!”
Lola chewed her sticky rice with a sigh. She didn’t fault the fairies for being more concerned with themselves than for the people Alberich was terrifying and murdering every night, because she wasn’t any different. Even with the grisly horrors splattered all over the twenty-four-hour news channels, all she could look at was the text crawl at the bottom of the screen reporting on the thousands of mages who’d flocked to the DFZ to join the Hero’s Army.
She might have kept Victor from becoming a god when she walked Fenrir away from him that night, but he seemed to have gotten everything else on his wish list. Just as he’d predicted, anti-blood-magic laws were being struck down all over the world, and mages were arriving in droves to learn his secrets. Losing to Fenrir didn’t seem to have set him back at all. Everywhere she looked, he was worshiped and beloved, the Hero who was still saving the world with every fairy monster his followers struck down.
But while Lola hated every second of Victor’s success on principle, her biggest concern was Simon and Valente. She’d sworn she’d save them, but as Victor’s influence got bigger, her options, which had never been many, had dwindled to nearly nothing. Things wouldn’t have been so dire if she’d still had Fenrir, but her once-powerful connection to the giant wolf had dried up within hours of the monster’s defeat. She couldn’t even go outside of Tristan’s barrow without Victor’s Black Rider following the dream she’d fed him straight back to her.
The way Lola saw it, her only hope at this point was the fairy queen. Morgan might look like a cancer patient at the moment, but twenty years ago and for centuries before that, she’d been an even greater monarch than Alberich. If there was anyone left who could free Simon and Valente from Victor’s clutches, it was her, which was why Lola had been cramming dreams down her throat as fast as she could eat them.
