Tag: the ruby queen

The Faerie Thief: The Ruby Queen’s Garden 017

The Ruby Queen's Garden (Episode One)With a flash of crimson sleeve, the queen’s arm snaked out and she caught Gwyn by the ear and pinched down tight.

“Don’t think you can escape me, girl,” she whispered. “You belong to the garden, and thus to me.”

Gwyn winced and tried to keep her head even with the queen’s grip. It wasn’t easy, though, with the queen being a few heads shorter than she was.

“W-where are we going?”

The Ruby Queen gave her a look so filled with fury and hate that she nearly made a door back to Lyra’s world then and there. The only thing that stopped her was the certainty that the queen would follow her and drag her back to the garden after she’d destroyed Lyra’s world completely.

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The Faerie Thief: The Ruby Queen’s Garden 016

The Ruby Queen's Garden (Episode One)“Busy?” Gwyn slowed to a stop. As much as she hated the daisies, turning her back on them when they’d a taste for blood was only foolishness.

The Q.P.D. nodded, her grin curling all the way across her face and bleeding into her sepals. “We know how you got there,” she said, vicious laughter crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Gwyn said, although she had a sinking feeling that she did. Still, it was impossible. There were no daisy beds near the croquet course.

The Q.P.D. turned up her nose. “Do you hear that, girls? The child expects us to believe her tales of innocence and no wrong doing, as though the clover would lie!”

“Clover—“ Her stomach twisted with the memory of sugared pear. Of course there had been clover, but why had it turned on her?

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The Faerie Thief: The Ruby Queen’s Garden 003

TFTcoverThe pebble was, on its own, quite unremarkable. It was a smooth, anonymous dun color. The same shade the soil went when the sun and wind and rain had bleached the color from it. It was soft and smooth as sand, but for the tiny markings she’d carved into its surface.

Silence.

A beautiful word. A quiet word. A word the flowers feared more than anything else. More than the gardner with his silver-bright shears. More than winter with her frost and chills. But not quite as much as they feared a queen with poppy-red skirts and a temper to match.

“Indeed?” The head daisy raised a brow, politely incredulous. “All in the Garden may speak their minds—”

Robin stepped forward, “I’ve a mind—”

Gwyn put a hand on his arm, her eyes on the daisy who was the grand duchess of this particular flower bed.

“—And when laws are broken,” the queen’s pet gave them a look so full of disdain that Gwyn could almost taste it, “the right authorities must be alerted.”

She shook her head. The stone burned cold and hot in her hand, aching to be used. That was the way of runes—invoke a power, even if only by scratching out the name of it, and it’s going to want to do what it was made to do.

A lesson she’d learned early on.

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