“You…” I pointed at Mab. “It’s time your secret was revealed. Everyone ought to be able to see how ugly you are on the inside—everyone should see your true face!”
Mab gasped and let go of Lady Isella as her features began to melt and run like wax. The tight, white mask of beauty disappeared and I saw under it for the first time—and so did everyone in the banquet hall.
No one dared to comment, but they didn’t have to—Mab’s true face was hideous.
It wasn’t that she was old or ugly—people can be beautiful even when they are one or both, if they have a lovely spirit that shines through their outer appearance. But Mab was rotten inside—corrupted, as Lachlan had said.
Her eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and her nose had been eaten away, leaving only a hollow, dark cavity where it should have been. Her cheeks sagged like grey, rotten dough and her lips were covered in cracks and sores—it looked like something with sharp teeth had been gnawing at her flesh. Her long black hair was coming out in clumps, leaving her head patchy and balding, so that her grey, scaly scalp showed through the few wispy strands that were left.
Also, she stunk.
The rotten meat smell emanating from her and the awful way she looked reminded me of Grund the ogre’s dead head. Mab was rotting away from the inside-out and had been for a long time, from what I could tell.
There were gasps all around the banquet hall as people saw the mad queen’s true face at last. Nobody dared to say anything, but they didn’t have to. Their horrified looks were enough to let Mab know what they were seeing—to let her know that her magical beauty had been stripped away so that everyone could see her true face.
“No!” she gasped, putting fingers that were no longer smooth and white to her sagging features. “No, you can’t! You don’t dare!”
I probably shouldn’t have dared, but she had made me so angry I couldn’t help myself. Plus, the damage was already done—there was certainly no taking it back now.
And why should I take it back? I had stripped away her stolen beauty and I knew where it belonged. Grabbing more power, I imagined myself pushing the beauty and youth back to the people it had been taken from in the first place—back to all the women that Mab had robbed to feed her own vanity.
It wasn’t battle magic or defensive magic, so I had to pay for it. I felt a few pricks and pokes as I pushed the youth and beauty back where they belonged, but it was more than worth the price to see the elderly servers all around us starting to grow young again.
“Oh! Oh my—what’s happening?” Sirella, who was waiting on the head table exclaimed.
Her back, which had been hunched with extreme old age, was slowly straightening itself and her wrinkled cheeks were smoothing and plumping out. At the same time, her grey hair turned brown and grew thick and lustrous. In less than a minute, she looked like she was my age.
“Oh, I’m me again!” Sirella looked at her reflection in the side of the shiny silver soup tureen. “I’m me! I look like myself!” She was nearly dancing with joy, which made me fiercely glad for her.
All around the banquet hall, the same thing was happening to other women that Mab had robbed. They were all youthening—if that’s the right word—right before everyone’s eyes.
Including Mab’s.
The mad queen watched with horror as all the beauty and youth she had stolen was restored to its rightful owners.
“No!” she screeched in a high, cracked voice. “No, what have you done? Do you know how long it took me to siphon away that much beauty? That much youth? It will take ages to get it back, so that I am my beautiful, young self again!”
“You’ll never take it back,” I said recklessly. “Mab, I bind you from ever stealing youth or beauty from anyone ever again!”
And I threw a loop of power over her, just as I had with the ogre yesterday.
But Mab was much stronger than Grund had been—and even angrier, if that was possible.
“No!” she shrieked, throwing off the silver rope I had cast over her. “No, you’ll never stop me! Never!”
And then she began to change.
94
I stumbled backwards in horror as Mab’s body began to thicken and swell. The black dress made of shadows began to bulge outward, becoming bigger and bigger as she grew and grew.
“Watch out—she’s transforming!” Lachlan shouted in my ear. He and Bran dragged me away from the head table. The dark Fae and creatures that Mab had summoned to be her guests were fleeing from the banquet hall but I knew that we three couldn’t run.
I had started this battle with Mab, and I would have to see it through to the end. But I have to be honest, it took every ounce of courage I had to stay in the banquet hall when I saw what she had become.
The mad queen had transformed herself, all right—into a monstrous spider.
Eight long, hairy legs, each as big as a tree trunk, supported a huge, swollen abdomen. At the end of it was a stinger as long as a sword, which dripped venom. Each drop hissed like acid when it made contact with the black wooden floor.
But the worst thing about the giant spider—which was as big as a house—was the fact that Mab’s head hadn’t changed along with her body. It was still human—or Fae, I guess—rotten and grey and twisted with malice. It looked somehow even worse perched on the enormous spider’s body than it had before her transformation.
“Now!” she hissed at us. “Now, the three of you will pay for defying me! No one can defeat Mab, Queen of the Winter Court!”
The long, wickedly sharp stinger lunged forward with lightning speed and Bran barely dragged me out of the way in time.
“Be careful, Emma!” he shouted at the same time Lachlan said,
“We have to kill it!”
“I can see that, but how?” Bran had his sword in hand and Lachlan had his staff. Both of them were standing in front of me to guard me from spider-Mab, who was bobbing and twitching, as though planning her next attack.
“It’s going to take all three of us,” Lachlan said. “Emma—you must try to bind it again. Bran, I’m going to use some magical darts to try and wound it.”
“Wounding it isn’t enough—you’ll only drive it mad with pain,” Bran said grimly. “We need to cut off its head—that’s the only way to kill it.”
“You can’t get too close!” I protested, even as I drew from the river of silver sparks, drawing as much power into myself as I could. I was going to need a much bigger rope than the one I had used on Grund the ogre!
“I have to,” Bran said, frowning. “The two of you try to give me some cover—like Lachlan said, it’s going to take all three of us.”
At that moment, Mab jabbed at us again. This time I felt the wind of the huge stinger as it rushed past, bare inches from my cheek. She’d been trying to stab me in the eye, I thought, which definitely would have been the end of me.
“Watch out!” Lachlan shouted. The clear crystal at the end of his staff turned a cloudy purple and shot an arrow of emerald light that looked like a laser beam at the huge, hairy body of the Mab-spider.
She screeched and hissed and I saw that Lachlan’s magical dart had hit the mark—there was a scorched spot on the swollen abdomen that was smoking where it had pierced her thick hide.