Lee’s trials

Moon marked

*Lee*

The moon gate feels like falling upward through freezing water.

My stomach lurches. Light presses against my eyes even though I have shut them. Thalia's hand is locked in mine, Ari's silver magic flickering through our joined fingers, Kieran somewhere close enough that I hear him swear in a language I do not know.

Then the ground arrives with a vengeance.

I hit stone on one knee.

A gust of hot, stale air blows over us, carrying the smell of metal, rain, coffee, and far too many people. Sound crashes in next. Footsteps. A train shrieking against rails. Somebody laughing too loudly. An announcement crackling overhead in a human voice that sounds bored with all of existence.

I open my eyes.

We are in a narrow alcove beneath a vaulted ceiling painted midnight blue and crowded with gold stars.

Grand Central.

Or beneath it, at least.

The moon gate has collapsed into a silver puddle around Ari's boots. It evaporates before I can stare at it properly.

Kieran is flat on his back beside a stack of wooden crates, one arm thrown over his face.

"Easy," he says hoarsely. "Nobody move. I am considering whether I have died."

Ari is on her knees, both hands pressed to the floor. Her braids have come loose completely. She looks drained in a way that frightens me more than the guards did.

"Are you hurt?" I ask.

She waves one hand at me without lifting her head. "I opened a gate through a storm and landed four people beneath the busiest station in New York. Ask me in five minutes."

Thalia crouches beside her at once.

"Can you sit up?"

"I can sit up. I am deciding whether I want to."

Kieran pushes himself upright and reaches into his canvas bag. He pulls out a wrapped oat bar, tears it in half, and offers one piece to Ari.

She eyes it.

"Is that from your pocket?"

"Yes."

She raises a brow,"How long has it been there?"

"That is a rude question when I am feeding you."

She takes it anyway.

The alcove around us is hidden behind a row of old vending machines, all switched off except for one that glows weakly with a picture of bottled water. A narrow painted sign above the arch reads MOON MARKET, though half the letters have faded.

Beyond the arch, people move through a long underground corridor lit by hanging glass spheres. Some are human. Some very clearly are not.

A woman with antlers buys a cup of coffee from a stall shaped like a brass teapot. A man in a grey suit walks past with a tail tucked neatly through a slit in his trousers. A little girl with blue scales along her cheeks holds her mother's hand and stares openly at us.

I realize, with a slow wash of horror, that I am still wearing a borrowed coat from a gardener's emergency locker and have mud in my hair.

Thalia notices me looking at myself.

"You look very princely," she says.

"I look like I lost a fight with a hedge."

"You did lose a fight with a hedge. The hedge won."

"That hedge had unfair magical advantages."

Her smile is tired, but it is there.

I want to touch her face. I want to kiss her. Check the bruise on her shoulder. Get her somewhere dry and quiet, where no one knows my name or wants anything from me.

Instead I look down at the compass.

The cracked glass has fogged from the change in temperature. The needle points north.

Not east. Not west.

North.

I turn it in my palm.

The needle stays fixed.

"That is new," I say.

Ari chews the oat bar slowly, looking as if every bite requires negotiation. "It may still be confused by the gate."

"That is comforting."

"I have given up trying to comfort you. It does not suit either of us."

Kieran gets to his feet and checks the mouth of the corridor. "We need to move. Gates leave a trace. Anyone following us through the old wards will know we landed here."

"Fileas cannot use a moon gate," I say.

"No," Ari says. "But he has people who can use other things."

That settles in my ribs.

Fileas does not need to step into a shining puddle and arrive in New York himself. He only needs someone with enough loyalty, enough fear, or enough money. Eirawen has always had envoys in the human world. Traders. Scholars. People who make discreet arrangements around the edges of magic.

He knows the address now if he took the wrapper from the boat shed. He knows the compass is involved. He knows I left before he could lock me in a room and call it protection.

Thalia stands, slower than she means to. Her shoulder catches and her mouth tightens.

"Astoria," she says. "We need to get to Astoria."

Kieran looks toward the ceiling, where the rumble of another train shakes dust from the old pipes. "That involves the human subway."

"Yes."

"I have used it before."

Ari looks up at him. "You punched a ticket machine."

"It ate my card."

"It required you to tap it."

"It was being difficult."

Thalia folds her arms. "You are both going to behave. I will not cross New York with a werewolf prince fighting a vending machine."

Kieran puts a hand over his heart. "Your faith wounds me."

"You will survive."

"Probably."

I should tell them about the direction of the compass. I should tell them it is pointing north, away from Queens. But everybody is exhausted. Ari has barely recovered from the gate. Thalia is trying not to favor her shoulder. Kieran has taken up position between us and the corridor with that particular look on his face, the one that means he has turned into a guard dog with opinions.

I fold the compass shut.

"All right," I say. "We find the address. We ask questions. We do not announce ourselves to every magical person in Manhattan."

Kieran glances at my soaked coat. "That may be difficult."

"Try."

We leave the alcove through the Moon Market.

The place is stranger than I remember from school trips, though perhaps I was too distracted then by Liam trying to haggle for a cursed watch to notice much else. Stalls crowd beneath the station's old stone arches. There are jars of glowing insects, powders in every shade of blue, rows of bottled rainwater labeled by storm and date. A witch with gold teeth sells charms from a velvet-lined suitcase. An elderly goblin watches us from behind a counter of cracked porcelain cups.

His eyes settle on me.

I lower my head and keep walking.

The human station is worse.

At least the Moon Market has the decency to admit it is magic. Upstairs, people flood around us with headphones in, bags slung over shoulders, coffee cups clenched in fists. Nobody looks at anyone for more than half a second. The ceiling sweeps high above the main hall, constellations glowing overhead while commuters hurry beneath them as if they have somewhere more important to be than a painted sky.

Thalia stops near the center of the concourse.

Her green eyes widen.

"It is beautiful," she says.

Ari, walking with one hand pressed to the wall for balance, looks upward too. "Humans do make odd little temples."

"It is a train station," Kieran says.

"That is what they want you to think."

A man in a navy coat bumps into Kieran's shoulder, mutters something without looking back, and keeps walking.

Kieran turns after him.

Thalia catches his sleeve.

"Behave."

"I was not going to do anything."

"You were about to growl at a commuter."

His eyes narrow, "He started it."

"You are twenty-two, behave your age."

"He walked into me."

"That happens in New York."

Kieran looks deeply offended by the city.

Ari leans close to me. "He will be fine."

"I wasn't worried."

"Of course not."

We find the subway entrance after ten minutes of following signs, taking the wrong escalator, and nearly getting separated by a school group in matching yellow raincoats. Thalia handles the ticket machine while Kieran stands behind her with his arms folded and a suspicious stare fixed on the screen.

"It is asking for money," he says.

"Yes."

"It already has a machine."

"That is how machines work."

He huffs, "It is very demanding."

I lean against the tiled wall, watching the crowd move around us.

My body has begun to notice everything it has been ignoring. My knees ache. My throat feels scraped raw from river water. Hunger gnaws at my stomach, dull and nauseating. The food in the boat shed seems like a story I was told about somebody else.

Thalia hands me a subway card.

"Here."

I stare at it.

She has written my name on the back in green pen.

"Why?"

"Because you look like you might lose it."

"I am offended by how well you know me."

"You hide a compass in your sock drawer."

"That was private information."

She shrugs, "You told me."

"I regret trusting you."

Her fingers brush mine as she presses the card into my palm.

"Eat something when we get on the train," she says quietly.

"I will."

She gives me a look.

"Fine. I will actually eat something."

"Better."

We go to take the N train toward Astoria.

The platform is hot and smells of wet concrete. A rat the size of a small cat vanishes beneath the tracks. Kieran watches it go with professional respect.

"That creature has seen war," he says.

Ari sits on the bench between us, her head tipped back against the tiled wall. She has gone quiet. Too quiet.

"You all right?" I ask.

"Mm."

"That is not a word."

"It is a word if you say it with conviction."

Her hands are trembling in her lap.

Kieran sees it. He does not comment. He simply takes her fingers and turns her hand over, checking the pulse at her wrist.

She opens one eye.

"Are you diagnosing me?"

"No."

"You have the face."

He smiles softly, "I am counting."

"Counting what?"

"How fast your heart is going."

She looks at him for a long second.

Then she lets him keep holding her hand.

The train arrives in a burst of wind and shrieking brakes.

Inside, it is crowded but not unbearable. We stand near the doors, gripping metal poles as the carriage jolts forward. Thalia stays beside me. Her shoulder brushes mine whenever the train turns.

At first, I keep the compass in my pocket.

Then the needle begins to move.

I feel it before I see it, a faint pull against the fabric of my coat.

I take it out slowly.

The compass points north again.

We are heading east.

My heart starts to pound.

I turn it toward the train doors. The needle remains fixed.

North.

The next stop rattles overhead.

59th Street.

Thalia notices my face. "What?"

I angle the compass so only she can see.

Her expression shifts.

"We should get off," she whispers.

"At the next station," I say.

Kieran hears us anyway. He always does.

"What is it?"

"The compass is pointing north," Thalia says.

Ari straightens. "North of where?"

"I don't know."

The train lurches into darkness between stations.

The compass needle spins once.

Then it jerks violently toward the floor.

The brass casing grows hot in my hand.

I hiss and nearly drop it.

Ari grabs my wrist. "Do not close it."

"It is burning me."

"Do not close it."

Moonlight flashes under her fingertips. The compass glass clears.

Beneath the needle, where there has always been plain cream-colored paper, faint ink appears.

A map.

Thin blue lines spread across the compass face. Streets. Tracks. A dark green shape like a park. At the center, a small black mark pulses once, then again.

Ari leans close, her breath catching.

"I know that shape," she says.

"Where?" I ask.

She does not answer immediately.

The train emerges aboveground.

Grey morning light spills through the windows. Buildings rush past, brick and glass and fire escapes slick with rain. Beyond them, I see the broad dark shape of water.

The compass needle settles.

It points toward the next station.

Astoria Boulevard.

Ari looks out the window, then back at the map.

Her face has gone very still.

"Look beneath the lights," she says.

The train begins to slow.

Outside, elevated tracks cross over a narrow street lined with closed shops and dripping awnings.

One of them is red.