The Goodnight Kiss

by Gwen Rivers

  I crave a first kiss to remember, to cling to no matter what comes next. Here at the beginning of whatever we are, the moment needs to be marked. Regardless of the next step, or the tangled mess of our past, at least we’ll have this between us.

  One perfect kiss.

  Slowly, I move until my upper body hovers above his. His arms tighten, then slide down my back. Sometime during the night, my hair came free of its braid. It falls in a curtain around the two of us. Beneath the thin fabric of my dress, my breasts flatten against his bare chest as I lean down. My heart thunders in anticipation. Will his eyes flash open in surprise? Or will he let out one of those soul-deep groans that tells me he is experiencing more pleasure than he ever has before?

  I lick my lips. Close my eyes.

  “Stop!” the shriek comes from the mouth of the cave.

  I whip my head around, just as Aiden’s eyes flash open.

  My jaw drops. No. It can’t be.

  A snarl rumbles out of Aiden and he moves in an instant. One second, I am poised atop him, the next I am peering over his shoulder.

  At the shocked faces of my aunts.

  Chapter 20

  Betrayal

  “Nic,” Chloe is the first to recover. She looks the same as always, red hair spilling down her back in a crimson wave, blue eyes bright. Though not with mischief. No. With fear. “Nic, he isn’t one of yours.”

  I stare at her, feel the skin between my eyebrows crinkling in confusion. It takes me a moment to believe they are truly here, in Underhill. That they crossed the Veil to find me. And another longer moment to realize what she means.

  “I’m not…that is, I wasn’t….” I shake my head.

  “She wasn’t going to kill me.” Aiden hasn’t budged, still bodily blocking me from Addy and Chloe. “Nic wouldn’t do that.”

  Addy’s brown gaze narrows on him. “You’re that cursed godling that brought her to us as a babe and begged us for our protection.”

  “He’s my grandson.” It’s Laufey’s voice this time. I almost overlook her, where she’s skulking in the shadows near the mouth of the cave. For a giant, she is masterful at hiding in plain sight.

  Addy whips her head to Laufey. “We had a deal, giant. The girl is ours to raise.”

  “You two know each other?” I try to shove Aiden aside but it’s like moving a block of granite. “Wait, what deal?”

  Chloe and Addy ignore me, their gazes fix on Laufey. As I watch, their eyes begin to swirl, brown and blue disappearing into a silvery gray nothingness. In unison they begin to speak, but not in their normal voices. There is no inflection no personality. It is more like they are reciting some sort of chant. “You have tampered with fate. Given life and stolen a soul from the underworld. Your hubris must be punished.”

  “Only me.” Laufey hesitates, her gaze flicking toward us before returning to my aunts. She raises her chin. “He has been punished enough by you bitches.”

  Again, in unison, my aunts speak three damning words. “So be it.”

  “Punishment?” I ask. It’s all happening too fast. Only a moment ago I was about to enjoy the first planned kiss of my life and now my aunts have appeared from out of nowhere and they are going to punish Laufey. “What are you talking about? What are you going to do to her?”

  No one answers me. Wind whips through the cave, an eerie gust that carries something more than ozone. Clouds form just outside, congregating into a black cloak that blots out the early morning sun. Energy crackles, sparking in the space around the Fates.

  “No,” Aiden cries and moves.

  But he isn’t fast enough.

  A lightning bolt streaks down and hits Laufey square in the chest. She flies back about ten feet, arms pin-wheeling, body in free fall down to the bottom of the hill.

  Aiden charges after her and I’m half a heartbeat behind.

  “Nic,” I can hear Addy and Chloe calling my name, but I ignore them, my focus on getting to Laufey, on helping Aiden.

  She is at the base of the incline, lying face down in a narrow stream. The water runs red beyond where her body is. Overhead the sinister clouds my aunts have summoned part and the sun shines down like the freak storm never occurred.

  “No no no,” Aiden chants as he falls to his knees beside her, turning her body so that he can cradle her in his lap. “Oh gods, no.”

  Her dress is charred black around where the bolt struck, blood oozing out. Her eyes stay shut, each breath a wheeze of air that barely moves her chest.

  “Is she…?” The word dead lodges in my throat.

  Aiden bends down and touches his forehead to his grandmother’s. “She’s alive, just barely.”

  I hear their footfalls then. Slow and careful coming down the hill behind us. Addy speaks in her brisk way. “Stand aside. Let us finish this.”

  My hands clench into fists and I round on them. “Why?”

  “Nic, she tampered with fate when she brought you back,” Addy explains, cool and calm, her eyes back to normal. “We can’t allow a creature with that sort of ability to exist. It would destroy the natural order.”

  “You’re saying I should have stayed dead then?” I rage. “You should take it out on me, not her.”

  “Nic,” It’s Chloe who speaks, her voice soft and pleading for understanding. “Nic, that’s not what we mean at all. We can’t have her do it again. It’s a power that can’t exist, the one to tamper with destiny.”

  “She isn’t going to.” My throat is tight and the words hurt as I force them out. “I asked but she said there isn’t a way to bring Sarah back. She isn’t going to interfere with your precious natural order!”

  “It’s not a risk we are willing to take.” Addy’s eyes flash. “Now, let’s be done with this so we can go home.”

  She reaches for me, but I jerk away. “You can’t be serious. You want to kill an innocent woman in front of me, a woman that essentially gave me life and you expect me to just sit on the sidelines and then go home with you?”

  They exchange a glance as though I’ve confused them. I probably have. After all those nights I stalked and hunted, that they cleaned up my mess.

  “You don’t belong here, Nic.” Chloe implores.

  “I don’t belong anywhere!” I shout at them. “Don’t you get it? I’m not a fairy queen or leader of the Wild Hunt. I’m not your daughter, no matter what paperwork you have that says otherwise. You raised me to murder! I should be in prison because I’m a mortal that kills other mortals. I should be dead because I died in my last life or because I was abandoned in the Black Forest at six years old, with no food, no one to explain anything to me but I’m right here! Don’t talk to me about where I don’t belong because I have no home, no family, no place. All I have are a head full of messed up memories and a killing power.”

  Aiden puts a hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me. “You belong with me.”

  “We had a deal,” Addy practically snarls at him. “You were supposed to leave her be.”

  “And the three of you were supposed to protect her.” Aiden doesn’t back down. “You need to tell her who abandoned her in that cottage in the woods.”

  Addy stills. Chloe’s eyes grow bright, her scent that of scorched earth. “We had no control over her actions. We thought one would suffice as a guardian—”

  “One?” I cut her off and stare between the two of them. “One what?”

  Aiden takes my hand in his, urges me to face him. “One sister. One Fate.”

  I stare at him, uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about? I didn’t meet them until after I was found.”

  “How dare you?” Addy shakes with barely suppressed rage. “How dare you interfere?”

  “You were supposed to protect her in my stead.” Aiden’s green eyes flash with barely harnessed fury. “I trusted you with her. After all the three of you have done to me—”

  “We’ve done nothing,” Chloe tries to break in. “It’s the Well of Fate that we guard,

&n
bsp; the balance—”

  “Don’t talk to me about balance.” Aiden is a juggernaut, his rage unstoppable. “Not after all you’ve taken from me. Even after all that loss and pain, I trusted you with her, to raise and protect her. Who better than the women even the gods fear to keep her safe?”

  He laughs and it’s a hollow sound. “Instead, you abandoned her to a fate worse than death. Leave her to starve, to be savaged by brutes. You are no better than the mortals she hunts.”

  It clicks into place, the severed thread in Addy’s album. Laufey telling me about how the Norns had to punish one of their own for tampering with fate. With my fate. I stagger and would have fallen if Aiden didn’t have a firm grip on me. My voice is thinner than that strand as I ask, “The third sister?”

  “Nic, please,” Chloe implores. “We had no way of knowing what she’d do.”

  “She sees the future,” I respond in a deadened tone. Addy has always born the burden of knowing. It’s what makes her so surly.

  Addy sighs. “Not all of it. Not sudden choices. And once a course is set, we can’t intervene.”

  “Your sister made a choice to abandon me in the woods, to wipe my memories. And you didn’t interfere.”

  “We came for you as soon as we could.” Chloe’s voice holds a pleading tone.

  More trouble than you’re worth. “I’m sorry you were hampered with me all these years. Sorry you had to kill your own sister because of it. I don’t know why you didn’t just let her off the hook.”

  “To do so would collapse the Veil and send the worlds spiraling into chaos. There can be no trust in us when one of our own is untrustworthy. What she did reflects poorly on us all.” For once Addy doesn’t sound self-righteous, only sad. “She was our sister, the third part of our soul. But fate cannot be tampered with, even by us.”

  On the ground behind us, Laufey gags and Aiden rushes back to her side. I glare at the sisters who’d given me so much and then crouch beside him, putting Laufey’s head in my lap. Her cheeks are hollow, her lips cracked as though she’s been without water for days.

  “We need to get her back to the house,” Aiden says. “To Fern.”

  “Take her. I’ll deal with them.”

  I can tell he doesn’t want to leave me but worry for his grandmother fights with his instinct to watch over me.

  “They won’t hurt me.” But I couldn’t say the same for him or for Laufey.

  He nods once and then lifts her up in a gentle hold and takes off for the woods.

  “Nic—”

  “Just go,” I whirl on Addy and Chloe. “You say you can’t interfere with a set course. I decided to leave you, leave the farm. To never see the two of you again.”

  “You don’t mean that.” There are tears in Chloe’s eyes. “We’re your family.”

  I shake my head. “You never were, not really.”

  Addy puts an arm around her sister. Her own eyes are dry, though her expression is sad. “Then we’ll leave you to your fate.”

  A chill goes through me. “What does that mean?”

  She reaches into her pocket and extracts a ring of keys, tosses them to me. “The farm is yours, as is the clinic and our vehicles. Everything is registered in your name. You’ll find all the paperwork you need in the safe in my office. The combination is the day we adopted you.”

  I stare stupidly down at the keys. “You’re just going to abandon your lives there?”

  “We were the best guardians we knew how to be,” Chloe wipes her eyes, steps forward and takes my hand. Her scent is bittersweet, like burned brownies. “We made mistakes along the way. But we did our best. I know it’s not in your nature, but do you think maybe someday, you could forgive us?”

  I look away, put the keys in my pocket. “What is it you always say? Forgiveness is for quitters?”

  Her hands fall to her sides. “Right. Knew that was going to bite me on the ass one day.”

  Addy puts a hand on her sister’s slumped shoulders. “May fate be kind, Nic. We will never forget you.”

  I close my eyes and turn toward the path Aiden took.

  And don’t look back.

  I sit outside on the dock overlooking the swamp, waiting for Aiden, for news of Laufey’s condition. He’d come out to tell me that Fern had been in the middle of preparing a poultice for the wound and that it was too soon to tell if the giantess would pull through.

  What he didn’t say is that this is all my fault.

  He doesn’t have to say it. I know it in my bones, like an ache brought on by a savage fever. If I hadn’t been so determined to bring Sarah back, Aiden never would have brought me here and my aunts never would have come looking for me.

  The Fates. They were never my aunts, never more than temporary guardians.

  The keys form a large bulge in my pocket. The farm is mine. I know I’ll return there and find no trace of either of them. Not Chloe’s hairbrush on the bathroom sink or Addy’s glasses by her nightstand. Not the handmade quilt Chloe likes to snuggle under on cold nights or the scrapbook Addy keeps in the chest at the foot of her bed. All personal touches will be eradicated like they’d never been.

  His footfalls are soft but still audible. I turn and look up into his red-rimmed eyes, a jolt of fear passing through me. “How is she?”

  He crouches down beside me. “She’ll make it.”

  My head feels too heavy and I let it drop so that my hair hides my face from him. “I’m so sorry, Aiden. I never should have insisted you bring me here.”

  His hands reach up, part my hair curtain and tuck several strands behind my ear. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Did I command you to bring me back?” The question has been gnawing at me ever since I’d found out he had a hand in resurrecting me. “Is that why you did it?”

  He frowns. “No. I brought you back because you never should have died, Nic. You were supposed to be an immortal queen.”

  I look away.

  He clears his throat. “And because it was my fault.”

  “What? How could it be your fault?”

  “I…left. We had a fight. The Hunt was out. It was my job to protect you when they rode. But I was angry, and I left you alone.”

  I turn so I can face him fully. “What did we fight about?”

  He stares out over the swamp, at the flitting light from the will-o-the-wisps bobbing just above the murky water. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” I insist, my gaze falling to his wrist, where the contraceptive charm had once resided. “I want to know what went wrong before so I don’t make the same mistakes.”

  “Believe me, you won’t,” his chuckle is darker than the midday shadows.

  I put my hand over his, a gentle touch of connection, one I never would have considered making a few days ago. “Please. I need to know.”

  He sits fully so that his thigh presses against mine. His feet dangle over the edge of the dock. It strikes me that this is such a normal thing to do, sit side by side with your boyfriend and look out over the water. Just two teenagers wasting time together. Only he’s not my boyfriend or a teenager. He’s a cursed god who is beholden to me. And I doubt any couple in history has had a conversation like the one we’re about to have.

  “Okay, well first off, the mistakes weren’t yours. They were mine. I knew you required offspring, that you hated the attention of the fey noblemen. It’s law that any monarch who fails to produce heirs with their chosen consort must accept the attention of any fey noble who seeks them out at the appropriate times. For all intents and purposes, you couldn’t say no.”

  My hands ball up at my sides. “All monarchs? The kings, too?”

  He nods. “Yes. The lines of succession are critical to the survival of all fey. Most enjoy that aspect of ruling. Loyalty to a partner is a foreign concept for the fey. They don’t mate for life and change partners as often as they change clothes. Sex is for power and personal gain as much as it is for pleasure.”

  “But I was different.�
� My dreams had indicated that much.

  “You were the ice queen.”

  A new memory surfaces, murmurs in the court as I pass sentence. “You’re being kind. What they actually called me was the Ice Bitch.” Just as Sarah had.

  He doesn’t deny it. “Colder than winter’s heart, lacking the wild passions of the fey, immovable logic, ruthless in your ongoing pursuit of justice. It’s why you were given command of the Wild Hunt. Nothing to…distract you.”

  At least not until him. I don’t speak the words aloud but from the vividness of my memories, from the fact that I’d chosen Aiden to be my lover, I knew very well that he had been a distraction.

  He inhales, his chest expanding before he continues. “The answer was simple, at least for you. If you had a child, had my child, all the rest of it would stop. The line of succession would remain intact.”

  “It sounds medieval.” The words slip out.

  “It’s older than medieval, older than mankind. And if you think humans are slow to accept change, the fey are like carts stuck in the mud. Roll half an inch forward, then half an inch back. Only the combined ruling of both Seelie and Unseelie courts, all four royals, can change the law. And getting four royals to agree on anything is like asking time to stop churning forward.”

  “If they’re half as stubborn as I am, I can see it.”

  “You were trapped by your obligations to your people and your crown. Once a month, on the moon of conception, I was forced to let you go to the fey nobles who craved my position at your side. Knowing full well that if you did conceive with one of them, I would be forced to leave.”

  A muscle jumps in his jaw as he stares out over the water. “Those nights were almost as difficult for me as they were for you. I hated the idea of others touching you, loving your body as I did. Of knowing you in that way. The thought made the wolf rise to the fore. Even if the mortal part of me understood, the wolf could only sense that his mate was unhappy. I’d have to run for the entire night, just so I wouldn’t slaughter them all. I never told you that before. Figured it was hard enough on you without worrying if I was going to lose it and destroy the entire court. There were times when I wanted to, believe me.”