by D. D. Chance
“You have taken some risk to come to us,” Danae said, watching me carefully. “Especially given what we’ve been told. I’m curious to know why.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Well, fair warning: don’t believe everything you’re told.”
“We never do,” Danae acknowledged. “That said, it’s no surprise that the coven of the White Mountains is concerned about their reputation. They’ve set themselves up as the primary guardians against the Fae for a long time now. We’ve taken them at their word, and left it at that. I can see that was a mistake now, but to be honest, no respectable witches wanted anything to do with the Fae, not even to protect us against a possible future threat. We’d rather they all just went away for good.”
Even as she said this, her glance flicked to Niall, who was availing himself of the table of offerings, a flagon of mead clasped in one hand. “Admittedly, this one is working hard to project an air of absolute innocence and ineffectiveness. But he’s a fool to believe we don’t understand he could kill any number of us should he have a mind to do so.”
Her accusation would have already been enough of a surprise, but it was nothing in comparison to what Niall did next. Without turning around, he chuckled, his rich voice threading through our minds alone, I suspected.
“I would be a fool if I attempted to take out your warriors, Mistress Danae,” he said succinctly and respectfully. “I am here under the auspices of King Aiden of the high Fae. We are only now unraveling a plot against our people. And, unlike our forebears, we are happy enough to leave you humans to your splendid lives. The Fae were not meant to conquer, if such conquering brings death and destruction to our enemies. We can create all we need in our own realm. We pose no threat to you.”
Danae took all this in without changing her expression, her gaze remaining fixed on me.
“And yet what are we to think about the rise of your ancient enemies, the Fomorians? Our agents in the field have made the link between the new race of the monster realm and these ancient foes, so ancient that our archival records are remarkably quiet on the subject. A factor influenced not a little, in our mind, by the librarians we’ve hired over the centuries, librarians who came from the coven of the White Mountains. That was before my time, of course. But the connection is curious.”
“Well that’s just great,” I groaned. “Your libraries are empty, the Fae’s libraries suck, and the coven of the White Mountain isn’t talking. That’s a whole lot of information that represents a big blank, not only for you but for the Fae as well. King Aiden is tracking down what he can, but the royal archives have definitely been corrupted.”
“Your high priestess plays a long game,” Danae said drily. “I wonder what its end is. Her demonstration in the Riven District cell today wasn’t an isolated incident.”
I blinked at her. “You know about that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Who do you think sent that demon to pay you a visit? But this…this is a problem. We’ve received our share of warnings over the past hundred years of the turncoat witch in our midst. Usually, though, it’s a Hogan witch accused of shirking her duty and opening the door to attack.”
“Oh, give me a break. We were running a tavern for those hundred years—that’s it,” I said sharply. “We gave an open door to people who needed it, witches and monsters who wanted nothing more than to live their lives on their terms. Anything else you’ve been told is bullshit.”
Danae bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I know your story, Belle Hogan,” she said evenly. “As you well know that the most common path the Hogans have chosen for those witches suffering this uncommon ailment has led them through Chicago. We’ve ushered dozens of your rogue witches into safety, sometimes without them even knowing that it is our hands that guided them to their ultimate destination. So it was all the more curious to receive Cassandra’s most recent disavowal of you. I thought your wards were better than that, both for yourself and your tavern. But it seems she finally has your number.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks,” I said. “I returned to the Fae realm to teach the king. I didn’t expect to find him on the brink of war. And certainly not a war that affects the human realm, but it sure is looking that way. The Fomorians aren’t screwing around. They’re already in the monster realm and…and I think they’re in the human realm too.” Or at least their gold was.
Danae nodded. “Because Cassandra is working with the Fomorian king and hatching some plan to get him to fight the king of the Fae. She wants to break them both while she gets richer.”
She smiled grimly at my surprise. “We’re not as stupid or as unseeing as you New Englanders would like to think, and Cassandra most of all. She covets my position as the highest voice among the clans. She wants it for herself.”
“That makes sense.” Taking over for Danae as the biggest big-shot witch in America sounded exactly like the kind of bedtime story that would lull Cassandra to sleep at night. “So can you help me—help the Fae? Or will you just be there to pick up whatever pieces are left after the fight?”
“War between the Fae and the Fomorians isn’t our concern,” Danae countered without answering me directly.
“Oh, come on.” I flapped a hand at her. “This war is different, and you know it. Both the high Fae and the Fomorians have established a beachhead on human ground. Don’t think for a moment they won’t exploit that position if they can.”
She considered that, studying me. “What would you have me do?”
I drew in a slow breath. “The ancient magic isn’t enough. Hogans are healers, which is great—but not as useful as it needs to be. You guys are the opposite. Your Death Walkers hold the entire world in thrall when you allow them to fight on your behalf. And, well—for this battle, we don’t need healers. We need fists and daggers and spells.”
“Fair enough,” Danae said, her quick smile gleaming in the shadows. “And I’ll do you one better. A twenty-warrior legion is at your disposal, to be trained and led by this one.” She gestured to Niall, who was drinking deep of the flagon of honey mead, but whose gaze was riveted on us across the room. He wasn’t missing a word of what we were saying. “He knows the price for drinking anything a witch offers, but he didn’t hesitate. He’s in love with the witch you brought with you out of the monster realm.”
I grinned as Niall choked on his mead. “Yeah, I think he is. The sucker,” I agreed, and Danae laughed.
“He has chosen well, and King Aiden was wise to agree to send him. My decision is made. When you have need of warriors, either to defeat the Fomorians or assure your safety against your own cove—former coven,” she amended, “you simply need to say the word. The coven of the Iron Sea will stand with you.”
24
Aiden
I must have heard my name uttered a hundred times over in the space of ten minutes: “King Aiden—King Aiden? Aiden.” From Fae I barely knew to those I’d spoken with over the course of my lifetime, I shook hands and patted shoulders to my right, then my left. More murmured greetings, more deferential nods. I moved through the pack of strangers, increasingly disquieted by how few of them I knew.
It was with decided relief that I felt the moment the deal was struck with the human witches. Niall’s blood bond had fairly sung with excitement, and I’d fought the grin. Niall would have been willing all on his own to bond with the witches at my order, but he had the added incentive of wanting a foothold in the realm of the witch who’d captured his heart, though he was trying hard to hide it. Still, my second-in-command did nothing by half measures. The fateful day where he’d been so grievously injured that not even Fae magic could bring back his eye, he had bristled with pride at the obvious mark of his loyalty to me.
I could be no less loyal to him. He’d need something to come home to after all, something worth fighting for.
“King Aiden!” This acknowledgment was unlike the others. A nobleman, too thin, too pale to be fully well, stood out in marked contrast to his fellow robust Fae. P
aying no mind to proper protocol, or maybe not knowing what it was, he stepped toward me, and it was only through quick action that I kept my protective guard from bristling as he clasped his hands to his heart.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked, but his smile betrayed no anger for that, no indignation. “I can’t see how you would. I was covered in blood and I would have left my own self for dead, left all of us beneath that screaming pile of wraiths.” His voice was loud, strident, and I realized at once this was deliberate.
“You don’t know King Aiden,” he said, stabbing his gaunt finger at the others. “You nod and you give him greeting, and you want to trust him, but how could you? He’s been kept far from his throne, buried in war, much like his father before him professed to be. That king would never have come to save my neck at Senegral Point. He never would have helped us fight off the monsters that bled over from the monster realm where the veil was thinnest. We are well used to war at Senegral Point, yet we did not expect such terror to burst from the sea. By the time we could send up the alarm, three keeps had been overrun, the bodies of our wives and children and warriors mutilated beyond recognition, their souls swallowed whole. And into that morass came King Aiden and his personal army.”
“Would that we had gotten there sooner,” I said, feeling the keening edge of this noble man’s grief.
“Light willing, you will never be called to such a scene of death again,” the nobleman said. “Because it was not a battleground, it was a killing field. Yet still you came, despite all the stories we’d been told.”
This last pulled me up short, and I blinked at the unexpected statement, casting out my mind to seek out new truths. There was a collegial camaraderie of the room, perhaps a little brighter and a little more welcoming, and so I nodded for the Fae lord whose name I still could not recall to continue.
“We knew the stories that you had lost your magic. That the blessing of the Hogan witch upon our High King had been broken and we would need to rely on our own abilities to ward off our enemies. We were at peace with this. Magic not our own is never permanent.”
Before I could come up with something to say to that, he pushed on.
“But I was wrong,” he said, his voice lifting defiantly. “I was wrong, and I am glad for it. You proved yourself worthy, and you pulled magic from the far realm whether or not it wanted to come. And your warriors cut through that layer of wraiths like a scythe, lifting them enough to give the warriors beneath hope, and you and your team power. You saved us. You saved my wife. Many of our children and their children’s children. And for that, I will forever be grateful to you and the family of the High King.”
Without warning, he fell to one knee, the noble gesture diminishing his power not at all. Because it was not to me alone he knelt, and he made that point plain. “To the Light,” he declared.
“To the Light.”
The two voices that joined this injured lord took me by surprise—one deep and resonant, and one light, almost lyrical. A male and female stepped forward from the throng, two more faces I once again could not place right away. I was beginning to suspect the hardest role I’d have as High King would be getting these names and faces straight.
“You came through the valley to protect us, not to strip us of our wine,” the female announced, and I finally recognized her as Lady Magdalen, queen of the valley Fae. That meant the male next to her would be the leader of the forest Fae. She was tall, red-haired, and statuesque, looking more like the Empress of the Tarot than the usual lithe female Fae, while the forest king was whisper thin, his gaunt face stretched into an easy smile beneath his curling dark brown hair. “You incited our warriors to fight like the warriors they have never had to be.”
I couldn’t deny it, and she trilled a soft laugh.
“We all must have purpose, to appreciate the good times and the harder ones,” she said. “All paths are honorable to those who take them with an open heart.”
“And yet you did not come to the forest Fae at all,” boomed the slender warrior beside her, undoubtedly King Rone, though I’d never met the Fae before in person. He gestured expansively with his long-fingered hands, each with a tiny ring that glinted like fireflies beneath the darkening sky high above us, as night finally drew down on the Fae realm. “You cleared your warriors from our forest with your first act as king. I doubt you remember it.”
“You had no need of them,” I said. “I did.”
“I had no need of them is right,” Rone agreed, his dark eyes twinkling as if he might break out in a huge guffaw. “But that never stopped the king before. Space and privacy to pursue our own path was never high on your father’s list of priorities for his forest clan. It was on yours, and we thank you for it.”
He brought his fists to his chest, while beside him, Lady Magdalen folded both her hands over her heart.
“To the Light, King Aiden.”
The voice of the Fae who spoke next was soft and graveled, as worn as windswept rock.
I turned with some surprise as a final warrior stepped out from the crowd. This man I recognized even though I’d never met him either, because his image had been drawn for my father and grandfather to leer at in pride and delight. Gray haired and hollow cheeked, he leaned heavily on his staff, and looked at me with weary gray eyes.
“I am King Sarrin of the mountain Fae, as I’m sure you know, my family broken into pieces and left to live out our days relying on the good graces of the dwarf lord. But we survived all these long years with the help of the first Hogan witch, who prevailed upon King Eric to take pity on us, and returned to our halls to stop the sickness the king of the ocean Fae unleashed within our ranks after the failed coup. The damage, though, had already been done. When you came to me in search of yet another witch, I wanted to despise you, but with you came light, sunshine, and magic that healed the earth and chased away the storm. My children’s children saw pure sunshine for the first time in their long lives. And for that, I am here to serve you. To bring the endless wars to a close.” He sighed heavily. “To the Light.”
A booming clap sounded from the back of the room, thunderous, intense. Not the clap that would start a round of applause, but the mocking, slow sneer of a clap meant only to insult. It cracked again and again—and then a voice rolled through the room.
“Enjoy your light while you have it,” growled King Lyric of the Fomorian, with an intense burst of magic that rippled across the realms. It would have to be intense, for him to reach us all the way in the Fae realm. “I come to steal it soon.”
He said nothing more—he couldn’t, I knew instinctively. The magic that would have been required to give him access even so briefly would have been exhausting, buried as he was in his Fomorian prison. But that didn’t mean I wanted the stain of even his words on this gathering. Without hesitation, I threw my hands wide, speaking the spell that sprang eagerly to my lips. Music surged, the sun brightened in the sky, and time hitched, pulling back the needed seconds to reset what had happened and erase the words of the hated Fomorian king from the minds of those in the room—except the leaders of the clans themselves, who I allowed to retain their perfect recall. Laughter rolled, then cheers and congratulations, and the party picked up in earnest.
All the while, three noble warrior Fae, Magdalen, Sarrin and Rone, stared at me with bleak understanding. I had used Magnus’s trick of timing magic to erase what I didn’t want others to remember, but I knew better than to act like it had never happened. The king of the Fomorian grew bolder, more cunning with every pass. And he still had a hold on Belle, a claim I would not allow to stand. I’d sooner strike him dead myself than allow him to think he could lay so much as a whisper on her.
If he wanted a war, I would give him one. And it was a war the Fae would win.
“To the Light,” we all said again.
25
Belle
I left Niall and Celia in the hall of the Death Walkers. It wasn’t like I had any say in the matter. Niall seemed
perfectly happy to be the center of attention, particularly of the warriors, and they’d begun plying him with questions almost as soon as I exited the room with Danae. Celia, surprisingly enough, had proven equally popular. The resourceful witch’s tenure in the Riven District apparently captured the fascination of these high-class witches, and they were both shocked and jealous that she’d had such adventures while they’d never strayed beyond the barriers of their own realm.
Their fascination didn’t go unnoticed by Danae.
“You’ve stirred up an unusual hornet’s nest,” she observed as we walked back through the quiet hallways of her elegant home. “For a rogue witch, you do a poor job of keeping a low profile.”
I glanced at her more than a little nervously.
“That wasn’t my plan,” I began, but her snort of derision cut off my apology.
“Of course it wasn’t. No self-respecting witch would cause herself this much trouble. Most of us are pretty simple in the end. We seek the safety of our home and hearth, the protection of our friends and family, and enough money to secure our freedom and perhaps the pursuit of pleasures as well. But we don’t seek excessive power for the sake of power. We don’t seek control over others, witch or otherwise. To evolve into a leader like that takes a particular twist of spirit, and I don’t see that within you.” She slid a sideways glance toward me. “That doesn’t mean you won’t be called to lead, however.”
“I don’t want to lead,” I said automatically, but with a force that surprised me. “This was never about leadership. The Hogan witches are teachers and healers.”
“And tavern keepers,” Danae pointed out, reasonably enough. “And escape artists too.”
“My great-grandmother was the escape artist,” I argued. “None of the rest of us have been so great at it.”