by Alicia Wolfe
“I don’t want to bore you with the details…”
She returned to her throne and reclined on it elegantly, her hair falling perfectly into place. The sun shone down on her sparkly leotard-like outfit and made it gleam like a silver waterfall. It threw glints of heaven off the sharp points of her diamond crown.
“I would hear the story,” she said.
I sighed. The last thing I wanted was to relive the tragic events of the past. “I’d really rather not,” I said.
Her eyes speared me like a fish. “I’m sorry, Jade McClaren, did you think I was asking?”
I swallowed. “No, ma’am. I mean, Your Grace.”
She waited. “Yes?”
Speaking in a clipped, strained voice, I said, “A mage did it. Vincent Walsh. He…stole my fire.”
“I am very sorry, Jade. Is there more to tell?”
“I…” More than I can say. At least more than I could say without balling like a baby. “No, Your Grace.”
“Very well. In any case, I am most sorry for what befell you.” She let a beat go by, and clouds passed across the sun overhead, then moved on. “Now, to business.” She waved a hand around the dais, drawing my attention once more to my situation, as if I might have forgotten. “Do you imagine it is every day that I entertain thieves in my court? That I clear the room for them?”
That hadn’t occurred to me. But she was right. If this was the heart of her hive, and she was the queen bee, then why weren’t there any drones buzzing about?
“I…guess not,” I said lamely.
“Good. Because I don’t. But there is something sinister threatening my court, and I have reason to believe it derives from the great evil that drove us from our lands and into your world ten years ago. This is a threat to us all, even your kind—humans, that is, not half-dragon shifters—and you would do well to take this as seriously as I do.” She turned to Davril. “Isn’t that so, Lord Stormguard?”
Lord Stormguard. A new flutter worked in my belly.
Davril had stood when she had retaken her seat, and so had the other courtiers. I was the only one still kneeling. Idiot. Hastily, I stood and dusted myself off, not that there was any dust in this place.
Looking vaguely amused at my discomfiture, Davril said, “I was assigned to watch the man you stole from last night, Jade. You don’t need to know why, only that it has something to do with all this.”
“Do tell,” said a voice, and I turned to see Jessela. At some point, she had ascended the stairs and now stood behind me and to one side. One of her hands rested on the pommel of her gilded sword, and I didn’t like the thought of her at my back.
Davril didn’t respond to her provocation, though, if that was what it was. Just what was their relationship, anyway?
“You stole the item I was there to monitor,” Davril told me. “I knew how to track it and followed you to the man, Jason Mattox, who I believe served as your fence. I eavesdropped on your conversation and knew where you were bound, so I inserted myself into the crowd at Pandora’s Box. I had meant to see if you met any other underworld contacts in an attempt to trace your network. Make a map of this underworld of yours.” He let out a breath. “I should have simply retaken the golden antler and let you be.”
Jessela sniffed. “Something about her interested you, Davril. Just what was it?”
Davril ground his jaw—I could see it bunch—but he refused to take her bait. There was something there, something to their relationship. But also something to what she said. Davril had jeopardized his mission because of me. That was a shock.
“Lord Stormguard could not have known what would happen to Mr. Mattox,” Queen Calista said, but the pain in her eyes was obvious. She mourned for the loss of Jason, for the loss of an innocent mixed up in all this. That endeared me to her, if only a little. I was still her captive, after all.
I decided to speak up. With more boldness than I felt, I asked Davril, “If you can track the antler, why not just go find it?”
A flicker passed across his face that might have been a wince. “Whoever stole it is masking its signature, Jade. Our antagonist is no novice, unfortunately. This was well planned and, so far, well executed. There’s no way to find the antler now, at least not in that fashion. But we have reason to believe that whoever did do this is using the human criminal underground in some way—though how exactly we don’t know.”
Queen Calista once more swung her gaze to me, and I could see the terrible weight in it. Something in me went cold.
With deceptive mildness, she said, “We could use someone associated with the human underground. To help us track down the antler.”
I rocked back on my heels as the meaning of it came crashing home. This was why the court had been cleared, why I had been given a special audience with Her Majesty.
“You…” Once more, I opened and closed my mouth, but only a squeak came out. When I could talk, I said, “You want me to help you find Jason’s killer?”
“And retrieve the antler, yes.” Queen Calista flicked her eyes to Davril. “Lord Stormguard can use all the help he can get.”
I almost laughed. “You want me…to team up with Davril…I mean, Lord Stormguard…to do this?’
Davril scowled at me, and the urge to laugh only grew. I half-turned to see Jessela looking amused, too, if only at Davril’s discomfiture.
“That is the situation,” Davril said, sounding as if he wished he could say anything else. “If you agree, and if the mission is successful, you will be pardoned and free to go. As long as you promise not to steal anything else from a subject of the Fae.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back. “I promise,” I said. “Now let’s go get Jason’s killer.”
And get my sister back, I thought but didn’t say.
Chapter 8
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said as Davril led me through the halls of the palace. He looked thoroughly put out by it all. “We’re going to be working together!”
“I wouldn’t get too excited,” he said dryly.
“I’m not excited; it’s just interesting.”
“Anyway, it will be brief. We’re not becoming partners or anything.”
I flashed a smile. “Aren’t we?”
He frowned at me. Staring up at him, I was suddenly aware of how huge he was, how wide his shoulders were, and how deep his chest. The shining armor made him even bigger, of course, but he didn’t need its help; he was a giant. I felt tiny standing in front of him.
“I mean, we are working together,” I said. “Doesn’t that make us partners?”
His cold eyes stared at me out of that ridiculously chiseled face. “No,” he said curtly. “It doesn’t.”
He continued striding up the hall, and I scurried after him. We were passing through a lovely high passage filled with magical displays. Currently what looked like an aurora borealis shimmered overhead, fantastic waves of color rippling like the waves of the ocean, red and green and blue and yellow. Warmth tingled along my skin, and the scent of baking apples filled my nose. Fae magic was awesome.
“You will be quartering here until the task is accomplished,” Davril said, his eyes forward, not looking at me.
“I’m going to live at the palace?”
He hedged. “You will stay at the palace.”
We marched up a delicate-looking spiral stairway and down another hall lined with handsome wooden doors. He stopped before one and swung it open, revealing a small but very pretty apartment complete with a plush bed and a window admitting a shining shaft of light.
“This is where you will stay,” he said. “I’ll leave you now.”
He started to turn, but I touched his arm. “Why didn’t the Queen ask about Ruby, my sister?”
Davril stared at me for a moment, then glanced away. Sounding somehow subdued, he said, “Because that would have raised questions in her mind. It certainly does in mine. Why was she taken? It makes no sense.”
I could have told him she had be
en taken to use as leverage against me, but that would only alert him to the fact that my loyalties were divided. If push came to shove, I would do whatever I had to in order to save Ruby, even if it meant going against the mission of retrieving the antler of the Golden Hind.
“I wish I knew,” I lied.
He shook his head, as if shrugging the questions away. “In any case, it would have made the Queen doubt you. She might have thought you had more to do with this than the rest of the facts would indicate.”
Shock ran through me, and I took a step backward, then stared at Davril in wonder. He avoided my eyes.
“You lied to the Queen,” I said, then realized I had spoken too loud. Whispering, I said, “You lied to the Queen to protect me!”
He looked like he regretted starting this conversation. “To get you released, yes. I didn’t imagine she would team you up with me. I work best alone.” He didn’t have to add that he would work even better not saddled with a criminal, a half-human and an utter amateur in all things Fae Knight.
Acting impulsively, I reached out and squeezed one of his hands. He wore gauntlets, but the palms were leather, and I knew he could feel the pressure.
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
“Well. If that is all, I’ll leave you now. Someone, not me, thank the gods, will fetch you to dinner later. Tomorrow morning, we will begin investigating the case. I want you to be thinking about what steps to take next.”
“Me?”
The seriousness in his look sobered me. “Remember, Jade, the reason you’re assigned to me is that we need your insight. Your connections.”
“You mean…you’ll go wherever I say?”
His mouth quirked in annoyance. “Within reason.”
I tapped his chest, indicating his armor. “You’ll need to lose this.”
“Done.” He paused. “You weren’t entirely forthcoming about having your fire stolen.”
“That’s my own business.”
“Actually, no.”
“No?”
He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped at the contact. His hand was strong, and I could feel the great power in it. He didn’t squeeze, though, at least not hard.
“No,” he said again. “You are, however temporarily, my partner. Sort of. And I need to know who I’m partnering with. What makes you tick. That makes it my business. I can sense there’s a lot you’re not telling us. And whatever that is, it’s what drives you, Jade. What motivates you.”
“I don’t know…”
He held up a finger, silencing me. “I know.” He withdrew his hand and stood back. Almost ruefully, he added, “I don’t know what I don’t know, but I know I don’t know everything I need to.”
He lied to his queen about me, and now he wants to know me better. “I’ll…think about it,” I said.
“See that you do. I want the truth tomorrow. Along with our destination.”
He marched away, the faint clanking of his armor receding down the hall, and I watched him until he rounded a corner, for some reason thinking he might look back, but he didn’t. Sighing, I passed into the apartment and shut the door behind me. The suite was simple enough, but homey for all that. It was certainly a far cry from the dungeon. And I owed it all to Davril for lying on my behalf. What did that mean? What did I want it to mean?
Nothing, I told myself. Anyway, the last thing I need is to get hooked up with a magical cop who hates my kind, or more likely, to start obsessing about a magical cop and then never attain the object of my affection. Besides, I have other fish to fry.
Not knowing what to think, I flung myself on the bed and stared up at the stone ceiling. Ivy twined across it, bursting with red flowers.
I pictured Ruby. Where was she now? How was she doing? I prayed she was safe and well. But there was something that made no sense to me. If Ruby had been taken because the nefarious party who had spoken to me in the mirror needed the golden antler, then who the fuck had killed Jason and taken the antler? Were there two nefarious parties at work here, both wanting the antler? I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. But that did seem to be the situation. The skull-like face in the mirror had contacted me after Jason had been murdered, which mean that it, or the powers behind it, did not have the antler.
There were two villains, I thought, or maybe even more. Maybe two whole sets of villains. Skull-Face was Villain One, and Creature Summoner was Villain Two. Villain Two had the antler, but for what purpose? No one had ever really explained to me what use the antler served. Obviously it fulfilled some magical function, but what that was, I couldn’t imagine. I wasn’t a real witch, after all, and certainly not a Fae.
No, I thought. I’m a dragon.
A long, sad sigh escaped my lips. For a moment, I remembered being a young girl before my fire had been stolen. Back then, I could shift, at least as much as I could. Wings would burst from my back and I could fly into the air as high as I wanted. I was free and weightless and happy. I could defend myself, too. I could breathe fire.
I laughed to remember Mom beating out the flames on the Christmas tree one year after I had belched (due to too many pancakes) and accidentally set the tree on fire. Ruby had been the one to finally put it out. She had been tiny then, but she had gravitated toward magic early on and knew just enough to turn the tree to ice. That had killed the fire, true enough, but it had also caused the tree to shatter into a million pieces.
My laughter turned to tears as I thought of little Ruby with her bright red hair covered in ice particles, trying to stamp out a little spark of fire that still jumped from the carpet. She’d still had a little blueberry on her cheek from the jam she’d smeared on the pancakes, and she’d been about to cry. She kept saying, “I broke the tree, Mommy! I broke the tree!”
I’ll find you soon, Ruby, I promised.
Somehow, despite my fear for my sister and the general turmoil in my mind, I must have fallen asleep, because before I knew it, knocking jerked me out of slumber. Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Come in.”
It was Jessela, accompanied by two other women who were obviously not knights judging by their livery. Of course, Jessela didn’t look much like a knight at the moment, either. She wore a flowing, elegant blue dress that might have been chiffon, all lace and ruffles, and her hair had been put up with a dozen glinting pins.
“What’s this?” I asked as the two women began measuring me. One had brought along a bright purple dress and laid it on the bed while I stood and submitted to being fussed over.
“They’re some of our dressmakers,” Jessela said. “Geniuses, all of them, if they can make me look like this.” She indicated her dress and hair with a rueful smile. For a moment, I began to like her. Then I remembered how frosty she’d been to me earlier and held myself back.
“But what’s the occasion?” I asked as one of the women brushed my hair.
“Dinner, of course,” Jessela said. “Queen Calista likes us to look our best. ‘Respect yourselves and others will respect you, too,’ she likes to say. But really, I think she just likes us to look nice. She certainly likes to look nice.”
“Strip this off,” one of the women told me, tugging at my cat-burglar outfit. “We’ll incinerate it.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, but I allowed them to peel it off me. It had become grimy in the dungeon, sweaty and a bit torn from my misadventures. “Just clean it and mend it if you can, then return it to me. I’ll want to wear it tomorrow.” I laughed. “My friends in the underworld wouldn’t know what to do if I showed up looking like…that.” I smiled and pointed at Jessela’s outfit, and she rewarded me with an amused look.
“That I would like to see,” she said wryly.
I hadn’t been dressed by others before, at least not since my mother used to dress me for church, and that had been a hell of a long time ago. I bore it all with only the occasional curse and elbow jab, and finally emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. Gasping in delight, I stared in the mirror that hung from one wall and ran
my hands along the purple dress, which was becoming more form-fitting by the second thanks to the spells the dressmakers were laying on it even as I watched. Its hue accentuated the purple highlights in my black hair, and even as I admired the dress, one of the women was dabbing purple glints onto my eyelashes. I was getting all purpled up.
“You look splendid,” Jessela said. “I never would’ve known it was you.”
I shot her a look. There was the cattiness I’d been expecting. “Excuse me?”
To her credit, she seemed to realize what she’d said. “I only meant…you look nice,” she said, trying to recover, and I had to give her props for trying.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not used to looking this good, either.” The fact was that I’d never looked this good. “And you do this every night?”
“No, but often. Just as often, I stand guard while others eat. We knights rotate shifts.”
“Is that what you do, mainly—protection?”
“Different knights have different duties, and some of us rotate through those, too. The higher-level knights serve the Queen’s interests outside of the Fae sphere.”
“Like Davril.”
“Right. Sometimes, I’ll take up duty outside the palace, too, but I’m mostly stationed here, or at least in the realm of the Fae. I don’t go much into the human world.” She bit her lip, and I was surprised to see her act a bit…well, not intimidated, but at least humbled, or hesitant, or something. I couldn’t quite place it. “The truth is, you’re one of the first humans I’ve ever interacted with.”
That explained some of her frostiness. To her, we were an alien species. I guess we really were, too, in a way. Although we looked so much alike that obviously there was some common ancestor at one point.
“And I’m guessing that most of the humans you have interacted with have been criminals, am I right?” I said.
“True,” she admitted, then cast a look at the dressmakers; they were pretending not to listen as they made last-minute adjustments to my dress and makeup. Apparently, they weren’t just dressmakers but make-over artists—gods knew, I needed the help.