Moonlight and Magick

by Isobael Liu

  Every Lupine knew the moment they’ve met their mate, and he’d suspected it when they had their first encounter, but didn’t know it for sure until they kissed. It was a defining moment in a Lupine’s life, when they realized their mate was there, for them. He suspected she wouldn’t be receptive to the idea, and she’d fight him tooth and nail because of the experiences in her life.

  Had Stephan raped her? She didn’t seem afraid of him in a sexual way, but again, she was rather adept at hiding secrets.

  He’d tried to keep things slow and gentle for her, kept their relationship easy to give her time to get used to him. He hadn’t wanted to rush her, to frighten her. She was still unsure of him, despite her trust in him.

  For her, he would take his time and do what he needed to do to protect her, to keep her safe, until she accepted him as her mate. He hoped, in time, she’d have learned to recognize him as her mate and realize he wasn’t going anywhere. It was inevitable, written in the stars, and despite the white stag’s protest, she would be his.

  She’d already dreamt of it.

  * * * *

  “So, you’re Stephan,” the graveled, male voice came from behind him.

  Stephan spun around, almost losing his balance as he did so, but could see no one. He scanned the area.

  “So?” he asked, belligerent in his reply.

  “You’re playing in someone else’s backyard, boy,” said the man. “I want to know why.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Stephan, hit by a ball of black energy, was blasted back a few yards until he hit a tree. He struggled to breathe.

  “What it is, to me, is you’re encroaching upon what is mine,” the man growled, low and sinister. “I do not appreciate your presence here.”

  Stephan could feel the voice worm its way into his mind, digging, tunneling through his brain, eating at his thoughts, his memories. Stephan struggled harder but could not escape the invisible force holding him against the tree or the worm in his brain.

  “Ahh,” the voice echoed in his ears and his mind. “You want power over her. To control her. Unfortunately, she is not for you. But, you have a use for me.”

  “No! She’s mine!” Stephan yelled.

  The voice laughed and the sound of it grated down Stephan’s spine, into his gut. He was sick at hearing it.

  “No, she is mine. Her powers will be mine, just as her life will be mine. I have plans for Lilian, plans which do not include you, the Summer King, or the Lupine who sniff about her. No, Stephan, she is mine.”

  The worm dug in and Stephan screamed with the intense pain. Even when freed from the invisible force, he could not escape from the pain and he fell to the ground, writhing. His fingers curled into claws and he dug into the dirt, as if he could escape the intense pain in his mind. Behind it all, underneath it all, came the sound of laughter.

  * * * *

  Lilian was rather sick of her dreams being in the woods. She knew this dream wasn’t one of the regular nightmares she’d been having, but still, couldn’t she at least dream about a castle, or Hawaiian beach, or some tropical locale and not a darkened forest?

  She looked around, catching sight of the white stag as it walked toward her. She held her ground, refusing to approach and refusing to back away. Another thing she was tired of, being a victim. She was going to start standing up for herself a lot more now.

  “Daughter.” The white stag bowed its great head toward her.

  “Daughter?”

  “I have a story to tell you. Will you listen?”

  “Do I have a choice anymore?” Her tone edged toward bitterness.

  The white stag folded its front legs and with a slow, regal manner, lowered itself to the ground, to lie down in the soft grass.

  “Sit, my daughter. I will tell you the story of your life.”

  Lilian sat, facing the stag, and sighed.

  The stag’s form began to mist and melt away. She watched, unsure whether to be horrified or curious at this point.

  What was revealed caused her to gasp. In its place sat a man, dressed in white, with white hair and silver eyes, very much like hers. His clothes made of silken materials gave him an aristocratic appearance, even as he sat on the ground before her. His hair long and loose, his silver eyes bright and clear, held wisdom and experience in them. His ears were pointed, and in the left one, he wore a silver cuff, studded with emerald stones.

  “When I called you daughter, I meant it in the literal sense,” he said, his voice very much like the white stag’s, powerful yet calm.

  “You’re my father?” Her voice broke a bit in her confusion.

  He nodded and she was glad she was sitting because she’d have fallen down if not.

  “How do I know you’re not just saying that?” she asked, stiffening. She would not allow herself to become a victim again.

  “The brand on your palm, the four circles connected, represents the four seasons of the year, the four major courts of the Sidhe. Each year, during the turning of the wheel, that aspect of the court rules for the season. However, the balance has been tipped. The Lord of the Winter Court, the Winter King, has set into motion plans to destroy everything in his bid for complete control. He wishes to become the High King.”

  “But what does this have to do with me?”

  “You are my daughter,” he replied. “The daughter of the Summer Court, the Summer King. He seeks your power to add to his own.”

  Lilian frowned. None of this made sense, and she wasn’t sure she believed what she was hearing.

  “You have the abilities of telepathy, telekinesis, empathy, and healing. You are sensitive to salt and iron, the bane of the Sidhe. You are standing upon the edge of a great precipice, in which you have a choice. Stay where you are, or to take the step over and embrace what you are.”

  “Say it.” She clenched her hands into fists, her tone fierce and demanding. “Say the words.”

  He nodded once. “To become Sidhe, fully, as is your heritage, your birthright.”

  Lilian scrambled to her feet. “No.”

  He stood as well, although he did it with such grace, it looked as though he skipped the whole process and went from sitting to standing in a moment.

  “You do not understand. If you do not, the madness will overtake you. It will drive you insane. Your human mind is not able to withstand the shift in perceptions. You will doubt your senses. It will be a constant battle. You will not know what is real and what is not.”

  “I almost do that now!” she snapped. “I won’t accept this! I’m not a faerie!”

  “Not a faerie,” he said with a smile. “Sidhe. There is a difference.”

  Lilian shook her head. “Either way, I’m not one. I’m human.”

  “No, you’re half human.”

  “Prove it,” she demanded.

  He grinned.

  Lilian’s body jerked and she found herself awake, heart pounding. She blinked a few times and sat up. She was awake, right? She slid from the bed and grabbed the peplos from the nearby chair, pulling it on. It was dark in the room, and she assumed it was the middle of the night.

  Outside, there was a loud howl, followed by another, and her heart jumped in her chest. She heard yelling. She didn’t wait. She ran to the door, threw it open, and ran down the hall. The shouting grew louder, but she couldn’t understand. They were using their native language.

  As she reached the courtyard, she bolted for the entryway and out onto the grounds. There, she could see the man from her dreams, surrounded by the Lupine. His arms were behind him and she assumed they were bound.

  “He says he’s your father,” Tiberius said to her.

  Lilian looked at Tiberius, lost for words.

  The men growled and circled the man with reined in anger. She knew they were territorial, as wolves were, and having a strange male just appear on their land made them uneasy.

  “If you are her father, then you are welcome here. If you are not her father, you will be torn apar
t,” Matthias said from behind her.

  “No!” She protested as she spun to face Matthias. “Don’t hurt him!”

  Matthias looked at her, studying her face. “Is he your father?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s the white stag.”

  Matthias stepped up to her side and reached for her hand, but kept his eyes on the stranger. “Prove it.”

  The man nodded and lifted his right hand, bringing it around to show them his palm. His left hand fell to his side, holding the rope which had been used to bind him.

  The man’s palm held the same mark as hers, and glowed with a bluish light.

  “My name is Amras, King of the Summer Court. Lilian is my daughter, stolen from me as an infant.”

  She slipped her hand into Matthias’s and held on with a tight grip. He gave it a light squeeze.

  “Again, prove it.”

  Amras nodded. “I met her mother, a human, and fell in love with her. We created a child from our union, but because Emma was human, full human, I could not bring her to my Court, nor could I take her child from her. Her mind would not have been able to comprehend all she would see, and a mother should never be separated from her child unless necessary. So, I visited her as often as I could. Lilian’s birth name is Ariella.”

  Lilian listened with an intense concentration. She could only vaguely remember her time before Jane, the woman she knew as Mama, had taken her in, and those shadowy gaps in her past had always bothered her.

  “Your mother was beautiful. She had blond hair and emerald green eyes,” Amras said, as he looked at her. He touched his ear cuff. “I wear this in remembrance of her. I have never taken a wife because of my love for her.”

  Tears prickled in her eyes and she blinked them back. Doing so, she missed Amras’s approach and from the reactions around her, so did the others. She jerked back in surprise when she realized he was standing in front of her, looking at her in earnest.

  “She was driven insane by my brother, Ulwe, the King of the Winter Court. He is the huntsman in your nightmares. He wants you because you are on the cusp of a great change, your Chrysalis. If he can gain your power before you come into your own, he will have won against the Summer Court and be much closer to taking over as High King. Once he has reached that stage, the mortal world will never be safe from him.”

  Lilian sensed Amras’s earnestness, his pain when he spoke of her mother, and knew without having to use telepathy, this was sheer honesty, spoken from the heart. Still, he could have faked it and she wasn’t going to take it on blind faith.

  “He convinced her your life was in danger. He used his abilities to drive her insane, made her afraid of every shadow, every noise. He made her believe the Sidhe were evil, demons, and I would come for her, kill her, to take her child. My child. She took you and ran away. I tried to follow, to tell her she was safe, I loved her and you, that I would never harm the two of you, but Emma was too far-gone. Ulwe had fed upon her, played with her mind too much.”

  “Fed upon her?” Lilian asked, confused.

  “The Sidhe are able to feed upon the emotions of those around us. It is a part of the Empathy ability. Have you not experienced it?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “When you go into an establishment where there is a group of people, the larger the better, and you feel their emotions so much that they become your emotions. If you went in and were feeling bad, soon you are feeling good. When you go in feeling good, you feel ecstatic. It is the same in the other direction. You become upset when others are upset, sad when others are sad. Yet, underneath it all, you feel more energized, more empowered.”

  Lilian wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. She knew he was speaking the truth. “You can feed from one person, feed from their energy, although to do this, it is dangerous for the provider. We do not condone the feeding from one person. Ulwe has always disagreed with this law and we suspected he might have been breaking the law, but it was not until I saw Emma when I caught up with her and you that I knew he had.”

  Lilian frowned. She only had vague recollections of the night he was talking about. Vague images, emotions.

  “I lost track of her and you soon after. Until the night your stepfather had killed your surrogate mother I had not a clue as to where you might be, if you were even alive. Your fear and your pain called out to me across time and space, penetrated the Mists, and for a brief moment, I was able to help you.”

  Lilian gasped and her hand tightened on Matthias’s.

  “I didn’t kill him?” she whispered.

  “No, daughter. You were but the instrument of his destruction. I killed him. I wielded the instrument, in order to protect you. Still, even after that brief time, I could not find you again. By the time I arrived, you were gone and it took all these years until we could connect once more, through your dreams.”

  Lilian wanted to sit down. “You’re my father?”

  He smiled and when he did, she could feel the rightness to it, the connection. Seeing him, in person, this close, outside of her dreams, she could feel his presence and she knew, knew he was telling the truth. He was her father. She released Matthias’s hand and threw herself into Amras’s arms, crying. Amras held her, murmuring in a gentle tone to her in his language. Their language, and while she could not understand the words, she was aware of the meaning behind them, the caring.

  She had found a connection to someone who was family, connected by blood, and a piece of her life returned to her. She cried for the loss of her relationship with Amras, cried for the loss of her mother, and cried in relief that she had a family, a past.

  “Shh, daughter. You will make yourself ill with these tears. Do not cry for things lost. They are in the past now. Be happy we have found one another.”

  Lilian sobbed, nodded, and tried to step back and wipe her face. Matthias stepped forward and swept her into his arms.

  “Let’s go inside and sit down. We can talk some more in private.” Matthias tilted her chin up and leaned down to kiss her with a gentle brush of his lips. “Take him to your room. You have a sitting area. I’ll bring some food and drink.”

  Lilian gazed up at Matthias and saw he worried about her. She gave him a soft smile.

  “I’ll be all right,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  He leaned down and kissed her lips. It wasn’t a gentle kiss like before, but neither was it possessive or aggressive.

  It was a promise.

  Chapter 7

  When Matthias walked into her room bearing a tray of food and drink, Lilian almost didn’t notice him. Granted, he could have been butt-naked and she probably wouldn’t have noticed as she was so caught up with Amras.

  Wait, no, I’d notice that.

  She glanced at him just to be sure he was clothed before she returned her attention to her father.

  Lilian sat across from him, the table between them, which left only a couple of feet separation. Their eyes were locked on one another, and both were silent.

  They were sharing their memories via telepathy and empathy, an easier way to catch up about their lives than talking. Amras held the link, though she had tried to at first, but he had argued he should do the work not to exhaust her any more than she already was. She had to give in to his logic.

  Matthias brought a chair over and sat close to her. He took her hand in his and caressed it with a gentle touch, which caused her to automatically reach out with a mental link and connect him to the telepathic conversation.

  “He won’t be able to keep up,” Amras thought.

  “He’ll do just fine,” she replied.

  They could both feel Matthias’s sense of wonderment and awe at how fast the two of them were communicating. Images and thoughts, memories and snippets of conversations were flying back and forth between them so fast Matthias had no hope of keeping up. Still he tried, and she smiled at his persistence.

  “You are meant for better things.”

  Lilian startled. Amras
sent his message along a different sort of path, one which did not include Matthias’s participation.

  “You are the daughter of a king. You are not meant for the Lupine.”

  She frowned at her father. “I wasn’t the daughter of a king when I met him, when he saved my life, when he was there when I needed someone to lean on.”

  “That was then. I am here now.”

  Lilian shook her head, her lips pressed together. “I don’t care. I like him. He’s fun to be around and he makes me feel…”

  “Lust.” Amras dismissed her words.

  She surged upward to stand, startling Matthias.

  “Enough. Just because we share genetic material doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me who I can see or associate with!”

  Amras just lifted a brow. Matthias frowned as he glanced between the two of them.

  Seeing Amras’s reaction infuriated her even more. Lilian stood, tense and furious at her father. As her anger grew, the air around her began to glow a bluish color, which shifted to a deep red. She lifted her hands up and shoved the air in front of her toward Amras.

  Her father’s chair went skittering back, and tipped over, but by that time, Amras had gained his feet, grinning.

  “Is that all you have, daughter?”

  Matthias started to speak, but Amras waved a hand in his direction and Matthias went sliding backward. Lilian saw red. She retaliated. Without thinking of her actions or the consequences, she gathered some of the energy from the red aura around her and formed it into attacks, volleying them at her father. Not only did she use the energy from around her, she also attacked mentally, and with dagger-like thoughts, tried to find the part of his mind in which to weaken him. She slashed at his mental shields again and again, as the physical attacks continued.

  Amras held her mental attacks at bay.

  Lilian could feel Matthias’s confusion and his rage when he realized Amras was the instigator of her fury. She knew he would try to protect her from Amras.