Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set

by Susan Krinard

  “Remind me of the exact wording of the prophecy again.” Lorcan accepted a mug of coffee from Stella with a grateful smile.

  “When the three-tailed comet returns to Iberia’s skies and the brightest star has seen five and twenty harvests, then he who claims the heart of the necromancer star will unite the delightful plain.” Cal was word perfect. He should be. After all, it was his prophecy. He was the one who had foreseen what would happen.

  “Okay, so that was what you predicted...when was it? A thousand years ago?”

  “Longer. Probably about fifteen hundred years. But you know I never see the detail of my prophecies. I only get a general feel for what will happen.” Cal’s voice was frustrated.

  “Yet, in all that time, you’ve never been wrong. And, vague or not, I know how important the wording is. Ever since you made that prediction, the world—including every ambitious, bloodthirsty leader in Otherworld—was on the lookout for the necromancer star so that they could claim his or her heart and, with it, Otherworld itself.” He grinned at Stella. “Yet you, me darlin’ girl—the necromancer star of the prophecy, the one we were all waiting for—chose him.”

  “I know.” She shook her head teasingly at Cal. “What was I thinking? I had my choice of them all. Moncoya, Prince Tibor, Nevan the Wolf—” She broke off laughing as Cal pulled her down onto the sofa. She curled up next to him, content to listen to the conversation between the two men.

  Lorcan continued. “You are the one who has won Stella’s heart, Cal. You fulfilled your own prophecy. End of story.”

  Cal was adamant. “The words of the prophecy are clear. My job is to unite Otherworld, not to rule it.”

  “Sure, isn’t that just down to a minor interpretation of meaning? You can do both. The other leaders want it. There’s no one who could do a better job of it.”

  “No. I’ve discussed it with the angel of the Dominion—”

  Lorcan interrupted with an expression of distaste. “You had to go and spoil my day by bringing angels into the conversation.”

  “Hear me out. He agrees with me. Moncoya is still a danger. Although the battle eliminated him as an immediate threat, it allowed him to escape and remain as King of the Faeries. He is a king in exile. Perhaps even more dangerous now that he is hidden from view.”

  “You’re no closer to discovering where he is?” Lorcan didn’t really hold out much hope. If Moncoya had been captured, it would have been big news across Otherworld and reached the ears of the resistance in the mortal realm. Nevertheless, it was worth clinging to a thread of optimism. With Moncoya behind bars, Tanzi would be safe. The journey to Valhalla would not be needed. She would have a future. One over which she had control... Determinedly, he forced his mind back onto what Cal was saying.

  “Wherever he is, his followers have him well guarded and well hidden. He knows many of the sidhes remain loyal to him. They have known nothing but his rule for centuries, and Moncoya is good at propaganda. The faeries are frightened. They don’t know what the future holds. You’ve heard about the recent terrorist attacks?”

  “A little, but I don’t know all the details. I take it those responsible are Moncoya loyalists?”

  Cal nodded, his face grim. “He’s been winding them up, playing on their fears. How will they feel if Prince Tibor, the vampire ruler, becomes King of Otherworld? Worse still, what if the faeries must swear allegiance to the wolves? That could happen, he says, if his people have no strong leader. If they give up their rights. He has made the Alliance the target of his venom, pouring scorn on our efforts to bring the dynasties together. It is a sham, a guise behind which I am plotting to strip the faeries of any power and hand them over to their enemies.”

  “Every time I think that evil little bastard can’t get any worse, he pulls another stunt to prove he can.” Lorcan shook his head. “Does he give any clues about your supposed motives?”

  Cal laughed. “Of course he does. It’s all a personal attack on him. I hate him because he’s my handsome, successful, legitimate brother.”

  Lorcan nearly choked on the sandwich he was eating. “You can’t let him get away with this.”

  “I don’t intend to. But in order to stop him, there is someone I must find. Someone I have never met, know nothing about and have no idea how to track down. That’s where I need your help.”

  “I get all the easy jobs,” Lorcan said in a long-suffering voice. “Who is this mysterious person?”

  “The rightful King of the Faeries.”

  * * *

  “I’ve been thinking about what I can do to help you.” Vashti was dragging items of clothing out of her wardrobe and either discarding them or folding them into a large gym bag.

  “You’ve done everything I needed you to. You’ve let me use your shower, fed me and—” Tanzi pointed to the gym bag “—lent or—since I’ve no way of getting them back to you—given me some of your clothes.”

  “I might be able to do even more. While you were gone, I did some serious thinking. You can’t move around much with a healing pelvis. Reading and pondering are among the few activities available. Do you remember when we were children and Rina would talk to us of the unique connection between faerie twins? She said we should have the most powerful telepathic bond two beings would ever feel.”

  “We were a disappointment to her.” Tanzi shook her head in mock sadness. “We never felt it.”

  “That was because we didn’t really try,” Vashti reminded her. “We were always too busy competing with each other to work together. What if we have the bond and have just never used it?”

  “You mean we suppressed it because we’ve always believed we didn’t really like each other?”

  Vashti grinned. “Something like that.”

  “How would we know? I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin.”

  “I did a bit more than just think about it,” Vashti confessed. “I asked Rina.”

  “You’ve seen Rina?” Tanzi sat up straighter. “When did that happen? And where?”

  “She came to visit me when she heard I had been hurt.”

  Tanzi thought of the woman who had brought them up. The only person to show them any care or affection throughout their formative years. It was to Rina they would go when they were injured or troubled. Rina would answer their many questions about what life should be like as a faerie princess. Moncoya had sent her away when they were twelve because he suspected his daughters might be too close to their nurse. Her throat tightened painfully at the memory. The sensation prompted her to ask Vashti a question.

  “Have you ever thought that our father was wrong when he told us we were above experiencing emotion?”

  Vashti regarded her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “Lately I have begun to suspect that I can feel. More than that... I do feel. It is just that for so long I was conditioned to believe that fervor, passion—call it what you will—were beneath me. Our lives here in the palace did not expose us to situations where we encountered strong feelings. Or perhaps our father taught us so well that our instinct has always been to crush our emotions at the first sign. But what if we can feel love, hate, despair, joy and sadness in the same manner and depth as everyone else?”

  “It would not be the royal way.” Although Vashti held her head high, for the first time in her life, Tanzi saw a glimmer of doubt in her sister’s face.

  “What if the royal way—or rather, our father’s way—is not the right way, after all? We have been the fairy-tale princesses in the tower. Shut away from the world until our prince comes to claim us. Only it wasn’t a fairy tale. It was part of a bigger plan. We were being conditioned to accept our prince no matter who he was. I was supposed to go through with marriage to Satan without protest. If I really was above feeling emotion, perhaps I could have done that.” She watched Vashti’s face carefully as she
made her next suggestion. “If our father comes to you now with the same proposition, will you be the dutiful daughter and marry the devil?”

  “No!” The word was filled with revulsion.

  Tanzi allowed herself a brief, triumphant smile. She was right. Now she just had to learn to control all these newly discovered emotions. Particularly when she was around a certain Irishman. She steered the conversation back to the subject Vashti had raised. “Maybe that is why we didn’t feel the bond. We thought we couldn’t feel anything. Tell me what Rina said.”

  “She reminded me of what she told us when we were children. That twins of all species share a special bond that manifests itself in shared thoughts. An example is when one twin is in danger, the other will feel it. With faeries, the connection should be even stronger.”

  “Why?” Tanzi wished Rina was here to explain it in her unique, storytelling way.

  “She said it goes back to the ancient times when the distinction between faeries and witches was less clear. Both had the same power to bless and curse. Mortals once believed that a witch was the child of a mortal woman who had spent seven years in Otherworld with a faerie lover learning the art of love and magic. If the woman bore twins, the babies must be returned to the faeries because their telepathy would be too strong for the mortals to behold. Since then, all faerie twins have been bequeathed the same power.” Vashti finished her perusal of her wardrobe as she was talking and closed the zipper on the gym bag. “According to Rina, you and I should not only have a psychic bond, we should be able to hold a telepathic conversation no matter how far apart we may be.”

  “Our mother was not a faerie, we are only half sidhe. Perhaps that explains our lack of ability.” Tanzi groped around, trying to find an explanation for why they had failed to do what should come naturally.

  “I thought of that. It turns out we have been wrong all these years. Our mother was a faerie. Like us, she was a sidhe who trained with the Valkyrie. She even fought with them as you intend to do, but she was not one of Odin’s daughters. Rina told me that. Our faerie blood is pure, Tanzi. Which means the bond must be there. Don’t you see what this means? If we can find it and use it, you can send me a message whenever you need me. No matter where you are, I will get help to you.”

  Tanzi felt tears prickle the back of her eyelids and, to her surprise, saw a shimmering reflection of them in Vashti’s eyes. All those wasted years. Years barren of feelings for a sister who was close by and yet so far away. “Then all we need to do is find how to use it. I don’t suppose Rina told you that?”

  Vashti smiled, blinking away her own tears. “As a matter of fact, she did.”

  * * *

  Lorcan glanced at the darkening landscape beyond the windows and hoped that Tanzi wasn’t already waiting for him down at the lake. He hadn’t anticipated his conversation with Cal would take this long. What did you expect to say to the friend you haven’t seen since you were both embroiled in a cataclysmic battle? Nice to see you again and, by the way, is there any chance you could lend me a boat?

  “So how are things with the resistance?” Stella had gone to deal with an issue over a contingent of Fauns who were unhappy with their room allocation. Since Cal hadn’t yet told Lorcan how he planned to find the true King of the Faeries, the man who could challenge Moncoya for his crown, the abrupt change of subject caught him off guard.

  “Not good.” Omitting any information about Tanzi for the time being, Lorcan filled him in on recent events. “Have you heard of a necromancer named Iago?”

  Cal frowned. “No. And yet...” He shook his head as though to clear it. “There is something vaguely familiar about that name. Sorry. I can’t think what it is. Maybe it will come to me. In the meantime, you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Ah, now, what makes you think there’s anything bothering me?”

  “Don’t try to bullshit me, Lorcan. I know you too well.”

  Lorcan held up a hand in a gesture acknowledging defeat. “Okay, you’re right. And I thought I was meant to be the perceptive one. What’s bothering me is I feel like a failure. I came back to tell you I have to go on journey, and here you are telling me my help is needed right here.”

  Cal folded his arms across his chest, stretching his long legs in front of him. “How about you tell me the details of this journey and why you have to go on it before we decide if you’re a failure or not?”

  “It concerns Moncoya.” Lorcan risked a glance at Cal’s face. It remained impassive. “And the reason why Tanzi disappeared.” Still nothing. “He was trying to force her into a marriage with the devil.”

  Lorcan had heard Cal swear countless times before but never for so long or so fluently as he did then. When he’d finished using every possible curse he could think of to describe Moncoya, Cal drew a breath. “He wants to replicate the plan our father had for me, doesn’t he? To give Satan a child that he can raise to become ruler of the mortal realm.”

  “That seems to be a pretty good summary.”

  “Why didn’t Tanzi come to me? She must have known I’d help her.” Cal was so angry he rose from his seat and began pacing the room.

  “She probably didn’t know whom she could trust. And I don’t suppose you think straight when you get told to start planning your wedding to the devil. At least she escaped. For once in her life, she didn’t obey Moncoya’s orders and rush out to buy herself a black dress and a wreath of lilies.”

  Cal’s eyes narrowed. “No, she came to you. Why was that?”

  Trust Cal not to miss anything. Lorcan kept his voice casual. “I helped her when she got hurt during the battle. She remembered and thought I might do the same thing again.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “You’re going to use up your twenty questions pretty fast at this rate.” His attempt at humor failed miserably, and the frown darkened Cal’s silver eyes to thunder-cloud gray. “She’s here. Saying goodbye to Vashti. But we’re leaving as soon as we can. That’s the journey I mentioned. She wants to go to Valhalla and I said I’d take her.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Probably.” Lorcan waved a hand at the seat Cal had just vacated. “Look, it’s tiring me out watching you pace.” After a pause during which the outcome was in doubt, Cal flung himself back down onto the sofa. “Don’t imagine I’ve given this no thought. Ever since Tanzi suggested the idea, I’ve tried to come up with an alternative. But think about it, Cal. Until Moncoya is captured, nowhere is safe for her. And let’s be realistic. Moncoya is such a slippery little snake he may never be captured. What you’ve told me today about his influence over the sidhes has only reinforced the danger Tanzi is in.”

  “But Valhalla? You are proposing to traverse the Isles of the Aesir? Do you know how many times that’s been done?”

  “Not many, I imagine.” Lorcan’s grin was rueful.

  “And all to help a girl you hardly know?”

  “Ah, come on, now. Are you telling me you wouldn’t do the same? Have you forgotten the time the trolls were terrorizing Old Kettleby?”

  Cal looked slightly embarrassed. “That was different.”

  “Was it, now? We were supposed to be in Breton, but, if I remember rightly, we stayed and dealt with the troll problem because a girl you hardly knew begged you to help.”

  Cal’s sigh came from the heart. “Okay. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but how can I help?”

  “A boat and a map would be a good start.” Ignoring his friend’s disbelieving laughter, Lorcan asked the question that had been intriguing him. “Who is the true King of the Faeries?”

  “A descendant of King Ivo, the just and benevolent sovereign who ruled before Moncoya. The heir we are seeking was a baby when Moncoya had the king and all of his family slaughtered. There has always been a rumor that he was smuggled out of the palace during the mass
acre. The angel of the Dominion confirmed it is true. The problem is, his identity has been so well concealed that he himself is unaware he is actually the king.”

  “How were you proposing I should help you find him?”

  “Funnily enough, I was going to ask you to go on a journey.” In answer to Lorcan’s raised brows, Cal elaborated. “I can’t leave here and go around asking questions. You, on the other hand are known to be a wanderer. No one will think twice if you turn up in different places and, at the same time, try to discover where this long-lost descendant of King Ivo may be. In fact—” Cal’s face became thoughtful “—perhaps the journey you are going on could have a dual purpose? You could escort Tanzi to Valhalla and also find out what you can about the true King of the Faeries on your way there and back.”

  Lorcan felt his jaw muscles clench. “I will not work for the Dominion.”

  “In all the years we have known each other, I have never asked you to explain the reason why you hate the angels.”

  Lorcan hunched a shoulder, turning his face away from the man who throughout the centuries had been his only true friend. “Does it matter?”

  There was sympathy in Cal’s voice as he responded. “I think it must matter a great deal to you if it brings you such pain that you cannot speak of it even to me.”

  Lorcan let go of the breath he had been holding. There was no hiding anything from Cal. “Let’s just say the Dominion let me down when I needed them.”

  He felt Cal’s eyes probing his profile. “If you won’t do this for them, will you do it for me?”

  “Ah, fight fair, Cal. You know I’d do anything for you.”

  “In return, you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.” Cal waited and, after a long moment of hesitation, Lorcan nodded. “Thank you. It’s the longest of long shots, but you may just discover something that will help.”

  “Why does it matter so much? If so many of the faeries are loyal to Moncoya, will this challenger be able to sway them against him?”