No Sanctuary

by Z. J. Cannon

  The only thing more dangerous than her eyes was her smile—shy, sweet, venomous. She was smiling at me now, with the easy warmth of a hearth fire about to blaze out of control and burn the house to the ground.

  “Kieran.” Tristra said the name slowly, like she was tasting the syllables. It wasn’t the name she had known me by. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”

  Chapter 28

  “How long are we going to keep up the pretense that you’re some kind of tour guide?” I asked through my teeth after five flights of stairs, several dozen rooms, and zero explanation as to what Tristra was doing here.

  “This is one of the strangest rooms in the house,” Tristra said, pausing by an antique wooden door with a tarnished brass knob. “Do you still enjoy human art? If so, you might appreciate it.”

  She opened the door without waiting for a response—probably because she knew I wouldn’t give her an enthusiastic one. The room was filled with nothing but crumbling Greek statues. Some were leaning against the walls; some had already toppled to the floor. There was barely any room for a person to squeeze inside, not that I intended to try. I idly wondered if the statues were real, or more fae reproductions like the Picasso room she had shown me downstairs. Then I remembered that I didn’t care.

  I reached past her to close the door. “I lost my taste for human art a couple of centuries ago.”

  “Don’t try to tell me you’ve gotten cynical about humans. I know you better than that.” She studied my face. Underneath her light tone, I heard a genuine question.

  I ignored it. After a few seconds, she sighed and locked the door. “Well then, what do you like these days? Whatever it is, I’m sure we can find a room for it.”

  “Where’s the room where you tell me what you’re doing here?”

  Tristra clucked her tongue at me. “You don’t want to skip to the end too quickly, now do you? When would be the fun in that? Imagine if, back when we were together, we had gone straight to being an old married couple and skipped all the excitement of getting to know each other.”

  “You mean the part where you pretended you weren’t sent to kill me, and I pretended I didn’t know?”

  Tristra’s lips lifted in a soft smile. “You’re leaving out all the good parts. Like when we stowed away on that ship across the Atlantic together. Do you remember the sunsets we saw when we would sneak out onto the deck?”

  “If you’ll recall, I stowed away on that ship to get away from you, and I didn’t know you had followed me until the third day,” I said, drawn into the memory despite myself. “When I did find out, I tried to shove you overboard.”

  The surprise of finding the very assassin I had been trying to evade on board the ship with me hadn’t been the only unpleasant part of that voyage. I had only been twenty years past my most recent drowning, and my fear of water had been at its strongest. But she was right—the sunsets had been incomparable.

  We had kissed for the first time on the deck of that ship. If I thought back hard enough, I could still remember the taste of her.

  Which was why I wasn’t going to examine that memory any more closely. I shut it down and pulled myself back to the present. Tristra’s smile had taken on an amused tilt. “Didn’t you stow away on that ship because you thought the fae couldn’t cross water?”

  “That was before I had you to teach me which legends were true and which weren’t. It wasn’t as if any of Oberon’s other assassins ever stopped to clarify my misconceptions before trying to put a knife in my heart.” I could still hear the echo of Tristra’s laughter when she had found out some of the things I had believed. Against my will, I smiled.

  I gave myself a mental slap across the face to snap myself out of it. “I’m more than two hundred years older than the last time we saw each other. That makes me too old for the game where we try to guess whether we can trust each other or whether one of us is about to get stabbed in the back.”

  “Are you?” Tristra raised a skeptical eyebrow. “From what I hear, your tastes haven’t changed overly much.”

  I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She looked much too innocent. I could instantly call to mind half a dozen times she had used that same look against me. “Only that even in exile, I still hear things. Not all my spies were caught, and they find ways to get messages to me. Some of those messages are about you.”

  I blinked. “I have a feeling I’ve missed a few things.” The last time I had seen Tristra, she had been on her way to the nearest Faerie portal, after our last and worst fight. She had planned to go back to her old life as Oberon and Titania’s assassin, or that was what she had told me. All this stuff about spies and exile was news to me.

  An uncharacteristically serious expression crossed her face. She rubbed her wrists. For the first time, I caught sight of the faint shadows of old scars along her wrists. The scars ran all the way up her forearms. They were shaped like interlinked ovals. Like the links of the chain I was wearing.

  Unconsciously, my hand went to the chain. I remembered what Engstrom had said about how it had come to him. Iron scars healed slowly, it was true—especially for the full-blooded fae. Even so, if her arms hadn’t healed yet, either she had only arrived on the island a short time ago… or she had been wearing that chain for a very long time.

  Then Tristra laughed, and her troubled look disappeared. “Oh, yes,” she said, like she was sharing a private joke with no one. “You’ve definitely missed some things.”

  “Then how about ending this tour early and catching me up?”

  “Are you sure? There’s still so much more to see. I found a Brazilian-themed room upstairs. It reminds me of our time there.”

  If there was one thing I wanted less than to continue the inanity of this tour, it was another reminder of my time with Tristra. I didn’t want any soft-focus nostalgia getting in under my guard. “Enough stalling. Bring me somewhere we can talk, or I’m telling Engstrom my answer is no.”

  Tristra shook her head at me. She clucked her tongue again. “You know I can see through you when you’re bluffing.”

  “The way I remember it, you have a bad habit of making yourself believe something is a bluff when it’s actually a threat you don’t like. Tell me, was I bluffing that day with the iron dagger?”

  “I still say you were.”

  “But you gave in before you could find out.”

  Unexpectedly, Tristra laughed. I had forgotten how musical her laugh was. It reminded me of the trill of a bird. One of those fluffy, colorful songbirds that everyone underestimates until the day it fights a housecat and wins. “I’ve missed you, Conall.”

  “Kieran,” I corrected. That other name had too many memories attached to it.

  “Kieran, then. All right, Kieran, we’ll do this your way. I know a place we can talk.” She waved me forward. “Follow me.”

  I expected another round of attempted diversions. Instead, within a few minutes we were sitting outside on a sheer gray cliff, looking down at the water. There was barely enough room for us to sit up here side by side, especially given how hard I was working to keep as much distance as possible between us. I kept shifting away from her, then shifting some more, until I was pressed up against one of the trees that seemed to grow straight out of the rock. Unlike the out-of-place palm trees down below, these had gnarled, twisted trunks and shaggy gray bark a few shades lighter than the cliff, and were each holding on to a few shriveled brown leaves.

  I looked from the mostly-dead trees to the sea slamming into the rock face below us. “I can’t shake the feeling that you brought me out here to push me over.”

  Tristra gave a theatrical sigh. “It’s been centuries since the last time I tried to kill you. You don’t believe I’ve matured since then?”

  “By ‘matured’ I assume you mean you’ve grown more subtle in your methods.”

  She laughed in a way that told me I had gotten it right. “Sit back from the edge, then, if you’d rather.” She shot me a
teasing look, one that dared me to stay put and prove I wasn’t a coward.

  “I’d rather keep the extra reminder of how dangerous you can be. Call it an extra incentive to be on guard around you.” Besides, I never could resist a dare from Tristra.

  I looked out on the ocean, and tried not to think about what it would feel like to be impaled on the sharp rocks below. I tried to let the sound of the waves and the sight of the horizon soothe my nerves. It had always worked in Hawaii. But even aside from Tristra, who made it impossible to relax, the aggressively-neutral weather still had me on edge. The sky was the same flat dusk-or-dawn color, even though at least an hour had passed. The air felt like nothing—not hot, not cold, not windy, just empty. The only thing that wasn’t flat and hollow was the water, which beat against the rocks like it was working out a grudge.

  The only thing here that remotely reminded me of Hawaii was the smell. And even that was different here. Here, there were no fruity cocktails or coconut-scented sunscreen mixed in with the salt air. In their place, I smelled seaweed and dead fish.

  “You know,” Tristra said wistfully, “after we got the assassination attempts out of our systems, there was a time we trusted each other with our lives.”

  “I remember. You would have done anything to save my life. Including tying me down with iron chains to keep me from rescuing humans who needed my help.” I stopped myself, and swallowed down the old anger I could feel bubbling up. That wasn’t the conversation we had come out here to have. “It would be easier to trust you if you weren’t keeping company with the human who created Arkanica.”

  “Then why don’t I ease your mind by starting off with some simple truths? I had nothing to do with the creation of Arkanica. I have no involvement in Charles’s business venture. And I bear no ill will toward you, and have no intent to shorten your life.” She ticked off statements as she said them. “Does that cover everything you were about to ask me?”

  I hadn’t gotten there yet, but yes, that about covered it. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.” I paused. “Thank you.” It took a lot for one of the fae to be willing to speak that plainly. Especially when the truth made them vulnerable. For Tristra, a master of the subtle and vicious games the fae were known for, such bluntness was practically unheard of.

  That made Tristra smile. “Do you remember when you used to believe that human superstition about how someone should never thank one of the fae? I thought you were the rudest person I had ever met.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I just didn’t feel very grateful toward someone who kept trying to kill me?” Her smile was contagious. I tried to return my face to neutral.

  Tristra’s smile, on the other hand, only grew. “If you weren’t grateful, you should have been. I kept you on your toes.”

  “You promised me an explanation,” I reminded her, before this conversation could get too far afield.

  “I didn’t promise you anything. I know better than that.”

  In answer, I just looked at her.

  Tristra sighed good-naturedly. “Yes, Conall, I’ll tell you how I got here. I didn’t come here intentionally, if that’s what you’re wondering. And I had never heard of Charles Engstrom, or Arkanica, until I washed up on shore. I would still be in Faerie right now if Titania hadn’t bound me in iron and exiled me to the place between the worlds.”

  Her voice tightened. She absently rubbed at her scars.

  “I would have walked in the dim gray nothing for eternity, if not for the fact that Charles was naive enough to let himself be cursed.” She could have made those words sound dismissive, but she didn’t. She sounded almost affectionate when she talked about Engstrom. “His island exists in that same in-between space. The one landmark in a featureless world. I saw the water, and decided drowning was a better alternative than wandering for another few thousand years. Instead, I washed up… oh, right about over there.” She pointed down at a section of beach.

  For second, I was confused. Why would Titania have… Then it hit me with the force of a punch.

  It had never occurred to me to wonder what Tristra had done once she had gone back. It had been her choice to leave, not mine, and I had spent most of the immediate aftermath trying not to think about her at all. When I was able to let her back into my thoughts again, I assumed she had picked her old life back up where she had left off.

  But of course she couldn’t have done that. Not after spending over a hundred years living in domestic harmony with the half-fae abomination she had been sent to kill. The Summer Court wouldn’t have stood for it.

  I had never thought about that. Had never let myself think about it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing the words were inadequate. I hurled a stray rock over the cliff with enough force to send a jolting ache through my shoulder. I looked at my hands in vague surprise. I hadn’t meant to do that.

  The strength of my reaction seemed to startle Tristra. She frowned at me, perplexed. Then the frown disappeared, and she gave a surprised little laugh. “Oh. Did you think… you thought it was about you?” She shook her head. “Oh, Conall. When they say size matters, they don’t mean ego. Were you under the impression that you had ruined my reputation forever? I was perfectly capable of silencing anyone who talked too loudly about how I had lost my edge, I can assure you.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel relieved, insulted, or just confused. “Then why…”

  Tristra gave a light shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. It probably had something to do with Titania taking exception to my attempt to overthrow her and her king.”

  I blinked at her. And blinked again. “Your what?”

  “Living with you taught me an important lesson.” Her voice turned serious again. “There are two kinds of people, in this world and Faerie alike. There are the ones who are able to stay noble and idealistic, despite everything the world throws at them. Their high ideals invariably lead them to a bad end. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?” She raised her eyebrows at me. “And then there are the ones who are willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top.”

  “And you decided you’d rather be in the second group,” I guessed. That still didn’t make her explanation feel any less surreal. “But a coup against Oberon and Titania? That’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?”

  Another shrug. “If you won’t go all the way, what’s the point of going at all?”

  I couldn’t imagine the Tristra I had known caring about that kind of power, at least not enough to risk her life and freedom for it. She had always been ambitious, it was true. No one could become one of the Summer Court’s elite assassins without a healthy dose of ambition. And now that I thought about it, she hadn’t exactly been overly loyal to Summer, either. Otherwise, she would never have abandoned her mission in order to be with me. But the kind of craving for power that would lead someone to attempt a coup against the monarchs who had ruled Summer for millennia… that was on another level entirely.

  And yet I knew she was telling the truth, because she was fae, and she couldn’t lie.

  But then, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that she had changed. I had also been a different person when she had known me. Back then, I had still been that foolhardy idealist she had described. Now… now I didn’t know what I was.

  “Well, that explains how you ended up here.” Although I still had questions about how the Tristra I knew had turned into the one who had gotten herself exiled. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re here now. Or why you’re on good terms with Engstrom, even knowing what he’s done.”

  “The answer to your first question is easy. I can’t leave. The curse holds me here as much as it does him. I might be able to go back to the place between worlds if I tried. But an eternity on this island would be better than another second in that place.” She gave a delicate shudder. “I would gladly escape to your world if I could. It’s not so bad there, apart from all the humans. But I can’t get there. I’ve tried. Maybe the magical guardian
created by whoever cursed Charles has enough sentience to recognize who I am and that I’ve been banished for eternity. Or maybe it’s simpler than that, and no one can leave once they set foot on the island.”

  “Hang on just a minute. You’re saying it’s possible no one can leave?” And it hadn’t occurred to her that I might find this piece of information relevant?

  She tilted her hand back and forth. “Maybe. Maybe not. We haven’t had the opportunity to test the theory, seeing as almost no one ever makes it here in the first place. A few humans have gotten through over the years, but they’re always dead by the time they wash up.”

  Well, wasn’t that just fantastic. I wondered if Ashante had known about this little wrinkle before she had sent me here. I changed the subject before I could start dwelling too much on that possibility and its implications—including the fact that I was still bound by my promise to her. “You know what Arkanica does, don’t you? Which means you know what Engstrom set in motion when he created it. If you’re not involved with Arkanica, why are you working with Engstrom and not against him?” I paused as a thought belatedly occurred to me. “Or… are you working with him? In all the time you’ve been here, you haven’t broken his curse.”

  “The curse’s magic is far beyond me. Whoever put it together must have millennia of expertise. I can’t even tell which element it’s built from. It seems to have elements of all four.”

  “But that’s just a matter of study, isn’t it? You could figure it out. Probably a lot more easily than I could.”

  Tristra’s breath hissed out sharply. Her jaw tightened. “I haven’t broken his curse because I can’t. And that won’t change, no matter how deeply I study it.”