Rogue’s Possession

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Packed? Blackbird is coming?”

  “Did you think we could stop her? She’s all determined to find Dad now, to explain and all.” She pulled a lock of hair around and nibbled on the ends. “Kind of crazy about my brother, huh?”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Gwynn—” She paused, chewed. “What do you think happened to him?”

  I thought of Nancy’s horrific story and knew I could never tell Starling about it. A similar scene might be there, buried in Blackbird’s locked-away memories. Infant Brody might be dead all these years and poor misguided Fergus on a fool’s quest to find something that had passed out of this world entirely.

  Starling, for all her flirty fun, possessed her mother’s perceptive nature. She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re thinking up a lie to tell me. Don’t. If you can’t tell me everything, then fine. But I think you owe me whatever truth you can tell me. This is my family. My quest too.”

  “It doesn’t have to be, Starling.” I pointed a finger at her when she took a breath. “It doesn’t. You have your own life to lead. You could stay here, maybe canoodle with that guy you like. Be happy. This drama belongs to your parents. I can understand Blackbird’s need to do this, but frankly I don’t think any of you should come along. You for sure could let it go—do your own thing and not play out this role in someone else’s tragedy.”

  “It’s not your drama either.”

  I sighed and raked my hair back from my face, aware in midmovement that it was one of Rogue’s gestures. Where the hell had he gone? Hell, he never told me where he regularly went, so why did this feel any different?

  It just did. I knew it in my bones.

  “I don’t understand the why of it, but I am wrapped up in this. So many threads tie me to this strange game that I don’t see how I could extricate myself.”

  “A game? Is that what you think it is?” Starling pounced on my careless words.

  “Isn’t every damn thing in Faerie a game? Always about the trick, the sleight of hand, winning a prize of no value.”

  “I think,” Starling replied slowly, with uncharacteristic seriousness, “that it only seems like a game to you because you don’t understand the rules—or the value of what’s being sought.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know I never will if you don’t fill me in. Please, Gwynn.” She bit down on her hair, making a disturbing crunching sound.

  “Okay. You can’t discuss this with anyone, and don’t take it as gospel truth because I don’t have much evidence to support my ideas. A lot of this is conjecture. And you shouldn’t chew on your hair like that—you’ll mess it up.”

  Guiltily she dropped the hair and fidgeted with her pretty yellow dress instead. “I promise not to talk about it with anyone but you.”

  Good enough. “What I think is that, yes, the Queen Bitch is running some kind of game. A competition, perhaps, where various fae—noble fae—have the opportunity to produce a child with someone from my world. For some reason, she wants this half-breed, firstborn child. So far, I think no one has succeeded in birthing the child with the quality she wants, so the game then moves to someone else.”

  “Why do you think no one has succeeded? If this is right, then she has Brody.”

  “Good point!” I said brightly, tucking away the image of Titania thoughtfully masticating doomed Cecily’s baby and pronouncing it insufficient. “Maybe she needs a lot of them.” Like bonbons.

  “So you think Rogue is the one playing the game now. And you.”

  I nodded, my throat a little tight to have it put so bluntly, though they were my own thoughts, echoed back to me.

  Starling reached for the lock of hair, then deliberately folded her hands and sat up straight. “See, this is what I think. I serve you—and I like to think we’re friends too. If you’re caught up in this thing, this game, and it’s the same thing that wrecked my parents’ lives, then I figure it involves me too. I could choose to stay behind and pick apples and dance all night, but maybe I want to be someone better than that. Someone more like you.”

  It took me by surprise, her bald statement. I couldn’t remember anyone wanting to be like me and it moved me in some deep way. Frightened me too.

  “Oh, Starling. We are friends, but I don’t think you want to be like me. I’m stubborn and arrogant and not at all better in any way. Plus the magic is doing weird things to me. I don’t know who I am half the time anymore.”

  “I know who you are,” she replied with staunch loyalty. I remembered Rogue saying the same thing to me, back when we made our first bargain. I know who you are, far better than you know who I am. “Give me the credit to recognize the truly admirable in you. I’m going with you, Gwynn. You can’t stop me.”

  “I can.”

  “But you won’t because you know I won’t give up.”

  “Well, you’ve got the stubborn part down all right.”

  She squealed and clapped her hands. “Hooray—a quest! Now get dressed. They’re picking apples today.”

  “They are?” I dragged myself out of the armchair, my body creaking with stiffness. Starling followed me to the bathing room. I poked my head into the bedroom along the way and saw Darling had abandoned the rumpled bed. Off hunting mice probably. A cheerful purr filled my mind, along with a vision of mouse guts. Just what I wanted to see.

  “Yes.” Starling groaned theatrically. “Mother decided it has to happen before we go, so she’s rousting everybody out to get busy. You know how she is when she decides there’s a task to be done. So everybody will be coming to help pick, then there will be feasting and dancing afterward.”

  “I think I would fall over dead of shock if there wasn’t a feast and dancing.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Geez, she was even starting to sound like me.

  “Why not just use magic to harvest the apples? Seems that it would be a lot faster.”

  Starling was shaking her head, her blond hair swinging. “Can’t. They’re magic-resistant.”

  “I thought they were poisonous.”

  “That too.”

  “So why grow them? What use is there for so many poisonous apples that require so much effort to harvest?”

  She looked at me in surprise. “Well, what else would the dragons eat?”

  Aha! Now I liked the logic of that. Which came first—did the dragons’ magic resistance come from the apples? And were the apples “poisonous” because they affected the inherent magic of the fae? Maybe Nancy and her son could eat them just fine. Must note that down.

  After I dressed in a russet gown that seemed appropriate for an autumn harvest party and Starling fixed my hair into a simple, loose braid to keep it out of my face, we headed downstairs.

  “There you girls are!” Blackbird called out. “I thought I would have to send someone after you, lest you sleep all day.” She frowned at me and clucked. “You look peaked, Lady Gwynn. Are you entirely all right?”

  “I didn’t sleep well, but I’m fine. I’m a bit concerned about Lord Rogue—have you seen him?”

  “Oh no, but I don’t expect to. I wouldn’t worry about that one. He comes and goes as he likes. He’ll no doubt turn up this evening, as is his habit.”

  I was beginning to feel like the distressed spouse who has to wait twenty-four hours before filing a missing-persons report. They were all correct that none of this was out of Rogue’s usual pattern of behavior. Only the nagging sense of wrongness led me to think otherwise. That and the ugly coil of knotted memory loss that lurked beneath my thoughts, a bad taste at the back of my throat.

  The afternoon stretched out in a glorious golden haze, Faerie at its cliché best. The sky arched in perfect crisp blue, the apples shining bright, piled into baskets. Music played and everyone, fae and human alike, sang as they picked.

  No one ate the fruit, of course. They had a slightly dead feel in my hands, though nowhere near the null-existence of the dragon-related items.

 
As evening closed in, bonfires sprang to life and people crowded around, pressing mugs of warm cider into my hands—presumably not made from the poisonous variety of apple—and loaded their plates from the tables piled high with food. I refrained from drinking the cider all the same. Call me paranoid. I refused offers to dance too, holding vigil at the edge of the festivities, searching the dark for a glint of amber eyes, perhaps.

  No sign of the Dog. Or Rogue.

  I alternated between the hollow certainty that he had abandoned me for some arcane reason and the deeper alarm that his absence had a more sinister implication. After all, the day was drawing to a close and he had not given me a lesson nor a kiss. What would happen if he failed to meet his bargains with me? Worse, what if Falcon called us in to do our promised service and I was unable to produce Rogue? The worry ate at me, a looming thunderhead of dread with flickers of panic lighting the edges.

  Time seemed to accelerate. The dancing around the bonfire became frenetic, a video played on fast-forward. People whirled, human and fae, in a strobe pattern of phantasmagoric glee. Once, I thought I saw Liam across the crowd, staring at me sitting alone at my table. But when the dancers parted again, he had disappeared from view.

  For my part, I waited. It wasn’t like I could go walk the woods, calling for a lost pet. If midnight came and went, then Rogue would have violated two promises to me—something I felt sure he’d never do willingly. I only had to wait to find out. Midnight.

  I reached for Darling and he popped out of the swirl of bodies and leaped, graceful as thistledown onto my table. For once he didn’t tease, simply rubbed his head under my chin and inserted the image of fifty-three topazes into my head. His way of communicating fifty-three minutes to me. Less than an hour left, by my handy kitty clock.

  He stayed with me, sitting in Egyptian cat pose, a sphinx overseeing the increasingly wild festivities. Thanks to his magic, the revelries continued without pause, one dance blending into the next with full abandon. No one tired. None of the ladies kicked off their uncomfortable high heels—neither did the gentlemen for that matter. Even Blackbird whirled past, her ample white bosom pushed into high curves by a tight corset, her dark glossy hair swinging free nearly to her ankles.

  Darling sat up when the moment arrived, wrapping his tail around my arm.

  Midnight.

  And nothing.

  I half expected a tolling bell in the distance, the lonely clang of the clock tower warning that the witching hour had commenced. It would fit the dread gathering in my chest.

  But the frenzied music only played louder, with no pause, no mass-mind acknowledgment of a vow broken.

  Somewhere, deep inside, that connection to Rogue, the something that breathed blue-black wild magic through me, shifted. It didn’t quite go away, but it thinned, moved farther away. My earlobes tingled as the earrings swayed. I reached up, but they didn’t come off in my fingers as I’d thought they might. It seemed they would be permanently attached until, and if, Rogue ever returned.

  I should have kicked myself for not making him take them off before we fell asleep, but perversely, I was glad for them. I closed my eyes against the wild harvest party and sent a message to Rogue, wherever he might be. Not vocalized. Just a feeling. A vow.

  I was coming after him.

  Part III

  Recalibrating

  Chapter Fourteen

  In Which I Am Treated as a Fragile Vessel

  The residue of memory removal feels less like a locked door or vacant space and more as if that place in the mind is connected to a wormhole that pulls it away to another place entirely. And I can’t believe I just wrote that down as an observation.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “Memory Interference Inconsistency”

  In the morning, there was much marshaling of the entourage, now exponentially multiplied by the addition of Blackbird and all the things she seemed to feel we had been doing without and shouldn’t be.

  I found her, to tell her Rogue had never returned, but stopped midsentence at the grave sympathy in her eyes.

  “There, there, dearie.” She folded her white hands under her bosom. “You know how men are—always off chasing some new idea. Lord Rogue will turn up soon enough.” Her gaze flicked to my belly and up to the earrings. “He knows how to find you when it’s time.”

  “Lady Blackbird. I don’t think Rogue is gone of his own free will. The night before last, I—”

  She tutted and shook her head to stop me. “No need to explain a thing to me, Lady Gwynn. I know the ways of these things. It’s no fault of your own. Men will be men, after all.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “No worries. Worrying isn’t good for you in your condition. Lord Rogue will be back for you. Have no doubt. When the time is right. Now if you’ll just wait a bit, we’ll all be ready to leave. Unless I can get you something?”

  Dismissed and wishing I’d just lingered in my rooms longer, I stood by and seethed over Blackbird’s assumptions. My “condition” indeed. By the way they all—fae and human, alike—cast sideways glances at me, then looked quickly away, word had gotten around. I should stitch a scarlet P to my dress, just to make them all happy.

  To my eye it would be an hour yet before the many carts had been loaded. Whatever an hour was in Faerie time—no way could I stand here and be Object of Pity. I found Starling supervising the loading of a standing mirror.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  A flash of sympathy and guilt crossed her face. Yeah, no one knew what to say to the jilted girl, the bride left at the altar. Women could be sympathetic friends, but also ruthless competitors. When one of us failed to successfully hook the man, there was always a bit of wondering. A little judgment that she must have done something wrong to blow the deal.

  I heard it too easily in her, what all the speaking glances implied. She felt sure we’d done the deed and she had me figured for knocked up from Rogue’s magically potent seed and him run off to parts unknown.

  “Maybe you should just sit and rest,” she suggested, confirming the shadow of her thoughts.

  It was on my tongue to tell her that even Rogue’s magically potent sperm couldn’t impregnate me if it never got near my magically fertile hoo-haw, but I bit down on it. She didn’t deserve my anger and, right at that moment, I couldn’t say much without giving vent to it.

  “I’ll be back.”

  Darling trotted alongside me, waving his tail. I didn’t care to stroll through the orchards, now entirely denuded of fruit, as if a flock of apple-eating locusts had passed through, leaving only a few shredded leaves behind. The air held cooler moisture, a breeze blowing that carried an edge of wildness to it. It reminded me of the autumn winds that heralded the frozen death of winter. Once again glad of the cloak Rogue had given me, I wrapped it around myself and indulged in full-out worrying.

  A footstep grated on a rock behind me and I spun, abruptly aware I’d forgotten my dagger, much less a longer fighting stick. Larch gazed at me with placid blueberry eyes, holding out the offending dagger.

  I took it from him with a sigh. “I apologize. I forgot I’d left it on Felicity’s saddle.”

  “Unlike you, my lady sorceress, to be so careless.”

  “Yeah. I’m out of sorts. I need to get my head together.”

  “Lord Rogue would never have broken his pledges to you. The rest are fools to think it.”

  Something inside me steadied. He regarded me solemnly, Darling sitting beside him with an equally grave look in his light green eyes.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “As you say, my lady sorceress.”

  Darling mentally sniggered.

  “I’m afraid for him.

  If I thought Larch would allay my fears, I was sadly mistaken. His brow creased. “Me also.”

  “Everyone says how amazingly powerful Rogue is and no one could stop him.”

  “This is true. For the most part.”

  “So what’s the other par
t? Who’s more powerful than Rogue—her?”

  “Sometimes, my lady sorceress, it does not take more power to defeat someone, but simply the correct leverage against a known vulnerability.”

  “What does that mean? Don’t give me riddles.”

  “But you’re the one who can answer the riddle. I cannot.”

  “Because you think I know his vulnerabilities.”

  “As you say, my lady sorceress.”

  Darling chirruped and blinked, a slow lazy look.

  “I thought you and Rogue weren’t getting along,” I told the cat.

  He shook himself, the feline equivalent of a shrug, and sent me a burst of affection. I scratched his back in return and he purred in his low grumbly way. It helped, to have at least these two on my side.

  “Do you suppose they’re ready yet?”

  Larch’s gaze unfocused a little, as if he looked into the distance. “By the time we get there, yes.”

  Darling stretched himself up against my leg, delicately pricking me with hopeful claws. I swooped him up and carried him like a baby while he happily batted at one of the lily earrings.

  “What I don’t get is, why would she snatch Rogue if he’s still playing her game? If she wanted him to lose, there are easier ways to foil him.” Had she moved up the timetable, as she’d taunted him with? That seemed like an alteration of the rules. Tick-tock.

  I had been kind of talking out loud to myself, but Larch cocked his head thoughtfully.

  “Titania would not cause a deal to be broken. She is bound by her rules as surely as we are.”

  I stopped in my tracks and Darling bit down on the earring, tugging hard. “Ow. Stop. But you’re right, Larch. She wouldn’t. Maybe can’t. Something else caused Rogue to fail.”

  Larch nodded. “So I believe.

  “Someone discovered a vulnerability of his and played on it.”

  Darling patted my cheek with his paw, showing me an image of Rogue running down the road after me. Me. Was I the chink in his otherwise immaculate Teflon armor? Not pleasant to contemplate. But his various vague and dire warnings could be interpreted that way. Perhaps I’d done something that opened a door to him.