“I’ll cut his tallywhacker off first.”
“I figured. I was very careful not to promise that you or Darling would be compliant. You owe him nothing except that he thinks he gets to keep you. He’s really quite dreadful at bargaining—I don’t know how he’s made it this long.”
“He has been out here alone,” Blackbird mused.
“But he’s allied with the other fae, right? Falcon’s enemies?”
“True. Still there’s no telling how that relationship works.”
I frowned at her, but this wasn’t the time to pursue that avenue of questioning. “At any rate, we need to discuss the plan for tomorrow. And is there anything to eat?”
Blackbird sighed and Starling pointed to yet another samovar of hot chocolate and a platter of cupcakes, cookies and other sugary treats. And a bowl of popcorn. No wonder Walt looked so out of shape. I took a handful of popcorn to soothe my growling stomach, feeling cranky that my promise kept me from turning the food into something more decent.
“You’re really certain you can defeat him? He seems so powerful.” Starling twisted her fingers together.
“Yeah, seems is the key word there. And I’m not going to defeat him, we are.”
* * *
Later that evening as I prepared for bed, Darling already crashed out on the one pillow, Thumbelina came in. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure—what’s up?”
“A couple of things. First, why do you call me Thumbelina?” She pronounced the English word pretty well, all things considered.
“Well, because you didn’t have a name and I didn’t want to call you ‘Hey Girlie’ all the time. And you reminded me of this fairy girl character from when I was young. Why—do you get a funny image?”
She screwed up her nose. “Yes. I see this tiny fairy with blue hair sitting in a flower cup looking all pretty and cute.”
I sat on the side of the bed. “That about sums it up all right.”
“I don’t want to be that.”
“Okay. What name do you want? I’m happy to call you whatever you like.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. You choose.” She pointed her dagger at me. “But this time, choose someone smart. And tough.”
“You don’t need to carry that knife around, you know. I don’t think anyone will bother us tonight.”
“That’s the other thing.” She tugged her hair tie loose, the powder blue ringlets springing around her head and falling to her waist. “I want you to cut this off for me.”
“Really? There was a time in my life I would have killed for curls like that.”
“But not now, right?” She gave me a keen-eyed look. “It’s not what you choose for yourself, I notice.”
“Perceptive.”
She plopped herself down on chair in front of the cold stone fireplace and handed me the dagger over her shoulder. “Cut it short and spiky. Like the outfit looks.”
I took a long, shining ringlet in my hand. “You’re sure?”
She clenched her hands into little fists against her slim, leather-clad thighs. “Yes. Get rid of it.”
Deciding not to point out that Blackbird or Starling could have done this and likely done a better job, I sawed through the curls one by one. Deprived of the weight, the couple inches of hair left behind stood up in tufts. With grim satisfaction she eyed the blue corkscrews falling to the floor. Darling even roused himself to bat one across the stones. “Good riddance,” she muttered, making me smile.
When I finished, she looked punk all right. With the short, wildly chopped hair, her lilac eyes looked even more enormous in her face. But she’d lost that flower-blossom innocence. Something of her shrewdness showed through, making her eyes clear and sharp instead of dewy.
“And a name?” She demanded.
“You sure you don’t want to pick one yourself?” I asked, but she was already shaking her head.
“No. You choose. You’re the one who knows.”
I wondered what she meant by that, how she saw me. Of course, I’d carelessly bestowed her with the silly Thumbelina moniker, I could make up for that now.
“Athena,” I decided. “The clear-eyed goddess of both craft and war strategy. It’s a big name. I think you’ll wear it well.”
“Athena.” She tasted the word and held out her hand for the dagger. “Yes. I like that. It will do nicely. Until tomorrow, Lady Gwynn. I can’t wait to see Walter’s face when you pull the rug out from under him.”
She left, still a bit of that skipping to her stride, Darling following after. We’d left the doors between our warren of interconnected rooms open, for the comfort of each others’ company, and I heard Starling exclaiming over the new hair while Blackbird tutted.
It didn’t surprise me that, when I dreamed that night, instead of slogging through the sand, I climbed glassy slick slopes instead. Over and over, I climbed, reaching the ridge only to slice my hands to ribbons when I grasped the sharp edge. My blood ran crimson and hot, steaming like the hot cocoa, pouring down the clear glass.
Above, Rogue sat in a chair, watching me and laughing. He kept shaking his head at me, as if he found my efforts ridiculous. When I slid, once again, all the way to the bottom of the blood-slicked surface, he peered down at me from his lofty heights and sighed, exasperated.
“Don’t look for me, stupid Gwynn. When will you learn?”
“Never!” I shouted defiantly. “You’re mine!”
Titania appeared, wrapping her naked self around him, pale eyes full of pity. “No, he’s not.” The intense musicality of her voice wrapped around me. “He never was.”
“He’s mine!” I cried, but I slid farther down, unnoticed as they kissed.
* * *
Starling shook me awake and I blinked blearily at the pity in her brown eyes. “Gwynn—you’re dreaming. You were yelling out—” She bit her lip on saying anything more, but her thoughts were clear. Poor jilted me.
I sat up and scrubbed my face with my hands. The sunlight shone bright through the windows. “How long until high noon?”
“A while yet. Walter sent us outfits to wear.” Her lips twitched in amusement. “But the party apparently begins soon. The duel is to be the culmination.”
“He came by and talked to you?”
“Yes. And brought more hot cocoa, along with cinnamon rolls. He wanted to talk to you, but we told him you were preparing for the duel and couldn’t be disturbed. It sounded better than sleeping in.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Let’s see this outfit.”
Starling went to get it and I took the time to steady myself and clear out the last dregs of the nightmare. These were like and yet unlike the dreams I’d had before with Rogue. Unlike because, in many ways, I could trace the fragments of memory and the day’s events flowing through them, the normal dreaming mechanism of my brain washing away the flotsam and jetsam of my experiences. But, as with the dreams I had before with him, these felt guided, as if they occurred in that semi-real plane where we’d first come together. That was the part that really ate at me. That he—or worse, Titania—were present and cognizant in these semi-dreams where I cried and pleaded for him. Him, the man I’d never wanted in the first place.
And now couldn’t bear it that he’d been torn from me.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t have anything better to do than moon over some guy. Such as, say, win an impossibly stacked magical duel, rescue my companions and get us the hell out of here and back on track. “Stop being such a pitiful fucking loser,” I muttered, forcing myself out from under the covers.
“What?” Starling looked a little shocked.
“I said I hope I won’t be the loser today.”
“Geez, me too. Please don’t make me spend an eternity with Walt the Weird Boy.”
“And here I thought you were bemoaning your fate as a virgin spinster. Walt could be your ticket out of that dreadful future.”
“Suddenly the virgin spinster fate is sounding much more appealing.”
�
�No doubt.” I picked up what she’d tossed on the bed. It was a Princess Leia slave costume. If Walt wanted to be coy about his origins, he was doing a lousy job of it. “Never mind, I’ll just wear what I had on yesterday.”
“He was pretty insistent.”
I shook my head. “Not part of the bargain—no dice.”
I’d slept in my underwear, so pulling on my traveling dress didn’t take much effort. Walt hadn’t thought to give us things like hairbrushes, so Starling did the best she could to make me look presentable. Finally I stopped her. “That’s just gonna have to do.”
“If you say so,” she fretted. “Why don’t I have a task, like the others?”
“It’s nothing personal—just how it worked out this time.”
She fingered her hair and I knew she was resisting chewing on it. “I have no skills.”
“That’s not true. You do an amazing job of keeping me organized.” As I said it, I realized how lame that sounded.
“Gee thanks. I wanted to go on an adventure so I could be something more than an efficient housekeeper.”
“You will. You just haven’t found your thing yet.”
“Think so?” She sounded so wistful.
“I know so.”
The gremlins came to fetch us not long after and we all trooped down together, nobody wearing their new Walt outfits, which had all turned out to be either obscene or humiliating or both. Particularly the pink bunny ears for Darling that now lay shredded on the floor.
Instead of taking us to the great hall, our insectile escort led us upward, not as high as our original landing pad, but into a great bowl in the center of the circling towers. I had to hand it to Walt, it was an impressive arena. We walked out from a tunnel like Roman gladiators of old. Two pedestals faced each other across the center. A festive audience of fae nobles filled a grandstand box at one end, the languid preying-mantis length of their limbs setting them apart from all the lower fae ranged in tiers behind them.
“Not exactly a full house,” Starling observed and Blackbird sent her a quelling look. It was true, though—many of the seats were empty. Either all of Walter’s guests hadn’t arrived or the turnout disappointed expectations.
I suspected the latter, confirmed by the disgruntled look on Walt’s face as he trotted across the sand to meet us. He wore flowing crimson robes, tall platform boots and a towering headdress.
“You’re not wearing your costumes,” he complained.
I just shrugged. “We forgot. Oops.”
He dug the blunt end of the staff in the sand, the crystal globe on top catching the sun and sending rays of light in blinding shards, and squinted at me.
“You don’t seem very concerned that you’re about to suffer a horrible death at my hands.”
“It’s a good day to die.” I replied, with Klingon gravity.
Walter grinned, the sincere pleasure making his homely face almost attractive. “Yes—exactly! Okay, your, um, guests have special seats over there. I don’t know what you want to do about your Familiar. Do you need a kennel for it?”
Darling sent me an image of Walt on his back, disemboweled. I frowned to keep from smiling. “The cat stays with me.”
“Well, I don’t know if that’s fair...”
“Okay, then you can give up the staff.”
His shrewd gaze fixed on Darling, who started cleaning his toes. “What does it do for you?”
“Darling?” I looked at him as if I wasn’t sure. “Mostly he gets underfoot. But he sulks if I send him away.” Darling swiped his freshly cleaned claws at my ankle and I yelped. “See?”
Walt chortled. “He’ll learn manners when he’s my Familiar. I think he’ll look good riding with me on a dragon.”
Darling, drat his egotistical soul, had the gall to look really interested in that. I reminded him how he’d reverted into a regular cat in proximity to the dragon and it deflated him so much that I felt sorry. Not the direction we needed to go. Time to start psyching up the troops. I reminded Darling of the plan and he perked right up. And let me know that the time for the duel approached.
“Is it noon yet?”
Excitement shivered over Walt and he drew himself up. “Nearly. Wait for the trumpets to signal—and then we duel until one of us is dead. Do you wish to say goodbye to your friends?”
“Bye, guys. See you in a bit.”
They strolled off with casual waves. Walt scowled after them. “None of you has much sense of ceremony. And something happened to that girl’s hair.”
I smothered a fake yawn. “Yeah, she’s like that.”
He turned the black look on me and thumped the staff in the sand again. “You’re not taking this seriously, Gwynnie. I don’t think you have any idea of what terrible magics I can wreak upon you!”
“Guess you’ll show me, huh?”
I stoked my anger now, carefully brewing it up, letting the silver-white feline stir and stretch. This was really the only part I wasn’t sure of—if I could keep her contained. Well, that and whether Walter’s dragons would come to his rescue. That was my biggest gamble, that they wouldn’t. I resisted touching the dragon’s egg in my pocket, hoping I wouldn’t need to use it.
Five topazes, Darling let me know.
“All welcome!” A page with a booming voice entirely out of proportion with his body stepped out onto the sand. The crowd—clearly bored and never tremendously noisy to begin with—settled. “All welcome to the Grand Duel between the Wizard of the Western Keep and the Most Powerful Lady Sorceress Gwynn!”
A polite smattering of golf claps.
“Go, Most Powerful Lady Gwynn!” Starling’s voice hooted out.
“Will the contestants take their pedestals?”
I stepped up on mine, Darling on the sand beside me. Walter was screwing around with his headdress.
Three minutes.
The waves crashing on the rocks outside the castle sounded like thunder, but the sun shone bright in the cerulean sky. In my heart, I fomented energy, the cat rising with interest. I shook my head and the lily earrings swung, reminding me of Rogue and his dark kisses, the lust swirling up, sparking red and black. Ruthlessly I cut aside the worry, the sorrow, the bitter sense of betrayal, and instead concentrated entirely on the sexual desire that fueled so much of my magic, blending it with the cat’s slicing physical edge.
One minute.
I drew the quiet around me. The dead silence Marquise and Scourge had ground into me at such a dear price. I wrapped all my feral anger, my unrequited desire, in a seamless container, ready to be directed.
Walter sensed it, leaving his outfit alone and stared at me, nostrils flaring.
Ten seconds.
Five seconds.
“Go.”
Darling took off running, straight for Walter. He was lifting the staff, ready to level it at me.
Noon.
My wish hit Darling with an instantaneous boom—all the more powerful for echoing his own wish. Suddenly he stood two stories tall, his paws the size of sports cars. More than halfway to Walter when he changed, it took only one stride for him to reach the wizard, seize him in his great mouth and shake him so the staff fell from his nerveless hand.
A bolt of sky blue and Thumbel—Athena—using her dragonfly girl magical speed, caught the staff and brought it to me. I took it and she whirled, dagger ready to defend me if need be.
The staff resonated in my grip like a tuning fork and suddenly the entire arena lit up in radiating lines, a shifting topographical map of magic. Darling, supernova bright, shook his head and Walter wailed.
A gong sounded and one of the fae nobles, Blackbird serene and elegant at his elbow, declared me the victor.
The duel was over. I loved a simple plan.
Chapter Eighteen
In Which I Learn Something about Dragons
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Flora and Fauna”
&
nbsp; (and remembered T-shirt)
“Put him down, Darling.”
The cat’s lime-green eyes, the size of beach balls, gazed back at me in fierce disappointment. He shook Walt again, dangling him like a hapless mouse. Athena stalked over to stand between them and the audience. She wasn’t as tall as one of his paws.
I sighed. Maybe not so simple. “You are an amazing and mighty hunter, Darling, but it’s time to put the poor guy down.”
“In truth, Lady Sorceress Gwynn, it’s within your rights to kill him, as he would have killed you,” the fae noble called out. The others enthusiastically agreed. For the enemy side, they seemed very much the same as our nobles—capricious and whimsically cruel.
“Isn’t he your ally? Do it now, Darling.”
He informed me that he wanted a new name. A battle name, now. Then he’d put the nasty Walt thing down.
“Well.” The noble smoothed his elegantly embroidered sleeves, checking them for flaws. “He’s not a terribly effective wizard. Really his death would be no great loss. Go ahead and kill him.”
Walt moaned and I promised Darling we’d discuss the battle name in just a few minutes and to put the man down now.
“You’ve already declared me the victor, so it’s not necessary.” Exactly why I’d wanted Blackbird to make sure that happened, so I wouldn’t have to kill poor stupid Walter. More for me than for him. My feline animus craved his blood, and that was a daunting enough feeling.
That part of me, along with Darling, wanted to taste his death and hesitated. The fae audience, much more excited now, began chanting for Walt’s imminent demise. The staff in my hand took up the miasma of emotions and pumped it together into a powerful charge. Darling, sensing my change in intent, put Walt down and pinned him with a huge paw, giving me suggestions for various satisfying deaths.
Walter squirmed and wailed. I cast a wary eye to the sky for sign of dragons.
They did not arrive to save him.
“Kill him and you can have this castle,” the fae noble said. “I have a proposition for you, Lady Sorceress. Something...tasty.”
Tasty, yes. Like this death would be. Walter was a wart on the world. He deserved to die. I formed a wish.
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