He fiddled with the cocoa hose. “I don’t suppose you know how to get back? I mean, I wasn’t much back home, but I had a decent job. Clearly my magic sucks here, compared to yours.”
“Did you come right to this castle—when you fell through?”
His cheeks puffed out as he sucked on the hose, collapsed as he swallowed. “Came through a video game. I was playing Skyrim, you know?”
“I don’t. Sorry.”
“Heh. N00b. Anyway I’d Fus Ro Dah’d the thing and it, like, sucked me in and boom! Here I was, facing a real dragon.”
“That had to be something.”
“No freaking kidding! Fortunately the thing seemed to take a liking to me and the rest is history. Until you came along.”
I cleared a pile of soiled robes off a coffee table and sat, not pointing out that I wouldn’t have come along if he hadn’t kidnapped me. “That’s really interesting. You must have a natural affinity for dragons. Were you by chance bleeding?”
He snorted. “Yeah—took an arrow to the knee.”
“Someone shot you with an arrow in your living room?”
“No.” He looked at me as if I was the nutty one. “It’s a joke. There’s this old guy in the game and—never mind. You wouldn’t appreciate the meme. You’re kind of a Debbie Downer, aren’t you?”
“I meant, were you bleeding for real.”
“Could be. You think that did it?”
“Partly, yes. And a wish to escape your old life.”
“I had that. Stupid. This place is worse. And now I’ve really fucked myself over.”
“Not necessarily, Walt.”
He snorted and stuffed a cupcake into his mouth, pointing a pudgy finger at me while he choked it down. “Easy for you to say Miss Fancy Schmancy Sorceress. You have them all eating out of the palm of your hand. It took me all day just to wish up this recliner and that was with my staff. Now you have that too.”
“That staff wasn’t good for you, Walt. Trust me.” I yanked the cocoa hose out of his hand. “And quit drinking out of silver. Are you an idiot? You know silver stops magic and you’re drinking a hot, corrosive fluid out of it? Also, you live on top of dragons. No wonder you’ve barely got any magic left. You’re amazing at quenching magic, so I think that if you simply get away from all these dampening influences and get some training, you’ll be fine.”
“You think so?” His beady eyes grew moist with longing. “Can I get the training you got?”
I nearly choked. “Believe me, Walt—you do not want that.”
“Well, if it sucks, that would be a good punishment. You know, for kidnapping, attempted murder, pain and suffering, all that. It would be like rehab.”
“Rehab from hell.”
“Keeping it all to yourself, huh? That’s not fair.”
“Look. The things I went through I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, much less on you. You have no idea what you’re asking for.”
He thrust his lip out mulishly, reached for the cocoa hose and stopped himself. “Well, my life is pretty damn shitty. I just sit here day after day and get fatter. No chick will ever want me and now you say I can’t even learn what you did. Poorly played, Gwynnie.”
I studied my hands, how even now I’d taken refuge in holding my wrist. “There must be other ways. I’ll find out for you.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll get Fafnir to send me there, for my sentence.”
“If I think you’re going to do that, I will sentence you to life imprisonment in this castle, for your own damn good.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“No—what’s cruel is what they’d do to you. It nearly killed me, Walt.”
“But you survived,” he pointed out. “Now you’re stronger than anyone. I’ll find a way to get there.”
Marquise and Scourge would have a field day with him. It would be turning a puppy over to a pair of bored and hungry lions.
“You have to negotiate terms if you do that. Good terms. Absolutely no loopholes.”
“You do it. Sentence me and negotiate the terms.”
“I can’t do that to you.”
“Then I’ll go on my own.” He watched me cannily, clearly perceiving I wouldn’t let that happen. “You’re a softie, Gwynnie. You won’t lock me up here and you won’t let me get taken in a bad deal.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll do it,” Walt called after me. “You know you want to.”
“I know I don’t want to.” I kept walking.
“Chicken!” His fake poultry noises followed me out the door.
Chapter Nineteen
In Which I Tell a Terrible Story, Twice
The properties of crystal to enhance and expand the influence of magic seem congruent with what I recall from New Age thinking. Interesting.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Magic”
Darling met me at the door of our rooms when we returned, prancing with excitement. Athena lurked behind him looking, of all things, a little guilty. “He’s settled on a new name,” she informed me.
I tried not to wince and looked at Darling expectantly.
“Hercules.”
“This is your influence?” I asked Athena.
She widened her large lilac eyes in effective innocence. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Hercules, huh?”
“Hercules. Hercules. Hercules. HerculesHerculesHerculesHerculesHercules.” Darling danced about, chanting the name in his head. He sent me an image of the young man he sometimes pictured to me, only tall and muscle-bound in this version.
“Fine.” I stopped him and scratched his delightedly arched back. “Though I may call you Darling Hercules and Darling, for short.”
I didn’t think he’d bite on that, but he graciously agreed.
“Would you mind zapping me up something else to wear to the feast?” Athena gestured to her leather fighting outfit. “Something not too girly, but still nice.”
“The Lady Sorceress Gwynn is not here to squander her magic making you new outfits,” Starling called from the other room. “And she needs to get in here and take her bath or she won’t be ready.”
I rolled my eyes and Athena grinned. I wished her into a black-and-white tuxedo, with little tails and a top hat. “How’s that?”
She looked in the mirror. “Spot-on, Lady Gwyn. Very nice.”
I took myself into my room, where Starling had a brass tub steaming for me. “Oh bless you. I’m dying to get clean again.”
She didn’t smile at me. “You shouldn’t indulge that fairy girl like that. She’ll just take and take.”
“I know how to say no. I’ll make you a pretty outfit too, if you want,” I coaxed her while I shimmied out of my now decidedly overripe dress.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not like there will be anyone to dance with.”
“I thought you were giving up on the love hunt for a while and focusing on adventure.”
“Well, that’s not going so well, is it? I’m just some silly handmaid you’re dragging along, kept in the dark, useful only for preparing baths for you.”
If I’d known she was this mad, I wouldn’t have undressed yet. I dunked myself in the water rather than stand there naked.
“I’d like to point out that I didn’t ever ask you to be in charge of preparing baths for me.”
“No, but gee—what else is stupid ol’ Starling good for? I might as well be doing that.” She plopped herself on the bed, folded her arms and gave me a mutinous look. “I want you to tell me what Fafnir has to do with all of this.”
“It’s an ugly, awful story.”
“Do you think I’m not strong enough to take it?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it, thinking of what I’d said to Blackbird. So I leaned my head back against the tub’s rim, stared at the ceiling and told Starling Cecily’s story, exactly as Nancy had told it to me.
“You think that happened to my brother.” Sta
rling’s voice sounded thin, strained.
I wished the water warmer. “You know as much as I do now. Your mother has no memory of what exactly happened with the baby and Titania—it’s weirdly blocked. She thinks Fafnir doesn’t remember either.”
“But you intend to try to find out.”
“What I can, yes.”
“He clearly recovered from being a puddle of melted goo,” she pointed out. I cracked an eye open to check her expression and, while she looked a bit wan, she gave me little smile. “That immortality thing comes in handy, I guess.”
“True.”
“How can I help?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Gwynn!”
“No, this isn’t a thing. I don’t think you realize that I just pretty much make stuff up as I go along. I play it by ear. I don’t know how you can help with Fafnir because I don’t know how the evening will go.”
“Fine.”
I washed my hair, thinking. “There is something you can do for me, but it might mean skipping the feast.”
“I can do that.”
“You could go talk to Walter for me.”
Starling wrinkled her nose, but then smoothed her expression. “Okay. I will. What about? Just anything? Pump him for information?”
I dried myself with the towel she handed me. “He thinks he wants the training I had, from Marquise and Scourge.” I hurried on before she could reply, unable to face her sympathy. “You know something of what I was like when I...got out of there. I can’t talk to him—to anyone, really—about just how horrible it was. I want you to talk him out of it.”
She began combing out my hair without a word. The quiet stretched between us while her thoughts hummed. “Does he need it—the training?” she finally asked.
“He needs training for sure, but without the torture part.”
“Hmm.”
“What? Don’t Hmm me.”
“I’m just thinking—you’re always trying to protect people, Gwynn. Like you do with me, not telling me about Cecily’s baby. You survived what they did to you. Maybe Walter deserves that chance too.”
“It’s not an opportunity, Starling! It’s—”
“Shh.” She put a soothing hand on the top of my head. “I’ll talk to him and I’ll be honest and tell him what I’ve seen of how much you suffered. Because I do know something of how much that wounded you. But I also think you don’t realize how remarkable you are now because you did go through that. You have an enviable strength. I can understand how someone like Walter would look at you and want something of that.”
“The price was too high.”
“Was it? I wonder.”
“And it doesn’t feel like strength from the inside.” I sighed. “Maybe I should try to talk to him about it.”
She tapped me with the comb. “Trust me. I’ll tell him the truth. You gave me this job. Now let me do it. Okay?”
“Okay. But remember to take some decent food with you. Otherwise you’ll be eating cupcakes all night.”
* * *
I thanked my lucky stars that Blackbird had gotten kidnapped with us because the feast was amazing. Feeling like I hadn’t eaten for days, I stuffed myself. The gremlins happily followed Blackbird’s directions, bringing in platter after platter of excellent meats and vegetables.
“Where did all the food come from?” I asked her. She sat between me and Fafnir—a thoughtful positioning on her part.
“The gremlins can conjure more than hot chocolate. You just have to know what to ask for. I think the wizard simply had no idea.”
“He was never a very good wizard.” Fafnir leaned over to address me. “That’s why we negotiated a temporary peace treaty with General Falcon. Once I saw what you could do at the Plain of No Trees and then the Debacle of the Sirens—” he shook his head in admiration, “—I figured we’d better destroy you or recruit you.”
“So you had Walter send the dragons to grab me on the Promontory of Magic?”
“It was worth a shot. I didn’t expect it to work.”
“So, Walter and the duel was the second attempt?”
Fafnir toasted me with his flagon and winked. “I bet on you.”
Poor Walt.
“I didn’t know about the peace treaty.” But it did explain why Falcon hadn’t summoned me and Rogue. A bit of luck, there. Or the magic, taking care of me.
Fafnir poured himself more wine. “Temporary. We can get the war going again as soon as tomorrow if you’d like to come over to our side.”
“I’m afraid I’ve sworn service to General Falcon.”
“Aha! But you’re not with him now. Why is that, I wonder?”
I really didn’t care to explain the whole sabbatical Rogue had wrangled for me. So we could go on our quest. My heart cramped a little, remembering how he’d looked with Titania. Was he under a spell? Faking it? Maybe he’d been faking it with me. I really wanted to look into the crystal globe again, and the strength of that desire bothered me. I could see how that thing would be addictive.
“Would you care to dance, Lady Sorceress Gwynn?” Fafnir rose and came to stand by my chair.
“Excuse me?”
He laughed and swept a distinguished bow. “Grace me with a dance at least, if you won’t join my army.”
The fae musicians had struck up a sort of waltz on the dance floor below. Walter’s ballroom was ironically much smaller than the throne hall. We all sat at tables on a raised dais that let us observe the dancers from above. Darling—I mean Darling Hercules—had already expressed his intention to help the dancing along with his anesthetic skills and the brightly colored couples, threesomes, foursomes and more whirled along in various enthusiastic tangles to the racing rhythm.
I did not want to dance. And not just because it was Fafnir asking. Though what I knew about him seemed so at odds with his demeanor. At least I understood why Cecily had believed she loved him. Somewhere in my own foolish heart, I’d imagined dancing at something like this in Rogue’s arms. A silly fantasy I couldn’t afford, especially not with Blackbird giving me a warning look.
Besides, I’d wanted a closer look inside Fafnir’s head, didn’t I?
“I’d be delighted, Lord Fafnir.” I smiled and offered my hand. “Though I’m afraid I don’t know the dances.”
He kissed my hand with the barest brush of his lips, a studiously polite touch. “Then I shall teach you. Don’t worry.” His eyes went to the lily earrings I’d put back on. I’d made myself a blue gown to match, in a fit of nostalgia. “I shall observe Lord Rogue’s claim to you.”
He led me onto the dance floor, which allowed me to refrain from commenting, and proceeded to show me the steps, which were intricate but repetitive. Rather like learning the newest line dance—once you got over the hump of the initial gimmick, the rest pretty much fell into place. Fafnir patiently explained, demonstrated and then started us out on slow turns. He made an excellent partner too, considerate of his much greater height and length of stride, adjusting his steps so I could easily match them.
“Lord Rogue is exceedingly lucky in having you for a consort. But then that bastard always has had the devil’s own luck.”
“And you, Lord Fafnir. Have you a consort?” I tried to keep the question innocent and neutral. Pain flashed through him, sharp, quickly hidden.
“Not at present, no.”
I felt mean prodding him and reminded myself of poor Cecily’s awful demise at his hands. “But you have had?”
“Certainly. Apologies to you, lady, but as long-lived as we are, we enjoy many consorts through our lives. Rarely are they as scintillating as you, however.”
The man would have to be a skilled diplomat, expert at ducking sensitive issues. All of his thoughts that I could read, like his manners, flowed in a seamlessly polite and gracious order. If it hadn’t been for that flash of pain, I would have started to think I had the wrong guy, despite the name.
“Seems that I heard you did have a mortal consor
t at some point—was her name Cecily?”
He stumbled over the next step, hissed in a breath and gave me a hollow look. I thought for a moment he might be physically ill, then remembered it wasn’t possible. “How could you possibly know about her?”
He’d regained himself, spinning me through the dance with expert ease, not allowing either of us pause. His grip, though, tightened in a vise on me, reminding me of the fae’s terrible strength. I readied a defensive wish, just in case. I still couldn’t quite get past his surface mind. Not and keep track of the dance steps, dammit.
“Just something I heard,” I got out and he relaxed his hold slightly, allowing me to at least breathe.
“Is that so, Lady Sorceress?” His flint-gray eyes searched my face and I saw the hardness in him now. “I wonder what game you’re playing with me.”
Might as well lay my cards on the table. “I seek to discover what became of Cecily—and her child.”
His gaze dropped to my bosom and lower. “Is it true then? Do you carry Rogue’s baby even now?”
“What happened to Cecily?”
Fafnir tipped his head, acknowledging the trade of information. “She died.” He said it with bleak finality. “As you mortals are wont to do. She died birthing our child and I...I have never recovered from it.”
“How very sad. Were you with her?”
He started to reply, stopped himself, frowning. And there it was—the oily black rope, the coil of a sea serpent showing through the waves and vanishing again. “Perhaps we need a breath of fresh air.”
“Lead the way.”
We pushed through the mad whirl of dancers and, as soon as we stepped through floor-to-ceiling doors out on to a wide balcony and out of Darling’s influence, I became abruptly aware of my tired body and sore feet. We’d danced for hours already. I would have gone on too, never realizing the drain on my sadly mortal self. No wonder Starling had been so wiped out.
The sharp wind caught me as I stepped outside, tugging at my hair and gown, grasping fingers. I imagined I heard a howling laugh echoing through the roiling clouds that dashed in shreds across the moon. Like everything in Faerie, the moon glowed more luminous, larger and seemed to watch me with a certain awareness. The face of the Man in the Moon on one glance looked as always, on the next, fully intelligent with shrewd awareness. I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself, and wished up a cloak. Not the one Rogue had given me, which was presumably back with the wagon train.
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