by Claudy Conn
~ One ~
YOU ALREADY KNOW that my name is Radzia MacDaun. My friends started calling me Z, and I found that I liked it very much, so I went with it. My mom still calls me Radzia, but Z worked for my dad.
In the last two weeks, my life has been turned inside out and upside down. All at once, a life full with hope for the future has tumbled into a universe where pain seems to rule, and life itself feels like a fitful fever.
Without warning I feel myself changing, evolving, leaving behind the girl I had been and becoming someone I don’t recognize. For many of us, that is a good thing—change, growing, opening up—but I am not so sure it is for me. I was all sunshine and light once—a butterfly flitting happily along. Now? Now, that butterfly is gone, probably never to return. No … no butterfly here.
My life has never been simple, but it has always been stupendously happy. I am twenty years old—almost twenty-one—and lucky enough to have my mom’s (who is pinch-me beautiful) golden, wonderfully thick, long hair and my dad’s deep green eyes. I am about five feet five, which isn’t tall compared to my parents.
I have always been surrounded by great friends and family—pampered, petted, and loved.
Can’t look at my friends and family now—don’t want to hear them trying to make each other laugh in the midst of our tragedy. Don’t want to see them smile. Something inside me has broken out of its shell, and it is dark …
I have found too often that matters are rarely as simple as they seem. That is probably because I have never believed that morals, rules, and lives are absolutes. They are definitely not black and white things—to me. I have always thought that the shades of gray dominate the world we live in. I have always felt that some laws needed bending—some righteous morals were too high to attain, some ethics unreasonable for the average man or woman to hold onto and still make it through life.
My dad often told me that if I continued down such a lax and easy road, it would bring me into a world of confusion, heartache, and pain. So, for him, I tried to think in black and white. However, there are consequences to rigid beliefs, terrible consequences. Complications arise if you cannot bend …
My dad paid the ultimate price for doing what he believed was right, true, and ethical! He didn’t play dirty. It was black and white for him, but you see, it wasn’t black and white for his wicked, evil, and unethical opponent. You can’t be that upstanding do-gooder when you face down evil, not if you want to win.
My dad was a Druid high priest, but he was human. He was the best of all men that ever walked this earth, but being the best didn’t save him.
Seeing in black and white didn’t come to his rescue, and it won’t come to mine. I am not even sure I see shades of gray any longer. It seems everything is clouded in black.
I should tell you right up front: I am not quite human.
I am Fae on my mother’s side, and the Fae in me alters my perception of human ethics.
Fae see things ringed in forever. Right there—it changes everything. One more thing: my mom is a Daoine princess, which makes me a Daoine Royal.
So, there you are. Not only am I Fae, but I am a Royal from the highest caste of Fae. That is what complicates matters for me now a whole lot. It never did before. My mom had been determined to keep us in the human world—to keep things simple. It was a good idea at the time, but no longer.
My dad—definitely all human, but just a tad more than human, as the MacDaun line dated all the way back to the beginning, to the Treaty between Fae and Man. They were all Druid high priests. When a woman was born to MacDaun instead of a son, she took the MacDaun name and trained as a priestess. The Druids like the Fae honor the female.
As unique as this tale may seem to you, I am here to tell you that it is not. What is unique is that I am telling you about it. These are secrets the Fae and Druids never disclose—but things have changed, and you need to know as much as you can.
There are children of Fae/human unions walking all over the Earth. Many of them are movie stars and rock stars you adore. However, none of them are immortal like their one immortal parent—usually the males of the Fae. And never before my mother and father was there a union (I am told) between a Daoine princess and a human.
Zilch, nada, none. Apparently I am the only half-Daoine/half-human child. My mom thinks this is a major thing. Fae are having trouble procreating. The Wheel of Being has waned over the ages. However, that is another story for another time.
As I have pointed out, there is a major difference between a Daoine Fae and a Tuatha Dé Fae. To keep it simple, I will explain that humans looked at the Tuatha Dé in ancient times and thought them gods. They were in fact, god-like in their form, their stance, and their immense abilities and magic.
Well, even the members of the four Royal Houses of the Tuatha Dé look at the Daoine Fae and think them god-like. Subtle, but a major difference in the Fae Realm.
The Daoine never mingle with Man. I mean it is almost a taboo. They are not interested in humans and find human habits deplorable. They consider themselves above the fray. They consider themselves the Keepers of Nature and are disgusted with what the human race has done to its planet. In addition to that, it is a rare thing for a female Fae, any Fae, let alone a Daoine Fae, to bear the child of a human. It is usually the other way around. Male Fae are very attracted to human women. They often seduce them with great relish. They find a female human’s passion bewitching. Now and then the human woman bears the child produced from that union.
Male Fae may lose interest in their human consort, but never do they lose interest in their children. Immortality has inhibited and reduced the ability in Fae to reproduce amongst themselves to any extent …
Given all this, my parents’ story is almost unimaginable, improbable, and one of those rare true-love stories.
My mother is Princess Breith of the Daoine.
She was young for a Fae, perhaps the equivalent of nineteen in human years. She was trooping with her friends, what they thought of as slumming, by taking a tour of the Highlands. (One of immortality’s ills is boredom.)
It was May first, and my father, Nemid MacDaun, was conducting the Ritual of Beltaine, as was his promised duty to the Tuatha Dé Fae.
My dad was not quite thirty at that time and had always been big and strong and quite a hotty, so the story goes (which my parents never tired of telling me). My mom was immediately struck by his presence and stopped to have a better look at him and the manner in which he conducted the ritual. She lingered and stepped out of her invisibility to speak with him. Long story short—that was it, done deal.
They were married and stayed for a time at my dad’s ancestral home in the Highlands. My mom found it amusing living amongst humans. However, my dad discovered my mom had a talent that she not only enjoyed but also excelled at. She knew how to move a pen and make it work on paper. She knew how to bring a story to life. He was so proud of her work that he shipped off one of her manuscripts to New York.
Bingo!
We moved to Long Island, and pretty soon she was working for a famous TV network as one of their lead writers for a soap. You likely know the one. We moved to Cold Spring Harbor, where we had a great home, but we spent our summers in Scotland.
Happy wasn’t enough of a word for what we were as a family. We laughed all the time. Love wasn’t a strong enough word for what my parents felt for each other. It was both inspirational and disgustingly romantic.
I used to want a love like that. I don’t anymore.
Now, you ask, what about my being a Daoine Fae?
I thought it was cool, even if I couldn’t tell my friends about it, even though it was a major secret. I was (in my mind) hot stuff, you know. I never, ever used my Fae powers when I was with my friends. Not even my closest friends had any inkling I was anything more than what they were … a somewhat nutsy teen.
Life was good. Summers were spent at our Highland castle in Scotland, and more often than not, many of my friends spent summer vaca
tions with me there. So, you have the picture.
I wish I could tell you that we went on and on and lived happily ever …
I can’t tell you that, and I can’t help but feel that the reason for this awful dive into black waters is entirely my fault.
If I hadn’t decided to go to university in Edinburgh, my parents wouldn’t have returned to Scotland to take up residence there to be near me.
If they hadn’t returned to Scotland to live, my dad wouldn’t have been pulled into the conflict with the vicious Unseelies.
As I have laid it out for you, the Unseelie Fae is a race of potently deadly, most definitely evil monsters. They were a mistake that couldn’t be flushed away.
So the word ‘if’ made it into this equation. Words are powerful things.
How can such a small word have such a huge meaning?
If is a word that can break your heart—if I hadn’t, if they hadn’t … if my dad hadn’t … he wouldn’t have been killed by Gaiscioch!
Now my mom is ‘free falling’.
She isn’t looking to be saved. She isn’t trying to hold on—not even for me.
I have always been so close to my mom. We are best friends—she has always been there for me, but now …
Her arms don’t reach for me. Her hands don’t try to clutch at something and hold on. She has let go—she wants to stop existing and be with my dad. She is just plunging into an abyss of darkness.
She is using illusion like a drug. She is trapped in the illusion that my beautiful dad is still there with her. She is all balled up within herself. She can’t think. She can’t see. She can’t feel anything but loss. At first she couldn’t stop crying. Now she huddles and hugs herself, and I can’t reach her. I can’t make her pain go away. How can I? I am suffocating with the same pain. In human terms, she is catatonic, and it is my fault.
She has never experienced this level of grief. She had never expected it. Early in their marriage she had asked my mortal father to take the elixir only a princess may offer the human of her choice. It was an elixir of immortality. He did.
Fae are born immortal, but not the Fae born of human—even ones who’ve taken the elixir. So, when I turned eighteen, she asked me to take the elixir. I hesitated. I mean, it was a pretty heavy thing to think about. Still, my mom wasn’t taking no for an answer, and I caved, just to put the subject to rest, you know.
My mom had every expectation that we would always be together. After all, hadn’t she protected us with Fae immortality?
My dad was immortal. How could he be killed?
There are only two, perhaps three, ways to kill a Fae. A Danu death weapon is the most widely known method.
He was killed with a weapon from the World of Danu from which the Fae had originated. My father had been drawn into this problem with the Fae traitor Gaiscioch when it first began, back in May. Dad wasn’t Fios (a seer who can see through Fae Glamour and magic). He couldn’t see the Fae if they were shielded in the Féth Fiada (cloak of invisibility), but over the years he had struck up a friendship with the chief of the Fae Trackers, Nuad, who had come to visit him during one of the rituals.
Evidently, all Druid priests were being put on the alert for the traitor Gais, for he’d found a way to escape the Dark Realm for short periods and had also been successful in sending lower-caste Unseelie creatures into our world to wreak havoc. My dad found a spell he thought would keep the portals at the MacDaun Dolmens closed. August and Lughnassa were only a few weeks away, and Dad was certain Gais would try and use our dolmens during the Lughnassa ritual.
Sure enough, Dad was right. Gaiscioch (who had been stuck in the Dark Realm, where he had taken refuge back in May) was able to access the portal at the MacDaun Standing Stones. His goal was to find a portal large enough and powerful enough to bring the worst of the Dark Fae through to our human world.
At home, my father suddenly felt the power surge at the MacDaun Dolmens and hurried there on horseback (it is not readily accessible even by Jeep), but he was not a seer and could not see anything but the lightning strike within the portal of the dolmens. He couldn’t see what was coming …
My dad immediately used the signal he and Nuad had set up earlier that week. As he awaited Nuad, he paced with the Death Sword in his hands.
Evidently Gaiscioch had found a way to send through ten uglies! They were lower caste Unseelies and visible, still deadly all the same.
One, in fact, brandished a death weapon. Nuad arrived at that moment, and he shoved my father out of the way as he sliced through them using his own Death Sword.
He was surrounded by the drooling, clawing beasts, and although singularly they were no match for Nuad, they attacked mob style, and he was caught up in the frenzy of slice and dice.
Too late, he saw Gaiscioch step through the portal.
Too late, he realized that Gais had put his hand up to retrieve the Death Sword from the beast.
Too late, he saw the madness on Gais’s face, and he roared out to my father to run.
You see, Fae are immune to the Féth Fiada—they are never invisible to one another—but my dad couldn’t see Gais … didn’t know he was coming at him.
Nuad yelled out to Gais, trying to draw his attention, but Gais apparently decided he wanted to take down one of Queen Aaibhe’s Druid priests. Like the coward he was, for a warrior would have shown himself, he stalked my father.
Nuad shifted the distance, shrugging off the Unseelies and screaming at Gais as he tried to reach and shield my father.
The Seelie Fae traitor grinned at Nuad, as though taunting him as he moved in for the kill, moved in all the while knowing my father, though pivoting in a circle with his sword out before him, could not know where to strike!
Gaiscioch could—should—have shifted off and out of Nuad’s reach. Gais could have left my father alone. He must have known he had only a short while on this side.
Instead, Gais decided the time had come to blatantly break his queen’s Treaty and kill her favorites among the humans … her prized Druid priests!
My father couldn’t see him, but he swung his death weapon with force, taking down an Unseelie who had attacked from the rear.
Nuad saw my father’s last heroic efforts, and Nuad saw as well the hatred and irritation on Gais’s face as he drove forward trying to reach him, but Gais had shifted out of his reach.
Gais shifted into my father and struck from behind, shoving the death weapon deeply into his back.
Nuad bellowed and grabbed my father as he started to crumble onto his knees. He held him and saw Gais’s triumphant face. He had succeeded in causing pain … a pain that would be delivered to his queen.
And then even as Nuad mumbled his good-bye to my father, he witnessed Gais’s expression turn into exasperation as the portal pulled him back into the Dark Realm.
There are times Fae can restore a life, but not when that life is taken by a death weapon.
It was Nuad who brought my father home to us …
That was only two weeks ago.
Lughnassa and my father have passed by me, August is here in full swing, and my mother’s Daoine Fae friends and family have arrived in force. They hug her to themselves, whispering words she doesn’t hear.
Over the years they (our Daoine relatives and friends) found themselves, in spite of their natural aloofness, caring for my dad and me. They often visited.
They finally convinced me to let them take my mom back with them to her Daoine home. They have tried everything short of force to make me go with them, but I can’t.
My mom is in their care for the moment, and that will hopefully serve …
She needs this time to grieve and recover.
I need this time for something altogether different.
You see, the human in me wants Gaiscioch’s blood. I want him to hear me. I want him to know that, like Rambo, I am coming for him.
I want to see Gaiscioch writhe with pain. I want to see his life’s blood splatter and pour out o
f his body until he gasps his last breath in a world of agony!
He took my father’s life. He did not even behave like a warrior. He did not respect my father enough to give him a fighting chance. He ruined my mother’s life, and he has made me into what I am at this moment … and what I am becoming.
I want to be the one that takes his immortal life and feeds him to the monsters he has unleashed.
The human in me wants this revenge more than anything else in the world.
The Daoine Fae in me is strong enough, magical enough, and powerful enough to accomplish my goal. And I have the ‘death weapon’ that my dad never got to use. He couldn’t see Gais, but when the time comes … I will see him … because I can.
Like my mom, I am ‘free falling’—but not into illusion.
I don’t have the time for that. Oh no, not now, not until I accomplish what I have to do. I have some things that must be done because, you see, I have a plan.
~ Two ~
On the Isles of Tir in the land of the Fae
EARLIER, THE QUEEN and Prince Breslyn had shifted in to meet me (shifting is our form of locomotion—somewhat like walking through a wormhole to the destination of our choice), and now stood in close conversation with one another while I got used to the mission the queen has set for me. I didn’t like it.
For those of you who have not met me, I am Danté, Prince of Lugh, and I fear that even with all our power and magic, we may not be enough to withstand Gais and his enormous Dark Army if they break through the Prison Walls.
Breslyn and I represent two of the four Royal Houses of the Tuatha Dé and are the queen’s most trusted princes.
Our queen is stunning in her ethereal beauty. She radiates a special aura all her own. Her scent is intoxicating. Her long gold hair—picked up now by the strong breeze—flies around her lovely shoulders.
My friend Breslyn holds himself well, though I know he is concerned. Things do not go as well as they should. His dark blond hair, usually slicked back and tied at the nape of his neck, is loose and blows wildly in the wind, and his lips are tight, grim.