The Mad Queen (The Fae War Chronicles Book 5)

by Jocelyn Fox

  Niall sighed, then reached out and took her hand. She felt her heart stutter as he pressed it between his own hands. “I am sorry, Vivian. I did not mean to offer insult. That was very rude of me, and I beg your understanding.” He smiled again, this time more warmly. “I am not accustomed to feeling weak.”

  Vivian swallowed and tried to catch her breath. Focus, she chided herself. “Can I do anything to help?”

  “I would be grateful for a glass of water,” said Niall. He released her hand as she nodded and quickly walked away to the kitchen. As she opened the cabinet and hunted for a clean glass, examining each one in the light, she heard Ross speaking to Niall.

  “So, what’s the real damage?” Ross asked skeptically in her no-nonsense voice.

  “It’s still too early to tell,” said Niall.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” replied Ross instantly in a low voice. “We need to know how bad it is. The bone sorcerer is out there with Corsica, and I for one don’t want to start hearing about mysterious murders on the evening news.”

  Vivian put the glass down on the counter and hesitated before turning on the faucet, straining to hear Niall’s response.

  “Forin was not completely dead,” Niall said quietly. “Almost, but not quite, so it only took a portion of my…let me think of the word.” He paused. “There is a word for it in our old tongue, it means something like heart’s strength.”

  Vivian turned on the faucet, staring down at the water as it filled the glass. She shut off the water and walked back into the living room. Niall and Ross paused in their conversation, both glancing at her. She handed Niall the water.

  “First of all,” she said in what she hoped was a firm voice, “I know that I’m not special. I don’t have a magic sword, I’m not this anointed hero who saved your world. And even in our world, in this world, I’m…pretty ordinary. I don’t know how to shoot a gun very well and I’m not good at running or lifting things.” She shrugged. Niall and Ross watched her, Niall with an expression of absorbed fascination that made something deep in her stomach glow like an ember and Ross with that closed-off caution on her face that meant she was reserving judgment. But Vivian yanked her mind back to the topic and forged onward. She needed to say the words, to make them understand. “I get it. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or with the right person at the right time.” She took a deep breath and raised her chin. “I know I messed up during the battle when I threw Corsica’s spell-orb. I’m not trying to say that I know anything or I’m useful. But…this is my house, and the least you can do is not treat me like a child.” The rest of her breath left in a sigh. She felt deflated as she waited for either one of them to say something.

  “You’re right,” said Ross slowly.

  Niall nodded. “You are young, but all mortals seem young to me.”

  “How old…how old are you?” Vivian asked.

  Niall chuckled. “Isn’t it impolite to ask one’s age in your world?”

  “Only for women,” replied Vivian. “But I see your point.” She squinted at him. “I’m going to guess…three hundred seventy-five.”

  He smiled into his glass of water.

  “Higher or lower?” she persisted, narrowing her eyes.

  “Higher,” he murmured, taking another swallow of water.

  “Hmm.” She paused for a second. “I’ll guess again later. Do you want anything to eat? What helps with regaining your heart’s strength?”

  “There are no private conversations in this house,” said Ross to Niall with a nod.

  “The layout isn’t conducive to sneaking around,” agreed Vivian.

  “I must confess that I don’t have an appetite,” said Niall, “but I will certainly eat later.”

  “Just let me know,” said Vivian.

  “I’m going to go check on Molly and Ramel and the twins,” said Ross.

  “I’ll…stay here with Niall,” Vivian finished. She picked at a loose thread on the edge of her sling as Niall finished drinking his water. The Seelie man looked at the bright sunlight outlining the curtains of the windows.

  “Would you care to sit outside with me? Sunlight would help,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Vivian, a bit too quickly. She winced internally. Smooth, jumping on that offer like a chubby kid snatching up a bar of chocolate.

  Niall gathered himself for a moment and then stood, his movement still graceful but slower than she’d seen from him in the past days. Mayhem gleefully cavorted about their legs as she unlocked the front door.

  “Ross, we’re going outside for a minute,” she called.

  “Take May with you,” came Ross’ reply.

  “I don’t think we could leave her behind if we wanted to,” muttered Vivian as the Malinois almost tripped her in her excitement to get outside. “Don’t bust through the screen door,” she chided the dog, pushing open the second door and releasing May onto the front porch.

  Niall gingerly walked through the doorway. Vivian remembered the iron handle of the old screen door and held it open for him. He smiled at her in thanks. Her stomach did a weird flip. It was just the scrambled eggs and bacon, she told herself. Usually she didn’t eat such a large breakfast.

  Mayhem sprinted around the perimeter of the front yard, bounding through the long grass, halting to investigate the charred wreck of Ross’s truck. The dog sniffed around the blackened hulk and sneezed. Niall walked across the small porch and down the front steps, striding out into the bright morning sunlight. Vivian watched as he turned his face toward the sun. Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought that some of the gray tinge receded from beneath his skin.

  “There’s a superhero we have,” she said, trotting down the steps to join him, “a…character in a story. He can recharge his powers by standing in the sun. Is it like that for you?”

  “We are the Court of Day and Summer,” replied Niall without opening his eyes.

  “Okay, but I mean, do you regain your magical powers by soaking up the sunlight?”

  Niall smiled and opened one eye, looking down at her. “No, not directly.”

  “Half the time it sounds like you guys don’t even know how your own power works,” said Vivian.

  “Because it has changed over time,” said Niall patiently. He folded his long legs and sat down in the grass. Vivian held her good arm out for balance and clambered down to her knees, then sat back with a huff. Niall didn’t comment on her lack of grace.

  “How has it changed over time?” she asked.

  “In the days before the accords which governed our interactions with mortals, we drew much of our power from the flow of ideas and people between our worlds,” he said.

  “Before the accords,” murmured Vivian, watching Mayhem drag a particularly impressively sized branch out from under one of the trees near the driveway. “Let me guess, the accords were a few centuries ago. Probably right around the time of the industrial revolution.”

  This time Niall opened his eyes and looked at her. “You say you are ordinary, and yet you somehow know much more about our world than any mortal has a right to know.”

  Vivian raised an eyebrow. “I told you, I’m a geek. I read a lot of books and comics and I’ve always liked the idea of other worlds. It always made sense to me.” She gestured to the sun-drenched expanse of grass, bordered by the gnarled trees that lined the distant road. “I never really believed that this was it.” She tilted her head. “Are there other worlds besides this one and yours?”

  “I do not know,” said Niall. “There are some in our world that think so. A few explorers set out to find what they believed to be another world beyond the horizon of the Endless Sea…but that is another story for another time.”

  “It sounds like an interesting story,” said Vivian with a smile.

  “I think you will find most of the stories about my world interesting,” said Niall.

  “Are you trying to imply that I’m star-struck?” she returned.

  “I do not speak to the
stars, so I would not use that turn of phrase.”

  She laughed. “Don’t avoid the question.”

  He chuckled. “Perhaps sun-struck would be more accurate?”

  Vivian found that she was suddenly in too good of a mood to feel annoyance at Niall’s teasing. “Well, you do look better since we’ve sat in the sun for a while.”

  “I feel a bit better,” he said. “But I fear I won’t be able to scry for at least another day.”

  “What would happen if you did?”

  He shook his head. “I doubt I would be able to work the scrying glass.”

  “Can I watch when you do scry?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If you so wish.”

  Vivian tried to suppress the smile that crept onto her lips but she found herself grinning giddily. Way to conceal your enthusiasm for anything involving magic, she chided herself. Or maybe, whispered the wicked little voice in the back of her mind, it’s more like enthusiasm for anything involving Niall. Rather than trying to silence the small voice, she glanced at Niall out of the corner of her eye. He was beautiful, she had to admit, beautiful in a way that defied her rather expansive powers of description. The best word that came to her mind was otherworldly…which, she supposed, was a bit like cheating, since he was indeed from another world.

  “Tell me more about your world?” It came out as a question, her voice starting to slide into sleepiness induced by the warm sunshine.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Everything,” she said dreamily. “I’d like to go there someday.”

  “The Lady Bearer was the first mortal in our world to travel there unbidden in centuries,” said Niall. “It can be rather dangerous.”

  “But from the story…Liam, Jess, Duke and Quinn all crossed over into your world too.”

  “Brought there by Dark forces,” countered Niall.

  Vivian frowned. “You said unbidden. What does that mean?”

  “Even after the accords,” Niall said slowly, “the Queens and their favored courtiers would bring certain mortals into our world. The particularly beautiful and the particularly talented. Musicians, artists, poets.”

  She snorted. “So, the rules didn’t apply to the Queens?”

  “Of course not,” said Niall, as though his answer were the only logical conclusion.

  “Of course not,” she repeated thoughtfully, propping the elbow of her good arm on her knee and her chin in her hand, watching Niall through lowered lashes.

  “Our world is very different from yours,” Niall continued.

  “I couldn’t have guessed,” she said.

  “And you accuse me of mocking you,” the Seelie man said, though there was only bemusement in his voice.

  “I think you have a few more centuries of experience in, well, everything,” Vivian pointed out, “so you’ve got to let me get my shots in every now and again.”

  “Every now and again,” he agreed.

  “So how is it that Molly is half Fae? How did that even happen in the first place, and how did she survive for so long in our world? I saw what it did to Merrick, and that was only from a few days.”

  Niall let out a long sigh. “I cannot rightly answer. I know that Molly is the daughter of one of Mab’s favored courtiers. Or he was one of her favored courtiers. He was a Knight, brother to her former Vaelanmavar, and he had traveled into the mortal world.”

  “Ah, certain Knights could travel into the mortal world, but mortals couldn’t travel into your world?”

  “That was the general idea. I cannot speak in detail to the Unseelie ways, but in my Court we had strict rules governing our conduct while in the mortal world. Under pain of death, we could not reveal our existence to any mortal.”

  “Did that include a ban on…well, having a kid with a mortal woman?”

  “It has become increasingly difficult for Sidhe women to bear children in the past two centuries,” Niall replied, his voice now serious. “To my understanding, there was a faction within the Unseelie Court that advocated taking mortal women to bear children, and binding the mortal half of the young ones.”

  “What would that do? Would that make them wholly Fae?”

  “No. But it would suppress their mortal characteristics. It would allow their Sidhe blood to become dominant.”

  Vivian tilted her head. “I don’t really see what’s so bad about having kids with mortal women.”

  “Some of the Unseelie did not consider consent a necessity,” said Niall tightly.

  “They…forced them?”

  Niall shook his head. “There is no need for violence when you have glamour and other manners of convincing mortals to do your bidding.”

  Vivian shivered despite the bright sunlight. “When you put it that way, it almost sounds worse.”

  “It may be,” said Niall. “You have no way of defending yourselves against something you’ve never encountered before.”

  “I wish I knew how to do at least a little bit of magic. At least to defend myself, you know?” Vivian shifted uneasily, the bright grass and warm sunlight now an uncomfortable counterpoint to her dark thoughts.

  “I would not let anything from my world harm you,” said Niall. “And though he is one of the Exiled, I think that Tyr would come to your defense as well.”

  Vivian raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you all out of juice for a few days anyway? I’ve got a dead battery and an unpredictable mute as my guardians. That’s encouraging.”

  Niall drew back slightly in surprise and then looked at her thoughtfully. “I must confess, I’m still learning your mortal colloquialisms, but I think I see your point.”

  Mayhem bounded back toward them with a large stick held triumphantly in her jaws. She dropped the stick in front of Vivian, panting excitedly into the redhead’s face.

  “Ugh, May, you need a breath mint,” muttered Vivian, but she picked up the stick with her good hand and threw it from her seated position. Mayhem shot after it, a black and brown streak in the grass.

  “I could teach you,” said Niall.

  Vivian turned toward him slowly, as though she was afraid that she’d break whatever spell had come over him to offer such a thing if she moved too fast. “I…excuse me?”

  “You understood what Corsica’s spell orbs were,” said Niall. “You have a good instinct for things. I could teach you.”

  Mayhem dropped the stick in front of Niall this time, her tongue lolling happily over her white teeth as the Seelie picked up the stick and deftly threw it. Both Vivian and the dog watched the impossibly high arc of the stick, now small in the sky, and Mayhem sprinted off in pursuit with a delighted bark.

  “Looks like you could teach me how to throw a stick too,” commented Vivian dryly. “I think you might have thrown that clear into the next county.”

  “Perhaps across the road, but not into the next county,” replied Niall.

  Vivian chuckled and then tried to catch her breath. Every time she tried to gather her thoughts, they scattered like a canister of coffee beans spilled onto the floor, clattering every which way. Had Niall really just offered to teach her magic? Could she even learn magic? Was magic even the proper word to describe what Niall was going to teach her?

  “If my offer was too forward, you needn’t say anything,” Niall said calmly.

  “No,” managed Vivian. “I mean, no, it wasn’t too forward. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. Is magic the right word for what you’re going to be teaching me? Would that make me a witch? How do you know that I can even do magic? I don’t think I’m descended from an ancient priestess like Tess.”

  “Magic is the word that best describes it in your mind, so there is no harm in calling it that,” replied Niall. “And it does not much matter what you call yourself either. Sorceress, mage or witch. Or nothing at all. You can simply remain Vivian, if you prefer.”

  She tried to hide the delighted shiver that scuttled down her spine at the sound of her name on Niall’s lips, trying to focus on the res
t of his answer.

  “The vast majority of mortals in Doendhtalam are actually capable of using their taebramh. That is the substance that gives you dreams and has long flowed between our two worlds. With all I have seen, I think you could learn to use your taebramh, but you will need a teacher to do so.”

  “Yes,” said Vivian. Her heart thudded painfully hard in her chest. This was really happening. She’d just agreed to learn magic from one of Queen Titania’s Knights. When she’d unlocked the front door to find Merrick and Luca cooking breakfast in the kitchen, she hadn’t immediately understood that her entire world had changed. After the battle with the bone sorcerer, when she’d awoken in her bed with a sore body and a fiercely throbbing arm, she’d learned that admission to this world of dangerous secrets came at a price. Now, she took a deep breath and nodded to herself. “Yes, I want to learn.” She met Niall’s eyes. “When can we start?”

  Niall smiled. “Right now, if you have no objections.”

  “We might need to move to the porch so I can sit in the shade,” Vivian confessed a bit sheepishly. “I can already feel a sunburn starting.”

  “That is as good a place as any,” said Niall. He stood elegantly and offered Vivian his hand. She looked up at him with narrowed eyes, but she didn’t see any condescension on his handsome face, so she took his hand and let him pull her gently to her feet.

  “I’m sure Ross will be working on calling police departments or something like that,” she said as they walked back toward the house, “so if she needs me, I’ll have to help.”

  “I understand,” said Niall.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling up to this? I mean, you giving part of your heart’s strength and all, I could understand if you aren’t, and I can wait until tomorrow or…” Vivian trailed off as Niall stopped and laid a hand on her good shoulder. She thought she might just melt on the spot, and not all from the growing heat of the morning sun.

  “I would not have offered if I did not mean it,” Niall said, his pale eyes glinting with something like amusement. They sat on the top step of the front porch, watching Mayhem finally lope across the yard with the stick that Niall had thrown so ridiculously far.