I knelt on a clod of dirt clutched in an ogre’s hand, and I stared up at the impossible.
My voice cracked. “Those are dragons.”
Raven stared up at them, wonder absent in his gaze. “They are.”
“Those don’t exist,” I explained to him very slowly. “Not even in Faerie.”
In search of richer nesting grounds, dragons had followed the first fae into the mortal realm where they were hunted to extinction by humans. All the history books said so. Yet there they were. Breathing. Flying. Alive.
The sleek lizards gliding over my head wore glistening metallic scales, and there were two beasts for each primary color. Their tails were streamers sailing in their wake. With serpentine necks, their heads were the size of entire horses with teeth the length of my arm. Wings extended from either side of their spines on nubby arms. Between finger-like striations, the skin looked as thin as silk.
Each wore a thick leather bridle clasped with a black cable.
“Mother has an affinity for winged creatures.” Raven swept out his arm. “This is her legacy.”
The edge of bitterness made me seek his face. “Not her son?”
“Heirs die.” His eyes hardened. “Bastards rise.” He glanced at me. “Legends are immortal.”
“How does no one know this?” A legend was only as effective as its reach.
“The Unseelie know, when it is important they should remember.” He made it sound like that was enough. “There is an enchantment on the beasts. Anyone may see them while on these grounds. Unless the visitor has been given the gift of recall, they forget the dragons after they leave, thus protecting their existence.”
I soaked in their ethereal beauty. “I will forget them.”
“For now.” His gaze went distant. “There is always later to consider.”
As the ogre’s hand swung past the landing pad, Raven asked, “Would you like a closer look?”
“No.” I turned my back on them. “That’s not why I’m here. I can’t play tourist with you.”
“Another time perhaps.” He called out to the ogre, “To the front gate.”
Gravity ceased to exist. The ogre lowered his hand so fast my feet left the ground, hair flew over my head. With sweaty palms, I clutched Raven’s arm. Unflustered by the free fall, he was my anchor.
Before the ogre’s knuckles brushed the pavers leading to the main gate, he slowed our descent. My knees buckled, and I sat down hard. He twisted his wrist and dropped us—dirt clod and all—onto the path. Still on my knees, I leaned forward on my hands and kissed the icy ground. While my churning gut settled, I braced my spinning forehead against the cold stones under my palms.
Raven took my arm and forced me to my feet. “It’s dangerous to show weakness here.”
I broke his grip. “I’m about to show what I had for lunch.”
“That would be unwise.”
“As unwise as wandering around this place with you?”
His face cracked into a smile. “As guides go, you could do worse.”
That circlet must be on too tight. This wasn’t a sightseeing tour or a vacation. This was a rescue mission. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself to stop dwelling on the part where I hadn’t exactly came here willingly either. Raven was the means through which my goals would be achieved.
Once the ink dried on the deals we were about to make, he would be my ticket home.
“We should get inside.” I stepped toward the door. “I don’t want to keep them waiting.”
Raven’s strides matched mine as we met the guards and gained entry. We were led through long halls that called Raven’s home to mind. Ornate fireplaces acted as centerpieces in every room we passed, warming the air to a bearable degree. Their fires lacked the friendly warmth of Raven’s. The dripping mantles and puddled hearths convinced me the fires were coaxed from wood and elbow grease, not the product of elemental magic.
More’s the pity. It was handy having a fire come when you called it.
“Wait here.” He eased in front of me. “I don’t want there to be any surprises.”
I nodded and stepped to one side.
When the door opened before us, he ducked inside a dimly lit room that smelled of rich incense. Myrrh undertones made my nasal passages itch.
Grateful for a moment alone, I straightened my clothing and smoothed my windblown hair with trembling fingers. I shoved all thoughts of dragons and ogres and elementals into the back of my mind.
When Raven returned, I was ready. One look at his formidable expression made me hesitate.
What had he gotten me into?
Chapter Twenty
Potent magic slithered over me, making my skin crawl as I entered the gloomy chamber. The enormous room was empty. Nothing decorated the space except for the massive tapestries depicting winter scenes. Straight ahead of us, built into the ice-block wall, was a low balcony. Two identical mirrors, both longer than I was tall, were tacked onto the wall behind the railing, and two matching chairs sat before them.
A path lined with flickering candles led us through the shadowy expanse to a small circle scraped into the frozen floor. Raven stepped inside it without hesitation. I did not. Circles were common symbols used by witches and other magic practitioners as a safety net while casting complex or dangerous spells.
Fae blood ran with magic. They needed visual aids as much as I needed an instruction manual on breathing. I waited, expecting Raven to offer an explanation, but he stared straight ahead with cold determination.
I followed his gaze. Two grotesque fae had materialized on the balcony and now sat in the chairs. Their bodies were humanoid, but their heads were...wrong. One eye the size of a basketball rose from the fleshy stumps of their necks. One had a red iris, the other’s was blue.
“No harm will come to you here, child.”
The baritone voice beat at me from all sides.
I turned a slow circle. “Who are you, and what right do you have to make such promises?”
Around us thunderous laughter boomed. A burly man limned in green light strode toward us, appearing out of thin air. Bare-chested, he wore leather pants and matching mud-brown boots. A wild nest of hair was drawn into a frizzy knot at his nape. His beard hung in tangles down to his navel with leaves and twigs and burs as accents. He stood two heads taller than me and was three times as wide, his muscles thick and smeared with dried mud.
“I am the Master of the Wild Hunt.” A breeze whirled around him smelling of fresh soil and wet dog. “As your father cannot be here, I have come in his stead. I will grant you my protection while you are on these grounds. That is a sight more certain and true than any offer this one can make you.”
“He’s right.” Raven set his jaw. “His word is good. Have no fear of that.”
The apparition that was the Huntsman waited until I stepped beside Raven.
Magic sizzled and popped, sealing us inside a protective bubble anchored to the floor by the circle.
“Thierry Thackeray,” a voice drifted from the balcony. “We have been expecting you.”
I glanced first at the seated fae before my gaze slid past their shoulders to the wall behind them.
Reflections now filled each of the mirrors. Both were sidhe males, both dressed in somber robes. They were visible to us from the waist up, the rest of their bodies obscured by the odd fae sitting before them. The crests above their frames luminesced, revealing ornate designs. One matched Raven’s, a raptor with a serpent in its claws, except it faced right-side up. The other showed a stag with enormous antlers wearing a serene expression.
The image in the frame beneath the stag smiled benevolently at me. “I am Consul Liosliath of House Seelie.”
Under the raptor crest, Liosliath’s counterpart scowled. “I am Consul Daibhidh of House Unseelie.”
“You have been informed of our dilemma,” Liosliath intoned. “We are most grateful for your consideration in coming here to attempt a mutually beneficial compromise.”
Compromise. Blackmail. Poh-tay-toh. Pah-tah-toh.
“What you do not know,” Daibhidh said with a hint of a grin, “is that King Moran is dead.”
I jerked my head toward Raven. The king was dead? Crap. Now all the threats and secrecy made sense. A crown was at stake. Wars had been fought for much less. Double crap. The conclave didn’t know. If they had, they would have locked the threshold down so tight not even a pixie fart could drift through the wards.
“He was murdered,” Liosliath corrected. “Therefore, a new king must be chosen by Right of Hunt.”
My breath caught in the vise clamping around my chest. They meant the Coronation Hunt, the hunt my father had instituted as a means of determining which house was fit to rule without rampant bloodshed.
I rubbed my forehead, taking all of it in. “There hasn’t been an assassination since...”
“Not since the Black Dog assembled the High Court and instituted the Right of Hunt,” Daibhidh supplied. “It was his blood that sealed the contract and brought peace to Faerie. The Coronation Hunt was his idea, and is his responsibility to maintain. The Huntsman is prepared, his hounds eager, and yet Macsen is not here.”
“The Sullivan tracks our king’s murderer,” Liosliath scolded.
Daibhidh sneered. “He does one duty to the detriment of another.”
The Huntsman exhaled on a snort.
“They can argue for days,” he told me in a quiet voice. “The Seelie want your father to find the king’s killer. The Unseelie want him to lead the hunt so that a new ruler is crowned before the old one is cold in his grave.”
“My mother was taken,” I told him just as softly. “She’s the only reason I’m here.”
He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I’ve heard nothing of a human in the Halls.”
Dread soured the broth in my gut. Mom had to be here. She had to be.
Tired of listening to the consuls bicker, I wanted straight answers. I just needed to get their attention first.
I tested the bubble with my toe. It held. I can fix that. Murmuring my Word, I removed my glove, and soft light pooled at my feet. Pushing energy through my hand, I shoved my palm straight up against the dome. Magic hit the reinforced shield, and it exploded outward with a deafening pop of air.
Silence fell around me. Into it, I challenged, “I came here to negotiate for the return of my mother.”
“Your mother is missing?” Liosliath’s brow furrowed as his reflection glanced at Daibhidh. “Is this House Unseelie’s doing?”
Unruffled by the accusation, Daibhidh waved his hand. “For all we know her parents are missing together.”
“You don’t have her?” Doubt dripped from my every word. “Then we have nothing further to discuss.”
“Are you saying,” Daibhidh crooned, “that you would exchange your life for your mother’s?”
“Are you admitting you took her?” I growled under my breath.
“No.” His lips twitched. “I have, however, heard things.”
I gritted my teeth and played along. “What kind of things?”
“Whispers.” His image rippled. “It will cost you to hear them.”
Raven gripped my arm. I shrugged him off me. It was his fault I was here in the first place.
“Name your price,” I said with more boldness than I felt.
“Gather your father’s mantle. Act in his stead. Run in the hunt.” Daibhidh’s reflection stilled. “Accept his title, become the Black Dog of the Faerie High Court in his absence. Then you can know all that I do. Do you accept?”
Run in the hunt. The blood rushed from my face and left me chilled to the bone. The hunt was a death sentence.
“There must be something else I can offer.” Panic raised my voice an octave.
“Are you haggling over your mother’s worth?” Daibhidh clicked his tongue.
“No,” I snapped, mind whirling. Haggling was exactly what I was about to try.
There must be another way. What else did I have? What else could I do? What else?
“Faerie is a dangerous place for a woman to find herself alone. Especially one with such close ties to Macsen Sullivan.” Daibhidh pursed his lips. “Not all fae admire his legacy as we do, you understand, and as Sullivan himself is untouchable... A mortal, well, they are so defenseless, aren’t they?”
“She isn’t defenseless.” Magic leapt into my palm and burned bright. “She has me.”
“Ah.” He tapped a finger against his bottom lip. “That might be true, but what good are you to her here when she is, well, you don’t know where she is, do you?”
I clenched my fist and extinguished my power before I used it and got myself killed ahead of schedule.
“The choice is yours,” Daibhidh said. “She might survive Faerie alone. No mortal ever has, but there must always be a first.”
Choice? No. This was blackmail, a promise that if I didn’t play nice then neither would they, and there was good reason why such tactics were popular among the criminally inclined.
They worked.
“Time grows short. Arrangements must be made soon, whether you are a consideration or not.” Liosliath raised his eyebrows. “Have you made your decision?”
A knowing smirk wreathed Daibhidh’s face.
My heart beat hard once.
Kill or be killed.
“Yes.” I tasted fear when I swallowed. “I’ll do it.”
Beside me, the Huntsman issued a low growl that rumbled with anticipation.
Tuning him out, I demanded of Daibhidh, “Tell me all you know.”
“Your mother is kept safe by an Unseelie loyal to the crown.” Daibhidh linked his fingers over his middle. “Once your duty has been done, she will be returned exactly where and how she was found by those who took her.” His ageless gaze captured mine. “Before these witnesses, I swear this to you.”
I breathed a sigh that left me limp with relief.
Mom was safe. She was going to be okay.
“Thierry.” Raven filled my name with anguish.
“Faerie owes you a debt of gratitude.” Liosliath visibly relaxed. “As a tradition your father himself established, your participation in the Coronation Hunt ensures it is a legacy in the making.”
Tradition.
Legacy.
The magnitude of what I had agreed to crashed over me and left me trembling.
The king was dead. The Huntsman stood at my elbow. And I had just volunteered to play tribute.
Crap, crap, crap.
“This is what the consuls wanted all along,” I said under my breath. “This is why you brought me here.”
Raven refused to look at me.
But I knew. This was why they sent him to fetch me.
Coronations were held once every one hundred years. According to lore, the purpose of the Wild Hunt was to ride through the mortal realm on All Hallows’ Eve, collecting the souls of fae who died on Earth and returning them to Faerie, to the Ever-After, the fae equivalent of Heaven.
On one such hunt, the Huntsman and his pack of sleek, black hounds crossed a battlefield. Their guts were distended with spirit flesh and their hunger temporarily sated when their noses led them to one last feast. Two souls, one Seelie and one Unseelie, stood with their hands clasped as if unaware the hunt was upon them.
The pack leader ran ahead of the others. Confused when the spirits stood their ground, he approached them, sniffed them and allowed each to stroke his silky, midnight fur.
The Seelie held the hound’s gaze while the Unseelie spoke. “Only in death have we known peace. If we had raised our voices instead of our swords, much of our grief might have been circumvented. Loyal beast, reaper, it is our final wish that Faerie never endure the misery of another Thousand Years War.”
“Mark this day, Black Dog,” the Seelie intoned. “Tonight you are the hunter, but one hundred years hence, you shall become the hunted. One prince from each of our houses will hunt you across Faerie wearing the skins of hounds, goa
ded by your own Huntsman while you wear the skin of a sidhe noble. Your blood will anoint the new ruler and usher in one hundred more years of prosperity for the fae.”
Instead of consuming the spirits as the Huntsman had decreed, Black Dog bowed his head to their will. That simple act of defiance shattered the bonds between himself and the Huntsman, and Black Dog gained awareness. As a gift to aid him in the trials ahead, the Unseelie entered his left eye and the Seelie his right, so that Black Dog might always view both sides of any argument with impartiality.
Black Dog also gained the form of a man so that he might stand toe-to-toe with kings. He named himself Macsen Sullivan and established the Faerie High Court, choosing one Seelie and one Unseelie consul to join him, and instituted the Right of the Hunt.
Once a century, he was run to ground and torn to pieces. The blood of one man was spilled to determine a king. His sacrifice avoided the slaughter of thousands had the houses gone to war for the crown. For the seven days after he was laid to rest in Faerie’s soul, the realm mourned him. Lore said those tears seeped into the soil and restored him, and he rose at midnight on the seventh day made whole again.
My father was a legend, and by doing this, I too would go down in history. I just wouldn’t get back up again. I was half mortal. The best I could hope for was being long-lived. The immortality thing Mac had going didn’t extend to me.
This gave temp job a whole new meaning.
Raven stepped forward. “I claim the right of coimirceoir.”
Both consuls gaped at him.
The Huntsman growled, “On what grounds can you claim guardianship of this girl?”
“She is not a girl, but a woman.” Raven set his shoulders back. “She is also my wife.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Wife? Clearly I wasn’t the only one who had sniffed the toadstools.
“She looks surprised to hear you call her that,” the Huntsman observed.
The consuls exchanged wary glances.
Liosliath narrowed his eyes. “What proof do you offer of the validity of this union?”
“Thierry has warmed her hands at my hearth, eaten at my table.” A pinkish flush crept up Raven’s throat. “She has disrobed in my chambers and even now she wears the colors and cuts of my house.”
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