by Holly Bargo
Summarily dismissed, the fae officer bowed and returned to the boat.
Uberon turned his attention to Corinne, who squatted beside the refugee and tugged at the canvass covering his head.
“Why did they wrap him like this?”
“Probably to save him from blistering under the sun.”
“They could have treated him better than this,” she grumbled.
“And they will henceforth. As it is, he is lucky they did not leave him to drown.”
“And why would they?” She pulled the heavy fabric from the man’s bearded, sunburnt face and gasped.
“Samuel!” she shrieked. Her nose wrinkled at the stench of unwashed, putrid flesh. “It’s Samuel!”
Irrational, jealous rage surged through Uberon and he focused on exerting control and calm, rather than obliterating this filthy, damaged human who seemed to have some sort of claim on his mate’s affections. With a deep breath, he asked, “How do you know him, Corinne?”
She raised eyes shining with tears to him and announced, “He’s my brother.”
Uberon closed his eyes in a slow blink and congratulated himself for not having succumbed to that insane impulse to reduce the rescued man to a greasy smear. His sweet Corinne would never have forgiven that.
“Then I am doubly pleased he found his way to our shores,” he said and raised his hand in silent summons. The gesture brought pounding feet attached to six males presenting themselves for service.
“Fetch something on which to carry this man and transport him to the castle. Be careful with him.”
The volunteers nodded and ran off to find something they could use as a stretcher. Uberon and Corinne remained beside the unconscious man until he was shifted onto a litter and strapped to it to ensure he would not roll off as they toted him up the steep mountainside into the castle’s cool interior.
Once inside the castle, two gargoyles took the litter and followed the queen to a luxurious guest chamber. Curious, the Merogis sisters—except for Ari’Dongharad who yet remained abed recovering from her excursion into the Quol—followed, chattering speculations and broaching questions. Corinne sent servants scrambling for basins of water, rags and soap, to clean the man’s damaged body.
“You must leave us to this work, Your Majesty, Lady Ari’valia,” a senior maid said. “’Tis not proper for you to be here for this.”
Worried, but truly having no desire to see her brother naked, Corinne bowed to the servant’s admonition and excused herself.
“I will help,” Ari’valia volunteered. She met Corinne’s gaze and seemed to perceive something that no one other than Uberon had. “He is important to you, isn’t he?”
“He’s my brother,” Corinne whispered. “I don’t know how he got here, but we must nurse him back to health.”
Overhearing the queen, the maid interjected in a crisp tone, “Then leave us to get him cleaned up. We must treat his wounds. Lady Ari’valia may return later to assist in his convalescence.”
Wrapping her arm around Ari’valia’s shoulders, Corinne left the room. The door closed behind them with a decisive click of the latch.
“He will recover. Urmentrűd is an experienced nurse. She is whom the human guards and sailors seek when they suffer injuries,” Sin’clannad reassured her as she and the other sisters gathered around the queen.
Corinne nodded and found a bench nearby on which to sit and wait until the servants permitted her back inside the room with her brother.
She felt as though she waited countless hours; however, she knew better. She leaped up from the bench when the door opened and rushed inside the room at the healer’s approving nod. Thoroughly bathed, his body no longer exuded the foul stench of infection and unwashed skin. His short, ash blonde hair had been shorn to a velvety fuzz upon his scalp. Neat white bandages wrapped around his arms and torso. Sharp herbal scents wafted from them, telling of the healing salves and unguents used to treat his wounds and fight infection.
Corinne pulled a chair next to the bed and took a seat. With exquisite care, she took her brother’s limp hand in hers and held it. She whispered, the words breaking, “Samuel, it’s me, Corinne. You’re safe now. Please wake up. You’re safe now.”
She did not know how long she sat by her brother’s side until the king himself entered the room.
“I can’t leave him alone,” she protested.
“Ari’valia will keep him company,” he assured her.
“But he doesn’t know her. She’s a stranger to him.”
“No male minds waking to a pretty girl beside him,” he said.
Corinne gave in, accepting the truth of that pronouncement. Ari’valia took the vacated chair and grasped Samuel’s big, rough hand in her small, soft ones. She promised, “I will have you notified of any change.”
Corinne nodded and allowed Uberon to lead her to supper.
A week passed during which Samuel burned with fever, thrashing and shouting in delirium. The fever abated as his body’s own defenses and the strengthening, antiseptic herbal medicines forced down his throat and used to treat the extensive wounds on his body fought to keep him alive and restore him to health. Corinne spent uncounted hours at his bedside, assisting as she was able, from bathing his skin with cool, wet cloths to drawing cool currents of air from the castle’s depths into the room to relieve the heat of his fever.
Finally, the fever broke and he slept a natural sleep. Corinne wept with relief, not protesting when Uberon picked her up and carried her to bed where he wrapped his body around hers and held her within the warmth of his love and protection.
On the eighth day, Samuel’s eyelids fluttered open. Instinct and training held him still as he waited for his blurry vision to clear and he took in what information he could with his other senses.
“Samuel?”
Ah, he recognized that voice. But his mouth and throat felt too dry to utter a single syllable.
A slim, strong arm slid under his head to lift him just enough for a cup to dribble a trickle of cool, herbal tasting water past his slack lips. He swallowed. In came another dribble. He swallowed again, taking pleasure in the way the cold tea soothed his throat.
“More,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and rusty, as the cup was withdrawn.
“Only water now,” came a soft reply from that voice he recognized. Another cup pressed to his lips and drizzled a bit of untainted water into his mouth. He swallowed.
“Thanks,” he muttered and fell back asleep.
When next Samuel awoke, his vision cleared to reveal a young woman, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old with dark hair and large brown eyes like a doe. The girl helped prop him up to drink several swallows of pure water. She said something in a language he neither recognized nor understood: it wasn’t Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, French, or German. The consonants were sharp and the vowels short and flat, not unpleasant to the ear.
The girl held up a bowl and a spoon and mimicked eating. He nodded his agreement. The girl barked an order and a burly servant that looked more like stone than flesh and blood entered. Samuel cursed his weakness, because he could neither defend the girl nor himself from the hulking creature. However, the creature paid him no more heed than a piece of furniture as he hoisted Samuel into a sitting position propped up by extra pillows the pretty girl stuffed behind his back.
“Corinne?” he asked, hoping that the girl would recognize the name, because he swore that he’d seen and heard his sister in this strange place, this place from where he would rescue her, come hell or high water.
The girl beamed and repeated, “Corinne.” She pointed toward the door to let him know that someone named Corinne did exist beyond that door. Or maybe Corinne meant outhouse in her language. He did not know.
The girl pointed to herself. “Ari’valia.” She pressed a fingertip to his chest, bare except for the bandages, and said, “Samuel.”
He thought her accent charming. Then he realized she had correctly identified his name.
/> “Yes. Samuel,” he said and managed a weak smile.
The girl nodded, touched that slender finger to her breastbone, and repeated, “Ari’valia.”
“Ari’valia,” he repeated obediently.
She nodded and smiled and held up the bowl, that lesson having concluded in favor of feeding him. Samuel attempted to raise his arms, but the muscles trembled and his bones felt as though they were magnetically affixed to the bed. He opened his mouth and let the pretty girl spoonfeed him like a baby. It was better than starving.
Soon thereafter, he drifted off to sleep again.
When he awoke next, Corinne sat beside him.
“You’re awake!”
“Corinne,” he whispered, blinking with a potent mixture of relief and disbelief. His bleary eyes took in the fine silk of her strange costume. “How?”
The corner of her mouth crooked up and she said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
“I never did like that movie,” he grated. “Where are we? How do we get out of here? Mom and Dad have been frantic with worry.”
“You eat. I’ll talk.”
He nodded, knowing he didn’t have the strength to do anything but comply. She held a spoonful of some sort of porridge to his mouth and began speaking.
“We’re in Quoliálfur,” she began. “It’s in an … an alternate dimension.”
Samuel frowned in obvious disbelief and worry that his baby sister had somehow been brainwashed.
“I know what you’re thinking, Sam. I’m not crazy or on drugs or anything like that. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
He sighed and opened his mouth for another spoonful of the bland, pasty substance.
“I’m … married, I guess you could say, to the king of Quoliálfur. He’s good to me.”
Samuel’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, because “good” might have been relative in comparison to torment.
“He loves me and I love him.”
“Marriages can be dissolved, Corinne. I’ll get you out of here.”
Setting aside the bowl of porridge, she sighed and unbuttoned the high neck of her gown.
“Corinne, I don’t want to see—” he protested.
She cut him off as she pulled the fabric open to expose the silver engraved in intricate patterns into her skin and the black diamonds sparkling among the design. “This marriage can’t be dissolved.”
“He did this to you?”
“Magic did this to me.”
“There’s no such thing as magic, Corinne. You always did take those old fairy tales too much to heart.”
She held up her hand, palm flat and facing upward. A ball of flame popped into existence and danced on her skin without burning her. Then it winked out of existence. She turned her hand so the palm faced him and spread her fingers. With separate little pops, four small flames danced between her fingers and began to swirl around her hand in random patterns.
“There is such a thing as magic and we’re caught in a fairy tale, Samuel. It took me a long time to accept that and I will give you as much time as I can for you to reach the same conclusion.”
She picked up the bowl and spoon and resumed feeding him. “Do you know how you got here?”
“My team … oh, God, my team,” he groaned. “Are they here, too. Do you know where they are?”
She shook her head. “The sailors who brought you here said you were the only survivor. Where were you?”
Samuel leaned his head back against the pillows and struggled to contain the upswell of grief and rage that threatened to explode. After a long moment, he squashed the violent emotion and locked it down to enable him to speak.
“We were chasing traffickers about two hundred miles west-southwest of Bermuda, he began.
“The Bermuda Triangle?” his sister asked.
“In that area, I suppose,” he answered. “Why? That stuff’s all been debunked. There’s no mystery to that area of the ocean.”
She shrugged and said, “Continue. Please.”
“My team and I were chasing traffickers and we were hit by a sudden squall. It came up from nowhere. One minute we were bouncing across the waves, and the next our boat was dead in the water and sinking.”
“Oh, Samuel.”
He closed his eyes against the hazy memories of his teammates one by one losing their strength and slipping, exhausted, beneath the waves. “I don’t know how long we floated. Did anyone survive?”
“Just you. You were half-dead when we brought you in.”
“I’ve got to get back to my CO.”
“Sam, there is no going back.” She averted her gaze to gather her thoughts, then looked back at him to lock eyes. “Coming here changes us. It’s a one-way trip.”
“I get that it’s primitive here,” he said, looking around as much as he was able. “But I’ll get us out of here, Sis.”
“I can’t leave. I don’t want to leave. My life is here with Uberon.”
“What the hell kind of name is Uberon. Who the hell is he?”
“I shall excuse your ignorance just this once,” came a cool, deep voice from the doorway.
Samuel’s jaw snapped shut as the man he surmised had abducted his sister and brainwashed her entered the room looking like a costar in a Lord of the Rings movie. From his imposing height to his booted feet, the man looked absolutely, impossibly authentic.
“Never again speak to Corinne with disrespect or I’ll kill you,” the man threatened.
“Uberon, please, this is a huge adjustment for him,” Samuel’s sister pleaded. She looked at her brother. “Sam, watch what you say. Uberon’s a bit protective.”
“He kidnapped you.”
“I gave myself to him and he … he …”
“I kept what was gifted to me.” The tall, regal man turned weird, silver eyes with vertical pupils to Samuel and added, “Heed Corinne. She was your sister, but she is now and forever my mate.”
Samuel shook his head in weak denial. Corinne placed a hand on his shoulder. He met her gaze and realized with a sinking heart that her jade green eyes had no white sclera and the pupils were vertical, too. He glanced at her hand and swallowed uneasily at the sharp claws that curved from her fingertips. Changed indeed.
“Sam, we’ll talk later. In the meantime, consider that you’ve been treated well here and that I am happy, truly happy, here.”
Samuel leaned his head back against the pillows and accepted his circumstances … for now.
CHAPTER 23
Corinne’s brother recuperated with the speed and single-minded focus of an elite warrior, which he was. As soon as he was able to hobble around with a cane, she guided him to the small chapel where he knelt at in a pew, bowed his head, and prayed to a God he accused of abandoning him. He understood the irony of that, but didn’t care. He watched his sister, lurking out of sight to see how Uberon treated her when not in his presence.
“The king dotes upon her and would never allow anything to harm her,” a gravelly voice from behind him murmured.
Samuel spun about, surprised that something so huge and apparently made of animated stone could creep up behind him unnoticed. Neither his balance nor his strength being quite restored, he wobbled and tilted. A large silicone hand grasped his upper arm and steadied him. Samuel put his hand on the major domo’s bare forearm and felt … stone. Living stone. Cool, polished smooth, impenetrable.
“Y-y-you’re …”
“A gargoyle,” Golsat replied. “Your concern for her Majesty does you credit, but there is no need.”
The term gargoyle sank into Samuel’s brain. His knees buckled. Golsat reacted quickly and hauled him to a bench.
“Now do you believe?” the major domo challenged.
“This … this is … impossible,” Samuel muttered, shaking his head, fisting his hands on his knees.
“This is not your old world. My Lady Corinne has found her place here and so must you.”
“I have to go back.”
; “There is no going back. Only a handful of fae have mastered the art of opening portals and traveling between worlds.”
“He’s one of them,” Samuel said, jutting his unshaven chin toward the doorway of the room where Uberon and Corinne played cards with Ari’valia and Sin’clannad.
“Aye. But he’ll not bend to your persuasion.”
“He’ll bend to hers.”
“She will not go back. And he carries letters to your parents to ease their worry.”
“So, that’s where the letters come from,” he murmured. With a sigh of defeat, Samuel bowed his head and admitted to being caught in a no-win situation. Golsat sat beside him in easy silence. The heavy wooden bench creaked beneath his weight.
“What am I going to do here?” Samuel wondered aloud. “I’m a Navy SEAL, but those skills mean nothing here.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are accustomed to being a strong man, yes? And you have the demeanor of a warrior.”
“In my world, I am a warrior.”
“Then you simply need a king to whom you will swear fealty.”
“I’m no vassal or villein.”
A sound rumbled from Golsat’s deep chest. Samuel realized the gargoyle was chuckling.
“All here are vassals to Uberon, King of Quoliálfur. He is not the first king I have served, nor the most lenient, but he is just and honorable. You could do much worse than swear fealty to him.”
“Did he put you up to this?”
Golsat frowned. “No one forces a gargoyle to do anything he does not wish to do. In my own way, I am just as powerful as he.”
“Then why not rule your own kingdom?”
“Administration sucks.”
Samuel gaped, eyebrows raised, then he laughed. “Corinne taught you that expression, didn’t she?”
Golsat favored him with a small smile. “She did. I find it apt on many occasions.”
“So, if my understanding is correct, then Uberon is über magical.” Samuel liked the pun. “Can you do what he does?”