Cruel Enchantment

by Bast, Anya

  The Seelie Royal raised an eyebrow. “Is that any way to address your queen?”

  Near her, the guards dropped Aeric onto his stomach. He roused a little and groaned.

  “You stopped being my queen when I left Ireland,” Emmaline answered in an even voice.

  The temperature in the room dropped several degrees with the rise of the Summer Queen’s anger. “Leave us!” she barked at the guards. All of them bowed deeply and left the room, closing the heavy door behind them.

  “How did you find me?” Emmaline asked. “How did you—” She made a sound of frustration, turning her head away and closing her eyes for a moment on a rush of emotion. “How did you know I even entered Piefferburg?”

  The queen gave a short laugh and glanced at Aeric, who had rolled to his back and was struggling to open his eyes. “Do you think he was the only one wishing and wanting and waiting for you to enter this place? I knew the moment you crossed past the wardings of Piefferburg, but he got to you first. Then you were trapped in the Black Tower and beyond my reach. I had to arrange to have you run out of the Black before I could pluck you for my own use.”

  What? Her mind fumbled for a moment, putting it all together. “You mean you arranged to have Kolbjorn come after me? To run me out of the Black? Did you . . . pay him?”

  She laughed again. “No, I didn’t have to pay him. All I had to do was have a few words dropped into certain ears over in the Black. You have so many enemies over there; it was only a question of time before someone went after you. Kieran Aindréas Cairbre Aimhrea was most interested to hear about it. It seems his oh-so-powerful friends kept him in the dark with that pertinent little piece of information.”

  Next to her on the floor, Aeric groaned. “Kieran could have killed her, you bitch.”

  The Summer Queen’s eyes narrowed and Emmaline braced herself to be spanked by her magick, but the queen only lifted her chin and addressed Emmaline, as though Aeric were but a half-dead bug on the shiny marble. “I’m surprised, but grateful, that the Blacksmith didn’t get the job done . . . killing you, that is. I’m mystified as to why he didn’t. I thought you’d be lost to me forever, Emmaline, once he got his hands on you.”

  Aeric pushed up from the floor carefully, his dusky blond hair shadowing his face. “Why don’t you just come out with it, Caoilainn? You want your assassin back.”

  The Summer Queen’s hands tightened on her throne and the temperature dropped again. Emmaline was going to want a coat soon. “The Unseelie never give me the respect I deserve. If I knew it wouldn’t spark a war between the Black and Rose I would put you down right now, Blacksmith.”

  Aeric raised his head and studied her through his hair. “Do that and the Shadow Queen will put you down.”

  The queen laughed. “Aislinn? I knew her when she was a baby. She’s ignorant and untried.”

  “She’s young, but powerful. Don’t underestimate her. I am claimed by the Unseelie as a subject and Emmaline is under Queen Aislinn’s protection. You can’t do anything to either of us.”

  “I have no interest in you, Unseelie. You’re just along for the ride, though I would like to know what made you go from Emmaline’s killer to her protector.” The Summer Queen turned her viperlike attention back to Emmaline. “Why are you here in Piefferburg, my dear? Certainly you didn’t come just to catch up on old times.”

  She didn’t want to tell the Summer Queen about the key or the piece of the bosca fadbh. Her jaw locked and she looked down at the floor, trying to come up with some kind of plausible story. She’d never, ever thought she’d come face-to-face with the Summer Queen with the weight of her true identity on her.

  “Oh, come now. We have no secrets between us, Emmaline. I was like a mother to you at one time. I still have your crossbow, you know. Would you like to see it? Hold it, perhaps? I’m sure the wood misses the feel of your expert hands.”

  Emmaline flinched as if the queen had hit her.

  “We’re done here,” Aeric rasped in anger. “You can’t hold us without pissing off the Shadow Queen, so let us go.”

  “Wrong,” the queen barked. “You can leave, Blacksmith. I’m keeping my former assassin until she sees the error of her ways. She is mine, body and soul, and it’s my right to hold her.”

  FOURTEEN

  AERIC studied the Summer Queen from the hem of her heavy gown to the top of her diamond-encrusted hairdo. Being one of the older fae, he knew a lot about Caoilainn Elspeth Muirgheal. Already ancient at the time of his birth, she’d been queen since long before he was born, but his father often talked about the dark times before she’d taken command of the Seelie. Amazingly, she was a bringer of the light to the Seelie Tuatha Dé after a period of sadistic violence when her father had ruled.

  But blatant brutality had been traded for other problems.

  She was an egoist, not so much ruling her court as creating her own personal adoration society. She fed her people lies about the Unseelie, creating fear and loathing where it wasn’t necessary. She kept her court weak magickally, most thought because she feared someone might challenge her rule.

  He also knew that although the Seelie as a whole were fairly harmless, the Seelie queen was not. She was infamous for ordering executions for even minor offenses; the floor Aeric stood on had seen quite a few bloody heads rolling across it. Her magick was not to be underestimated, either. She might be the ruler of fluffy bunny white magick users, but she was not one herself. The Summer Ring she wore, like the Shadow Amulet, gave her enough magick to be the ultimate defender of the Seelie Court. She could toast someone on the spot if they pissed her off enough, and she hated disrespect.

  One would be wise to be cautious in her presence, speaking to her with the utmost deference and reverence.

  “You will not touch her, you fucking coldhearted bitch.”

  Aeric had never been cautious, deferent, or reverent.

  The temperature in the room dropped below freezing for a moment and the Summer Queen rose from her throne. Her words echoed throughout the chamber, laced with angry magick that roughed their skin with the sensation of burlap. “You need to learn the meaning of the word circumspect, Blacksmith. It’s something you are required to be when you are in the presence of one of your betters.”

  “Admit you killed her parents.” He pointed at Emmaline, who was studying the floor. “Admit you engineered everything when she was young and vulnerable in order to create the perfect assassin for your use. Admit it!”

  Emmaline’s head snapped up and her gaze locked with his. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted in surprise. Yeah, he’d figured that part out all on his own; it had just taken him a few centuries to get there.

  “Guards!” the Summer Queen yelled.

  The Imperial Guard slammed the double doors open and marched into the throne room, their boots stomping on the marble and their rose and gold armor clanging.

  “Admit it!” Aeric roared, advancing on the Summer Queen. The guards grabbed his upper arms and hauled him backward. He bellowed at them and fought his way free, only to have several more grab him.

  “Subject of the Unseelie Court or not, you are under arrest, Blacksmith. If the Shadow Queen wants you back, she’s going to have to pay for it.” She waved her hand. “Get them both out of my sight. Emmaline, Lars has missed you. He can’t wait to see you again.”

  Emmaline went stock-still and paper pale at the mention of that name. Her reaction made a strong wave of protective-ness surge through him, made him fight the guards as hard as he could.

  The guards yanked him back toward a door partially concealed in the throne room wall. He watched with rage simmering in his veins as they manhandled Emmaline out of the room. She’d appeared in shock when confronted with the Summer Queen, almost pushed over the edge psychologically. Now she was angry, pulling and pushing at the iron-strong hands of the guards as they dragged them both out of the throne room through a door that let out an odor of old blood and unwashed bodies as soon as it was opened.


  The dungeons.

  Just like the dungeons in the Black Tower, these were dank and filled with misery. It appeared even the shining ones couldn’t escape all the ugliness of life.

  They tossed him into a small cell with a concrete floor, piss bucket, and heap of moldy straw. Emmaline went into an identical one beside him. The fact that they weren’t completely separated was the only upside to this ordeal.

  He collapsed to the floor when they pushed him inside, his palms and almost his nose finding the gritty floor. “Are you all right?” he asked as he pushed up and looked over at her. She was sitting on the floor, one hand splayed behind her and her head bowed, hair concealing her face.

  “The key.” Her voice was rough with emotion.

  “I have it.” He moved closer to her. “Emmaline, are you all right?”

  It took her a moment to look at him. Her eyes weren’t quite focused. “I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t, of course. Seeing the Summer Queen again had thrown her. That name, Lars, had been like a kick to her abdomen. He licked his lips and looked around the cell for some way to escape. He wanted to punch something—someone, maybe someone named Lars. “How’s your injury?”

  “Messed up again.”

  “We’ll get out of here. Don’t worry.”

  She shook her head and looked up at him with a film of despair over her eyes. What was wrong with her? She needed to snap out of it. “She wants me back, Aeric. You’ll get out of here. I won’t.”

  There was a note of helplessness in her voice. Emmaline Siobhan Keara Gallagher was not helpless. She was a fighter, a survivor. Had seeing the Summer Queen flipped her backward in time, back to when she’d been under the Seelie Royal’s thumb? What sort of trauma had she received at the Summer Queen’s hands that would cause that kind of reaction?

  He gripped the bars that separated them so hard his knuckles went white. “You fucking stop that right now. You have to get out of here, Emmaline. The mission. The key. The key. Don’t you remember?”

  The haze cleared from her eyes and they locked on his with a ferocity that he recognized. “The key. You’re right.” Her expression hardened. “I need to make it through this.”

  “Fuck, yeah, you do. The Shadow Queen will bargain for us. We’ll both get out.”

  She shook her head. “The Shadow Queen can bargain for you, not me.”

  “You can bargain for your release with the promise of the piece. She’ll let you go if you agree to give it to her once you get it.”

  “No.” The word was a lash of anger. Her expression turned vicious for a moment. “She can’t know about the piece, let alone possess it, Aeric. She can’t be allowed that much power. The piece needs to go to the Shadow Queen. I see that very clearly, having met her. The Shadow Queen lacks the . . . insanity of the Summer Queen.”

  “Why does the Summer Queen want you back so badly?”

  “I was the perfect assassin. I could take on the appearance of anyone, I was strong, I healed fast, and I wasn’t much trouble.” She grinned. “I’m much more trouble now that a few centuries have passed. The Summer Queen just doesn’t realize it yet.”

  “She really fucked you up, didn’t she?”

  Emmaline’s grin faded and her eyes went out of focus again. “It wasn’t easy back then.”

  His voice was a low growl. “What did she do to you?”

  Her face took on that haze again, but she blinked and came back to herself almost right away. “I didn’t realize until years afterward that she’d murdered my parents and arranged for the conditions that pressed me into her service. Back then I really thought they’d died by accident. I was just a kid. I didn’t put it all together until later on.”

  “She did kill your parents. I’m sure of it.”

  “Yes.” The word sounded heavy with a grief he wasn’t sure she’d ever truly allowed herself to process.

  “What else did she do, besides make sure you starved for a couple years?”

  “I was ten when they died. Yes, you’re right, I starved for two years, though not all the time. I wasn’t totally alone. Graeme helped me sometimes.”

  “Not enough,” he rasped in anger.

  “After I’d had a good taste of the world as an orphan, that’s when the Summer Queen took me in. It was nice at first. I was warm and there was food, regular baths, safety. She made it clear it wasn’t for free. I was expected to work for my keep. She gave me crossbows and I trained with professionals. I learned how to use a knife, how to fight. When I turned fourteen, that’s when my first order to kill came.” Her fingers curled tight around the bars. “I resisted.”

  “And what happened?”

  She touched her abdomen in what seemed like an unconscious gesture and Aeric remembered the scars he’d seen there and on her upper thighs. His body tightened.

  “What happened?” His voice was a low, enraged lash in the fetid air.

  She jerked herself out of her stare and looked at him. “At that point, I trusted them.” She blinked. “They broke it, my trust.”

  “How?”

  “They took away my security, my comfort.” She looked away from him. “They showed me what life would be like if I disobeyed.”

  His hands tightened on the bars. “How?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Emmaline, you can trust me.” He touched her fingers and she grabbed on to them through the bars as if he could save her.

  Drawing a ragged breath, she forced the words out in a rush. “Forced nudity, solitary confinement, making me wear a black hood for as long as I could go without food or water.” She pressed her lips together, trembling, while he mentally kicked his ass a hundred different ways for forcing her into the burlap sack. No wonder she’d gone berserk. “I don’t want to talk specifics. The bottom line is that they broke me down and built me back up the way they wanted me. By that time only the killer they’d trained me to be was left. It suited them.”

  “You keep saying they, Emmaline. Who besides the Summer Queen did these things?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “Lars. It was always Lars. The Summer Queen never got her hands dirty; she only gave orders.” Her hand went to her stomach again.

  His gaze flicked downward. “What about the scars? Did Lars make those?”

  She nodded.

  He was going to kill this man. Tear his limbs off. Some of those scars were in very intimate places and she’d been a child. “How?”

  Emmaline had a faraway look on her face. It took her several moments to answer. “Knives,” she whispered.

  “Look at me.”

  She continued to stare off into the distance.

  “Look at me, Emmaline.”

  Blinking slowly, she turned her head toward him and her eyes focused on his face. “Sorry. I haven’t thought about that in a long time. I blocked it out.”

  Aeric gripped the bars and fought his temper. He’d always had a bad temper, but right now it was boiling. He wanted to find the Summer Queen and rip her apart with his bare hands. He wanted to strap Lars down and deliver that bastard’s karma fiftyfold.

  He took a deep breath, knowing he needed to at least seem calm for Emmaline’s sake. “Hey, Emmaline, it’s okay. That was a long time ago. It’s over and it will never happen again.” He spoke the last words with icy vehemence. He needed to get her out of here before the Summer Queen made him eat his words.

  It had been a long time ago, but what had happened to Emmaline had cut deep and left emotional scars. Those scars hadn’t healed; she’d only slapped some psychic Band-Aids over them. Seeing the Summer Queen again had ripped those Band-Aids off and she was bleeding.

  He wouldn’t be able to handle it if they hauled Emmaline away to fuck her up, bring her back to the same emotional state she’d been in when she’d worked for the queen. He’d go nuts if that happened and he was stuck in here unable to help her. He wasn’t sure how much magick the Summer Queen had—but despite being Seelie some of it was
dark. It was possible she could use magick to strip away some of Emmaline’s free will, just as she’d done when Emmaline was a child.

  He had to get Emmaline out of here. Now.

  “Funny. Feels like it happened yesterday.” She gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I never should have come into Piefferburg. It’s brought up junk that I buried a long time ago. I should have laid it all out to the HFF and we could have tried to arrange for someone else to come. It would have been hard, but maybe we could have managed it.”

  He motioned to her. “Come here.”

  She scooted over to the bars as close as she could get to him. Sighing, she laid her head against them and closed her eyes. He stroked her hair, wishing he could take her into his arms, regretting he’d ever doubted her story and hating himself for thinking she’d come to Piefferburg to go back to the Summer Queen.

  He settled for resting his head against hers on the other side of the bars and closing his eyes, images of retribution against the Summer Queen and Lars dancing through his head.

  THE next morning Aeric woke sore and stiff, having fallen asleep slumped on the floor next to Emmaline. He blinked, groggy, realizing the sound of the opening cell door had woken him.

  A rose-and-gold-bedecked guard stood in the threshold. “Get up. The Summer Queen has ordered your release.”

  “And Emmaline?”

  “She stays.”

  Emmaline roused beside him, her eyes coming open blearily.

  He rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm, chasing one fuck of a headache. “No, I won’t leave without her.”

  The guard looked at him as if blue snakes had suddenly sprouted from his head.

  “What?” Emmaline pushed into a sitting position. “No, Aeric. That’s crazy. Go. Get out of here!”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Not without you, cupcake.”

  She pushed to her feet, gesturing in frustration. “Aeric, you can’t help me anyway! You’re locked in a cell! Look, you’re amazing for wanting to stay with me, but you can’t do me any good in here. Are you hearing me? Take this chance.”