“Ball game?” Quinn muttered.
Maggie didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze remained fixed on Culhane’s. “Otherworld needs all of its warriors fighting together now. No more of this stupid bickering about who fights better than who or who has better powers or whatever.”
“You don’t understand,” Culhane said tightly as his carefully banked fury began to slip its leash. “You’re new to this, Maggie.”
“I may be new to Otherworld, but to this sexist crap?” She shook her head. “Old news, Culhane.”
He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her in close and ignored the room full of people watching them both intently. He stared into her eyes and said, “You’re new to ruling, Maggie. You’ve said yourself you have no idea how to be Queen. You have stalled and avoided your responsibilities for as long as you could and even now, there’s a part of you that quails at the thought of taking your rightful place.”
“My rightful place,” she said, not arguing his point, just reminding him that like it or not, she was the Queen.
Irritation clouded his judgment. That was the only reason he could find later for what he said next.
“You are still more human than Fae. You are not immortal yet. Your powers are still growing. You are hesitant when you need to be strong. You need me to make these important decisions for you.”
A second ticked past. Then two. Then three. Finally, Maggie asked, “Was this all nothing but a game to you, Culhane?”
“What?”
“You used me to fight Mab. Now you want to use me to make your changes to Otherworld. What’s the plan? I’m Queen, but you’re in charge?”
“It is not like that, Maggie.” He had never used her. He’d thought only to train her. To help her. To set her on the throne so that he might . . . He groaned inwardly. So that he might rule in her stead.
“Do you even give a single damn about me?”
Too late now, Culhane saw the trap he’d stepped into so completely. All he could do now was try to ease himself free. “How can you ask that after—”
She shook her head and spoke up fast to cut him off. “You want to use me, Culhane. All I ever was to you was a tool.”
“You’re wrong.” He wouldn’t beg or plead. Wouldn’t bloody well ask for forgiveness for doing the right thing for both his world and the mortal dimension. “You’re wrong about everything.”
She stopped, pushed both hands through her hair and choked out a half laugh. “God. How stupid am I? You never wanted me to be Queen. You expected me to just let you be King.”
He drew himself up to his full, imposing height and stared down at her. Those blue eyes he knew so well were clouded with suspicion and hurt and anger. He suspected those same emotions could be seen in his own eyes. Even if most of what she’d said had been true, he had never once thought of her as a puppet. Just some mindless body to sit on a throne. He’d wanted to rule with her. To show her what Otherworld could be.
And now, that chance was gone because she didn’t trust him. That fact stung more than any other. Hadn’t he been by her side through all of this? Hadn’t he defended her? Protected her? Looked out for her when she had known nothing about the new life she was facing? Did he really deserve her contempt?
No.
“I am Culhane. A Fenian warrior,” he said softly, though with such strength, his voice ricocheted off the walls and hummed in the room like a force of nature. “I am unaccustomed to being mistrusted. My honor—my word—is all-important to me and has been through the eons of my life. You are my Queen, Maggie Donovan, and your protection is my duty. But I will not defend myself to a woman who should know me better than this.”
Then he gave her a half bow and shifted out of the room, out of her world. Quinn was just a heartbeat behind him.
Maggie was rocked to her soul.
Nora was crying.
Eileen looked confused.
When the back door flew open a moment later, Claire MacDonald rushed inside, eyes wild, hair flying. “Mab’s escaped!” she shouted.
“Some psychic,” Bezel snorted, and ate a cookie.
Chapter Ten
“Female warriors?” McCulloch repeated with a grimace, as if even the words themselves were distasteful. “It cannot be.”
“So we tried to tell the Queen,” Quinn muttered in disgust.
Muldoon poured a glass of nectar, downed it in one gulp and shook his head. “Surely this will be the end of the Warrior clan.”
“ ’Tis lunacy,” Riley swore.
“Or perhaps not,” O’Hara put in quietly.
Instantly, the others in the room turned on him, their voices combining to create a dull roar of outrage.
Culhane was only half listening to the debate that had been raging now for hours. He’d gathered his most trusted five the moment he’d returned to the Warriors’ Conclave to tell them about Maggie’s unreasonable demand.
Maggie.
His heart clenched in his chest and a ball of ice settled low in his belly. She’d been in his grasp there in her kitchen and yet farther from him than she had ever been. As if their time together in the throne room had never happened, she’d distanced herself from him completely. He’d seen it himself. The frost in her eyes, the disdain in her voice and the disappointed anger written all over her features. He would remember it always.
And know that he had been at the root of it all.
Yet a part of him rebelled against any regrets clouding his thoughts. He had done only what he had always done. His best for Otherworld and his people. He would not apologize for simply being who and what he was.
Gods knew he had never meant to harm her in any way. Maggie would realize that eventually and come to see that she needed him. Needed his advice. His counsel. Him.
“Culhane, you must stop this insanity.”
He looked at Muldoon, a fiery man with thick red hair, blazing green eyes and hands the size of platters. A giant of a man, he made the other warriors, including Culhane, look nearly small in comparison. At this moment, Muldoon looked ready to explode.
“Is this what we waited for? For a queen who cares not for the tradition of the Warrior clans? Does she dismiss us without even knowing us? She is not even fully Fae yet!”
A fierce wave of protectiveness rose up in Culhane as he stood to his full height and glared at Muldoon until the warrior’s gaze flinched away.
“Maggie is Queen,” Culhane said with deliberate emphasis, his gaze moving from one warrior to the next to ensure that all of them understood how he felt about the situation. He didn’t agree with Maggie about this, and he would certainly try to change her mind. But until that happened, he would defend her decisions. He would fight for her right to rule. He had waited centuries for her to ascend to the throne. He would not turn his back on her before she had been Queen even a month. “If she decrees the females as warriors,” he continued, “it will be done.”
“Ending the Warrior clans for good and all,” McCulloch muttered again, in spite of the glare Culhane sent him.
“Ach,” O’Hara groaned, pushed to his feet and snatched the bottle of nectar from Muldoon. “Such whining I haven’t heard in this Conclave in years. Are you so afraid of females fighting alongside you? Do you fear they’ll be a hindrance? Or is it that you fear they might prove themselves finer warriors?”
McCulloch stepped up to his friend, grabbed a fistful of O’Hara’s shirt and yanked the warrior right off his feet. He lifted him until O’Hara’s feet left the floor. “I fear no woman and there’s not a female alive can out-fight me.”
O’Hara laughed, punched his friend in the face and shifted out of Mac’s grasp. When he rematerialized, he was still grinning like a fool as he watched Mac rub his aching jaw.
O’Hara moved to the sideboard, grabbed a glass and poured himself a healthy draught of nectar. “Then why do you moan and groan and complain like a troll in the rain? You’ve nothing to fear and mayhap we have all to gain.”
More mutters of disgust
and still more complaints rose up in the room and Culhane ignored them all. O’Hara wasn’t threatened by the change. Most likely it was because O’Hara had probably had half of the female guards on their backs at one time or another. He, more than any of them, had seen firsthand the frustration simmering in the guard. He knew they were good fighters and didn’t fear having them join the warriors.
There was that word again.
Fear.
Culhane mentally sneered at the thought. His warriors knew no fear. The very notion of it was insulting. Demeaning to the proud Fae he’d served with for centuries. This wasn’t about fear. This was about the fact that for eons, the male Fae of Otherworld had been no better than servants to their women. All but the Warrior clan. Here, in the Conclave, the male Fae were respected and needed. Here, there were no women muddying things.
And now, the female guards wanted to be included in the only truly independent environment a male Fae could claim?
No, Culhane told himself. This would not go well. There were too many centuries of bad blood spilled to be forgotten because a new and foolish queen hoped to turn everyone into a happy team working together. The gods alone knew what she was thinking. Didn’t she understand what this would do to his men? To all Fae males?
Those who did not serve as warriors looked to this clan as a source of pride. Here, they could say, the women did not rule. In the Conclave, it was a male’s world. Bitterness rose in his throat and nearly choked him. He hadn’t foreseen anything like this. The prophecies had said nothing about the future Queen turning Otherworld on its head. Had not mentioned that she would make Culhane want to beat his head upon a rock out of sheer frustration.
And had he known, he asked himself, would he have done anything different? Would he, even now, wish for Mab to be on the throne again rather than Maggie?
Ah. Such a question. And the answer was, no. He would rather Maggie with all of her unfounded notions be on the throne, because clearly, she was a female who appreciated equality. Though she was going about it in the wrong way. Giving the female Fae more power and stripping it from the men was not what he had had in mind.
“Enough,” he shouted, silencing his own thoughts as well as the other warriors. His men turned to him, their personal arguments forgotten in the face of his authority. “We can do nothing about Maggie’s plan at this time. Instead, we should concentrate on Mab. Send squads of warriors out. Groups of three. Search Otherworld until she’s found and then report back to me. We five will meet at the palace tonight.”
“Why the palace?” Mac asked.
“We’ll search that place top to bottom,” Culhane told him. “There may be clues to where Mab might go for help.”
“Makes sense,” Muldoon said.
“If we find her in our search, what then?” Quinn asked.
“When we find her,” Culhane corrected, “we do nothing. We observe. See what she’s stirring up. We won’t be able to stop her unless we know exactly what she’s doing.”
“Aye.” One by one, the warriors nodded and shifted out of the Conclave.
Culhane shook his head, thinking about what would have happened if the females had been given orders. Would they have shifted immediately into action? Or would they have stayed, demanding explanations and reasons and wanting to talk about all manner of things rather than simply accept a direct command and obey?
Gods, a warrior could go mad trying to figure out a woman. But as for his men, they would do their duty. As they had always done, he told himself. As he had always done.
Once they’d found Mab, Culhane could show Maggie that his warriors didn’t need the females to fight alongside them. She would see that the males had protected all Fae for longer than most could remember and they didn’t need any help.
Maggie was Queen. But he was Culhane, a mighty Fenian warrior. Nothing was going to change that.
“You haven’t found out anything?” Maggie faced Bezel and fought back her frustration.
“Nada,” Bezel said, grumbling. “There’s something going on with that grandFae of yours. I just haven’t caught him yet.”
“Great.” So she didn’t know any more than she had before. “Seriously, could my life get more screwed up?”
“Probably,” Bezel mused, rocking back and forth on his huge feet.
“Thanks for that.” She shook her head, grabbed a couple of wineglasses out of the cupboard and looked at him again. “Just keep watching, okay? I want to believe Jasic’s on the up-and-up, but . . .”
“He ain’t,” Bezel warned, his silvery eyebrows beetling on his forehead like live caterpillars.
“Then find something,” she said, turning her back on the pixie to join Claire in the living room.
“Are you even trying?” Two hours later, Maggie took a gulp of her wine and gave Claire a dirty look. The two women were seated on the floor in Maggie’s living room, a bottle of wine between them and a snoring Sheba stretched out across their feet.
It was nearly ten, and outside the living room windows, the night was dark but for the glow of the Christmas lights strung under the eaves. Up and down Maggie’s street, the lights and reindeer and laughing Santas had been going up all week. Normalcy was all around her, yet somehow, it didn’t quite come close enough to her to make a real difference in her life, Maggie thought.
Heck, she’d even used her still-growing Fae abilities to help her with the lights this year. Floating/flying? Much easier than dragging a rickety ladder around behind her. Of course, she’d had to hang the lights at night, so her neighbors didn’t notice her doing the floaty thing.
Nora, Eileen, Claire and Maggie had spent most of the evening dragging out Christmas decorations from the attic. While Bezel kibitzed from a corner, the women had buried their fears of Mab under layers of holiday spirit. A snowman Nora had made in a ceramics class three years ago sat on a silver tray surrounded by shiny, red glass bulbs. Red and white silk poinsettias burst out of every vase they owned and Eileen’s painting of a Christmas tree hung in a proud spot over the faux fireplace.
Maggie had floated up to the ceiling, stringing artificial pine boughs around the living room, and a wreath she’d had for years hung where the front door had been until her grandfather had paneled over it. There were cinnamon candles burning, scenting the air, Christmas music playing softly in the background and a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay on the table.
Nora and Eileen had gone to bed an hour ago, exhausted from the decorating—not to mention all the high drama and anxiety. Bezel was eating his way through more of Nora’s cookies in the kitchen and Maggie and Claire were slowly, deliberately, working up a heck of a wine buzz.
“Of course I’m trying, you silly cow,” Claire said with a short laugh that ended on a hiccup. “Visions come when they come. It’s not like turning on a bleeding TV, you know.”
“Bezel was right. Some psychic you are,” Maggie muttered.
“You know,” Claire mused, completely ignoring the dig, “if that dog didn’t snore when she slept, a body would swear she was dead.”
“She’s exhausted,” Maggie said in defense of the lazy golden retriever. “Like me.”
It had been a full day, she thought, what with freeing Mab, having sex with Culhane, only to discover that he’d been using her all along, and then watching him shift right out of her life. Not to mention all of the decorating and the drain of keeping a determinedly cheerful attitude so she wouldn’t upset anyone.
God. She wanted to curl up under the table with the dog.
“Yeah,” Claire said, “because all those naps she takes must wear her out.”
“Hello?” Maggie poured more wine. “Sheba’s sleep schedule’s not the most important thing right now. You’re not even trying to have a damn vision.”
Claire shook her head and sipped at her wine. “You know, when I first told you about being psychic and well, a witch, I was worried that you’d shut me out.” Her Scots accent was a purr of sound on the words that tumbled from her. �
��Most everyone I’ve ever known has pushed away once they learned the truth about me.”
Claire MacDonald had been Maggie’s best friend for ten years. But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that Claire had confessed her little secret. Since then, the two women had become even closer. Since they were both dealing with the supernatural, it almost made them seem normal. To each other, at least.
“Ah,” Maggie told her with a smile, “but I’m not everyone.”
“That’s the God’s truth, I’ll say.” Claire laughed. “Most folks want to shuffle me out the door as fast as they can, while you, my very different friend, order me to have visions.”
“Well, what the hell good are they if you can’t drum one up when you need it?”
“A question I’ve often asked myself,” Claire admitted.
“It’s just ...” Maggie blew out a breath, shifted slightly because her right foot had gone numb under Sheba and then said, “Everything’s a mess all of a sudden. Mab’s out. Nora’s terrified, even though she won’t say it. . . .”
“Yes,” Claire said with a smile. “I noticed the two cakes, the muffins and the cookies in the kitchen. Though I thought there were more cookies a while ago.”
“There were,” Maggie told her, and laid one hand across her stomach. She’d had cookies for dinner. Not a good idea. “We’ll probably all get diabetes in the next few days, the way Nora’s baking. Especially now that she and Eileen are staying here because we have to watch out for Mab the Marauder trying to kill us in our sleep or something.”
“Ah no,” Claire said, lifting her wineglass in a salute to herself. “You’re forgetting I warded the house tonight. The strength of the spell I put on this place will keep out anything with a mind to cause harm.”
It had been pretty impressive, Maggie thought, watching Claire work. While Nora, Eileen and Maggie had been decorating like crazed elves with a deadline, Claire the Friendly Witch had been casting a spell around the house and grounds. She’d been pretty damn impressive, too. With the candles, burning sage and the fiery crystals humming with trapped energy, Claire had almost looked like an ancient wizard with the secrets of the ages shining in her eyes.
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