Gillen shrugged. “It’s a big hospital, Grey. Your brother’s not the only one prone to getting beat up.”
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“Send the Clure out. One maniac in the room at a time,” Gillen said.
Controlling my anger, I left them in the waiting room. I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t a healer, and now was not the time to argue. My brother was injured.
In Callin’s room, the blue-green glow of monitors and a small spotlight near the bed provided dim illumination. The humid air was heavy with lavender and dill and bitter green herbs. Callin lay in a stone crèche, an oblong slab of quartz charged with essence. Bandages wrapped his chest and left shoulder, and a thin layer of essence hovered over his body like a mist.
The Clure had pulled a chair close to the crèche and slumped over its edge. With his face somber beneath his mop of curls, he traced his fingers along Callin’s brow. I cleared my throat. The Clure stood and wrapped his arms around me, burying his face into the side of my neck. He smelled of whiskey and tears.
“I wasn’t there,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re here now,” I said.
He pulled away, his eyes watery. “It can’t happen like this. It can’t end like this.”
I rubbed his shoulder. “Callin’s tough. You know that. It’s not over.”
We spent a few moments staring at my brother, the Clure hugging himself against the hurt. I slid into the chair, staring at the bandages, trying to guess at the injuries.
“I’ll be outside,” said the Clure.
Tubes ran into Callin’s nose and mouth. His battered face showed signs that he had been in a fight that had turned up-close and physical. One eye was swollen shut, and the bridge of his nose was broken. Typical. Cal got himself in over his head and got knocked on his ass for it.
“What the hell did you do this time, Cal?” I asked.
I held his hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched him like that. We never were all that affectionate, but holding his hand reminded that we were brothers, that family mattered. I might not like a lot of the things Cal did with his life or to himself, but I cared.
He hadn’t come to the hospital when our roles had been reversed. I woke up alone, with no family except Joe and Briallen. My parents had visited after my accident, but after weeks of no change in my condition, they were called away to a diplomatic mission. Cal had been nowhere in sight.
He’s down. Is he okay?
It had been so long since Cal and I had exchanged sendings, I almost didn’t recognize his voice in my head. “Clure’s fine, Cal. He’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know if he could hear me. I was surprised he was aware enough under the sedation to talk. Too many. Clure’s on the way.
Irritated, I checked to see if the Clure was coming back to boot me out already, but the hallway was empty. “It’s okay, Cal. They’re letting only one of us in at a time,” I said.
Dammit, Keeva.
The force of the sending startled me, the equivalent of shouting in my head. Cal knew Keeva through me. She had been my Guild partner for ten years. We occasionally bumped into Cal, but not often. In those days, I didn’t care much about the Weird other than as a place to party, and I never did that with Keeva. Why she would be on his mind now puzzled me.
My memory flashed to the essence-fire residue I smelled on Keeva. She had more than once saved my butt in the nick of time. As much as we bickered, she had a sense for being in the right place at the right time, and I wasn’t going to complain if she had intervened with Cal somehow.
Cal wasn’t talking to me. He was sending in a delirium state. “Everything’s fine, Cal. You need to rest.”
Connor.
“Yeah, it’s me, Cal. We’re all here. Don’t worry about anything,” I said.
Too many. Clure’s on the way.
I didn’t understand my brother in the best of times, never mind delirious from pain and medication. We had spent the better part of our adult life arguing, mostly about his drinking. We had drifted apart the last decade, and he fell in with a rough-and-tumble crowd I wanted no part of. Despite the Clure’s propensity for chaos, hooking up with him was probably the most stable thing Callin had done. Now he lay in a crèche, and I wasn’t able to do a damned thing about all that. I wanted the chance to fix things between us.
Gillen entered with his surgical team. His cranky manner had disappeared behind the focus on what was to come. Almost as an afterthought, he dismissed me. “We’re ready in the operating room. I’ll have someone keep you updated.”
Back in the waiting room, Joe had arrived. He sat on the arm of a sofa, talking with my mother. They stopped when I entered, guilt-stricken looks on their faces. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Has he gone into surgery?” Joe asked.
“Yes, and that’s not what I’m talking about,” I said.
“Connor, our focus should be on your brother right now,” my father said.
I took a seat opposite my father. He looked tired. “I’m not letting this drop, Da. I should be the best candidate for an essence blood match. What are you not telling me?”
He unrolled his sleeve. “It’s not important.”
“My brother’s on the verge of death, and I’m not being allowed to help. I deserve an explanation,” I said.
He kept his attention on readjusting his clothing. “Watch your tone.”
“I’ll take whatever tone I want,” I said.
He glared. I knew that look. I was about to be put in my place. My mother stood. “Enough, Thomas. We knew this day would come.”
A thick silence filled the room. “Okay, now I’m more worried,” I said.
Joe fluttered around my mother, his expression fluctuating between confusion and boredom. “I don’t understand why it’s a big deal, Mama Grey. Flits foster everyone.”
“Joe!” my mother said. His eyes gone wide, Joe slapped his hands over his lips.
I heard the word. I stared at my parents, searching their faces, looking for, well, me. Cal resembled my father enough to be his clone—red hair, stocky muscle, and blunt features. I always assumed I took after my mother’s side of the family. We had the same dark hair and similar features, but no particular characteristics marked us as mother and son. She looked Irish. I looked Irish. I assumed my blue eyes were a genetic throwback to an ancestor no one recalled. “I was fostered,” I said.
My mother dropped her gaze and took my hand. “We always meant to tell you.”
It wasn’t sinking in, at least not on an emotional level. I heard what she said, but I felt a distinct objectivity, as if we were discussing the weather. I was fostered. Thomas and Regula Gray were not my biological parents. As Joe said, it wasn’t unheard of in the fey world. What made it different was that I hadn’t known. Everyone always knew. It was an old tradition, without controversy. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My mother squeezed my hands. “Nigel asked us not to.”
“Nigel? What does….” I closed my eyes, dread slicing across my gut. “Danu’s blood, please don’t tell me Nigel Martin is my father.”
“He’s not,” my father said.
Utter relief swept over me. With everything that had gone sour between me and Nigel, the last thing I wanted to hear was that he was my father. I steeled myself for the next logical question. “Who are my parents?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Thomas said.
Not telling me I was fostered was at least plausible. Human parents kept the knowledge of adoption secret all the time, but fostering didn’t work like that. Someone had a child and placed it with another family to raise for a variety of reasons—all of them open knowledge. “How can you not know?” I asked.
My mother squeezed my hand. “Nigel said he didn’t know. You were a foundling.”
I couldn’t help the derision in my voice, but it was directed toward the absent Nigel. “Foundling? Not likely. Nigel didn’t find a baby and hand it
over to the nearest couple. He knew more than he was telling.”
“Indeed. I pressed him on the issue repeatedly. I did my own discreet investigation but found no one with a missing child,” my father said. “In the end, I accepted his word.”
My mother sat in silence, staring off to the side. I moved off the chair and sat beside her. “I didn’t want it to come out this way,” she said.
I put my arm around her and kissed her temple. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We wanted another child so badly. I had just lost one when Nigel came to us,” she said.
I kissed her again. “It’s okay. You’re my mom. Nothing will ever change that.”
I stood. “I need a moment. I’ll be right back.”
I passed Callin’s room. The Clure stood at the window. I don’t know if he saw me, but I continued down the hall to another waiting room that was empty. I leaned my hands against the windowsill and breathed deeply. I had no idea what this meant to me. I had spent my entire life thinking one thing, taking it for granted actually, to find it was untrue. The people I thought I knew were not the people I thought they were. I was not the person I thought I was.
Joe appeared behind me, his essence flashing pink in the window. He fluttered up, trying to see through his reflection. He hovered close to the glass, intent on a smudge.
“You never said anything,” I said.
He licked the window and frowned in disgust. Unlike him, I wasn’t surprised. “Your mum asked me not to,” he said.
Joe had been around my family for generations. He was an Old One, one of the few confirmed people I knew who had come from Faerie. He didn’t remember much, mostly people he had known, but larger events escaped him. Not that memory loss bothered him. Flits remembered what they cared about, and what they cared about didn’t always make sense. He was around when Nigel showed up with a mysterious baby. He knew my mother hadn’t been pregnant with me. He had been my companion, from birth I thought.
“Did you know Nigel was involved?” I asked.
He settled on the windowsill. “He visited a lot when you were a baby.”
“Did he ever say anything about my parents?”
“He trusted them to raise you,” Joe said.
“No, I meant my biological parents.”
“Oh. Not that I remember. Connor, you seem upset.”
“I just found out my parents aren’t my parents. It changes things, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t see how. Tom and Mom are bestest parents. You could have got stuck with mine.”
“They did name you Stinkwort,” I said.
He tilted his head at me. “Exactly. Really, who cares, Connor. We end up who we are for a lot of reasons.”
“What if it turns out that Meryl and I are brother and sister?” I asked.
“What if you are?” he asked.
I glanced down at him, wondering if he were that indifferent to the ramifications. He smirked at me. “Okay, fine, I’m overthinking the situation,” I said.
“Again,” he said.
“Well, I’d like to do a little of that alone. Can you give me some space?” I asked.
“I’d say you have enough space between your ears, but I know how crowded it is in there.”
“Thanks. Come get me if I’m not back when the surgery’s over,” I said.
He winked at me and popped out. I stretched out on a couch and stared at the ceiling. People walked by the door, their body signatures growing and fading as they went about their business. Someone entered the room, a Danann fairy with a strong signature. I shifted on the couch to see who it was. From behind, the man’s wings obscured his features. The wings were huge, multilayered, and vibrant with essence. Even without his fey aspect, he was physically imposing, tall, and muscular. He seemed to be waiting for someone. I settled back and closed my eyes.
I snapped them back open when I sensed the shot of essence. As I sat up, the Danann put the finishing touches on an essence barrier across the door. When he faced me, a shiver went over me, one part surprise, one part fear.
“Brion Mal,” I said.
An assured, maybe smug, smile crossed his face. “I’m flattered you recognize me,” he said.
Flattered, as if he couldn’t possibly know his fame among the fey. Brion Mal was leader of the High Queen’s Fianna, the greatest fighting force in the world. When people talked about elite fairy warriors, they spoke of Danann security agents with their menacing black outfits and blank silver helmets that hid their identities. They spoke about ability levels they could only dream of having. They spoke in tones either hushed in awe and fear or raised in anger and bitterness. When Danann security agents talked about elite fairy warriors, they spoke of the High Queen’s Fianna.
The Fianna served the Seelie Court, regardless of High Queen or King. They came from ancient clan lines, the sons and daughters of powerful leaders and warriors. Their reputations preceded them, They didn’t hide their faces behind masks. They wanted people to know who they were. The mention of their names instilled fear and dread in whomever the Fianna targeted.
“Somehow, I don’t think you’re here for my brother,” I said.
“Your brother concerns me even less than you do,” he said.
Whatever his intention, he was going to succeed. I didn’t think I was a match for Brion Mal even at the peak of my abilities. I didn’t bother activating my body shield. He would break through it with ease and leave me bruised in the process. That didn’t mean I was going to go down without a fight. I rubbed my calf, using the nervous gesture to bring my hand near my dagger.
“Don’t struggle,” he said.
I never touched my dagger. Essence leaped from his fingers, a fine mesh that spiraled through the air and settled over me. The binding immobilized me without pain. Mal didn’t need pain to control me. He blew a deep breath at me, the binding shivered, and my mind clouded. I was asleep before I finished falling off the couch.
27
I woke up in a room about ten feet square that was sheathed in glass and steel. Stretching, I dropped my feet from the bed to the floor in the empty surroundings. From the small size and low ceiling, I guessed I was in a safe house, one of many the Guild had scattered around Boston and its suburbs. Safe houses were two-edged swords. Good to be in when someone was hunting you down. Bad to be in when the Guild didn’t want anyone to know what it was doing to you. Under the circumstances, the latter was more likely, so not so good for me. At least, I had gotten some sleep, and I wasn’t dead.
From the inside, holding cells looked the same, so I had no idea where I was. Unlike the police, the Guild needed safe havens with the added level of glass-and-steel sheathing, which slow down someone with essence ability and give the guards time to defend the room. Cost wasn’t an issue, but secrecy was. It wasn’t easy building one without the neighbors’ noticing. The Guild didn’t like abandoning them unless they had good reason.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out what I was doing there. The door opened, and Ryan macGoren entered without ceremony. He raised an essence barrier between us, dividing the room in half. He wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t blame him after our last encounter, but the barrier said more about macGoren’s paranoia than about the threat I posed. He was a Danann at the height of his ability. I had a stone in my head.
MacGoren had been injured in the catalyzing event of the Guildhouse destruction. He bore scars from a blast of pure essence that had hit him. His once-handsome face, which had turned heads on the fey social scene, had been scorched smooth. The bones of his cheeks stood out, hard-edged and bleached. His hairline had been burned back, the hair that he had prided himself on was now an odd sweep of blond that hung lank from the top of his head. The most dramatic change, though, was that his eyes had crystallized. The same thing had happened to me, but only my irises had been affected. With macGoren, the eyes had vanished beneath an almost insectlike faceted layer of glittering membrane over the entire surfaces.
Beyond his previous good looks, I never understood what Keeva saw in him. His power was obvious, but Keeva had the looks and brains to attract anyone. Yet she chose macGoren.
MacGoren managed to retain his smug arrogance. “I hope you’re not comfortable.”
I faced him through the barrier. “What do you intend to do, macGoren? Word’s going to get out that I’m missing. There will be fallout.”
He snorted. “Fallout? You staged a major terrorist act on the Guildhouse. Do you think the public is going to rally to your pathetic cries of innocence?”
“The State Department might have a problem with Brion Mal kidnapping an American citizen,” I said.
His smile made stippled lines in his cheeks. “Do you think we would have used someone as high-profile as Mal if we were worried about the human government?”
MacGoren had brought Vize into the Guildhouse despite my warnings. He didn’t listen to me then. He wasn’t going to now. “I tried to stop you from making a fool of yourself. Enough witnesses survived that know you were the one who let Vize in and I was the one who tried to stop you.”
His eyes shifted, a disconcerting movement that left me with nothing to focus on. He could be staring at me or the wall behind me. “No one cares, Grey. The Elven King is dead. Maeve has won. No one will criticize anything she does. We attacked that traitor Eagan in his own home with human support without any repercussions. You don’t matter. You’re a clean-up detail.”
While we talked, I scanned the barrier. A good punch with a full body shield sometimes collapsed a barrier, but macGoren knew what he was doing. The barrier was stable, without any flaws. “If I don’t matter, then why am I here?”
He chuckled. “Ah, but that’s thing, Grey. You’re not here. You’re not anywhere. You went into hiding by your own choice.”
“You’re going to keep me locked up? As usual, macGoren, your plans are pointless. Stop the games and let me out. If what you or Maeve says is true, prove it in public,” I said.
If possible, his stiff face became more unreadable. “You think I am pointless, that I am a fool. Do you have any idea who you are looking at, Grey? I am one of the most powerful fey in the Seelie Court now. Brion Mal does my bidding. I have exposed the Teutonic Consortium in an act of war. No human government will ally with them now. I have given my queen her greatest victory since Convergence. She is well pleased.”
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