by Megan Chance
Finn said, “She has no choice. She made a bargain. We’ll see she comes to no harm.”
“You?” Patrick laughed. “I’m to trust the Fianna, when this is his fault to begin with? He’s the one who put her into Battle Annie’s hands.”
“We were being chased by your Fomori,” Diarmid snapped. “I didn’t know they were sidhe until it was too late.”
“Enough,” Finn barked. “This arguing is pointless. Battle Annie’s asked for Grace, and we’ve promised to deliver her. Come if you like, Devlin. But a sidhe queen is no one to deny. If she has to come after Grace herself, she’ll be angry. And it won’t be just the Fianna who will pay the price.”
“Well, Grace?” Aidan asked.
They were all looking at me. I had made a bargain, and I would not break my vow. Whatever it was Battle Annie wanted from me, I had to answer.
“Very well,” I said. “Take me to her.”
That night
Grace
As I turned to get back into the carriage, Diarmid was at my side, his hand on my elbow, radiating heat. He whispered, “How respectable you look, lass,” and his breath stirred the tendrils of hair escaping my pins. It was all I could do not to fall into his arms.
There was not enough room for all of us in the carriage, so Finn rode with the driver while the rest of us crowded inside. I sat beside my brother, Diarmid and Patrick on the opposite seat, so stiff they looked like a pair of perching statues. We were so close, Diarmid’s knees brushed my skirt. He pressed his leg to mine, and I couldn’t help glancing at him. His smug smile said he knew how affected I was. Obviously, I hadn’t fooled him when I’d told him I didn’t love him.
There was no room to move away, and so I tried to ignore him. No future. You cannot trust him.
I was more afraid of Diarmid than of Battle Annie. I’d dealt with her well enough before, and Patrick and Aidan and Diarmid and Finn were here to protect me, though I didn’t think I would need them. She wasn’t as strong as Iobhar, and I’d learned so much. Whatever Battle Annie wanted from me now, I was confident I wouldn’t be trapped.
I had no idea where Annie’s lair was, but when we arrived at Corlears Hook, I wasn’t surprised. She’d easily navigated the crowded river the night she’d brought me here, as if she’d done it often. The carriage even stopped at the same pier, next to the saloon called the Hangman’s Noose. Voices came from inside, drunken arguing. I shuddered, half expecting to see river rat boys swarming from beneath the pier, but there was no sign of them tonight.
Finn helped me from the carriage with a smile that warmed his icy-blue eyes. “Not to worry, lass. We’ll keep you safe.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Patrick reassured me.
“She can save herself, if she listens well enough,” Diarmid said stiffly. “Remember what I told you, Grace.”
“I remember,” I said.
Aidan caught my eye, mouthing, I need to talk to you. He looked worried and a bit ill. Before I could wonder why, Finn opened the door of the Hangman’s Noose.
The saloon was dim, lit only with a single oil lamp. There was no furniture at all. The bar was a plank supported on barrels. Men looked up as we came inside, clearly startled at the sight of a girl in a pink ball gown, clutching a paisley shawl.
The bartender, a young man with dark eyes, glowed faintly silver. Sidhe.
“Battle Annie is expecting us,” Finn said shortly.
The bartender jerked his head toward the corner, to a trapdoor. I remembered Aidan telling me once about riverside saloons with trapdoors that opened over the water to get rid of troublesome drunks.
Patrick said, “Do you think us fools?”
“’Tis where she is,” said the bartender. “The only way.”
“Aye. The only way to drown us,” Diarmid said.
Finn looked at me. “Well, veleda?”
I was puzzled until Aidan said, “I’ve told him what you can do, Grace. Does the bartender tell the truth?”
I listened. The music of the world filled my head, along with Battle Annie’s song, strong and clear, very close. “She’s there. She’s waiting.”
Finn lifted the trapdoor. It opened into darkness and the reedy, muddy smell of the river, cold autumn air, and the lapping of water below.
“For God’s sake,” Patrick whispered in dismay. He looked at me. “Are you certain?”
She was down there, as unlikely as it seemed. I nodded.
Finn glanced at Diarmid. “I’ll go first. If I call up, get her out of here quickly.”
He stepped to the opening of the trapdoor and jumped.
We should have heard a splash, but there was no sound at all. He just disappeared. It was bewildering. I wondered if we would have heard Finn’s call even if there had been one.
Aidan took a deep breath and stepped to the edge. “Well, here goes nothing,” and then he jumped. He, too, disappeared.
“You go next,” Patrick said to Diarmid, who shook his head.
“And let you whisk her away from here? Back to your Fomori guard? No.”
Patrick bristled. “If I leave her with you, what guarantee have I that you won’t abduct her again?”
“My captain’s below. I won’t abandon him. Nor Aidan.”
“We’ll go together, then. All three of us,” Patrick said.
“There’s not enough room,” I said, sighing. “One of you go—I don’t care who. I made a bargain, and I won’t disappoint Annie.”
“You’re her protector, Patrick, aren’t you?” Diarmid taunted. “Why don’t you see if there’s anything to protect her from?”
Patrick looked at me. I said, “I’ll be right behind you.”
“I’ll be waiting.” With a final warning glance at Diarmid, Patrick jumped.
Even a few moments alone with Diarmid were too long. I stepped to the edge.
He grabbed my arm, pulling me back. “We’ll go together.”
“I can go alone.”
“I’ll catch you. I don’t want you to soil your pretty pink gown.”
The thought of his arms around me . . . “I don’t care about the gown.”
His eyes darkened. “But I like it, mo chroi. The pink suits you. I knew it would. But your hair”—he flicked one of the slender curls dangling near my ear—“I’m thinking I like it better down.”
My stomach flipped. “Please don’t, Derry. I told you. It’s over.”
“It doesn’t feel over to me.”
“It will be when you kill me on Samhain.”
He jerked in surprise, but his fingers gripped my arm harder. “D’you think I’m blind? I know you still love me.”
“You’re imagining things.”
His smile was wistful. I wished it didn’t pull at me so. “Maybe. The gods know I love you enough to want you to love me back. But I’m not imagining that you’re afraid. You’re hiding something. What is it you don’t want me to know?”
“I am afraid. Of you.”
“’Twasn’t fear I saw in that storehouse. You knew about the geis then.”
“But there was hope too,” I told him. “And now that’s gone. Oh, what does it matter? You have to be true to yourself, just as I do. Please, Derry, there’s so much you don’t understand—”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Battle Annie is waiting.”
I thought he was going to insist, and I wasn’t going to tell him, and the whole thing would just be impossibly painful.
But he said, “As you like. I’ll let it go for now. But I won’t let you lie to me forever.”
“We don’t have forever.”
He looked stricken. “Don’t say that.” He took my hand, weaving his fingers tightly through mine. “Now.”
We jumped, plunging into darkness. It was a fall without end. Diarmid’s hand clutching mine reassured me in a way it should not.
We hit the ground hard—him first. He grunted as I crashed onto him. His arm came around me, holding me close. I looked u
p into a terrible blinding silver glare, as if we were surrounded by a hundred arc lights. Pain stabbed through my skull. I moaned and raised my arm to shield my eyes.
“She can’t see!” Aidan shouted. “Remember who she is.”
Immediately, the light eased, along with the pain. We were lying on the highly polished wooden floor of a large room. The walls were covered with tapestries depicting celebrations in crystal halls, the colors gem bright, shining with gold and silver threads. A crowd of fairies watched us. The hum of their magic, their greedy song, filled my head. Let us touch you, touch you, touch you . . . Aidan looked queasy and ready to swoon. Finn grabbed his arm, anchoring him. Patrick stared at me. Diarmid and I were still tangled together, me on top of him.
“Let go of me,” I whispered.
“You know you don’t want me to,” he whispered back, but he released me, and I scrambled to Patrick. He pulled me to his side. I pretended not to see Diarmid’s glare. The sidhe’s song was so heavy in my ears, I could hear almost nothing else. Aidan’s knees buckled; only Finn kept him upright.
Patrick said, “Look at Aidan. Make them stop.”
I let my voice ring out. “My brother and I were summoned here. Battle Annie would not want us harmed.”
The song faded to a low hum. Aidan staggered as if he’d been abruptly released.
I said, “Take me to Battle Annie.”
The fairies turned to look at me as one, like puppets on a single string. A tapestry was pushed aside, and Battle Annie entered from a doorway behind it. She looked the same as when I’d last seen her, the loops and coils of her many braids, feathers and beads, the tattoos dark and menacing on her cheek and her shoulder, countless necklaces jangling around her neck.
“Well met, veleda.” She glanced at the others. “So long as you do not interfere, I’ll have no quarrel with you.”
“Why have you summoned me?” I asked her.
Her sloe-eyed gaze slid back to me. “Our bargain, veleda. I have use of a brithem.”
Just the brithem. She knows of the split. But no, it was only that she knew of my ability to tell truth from lies—she’d been the one to show me I could do it. It was part of the veleda’s power; she could not know that, in me, it was the only part.
“Sarnat says you’re stronger. You’ve been trained by that traitor boy.”
“Yes.”
Battle Annie nodded with satisfaction and turned back to the door. I followed. Aidan fell into step beside me. He did not look any better now that I’d asked the sidhe to stop their song. In fact, he looked worse.
“Do you still hear them?” I asked.
“That’s not it.”
“You look ill.”
Patrick said, “She’s right, Aidan. Perhaps you should sit down—”
“I’m fine,” Aidan snapped. “Let’s just get this over with.” But he wasn’t fine. I felt his worry and fear as if it were mine—that connection again—and woven into it was a knowing that puzzled me.
Be very careful, Grace. His voice was in my head. When I looked at him, his lips tightened into a thin line, and he glanced away.
Battle Annie led us through a labyrinthian hallway and into a huge room, its walls also covered with tapestries—these were dark and creepy, greens and blacks and golds, forests full of twisting, writhing branches, with glowing, disembodied eyes peeking from the shadows. They were awful. At one end was a dais set with an elaborately carved table and a chair. There was nothing else.
It was an unsettling room, which I guessed was the point. The rest of the sidhe crowded in behind us, their curiosity shimmering, their glow filling the space like moonlight in fog.
Battle Annie pointed to the table. “Your place, veleda.”
Nervously, I went to it and sat. Close up, the carvings were more than leaves and flowers. Caught within petals and vines were screaming sprites, kelpies drowning their riders, ravens plucking out eyes. My discomfort grew. What is this place?
Patrick gave me an encouraging but wavery smile; Diarmid looked wary; Aidan, distracted and sick. Only Finn stood confident and assured, as if hobnobbing with fairies was something he did every day.
“Are you ready, veleda?” Battle Annie asked.
Ready for what? Whatever was about to happen, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it.
“Bring in the offender,” she commanded.
The tapestries on one side of the room parted as if by an invisible hand. Two sidhe boys came in, each of them holding the end of what looked like a thick green vine. Behind them came two others, flanking something I couldn’t quite see. But then the boys parted, and I realized what the vines were connected to—
A girl. The vines wound about her arms and her waist, writhing and pinching, pulling at her shining blond hair. Her startling cornflower-blue eyes were dark with either pain or fear.
Deirdre. The sidhe girl who’d told me and Diarmid the clue about the Druid on Coney Island, where we’d found the ogham stick. Diarmid seemed as surprised as I was.
“I know this girl,” I said. “What has she done?”
“Nothing,” Deirdre gasped before Annie could answer. “I am not bound by the river queen. I do not have to answer to her.”
“You became bound to me when you pledged yourself to Turgen,” said Battle Annie coldly. “Or do you claim now that you didn’t make the vow?”
Deirdre said to me, “Veleda, have I not always dealt fairly with you? I gave you what you sought. I did not turn your lover into a stag when you requested that I not.” Her eyes sparkled with cunning; I knew she’d read the mood here and used the word lover deliberately. She was either blindingly stupid or far cleverer than I ever hoped to be. No doubt the latter. I could not look at either Diarmid or Patrick.
“Compliments will not ease your way,” Battle Annie interrupted. “We are here to discover the truth of your crime.”
The vines twisted and twined, binding tighter. Pain creased Deirdre’s mouth. But she did not cry out.
“What did she do?” I asked.
There was a commotion from the hallway, shouting, a scream. Battle Annie spun around; Finn reached for his dagger. A boy ran into the room, gasping, “We tried to keep them out, my liege, but they could not be held!”
Behind him swarmed a group of fairies, and in their midst I saw Daire Donn, Lot—
And my mother.
The next moment
Grace
I leaped to my feet. “Mama?”
She was dressed as if she’d just come from the ball—they all were—and her eyes were wide with distress as she hurried toward me. “Grace!”
Battle Annie’s sidhe stepped between us.
“Don’t touch her!” Aidan rushed to Mama, Patrick right behind.
Lot glared at Battle Annie. “We heard you had the veleda. We could not leave her in the hands of the sidhe.”
“She was safe with us,” Finn said, not sheathing the dagger he’d drawn.
Daire Donn laughed. “You must think us fools.”
“You will release the veleda to us now,” said Lot, sounding exactly like the Fomorian goddess she was.
“The veleda made a bargain with the sidhe queen,” said Finn. “We are her guards. You’re intruding where you don’t belong.”
“Grace, you must come with us.” Mama pulled away from Aidan. To Battle Annie, she said, “I want to take my daughter home.”
“She is not my prisoner,” Annie replied.
Mama looked at me. “Grace, please. You mustn’t be here with the fairies. They are so very dangerous—”
“What are you doing here, Mama?” I asked.
“You’re my daughter. I want to protect you.”
Too late. But I didn’t say that; it would only hurt her, which I didn’t want to do.
Aidan said, “Grace made a bargain with Battle Annie, Mama. She promised.”
“Such a thing is easily remedied,” said Daire Donn with a dismissive wave. “Release the veleda to us, River Queen, or bear th
e consequences.”
“What consequence would that be, King of the World?” Finn sneered. “Your humiliation when we beat you again?”
Lot’s purple eyes narrowed. “You have offered the veleda nothing but abductions and fairy spells. We have never lied to her.”
“Lies are in your every word,” Finn said. “Truth is not in your nature.”
“The time of the Fianna is over now, Finn MacCumhail.” Lot looked at me. “Thanks to the veleda, there will be a new world. Please, my dear, come away with us now.” She held out her hands to me beseechingly.
Diarmid stepped before her, brandishing both of his daggers. “You won’t get near her without going through me first.”
Lot’s eyes flashed. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that my past affections will make me merciful now.”
“Your affection is poisonous,” Diarmid spat.
“The veleda does not belong to you, Diarmid Ua Duibhne. Have you forgotten her fiancé?”
Finn laughed. “Have you forgotten the ball seirce? Do you really think she still belongs to Devlin?”
It was too much. I banged the table. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
They all looked at me as if I’d burst into flame before them.
Lot’s gaze was uncomfortably searching. “Your fiancé tells us you are still betrothed. Does he lie?”
Diarmid went very still. I remembered what Patrick had asked of me in the carriage.
“We’re still engaged. Nothing’s changed.”
I felt Diarmid’s pain. Lot smiled in satisfaction. Finn frowned. My mother sighed.
Battle Annie said, “None of this has anything to do with our bargain, veleda.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere until we’re done here.”
As if by silent command, Battle Annie’s fairies formed a barrier between me and my rescuers. Mama began to push through, but Aidan put his hand on her arm and shook his head. Daire Donn and Lot looked forbidding. Finn’s hand remained on the hilt of his dagger. Diarmid did not put his away. He also would not look at me, and that was the worst thing of all.
“What is Deirdre’s crime?” I asked. In the commotion, Deirdre’s guards had gathered close about her. Now, they parted to show me that the fairy had fallen to her knees. The vines pinched cruelly into her arms and throat.