by Jocelyn Fox
“No, but you bend the knee to Malravenar,” I commented, swallowing the taste of copper. “Knee…tail…whatever.” I shrugged. “It might not be for coin…but that’s still selling yourself, don’t you think?”
All Theles’ attention had shifted to me. Finnead edged away slowly, one hand on the Brighbranr.
Confusion clouded the anger in Theles’ eyes. Her brows drew together as she thought.
“And I hope that you haven’t signed a contract in blood or anything,” I continued, “because I think you need to negotiate better terms. I mean, first of all, the flow of information between you and your boss…it leaves a lot to be desired.” I made a face. “No pun intended.”
“I do not agree with our allegiance to the Dark One,” Theles said, “but we have something he needs. Something he wants desperately.”
Well. The ruse was up. They did know who I was. But I hoped against hope and asked anyway. “What do you mean?”
“The Crown of Bones,” she breathed, a strange light coming into her eyes.
The Sword’s power snapped to attention. I grimaced as it dug its claws into my rib cage. Easy, I thought at it in irritation, but it only gripped harder.
“Okay,” I said slowly, “looks like you have a lot of bones around here. What’s so special about these particular ones?”
Theles opened her mouth to answer but then jerked as a piercing shriek filled the cave. I grabbed her wrists and kicked upward with all the strength I had left, rolling her off me. I went for my dagger with my free hand but Theles’ massive tail crashed into me, all muscle and scales. I skidded sideways on the wet stone, regained my footing despite the agony ripping through my injured leg, and yanked my dagger from its sheath.
Riadne screamed again, a sound of mingled fury and pain. Green blood ran down her back from the stab wound in her shoulder. Finnead dragged her off Luca, one hand wrapped firmly in her hair and the Brighbranr pressed against her throat. Blood seeped from her lip as well, and when I glanced at Luca he was wiping her blood from his mouth with the back of one hand.
“Release me!” Riadne snarled, kicking ineffectually with her smooth bare legs. Finnead tightened his grip on her hair and she growled but subsided.
“Be still,” he commanded. His gaze shifted to Theles. “Come no closer, or more of your sister’s blood will be spilt by my blade.” A thin line of blood appeared on Riadne’s throat. “And the first I feel of your powers, she dies.”
I actually felt a flash of sympathy for Theles. The young siren looked unsure, her eyes shifting from Riadne to Finnead and then to me.
“How long does that last, the whole legs instead of a tail deal?” I asked Theles.
“Once we change, it lasts until our lust has been sated…or the man dies,” Theles answered, poisonous sweetness entering her voice with her last words.
“Hm,” I said contemplatively, casually testing the balance of my dagger in one hand. “And the whole knockout-kiss deal, that goes away too, doesn’t it, when you get your legs?”
Theles remained rebelliously silent.
“Tell me about the Crown of Bones,” I said. I glanced at Finnead. He pressed the Brightbranr into Riadne’s neck. The siren whimpered. Theles slithered forward. I stepped in front of her, dagger pointed at her chest. “Now, we don’t want to be too rough with your sister, so please just answer my question.” The Sword strained to hear the answer.
“It holds the bones of the First,” Theles whispered.
“The first? The first what?” I said, even as I heard Finnead draw in a sharp breath.
“The First Queen, the Queen Over All.” Theles gazed at me solemnly.
“And what’s the big deal about this crown with her bones? That’s kind of gruesome, by the way,” I said with a grimace.
“It’s impossible,” breathed Finnead. “A legend, nothing more. A story about the beginning.”
“But you have it?” I pressed Theles, taking a step toward her.
Her eyes darted to one of the grottoes. I turned and followed her gaze. I couldn’t see any crown clearly, but it was enough. “Keep ahold of her,” I said to Finnead, and then I addressed Theles. “If you move, if you try to use your power, your sister dies. Don’t think that he’ll hesitate.”
Finnead’s cold smile was enough answer. Theles crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. I sheathed my dagger and strode across the ledge, doing my best not to limp. I stopped by Luca, grimacing as I knelt. Thankfully, his trousers were still intact and covering all the essential parts. I reached out to him but he flinched and I drew my hand back. “Hey,” I said softly, “hey, look, I won’t touch you, okay?”
He cleared his throat and pushed himself into a sitting position. Blood still stained his lower lip. “She was inside my head,” he said. He looked up at me, eyes haunted. “I’ve had enough of people being inside my head.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. After a moment, I said, “Well, she won’t be able to do it to you anymore. I promise. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”
“You did, though, when you could,” he said with a nod. But his eyes were still haunted. I swallowed and stood, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his arm comfortingly.
“Right then,” I said, walking over to the edge of the ledge. I really, really didn’t want to get into the water again. Every fiber of my body begged me to just find a warm blanket and curl up in the corner with Luca as my natural heating unit—the Sidhe ran cool, so Finnead wouldn’t be much use to me. But I took a deep breath and fixed my eyes on the grotto that Theles had identified. “Of course it’s the one farthest from the ledge,” I muttered to myself. The Sword expressed its displeasure at the thought of going into the water again, a prickle running over my war-markings. “Trust me, I don’t like it either,” I said. Another breath, and I swung my arms back and pushed off the ledge with my good leg, arcing out over the water in a graceful dive that would have made my brother proud.
The water was colder than I expected, almost as cold as the first initial shock after falling from the bridge. I clenched my jaw and got a few good underwater strokes in before surfacing and striking out for the grotto with a nice, easy breaststroke. Maybe crawl would be faster, but breaststroke took less energy. I was good at gliding through the water, when I concentrated on making my body one long lean line. That task was complicated a bit by the Sword’s sheath, its straps pulling at my shoulder as I swam, but I focused on reaching the grotto.
I reached the far side of the lagoon and risked glancing back at the ledge. Luca was up, my plain blade put to good use keeping Theles at bay. The two men were discussing something in low voices. I tried to hear for a moment, then the Caedbranr stirred.
What is this, this Crown of Bones? I don’t even know what I’m looking for, I thought at it, gripping the edge of the grotto’s ledge with my hands and pushing myself out of the water, swinging my good leg up onto the floor of the grotto. I gave a decidedly unladylike grunt as my injured leg banged against the rock shelf, cursing both my lack of coordination and the strange interior decorating tastes of the sirens.
The Sword remained silent but I got the sense again that it was searching for something.
“Are you going to let me in on the secret, or not?” I muttered at it, arranging my leg as best I could and beginning to examine the contents of the grotto. A mosaic of colored glass decorated the edges of the floor, coloring the shallow water purple and blue and yellow in refracted patterns.
A skull occupied a shelf at eye-level, its eye-sockets filled by flat gold coins, silver and gold chains draped over its polished pale dome. I reached out and touched the ridge below the eye socket, feeling the bone’s satiny smoothness. I shivered, wondering what being had once lived and breathed with this skull within them, smiling with the teeth now bared in a permanent deathly grin, gazing out at the world with eyes now replaced by hard golden coins. Two candles flanked the skull, ivory wax spread like the train of an elegant gown at the base of their slender lengths
. I turned and looked at the other shelves: a few gold chains, the bones of a small bird arranged as if it were in flight, a blue feather and the shed skin of a snake, but nothing remotely resembling a crown.
“It probably doesn’t look like a crown,” I murmured to myself, biting my lip in thought. Somehow I kept turning back to the skull. The silver and gold chains decorating the skull shimmered in the half-light. I leaned closer and slid two fingers under a few of the chains, carefully removing them one by one, laying them out on either side of the skull, in front of the candles.
“What am I missing?” I sat back, the shallow water lapping against the sides of my legs. I noticed with detached interest that the water around my injured leg was stained scarlet. I reached up and touched Gwyneth’s pendant, tracing its cool curve idly with one finger. I frowned, thinking about the Crown of Bones, and then the vision hit me with such force that I fell back against the stone wall of the grotto.
“Tess!” I heard someone call—Finnead or Luca or both, I couldn’t tell. The vision had me in its claws and it dragged my vision to blackness.
The vision was unlike any other I’d experienced. It had none of the clarity and sharpness of Gwyneth’s memories. I understood that the pendant was reaching back through Gwyneth, back through the line of Bearers until it found what it sought. It was like the grainy projection of an old movie, no sound and washed out colors, fuzzy and faded around the edges. But I concentrated and made out a woman seated on a great carved throne, the pillars of her throne melded with the structure of the great throne room in which she held court. Her face was covered by an opaque golden veil, her hands encased in silken gloves, one as dark as night, spangled with shining stars, and one as bright as the sun itself, pulsing with golden light. She wore a blindingly white gown, spotless and immaculate….save for a splash of red at her throat. A great ruby-red stone glittered just beneath the golden veil, suspended by a golden chain.
Two slender figures knelt before her, bareheaded, one with midnight dark hair and the other shimmering gold. The dark-haired woman knelt before the midnight-gloved hand of the First Queen, and the golden-haired woman bent her head before the hand encased in vibrant sun. The red gem at the throat of the Queen of All began to glow, pulsing like a heartbeat, as she raised her hands in benediction. The golden sun expanded and the star-studded darkness flowed forth like a black tide until night and day filled the great court and there was such power that my bones ached and I couldn’t breathe, and the brightness and darkness combined in such perfect chaos that I wrenched myself from the vision, or the vision released me, and I fell trembling back into the water of the grotto, scraping my palms against the wet rocks.
I blinked and coughed and scraped in huge breaths. The power I had felt in that room left my bones singed and hurting. I looked down and saw my war-markings blazing through the sodden cloth of my shirt. Words seemed insignificant; oaths rose to my lips but weren’t sufficient to describe half of what I had seen and felt in that bare moment before the throne of the First Queen. I had witnessed the benediction of the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie Queen, their anointing and their baptism in the power of Night and Day.
No wonder I was feeling a little shaky.
Chapter 18
“Tess!”
My name rang against the walls of the White Cave.
“Gods damn it, Tess, if you don’t answer me I’m diving in,” Luca shouted.
“I’m fine,” I croaked. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m fine! The pendant just shoved a vision down my throat.” I leaned forward in the shallow water, peering at the chains I had laid out beside the skull. No red gems. Then I looked at the skull, at its blank golden stare, its permanent mocking grin. I sighed. “It always has to be the most difficult, gruesome way, doesn’t it,” I grumbled, reaching forward and lifting apart the skull’s jaws as gently as I could. Its jaw creaked, bone rasping on bone, and I silently apologized to the spirit of whomever had occupied the skull in life.
Inside the skull’s mouth on a black cloth was the red gem, the color of old blood, missing the golden chain and darker than I had seen it but still unmistakably the red gem that had hung from the throat of the First Queen. Why it was called the Crown of Bones, I still had absolutely no idea, but I carefully folded the black cloth around the gem. It was almost as large as my fist, and heavier than it looked. Shutting the skull’s jaws with a bony click, I slipped the jewel into my belt pouch. Then I scooped up the golden chains—perhaps one would fit with the gem, or was powerful in its own right—tucking them into the pouch as well before making sure the pouch was securely fastened shut and tied to my belt. I resisted the urge to keep it clenched in my hand as I prepared for the swim back to the ledge.
“I hope you are a fast swimmer,” Riadne said with a strangled chuckle. “Ligeia will not be amused.”
I hesitated. Suddenly, diving into the lagoon with the third siren’s imminent return didn’t seem like such an appealing idea.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Finnead calmly, pressing the Brighbranr to Riadne’s slender throat. “Sirens will lie for much less than saving their own scales.”
Every moment I waited, if Ligeia was coming, brought her closer; but I stood at the edge of the grotto, frozen by indecision. The Sword vibrated, a low hum against my spine. Was it supposed to be comforting? Encouraging? I didn’t know anymore.
“Tess, you must swim back,” Finnead told me in that same unruffled voice. I latched onto the calm gravity in his words. Luca, still with my blade drawn and pointed toward the immobile Theles, kept his eye on the younger siren and stepped over to the edge of the ledge. He risked taking his gaze from Theles, looking toward me.
“If she comes, I will dive in,” he said.
I took a deep breath and drank in the sight of the two of them, so calm and sure, like two halves of one whole, and nodded. Checking the belt pouch one more time, I debated for a quick second whether I should draw my dagger, but it would just slow me down, and I’d probably cut myself to boot. “Here goes nothing,” I said to myself, and dove into the cold water.
I wasn’t a fast swimmer. I was the runner and Liam was the swimmer. I always thought it was easier for him to teach himself to run, to become accustomed to the burn and sting of sweat, the pounding of bones against the ground. The water was another world entirely, and though I was a solid swimmer I was never racing material. Breaststroke was my best, with the glide that favored my long body and let me float for a moment, suspended in the crystalline water. Sweep with the arms, stretch, kick, glide. My heart in my throat, I swam toward the ledge, every stroke igniting a flare of pain in my leg, my water-filled boots straining against my feet as I kicked. I fought the urge to kick them off; then I’d be barefooted as well as soaking wet when we emerged from the sirens’ lair.
I kept my head above the water as I neared the ledge. Luca glanced at me quickly over his shoulder. A slow line of greenish blood trickled down Riadne’s marble-pale throat. She snarled wordlessly, a hideous animal sound, her face twisted in fury and her slender hands fisted by her side. A few more half-strokes and I would be to the ledge—just as well, since my bones were jelly, both from the swim and the vision.
Suddenly a manic gleam appeared in Riadne’s dark eyes, a grin curving her perfect lips; and Theles started forward with a small gasp, raising one hand as if to ward off an enemy. I reached for the ledge and the rough rock scraped my fingertips as I kicked with all my remaining strength. Luca leapt toward me, sword still in his good hand, and I reached desperately for him as a sudden wave sloshed water over my shoulders. My hands closed over the unraveled bandage of Luca’s injured hand and he hauled me out of the water with such force and speed that my head snapped back.
The third siren erupted from the water of the lagoon where I had been just a heartbeat before. Her hands wrapped around my leg, each of her fingers digging into my flesh like a talon. She jerked me back down toward the water and a breathy sound of fear escaped my throat. I didn’t want
to drown in the embrace of a siren—of all the ways to die, that was pretty far down on my list. I kicked at the siren. My heel connected solidly with her face and I was rewarded with a gratifying snarl of pain from the creature.
With a massive heave, buying me some upward momentum, Luca released my hands and caught me with his muscled arm around my back, pivoting to both wrench me away from Ligeia and to free his sword. Vaguely I heard Riadne screaming something stridently in the background, her voice ugly and raw. I threw my arms around Luca’s neck as his sword flashed. Ligeia howled and Riadne shrieked. Even Theles hissed. The iron grip about my leg loosened and then fell away.
Finnead said a word in Sidhe, his voice rolling with power, and Riadne fell silent, her screams echoing in the white vault of the cave. I clung to Luca, his warm skin against mine sending heat rushing through my frozen body, as he stepped quickly backward, putting some distance between us and the edge of the lagoon. Green blood streaked his blade and I risked a glance at the water. An inky cloud of blood stained the water, spreading until the tainted water lapped against the white stone, tinting it a sickly green. By the edge of the water in a pool of blood lay both of Ligeia’s hands, fingers slightly curled, like dead spiders. My stomach heaved but I pushed it down. I had seen much worse on the battlefield in the Royal Woods.
Luca pushed me behind him. I fumbled for my dagger and finally got it unsheathed, grasping it with a shaking hand. I saw Finnead’s hand tighten on the hilt of the Brighbranr. “Wait!” I croaked hoarsely.
Finnead pulled Riadne’s head back mercilessly, but his sapphire eyes fastened on my own. He was listening. Waiting.
“Riadne, I invoke the right of my companions and I to leave unharmed at a time of our choosing,” I said in a stronger voice. “As you agreed. As we sealed in blood.”
Riadne bared her pointed teeth at me in answer.
Theles turned her attention to Finnead. “You may think us dishonest, Sidhe, but we have little use for such pacts, if we exercise our powers correctly.” Her last phrase was aimed at Riadne, a deadly sweet arrow.