The Problem with Promises

by Leigh Evans

  Damn right, it was.

  With a hiss, the tip of Knox’s knife went right into the center of the balefire.

  This was when it would have been good for the ball of flame to divide in two, like a split walnut or a broken clamshell, before it broke apart to fall harmlessly to the cement pad. Instead the fireball remained relatively intact, save for that dribble of wet fire that scorched my tender knuckles and remained poised on Whitlock’s blade.

  A rather spectacular fiery shish kebob.

  “Son of a bitch,” I breathed.

  The Fae’s eyes widened until her lashes tickled the pouch of skin above them. “Blah, blah, blah, blah!” she shrieked in Merenwynian as she twisted the coin she wore around her neck.

  Then, quicker than you could say “Alice in Wonderland,” she spun on her boots and pelted back down those hidden stairs.

  I’m not stupid. I had fire on my knife blade and a wrist as strong as hers. I flicked the balefire through the heart-shaped window. Heard it drop with a sizzle onto the stairs. Was momentarily blinded by a flurry of red sparks, blue flame, and dark smoke.

  My brain caught up. Told me to duck.

  I did, sinking into a frog crouch.

  So, I was in a good position to watch the gray coil of smoke billow out of the window’s opening. And the film over the gate to darken, then slowly clear itself.

  Tender knuckles braced on the cement, I found myself ogling blue skies.

  And nothing else.

  The Gatekeeper had harried back down her rabbit hole.

  * * *

  Well, I didn’t immediately leap through the gates after her. What I did—considering the sum strangeness of my evening and morning—was take a time-out.

  I stared at the window blankly. That’s what you do when you’re looking at something that makes no sense—like a sky that is both up and down. You freeze, dumbfounded, giving your head time to wrap itself around the huge-ass differences between this portal—this safe passage—and what you knew of the Creemore portal that had swallowed first your Trowbridge, then your brother.

  Apples and oranges. That’s what I was comparing.

  Or better yet, economy travel against a first-class ticket.

  Behind me, I heard a click. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have reconciled that noise to the snick-slide of a safety latch. Today, it was achingly familiar. I flicked a glance over my shoulder. Mathieu. Diamond in his ear winking in the sunlight. Wrist resting on the fence’s railing. Snub-nosed weapon pointed my way.

  Was that the same gun? It looked smaller.

  “Oh fuck off,” I muttered, turning back to the passage.

  What should I do? Cry “Sy’hella!” and hope this gate would respond like the one over the fairy pond at Creemore? Because the damn Fae had left it open—any Merenwynian evil could slither through it. Where the hell was she? Waiting somewhere in those passages? Ready to pop out at will, lobbing fireballs again? Or maybe she’d already crossed to Merenwyn? Screw those pesky mortals! She was astride her pony, spurring her trusty steed to the castle.

  Sound the alarms. The wolves just returned fire.

  Crap.

  St. Silas’s boots echoed on the cement.

  Just get it over with. Shoot me. Or better yet, let me go back to Trowbridge. Allow me to huddle in close. Let his chin cover my eyes. Then … shoot us. Yes. That’s the better choice. Romeo and Juliet. Except Romeo had been a douchebag and Juliet … I’m sorry, Julie-girl, but you gave up way too easily.

  How can I fix this? How can I make this better? Right?

  “Leave her alone, St. Silas,” shouted Trowbridge.

  Unmindful, St. Silas crouched beside me. He scratched the stubble on his chin. “The Great Council will not let it end so.”

  “Of course they won’t,” I said, with bitter sarcasm.

  The burning smell was gone. Rinsed in a wind I couldn’t feel. Scent, sweet as freesias, drifted through the heart-shaped portal.

  “Gregori and Salvador will demand that you travel to Merenwyn, ma chère. They will hold your mate here—a hostage, you understand?”

  “Stop talking to her, St. Silas.” The fence shivered and groaned.

  “Yes,” I replied dully. “I understand hostages.”

  The sky was so blue. Lexi was on the other side of that window. Waiting for rescue and an attitude adjustment. The Black Mage too.

  And the gate … oh Goddess … it was still wide open.

  “They will sweeten their demand with the promise of hope.” He balanced his arms on his knees, hung his head in a manner almost doleful. “They will tell you that once you’ve returned with her head and both coins, that they—we—will let you go.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “I would try, ma chère. But my appointment to the council is recent. My opinion does not, as yet, carry great weight.” The wind ruffled his hair. Caught his scent and sweetened it with flowers. He lowered his voice, to the faintest whisper. “Do you recognize opportunity, ma chère? Sometimes it passes us so quickly…”

  “I don’t know the language,” I said, my mouth dry. “I can’t speak a word of it.”

  They have crossbows in Merenwyn.

  He scowled at the window. “Perhaps the Gatekeeper has not traveled far. Perhaps she has fallen inside this…” He paused for a word.

  “Rabbit hole,” I whispered. The Black Mage knows what I look like.

  A slow nod. “It is possible that she’s wounded. Inside the passage. An easy kill.”

  “Or she’s waiting for me on the other side. With a few dozen royal guards.”

  What about the Raha’ells? What if they found me first? Would they take a long look at my translucent green eyes and think that they looked awfully familiar? Would they hold the Shadow’s sister as hostage or would I become the fox? Running ahead of the hounds.

  “You can’t send her!” shouted my mate. “She’ll be defenseless.”

  We both pivoted. St. Silas on his heel, me on my knee. Trowbridge gave the handcuff securing him to the railing a furious yank. The chain-link fencing shivered.

  “I will arm her with the knife,” the Frenchman replied.

  “You may as well put these fucking handcuffs on her and push her through hog-tied,” he said, comets swirling. “They’ll pick her off before she’s covered half a league. They have traps and hunters! It’s a game to them, don’t you get it?”

  “I will allow it to be her choice.” The Quebec wolf slanted his gaze away from my mate’s growing flare. “Stand down, Trowbridge. Or I shall instruct Mathieu to commence target practice?”

  I gave my lover a thin smile that tasted both sad and sweet, then turned back to the gates. Staring at all that sky—seeing that there was no land, no horizon, not a tree in the distance—it was like being in Threall and looking at the end of the world. Exactly like that. If I took that first step through the window, what would I find? An endless plunge, or a short drop?

  “Jesus,” Trowbridge said despairingly. “Don’t go, Tink.”

  I don’t want to. I really don’t.

  “I have to close the gates,” I said. “Have to.”

  “Just say the words. Stay with me.”

  Stay. His favorite word is “stay.”

  I thought of my brother’s portrait. I thought of Anu and Cordelia.

  Then … I thought about me.

  I am stronger than I think I am. Harder too. Death’s been trying to catch me for days, and I just keep … slipping between its fingers. And if I do go—if I take that leap—I will buy some time. Things happen when time is bought.

  Pigs fly.

  “Don’t let her go!” yelled my mate.

  Courage. It starts with one step.

  “I’m going to do it,” I said, getting off my knees.

  “Sweetheart, don’t. Not without me.”

  I bent over, put one hand on the frame. The myst rolled over my knuckles. It was cool, and perfumed with a smell I remember so well. My mother’s land. “I’m no baby anymore,�
� I said, staring at the blue sky.

  “You’ll always be mine.”

  Mine, mine.

  I forced my lips into a weak smile. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me to stay alive, Trowbridge.”

  A muscle jerked in his jaw. “Stay alive,” he whispered.

  I nodded, turned my back, and took that step.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I should have anticipated falling down the stairs. I knew they were there. But they’d been cut to fit a size zero foot, not a size six. Very narrow, very steep. And I was already disoriented. Everybody had told me portals were all about wind and walls that looked like smoke but felt wet. That there would be voices, long, echoing cries. And people behind the liquid walls. Lost souls. That’s what I’d been told—portals were air, and smoke, and sound, and everything that scares you.

  There was no wind, no smoke. No voices either.

  I was alone. Utterly alone. On a rock landing pad of sorts, at the bottom of a slope of stairs that had been chiseled out of solid dark rock. If I rolled, just a bit, I’d drop.

  Maybe three feet, maybe leagues.

  Into a pool of blue.

  Sky? Or water?

  I can’t do it. I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to be alone. Not again. Not now when I know what it feels like to belong to family that wasn’t a family.

  I swear—I didn’t say it. I thought it but I didn’t say it.

  Merry spoke. With a pinch of tissue, and a bite of electricity, and a deep golden glow from inside her breast—she reminded me.

  I was not alone.

  And so, I took a deep breath, and I covered her with my palm, pressing her hard against the cushion of my own breast, and then … I rolled.

  To find myself dropping into the air, not a chilly pool. Into the arms of a strong wind, not infinity. We were carried, blown like the leaf I’d always thought I was, by a breeze so powerful that my clothing flapped about me. My stomach roiled. I got impressions of others—hands pressed against the wall, mouths opened in cries—images set into undulating walls. A blur of faces too white, anguish too real.

  Light ahead.

  Blue, blue, blue.

  The opening came up on me faster than I wanted it to—and for once, time did not slow down. We were sent—Merry bleating orange pulses—spewing into the void.

  Goddess, take my soul.

  A sense of falling. My mouth opened for another long shriek.

  And then, with a thud that stole my breath, we landed. Hard, because one way or the other, all my landings are hard. No spongy moss beneath me this time. The ground smelled of earth and something else … sweet as my mum’s breath. I lay where I was, facedown in very ordinary dirt, for far longer than I should have, temporarily robbed of courage. Merenwyn’s earth tasted very much like ours.

  Merry’s ivy twined tight around my cold fingers. Gave them a reassuring and painful squeeze.

  I rolled to a sitting position.

  I’d landed on a small promontory approximately six feet in width. Wincing at the flaring hip pain, I turned and looked behind me. A solid wall of rock, and above that, a small cave. It would be difficult to spot unless you knew it was there. The entrance was shadowed. And the set of stairs carved into the cliff face had been sized to fit a very small foot.

  Get up.

  Nothing had broken, though my knee felt hot and I knew it would swell soon. I crab-shuffled to the edge. Below me was Merenwyn. Acres of untouched forest. Stretching out to the horizon, rolling with the swell of the land.

  The Raha’ells waited there. And perhaps over there, down by that ribbon of a river, I’d find a royal guard or two. Or three.

  Look at those trees. As massive as the ones in Threall.

  How to leave this place? My gaze followed the line of the notched stairs and noted a trail, no wider than a couple of feet. It led down the mountain, and then disappeared into the dark woods. So … courage. It can begin with a simple action. One step that takes you to a place you’d never thought you’d go. But heroes? They’re people who choose to keep moving forward. Even if they’re frightened. They move toward a goal. They soldier on toward their destiny.

  I will close the gate behind me. I will find shelter. I will meet Lexi and kill the Black Mage. I will see the Book of Spells destroyed.

  From the tunnel came a faint strand of sound. The shiver of metal fencing, hollow and distant.

  I stared at the vista, verdant and far-reaching.

  Count to twenty-five then do it. Get up. Take the next step.

  Suddenly, a gust of wind howled through the gash in the rock face. My hair lifted and whipped around my face.

  My hand tightened on the knife hilt.

  The noise grew terrible. The rattle of metal, the shriek of steel striking stone.

  One final cataclysmic whoosh of sound and wolf-scented air.

  Then a thud, coupled by the chatter of chain link.

  And a curse, exquisitely mortal.

  I closed my eyes briefly. Feet and fencing had landed in Merenwyn.

  His scent reached for me first. Alpha and man, woods and salt, sex and that indefinable element that was sung to the wolf inside me. It wrapped around me and said, “This be my mate.”

  A thoughtful pause.

  Down in the valley, the tops of the trees swayed.

  “You always going to leave when I ask you to stay?” he asked.

  I smiled through the tears. “What took you so long?”

  Acknowledgments

  My first round of thanks goes to those who volunteer to slog their way through the first draft read: Julie Butcher, Kerry Schafer, Rebecca Melson, and Victoria Koski. I’m endlessly grateful for both your comments and pat-pats.

  My second round of applause is directed to those who help polish and present that draft: my editor, Holly Ingraham; my hidden resource, Mickie; and all those at St. Martin’s Press whose work touches mine. Hugs to you all.

  My final round goes to the readers. Though I write the books, my readers make the series. Thank you for hanging with me for the entire ride!

  ALSO BY LEIGH EVANS

  The Trouble with Fate

  The Thing About Weres

  Praise for Leigh Evans and

  THE TROUBLE WITH FATE

  “[A] brilliant debut … has a likeable, light-fingered heroine with smarts, a tough sexy hero with troubles, and a glimpse into a fascinating Fae world that will have you howling for the next book. I loved it!”

  —Suzanne McLeod, author of The Shifting Price of Prey

  “What a delicious read! Chock-full of fun twists and sexy diversions, one of them named Robson. Leigh Evans is definitely one to watch. Get this book! You will not be disappointed!”

  —Darynda Jones, New York Times bestselling author of the Charley Davidson series

  “It’s rare to find a debut novel with a well-crafted world, a great story, and dynamic characters, but this book has them all. I was grabbed early and hooked to the very end. I eagerly await the sequel!”

  —Karen Chance, New York Times bestselling author of the Cassandra Palmer and Dorina Basarab series

  “Her first time at bat, Leigh Evans has hit one out of the park. The Trouble with Fate is the perfect mix of romance and action, with characters you can’t help but root for and a twist that had me squealing with surprise. Evans offers a brilliant new take on fairies, werewolves, and magic—and this book is urban fantasy and paranormal romance at its best. I am officially addicted.”

  —Chloe Neill, New York Times bestselling author of the Chicagoland Vampires and Dark Elite series

  “A true storyteller with a tough heroine and an original and engrossing tale. Reader, beware, if you pick up a Leigh Evans book, you won’t put it down until the last page.”

  —Patricia Briggs, New York Times bestselling author

  About the Author

  Leigh Evans lives in Southern Ontario with her husband and a short, fat, black dog. She’s raised two kids, mothered three dogs, and h
erded a few cats. Other than that, her life has been fairly boring. You can visit her online at www.leighevans.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE PROBLEM WITH PROMISES

  Copyright © 2014 by Leigh Evans.

  All rights reserved.

  For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  eISBN: 9781250032461

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / March 2014

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.