by Mindy Klasky
For one entire week, I lurked in my room on the Vampire Ward. When my belly screamed for sustenance, I sneaked out to the vending machines, pressing buttons without regard to which candy and soda dropped from the wire racks. I consumed the food and drink as if it were medicine, forgetting its flavor before I swallowed.
Alone, abandoned, I thought about all I had done in the Eastern Empire—how everything had seemed so perfect with Jonathan. How it all went astray.
I remembered that ideal week after the ley-wall broke, before the appointment with Oberon. I’d loved those nights, watching Jonathan work, seeing the good that one imperial citizen could do for another.
I couldn’t stay in my room on the Vampire Ward forever. I needed to find a future. I needed to build a future.
I knocked on the door to Ashley McConnell’s office. “Do you have a minute?” I asked when she looked up from her computer.
“What’s up?” Her voice was gentle. Kind. Her tone reminded me of the way well-meaning loved ones spoke to the dying.
“I’ve been thinking. What would it take for a person like me to become a doctor?”
“A doctor!” Okay, that squawk didn’t sound well-meaning.
“The type of work you do here is amazing. If I could learn to help people… If I could use my powers for good…”
Her face softened. “It takes years to become a doctor, Titania. Extra time for you, because I’m assuming you don’t have a traditional undergraduate degree.”
My face flamed. “That would be a fair assumption.”
“Why don’t you start by taking a job here at the hospital?”
Hope flared inside me, only to be met with immediate disappointment. “I can’t do that. I can’t run into—”
“This would be a day job. Don’t get excited,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing glamorous. We need someone to help the nurses. You’d stock the supply cabinets. Make up patient beds. Help with light filing and other duties as assigned.”
“I can do that.” But then I thought of my rumpled bed on the Vampire Ward. “Er, how much does it pay? I’m going to have to get a room somewhere in town.”
“For now, let’s call things even. You stay upstairs. We’ll add a small stipend from petty cash, enough for you to buy food from the vending machines. And if we need you in an emergency, you’ll make yourself available. Sound like a deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
We shook on it. For the first time in days, I thought I might have a future in Washington.
21
I woke near dawn on Samhain. The new year had started at midnight. If I’d been home in the Thousand-Oak Grove, I would have spent the night dancing under the moonlight. I would have greeted the dawn on the shores of the Thames, surrounded by my ladies-in-waiting. I would have cast a gold coin into the river, wishing for luck in the coming year.
I didn’t miss the dancing. I didn’t miss the glint of the river, rippling in the moonlight. I didn’t miss the feel of a fresh-minted coin cut with the image of my father, the king.
I missed Jonathan.
Not a day had gone by that I didn’t think about him. I carried a stack of new scrubs from the laundry to the supply closet, and I felt his hands on the scrubs around my waist. I made beds in the emergency room and I remembered that first night, when I thought I’d dipped his wallet, when he’d known all along exactly what I was doing.
I lay in my room on the Vampire Ward, and I remembered the weight of his body on mine.
I was a woman lost between two ports. I wasn’t fae enough to return to the Thousand-Oak Grove. I wasn’t imperial enough to stay in DC.
Now, on Samhain, there was no going back to sleep, not with so many melancholy memories flooding my thoughts. I pulled a wool coat over my scrubs and slipped my feet into flannel-lined boots. More and more, I was giving up my fae ways, settling for real goods instead of glamours. It was easier. It felt more honest.
My breath fogged on the air as I walked to the fountain. Gravel crunched under my feet. Automatically, I looked up at the stars, seeking out familiar constellations. The Badger was already blotted from the sky, his pale stars too hard to make out this close to dawn.
I rounded the boxwood hedge, and my feet froze to the path.
Jonathan stood beside the fountain.
I needed to flee before he saw me. I had to dash back to the hospital, race up the stairs, and lock myself into my room on the Vampire Ward. That’s what an imperial woman would do, running from the man who’d broken her heart.
A fae princess, though, would demand her rightful place beside the fountain. She’d shoulder him aside and fling a coin in for the new year, just to prove she could. She’d stand there, glaring, until the sun rose and he had to leave or burn.
He turned around. “Titania,” he said.
Hearing my name on his lips cut like a scalpel. I’d dreamed about his speaking to me. I’d imagined his greeting me again. But not like this, not with sorrow tightening every line in his body.
It was light enough for me to see the paper in his hands. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but I’d read them once before.
Clarice Sanders invites you to the
wedding of her daughter,
Abigail Weaver,
to Matthew Drake
at the Church of St. Peter
at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 31, 20—
If I could make out the invitation, the sun was already breaching the horizon. Not believing my eyes, I glanced at Jonathan’s hands, at the wiry fingers I knew too well. They were already flushed, growing pink with the first wash of sunburn.
“You have to get inside,” I said.
“Abigail gets married today.” It sounded like he wasn’t answering me, but I knew he was.
He was a good man. A good father. He’d tried to do what he thought was right, negotiating away Clarice's embezzlement, and it had cost him everything. For nearly thirty years, he’d counted up that cost.
But he didn’t have to count this. He didn’t have to miss his daughter’s wedding.
“Let me cast a glamour,” I said. “That night… Oberon’s silver cup didn’t burn you. The glamour will protect you from the sun.”
“It won’t last long enough.”
“It will if I go with you.”
He stared at me. My Game had made him a monster. I had done that—I’d taken away his right to fight in the only way that was important to him. I’d stripped him of his independence, his individual right to choose.
And he’d equalled my thrust with his own. He’d wrestled me into submission with an ease that shattered me. He’d taken away any story I could tell myself that I was strong, that I was free, that I could choose whatever I wanted to do.
We’d hurt each other—deeper than I’d ever thought possible.
But I was tired of aching. I didn’t want to keep revisiting that night on the Mall. I didn’t want to see the instant I chose to betray him, the moment he reacted in kind.
I wanted what we’d had before. I wanted him back.
“You said you’d never go to a wedding. I can’t ask you to—”
“I’m volunteering,” I said.
The night was fading faster now. I could see each line of his face, as if he stood in a spotlight. His cheeks were turning ruddy, succumbing to the burn. “Please,” I said, “Let me make this right.”
“You don’t owe me anything now. I don’t know if you ever did. You wanted to help. You wanted to keep me safe. And then I—”
For just a moment, I felt the iron chains cinching around my body. I felt the breath squeezed out of my lungs as he squeezed the links tight. I was bound, frozen, confined.
“How could I do that?” he said. “How could I hurt anyone I love as much as I love you?”
The chains shattered.
“Say that again,” I ordered, because no matter what had passed between us, I was still a fae princess. I still knew how to issue orders when it counted.
He brush
ed my hair off my face and cradled the back of my head with his palm. “I. Love. You.”
My grin grew wider with each word. I covered his wrist with my palm. I gathered the glamour inside my mind. I closed my eyes and pushed, and then I opened them to see a gargoyle standing in the first ray of dawn.
22
We stood in the back of the chapel, witnessing the marriage of Abigail and Matthew.
Jonathan wore his gargoyle glamour, the human version of his supernatural mien. His shoulders were broad; his hands were nearly square. His blond hair was gone, replaced by a gleaming bald pate. His skin was the even gold of river rock.
I wasn’t happy being in the church. If I closed my eyes, I could see the Thousand-Oak Grove. I could smell the breath of Oberon’s men, the ones in my nightmare. I could feel their hands on me, rough, cruel.
Even when I kept my eyes open, the organ music echoed strangely in my veins, calling to mind the dire tones of Oberon’s hounds. I didn’t like the priest on the dais—neither his oily smile nor the way he stumbled over Abigail’s name as if he’d only met her for the first time that morning.
But people around us were happy. Jonathan pointed out Clarice in the front pew, wearing beige and dabbing at her eyes with a scrap of white tissue.
Abigail beamed in a simple white dress. She carried a bouquet of autumn wildflowers, asters and gentians and tiny blue lobelias. Her voice rang out, loud and heartbreakingly clear as she vowed to love, honor, and cherish her husband.
Matthew Drake stood beside her in a plain charcoal suit. His voice shook with emotion as he offered his own vow to love, honor, and cherish.
They kissed like sweethearts at their first spring dance.
There must have been dust in that church. Something got caught in my eye, and I couldn’t banish the tears that striped my cheeks. Jonathan gave me a knowing smile and handed over his handkerchief.
His glamour rippled just as the organ music started up again. I touched his wrist and strengthened my magic, restoring his gargoyle shell.
Abigail and Matthew led the recessional, breaking tradition by taking time to clasp hands with wedding guests who lined the aisle, accepting well wishes and a few quick embraces. When the happy couple got to the back of the church, Matthew gave Jonathan a quick handshake. Abigail leaned forward, offering her cheek for a kiss. After Jonathan obliged, she turned her head to a curious angle.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know we’ve met before, but I can’t quite remember your name.”
“Jonathan,” he said, but then he caught himself, unable to say “Weaver” without ruining his game.
“Silveroak,” I interrupted, reaching out to shake her hand. “Titania and Jonathan Silveroak.” I started to say, We knew you when you were just a little girl, but I stopped myself in time. Jonathan and I looked like we were the exact same age as Abigail and her groom.
“Our families are old friends,” Jonathan said. “And I couldn’t be happier to see you today.”
Abigail laughed, and Matthew nodded, and then they hurried out the door. The wedding guests followed, smiling and talking and speculating on whether they’d ever seen a bride and groom more happy.
Jonathan sank back onto the pew as the last few stragglers left the church. The priest followed behind, nodding to both of us and reminding us that there was punch and cake in the tent on the front lawn.
“We’ll be along in a moment,” I said. I cast just enough of a push to make the man look away, to remind him that he had happy parishioners to greet, and a white-frosted wedding confection that would not eat itself.
I joined Jonathan on the wooden bench. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m better than fine. I just can’t believe that after all these years, I was finally able to talk to my baby girl.” He sounded like he’d just received a Snickers bar, a packet of M&M’s, and a two-liter bottle of ice-cold Mountain Dew.
“If you play your cards right,” I said, “this doesn’t have to be the last time you see her. Maybe it’s time for Jonathan Silveroak to resume his friendship with the family.
“Do you think?”
“As a gargoyle, all sorts of things are possible.”
“That means you’re planning to stick around?”
“That means you’ll have to order me to leave.”
He leaned forward to kiss me.
I must have seen the shadow move across the doorway. I must have recognized the shape, familiar after a lifetime in the Thousand-Oak Grove. I must have felt the ancient bond, the ties that had been set when I was only a child.
Even as my head tilted, even as my lips opened for Jonathan’s kiss, my brain shouted a warning.
I twisted toward the fae prince of the Unseelie Court. He was clad head-to-toe in black. His long hair was pushed back from his forehead, and his mouth was set in a sneer.
“Oberon!” I exclaimed.
But he hadn’t come to talk.
His dagger rested in his palm. I only had time to note that the weapon’s grip was made of obsidian, black stone shining beneath the Unseelie Prince’s steady fingers. The blade was cold iron, sleek and dark, nestled against his sleeve until he was halfway through his strike.
The blade burned as it cut deep into my side.
I felt the iron edge, flaming through my rib-cage. The burning tip lodged against my heart. The hilt rocked against my chest, searing as my abandoned bridegroom sawed up and away, twisting viciously to rip his blade free.
I couldn’t scream. The pain was too intense—a solid oak of agony, a towering mountain of torture. It locked every fiber of my body, shredded every morsel of my magic.
Blood bloomed on my green blouse, spreading faster than my fingers could stop it. In seconds, my hands were washed in gore. My arms began to shake. My body slumped against the pew.
Jonathan catapulted over my body with all his vampire speed. My vision was fogging. I was staring through mist, but I saw his jaws stretch open.
He was a gargoyle now. He had no fangs. But he had ordinary incisors, and he knew exactly how to use them.
With the silence of a midnight stalker, he clutched Oberon’s throat before the fae prince could glamour an escape. His gargoyle fingers cinched closed. As if from a distant tunnel, I heard a wet gurgle as Oberon fought for breath past his crushed larynx.
I slipped from the bench to the floor. I couldn’t see either man now; I could only make out a square of ceiling, pure and white above me. I heard a struggle, a thrashing. Feet pounded against the floor. One voice snarled, low and hungry, fading away to a wet, sucking hiss.
I fought to sit up, but my body wouldn’t obey me. The roof of my mouth buzzed. The white ceiling faded to grey. I tried to shake my head, tried to drive away the darkness, but I couldn’t move.
“No,” I heard the word, harsh and bare and urgent. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Someone shifted me. I felt heat around me, like sun-warmed sand against my freezing arms and legs. I needed something. I needed that heat, but there was no way to pull it closer.
The knife was back. Its evil iron blade flashed before my eyes, and I waited for its wicked bite. But this time, the knife didn’t cut me. This time, the knife sawed into a block of stone.
No. Not stone. Flesh. Smooth, hard flesh, the color of golden river rock.
“Drink, Titania.”
I heard the words, but they made no sense. I’d known someone named Titania once, but she’d disappeared a lifetime ago.
“Drink,” the voice said again.
My body slipped deeper into the sun-warmed sand. I couldn’t remember what drink meant.
“Sweet Titania, drink.”
A rock pressed against my mouth. My lips opened. My tongue flattened. The stone pressed harder, pushing, forcing, and my mouth was filled with sunlight.
I swallowed the golden light because there was nothing else I could do. Heat coated my throat. A sunbeam jolted my belly. My mouth was full again, and I swallowed aga
in, and the sun filled every crevice of my body.
The screaming pain in my chest fell silent. Another gulp, another ray of light, and my nicked ribs healed. Two more swallows, greedy now, starving, and the great rent in my chest sealed closed.
I opened my eyes and reached up with my hands, pulling Jonathan’s forearm to a more convenient angle. He was crooning my name, cradling me against his gargoyle body, my spine matched to his chest, his arms and legs wrapped around mine.
As I drank, a peace settled over my body. I felt even, steadied, like a sapling putting down roots in a glade.
I laughed and clutched his arm closer. Another swallow, and I sensed the earth beneath the church’s stone floor. One more, and I could feel the dogwood trees outside, lining the path to the tent full of wedding guests.
This was the communion I’d felt with the Thousand-Oak Grove when I was a child. This was the familiar sense of belonging. I was the land around me; I was everything that grew there.
I was grounded in the Eastern Empire.
I pulled away from Jonathan, just enough to turn and face him. His forearm looked like a science experiment, a perfect dissection made with a precision blade. I couldn’t bring myself to study the iron knife by his foot.
Even as I avoided the weapon, though, I watched Jonathan’s flesh knit itself. Despite his gargoyle glamour, he could still work a vampire’s miraculous healing.
“Your blood…” I said.
He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything else I could do. You would have bled out before any ambulance could get here.”
“Then I’m turning.”
“No, no,” he brushed away the thought. “I didn’t drink from you first. Nothing will stop you from being a fae princess.”
“Then it’s all grounding.”
“Grounding?” His fingers started to feel at the back of my head. It took me a moment to realize he thought I had a concussion.
“Your blood,” I said, sitting up straighter so his hand had to fall away. “It’s from the Eastern Empire. Like grain or fruit or herbs, it’s grounded here.”