Curious what the heck an Aves was, I glanced at him in question. Eyes tightening at the corners, he shoved me behind him. Or he tried to. I tripped on an exposed root and fell onto my hands and knees, spitting mad, ready to break him off a piece of my mind.
Then I saw them.
Aves.
Swarming.
“Oh crap.”
Pain radiated through my shoulder. My face smacked into the dirt, and I spat moldy leaves. Talons pierced my back, wings brushed my cheek and hot breath blasted my nape. The dull scrape of a beak followed. A flash of bird-boy snapping my neck flickered in my head.
Not today.
Torquing my upper body, I threw all my strength behind my elbow, slamming it into his ribs. It squawked and flapped its wings, achieving liftoff and lightening the load on my back. Bracing palms on the earth, I shoved up and yanked my feet under me. Bird-boy toppled with a grunt when I stood.
Static crackled over my skin, and I yelped when green light flashed by my foot, blasting clods of dirt into the air. I half-expected smoke to curl up from my boots. None did, thank God. My assailant, however, wasn’t as lucky. He had been reduced to a heap of charred bones and vaporized feathers.
The almost magnetic pull of Mac’s emerald gaze drew mine to him, and I gulped. “Mac?”
Intricate runes mapped every visible inch of his face and neck, including his scalp under his closely cropped hair. Symbols covered his lips. His eyelids, when he blinked, were also marked. This was the real Macsen Sullivan, the one fae whispered about behind their hands and feared crossing in the dead of night. This was the face of Faerie justice. Even in this, he maintained balance, the patterns symmetrical, carrying equal weight in proportion to the area of his body they emblazoned.
All this time I had been seeing him through a layer of glamour.
I stared into my possible future, terrified of so much magic owning real estate on my body.
“Thierry.”
His voice snapped me to attention, and I cut him a sharp nod.
After turning a slow circle, I spotted three more scorched-earth marks left from where Mac had ended lives with a flick of his rune-stained wrist. Standing there stunned, I whooshed out a surprised breath when another bird-thing leapt onto my back. I spun toward the nearest tree and rammed my spine against the trunk until the creature’s grip slacked, and I scraped it off me using the rough bark.
Staggering forward, I scanned the forest and then the limbs over my head. Both were clear.
“Are you all right?” Mac’s voice rose behind me.
“Fine.” I rubbed my shoulder. “What were those?”
“Aves—half man and half bird.” He came to my side. “The Morrigan bred them herself.”
Eww. I wasn’t going to ask how that was possible.
“I counted seven bodies,” he said. “Females mate with two males. That means two escaped.”
“What about him?” I pointed to the one I had knocked unconscious. “Do we leave him?”
“We might as well.” Mac dusted his hands. “The others flew straight to the Morrigan, I’m sure.”
“Great.” The giant redwood caught my eye. “She knows where we are and what we’ve done.”
What I had done.
Confirmation from her spies ought to buy Shaw more time. Silver lining, right?
Mac walked to my side and stared out at his home. “We should get inside.”
I grabbed his arm when he rocked forward. “How do we know it’s not booby-trapped?”
“The den is more heavily warded than the grounds.” A twinkle lit his eyes. “Why do you think she sent Aves?”
“They kept to the trees.” I considered it. “That’s why they attacked us physically.”
“Aves possess no magic, but even if they had been armed with spells, they are useless here.”
I fell into line behind him, watching our backs. I lifted my chin and drew a long breath in to fill my lungs. Burnt feathers and cooked meat stuffed my nose. A troll could be right behind us, and I wouldn’t smell him. Given their diet, that was saying something. Generally, when a person had corpse stuck between their teeth, you smelled them long before they got close enough for a chat.
Rubbing my hands down my arms, I asked, “Do you think she’ll try to stop us?”
“Not yet.” He sounded resigned. “She’ll want to see what you’re capable of herself.”
Great. Lucky me I wasn’t one to suffer performance anxiety.
The Morrigan’s ability to shapeshift into a crow meant she had a bird’s-eye view for everything Mac taught me. Well, I hoped she enjoyed the show. My one-woman act would be coming to a tether near her soon. As an Unseelie, she must have set up camp in the Halls of Winter. Mac said there was a tether there, and she would be guarding it I was sure. The denizens of Summer were no less lethal, but after Balamohan, I was nursing a healthy…not fear…but respect for the Morrigan’s ruthlessness.
The short walk from the Aves slaughter to Mac’s den took no time. I kept an eye out for Aves or other fae loyal to the Morrigan, but it seemed we were alone. As Diode, the lock on the massive door had given Mac trouble. Thanks to the power of opposable thumbs, Mac worked his lock in seconds. I scooted aside as a three-foot section of the trunk swung open, and smoothed my fingers over the shaggy bark, tracing claw and teeth marks left from the hounds who had hunted me. With a shiver, I dusted my hands and sidestepped Mac. Entering his circular living room, I gave him space to heft a bar into place behind us.
While he fidgeted with the lock, I stood on a ratty woven mat and breathed. Tobacco smoke and parchment tickled my nose with a pleasing familiarity. His floor-to-ceiling shelves held tomes with gnawed spines, and broken knickknacks littered the floor. Chewed shoes and shredded paper huddled in corners, and the stink of urine near Mac’s bedroom door made my lip curl.
I thought the hounds had followed me straight from here after I killed Prince Raven. Apparently, they hung around long enough to destroy everything they could get their teeth and paws on. Mac was lucky he left his other doors shut, or he might have lost everything. As it was, the place was wrecked.
“Forgive the mess.” He nudged a broken ceramic owl with his toe. “I had no time to clean.”
“You’re forgiven.” I chuckled. “Considering you were busy saving my life at the time, I’m glad you didn’t stop to straighten up. It’s not like you’ve been here since that day to do anything about it.”
“Still—” he bent to straighten a fallen chair, “—there are rules of hospitality.”
I snorted. “Have you ever seen my bedroom?”
He raised his head. “You have a point.”
Debating whether I ought to be insulted by his swift capitulation, I rolled my shoulders. “Hey, I wash clothes. It’s the hanging-up-and-folding part I don’t get around to. That’s half the battle, right?”
He hummed low in his throat. Not a disagreement, but an acknowledgment.
A bumping sound froze us mid-conversation. Mac’s head swung left, toward his bedroom. Light sparked in his palm, green-black and menacing. Power leapt into my runes, and we stalked forward together. A quick hand signal indicated I should open the door, and he would rush in the room to clear it.
Rolling my eyes at his mile-wide protective streak, I got in place. Then again, if something had broken his wards and gained entry, it must be nasty. Or really stupid. The hounds had battered down the door, sure, but they were relatives of ours. Magic was fluid, and—like me with the tethers—often a familial tie was enough to break a ward or a spell if you had finesse, were willing to spill your own blood and had enough juice to power a counter spell. Maybe Mac’s bum-rush idea was smart after all.
Hand on the knob, I caught Mac’s eye, flung open the door and jumped back. The glow of his magic lit up the room, and I glimpsed a shadow dart across the foot of the bed. With a curse, Mac extinguished his energy and shook out the residual sparks. He turned to me and sighed.
His hand flung out to g
esture at a dark smudge on the floor. “I believe this belongs to you.”
Creeping forward, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and realized the smudge was a body. Not just any body, either. Crap on toast. I crossed to him and knelt, gripping his chin and lifting his face.
“Hey, Rook.” Runes lit, I held them close to his face. “I heard you were dead.”
“I’m harder to kill…” he sucked in a shuddering breath, “…than I look.”
Most cockroaches are.
Sucking on my teeth, I caved. “What are you doing here?”
His answer was to roll his eyes up in his head and slump forward, all but falling into my lap.
Great. Just great. This was all I needed. My soon-to-be ex-husband passed out, drool sliding from the corner of his mouth, bleeding from dozens of nasty scratches crossing his pale face and neck.
Really, was it too much to ask to be a widow?
Mac and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the foot of his bed, watching Rook flip and flop on the mattress. Sleep hit him hard once I cleaned him up and Mac scrounged together a meal for him. The hounds had eaten most of Mac’s stores since his compact kitchen sat off to one side of the living room.
My foot jiggled. “How did he make it past the wards?”
“I invited him to cross my threshold, remember?” Mac sighed. “What’s done is done.”
With the hounds at our heels, Mac—Diode—whoever—had to act fast. He had allowed Rook in so that I wouldn’t argue and waste precious time. Now it seemed I had compromised his den. Go me.
Hopeful as I was that was the only reason the wards reacted favorably to Rook’s presence, I had to put it out there. “I was afraid it was the blood thing. You know—him being my husband and all.”
“It was my first thought too.” Strain registered on Mac’s face. “But he used no magic to enter.”
A chill whispered over my skin. “You don’t think the Morrigan can use that bond too?”
He turned his head so our eyes met. “It’s a possibility.”
Fear crackled like ice over my heart. “Through that bond, her blood could null my magic?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Our magics have similar roots. We are all death-bringers.”
A low groan drew my gaze to Rook. “Do you think he’ll die?”
Mac laughed. “No such luck.”
Pressing my lips together, I wasn’t sure if the answer pleased me or not. I could make Branwen happy by returning her brother to her, but should I set Rook loose in the mortal realm? I wasn’t sure.
A firm hand dropped onto my shoulder, and I glanced at Mac.
“You must get this marriage annulled before we face the Morrigan.”
Eager to be free of Rook, I gripped Mac’s hand. “How does that work?”
Rook had tricked me into performing a barely legal marriage ceremony by dining with him on food he served me, wearing clothing he bought for me bearing his crest, and by changing in his bedroom. Part of me wondered if it could be that easy to break the bond. Say I cook for him, give him back his armor and…I don’t know how to reverse the last bit. You can’t un-flash a room where you’ve changed.
“You must go before the High Court and plead your case.”
I groaned. “Are you serious?”
“They acknowledged the union, and they must be willing to dissolve it.”
“No way is Daibhidh going to vote for freeing me from a union with an Unseelie. That was half their claim to the throne.” My fingers curled into my palms. “Liosliath might agree to it just to piss him off, though.”
Mac was nodding. “You need a majority, not a unanimous vote.”
Hope sparked in my chest. “You’re the tie-breaker.”
“I am.”
I grinned at him. “Can I assume you’re going to vote for the annulment?”
“I would have annulled the marriage with a swipe of my claws had you let me.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, smiling when he stiffened. “I appreciate the sentiment.”
Before Mac figured out where his hands went to make a hug work, I chickened out and shifted my weight, straightening before he got an arm around me. Awkward as heck, but it had felt right for a second, until we each had a chance to think about what we were doing instead of going with it.
Ignoring his hurt expression, I mentally added this newest item to my to-do list.
Sever the tethers. Annul my marriage to Rook. Rescue Shaw. Get the heck back home.
An odd feeling bubbled up in me. Relief maybe. Shaw and I had been willing to ignore my wayward husband and move on with our lives. The fact Shaw had claimed me first meant, to us, that Rook’s marriage scheme was just that—verbal acrobatics—and he stuck one hell of a tricky landing.
At the time, yeah, I was grateful. I wanted to live, and playing along with Rook meant I not only lived, but I got to go home. Now our circumstances had changed. I wasn’t the Unseelie princess, and I wouldn’t become queen, either. I was of no value to Rook, and he of no value to the Morrigan.
We were square as far as I was concerned, pending the dissolution of our marriage.
I retreated to the living room, and Mac did the same, pulling the door almost shut behind him.
Feeling my internal clock ticking, I pressed, “Why do you think he’s here?”
Mac shrugged. “Either he’s a spy, or he had nowhere else to go.”
“With the Morrigan ruling Winter, he may not be able to return home.” It begged the question… “How long do you think he’s been hiding out here? His wounds look recent, but they don’t smell fresh.”
“I would guess no more than a day or so for him to be half-starved and not acted on it yet.”
I set my hands on my hips. “You’re thinking he got himself trapped in here.”
Thanks to the hounds, the cupboards were bare. He might not have expected that.
Mac nodded. “The Aves would have told the Morrigan he was here, if she didn’t already know.”
“And if he has fallen out of favor with her—and was injured—he made an easy target.”
“I doubt even they would have been brave enough to peck her son to death.” He shifted his weight. “But I understand if he wasn’t brave enough to risk the woods in his condition to learn if that was the case.”
I snickered at the thinly veiled insult. Very thin. Like tissue paper.
“Once he regains consciousness,” Mac soothed, “we will find out what he knows.”
My foot started tapping. “It will take a while for Sleeping Beauty to catch forty winks.”
Mac started toward the Hall of Many Doors, grasped the handle, and a soft pulse of magic lit the room. Holding the door open for me, he smiled. “I have an idea of what we can do in the meantime.”
A burst of adrenaline sent me scooting under his arm. “Where are we headed?”
“To Spring.”
I rubbed my hands together. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Chapter 10
Three hours later, I slumped in a wingback chair in Mac’s office with my right leg propped on a matching floral footstool and a light-as-air cushion spelled with ice magic balanced on my kneecap. Cold muted the pain and the sip of brandy Mac offered took the edge off, allowing me to sit and rest.
Spring had kicked my butt. That season’s primary tether was deactivated, but it had cost me torn ligaments.
Head tilted back, I stared up at Mac through blurry eyes. “So that’s where you got the fur.”
We had been ambushed by four saber-toothed cats the second our feet touched the ground.
Mac could hop right back into the tether and ride it to his den. Me? Not so much. The first time I used a tether in the Hall of Many Doors by accident, I found myself standing alone in Spring with no clue as to how I got there or how to go back. The doorway I had walked through vanished, and there was no door back. Without a physical object anchoring the tether, I was stuck unless Mac guided me.
And stuc
k had almost gotten me killed when the tigers decided we smelled tasty.
“Yes.” He paused in his search for a charm of some kind. “Saber-toothed tigers in Faerie behave more like lions than tigers. The pride denning in Spring prefers the swampy area around the tether for raising their young. One of the older males became too weak to hunt for himself, and the younger males prevented the females from providing for him. Out of desperation, he snatched someone out of the tether and ate them. I was sent to put him down. He was such a beautiful animal, I kept his pelt.”
I clapped my hands. “And thus the legend of Diode was born.”
A dark flush rising in his cheeks, he cleared his throat. “How is the pain?”
“Fine.” I gave my knee a test wiggle. “Another hour and I ought to be able to walk on it.”
He bobbed his head, half-listening while searching drawers in the bureau by the door.
“Ah,” he said at last. “Here we are.”
He walked the tarnished amulet to me and placed the silver disc on my open palm. Flat and cool, it hung from a matching chain that coiled in my lap. I ran my thumb across the pale blue stone set in the center. Lilac veins flashed like lightning across the strange gem. I had never seen anything like it.
It also reeked of magic…and Mac.
I turned it over to examine the back. “What does it do?”
“It’s a homing beacon I designed for myself when I was first learning to create and navigate the tethers. It requires a drop of blood to attune the spell to you, but it’s better than a compass for getting you where you want to go.” He leaned over me and adjusted my grip so my fingers eased into grooves on the sides of the circular amulet. “Grip it like this and speak the name of the place you want to go.”
The ability to operate the tethers without knowing individual coordinates would help big time.
He stuck out his hand, ready to invoke the charm now. I tucked my fingers under my armpits and wiggled back in the chair. “Do me a favor. Wait until we tackle the next tether to attune the amulet?”
Laughing under his breath, he changed course and slid one hand under the back of my knees.
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