The one door that still worked led to Mac’s study. I passed through it, bubbles in tow, and sat on the edge of his desk, glancing around, wondering if I would ever see this place again. Or worse, if I would see it every day for the rest of my life. A pang arrowed through my chest. Home was so far away.
Shifting my hips, I knocked over a small inkwell that spread black ichor across his desk. I leapt to my feet, snatching papers out of the black liquid’s path and setting baubles on the floor. I spotted an old shirt of mine, one Mac must have brought back with him, and used it to mop up the mess I’d made.
Crisis averted, I dropped into his chair with a fistful of papers and started shuffling them. One of the cleaner pieces caught my eye. It was a note—sort of—addressed to me. My name was written in a neat script. Below that a series of numbers—coordinates?—were listed. Underneath those it I read, “Tethers may be established from one point to another so long as fresh blood ties the ends together.”
Taking care not to smear more ink on the writing, I folded the paper and tucked it into my backpack for later. An idea was itching the back of my mind, but I couldn’t stop now to devote brainpower to the pondering of logistics. I had to stash the Morrigan, and then I had to go after Shaw. That ought to be fun.
Bháin was hard to read. He had shown Mom kindness. But had he chosen to do so, or had he been following Rook’s orders?
Like so many other things, I just didn’t know for sure.
I never thought I would actually wish Rook was around. I had so many questions.
Word of the Morrigan’s capture would spread quickly. Even if the Aves kept their beaks closed, the trees and rocks had eyes and ears in Faerie, and it was too dangerous to assume the flock was the only witness to our altercation. That meant I had to get moving. Fast. Before word reached Bháin.
Fifteen minutes and twice as many failed attempts to extricate myself later, I slapped the door to the Hall of Many Doors shut behind me. Straining my senses, I winced at the discordant sensation of having one of my air pockets trapped. The slight pull on my essence reminded me of shutting the door on a lock of hair and having them yanked out as you walked away.
It hurt, yeah, but I could deal.
Turning a slow circle in the living room, I decided I had all I needed for the final leg of the trip.
Outside, chirps and whistles rained down on me from where the Aves kept their perches. Great.
I tugged the elastic band from my hair and ran my fingers through it, twisting it up into a sloppy bun that kept the stragglers from my eyes. Determined to see this through, I set out for Rook’s home.
Faerie’s nifty travel magic made the journey back to Winter a quick one. The problem was I had no idea how to reach Rook’s house, and without him or Mac to lead me, my campaign spluttered out.
Hours lost in the blizzard conditions of Winter turned me around, twisted my perception and left me standing in a barren field. White stretched as far as the eye could see. The extreme cold began to punch through the heat spell on my armor, and I shivered. My breath frosted in the air.
A single black feather caught on a drift and swirled around my ankles.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“Rook?”
A dull thud and a blur of dark feathers hit the snow. Shaking off the flakes, the Aves translator, who I decided to call Pie, as in four and twenty baked in a, blinked up at me with his beady black eyes.
I blinked right back. “Where did you come from?”
“I followed.” He puffed out his chest. “We followed.”
Well shoot. I thought they had ditched me on the edge of Autumn.
He bobbed his head. “Walk circle?”
Heat prickled in my wind-chapped cheeks. “I’m lost.”
His feathers rustled. “I can direct.”
Hope warmed my chest. “Do you know where Rook lives?”
Pie hopped in place to keep his feet from sinking in the snowbank. “Ice house.”
“Yes, the ice house.”
“This way.” He took to the air and vanished sixty seconds later.
“Slow down,” I yelled. “I can barely see my own nose in this weather.”
Okay, so visibility was closer to six feet in any direction, but I felt claustrophobic trapped in my circle of whited-out sameness. A wispy voice startled me, and I sucked down an icy breath while scanning for its origin.
“Too late, too late,” it whispered. “You came too late, too late to save him.”
I froze in place, cold panic seeping into my bones. “Who said that?”
“Master likes you, likes you.” Trilling giggles. “He likes you, likes you enough to spare you.”
A shimmer of white light zinged past me.
The master? Surely the voice didn’t mean…
“Wait.” I stumbled after it. “Who are you?”
A squawk jerked my gaze skyward. When I glanced back down, the light had vanished.
“You follow.” Pie hovered over the frigid ground. “This way.”
I lurched ahead, wading through drifts. Some came to my ankles, others to my chest. Pie kept in view, his erratic flight a smudge against the flawless white perfection of the snow-laden Winter sky.
Try as I might, I didn’t hear the singsong voice again.
I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Around the time my eyelashes stuck together and I slipped on a spot of ice I hadn’t seen, a light swung into my line of sight. Sort of. I couldn’t see much. The orb of golden light was real, wasn’t it?
“I heard you had arrived.” The silky voice slid through me. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Firm hands grasped my upper arms and hauled me to my feet.
“Bháin.” My lips were so numb, his name came out as mushy as baby food. “I came for—”
“Your incubus.” He chuckled at my ear. “Even if the master had not informed me who he was, I would have known him by the turn of his thoughts. His hunger… It is as stark and endless as Winter. You are all that keeps him sane, and he is far from it at the moment. You may have waited too long.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I snapped.
Save the mortal realm from a deranged goddess bent on devouring it or rescue Shaw.
Oh God. Maybe he was right. Maybe I made the wrong choice. Maybe I should have…
“Love is complicated, is it not?” he mused. “The worth of such love—how can it be measured?”
“Was the Morrigan telling the truth?” I swallowed hard. “Did she give Shaw to you?”
“Yes.” A thoughtful pause lapsed. “It was a most unexpected boon.”
Jerking from his grip, I let simmering magic fill my palm. “Take me to him.”
“First—” he ignored my threat and grabbed me again, “—the master wishes to speak with you.”
“R-Rook?” I stammered. “He’s here?”
He’s alive?
“You are not the only half-blood to inherit a burdensome gift from a fae parent.”
Befuddled as I was, I caved to the inevitable and allowed Bháin to drag me inside Rook’s home. This was much less you shall not pass and more come inside, but you can never leave than I had expected.
Ushered over the threshold by Bháin’s tight grip, I sighed as warmth hit my face. A dozen steps later, he clamped his hands on my shoulders and spun me around. He pushed down until my knees gave, and I dropped into a chair.
He snapped his fingers, and the room grew several degrees hotter.
“The elemental?” I reached up and examined my frigid cheeks. “I remember from last time.”
“It is indeed.” He tapped the crook of his finger beneath my chin to tilt my head back. “This might burn. Hold still.”
His ice-cold finger traced the chilly lines of my eyelashes where they had frozen on my cheeks. I hissed at the burn, his touch like fire in the depth of its frigidity. The pressure vanished, and I blinked.
Bháin dusted powdered fro
st from his fingertips, which were stuck to his skin like iron shavings to a magnet.
I traced the chilled imprints of his fingers on my cheek and shivered. “I appreciate the assist.”
He bowed slightly. “I will go fetch the master.”
“Is Shaw all right?” I grasped his wrist then yanked my hand back when his icy flesh stung me. “Tell me that much.” I held my hand out to the elemental, a roaring flame standing on cartoonish feet next to me, and let it thaw my fingers. “You were very kind to my mother. I remember how well you treated her.”
His sigh circulated a nippy breeze. “He is as well as can be expected.”
My gut cramped with sympathetic pain. “His hunger.”
“He is starving.” He turned to leave then hesitated. “I will try to prevent him from killing you.”
Throat tightening, I bobbed my head.
Shaw was alive. That was all that mattered. Rook was here. Did he know about his mother yet? I doubted it. If Bháin or the Aves sentries had tipped him off, then Rook would have greeted me at the door with a gleam in his eyes and a scheme on his lips. Good. I could use that then.
“I wondered how far down on your list the incubus fell.”
The calculation in Rook’s voice snapped my head up.
“I understand that Faerie is now cut off from the mortal realm.” He glided into the room and sat in a chair near the hearth of the spacious seating area where Bháin had situated me. “Where does that leave you?” Bitter laughter spilled over his lips as he held up the shell. “Or me for that matter?”
I slid to the edge of my seat. “Do you want to live in the mortal realm?”
“Not particularly. I don’t belong there any more than I do here.” He shrugged. “I would have—for her. Tell me… Is she well?”
“She was recovering the last time I saw her.”
Red splotches mottled his pale gray cheeks. “Explain.”
Knowing this for the game it was, I filled in the blanks of Branwen’s life. I told him how the Morrigan sent Balamohan to kidnap his sister from her selkie husband. How she had remained entombed until the day Shaw rescued me, hoping to ingratiate Shaw to him. I informed him of Dónal’s passing and Branwen’s grief, how she had begged me to save her brother. I ended it with the shell she had given me, so that whatever his fate, she could know it with certainty.
“After all this time, thanks to your efforts, she was within my reach,” Rook murmured into the silence. “And yet, thanks to your efforts, she has never been farther away.” He stared at the conch shell. “Am I such an affront to the gods that their joy stems from my pain? Is being Earth-born that foul? Is my blood tainted so that the loving embrace of the one person who has ever cared for me is forever denied me? All this…my life…all for nothing.”
I shifted on my seat, trying to appear attentive when I wanted to jump up and search the place.
Rook’s dreary sentiment rang eerily similar to his mother’s, and that had me nibbling my lip.
“I came for Shaw,” I said, when he remained quiet.
“I know.”
He snapped his fingers, and the fire elemental scampered back to its blackened hearthside perch.
I gripped the arms of my chair. “I sense a but coming.”
“I had goals, Thierry, a plan. I labored to get into Mother’s good graces, did unspeakable things to earn her trust, all so I could mount an effort to rescue my sister and those like us.” He leaned back in his seat. “Then fate presented me with a perfect opportunity to realize those dreams. You fell into my lap, the best gift I had ever been given.” His head tilted back, eyes closed. “I wed you. I fought to have you named queen. I even argued in favor of your sabbatical, which I see now was my mistake.”
My nails pierced the leather upholstery. “Everything you did was to further your own agenda.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to me, almost got me killed, married me without my consent, foisted the wellbeing of an entire realm on me, and you expect what from me—pity? You want me to be grateful that you, in all your selfish scheming, experienced a prick of remorse and let me go home?” I snorted. “When we both know the real reason you lobbied for it was so I would name you prince regent and let you steer the realm while I was gone. You weren’t doing me any favors or a kindness. You did it for yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
His black eyes opened on me, deep and dark and fathomless, cold and eternal and lost. Lips bent in a mockery of a smile, he got to the broken heart of it. “You cost me everything, Thierry.”
This made the second time someone had accused me of that today.
“You can’t expect me to be sorry for doing what it took to survive.” I slid my hands into my lap, linking my fingers to cover the subtle glow of magic that could not save me but might distract him. “I did no less than you would have done in my shoes. Stop playing games. It’s over. Let me have him.”
“No.” He picked at the collar of his white shirt, which was darkened with dried blood from his recent near-death experience. “Your whole life you’ve wanted someone to love who knew the worst of you and forgave you for it. I had that, though not romantically, and I lost it.” He crossed his ankles. “It’s fitting that you will too.”
I launched myself out of the chair at his throat. Ice-cold arms encircled me. Arctic breath panted across my throat. Bháin restrained me while his master raked thoughtful eyes over me and chuckled.
“Bháin,” I pleaded. “The Morrigan gifted him to you. Can’t you—?”
“I am a slave, lady.” Chill words beat against me. “I own only what the master says is mine.”
I screwed my eyes shut tight. “She wanted me to come to you.”
“I think so, yes.” Rook’s chair creaked. “She wanted you to grovel at my feet and beg me for the life of the man you chose over me.” Footsteps thumped softly. “If you had loved him less, you could have been mine.” Warm fingers traced the curve of my cheek. “We could have been good together.”
Eyes snapping open, I glared at him. “I never wanted you.”
“You kissed me. Kisses are seeds of potential sown in the hopes love will blossom.”
A blush crept up the back of my neck. “I thought I was going to die.”
His hands balled at his sides, but he made no move against me.
“You say you want to make a difference. You want to be an advocate and save other half-bloods from the fate you and your sister faced—so do it.” I struggled against Bháin. “Stop whining. Stop pouting. Stop acting like a spoiled little boy. Act like a man if you want to be treated like one. Get off your feathery ass and do something about it.”
Rook’s eyes shot wide, and his mouth dropped open, but I wasn’t done yet.
“Daibhidh is dead. The Unseelie will need a new voice in the High Court. Why not yours?”
His head jerked toward Bháin. “Is this true?”
“I heard gossip and dismissed it as impossible.” He shifted behind me. “How can it be true?”
A smirk twisting my lips, I bared my teeth. “He had a disagreement with an ogre.”
“That’s not possible.” Rook rubbed a finger between his eyes. “Mother would have…”
“About that—” Sweetness and concern dripped from my voice. “Heard from her lately?”
Gray cheeks paled to stark white. “What have you done?”
A ribbon of fear sifted through me, panic I might have pushed Rook too far, but this still wasn’t far enough. He didn’t believe me. Not yet. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to. I had no proof, but I had an idea that might save my bacon…if Bháin ordered his snowflake-y minions to do some recon.
I bumped my chin higher. “I propose a trade.”
Rook backed away from me until his knees hit his chair and he sank into it. “The terms?”
“You give me Shaw and a blood promise that this is over. That whatever imagined debt we have is paid in full.” I wet m
y lips. “In exchange, I will return your mother to you. She’s immobilized at the moment. I would prefer she stay that way until after Shaw and I are safely back home, but after that you’re free to release her—or not. That’s your business. She’s your mother after all.”
Rubbing his hands over his face, he spoke through his fingers. “Bháin, I need confirmation.”
The hands restraining me eased, and the sparkle of a snowflake fused with magic danced across the still air to hover over my head. Bháin commanded it with a flick of his fingers, and it flew away.
“Can you call him off?” I yanked my arm. “I’m getting frostbite over here.”
Rook gestured toward the chair I had occupied. “Let her sit.”
Sit I did, and then we waited.
Chapter 17
I’m not sure how long I sat there with Rook, Bháin standing behind my chair in the event I leapt for his master’s throat a second time. Long enough I worked up a head of steam. Knowing Shaw was here, hidden, set my teeth on edge. Aware of his suffering, Rook and Bháin let me sit and stew instead of taking me to him, letting me feed him and try to bring him back from the brink.
A glimmer of magic drew me up straighter in my seat. The snowflake drifted to Bháin, twirling, singing in the same childlike voice I’d heard on my trek here. I wished the thing would spill it already.
“Thierry speaks the truth,” Bháin announced. “Elena confirms that flurries stationed at the Halls of Winter saw the ogre drive Consul Daibhidh into the ground with his fist like a spike after he killed the Black Dog.” Curiosity lit his eyes. “Both sets of remains were claimed by the Huntsman.”
Rook sneered at his servant. “They knew this and failed to report it?”
Amusement tipped the corners of Bháin’s mouth. “Apparently, Thierry rode a dragon to escape your mother. The flurries followed them to the edge of Winter but then got distracted by racing the beast.”
Seeing how I recalled the other dragons’ existence with perfect clarity, I was betting Blue voided the spell when he left the castle.
Rolling his eyes, Rook scanned the ceiling for patience or answers. Maybe both. “What else?”
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