by Anya Bast
His grin faded. Priss.
Slowly she pushed to her feet and walked unsteadily toward the back of the house.
“I laid out fresh clothes for you on the bed. I’ll make you something to eat.”
At the entrance to the master bedroom, she stopped and half turned toward him. “I really am thankful you got me out of there. I thought I was going to die for real that time.”
“I did, too.” He paused. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me, too.”
EVERY part of her body ached. It felt a little like the time she’d caught the flu. The fae didn’t get sick very often, so she remembered it.
Gathering up the clothes Niall had set out for her, she moved carefully into the bathroom and ran the water in the shower. She’d never been so hungry in all her life. She was so hungry she was nauseous, so hungry she was repulsed by the idea of eating.
Clean first, then food—a small amount of food.
She washed her hair twice and scrubbed her skin until it was shiny and pink, as if trying to get the touch of Gideon Amberdoyal off her. Then she dressed in the jeans and soft sweater Niall had laid out for her. When she returned to the kitchen, she felt better, maybe even a little stronger, and saw that he’d made toast and eggs for her.
“While you were sleeping off the iron sickness, I made a visit to the nature fae around here. They provided us with some fresh food.”
She sat down and studied her plate. The mix of ravenousness and illness warred in her stomach. Picking up her fork, she tested a little of the egg. She swooned. It was the best thing she’d ever put in her mouth. Her body demanded more.
Soon she was shoveling the food in and Niall had to slow her down. Finally she leaned back in the chair, the small amount of bread and eggs making her stomach ridiculously full. Ah, that was so much better.
Now it was time for business. “So, what did Priss say?” she asked.
Niall sighed and sank into an opposite chair. “There’s no way to save your mother, Elizabeth.”
Disappointment sank like a boulder in her chest. She’d really been hoping for some good news. That was the problem with hope. The higher the hope, the harder the disappointment. She drew a breath and looked away from him. “That’s too bad.”
“It is. I’m sorry. I’d wanted better news to bring to you.”
“That means we’re still bitter enemies.”
“I’m having a hard time feeling bitter toward you.”
She looked at him, trying to read his expression. Narrowing her eyes, she said, “You don’t have me locked in some blasted illusion in my head right now, do you?”
He locked gazes with her. “I swear on my mother, I don’t.”
“You never had a mother.”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Niall.”
He leaned forward. “You can tell I don’t. Can’t you feel it? You should be able to sense the difference, since you’ve experienced the illusion before. Reality is more real than my mind fuck can ever be.”
She considered him before speaking, sensing her environment. “I can feel it, and I think you’re telling the truth.”
He leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. “Good, because I am.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she asked, “Where do we go from here?”
“You rest, get better. I’m assuming you can’t dissolve yet.”
She rubbed the center of her chest with her palm. “The iron sickness has sapped my magick.” It felt like a hole had opened up inside her because of it, too. She eyed him suspiciously. “After I get better, then what?”
“I don’t know. You may not feel like a bitter enemy to me, but we’re still on opposite sides of this thing.”
“Yes, so…why help me?”
“I told you already.” He met her eyes. “I like you.”
Trying to take his measure and sort her feelings for him, she studied his face. She was physically attracted to him, that fact was undeniable. There was more there, too. A flicker of something deeper. An appreciation for his protectiveness and desire to do the right thing, for his wit, even for that stupid cocky grin she wanted to knock off his face half the time.
“Elizabeth?”
She blinked, coming back to herself. Oh, crap. This was not a good thing.
Pushing to her feet, she swayed a little, catching herself on the edge of the chair just as Niall reached out to steady her. She pushed his hand away. “I’m going to lie down for a while. I assume there’s some kind of hidey, no-one-can-find-us spell on this place.”
He nodded. “Rest easy. Get well so we can go back to chasing each other around like Tom and Jerry.”
She gave an uneasy laugh. “Sure.”
But she had a feeling they were doing another kind of chasing at the moment.
LIAM reached out, his soot-streaked hand skimming through a pile of dead leaves. He grasped the dry, rough root of a tree and used it for leverage. He flipped to his back, and a coughing fit immediately assailed him, making him double over on the ground. A short distance away the house he’d dragged himself out of still smoldered.
Damn Gideon and his fucking hive magick. It destroyed everything it touched.
Rolling onto his back again, he stared up at the lightening sky and dragged smoke-tinged air into his burning lungs. He’d only barely escaped with his life after meeting that fucking fae, Niall Quinn. Worse, now the bastard knew what he looked like, knew his name, and he needed to go back to the Black Tower to risk himself again. Gideon had left him for dead, so it was his only move.
He closed his eyes, wheezing. Outside these walls was his small family of free fae. Good ones, bad ones. They’d all joined together, coming from far and wide, most of the fae who’d somehow managed to escape the Great Sweep and the descendants of those fae.
Danu, he missed them right now.
He’d been there the day his wife had committed the sin of murder. It had been in the early days of Piefferburg, and he and Aideen had been running from a small group of Phaendir in Ireland that had been set on capturing them and loading them onto a ship bound for the newly formed fae imprisonment area in the colonies.
They’d sought shelter at a friend’s house, only to discover that the friend, Declan, had taken money from the Phaendir to turn in fae. He and Aideen had only just figured out why Declan had been acting strangely before the Phaendir had burst through the front door of the cottage. They’d fought their way free, and Aideen had stabbed Declan right before they’d fled into the woods.
She hadn’t needed to do it. It hadn’t been in self-defense. The killing had come from a place of utter rage and betrayal. Aideen had been livid that Declan had informed on them and had wanted him dead. Simple as that. Liam was certain Aideen’s action would be considered cold-blooded murder in the eyes of the Wild Hunt.
Maybe it had been wrong, but how could he allow her to spend forever in the sluagh for what she’d done? It wasn’t fair that these fae should spend a lifetime in Piefferburg, but it wasn’t fair his wife should be damned for eternity for what she’d done, either.
And now, here he was, feeling as big a betrayer as Declan.
Liam pushed up and pressed a palm to the center of his chest, coughing. He needed to get his arse moving. No way was he letting Gideon have those fecking pieces. He’d acted like he didn’t care in front of the woman, Elizabeth, but he did care. He had no intention of letting the Phaendir go near the book or the bosca fadbh; he’d just figured the best way to prevent Gideon from getting them was to stay close.
Looked like that plan was fecked all to hell. Who knew where Gideon was by now? Not mourning Liam’s loss, that was for sure.
GIDEON lifted his foot out of a glop of muck that made a sucking sound and took his shoe.
After clenching his jaw for a long moment, he let loose with a string of malicious curses screamed into the fucking faery treetops.
All the sprae in the area, keeping their distance from him anyway,
disappeared with little winks. The Labrai-cursed Boundary Lands were covered in snow, yet he’d managed to find the one swampy section in the whole forest.
He glanced around, beginning to think the very trees and bushes were out to get him. In a fae forest, that possibility couldn’t be dismissed. He was, after all, their enemy.
Turning, he fished his shoe out of the mud with freezing fingers, all the while glancing anxiously around him. Then he straightened and strode forward, limping with only one shoe on. He was the archdirector of the Phaendir with powerful hive magick burning in his head. He could explode anything that threatened him.
He was just glad his men couldn’t see him like this. They were holed up in Piefferburg City, giving him a steady stream of Phaendir hive magic, and he was out here, freezing, covered in soot and mud.
He’d actually had to flee nature fae. Fucking tree faeries. Birch ladies in their wispy white dresses.
This was the fault of the U.S. government and their frightened, weak-willed morality against allowing him to storm the gates of Piefferburg the moment they’d learned the fae had the book and the bosca fadbh. This was their fault.
Back when they’d first created Piefferburg, the Phaendir had assumed the New World would be the perfect place. Free of laws, wide open in terms of space. And, in the beginning, it had been perfect. Early America had been nicely free from conscience. In fact, if it hadn’t been for their powerful magick, the fae would have been enslaved just as the Africans had been.
Yes, Gideon, thought, sighing with remembrance, for centuries things had been just lovely. Back then, no one could have predicted it would turn out this way.
He remembered those days with fondness. Hunting down the fae had been good sport. First Watt Syndrome had hit them, making them weak, pathetic, and catchable. The creation of Watt Syndrome had been one of the earliest examples of biological warfare, all thanks to the Phaendir…with the Summer Queen’s help. The illness had hit only the fae, killing them off by the hundreds, making the rest fragile and sluggish, unable to fight off the Phaendir/human alliance.
Watt Syndrome had been key in the capture of the fae worldwide. If the fae escaped now there would be no recapture. The fae had developed an immunity to Watt Syndrome over the centuries and, even though the Phaendir had tried, it seemed impossible to engineer another bug as beautiful as that one had been.
During the Great Sweep, they’d gathered the sick fae and loaded them onto ships bound for the New World. Packed so the vessels were near to bursting, they’d died like flies on the journey. Gideon had thought it was all a big waste of time and resources. Why not just slit their throats as soon as they’d been in custody? Yet even back then there had been a misplaced sense of morality and he’d been unable to convince more than a handful of his fellow Phaendir or humans that killing them right off was the best plan—Labrai’s plan. As if letting them die of Watt Syndrome, hunger, iron sickness, or a lack of water on the journey to their prison was any more humane.
Even though the Christian god had said it was perfectly acceptable to slaughter a million or so people during the Crusades and thousands more in the Inquisitions, killing the fae at point of capture was wrong.
In his opinion, that had been arbitrary, ridiculous, and hypocritical.
Gideon had traveled from England to the colonies in the spring of 1647. His accommodations had been slightly more luxurious than that of the stinky, moaning, sick mass of fae in the ship’s hold, of course. Sharks had traveled in their wake to enjoy the regular feedings.
Those ships hadn’t been unlike those of the already thriving slave trade that had carried Africans. The slaves had been treated much worse than the fae, in Gideon’s opinion. Slaves had been shackled, forced to work, treated like property. Their children had been taken from them, their women raped. The fae had just been thrown into a big, secure area and left to fend for themselves. Set adrift and left alone.
He’d been one of the Phaendir to erect the warding that enclosed Piefferburg. He’d been there to supervise the building of the brick wall, too, the thing humans could see as a tangible barrier.
At first the fae had had nothing. They’d lived in squalor, built their houses from sticks and mud, fought over the game in the forests. Many more had died, and that time Watt had had nothing to do with it. Slowly the fae had recovered, built better houses, formed alliances, and organized the distribution of food.
One thing no one had counted on was the mending of the rifts between the fae races. The war that had originally driven them apart, outed them to the human world, and made them vulnerable to Watt Syndrome and eventual capture was only a distant memory. Survival had united the fae once more. Eventually the Unseelie and Seelie Courts had formed, but their war was not a violent one. Not even now, even after the Summer Queen had betrayed them all, still, annoyingly, unity in Piefferburg reigned.
America had matured outside of Piefferburg’s walls and feelings for—fascination—with the fae had begun to take hold. The government had begun to allow shipments of supplies to be delivered through the gates. Commerce had flourished. And where there was money to be made, the Americans were there to take advantage of it. “It’s a slippery slope!” the Phaendir had cried to no avail. Now look where they were.
Look where he was.
Something moved to his right. He turned, releasing a bolt of hive energy that crackled in his head. A bush exploded, something screamed, and bits of flesh flew everywhere. Gideon stood stock-still, fists clenched, then reached up and wiped a bit of rabbit from his cheek.
Someone was going to pay for this. All of it.
FOURTEEN
ELIZABETH stepped out into the comforting twilight of a chilly late afternoon and heard the crunch of snow under her boots. She headed for the tree line and began to gather kindling and place it into the basket she held. It was nice to get outside and draw fresh air into her lungs. The air had an icy bite to it, and a large amount of snow had fallen. The SUV Niall had driven could still handle the roads, but barely. If it started snowing heavily again, they’d have to leave.
Over the last day she’d gained a lot of strength, though she didn’t quite have enough power yet to dissolve. The iron sickness was rapidly on its way out of her body, and she hoped like hell she never experienced it again.
She and Niall had spent an uncomfortable amount of time talking during the time she’d been recovering. He’d saved her. He’d helped her. Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to do with those facts or the most disturbing thing of all—she liked being with him.
Kneeling, she scooped a handful of snow into her palm and let it melt. It called to her, sparking yearning in her chest for her water self.
Footsteps crunched behind her, and she turned to see Niall. “Let me help you with that.” He reached for the basket.
She snatched it away from him, frowning. “I can handle the weight of a few sticks, Niall.”
He shrugged and stuck his hands into his pockets. “I can gather the wood on my own.”
Not looking at him, she knelt and placed another branch into the basket. “You’ve been doing everything and I don’t like to feel beholden to others.”
“You should be resting.”
“I need to get out a little, feel the snow on my cheeks and get some fresh air into my lungs.”
“You still look pale.”
“Who are you, my mother?”
He grinned. “No, I’m definitely not that. I don’t have very motherly-type thoughts where you’re concerned.”
She felt her cheeks heat and turned away. Damned man was hard to resist, and with every day she spent with him, she had more trouble remembering why she should.
Reaching down, he pulled out a stick peeking from a snowdrift and set it into the basket. “Speaking of your mother—”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t even know what I was about to say.”
“I don’t want to talk about her.” She turned away from him.
&nb
sp; He grasped her elbow and turned her back toward him. “We’re going to have to talk about this sometime.”
Her gaze met his and held. “Not today. It’s a good day and I don’t want to ruin it.”
“Okay, why not procrastinate a little longer? It’s not as if the fate of the fae world hangs in the balance or anything.”
She swallowed hard. “It’s not that I don’t feel guilty.”
“You’re too young to remember.” He walked a short distance away from her, looking for more branches. “You have no idea what the Great Sweep was like.”
“How were you taken? Were you sick?”
He nodded. “A human man chained me in charmed iron even though I couldn’t move because I was so sick from the Watt. I only remember bits and pieces of the hellish journey over here. I would have died, but my brother came with me. Ronan kept me, and many others, alive on that ship.”
“He came voluntarily?”
Niall nodded. “He never contracted Watt. That’s how it was for some of the fae. They came protecting those they loved.”
She pulled a piece of dead wood from where it was caught on a tree branch. The basket was full, so they started back toward the cabin. “Everyone in my family was born after Piefferburg was created. I’ve heard stories, though, from some of the nature fae.”
“Hearing stories doesn’t come close to having experienced it for yourself. If you had, you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.”
She stopped and turned toward him, narrowing her eyes. “Really, Niall? Imagine if it was Ronan dependent on the sprae to survive. Ronan, who gave up his life to protect yours? If he was sprae dependent, you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.” She paused and jerked her chin at him. “Would you?”
He clamped his mouth closed, then took the basket from her and walked into the warm cabin. “It would be a hard call.”
She stamped her boots free of snow in the entryway. “It wouldn’t be a call at all and you know it. You and I are a lot alike. We’re both protective as hell.” She waved her hand to encompass the room. “That’s why you’re doing all this for me instead of chasing me down and torturing me like your queen wants.”