The Queen inclined her head, her smile flaring and then settling again to a satisfied little grin. “Again, well done. You win the Internet, or a cookie, if you’d prefer.” She cast a casual glance at the table, and with a ripple of power, a silver plate laden with a couple dozen cookies shimmered into sight. “Take a few, if you’d like. You needn’t worry about Faerie food enchanting you, or any such nonsense. These are imported.”
Come to the Dark Side, we’ve got cookies flashed through my brain, and I squelched the thought as fast as I could. Now was not the time to burst into hysterical laughter. Or, for that matter, to take any morsels from the Queen of the Unseelie, no matter how enticing they looked. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather know what you’ve done with Elessir.”
“He’s nearby, I assure you.” Luciriel gave me another chuckle that reminded me of the bone walker. With a shiver of dread, I caught myself suspecting that the Queen’s creature laughed like her rather than the other way around. “Safely out of the way until I require him. Though given what I saw in your dreams, little one, perhaps I should be offering you him instead, hmm?”
Memory rolled through me, not only of what I’d dreamed, but of the bard’s lips on mine just before as well. I opened my mouth to claim I didn’t want him, only to remember just in time that the Sidhe, even the Unseelie, were not supposed to lie. But then—and I clung to this scrap of reassurance with all my might—she couldn’t call me on the denial if I wasn’t actually lying to myself. And I’d already made that call back in my very own house.
“I’m with Christopher,” I said, though my throat was dry and I had to wet my lips to speak. “So if Elessir’s all you’ve got to sell me for a recruitment pitch, sorry, Your Majesty, I’m not buying.”
Luciriel appeared disconcertingly unfazed by this, reaching over to claim one of the cookies for herself and nibble on it as she regarded me. “Yet you have some concern for him nonetheless,” she mused. “I seem to recall that you came very close to bargaining with me for his life.”
“Threatening to kill him won’t convince me I should work for you,” I blurted, not at all liking where this was going, and alarmed enough now for Elessir that it overcame fear for myself.
“Once again you make assumptions about my intentions. I have no intention of killing him.”
The cookie she’d chosen was chocolate chip. I could smell it, warm and fresh, from where I sat. Its sheer incongruity with the Queen, the room we were in, and the entire predicament at hand was almost enough to set off my threat of hysterically gibbering once more. I clenched one fist hard enough to drive my nails into my palm, just to give myself something else to focus on. “But you’re not above torturing him,” I accused. “Which is also not helping you make your case.”
“Disciplining him,” Luciriel countered, one pale brow winging up. “Is this sentiment of yours a product of your human upbringing or your Seelie blood?”
“Why do you care? Why do you want to bother with me anyway?”
Rising with fluid grace, she came round the table to stand before me and reached a delicate hand for my chin. I jerked my face away from her, a motion that brought stinging tears to my eyes even as I did it—but I was certain that if I let Luciriel touch me, I’d be lost. Mercifully, she didn’t push it. Instead she settled onto the couch beside me, which was intimidating enough as it was. “You are blunt with me,” she said, “and so I shall be blunt in return. Children are born so seldom to either of the Courts that our numbers grew fewer with each passing century. We cannot afford to ignore even those of mixed blood such as yours, especially when it comes with the promise of power.” She leaned in closer to me, close enough that I could catch the lingering scent of chocolate on her breath, intertwined with a subtle aroma of roses. “Had you committed to the Seelie already, I would have known it. And I want you in my Court before Amelialoren claims you for hers.”
“What if I-I say I don’t want to be in either of your Courts?” I had to struggle to keep from meeting her gaze, to keep my voice steady. Even more than the scent of her, the aura of her power palpably enveloped me. So much so that I felt my Warded necklace flare up like a signal fire—and then fizzle completely out, its protective power overloaded.
Frantic, I snapped my head up. That was all the opening the Queen needed to trace one finger along my cheek, laughing softly, watching me all the while with her peacock eyes. She wasn’t actively thralling me as far as I could tell, and I’d been hit with that crap often enough now to know. But God help me, her simple contact was almost thrall by itself.
Which, in turn, struck a chord of comprehension in my otherwise scattered thoughts.
“You need my consent,” I whispered. “I have to commit willingly to the Unseelie, or it doesn’t count. You can’t just mind-control me into it.”
Luciriel blinked at that, pulled back her hand, and cocked her head to regard me with new satisfaction. “You are a clever child, aren’t you, Kendeshel? Untrained as you are, and unschooled in the ways of your true people.”
“Stop saying that!” Even as something in my blood sang at the notion of my ‘true people’, a burst of anger at it—and at the Queen—cleared a larger space in my mind. Gratefully, I latched onto it. “My name is Kendis Thompson, and lady, you have no idea about my true people!”
I was shouting now, hoarse and strident, fueled by that anger and by the hysteria bubbling just beneath my skin. It was deeply stupid of me, too, as I belatedly figured out when Luciriel’s inviting expression turned shuttered and cold. “If this is your way of saying no,” she said, “let me remind you, I have many less pleasant ways of gaining your consent to this objective.”
“Consent given under duress is not consent,” I shot back, dialing down the volume, if not the force. “Whether you thrall me into it or threaten. I still haven’t been convinced I shouldn’t run screaming, and if you threaten me or anybody I care about, that’s exactly what I’ll do. And you’ll never get me at all.”
Sure, it was a bluff. I didn’t want to begin to think of what awaited me outside this normal-but-not-quite room, and whether I’d survive five minutes in Faerie, much less make it back to Seattle where I belonged. And Luciriel, not being an idiot, would surely be able to tell. I watched her, and I sweated, waiting for her to take my head off with a single glance.
To my surprise, her expression shifted again—not to anything I could call respect, mind you. Willingness to humor me for now was closer to the mark. “Very well then, Miss Thompson. How would you suggest we proceed?”
I was sure I must not have heard her correctly, and yet. “If you really want me to consider joining your Court, then send Elessir and me back to Seattle right now,” I said. Screw it. If she was going to at least pretend to listen to me like a rational person, then I was willing to spell out for her what it would take to give her the slightest bit of credence. “You may or may not have noticed, but your pet bone walker threw us through that portal just as she was gearing up for serious mayhem. Or did you miss the part where she’s taken over a dragon child?”
The Queen’s perfect features went blank and her eyes ever so slightly wider, the closest I’d ever seen her or any other Sidhe come to outright shock. “I had sensed she’d left my bardling when I made him bring you to me, but I’d seen no sign of this,” she murmured. Her voice sent delicate shivers of frost along my nerves, but before I could reply she added more sharply, “What dragon child? Tell me, quickly!”
“A Japanese kid named Saeko. Her father’s a dragon, her mother’s nogitsune, and her mother says she’s about to have her first change into dragon form. Now that the bone walker’s in her she’s maybe going to take out Seattle.” I could hear my own words start to waver again, and fought with every last scrap of concentration I had to keep them steady. “A city in which I and everyone I care about happen to live. We were busy gearing up to keep your creature from tearing it apart when I showed up here. So you want to deal? At minimum, put Elessir and me back where we
were, same place, same time, so we can help the others stop her.”
“At minimum,” Luciriel repeated, her pale brows arching. “What more would you have of me, then?”
Well, hell, as long as she was asking. “Give Elessir a pardon or whatever it takes to let him off the hook for whatever he did, and stop fucking with him. Also, the Pact makes everybody in Seattle off-limits anyway. But for the sake of emphasis, you leave every resident of Seattle alone, inside or outside Seattle. By you, I mean you and anyone or anything that serves you. And oh yeah, as long as you brought it up, a way to take down your rampaging succubus ghost-bitch sure would be nice if you want me to put serious thought into joining Team Unseelie.”
The Queen’s eyes glittered, far more brightly than any mortal’s would have done in the light of the eerie flames in her hearth. “Are you saying that if I give you these things, you will join my Court? Just so that I’m clear.”
“I’m saying I’ll think about it.”
“And that’s not good enough. A deal implies that both parties will commit something to the bargain.”
Millie and Christopher both had warned me, in no uncertain terms, about making bargains with the Sidhe. And even if they hadn’t, even if I’d never read a single fantasy novel or fairy tale, what I’d seen of Luciriel so far was more than enough to set off alarm bells in my brain about what I was doing.
But I had no idea if I could get myself out of harm’s way, much less home again. I had no idea whether I could find Elessir and get him to safety either. And as much as I hated to admit it, the bard was right. I had barely begun to learn what I could do with my magic. Luciriel was so far out of my league, magically speaking, that I had no prayer of fighting against her.
Bargaining had ‘bad idea’ written all over it.
I didn’t see any other choice.
“Then you can have me for a year and a day,” I said grimly, not knowing why I chose that time frame offhand, but remembering it dimly from tales. It felt appropriate. Luciriel began to smile—yet before she could speak, I shot up a hand to hold her off. “But not yet. Not until after Christopher MacSimidh, Warder Second of Seattle, lives out his full, natural lifespan.”
Unnervingly, Luciriel’s smile broadened. “Shall I take that codicil to mean, child, that you are committing to the mortal rather than to my bard?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, and not that this lets you off the hook for laying off of Elessir, but yes. Christopher MacSimidh is the man I love, and I intend to have a life with him. After that, I’ll come to you.”
In this strange chamber, with the Unseelie Queen’s peacock gaze locked upon me, the words came out with a formal solemnity I hadn’t known I had in me. It seemed to serve, for Luciriel’s smile dimmed somewhat, and her regard turned thoughtful. “I want a year,” she said, “for every year of life you spend with your Warder.”
“A month,” I countered. “One cycle of the moon for every year I have with him. And all bets are off if any Unseelie takes any action that causes him to be killed. That’s my final offer.”
“Then swear it. Swear upon your name, your magic, and all you hold dear.”
She held out a slender hand, and for all that I’d feared to touch her before, once again I saw no other choice before me. I put out my own hand and clasped her pale fingers in my dark ones, saying, “I, Kendis Marie Thompson, so swear. By my name, my magic, and all I hold dear.”
“Your terms are accepted. The bargain is made.”
The Queen’s last words pealed through me, straight into my blood and bone, on a current of power that made my every muscle shudder with the need to drink it in, to nourish myself upon it like the tree I’d dreamed of being. For an instant, I was that tree again. Luciriel’s hand against mine was the earth to hold me rooted, her magic my life-giving air.
Then that magic blotted out all else, and the hearth, the furniture, and even the Queen herself vanished in a wash of silver light.
Chapter Eighteen
When I came back to myself, the first thing I noticed was that I was not back in Kobe Terrace Park—the cool marble floor beneath me and the high vaulted ceiling above were dead giveaways for that. So were the will-of-the-wisp balls of light that glimmered in ornate sconces upon the walls in the same unearthly hues as the fire in the hearth of the room I’d just left. But before I could give in to a surge of fury at being cheated, the second thing I noticed cut me short.
Elessir was shaking me, with a strain in his expression that looked suspiciously like fright. Fright lurked in his voice, too, just beneath words that held no trace whatsoever of his affected drawl.
“Miss Thompson, if you can hear me, now would be a very good time to wake up.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” I grumbled, shoving blearily at his hands. They retreated so fast that I might as well have been on fire, and the sheer shock of that—not to mention his presence in general—made me sit up and take full stock of him. He didn’t look any different than when I’d last seen him, except for the returned focus to his eyes and a betraying tinge of red along his fine-boned cheeks. At that, I couldn’t help but gape. “Holy crap. Are you blushing?”
The instant the words left my mouth, I remembered exactly what we’d been doing when I’d last seen him. Heat rushed down my entire face, from my scalp clear down to the hollow of my throat, and only then did Elessir shoot me a sarcastic smile. “Our Queen excels at orchestrating discomfiting circumstances,” he said. “You’d best accustom yourself to that.”
“She’s not my Queen,” I snapped. Not daring to look at him, I scrambled to my feet to try to figure out where Luciriel had dumped us. I saw marble floor in all directions, as well as marble-trimmed walls with row upon row of carved stone panels. “And if she’s gone back on the deal we just made, she’s not going to be my Queen ever!”
“Wait.” Elessir, leaping up beside me, grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. “Her power’s all over you, I can tell. How did she lure you in? What did she promise you?”
His renewed contact wasn’t helping the blush situation any. If anything, I felt that heat suffusing my face roll straight down to where his hand gripped my elbow. But I stared at him anyway, exhausted past the point of caring, and said, “You, for starters.” His expression changed, heat of his own sparking in his midnight gaze, and I added bluntly, “Yes, like that. I didn’t take her up on that part.”
“Then what did you take her up on, pray tell?”
“A stay in her Court. In exchange, she releases you and puts us back in Seattle, she and everyone who serves her leaves everyone in Seattle alone, and she hands over a means to take down the bone walker.” Yanking my arm from his grasp, I waved it at our cold, bare surroundings and began to pace back and forth. “Not that this is the park we just left! Goddamn it, why didn’t I listen to Millie? She’s told me over and over. Do not bargain with the Sidhe!”
“Miss Thompson—”
“But what the fuck was I supposed to have done? There’s no way I could have taken her and I don’t know how to get back and goddamn it, they need me—”
“Miss Thompson!”
The Unseelie’s voice, sharper now, pierced through the wave of helpless fury swamping me; I stopped pacing, and glared back at him once more. “What?”
“If I understand you correctly, the Queen has not betrayed your bargain. Not yet at any rate.” Elessir looked thunderstruck now, standing there with eyes gone wide in his pale face as if someone had slammed a board into the back of his head. “I know this place.”
That was enough to finally and fully seize my attention. I blinked at my companion, and then took another, longer look at our locale, and realized at last that I too knew where we were—or at any rate, what kind of place we were in. “This is a mausoleum,” I blurted, a chill rolling down my spine as I clued in.
What in the name of all that was holy was Luciriel doing dropping us here?
“An ossuary, actually,” Elessir whispered. “This is
where the Court of the Unseelie stores the bones of its noblest dead.”
He turned in a slow circle, his gaze coursing intently over the stone panels in immediate sight, and as I followed the path of his attention I began to take in more of their details. All of them bore writing in a flowing script I’d never seen before, short enough chains of symbols that it didn’t take much to guess that they were names. Next to almost all of these unreadable characters were larger, more stylized sigils. Some of these, at least, were discernible on first glance. I saw many trees and seven-pointed stars, crescent moons and full-antlered stags. Whether the Unseelie divided themselves into Houses like the Seelie did, I had no idea, but whether I was looking at House symbols didn’t seem nearly as important as the purpose of the place itself.
“Who qualifies as noblest?” I asked, and I wasn’t at all surprised by the answer that Elessir gave me.
“Mages. The Queen claims the bones of all the magic-wielding dead, because even their bones have power…” The bard trailed off, and then abruptly burst into motion, scanning down the rows upon rows of names he passed, a hand outstretched yet not touching a single one.
I followed him, of course, not willing to let him out of my sight—but seized, too, by burgeoning curiosity. When he stopped before one particular set of panels, I didn’t need to be able to read the name that had attracted him. The stricken gaze he gave it, as if the letters carved into the stone might at any moment engulf him in flame, was all the hint I needed as to whose resting place we’d just found.
“That’s hers, isn’t it?” Elessir didn’t answer me, but I kept speaking anyway, troubled by his haunted eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to speak politely of the creature that had nearly killed my best friend, yet I suddenly couldn’t quite lambast her either, not in this place of silent death. He’d said her name, I remembered, though I couldn’t recall what it was. “Your wife’s.”
“Melorite,” he rasped.
“So Luciriel sent us here to get her bones?”
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