Dangerously Charming

by Deborah Blake

  So in the end, he’d just trusted fate, figuring that destiny wouldn’t have dragged them all the way here just to let them get smashed into a million bits against an unwelcoming rock door. He sent up silent thanks that he’d guessed right, and then turned back to Jenna, who was gazing around with wide-eyed wonder.

  Day took a look around himself and smiled, recognizing the place they’d come through as one he’d been to many years before, although it was too far off the beaten path for most denizens of this side to visit it often.

  “I don’t understand,” Jenna said. “This doesn’t look anything like what I saw on our way to the Queen’s castle.”

  She was right about that. Unlike the more polished region around the royal grounds, this area was much more overgrown and wild. Without any regular residents to guide its design, the more desolate spaces in the Otherworld tended to simply do what they wanted.

  In this case, that meant lots of short, stubby trees with gnarled limbs in various shades of blues and grays, most of them draped with dark green hanging vines that twisted and braided themselves into complicated patterns. (And occasionally dropped down to ensnare an unwary creature for dinner. Day thought maybe he’d wait a minute to mention that little tidbit.) The sparse grass was tough and fibrous, and made a subtle whistling sound as you walked through it. Day’s horse bent its head down to nibble on it and gave up in disgust after one unpalatable mouthful.

  There were no paths or roads, simply places where the trees hadn’t bothered to grow. But if they wound their way through the narrow spaces, Mick knew they’d come out the other side to a slightly more hospitable area. Of course, the problem with that was there would be more people there, which meant a greater chance of being seen, which wouldn’t be a good idea under the circumstances.

  “We’re in a completely different part of the Otherworld,” he explained. “It’s not nearly as large as the world on the other side of the doorway, but we’ve still traveled quite a way from where we were the last time you were here. This is a less civilized section, with a much smaller population, but we’re still going to want to keep a low profile.”

  “Why?” Jenna asked, starting to regain her usual poise.

  “A couple of reasons,” Day answered, reaching up to rearrange the saddlebags so they sat a little more comfortably on the horse’s back. “For one thing, we’re on Zilya’s home territory now. She’ll have more power here than she would back in the Human lands, and I’d just as soon she didn’t find out we were here.”

  “Oh,” Jenna said in a small voice. Clearly, the thought of her nemesis with ever more power was unsettling, to say the least. Still, she stuck her chin in the air and asked, “What’s the other reason?”

  “That’s the more important one, in some ways. We don’t want word to get back to the Queen that we’re here without her permission. She might be just fine with it, or she might decide to send you home.” Or worse, but he wasn’t going to mention that either.

  Jenna wrinkled her brow, staring at his steed. “I don’t know, Mick. I’m thinking that a horse like this will kind of stand out. There can’t be that many this beautiful, even here.”

  The horse tossed her head and stamped one foot, obviously pleased with the compliment. Day rolled his eyes but patted her gleaming sides anyway.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “As long as I ask nicely and she’s feeling cooperative.” He stroked the horse’s long nose and whispered into her ear. She whinnied and then shimmered from her tail to the ends of her mane, and slowly changed color from shining white to a drabber, although still pretty, dappled gray.

  Jenna blinked. “Well, that’s a handy trick,” she said.

  “She can change from a steed into a motorcycle; a superficial alteration of her hue is hardly a big deal.” As long as they were in the Otherworld. Trying such a thing on the other side of the doorway was nearly impossible. Day glanced down at his black leather jacket and boots, and the brown pants and cotton shirt he wore with them. “We can’t pull off the same trick, alas, but hopefully my different attire will throw off anyone who sees us at a distance.”

  At Jenna’s questioning glance, he explained, “As the White Rider, I used to wear all white. Few people here have ever seen me dressed in any other way. I wouldn’t wonder that most of them could be standing right in front of me, wearing these clothes, and not even look twice.”

  Jenna grinned at him. “Not if they’re female, they won’t. I doubt there’s a woman alive who would not look twice at you, babe.”

  He snorted, absurdly pleased by the flattery, although he tried not to show it. “We’ll just have to try and stay away from women, then, won’t we?”

  “What exactly are we going to do, now that we’re here?” Jenna asked as they started walking alongside the newly retinted horse, ducking occasionally to avoid a particularly enthusiastic vine.

  “We’ve followed the part of the riddle that said to find ‘a pathway through,’ but I’m not sure how that helps us.” She stroked her belly absently, a nervous habit Day had noticed recently. “What do we do next?”

  “I suspect we need to find the ‘magic key to a gift divine’ mentioned in the riddle,” Day said. “But the Otherworld is vast and changeable, with lots of places to hide things. We obviously can’t just wander around looking for something that might or might not be the right key, and could be either hidden or sitting right out in plain sight.” His feet slid a bit as the ground underneath them changed from grass to a kind of silty sand that seemed to shift and move on its own. The tiny black grains sang quietly to themselves, with sharp dissonant notes whenever walking feet disrupted them.

  “Oh,” Jenna said, grabbing on to his arm for balance and then letting go as soon as she realized what she’d done. Mick shook his head and took her arm back. She hesitated, and then left it there.

  “Is there anyone here who might be able to help us figure it out?” she asked. “You know, like some kind of an Otherworld version of a reference librarian? Or a scholar?”

  Day could feel his face set into grim lines—lines that had become habit recently. At least until Jenna came along. “I know someone who might be able to use the journals and books you brought along to help us find some answers,” he said reluctantly, patting the saddlebags with the hand not holding on to her. “But . . .”

  “But what?” Jenna asked, turning to face him. She stopped in her tracks, no doubt catching a hint of something in his voice. She was getting way too good at reading him.

  Day grimaced. “But I’m not sure if this person is even still in the Otherworld. Or if he would be willing to speak to me, even if he is.”

  “Why?” Jenna asked. “Is he some kind of old adversary?”

  “No,” Day said, shaking his head ruefully. “He’s my brother.”

  CHAPTER 16

  EVENTUALLY, they reached a place where the footing was more dependable, and Day lifted Jenna up so she could ride in front of him on the horse. Krasivaya was plenty tough; she could have taken Jenna’s slight weight in addition to his own and still trotted for days without getting tired. The horse was magical, after all.

  And it was a good thing, because the last place he’d heard Gregori was living was pretty much on the ass end of nowhere. His eldest brother had picked one of the most inaccessible spots in the Otherworld, and that was really saying something. But that was Gregori for you. It was likely to take them days to get to him, traveling through some fairly desolate lands.

  “I don’t understand,” Jenna said after they’d been traveling for a couple of hours (or what seemed like hours, since time was both fluid and difficult to track on this side of the doorway). “Why wouldn’t your brother talk to you? I thought you told me that you and your brothers got along well.”

  Day had been afraid she’d get around to asking that. In fact, knowing Jenna, he was pretty sure she’d been holding the question
in since he’d made his original comment. It wasn’t that she was nosy, as far as he could tell, but that she was genuinely interested in other people. Which would have been fine, if “other people” had been anyone other than him. Or if he’d been normal other people.

  “We did,” he said, reluctant to tell the story. “But things happened. Brenna happened. Except that everything she did to us could have been avoided if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jenna said, twisting around on the horse so she could look at him.

  “Brenna trapped me because I fell for her damsel-in-distress routine. She played on my well-known weakness for rescuing women, and used it to sucker me into lowering my guard. My brothers got caught when they came looking for me. So you see, she used my stupidity to capture us all. It was my fault we got caught in her trap, and my fault that my brothers were tortured day after day, nigh on to the point of death.” He fell silent, overwhelmed as always by the crushing reality of what he’d done to those he loved the most in all the world. In both worlds.

  Jenna was silent for a minute, and he thought maybe he’d finally made her understand the magnitude of his crime. He should have been happy if that was true, but a part of him hated that she would look at him differently from now on.

  “I heard a little of the story at Barbara’s house,” she said finally. “But nobody seemed to think it was your fault.”

  “They weren’t there,” Day said shortly. “I was.”

  The two of them rode along for a while through a grove of what looked like apple trees, if apples were purple and covered with soft fuzz like a peach. Day reached up and plucked a few, tucking them into one of the saddlebags for later.

  “So your brothers blame you for what a deranged Baba Yaga did to them?” Jenna said. “That hardly seems fair. After all, you had no way of knowing she wasn’t genuinely someone in trouble, did you? Did they expect you to just keep going?”

  “Well, they probably would have,” Day said. “The two of them have always believed it is better not to get involved with the affairs of the Human world, except when under the express orders of a Baba Yaga.” He shook his head, giving her a rueful half smile. “Truth is, they’d been teasing me about my weakness for years. It just turned out not to be so funny in the end.”

  Jenna narrowed her eyes, then swiveled back around to face front as the going got a little rougher. “So neither of them had any flaws at all? That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “I guess it depends on what you consider a flaw,” Day said. “Alexei loves a good bar fight, and he was always dragging us into them. But to be honest, Gregori and I find them fairly amusing, too, so it wasn’t much of a hardship. And Alexei’s grandfather was a great warrior who was always fighting one battle or another, so it was probably to be expected.”

  “What about Gregori?” Jenna asked. “Surely he had some kind of failing. Nobody is perfect.”

  “Gregori came awfully close,” Day said. “It could be damned irritating at times. Maybe it was because he was raised by a mother who was a powerful shamaness, but Gregori was always cool and unruffled. Even when we were trapped in that horrible cave, he drove Brenna crazy with the fact that she could never break his calm serenity. Some days, I think that was all that kept Alexei and me from losing it entirely.”

  “Huh,” Jenna said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, that just doesn’t sound to me like the kind of man who would blame his brother for a situation that was primarily the fault of a crazy woman. I’m surprised, that’s all.”

  Day didn’t see how anyone could not blame him. Which is why he’d never tried to ask either of his brothers how they felt about it. He couldn’t bear to hear what they had to say.

  “Gregori is very good at keeping his feelings hidden,” Day said. “Besides, we haven’t seen each other since right after it all happened, remember. He could be thinking anything.”

  “Then why assume the worst?” Jenna asked in a mild tone. “After all, you have a lot of shared history. A lot of shared history.” She turned back around and stared at him. “I still can’t believe you’re the son of a god. That’s just incredible.”

  Day snorted. “Really, Jenna, it wasn’t all that great. I mean, sure, it was fun when you got to throw a thunderbolt or create a silly new bird. Alexei came up with the duck-billed platypus, by the way, so don’t blame that one on me.” He tried to muster a smile. “But mostly our father was busy, preoccupied, and arrogant. About what you’d expect from a god, but not a hell of a lot of good as a father. It’s not as though he spent time playing catch or reading us bedtime stories.”

  “Oh,” Jenna said, sounding disappointed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. So you really didn’t have a father at all. That’s sad.”

  “It was okay,” Day said. “It’s not as though I had a bad childhood. But Gregori was probably more of a father to me than my own was.” Maybe that was part of why it was so painful to have let him down.

  “We were always very different from each other, but it didn’t stop the three of us from getting along. It was almost like we were each pieces of a great puzzle, but together we made one picture. Alexei was fun-loving and looked at life very simply, and Gregori was always the deep thinker whose passions ran deep and quiet.” He sighed. “Of course, that was before our ordeal. We’re all changed now.”

  “Changed how?” Jenna asked.

  Day was glad she was facing away from him again, so he wouldn’t have to see the pity in her eyes.

  “Alexei lost his joyful exuberance,” he explained. “And Gregori lost his inner peace. I haven’t seen them in months, but from all reports, they are both still searching for answers, just as I am.”

  “What did you lose?” Jenna asked softly, looking straight ahead.

  “Everything else,” he said. He knew he sounded rude and abrupt, but there was no way he was going to tell her that he’d lost his never-ending faith in his own judgment, especially when it came to women. Now, instead of looking at women and finding them each glorious and beautiful, as he once did, he always saw a shadow of Brenna staring out from behind their eyes, lurking in hiding and waiting to pounce.

  Jenna was the first exception to that, although he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it had something to do with her being pregnant—a state Brenna would never have been able to duplicate—or maybe it was merely her open heart and blunt directness. It was impossible to imagine subterfuge within those light blue eyes, no matter how paranoid one might be.

  “You all suffered at the hands of that evil Baba Yaga,” Jenna said. “From the sound of it, you came out worst of all. Maybe your brothers were upset with you at first, but surely they must be over it now, even if they are still suffering.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Day said coldly. “I haven’t spoken to either of them since we went our separate ways to heal. For all I know, they hate me. I wouldn’t blame them if they did.” Gods knew, he hated himself. And he had heard the whispers in court . . . He knew that others blamed him as well, no matter what they said to his face.

  The Queen herself had been silent on the matter, but he doubted she was as sanguine about the loss of her Riders as she seemed.

  * * *

  NIGHT fell quickly, as though someone somewhere had thrown a switch. Jenna wondered if that was how it worked, but she wasn’t going to ask Mick. He’d been silent and brooding since their conversation about his brothers and had refused to talk at all for the last few hours. Or however long it had been. It was hard to mark time without a sun overhead and her watch had quit working as soon as they’d crossed over into the Otherworld. But the clear daylight had faded within minutes to a dusky evening, although the three moons now glowed more brightly overhead, lighting their way.

  “We’ll stop now,” Mick said, bringing the horse to a halt and dismounting with ease.

  He had to give Jenna a hand down; her
hips and knees felt creaky and stiff, no matter how smooth the horse’s gait had been. She worried a little that all this bouncing was bad for the baby, but since there didn’t seem to be any choice, she tried to shove that thought to the back of her mind, along with its fifty thousand fretting cousins.

  “We can have some dinner and get some sleep, and be on our way whenever the Queen decides she wants it to be morning.”

  Aha, there is a switch, of sorts. It figures.

  “How long is it going to take us to get to where you think your brother is living?” she asked, a little afraid to hear the answer.

  “Another day or two, probably. Hard to say. Some parts of the Otherworld stay more or less static, but others can change around periodically, and it has been a long time since I have been out this way. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll have to see.”

  Jenna thought she could really come to resent the Otherworld. Sure, it could be really beautiful, and it was certainly fascinating, but she much preferred a place that was a little less unpredictable. On the other hand, she couldn’t fault the scenery. The moons overhead gleamed like polished silver, even the smaller crescent with the slight tilt to the right. They’d camped on a rocky outcropping covered with blue moss that glowed softly in the darkened landscape. Something that probably wasn’t a bird twittered in the distance, singing a song that sounded like church bells.

  Mick built a small campfire using twigs and branches that he politely asked a small tree to donate, and they had the last of the supplies he’d packed in for a hodgepodge kind of dinner—a hunk of cheese paired with a marginally too-chewy heel of bread, plus a handful of figs he’d had stowed away somewhere. When they finished, he offered her one of the not-quite-an-apple fruits he’d plucked off the tree they’d passed earlier.

  Jenna gave it a dubious glance and shook her head.

  “I know it looks a little odd,” Mick said. “But I promise, it tastes delicious.”