by Jenna Black
Titania rose to her feet slowly, moving like an old lady. Her expression was still tightly controlled, but I got the feeling she was holding on to that control by a thread. I also got the feeling it would be bad news for everyone around her if she lost that control. There was a palpable tension in the air, and it wasn’t just because of the shock of Henry’s death. Her eyes locked on me, and the ancient power in her gaze held me trapped as she stepped away from Henry’s body—well, Henry’s clothes—and came toward me.
My instinct for self-preservation suggested I start humming again, but I resisted the urge. Threatening the Queen didn’t seem like such a hot idea after I’d just killed her son. I’m sure she’d been plenty mad at him after what he’d done, but I knew from experience that it was hard to stop loving family, even when they screwed up.
“What did you do to my son?” Titania asked, her voice as icy as it had ever been.
I licked my lips nervously. “I, um, made him mortal, I think. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let him take me. Or Elizabeth.” Inspiration hit me, though I might have been confusing inspiration with desperation. “Elizabeth is your granddaughter. You saw how he treated her: like a piece of property, one he didn’t have to take good care of. He shot her, and if Arawn hadn’t spoken up, Henry would have been just as happy to let her die. Never mind what you think about me, but did you really want him leaving here with her as his prisoner? Again?”
I couldn’t tell from looking at her whether my argument was having any effect or not. Poker players everywhere would envy her lack of expression.
“I should have you executed,” she said, and one of the trolls eagerly stepped forward. Volunteering for the job, I guess.
“She has committed no crime,” Arawn said. I wasn’t sure why he was defending me, but I wasn’t about to complain. I seemed to be very good at annoying the Fae. I didn’t want to annoy Titania while she was deciding whether to execute me, so I was happy to let Arawn do the talking.
“She killed my son.”
“In self-defense. And after he had shot her and your granddaughter and held a mortal weapon to your head. Surely you can’t blame her for that.”
“Henry would never have resorted to such drastic methods had she not forced him into it.”
It didn’t sound like Titania was much for forgiving and forgetting. Maybe I should start calling magic after all. Only now everyone was aware I could do it, and I suspected I’d be dead before the first note left my lips. Henry’s magic might have protected him from being killed by one deadly spell—except for mine—but I didn’t have the same luxury.
“He sired a Faeriewalker, Titania,” Arawn said with what sounded like a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Sired her and then kept her secret from everyone, including you. You can’t imagine his motives for doing that were pure.”
Titania considered that for a long, painful moment. Then she turned to Elizabeth, and her voice softened.
“Where is your mother, child?” she asked.
Elizabeth still looked like she was one wrong move away from fainting in terror, but she managed to answer. “He killed her,” she said, sounding even younger than she was. “He came to Avalon about three years ago and he visited my mother.” Her eyes welled with tears. “She was so happy that I would finally have a chance to meet my father. But when he found out about me…” Her voice trailed off.
“What happened when he found out about you?” Titania prompted. Considering how cold and terrifying she was capable of being, I had to admit I was impressed by how gently she spoke to Elizabeth.
“He killed her,” Elizabeth whispered. “He killed her and took me away. Then he brought me to Faerie.”
Titania looked appalled. “That cannot be,” she said, but it didn’t sound like she believed her own words.
“Dana did you a favor,” Arawn said. “Let her go, and be consoled that you have gained a granddaughter.”
“I will think on it,” Titania responded.
A Fae serving woman stepped through the fake wall and into the hallway. She didn’t look surprised by what she saw, so I guessed she’d been summoned somehow. Titania beckoned the woman forward, putting a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder.
“Take this child to a healer, that we might be certain her wounds have been properly tended,” Titania said. “And have Henry’s suite emptied and redecorated for her.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Titania smiled at her, that smile thawing the ice in her eyes. There might even have been a hint of kindness in her face, though kindness and Faerie Queens didn’t seem to go together.
“You are my granddaughter, and both of your parents are dead. I will care for you as your father ought to have cared for you from the day you were born.”
“C-can I go back to Avalon?” Elizabeth asked wistfully.
Titania stroked her hair, the touch both gentle and possessive. “Someday, perhaps.”
Someday when Elizabeth had been thoroughly trained to be Titania’s lapdog, she meant. It appeared her philosophy about Faeriewalkers was that they should be allowed the privilege of living as long as they made themselves useful. It remained to be seen whether killing Henry had made me useful or condemned me.
The servant led Elizabeth away.
“You come with me,” Titania said to me with a wave of her hand, then headed toward her room.
I followed reluctantly, wishing she’d just make up her mind about me one way or the other. I wanted out of here, out of the Sunne Palace and out of Faerie. Arawn took a step to follow, but Titania turned to him and shook her head.
“You, I did not invite,” she said. “Not this time.”
Arawn grinned at her. “And you think that will stop me? I have a vested interest in Dana’s well-being.”
The reminder brought heat to my cheeks, especially when Titania’s sharp glance my way told me she knew exactly what the Erlking was talking about. I reminded myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong when I’d agreed to give the Erlking my virginity. It was the only way I could save Ethan, and I never planned to make good on my part of the deal, even though the cost to me was going to get heavier and heavier as time went by.
Titania looked at me. “Arawn is a most dangerous ally,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t do anything stupid with him.”
Arawn laughed softly. “She is a stubborn little thing, our Faeriewalker.”
I glared up at him, but that didn’t do much to dispel his amusement. I wondered if he still believed there was a chance in hell I was going to sleep with him someday. He’d claimed once that he thought time would whittle away my resistance, but that was before I knew what all the consequences would be.
That led me to thinking about Elizabeth again. Here was another female Faeriewalker—one who was apparently a virgin, or Henry wouldn’t have offered her to the Green Lady—who would be more vulnerable to him. And neither Titania, nor any other member of her Court, could warn Elizabeth about Arawn’s ulterior motives. No, I was the only one who could, and it made me wonder if I’d outlived my usefulness to him.
Of course, he had argued with Titania to save my life. But his scheming and machinations were so complex I rarely figured out exactly what he was up to until it was way too late.
Titania made a face of polite skepticism, but didn’t say anything. This time when Arawn made to follow us back into her room, she didn’t protest.
I blinked in surprise when I walked through the doorway into a completely different room from the one we’d been in before. The bed was gone, as was the carpet of rose petals. The floor was now covered in apple-green grass, trimmed short like on a golf course, and the furniture consisted of three chairs, unlike any I’d ever seen before. They sprouted from the ground, complete with gnarled roots, their glossy-smooth trunks forming scooped-out seats adorned with fluffy cushions that looked suspiciously like moss. There were three of them, arranged in a triangle and facing one another, but one of them wa
s adorned with white climbing roses that filled the room with their scent.
Titania took a seat on the rose-covered chair, gesturing me and Arawn into the other two. Both chairs were large enough for Arawn to sit comfortably, which meant that my chair made me feel small and vulnerable. Which, come to think of it, I was, considering I was in the presence of two of the most powerful people in Faerie.
Titania sat rigidly straight in her chair, looking very queenly in her fancy embroidered gown and with her steely eyes. Arawn was considerably more relaxed, almost sprawled in his chair, and there was a twinkle in his eye that said he expected to enjoy whatever was coming next.
“I have heard that the people of Avalon are used to being more frank and straightforward than we of the Courts,” Titania began.
“An understatement,” Arawn interrupted with a chuckle.
Titania flashed him a look of annoyance that didn’t bother him in the least, but she didn’t allow him to distract her for long. “I will therefore attempt to be frank and straightforward.”
Oh, goody.
“My inclination is to order your execution,” she said, and the pit of my stomach dropped out. I could have done without the whole frank-and-straightforward thing if this was what she meant. “You have killed my son. Not without reason, I know, but it is still a crime punishable by death.”
My heart hammered somewhere up around my throat, and my skin was all clammy. I hadn’t exactly thought I was home free, but I had thought the scales were tipping in my favor. Apparently, I’d been wrong.
“But that would be the excuse for putting you to death,” Arawn said, “not the reason for it.”
Titania gave him another dirty look, her face far more expressive now than it had been before.
Arawn shrugged. “By the time you got through your ‘frank and straightforward’ explanation, Dana would have been so frightened and confused she’d have no idea what you were saying. I’ve spent enough time in Avalon to speak like a native, as it were.”
She obviously didn’t like it. I wasn’t sure I much liked it, either.
“The reason for it,” Arawn continued, “is that you are a threat. Even more of a threat than Titania originally realized.”
Because of the spell, he meant. The spell he’d urged me to cast. The spell he’d known would show Titania just how dangerous I was capable of being.
It was stupid to feel betrayed by the Erlking, but I couldn’t help it. I knew how false his charms were, but I fell for them every damn time.
“You could kill the Queen, or any of her people, without a single weapon at hand,” the Erlking said, as if he hadn’t made his point already. “That makes you the most dangerous Faeriewalker ever born.”
I must have looked as terrified as I felt, because Titania shushed the Erlking and spoke softly, like she’d spoken to Elizabeth.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. “All you need do to prove you are not a danger to us is to swear allegiance to the Seelie Court.”
The jaws of the trap snapped shut around my ankle.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My father had once told me that because I was the daughter of a Seelie Fae, I was automatically considered part of the Seelie Court. But having other people assume I was a member of the Seelie Court was not the same as being a member of the Seelie Court. I wasn’t bound by any oaths, and Titania had no right to order me around. But if I swore allegiance to the Court …
I glanced at the Erlking, who wasn’t quite smirking, but who definitely had a hint of knowing triumph in his eyes. I understood exactly why he liked where this was going. If I swore allegiance to the Seelie Court, then I’d also be bound by his agreement with Titania not to tell anyone that if a virgin gave herself to him of her own free will, he could steal her powers, and even her life. The geis around this agreement was so strong that my father hadn’t been able to give me even an oblique warning about it. Which meant there would be no one who could warn Elizabeth that her new “friend” had ulterior motives.
I shook my head at him, my hands clenched into fists in my lap. “I fall for your tricks every time,” I said bitterly. “You’d think I’d know better by now.”
“There was no trick,” he said. “Not this time. You were the only one who could kill Henry, and if you didn’t do it, both you and Elizabeth would have suffered.”
“And you didn’t give a thought to how it might benefit you when you pushed me into doing it, right?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I won’t claim I was unaware of the advantages. But that isn’t why I did it. I am not the monster you like to think me.”
“Yeah, you’re a candidate for sainthood.”
As usual, he laughed at my sarcasm, but the laughter faded quickly. “Have you ever considered that once Titania gave me permission to hunt you, I could have bound you to the Wild Hunt and forced you to take me out into the mortal world whenever I wished?”
“Oh, and that’s not what you were trying to do when you had Ethan try to kidnap me in the middle of the night?”
He gave me a condescending look. “Think about it a minute, Dana.” His expression turned wry. “And assume I am not stupid.”
That was one thing I was sure he was not.
No, he wasn’t stupid at all. So why on earth had he used Ethan to try to capture me? Thanks to the mark on my shoulder, Arawn could find me wherever I was, and if he and his Wild Hunt found me, there would be nothing I could do to escape them. If Arawn hadn’t tried to use Ethan, I wouldn’t even have known he was hunting me. Not until it was too late, at least.
And then there was the way he’d had Ethan try to capture me. Ethan had said he’d fought the orders as best he could, making as much noise as possible so that Keane and Kimber would wake up and stop him. But surely the Erlking knew better than to allow any wiggle room in his orders. He could have ordered Ethan to sneak me quietly out of camp, maybe even knock me unconscious so I couldn’t fight him, and Ethan would have had to do it.
“But why?” I asked, totally bewildered. Every time I thought I had the Erlking figured out, he’d do something to prove I was completely wrong.
“Had such an opportunity presented itself to me in the early days, when I did not yet know you,” he said, “I would have taken it. I still want very badly to hunt in the mortal world, and if I could persuade or coerce you into taking me, I would. But I would not see you destroyed in the process. Being bound to my Hunt would destroy your special spark. And remember that mortals who are bound to the Hunt cannot survive it for long. Your Fae blood would preserve your life for several years, maybe even a decade, but you are too mortal to survive it indefinitely.”
I rubbed my eyes, exhausted and headachy from all the stress and the constant intrigue. I was pretty sure he was telling the truth about not wanting to bind me to the Hunt, but I wasn’t sure his reasons were anything so benevolent. After all, he still had hopes that I would give him my virginity, and that he could claim my Faeriewalker powers as his own. If he did that, he’d have access to the mortal world anytime he wanted, not just for as long as my body could survive the rigors of the Hunt. Reasons within reasons within reasons, all tangled together and confusing.
“Whatever,” I mumbled with a shake of my head. Maybe he’d set me up, or maybe he hadn’t. In the end, it didn’t much matter.
I wrenched my gaze away from the Erlking and faced Titania instead. “You realize that if I am a member of the Seelie Court, I can’t warn Elizabeth about him.”
“Don’t forget that Connor is still a member of my Hunt,” the Erlking reminded me.
I flinched, because I had kinda forgotten about Connor. When I’d first learned the Erlking’s secret, he’d promised me that if I told anyone, he’d make Connor pay for it. I couldn’t say I actually knew my brother, so maybe I was protecting someone who didn’t deserve protecting. But Connor was Fae, and therefore immortal, and the suffering the Erlking could inflict on him if he wished to …
“It
will be my responsibility to protect my granddaughter,” Titania said. “She is not the only girlchild I have had to keep from Arawn’s influence.”
Something about her tone of voice chilled me, though I couldn’t say just what. But I knew the most foolproof way to protect Elizabeth from Arawn without actually telling her the truth was to make sure she didn’t stay a virgin very long.
Was Titania that cold? That ruthless? I wished like hell my dad were here so I could ask him. I was in way, way over my head. I’d thought I’d had some clue about what Fae politics and intrigue were like, but it was worse even than I’d imagined. Maybe saving Elizabeth from Henry’s clutches wasn’t going to turn out to be such a good thing after all.
“Come now,” Titania said. “You are a natural child of the Seelie Court. It is only fitting that you take your proper place. Swear allegiance, and we can put all of this unpleasantness behind us.”
It was a no-brainer, right? Join the Seelie Court and live, or refuse to join and die. But if there was one thing I’d learned through hard experience, it was that nothing about the Fae was simple.
“I want to talk to my dad before I decide,” I said.
“You already know what your father would advise,” Titania said. There was an edge of impatience in her voice. She probably wasn’t used to people not doing exactly what she told them to, when she told them to do it.
My dad would tell me I had no choice. But then my dad had also believed I had no choice but to give up on Ethan once the Erlking had captured him. I didn’t like the deal I’d made with the Erlking, but the fact remained that if I had it to do over again, I’d do the same thing. I could never have let Ethan be enslaved to the Wild Hunt, not when I could save him.
My instincts—or over-the-top paranoia, take your pick—were telling me that if I agreed to the Faerie Queen’s deal, I’d be as much a slave as Ethan had been. I wanted to live, but not like that. Maybe I was being stubborn, or immature, or just basically stupid, but I’d walked into one trap too many, and I wasn’t willing to walk into another.