"By stealing my essence, like yours?"
"You've no essence to steal, mortal."
"Very well." Gripping the half staff in both hands, she worked at the wood until she felt sure the carvings would etch into her palms and out would pour blood. Not ichor. You are mortal. "I shall leave you with a bit of your own truth, Avenall of Rougethorn. It was my father, Shinn, who also banished you."
"This I know."
"And yet—do you know the reason you were sent from Faery without so much as a by-your-leave?"
Rolling to stretch on his side, he propped his chin in hand. "I guess you will tell me."
Gossamyr stepped up to the bed and gripped a thick spiral post fashioned of the same marble as the floor. She knew the Red Lady's heart was colder than the stone. If she possessed a heart. "I will, and then I will consign you to my past and think not another moment for your life."
Avenall sighed and spread out his arms in a waiting gesture.
"My father banished you from Faery because you chose to court his daughter after he had forbidden such a match. He would not have a Rougethorn marry his own. On the night we were to make love, Shinn sent you off. I loved you, Avenall."
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Gossamyr turned and strode from the room. Her footsteps increased. Her arms pumped. And her heart pounded. She ran down the hallway. The gargoyles' flames flickered and brightened in her wake.
All this time—her father—
/ will not have a Rougethorn in myjamilj.
She entered the darkness of the Paris night with a cry that echoed out and spiraled into the heavens.
TWENTY-TWO
Dominique San Juste startled at the female cry drifting over all of Paris. He could not fix a location to the sound, instead it encompassed all, the air, the cobbles, the stone walls and creaking wooden signs, and finally, resonated in his bones. Mournful and vehement, the howl was tinged with a glimmer of which he had never known—but had always carried within him—Enchantment.
Unsettled, he stroked a palm across Tor's bone-white withers and searched the darkness.
"You feel it, too, my friend," he said to his equine companion. "What mischief have you led me to?"
The stallion bristled and reared upon its hind legs in brilliant display.
And Dominique sensed every moment that followed would place him closer to a most dangerous Enchantment.
"Where is he?" Gossamyr stumbled across the threshold into Ar-mand LaLoux's home. The old man nodded toward the ladder. Gossamyr scaled the rungs two at a time. Ulrich met her at the
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top. She plunged into his arms but took no time for courtesies. Pulling him across the floor toward the window, she stood for a moment, catching her breath. Not once had she broken her stride from the Red Lady's lair.
Manic visions twisted her thoughts here, there and widdershins. A changeling? Completely mortal? Believe and you Belong...
Where did she belong?
So much she had always accepted, thought to know as truth!
"What is it? Did you track the pin man? Sit on the floor, my lady, you're out of breath."
She followed his direction and sat, crossing her legs. When he remained standing, she clung to his wrist and pulled him down, leveling his face with hers. Gripping his head between her palms, she ignored his wince when she pressed upon the bruise staining his cheek. Heaving yet from her race, she was unable to get out the words.
Warm hands bracketed hers, pulling her shaking fingers from his face. "Gossamyr? If you do not speak I shall assume the worst. Have you been followed? Harmed?"
Harmed? Mayhap by the very man she had called father all these years.
"You are bleeding."
She shook her head that he should disregard that insignificant bother.
Oh, but an ache had begun to pulse in the depths of her being. The old wound had been scraped and now this new knowledge tore open her bleeding heart.
"Gossamyr?"
She shot a gaze into the man's eyes. "What did you call me?"
"It is your name."
Yes, her name. Was it? Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege. Truly?
She had not been able to conjure Avenall's name complete. It
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was there, just at the edge of her mind. Ah! He had utterly changed. Physically and mentally. He knew nothing of himself. Puppy? Yet, he claimed to know much about her.
Could he speak the truth of her?
"Tell me you are not harmed elsewhere," Ulrich whispered. "You tremble so—"
"No!" That shout released her dry and twisted tongue, and Gos-samyr began to cry long-buried tears. She could not keep them back. Be blighted, the champion, the wandering refugee from Faery simply needed to let out some pain.
"Mon Dieu, this is serious. Faery princesses are not supposed to cry."
Ulrich pulled her to him. His hair brushed her face and for a moment Gossamyr recalled that time long ago, when she had been but a child and had stood watching the dancer...
o
There in the center of the toadstool ring, his hands swaying in the air, a mortal danced. A male, for he was hearty and dressed in striped hosen and doublet. His head tilted back and mouth open, he laughed and giggled and shouted out in joy.
Gossamyr tilted her head, studying the mortal's movements. Almost as if commanded by the mistress of the Dance, a puppet dancing for the twisted pleasure of the masses. "Poor thing."
Gossamyr worked her way to the edge of the ring where the grass had been trampled to an emerald mat and stood, her barefoot propped on the head of a wide loamy toadstool. No one paid her mind. Even the piskies soared by without so much as a teasing thrust of their lavender tongues.
Splash of mead sprayed her cheek and she swept out her tongue to lick away the sweet liquorfrom the corner of her lips. Dozens of fee danced a tribal rhythm about the mortal, a circle of violet eyes. His own eyes were closed, oblivious to a danger Gossamyr could not know. But she sensed it.
Dancers spun past her in increasing speed, stomping and twirling and lifting skirts high to expose moonlight-pale thighs and bronze ankle chains. Fluttering wings swept the air in heady perfume of heliotrope, rosemary and rose.
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She spied the mortal dance closer. For all matters he looked as all fee did, having two legs, two arms, a torso, head and hair—rusty hair. Wingless, as was she—not uncommon in Faery. But the eyes, when they flashed wide to take in the merriment, were not violet. A pale noncolor. From where she stood, Gossamyr could not determine what shade or tint
The wind of the Dancers' reel stirred Gossamyr's hair as the mortal passed her by, oblivious to all but the music. "An endless moment,"she recalled Shinn once saying as he'd explained in Jew words her frequent questions.
Closing her eyes, Gossamyr drew in the heavy green scent of moist meadow grass. A musty aroma drifted up from the frilled underside of the toadstools. Blackberries crushed, spiced, and brewed to summer mead spilled down throats and from bronze goblets.
Drawing deeply, she sensed another aroma, a scent she had not before smelled. Earthy and tainted with the ripe lush dregs of crushed grapes. Mortal scent? She leaned forward. Delicious. Beguiling.
Stretching out a hand, she wished with all her might—and it happened.
The skim of hair across her fingers. Swift, but the moment slowed, so she could sense every individual strand and memorize the texture as fshe had studied it for centuries.
Clasping her fingers to her chest, she closed her eyes and stood on tiptoe. The canorous swing of the revelers faded into the background as her wishes, her passion was born.
The Otherside. She would journey there someday, to explore and discover and learn all that she could of the beguiling creature called mortal, for she was part of the realm, as well—by half.
Staring at her fingers now, Gossamyr perused the lines of life. There, mayhap the trail of the Dancer's hair deepened that line. Reaching out, she
touched Ulrich's hair. Overwhelming tears rushed to her eyes.
"Gossamyr?"
It was him. This mortal had Danced for her unknowing. Not so long ago, he would remark. Many dozens of moons, she knew. An endless moment. Tricksy, this time difference between Faery and the
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Otherside, moving neither forward in synch, but twisting in and upon itself. Avenall had spoken the truth of Time.
Truly, this man was the mortal who had unearthed her passion for the Otherside.
And yet, be it only because she was mortal? Her passion for all things not Faery stirred up from the depths of her being? Had the mortal passion led her here after all? Why hadn't Veridienne told her?
Do you already subscribe to a truth you cannot trust?
Believe and you Belong.
Believe in what?
She did not want to belong—not here!
"Am I mortal, Ulrich?" She gripped his shirt, fingering the needlework dragonflies. "Do you think I am mortal? Not of Faery?"
"What are you babbling about?"
"Avenall—the pin man. He.. .he told me things."
"Bizarre things surely."
"You've said yourself, I am more mortal than fee."
"Yes, but you've told me you are half-blooded."
"You never believed me. And the spell in the cathedral tower, it did not locate me!"
"The spell—but I am not a mage, precious one. 'Twas merely a trick that may or may not have succeeded. Why are you so upset? You take the word of some minion who tries to make you believe such nonsense? Gossamyr, I saw you the moment you left Faery. I saw the blazon."
Conscious of her lost glamour, she smoothed a palm across the base of her throat and over her collarbones. "Any mortal who spends time in Faery develops a blazon. It is the glamour fixing to one's essence. Have I an essence? Or but a mortal soul? Oh, Ulrich, you must help me!"
"You need rest, Gossamyr. You have not rested properly since we have joined up. Your mind, it plays cruel tricks upon your brain."
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"But the Red Lady told him about her banishment. Ulrich, the succubus was banished from Faery by Shinn. The very man who would call me daughter was betrothed to marry the Red Lady. Why would he not tell me? Why the lie?"
"You would believe a succubus's minion over your own flesh and blood?"
"I—I am not Shinn's blood," she whispered.
"What?"
"Avenall claims I am but a mortal exchange for Shinn's
o
changeling child."
Ulrich sat back, his legs bent, forearms propped on his knees. The single candle's flame, set on the floor before the window, shadowed long lashes across his forehead.
"You have no answer for that."
"I don't know what to think. You have a relationship with this pin man that you call him by name? You know him well enough to trust his word?"
"I did once. We were.. .in love."
"Oh?"
"Mv father would not allow him to court me because he was not
j
Glamoursiege but rather a Rougethorn, I told you that. The two tribes have warred against one another. And yet, they were to wed..." Impossible to imagine that Shinn might have once agreed to marry the Red Lady. And yet, she knew so little, mayhap it had been an easy agreement.
"But he did not marry her. Instead, he took a mortal wife. This mortal passion makes one do crazy things."
"Indeed. It will set a man on a deadly quest to find a hornless beast of myth."
Gossamyr sniffed and, only now realizing she cried, pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. "You see I have emotion. Mortal emotions that run afoul with the merest of problems. Don't look at me."
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"Be you mortal or be you fee you are still the same, Gossamyr. A beautiful warrior—"
"Sent by lies to exterminate my father's banished lover!"
Ulrich gave a low whistle.
"Bloody elves, does Shinn banish every fee who gets close to him and his own? Mayhap Veridienne was banished, too!"
"You don't believe that."
"I don't know what is truth anymore."
"You know your mother was mortal."
"Yes, but is Veridienne my birth mother or merely a foster mother?"
The clank of an iron pot below silenced them both. Armand must be to the evening meal. Counting her heartbeats, Gossamyr squeezed her eyes tightly shut to avoid the steady blue gaze bent before her.
"There is a way to know for sure," Ulrich said. She looked up at him. "Call out your father."
"To Paris? The Red Lady would scent him in a moment. Shinn would not be so foolhardy."
"Can you send the fetch to him?"
"I haven't seen Shinn's fetch for a time. But you!" She lunged and clamped her hands upon Ulrich's shoulders. "You can work a spell to see my truth? Yes?"
"I am but a mere shepherd of—"
"You can! You studied with a mage. Your spell in the cathedral was successful."
Vacillating with a noncommittal shrug and then a defeated sigh, Ulrich offered, "You are quick to use magic now."
"If I be mortal, it is my right."
"I would have to check my leech book."
"Then do it! Where is it? Here!" She dived for the saddlebag and upended its contents. The mortar and her sigil scattered. A small book of folded parchment slid out beside the candle and she paged
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through the stitched sheets. Black lines of flowing text darted from side to side of each page in a tilted manner that made it difficult to decipher the words. She knew the mortal script, yet this was erratic. Why did everything have to be so complicated?
From behind her, she felt Ulrich's arms embrace her and his hands move over hers, closing the book in her lap.
"Does it truly matter, faery princess?"
Do you know the truth ojyourself?
"I am not fee. It was.. .is, and always has been, a mortal love."
"I understand now, the mortal passion you speak of."
"What of it?"
"It is love, Gossamyr. Love is the mortal passion!"
"I—" But it made sense, so much sense. Shinn's mortal passion for Veridienne. Her mother's love for her home. And she, she had always known that she could love, but had pressed it back as the mortal passion. "I think you are right, Ulrich."
Silence pounded in her ears. Her mortal soul beating within, seeking escape? Your truth will be your end. "But I must learn the truth. Help me, Ulrich."
"Very well." He drew her onto his lap and, looking over her shoulder, the two paged through the leech book. "There must be something in here."
"We must hurry. The pin man will tell his mistress who I am."
"Think you?"
"Yes. Though I did leave him with the truth of us, I wager he shall not remember. If only I could recall his name complete I might break the erie. Ulrich, as Faery slips from me, so too do my memories."
"You remember your father."
"How could I forget Shinn?"
"It is akin to asking how he could not love a child he has raised
o
as his daughter."
Turning in Ulrich's lap, Gossamyr looked into his truth. Her
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Dancer. His presence in Faery had forged her curiosity for the Other side. Had he not danced, she might never have attempted to convince her father to allow her this mission. It could not be coincidence that had placed them together on this path to change their futures. Or be it the mortal passion that held her in its thrall?
She waited in the attic, twilight shimmering a thin silver line across the window. Cross-legged, she sat, and closed her eyes. Those three words from the dilapidated castle returned to her. Vengeance, valor, truth.
What word had vengeance replaced? Charity? No, there had been a single "r." Honor? And why had she claimed valor when all along the truth had dodged her like a fetch's flight?
She had not succumbed to the dreaded fee curse called the mortal passion. She was the antithesis of the malady. For in her heart, she already loved. A mortal who could love. So many unexplained things from her childhood could be answered with the simple statement: You are mortal.
She did never heal as did the fee; scars abounded on her legs and arms. Glamour had to be learned, 'twas not innate. No wings. Unable to twinclian. Not so tall as the lithe fee and not slender. Muscular and well formed, and as Avenall had remarked, breasts far too large to accomplish flight. Brown eyes. And how she had lumbered in the Faery air, not like here, where she positively fit.
Could Avenall's claim that her truth would be her end have some bearing on Shinn's silence? It made little sense a man who had claimed to love her for so long could so easily dispose of her. Was Shinn capable of wearing such a mask? Had he been plotting the Red Lady's demise, with Gossamyr as the weapon of destruction, since her birth? Why, if they had been affianced, had he not initially refused the betrothal? Rougethorns had always been known to dabble. Surely their union had taken that into account? Mayhap
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it had something to do with the rift? To combine magic with Enchantment to induce it to heal?
No, it did not seem like her father.
Every day she learned more of the lord of Glamour siege's quick and bitter temper. What twisted reign did Shinn walk? He had no right to toy with love and desire. Had his own tragic love affair pushed him to be so protective of her? To jealously cast away her lover?
The soft footfalls of Ulrich's boots landed the attic floor. Gossamyr heard him shuffle a jumble of items in his hands as he laid them on the floor behind her. Pages flipped in his leech book. A heavy sigh weighed down his breath. He had gathered the required supplies to work the spell—one gray mouse tail, sleep dust (from Armand's eyes), fresh thyme and six strands of Gossamyr's hair.
"You can do this," she offered, turning to catch his reluctant, yet agreeing, nod. "What betroubles you, Ulrich?"
"Of course I can work the spell. Thing is, I don't know if I want to do this."
"You would refuse me help?"
"Never."
"Then what is the problem?"
Seriousness stilled his eyes. "There is a requirement to work the spell. You must present yourself to me bared of propriety and vestments."
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