"You are winged?"
He nodded. "You must know how difficult it is for a faery to walk unnoticed in Paris."
"But thev do."
J
"They are able to work a glamour for so long?"
Gossamyr nodded. "Most mortals cannot See a faery should they spread their wings before them. And when the Disenchantment sets in, well.. .their wings, they dissipate. Why is it you still have yours?"
"I cannot say. They've never disappeared, much as I wished for such when I was a child. I only wanted to run and play with the others,"he said. He drew the cloak out along one arm. "This is my disguise."
"It serves to hide your nature well. But with the Red Lady holding court, do you know the danger you are in?"
"I know nothing of this red lady. I am not of Faery, demoiselle. I am fee, but.. .an outcast. I can never have Faery. I function as a mortal with some of the powers of glamour. I suspect this red lady, if it is fee she seeks—"
"The Disenchanted."
"Disenchanted? The woman will not recognize me as one?"
"Perhaps not, for you were never Enchanted in the first place,"
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Gossamyr said, understanding growing. One must live in Faery to be Enchanted. Yes?
"It pains me to hear you put it in such a manner."
"Forgive me." She felt the wall of a house behind her and pressed her hand to it. She was so stunned to hear this man's confession, and yet, curious. He was she in every opposition.
"What troubles you? My lady?" He searched her face. A look that gentled even with its curiosity.
.. .a fine handsomeJaery man to sweep you Jrom yourjeet—literally?
She stretched a look to the unicorn, which stood outside the door to Armand's home. Peaceful acceptance glittered in the beast's pale violet eyes. Perfection destroyed by the mortal who would take its horn for devastating magic. She must return the alicorn immediately.
But you vowed to help Ulrich. Gossamyr stilled. Indeed, she had made a vow.
Close, the presence of this stranger. He reminded her of Faery—at least the semblance of her former home. Your truth keeps you jrom returning. She wanted to be there. To touch it. To feel the comfort of her home. A home she might never again visit.
It is not your home! It was never yours!
"How long before you learned the truth?" An abrupt question, but she hadn't time for dally.
"I have always known I am a fee in the mortal world. My mortal mother made sure I knew whence I came. Though she knew nothing of the faery ways and could not teach me."
"You were fortunate to have the truth."
Do you know the truth ofyourselj?
Verity d'Ange. Always she had carried that bit of her truth, unknowing.
o
You have the truth complete now. You are the truth. "Remove your cloak. Please," she pleaded. He balked, placing a hand to the hilt of his sword. Not a menacing move, merely, unsure.
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"I—I just need to see. To.. .to remember. Please?"
"To remember?"
"Since I have been in Paris, the Disenchantment. ..I think it draws away memories. I simply want to believe."
"Ah." He unclasped the silver agraffe at his neck and swung the cloak from his shoulders. Behind him unfurled shimmering violet wings, quarter-sectioned like the fetch, and her own tribe—but the upper wing was larger than the lower, unlike the symmetrical wings of tribe Glamour siege. Such wing structure identified him as from an old and revered family.
"Wisogoth." Not troopers but ancient earth dwellers who lived in great underground caverns lit by crystals and iridescent rivers. Desideriel's tribe.
The span of Dominique's wings fluttered in the still air, gushing a sweet breeze across Gossamyr's face, a summer meadow rich with clover. She closed her eyes and drew in the aroma of all she had once had.
To seal the rift wouldJor ever close jour access to Faery.
"What is Wisogoth?" he asked.
"It is a Faery tribe. The oldest in Faery. Your tribe, I would judge from the form of your wings. Have you a blazon?"
"1 know naught."
"It is.. .the Wisogoth blazon covers the back. It shimmers with glamour. A permanent marking."
"I have nothing like that."
"Perhaps you are not Enchanted?"
"Yet, I've glamour. That damned dust constantly spumes from me at the most inopportune moments."
"Interesting. I cannot figure this." How to possess glamour without Enchantment?
"You know Faery?" he inquired softly. "Tell me who you are, demoiselle. You are on a quest?"
"I am come from Faery," she confessed. "Glamoursiepe, a tribe
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that borders the Netherdred. But I am mortal. Like you, I.. .am a changeling."
He tilted his head wonderingly.
That she had spoken the word secured it into her soul. A completely mortal soul. No essence of Faery within.
In a rocking sway of unstoppable comprehension Belief altered.
Lost to you now.. .Faery.
I bid you farewell__
Gossamyr stroked a finger under her eye. No tears. Just the memory of pain. "I am mortal, stolen from my cradle as a child and taken to Faery. I have lived there all my life because I.. .believed."
"Wondrous."
"And now I do not belong."
"Why not?"
"Because a mortal must Believe to Belong." Gossamyr twined her fingers together before her and pounded her balled hands to her forehead. "I have always believed myself to be born of a mortal woman and a Faery lord; only recently have I learned I am true mortal—that my birth parents are no longer."
"I am sorry."
Bouncing on anticipatory footsteps, she shook out her fingers and entreated, "Did you ever meet your faery parents?"
"Yes. My mother lives close to me now. My father.. .is dead. For the best; he was not fee."
"I see."
"That may be the reason I have glamour while you deem me without Enchantment. My father, he was.. .cruel. Of the angelic ranks. I am..."
"Quite astounding," Gossamyr offered.
Charmed by his smile, an easy charm and not gratuitous, Gossamyr knew she had found a friend.
"Why have you come to Paris, my lady?"
"I have left Faery to seek the Red Lady and destroy her. My fa-
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ther sent me, knowing no fee could approach the villainess without her seducing and killing them."
"You possess the powers of the fee?"
"No. I am Disenchanted, stripped of the little glamour I once held."
"Ah." He curved his hand before her, looking to caress her cheek, but he did not touch her. Only he smiled upon her with a calm look of peace that reassured he was friend not enemy. "What is your name?"
"Gossamyr," she said, and then looked to the ground. Overwhelmed, that is all she could feel here in the presence of such a regal man and the unicorn. Gossamyr Verity de Winter shinn of Glamoursiege, false child of Shinn. Avenall's words cut to her tender heart. Who was this Verity d'Ange?
The unicorn snorted at the sudden appearance of a man in the doorway. A froth of white beard tufted the door frame. Ulrich's uncle tilted his head, sensing those around him. "Who is about?"
"Monsieur LaLoux." Gossamyr approached the old man. "It is Gossamyr. I've come for Ulrich. Is he inside?"
"Ulrich? I've not spoken to him since last he was here with you, my lady."
"I told him to return anon. Where could he possibly—" Spinning her half staff, Gossamyr looked both ways down the dark street. "Oh, no."
"What is it?" Dominique calmed Tor with a palm to the beast's muzzle.
"She was calling to him earlier," Gossamyr said. "I should have never left her lair. The Red Lady has likely lured Ulrich and the alicorn to her."
"The alicorn?"
"Yes." She started walking the cobbles. "My friend was on a quest to return the alicorn
to its rightful owner. I must hurry."
"I shall accompany you!"
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"You cannot," she called to the changeling. "You would put yourself in harm's way should the Red Lady recognize you are fee. Stay with the unicorn; protect it."
"Very well," the changeling called. "But Tor does not take orders. He will go where he pleases, there is nothing I can do to stop him."
Gossamyr winced. A unicorn anywhere near the Red Lady was surely a dead unicorn. "If the beast knows what is good for it, it will stay far from the Red Lady's lair."
A protesting whinny and clomp of hooves preceded the charge of the unicorn. He cantered past Gossamyr. Close behind ran the changeling.
"Very well," Gossamyr said, picking up her pace to match the others. The smile of adventure emerged. "To charging head on into dang
!"
er!
The world undulated away from him. Or rather, he was being dragged, arms wrenched overhead and wrists clasped by pinching fingers. His muscles, stretching from pit to torso, screamed. Too dazed to struggle, Ulrich remarked the thick white candles flashing fire sparkles across the walls. Stars stolen from the sky. The flickers of light moved away from him, appearing from wherever it was he was being dragged.
o oo
At his feet trailed a disturbing vision, the succubus who had kissed him—briefly. Not really a kiss though, more like she had moved close enough to kiss and had.. .inhaled his essence. Your soul,
o
lackwit! She draws out jour soul! Even so, that blithe moment had literally left him drained.
Lifting a knee, Ulrich thought to kick out, to put a stop to this.
"Ah, ah," the lady with the red marking on her face cooed—still he could but see a swath of her face where she had wiped his tears; it floated mysteriously above the white dress. She poked Ulrich with the tip of the alicorn.
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Such fire! 'Twas as though he'd been pierced with a flame-red poker, when all she had done was touch it to his knee.
Drowsy with pain, Ulrich muttered, "Gossamyr?"
"Be that her name, then?" The Red Lady danced the alicorn in the air gaily, drawing a circle of iridescent glamour in its wake. "Gossamyr, Shinn's false daughter?"
"The man knows not what he mumbles," the unseen voice from above Ulrich's head snapped. "Gossamyr is a common name."
Something gave a tug to one of Ulrich's wrists, making him cry out. He could not see who or what held him. A faery thing, curse them all!
"Why do you hide things from me, Puppy? There, in the torture chamber."
Torture? Where was the danger-loving Faery Not when he needed her?
An icy blackness ignited to a dull glow as the alicorn was touched to an iron torch on the marble wall.
"Shall I chain him to the wall?"
"I don't think it necessary." Two glossy red eyes peered at Ulrich, the alicorn drawing a line below her pouting lips. To but see a part of her face, from cheek to cheek and eyebrow to lower lip, distressed him. "He's weak. Nor will he run without trying to retrieve his prize, yes?"
Yes, he'd run without the prize. The loss of his wish seemed ultimately more tolerable when compared to the evils this nasty half-faced bitch could work upon him. Ulrich had seen the wall of pinned essences. Souls of faeries the succubus had sucked to a slow and painful death. Could she do the same to him? Steal his soul and pin it to the wall? And then, would one of those skeleton creatures emerge to battle Gossamyr?
A dead soul shepherd would not then be able to retrieve his lost daughter.
"My kitten will be a good little boy."
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The woman's touch felt like ice. No longer did the soft, susurrat-ing tingle of the divine attract him. Nor could he smell the myrrh that had filled the halls of this lair; naught but terror filled his nostrils with a sharp cloying odor.
He saw the tip of fingers coated with the glimmer from his eye swipe across the air to reveal her neck and the serrated curves of her bosom.
"Methinks you should not play with kittens," the man he could not see said as he dropped Ulrich's feet and legs. "They have nasty claws that will tear my mistress's dress and make her bleed."
"Oh, Puppy. Come to me."
"Not when you've that horn in hand. It hurts."
"I'll not let this prize from my sight, so you'll have to learn to live without my touch. Leave him. Shinn's daughter will seek him, I am sure of that."
"I mean nothi I to Gossamyr," Ulrich managed.
"So she is Shinn's daughter?"
Hades, he shouldn't have said anything. Ulrich choked back risk of exposing further knowledge.
"Your silence speaks volumes."
For once he prayed for a rogue spirit seeking direction to float on by. Could he use it as a weapon and send it through the suc-cubus's being?
The fire burn of the alicorn tingled along Ulrich's brow as the Red Lady drew it slowly over his face. "To what purpose do you serve Shinn's false daughter, hmm? You are completely mortal, this I know from your plain scent and unremarkable appearance."
Summoning the few remaining threads of courage, Ulrich worked up his saliva and spat. Direct hit above and between the Red Lady's breasts. The globule landed a part of her flesh he could not see, so it appeared to float.
"Wrong answer." She summoned the minion who lurked in the shadows with but a flick of her fingers. Footsteps shuffled over. Ul-
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rich saw the tips of black hair revealed as they wiped her breasts clean of spittle. "I see we shall have to restrain the miserable mortal. But I don't want to take away his soul, not yet. So.. .just a little kiss."
Ulrich struggled as she leaned over him, but the melody whispering from her mouth captured his mind in a vise hold and quickly becalmed him to a ragged mass of muscle and bone. Unable to move, he moaned as cold lips pressed upon his and summoned the passion in his groin.
Oh, but it was so sweet, her kiss. Take me, drink me, suck out my soul...
TWENTY-SEVEN
"I know it is this way." Gossamyr strode ahead of Dominique and Tor. "East from the edge of the city. I remember the spire of that great cathedral was in view."
"This man who has been accompanying you," Dominique called from behind. "What were the reasons the two of you joined forces?"
Inexplicably compelled, she looked at her palm, the lines deepened with memory. He'd danced the mortal passion into her soul. Love? "We were destined to come together. Though I cannot be sure my father did not place him in my path. Ulrich is a good man."
"As a mortal he will be safe from the succubus's evil?"
"Not sure. The man who serves at her right hand is fee—and she holds him in an erie. His essence is pinned to her wall."
"And that is a faery soul, as you have explained. Incredible. You teach me much in so little time."
Time. The unrelenting enemy.
Gossamyr stopped, stretching out a hand to give the others silent orders. Tor's hooves clopped to a halt behind her and the
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hematite stones on Dominique's cape ceased clacking. The caw of a crow, unseen, but close, made her tilt her head to the side. The air smelled clean, strangely so. They were far from the marketplace, but close, the calls of river men, as their skiffs sluiced silently through the dreadsome dark waters.
The warm huff of air at the back of Gossamyr's neck danced through her system, invigorating and smelling of summer mead buzzing with honey-dripping humble bees. She reached back. Tor pressed his nose into her palm. Hot suede. Huff of misty breath.
She and Dominique exchanged glances.
"He trusts you," the changeling offered.
"If that be so then I beg the unicorn remain far from the Red Lady's lair. If she has Ulrich, no doubt she holds the alicorn."
Dominique shrugged and smoothed a hand over Tor's braided mane. In response, the unicorn stomped the ground twice with its foreleg and dropped into a regal
bow, nose to the cobbles and fettered forelegs bent.
Fearful of such deference from the sacred beast, Gossamvr man-aged a bow and gestured the beast rise. But Tor did not. "What is he doing?"
"He will yield to your request. Many years Tor has searched for the alicorn."
"Time be tricksy."
"He knows it is close, but is aware of the risk. Evil cannot be calmed when such power lies at hand. Do not lead us astray."
"I will not. I have seen and touched it. I will bring it back to you.. .er, Tor. I pledge my honor to you."
The beast rose and reared up grandly upon its hind legs, stretching twice the height of Gossamyr. It then turned and cantered off down the street.
"He will remain close but unseen," Dominique said as he gestured they continue. "Are we near to her lair?"
"Too close." Gossamyr walked up to the iron gate surrounding
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the humble manor. Four guttered candles lit the shell path to the stables. And there, at the edge of the stable lay a puddle of darkness. Gossamyr rushed across the path, her bare feet making little noise, and plunged to the fabric that resembled a slick of mud. It smelled earthy. "Ulrich's cloak. She has him."
"I.. .can feel her."
Gossamyr spun around to spy the changeling standing in the center of the shell path. The dark cloak listed on the wind, skillfully disguising wings. His eyes closed, he pressed forth a palm to caress the air before him, feeling, scenting—
"No!" Gossamyr shoved Dominique out from the succubus's erie. "She is calling to you. Do not listen. Don't—blight, perhaps you should remain out here."
"I will not abandon you now."
"But you hear it?"
"A call? Yes. Gorgeous and seductive."
o
"I can do this on my own."
"Oh? You remind me of my wife. Headstrong and stubborn, she is always getting herself into a fix." He cocked his head, closing his eyes. "So.. .gorgeous."
Swinging her staff to gently land Dominique's chest, Gossamyr said, "Please, you need to understand the power of her call. It can devastate."
Dominique blinked from the reverie he'd slipped into. "But you said I am in no danger. If I have never been Enchanted...?"
"A faery essence lives inside you. A sweet waiting to be plucked by the Red Lady."
Dominique nodded, agreeing. "Very well, Tor and I shall stand guard outside."
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