Pausing before the door to the lair, her hand pressed to the base of a stone gargoyle with horns curled about its ears, Gossamyr surveyed the darkening perimeter. Thick vines grew over the garden
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and sweatered the side of the mansion. Their leaves were sharp and smelled foul. She had not before noticed them. The stable door hung open, revealing the carriage but no equipage. Dominique strolled outside the gate, arms akimbo, his head twisting. Dark hair listed across his cape. Had the changeling resistance to the Red Lady's allure, he might have proven a boon to her. But knowing little of the glamour he held—Enchanted, Disenchanted, or mayhap Celestial?—she could not trust he would be resilient.
Facing the door, she summoned courage. It no longer mattered diat she defeated some evil force and made Faery safe. Nor did it matter that she returned to her father's side, valorous and proven. A champion. Her own desires mattered little.
Ulrich, the truest friend she had ever known, needed her. And mayhap there was yet hope for Avenall. Avenall Eloi Papilion of Rougethorn.
"Be strong," she muttered. "Be bold, be bold..." She would not speak the final "be not too bold."
Gripping an arret to the ready and tucking her half staff under her arm, she kicked the door open and marched over the threshold.
Gossamyr strode forward, passing the leering marble gargoyles that clung to the walls as if captured midscamper. Constant whispers tickled her ears. Did the stone creatures speak? The chill of such a notion shivered through her limbs.
She pressed onward but indecision slowed her pace. Would she find Ulrich there in the room filled with moaning essences? Would the Red Lady leave such a well-marked path to her destruction? If only she could twinclian into the room, remain small and scope it out.
Touching her neck where the distinctive blazon had once shone, she felt nothing. Mortal now. Always had been, and always will be. So powrerless without the blazon of Faery.
And yet.. .still a force.
Shinn had trained her to jump out in the face of danger and offer it up a challenge. And that was what Gossamyr intended to do.
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The whispering had stopped. A movement at the corner of her eye snapped her gaze to the left. Just in time to see one of the gargoyle torches move its horned head. Watching?
Testing, she tapped the head of a stone beast with her staff. No movement.
"Methinks I am being tapped by souls unseen," she murmured. "Blight! Be to it!
"Where are you!" she called out, announcing her arrival. "Show yourself, banished one."
A shove of the staff tip against a door to her right opened into darkness. Cool air crept out, fluttering the candle held by her stone watcher. The stone claw faltered, dribbling candle wax onto the floor.
Gossamyr strode onward, her wake whipping the remaining torch flames in a mad dance. Stabbing open the door on her left revealed a thin stream of light cutting across the marble floor. Peering through the crack, Gossamyr spied a single form suspended in the center of the empty stone-walled room.
"Ulrich!"
Rushing inside, she skidded to a halt before the soul shepherd. His body, stripped to but his parti-colored hose, hung suspended by nothing more than the succubus's erie. The weight of his torso stretched his arms; they had turned unnaturally inward at the shoulder. His head hung upon his chest but his eyes were wide. Fingers twitching, he moved slowly in a circle. "I will get you down from there."
"No." Weak and barely there, his voice. His thumb twitched. A miserable moan preceded his whispered, "Let me.. .die."
"And have you forfeit your chance at a reunion with your daughter?"
"I will see her.. .anon. If Heaven will admit a miserable soul such as mine."
Gossamyr stepped beneath Ulrich. He was very high.
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"Gossamyr, save the alicorn. I am not worthy... I just want to die. Rhiana waits for me..."
He wanted to be with his daughter. His dead daughter. "Has she taken away your soul?"
"Not.. .yet... She comes!"
Leaping high, Gossamyr managed to brush the toe of Ulrich's pointed leather shoe. She landed in a crouch.
A wide sweep of white light flooded in through the doorway.
Gossamyr looked up from her crouch, into the blood-red eyes of her father's disgruntled lover. Pinpricks of red circled her left eye and arabesqued onto her cheek, a match to Avenall's mark. Hair the color of scarlet anemones poured over her shoulders. The simple white plush gown caressed her body and was cut high to expose her legs to the thighs. She drew a silver pin beneath her nose, tipped with brown. Dried blood, most likely. Gossamyr's?
"Delighted you could join the fete," the woman purred in a sensual stir of tones reeking of Faery. "I have looked forward to meeting Shinn's false daughter for quite a time. Pity we cannot speak as allies."
Gossamyr stood upright. A glance to die ground spied her staff, too far to grasp.
"You have an interest in my pretty, mortal kitten?" The Red Lady gestured to the suspended soul shepherd.
"He has done nothing to you; release him and you shall have the alliance you have waited for."
"Mmm, no." The woman drew out an object from her wide-cuffed sleeve and pointed it at Ulrich's form. "I am not finished playing with him."
A fine stream of glimmer shot from the alicorn's tip and zapped Ulrich into a spastic disarray of jerks and twitches. "Nor you." She turned the alicorn toward Gossamyr and winked. "Gossamyr de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege, you will do my bidding!"
TWENTY-EIGHT
For a moment the entire room stilled. Gossamyr gripped her chest, anticipating the inexplicable pull, the erie to melt over her with the recital of her name. The vile red creature had Named her.
Gossamyr de Wintershinn of—
Wait.
No urge to prostrate herself before the woman befell. Not a single muscle flinched. Breath held, Gossamyr sucked in deeper. Was that a prinkle racing up her spine? No.
Named, yet— Her Faery name.
You are mortal complete!
Not her true mortal birth name.
The smile of adventure, of dangers yet mastered, crooked Gossamyr 's mouth. "Think you?"
The Red Lady's jaw dropped. Clearly she had expected Gossamyr 's submission. "Gossamyr de Wintershinn," she repeated thrice quickly.
"Not the right name, bitch!"
Fire blazed in the red pupils fixed in the Red Lady's alabaster
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mask. Lifting the alicorn high, she incited its power with a few words. "Faery forged with glamour bright and magic bold. Tell me your mortal name!"
Gossamyr dodged the stream of power that shot from the alicorn's tip and rolled beneath Ulrich's dangling figure to the far wall. There, she gripped her staff and jumped to defense just as another wicked bolt of forbidden magic crossed the room.
She spun the half staff up to protect her face and caught the mixture of glamour and magic within the ribbons of carved apple-wood. Gossamyr could feel the wood bend and change, briefly, and then the strange mix shot out from the carved ribbons at each end. To master the alicorn—so much power the succubus drained from the essences!
"You do not want me dead," Gossamyr called. Moving deftly, she sidestepped another blast. "I am your only connection to Shinn!"
The room silenced. Gossamyr had played the one weapon she could guess would harm the woman. Love.
Drawing back her stolen weapon, the Red Lady gained in height and volume almost as if puffing herself up with air. An illusion, Gossamyr knew, but still impressive. Her pale flesh shone. And now, peeking through the decorative cuts of white fabric, the blazon that girdled her waist glittered brightly. The air tickled with sharp bites—Enchantment bound by a darker force. What wicked magic comes this day?
"Shinn is in Paris," the succubus announced. "I don't need you, silly mortal."
Could he yet linger in Paris? Gossamyr prayed not, for her father risked far
too much. He had aged; a stay in the Other side would weaken and further age him.
"I know as much because I control him at this moment," the Red Lady announced. "Turiau de Winter shinn of Glamoursiege—"
"No!"
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Too late, her father's name had been invoked, mayhap many a time previous to this moment.
Please stay away, Shinn. Fight the allure.
Easing to the left, Gossamyr worked slowly toward Ulrich. A keen eye to the alicorn ensured it hung at her enemy's side, for the moment forgotten. She could feel the subtle wind of Ulrich's feet swaying overhead.
The urge to strike stirred in Gossamyr's breast. If she rushed forth right now, she could pin the woman to the floor and be done with her. But the unknown held her at bay.
If the Red Lady died would her glamour then die? All those pinned essences.. .would they be obliterated? And Ulrich, he may perish, as well. What of Shinn? He would be released from the suc-cubus's erie. But—possibly Disenchanted—could he then return to Faery?
And where was Avenall? The pin man must lurk close by. Had her confession to their past stirred his memory?
"Call Shinn to you," the Red Lady commanded in her cool growl, "and I will release the mortal man."
"Promise?" Gossamyr knew it would not be so easy. Nor would—or could—she summon Shinn into this dangerous nest of tainted Enchantment.
"You have my word." The succubus bowed her head and looked up through dark-shadowed eyes. "The Faery lord for your mortal lover."
"Your word?" Gossamyr laughed. "Nay, that I should trust thee! You be the one who doomed me to Faery through your spurned heart."
"Doomed? You did not favor your home?"
"Well..."
"Should not I bear the right to exact punishment against my heart? Come, child—" the succubus tilted her head, eyeing her with curious malevolence "—you know the sharp pulse of a wounded
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heart." She drew a blood-red nail along the curve of her pale breast.
Speared expertly through her bruised heart, Gossamyr flinched. The succubus knew of her and Avenall's relationship. She knew of her birth and origin. The enemy grew more powerful with every bit of history she claimed from Gossamyr's soul. Yet, she did not wield her mortal name, and that promised hope.
"Are you not willing to do anything to make your mortal heart whole?"
"It is..." Gossamyr shivered at the quake moving through her body. It is whole!
Have you no Jeelings?Your truth.. .you are lost to Faery.
"My heart.. ."She stepped twice to the side, swayed, but righted herself. "No," she gasped to herself.
A beautiful song, rich in volume and melody, filled the room. Come to me, it uttered in lyrical tones.
Gossamyr blinked and yawned. Falling, she. So pretty, the surrender.
Her muscles stretched and loosened. The staff stabbed her foot.
The blurry figure of another, a man, bounced in behind the Red Lady. Wings spreading, he fluttered them, his position gifting the succubus with false wings. Flash of silver glinted in Gossamyr's peripheral vision.
"Surrender your heart, pitiful one," the pin man hissed in glee. Tapping a pin aside his jaw, his wings, lucid and tattered, flapped once. "She wants you."
Pulled into the song, Gossamyr again swayed. "No, Avenall..." she managed to say. "Av.. .enall..."
"Surrender," danced the delicious tones tickling into her ear.
o
Yes, to the Dance. Merry be and merry will, dance away your life you shall!
No! Gossamyr gathered a breath and shouted, "Avenall Eloi Pa-
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pilion of Rougethorn!" She fell to her knees as the whinny of a horse startled her.
Awaken.
Gossamyr shook her head. It felt as though she were shaking away a hard shell of opaque glass, seeing again, coming back into her soul. Your mortal soul.
In the doorway appeared Dominique, and behind him Tor raced past, his glossy white hooves clacking against the marble. Had the—yes—the unicorn had spoken beyond the erie and wakened her from it.
The Red Lady spun and pointed her Enchanted scepter. "The unicorn!" she announced, and then scurried from the room in a flight of flowing white skirts.
At the touch of the alicorn, Dominique flew into the air. Connecting to the wall with a sickening crunch, he slid down to land in a tangle of legs and wings.
Gossamyr ran to the doorway. The duo—pin man and Red Lady—were on to the room filled with essences.
Scampering back to the center of the room, she retrieved her staff and glanced to Ulrich.
"Leave me," he whispered.
"And when did you become such a pitiful excuse?" Planting the staff before her, she leaped, using the short bit of applewood to lengthen her distance. Arms stretched, she straightened her legs upward and kicked Ulrich in the gut. The blow released him from the erie. He landed the floor less gracefully than Gossamyr's crouch.
A yelp and a moan clued her the man would survive. She had been rather rough with him of late, poor thing. He deserved only kindness.
"Dragon piss!" Ulrich whined. "When will you see to leaving this poor old man in peace?"
"When you are poor and old and worthy of ignorance. Are you all there?" She pressed a hand to his bare chest. "Soul.. .intact?"
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"I think so."
"Did she kiss you?"
"A bit."
"A bit?"
"Once or twice."
"Hmm." She touched his cheek, tilting it to a side. His eyes fluttered, but beneath the nervous lids vivid blue flashed. "Yet you are still whole."
"Yet." Probing over his body with his fingers, Ulrich finally nodded and let out a sigh. "I may be beaten, Faery Not, but I am far from broken."
"That is the Ulrich I like to hear."
Flinging her arms about him, Gossamyr hugged him, drawing him upright to clasp to her chest.
"Faery Not?"
"Yes?"
"You are.. .hugging me."
"I know." And she gasped out a happy sound. "I would kiss you, as well, but we've more urgent needs."
"Must we? I could manage a kiss."
Gossamyr forced their separation, but Ulrich touched her face.
"What of you? I thought you were off to find your father." His head lolled, but he snapped it level. Remnants of the erie. "Did you speak to Shinn?"
"I did." Softly, she touched the green bruise on his cheek. That a woman could hurt this man! A charming smile managed to stir up a smile on her face. "You have taught me much, Ulrich. I do believe that a man can love a child, even if she is not of his blood. Shinn thinks love is elusive, but it was love that kept him silent about my mortality. He has always had the mortal passion, as have I."
Two blinks offered a silent agreement. Still woozy from the Red Lady's erie, surely. A film of glimmer purled a trail from the corner of his right eve.
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"What be wrong with your eye?"
"Nothing that hurts overmuch. Don't touch it! It seeps.. .glamour, I think."
"Glamour?"
"I spoke to Shinn, too."
"My father— When?"
"Mayhap right after you did."
So Shinn had sought Ulrich. There was no reason—
"He took your sight?"
"Just the one eye. Blessings, but I cannot see faeries now. Though, I did see the red bitch, or at least, part of her. There is another whom I cannot see."
"Avenall."
"Ah." He held up a swaying finger. "Your forgetful lover. Do you count him as your enemy?"
"No." At the moment she needed any would ally themselves to her. Sure, he stood at the Red Lady's side; but for now— "Ready for some danger?"
"Does that bitch yet hold the alicorn?"
"She does."
"Then I'm right behind you."
"Let's be to it!" Gossamyr dashed out into the hallway and slid to a stop. She
glanced back; the soul shepherd rolled to his knees.
"Right behind you!" he called.
The white marble halls twisted into dark curves and long stretches of cold blackness. When Gossamyr felt sure they had passed the same horned gargoyle torch, candle held in claw, she turned to find the scent of myrrh drew her forward down the hallway, dark on the end she and Ulrich stood, and bright a short dash onward.
The clomp of hooves alerted them both. Sliding to a halt, Gossamyr pressed back a hand to still Ulrich at her side.
"The unicorn. Slowly, Ulrich. We don't want to frighten it."
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The beast paused at the T at the end of the hall, shook its head and stamped the floor. Tor's brilliant luster illuminated all.
"That be a unicorn?"
"Shh."
"It's.. .why, it is but a white horse!"
"Sacrilege! Oh!"
And the beast was off, snorting its displeasure.
"You've chased it off with your unthinking words."
"But it looks like any other—sorry." Ulrich pushed the staff from his bare chest. Offering compliance with splayed hands near his shoulders, he said, "Whatever you bid, I shall do. Lead on, champion."
Tempted so suddenly, Gossamyr kissed him. Quick. A reaction to her heart. A mortal passion she had no desire to avoid.
"Remember your eye, Ulrich. You can no longer see the Enchanted. Mayhap that is why you see but a horse."
"You've got a point— Gossamyr?"
She turned another corner and strode ahead, her focus, finding the Red Lady.
Left standing beside the hot flicker of gargoyle flame, the fleeting warmth of a woman's kiss quickly receding, Ulrich surveyed his surroundings.
Empty hall.. .that led to another empty hall.
To the right, one Faery Not—not skipping down that way. (She needn't his interference.)
To the left—one white horse?
"Here, pretty, pretty..."
Gossamyr ran into the pin man outside the door protected by the seven gargoyles. She remembered diis place. The room filled with essences was just through the huge marble door. "Avenall?"
A beastly yowl startled her thoroughly. One of the gargoyles
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tossed its candle at her. Flame burned her elbow. Sulfurous sparkles tainted the air. Spatters of fire licked up her back, tracing the length of her braid.
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