Unbinding

by Eileen Wilks

  All of those who’d returned with Kai had lived. Most were physically recovered. The two who’d been the most ill from magic sickness—Penny from the beach and a young man named Frank, whom Dyffaya had called Liu—were still pretty weak, but they would get back to full strength eventually. Emotionally, none of those he’d beguiled were back to full strength. Kai had treated some of them. Others had refused her help. They didn’t want anyone messing with their minds ever again. She understood that.

  “It’s weird how little it’s changed, isn’t it?” Arjenie said.

  Kai looked around. The vines covering the walls of Fagioli’s patio had lost their blooms, but they were making new buds. Otherwise the place looked just as it had when all this started. In Earth time, that was less than four weeks ago. She’d spent the first week of her return with her grandfather. The second week, she and Nathan came back to San Diego so she could help those who wanted it. “It is. They still serve the best mocha coffee in the universe, too.”

  Arjenie grinned. “Spreading that net pretty wide, aren’t you? I heard you arguing about mochas with Rule last night.”

  “I’m pretty sure I won that one.” Mostly because Rule Turner didn’t sully his coffee with chocolate, but still. She’d won.

  Rule Turner and Lily Yu had long since returned, and last night the lupi had thrown a party. A big party, intended to combine “welcome home” with “yay, we won!” and a send-off bash for her and Nathan. There’d been music, dancing, and food. Lots and lots of food.

  José had been there. He’d danced with her. Doug had attended the party, too, but it would be a while before he danced again. And Ackleford had been invited. To Kai’s surprise, he’d come—and he’d brought Karin Stockman. At one point Kai had been mostly alone with the special agent. Surrounded by people, yes, but none of them had been talking to her at the moment. She’d taken advantage of it. “You like Karin,” she’d said.

  He’d scowled. “Won’t anything come of it. She’s based on the other side of the goddamn country.”

  “Yes, but you like her. A lot.”

  He’d shrugged. “She’s smart, she’s mean, and she’s solid. What’s not to like?”

  Kai had laughed at Ackleford’s romantic criteria and assured him that Karin liked him, too.

  “So.” Arjenie set her mocha drink down and leaned forward. “We’ve talked about Ackleford’s possible love life, and mine—which is entirely satisfactory—and all sorts of other things, but we haven’t talked about your decision. You said you were pretty sure what you were going to do, but you didn’t want to tell me until you were a hundred percent. How about it? Have you made up your mind?”

  Kai smiled. “I’m going to get my eyes fixed.”

  “At the surgical center?”

  “Nope. I’m going for the surgery-free option.”

  Arjenie’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going to take service with the Queen of Winter. Wow. That’s good. I think that’s good.” She frowned. “I’m not sure. But you are?”

  She nodded. “Nathan was right. I couldn’t make up my mind before because I didn’t know what I wanted. But that wasn’t all there was to it. There were two things I had to learn, and I couldn’t make up my mind until I did.”

  “You okay telling me what those things were?”

  “I’ve been wanting to. The first thing . . . until all this happened, I kept seeing myself as lesser. Less than the elves, and worse, less than Nathan. He was the power. I was just this nice girl with an unusual Gift that he’d fallen for. He didn’t see me that way, but I did.”

  “You don’t now?”

  Kai shook her head slowly. “I hadn’t realized how much my attitude about elves was really about me, not them. I wanted them to be more human, which is silly, but I was afraid I’d lose myself in their—their magnificence. I hadn’t realized how much Eharin had poisoned my attitude, either. Oh, everything I disliked in her is common in other elves, too, but those things were so exaggerated in her, almost cartoonish. It’s like Europeans saying they don’t like Americans because we’re so loud and brash. Sure, some Americans are loud, and culturally we’re more about the brash than the meek. But plenty of Americans are neither of those things. Reducing an entire people to a stereotype is always dumb.”

  Arjenie grinned. “You like elves now?”

  Kai chuckled. “Some of them, no. But others . . . I liked some of them all along. I just insisted they were the exceptions.” She was silent a moment, thinking of what she’d learned in that final, intensely private time with one who had been a god. Most of it she couldn’t speak of, but how it had affected her—that was okay to talk about. “Elves are so beautiful and powerful and graceful that all I could see was how much better than us they were. But they aren’t. Better at some things, yes, but . . . Arjenie, I think many of them are lonely.”

  Arjenie’s eyebrows shot up again. “Poor, lonely superstars?”

  Kai laughed. “Something like that. They’re so good at all the surface things that I thought that was all they valued. I was wrong.” She thought of a trapped, desperately lonely mind . . . but he’d been lonely before he became trapped. That’s part of what went so badly wrong. Being visible to lots and lots of people is not the same as connecting with others, but the man who became a god hadn’t known any other way. And in that, he was typical of his people. “Then there’s those status games they play. I was pretty contemptuous about that, but now I suspect that’s how they connect with others. Through their games. They need connections as much as we do, but I don’t think most of them know how to make a friend over a cup of coffee. And that’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is.” Arjenie fell silent, contemplating an inability Kai suspected she didn’t really understand. Kai hadn’t, either. “What was the other thing? You said there were two things you’d learned.”

  “Oh, that. Well. The thing is, I’ve become a power.” It sounded silly. Pretentious. And yet . . . “That’s very sidhe of me, putting it that way, but the point is that I have power. Lots of it, especially now that Dell’s taken a pair of mates. Before, I was hiding from that, scared of the responsibility that goes with it. I wanted to go on being lesser so I didn’t have to face up to that responsibility—which means, among other things, that I’d damned well better get the best training I possibly can. To do anything else is irresponsible.”

  “And you can get that if you take service with the Queen. I understand. But you have to vow to her for life, right?”

  “Yes. But I feel okay about that, because I know what I want. That might change, so I’m going to ask that some of the clauses be open for renegotiation after some fixed time. Maybe ten years. Otherwise, I’ll negotiate the best deal I can—”

  “You will, not Nathan?”

  “I’ll certainly want Nathan’s advice. He’s the expert at negotiating with one of the sidhe. But it’s my life. I have to handle that particular deal myself.”

  Arjenie grinned and lifted her nearly empty plastic glass. “That calls for a toast. To negotiating our own deals!”

  Kai grinned back, tapped her plastic glass against Arjenie’s, and drank the last of a truly delicious mocha.

  “You want to tell me what kind of clauses you’re talking about?”

  “Splitting my time between Earth and Faerie, for one. I’ve realized that I enjoy wandering, but I need a home base, too.” She wanted more time with Grandfather. She wanted to get her things out of storage, and have a place to put them. “Nathan’s okay with that. He likes a lot of things about Earth.”

  Arjenie perked up. “Here? I mean, not just here on Earth, but maybe you could make your home base in San Diego, or nearby?”

  Kai smiled slowly. “Nathan really likes hanging out with lupi, and San Diego isn’t that far from Grandfather.”

  Arjenie shrieked and did the happy dance sitting down.

  Kai lau
ghed, and of course had to hug her friend, and then they talked about possibilities. Kai had figured out a lot, but she didn’t yet know what she wanted for a home. A house in the mountains, or one in the desert? Something near Clanhome, or halfway between it and Grandfather’s beloved mountain? Maybe even a place on the beach . . . when Arjenie pointed out how much even a tiny beachfront condo would cost, Kai admitted sheepishly that price wasn’t much of an issue. The Queen had supplied them with gems to finance their stay here. Rather a lot of them, including three of a type that weren’t found on Earth. Tétel an bo, the sidhe called those stones, meaning eye-of-the-sky. They were lovely, rather like a star sapphire but a brilliant turquoise color. It turned out that collectors really, really wanted one of the new gems. A single one would pay for almost any house, even in high-priced San Diego; two would buy a mansion.

  But Kai was sure of that much: she did not want a mansion. Something small and homey, with a comfortable guest room in case Grandfather agreed to leave his mountain for a short visit. And who knew? They might have a guest from Faerie from time to time, too. Something outside the city, too, because Dell didn’t do well in cities. Neither did Dell’s mates.

  When Nathan appeared in the wide doorway to the patio, she realized guiltily that she’d lost track of time. She was supposed to have been out front thirty minutes ago so he could pick her up. He paused, looked around—and a smile broke over his face when he saw her. One of those smiles, the ones he invented on the spot to say that he’d found her again.

  There was a flurry of hugs and goodbyes, promises between Kai and Arjenie to see each other again. Then Kai was outside Fagioli, looking around. “Where’s the car?” They were supposed to head back to Clanhome one more time. Nathan could cross realms from anywhere, but it was much easier for him near a node, so Dell waited for them at the one on Little Sister.

  “Eh.” He rubbed his nose. “I thought we’d walk a bit first. Do you mind?”

  She cast him a puzzled smile. “No. Something bothering you?”

  He took her hand. “Let’s walk.”

  He didn’t say another word for the next three blocks. Finally she did. “Are you still upset about getting things backward?” That’s how he’d put it. He’d been “backward” about who Dyffaya wanted, but worse, he’d been “backward” about who was needed to deal with a mad god. He’d started out all right, he said, following his instincts, which told him to keep Kai close. Then he’d gotten all sidetracked, thinking he could go fix things himself, without her. Without even consulting her.

  He’d been shaken when she told him what would have happened if he’d stuck Claw into Dyffaya and she hadn’t been there—because Dyffaya couldn’t die, but his mind could. Over and over and over. The god would have lost any trace of rationality, even his sense of self, yet he would still have had the power of chaos—chaos unleashed, driven by the impossible imperative to live and a terrible craving for company. Neither of them knew for certain what that would have meant for those trapped in the godhead, but “hell” was a fair guess. And that hell might have lasted a very long time.

  Who had been needed to deal with a mad god? Not Nathan alone. Not Kai alone, either, but both of them together.

  “Yes,” Nathan said firmly, “but not now. The thing is, I don’t know how to do this right.”

  “Do what?”

  “I even read some women’s magazines. I was right,” he said darkly. “They didn’t help at all. Muddled my mind up, they did, with all their advice.”

  “Hmm.” Deeply curious, but willing to let him play this out his way, she didn’t ask any of the questions bubbling up.

  They reached a little pocket-size park, one of those small islands of green in the city. This one held trees, with a narrow concrete path so you could wander among them without getting your shoes dirty. “Here we are,” he said with relief. “This is the best I could come up with. Mostly I just gave up,” he admitted. “It seems I’m not good at romance.”

  “I can’t agree with that.”

  “This one,” he said, drawing her over to a tall oak that looked older than the other trees. “Its roots go deep.” He placed her up against the tree. “Kai, you are sure about taking service with the Queen?”

  She nodded, bemused.

  He expelled his breath in a gusty sigh. “Good. That’s good.” He pulled something out of his pocket. A jewelry box. A small, square jewelry box. He opened it.

  There were two rings. One was white gold or platinum, she wasn’t sure which—a wide, silvery band set with turquoise chips in the shape of a simple rune. The one that meant always. The other was made of some dark metal she didn’t recognize. It was larger, but had the same turquoise chips set in the same rune. “They aren’t the usual, but neither are we, and I thought—but if you’d like something different, we can do that. Do you want one of the diamond ones? The engagement kind? I didn’t think you would, but—”

  “Nathan—”

  “I couldn’t ask you before or let you know that I wanted to. Vowing to my Queen, that needed to be your decision, freely made, so I didn’t want you thinking about this decision instead of that one. But now you’ll be made a legal adult, able to make agreements in your own right. It’s forever I want, like humans try for and Wild Sidhe do, not the sort of contract elves make, which can mean almost anything. Though we may want to make up a contract later, something they’ll understand—the elves, I mean. We can talk about that. And you may want a ceremony with the dress and your grandfather and all, but we can do that later, too. But this . . . among my people, you see, it’s just between you and me.”

  “Nathan—”

  “If you don’t want to, you’ll still be my Kai. You can’t stop being mine, and I don’t need anything to show that, but this ring says that I’m yours, too, and I . . . I would very much like that.”

  “Nathan, you haven’t asked.”

  Light shone at the back of his eyes, a glow turning the winter sky luminous. “The asking and answering, that’s the whole thing, for my people. The rings aren’t part of it for Wild Sidhe, but I thought you’d like them, and I liked them, so . . . but once I ask and you say, and you ask and I say, it’s done, and there’s no changing it.”

  “Nathan. Ask.”

  He handed her the dark ring, the one sized for his finger. He took out the other one—the silvery ring that, like his, said “always”—and held it in one hand and her hand in the other. His voice was husky. “Will you marry with me, Kai?”

  She smiled—a fresh-minted smile, one invented just for this moment. Just for him. “Yes.”

  EPILOGUE

  IT was a small room. Not cozy—elves didn’t do cozy—but as close to that as they came, with large, soft cushions scattered invitingly on the gleaming wooden floor and a small fire burning merrily in an ancient stone trough. No wood needed for that fire, of course. It burned air and magic and someone’s intention.

  Kai didn’t dare sit on one of those cushions. She was terrified of wrinkles. Or smudges or dust, though it was highly unlikely any dust was allowed here, in one of the most private places in Winter’s court. She wore white, pristine, glistening white, draped around her in a way only an elf could pull off properly. The color and style of the dress were obligatory. In a short time she would leave this room and go to the Great Audience Chamber. There she would make her vows to the Queen of Winter in view of her entire court.

  There had been a moment when she thought the offer might be withdrawn.

  She and Nathan had made their report to the Queen, but Winter had known the key fact before they returned: the one they called Dyffaya was finally, fully dead. She knew this, she told them, because “chaos has returned to Faerie.”

  “Oh,” Nathan had said. “I suppose it would. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Kai had needed that explained. For over three millennia, Dyffaya had occupied the godhead, but his worship ha
d been utterly banned. For over three millennia, therefore, chaos had been severely limited, its spiritual power unavailable.

  And now it was.

  Change was coming to the realms. To the elves, who loved stability almost as much as they loved beauty. The Queen had not been happy about that, but after a moment she’d sighed. “I cannot regret it. Sandetti is at rest now. If the rest of us are due for unrest, perhaps that is fitting.”

  Kai thought about that conversation, alone in the almost-cozy little chamber. And then she wasn’t.

  “I am here, as you asked,” Winter said in a crystal-pure voice, “and I am curious.”

  No door had opened to admit the Queen, not that Kai had seen. Startled as much by the Queen’s beauty—she simply could not grow used to it—as by her sudden appearance, Kai was slow in making her bow.

  “No, don’t. We leave our stations outside this room. Here, it is just you and I.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Kai said. “I have a request. This isn’t part of our deal, but separate. A favor, I guess, though I’m told I shouldn’t ask for favors—but maybe this one goes both ways. It’s about the token of your service I’m to accept. I . . .” She was making a mess of this. “Let me show you.” She held out the ring she’d had made—a simple circle framing one of the tétel an bo gems the Queen had given them. An eye-of-the-sky. “If you don’t mind, Lady, I’d like to wear this as your token.”

  Winter glanced at the simple ring—then looked up sharply at Kai’s face. She said nothing.

  “It’s the color of his eyes,” Kai said softly.

  Winter’s eyes went dark as night, but a quiet night, calm and ancient. And grieving. “He was a great man.”

  “He was.”

  “We asked too much of him,” she said abruptly. “We were desperate. The war was not going well. But we asked too much.”