The intensity of Cuinn’s relief had more or less the same salutary effect on his balance as a judiciously-applied two-by-four. Are you saying we’re back in your good graces? You’re willing to trust us? To trust me?
There was always a certain innocence to the strange gaze of the Gille Dubh. Sometimes, though, a Fae had to look very, very hard to find it. If you are willing to trust me.
Faen had a great many words for ‘irony.’ At the moment, Cuinn couldn’t bring a single one to mind; he was too busy living into the concept. I’m guessing a simple ‘yes’ isn’t going to be enough.
Coinneach shook his head. Hold still. Completely still.
Before Cuinn could react, the Gille Dubh’s hand was around his throat. Not tightly, but firmly.
I—
No. Fuck, those eyes were hypnotic. Dark brown, almost black, like the rich earth of the Realm, shot through with darts of a brilliant apple-green. What I need to do is not supposed to be possible. I would appreciate minimal distractions.
For perhaps the first time in his long life, Cuinn an Dearmad did as he was told.
Starting at Coinneach’s shoulder, his arm shifted, twisted, became wood. The hardness, the grain, worked its way down his arm to his elbow, his forearm. At that point, Cuinn couldn’t see it anymore, but he thought he had a good idea of what to expect next, and braced himself for the moment when the hand around his throat solidified. He could feel power in it, the same strange magick that powered travel through the wellsprings and had stolen his voice.
Then he gasped, as his own neck stiffened, from under his jaw nearly to his collarbone. He could still breathe, though his breath felt and sounded strange, like wind through a wooden flute.
He’s turning me into a tree. He’s turning me into a fucking tree.
Revenge, after he’d given Coinneach and all his kind more than two millennia of oblivion?
Now there was logic a Fae could understand.
Rian, dhó-súil, I’m sorry. Don’t burn them…
Coinneach’s hand fell away; the Gille Dubh staggered, caught himself. Cuinn’s throat relaxed, the skin and muscle softened, and everything between his head and his shoulders was his own again—though that didn’t stop him from checking with a hand, just to be sure everything was what it was supposed to be.
And the darkness fell away, revealing a semi-circle of Fae and humans. Tiernan, Kevin, Rhoann, Josh—with Scathacrú and Árean orbiting him like a couple of crazed moonlets—Conall, transforming before his eyes from ginger twink to thunder-browed mage… and Rian, Cuinn’s beloved, blue eyes ablaze through a curtain of blond hair and heat crazing the air around his hands.
Heat, and the first curls of flame.
“Twinklebritches, can you channel a fire extinguisher?” Cuinn croaked.
* * *
“Terry. Lán’ghrásta, please. Wake up.”
He hadn’t fallen asleep. That would have been idiotic. Anyone knew better than to fall asleep in the cold, even a New Jersey kid who had never personally been colder than when making a deli run during a blizzard because his selfish-ass boyfriend had had a craving for licorice ice cream…
“Terry. Please.”
If Maelduin was as upset as he sounded, maybe Terry had fallen asleep. Shit.
But… he wasn’t cold. He was perfectly comfortable. Other than his clothes feeling damp, anyway.
“Terry…”
I’m an ass. Terry opened his eyes… and dear God, there was Maelduin. Beautiful blue eyes staring right back at him. “You came,” he croaked—his voice, at least, seemed to think he’d been frozen.
Maelduin’s smile made Terry feel even warmer, and the hesitant kiss that followed it stole Terry’s breath. “Of course I came.” Chill fingers brushed hair from Terry’s forehead. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I told you not to—oh, shit.” Terry tried to sit up, but the best he could manage was pushing himself up to prop himself on an elbow. “The timeslip—the Marfach—what’s happened?”
“You’re lying on the last of the barrier.” Maelduin urged him to lie back down; what had been ice and a glittering web under him was now the same translucence that had surrounded him back in the studio. “I broke it trying to come after you. And the Marfach…”
The Fae craned his neck to study the circle where ice met sky; when he turned back to Terry, his eyes were oddly bright, ice crystals lingering on impossibly long lashes. “I’m here to get you out of here, whatever it takes. The Marfach matters less to me than you do.”
You can’t mean that, Terry nearly blurted. Sure, he’d hoped, when Coinneach sent him away. But all that meant was that he’d managed to forget, yet again, that hope was just another four-letter word.
Wait. Something in Maelduin’s eyes, and in the sudden tightness of his grip on Terry’s hand, brought Terry up short. He’d forgotten their bond, the force strong enough to break the desperate magick of the daragin.
Maybe Maelduin did mean exactly what he’d said. What Terry had secretly longed to hear someday, despite years of trying to convince himself words like those were strictly for other men.
Maybe all Terry had to do was believe him.
Something dug into Terry’s fingers as Maelduin squeezed his hand. A ring, a massive gold ring with a figure carved into the flat oval surface. Heat radiated from the metal, warping the air around it and somehow burrowing straight into Terry’s bones.
Maelduin saw him looking, and turned the ring slightly, letting the carving catch the light. “It’s called the Croí na Dóthan—the Heart of Flame.”
“It’s beautiful.” An understatement—it was breathtaking. And it was probably what was keeping him alive at the moment. Strangely, though, Terry was much more interested in looking at the face of the Fae who had followed him into hell to rescue him from the devil itself. He was pretty sure he was being warmed as much by blue eyes, a hesitant smile, a barely visible scruff of blond beard and the memory of chafing his own lips tender against it, as by the gorgeous golden trinket.
Maybe… I finally chose right?
He wriggled his fingers, just enough to feel Maelduin’s touch and make the light dance on the patterned gold. “I don’t suppose this is a proposal?”
Terry felt his face go red even before he’d finished blurting the nonsensical words. Dear God. I’m lying at the bottom of a pit of ice, a monster straight out of Satan’s worst nightmares probably breathing down the back of my neck, and I start playing Bachelor - The Gay Edition?
Maelduin frowned. Even his frown was gorgeous, although the ice in his eyebrows was worrisome. “I… am not sure I understand.”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Merde. Dannazione. Damn.
Maelduin’s hand closed around his. “It’s my heart. Is that the same thing as a ‘proposal’?”
Oh dear God. Terry stared, for what felt like forever, his brain doing a decent imitation of Bambi on the ice. “I — uh… maybe. Yes.”
Maelduin’s smile transformed his face. His eyes brightened, and for the first time Terry noticed the brilliant blue was faceted, clear, like perfect gemstones. His skin, pale from the bitter cold, flushed and warmed, turning pellets of ice to tiny trickles of water. And his mouth, God, that smile was the most kissable thing he’d ever seen in his life.
And all of it was because he’d just proposed. To me. He’s that happy because of me.
I finally chose right.
* * *
The wonder writ plain on Terry’s face snatched away what little of Maelduin’s breath the wind had left him. Fae have been fools, as long as there have been Fae, to think that magick and intrigue are better than what I see here.
Terry’s fingers brushed Maelduin’s cheek, and he shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Or have we feared this? Have we fled, as a race, from something we could not control… and which might control us?
Maelduin captured Terry’s hand in his, letting the warmth of it penetrate his chilled fingers. “If I understand the wor
d, a ‘proposal’ is a thing that wants answering. Yes?”
Terry flushed, and even over the howl of the wind Maelduin could hear his heart racing. “You’re right. And… yes. Whatever you mean by it. Yes.”
‘Miracle’ was another word Maelduin had heard from the trapped spirits in the box. Another word he had not fully understood; it had something to do with impossibility, and more to do with the kind of wonder he saw in Terry’s eyes and heard in his breathless laughter. Now, though, he understood it fully, as magick welled up in him and spilled out, and drew him down to kiss the human male who was his scair-anam — and his willing mate.
Terry gasped beneath him, and shivered, and arched. And nothing in Maelduin’s life had ever felt as wonderful as Terry’s arms going around him, Terry accepting him. Not even the sex and the magick that had left him dazed and breathless.
“Is this SoulSharing?” Terry whispered.
Maelduin could feel his human’s lips moving against his own, and breathed in the heat of his breath. The elemental Fire of the Croí na Dóthan was superficial compared to this warmth; Maelduin could even ignore the rising shriek of the wind. For now.
“I think so.” ‘This’ was certainly a most unFae sensation—love, without trickery, without artifice, without proof asked or proof given.
“I should have believed you, then.” The unsteadiness of Terry’s voice surprised Maelduin. “All this happened because I didn’t believe you.”
“No.” Maelduin laid a finger over Terry’s lips. “You should not have believed me, because I was not worthy of belief. Not then.” The magick of their Sharing still danced on Terry’s skin, beautiful and distracting. “And I look forward to persuading you that I am no longer a complete amad’n. But first I need to get both of us out of this… incredibly inhospitable place.”
“I don’t think Coinneach can hear me from here. I tried the mind-speech, for a long time, until I—I think I fell asleep.” Terry shivered, with the memory of cold or with the actuality; the wind seemed to know a chance of rescue had arrived, and was determined to claim its prize.
Perhaps even the Fire in the Croí was insufficient to beat back this cold for long. And Fae were naturally resistant to temperature extremes, more so than humans—but even Fae had their limits. “The barrier is the problem. The Gille Dubh and daragin dare not drop it until they’re certain the Marfach is nowhere nearby.”
Terry glanced upward, almost involuntarily, and shuddered. “I saw it, I think. Just for a second. But then it disappeared.”
“Disappeared? How?” Maelduin ducked his head to bury his face in the warm hollow between Terry’s neck and shoulder, grateful for the respite from the wind.
“I’m not sure. I thought it just vanished. But I might have looked away, I’m not sure. It’s… hard to look at.”
“I was not aware it was possible to look at it at all. I have only ancient stories of it, but those stories say that the Marfach is formless, and a Fae who looks at it will go mad.”
“Your stories may be out of date. Or maybe not. It’s… beyond hideous.” Somehow, Maelduin could tell the spasm running through Terry was a shudder, and not a shiver.
Maelduin was doing enough shivering for both of them. “I can bear hideousness. Let me be certain the monster is gone.”
And then what? He thought he might be able to locate the other Fae with his magickal sense, but Fading back to tell Coinneach it was safe to bring Terry home would require a level of calm and concentration impossible to achieve in the freezing gale.
Perhaps I should have thought of this sooner.
One step at a time.
“What are you going to do?”
Maelduin eyed the rough face of the ice, stretching up all around them toward the gray, cloud-scudding sky, three times the height of a tall Fae. “Climb. Look. And if the Marfach is waiting, kill it.”
He was not expecting Terry’s quickly-muffled snort of laughter. “Did I make a joke?”
“Sorry. No.” Terry bit his lip. “But you can’t walk across my living room without being attacked by the furniture, and maybe the floor. I can’t let you try to climb that wall, you’ll fall and break a leg and I missed the Boy Scout meeting where they demonstrated how to improvise a splint out of rolled-up towels.”
New words and new meanings flowed over Maelduin, leaving little or no trace. All that remained with him was the laughter in the words and the love behind them. Enough, and more than enough—an embarrassment of riches. He opened his hand and cupped the warmth of Terry’s cheek in his palm. “We are Shared, lán’ghrásta. Furniture and floor have lost their power over me.” I hope.
Terry’s smile was as warm as his kiss. “Be careful, then. This wind is almost as dangerous as my carpet.” The smile lingered on Terry’s lips, but worry welled up in his eyes. “And if that thing is up there, don’t stick around.”
“No longer than necessary. I promise.”
Before Terry’s eyes could break his resolve, Maelduin rose, bracing himself against the gale, working his fingers to bring warmth and feeling back into them. The ice rising up around him was far from smooth; he had climbed rock faces more sheer, and that with his comhrac-scátha seeking to pull him down.
If my skills are truly my own again…
He closed his eyes, and remembered Terry’s warmth. His acceptance.
They are ours.
Maelduin leaped, working his fingers into cracks in the ice almost halfway up the wall, seeking purchase with the soft toes of his boots. His fingers were so cold, he scarcely felt the chill of the ice, and there was no time to cling to the frozen face; he boosted himself up, squinting into the wind and finding places for his hands by sight rather than by touch.
Just below the surface he finally paused, pressed close against the wall so as not to be torn away by the wind. For all he could tell by listening, a horde of Marfaicha waited over his head—the wind surely sounded like some sort of monster. And for the first time he wondered how he was to kill a creature legend said could not die. Oh, every mythical evil had its weak point, probably equally mythical—supposedly the Marfach could not abide water, and could be made to die if it forgot its own nature. But the only water within reach was frozen solid, and if there was a channeling to give evil incarnate amnesia, Maelduin had no notion what it might be.
And then there was his sword to contend with—if his uncle’s blood was not the first it tasted, it would turn in his hand and kill him.
Maelduin would have shrugged, but keeping his numb grip on the ice was more important than a gesture. If the Marfach’s blood was the first to stain his sword, it would buy Terry a chance to live.
A moment’s lull in the wind ended the chase of thought after thought; Maelduin braced the sole of his right boot against a near-vertical wedge of ice, dug the fingers of his left hand into a crevice, and vaulted to the surface. His sword cleared its scabbard as he leaped; he landed in a crouch, turning slowly, his breath hissing through clenched teeth as the wind, apparently angry at having missed an opportunity to kill him, sliced into every inch of his skin as if he were naked.
He was alone. Alone in the most desolate land- and sea-scape he had ever seen. Crumpled ice surrounded him, shades of gray, dirty white, and a dull blue under a leaden sky. Water stretched to the horizon in one direction, studded with floating islands of ice; in the other direction, a field of jagged broken ice extended for an unguessable distance, until it met with what might have been a landmass. Or maybe it was simply more ice.
What hell is this? And where was the Marfach? Maelduin turned on his heel, squinting into the wind, studying the outcroppings of ice, the shadows they cast, looking for anything that moved or any shadow other than what a chunk of ice would lead one to expect.
Nothing.
Maelduin’s gaze caught on something not white or gray or blue, something stuck to the ice. Rough patches of brownish red, and something paler; he knelt beside one of the blotches and brushed away pellets of ice.
&nbs
p; The brownish red was blood, from the way it had dripped and splashed. And the other might have been flesh, though grayer than any Maelduin had ever seen, left by a creature frozen to the surface and uncaring of what it might leave behind in its attempt to escape.
But it had escaped. It was gone.
Maelduin turned; three strides brought him to the edge of the icy pit, and a leap took him over the brink. And the wind took him.
This might have been a bad idea—
He landed several body-lengths from a wide-eyed Terry, his chilled muscles reverberating with the shock of his landing.
“Looks like my furniture won’t be a threat anymore,” Terry murmured, barely audible over the wind.
Maelduin ran back to Terry and fell to his knees. “It’s gone. There’s no sign of it.” He cupped both of his hands around one of Terry’s, heat coming off the Croí as if it were a live ember.
“Thank God.” Terry flexed his fingers, tickling the inside of Maelduin’s palm. Deliberately, or not, Maelduin wasn’t sure—but either way, he could scarcely feel it. “Now what do we do?”
Damn. The proverbial Vile King’s third question. “Somehow, we have to let the daragin know the barrier is no longer needed.”
“But they can’t hear us through it.”
“Tally one. And tally two, the folabod’ne wind keeps me from concentrating long enough to Fade back to your studio to gain help that way.” As if it heard its name being called, a blast of wind whirled down into the pit; Maelduin ducked his head and narrowed his eyes to slits, but the blade of the wind bit deep just the same.
“How do you stand it?” Terry’s voice was soft, unsteady. “I would have frozen to death if you hadn’t come for me.”
Maelduin brushed his cheek against Terry’s, numb lips curving into a smile at the faint sensation of beard against beard. “We’re a hardier race than we look.”
“No one’s hardy enough to deal with this for long.”
There was no answer Maelduin could think of, so me made none.
Stone Cold Page 23