Julia's eyes turned to the marbled floor beneath her feet, breathing in and out silently. I will not cry, she commanded herself. She felt so lost. William was gone, the soul meld obliterated by a magic she had just met. It's absence was a relief. It was also a shock and a loss.
The silence wore on. Finally, Tharell spoke. His deep rumbling voice resonated inside her breastbone, “It is done. The reign of Queen Darcel has been stopped by the bite of true death.” Julia looked up, noticing his glance was all for Delilah. But it returned unerringly to Julia. Her breath caught.
“We cannot keep you, Queen of the Singers. However... I think I might speak for the Sidhe warriors who remain…,” Domi and Celesta's silence allowed him to continue, “They would wish that those of your people, who desire,” Julia’s grief wasn't so complete that she couldn't see his struggle for delicacy, “to wed,” he finally spit out, “those of the fey,” he hesitated in the ponderously awkward silence then continued, “it would strengthen the line of the Sidhe and begin an alliance between our peoples.”
Julia looked around at the small court, many faces beautiful, all were haughty. The real question was: Did she want to help these people? After their ruler had almost forced her into being a part of their dysfunction against her will?
Julia wasn't sure if she was up to being clever and sighed, though her eyes remained steady on the mixed-blood Sidhe.
Tharell read her mind, his deep purple skin's wounds like black slashes against the bruised sky of sunset. “She is no more, Julia Caldwell. We would not have her ghost rule here. Yet rather, a real monarch. One without cruelty, one who seeks fairness, regardless of who needs it.” Julia met his serious gaze, his words so much more than what he'd uttered. Tharell wanted equality, a very human desire and Julia realized these supernaturals, for all their powers, wanted many human ideals. As she gazed around the room, she thought that would take time. Many of the faces showed they didn't agree with his stance. Not everyone would welcome the mixing of the fey and Singer. His vote was one drop of water in a bucket of uncertainty, of prejudice.
Julia didn't answer, instead she asked a question, “Who will... lead your people now that Queen Darcel is gone?”
“Dead,” Tharell corrected and couldn't hide his joy in the clear flash of his brilliant blue eyes. A slash of white appeared against his deep violet skin in a fierce grin of sheer pleasure. Julia had a recent memory of how Darcel dealt with her people. And Rex had been one of the perfect Sidhe she'd extolled. How would she have handled her half-breed guard? Judging by his expression, Julia thought badly, very badly.
Julia waited for his answer as if the world held its breath.
“Would it be too much to ask that you rule here?” Tharell finally asked softly and Julia stood amongst the mumblings of the fey. It sounded like discordant dissent. Cyn stood beside her, not touching, just quietly offering her strength.
Julia took a deep breath, steadying herself. “It would,” she said in a tone of regret. “I'm sorry, but I have something that's more important than ruling, than healing... than anything.” She wasn't dismissing Tharell; she was just being honest. For the first time, she would be honest with herself because she finally could be. Julia turned to Jason and he looked down at her, their eyes falling into each other and Scott moved away so that Julia could do what she needed to do.
Julia couldn't have cared for Scott more than she did in that moment. He was giving her the ultimate freedom: choice. After what they'd been through together, she recognized it for the gift it was. She knew it hadn't been given without sacrifice.
In front of the fey and the most important people in their world, while the Were stood as witness, her known enemies, Jacqueline and Tony, and her unknown amongst the fey—Julia declared herself to her husband. Hope etched its spell in the very air they breathed.
“I'm sorry, Jason,” she began and he cupped his large palm against her face, having stood quietly by since William's death, since Tharell's words. The coarseness of his skin was exactly as Julia remembered, the smell of him equaling the footprint of those poignant memories exactly.
Some things remained the same; her guts clenched with the things that might have irreparably changed.
“Me too, Jules,” he answered in a whisper against the side of her mouth.
She steeled herself. Then, “Would you marry me?” she asked and Jason pulled his head back, a slow grin spreading across that face she knew so well.
“I thought we already were?” That nasty lapse of love-hate that had clung to them for months was now like a smear that left no stain. Gone, to be replaced with the love he'd held at bay. Out of fear of unrequited love.
Julia realized that he couldn't have been with her while she was also with others. Because what they'd had was true love and sometimes it didn't conquer all, but cannibalized itself until it disappeared from a person's life, the flames eating at each other until only embers remained.
In their case, Julia had caught the thread of it and wound it up tightly in her heart, until she found she could call it back.
Call Jason back. But would he answer?
William's death hadn't been for nothing. The collapse of the soul meld with Scott had been a blessing in disguise. Something good coming from tragedy.
Their love had survived the smoldering ashes of the battle of the fey. William's death eased the decision she'd already made and the meld had disappeared like smoke on the wind.
Gone but yielding to what now stood before them.
Their love was a blazing fire come full circle to consume them.
Jason bent low, putting his other hand up to cradle her face and Julia shut her eyes as those lips she knew so well, kissed her tears away and stroked her mouth until Julia kissed him back as if no time had passed.
Joy replacing the sorrow.
Hope taking the place of all.
*
Leaving
Julia moved through the door of the fey mound to the outside, Tharell's escort unnecessary but welcome. She'd been loaned a garment of the Sidhe, her blood soaked clothing no longer wearable, and too sad to consider it. It had been explained in great detail, that Darcel's reign had been filled with tyranny and the fey were hopeful for a new order. Julia wasn't sure over a thousand years of tradition could be expunged just because the nutcase ruler was absent. Maybe those long-held beliefs would prove stubborn. She still felt the echo of William's thoughts... his words, moving through her mind and it made the tender parts of her ache with the loss. He'd improved her life and now he was gone.
Julia learned that Queen Darcel had been dying a slow and painful death. Death that would never come but yet consume her slowly, in agony. She'd hoped to farm Julia's blood in a desperate attempt to relieve herself. And also relieve Julia of her life. Killing Julia to save herself. If Julia had lived through that cultivation, she would have been a brood mare for the Sidhe.
A role that was always riding on the periphery of her new life as a supernatural.
The briar behaved themselves as the line of fey wove between the branches, though some “tasted” of the non-fey who passed, the Sidhe touching the cold steel of their blades against the offending branches as they played a game of tug of war between blade and branch.
When Julia took her first breath of fresh air she clutched William's ashes tighter to herself, confused by her conflicted emotions. She was so blessedly glad to be alive, to have a chance with Jason. So sad to have lost William. And in some ways, the utter devotion of Scott. It was true that the soul meld had been too stifling for her, but conversely, there'd been a strange comfort of knowing her feelings weren't her own, but predestined.
Now the magic of faerie had broken those velvet ties and Scott walked beside her as Combatant rather than soulmate. He still cared, but it was a different care.
Tharell stopped her. “Julia.”
She turned, her hair stirring in the breeze, the dappled sunlight through the trees before them like fallen puzzle pieces. It softened Tha
rell's almost-black skin to a sparkling lavender haze that rode him like an iridescent layer in a glimmering cloak of flesh. Tharell saw her as a liquid gold apparition, her hair curling at her waist. The gilded cord on the blood red Sidhe's garb became her. The color was bold against her delicate coloring, matching the woman within.
“When can we expect you?”
Julia now understood a promise made to the fey was a serious one; she had been instructed. Oath breakers would be punished, even her. Jason held one of her hands, stroking the knuckles almost absently.
“Don't promise what you can't keep,” Jason reminded her gently, his abrasive defense long gone.
Julia didn't miss it. “I won't.” He squeezed her hand.
She looked at Tharell, and like the Combatant, his size was intimidating. But it was the rawness of not belonging to anyone that struck a resonating chord with Julia. “Soon... before the end of the year.”
“Our time runs differently in faerie. Our magick,” Tharell reminded her.
Julia clarified. “In three more human months.”
“We will use the world's time instead of faerie as a marker,” he said as a partial question.
Julia nodded. “It's the only time I know.”
Tharell smiled. “For now.”
Julia's lips lifted at the corners. “Yes- for now,” she agreed. “Goodbye, Tharell.” Her eyes went to the Sidhe warriors who remained. Who no longer fought for an insane ruler. Possible future allies. They nodded back and Tharell echoed her goodbye, “Until we meet again, Julia of the Singers.”
She went to walk away, then thinking of something critical she called to Tharell and he replied, his bound hair whipping around his body like an errant tail. “Yes, Queen Julia?”
She hated the title but pushed forward. “Thank you for... helping with Jacqueline and Tony.”
“You are most welcome.”
There was such a thing as a jail made of fey magic. It was strong enough to hold Jacqueline until the mess of royalty could be sorted out. Julia needed time, and the fey had given her that by incarcerating Jacqueline and Tony. It'd be enough for a while. But not forever.
They left the mound behind, jailers of the woman who would murder her and Tony, a violent offender. They deserved each other, Julia thought.
But it was Adi who summed it up perfectly as the distance grew between them and faerie. The space now looked like any small knoll in the middle of open land between patches of forest. “Queen Wench and King Jackass are where they belong.”
Julia couldn't rouse a smile at Adi's humor but peered over her shoulder at Reagan, thinking she looked sad too. Maybe it was anticlimactic? Reagan impressed Julia as someone who took their vengeance very seriously.
Julia shook it off. She couldn't heal the wounds of everyone. There were several that still oozed the blood of the last two years of her life.
Julia wanted healing. Needed it.
Jason kept her hand in his and Scott took the urn with William's remains as they traveled to Region One, his look contemplative, serious. But he stayed by her side.
They traveled the long journey in relative silence.
All of them locked within the recesses of their own thoughts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Were
Harriet put his arm out in front of Tai. “Hold up.”
Tai stopped walking, the soft ground thick and squishing between the deeply patterned soles of his boots.
“What?” Tai scanned the deep woods, every shadow looking the same and he inhaled, the sharp scent of cedar and Douglas fir filling his lungs. He was irritated, exhaling the smell of forest in a rush. A worthless hike in the middle of bum-fucked Egypt wasn’t his idea of solid investigative work. Tai Simon wanted done with this. Hell, he wanted a cold beer.
A smile flashed across Tom Harriet's face and was gone. “Y'know, if you weren't such a pansy you'd think of this as an adventure.”
Tai sighed again, Harriet had always been a strange ranger. “Yeah, I'm sure you're yukking up, all Mr. Nature and whatnot.”
Harriet laughed, looking at his partner, more at home playing chess than in the outdoors. “You got that. That broad's cigarette marathon burned my nose hairs.” Literally, he thought.
Tai put his hands on his hips, looking deeper into the vast pockets of the forest. “Didn't you say you were from the Colorado wilderness or some survivor's crap like that?” That's when Simon caught sight of it. Brown, solid. Rocks.
“No,” Tom replied, his nostrils flaring in recognition. Close, very close.
“Where then?” Tai asked absently, moving toward the outcropping of nutmeg-toned boulders.
Tom Harriet watched the broad back of his partner move toward the entrance to the Northwestern Den and felt a hard smile form on his face as he answered, “Alaska.”
Tai turned suddenly back to Harriet, his tone sounding a primal alert as Ford appeared behind him.
*
“Not yet,” Harriet said and Ford backed further away from Simon.
Tai turned. “What the fuck.” His eyes narrowed on Ford then they skirted to Tom Harriet, his partner of two years.
“What the fuck is going on Tom?” Simon asked in a low voice. It was mainly inquiry but suspicion had leaked in there as well.
Tom held up his cell. “I'm sorry Tai, I've been given orders.” His eyes met his partner's with regret. “And they don't include you. Or, they could...?”
The hell with this, Tai thought as his gun cleared its holster as fast as Harriet knew it would and he put up his hands. “Listen... Tai, don't make us kill you. It doesn't have to be this way.”
“He's not going to make a good gopher, Tom, you gotta know that,” Ford said, his outfit no longer that of a FBI agent but one of someone who was a serious outdoorsman. Or of someone who had an agenda to journey for a time outside.
“Stay where you are,” Simon said, his gun hand steady. Harriet knew that it wouldn't stay that way. There was only so long a person could hold a weapon steady until gravity had its way with you.
“Put the gun up Tai, and we'll talk.” Harriet raised an inoffensive palm, speaking in a soothing way.
“Don't play me, Tom.” Tai gave Harriet cool eyes. Weirdness aside, he was getting his game back on.
Harriet shrugged, letting his hand fall as he continued, “We have a proposition you can't refuse.” What he really meant was an offer Tai shouldn't refuse. Simon heard all of that in one sentence.
Simon's hard eyes met Harriet's. “Fuck that and the Trojan your ass rode in on, partner.”
He said partner like dick.
Tom sighed. Shit. He flicked a glance at Ford, his liaison for the pack. “Show him.”
Simon added a second hand to the grip of his piece, the barrel unwavering from Ford, who was currently performing a striptease.
No reason to ruin perfectly good clothing, Harriet thought.
“Whatever you're going to do- don't. I Will. Fucking. Shoot,” Tai said.
Harriet knew he meant it.
He didn't shoot in time though. Ford burst his skin in a hurricane of skin and the gore that makes people human, flinging his change at Tai. The shot went high as Ford's talons caught the gun and hooked it into a skating dance of speed and air where it sailed harmlessly into the forest.
A male screaming wasn't a typical sound. People are so accustomed to the idea of a female screaming or being threatened but a man in true fear for his life. A hard man like Tai?
It was something to behold.
He wailed in a pure mix of surprise and terror as Ford's snout got within striking distance of Tai.
“Wait,” Harriet said and it was painful to watch Tom's power arrest the movement of the less alpha Were, Ford. He growled, trying to shake off the neck-tightening rush of energy that laid over him like a chokehold. But he couldn't, Tom was alpha and that was all.
Tom strode to where Tai Simon lay on the ground, his expensive suit ruined by the change of Ford, bits of his human body
shed all over Simon. Tai's best feature, those blue eyes that had gotten more conquests into the sack than Harriet could count, were so wide the whites had overcome the blue.
“Tom!” Tai shrieked, wrestling under the five hundred pound black Were, his fur glistening like a wet shadow in the ambient light of the woods.
“Quiet and listen up, Tai.” A few soft huffs of breath from the Were and those shocky eyes went to Tom's. He paused, letting Tai think about his options.
None.
Finally realizing his conundrum, Tai asked in a breathy voice, “What?”
“I am a werewolf.” Tom smiled; sometime telling was showing. “We are seeking some naughty, runaway people of the blood. Karl Truman is the key.”
Tai looked at the Were, whose breath warmed his neck, then back at Harriet. “Okay...” he choked out, “seeing is believing. But what do I have to do with it.” Tom watched his partner’s eyes fill back with a semblance of logic, his humanity reasserting itself and he was glad Tai wasn't going to lose it over the show.
Harriet smiled. “I've always liked you, Tai.” Tai Simon looked at him like he was a liar and Tom supposed he deserved that. Harriet frowned. “This is straight reconnaissance, Tai. You help us retrieve Truman and a few supernaturals who were missed in our initial acquisition, and you can become one of us as a reward.”
Tai looked at Tom, then his eyes moved to the Were above him, the paws driven into his chest. The crushing weight only relieved because his haunches were on the ground. “I think being one of you sounds like a bad plan.”
Ford's form bled until he was wolfen and Tai took a deep breath, trying to find the steady in his new reality and grasping onto nothing. All the straws of logic were firmly out of reach. There was a half-wolf, half-man hanging over him. He could feel himself slipping.
Harriet waggled his finger at Tai, “Ah-no. Don't lose your balls now, Simon. Keep it together.”
Ford growled, “It is help now or die.”
Tai breathed deeply, summoning whatever courage remained. Gunless, on the ground, and between two creatures of legend, he wasn't doing too bad, everything considered. “Shit choices, Tom,” he finally said.
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