Sorcha quickly became used to the routine of the tense little household. In the morning there was breakfast in silver chafing dishes in the dining room, prepared by Kevin and served and cleared by the housekeeper who was tiny, gray, Irish, and efficient as hell. Deirdre rarely emerged from her studio. Kevin came and went from the house in a sporty antique Mercedes coupe that announced itself with a bass rumble every time the driveway gates opened.
The hours between breakfast and noon were Elada and Sorcha’s to do what they pleased, and they made good use of the time, sharing their favorite books and movies and songs. At first Elada hadn’t wanted her to play for him, because it smacked too much of her servitude with Keiran, but she’d wanted to share her music with him. And the music had been good for Tommy, too, who couldn’t play his fiddle but enjoyed having a good croon before lunch.
By the third morning even Deirdre had grudgingly crept down the stairs to listen.
It was the first Sorcha had seen of the reclusive artist since her arrival. Tommy seemed to regard her with a mix of fear and awe. Elada treated her with deference, and her human lover Kevin treated her . . . the way Elada treated Sorcha. When she walked in the room, he made space for her on the sofa, and it was more than a physical gesture. Sorcha could see that there was a place at Kevin’s side permanently reserved for this woman, no matter what troubled their relationship right now.
The morning belonged to music and sometimes to movies when a song suggested a story. Kevin had opened the cabinets along one wall of the parlor and revealed a state-of-the-art home theater with a dazzling selection of entertainment options. “Deirdre likes movies, but she doesn’t like movie theaters,” he had explained.
The afternoons belonged to Miach. The sorcerer usually arrived just after lunch, passing inside the house and appearing in the hall.
“They’re his wards protecting us,” Elada had explained, “so he can pass through them.”
She knew that Elada was never far from reach while she trained with Miach, and it was comforting, until the first day Miach asked her to reach for her voice and sing at an object.
“What if I miss?” she asked. “What if I miss and hurt someone?” Panic rose in her. “When I sang at Keiran—”
“When you sang at Keiran,” said the sorcerer, “you were fighting for your life.”
“I can’t do this here,” she said.
Miach considered. “Did you pass with the Prince Consort?” he asked.
The horror of it came back to her all at once. “Yes.”
“Then you understand that it is . . . unsettling for humans. Druids are often able to handle it, but not always.”
The choice was staying here and potentially hurting innocent people. “I can handle it.”
“Then we can pass someplace isolated. If we stay only a short time, chances are that we won’t be scryed, but we take a risk any time we are out in the open.”
“I’m willing to chance it.”
Miach offered her his hand. “It’s easier if you close your eyes,” he advised.
It wasn’t actually easier, but when she opened her eyes, she was in a green field, at the center of a circle of standing stones, some tall and proud and others blasted in half. The sun was at a different place in the sky than it had been at Deirdre’s, and by the time it set, there were no stones left standing at all.
• • •
When the voices in the parlor stopped, Elada felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He’d promised to stay out of the way while Miach worked with Sorcha, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, and it didn’t mean that he was without his suspicions.
Miach had promised Conn of the Hundred Battles that he wouldn’t harm Conn’s lover, the Druid Beth Carter, if there was any other option. But when Donal and the New York Fae had closed in on her, Miach had ordered her killed. And Elada had attempted to carry out his orders.
He hadn’t liked it, but he’d seen the necessity in it. Now he knew that what he’d taken for necessity had been expediency, and he feared that Miach might find it expedient to kill Sorcha if she couldn’t gain control of her power.
Elada had considered the alternatives. He could spirit her away somewhere, go into hiding on the other side of the world with Sorcha Kavanaugh, until the Prince and Donal and Finn lost interest. She’d never learn to control her gift then and, like Deirdre, she’d never feel safe from pursuit.
Miach and Sorcha might have simply gone upstairs. He didn’t have Sorcha’s preternatural hearing, couldn’t locate her that way, so he began searching the house. She wasn’t in the room behind the kitchen with Kevin, where the sometime Olympic athlete was waxing a pair of skis. And she wasn’t with Tommy Carrell, who had installed himself in the second floor parlor that doubled as an office and begun writing music in his spare time—one handed and painstakingly.
There was only Deirdre’s studio left to search.
Deirdre was alone when Elada entered. She was painting, from memory, the Public Garden, but not as humans saw it, and not, perhaps, as it ever existed, but as it might have looked if the Wild Hunt had descended on that urban oasis and transformed it for the Queen’s pleasure.
“She isn’t here, Elada Brightsword,” said Deirdre, without looking up from her canvas.
“How do you know I’m looking for Sorcha?”
“Because you’ve always been looking for her.”
There was something eerie and faraway about Deirdre’s voice, as though she was seeing into another world or another time, and perhaps she was. Elada was a warrior, not an artist. He didn’t see the way Deirdre saw, or hear the way Sorcha heard. That was why he appreciated their gifts, because they could show him things he might not otherwise ever see.
Like the painting she was lost in now. He’d walked through the Public Garden often enough at night. The landmarks were right. The paths wound their way around the ornamental lake, the bridge lights cast constellations on the water, the swan boats were crossing the glassy surface in a wedge.
That was at first glance. On the surface. A second look, and everything changed. The paths didn’t just wind around the lake, they wound into deep forests where lights danced and beckoned. The constellations on the water weren’t a reflection of the lacy iron bridge, they were the sky as it had appeared over that spot two thousand years ago, when the Wild Hunt had roamed free. And the swan boats weren’t boats at all, and they weren’t touching the water, but flying above it, the birds carrying Fae riders on their backs.
“Don’t you ever long for it?” asked Deirdre, breaking the painting’s spell and turning to Elada. “The beauty of the Court? Everything that we lost?”
“No.”
“Of course you don’t. Then, you were only Miach MacCecht’s sturdy right hand. Not the hero who freed him.”
“That isn’t why I don’t miss it,” Elada said. “The Court was beautiful but corrupt. Irredeemable.”
“And extorting money from peasants in South Boston has redeemed you?”
“Protecting the weak from the strong has made amends for some of my transgressions.”
“And because you transgressed, you think what the Druids did was right? And you’ll let them come back and enslave us all again?”
“No one is going to enslave you, Deirdre.”
“I have the marks,” she said, letting her shawl fall from her shoulders and pushing her collar wide. “Just like you do. Your little Druid could command me to slit my own throat.”
“And the Queen would command you to slit Kevin’s.”
“The Queen valued beauty in humans.”
“The Queen would let you keep a pet, not a partner. Don’t let your fear of the Druids cloud your reason. Kevin left you because you violated his free will. You don’t want his mindless obeisance. You want his love. He came back for that. If the Queen returns, you’ll lose him and the life you’ve b
uilt together.”
“And you think you can build a similar life with your little Druid?”
“Yes.”
“How? You’re marked, just as I am. And there is no cold iron, no material that can negate the effects of those Druid spells.”
“I don’t need anything to negate the spells if I earn her trust.”
Deirdre laughed. “Good luck, Brightsword. For all her Druid power, she is fragile and human, and if you love her, to keep her safe, sooner or later you will violate her will as I did Kevin’s.”
He left Deirdre with her paint and her canvases and went to the parlor to wait for Miach and Sorcha to return. Dinner came and went with no sign of the pair. It was dark out by the time they appeared in the hallway, Sorcha looking drawn and exhausted and Miach failing entirely to look contrite.
Before Elada could speak, Miach said, “She was with me, and safe.”
“You should have told me you were going to pass from the house.”
“You would have objected,” said Miach.
“I’m okay,” Sorcha affirmed. “But tired. And hungry.”
“I’ll leave you,” said Miach. “Donal and his followers expect to be entertained and Nieve has lost all patience with them.”
“And Helene?” Elada asked.
Miach looked away. Then he said, “Helene thinks I am carrying on an affair with Deirdre. And I’m not going to disabuse her of that notion until it is safe for her to come back.”
“That’s awful,” said Sorcha. “Think what she must be going through.”
“It is better than the alternative. I don’t want her in the house with Donal and his people. They don’t touch Nieve because she cooks and they like to be fed, but I wouldn’t be able to turn my back on Donal with Helene. And if she alters her behavior now, and anyone is watching her, her knowledge will make her a target. And if our enemies learn where you are, this house will come under siege.”
• • •
Sorcha was glad when Miach left. And gladder still when Elada didn’t try to defend him.
“He’s wrong,” she said. “I’ve never even met his wife, but I know he’s wrong.”
“You would like Helene,” said Elada. “She has courage. And her best friend is a Druid.”
“And she puts up with Miach.”
“Is training with him so bad?”
“It’s . . . unnerving. I split rocks today.”
“Like prisoners in a chain gang?”
“No. Like opera singers with crystal glasses. I shattered a circle of standing stones. I was just supposed to crack one at a time. It was going well for a while, but then I lost control.”
“You’ve been at it less than a week.”
“Miach doesn’t think we have the luxury of time.”
“The Fae are notoriously impatient. That will work to our advantage, eventually, because Donal will get tired of watching Miach, and Finn will get tired of watching Donal.”
“And the Prince?”
“Needs to die.”
• • •
A week later they were still at Deirdre’s: Sorcha was still making love with Elada every night, and Tommy was keeping himself busy in the second-floor study where he liked to write music and smoke clove cigarettes he thought that no one knew about.
It was time to talk to her best friend, because they had been friends with benefits for a long time and she knew they never would be again. Not after Elada. Not even if things didn’t work out between Sorcha and her Fae lover. Sex, she’d come to realize, ought to be more than a comfortable exchange between bodies, more than something you did because you felt charitable or obligated. And it ought to be more than pleasant. It ought to make you want to scream the house down and should possibly leave you aching in the morning.
She’d decided to talk to him after one of Kevin’s extremely good lunches, because the skinny fiddler liked to eat and Sorcha was pretty sure he’d never eaten as well in his life as he had in the last week. She had only done so once, when she’d been hired to play at a country wedding in Ireland and discovered that the bride’s parents were wealthy landowners. There had been a busy kitchen in the castle with a professional staff, and food always on offer. Sorcha had stayed two days past the festivities, playing for the overnight guests who remained, eating like a squirrel in autumn and pocketing the cash tips that came her way.
Tommy was doing much the same, and his hand was healing well, so it was time to level with him.
“I’m sleeping with Elada,” she said baldly, clutching one of the chintz pillows in the window seat and smiling nervously.
“I know. My room is right next to yours. I can hear you.”
“Oh.”
“I thought you hated the Fae,” he said.
“I do. Or most of them anyway. He’s different.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m getting to be,” she said. “I think this may be a more permanent thing.”
“Are you asking me to move out of your gran’s?”
She hadn’t thought about that, but she couldn’t imagine Tommy down the hall and her in bed with Elada. “I guess so.”
Tommy nodded. “If you’re still with him when all this is done, then I’ll move out. But I don’t want you to get hurt, Sorcha. These people—the Fae—they aren’t like us in some ways. Herself and the cover boy especially.”
“You mean Deirdre?” Sorcha asked. “We’ve hardly seen her.”
Tommy made a clicking noise through his teeth. “I’ve seen a good bit of her.”
It took a moment for Sorcha to catch his meaning. “Oh.” Elada had warned her about Deirdre and Kevin. Maybe she should have warned Tommy. . . .
“So we’re good then, right?” asked Sorcha. It was a reminder that the Fae hewed to other norms, but it also made her want to giggle like a schoolgirl. And to share that laughter with Elada. She wanted to share everything with him lately, and that, more than the amazing sex, was what made her think they had a future. If she lived.
Miach refused to risk another trip out of the house with Sorcha, and Elada agreed with him. Tommy, who had been told their real predicament, and given a piece of cold iron and a pointed look by Kevin, was content to eat, drink, sleep, and write music. The hot and cold running movies in the home theater didn’t hurt either. It was only Sorcha who became stir-crazy.
That was why she ventured into Deirdre’s studio one afternoon at the end of their second week. Sorcha had been in and out of every room in the house so many times, she was desperate for a change of scenery. She supposed it was too many years of wandering from gig to gig and town to town. Or perhaps it was the fact that this was a Fae household, and no matter how different the atmosphere, it still reminded her of her year imprisoned in Keiran’s house.
Sorcha wouldn’t have entered at all if Deirdre had been in there, but the door was ajar and the room was empty of inhabitants. The space gave the illusion of opening onto the outdoors, with tall windows on three sides and a lofty vaulted ceiling, but it was the vivid canvases that drew her inside.
She got lost staring into a woodland scene where strange lights beckoned through the trees. Fairy lights. There were figures in the picture as well, but they were indistinct when she looked directly at them, yet they seemed to take on life and move whenever her eyes slid away. And even though Sorcha knew there was no real sound, no vibration in the room with her, she detected the ghost of laughter dancing through those trees.
There was danger here, but it wasn’t the kind her hearing could sense. It was an art, like her music, and a weapon, like her voice, but it wasn’t within her gift to make or manipulate it.
When the light changed in the room, she sensed a real and immediate threat. The sky darkened. The windows disappeared, the canvases grew tall and sprouted branches, and the ceiling disappeared in a canopy of leaves.
The laughter, which was not real sound but the painted suggestion of sound, floated through the trees, and figures that were not beautiful but suggested beauty moved in the distance.
“Where are we?” Sorcha asked the woman she knew must be in the room with her.
“In my studio,” said Deirdre.
When Sorcha turned, the Fae artist was standing behind her. She was costumed as expressively as usual, today in a long black velvet skirt that swirled about her ankles and an embroidered Kashmiri coat alive with blooming roses.
“Where did the walls go?” Sorcha asked.
“They’re there,” said Deirdre, “if you can keep hold of them in your mind. Or you could wander into the forest and follow the lights.”
Definitely not a good idea. Sorcha didn’t doubt Deirdre’s words. She could perceive the depth of the forest now with her hearing. It was becoming more real the longer she looked at it.
“Is this a test?” she asked. Or an assassination attempt.
“This is the world of the Fae before the fall. The world you took from us.”
“No,” said Sorcha. “This is that world as you presented it to mortals, full of enchantment and promised pleasure. I’ve been taken in by it before. By a Fae in New York. I spent a year in his house, and I wasn’t chained in iron like you were, but I was a prisoner nonetheless. And there were no lights in the trees at Keiran’s house, only servitude and misery.”
“But you went with him anyway,” said Deirdre.
“Only because I didn’t know how to turn away. When I saw what he really was, I ran. Your fairy lights hold no appeal for me.”
Deirdre’s lips twitched. “No? Look again.”
She shouldn’t, but she did, because the lights did hold some fascination for her, and she wanted just one more glimpse of them. A mistake, because the figures in the distance resolved themselves and she saw that they were Fae, and one of them was Miach.
The other was Elada.
The scene that played out was a carnal revel, and all of the participants were beautiful but not all of them were Fae. The carefree abandon, the hedonistic pleasure of the bacchanal in the woods made Sorcha ache inside. To have no worries, no fears, no responsibilities but pleasing the golden-haired man in the flowing silks with the silver sword who had made her scream his name out loud last night . . .
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