by R. F. Long
“Like what?”
“Kryptonite?” She smiled. “Sorry, it’s from a story, Superman? He’s stronger, faster, he can fly, but put kryptonite near him and he’s weak as a baby.”
Daire mulled that over as he stared out of the window, no doubt feeling the metal enclosure of the car even more keenly when he thought about it. “I don’t think it weakens me as much as that,” he said at last, “and I cannot fly, but eventually…I will not be that which I am.”
“Is there any way to restore your strength other than go home?”
“No.”
He said it so suddenly, so violently, that her hands clenched on the wheel, jerking it to the side farthest from him. She adjusted the car quickly, surprised at her reaction to his anger. Then again, his anger was so abrupt, so dark, and in it she understood the word rage.
“There’s nothing,” he went on, his voice gentler. “Nothing I will use.”
She knew he was lying, but left it there. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to stir that particular simmering pot again in a hurry.
They reached the edge of the village and she turned down the High Street.
“So you’ve two days then,” Rowan murmured. “What will happen to you if you don’t leave?”
She pulled into a parking space outside the gallery and turned off the engine, but she didn’t get out of the car. She wanted to hear an answer, clearly one that Daire didn’t want to give.
Daire stared straight ahead, as if seeing nothing, or looking far beyond the nearly minimalist front of her gallery. His powerful face looked gaunt, hopeless. Rowan reached out and laid her hand on his thigh. Beneath the smooth denim, she felt his muscles, tense and powerful. Warmth filled her stomach.
He started at the intimate touch, but didn’t pull away. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dipping. “I will be trapped here. To dim, to fade, like a ghost, a living ghost. How much do you know about the Sidhe?”
“A little,” she began enthusiastically but paused. Grams’ tales were ragged and worn in her memory. She’d dismissed them as fairy tales for too many years. She pursed her lips and corrected herself with regret. “Not a lot.”
He nodded, that familiarly brief, succinct action.
“When the Morningstar went to war with Heaven, some angels took sides. Those who sided with our Creator were victorious. They remain the wondrous creatures of light and love, his servants, forever exalting in his presence.
“Others, those who sided with Lucifer, fell with him and they are his servants, banished with him, the demons and devils who torment all they can touch.
“In between the light and the dark, there wander the twilight folk, the angels who did not take a side, but preferred to wait and see the outcome. Their faithlessness was also rewarded. The Creator banished them from Heaven, forever to walk the paths between.
“Their children, the Sidhe, are born without a soul, without a home. We carved our Realm in the between places, the forgotten, neglected places, and joined them all together with magic, manipulating the veil as much as anyone can. To survive, the Sidhe must return to our Realm to sustain our magic. Without it this world drains us, for to live in this world, one must have a soul. For a soul provides the tine anama—soul fire—the force which fills you, drives you. The force you made flow through me the other night to save us from Aynia.”
It had grown very cold in the car. Rowan shivered and pulled her jacket closer.
“So if you don’t go back…”
“I’ll fade.”
“Die?”
He frowned. “Perhaps, or become a ghost, like Aynia said. A mournful thing neither of this world not the next. A wanderer.”
She squeezed his hand, trying to believe her own words. “We’ll find it, Daire. I’ll help. As soon as I’m done here, we’ll go back.”
He nodded in acceptance of this, but made no comment. Going back meant getting things over and done here quickly. The days were short and twilight long at the end of October. A wave of cold wrapped itself around her. She hugged her chest and tried to control her chattering teeth. She was about to get out of the car when another thought struck her.
“Wait, what about the others? The ones who attacked me? They were the children of angels too?”
“Unseelie,” he replied, as if that explained everything. Perhaps the word didn’t but the tone did, like he was describing something found at the back of the fridge after a month or more. “There are two courts of the Sidhe, the Summer and the Winter, the Seelie and Unseelie. My father rules the Summer, the Seelie Sidhe. The woman you saw the other night—Aynia—and her comrades serve the Unseelie. They are Sidhe, like me, but they tithe to Hell, while we struggle to placate Heaven. It’s a long and complex story, Rowan, and we are already at your gallery. Do you not want to go in?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. Reality. Oh yes. There was still reality to deal with. She just didn’t want to face that particular disaster yet.
“Right,” she grumbled and got out of the car, slamming the door. Daire didn’t move. Earlier it had seemed he couldn’t wait to get out of it. Perhaps he was waiting for her to open the door for him. Well, he had just dropped the bombshell that his father was a king. That made him a prince, didn’t it? And throw in the added bonus of descent from angel stock…
For a moment, an energy rose around her, cloying, muffling the world. She recalled Aynia standing before them, beautiful and terrifying.
Two princes of the Seelie Court.
Rowan stared at Daire through the glass. His breath misted in front of him, and there was frost on the windscreen. Inside the windscreen. His eyes closed, his head tilted back. The autumn sun warmed Rowan’s hair, the back of her head, but Daire looked frozen.
A mist shimmered behind him, swirling into the semblance of a woman. She draped a slender arm over his shoulder, around his throat. His head rested back on her shoulder, exposing the strong line of his neck to her. She whispered in his ear and Daire’s face creased in despair. Outside the car, Rowan could hear nothing, and suspected she would be as deaf to Aynia’s voice inside. Before her, Daire started to wilt, a combination of the iron enclosure and his enemy’s ministrations etching pain deep into his features.
Rowan dashed around the bonnet of the car, out into the road, and jerked the door open.
“Get out!” she yelled. “Daire, get out now!”
A car horn blared at her, but she held firm, focused on Daire. Laughter reached her, soft, mocking. It drifted on a chill breeze and dissipated in the sunlight. Rowan became painfully aware that several people on either side of the street were staring at her. It wasn’t often that a sleepy village like Weathermere got to see the ice-queen gallery owner screaming at an overtly attractive man to get out of her car.
Rowan shivered, still clinging to the freezing metal of the car. That hadn’t sounded like her thoughts. None of it sounded anything like her. Slowly, the voice rose to audibility.
“Face it. They’ve all been waiting for you to fail, haven’t they? A frigid little jumped-up brat with designs on the art world. But neither you nor this gallery belong here. They think it’s a pathetic tourist trap at best. Or a snob-infested exploitation business. What do they need a gallery here for, anyway? What have you ever done for them? And how many of them have set a single foot inside the door to see your fancy London charlatans who pile up junk and call it art?”
Rowan let go of the door and tried to stumble back around the car, onto the pavement, tears blinding her. It was Aynia’s voice. And Daire had warned that she lied. But it sounded so convincing. Aynia whispered all of Rowan’s doubts and fears at her, right in broad daylight. It was daylight! How powerful would she be once the sun sank beneath the hills, but still stained the skies? How powerful was she really?
“Even Matt thought you had gone off the rails when you suggested the plan.”
Yes, even Matt, who had always supported Rowan, had his doubts about the business sense of a fine art gallery here. Many of her
friends had laughed out loud when she first told them. For three years she had scraped by, offering lower rates and better services, relying on favours. Oh, she was great for calling in favours.
“Your grandmother was never beholden to anyone. She was strong, independent. When your parents died, she was here for both you and Matt. Where were you when she needed you? Miles away. The art world’s darling.”
“No,” Rowan sobbed.
Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her against a solid body. “Don’t listen,” said Daire. His warmth enveloped her, driving the cold from her body with the fire inside him. But Aynia’s mirth lingered in her ears.
“And as for him…” It came as a parting shot, just as the Dark Sidhe left them, the words echoing back to Rowan. “You’d hold him here, even if it meant destroying him. You’d hold him to you for desire’s sake and let the iron in you drain him away.”
Daire cupped her face in his long-fingered hands, tilted it up to look into his. “Whatever she’s saying, she is using your own fears against you, Rowan.” His eyes gleamed like emeralds, and in their depth she saw little flecks of gold, like patches of sunlight through the canopy of a forest.
“My fears,” she sighed. “Yes, and the truth.”
“No. Just what you fear the truth might be.”
She tried to smile, tried to believe him. It was like physical pain. “And what did she say to you?”
Daire glanced away, just briefly and Rowan realised he intended to lie. But why? What could he possibly want to lie to her about?
“Nothing she has not said to me before,” said Daire. “That I will be trapped here, that I will not be able to find the key or my way home. That Aidan will not come.”
Rowan took a step back and Daire allowed his hands to fall to his side.
“When did she say that?”
“This morning,” he admitted. “It wasn’t just the bird, Rowan. I met Aynia in the woods.”
“Does she have the key?”
“No, or she would not bother with me. But she offered me passage if I joined her.”
“And betray your family?”
He smiled, and his eyes ached with regret. “Many have. Aynia among them. We were betrothed as children. We lived the equivalent of many lives together.”
“Oh!” It came out much more sharply than Rowan wanted. Not the nonchalant dismissal of information required, but outright shock.
“It was long ago.”
She wanted to ask if he had loved her, but that was stupid. Or if he still loved her, but that was even worse. Instead, she settled for an entirely different question, which wasn’t much better.
“What if you did go with her? It would be a way back, wouldn’t it? To the wrong part of your world perhaps, but a way back.”
He winced and his gaze turned distant.
“The two courts are at war. The war in Heaven never really stopped. Part of our curse is the division between the exiled factions. We had to decide what to do. Some chose to try and make amends with our Creator, in the hopes that someday, perhaps we would regain our place among his beloved. We set wards around our home and used the veil as protection. But others chose differently. The fae world can be as dangerous to us as yours. Hell’s demons prey on us all, more fervently than they prey even on humans. Though you are sweeter meat to the forces of the Morningstar, you are protected by the light of your souls. The Sidhe have no such protection. So the Unseelie Court took a different path. They elected to tithe to Hell, in order that they be left alone.”
Rowan shook her head, unable to take it all in so quickly and forge some kind of sense from it.
He had no soul? Is that what he was saying? His people used to be angels but he had no soul? Forget the whole Heaven, Hell, Creator and Morningstar business for the moment. Just focus on the denizens of his Realm, rather than moving up or down the ladder.
“And what do the Unseelie pay Hell with?”
“My people,” he replied simply, lifting his eyes to the blue sky and clouds overhead so he would not have to look at her while he said it. “Any of the Sidhe they manage to capture.”
Chapter Seven
Daire followed Rowan into the cool shadows of the gallery. Blinds covered the windows and the main hall was empty, a blank white space of blocks and pedestals interspersed with panels of oak, but lacking anything like art. Daire hid his disappointment. To all Sidhe, art was sacred, a piece of creation drawn from the soul. Thus only a mortal could make such things. Creativity lay far beyond Sidhe capabilities, so they revered it and coveted it.
Their footsteps echoed, loud in so void a space. Neither spoke. He could tell Rowan was shaken, not just by Aynia’s attack, but also by his revelations.
She purposely busied herself, walking away from him. As far as he could tell, Rowan had not realised the odds, not until now. Neither had he, until he articulated them. If Aynia took him, she would tithe him. No doubt there. Torture first, presumably; ridicule and humiliation in such a way that all the Sidhe would know what had befallen him and would shudder in the darkness of the night when the memory of his fate visited them. But ultimately, finally, Aynia would cast him down. Then the torment would never end.
Rowan might think she knew what was going on now, but how could she? She had witnessed nothing but a brief skirmish or two in an age-old battle, a fragment of a war which had started with creation itself. Even he could not tell how many had fallen, how many had been lost, mortal and Sidhe, Seelie and Unseelie. It would never end.
Daire would have to find a way to defend himself. That was a given. The attack in the car told him something of greater concern. Aynia meant to torment Rowan as well, to use her to get to him.
It wasn’t enough to just find his way home anymore. There was no guarantee Aynia would forget Rowan when he was no longer here. Not only no guarantee, but knowing Aynia as he knew her—her spitefulness, her malice—it was unlikely in the extreme. No, he would have to find a way to defend Rowan as well. And in doing so, teach her to ward off Aynia’s attacks herself.
How?
The question taunted him. She was a mortal, albeit a bright soul gifted with an abundance of soul fire. But just a mortal. Frail, brief-lived, fragile. The Sidhe of either court could bring nothing but danger to a mortal. He knew that. Allow her to get too close to him, and his glamour could swiftly form an addiction for her. Many a mortal had loved a Sidhe only to pine away and die for love of them. Many a Sidhe had given up their place in the Realm for love of a mortal only to waste away in the iron world. It was not unheard of. But his kin spoke of such tales as tragedies. Stories to be told while harpists played the sorrowing strain and the hall fell hushed with regret.
Once, Daire thought the protagonists in such tales weak or foolish to allow a mortal to hold such sway over their lives, or to be so besotted as to bring their mortal lovers to the Realm and see them in turn become washed-out shadows of their former selves, a walking tragedy for all to see. The two did not belong together.
His head knew all of this. His body seemed to be having other ideas. Rowan was unlike other mortals he had encountered. She bewildered him. And although weak and frail, mortal, as he knew her to be, she had saved him from Aynia’s attack. Again.
Beyond that, he couldn’t think.
Rowan made straight for a back room, most likely her office. He could hear her on the phone, her lyrical voice trying to cajole someone into giving her gallery the help it needed.
Daire pressed his hand to the plain white wall and tried to pass on a blessing. But he was still so very weak. And the wall was not made of a natural stone. He moved to the wooden panel and tried again. This time he felt the wood respond, a stirring of life deep inside it answering his call. It faded just as soon as it quickened. There was too much of the iron world about it. The gallery was a hollow place, a vessel needing to be filled with the magic Rowan had demonstrated, her own innate creativity. But she didn’t fill it herself. She brought in others to do that. And maybe that too w
as a method of creation, feeding it in other souls. Was that what she did when she brought in those other artists?
These walls meant so much to her, even empty. They represented something he never thought someone would need to fight for: her sense of self, her independence, and the strength that kept her going.
The tiny bell over the door jangled behind him and Daire whirled rapidly. His hand rose in a blur to grasp the handle of the sword hidden by glamour, his stance poised for attack.
The girl who entered shied back and her face turned as white as those empty walls. She looked even younger than her jeans and colourful T-shirt indicated. “Oh! You gave me a start! Who…who are you?”
Daire straightened and spread his hands wide, showing her he did not intend to attack, relieved that he had not drawn his sword. That would have been too difficult to explain. “Are you looking for Rowan?”
“Yes.” The girl waved a sheaf of papers towards him, then hurriedly pulled them back against her chest when he made no move to take them. “It’s a notice about the local art group. She usually lets us put one up. Are you a friend of hers from London? You aren’t from here.”
“No,” he replied gravely. “I am not from here.”
“Didn’t think so.” Her tone brightened as she relaxed. “I’m Maggie Jennings.” This time she offered her hand to him and Daire shook it as briefly as was polite. “I’m secretary of the Weathermere Art Group. The show is being held in the Town Hall, if you’d like to come. Rowan usually gives us lots of support. Have you seen her paintings? She doesn’t show them anymore but I always thought they were wonderful. Don’t even know if she even paints anymore. It’s a shame, isn’t it? What did you say your name was?”
Daire started to stammer his response. Her incessant twittering was setting his nerves on edge.
“He didn’t,” said Rowan from the office doorway. “Lay off him, Maggie. You’ll scare him to death.”
Scare him? This little thing? Daire bristled internally. And yet, there didn’t seem to be a way to make her stop talking.