Nine
Gwen’s lips were as cool and soft as I remembered, pressed against my forehead. All things considered, it wasn’t the worst way to wake up.
I opened my eyes and blinked away the gummy sensation of sleep. Gwen smiled down at me. Her perfect lips formed a heart on her too-pale face. She always smiled at me like that. Like I was the only thing in the world that made her happy. In that quiet moment, I wanted her lips to touch my forehead again. I wanted her to give a little comfort and tell me everything would be all right. If I asked, she probably would.
For one queasy moment, I let myself wonder if I broke her heart at the beginning of summer. If I had, why was she still so kind to me? Why were any of them?
I huffed and pushed myself up, expecting to feel like hell, but I didn’t. I could breathe, for a start. I touched my cheeks. No sting, either. Gwen must have patched me up while I was sleeping. She really was too good for me.
Dom sat at the edge of the pond, deep in conversation with a pair of water wives. He had this big, goofy smile on his face, like he had just found out that not only was the tooth fairy real, but she also shared his taste in music. Nothing like a pond full of beautiful women to distract a guy from the insanity of the day. The water wives didn’t look the least bit annoyed that he was there. If anything, they looked as interested in him as he was in them. The one in the water whistled a lilting tune, which Dom tried to whistle back. Poorly. A shadeling curled up at his side, not quite touching him, but regarding him silently. Maybe they realized he’d helped to save them. Well, crap. He really was the kind of guy to jump into danger to help strangers and make friends with people the second he met them … And I’d just held a nail to his throat.
He was right. Hell, everyone was right, lately. I was an asshole.
Gwen hummed that musical hum of hers and glanced over her shoulder.
“It has been many years since a human male has come to our home,” Gwen observed. “But your friend is … pleasant. He demands nothing of us.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “His is a rare sort. You were lucky to find him.”
Find him. Threaten him. Expose him to the Fae. Real lucky. Poor guy had no idea what I’d just dragged him into. I ran my fingers through my hair. They came out smeared with soot.
“Bryn,” Gwen said, resting her cool hand on my forehead. “What happened?”
“Fire. Nothing,” I muttered. “I got here as soon as I could.”
“Liar!” Dom snapped. I shot him a glare as he hurried over, all gangly limbs and judgment. “She went inside. Nearly got herself killed.” He shot me back a glare of his own. Right. Maybe I wasn’t entirely forgiven.
Gwen’s gaze sharpened to two chips of jade as she turned to me.
“Is he telling the truth, Bryn?” she asked, but didn’t wait for me to answer. Water wives couldn’t always catch a lie, but they could always catch the truth. “This is most unusual from you.” Gwen turned back to me. “What happened?”
“I … Well, the house was on fire,” I explained. “I had to look after the shadelings. Here, where’s my…” I glanced around. There, just within reach, was my blanket, still bundled up. The fibers were singed here and there, but it looked more or less whole. “Apparently someone threw a few Molotov cocktails in through the windows. I think when they couldn’t get through the house’s defenses they had to get creative. This is the only bottle that didn’t ignite. Can you tell us who threw it?” I tugged the blanket open to reveal the bottle shards. Mum’s jewelry box sat on top of them. Some of the wood was scratched and torn. A sudden knife of panic stabbed through my chest. I had to take a deep breath. A little sandpaper and stain and I could fix it.
Gwen reached for the box, but I snatched it away before she could touch it. My palms stung as tiny shards that had embedded themselves in the wood pricked my palms, but I didn’t let go. “No. Just the glass.”
Dom’s eyes widened, his eyes glued to the box. “Is it magic?”
“It’s my mum’s,” I snapped.
Gwen glanced sidelong at me, then down at the remains of the bottles. Her pale hand danced over the glass shards for a moment, like she was feeling the temperature, before she brushed the pads of her fingers against one.
Her scream sounded like the shriek of metal being rent apart. Gwen flew back from the glass, holding her hand up in front of her, fingers spread wide. I jumped to my feet.
“Gwen, what happened? Did you cut yourself?”
“What’s wrong?” Dom demanded, starting back. The other water wives gasped and dove back into the lake without so much as a splash.
Gwen swerved past him, plunging her hand into the water. Her chest heaved. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites all the way around her irises.
“Gwen,” I gasped, reaching for her.
In the same moment, Dom knelt down next to her, his hand hovering over her shoulder. “Just breathe, you’re going to be okay. She’ll be okay, right?” He stared down at her like a doctor on the battlefield, desperate to save a soldier. Like he even knew her. How the hell did someone care so freely?
I wanted to snap at him to back off. He didn’t know her. He shouldn’t be the one to comfort her, but I smothered the selfish urge and turned my attention back to Gwen. She needed me. I squeezed her shoulder. On her other side, Dom did the same. With both of us supporting her, Gwen’s breathing slowed. She closed her eyes. Her lips shook, then moved with silent words.
“I can’t hear—” But maybe I didn’t need to.
The water shimmered in front of her. Within seconds, the stones and little fish and the faint outlines of the homes disappeared as a pale, inhuman face swam into being. An ashy taste filled my mouth.
“Shit.” Dom’s hand flew to his mouth. “What is that?”
“An Unseelie Fae,” I muttered, swallowing hard. I knew it. I held the box just a little closer, as if it could chase away the image of that horrible face. Oh God. This was really happening, wasn’t it?
Gwen pulled her hand out of the water. It shook so badly, it sent droplets flying everywhere, rippling the surface of the water like a rainstorm. Her cheeks took on a strange, greenish hue.
I grabbed her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry I asked you to do that.”
“What was that thing?” Dom demanded again. “It’s … You said it’s what burned Bryn’s house? That’s the bad guy? How many of those things are there in this town?”
Gwen gave a little chin jerk as she stared down at the water. “A drone,” she murmured. “So few are kept. Most are traded for changelings at a young age. I have never heard of a grown drone warrior being sent against a human before. They’re too wild. Rest easy, Dom. They are rare. But that one would come close to you, Bryn—”
“It’s one of them that attacked me the other night,” I told her. “So this makes two of them.”
Gwen’s head whipped around, her mouth wide. “Bryn,only the reigning monarch of the Unseelie court may command these wretches.”
I stared down at the box in my hand. The one Mum had treasured so much. Was that what had happened to her? Had she been taken before an Unseelie king or queen?
“I don’t get it,” Dom insisted. “If they’re fairies or … or Fae or whatever, then why the firestarters? Can’t they use magic or something? Or, like, is there some way to keep them out?”
I traced my fingers over the intricate patterns of the box. It felt like my mind had been split in two. Half of it was back in Wales on a rainy day when Mum told me stories and kept me safe. The other half was anchored to the darkening present.
“Our house is too well protected,” I explained. “The gates are iron. No Fae can touch it. And everything we planted in there is supposed to repel them…” My heart slammed like a sledgehammer into my ribs. I took a few deep breaths to calm it before I could speak. “I think they were trying to force us out of the house.”
Now that I’d said it out loud, it seemed so obvious. They coul
dn’t touch the boys so long as we lived behind the iron gates and the rowan tree. The only remarkable part was that they hadn’t tried it sooner. We needed to go somewhere else. Somewhere my brothers would be safe.
“Okay, so why are the Unfeeling after you?” Dom asked.
Sweet little lamb. He didn’t need to get tangled up in all of this. But I couldn’t just make him forget everything he’d seen today. He cared too much.
I scrubbed my hand over my face before letting go of Gwen’s hand, hugging the box closer. “Family thing,” I muttered. “We think it had something to do with my mum. I’m going to have to tell Dad.”
“Your dad? Wait, is he the one with the…” Dom brought his hand up to his temple, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to make an insensitive gesture. Lucky for him, he seemed to think better of it and lowered his hand. “Um … hallucinations?”
“He was cursed,” I said. “But yeah. He sees fairies everywhere he goes, so much that he’s just learned to ignore them. This is only going to make it harder for him.” And now that court Fae were trying to get to the family, he was as good as unprotected. He could be standing right in front of a drone and wouldn’t know it was real.
“Your family cannot protect themselves if they don’t know the threat,” Gwen pointed out. “Today only proves that you cannot do this on your own.”
“I wish Mum had taught me about this.”
This would all be so much easier if I knew what she’d done. How she got us into this. I gazed down at the box and let the memories take over. The ugly floral rug in the living room and the rain pat-pat-patting against the windows. Mum’s powdery perfume as I curled into her side for warmth, as I ran my fingers over the wood, trying to find pictures in the patterns the way I might find them in the clouds.
“Was that box hers?” Dom pressed. “Maybe there’s a clue or something inside.”
“No, it’s just her jewelry. Dad kept it to remember her.” And would he be happy to know I’d saved it? Maybe that would soften the blow. I took a deep breath, clicked the latch, and swung the lid up.
Mum’s jewelry. It was like being sucker-punched with a memory. I caught my breath. There was the armband that looked like a snake. She’d worn it the day we went to the beach and I got sand in my ice cream, back before the boys were born. And the heavy pendant with the love knot in the middle. I think Dad gave that to her.
I pulled out the pendant, focusing on its weight in my hand and—
“What’s that?” Dom blurted out.
Just under the layer of gems and precious metals was an old, leather-bound book. I pulled it out and waited for some memory. Nothing. Had I ever seen Mum with this book? A few long seconds passed, but my mind remained blank. If this was Mum’s, then she’d never had it out around us.
I opened the front cover. The old pages crackled softly as they moved. They weren’t paper. They were something thicker, like what they made books out of in the Middle Ages. Vellum, maybe? It was the sort of thing I probably needed to handle with gloves. Gently as I could manage, I turned the pages one by one. Scribbles in half a dozen languages littered the pages. Nordic runes. Celtic ogham. Others I didn’t recognize, all forming what looked like poems and recipes and spells.
Had Dad known this was in here? He had to. He’d had it for years. He’d known about this and he’d kept it from me.
Dom’s eyes widened. I might as well have held the Holy Grail in front of him. Much more excitement and his eyes were going to pop right out of his head. Gwen reached out, her pale hand hovering over the pages as it had over the glass.
“A grimoire. Some of the contents are certainly human,” she said, then wrinkled her nose and hissed. “Much is not.”
“What do you mean not human?”
Gwen withdrew, burying her hands in her voluminous skirt. “Fae magic. But every word in that book was written by the same hand that once held that box.”
“You mean my mother?” I held the book out, a sudden hunger gnawing at my insides. This could be my first chance to see Mum in nine years. “Can you do what you did with the shards? Touch it and show her picture in the water?”
Gwen grimaced and shook her head. “No, Bryn. It’s been enchanted to repel any Fae kind who attempt to touch it.”
I tried to imagine my mum doing that, but it felt wrong. She was the one who’d taught me to look for the nymphs and sprites in the woods. Anti-Fae enchantments didn’t fit the picture of her that I still had in my head.
“Gwen, I’m sure it’s safe.”
“No!” Gwen’s green eyes burned. “There is Unseelie magic there, Bryn. I will not touch it!”
“Unseelie? No, Gwen, it’s my mum’s. She was human.”
“Maybe,” Dom suggested, “maybe she experimented with fairy magic.”
It was like a slap to the face, but he couldn’t know what he’d just said. He’d only found out that fairies existed an hour ago. Except … except a little voice in my head had to question all of it. Dad must have known about this. And he’d never told me. Why wouldn’t he tell me?
“It would explain a great deal,” Gwen said. “Why your family’s being targeted. Bloodlines are powerful things. If an ancestor of yours made a deal with the Unseelie—”
I slammed the book shut. “My mum didn’t do dark magic,” I snapped. “Neither of you knew her. She was a good person.”
Dom looked like he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue. Gwen, on the other hand, had no such reservations. “Good people make mistakes,” she insisted.
“You just don’t get it. You…” I needed backup. I jumped to my feet and turned to face the trees. “Shadelings!”
There was a flicker of movement somewhere amidst the dark branches. A bright pair of eyes blinked to life, flicked toward Dom, then vanished again. Right. Him. It would be easy to send him away. Except he’d dropped everything to save them. With no good reason at all, he’d jumped into action to help me. Gwen liked him. He was this light, gentle kind of good I only ever saw in the water wives, the kind everyone needed more of in their lives.
Maybe it was time to learn how not to be an asshole.
“Standing order,” I barked. “This human is with me. It’s fine. You can show yourself around him.”
The shadelings shuffled out from the shelter of the trees, all watching Dom with open suspicion. It was strange to see all of them out of the shadows at once, but there they were. Twenty-seven dark forms, inky black to plum purple to forest green, all two feet tall, huddled and leery of the sunlight.
I knelt down, showing them the book. “Do you recognize this?”
I waited for them to shake their heads. Maybe the Fae who’d taken her had dropped it. Maybe Dad had picked it up when he was still trying to figure out how to get her back. But, one by one, the shadelings nodded.
“Missy Mistress always had it. Wrote in it all the time, she did.”
“What? I’ve never—” I protested, but the purple shadeling with the yellow eyes interrupted me.
“Not you, Missy. Your mother, our Missy Mistress.”
I could feel Gwen’s and Dom’s eyes on me. I probably wouldn’t get any obnoxious I told you sos from them. Somehow, knowing that didn’t do much to make it better.
“She wrote in it herself,” I breathed, and it made my stomach turn to see the shadelings nod. My mum had practiced fairy magic. My dad hadn’t told me.
“It’s why we’re here, Missy,” the shadeling squeaked. “Human magics can’t summons us like fairy magics can.”
Mum played with fairy magic. Lawless magic that didn’t require ritual or practice or care. That’s why our whole family was in this mess. This was all her fault. And for the last nine years, I’d thought it was mine. And Dad had just let me. But it was her all this time. She’d dealt with them. Something in me felt hollow, like a place that had always been too full was cleared out, leaving behind a chilly emptiness. Memories fought for a place in the front of my mind, every one of them tainted like t
hat nail polish you could never quite scrub out of the carpet. Every hug, every kiss, every lullaby had come from Mum. The one who’d brought them to our doorstep.
“Mum’s the reason all this happened,” I breathed. How was I supposed to feel? Betrayed? Relieved? Scared? My whole body jumped into overdrive. Hands shaking. Cold sweat. Heart trying to pound its way out of my chest.
My head began to spin. I sank down onto the ground and focused on breathing. Breathe in. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight …
“Here, I think it may help to get that out of the way,” Dom said, tugging at the book. After a fraction of a second, I let it go. There was a clatter of beads on wood as he settled it back in the jewelry box, then the faint clack as he closed it up. Nobody said anything. Not that there was much of anything to say, anyway.
The purple shadeling padded forward and curled up in my lap. It smelled like dirt and smoke. I rested my hand on its back.
“Eeerp!” it squeaked, squirming away from my hand. A bright burn stretched from its shoulder to its lower back. How had I missed that?
“I’m sorry,” I sighed as I gathered it into my arms. “Gwen, can you and your sisters help me with the shadelings?”
The water wives never really needed much encouragement to offer their healing to anyone or anything. To their credit, the shadelings must have been more bothered by the events of the day than the prospect of a bath. For the most part, they let the water wives usher them to the shallows of the pond without a fight.
I’d let the information about my mum simmer. Better to think about that later. For now, I would solve the problems right in front of me. I rose, carrying the shadeling in my arms to the pond with the others.
Ten
Dom walked with me back out of the woods like some sort of gangly watchdog. To his credit, he didn’t ask any questions, though every couple of seconds his hands twitched, tugging at his shirt or cracking knuckles. Any little noise to fill the silence. He didn’t know how to handle any of this.
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