A wide shadow crossed the snow. Her friends flew up in the air, chiming out of key and fleeing the dragon landing by her side.
“Is this what you plan to do with my power?”
“Your power? Doyle gave this to me.”
“Where do you think the magic comes from? The air?”
She rubbed the slightly raised pattern on the back of her neck. “I thought it was in the tattoo itself.”
“No. It’s a talisman. It links you to me. And as much as I wished I could, I can’t allow you to use it against Maeve. You have to give up any ideas of destroying her.”
Hot fury rushed through her.
“You can’t mean that. She’s a nightmare. She steals the hearts and minds of young boys and warps them for her pleasure. She’s got the entire countryside so afraid of her that they’re giving her the best of the best, just so they can sleep safely in their beds at night. She’s horrible and she deserves to die.”
“Maeve will come to her own end. Eventually. But it won’t be at your hands.”
“Yes it will. I’m sworn to kill her.”
“Is that really what you swore? Did you swear a magical oath? Are you bound?”
“Who cares if I did that or not. It’s still an oath. I have to find my brother and that she-wolf is my best chance. And once I’ve tortured it out of her, I’m going to make sure she can’t do to any more boys what she tried to do to him.”
“You are bound to serve me. You will not disobey.” He turned, surprisingly quick on his feet for such a large beast and gathered himself for takeoff.
Her anger swept up past her fear. She ran in front of him, blocking his flight. Her fists tight balls of tension at her side, she glared up at him. “I will have my day with her, no matter what you say. I vowed to serve you, not your oath. If you won’t help me I will rouse the locals. Maybe, if someone forces them to look at what their sons have become, they will realize what she really is and what they’ve been doing all these years. What she’s forced them to do. Then I will have an army and together, we will blast the Winter Palace out of existence.”
“I’ve taken you into my home, fed and clothed you. I’ve allowed you to wear something that links you to me by ways of power and this is how you betray me? You would force me to break my oath?”
She held her ground and held his gaze.
“So be it. You are forbidden to leave the cave.” He moved around her, aiming again for the sky.
“You can’t forbid me!” She said the words with as much emphasis as she could muster, but she was very much afraid she was wrong.
His head whipped around on his long neck, coming face to face with hers. She jerked away, the motion knocking her off balance. She stumbled, reaching behind her for support. Coming up with nothing she fell backward on her ass.
“How can you forget so quickly? You are the one who is bound to me. Try to walk away from the cave. Just try.”
Clambering to her feet, she went for the path she’d easily walked down not a half-hour before, when she’d come out of the cave looking for sunshine. But it was as if a force field held her back. She couldn’t move forward, only back.
“What’s going on?”
“You swore allegiance to me, on your power and your life. And completely voluntarily, mind you. Your own magic won’t let you go against me. And now that you are more powerful, your own magic is a force to contend with.”
He gathered his haunches and launched into the sky. She covered her eyes with her hands, tiny flecks of dirt and ice from the wind of his flight driving into her skin.
By the time she uncovered them he’d disappeared from sight, leaving only the bright sun that now mocked her earlier happiness.
“I’m so screwed.” Everything was dark and depressing, despite the sunny day.
She’d worried so much about the tiny silver dragon Doyle had given her and the repercussions of the extra power, but Doyle wasn’t the problem. And in the end, neither was the dragon. She’d done this to herself—sworn allegiance to the beast who was sworn to defend her own enemy.
DOYLE SOARED HIGH INTO the clouds, up where the atmosphere was thin and his breathing labored. He wanted to tell her everything. Wanted to confess the details of his vow, the loss of most of his race, and the guardianship of the little queen. But just as her own magic held her prisoner of his commands, his vow would not let him speak. And so, he pushed her away.
He aimed for the border northeast of the forest, where Bosco’s army had been yesterday.
Even if he could tell her, he had to be able to trust that her thirst for vengeance against Maeve wouldn’t be stronger than her empathy for his plight. And he’d seen nothing from her but her love for her brother and her anger against Maeve. Nothing to indicate she’d give it up, for him or for the egg.
He needed a distraction from thinking about Siobhan. The way she looked at him, her black eyes sparkling with passion. The way she touched him. The way he wanted to share his secrets with her.
Lying in her arms, he’d almost spilled the fact that he was the dragon. It was stupid and childish, but he wanted her to see him. All of him. How big and powerful he could be. How massively strong he was, both in magic and in flight.
He wanted to take her up on his back and fly over the countryside, show her the flat snow of the plains stitched with the icy rocks of the mountains. Fly her further south where the Forest of Pines stretched deep into the mists that separated the lands of the north from the lands of the south. Maybe even fly her into the mists where he could pull magic like bread dough and shape whatever he wanted from scratch, only to let it fall apart as soon as he stopped believing in its existence.
He could picture how excited she’d be. The way her skin would flush with emotion and the way she’d want to test out her new skills with her enhanced Gift. He could teach her everything, so much more than she knew. But, first, he had to share who he was. And he couldn’t do that. And now, she and his dragon side were even more at odds than they’d been before. And it was all his fault.
He’d let his anger take over when he realized how she could threaten his plans, threaten the egg. He was still angry, but he wasn’t a child. He knew how important this was to her. He still remembered the fire of vengeance and how it had led him to hide his queen egg away and go back to Vollenth, instead of staying here and making sure the egg was secure.
Shards, he’d been a foolish, young idiot, but no one would have been able to talk him out of going. He was never going to be able talk her out of going either.
He couldn’t convince her not to go, and he couldn’t tell her he was really Atavantador. He was fucked, and now even the thought of seeing her tonight meant he’d have to deal with all of it—her anger at the dragon, her frustration with not being able to leave the lair, and his own frustrations with how he was getting deeper and deeper involved with someone he should just walk away from. And couldn’t.
He’d nearly reached the border. The army was on the move, a tiny mass of black on white snow, leaving a churned up mess of mud behind them that showed their path for miles. They’d passed the official cairn of stones marking the border and would make it to Maeve’s personal lands soon. And the Winter Palace within days of that. Bosco was moving fast. Doyle had to be ready. When the battle arrived and took all of Maeve’s attention—that would be his best opportunity to steal the little queen out from under the palace.
If he could get into the secret chamber he’d created years ago, when this land was all frozen under its own mists. The egg was so buried under the palace complex he wasn’t sure he could easily get to it. The cover of the battle might enable him to blast through the walls to the chamber, but even then he faced the challenge of getting her out from Maeve’s web of spells.
And he wasn’t sure how tangled that web really was.
He couldn’t solve the Siobhan issues now. She was safe for now, in his lair. Bosco would be arriving soon. He had to know what he faced. Time to do some reconnaissance.
Preparation for war was everywhere. Stockpiles of spears and arrows at key locations on the walls, guards sparring in small groups, magic users fortifying every tiny hole they could find. There was a new tower squatting in the back and by its shielding it looked like it would hold an army’s worth of weapons. Maeve wasn’t leaving anything to chance, was she? But as closely as her weapons tower was guarded he easily slipped into the oldest part of the palace where the egg was hidden.
Years ago, when he’d come back from Vollenth, only to find his precious charge buried under the Winter Palace, he’d tried to extricate her. But even then Maeve had her magic twined into the safeguards that he’d built. She’d used his own creation against him and he feared it was impossible to destroy what she’d built without having his own power turn on him and destroy himself. Then where would the little queen be?
Dead.
Four hours later and he was just as frustrated as when he’d arrived. Getting to Maeve’s private rooms where the pool lay wasn’t the issue. His glamour and powers made that simple. But once there, he still faced the issue he’d faced when Maeve had become the Winter Queen—there was no way to get the egg out without destroying either her or himself.
And neither one of those was an option.
Chapter Twenty-five
With every step Siobhan took toward the door into Cairngloss, she found she couldn’t move back in the other direction. So she stopped moving and stayed put while the sun moved high in the sky. She got hungry and thirsty and more pissed off as the day wasted away.
Her fairy friends tried to help, laboriously bringing her giant pine cones and piles of early frost flowers.
“Thank you,” she said. They’d almost gotten her to smile with their efforts. “I wish I could eat these, but they’re not big fae food.” Eventually they got bored and flitted off, leaving her alone and hungry.
After hours of straining to move even an inch away from the mountain she finally gave in and went back inside. At least inside she found she could move wherever she wanted. That was something, but with every step she took back to the lair her anger escalated. Yesterday, she’d no plans of leaving immediately. She knew she needed to hone her magic if she were to face the queen.
But today? Today, she was stuck.
“How could he do this to me?” She paced back and forth in a room that now felt like a prison. “No.” She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. “You have no one to blame but your own self.” There had to be a way out of this. There was always a way. And she’d find it.
Maybe Doyle knew how she could escape this trap of her own making. He’d traveled and seen more of the universe and he understood magic so much better than she did. He had to know how she could get out of this fix.
It was hours before he returned, and by the time he did she was practically frothing with impatience.
“There you are.” She leapt off of the chair. She’d been trying to fill the hours by first trying again to find Bosco, but even with her enhanced powers whatever shielded him was more than she could penetrate. So instead she’d sharpened her sword and knife. And then had resorted to picking up needle and thread to repair a hole in her jacket. But her stitches were terrible and her focus even worse. When Doyle opened the door she gratefully tossed the whole thing to the side. “I’m so glad to see you.” She ran to him and threw her arms around him, leaning up for a kiss.
But his response was cool. He barely brushed her lips with his before moving away. “Is there something I can do for you?”
She frowned. Something was wrong. Was he pulling away because they’d had sex the night before? Or was it something else? Whatever it was, she didn’t have time for it, she had to solve this problem right now, before thinking about it ate a hole in her brain.
“I need your help. I had a discussion with Atavantador and we have an issue.”
He crossed to the small cabinet where he kept the whiskey and pulled out a glass and the bottle. “Do you want any? I think I need a drink.” She shook her head and watched him pour his own. He sat down at the small table and gestured for her to sit in the other chair. “Sit down. Let’s get this over with.”
“I don’t understand.”
He shook his head and sighed. “It’s alright. Chalk it up to a very bad day. Tell me what you want to tell me.”
She sank into the chair, her enthusiasm dampened. “I didn’t think about the repercussions when I bound myself to the dragon. Actually, I was only trying to stay alive. But now it turns out that I’m tied, not only to him as a loyal subject, but I’m actually tied to his causes. And he’s sworn to protect the queen. He’s forbidden me to leave the cave, and that’s impossible.” She stood up, unable to hold still while the words poured out of her. “I can’t stay here. I have to find Bosco. I have to stop the queen.”
His cool expression didn’t change as he sipped his whiskey. “Has it occurred to you that it’s been a hundred years since you last saw your brother? He may not need your help at all. He may be happy doing what he’s doing. Or—”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Or he might be dead? Is that what you were going to say?” The anger she’d been dealing with all day rose up hot and choking in her throat. “He’s not. I would know.” When Bosco had been born, this tiny, pale, wrinkled baby with the same black eyes as hers, he’d looked up at her and smiled. And she’d known right then and there. He was her responsibility. She would know, with that same surety, if he were dead. “He’s alive and he’s in trouble.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if he weren’t, he would have been there when he was supposed to be.” It all came back, waiting for him to arrive.
The fear. The terrible weight of anticipation as the minutes had turned to hours and he hadn’t come to save her. She’d slowly been thawing in front of the entire court and they’d pointed fingers and jeered at her. The queen had been the worst.
“He would have come for me,” she whispered now.
“But he didn’t.”
“And you think that means he’s dead. But I know it means he must be in trouble. The queen knows where he is, I’m sure of it.”
“What makes you think that? Surely if he were nearby Maeve would have found him by now.”
“I’ve tried to see him, but something is blocking him. She’s far more powerful than I am. There was something in her face on the day that she handed me over to you. She knows. I know she knows.” She had to believe that Maeve knew where Bosco was. Otherwise, what chance did she have of finding him herself?
“And what if she doesn’t?” His gaze was implacable over the rim of the glass.
“Then I need to stop her taking and destroying any more boys.” He was sitting there, sipping his whiskey, as if her outrage was nothing. Her outrage grew. “Don’t you understand? Have you been there? Have you seen them? The Winter King is so miserable he’s fading away into oblivion. And Ardan...”
Doyle’s eyes narrowed. “You know the captain of the queen’s guard?”
“I knew him.” Her eyes skittered away from the sudden heat in his eyes. “He was so different as a boy. Carefree. Fun. Now he’s without hope.”
“He’s a man. He can leave her service if he wants to.”
“He has no choice!” She gripped the arms of the chair. “She stole his free will years ago and she’ll do it again and again, until she’s stopped. You have to help me get out of h
ere and kill her so she can’t do it again.”
Doyle downed the last of his whiskey and stood up. “I’m sorry. It’s not possible.”
“What do you mean it’s not possible? Are you bound to him so hard you can’t even think about breaking your chains? Maybe helping me break mine will help you, and we both can be free.”
Something flickered in his eyes, but he shook his head and put the glass down on the small side table. “I can’t help you.” He headed for the door.
She ran and cut him off, throwing her body in front of him. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” His face softened. He reached up to touch her hair. “You’re here, you’re safe. That’s what matters.”
“It’s not what matters.” She flinched away from his touch. “Bosco matters. Those boys matter. Injustice matters.”
His hand dropped and his expression hardened again. “I’m sorry.” He moved around her, brushing her side as he passed and closing the door quietly behind him.
She paced back and forth across the small room. Why wouldn’t he want his freedom from the dragon? She’d wondered about him. Wondered why he was here. She’d assumed he was a paid servant, and then she’d assumed he was bound by an oath. Now she wondered, was it more than that?
Her hand wandered to the dragon on her neck, touching the raised scales.
The dragon. Atavantador had eyed her with eyes that were bluer than the deep water ice. Fractured like her own, and yet splintered by the black iris of a cat. Like Doyle’s. Atavantador was powerful, his magic an ancient magic that she truly didn’t understand.
And Doyle. She hadn’t thought about the fact that his magic felt like the dragon’s, he obviously came from the same world so it made sense their magic would feel the same. But now she wondered. Was it more than that?
Caged: A Fae Fantasy Romance (Fae Magic Book 4) Page 15
