“That’s still pretty risky, isn’t it?”
Bob shrugged one shoulder—which told Kelley it was.
What in the world made him give Titania his name? she wondered.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Bob looked at her, his green eyes glittering, and said, “She promised not to kill you if I did.”
Chapter XXV
Aaneel left Perry standing at the edge of the asphalt and walked toward Sonny with a relaxed, easy gait. The man who was once the leader of the Janus Guards was dressed not for battle but in the flowing, brightly colored silk trousers and tunic of an Indian prince. His thick black hair, only just silvering at the temples after all his long years of living in the Otherworld, was tied back off his face, and his dark eyes glittered coldly as he stepped toward Sonny. In his hands, he held twin khukuri knives.
“Why?” Sonny asked.
Aaneel seemed to consider the question for a moment, stopping in the middle of the tennis court. Then he said, “I was never meant to be what I am. My mother was a princess in this world of long-ago. She was a pure-hearted woman and a treasured confidante of the Seelie queen. Before my mother died giving birth to my own sad self, Titania told her she would take care of me.” He smiled indolently. “It is past time I honor that pledge and let the queen do just that.”
Titania, Sonny though grimly. So it seemed it was the Summer Queen who was behind all the recent chaos after all. He shook his head in disgust.
“In other words, you grow tired of having to earn your keep.”
Aaneel’s smile grew a touch brittle. “In other words, I am no longer willing to be the Winter King’s lackey.”
“But you’re more than happy to be the Summer Queen’s lapdog.” Sonny knew that Aaneel had always had a taste for the finer things in life. Gourmet food, fine clothing, beautiful women. Luxury. Titania must have offered him all that. And more. Over Aaneel’s shoulder, Sonny saw Perry stiffen, a frown crossing his brow.
“What about you, Percival?” Sonny nodded to the young man. “What’s your excuse?”
“She saved my village!” Perry said defiantly. Sonny knew the story of his taking by the Fair Folk—Titania had promised gentle weather and bountiful harvests for Percival’s drought-plagued hamlet in exchange for him. “I owe her.”
Sonny gazed at him a little sadly. “Do you, now? Do you not think a Faerie queen might have had something to do with all those bad harvests in the first place, lad?”
Aaneel laughed. “Don’t listen to him, Perry. He clings to his loyalties like a drowning man to driftwood. There is a new order coming, Sonny. A glorious time approaches like a majestic ship sailing over the horizon. You would be wise to get on board or get out of the way.”
“I’m not always wise, Aaneel,” Sonny said. “But I’ve been treading these same waters a long time and I’ve grown accustomed to them just the way they are.”
The rogue Janus sighed. “More’s the pity. Stay how you are then. Sink or swim, I will not throw you a lifeline.”
“I wouldn’t take it if you did.”
Sonny tightened his grip on the two short swords in his hands and braced for the coming attack.
Aaneel was across the breadth of the tennis court before Sonny had time to even draw breath. So swift were his actions that the blades in his hands were nothing more than a blur. But Sonny had studied Aaneel—he had studied all the Janus guards, eager to learn all he could about the arts of war—and he knew that the khukuris were hacking weapons, most useful when employed with an overhand, downward swinging motion—like a machete. So long as he kept his blows high up on Aaneel, he had a chance.
Sonny sidestepped Aaneel’s first vicious attacks and launched a series of head-cuts in retaliation. Sonny had to draw on all his speed to evade Aaneel’s flashing knives. Aaneel was the best of the Janus. The oldest, the most experienced . . . the most treacherous. Sonny fought with a grim determination.
He pictured Auberon in his mind, lying weak and dying because of the betrayals of those like Aaneel—a man the king had trusted above all others. He thought of Ghost, who would not now be dead if only Aaneel had remained true. He thought of Percival, who stood watching, teetering on the edge of corruption because of Aaneel and the Summer Queen’s taint.
Sonny tried to reach for the Green Magick, but the power lay dormant and unresponsive deep within him. Because Chloe had removed the shielding charm, he could sense its presence now, but—contrary to his hopes—he could not shape it to his will. It was his training, he realized suddenly, slashing upward with the blade in his right hand. Aaneel swore and came at him again. Sonny had been taught to fight from the time he could walk and he had been taught to fight cold—trained to ignore the emotions that were a liability in a battle. He was not a berserker like Fennrys or Ghost. As a warrior, his cool-headed detachment, the ability to divorce himself from the blinding effects of intense feelings, was the strongest weapon in his arsenal.
Except in this particular instance, when he really could have used a violent emotional response to ignite all that dormant power. Now that Chloe had taken away the charm from his mind, he remembered the rush of rage and fear that had filled him when he thought Kelley was dead—and he knew that that was what had triggered his magick. He’d felt stirrings of that same kind of rush back in the apartment when Fennrys had goaded him about Kelley. But that reaction wasn’t something he could just manufacture.
Aaneel came at him again, windmill slashes cutting the air side to side in front of him. Sonny retreated, shifting his weight onto his back foot, ducking low as the blades whistled past his cheek. He leaped back, taking quick stock of his surroundings; the fight had taken them past the edge of the tennis court and onto a cracked walkway that led directly to a large brick building.
In the briefest of moments, as Sonny glanced up, he was startled to see Kelley standing framed in the arched windows of the second story. At her side stood Titania.
“Kelley!” Sonny shouted, parrying another of Aaneel’s strikes with the crossed blades of his swords as he did. Sparks flew from the screeching metal, and he had to dodge out of the way of another of Aaneel’s furious slashing blows. He glanced back over his shoulder for a brief second. “Down here!”
Kelley stared out over the courtyard as if she couldn’t hear him.
On Aaneel’s next attack, Sonny dived low and took the other man out at the knees. Aaneel tumbled away, but Sonny didn’t follow. Instead, he sprinted in the opposite direction—toward the window where Kelley stood. Directly underneath, he saw what looked like a raised stone dais, covered in a thick layer of foliage. It was high enough so that he could use it to leap to the stone overhang just under the window. All he had to do was reach that ledge and then he would climb to her—just like Romeo had to Juliet.
It was a good plan.
Only it was thwarted by a better one.
Sonny realized an instant too late why the leprechaun had yet to show himself. He’d had no need. The instant Sonny’s foot touched the top of what he’d thought was a solid stone platform, he was done. It wasn’t solid, or stone.
It was an uncovered well.
The deep cistern—a stone-walled hole in the earth—had been cleverly camouflaged, not with a glamour, but with greenery. It was the same technique Aaneel had once told him they’d used in India to trap tigers. The second Sonny put any weight on the top, the thatch of vines and leaves gave way under him, and he plummeted into blackness. His head struck the stone as he fell, and he landed heavily, unable to rise.
Sonny reached up a hand to the warm wetness on his forehead, and his fingertips came away dark with blood. The nausea and dizziness he felt as he struggled to his knees told him that he had most likely suffered a concussion—a bad one. The stone sides of the well wavered and tipped as he fell over heavily onto his back, staring up at the circle of sky far above him.
As Sonny’s consciousness began to fade, he saw the tall, elegant figure of Gwynn ap Nudd, his features silvered by the moon�
�s watery light.
Titania and Gwynn?
It was worse than Sonny had imagined. Much worse.
The pain in his head flashed blindingly behind his eyes, and Sonny slid away into nothingness.
Chapter XXVI
“When Auberon drifted from Titania’s side into a dalliance with your mother, he surely did not know what poisoned fruit the Summer Queen’s hurt would produce,” Bob mused.
“Yeah, well . . .” Kelley thought about that—and about what she knew of Titania. “I don’t know if I blame her entirely. I’d still be a little miffed about the whole love-potion/ass-head thing if I was her.”
“Oh, pish. That was just good fun.”
Kelley raised an eyebrow at the boucca. “Auberon manipulated and humiliated Titania all for the sake of bragging rights over who got to parade around with that pompous jerk Aaneel.”
“Who, by the way, has defected to Titania’s side,” Bob informed her.
“Color me shocked,” Kelley said sarcastically. She hadn’t exactly had warm fuzzy feelings toward the erstwhile leader of the Janus Guard lately. “And anyway, you know my mother’s track record with love affairs. Do they ever end well?”
“Oh, no. I shouldn’t think so. Perhaps that’s one reason she’s so meddlesome in your, well, your affairs.”
“Right,” Kelley said. “She doesn’t want me to succeed where she failed.”
Bob shook his head sadly. “You’re awfully young to be so jaded, Princess. Did it ever occur to you that she doesn’t want you to fail as she did?”
Kelley opened her mouth to retort. But then she stopped and thought about it. Had Mabh—for all her scariness—ever really done anything to hurt Kelley? Really? In a way, all she’d ever done was try, in her own signature pathological way, to protect her.
Kelley couldn’t say the same for her father.
Only . . . what was it Jack had said? The bad guy never thinks of what he’s doing as bad. Could it be that her parents, in their own bizarre, nonsensical, inscrutable ways, actually . . . loved her? That was stretching things maybe. Maybe they just didn’t hate her. She wondered if, after everything that had happened, it might just be possible for her to return the sentiment. To Mabh . . . and maybe to Auberon as well.
Auberon, who’d stolen her wings when he’d taken back the power of his throne from her veins. Power that, at the time, she’d fervently wished he’d choke on and die—
“Oh no . . . ,” Kelley whispered.
A terrible realization came crashing down upon her.
Bob was gazing at her curiously. Kelley glanced wildly around the room until . . . there! The flash of reflection that had caught her eye earlier—a shard of glass, all that was left of a shattered mirror, hanging askew on the other wall. She carefully worked the triangle of broken glass free from the old bent frame and, with the sleeve of her jacket, rubbed the grime from the surface until she could see her own face reflected clearly back at her.
She concentrated.
Long minutes passed as she sent out the silent call to her mother. Perspiration beaded on her forehead with the effort to navigate through the veils that separated the Otherworld from the mortal realm, trying to avoid contact with the drifting restless shades that haunted the Between.
“Think small,” Bob murmured from where he hunched, watching her keenly. “Think small and slippery, light and little. A gnat, a newt, a hummingbird on flitting wings, a leaf on a breeze, a puff of dandelion fluff . . .” His voice hummed in her ears like a singsong nursery rhyme, nonsense and instruction wrapped up together. She tried to think of it as an acting exercise and let herself be guided by the boucca’s murmured wisdom. She felt herself slip between the layers of enchantment, from world to world, to drift into the circle of the Autumn Queen’s court.
Kelley brought her gaze back down to the mirror she held before her and stared into her own eyes. They flickered, sparked, and then grew unfocused for a moment. And then her gaze sharpened, and the Queen of Air and Darkness stared back at her, a look of surprise on her face, quickly stifled when she realized what had been done.
“Daughter,” Mabh said with carefully affected blandness. “You are getting rather good at things. You called?”
Kelley exhaled the breath she’d been holding and rolled the exertion from her shoulders. She’d done it.
“Master Goodfellow.” Mabh bowed politely to the boucca, who stood warily a few feet behind Kelley. “We’ve missed your presence here.”
“My lady.” Bob bowed, without taking his eyes off the queen. “You’re looking . . . rather lovely.”
“Only rather?”
“Wow. You guys really don’t lie, do you?” Kelley was starting to get the hang of the games the Fair Folk played with one another, but that didn’t mean she was necessarily going to play by exactly the same rules. “Mom—you look terrible. For a Faerie queen, that is. For a normal person, you look like a rock star. How are you?”
“Heavens. Is that a note of concern I hear in your voice?”
“Knock it off, Mom. How’s Dad?”
If Mabh was shocked by Kelley’s mode of address—and she obviously was by the look on her face—she had the good sense not to push the matter by drawing any more attention to it. “Worse and worse, I hate to say. And it seems that I am unable to do anything to help him. In fact, I’m feeling rather unwell myself these days. Not near as bad as Auberon, but—”
“It’s going to be okay,” Kelley said. “Put him on the phone.”
Mabh did so. It took all Kelley’s self-control not to flinch in revulsion at the sight of her father. His eyes were sunken pits, and the arteries along the sides of his neck pulsed with dark blood. The Winter King’s cheekbones and the angles of his forehead stood out in sharp relief.
There was a desperate fear in his bloodshot gaze that squeezed Kelley’s heart to see. She put her hand on the dirty shard of glass and pressed her fingertips hard against the surface. At Mabh’s urging, Auberon did the same, reaching out with one claw-like, emaciated hand to touch the circle of mirror she’d brought to his bedside.
“Give me back the power you took from me that night at Samhain,” Kelley said as gently as she could.
She still remembered how it had felt when Auberon had ripped away her Unseelie gift, and how she had wished him nothing but ill as he’d done so. Her hatred and her fear had been so great in that moment. And she had sent all of that toxic emotion along with her power.
“Please. Give it back to me.”
There was a flicker of uncertainty in Auberon’s gaze, and then he closed his eyes. Kelley felt as if she was suddenly falling forward into a dark and formless place. Her vision grew dim, and the shabby prison cell all around her disappeared. Shadows and silence enveloped her, and she breathed slowly and deeply, trying to still the pounding of her heart. The blackness thickened and became absolute and Kelley continued to fall, without even knowing which way was up.
Just when it became almost too much to bear and a cry began to bubble up in her throat, she saw a tiny, pale flicker of light in the darkness. She arrowed her consciousness toward it, and it grew larger and brighter. Soon the gleaming silver light was all around her, surrounding her.
Her power. Her birthright. Her Unseelie gift.
It burned like a star, and suddenly she was at its heart. But, looking outward, she saw that the edges of the flaring brightness were knitted to the shadowy umbra through which she’d just passed. The bleak blackness was tied into her power, and she knew that this was what she had sent along to the Lord of the Unseelie Fae when she wished her hurt upon him.
Head and heart, mind and soul, she thought. Thinking makes it so.
She had done this with her magick. Now she would undo it.
Slowly, carefully, she drew the brightness back into herself, and with it the darkness with which it was entwined. . . . Her anger. Her fear and hatred. She revoked the unspoken curses she had unwittingly sent against Auberon the king and, in their stead, sent out an
apology to Auberon her father. Understanding. Not . . . love—she was not there. Not yet. But understanding. It was a start, she hoped.
From far away, she heard Auberon gasp. It was a sound as if someone had suddenly loosened a tight band from around his chest, allowing him to draw a clear breath again. The last of Kelley’s power flowed back into her, and she was no longer falling.
She was flying . . . on star-bright, silver wings.
Kelley looked about and saw that the darkness, the shadows, had receded and a pristine, wintry landscape stretched out below her right to the horizon in every direction. It was pure and beautiful . . . only . . .
Here and there stands of trees, branches black and bare, reached grasping fingers into the pearl-white sky. Kelley flew closer and saw that they looked . . . wrong somehow. She reached out a hand and touched one of those thorny twigs and screamed in pain as the cold fire of pure iron lanced through her fingers and down her arm.
Kelley threw herself backward and suddenly found that she was back in the cell on North Brother Island. She lay on the floor, clutching her hand and writhing in pain. Bob crouched before her, concern twisting his pale green features. Kelley could hear her mother’s voice calling out to her. She groped senselessly for the shard of mirror and held it up, looking into Mabh’s anxious face.
“What happened?” the queen asked. “Are you all right?”
“Ow.” Kelley clambered up onto her knees. The fingers of her hand that had touched the phantom iron looked scalded an angry red. “Yeah. Ow . . .”
“Daughter . . .” Auberon was calling her, his voice weak, but clear.
“Dad?” She tried to see around Mabh, who was peering anxiously through the mirror at her. “Mom—give him the mirror.”
Mabh handed the scrying glass to the king, the scene of the room in the Autumn palace bobbing wildly as she did. The change in the Winter King’s appearance was subtle. But it was substantial. Auberon’s eyes seemed less sunken and their black depths glittered fiercely. The drawn tightness of his features had loosened; it almost seemed as if some of the flesh had returned to his bones. He still looked terribly weak, and flashes of pain shot across his face when he moved.
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