Rogue's Paradise

by Jeffe Kennedy

  My throat tightened as I recalled what he’d said, when the feline spirit first manifested, that she’d take flesh from mine—something my mortal body certainly could not withstand.

  “You said you would help with that.”

  “I said I would try. And I know you asked me not to say this, but I must point it out since you seem to be in denial of this truth—the stakes are higher. Should our efforts fail, the child will likely die.”

  And, not incidentally, me along with it. “Dang—and then you’d have to go find some other human from my world to knock up. Just think of the inconvenience.”

  “Do you mock me, cruel Gwynn?” he asked, voice deadly quiet.

  He was right, I didn’t want to think about the reality of this baby inside me. I would have to come to terms with it at some point, but it pissed me off that this was a factor in my life now. This pregnancy I had never agreed to or wanted. Maybe I didn’t even totally believe in the baby’s existence. It would be nice to see an ultrasound or something. I had no way of knowing how far along it was. Though I’d tried to keep track of days in my grimoire, it still worried me that time moved differently here.

  Besides it wasn’t as if I had any sort of experience along these lines. Completely out of my depth with no medical resources to guide me. Who could blame me for being in denial?

  Still.

  “You’re right. That was mean and uncalled for. I take it back.” Kind of. “It just continues to eat at me that I’m only important to you as some kind of vessel for your progeny.”

  “I think that sometimes you say these things to me so that I’ll reassure you that they are not true.”

  I cringed, hating that he’d called me out on my insecurity. Also, it seemed I could never explain my very mixed feelings about this pregnancy. I’m not thrilled about giving birth in what amounts to a Third World country. How much he understood of that, I didn’t know. But what still remained a theoretical construct to me seemed to carry considerably more import for him. His next words confirmed it.

  “I didn’t tell you this before, because of the way you fret that the child is more important to me than you are, but the babe you carry is my one and only opportunity.” His eyes burned like the heart of the flame on a Bunsen burner. “So, my tenderer feelings for you aside, I also have a stake in this battle of yours.”

  Chapter Nine

  In Which I Fight an Epic Battle...Against Myself

  Sometimes I wonder if the commonality of references to forces like “Mother Earth” reflects a parallel between my world and Faerie, or if that’s simply my own frame of reference contaminating my observations.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “General Observations”

  “So, if that’s where you stand on the matter, why are we even here?” I gestured at the practice arena, feeling more than a little heartsick about it all. “I’ll just loll about and gestate.”

  His jaw flexed, and it perversely pleased me that I’d annoyed him. “We are here because I already agreed that it’s your choice. I would likely want the same thing.”

  “But I’m risking the embryo’s viability.” Took some getting used to the idea. “You’re right. I didn’t want to think about that.”

  “And, not incidentally, your own life.”

  Now that part had become quite familiar. “Let me ask you this.” I weighed my options. “Okay, if I give this up, let the cat keep the claws until at least the baby is born, what kind of guarantee does that give us? Will it be enough to satisfy her—particularly if I’m having to work magic, given what lies ahead of us?” One thing I did know—the more I worked magic, the more the cat stirred. I could probably graph it on a nice exponential log scale.

  Rogue contemplated my questions. “You do have a rather ruthless method of breaking down options.”

  “I take it that’s a no.”

  “Beyond the fact that there are no guarantees?” He shook his head, bothered. “I must admit that you are right. The détente, as you called it, is unlikely to last long—particularly if you draw heavily on magic, as you’ll undoubtedly be required to do. This is a downside to you being a sorceress that I failed to consider.”

  “Hey, even you can’t plan for every damn thing.”

  “If you only knew. Shall we explore your other options then?”

  “I can’t wait.”

  He began pacing. “The principle to understand is that the cat is a separate entity from you. Though her roots twine in your soul, the seed that gave her life came from elsewhere.”

  “Like some kind of elemental spirit.” I tried out the concept on him, to see if it would click or not.

  “If you will.”

  Okay, good. “So, when I work magic, I create a sort of fertile soil that allows her to grow and draw strength.” A closer parallel to the embryo than I liked. Don’t think about that now. “But why does Falcon have one? He works no magic.”

  Falcon—call him General—had been in charge of my life for too long. I’d enjoyed pushing him into the involuntary reaction that made him a falcon in truth. Small joys.

  “Yes, he does—you’re simply not aware of it.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  He stopped his pacing and glanced over his shoulder at me, the tail of his long hair sliding like ink over his shoulder. “You won’t like it.”

  I snorted, wanting to fold my arms but settling for sliding the razor edge of one index-finger claw against the curved back of the other. It made a satisfying hiss. I seemed to be improving with my dexterity. Small comfort. “Color me shocked.”

  “He mentioned it to you—his services to those such as Lady Healer. He has a gift for giving pain.”

  “The opposite of Darling’s anesthetic abilities.”

  “Close to that.”

  “Not terribly useful, as magical gifts go.”

  “No, but then he’s never been imaginative with its application either. Instead he squanders it on sexual play with those who crave such things.” Rogue raised a brow at me. Significantly.

  I nearly choked. “You think that I would have...” I couldn’t complete the sentence, the image revolted me so thoroughly.

  “Falcon did imply as much.” He lifted one shoulder. “And it’s not as if I didn’t find you seeking pleasure with that human man.”

  “That was...” a mistake. A diversion. A desperate attempt to rediscover my own agency. And the betrayal that had nearly cost him his body, if not his life. And I’d failed to finish yet another sentence.

  “You asked me about Titania.” He pointed that out with relentless calm. Ouch.

  “Then no. I didn’t even really want him. And I did not dally with Falcon. You’re the only one I’ve ever wan—” Shit. I should not have confessed that. And three time’s a charm.

  Rogue pounced, literally, on me in a moment and lifted my chin so I had to look into his face. “The only you’ve ever... what?”

  My face grew hot. Along with the rest of me. “Really wanted. Like this.”

  “Like how?” He feathered a kiss across my mouth, as if tasting what I might say.

  Desperately. Unceasingly. Beyond will and reason. Easier to show than say it, I opened my mind to him again, only then becoming aware of how tightly I’d shut it on that set of feelings. No wonder he’d been uncertain.

  His mouth turned hard, demanding and as voracious as the spirit animals he’d described. My own hunger billowed explosively to his spark. In a moment, the kiss was over, leaving me blinking in confusion.

  “I feel the same,” he said. Then grinned. “Your technique of needling for extra reassurance is an excellent one.”

  I groaned, dropping my forehead on his chest. “I’ve created a monster.”

  “No,” he replied, with easy charm that belied the anger that swirled from inside him, “that happened long before you met me.” Before I could respond to that, he continued, setting me back on my feet and stepping back. “Turn your eye inward, toward your animal like you did for yourself when
I asked that question. What does she want? How does she want it?”

  Ignoring for the moment the sneaking suspicion that this whole conversation had been a teaching ploy, I did as he said, searching her heart as I’d searched my own, asking for her feelings.

  Unlike the reasonably quiet inner chambers of my mind, hers ran wild and hot, a quicksilver slide of seeking desires. Sharp teeth wanted bloody meat. Razor claws needed to rend and tear. Sinews to slide and stretch. Muscles to run.

  “She wants out,” I whispered, profoundly rattled by the power of the cat spirit’s need. “Nothing else matters.”

  “But she can’t be out.” Rogue’s voice was firm. “She cannot last long without your life to draw from. If she comes out now, you’ll die, which means her death also. Make her understand that.”

  “She doesn’t care. It would be worth it.”

  “She’s wrong. She doesn’t know. Tell her what she can have if only she waits, has patience.”

  “What? What can I have?” The voice purred inside me, speaking with my tongue. Disconcerted by it, I almost lost the focus on her, but a brush of Rogue’s thoughts directed me back. Keep the thread. I clung to the anchor with gratitude.

  “You could have centuries,” he offered. “Power beyond dreaming.”

  “Flesh?”

  “Flesh to wear and to rend and to eat. But, if you spring upon the prey too soon, it will escape you. Patience rewards the wily hunter.”

  “Patience,” the cat hissed from deep inside me. “The hunter knows patience.”

  “Yes. Take back your claws. Keep them until the time.”

  She balked at that, resisting. My fingers burned with her annoyance. The claws anchored her to the world, let her taste and feel it.

  “You can bring them out again, from time to time,” I told her. “We’ll run.”

  “And hunt?”

  “Yes. To reward your patience.”

  She growled a bit, considering. “Take them then. For now.”

  I tried, wishing the claws gone. Wishing them transformed to air. The magic dissipated, as if it found nothing to attach to. “I don’t know how.”

  A nearly fatal mistake to admit that.

  The growl became a purr of amusement. She nudged at the inside of my skin, then pushed with more vigor, making my ribs creak with strain. “Perhaps you offer me nothing. Why should I not seize what I can? You have no power. You are weak and worthless.”

  “That’s not true. I am more powerful than you.”

  “Prove it.” She issued the challenge in the hissing silence of my heart. With a liquid lunge, she hurled herself against my rib cage, threatening to burst free as I’d once seen the Dog erupt from the shreds of Rogue’s broken body.

  “Gwynn!” Rogue’s shout echoed, a useless warning from an unbridgeable distance, for I was already wrestling with her. The anchoring rope of his thoughts slid away from my grasp. It was all I could do to fight the cat down with all of my strength. She had me by the throat and I dug my claws, the ones she’d foolishly lost to me in her greed, into her soft belly.

  For this, too, Rogue had handed me the power, stoking the desire in me. But I needed more. All those lean, despairing days while I had searched for him, the final conflict with Titania, my brush with death—they all left me without reserves. I’d begun refilling the well, but watching the power drain away, I knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  I should have waited.

  Waiting would not have helped.

  She, too, drew from me and would grow stronger as I did.

  It would not have saved me to wait. Perhaps nothing could.

  Eager, feeling me weaken with the onset of despair, the cat closed her jaws on me. Just as the Black Dog had in my first few hours in Faerie. I found myself on my back, claws digging into the packed earth of the arena, my body pressed flat. The internal rack of her determination stretched me, my muscles and sinews threatening to tear asunder.

  The learning is in the doing, Rogue had said, but what could I possibly do?

  I hurled wishes at her, but they slid off, mercury on glass. My energy drained away with each attempt and I made myself stop.

  With a delighted purr, she flexed, and I screamed with the pain. Worse, the extent of my dreadful miscalculation eroded me further. I’d been so determined, so stubborn and now... Now I’d lost not only my own life, but our unborn child’s also. I couldn’t let that happen.

  I needed another source of energy, now.

  I have resources outside myself.

  Mother Earth is the font of all our life, magical and otherwise.

  With nothing left to lose, I reached down into the earth, seeking that font. At first I flailed, finding only what I expected—dirt, the crust over magma beneath. There had to be more. Rogue had said as much. He would never lie to me about something that important. I refocused, looking wider, without expectation.

  The magma layers roiled, not like the dull diagrams in the textbooks, but vivacious and bubbling. The blood of the earth, hot and stoked with unimaginable potential.

  Deep in the center and beating like a living heart lived not a metallic core, but a vivid, eternal and infinite fountain of fiery life.

  I approached feeling as I once had standing before a dragon. It burned with a similar heat, both wholly magic and impervious to it. The same sense of worshipful awe infused me. My heart beat in time with it—a rhythm that somehow synchronized with both my own 2/4 atrial/ventricular pattern and the 3/4 that belonged to Rogue.

  No, not that belonged to Rogue this time, but to the fetal heartbeat within me.

  My fae child resolved into being for me at that moment.

  Vividly real. Precious and perfect.

  The earth’s core welcomed me, mother to daughter to granddaughter, and I drank from it, filling myself and layering my fleshly body with her enduring strength.

  I turned to the cat, which still tried to savage me, desperate to separate from the soil it had grown in.

  Don’t try to control it.

  My thought or Rogue’s? Mother Earth’s? For this was her daughter too.

  Mentally, I stroked the feline, showing it love and care. I had no desire to trap her. Together we would find a way. In good faith, I shared Mother Earth’s energy with her, feeding her.

  She didn’t exactly give in, but she subsided, drinking in what I offered and, replete for the first time in her conscious existence, relaxed.

  As compromises went, it was a good one.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes.

  Rogue sat nearby, long arms wrapped around his bent knees, chin resting on the backs of his hands, watching me with midnight eyes that revealed little of what was going on in his head. A fleeting impression made me think he’d been waiting a long time.

  I sat up, aches in every fiber of my being, somewhat dismayed to see the curved platinum claws still extending from my fingertips. But the magic surged through me, the steady pulse of the heart of the earth.

  Not to control, but to coexist. Rogue had suggested that from the start, but apparently I’d had to learn it for myself.

  With a pointed thought, instead of getting rid of the claws, I retracted them. An important distinction, the pulling of them back inside me, from whence I could extend them again.

  Or I could, the cat murmured, sleepily and from a great distance.

  Yes, I replied. If I agree. Then I flexed my fingers, delighted to have this key characteristic of my humanity back. At least on the surface.

  “Well done.” Rogue uncoiled into a more relaxed position. “Though it was a near thing.”

  “She nearly escaped me.”

  “Yes. I saw.”

  “But you didn’t interfere.”

  “As I’ve tried to persuade you many times, my Gwynn, some things are beyond even me. Though your confidence in me is gratifying.

  “That’s why you wanted to do this in here,” I said, the light dawning. “If she had broken free, the silver here would have contained
her.

  “Hopefully, yes. It should come as no surprise to me that your animal is more powerful—and in an unusual way—than any I have seen. It would not have done to have her loose in the castle or the countryside.”

  “If silver could contain her here, then wouldn’t silver have kept her inside me, also?”

  Rogue’s eyes gleamed in the sourceless light. “Of course.”

  “Then why—”

  He shook his head at me, the abrupt movement stopping me. “Do you think I forget my promises to you so easily? I swore never to bind you in silver again. Even to save your life or our child’s life, I would not violate my oath to you, my Gwynn.”

  Oh. From the resonance of his words, I knew he meant more than the typical consequences for oathbreaking, becoming vulnerable to Titania’s psychotic whims. That was plenty bad enough. No, he meant something else here. Something intimately between us. I was an idiot. “If I’d realized before, I could have made peace with it. Maybe it would be different, if I’d made the choice.”

  As he studied me, his lips twitched, in a not-smile. The black lines on his face seemed to unfurl then tighten again. His animal crawling near the skin. The Dog, pressing to escape. My own skin itched at the left temple and down my cheek, knowing how it felt.

  “I’ve seen inside your head,” he said. “I know what that did to you. Know something of it myself. Some prisons are worth self-destruction to escape.”

  “Thank you.” I said it quietly, but with firm intent, knowing full well what such an expression of gratitude could mean.

  He inclined his head, accepting it.

  “You might have told me, though, about finding the earth,” I added, with some asperity, to lighten his grave mood.

  “I couldn’t, no. First—” he raised a brow to stop my argument in its tracks, “—some teachings cannot be spoken or shown. You might consider them a sort of final exam. If a student cannot find the connection on their own, they will never be able to use it. Second, you were thinking too much. Sometimes teaching means shoving a student in the right direction and hoping she trips over it instead of her own wagging tongue.”