Rogue's Paradise

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Rogue rewarded me with a kiss. “With you? Always. Do you wish to be present while I interrogate Fafnir?”

  The image behind his intention chilled my blood. Though it hardly compared to what I’d done to the guy with my claws. Still. “No, that’s okay. But, um, there’s something you might ask him about.”

  Rogue’s face hardened into sharp lines as I relayed what Fafnir had said about stealing Cecily’s corpse. “He’s a worse fool than I thought. I’ll discuss his plans with him. Among other things.”

  “Is he trying to...resurrect her somehow?”

  “If only.” Rogue gave me one more kiss, an absent one, his thoughts deeply shrouded. “I suspect something much worse. But I shall be sure to tell you what I find out.”

  And, with those tantalizing words, he left.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In Which I Perform a Cunning Array of Stunts

  Much as I like thinking, sometimes it’s better just to act already.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “Personal Notes”

  Okay, okay—I revised the list as soon as he left. But only to satisfy my own sense of order. I’d never been particularly inclined toward obsessive/compulsive disorder; however, as control in one area of my life slipped, I felt justified in getting persnickety about others.

  Besides, I’d forgotten to ask how to summon Starling and I couldn’t exactly get going on el numero uno until I did. That moved things around right there. Feeling better, I surveyed my new list, now organized by short-term and long-term goals.

  Okay, maybe I had a titch of OCD.

  Short-Term

  Explore mass-mind web

  Call Athena to bring scepter & dragon eggs

  Call Starling to discuss wedding

  Plan wedding (or delegate to Starling)

  Check in on Walter for Starling

  Feed dragon

  Add notes to grimoire on recent events. Perfect mass-mind calendar skills/add to timeline

  Long-Term

  Find out about this cabal—discuss w/Rogue

  Conception field trip

  Deal with possibility/probability that Rogue remains under Titania’s influence

  Plan strategy for Titania’s surely imminent attack

  My last two long-term goals loomed at the bottom of the list, daunting in their size and unpredictability. But I left them there. Conversely, I resolutely removed “Deal with pregnancy” from the list as my nod to inevitability. Besides, I had no doubt Rogue would deliver Miss Nancy—by hook or by crook, as the saying went, which brought up amusing images, though hopefully he wouldn’t actually employ any of them—and thus I’d done all I could. The baby would, as Rogue pointed out with flawless logic, arrive on its own. Not so much the wedding.

  First things first, indeed.

  Tired of sitting, I paced as I mentally looked for the mass-mind web. Without Rogue’s guiding touch, I fumbled around a fair amount, finding instead various startled minds careening around the castle on their errands. Clumsy me. To my surprise, however, my mental reach extended much farther than I’d have predicted, based on past experience. In fact, as I paced toward the center of the dome, minds even more distant popped up on my mental radar.

  The crystal dome—why hadn’t I realized before?—acted to amplify my abilities, much as the scepter did. Rogue hadn’t mentioned this, which likely meant he’d meant for me to discover it on my own. I could see why. Our very bedroom gave us an edge on the competition.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t exact a similar price. Somehow I didn’t think it would, but that would be a thing to watch for.

  Standing in the exact center of the room, I focused my virtual gaze out from the minds themselves to the delicate strands running in and out of them. Connected, yes, like a web, a fiber leading from each to the next. The threads also spiraled out, attaching to the earth, the trees, even the castle walls. That big null spot must be the dragon. Curiously, similar blank lines emanated from her, too, ending abruptly, as if encountering other unseeable walls. A network of dragons? Hmm.

  It was a mistake, however, to see Rogue’s mental metaphor of a spiderweb in geographical terms, however. While physical proximity mattered to some extent, power of the mind involved factored in more. Rogue, for example, stood out to me like a tower of blue-black flame, the connections between us flowing like tributaries to a great river that flowed in both directions. He noticed my passing with a fond thought.

  Titania, too, blazed through the network as a supernova of magical power, scintillating, in constant motion. Through the icy aura, however, black holes drilled down, much as sunspots on the moving surface of a star. Her wounds, no doubt. So, this was how Rogue had known her level of recovery. I stayed far back from her.

  Especially because, all around her, the web seemed to fold and double back. It put me in mind of graphics I’d seen depicting the way wormholes and other singularities bent the fabric of space. The sheer number and variety of interconnections overwhelmed me. It frightened and nauseated me to attempt to get my brain around the phenomenon.

  Rogue—all the fae—would have developed within this framework, understanding how to move within it reflexively, as a human child learns to put babbling sounds into words. No—as a human child learns to walk upright would be a better analogy. For me, this felt like moving in a new form of gravity, one where my muscles worked all wrong.

  What I needed to do was reframe it to a more workable metaphor for my mind. Imagining the mass mind more like folders and subfolders on a computer, I wrestled the unwieldy concepts into an order I understood. I breathed easier, having tucked Titania’s blaze into an essentially locked folder. No sharing properties. Ha!

  After that, it became easier to find and sort the people I wanted to access regularly. It seemed rude to knock directly on people’s minds, but in lieu of going out and searching—and possibly getting lost again—I fixed on Larch as someone who might not mind. I’d located him easily, his solid blue feel familiar to me, and tried the telepathic equivalent of ringing the doorbell.

  He answered immediately and without rancor, promising to send a page—as I asked, since I figured Larch’s promotion meant he wouldn’t fetch for me anymore—to ask Starling and Athena to come visit me. I could have asked them directly, but I seriously didn’t want to get in the habit of summoning my minions to me from the remote loft of my tower.

  Way too Snow Queen.

  Starling arrived first, which didn’t surprise me. Athena likely had to retrieve the scepter from wherever she’d stowed it. She might even be sitting in on Fafnir’s interrogation, unflinchingly interested as she was.

  Looking me over, Starling nodded in satisfaction, and I felt as if I’d passed a pop quiz. “Will I do?” I asked her in a dry tone.

  “Yes, actually. Though the dragon is a bit outré,” she replied in a saucy tone. “You might have warned me. Your seneschal needs to know these things.”

  “The next time I’m abducted and unexpectedly acquire a gigantic house pet in the process, I’ll be sure to send you a memo.”

  “That would be very thoughtful of you. See that you do.”

  “Someone is feeling feisty this morning.”

  “Afternoon, that is, Lady Gwynn.” She winked at me, her hair shining in the sunlight. “And yes—I like having a staff. I’ve already started amassing the pages to send invitations. Winter solstice for the ceremony then?”

  “I don’t know why anyone bothers asking me.” I frowned at her.

  “Form only. I know how you dote on protocol.”

  “Okay, so, two questions—if this amazing event is three days away, how can the pages possibly invite everyone in time for them to travel here? Why don’t we just announce via the mass mind?”

  “Everyone knows, of course. The invitation by page is more a formality.” She went on from there, explaining who should be invited and in what order.

  Starling would be one of my hopeful monsters, should my theory bear out. Though a second child and not firstbor
n, she looked very nearly human. A tall, long-limbed and graceful woman, yes, but not so much that you’d think twice about it. Her peaches-and-cream skin glowed with perfect vitality that whispered of magic, though it would be put down to youthful health in my world. Her glossy brown eyes sat a bit wider apart in her face, over human-flat cheekbones, with a scattering of freckles grown darker in our journeys. Melanin response, just as in human physiology.

  “Lady Gwynn.” Her tone caught my attention. “Are you even listening to me?”

  I rewound her explanation in my head. “Yes. You’ll send out page-borne invitations immediately, ranked in order of recipient’s importance, starting with the Queen Bitch, the last person I want at my wedding. The silk nymphs will arrive tomorrow to begin work on the gown. Rogue and I need to decide on a location for the actual ceremony—though I got the distinct impression from him that it would be here, but I’ll ask. You will consult with Mistress Nancy when she arrives about catering. Athena has volunteered to corral the dragonfly girls to gather flowers. Yes, the Stargazers from the meadow would be fine and most appropriate—I’ll check with Rogue that it’s okay to cut them. You’ll handle the rest of the decorations.”

  Starling narrowed her eyes at me. “I don’t know how you do that.”

  I gave her a cheeky grin. “It’s a gift.”

  She snorted and opened her mouth to say something else, but Athena arrived, carrying Walt’s scepter, Darling Hercules at her side. She set a velvet bag on the workbench. “Your dragon eggs. I brought them all.” Then she whistled, tipping back her head to take in the expanse of sky. “Nice digs. Lord Rogue is a class act.”

  “He is that.”

  Darling slipped an image in my head of him in eye-blinding armor, performing the ceremony. “I don’t think so,” I replied and he flicked his tail in annoyance. The presence of the scepter in the room sizzled with a subsonic hum.

  Though Darling had brought up a good point. “So, who will marry us?”

  Athena and Starling cocked their heads in that quizzical way, while Darling Hercules leaped up on my workbench and batted the rubber ducky off with the cat equivalent of a smirk. I moved the grimoire out of his reach.

  “You marry each other,” Starling finally said, nice and slow for the idiot girl.

  “No, no.” Hell, it confused things in good old American English too. “In my world, people get married according to a religion. So a priest or representative of that god or goddess performs the ceremony for them.” Or the judge did it for the government. Pretty much the same thing, in the end. Snarky me.

  “Are you saying you want Titania to perform the ceremony?” Athena raised her powder-blue eyebrows in astonished arches.

  “God, no!”

  “It’s your special day.” Starling glared at Athena. “You should have what you want.”

  “No. I don’t want it to be like that.” Watch me turn into Bridezilla. Given Faerie magic, I’d morph into Godzilla in a froufrou gown. “When Blackbird and Fergus got married, how did that work?”

  A little line appeared on Starling’s brow. “I don’t know. I’ll ask when they arrive.”

  “They’re coming?”

  “Of course, Gwynn!” Starling nearly stamped her foot. “They wouldn’t miss the wedding of the millennium. I’ve been trying to tell you—everyone who is anyone will be there.”

  “Clearly excluding the everyones who aren’t anyone,” Athena observed. My little fae Che Guevara.

  “I agree, everyone should be invited. After,” I specified, seeing Starling’s aghast expression, “the bigwigs receive their invitations.” Rogue would not be at all pleased to have humans at the wedding, but if the bride is one, I say the others get to come too. “Now—how is it possible that Blackbird is coming? Are you saying Fergus found her and is retrieving her from sailing the sea?”

  She lifted one shoulder. Let it fall. “I don’t know. Fafnir mentioned at the feast that they’re on their way.”

  All so convoluted. I’d check in on them too. It began to feel as if the Castle of the Dark Gods had a big homing signal on it, with all of my personal pigeons flocking home to roost.

  Starling gathered her skirts. “I’m off then. I have work to do.” She stared pointedly at Athena, who grinned cheerfully and didn’t move.

  “Oh! Before you go, Starling—can we arrange for magic apples to feed the dragon?” Look at me, Queen of Delegating.

  “Already requested.” Starling gave me a smug look.

  “You are amazing,” I told her. “How much do I love you?”

  “Not nearly enough.” She sniffed, but she bustled off with a happy bounce in her stride.

  “I’ll hang for a few.” Athena said, when I looked at her in question, maintaining her grip on the scepter, giving me an implacable look.

  “You don’t trust me alone with the scepter?”

  “Nope.” She popped her lips over the word, making me realize she’d said it in English. So much of me had leaked into her. “I’ll wait while you use it and then put it away again.”

  I itched enough to get my hands on the thing again that I respected Athena’s caution. The scepter definitely possessed some sort of addictive quality. My recent discovery of the dome’s properties might mean I could use that as a tool instead, but for now I intended to fulfill my promise to Starling. That she’d left without arguing further, her glance flicking to the scepter and away, indicated she hadn’t forgotten, but had simply been good about not nagging me.

  Gravely, Athena handed me the scepter, standing by like a weight-lifting spotter while I settled cross-legged into my chair, laying the awkward object across my lap. A heavy crystal sphere on one end of a fairly long staff, the scepter didn’t balance well. It looked great for brandishing, however, as Walter had done frequently before I took the damn thing away from him.

  Darling leaped onto the other arm of the chair, my flanking sentry.

  “I’m not going to go psycho with one peek,” I said, trying not to be irritable. The scepter sang softly in my hands, the staff smooth, solid, fitting my hands perfectly. The crystal globe swirled with light, beckoning me to touch.

  “Then it will be no trouble for you to hand it over again.” Now that Athena had given me the scepter, she’d pulled out her dagger, spinning it artfully. The slightly menacing aspect, complemented by her spiked hair and that sharp, restless mind, got my attention. Not that Athena wasn’t always serious—sometimes dismayingly so, despite her flower of a face and lavender eyes—but she clearly meant business.

  “I won’t use it if you think it’s that bad.” I definitely wouldn’t mention the dome’s properties. Rogue wouldn’t have built it for me if he thought it could be damaging. Right?

  “It’s a good experiment,” came her nonanswer. “Let’s see how you do, since you’re...better.”

  Better than what? But I knew exactly what, even before Darling Hercules gave me an image of my haggard self, riding through the Glass Mountains, a starving husk with despair written all over her. Surely I hadn’t looked that awful. Athena and the cat simply gazed back at me, lavender and green eyes sharing common sympathy—and determination. I’d never mentioned the dreams to them, of Rogue in Titania’s bed, of them laughing at my efforts to find him. It hadn’t been all about using the wizard’s staff.

  “Fine. Poke me if I get weird. But don’t get blood on the carpet.”

  Even Athena didn’t laugh at that one. Some humor was simply lost on the fae.

  I put my hands on the crystal globe. And, oh yes, it satisfied some deep craving, like a shot of whiskey after a four-hour department meeting. As if I’d strapped on a mental jetpack, my thoughts took off with fabulous speed and power. Belatedly it occurred to me that the scepter and the dome would amplify each other.

  It felt so amazing that I couldn’t find it in me to care. Better than riding on the Liralen.

  Barely did I think of Walter than I was there, hovering somewhere right behind his forehead. Wrenching and sordidly disori
enting. I should have braced myself for the return to the scene of my horrific sorcery training. One day it wouldn’t bother me so much. I hoped. For the time being, however, the scene I happened into made me reel. I’d left Walter with my erstwhile trainers, Marquise and Scourge, knowing full well their predilection for sadistic kink as a tool for teaching self-discipline.

  I’d tried my best to warn Walter and, sure enough, they were working him over. Being in his head while they did it sent a flood of revulsion through me.

  Marquise’s eerily beautiful face gazed up, contorted with pleasure, words of endearment falling from her lips, her Christmas-ornament eyes glittering. The erotic joy of fucking her filled Walt’s mind with delirium, urged higher by the agonizing pain from Scourge’s whip falling on him from behind.

  I nearly vomited. Would have, had I not been out of my own body.

  I yanked myself away, the point-of-view refocusing like a camera panning back to a wider angle. The scene still played out—still deeply disturbing to my scarred self—but blessedly less immediate. Walt was determinedly working to please Marquise as Scourge whipped him—and as he magically altered a nearby cube from white to black, to a sphere, to a pyramid, instantly and perfectly at each of Scourge’s shouted commands.

  Lessons in exacting magic under the most distracting conditions. Well did I remember those trials.

  And how grateful was I that Rogue had taken the steps he did to spare me actual rape by those two. Steps that had ultimately placed him in Titania’s grip, and in her bed.

  Marquise smiled, a delighted expression that had nothing to do with Walt’s steady efforts. Hello, precious pet, she mentally crooned at me. Felicitations on your nuptials. We all three shall attend. She blew me a kiss, her tinkling laugh following when I zoomed myself back, their castle spinning into a dot below me.