Rogue's Paradise

by Jeffe Kennedy

  The image of me, years in the future, walking these halls with a boy like Billy or a girl of Athena’s size, reading the signs to find our way, took me aback. Likely my half-breed child would exceed my abilities and would need no such markers. It would be me on my own, forever not truly belonging to this place. Without real family—just fae connections.

  The thought depressed me utterly.

  The dragon looked pleased to see me, puffing out a sparking breath in the chill air and nodding her chin at a basket of the apples. How Starling had gotten them so fast, I didn’t know, but I appreciated it. Darling Hercules and I stayed out of range of her magic dampening field, which she seemed to considerately keep close.

  I took the velvet bag of eggs out of my pocket and opened it, setting the remaining four in front of her. As I’d planned to do all along. But no, Rogue had to be a jerk about them. He’d been good about the dragon the night before, and that morning. Probably he’d just said something out of his general pissy mood. Not that it excused him.

  It was worth it though, to see her amber lantern eyes gleam with delight. With a gentle claw—which seemed unnecessary to me since the things were hard as gemstones—she gathered them close. Then she plucked an apple from the basket and held it out to me.

  “No, thank you,” I said, as politely as I could. “They’re poisonous to me.”

  With a dip of her chin, she insisted, and I stretched out my hands, again with that sense of reverence I’d felt when I first encountered one—probably her—in Walter’s castle. In the late afternoon light, she glittered as if covered with jewels herself. Immense and full of tangible power, she filled me with awe. As if some racial memory from a cavewoman ancestor whispered to me of dinosaurs walking the earth.

  Not at all logical, but there it was.

  She dropped the apple neatly into my cupped hands and dipped her chin again, indicating it. I examined it, though I’d seen them before and this could be one I’d plucked myself during the harvest at Castle Brightness. But no—the apple had changed, seeming to be made of purest gold. The basket still held regular apples, shining deep red. Well, as regular as poisonous fruit that fed the magic-free dragons could be. So, she’d changed it. Transmutation into gold.

  She winked at me then, slow and deliberate. Some kind of message for me.

  Not for the first time, I missed that we couldn’t seem to speak directly. All those years of my life not hearing mind-to-mind communications and now I felt crippled by its lack.

  “Are you warm enough?” I asked her, more rhetorically than anything else. Though the sun shone bright, the wind possessed a cutting edge. Enough that I wished up a cloak—not the one Rogue gave me—and a gust caught at it, making it snap like a pennant. “We could move you to an inside room, like you had at Walter’s.”

  I caught a rustle of amusement before she set her great head protectively over the eggs and closed her eyes. Guess that was a no.

  And a clear dismissal.

  Pocketing my golden apple—wasn’t one part of the story with Aphrodite, Helen of Troy and Paris?—I walked with Darling Hercules back inside. He suggested some mouse hunting, which I declined, to his disappointment. If I followed my list, I should go back to my tower room and make notes. I seethed with too much restlessness for that and my black mood made me unambitious, to boot. Blame my stubborn nature, but mostly I wanted to leave the castle. To go anywhere else, now that I couldn’t. I felt stifled, cooped up. Yes, I’d promised to try to be gracious, but that was before Rogue smacked me down like a disobedient toddler. An insidious voice whispered that I had indeed traded away my freedom, as I’d dreaded all along.

  I loved Rogue. No escaping that fact. But it didn’t change reality.

  After all, the feeling of being in love was all endorphins and, like a junkie coming down from a high, without that drugging influence, I saw my current situation in a cold and sober light. No wonder Nancy and Fafnir thought I’d been coerced. Seduced counted. It only felt more pleasant while it happened.

  I didn’t know what to think and I really hated being in that place.

  Worse, I had no one to talk to. No one who didn’t have some stake in the outcome, who could give me unbiased, objective feedback. Darling Hercules sent me an image of a handsome young man, his former self, possibly, listening intently.

  “Thank you, but you’re not good for advice. I mean that in the nicest way.”

  Not sure where I wanted to go, except far, far away, I plopped down on the tower steps, unable to motivate myself to go any farther, and Darling perched beside me in glum agreement. The tower had no windows, which made it comfortingly dark. It served as a place to hide, at least for a while. I could have sat outside with the dragon, but the wind was blowing too cold and she didn’t want me there anyway. Mostly I wanted to drink too much wine and drown my sorrows—to an alarming degree, given that I couldn’t do that either.

  After a time, footsteps came up the circling stairs, the scent of Rogue’s blue-black magic preceding him. He appeared around the bend, expression carefully blank.

  “I don’t think I want to talk to you right now,” I said, before he got too close.

  “So you’ll sit in a dark tower instead?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “Not like you.”

  “That’s me—full of surprises.”

  “I won’t apologize for being angry with you.” He’d stopped a few steps below me, one foot higher than the other.

  “Makes for a short conversation, anyway.”

  He said nothing to that.

  “Fine. I’ll go first. Unlike you, I am sorry for what happened. It was a mistake, but I didn’t know. The baby is fine. I won’t do it again.”

  “I know you won’t, because I’ll keep that cursed scepter out of your reach. Had I any idea what you’d laid hold of, I’d never have let you use it.”

  “Let me? I’m sorry—I think you’ve mistaken me for a fuck-toy after all.”

  “Don’t start with that again. You were wrong and you said so.”

  He just didn’t get it. Worse, it seemed more and more likely that he never would. A lifetime of this battle lay ahead of me. I sighed. “Darling Hercules—would you excuse us?”

  With an affectionate thought and sweep of his tail, he trotted down the stairs, swiping a paw at Rogue as he passed.

  “Come now, stubborn Gwynn.” Rogue made an effort to sound coaxing, but I’d had enough of being coaxed and seduced. “It was a misunderstanding. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable. Have you eaten? Mistress Nancy said that—”

  “I think we shouldn’t get married.”

  That stopped him. “You already promised. Will you break that vow?”

  “I wouldn’t be breaking it. I promised that I would marry you, but not when.”

  “You agreed to winter solstice. Only hours ago.”

  “Yes, but you said that agreements between you and me like that no longer held the same binding force of a bargain.” Loopholes had saved me before.

  “Gwynn—” He started up the next step.

  “No. Stay there. I don’t want you touching me. I—I’m very unhappy with you.” Though the words were mild, my voice shook with the force of the emotion behind it. “There’s a saying among my people that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.”

  “Meaning?” he inquired in a stiff, formal tone.

  “Meaning that we keep coming to agreements and then you revert to type, every time. You pretend that we’re equal partners and then you go autocratic and treat me like an idiot that you need to manage.”

  “What you did was idiotic,” he insisted.

  “You think I don’t know that? I’m grateful you dragged me back, that you saved my miserable life, yet again.”

  “I didn’t.” He bit out the words. “I couldn’t. Where you’d gone, how you’d done it—I couldn’t reach you. I thought I’d lost you forever.” His despera
te terror glinted like a flash of a raven’s wing, tossed in the ocean and submerged again.

  “Then how?”

  “You grabbed me and pulled yourself back, through the connection to Titania, so far as I can tell. You couldn’t come straight to me, so you went through her. It shouldn’t have been possible.”

  No wonder I felt sick, coated with her mental slime. “It scared me too. She’s nearly healed. I saw her. And, in that place, I saw her ties going into you and from you into me, working their way to the baby. She can get to us through you. It’s not healthy for us to be connected to you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I want out. I can’t do this. I can’t be your wife. Live in this place. Let’s do whatever ritual we need to do to cut the ties. I’ll hide somewhere, have the baby and we can work out some kind of joint custody.”

  “And go into the desert alone?”

  “So unfair of you to use that.”

  “I’m not using it.” With a heavy sigh, he set his back against the curved wall and slid down to sit a few steps below me. “I can’t apologize for being angry, but I regret that it upset you. It came from a place of fear. I’m not accustomed to feeling that way.”

  “That doesn’t excuse anything and it doesn’t change my mind.”

  “Sometimes we are going to disagree. Even fight with each other, stubborn Gwynn.”

  “That’s not it.” I didn’t think it was. “I think marrying you would be a mistake.”

  There. I said it. The words echoed cold and heavy between us.

  “Be that as it may, the cords cannot be cut. You’re welcome to try, as you no doubt will since there appears to be nothing you won’t attempt, but you will not succeed.”

  “Till death do us part then. Meaning mine.”

  “Not even that.”

  Ominous. “What it that supposed to mean?”

  “I found out what Fafnir’s plan is—just now, so don’t be angry I didn’t tell you sooner. It appears Cecily’s spirit remains tied to him. He believes their child might still be alive.”

  A changeling in my world? “Then he does want to reanimate her corpse.”

  “He hoped to study you and your connections to our child, then use her flesh to...find them.”

  The implications of that rippled through me. Like the Catholic version of the soul, confined in purgatory. This did make me feel better.

  “So, you’re saying there’s no going back for me. I’m trapped. For eternity if I am to believe that kind of claptrap.”

  “If you care to see it that way, then yes. From the beginning you’ve been tied to me, and with the passing of time, those cords have strengthened. All that’s changed is your awareness of them. I’ve done my best to make it palatable for you, but like it or not, here we are, each bound to the other.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  He laughed, a bitter sound. “Don’t you see? It goes both ways. If she had you, she had me. And vice versa. We’re stuck with each other, my spirited Gwynn. And you will marry me in three days’ time. Virtually all of Faerie has been invited, which means you made that agreement with each and every one of them and thus so did I. You’ve asked for honesty, for me to explain things. There you are. You don’t have to be happy about marrying me, but you will do it. For your own damn good, if nothing else.”

  “I hate it when you treat me like you know better than I do.”

  “On some things I do.”

  He was, of course, right about that. Not that it sat any better with me.

  He stood and started down the steps again. Paused. “If you won’t do it for your own good, consider doing it for mine. That might not be enough, but at least give it some thought.”

  “You just want to win.”

  “Yes,” he answered without ceasing his descent. “For us all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In Which I Star in the Center Ring of the Three-Ring Circus

  Never invite the evil queen to your wedding.

  ~Big Book of Fairyland, “Personal Observations”

  We didn’t see much of each other over the next couple of days.

  Good for regaining perspective, for clearing my head of the fog of sex and seductive emotion. Also lonely. Which only served to both add to my doldrums and also piss me off more. Mostly I was mad at myself, but it was easier to push that onto Rogue and his high-handed ways.

  If you won’t do it for your own good, consider doing it for mine.

  Like I owed him something. Pompous autocratic control freak.

  I really wanted to talk out my concerns and it made me feel crazy that he was the only one I wanted to talk to.

  Starling kept me busy with inane activities and meaningless decisions. I didn’t care what color my dress should be, so she badgered me until I told her anything but white. As to where the ceremony would take place, I referred her to Rogue, stopping just short of telling her I didn’t give a shit. None of it mattered a whit to me, except that I had gotten myself well and truly stuck. All the preparations took on such a surreal cast that I found it hard to take any of it seriously. I visited the dragon several times, fantasizing about riding off on her back to some remote location where I might hide and never be found.

  Only the prospect of breaking my agreement with all of Faerie—and the specter of Titania’s spidery self draining me dry while I never quite died of it—kept me from running. And maybe a dollop of guilt.

  Otherwise, I would have, I told myself. But I was fresh out of loopholes.

  On the rare occasions I did see Rogue, he treated me with polite and wary distance. He neither ate with me nor shared our bed. I suspected he mainly kept out of my way. Self-preservation, perhaps, though he seemed dangerously on edge also. I began to feel like one of those maidens in historical romances, forced into a marriage of convenience with the brooding and perhaps deranged gothic hero.

  Only it didn’t suit me to play the role of naive virgin.

  More and more people began arriving, Starling breathlessly informing me of each and every one. Mostly I didn’t care about that either, except the ones who verified the long-distance seeing as accurate. Fortunately, Lord Rogue didn’t require me to greet them, probably not willing to test my temper that far. I wouldn’t have been able to face any of them, particularly not Marquise and Scourge with Walter as their hapless slave. Starling mentioned that she’d seen them, her tone carefully neutral, and said nothing more when I didn’t comment.

  I’d already given her an edited version of what I’d found out and that was all I cared to say on the topic.

  I couldn’t discuss what weighed most heavily on my mind, and everything else seemed too frivolous to bear. Everyone tiptoed around me and my foul mood, which suited me well enough.

  Everyone, that is, except Puck.

  The night before the wedding—to my relief, there seemed to be no fae version of the bachelorette party or, if there was, Athena and Starling knew better than to suggest it—he waltzed into my tower with no announcement, wearing an outfit seemingly constructed of turquoise cabbage roses. “Lady Gwynn,” he sang out, “I have a pig to pick with you.”

  I looked up from my grimoire, where I’d been trying to work out how the fae phyla and species might branch from one another, to distract myself from feeling like a pitiful prisoner. “I think you mean a bone to pick.”

  “What fun would that be?” He did a shuffle step and jingle bells hidden deep in the cabbage roses chimed. “Which, neither are you.”

  “Fun?” I stood and stretched. I should walk more, but without anywhere to go but inside the castle, which just put me more on edge with all its unsettling twists and turns, I’d kept to my room. I hadn’t cared to run into Rogue or someone like Nasty Tinker Bell either. “I think I’m facing enough serious issues that I don’t need to be trying to make merry.”

  “Nonsense. That’s when the most merrymaking modalities must may be.”

  He’d spoken to me in English, as he sometime
s did. Nevertheless. “You realize that made no sense.”

  “Does anything?” He shrugged elaborately.

  “Good point.”

  He flopped onto the bed, crossed hands under his head and stared up at the sky. “Tell me, doctor, all of your problems.”

  “I think you have our positions reversed.”

  “Ah, yes—then I shall tell you. You’re being foolishly mortal. There. You can pay me in wine.”

  “For lousy advice? I don’t think so.”

  “Is this better? Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”

  “Seems I’ve heard that one before,” I replied in a dry tone.

  “And yet you seem to think your eyes have been blinded by fairy dust.”

  “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, right?”

  “But not within probability.”

  “Meaning?”

  He hopped up and tapped me on the nose. His nails were painted pink. “Meaning, you’re a smart girl. Trust your mind, not your eyes.”

  “That’s just it—I don’t know if I can trust my own mind.”

  “You always have before. Yes? Yes? Yes?” With each question, he executed a box step, adding the jazz hands that made me laugh despite everything.

  “Yes,” I finally agreed.

  He snagged my ever-present carafe of wine and drank it down. “Much better!” And Puck left as abruptly as he’d arrived.

  Use my mind, huh? Hardly seemed like useful advice, but I sat back down and set myself to composing a list of pros and cons on whether to marry Rogue. He might imply I had no choice, but if I really didn’t want to marry him, I’d find a way out.

  I didn’t care what anyone said—there’s always a choice.

  Pros

  Security from cabal

  Protection from QB’s final solution

  Companionship