by AJ Lancaster
By lunchtime, Hetta was sick of fae royalty, her entire family, and the fact that coffee continued to smell like something rancid. The last still felt like a personal betrayal. She caught only fleeting glimpses of Wyn, who was weighted down under a pile of queries and complaints from all parties. She knew he’d been up most of the night as well, talking to Irokoi about what they needed for the spell to free first Catsmere and then the Spires.
She stared down at the draft of her report to Queen Matilda, dreading the next task on her list. She didn’t want to go back to Penharrow, to face the guilt of the damaged manor and the disgust of the lords. Thoughts of hiding under her desk and pretending to be invisible were far too tempting, but she had to try. This would be her last opportunity to sway any of the lords before the Conclave itself, thanks to the time-bending of Deeper Faerie; she wouldn’t get another opportunity to make up for the first impression she’d made on the Chair. Not that she felt particularly gracious towards Lord Arran after seeing how he’d reacted to Wyn and Gwendelfear, but she supposed he had just suffered a tremendous shock at the time. She’d give him another chance if he’d give her one.
She was guiltily grateful when Lady Phoebe came in and provided a brief distraction—even if the distraction was the fraught subject of Hetta’s wedding. How many people should they cater for? Where should the ceremony be held? What could they use for seating? Did Hetta want Laurel as a flower girl? Who should make her dress?
“I’ll wear my mother’s wedding dress,” Hetta found herself saying to the last, to both her own and Phoebe’s surprise. She remembered finding the elegant silk dress in the attic as a child with a mix of excitement and sadness. “I mean, if the fabric is still good. I haven’t actually looked at it in years.”
Phoebe beamed. “That’s a lovely idea. I shall have it brought out so we can check.” She got up and then fluttered indecisively in front of Hetta’s desk. A faint flush rose on her pale cheeks, paler than the majority of the Valstars. “Hetta, dear. I know I am not your real mother, but I have always considered you another daughter and…well, I know this can be a difficult time. If there is anything you would like to ask…” Her colour deepened, and she twisted her hands together. “Children can be a blessing, but they are not…if one is not ready for such things, one should not feel forced to… I mean, Wyn is a very nice young man, and I’m sure I should be delighted for you if this is what you want, though his heritage makes things a little awkward. But children and marriage are very permanent, Hetta, is what I’m saying, and I should not like to think of my own daughters bullied into such things if they were not, not sure.”
Hetta was deeply touched. She stood and clasped Phoebe’s hands, meeting her worried blue gaze. “I am sure.” Though she wasn’t sure she wanted the insight into her father’s second marriage.
Lady Phoebe relaxed, smiling again. “Well, I am glad then. I shall go and see if I can find the dress.” She left, leaving Hetta staring thoughtfully after her.
She gave herself a shake and went to find Wyn. It took a while to reach the steward’s office, as she kept being waylaid by staff and family both. Many of them wanted reassurances about the leviathans. That, at least, she could give.
“They were a one-off occurrence, but they can’t get into Stariel in any case. You’re safe.” If only Penharrow could say the same.
She passed the Green Drawing Room, where Marius and Rakken were still buried, working on the device Rakken said he needed to properly remove the compulsion. She reached out absently for Stariel for reassurance that neither of them had murdered the other.
When Hetta checked in on Ivy in the library, her cousin looked up guiltily from her armchair and admitted to getting completely sidetracked owing to a previously undiscovered set of travel diaries chronicling Hetta’s great-great aunt’s visit to the continent a century ago.
“Do you know she kept a list of all her lovers? I had no idea Aunt Etheldreda was so outrageous as that! But nothing to do with fairies, I’m afraid. I’ll keep looking though,” she said, putting the diary away.
Hetta found Wyn in his office, talking softly to the cook, who excused herself as soon as Hetta knocked. He looked up at her entrance, hair falling away from his face, and for a moment his softer human face startled her.
The desk creaked as he pushed up from it. “Hetta?”
She shook her head, holding out the report for the queen and explaining what it was. “I need your diplomatic insight; I wrote it in a bit of a rage, I’m afraid. But first, will you come with me to Penharrow?”
His eyes searched her face. “What about Aroset?”
“That’s why I don’t want to go alone, though she might still be in Meridon, or Greymark, or wherever she’s trying to stir up trouble with these wing worshippers of hers.” They weren’t sure if the man Rakken and Marius had met at the train station was indicative of larger meddling from Aroset or a one-off.
She made a face. How unfair of Aroset to cause problems in the human world as well as in Faerie. The two worlds were never going to stay properly separate again, were they? She looked into Wyn’s warm russet eyes. The good and the bad both.
“I am, sad to say, no match for Aroset.”
“You’ll make it easier for us to run away back to Stariel, though,” Hetta pointed out. “Well, fly.” She couldn’t read his expression. “Besides, if she does turn up, maybe we can ask her politely if she’ll volunteer to take part in this spell of Irokoi’s.”
She hadn’t meant it seriously, but Wyn answered as if she had. “Even if she would agree, I don’t want her to have a chance at the Spires, and we’d have to offer her that to have the smallest chance of persuading her.”
“Me neither.” Without him prompting, she pulled out the heartstone to show him. They considered its colour in sober silence before she tucked it away again and gave herself a shake. “Are you coming?”
His lips curved. “As my Star commands.”
They walked through the house and met Irokoi standing in the entryway, holding out one of his wings for two of her small relatives to examine, looking entirely bemused. His silver hair was once again unbound, spilling brightly over his dark wings.
“Can you take us flying?” Willow was asking him, gingerly reaching out to touch one of his primaries.
Irokoi shook his head. “Small humans are very fragile.”
“Please?” Little Laurel’s eyes brightened when she saw Hetta. “Prince Irokoi can take us flying, can’t he, Hetta?”
“Not now, Laurel.” She fixed Irokoi with a look. “Has Rakken removed the rest of the compulsion from you?”
Laurel heaved a great put-upon sigh. “What about later?”
“If your mothers give you permission, I will fly with you later,” Wyn said. Laurel and Willow burst into delighted whoops. “Remember, you must get permission first,” he repeated sternly, though the corner of his mouth twitched at the reaction.
“Why don’t you have wings all the time like Prince Irokoi?” Laurel asked.
“They are a little awkward for human drawing rooms, unless one does not mind the risk of knocking over ornaments whenever one turns,” Wyn said.
Laurel accepted this without question, but Hetta couldn’t help shooting him a surprised glance. Why had he never mentioned that before? We can rearrange the drawing rooms, you know.
The two girls dashed off, presumably to plague their respective parents, leaving the entranceway in sudden stillness. Irokoi inclined his head.
“Mossfeathers over-extended himself yesterday. He’s still learning the shape of what he is. The telepath will help, though. I’m about to go to them again.”
“The telepath is my brother. You planned that whole thing yesterday, didn’t you?” Hetta didn’t like feeling manipulated, or people taking risks with Marius’s welfare. “You could have warned us.”
Irokoi folded his wings back. His expression was bright and open, and she didn’t trust it anymore. “No,” he said evenly. “I could not have.”
They left Wyn’s cryptic brother watching them as they left the house and took the kineticar to Penharrow, driving through fields neatly lined with fresh green growth, seeds sprouting towards the sun. Neither of them spoke as they crossed the border, though Hetta couldn’t help tensing.
Stariel gave a small, unhappy murmur and then—she sucked in a breath as the land’s presence sharply ebbed. Her connection wasn’t gone, but it lay muted in the back of her mind now.
“Perhaps we can persuade Stariel to make you another token,” Wyn murmured, looking at her hands upon the steering wheel. She’d been absently rubbing at the knuckle of her ring finger.
“I don’t seem to be doing very well explaining or persuading it to do much at all, these days.”
“You are the newest faelord in all of Faerie by a considerable measure, and Stariel is more awake than it has been in generations. You will learn together.”
She loved his unshakeable faith in her, but it didn’t quell her own doubts. The wording he’d chosen picked at her as she rounded a curve in the road, hedgerows forming a green tunnel about them. The newest faelord. But that wasn’t all Stariel was, was it? It was just as much human estate as faeland.
Her stomach twisted into knots as they neared Penharrow. She didn’t know how to make up for her absence from Angus’s house party or for the damage to his house and the disastrous impression the leviathans had made when she’d finally returned, but she had to try. At least the lords can’t possibly think any worse of me than they already do.
She parked the kineticar in front of the house. Gravel crunched under her shoes as she got out, collecting the basket from the back. She scanned the skies, but there was no sign of crimson wings. She let out a long breath.
The house looked…both better and worse than it had. A grey tarpaulin covered the hole in the upper storeys, and the rubble had already been cleared away from the front of the house. She stared at the fluttering material until Wyn squeezed her hand.
“What am I even doing here?” she murmured.
“What you can.”
Angus’s butler was extremely frosty when they knocked, but he showed them into the same front room where Gwendelfear had healed Lord Arran to wait.
Wyn grimaced at the empty spot where there had previously been an item of furniture. “I expect the water Gwendelfear dumped on me ruined the fabric.”
They turned as the door opened and Angus came in. He looked tired, and as grim as she’d ever seen him.
“Hetta,” he said heavily. He spotted Wyn standing by the mantel and his mouth thinned. “Prince.”
“Is everyone all right? Lord Arran?” she asked.
“Lord Arran is gone, as are the other lords.” Her heart sank. Angus frowned at Wyn. “You’re considerably more upright than you were when last I saw you. More fairy magic?”
Wyn nodded. “What of the others who were hurt?”
“My mother’s recovering well, Dr Greystark says.”
“I’m so sorry, Angus, and for the damage to your house—”
“Unless you called those monsters down upon us, it wasn’t your fault.” His mouth curved. “You didn’t set them on me a-purpose, I’m assuming?”
“I didn’t…exactly call them down upon you, but they were here for me. They only went for Penharrow because I repelled them from Stariel’s borders.” Hetta shifted her feet, annoyed at the guilt. It had been much easier when Angus had been firmly in the wrong on all counts.
He gave her a long look, up and down. “I’m not glad of my roofing bill, but what sort of man would I be if I’d rather monsters attacked you than me?”
A sensible one, given that I’m the one who was able to stop them, she didn’t say. “Stariel can pay for the repairs—” But Angus was already shaking his head.
“Nay, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to take from Stariel’s coffers, wouldn’t it? Penharrow’s books are in well enough shape to stand it, besides, and I suspect yours still aren’t.”
He was right, but she didn’t have to like it.
She blew out a breath. “I brought you some of my grandmother’s anti-fae charms. I don’t think they’ll work on anything like the leviathans, but they’re better than nothing.”
“And will there be more of them?”
Hetta shook her head. “I don’t think so.” But she couldn’t actually promise, could she? She’d seen the wild, terrifying beauties contained in Deeper Faerie. “We’re…working on approaching the High King about fae in the Mortal Realm, to stop this sort of thing happening without consequence—a treaty.” A treaty with whom, using what leverage?
Angus looked from her to Wyn, his eyebrows rising. “I see.”
“Thank you for all your efforts with the Conclave on my behalf; it’s not your fault I’ve made such a mull of it.”
Angus looked out the window towards the drive, where yesterday there had been rubble and dust and screaming people. Today it was quiet, almost serene. You couldn’t see the damage to the house. “Well, I can’t deny this wasn’t the impression I’d hoped you’d make.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “You still have a chance to speak your piece before the vote, at the Conclave. They’ll take you seriously now, if nothing else.”
It seemed like a pretty faint hope, but she thanked him anyway.
42
The Call of Blood to Blood
Wyn got up from his desk and stretched, ignoring the desire to keep extending until his wings came forth. Marius’s words about hating himself kept burrowing deeper, but he didn’t know how else to deal with the rising tide of magic in his blood. It was getting worse, and he didn’t have any time now to find some other method of control, not with everything else there was already insufficient time for. There would be time later, before the child was born. His child would not feel shame for their heritage, regardless of Wyn’s own feelings on the subject.
He went and pulled closed the curtains on the deepening dusk. It had been a tiring day, not least because in between mundane matters, he couldn’t help prodding at the shadow he now knew lay within his mind. He still couldn’t remember, but the more he pressed against the shape of it, the easier it was to keep hold of the idea that there was something missing.
Current paperwork dealt with, he stacked the pile neatly and went in search. Irokoi had disappeared into a room with Rakken around mid-afternoon, and he’d heard from neither of them since, for better or worse.
He found Marius snuggled into a windowseat in the library, a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Wyn smiled at the sight of him rugged up like a caterpillar in a blanket. Marius always did feel the cold.
“Any progress?” he asked softly after making sure his mental shields were intact.
Marius jerked out of the book he’d been reading, losing his grip on his cup—fortunately empty—which went bouncing over the carpet.
“Almighty Pyrania, could you not sneak up on me?”
“My apologies.” Perhaps Rakken had been right to think Marius had always had some degree of subconscious control over his telepathy. If he didn’t, it would be impossible to sneak up on him.
Marius unwound his arms from the blanket and leaned down to retrieve the cup, setting it on the window ledge. “Rakken was being typically obtuse explaining the magic parts, and I can’t seem to read his mind when I’d actually like to, but I think progress is being made, yes. Rakken thinks he can get my device to stop the compulsion coming back once he’s removed it. It doesn’t exactly prevent compulsion, as far as I can work out, but it seems to…pause it. He’s testing it on Irokoi now.” He sounded grumpy, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Look, I’m not going to explode suddenly if you or Hetta stop checking on me constantly.”
“I am glad to know it.”
Marius narrowed his eyes, but then his gaze shifted behind Wyn, and the darkening of his expression told Wyn who it was without turning. Rakken was masking his presence, the leylines undisturbed by his passing.
&n
bsp; Wyn turned. “Good evening, brother.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the way Rakken considered Marius, the heated meaning in the air between them. He felt a sudden desire to tell Rakken that Marius and, in fact, all of Hetta’s family were strictly off-limits.
Then Rakken shook off the connection and met Wyn’s eyes. “Our mother,” he said grimly and without preamble.
The last person to compel Wyn had been King Aeros, forcing him to his knees in the throne room. He’d managed only a token resistance then. Now, the weight of Rakken’s compulsion hit him like gravity, a force so enormous and inevitable that it drove the air from his lungs.
But he’d been weaker, before. Now, aggression woke in him, fierce and unbending. His wings snapped out in a soft explosion of feathers. Marius yelped and ducked out of the way.
Rakken rolled his eyes, but there was a wariness there that said he’d noticed Wyn’s flare of power and wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Honestly, do you want to be free of Mother’s compulsion or not?”
Oh. “You could have explained yourself first, Rake,” he said, pulling his wings back in irritably. Ah, stormwinds take it. He couldn’t deal with his brother and his misbehaving magic in this form.
Rakken made a gesture to halt him when Wyn would have changed back. “Do you wish to lose control of your powers? You’re already boiling over with magic; it’s no wonder you cannot keep your instincts in check.”
“My control is worse in this form. I told you this, Rake, when I asked for your advice!”
Rakken canted his head, a puzzled frown appearing between his brows. “And I told you what to do to resolve the issue.”
“No, you did not! You spouted unhelpful metaphor at me about our ‘primal natures’.”
