by Jocelyn Fox
“So do you want to be Seelie or Vyldgard today, Sage?” asked Vell light-heartedly. She’d explained to Liam that much of her early interaction with Sage had been in the early days after Brightvale, when she still felt angry at everyone and everything around her that had somehow contributed to her crowning as High Queen. Sage had been one of the healers assigned to care for Tess, and Vell had admitted that he was a skilled and patient healer…if a bit easy to intimidate, she’d added.
“Don’t patronize me, my lady,” replied Sage with a half-smile. “I know I need to toughen up before you’d even consider baptizing me as Vyldgard.”
Vell stepped forward and teasingly gripped Sage’s uninjured arm, measuring his bicep with her hand. “Seems like you’ve got a good foundation.”
“I’ll second that,” contributed Robin with an impish glint in his eyes.
Liam chuckled. He’d quickly learned that the Sidhe, especially the Seelie, were not as rigid and complicated as mortals in their view of love. Sidhe could marry, or they could be lovers, or they could be merely friends who decided to have a child together. The entire Court contributed to raising children, though there had been few Sidhe children in the last centuries. During the journey to the Dark Keep, he’d picked up on the fact that Robin was attracted to men, but none of the Sidhe had ever said anything that led him to believe it was considered anything other than perfectly natural and acceptable. He’d mentioned it to Vell recently after one of their particularly intense sessions of lovemaking, and she had laughed at him.
“Why would it be wrong?” she’d asked. “You and I, we fell in love with each other’s souls.” She’d trailed one hand down his bare, muscled chest, eliciting a shiver of pleasure from him. “It is no different with them. Love is love.” She had effectively silenced any further questions by capturing his mouth with her own, her strong hands gripping his shoulders as she nipped at his lower lip and straddled him playfully.
Liam only half-listened to the conversation between Vell and the two men, instead letting his mind drift into daydreams as he watched Vell. He’d never before met a woman who so perfectly balanced strength and beauty. Sometimes he thought that Vell resented her beauty or tried to hide it. To her, it wasn’t a tangible advantage like her physical strength. But he liked to think that with every kiss and every caress, he was convincing her that her beauty was as much a part of her as her toughness. They were equals in every way, and she even surpassed him in the skills of warfare required in Faeortalam. That in itself excited him beyond anything he’d felt with a woman in the mortal world.
After they left the healing ward, they returned to the High Queen’s quarters. For the rest of the afternoon, Vell reviewed messages and received different members of her Court to discuss the progress of certain projects. Thea sought approval to build a bigger forge and take an apprentice, and Maeve had sent two of the younger healers into the grasslands springing up around the White City to report on the rejuvenation of the wild medicinal herbs. Liam spent much of that time contributing to the conversation when Vell asked it of him. In his free moments, he spoke with the leaders of his reconstruction teams and consulted different books on the history of the White City, gleaning details about building methods and materials, taking painstakingly meticulous notes.
After she had concluded her receiving hours for the afternoon, Vell sealed the entrance to her quarters with a quick flick of her wrist, the gesture ensuring that the tapestry would not admit any visitors without first seeking her approval. She stood and stretched languorously, linking her hands above her head. Then she removed her golden circlet, setting it on the table unceremoniously. Liam looked up as she unpinned her braid, glancing at him mischievously as she shook out her dark tresses. He carefully marked his place in his book and set it aside, watching as she stalked toward him with predatory intent. Her hands traced his broad shoulders and slid under his shirt; he obligingly raised his arms and she divested him of the garment. He stiffened slightly when her fingers found the scar on his side, playing lightly over the sensitive area.
“Visiting the healing wards reminds me of how lucky I am,” she said softly. Without her crown, with her hair curling gently around her face, she did not wear the mantle of the High Queen in this moment. She was a young woman speaking to the man she loved. Liam caught her hand and tenderly kissed her knuckles. She shivered. He pressed her palm to his chest over his heart.
“I would die all over again for you,” he said earnestly, his green eyes serious.
Vell smiled, a puckish edge to her voice as she said, “You say the sweetest things, my love.” She leaned close and kissed him deeply, her hands traveling down the hard planes of his chest and abdomen, dipping lower, teasing until he growled and stood, sweeping her off her feet and grinning at her girlish squeal of surprise as he carried her over to her sleeping furs.
Chapter 23
Ross wrapped her hands around her steaming mug of tea and gazed out at the stormswept landscape beyond the living room window. She couldn’t make out more than silhouettes in the inky blackness. At first she’d thought that the storm would just be a typical summer cloudburst, intense and then quickly swept away by the winds from over the lake. But the storm rumbled and shuddered over them all evening and into the night.
“Can’t sleep?”
Ross turned at Vivian’s voice. Her roommate had changed into her pajamas, long gym shorts and a soft, loose t-shirt emblazoned with a phrase from Tolkien: Not all who wander are lost.
With a crooked smile, Ross replied, “Was that a rhetorical question?”
Vivian shrugged. “Mostly. Since I can see that you’re staring out the window in the middle of the night – or I guess it’s really early in the morning, isn’t it – and therefore can judge for myself that for whatever reason, you’re not sleeping.” She nodded to the ceramic teapot sitting on the stove. “Still warm?”
“Should be warm enough.”
“Excellent.” Vivian busied herself with selecting a mug and rifling through their stash of tea. “You know,” she said as she poured steaming water into her mug, “I’m surprised that Noah trusts the runes enough to sleep.”
“I was surprised too.” Ross sipped her tea and added thoughtfully, “He trusts Merrick and Luca.”
Merrick and Luca slept in the study again, while Duke slept in Ross’s bed. She’d tried to sleep, and normally the solid warmth of him at her back lulled her into slumber. But her thoughts kept racing around the events of the day. She managed to catch a few hours of restless sleep, but then she’d slipped out of bed in the early hours of the morning. Duke hadn’t even stirred.
“You think this plan is going to work?” Vivian asked, dipping a finger into her mug to test the temperature.
“The men seem to think it will.” Ross shrugged. “I don’t really care about this wizard or whatever he is. I just want us all to be safe.”
“I think that eliminating one might help with the other,” Vivian commented.
After they’d finished the runetrap and the skies had opened up, they’d sat sodden in the living room for a few moments. Then Merrick had asked Ross if she had any glass bowls. She willingly if suspiciously produced a set of four small glass bowls.
“No more blood,” Vivian had said to Merrick firmly, her concern written across her expressive face as she finished bandaging his cut hand.
Merrick’s chuckle had turned into a cough and then a wheeze. Ross glanced at Duke; the dark-haired Sidhe sounded like a pneumonia patient.
“I couldn’t do any more work with blood even if I wanted to,” Merrick had finally gasped with a game smile. “Just the chalk.” He held out his hand. Luca picked up the chalk that Merrick had used to mark the doorway and handed it to him.
“Do you have to do anything else? You don’t seem strong enough,” Vivian said. “And if you need blood…take mine.”
“V,” said Ross sharply. As much as she didn’t want Merrick to overextend himself, she certainly didn’t want her roommate
throwing herself into the dubious exercise of this magic that involved blood.
Vivian smiled at Ross. “You don’t even believe in magic, right? So what’s the harm?” She turned back to Merrick. “I’m guessing these are going to be something like alarms, aren’t they? Placed by the road and then back by the river.”
“Are you sure you aren’t a sorceress?” Merrick asked guilelessly, his luminous gray eyes considering Vivian. “I’d heard that there weren’t many left, and none so young as you.”
Vivian blushed fiercely. “No. At least, I don’t think so. I mean, there’s family stories and whatnot. But I’m not part of a coven or anything. My gran would have had a cow if she’d found out I dabbled in any of that. She went to Mass every Wednesday and twice on Sunday.”
“Devotion and dedication come in many forms,” Merrick replied vaguely. He looked down at the chalk and then at Vivian. “You offer willingly?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Perhaps my blood would be more appealing to Gryttrond,” suggested Luca.
“Don’t steal my moment,” Vivian snapped at him.
The ulfdrengr raised his hands as if to ward her off. “If the raedhaerdyr wants to prick her finger, far be it from me to stop her.”
Vivian narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean? Raedhaerdyr?” She pronounced the word seamlessly.
Luca chuckled. “You are a silver-tongue, I think. It means…” He searched for the right words. “She of the red hair.”
She tossed the hair in question over her shoulder. “Well, at least you’re accurate.”
Merrick lined up the bowls, dome up, on the living room carpet.
“Don’t worry, Ross, we won’t get blood on the rug,” said Vivian with a grin.
“That’s the least of my worries,” Ross muttered. She watched skeptically as Merrick traced symbols on the bottoms of the glass bowls. He paused after the last one, closing his eyes briefly as though resting. Then he produced a little silver dagger. Vivian held out her hand unflinchingly. Merrick flicked the dagger expertly and a fat drop of blood welled from Vivian’s middle finger.
“Just one drop on each bowl is enough,” said Merrick. “But give me a moment.”
Vivian balanced the drop of blood on her finger with concentration until Merrick took a breath and nodded to her. He murmured under his breath as she carefully dropped the blood onto the first bowl. The air in the room tightened, and Vivian shivered, but her eyes lit up. She squeezed another drop of blood from her finger with single-minded intent, repeating the procedure with the remaining glass bowls. A shudder ran visibly through her body as Merrick said a word in a commanding voice and the symbols on the bowls flashed scarlet. Little wisps of white smoke curled from the bowls. The runes now looked as though they’d been engraved and painted red.
Merrick sat back, his face gray. “Two by the road, and two by the river.” He nodded at Vivian. “You’ll be able to feel it, too, when the line is crossed.” Sweat pearled his forehead. “For everyone else there will be a red flare.”
“I’ll place them,” said Luca.
“I’ll go too,” said Vivian, raptly tracing the rune on the nearest bowl. Luca hadn’t protested, and they’d both gathered their bowls, returning from their mission soaked but satisfied.
“What did it feel like, when Merrick did that thing with the bowls?” Ross asked now as they watched the storm together in the early hours of the morning, swirling the tea in her mug.
“You could let him use your blood in his next spell and you’d find out,” Vivian said teasingly. Then she sobered. “It felt like little bits of me expanded and…I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Like sparks in my veins but a cool rush through my chest when he finished the spell. It actually felt really…good.”
Ross groaned. “Please don’t become addicted to magic or whatever it is that makes up his hocus pocus.”
Vivian laughed and then quickly lowered her voice as she remembered that the others were still sleeping. “I won’t lie, I want to learn how to do it myself.”
“Can you do it yourself?” Ross asked skeptically. “I mean, I know that there are Wiccans and such. Ouija boards and voodoo and all that. But this…if it’s real,” she pronounced deliberately, “this is on a whole new level.”
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Vivian grinned. She took a deep breath and sighed happily. “I mean, seriously Ross. Didn’t you ever read Tolkien or Anne McCaffrey or any of the other great fantasy books when you were a kid? Didn’t you ever investigate the back of your closet for a door into Narnia?”
“No, but I’m betting you did,” Ross replied, smiling as her friend grinned brilliantly.
“Well, yeah, of course I did. I always wanted it to be real, you know? And now…now I can be a part of one of those stories.” Her eyes shone with the same light that had appeared when Merrick sealed the spell on their warning-bowls.
“I thought you were going to write about it,” said Ross.
“I mean, afterwards, yeah. But I’m along for the ride now.” Vivian tilted her head, joining Ross by the window. “The rain is slowing down.”
As the rain slowed, the predawn twilight washed the storm soaked land in weak gray light. From the living room window, she could see most of the side of the property, from the tangle of brush and trees by the river up to the gravel drive that snaked through their yard from the main road. Ross noticed that the wind had torn down a few small branches from the trees by the river. She frowned. “V, can you still feel those little warning runes you put your blood on?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Has anyone tripped the alarm?” Ross asked. She felt her heart speed up.
“Nope,” said Vivian confidently. “No alarm bells jangling in the noggin. Or maybe in my chest. I don’t know where exactly to pinpoint it, but…”
“Go get Luca and Merrick,” Ross said in a low, tense voice.
“Why? They need their sleep, or at least Merrick certainly does…” Vivian trailed off as she saw Ross’s knuckles whiten on her mug and followed the direction of Ross’s focused gaze. “Oh.” She swallowed. “You’re two for two with seeing the creepy things first, Ross.” And with that, she quickly set her mug on the counter and disappeared down the hallway. Ross stared out the window for another moment, and then she followed, wrenching open the door to her bedroom. Not that it locked anymore anyway, since Duke had kicked it in the night before.
“Noah,” she said without preamble, “we’ve got company.”
He muttered a curse and threw back the blankets. “No flare?”
“No flare.” She shook her head as she picked up her Glock from the dresser, checking the magazine perfunctorily. Two extra magazines weighted down the left pocket of her mesh gym shorts. She clipped her folding knife to the waistband as extra insurance.
Duke grunted, already checking the Beretta. “Then what is it, if it didn’t set off the alarm?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ross grimly, “but it didn’t look human.”
When they emerged into the living room, Luca was hefting an axe in both hands, and Merrick held a naked blade in his hand. Vivian had convinced one of them to give her a long dagger. Luca spoke to her in a low voice. “Keep your weight balanced between both feet and don’t stop moving. Go for the elbow or shoulder. If they can’t hold a blade, they can’t attack you. But stay behind us.”
“You want all of us to go out there? Are you sure that’s the smartest plan?” Ross said.
“Smartest, perhaps not. But these runes won’t hold forever, and they may not hold at all against whatever is out there. It didn’t set off the warning-runes,” said Merrick.
Mayhem circled the room restlessly, her ears pricked. She stopped by Ross, staring at the door as if waiting for them to move out. “Vivian, you should stay in the house with Mayhem,” Ross said. She felt like events were spiraling out of control First Vivian offered her blood for those stupid bowls, and now she thought she could go out and fight whatever creature was
out there in the darkness.
“Like hell I will,” Vivian said firmly, all trace of joking gone from her normally jovial voice.
“If anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen out there,” said Duke to Ross with a half-grin. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure her with one of the phrases they had uttered often on their deployments, or if he was trying to lighten the mood. Either way, it didn’t work.
“Why don’t we just take my truck? Get out of here and lose them on the road,” she continued doggedly.
“Because they will not stop hunting us,” replied Luca. His icy blue eyes caught Ross’s gaze. “You are no coward. You wish to protect your friend, and that is honorable. But everyone here is a part of this fight now.”
“I didn’t ask to be, and neither did Vivian,” she said in a low voice that was close to a growl, but she adjusted her grip on the Glock.
“I know,” said Duke. “I know you didn’t, and I’ll make sure you both get through okay. I promise.”
Ross looked at Duke for a long moment. She couldn’t decide if she felt like crying or screaming, but regardless, she shoved her whirlwind of emotions deep into her chest and slammed the lid on the black box. Her voice came out gravelly. “The last time you told me that, you disappeared and I thought you were dead.”
