The Castle of Fire and Fable

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Do you miss the others?” I asked Arthur, trailing my fingers across his chest.

  “Not even a little.”

  Damn. “Well, I miss them all. Arthur, last night was amazing. Seriously, I wish you’d been here every night for scientific observations instead of Andrew.”

  “But?” he lifted a bushy eyebrow.

  “But… three days ago you made it perfectly clear to me that you didn’t want me because of the others and what we were doing. What changed your mind?”

  “I never said I don’t want you.” Arthur sat up and pushed a cushion behind his head. “I said, I didn’t want to be part of your harem.”

  “But then…?”

  “I wanted to be the only one, Maeve. I wanted to be the guy to sweep you away and heal your pain. But being here with you, I realized that maybe I could still be that guy. I don’t have to compete with the others. I don’t have to win. Because having you in my life is winning.” He stroked his beard. “So, even though you want to keep doing stuff with the others, you can be my girlfriend, if you want.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I may not be able to do the… group thing,” he said. “At least, not yet. But I want you in my life, Maeve Moore. And trying to resist your charms was eventually going to burn down the castle, so this is the most logical course of action.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, my heart lifting. “Well, if logic is involved, I have to agree. I accept your offer, Aragorn. From now on, you can call me your girlfriend.”

  After Arthur’s announcement, we got a little distracted… okay, a lot distracted. We had to scramble into our clothes when a scientist came down the road to check the weather station. We sped out of Coopersville and arrived at Kelly’s room just as her doctor was leaving.

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light, even though my heart pounded against my chest. “Is my sister crazy?”

  “We don’t like to call anyone crazy these days, Miss Crawford,” he said. “But the answer is no. I’ve assessed Kelly and I don’t believe she’ll continue to be a danger to herself, provided she gets the support she needs from the good people in her life, like you. Her grief over the loss of her parents, coupled with feelings of abandonment has created escalating levels of stress she didn’t think she could handle.”

  Feelings of abandonment. Shame burned in my chest. I’d never meant to abandon Kelly, but that was exactly what I’d done. I hoped what I was about to do now would make up for the horrible way I’d neglected her.

  The doctor patted Kelly’s arm, and she smiled. “I’ve prescribed Kelly some mild sedatives to help her sleep, and given her a recommendation to a great psychiatrist. As long as she makes some lifestyle changes, she should be okay.”

  “That’s it?” I was half relieved, half incredulous. She obviously hadn’t told him anything about Uncle Bob, which I could understand. But even so, my sister tried to kill herself and they were just letting her go? How did I know for certain she was cured? “She can go home?”

  The Doctor nodded. “Kelly says she has a good support network in you and her community. Counselling will help her deal with her grief in a healthy way. Psychologically I’m not seeing any underlying issues. Just

  “Don’t worry, Doc. I’m not going anywhere.” I wrapped my arms around Kelly. The Doctor nodded again, and left us alone.

  I squeezed Kelly extra hard. “Did you hear that? You’re going to be okay.” But then I had a flash of her face from yesterday and my heart plummeted again. “Aren’t you?”

  “Don’t even think about it.” Kelly hugged me. “I’m going to be fine now. This isn’t what I want, I know that now. I just wanted to escape that house and I… I think I scared myself as much as I scared you guys.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I should have just told you what was going on. I should have told someone, gone to the police. But I was just so scared and broken. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You weren’t thinking. You were in pain.“ I gestured to Arthur. “This is the guy who told me that you have to forgive yourself all the stupid things you do while you’re grieving. Listen to him. She’s pretty smart. But you totally should have told me, because I would have been here much sooner to fix things for you. But, better late than never.”

  She looked at me with wide eyes and I grinned.

  “Maeve, what did you do?”

  “Nothing.” I beamed at her, even though my insides turned at the memory of the flames. “But you’re not going to have any problem getting out from under Uncle Bob and Aunt Florence. They’ve agreed not to stand in the way of you petitioning for emancipation, so you don’t need a guardian.”

  “Emancipation?” Kelly’s smile lit my heart. “I can do that?”

  “You sure can, and no one is going to stop you. In fact, Uncle Bob has even left a little parting gift in your bank account.”

  Kelly grabbed her phone and tapped frantically. Her eyes bugged out of her head when she saw the number. Yes! At least Uncle Bob could follow instructions. “No way. How did this happen?”

  “I can be very persuasive when my sister’s happiness is at stake. With that money, you can go anywhere and do anything, including college. But I think you should come back to England with me.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Have you ever known me to say something I didn’t mean? It just happens that I own this huge castle with heaps of rooms, and with five guys living there I could really use a break from all the testosterone. What do you say?”

  “Eeeee! You’re the best!” Kelly reached up and embraced me. Her fruity scent invaded my nostrils, and that lump rose in my throat once more. I hugged her back, my arms heavy with the weight of what I did and the love I felt for her. I glanced up at Arthur. As I predicted, he looked pretty concerned. What am I supposed to do? I mouthed at him. It was my job to look after Kelly. No way was I leaving her behind again.

  Arthur nodded his understanding, but he didn’t look convinced.

  “So,” I pulled back. “Arthur and I are staying in America for as long as you need us. We’re here to look after you. Where do you want to go first?”

  Kelly grinned. “Happy’s, please. After three days of hospital food I am dying for a cheeseburger.”

  My stomach clenched at her words, but I struggled to keep an even face. “Mind your Freudian slips, girl, or I’ll rescind my offer. I have half a brownie cake in the car for you, but I guess you can get your own. After Happy’s, we’ll go sort a hotel, and then find a lawyer and start the emancipation process.”

  Kelly thought for a moment. “Can we stay in a youth hostel instead? I want to talk to some people who have exciting lives and passionate dreams.”

  “Are you sure that’s the best idea?”

  “I’ve been a prisoner in that horrible house for over three weeks. It feels like three years. I want to meet people with things to look forward to. I want to party. I want to talk about stuff that isn’t Jesus or a Woman’s Duty or Eternal Damnation.” She peered up at me with those enormous baby blues. “Didn’t you just say that grieving was a time to do stupid stuff?”

  “That was not what I said at all. And what about going to the police?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” A dark sliver of pain passed in front of Kelly’s eyes. “But I will decide soon, I promise.”

  “I’m with you, whatever you choose to do. Either way, I don’t think Uncle Bob will hurt anyone again.”

  She studied my face. “You must’ve lit a fire under him to make him change his ways so easily.”

  I grimaced. “You might say that.”

  After an enormous breakfast at Happy’s (Kelly had two cheeseburgers and two slices of brownie cake), we rolled ourselves downtown and made an appointment with a family lawyer about Kelly’s emancipation. The appointment wasn’t for a couple of days, which would give us time to put together evidence to demonstrate Kelly could look after herself and would be financially secure at Briarwo
od.

  As per Kelly’s request, we got a private room at a nearby hostel. Groups of young people hung around the entrance, lugging enormous backpacks and chattering in a myriad of languages. Kelly’s eyes lit up as she flirted with the young German guy behind the counter.

  I squeezed Arthur’s hand as I watched her. “She fits. She’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  “Oh sure,” he whispered back, his breath tickling my ear. “You’ve just invited your sister to live on the very edge of a future supernatural battlefield, and you’re going to have to hide the fact you’re a witch with a harem of guys trying to stop the fae from taking over the world, but everything’s going to be fine.”

  I gulped. When he put it like that, what the hell had I got myself in for?

  47

  BLAKE

  Without Maeve around, I expected Corbin to turn outright hostile toward me, maybe even try a little torture. I checked all my food for shards of glass, and made Flynn check the shower first to make sure it wasn’t going to spew out molten honey instead of water. A lifetime of dodging the princes’ delightful pranks had taught me a thing or two about staying on my toes.

  Instead, Corbin acted much the same – mostly ignoring me and any offers to help him translate his books. He seemed to be avoiding everyone, even Rowan, who paced around like a puppy who’d lost his master. Corbin holed up in his study and I didn’t see him outside of meals, which suited me fine. The guy bugged me. He still kept a vigil over my room every night. This morning I caught him sleeping in his chair and drew a giant cock and balls on his cheek. He’d been walking around the castle for three hours and still hadn’t noticed it.

  “I can’t believe he went off to give the morning’s tour and he still hasn’t noticed,” Flynn chortled about it while I held a long length of metal with a pair of tongs so he could weld the end of it onto another metal frame. I’d spent quite a lot of time in Flynn’s workshop over the last couple of days, holding bits of metal together while he heated them with fire and cooled them with water to make them into eldritch shapes. I’d never seen so much metal before. Really, I’d never seen any metal before since it was poison to the fae. But here on earth they were nuts for metal. They had metal transport skins called cars and metal cooking fires and metal moving picture boxes and even metal artwork.

  Daigh fancied himself a connoisseur of human art. One of his favorite tricks was to copy the paintings of human masters in fae inks, then break into major galleries or private collections and replace the real things with his fakes. I still remember him chortling as he recounted stories of humans scrambling to figure out what went wrong as the fae ink started to fade away and leave a different – usually much lewder – image behind.

  Okay, I’d chortled a bit, too. Daigh could be amusing when he wasn’t terrifying.

  Daigh would never have called Flynn’s statues art. To the fae, they were fucking deadly, which meant that even though I thought they were ugly as fuck, I loved them.

  “I know, I’m a genius,” I grinned back. I’d only just learned the word, and I felt it definitely applied to me.

  “If you’re a genius, then I’m a bloody protestant,” Flynn grunted as he waved the soldering iron in my face. “Hold still, I just have to put a bend in the other end.”

  After Maeve, Flynn was the human that fascinated me most. I’d been trying to figure him out, but so far I’d come up a complete blank. Normally humans were so easy, especially when it came to sex. But unlike everyone else, Flynn didn’t seem to be chasing Maeve on his own. He looked pretty damn happy the other day during our little group revel, but I remembered how easily he’d let me take over from him with Maeve at the ritual. And I’d watched him and Corbin take Maeve together on the movie night (Maybe Arthur could sleep through that moaning, but I couldn’t). He liked sharing her. He loved seeing her happy.

  At first I thought he might just be in it for the sex, nothing deeper than that. But then I’d seen the enormous sculpture he’d made for her bedroom. Nope, Flynn cared about Maeve. He had it bad. So why didn’t he pursue her? Why did he hold back and let Corbin and Arnold and even Rowan deepen their bonds with her?

  One thing I’d learned about human men was that they didn’t talk about their feelings. I’d tried to turn our workshop conversation around to Maeve at least three times, and every time Flynn broke into some bawdy song or started wanking on about the Dublin football team and I got bored and ordered more curry.

  Flynn finished his weld and allowed me to set down the metal sculpture. “That’s all I can do on this piece for now. Want to help me make a mobile for Connor?” He pointed to a workbench in the corner where he’d set up rows of metal washers that had been soldered together to make shapes. A star. A dragonfly. A weird lumpy shape I assumed was a teddy bear.

  “Another time. I’ve got to take my daily dose of nature. See you later, mate.” The word mate sounded so foreign on my lips. A filial word for a friend who was male. I’d never had one of those before. The only other friend I’d had was Liah, and she and I hadn’t really spoken since Daigh forced us apart as children. In the last few days it had started to fly off my lips when I spoke to Flynn. I liked it. It made my chest feel twice as wide.

  Speaking of Liah… I hurried across the garden and picked up the package of fruit I’d tossed into the bushes earlier. I circled around behind the topiary maze and ducked into the orchard, glancing around to make sure Rowan wasn’t out doing the pruning. He’d been down here collecting apples for dessert yesterday, and I’d had to quickly hide Liah’s food parcel and pretend I was just admiring his excellent rootstock.

  Also, dessert is an amazing human invention, possibly even greater than curry.

  No Rowan in sight. Good. I hurried through the gate into the wood, calling into the trees. “Liah, I’ve got some food for you. Meat and taste free, just the way you like it!”

  No answer. Only the rustle of branches in the breeze and the lonely chirping of a sparrow greeted me.

  Odd. Liah hadn’t been straying from the wood since she’d discovered all the bad things lurking in the human world. Maybe she’s sleeping.

  “Liah?” I called, louder this time. “Where are you?”

  I made my way through the wood, calling her name. She didn’t show herself. Heart pounding, I realized that if she wasn’t here, there might be one place she would go.

  I sprinted down the slope to the low stone wall marking the edge of Briarwood’s boundary. The three sidhe rose from the center of the meadow, dotted around by bare, charred patches of earth. I vaulted the wall and crept toward the mounds.

  As I rounded the corner toward the gateway, I noticed Maeve’s scientific equipment scattered across the grass, cords snapped, screens stomped on, metal cases torn open and exposed to the elements. My stomach clenched.

  At the edge of the largest sidhe, standing on top of the stairs with her arms at her sides and her face to the heavens, was Liah.

  “Yo, Seelie. I brought you some food that didn’t have to die first.” I held up the basket, hoping my words wouldn’t give away the churning in my stomach.

  Liah’s head whipped around, her eyes gazing at me with pure hatred. “Get away from me, Blake.”

  I took a step closer, noticing for the first time a circle of black soot at her feet. As I watched, long, thin tendrils of blackness rose from the circle, encircling Liah’s bare ankles. What in Oberon’s name is that? I’ve seen a lot of fae magic, but I’ve never seen that before. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m leaving.”

  “How?” I lifted my hand to inspect the wards around the gateway. They still held firm. “We have wards in place to—”

  “I’m not going back to the fae realm, Blake. I’m going to another place.”

  Another place? That makes less than no sense. There were no other places. The gateway went between earth and Tir Na Nog, and that was it. The only other place we even knew about was the underworld
, and she can’t—

  Oh no. Oh, fuck no.

  “That’s the stupidest fucking idea you’ve ever had, Liah. Even stupider than that time you wanted us to dance on the frozen river and the ice cracked and we both fell in and I turned blue and got sick for a month. If you think Earth is bad, that place is a thousand times worse.”

  “You don’t know. You’ve never been.” She set me with her firm, don’t-fuck-with-me stare. The black fingers rolled up her calves, trapping her legs in place. “All I know is I can’t stand the ghosts of the forest any longer.”

  “So come with me.” I held out my hand. “We’ll fight Daigh together. Why even consider—”

  “Because Daigh is already there with his entire army. It’s where he’s going to launch his attack from. It’s how he plans to get around your wards.”

  What? Shit. That was bad. “How? How do you know this?”

  “Because I am fae. I can lift the veil between the worlds as long as I pay the price.” Liah held up her stump. A long, jagged cut radiated along the length of her arm, crisscrossed in two places by smaller cuts to form a fairy sigil. I recognized the symbol from Daigh’s personal grimoire, from a chapter on the darkest, most malevolent magic the fae were capable of unleashing.

  My blood turned cold. Liah lifted her other arm, revealing a dark burn running from her blackened fingers right down to her elbow. “It hurts so bad, touching all that stupid metal. I almost wish you’d cut this hand off, too. But Daigh asked me to come here and destroy her scientific implements and I did it. All the pain will be worth it if I can get back to him.”

  My stomach dropped to my knees. She’s lying. She has to be lying.

  But the cold smile on her face told me exactly what Liah had done. For the first time since I’d seen her again, she was telling me the truth. She’d lied to me from the start. She’d come with me on Daigh’s orders. He’d figured I’d come back and take her to the human realm, the same way Maeve had done to me.