The Dark Huntsman: A Fantasy Romance of The Black Court (Tales of The Black Court Book 1)

by Jessica Aspen

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, why does the queen expect you to be like your father?”

  He kept walking, and she waited for him to fill in the silence.

  “My father wasn’t much of a father, by human standards.” She drew closer to hear his quiet words. “By elvetian standards, he was adequate. He ignored me until I was old enough to be of use to him at court, and then he took me away from my uncles and introduced me to the queen. The Black Court was—is—a miasma of fear, negativity, and beauty.” His voice drifted off. “Such beauty.”

  Trina grew impatient waiting for him to continue.

  “I was lucky,” he said, finally. “Prince Kian liked me. I became one of his favorites and he protected me from the worst of the court. But the queen always kept an eye on me. And when my father came to his untimely demise, she wanted me to replace him. Take over the family business.” The weight of the sarcasm in his voice filled the silence as they walked…the only other sound besides their boots, the soft padding of the hounds, and the occasional whoosh of air.

  “I would have resisted her invitation had it not been for the prince. She threatened to send me away if I didn’t take on the position and I wouldn’t leave Kian.”

  “Why you?”

  “Not everyone can be a Huntsman for the Great Hunt. I have the necessary Gifts and I inherited many things from my father, such as the hounds.” He reached out and fondled the ear of the hound on his right, who lifted his head and waved his tail in gratitude. “And so began my descent into the belly of the court. I don’t know how depraved I would have become in her service if she hadn’t pushed the prince too far.”

  He slowed, and they stopped. “The prince rebelled. I was thrown into the queen’s dungeon, a confinement from which I have recently been released.” He leaned low and dropped his voice to a dark whisper, breathing his words on the sensitive skin of her neck. “My release was contingent on my killing a certain family of gypsies. Instead, I found you, my naked witch, casting spells in the gloaming.”

  He had every motive to kill her, to use her to track down her family and kill them as well. His honor and commitment to the prince pitted him against the queen, but his survival depended on serving the same queen. Her fate, the fate of her heart, depended on his making a choice. Had he made it? Was she right to put her trust in him?

  He reached for her hand, tracing a shivery pattern on her palm. “What spells have you cast on me, my witch?” His haunted eyes gleamed in the dark, and a cold shiver crept down her spine.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Haddon flexed his fingers and folded them behind his back.

  “What do you mean she still lives?” the queen demanded. Her voice rose, vibrating the crystals of the chandelier in Owen’s tiny room. “That stupid boy gave me her heart. I have it in a box in my treasure chamber!” She leaned in and stared at Owen, her black tresses coiling and uncoiling around her head.

  The mirror shrank against the wall, his eyes flitting back and forth between the queen’s mottled face and the tinkling, swaying chandelier above his head.

  Owen flailed his hands. “I d-d-don’t know what to say, my queen. It isn’t clear. All I can see is th-th-that she is living in the Black Forest and is under th-th-the protection of the Seven Brothers of the Fir Bolg.” He extended a trembling hand out to Haddon, his eyes begging for help.

  Haddon kept his face blank and made sure he, himself, was not in the path of the heavy light fixture.

  The man was a fool. They needed a new mirror. Why risk his own neck for the used up psychic as he had in the past? It would do no good anyhow. The man’s news was horrible, he was as good as dead.

  “How dare they?” The queen’s wings beat hard and fast.

  The walls of the room shook. Dust from the cracking stones choked the air. The mirror squatted, throwing his hands over his head, hiding from the queen’s angry shrieks. A stone worked its way free of the wall and toppled. It crashed to the floor, shattering on impact, and left behind a ragged crater in the marble floor.

  The queen’s voice grew louder. Her wings flapped scraping the sides of the small chamber and raising a cool wind. Haddon flattened against the wall. Edging along it, he ducked under a flaring wing as he headed for the exit. A cloud of dust swirled and he covered his face and coughed.

  The chandelier shuddered. Individual crystals dropped one-by-one, shattering as they hit the floor. Haddon ran for the door.

  “Help me!” Owen screamed.

  Haddon glanced back. The old man cowered under the dropping danger of the crystals, trying to shelter his head under his bony arms. Haddon had a flash of the boy Owen once was years ago, cowering in a corner from the queen and Haddon soothing him, seducing him into becoming lovers. Haddon snarled and went back, darting through the avalanche of rocks, dust, and glass, he grabbed the stupid oaf, dragging him to the relative safety of the hallway.

  “I will find her!” the queen raged. “I will destroy her. And then I will destroy all who have helped her!” As the queen’s voice escalated into an unintelligible mix of words and shrieks, Haddon waited in the hall for the storm to subside, subduing his desire to kick Owen, who crouched at his feet. He bitterly hoped the huntsman would show up again soon. He would serve his head to the queen on a silver platter, along with a side of the MacElvy girl’s real heart.

  Deceiving the queen was a mistake, but deceiving him would be fatal.

  As he listened to the old man’s pathetic wails and waited for the queen to finish demolishing the mirror’s chamber, he plotted. It wasn’t that he cared for the useless wretch, but until they had obtained another psychic, Owen was all they had. And he still had some uses. Too bad he couldn’t use the red-headed MacElvy that Owen had identified as a fellow far-seer, then they could have killed this one and been done with him.

  The dust settled. The queen sat in the middle of the devastation, her robes torn and disarrayed, her snaky curls standing on end as her wings slowed and grew still. A chill skittered up his spine.

  He’d never seen her look quite like this, her demeanor an oasis of eerie calm.

  “Haddon.” Her voice was quiet.

  “Yes, my queen?”

  “Haddon, I’ve been going about this all wrong.”

  The wait for her to speak was interminable. As unbelievable as it seemed, this calm queen scared him more than the earlier, out of control queen. With her in this state, she was completely unpredictable.

  “Haddon, I’ve been sending out flawed, untrustworthy, incapable people to do a job that I should have been doing myself. Who better than me to understand the necessity of all of the MacElvys being gone? Who better than me to be sure that my precious son is safely out of harm’s way? And who better than me to be sure the job is actually done?”

  She rose and brushed at her face, leaving streaky smears of dust on her cheekbones. “Come, Haddon. You and I will concoct a plan to sneak in under the noses of the Fir Bolg. That ridiculous king will never know that we have violated the treaty. And once we have killed the girl and taken care of that lying son-of-a-bitch huntsman, we will deal with the stupidity of the Seven.”

  She moved her wings gently to free them of dust and stepped over the old man. “Haddon, Owen will need new quarters so he can focus all his energies on finding this girl.” She swept from the room, adding over her shoulder, “If the huntsman shows his face, be sure to take him alive. I will deal with the bastard myself.”

  This was bad. He couldn’t allow her to violate the treaty between the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha De Danann. King Oberon would be up in arms, they would end up fighting not only the Fir Bolg, but the entire Golden Court and their allies. Few of their own people were truly loyal to the queen. If they had to actually fight against Oberon, Goddess knew how many they would have on their side. Granted, Logan’s uncles, the Seven of the Fir Bolg, were no longer the force they once were, but they had their own resources and connections. And if King Oberon discovered that the queen plotted his downfall
, well then, all bets were off. If Haddon wasn’t careful, the queen would destroy them all.

  “Owen, get someone to find you a new room.” He left the shivering old man and hurried after the queen into a small chamber off of the throne room. “My queen…”

  One of the ladies of the court bustled in. “My lady?” The queen slowed, still encased in that eerie calm. “There’s a gypsy woman waiting. She insists she has to see you immediately.”

  “Insists?”

  “Yes, my lady, I wouldn’t have bothered you, but she says she has information about the location of the MacElvys.”

  “Who is this gypsy?” Haddon asked.

  “She says she’s the head of the Boyd clan and that she’s willing to turn them over to you in exchange for your backing her takeover of the MacElvy territories and wealth.” The queen’s eyes blazed, her unnatural stillness cracking.

  “My queen,” he said, stepping in, “this is our opportunity. Through this woman, we can penetrate the Seven Brother’s protection and keep the terms of the treaty.”

  The queen hadn’t left the court for years. Set up or not, this was the opportunity to keep her here and finally have a source within the tight-knit gypsy clans. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of finally winding up this fiasco.

  “Haddon, don’t forget, I want Logan Ni Brennan taken alive. I have plans for him.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m saving a special place in my toyroom for him.”

  “As my lady wishes.” He bowed low and waved her down the corridor to the throne room. He would make sure she interrogated the sod, after he had shown him the repeated use of all the implements in the dungeon.

  The hot mid-afternoon sun beat down on Trina’s scalp as she pushed through the hounds milling around Logan and Solanum. After his revelations earlier, she knew she stood between him, his freedom, and his commitment to the prince. Didn’t someone say the definition of insanity was knowing what was real but not believing in reality? She was crazy to trust him. Crazy to let him go off without her.

  “You’ll be safer here, lass,” Logan said. “I’ll find Aoife.”

  “Take me with you. You can’t leave me here. I’ll go stir-crazy!” And she’d spend the entire time worrying about what he was up to. “I’ll be more use going with you than staying here.”

  He winked at her. “Better crazy than dead.” His broody darkness of the morning had fled and he was back to being the lighthearted flirt. “It’s just for a little while.”

  “I can help. I need to help.” She’d explained, she’d screamed, she’d damn near pushed herself to the breaking point for her family. How could he not get this? “I just can’t stay here doing nothing.”

  “No, I’ll be in Underhill, and there are those who would sell us out in a heartbeat.” He pulled her to him, his lips crushed hers, and a rush of lust weakened her limbs. “I’m not risking you this time. In fact…”

  Before she could react, he pulled the sapphire from around her neck and cupped it in his hands. Its heart lit up, the light fluttering in and out before dying. All her hopes of freedom died, too.

  “There. Now you can’t follow me.” His charming smile made her want to take a knife and cut his heart into little pieces, just like hers. “And when I return, we’ll see how crazy you are. I might like a little insanity in a woman.”

  He waggled his eyebrows and swung up on Solanum, who waggled his own horse eyebrows in a disturbing way.

  “What he means is, he’s going to fuck…Hey! That hurt!” Solanum shook his head and whinnied.

  “You’ve a hard head, beast.”

  “I’ve a hard…ouch!”

  “Wait!” she called, but he was gone, the sea of red hounds washing after him through the hole in the hedge that began to seal up, branches and thorns re-weaving themselves into her prison. She ran and dove for the shrinking opening, jerking back when the thorny branches slammed together on her nose.

  “Damn high-handed son-of-a-bitch!”

  She wiped a drop of blood from her face and glared at the thick barrier of thorns. How could she go from feeling so good about him to feeling so bad? On their return from the tunnels, he’d dropped his dark mood and made her feel like she was a queen, flirting and laughing with her through lunch, and after, when they’d made love. He’d made her come so many times, she’d lost count. His touch was masterful, assured, and so tender she’d grown confident he would treat her like an equal. Now this.

  She didn’t know if it was the pure chauvinism of being hundreds of years old and male, or if he had plans of betrayal. There was no doubt it was time to get off her ass and out of this trap. Even if he’d stuck her here out of some confused sense of caring, it was wrong. She wouldn’t stay with a man who treated her like she was a delicate, fragile flower. She needed a man who saw her as a partner, not an encumbrance.

  The sapphire gleamed in the sun, its surface undamaged. She held it in her hands, looked at the thorny bushes that blocked her way, and reached for the power.

  Soft energy flowed up through the soles of her feet and pulsed through her body. She focused, directing the energy into her arms, her hands, and the stone. She again asked it to open the hedge. The power flowed into the stone and back out but it lay inert on her palm, a pretty enough, rough-cut sapphire with no special glow or heat.

  Her heart sank.

  “Damn.”

  She went back into the cottage and rummaged for the objects needed for serious spell-casting. Candles were easy, as was wine, and bowls for water, salt, and oil. She found a knife that would take the place of her lost athame and carried it all to the flat stone at the center of the clearing to set up for the ritual.

  Centered, Trina called the four directions and closed the circle. She asked for the Goddess’s blessing and made an offering of the wine. A symbol of her willingness to give what was needed for the spell and her willingness to give of herself. Taking a deep breath, Trina looked at the dull sapphire sitting on the rock.

  Now was the time to reach for the real source of power, the river of energy that fed the clearing deep below the ground. The power that she and Logan had accidentally accessed when they’d rocked the earth, and the energy she was afraid fed the lurking forest outside, waiting for her to make a mistake.

  Trina traced her power centers with her Gift, down her neck, down her abdomen, down her legs and through her feet. Down, through the earth to where the node waited for her.

  She dipped in with her Gift and a champagne burst of abundant energy flowed in and through her. She laughed, forgetting why she was there as effervescence bubbled through her, floating out of her body as the energy buoyed her up into the sky.

  Rolling through the clouds and playing tag with the sunbeams, she thanked the Goddess for the incredible gift of feeling rushing through her. Down below, a tiny body lay on a rock in a small field of grass surrounded by forest as far as she could see. Something tugged on her spirit. She resisted and soared higher but the tug came again, harder. She fell. Tumbling through the clouds, the sky rushed past her and she slammed back into her body.

  Her limbs felt heavy and strange. She tried to remember what she needed to do, and then she inhaled. With the first shock of oxygen, it all came flooding back. Gasping for breath, she bent her will to directing the bubbling flow of energy into the stone.

  She tried for hours. Chanting and breathing, holding the sapphire and looking at it with her third eye, trying to see if she could discover how Logan’s fae magic had turned it off and if she could turn it back on. But it was no use. Nothing happened.

  She dropped to the ground and clutched handfuls of grass in her tight fists as frustrated tears welled up inside. No one was there to hear her. She could let go. No one but her would ever know that she’d gone and fallen in love with an elf. Who, even if he could love her, couldn’t be trusted and didn’t trust her.

  A rustling came from the direction of the hedge behind her. The bushes shook and shivered, and the stubborn thorns parted. An old woman ste
pped through the shivering leaves and Trina’s mouth dropped open. A reassuring tickle of power brushed against the soles of her bare feet as the picture of old Mother Hubbard come to life, carrying an overflowing basket of trinkets in her clawed hands came through the bespelled hedge.

  “Hello, deary.” Her voice cracked. “Have you a chair for an old woman to rest her bones in? Mayhap some water?” The old woman crossed the grass, her bent back clothed in a long black dress that could have been worn by a puritan in the 1600’s.

  Trina pulled power from the ground and rifled through the defensive spells in her head. “Who are you and how did you get in?”

  “Why bless my soul.” The old woman’s face stretched into a leathery grin. “I should introduce myself. I’m the Old Woman of these woods, and I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. It’s been a long time since anyone has lived in this old cottage, and I came by to bring you a welcome gift. Can I come up onto your porch and sit a while?”

  Trina hesitated. The woman appeared human, but certainly was at least a witch, if not partially fae. Something wasn’t right, but there was no obvious threat, and in fact, the entire situation reminded her of the tests the fae enacted. Most of the old tales had dire consequences for treating old fae ladies poorly.

  “I can leave, dearie.” The woman began to turn.

  “No!” Trina let the power leak back into the earth. With all her troubles, she didn’t want toads and bugs to come pouring out of her mouth. For that matter, gold and jewels would be just as much a problem. “No, it’s fine. Come up onto the porch and sit.”

  Ancient bones creaking her visitor moved slowly up onto the old boards of the porch and settled into one of the vacant chairs. Trina hovered on the grass, not ready to relax, but unwilling to evict her visitor and risk unknown consequences.

  Humming a familiar tune that Trina couldn’t place, the woman pulled her basket onto her lap and sorted through the odd assortment of pretty enameled combs, rings, and small, charming inlaid boxes. “Mmmm, now let’s see.” Her dark, beady eyes darted appraisingly at Trina. “I wasn’t sure what would be best for you, but now that I see you, I can tell.” Her voice sharpened. “What’s your name child?” she asked abruptly.