Sorrow's Son (Crossroads of Worlds Book 2)

by Rene Sears

  But I had already pulled out my phone and pulled up the last message I'd sent Teo. There wasn't a reply to it yet.

  There might be fae who hated our father looking for you. Please be careful.

  I hesitated, then hit send. It seemed inadequate. Maybe Rowan was right and they wouldn't be looking for him since he didn't actually know our father.

  For my aunt I decided to condense the last few weeks and skip over a few things. A fae hellhound came to your apartment so I left. Staying with friends right now, but be careful. It might come looking for you. It would be easier if I could tell Teo to look out for her too but I had no in faith in Vicente or the family I hadn't met to value her the way I did.

  Action had made me feel better, even action so slight as sending a couple of texts. Rowan was watching me closely. "I want to know," I said. "Did—"

  A sound shook us, a loud ringing, coupled with movement like an earthquake.

  "What was that?" I rubbed my ears.

  Rowan was standing, hand on the hilt of a dagger I hadn't noticed until then. "Someone is at the gates of Strangehold. Someone unexpected."

  He took off through the kitchen door at a jog, and I followed, every step jolting my exhausted body. By the time we reached the front doors, Rose and Hawthorn were already there, Rose looking nearly solid again and Hawthorn's face a thundercloud. As soon as she saw us, Hawthorn went to the door and flung it open violently.

  Briar stood in the courtyard, bathed in the silvery light, looking every inch the great fae lady in a flowing red gown the color of her hair, her face a smooth, expressionless mask; but her hands twisted together in front of her.

  "Briar," Hawthorn said, "what an unexpected pleasure."

  "I would not have disturbed your household by my own choice." Briar's eyes flicked over me and rested on Rose for a moment. She was resolutely not looking at Rowan. "Only I did not come here of my own volition. I was sent."

  "Who sent you, Briar?" Rowan's voice was smooth, friendly even, but there was an undercurrent of tension to his stance that reminded me—as if I could forget—that he had been and still was a very dangerous man.

  She straightened her back. Her hands went abruptly still, pale against the dark red of her dress. "Her majesty Gloriana sends me to beg a favor."

  "What?" Rose said, and at the same time, Hawthorn hissed, "You told her? You revealed us? You swore an oath!"

  "No," Briar said desperately, and finally the mask of her face cracked a little, and her eyes went to Rowan. "I would not! I did not. There is another in the courts who knows your secrets."

  "There is not," Hawthorn said. "The only other noble of the courts yet living and not standing with us is exiled in the mortal realm, and less likely to talk with the queen than even I am. There is none who could have told her but you."

  "I will swear it in blood if you require it of me." Briar held out her arms, the sleeves falling away in a graceful spill of red. "Do it, and acquit me of betrayal."

  Rose stepped forward and took Briar's outstretched hand. Briar flinched, whether because she was human or because she was a ghost I didn't know. "There is no need for that. I believe you." Hawthorn shot Rose a look.

  Briar stepped back and looked between Hawthorn and Rowan. Even with Rose standing right in front of her, she didn't acknowledge either of us mere humans. "But you must know—she does not command. She asks. She has called home her Blade and the Hunt and requests the favor of your guests." If that was true, maybe I didn't need to worry about Teo and my aunt after all.

  "Of my guests?" Hawthorn said thoughtfully. "Not of us?"

  Briar had recovered her poise. "Things grow worse underhill. Patches of rogue magic wander the hills and worse—patches of no magic at all. It started when the queen closed the gates between Faerie and the mortal realm." Rowan glanced at me, only for a fraction of a second. Would I ever be able to look at him without thinking that he had killed my father?

  "The thaummancers believe that the flow of magic between the realms was upset when the gates were closed. They say the troubles will spread between the realms until both worlds are affected and no one is safe." Briar looked around. "Possibly to this realm as well."

  "Do you know what she wants my guests to do?"

  Briar shrugged, and even that was graceful. "That is between her and them. I only bear her message and the message of her oracle." She shot a look at Rose, more respectful than hostile for once. "And perhaps your own?"

  Hawthorn sighed, a fractional escape of breath "Welcome to Strangehold, then, Briar. You might as well come in, and you can make your case to them yourself."

  Briar unbent to the slightest degree, and then she came inside.

  *

  While the adults got Briar settled, I ran back through the hallways to tell the twins. I should have gotten lost—I mean, I had earlier. But I could feel the twins ahead of me, and though I took a few wrong turns, I just reoriented on them and followed to where I thought they were.

  It was weird.

  But it worked; I was with them in no time. They weren't in their room. They were in Morgan's.

  "It's a trick," Morgan said as soon as I had told them about our visitor.

  "I don’t know," Iliesa said. "Would Lady Briar really claim to be from the queen if it wasn't so?"

  "Not a chance," Igraine said.

  Two pictures flashed into my mind like photographs next to each other: their mother Gwen, smiling and happy, utterly unlike when I had seen her, leaning on a tall fae man, both laughing, on a rare occasion they'd left Faerie and gone to the mortal realm together—at a carnival? And then Gwen in the armor of the Queen's Blade, grim and aggressive. She'd blamed her sister for not keeping them safe from her; she must also have wanted to keep her children from seeing her like this—as a weapon aimed against them.

  I looked up and two pairs of eyes were focused on mine, one pair green and one brown. Morgan watched us all, lines of pain down the middle of her forehead lending her extra years.

  "What about your mother?" I said out loud.

  Igraine looked sideways at Morgan.

  "My sister would never hurt you by choice," Morgan said. "But she's not making her own choices right now."

  Igraine and Iliesa exchanged another look. I could read them much better now than I had before I pulled them apart, so I wasn't surprised when Iliesa stood up and smoothed her tunic over her hips. "Well, we won't know until we go listen to her, I guess. Aunt Morgan, can I help you walk to the front hall?"

  Morgan swept another look over all three of us. "I'd appreciate the help. It'll take me forever to get there otherwise."

  We listened to the pair of them limping down the hall, and then Igraine sighed and looked my way. "You know what it's like," she said slowly.

  Hairs rose on my arms. "What what's like?"

  "Having a parent who..." She let it trail off.

  There were a lot of ways she could have finished that sentence. "Igraine, your mother can't help what she's doing. She doesn't want to do it. My father..." I didn't want to finish this one, either.

  "I worry that we'll never get her back. Even if the queen lets her go, what if she's never the same? I know it'll kill her to have hurt Aunt Morgan, and if she's done something to our dad, it'll break her." Something clenched in my stomach. Her mother was the Queen's Blade, and the queen had had my mother and uncle killed. What if her mother had been the one to do it?

  Igraine was looking at me, her forehead wrinkling into a frown. It wasn't just that I could read her better; she could tell that something was wrong with me, too. But I didn't know for a fact it had been her mother, and even if it had, it wasn't Igraine's fault.

  I cleared my throat and made myself speak. "She'll come back to you if she can. My father chose not to. He knew he wasn't coming back when he cast that spell."

  Her frown melted into a more sympathetic expression. "I don't have the right to ask you, but...will you help us? The queen has our parents. She'll use them to get us to..."
<
br />   "What is it that you think I can do to help?"

  "I don't know, but I'd be just one more part of the source if you hadn't helped us before."

  I thought about Teo, waiting to hear from me. And then there was Rowan. Helping them would no doubt mean more time with him, having to accept as well as I could—or not—that he had killed my father.

  But on the other hand, maybe I could help them. And Rose and Hawthorn were my best bet of learning more about the dragon I had, for better or worse, tied myself to.

  "I'll help you," I said.

  Her eyes warmed to a brighter green. "Thank you."

  "As much as I can, as long as I can. There's still my brother..." I trailed off, not entirely sure what I was trying to say.

  "I understand," she said, and she probably did, maybe better than I did myself.

  Vertigo rolled through me, an unsettling moment of my knowing that she knew a lot about me—and I knew a lot about her—that neither of us had chosen to tell each other, and might not have until much later, if ever; knowing without getting to know. If it meant she understood how ambivalent I was about my family, eager and afraid at the same time, it also meant that I understood what a friend meant to her and Iliesa, who had spent their short, strange childhood surrounded by other kids who made sure they knew how different they were from everyone else. I knew what it would mean to have someone choose them.

  "I should give this back to you." Igraine touched the frog charm at her neck.

  I hesitated. "Keep it. If you want." I had my memories of my mother, and no physical object could ever be as precious as those.

  "Thank you," she said, and lifted her eyes to mine; waiting.

  "Yes. I'm in. I'll help you."

  She smiled, and it transformed her face. Whatever offer, whatever threat, Briar brought from the queen, I'd face it with them.

  GUINEVERE

  The queen had not had a Blade the entire time I lived in Faerie, until she made me one.

  I'd seen Lord Rowan, the queen's changeling son, in the position a few times before that, impassive in his golden armor, a threatening figure behind her, but by the time I moved into the ambassador's quarters in the Shining Court, he had resigned.

  I'd never thought about how much the armor weighed, or what it meant to be bound to the queen's will. If I'd thought of him at all, it was only to be glad that I had nothing to fear. I'd certainly never concerned myself with what he thought or felt.

  The armor was heavy, but the knowledge that my will was not my own was heavier still.

  Right now the queen was distracted—distracted by my daughters, who she'd made me attack. My sister interposing herself between my sword and my children was a memory I'd never forget, no matter how hard I tried.

  I never realized what a charmed life I'd led until now: A job that meant the world to me, liaison between Faerie and the Association. A husband I adored, and two girls, wonderful and strange. There were fae I didn't like as much as others, but that had been true of people overhill too.

  I'd never known what it was to hate, until now.

  The boy—my daughters' friend, who had come to Faerie with them, risking the queen's interdiction. I didn't even know his name, but I already liked him just for that. He had thrown a dagger at me. I had parried it aside with my sword—in the armor, I could be nothing less than a perfect warrior—but picked it up as he and Morgan fled.

  It was the one weapon I had that was not hers.

  As I stood now, guarding an empty throne room—her majesty's way of reminding me of my true importance, I presumed—the dagger was a solid, comforting weight at my hip. I wasn't—well. I hadn't been a warrior, but the last several months had been quite an education. This dagger, cheap, dulled metal that it was, was something the queen did not control. And as long as she didn't know about it, I could use it.

  How, I didn't know. Not yet. But as long as she was a threat to my daughters, I would keep looking for a way to turn it against her. It was that or give in to despair.

  I wasn't ready for that.

  I stood at attention in the empty room and thought about broken hearts and what broke them. She had turned me against my family, and I didn't know if they would ever be able to see me as they had before. I didn't know how I'd be able to look in the mirror once this was over, assuming it ever would be.

  No. Don't think like that.

  I knew what had broken my heart.

  Now I would find out what would break hers.

  END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A book only exists as a story the writer tells herself until someone else reads it, at which point she discovers all the bits she glossed over and the hard parts she didn't dig into deeply enough. My deepest thanks to Stephanie Burgis, Kat Howard, and Ben Sears for reading early versions of the story and for finding those bits and helping me dig deeper. You truly made this story stronger.

  Thanks also to Lou Harper, who once again took a series of notes and a Pinterest board and turned them into a marvelous cover. (And in particular for her care in finding just the right hellhound.)

  My family are my staunchest supporters in my every creative endeavor. I can't thank them enough for providing time and space and support. All thanks to Sean and Jimmy for understanding that sometimes mom needs time to write, and to Jimmy for reading Strangehold and then becoming its strongest advocate. And in particular thanks to Ben, not only for all his enthusiasm for whichever work is current, but for all those years ago saying "If you want to write a book, why not do it?"

  And to you, for reading: Thank you.

  Note to the Reader

  Thank you for reading! If you wish to be notified when a new book or story comes out, please sign up for my mailing list at http://tinyurl.com/renesears. (You will also get a free story when you sign up.) I will never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time. There is also more information about the Crossroads of Worlds series and my other writing at http://www.renesears.net.

  Reviews and word of mouth really help a book find its readers and contribute to a book's success, so please consider leaving a review, whether positive or negative. Thank you, and happy reading!

  Rene

  QUEEN OF STORMS

  COMING SOON:

  Faerie is crumbling. When the queen of Faerie closed the gates between Faerie and the mortal realm, a blight on the land began. Now, the fae are turning into twisted versions of themselves as magic is going wrong or vanishing entirely and if the blight goes unstopped, it might spread to Earth as well.

  Twin daughters of a fae lord and the human ambassador to Faerie, Igraine and Iliesa just want to reunite with their parents and go home to Faerie. But the queen believes that only they can put things right—by becoming a willing sacrifice at Midwinter. The queen has their parents and all the power of Faerie on her side. The twins have their aunt Morgan, the former assassin Rowan, and the young human spellcaster Javier.

  As the clock ticks down to Midwinter, the twins discover unsuspected links to the land. But when Iliesa tries a desperate spell, she turns the blight onto herself. Bereft of her sister for the first time in her life, Igraine must turn to powers beyond Faerie or Earth for any hope of saving her sister and her homeland. Even if she succeeds, will she recognize what she's become?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rene Sears is an editor and the author of the Crossroads of Words series. She has had short stories published in Cicada, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy's Edge magazine.

  Rene enjoys travel and the outdoors and has rafted down the Main Salmon River in Idaho four times. She is also paints and embroiders, and enjoys making things, and aspires to one day unite disparate interests by embroidering a book cover.

  She lives in Birmingham, Al, with her husband, two children, and a dog that may or may not be part Belgian Shepherd. You can find out more at www.renesears.net Sign up for her newsletter and get a free story at https://tinyurl.com/renesears

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  Rene Sears, Sorrow's Son (Crossroads of Worlds Book 2)