I, myself, could have been the door, since I didn’t remember a damn thing.
Darling squirmed, his message conveyed, and scampered down the hill, tail banner high. The traveling caravan appeared ready to go, indeed, queued up like a many-segmented colorful snake, poised to strike down the road.
Starling waited for me next to a carriage that could have been created by Cinderella’s fairy godmother—a sequined fishbowl for all intents and purposes. Hopefully they’d punched some airholes in it. Darling perched on top of the glass globe, looking immensely pleased with himself, and likely to slide off at any moment. Felicity, bestowed with a great sparkling plume, led a brace of four other horses, prancing in place happily.
“I’m riding in this?”
“Yes! Both of us.” She patted my arm in sympathy. “So you won’t tire yourself out.”
“Starling.” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I am not pregnant. I know this for a fact, because it is physically impossible for me to be pregnant since I have never had sexual intercourse with Rogue. Or anyone else since I got here, for that matter,” I added, just to be clear.
And—kill me now—she looked indulgent, patting me on the arm again. “Don’t worry about it now. We’re here to take care of you. Just leave everything to us. I put your grimoire in there so you can work in it,” she coaxed.
Because everyone was now waiting on me, and they all seemed so excited about the carriage, I climbed inside. Fortunately the blue velvet bench seats were remarkably soft and cozy. Also, what had appeared to be clear glass were window openings here and there, between the sparkly swirling decorations. Above, Darling peered down at us through the curved roof, eyes bright with superiority. An expression that vanished as the carriage lurch forward and he desperately scrabbled for purchase on the smooth surface, pink jelly-bean toes mooshing against the glass, paws splaying in all directions.
Starling giggled. I snorted. Darling glared at us, but—furry brown belly pressed tight against the carriage and all four legs akimbo—he began a slow, relentless slide down the back. Starling fell to her side, helpless with laughter. I nearly couldn’t catch my breath long enough to make the wish, but I managed to create a pillow affixed to the top and scooted him up to it.
He sank his claws in and lifted whiskers to the crisp blue sky, at last in his rightful place.
Yawning mightily, Starling stretched out on her seat and promptly fell asleep. Taking my cue from her, I turned sideways on mine and, propping my back against the curved rest, opened my grimoire to review and add notes.
I created a new section by wishing in some new pages—way better than having to grab a package at the hobby store and wrestle the blanks into the binding—and contemplated how to categorize these recent phenomena. Blackbird’s memories, mine—they weren’t really lost. It was more as if they’d been interfered with somehow. I wrote down Memory Interference, but frowned at it. I didn’t want to create an immediate bias by assuming some kind of outside agency at work. Memory Inconsistency, then.
I wrote down as many observations as I could recall of the oily rope in Blackbird’s mind and in my own. Then I turned to the Rogue section and recorded every detail possible about our last night together, along with Larch’s speculations about vulnerability. I’d never been much for personal journaling, and I felt my face heat as I remembered how I kissed and touched him. A naked feast just for me. In the bright light of day, the way I’d gladly—no, voraciously—gone down on him and sucked him to violent climax seemed...wow. Okay, it aroused me again just remembering.
Funny how I kind of wanted to hide the page, though I knew perfectly well no one could read writing at all, much less this. Still, I glanced at the peacefully snoozing Starling before I continued.
The whole interlude had been so wildly exciting I’d even swallowed, not usually my favorite thing. That part stood out vividly though, because I hadn’t minded at all, hadn’t felt choked by the mucous fluid as sometimes happens. I’d drunk him in with as much hunger as the rest, reveling in his gasps of pleasure, the wildly triumphant utter delight emanating from him.
With a sinking feeling, I made myself contemplate it. Had that been the joy of a final victory? Of course it was completely impossible for a human woman to become pregnant from ingesting sperm, but my own snarky thoughts came back...Rogue’s magically potent sperm.
No no no.
Just because a lot of biology here didn’t work according to my physical laws didn’t mean that this could change too. There had been entirely too much superstitious nonsense and misinformation surrounding pregnancy back in my old world. Things here might work differently, but they still followed definable rules—if I could just find them.
Except Rogue had no belly button, so that implied he hadn’t grown in a womb, not in the usual way. How had the egg and sperm united to form him? With fish, the male salmon distributed milt over the red of eggs—no male/female interaction necessary. If the fae formed in eggs, they wouldn’t have navels.
It would explain why they all seem so convinced you’re pregnant, if you are, my objective self relentlessly pointed out. Of its own volition, my hand fell to my flat belly. Surely not.
“Did the baby move?” Starling’s eyes had popped open, bright with interest.
“No.” I snapped the grimoire closed and set it on the floor. “The baby—which does not exist to begin with—would barely be a division of cells at this point. Microscopic bits of tissue do not move in any discernible way.”
“Oh.” She pouted. “I’m just excited for you.”
“Starling...” I sighed. Started over. “Do you know much about how babies are made?”
This sounded like a condescending question to a twenty-something-looking person like her, but it had occurred to me that this wasn’t such an obvious thing here. Cecily had been clearly pregnant to Nancy and seemed to be giving birth in a human way. I hadn’t meant to question the extent of Starling’s sexual knowledge.
But, unaccountably, across from me, Starling had turned bright red and was picking at the blue velvet upholstery.
“Some,” she muttered.
Oh my God.
“See, I know that when a man and a woman love each other very much—”
“You can stop there. We’re not having that conversation.”
“But you asked.” She thrust her lower lip out and I rolled my eyes at her.
“Tell me this—do you have a belly button?”
She nodded and lifted her dress, revealing pretty lace pantaloons that matched her skirts.
“Glass coach, remember?”
“Oh, they can’t see in. Magic glass coach.”
Of course. So I took the opportunity she offered and moved over to sit next to her on her bench. Her navel looked perfectly normal to me. A dainty little innie. But Starling was half-human, so not unexpected.
“And you grew in Blackbird’s womb, right? She gave birth to you?” I asked this, just to be sure to cover all bases. The word niggled at me and I remembered something Rogue had said that last night, about Titania’s cursed womb. I needed to add that to my notes.
“Yes, but they had to cut me out.”
Interesting. Might not mean anything though.
“How about Blackbird—was she...cut out too?”
Starling frowned at me, puzzled.
“Let’s try this. Do you have a grandmother?”
She cocked her head, not quite understanding the concept.
“Your mother’s mother? Who Blackbird lived with before she was imprisoned in the tower in the Glass Mountains and so forth?”
“Well...I think she lived in that tower for a really long time.”
“Right. But before that?”
“I mean, a really long time.”
“Gotcha.” I moved back to my bench and picked up the grimoire.
“The fae nobles are like that.” She sat up and tucked her feet under her. “All immortal—you know. So you can p
retty much lock one up in a tower and leave her there for a long time.”
“And you?”
She shrugged. “I’d starve and die. Or at least, grow old and die. I think. It’s not like I have a lot of half-breed friends to ask.”
That got my attention. “How many do you have?”
“Um, none?” She gave me an impish grin, which faded as she looked out the carriage window, the breeze ruffling her sunny bangs. “I wanted it to sound good. You’re my only friend, Gwynn. Before you I had no one.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Tis true.” She blew me a kiss. “Except for Mom, who doesn’t count.”
“Have you heard of a Lord Fafnir?” I thought the seeming change of subject might be too abrupt, but Starling nodded.
“Lady Incandescence’s old lover, before she became Lord Rogue’s. I never met him though.”
“Why not?”
“Before my time. I guess he was all the thing, back in the day, but then he met his final comeuppance.”
“What happened?”
“He was defeated and went over to the enemy.”
“Falcon’s enemy in the war?”
“Is there another?” She sounded all irritated and flopped onto her back, staring up at the sky through the glass ceiling. “What do you care? Lord Rogue is a far better catch.”
I didn’t point out the obvious, that Rogue wasn’t around. And certainly not caught. At least not by me, at the moment.
“I care,” I explained with great patience, I hoped, “because I’m thinking about our quest and the pattern of missing firstborn children, not about romance. There are more important things in life than figuring out which man you want to land.” I added a couple of notes about Fafnir to his section in Flora and Fauna.
“Easy for you to say—you have them panting after you. You’re not a tainted half-breed who’ll end up a virgin spinster and laughingstock of the entire countryside.”
“Isn’t that a little dramatic?”
When she didn’t answer, I glanced over at her in time to see her wipe a tear from her cheek.
“Ah, I’m sorry. What happened? Officer Sean?”
She looked miserable. “He has girls at home. Human girls. He’d never soil himself with a dirty half-breed.”
I put down my pen. “He said that?”
“He wanted to, you know, do the deed, and I said, ‘No! I’m a good girl and I’m saving myself for true love’ and he says, ‘Maybe I am your true love’ and I say, ‘Maybe you are but I don’t know for sure yet but we have time to find out’ and then—” She paused to draw in a breath and wipe her nose with the back of her hand. “And then, he laughs at me! He laughed and said I wasn’t worth the wait. That he has his pick of human girls and I’d saved him from contaminating himself with fae twat.”
I flinched at the ugly word. “That was a horrible, ugly thing to say to you.”
“But it’s true.”
“No. It isn’t.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes at the blue sky. “It is, Gwynn. You don’t know. The fae won’t have me either. Who wants a wife who’ll just die? And the humans—they’re all afraid the magic will rub off on them, change them.”
Interesting how that paralleled what I’d been thinking. “Yeah—but he was happy enough to dip his wick in it until you brought up true love.”
“What? Oh!” She wrinkled her nose. “And ick!”
“But my point stands.”
“I still don’t understand,” she whined. “I’m not as smart as you are.”
“Oh, stop it. Yes, you are. My point is that he was not telling you the truth. This is a human thing and—I’m sorry to say it—not unusual for a human man when getting laid is on the line. He was happy enough to do the deed, as you say, until you scared him with the Oh My God lifetime and beyond commitment of True Love.”
“But I want to fall in love!”
“Fine. But don’t go looking for someone to pop into that role. Figure out who you are first. Make your life what you want it to be. You are not trapped in a tower waiting for rescue. When you find someone you like enough, who thinks you—the woman, Starling, regardless of your parentage—is wonderful also, then you can try on loving them. Love as an active verb, not some fairy-tale idea of this magical state of True Love that somehow descends on you from beyond.”
“But everyone wants true love.”
“It’s a fantasy. It doesn’t exist.”
“You have it.”
“No. Especially not me.”
When we stopped for lunch, I left Starling to help Larch set out our colorful blankets, flasks of chilled wine and trays of leftover feast food. With the current size of our company, it took me a few minutes to find the human soldiers. The men had gathered around a small fire and were heating some kind of meat over it. Officer Liam spotted me and, wiping the grease from his cheek, rose from his crouch to meet me.
“Lady Sorceress.” He inclined his head in apparent respect, but I heard the unhappiness in his thoughts, the sweet scent of desire forever tainted with the bitter metal of fear. Great. “How may I serve you?”
“A private word, please.” I walked away, making him tag along after. Small pleasures. When we were out of earshot, I stopped. “You have an Officer Sean among your men?”
“He’s a good man.”
“I don’t care. I want him gone. Send him home.”
Liam’s face darkened under the sunny bronze curls. “Is that Lord Rogue’s order?”
“Lord Rogue isn’t here. It’s my order.”
“Why do you want Sean to go?”
“It doesn’t matter why—make it happen. Tell you what, you can go with him.” I turned to leave.
“No, I can’t.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. A handsome man, for sure, though not as tall as Rogue. “No?”
“Some of us hold our honor highly. I can’t just gallivant off because the whim takes me. Not like himself.”
“Excuse me?”
He scratched his bristly chin. “Seems I heard something about that—how you’re knocked up with Lord Rogue’s bastard and now he’s off to greener pastures.” He was pleased to needle me, his thoughts full of satisfaction at scoring a point. I’d been screwed, just as he had.
“Really?” I said to him. “That’s really where you want to go?” I stared him in the eye, letting the cat well up in me. She wanted out, frustrated from my worrying and with the lack of action in the past few days, ready for a little fight.
He held up open palms to placate me, but he smelled more of spitefulness than fear. “Just seems that I warned you of what would happen if you cavorted with the fae. ’tis unnatural. No good can come of it.” His gazed drifted down to my midsection and I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around myself in protection.
“You have no fucking clue what kind of choices I’ve had to make.”
“No, but I know he left you. He said he didn’t care what happened to you. How can you choose him?”
The cat crouched in my heart. “When did he say that?”
“The night before the harvest party.”
Now he had my complete and utter attention.
“Tell me what happened.”
He shrugged, putting me off, back to his insouciant self. “Nothing you need to fret about, Lady Sorceress. Something between men.”
The cat’s need to act, already so close to the surface, flared and melded with my own high emotional state. “Fuck that shit,” I muttered to myself and lashed out a silver-white lasso of thought around Liam’s, holding him in place with the merest wish.
This became easier each time. I sifted through his memories of the past few days with careless ease, quickly finding the one I wanted. There. Rogue waking him from slumber, imperious, demanding—and on edge. Was that fear or anger? Making Liam swear to protect me with his last gasp and laying the onus on him. And giving him a goddamn message for me.
“Tell her not to look for me. If
Falcon calls, she should ignore him. I’ll handle him. I don’t care what she does, as long as she stays safe—and well away from me. Tell her to remember what I warned her about. Protect my lady, Liam, or I’ll skin you and keep you alive that way.”
So odd to see Rogue through Liam’s eyes, the shine of wild magic around him, the flare of his cloak as he left again. I didn’t have to ask Liam why he hadn’t passed along the message. It stood in his thoughts—the disgust at my sluttish behavior, a bit of pity at me being cast aside, and the prurient hope that he might be the one to fuck me next.
I shook my head at Liam and let him go. He staggered a little, but I didn’t care. With nothing further to say to him, I turned my back and left him there.
Chapter Fifteen
Juvenile Delinquents and Unexpected Airlifts
Magic seems to operate almost like a radioactive substance or other mutating agent. Which begs the question, who or what were the fae before they mutated?
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Magic”
In the back of my mind, I registered the fact that I’d taken another step past whatever ethical code remained to me. The cat, however, didn’t care and she filled my head enough that the thought remained a minor note. Mostly we were thinking about Rogue’s blunt message.
Tell her not to look for me.
I brushed my fingers against one dangling lily earring. It was all I wanted to do. I plopped myself on the blanket and Starling handed me a plate and a glass of wine.
“I can have wine even though you think I’m pregnant?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Good enough for me.” I pondered while I ate. Remember what he warned me about? I could have devoted an entire Chapter to Rogue’s ominously vague warnings, there had been so many. Which damn warning? The dragon’s egg weighed, null and lifeless in my pocket, complimented by the vial of blood on the other side. He’d warned me to be careful of who I received tributes from. A place to start, anyway.
Rogue’s Possession Page 19
