The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  I glanced pointedly at Helen, who thought for a moment, then folded her arms and cleared her throat. “Lord Oberon,” she said, resorting to English, “I know you understand me perfectly well, and so I’ll save us the time. I am no one’s pet, I am a guest, and I assume you’re making Lord Coileán cross for the sheer pleasure of provoking him. As we’ve all had a long day, and as I can only suppose you came alone, might I humbly suggest you cut it the hell out?”

  Oberon, taken aback, gawked at Helen in sudden silence, and I fought hard to control my laughter. “What she said,” I told him, cocking my head at the annoyed wizard. “If you want to take a stab at binding Moyna, go ahead, but I’ll not suffer insults to the girl.”

  He looked back and forth between us, studying the situation, then seemed to come to an internal resolution and drank again. “You’re hopeless, boy,” he said as he brushed past Valerius and into the corridor, “but yes, I think I’ll have a bit of fun.”

  Helen and I stood there as his footsteps died away, and I realized my muscles had reflexively tightened and forced them to unclench. When I was sure he was out of earshot, I muttered to her, “Don’t do that again, okay?”

  “I’m really not in the mood for any more bullshit right now,” she replied, then finished her drink in one long sip. “And I’ve had two of those in under an hour, so that could be exacerbating the problem.”

  “Would you like to be sober?”

  “No, and don’t try to mess with my head,” she said, sliding out of my reach. “This is a no-enchantment zone,” she added, prodding her chest with two fingers. “Are we clear on that?”

  “Crystal, but if you’re going to be lurking around here, you might want the language.”

  “Not today.” She frowned at the room, then plopped back onto the couch, covered her face with her palms, and groaned. “Shit, I can’t go home like this.”

  “You’re not that wasted,” I replied, sitting beside her. “Believe me, Greg’s seen worse.”

  “No, I mean everything with Aiden—I can’t leave him. For God’s sake,” she said, looking up at me, “he’s unconscious, you’ve got Pavli allegedly putting him back together, and he’s in the middle of friggin’ Faerie. I can’t leave him like this.”

  “Well, I’ve got matters to address, and I’m not leaving you unattended in my office,” I said. “Want a room? I’ll send someone to fetch you when he wakes.”

  “No,” she muttered, and stood once more. “I need to get out of here. Need to walk. Think.”

  I caught her before she reached the door. “The gardens are out back,” I offered. “And Joey should be around—he knows the place reasonably well. Do you want a guide?”

  Helen shrugged and brushed her hair from her face. “This day’s not going to get any weirder. Bring on Dragon Boy.”

  I had to hand it to Toula—the woman was more adept with technical magic than most of the magi, grand or otherwise, I’d ever known. A lifetime of working around the limitations of her bind had forced her to perfect the finer nuances of spellwork that so many wizards ignored. When bound, she had been skilled, albeit frustrated. Freed and in her full power, though, she was a force to be respected—a fact I didn’t treat lightly. It was one thing to find myself nominally in charge of a court—I thought I knew enough by then to stay one step ahead of the average faerie—but quite another to be confronted with an atypical witch-blood with the skill and the chutzpah to wander into the realm whenever she pleased.

  Fortunately for me, Toula seemed to have decided that we could be pals.

  Valerius had thought to fetch her once I’d herded or dragged our crew back through the gate, and whether because he’d been the one to ask or because he let slip that Meggy was almost in hysterics, she hopped out of bed, threw an oft-washed D.C. sweatshirt on over her boxers, and assumed control of the situation while I tried to simultaneously calm Meggy and pacify Helen. By the time I’d coaxed Meggy into a dark room and nudged her into sleep, Toula had banished Joey and Georgie to the barn to decompress, worked a spell over Moyna to keep her unconscious, moved Aiden into his room to begin fusing his ribs back together, and told her brother, in no uncertain terms, to keep Helen out of her hair while she worked. With Helen finally out of my way, I had time to check on Toula’s progress.

  I caught her slipping out of Aiden’s room as I rounded the corner to find her. “Sleeping,” she whispered, latching the door. “He’ll be good as new when he wakes. Maybe a little sore, but that’s why we have Tylenol.” She wiped her hands against each other as if brushing off the etheric traces of her spell. “Sent Carver home?”

  “Sent her outside,” I replied, following Toula down the hall to the bedroom where I’d left Meggy. “Oberon’s here to bind Moyna.”

  “Oh, goody,” she muttered, then cracked the door open, listened to the silence, and shut it with a nod. “Still out. Let them both sleep it off—it’s not going to hurt them, and quite honestly, I’d rather deal with this situation without asking Meggy to make any decisions.”

  She headed for the stairwell, aiming for the secure underground room where we’d moved Moyna, and I trailed at her heels. “Meggy has a right—”

  “Meggy is a mess,” Toula interrupted, lighting the spiral staircase with a flick of her fingers as pair of glowing orbs manifested above her. “I say this with love, but you and I both know she’s going to be useless in a crisis involving that girl. Better to do what needs to be done and ask forgiveness later.”

  “We’re not killing her.”

  She stopped and looked at me with horror. “Of course we aren’t killing her! Damn, Gramps, let’s ease up on the psychopathy, okay? I was thinking, you know, a bind and some therapy, and you’re all the way off the cliff…”

  “Long day,” I muttered, pushing past her down the stairs. “And what sort of therapy would you recommend, hmm? I can’t really see the three of us in family counseling.”

  “Not as such, but if you got some sort of mediator, tried to talk it out with her—”

  It was my turn to stop and stare. “She wants me dead. By now, I’m sure she wants Meggy dead, too. How am I supposed to talk sense into that?”

  Toula shrugged. “Start with a decent bind, I guess, and see where it goes once she wears herself out.” She hesitated, then said, “You really thought of killing her? Your own kid?”

  “It was Oberon’s idea.”

  She muttered under her breath—I caught only the words faerie and lunatic—and we descended the rest of the way into the cool darkness of the cellar in silence. Her roving light joined us an instant later, throwing the barred doors of Mother’s storage rooms—and Oberon—into sudden relief.

  He leaned against the moist stone wall, arms folded, and blinked rapidly at the change in light. “You could have warned me about that,” he said, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

  “You’re lurking in my basement,” I replied, and he straightened as I headed past him toward Moyna’s holding cell. “I don’t lurk in your basement, do I?”

  “I don’t have a basement. And you’ve found another pet witch?” he asked, deigning to notice Toula. “What are you doing, breeding them?”

  “Can it, Red,” Toula muttered over the slap of her flip-flops on the flagstones. “Be useful or be gone.”

  I smelled the change as it happened, but Toula was quicker on the draw and threw up a shield against the bolt of force that flew from Oberon’s palm. “Cute,” she said, straining slightly as the attack subsided, then dropped her shield, cupped her hands together, and blasted back at him with a ringing cry of, “Lorem!”

  Surprised for the second time that afternoon, Oberon failed to prepare for the counter-attack and was thrown headfirst into the wall by the strength of Toula’s spell. He sank to the floor with a groan, and by the time he’d realized what had happened and why his head was pounding, she was shielded again and primed. He slowly picked himself up, patted the back of his head for injury, then looked at me in confusion.

&n
bsp; “Perfect witch-blood,” I explained, hoping he hadn’t had a concussion. “You remember Toula, right?”

  He watched her for a moment as his eyes recalled how to focus, then gingerly nodded.

  “Great,” she said, smirking at his dazed discomfort. “No more cheap shots, eh?”

  Oberon stumbled away from the wall, giving her a significant berth, then peered at me and muttered, “How?”

  “Mab, a wizard, and a ton of dumb luck,” I replied. “And I’d prefer not to find out exactly what she’s capable of while we’re all down here together, so how about not making this difficult for once?”

  “She hit me,” he said, nearly whining in his disbelief.

  “She’s quick on the draw—and again, she’s my guest. Try that again if you want a fight.”

  His green eyes narrowed. “Your mother wouldn’t have permitted her pets to so insult me, boy.”

  “You may have noticed by now that I’m not my mother,” I said, and stopped before Moyna’s door. “How are we proceeding?”

  “Well,” said Toula, drawing up beside me, “I can keep her unconscious indefinitely. There’s plenty here to feed the spell, and the work’s solid, if I do say so myself. If you want to bind her, you can do so with the spell still intact, but I’d feel more comfortable being on hand to patch it as needed. Large-scale enchantment plus large-scale spellwork…”

  The end of that thought didn’t need to be vocalized. “Agreed. What do you need from me?”

  “Just be nearby in case I need to amp up the juice. I’d rather not be rebuilding and feeding all at once.” She looked around me at Oberon, who glared sullenly back at her. “You’re doing the bind, I understand?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Toula huffed in exasperation. “Yes or no, it’s that simple. Or did I hurt your little feelings?”

  “Don’t even think it,” I snapped, seeing his hand flinch, then gave Toula a look that I hoped properly conveyed the gravity of the situation. She stepped back a pace and raised her palms in surrender, and I turned my attention to Oberon. “You’re right,” I told him, “your binds are better than mine. Will you do it?”

  He stood there, regarding us both in stony silence, then shrugged as if nothing were amiss. “Of course my binds are better than yours, boy,” he replied, pushing the door open. “Do you have any idea how much practice I’ve had?”

  “I don’t really want to think about it,” I muttered to no one, but followed him into the room.

  My daughter lay motionless atop a plush bed in her windowless cell. I assumed the bed and its rose-print linens were a product of Toula’s imagination, as the ensemble was nothing if not out of place in that dank hole. I’d thrown up wards around the cellar to keep Moyna in, but Toula had taken it a step further, crafting her own brand of wards around the walls and door of the room, and my skin tingled as I passed through them. The little orbs followed Toula, giving me a clearer view of Moyna’s pale face, her salt-stiffened tresses, and the myriad bruises on her bare arms from impact with the flying gore and the water. In the poor light, she could have been a corpse—but on closer inspection, her thin chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm, and enough color suffused her cheeks to give me confidence that she lived yet.

  “Are you certain about this?” Oberon asked, pulling me back from her bedside. “It would be a moment’s work—”

  “Don’t hurt her.”

  He sighed. “If she harms my people or my property, I’ll hold you fully responsible.”

  “If you bind her properly,” I countered, “she won’t be able to harm you.”

  After a moment’s contemplation, he allowed, “I suppose that’s fair,” then stepped closer to the bed. “Next question: keep her memory intact?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Toula insisted, planting her fists on her hips when we turned to her. “Seriously? We’re having this debate? How well did that memory wipe work last time?”

  “It only failed because the bind failed,” I protested. “And need I remind you that she—”

  “Wants to dance atop your grave, I know, I know. But how do you expect this mess to get any better if you don’t even try? You’ve got her at your mercy—treat her with a modicum of respect, have the decency to leave her with her own mind, and work with her. Rewriting her memory again is tantamount to slapping a band-aid on a septic wound and hoping for the best.”

  “Or,” Oberon said quietly, “you could take the advice of the most experienced person in this room. Your decision, Coileán.”

  I moved to Moyna’s side and looked down at my child, who was still and dirty and frowning ever so slightly in her sleep. There was so much of Mother—and, I realized uncomfortably, of Aiden—in her features, but there was also a shadow of Meggy across her face, something I recognized yet couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  She had her mother’s eyes, I recalled. If they opened, I would see Meggy’s pale blue eyes staring back at me, hating me, fearing me…

  I almost touched her hand, but I hesitated, suddenly—irrationally—afraid of breaking the spell holding her in check.

  “All right, Toula,” I said, stepping out of the way, “we’ll leave Moyna intact. But you’re going to have to explain why to Meggy when this is all said and done.”

  “If she ever wants Olive,” she replied, pushing up her sweatshirt’s sleeves, “she’s going to have to trust me and make peace with Moyna. Now get back and let me work.” She waited until I’d retreated to the door, then nodded at Oberon. “Whenever you’re ready, bub.”

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  Aiden woke at dawn, whole and hale—if a little discolored and smelling of salt—and wandered down to my preferred dining room to ask about pancakes and his sister. I summoned an aide to handle the former—my attempts at pancakes usually ended up rubbery, for some reason—and turned to the realm for assistance with the latter. The familiar voice in my head, which had mellowed in its disappointment at Oberon’s departure, directed me toward the barn, and I forewent the walk in favor of the faster rip-open-the-fabric-of-space method upon which I’d recently come to rely.

  The interior of the barn was still shaded from the weak light, but Georgie’s red eyes opened as I slipped into the main room—which, I noticed with faint trepidation, had been expanded in recent days. The dragonet stretched her front legs and refolded her wings, then rested her head on her feet and blinked slowly. Breakfast? she asked, sounding hopeful.

  “There’s a flock out there with your name on it,” I whispered back to her, stepping around a waist-high pile of her cold leavings. “Go do some damage.”

  Not anymore.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, glancing at the open doors, then realized that something seemed amiss in the barn—a certain lack of bleating. “Where are they?”

  Georgie’s thought was colored by a faint sheen of guilt. I got hungry last night.

  I could only goggle at her. “You ate the entire flock?”

  Wrapping her tail around her, she explained, Couldn’t sleep. Sheep helped.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep? What’s the matter?”

  The tip of her tail twitched as it slid over her nose. Bad dream.

  “A bad dream,” I repeated, leaning against a stack of hay bales. “You had a bad dream, and you stress-ate twenty-odd sheep? Is that right?”

  Yes?

  I sighed and waved at the empty pasture, and the familiar bleating once more filled the air. “That’s forty, Georgie. Forty. Try to give them time to reproduce between meals, all right?”

  She stared through the doors at the pasture, seemingly uncertain of whether it was safe to unwrap herself and rise, but her stomach rumbled audibly, and with another snort, she climbed to her feet and plodded out to kill her meal, screeching at the sunrise for good measure. I shook my head, tried to ignore my terrified creations’ frantic bleats, and climbed the wooden staircase to the loft—once a little room under the eaves, and now a pleasant nook roughly halfway up the enlarg
ed barn. I supposed Joey had worked with Val to customize his space—I couldn’t fathom where else he’d have come up with taupe paint, light-blocking curtains, sword hooks, and, I noticed to my amusement, a large bathroom with a claw-footed soaking tub. The place was rustic but still on the respectable end of bachelor pads, even if everything smelled slightly of charred mutton and dragon dung.

  As my eyes adjusted, I picked out two figures in the room, one buried beneath the blankets on the bed, and the other sprawled on the couch across the loft. A closer inspection of the couch revealed a tuft of blond hair peeking from beneath the quilt—Joey, I presumed. The smaller lump on the bed appeared to be a brunette, and the purple coat discarded at the foot lent credence to my supposition that I’d found Helen. I shook her shoulder and stepped back as she muttered and sat up, scowling at the gloom and clasping the burgundy comforter to her chest. “Wha?” she mumbled, then noticed me, remembered where she was, and clutched the blanket more tightly. “Jesus,” she hissed, suddenly awake, “a little privacy?”

  “Aiden was asking for you,” I whispered, mindful of Joey sleeping behind me. “I thought you’d want to know.” I paused, took in the details of the room, then smirked at the girl in the bed. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?”

  Helen snatched her discarded clothing off the rug and slipped back beneath the blankets. “You know, there’s a reason he’s sleeping on that side of the room. Some guys are gentlemen.”

  “And then there’s me,” I replied, lifting her bra off the floor with one finger. “Missing this?” Her hand darted out from under the covers and yanked it back, and I chuckled as the bed creaked with her awkward attempt at modesty. “You’re telling me you spent all night out here with these two, and nothing at all untoward happened?”

  A moment later, she emerged from the bedding, disheveled but clothed, and tucked her wand back into her pants as she scoured Joey’s dresser for his hairbrush. “And why would anything untoward have happened?” she asked, yanking the brush through her thick rat’s nest. “We toured, we talked, he cooked, I slept. Not everyone has the libido of a sixteen-year-old boy.”