“Thank you,” I replied, feeling my gut begin to unclench for the first time in days.
“But there is one other matter to address,” Nath continued, looking at Oberon and me in turn. “Although I suppose I should thank you, I find my brother is dead at your hand. Compensation is owed.”
I looked to Oberon for a cue, but he remained stone-faced. “What did you have in mind?”
Nath turned most of her eyes on Geheret’s body for a moment, then flicked her hand in the air as if halfheartedly trying to hail a cab. The corpse exploded in black flame, and Moyna screamed and fell backward in her effort to escape the fire. “When Geheret’s mother came into this realm,” said Nath, “my father favored her, and though she was powerless, he saw to her needs. Geheret was the only fruit of their union—I am younger, and as you may have deduced,” she added, flashing what appeared to be a wry grin, “I am not of Mab’s line.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I replied, earning a wider smile from the throne.
“Her people began as refugees in this realm, but they have since aspired to dominion,” she continued, cutting her eyes to the little knots of fae troops scattered around her. “They have no place here. I would see them gone from our lands.”
I overheard snatches of worried conversation around the circle but kept my attention on Nath. “You would have us…repatriate them?”
“If you like,” she said with a light shrug. “In truth, it makes little difference to me. I banish them now and henceforth,” she said, raising her voice, then spoke in the realm’s tongue—repeating herself, I assumed, given the cheer the non-fae set up immediately thereafter. “For compensation,” she said to me, “I would ask that you allow them the use of your gate. What you do with them after they have left me is none of my concern.”
“Gladly,” I told her, but caught Oberon’s eye and added, “If you would excuse us for a moment to discuss the logistics?” Nath nodded and bent to speak to a pair of steel-helmed soldiers at her left hand, and I pulled Oberon aside. “Do you want them?”
“Me?” he muttered. “What am I to do with them? They’re Mab’s people—if you think they’re going to swear allegiance to either of us, you’re a bigger fool than you seem.” He straightened, seeing something over my shoulder, then beckoned as one of the fae soldiers approached. “Come to talk defection, Kiet?” he asked as the soldier tucked his helmet under his arm.
“Lord Oberon. Lord…Coileán,” he managed with obvious distaste. “I can’t claim to speak for all, but you know as well as I do that a peaceful merger is impossible at this time.”
“I was just explaining the facts of life to the boy,” Oberon replied. “What do you suggest?”
Kiet—who, if known to Oberon, had to be some centuries my senior—rubbed his nose in thought. “A third court—”
“Out of the question. The realm won’t have it.”
He grunted. “I’d feared as much.”
“How many of Mab’s children remain?”
At that, Kiet cocked an eyebrow. “Excluding the ones slaughtered this day? To my knowledge, one—assuming she is who I think she is, my lords.”
We followed his gaze to Toula, who was simultaneously defending the gate and keeping Meggy away from Moyna. “She is,” I said quietly. “Would you like a word with her?”
Kiet nodded, and I caught Toula’s eye and beckoned for her to join us. She jogged over, frowning, and I pulled her into the huddle. “This is Fotoula Pavli,” I said, ignoring the death glare she shot me at the recitation of her proper name. “Mab’s daughter. If there’s something you need to discuss…”
The soldier dropped to one knee and dipped his head. “Lady Fotoula,” he said, oblivious to her twitching, “with your brother’s death—and the deaths of your other siblings,” he added with a glare for me, “the court is bereft of a leader, and the title flows to—”
“No.”
His head shot up in consternation, but Toula stepped back and folded her arms. “No,” she repeated, “it doesn’t. Even if it did, I’m way too Arcanum to run a court, but…”
Her voice trailed off, and I caught the glance she shot across the circle to Val, who watched with concern from the rim of the gate. The two exchanged a silent, indecipherable look, and she turned back to Kiet. “I’m sorry, but no. Choose someone else.”
“Return to Faerie and submit to my rule,” I told him as he rose, “or take your chances in the mortal realm. The choice is yours.”
Kiet’s eyes were troubled, but he nodded. “My lords. We will not return to Faerie at this time.”
“Suit yourself,” said Oberon as Kiet walked away. He had the grace to wait until the soldier was out of earshot before murmuring, “Protecting someone, are we?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Toula, and left us to rejoin her brother, Meggy, and Joey, who had somehow coaxed Georgie out of her feeding frenzy.
Seeing our knot break apart, Nath asked, “Is the matter resolved?”
“It is,” I replied. “Mab’s people may have safe passage to the mortal realm. I’ll open a second gate from Faerie as soon as we take our leave.”
“Very good. And as for them?”
I glanced at my sisters and brother, who said nothing and looked somewhat green, even in the dim light. “They will return with me. We have matters to discuss. And if that doesn’t suit them,” I continued, meeting their worried eyes, “then they can remain here, and you may do with them what you like.”
Nath nodded and steepled her long fingers. “Then I suggest, for their continued well-being, that they accompany you.”
“Thank you, my lady,” I told her, and turned to find Moyna on the fringe of their group. “And as for you, young lady…”
When I wake in the early hours and replay my life in the still darkness, I often pause at that moment and rewind, trying to find the spot where I made the wrong decision, where I could have done something differently and rewritten the outcome. I’ve found several such moments through this retrospection, but even still, no matter how desperately I try to avoid re-watching it, my mind continues to show me the truth as it happened. There is no restarting in life, after all.
I see Moyna standing apart from the family, red-faced with anger and baring her teeth between lips the color of old port. The top of her corset heaves with her labored breathing, and her blue eyes dart toward the gate and her mother, who runs toward her with relief etched on her face, finally free to reclaim her lost child. Moyna’s hands clench and ball into fists, and I remember—too late, always too late—that the magic flowing into the Gray Lands is hers for the taking.
I see the green fire spark between Moyna’s fingers, and still Meggy runs to her, overjoyed and oblivious to the danger.
I see my own hands rise and flare in front of my face as my panic takes control. I hear myself yelling Meggy’s name. And when that does nothing to change her course, I see the twin blue fireballs shoot from my hands, straight for Moyna.
But Meggy finally notices me. Meggy sees that I’m about to kill her baby.
And Meggy, who can’t raise the shield she needs in the split-second she has left, jumps between us.
I started running for Meggy before she hit the ground, trying to somehow recall the power that had blasted holes through her chest and abdomen, but magic doesn’t work that way. I can’t turn back time. I can’t raise the dead.
But as I knelt and cradled her head, begging her to hold on, to heal, to forgive me, I tried my damndest.
The last thing I remember from the Gray Lands is looking up to find Moyna staring down at us with a gloating smile. “How does it feel, Ironhand?” she asked. I stared at her, beginning to comprehend what had happened, and her smile resolved into a smirk. “Still love me?”
She vanished then, and I caught the flicker of motion as she reappeared beside the gate. Helen was too preoccupied to offer her any resistance, and as Oberon had incapacitated the guards, there was no one around to stop Moyna as s
he opened a rip into the mortal realm and was gone—and I was left to clutch the body growing cold in my hands.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Even now, I can’t say with any certainty who dragged me back across the border, though I suspect Val had a hand in it. I do remember struggling by the barn in the twilight as he and Joey pried Meggy away from me. She had grown pale and stiff by then, but something in me that had snapped insisted that if I waited a little longer, held on a little tighter—hell, maybe tried clapping—she would revive. When they finally pulled her out of my arms, I never had an opportunity to reclaim her, as Toula, who had been standing by at the ready, moved in and punched the wind out of me before I could start sparking. Each time I managed to catch my breath, she hit me again, harder and faster, until I surrendered and stayed down, curling up to protect myself from the rain of blows. “Stupid,” she muttered, but whether she’d directed that at me, Meggy, or herself, I suppose I’ll never know.
When I hadn’t moved from the dirt by full nightfall, a few of my aides ventured out to claim me and half-carried me back into the palace. I limped into my chambers alone, then erased the doors and windows from existence before collapsing onto my bed and letting the blackness take me.
I might have remained there indefinitely had a shaft of sunlight not roused me from sleep.
The light hurt, even with my eyes closed, and I first tried burying my head in the pillow to seal it out. But I could still feel it, a warm spot on my back that refused to leave me in peace. With the warmth came fuller arousal, which brought back once more the scenes I’d been reliving in dreams and trying to push from my mind.
I’d been sleeping for a reason, I remembered, and I’d removed the windows specifically to avoid this situation. Yet one had returned of its own accord…
Frustrated, I rolled over and forced my eyes to open—and in the daylight, I saw I was not alone.
She sat at the foot of my bed, petite and almost girlish in form, her blonde waves cascading over one shoulder and onto the coverlet. Her dress was unremarkable, a silvery sheath short enough to reveal the bare feet she’d tucked up beneath her, but her eyes…hazel and slightly upturned, faintly glowing, and ancient, they crinkled when I gasped in surprise to find myself with company. Her mouth twitched as I scrambled to right myself and scooted to the head of the bed, leaving a trail of dirt across the white sheets. “It’s time to rise, child,” she murmured, then laughed softly when I rolled off the bed and into a defensive stance. “Come now, don’t tell me you don’t know me. Are these measures truly necessary?”
My throat was too dry to produce more than a raw croak. “Who—”
“Listen,” she said, pressing two fingers to the side of her head, and I heard her voice continue in my mind: You don’t know me, Coileán? You haven’t completely ignored me this last year, have you?
I felt my mouth open, then snapped it closed as recognition hit. “Moon and stars…you…”
She tilted her head and nodded. “Sit. I won’t hurt you.”
“But you…” I floundered, trying to drive the fog from my brain, and managed, “You have a body?”
At that, she laughed in earnest, high and trilling, as I stood beside the bed in my filthy clothes and stared at her. When the fit subsided, she patted the blanket in invitation and smiled. “This form is tiring to maintain, and I seldom find it necessary, but to answer your question, yes, I can be corporeal when I so choose. Now sit, child.”
Struck dumb by the revelation that the voice of the realm had a face to match, I did as bidden.
She—Faerie, I supposed, having no other name for her—smoothed her skirt and regarded me with the sort of expression I’d not seen directed my way since Étaín had caught me setting the bushes on fire as a small boy. “You’re shirking your duties, you realize,” she began, and held up her hand when I tried to protest. “I know what happened, and I know the memory is fresh and agonizing to you. But hiding away isn’t going to undo the past.”
“I’m not hiding,” I countered indignantly, “I just need—”
“Coileán, you’ve not left your bed in ten days.”
That threw off my planned retort. “Ten?”
“Ten. They’ve carried on without you, but this can’t continue.” She sighed and reached across the covers to take my hand. “You have a duty. The world does not stop for one man’s grief, does it?”
“You don’t understand, I killed…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish that sentence, but she nodded.
“You killed that child. And you tried to kill your own. I’m well aware. So what do you plan to do henceforth—sit here and mourn? Starve yourself? I know you’re thirsty.” She produced a glass of water and pressed it into my free hand, then waited as I chugged it down. “You know,” she said once I’d come up for air, “you’re not the first to lose a lover. The ache is there, child, but it passes.”
“I killed her.”
“And I don’t mean to sound callous, but by anyone’s reckoning, that’s not the first life you’ve ended prematurely.”
“You don’t understand,” I muttered, pulling free of her grasp as I refilled my cup and downed it. With one thirst slaked, I switched the water for bourbon and continued to drink, focusing on the familiar burn instead of the fresher pain.
She let me brood for a moment, then said, “You loved her. I know—”
“You can’t know,” I snapped, wheeling on her. “You have no comprehension of what that’s like, so don’t sit there and lecture me—”
“But I do.” She sat silently, waiting while I pulled my temper under control, then murmured, “I was not always as I am now, child. My mother was mortal. And yes,” she added, seeing my surprise, “I had a mother. A father, too. Sisters and brothers. Lovers. But that’s not a story I care to revisit at this time.” She stood and looked up at me with faint reproach. “We have matters to discuss if you can look beyond yourself.”
It’s embarrassing to be chastised by someone too small to look you in the face, especially when that person is in the right. “I’m listening,” I mumbled.
“Moyna. What do you plan to do with her?”
I shook my head and shrugged, then began peeling my jacket off. The odor that assaulted me as soon as it fell away was far from pleasant, however, and I opened the window Faerie had replaced to let the stale air in the room circulate. “Has she been found?”
“Not to my knowledge, no. Do you intend to seek her out?”
“I should, shouldn’t I?” I muttered, leaning on the windowsill. “Of course, I could wait for her to surface—she’ll probably try to kill me soon enough. Oberon did just murder her boyfriend, but somehow, I’m sure I’m still to blame.”
“Petulant, aren’t we?” she remarked, joining me at the window.
“Paranoid. Could you at least take Moyna out of the succession? It’d give her one less reason to kill me.”
“Well,” she mused, propping her chin in her palms, “I could, technically speaking, but I’m bound by my word…” She looked at me, saw my blank expression, and said, “Ah. Your mother never gave you the terms, did she?”
“The terms of what?”
“Our treaty, you might call it.” Faerie gazed out at the ever-blooming roses and let the breeze tousle her hair. “When Mab and Oberon and your mother stopped fighting, the four of us came to an arrangement to prevent further bloodshed: they would split governance of the realm three ways, I would provide them with the power they required to maintain the peace, and should something happen to one of them, that person’s eldest living child would take the throne. This is unfamiliar to you?”
“Not exactly…”
She smiled to herself. “Titania is no longer a party to consider, and Mab broke our bargain. This leaves only Oberon, but as long as he lives, I will not change the terms. My word is my word.”
We stood together silently, each contemplating the morning and our own thoughts.
“What did Mab ever do to yo
u?” I finally asked her as I put my emptied bourbon glass aside. “Oberon said he and Mother drove her out in a power struggle—you didn’t step in?”
Her delicate features hardened. “Oberon does not know the full truth.”
“Which is?” She said nothing, and I pressed, “You had a deal with Mab, but you start shouting at me every time one of her people enters the realm. Come on, you still complain about Toula. What happened?”
She didn’t turn away from the window, but her eyes slowly slid to meet mine. “You expect me to be content around Mab’s daughter, the wizard?”
“You don’t mind Val,” I pointed out.
“The boy is no wizard, nor was he ever Mab’s in any quality but blood. But that doesn’t answer your question, does it?” With seeming reluctance, she pulled herself from the view to face me. “I could have stepped in when Titania and Oberon plotted against Mab, yes. I could have stopped them. But Mab had already betrayed me by that time, and I saw no need to come to her aid. When the others drove her out, I considered our bargain void.”
“What happened?”
She paused, collecting her thoughts, then quietly said, “Mab had a love of power. Oh, the others did, too,” she added, “but Mab was always the keenest of them to acquire it. She began to make forays into the Gray Lands,” she continued, hoisting herself onto the windowsill. “And she became…friendly…with my counterpart there. He promised her dominion over both realms if she ousted me. I knew what she was planning, but Titania’s greed swelled first, and Oberon, foolish boy that he was, sided with her against Mab. I simply withdrew the power I’d given her, and she could not stand against them. Her friend took her in, I see,” she remarked dryly, “though I’m sure it pained her to rule in a land in which she was powerless.”
“And…you never told Mother and Oberon about this?”
She chuckled. “Your mother wouldn’t have cared, especially once Oberon moved out. And as for Oberon…well, he likes to imagine that he has full agency in his decisions. There’s no sense in upsetting him. I do try to stay out of court matters,” she added, “but sometimes I have to prod, even if it irks him.”
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