The Wild Curse (Faerie Sworn Book 2)

by Ron C. Nieto

  “We?” she croaked, because she had to say something and that was all she could do.

  “I have secured a bargain with the Royal Hunter. You will bear the relic to the Queen, and you will bargain with no one but me. The honors of the hunt will go to him, of course, but your cooperation should cast you in a favorable light. I shall attempt to keep you from making more mistakes than needed, and then we shall claim our answers as a reward.”

  “Why would he agree to that?”

  Troy smiled ruefully. “He has discovered that appointing a Horn-bearer may be in his best interests.”

  “How—?” Of course. “Iron.”

  “We must not forget the Wild Hunt was human at one point. It appears the Horn has some troublesome embellishments.” Troy’s smile became a wicked, wicked thing, full of mischief and way too much amusement.

  I can earn some time if I play along, and maybe get the Horn back. I’m backed into a corner, a rock in front of me and the deep blue sea behind, with only one choice left.

  “Okay,” she said. Her fingers reached up and closed around the silver chain around her neck. The edges of the three wilted rose charms dug into her palm. No more favors left. One way forward. “Okay, let’s do it your way. What am I supposed to do?”

  I’m only trapped if I don’t enter the game to win.

  “Come.” He rose and extended a hand to help her up. “I will explain on the way. You forced your body through unstable pathways when you fled from the Seelie Court, and I could not afford to be gentle when I brought you here. It will be safer for you if we travel through the mortal realm, and it will also gain us time to think and to plan.”

  She accepted the help and took a deep breath before setting out after him, cutting through the underbrush away from the small river.

  Yeah. Time to come up with plan B.

  C H A P T E R III

  Lily hugged her middle. It had gotten chilly, or else the ice running through her veins had started to seep through and freeze her core. The effort needed to keep up with Troy’s soundless striding wasn’t enough to keep her distracted. There was a clock ticking in the back of her mind, and each second echoed inside her skull like a gunshot.

  “So what’s your new plan?” she asked, addressing the back of Troy’s head and hoping to focus on something useful.

  “A simple one,” he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder. “One hopes it should prove simple enough to survive an encounter with you.” Her hands clenched into fists, but she bit back her frustration. Learn to deal with faeries once and for all, Lily! “What is it?”

  “We shall meet the Royal Hunter at the place where you lost the Horn. You shall do your best not to bargain with him, not to fall into debt, and not to give offense. We shall then make our way to wherever he indicates us to, and we shall perform as he requests of us. That is all.”

  “I don’t get it. That sounds like giving the Unseelie Court what it wants and getting nothing in return.”

  “Make no mistake. Firstly, the Court and the Queen are not one and the same. The Royal Hunter acts on behalf of the Queen, and it is most likely he shall take us to her at the heart of the Court, where the Court dwells as well. Secondly, information shall be obtained and help shall be secured if pertinent, but you shall have no part in the obtaining, nor the securing.”

  “Because I’ll muck it up.”

  “As you say.”

  Good grief, it can’t be that bad. Can it?

  It was true that she had only recently discovered the world behind the world, but she learned fast. She had dealt with the dragon-like cuelebre just fine on her own, after all. Perhaps she had needed some help to get away from the collapsing domain linked to the faerie’s life after killing it, and perhaps she wouldn’t have needed to kill it in the first place if not for her hasty bargaining with Glaistig, but still. While Troy kept referring to their visit to the Seelie Court as a failure, it was because he only saw her running from the ball, traipsing along the palatial compound, blind to her surroundings and prey to a fit of pique. From his perspective, it may look bad. However, she had a plan. She had made a bargain. She hadn’t been running away, she had been running toward the solution to their problems.

  I’m not that terrible. I just can’t ever explain it to him because if I try to make him understand, I know better now, he will ask why.

  And the moment he asked, she would be powerless against him. If he used her True Name, she would answer him true, unable to resist the compulsion. That was what worried Cadowain so much—he thought she would become an Unseelie tool.

  If she wanted a chance to find her grandmother, she had to remain as clueless in his eyes as she was now.

  “All right,” she said at long last.

  Troy hummed in reply, not looking back and not offering further comment. He kept walking, weaving his way through the forest. He had a way to him, as soon finding paths and trails as abandoning them to slip into unbroken wilderness, and it allowed them to make good progress. He didn’t increase the pace, but he didn’t slow down either, despite the slopes, the underbrush, the streams, and even the ancient granite boulders they found in their path.

  Sometimes, Lily had to push hard to keep up. Sometimes she just put one foot in front of the other, like an automaton. Sometimes her mind ran round and round, looking for a solution that would allow her to salvage her plan. Sometimes she watched him.

  He walked with the easy grace she had seen predators display when watching Discovery Channel documentaries, moving with economy but putting his whole body into it. It was stalking rather than walking, really. It suited his body, built for speed and endurance, not for brute strength. More like a cheetah than a lion. It deceived the eye because Troy was tall, really tall, but not bulky, and his long limbs disguised how powerful his slender frame truly was. She had only realized because the thin shirt they had given him for the Seelie ball, which had been a perfect, elegant fit, was now wet and hung off his shoulders, clinging to him and accentuating the way his back tapered to a trim waist.

  Wait. Wet?

  Lily frowned. It wasn’t just the shirt, either. His hair, slicked back as usual, dripped a random pattern down the back of his neck. His trousers looked plastered to his skin too, along his legs and—

  She jerked her eyes back up.

  How long have we been walking anyway? She wasn’t good at calculating time, she had never been. She had become even worse since she tangled with faeries because she lived in slow motion or fast forward depending on where she was. We must have covered several miles by now. The time doesn’t matter that much, the fact is that I’m dry, I’m tired, and I could swear the light has changed. So why is he still wet?

  And why haven’t I remarked on it before?

  Probably because she hadn’t truly looked at him before.

  “Troy? Hey, I have a question.”

  “So do I.”

  She forgot how to breathe. “Really?” Lily managed to force the word past the lump in her throat.

  “Indeed. I cannot help but wonder what possessed you to flee the Summer Court, intrude on hallowed ground in the middle of the night, and find a relic the Unseelie Queen herself was hunting for.”

  Yeah, that’s a great question. How exactly did you think of the Horn at all, Lily?

  She should have spent less time admiring his back and more time thinking of answers that would explain her actions away. Still, he hadn’t added a “Lily Boyd.” He wasn’t forcing her to speak true. If she quit stalling and gave him something believable, she might get away with it yet.

  “Cadowain told me,” she said. “He explained it was likely the reason Grandma got in trouble.”

  “Did he now.” Troy stopped walking and turned to stare at her. His stance remained casual, but something about the way his shoulders shifted told Lily to tread with care.

  “Yeah, at the ball, before your being a kelpie came up,” she plunged on, lying through her teeth while sticking as close to the truth as she dared. �
�Afterward, I thought my manners had botched things, as you usually point out, so I decided to go for the one bargaining chip I knew of.”

  “You did sabotage yourself at the ball,” he said. “It is true that seeking another course of action had become a necessity, but I wish you had shared your intentions before setting off in a harebrained quest of your own.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  “Of course. If I had known, the Horn might still be in our possession, and perhaps this tangling with the Unseelie Queen might have been avoided. At the very least, it would have meant a clearer path, and one of our own choosing.”

  “You couldn’t have acted against your court anyway. Cadowain told me that court loyalty was first and foremost for faeries.”

  “You have learned a great deal about us, Lily, but you still think like a mortal.” Troy sighed and a small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I would have been forced to deliver the Horn to my Queen, you say. However, how was I to know that such a trinket held her interest? Indeed, if we had not crossed paths with the Royal Hunter, I would have remained ignorant.”

  “Like you couldn’t guess she’d want it,” she said, shifting from foot to foot. She was tired, and it was catching up to her while they stood still. She needed to keep going through sheer inertia or to stop and rest. Either option would help her avoid any more questions, too.

  “Listen to your own words,” he said, resuming his walk as if he had read her mind, but at a slower pace. “And remember the importance of what is said. Let that be the one lesson you never forget about us.”

  Words. Guess? Lily groaned. “You weren’t bound to help unless you were told she wanted something you could help with.”

  He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to because she knew it by heart by now—as he had said, it was the one lesson he had tried to drill her in time and again. Words. Without the words to bind him, he had been free to help her. Sure, for her, that meant betraying the spirit of the oath, but she wasn’t a faerie. For them, only ever the letter existed. It was the only way a bunch of creatures unable to tell a lie could ever play at intrigue and cause mischief.

  “I didn’t realize,” she whispered to his back.

  “I assumed so. It would be the only reasonable explanation to your behavior, even though you were meant to know better.”

  More silence. More walking. Then—

  “Can I trust you now that they have given you the words?”

  “You may trust me to look for a way to find the Doctor’s whereabouts, to discover her fate and to avenge her if it has come to that.” Troy stopped again, letting Lily catch up to him. He hesitated, a wild wary creature mistrusting the ground he trod, but after a moment, he reached out a hand. His fingers were feather-light upon her shoulder, and she couldn’t help shivering, goosebumps breaking all over from a strange mixture of fear and comfort. “No matter my current duties regarding the Horn, only a direct command to desist in my search would truly prevent me from honoring her friendship.”

  “Is that why you keep helping me, even when the promise you made to her has expired?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because.” She felt her shoulders fall. She wanted to trust him, even now, she realized. But his games proved she couldn't. His solemn look dissolved into a grin and he snatched his hand back, letting her reclaim her personal space. “Now, if you would keep walking? It never pays to make a sidhe wait for longer than required.”

  That reminded her. “If you didn’t tell him, and if you could have avoided him if I had only told you, then how did this hunter of yours find me?”

  “Still the suspicious one?”

  “Well, since you were trying to be open and reassuring before, I figured I should get out all the questions while the mood lasts.”

  A smile half-hidden in the corner of his eyes, Troy sighed. “You must understand that there are paths between the fay realm and your mortal world. Some are easy to traverse, and those appear whenever both shores are close. Others are taxing for mortal and fay alike. Yes?”

  “Yes. That’s what you told me about time running almost at the same speed or radically different, right? When time runs in a similar way, the lands are close and it’s easy to cross over. When you go deeper, time becomes less significant and that can strain a mortal.”

  Troy nodded. “There is that. However, there is yet another type of path—the one that does not exist. Truly, it is less a path and more a tearing between the realms. You have experienced it before.”

  “When you got us out of the cuelebre cave.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure it counts as experiencing. I was unconscious the moment you pulled through and delirious for a while before and after.”

  “As I said, it is taxing. It is also extremely loud.”

  “Loud? Does it really make a noise?”

  “Of sorts. Suffice it to say, it is noticeable enough to raise questions and pique the curiosity of a searching sidhe.”

  “But I can’t open paths.” And I shouldn’t have brought that up.

  Lily stumbled and her eyes darted to Troy’s back, waiting for him to whirl around and demand the truth.

  He didn’t.

  “Of course not. No mortal can,” he said, shrugging in a casual manner that made him look too human. “However, Cadowain is an able player of the game. He planted the idea in your mind during the ball, and it is likely he suspected you would act on his information. It would have been simple for him to arrange the convenient tearing of a path the moment you left the court.”

  Lily’s throat went dry and her heart threatened to break through her ribs. So close to the truth, so easily. She rubbed her palms down her trousers, trying to get rid of the cold sweat.

  “How do you know?”

  “It is the way of the court, Lily. That you failed to see how your actions were part of the game does not mean the hand of the player was hidden. It only means you are unused to our ways.”

  Lily. Not Lily Boyd.

  An explanation. Not a question.

  He believes me.

  Faeries are a bunch of creatures unable to lie. Could it be they have become so used to their game that they don’t even know what a direct lie is anymore? Could it be they are experts at detecting traps and half-truths but have forgotten that we humans can tell open falsehoods when they have to mislead?

  Lily licked her lips and glanced about. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought they were almost out of the Cairngorms. They were definitely close to the spot she had torn through in her previous visit to Aboyne’s graveyard, and from there, the river and the Royal Hunter were little more than a mile away.

  She had only a mile or so to try and salvage her original bargain with Cadowain before it was too late.

  Time to test the lying theory.

  “Troy? Could we rest up before meeting the hunter? We must have walked for miles, and I was pretty shaken to begin with. I’m too exhausted to think straight right now.”

  “If you wish.” He glanced about and stepped off the invisible path he had been following. “This way.”

  “Not going to complain about my slowing you down?”

  Troy turned around in a flash, making her stumble. The easy lines of his body radiated tension and a small crease appeared on his brow as he fixed her with a glare that felt like a physical shove.

  She straightened her spine and tried her best not to take a step back.

  “What?”

  “I have offered what information you have needed of my own free will, more often than not before you even realized you had a gap in your knowledge. I have forgiven every single debt you have incurred through your careless use of language. I have offered my assistance far above my obligations, even when your actions have been unwise. I have advised you and obtained no personal gain from it. And still you believe I will begrudge you a reasonable rest?”

  “I—” Lily gaped. The tension that had so sta
rtled her at first was not aggression because it echoed the sentiment burning in his eyes. Frustration. And his frown hinted at confusion rather than anger. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t understand you, or your motives.”

  “No,” he said, deflating, hiding his expression, turning aside. “Of course not. Only she ever did.”

  “I’d like to,” she called to his retreating back.

  “This way,” he repeated, his voice soft as drizzling rain.

  C H A P T E R IV

  Troy found them a tiny nook protected by a gnarled tree that leaned against a boulder. The light cast long shadows by the time they made it there, but it seemed the sun never touched the floor of the natural refuge—it was covered in thick moss and still moist from the dew of a morning come and gone.

  It looked like a perfect haven.

  “You may spend the night here,” he said. “We shall set out again at dawn and meet the hunter before the first light of day breaks the sky.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Lily dropped like her limbs were made of lead. Tired after all. Discreetly, she stretched her back and tried to cover a sigh of pleasure when something popped into place between her shoulder blades. Then, she patted the ground by her side. “You must be tired, too.”

  He shook his head. “There is a small creek some fifty yards in that direction,” he said, pointing with his chin. “I shall retire there.”

  “Oh. Well, we can settle down by the riverside, I suppose.” She scrambled to her feet, casting a longing look at the would-be camp.

  “Do not be ridiculous. The land will only become more humid the closer we get, and I do recall you feel the cold easily enough. This is the best place for you to be, and it should be safe too. Although,” he ran a hand through his hair, causing a myriad droplets to sluice down his neck and soak his already wet shirt, “I suppose you must be hungry and thirsty as well as tired by now. I fear there is no food I would dare to provide at hand, but you may come to the creek to drink and refresh yourself.”