So did the presences of the other two Sidhe, the ones who had exhibited power, the ones who were mages like me.
A few paces in front of the column in the air, Elessir loitered. The Unseelie had his arms crossed lazily along his chest, and of the Sidhe present, he alone had no expression of grim purpose. With an insouciant curl to his lips he sketched me a bow in acknowledgement of my awakening, but despite the courtly gesture there was very little courtliness to his bearing. He stood with his weight rocked slightly forward on his feet, his expression full of the feral anticipation of someone eager to watch some violence commence; he looked like a Roman waiting for gladiators to enter the Coliseum. I would have bet money that he was craving a bag of popcorn.
Lastly, directly in front of me in the circle of light, was Malandor.
Never mind bad, this was right up the scale to ‘indescribably screwed’.
Swallowing back a flood of panic, I forced myself to raise my eyes to Malandor’s face and just look at him. Before now I hadn’t really had the chance. Maybe after devouring every detail of my mother’s picture and tangling with Elessir, I was finding Sidhe features more familiar. Maybe having stared at my own changing reflection was helping, too. Whatever the reason, the Seelie lord seemed a bit more real now, a bit less fantastic; oh, his hair still crowned him in scarlet glory and his gaze was still a sword through my chest. In the ghostly light of the circle around Christopher and me and the watery rectangle that framed Tarrant, his eyes glinted the same color as the lake. But the rain had soaked him, too, plastering that fiery hair to his skull and the fine silken cloth of his garments, garb of design and hues that had to be Sidhe make, to his body. His aquiline features were even more beautiful than Elessir’s, but distinct shadows darkened the corners of his eyes and his cheekbones jutted out gauntly, as though he ran critically short on both food and sleep.
I studied him, searching hard for anything in the shape of his features that would point to a connection to Mom, and therefore to me. As I did, I blurted out hoarsely, “Are you really my uncle?”
Malandor’s eyes narrowed to slits without diminishing the stark fire within them. “Do you presume, girl, that blood kinship to me will save your life?”
That was a yes, and a disgusted one at that. The Seelie stared down at me as though I were a personal affront to his existence, his upper lip arched in the subtlest of sneers. “So you’re going to kill me,” I challenged him, bristling. I’d been lucky through most of my life; I’d grown up in a liberal part of America, in a more liberal time than the one in which Dad and Aunt Aggie had come to their adulthoods. I’d met prejudice, of course, but I’d never been looked at with such scathing hatred of me, of my self, through no fault of my own before, and I didn’t like it one damned bit. “You going to bother to explain why, or shall I just assume you murder half-Sidhe, half-human young women on general principle?”
“Mouthy, ain’t she?” Elessir blandly put in, waggling his eyebrows at me when I shot him an infuriated glance. “I still say, Malandor, she seems more like one of us than one of you. You’re quite sure Elanna was your full-blooded sister?”
“What the hell are you doing here? You’re working with them? You were fighting them at the bar!” I seethed at the singer before Malandor could reply.
Elessir’s midnight eyes gleamed. “Had to win your confidence and get some of your blood somehow, darlin’. How else were we going to break past Warder magic to get you?”
“You said you wouldn’t harm me or my friends or family with that, you lying son of a bitch!”
“That’s true. But I said nothing of your uncle and his lapdogs.”
If I’d learned anything about the Sidhe in the last two days—aside, of course, from their basic existence—is that they were masters of two things. One was magic. The other was looking truly terrible in their anger, and I mean that in the sense of terror-inducing rather than anything so plebian as mere badness. Tarrant’s eyes flashed azure fire, distinct even against the backdrop of the shining column in which he stood, and though I caught only the edge of the glare he hurled at Elessir I felt my blood chill. “Do keep talking, Unseelie,” he invited, his voice almost a purr and yet as edged as the dagger he unsheathed. As if itching for an excuse to pitch it at the singer, he took meaningful aim. “Please.”
Melisanda slid a sideways glance at the Unseelie, though her attention and her sword remained unwaveringly pointed at Christopher and me. Perhaps a little more on Christopher than me, I thought, seizing this marginal assurance that he still breathed. She wouldn’t have glared so sternly at a dead man, and they surely wouldn’t have bothered to chain a dead man to me. Irritation set her delicate countenance into a mask of unyielding lines; I suddenly remembered that Christopher had fought her, and wondered if that had pissed her off. But I couldn’t fathom for the life of me why the faintest trace of discomfort lingered in her face as well, just beneath the irritation.
As for Malandor, a hot flush of crimson sprang up high across both his pale, haggard cheeks and turned them almost as vivid a hue as his hair. I watched him clench his perfect teeth and haul in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. Then, without looking over his shoulder at the sardonic fey behind him, he gritted out, “Shut. Up.”
Elessir’s brows climbed almost to his hairline while he fired around a look at each of the Seelie, taking their measures. Evidently he decided against anything that would make him have to worry about being outnumbered, for he inclined his head towards Malandor and murmured, “Shutting up, boss.”
For an instant I thought my uncle was going to whirl around and attack the singer on the spot, either by drawing the blade sheathed at his hip or by letting loose with the power I could feel hanging about him like a cloud. I couldn’t say I’d exactly blame him; I wanted to pummel Elessir, too. But when Malandor wrestled down his rage and refocused on me with something looking more and more like obsession burning in his gaze, it became clear he had a higher priority than beating the snarky Unseelie senseless.
Namely, me.
“You are my sister’s daughter,” he confirmed coldly. “It will not save you to know this. But because I am not entirely without honor or mercy even in these foul days which have befallen my House, if that scrap of knowledge will permit you to make peace with whatever gods your human kin have taught you to revere, you may have it.”
Nausea churned through me at the thought that someone of my own flesh and blood would be able to do me violence, to spill my share of the blood that made a bond between us—that he would be able to kill me. Revolted, I wondered if all the Sidhe were like that, and then remembered my mother’s voice whispering to me in my dream.
I will always love you, Kendeshel.
Maybe it was just Malandor, then.
“So if I’m your goddamned niece,” I growled, “what’s your problem? Is this a bigotry thing? Are you going to kill me because I’m half-human?” I tried to lunge at him, wanting to get in his face, wanting to hit him. Too late, I remembered that I sat chained on the ground and that Christopher was bound to me. But as soon as the young Newfoundlander at my back shifted and moaned at my movement, my fear for him superseded my fear for myself. “Are you going to kill Christopher because he’s all human?”
Her lips curling into a smirk even more disdainful than those gracing the faces of the males around her, Melisanda shot Christopher another wary glance and then looked at me. “If you think the Warders are merely human, changeling girl,” she said, “you are woefully ill-informed.”
Wait a minute, what was that supposed to mean?
I didn’t have time to figure it out, though. Later, I vowed, I’d hassle Christopher and Millicent for details—assuming Christopher and I actually got out of this alive. Opting not to rise to his lackey’s bait, I kept my eyes on Malandor and demanded, “Did you kill my mother because she jumped in the sack with a human?”
One second he was looming over me; the next, dropped to a crouch in front of me with his hand wrapped around m
y neck. “Do you think it gave me pleasure to watch Elanna die?” he hissed. “She was my sister!”
“Dear God,” I croaked. “You really did kill her.”
My uncle’s face twisted in a thin, keen kind of pain. “I had already struck her down, for our combat was to the death,” he said hollowly. “But she dealt herself her own death blow. This knowledge will not save you either, child, but I have no reason to conceal it from you.”
“You’re telling me she killed herself? You expect me to believe that?” The words erupted from me in an enraged bellow that I didn’t bother to hold back. “Her own family drove her husband crazy! Did you think she’d just lie down and take it?” Chains or no chains, I tried to throw myself at Malandor again and howled, “Did you kill them both?”
“What you believe is immaterial; I have told you the truth,” said Malandor. He let go of my neck and took my chin in his hand, just as he’d done before at the Penguin, and I stiffened at his touch. Fragments of the nightmare I’d had in Aunt Aggie’s house flashed across my mind, sharp and jagged, like pieces of a fractured mirror: a voice charming Mom’s memory out of Dad’s head, my father’s bone-deep terror, and my mother charging off on a mission of vengeance into the night. I believed the dream now, and as fear swamped me, I realized I believed Malandor, too. Maybe he hadn’t killed my parents directly—but the madness that had made Dad crash his car in his desperate haste to get back what he’d forgotten had killed him nevertheless. And he’d just admitted to fighting my mother to the death.
I was looking at my parents’ murderer.
“Your hue and face from your human sire,” he whispered, scrutinizing me with a haunted intensity. “But by the Lady, those eyes. You have her eyes…”
This strangely intimate anguish scared me far more than my uncle’s earlier cold, insolent superiority. “It’s because I’m her daughter—your niece! Your family!” My own panic made me want to retch; both halves of my blood, mortal and fey, rebelled against this elegant, ethereal being who was no better than any Southern slave owner who’d ever lifted a hand against children in his family who were darker than they should have been. But I was terrified all the same, and I couldn’t stop myself from begging, “At least let Christopher go, he didn’t do anything to you. He was just sticking up for me!”
The Seelie lord gave me an almost sad little smile, as though he approved of me pleading on the behalf of another. “The young Warder does appear to possess the requisite nobility for his lineage,” he agreed. “Do not fear for him, girl; he will feel no pain. And because I am merciful, because you have Elanna’s eyes, I will ensure your passing will be equally painless… Kendis Marie Thompson.”
“Gee, thanks,” I retorted. Or at least, I tried to. I opened my mouth to say the words, but they never made it out of my brain.
With a master artisan’s deft touch, Malandor laid the syllables of my name across my consciousness and his fingertips against either of my temples—and then released his power straight into my brain.
The first two times he’d thralled me I hadn’t felt it coming. This time I managed about half a second of unmitigated horror before a tsunami of energy engulfed my every thought. My own raw, nascent power flickered within my blood only to be swept up by the far greater wave of Malandor’s magic, a single eddy lost in a mightier current that began with my uncle, flowed through me till it found every last corner of my nervous system, and then returned to its source. No longer aware of panic or dread, of the chains that held my arms tight against me or of Christopher’s form huddled against my back, I drowned within that current.
Then, carried back upward by it, I floated.
Somewhere an immeasurable distance away my entire body relaxed. I couldn’t move, but I didn’t care. Memory disappeared from my thoughts along with terror, and even the figures of those who surrounded me turned curiously insubstantial against the backdrop of the storm-swept night—all except the One who crouched before me, the One who caused the floating. He alone shone vibrant and clear in my sight, and I stared at him in rapt fascination, wondering where he would float me next.
“Now, my dear,” came his gentle murmur, “that’s more pleasant, is it not?”
A dreamy, drowsy voice I didn’t recognize as my own slipped out of my mouth. “Yeah…”
“Would you like to float forever, Kendis?”
The words poured liquidly through my hearing, joining the current that bore me. That last word in particular twined around me; it was significant for some reason that I could not recall. I struggled for the memory, but the word set me spinning through the current, Kendis, Kendis, Kendis, till my head swayed in a slow, dizzy attempt to keep my eyes upon the One. He’d asked me something. I had to answer.
“Uh-huh,” I said giddily.
He smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it warmed his eyes until the current that carried me along glowed silver with the light of his gaze. I sank into the silver and felt it flow all over my skin, wrapping my mind in a cocoon that sheltered me from everything else in existence. Something white and shining flickered again within me, but the silver caught and held it, and wove it into the cocoon as well.
It seemed right, because I floated higher.
“You must do something for me if you want to keep floating, Kendis,” the One murmured. His voice rang through each strand of the cocoon around my thoughts and made it stronger. “Will you do it?”
“Okay,” I murmured back. Whatever it was, I would do it happily.
“Brave child,” the voice within the silver crooned. Somewhere outside the cocoon I felt a hand, the hand that went with the voice, cup my cheek. “Noble child, despite the mortal blood in your veins. I will be calling a being to us, Kendis, with the power I have gathered from the storms I have set over this city. And this being needs something from you. It needs your blood so that new Sidhe lives may be born into the world. As the reward for your sacrifice, you may float forever. Won’t you like that, my dear?”
My blood? I didn’t need that, did I, floating within the silver cocoon?
Someone standing behind the One moved, making me remember he was there. He had black hair and blue eyes, and he looked like Elvis Presley. That made me want to giggle; what was Elvis doing there? Was he floating, too? “Are you certain,” he asked, “that the sacrifices will count as willing if one of them has been thralled and the other is unconscious?”
The voice within the silver chuckled darkly, and the darkness pulled the silver all the closer around my thoughts. “All that is required is that consent be given. And I believe our changeling is now prepared to give us her consent.”
“Malandor, Miss Thompson will give us her consent if we ask her to strip naked, paint herself blue, and fling herself off the top of the Space Needle. She’s thralled.”
“Given that neither the changeling nor the Warder will have time to inform the demon of this before she deprives them of their heads, Unseelie, I doubt that there will be a problem.”
Oh good. I didn’t want there to be a problem.
The Other frowned, though. He didn’t seem to like the One, and that made me almost want to frown too, except that for some reason I couldn’t remember how to make my face do it. But it didn’t seem important anyway, not even when he insisted, “If the sacrifices aren’t genuinely willing, you fool, the ritual will be tainted! Do you want Azganaroth to go berserk?”
“Fortunately, the decision is not yours to make.” The One smiled again, more broadly this time, and the strands that cocooned my thoughts resonated in sympathy with that smile. “The tomes I have consulted say that Azganaroth requires blood willingly spilled—or else a sacrifice so bountiful that it negates all else. Her province is blood and life and birth, after all, and with the blood of three lives I daresay she will be appeased enough to bring births back to my House.”
The black-haired One who looked like Elvis spat in fury, “Three?” A sword blurred into his hand, and I watched it in fascination. It shone cold, clear, and silver in
his grasp, the silver all that was needed to attract my dazzled eye. He had part of the silver; why was he angry? “What treachery are you pulling, Malan—”
Smoothly and fluidly, the voice of the One cut across the Other’s protests.
“Tarrant. Melisanda. Kill him.”
“Are you oathbreakers now as well as kinslayers?” the Other screamed as the golden-haired warrior who served the One closed in with her own blade of silver. “Is it not enough to break the ancient Pact with the Warders? My entire Court will have your heads!”
“Those mortal pretenders to our power do not concern me, Elessir a’Natharion. As for your Court…” My One chuckled again. “I do not believe they will be very eager to avenge one who has plotted against his own Queen.”
“Lady damn you! You swore you would help me take Luciriel down!”
“Have your centuries of life not yet taught you, Unseelie, that there are no oaths between your Court and mine?”
Silver clashed with silver, sword against sword, swift and lethal against the gleam of the column where an amber-haired shadow hurled forth his own small blade of silver. It struck the black-haired Other whose voice pealed with song and wrath, making him stumble, making him fall. But the One smiled at me kindly, so I didn’t fear. Instead I watched him rise and lift his hands up above me with a mesmerizing grace; though I could not move, it was as if I bobbed upward through the air in the wake of his agile fingers.
“Watch now, Kendis, and I will call the one who will help you float forever.”
Just overhead his hands moved in intricate patterns from which I couldn’t look away… and I didn’t want to. I desired nothing more than to watch in wonder as sparks of silver began to illumine each gesture, filling my vision with light. Then came the words, intoned quietly, at first, in a language I didn’t know and yet found strangely and pleasingly familiar. It would be as though the current carried me back to a beloved place I hadn’t seen in far too long. The words grew in volume and timbre, their measured cadence that of the most somber of songs. That was good, too. I liked music.
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