He glanced up at Donovan who loomed over the far side of the bed with his arms crossed. Now and then, he gave Malcolm a look that he never gave anyone else. Like he was expecting something, or ready for anything. Something like that.
The girl in the bed didn’t budge. Barely even breathed. The sheets hadn’t gotten crumpled at all, probably because she was so still. Malcolm could see the sheet through the girl’s arms, like a ghost. Her magic was failing, almost not even there anymore. When it vanished completely, so would she. Then her music would be silent, leaving a void too bitter to think about.
Hands trembling, he reached for her. For a second, he thought he might fall through her, like she really was a ghost, but he didn’t. She felt weird though. Soft, kinda. Like if he gripped her too hard she might crumble.
Her music danced like fine pixie hair over his skin. Holding her hand, Malcolm knelt beside the bed. When he lowered his head to her skin, the magic feathering against his face. He longed for the music. To feel it inside him. For her to Touch him with it. She couldn’t Touch him though, not sick like she was. So he Touched her instead. His magic flowed from his skin into hers, carrying with it his thoughts. I don’t know you, but I would miss you… if you leave.
He closed his eyes. Just felt her magic with his special way of feeling. She was different, and not just in the way everyone was different from everyone else. Truly different. Disconnected from the world. Floating above it and anchored to nothing. That was why she was falling apart, like vapor in the wind. As he Touched her, Malcolm reached for her with the feeling that had been building inside, trying to ‘catch’ her before she floated away into nothingness.
But he couldn’t.
She slipped through the fingers of his magic like mist.
Opening his eyes and hurting so much on the inside that things blurred until he blinked, then gazed down at her hand.
Then his eyes popped opened wide.
There, in his hand, he watched her body solidifying. He couldn’t see through her at all anymore. The Touch he’d given to her gently, he now poured into her as thick and heavy as he could.
But even giving everything he could, the magic was so slight to what she’d lost.
Malcolm lifted his gaze to Donovan. “Touch her.” And then to Dawn, “You, too. Help me.”
Dawn crossed her arms, but Donovan didn’t hesitate. He brushed his fingertips to the girl’s cheek, and Malcolm felt Donovan’s Touch spreading into the girl, filling in a few more gaps.
Malcolm snapped at Dawn. “Do it!”
She grumbled, but still reached under the sheet at the foot of the bed and Touched the girl’s ankle. The healer’s Touch flowed. Helping, but still not enough.
“Get the others! All of them! All of the Sidhe!”
When Dawn hesitated, Donovan said, “Do it.”
Leaning his forehead against the girl’s hand, Malcolm closed his eyes again. Don’t leave. Don’t go away. He reached for her magic, tried to make it more. It wouldn’t grow, though. Even with the Touch moving through her and weaving together the fraying threads of magic. Her core wasn’t getting stronger. Her heart, her soul, was as far away as ever. The music still a faint tune, threatening to Fade.
Malcolm sensed the magic of the others as they spilled into the room. “Touch her,” he said, without even looking up, “as much as you can. Give everything you can.”
He felt each one as they made contact, their unique Touch pouring into the girl. The fire from Bryce. The cooling darkness from Trip. The strength of metal from Tiernan. Even Kieran’s sound magic, which twined and vibrated in a way so similar to the girl’s music that it spilled without resistance across her skin. Her body soaked up their Touch magic; strengthening her flesh, solidifying her bones. But still it didn’t reach the heart of her magic. Malcolm could see it, there, just below the hollow of her neck where the collarbones joined. Almost gone, almost like it was barely even there.
She wasn’t connected.
All of the rest of them were connected. Energy reached down from each of them, into the power moving through the Earth. The ley lines. But this girl was separate. Broken. Alone. And even the Touch of the Sidhe, her people, wasn’t enough to call her back.
Malcolm’s mind seeped into her magic, willing it to connect. The tremble of effort made him shake. Sweat prickled on his skin. But every time he tried to gather the threads of magic in her heart, they slipped from his grasp. Too fine. Too fragile. No way he could draw her magic down to tie to the ley lines far beneath them.
But the power of the ley lines wasn’t so distant as that.
Seeing the energy with his closed eyes, Malcolm angled his head toward each of the other Sidhe. The magic from the ley lines flowed into each of them like threads of magic that anchored them. All except for Donovan. His connection was as thick as his arm. Like a pipeline of power that fountained into him.
“Yes!” Malcolm opened his eyes. “Here!” He snatched Donovan’s hand and pressed it on the girl’s chest just above the weak beat of her heart. “Touch her here.”
Malcolm covered Donovan’s hand with both of his. All his muscles strained with the effort. And then he reached out and shoved his fingers against Donovan’s chest. But his focus drove right into Donovan’s heart like a fist.
Donovan jerked. He hissed through gritted teeth, “What are you doing?”
Malcolm couldn’t stop. Not now. The ache needed this. Like a cramp that had to stretch. Had to reach. Had to push through to release.
The magic from the ley lines flowed in a glowing band of power from the ground and into Donovan’s heart. Malcolm caught a thread of it. Coaxing it to unravel out just a tiny bit, he diverted it straight out of Donovan’s heart, out of his torso, across the space between, and down into the girl’s core.
And the whole time, Donovan screamed like someone was killing him. His back arched hard like he was getting electrocuted, but he still kept his hand on the girl. His other hand gripped in a fist of pain as he fought not to jerk away.
Through Donovan, the magic of the ley lines reached into the girl’s heart. Bound to her. Knotted about her very being and melded with it. The cord of power thickened, moving more magic through both Donovan and the girl. Growing and strengthening. Feeding the music. Making it surge louder. Making it crescendo like an orchestra.
The power burst into the fine and fragile wisps of threads in her heart and made it puff back up to normal size in an instant, just as sudden and jolting as the explosion of a fist-sized kernel of popcorn.
The girl bolted upright in the bed, screaming as if her heart exploded, only it hadn’t. It sparked back to life. She clutched at her chest where Donovan’s palm pressed to her flesh and screamed a bunch more. All that desperation… All the need that no one could hear… Now it tore from her in loud, gasping, cries. Like she’d been drowning and just broke the surface to cry out her pain and fear even as she escaped death’s grip.
Donovan stared down at her with wide eyes, one hand over her heart and the other over his own, gripping his chest with clawed fingers. Sweaty and shaking, he gasped with each aching breath.
Malcolm stumbled back. The room spun and tilted, but he grinned anyways. “Now the music won’t stop.” His legs went all wobbly and then gave out from beneath him, dropping him to the floor in a heap as he blacked out cold.
Chapter Seven
“How long do you think the lassie will sleep?” Tiernan poked around the shelves packed with the various books and whatnots that found their way into the war room. One of these days someone might organize the collection, but for now that area became a catchall for items of potential usefulness that hadn’t yet found a more permanent home. Tiernan touched a finger to each of five fist-sized globes of fairy enchantment, only eliciting a response from one, which sparked to life with a blue metal-flake pattern, identifying the metal-Sidhe’s aspect of magic.
Donovan leaned over the conference table in the middle of the wide room, throwing himself into work so he
could avoid discussion about what the bloodhound had done. He’d never encountered pain like that before, not even at the hands of the Unseelie queen whose aspect of magic had been flesh, something she manifested with vicious creativity. The boy hadn’t attacked him, per se —at least that hadn’t been his intent—but he’d stepped over a serious line. A line only a bloodhound could cross. And Malcolm probably didn’t even realize fully what he’d done.
It was with good reason that bloodhounds were feared, even loathed. Almost all of them went feral, losing themselves into the madness of their magic. Malcolm was a wild card. Unstable. A good kid who’d been through some horrendous abuse and now discovered himself the wielder of potentially deadly powers he didn’t understand and couldn’t control.
And Donovan was going to have to figure out a way to leash him.
Tiernan had said as much as soon as Malcolm’s magic manifested. No doubt Tiernan wanted to gloat over predicting Malcolm’s violating indiscretion, but the younger Sidhe valued the placement of his internal organs too much to voice even a word about it.
Which was good. Because even though the pain had passed, the experience wasn’t over.
It lingered within Donovan.
He had a suspicion as to what had occurred, and what was still happening, but he hadn’t settled into the belief of it. And surely, with the exception of the girl and of Malcolm, no one else had any notion as to what truly happened.
Nor of the consequences of it.
So Donovan focused on the map instead, putting away his personal concerns in favor of a more global one. Each note stuck to the map before him represented another earthborn they’d yet to track down. A dozen or so in Ireland. A few more on the Continent. A good number across the pond in The New World and in the South Pacific. The remnants of the Unseelie and the new hope for the Sidhe. The bloodhound could hunt them down, like he had the Seelie lass upstairs. “Dawn sedated her until she recovers her strength.”
Over his shoulder, Tiernan asked, “You sure you want her at full strength? Being Seelie and all…”
“She isn’t the Seelie that concerns me.” He waved at the map. “So many exiles filtered out of Ireland into The West? Why abandon the protection of the Veil?”
Tiernan hissed and snatched back his hand from the shelves. Then tugged a handkerchief from his back pocket and reached into the clutter, coming up with a heavy circlet. “Silver shock collar?” His grin was as wicked as the twinkle in his eyes. “Can I have it?”
“I don’t care.”
Wrapping the collar with his handkerchief before tucking it into his pocket, he answered, “No goblins or Changelings out West. It’s a big place and easy to get lost where the wizards can’t find you.”
“But more vampires and werewolves. I shouldn’t wonder if a good number of these Sidhe haven’t been slain long ago.”
Tiernan shrugged. “Just going by rumors. Quite a number of elves and fairies out that way, with all that wilderness. And it’s not hard to get to by airplane. Have you ever flown?”
Something inside Donovan jolted. He gripped the side of the table in an effort to regain control.
“Hey, you okay?”
Donovan barely heard Tiernan and couldn’t answer him. Before him, the map lost its focus. A foreign terror clutched at his heart. Even covering the ache with his hand didn’t lessen the urgency. Gasping for breath, Donovan shook his head, but couldn’t shake off the feeling that stabbed through him like the sluagh song.
It was her.
He knew it.
She feared.
A silver knife flashed in his mind’s eye. Ruby-red streaks of blood on the mirror-finished blade. Horror and pain.
Donovan hadn’t decided to teleport; he just did. He didn’t need to ask where the girl was; he just knew. He knew, just as he’d always known where to find Danu.
As Donovan appeared in the doorway of the girl’s bedroom, she startled back from him. Clothing had been left out on the chair for her, and she’d tarried long enough to dress herself before attempting her escape. The jeans and simple white t-shirt fit her slender figure nicely. Apparently, Dawn hadn’t left her shoes because her feet were bare. Panic exploded through the girl when he’d popped in front of her without warning, but he knew that it hadn’t been him that she’d recoiled from as she jumped back with a yelp. For a split second, she’d thought he was someone else.
“Who are you afraid of?” Donovan needed to know. The girl feared him plenty, but he wasn’t the core of this fright that drove her to run away.
Turning, lunging away from him, she reached into her magic to teleport away.
Acting on instinct, and not by design, Donovan snatched the power she summoned, like a fist around a cord, and jerked her back.
That he could do so startled him as much as the girl. Compelling her to stay, she couldn’t flee from him. Just as all the Sidhe of the Mounds had once been connected to Danu, the girl’s connection to this realm’s magic flowed first through him. Her thoughts… her feelings… even her magic lay exposed to him.
Spinning toward him, eyes wide, the lass backed toward the corner of the room. “What’s happening to me?”
Raising his hands to show her that he meant not to attack, he spoke in a calming voice, “We saved you from wizards and brought you here to heal.”
Her hand covered the place on her chest where Donovan had Touched her. The place where their bond entered the heart of her magic. No doubt she felt it as strongly as he, if not more so. “Saved me?”
A face flashed before his mind’s eye. Manannan. Not the self-satisfied Seelie king with the condescending smirk that Donovan recalled, but an enraged Sidhe lunging with fury toward the girl.
Tilting his head, Donovan reconsidered her. This was no random Sidhe youth who’d fallen into misfortune. As an Elite, Donovan knew the Sidhe of the Seelie Court. This girl hadn’t been a major player, or he’d have recognized her immediately. But now that he knew she’d been close to Manannan, he rolled over the memories from the Mounds that he’d closeted away.
And then he recalled her.
Kaitlin.
She wasn’t so blond the last time he’d cast a cursory glance over her. In a flowing, sparkling dress of high Seelie fashion, the princess had swept her auburn hair back with an elaborately braided style that no doubt had taken her servants hours to construct. Then, she’d lingered a half step behind her sister, the Seelie queen. Donovan recalled catching glimpses of Kaitlin in less formal settings. On horseback, riding with a fox hunting party. At town festivals, bashing around with other elves closer to her age and dressed in the casual apparel favored by youths. She’d never taken much interest in politics and so hadn’t been one he’d paid more than passing attention to.
Of all the Sidhe Donovan might have expected to survive the Collapse, the Seelie princess wouldn’t have been among them.
“I know who you are, Kaitlin, and you are safe among the Unseelie. We would never betray you to Manannan or the wizards.” He tapped his own chest where he felt their bond. “You know I’m speaking the truth.”
“I… I know it. But I don’t understand how I know it.” Her brilliant green eyes flicked over Donovan, as if searching for some kind of clue. Kaitlin was bright enough not to accept the foreign feelings at face value. Certainly, she knew he was Unseelie; his dark features gave little doubt to that fact. He’d wager that growing up in the Seelie Court, she’d heard nothing but horror stories about the Unseelie. “I don’t remember you.”
“Do you remember the Collapse?” When he didn’t see understanding in her eyes, he pressed on, “The day the Seelie were going to unite the Courts?”
The memory of the silver knife flashed in his mind again. This time buried to the hilt in an elaborate brocade fabric. And then a wash of fear that recalled Manannan’s fury.
“What was that?” Donovan lifted his head. Edging closer, he offered his upturned hand. “Kaitlin, show me what happened.”
Kaitlin shuffled toward the
end of the bed and then crossed close enough to slip her hand into his. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Isn’t that what they say?” Even still, she gave a shiver that Donovan felt through their connection and then through her Touch as it flowed into him.
She closed her eyes and didn’t resist him when he drew her close enough to support against his body. Holding her to him, it might have seemed as if they meant to dance, but rather Donovan didn’t know how powerfully the shared memories might affect her. Only when she relaxed into his embrace did he Touch her back. His magic flowed into her, carrying with it his reassurance and his strength.
With a sigh, her memories filtered through the Touch and began to replay before him.
Chapter Eight
Like silvery schools of minnows, fleeting memories flexed before him before bursting apart and reshaping.
In the shadow of standing stones, Kaitlin gazed with horror upon a tall, blond Sidhe. Donovan recognized Lugh. Kaitlin knew him, or thought she had until this moment. Now her trust in him fractured. Dressed in modern clothing, Lugh towered over the human before him. His unmistakable voice, nearly musical in its heavily elven-accented English, commanded the human, “Kneel before me, Druid.”
Kaitlin recoiled as Lugh’s sharp blue gaze cut up to her, seeing her witness this act that she believed a betrayal of all the ideals she held dear. The Sidhe should never Touch a human. Lugh knew this as much as Kaitlin did. It was cruel. Inhumane. A violation. And yet Lugh cradled the man’s face in his palms. Kissed his brow. The human cried out with the pleasure of the Touch that would scar his soul.
As the scene froze in that moment, Lugh’s voice echoed, “What Sidhe Touched you, Riley?” And the human’s sobbing whisper replied, “The god of magic, Manannan.”
Kaitlin swooned in Donovan’s arms and he drew her tighter against him. Her hot tears coated his cheek where she pressed against him. Her arms wrapped tight around his neck. They Touched still, where their skin made contact. The twist of confusion and hurt deepened as the next vision came to life before them.
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