by Anya Bast
He gave her a look of doubtfulness. “She allows you to rub elbows with down-and-out goblins, boggarts, skillywiddens, and red caps?”
“She’s very compassionate.”
He laughed.
“She can be,” Aislinn amended, “sometimes. Anyway, I don’t need to defend myself or her to you.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because you’re making me.” Her voice was a low, annoyed hiss. Gah! This man brought out the worst in her and she just couldn’t control it.
“I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to do, sweetness,” he murmured over her head, looking out over the crowd. The words seemed laden with innuendo.
“The Seelie Court is about more than just balls, clothes, and shallow gossip. We are an honorable tower. Our men and women believe in chivalry and integrity. We operate with a respectable code of ethics here.”
“Relax, Aislinn. The last thing I wanted to do was rile my tour guide.”
“I’m not your tour guide,” she snapped.
“No, you’re my dance partner and a very good one, too.” A slight note of wonder threaded his voice.
Aislinn blinked and looked around, realizing all eyes were on them. Her voice had been strained and stiff while she spoke to him, but her body hadn’t been . . . at all. In fact, she’d shamelessly melted against him and let him lead her into an intricate dance pattern that had all the ballroom admiring them.
She glared at him. “You did that on purpose.”
Unperturbed, he only shrugged a shoulder. “I can’t make you do anything some part of you doesn’t want to do.”
Annoyance flashed. She pressed her lips into a thin line to control it. “I still don’t understand why you want to come to the Rose, Gabriel. You seem to hold this court and even the queen in contempt.” She stared up at him for a long moment as if she could read his mind. “What game are you playing?”
“You caught me. I’m actually here on a top-secret mission for the Shadow King, with orders to target you. I compelled the Summer Queen to help me get closer to you and I’m using my charms as an incubus to seduce you to the Black for nefarious purposes.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, Gabriel. What makes you want to be here?”
He spun and then dipped her. His mouth came down close to hers. “I’m bored, sweetness, and you’re the perfect cure.” He held her that way for a heartbeat, their lips almost touching. Around them people clapped.
He righted her and she hurried away, returning to Carina’s side to retrieve her drink. She needed that drink, lots of them. Gabriel melted back into the crowd.
“He likes you,” said Carina.
“What? Well, yes, maybe. He likes me in the way he likes all women: as possible fodder for a night in his bed.”
“No, I mean he really likes you. I can see it in his body language. Remember? That’s my magick. I can tell truth from lie when I watch someone move and Gabriel likes you a lot. I would even say, admires you.”
Aislinn’s cheeks heated. “Not possible. I’ve given him nothing to admire. I’ve been awful to him, a total shrew.”
“I don’t know.” Carina shrugged and took a sip of champagne. “I’m just telling you how I see it. He admires something about you and, while he might like them, it’s not your boobs.” She cast a pointed look at Aislinn’s cleavage, which was particularly showy tonight.
Aislinn blew out a hard breath. “No way. The only person that man likes is himself.”
UNDER a sky littered with a million chips of starlight, Gabriel made his way through Piefferburg Square to the dark half, the collar of his shirt loosened and a partly empty champagne bottle in one hand. On the Seelie side all the bright and shining roamed, along with the occasional troop passersby, those fae who belonged to neither court and simply lived as citizens of their fair resettlement area—or prison, as most regarded it.
The middle of the square, where the much-maligned and abused statue of Jules Piefferburg stood, crafted from charmed iron—giving them all an eternal fuck-you with its presence—lay in a twilight area where both the courts almost touched. Here you began to see some of the more monstrous examples of the darker side of Fae.
There were the tall, spindly goblins who appeared so frail but were actually incredibly strong and vicious when prompted to be. Some of them lived and served in the Black Tower, but most lived in Goblin Town, a distance away from Piefferburg Square. There were the poweries, huge, hulking men and women also known as red caps, who needed to kill periodically to survive—luckily, “periodically” was every few hundred years, and they kept their restorative murdering to their own kind in elaborate gladiator-like tournaments that all the fae turned out to see. There were alps, tiny, squat German fae who sat on the chests of their victims and caused nightmares bad enough to cause permanent psychological damage. There were the crossbreeds, too—large brutish hunchbacks that twisted the mind a bit and shorter elflike creatures with postnasal drip. The Unseelie took in all, no matter their appearance.
There were plenty of the nonmonstrous in the Black, too. The Unseelie Tuatha Dé Danann, men and women who looked just like Gabriel but who, unlike their shining Seelie counterparts, could kill or maim with their magick. They were perhaps the most dangerous of all the members of the Black Tower. Deceptively deadly at times.
After spending a day at the Seelie Court with all its glittering pretensions, Gabriel knew he preferred monsters and mayhem to gilt and gossip.
He couldn’t wait to get home.
He waded further into the darkness of the other half of Piefferburg Square, under the shadow of the tall black crystal tower that mirrored the Seelie Court’s rose one. The doors opened for him immediately and he entered the black marble foyer.
“Gabriel,” said Hinkley, chief adviser to the Shadow King and majordomo of the Black Tower. He was a thin, balding, knobby man with a permanent stoop. He peered up at Gabriel through wire-rimmed glasses perched on his long, crooked nose. “He’s been asking for you. You said you’d return much earlier than this.”
There could only be one he Hinkley could be referring to.
Gabriel handed him his now-empty champagne bottle and strode past him, making Hinkley’s short legs work to catch up. “I couldn’t get here any quicker without raising suspicion. I spent almost all yesterday and this evening with Aislinn Christiana Guinevere Finvarra. There was a ball tonight I couldn’t get away from until now.” He shrugged and grabbed a shiny red apple from a bowl of fruit near a sofa. “I was working.” He snapped out a bite.
“So I trust she’s already under your spell?” asked Hinkley with his brows raised in a smarmy way that made Gabriel shudder for any female he might turn his attentions toward. “I’m sure you’ll have the matter put to rest within a couple nights’ time.”
Hardly.
When Gabriel had first arrived at the Rose yesterday, he’d seen Aislinn as he’d passed her in the corridor on his way to see the Summer Queen. She’d watched him with cool gray eyes set in a heart-shaped face. The coolness and detachment in her gaze and on her face was the first thing he’d noticed about her—coolness wasn’t usually a quality most females displayed where he was concerned. The second thing he’d noticed was how attractive she was. What the Shadow King had sent him to do wouldn’t be a hardship at all. For once.
No, Gabriel would love seducing sweet, luscious Aislinn Finvarra of the beautiful silver blond hair and succulent, small, curvy body. In fact, he couldn’t wait. But it looked like he’d have to wait, for he’d noticed something else about Aislinn—she was not affected by his particular “charm.”
Not at all.
Out of all the women the Shadow King had ordered him to seduce to the dark side, it was the one woman who seemed immune to him.
Normally women weren’t much of a challenge for him, but sometimes he found one who could resist him. It had never troubled him much; after all, there was always a willing one nearby and Gabriel wasn’t all that picky. As l
ong as they were pretty and adventurous in bed they’d do. But he had to seduce this unwilling one if he was to stay in the Shadow King’s favor.
And Gabriel very much wanted to stay in the Shadow King’s favor.
He enjoyed high status in the Black, a nice apartment, good food, and other little perks. He had no family fortune to fall back on, coming, as he did, from abject poverty and a dark, twisted history of doing what he had to do in order to survive. The king asked little of him to maintain his high status. He couldn’t fail the royal in this.
In addition to the coolness and detachment, Aislinn, out of all the Seelie who’d watched him enter their tower, was the only one who hadn’t looked at him with some kind of combination of fear and lust on her face. The fear made sense and he was used to seeing it—even from the Unseelie. He was sex and death all in one package.
Even if most didn’t sense the death consciously, it was there. And it didn’t come from his capacity to create sexual addiction in women, either. It was true he could do that, though not to the point where they’d die from want of him. That sort of power had died out in his line long ago, though it was in Gabriel’s best interests not to reveal that secret. Creating sexual addiction in those who came to his bed was not a desirable thing—it made his lovers needy and clingy and that was something he couldn’t abide.
No, the intangible threat of death that people sensed came from something far more powerful. Something only a handful of trusted Unseelie knew about.
Gabriel turned down the corridor toward the Shadow King’s quarters and Hinkley scurried to keep up. The floor and walls here were made of black marble veined through with silver. Framed pictures of some of the historical battles between the Rose and Black adorned the walls above small tables with vases of orchids or bowls of fruit or candy. Those battles had occurred back before the Great Sweep had compelled them all into Piefferburg and the fae courts had been forced into an uneasy peace.
This was the floor where the Shadow King and his advisers lived. Not many of the other Unseelie had cause to be here, so all was silent save for the click of his and Hinkley’s shoes on the floor.
His thoughts turned to Aislinn and he had a moment of uncharacteristic discomfort. “I may need more time with the woman than we thought.”
Hinkley made a choking sound. “You don’t have long. For whatever reason, the Shadow King is most obsessed with bringing this woman over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this impatient.”
Gabriel stifled a yawn and set to undoing the cuff links on his tux. “I’ll get the job done.”
They came to the double doors that led to the king’s quarters. The Unseelie Court had both daytime and nighttime fae. It was active around the clock, as opposed to the mostly daytime Seelie Court. The king was a night dweller, which meant Gabriel wasn’t waking His Majesty from slumber. Even if he were it wouldn’t matter. The Shadow King didn’t sit on his throne like a half-dead statue the way the Summer Queen did. He moved, fought, danced, laughed, and cavorted with his people.
Though one could never mistake the Shadow King for one of them. Imbued with the power of the Shadow Amulet, he was far more powerful than any of them could imagine. The amulet gave the Shadow Royal eternal agelessness and the ability to call and control the goblin army. You didn’t want to cross him, and you never wanted to disappoint him. When the Shadow King decided you needed to be punished, his ways of doing so were legend. Magickal torture was torture like none could imagine.
That was why Gabriel didn’t want to fail in the task he’d been set. Not even the king’s favorites were immune to his anger. On the contrary, he expected more of them.
The doors opened by themselves as he approached—a handy little bit of magick—and Hinkley fell back, allowing Gabriel to enter on his own. No one was in the waiting room and the doors to the apartment were open, so he walked into the spacious foyer of the residence and passed into the living room.
The room was modern, done in shining silvers and whites. It was a cold room for a friendly king. Gabriel didn’t like it, no matter the lushness of the décor and the obvious signs of wealth that were displayed. The term “Shadow King” was not apt, in Gabriel’s opinion, not when shadows were so dark and chilly.
Aodh Críostóir Ruadhán O’Dubhuir, also known as the Shadow King, stood at the huge window that overlooked Piefferburg Square, a short glass filled with amber liquid in his hand. The long hair that cascaded down his back started out silver blond at the roots—his natural color. From there it faded into dyed hues of orange, then rose, ending at the tips in fiery red. He was many centuries old, but because of the Shadow Amulet, he didn’t look a day over thirty-two. The amulet was a part of him, literally. Once donned by its rightful owner, the heavy necklace sank into the flesh and imbued the royal with magick, leaving only a tattooed image on the neck and upper chest to mark its physical presence.
The Shadow King didn’t acknowledge Gabriel as he entered the room, but Gabriel knew he was aware of his presence.
The crystal-knobbed fighting staff that was his favored weapon—a weapon he’d practiced with against Gabriel many times in the sparring room—leaned up against the wall beside him. And Barthe, an ogre, a wilding creature of limited cognitive power, lurked silently in the corner, his small black eyes fastened on him from a doughy face.
There were only a clutch of ogres left after Watt syndrome had ripped through the race. Most of them lived in close-knit family clans, residing in caves in the Boundary Lands. Typically ogres disdained contact with the rest of Piefferburg, but Barthe was a rare one who wanted interaction with others. In fact, he’d bound himself in service to the king. The beast acted like a pit bull of sorts, protecting his master.
Towering over seven feet, Barthe was built like a mega linebacker with a narrow waist, huge muscular arms, and broad shoulders. His fleshy face was closer to that of a boar than a man, with small white tusks that couldn’t be underestimated in battle. His body was covered in fine black hair. He walked upright, was deadly and brutal in a fight, and loved his king more than his own life. Barthe was capable of only limited communication, but Gabriel understood that his clan had rejected him for choosing service to the Unseelie king over them.
Gabriel collapsed into a pearl-colored armchair and slouched. As the king’s favorite, he enjoyed certain allowances. Plus, he was exhausted. Having to work the Seelie Court by day and get himself over to the Unseelie after midnight was going to take its toll.
“You did not report to me last night,” the king stated without turning, then took a long drink.
“I had nothing to report and lots of work to do.”
“But I trust you have something to report now. Have you seen her?”
Gabriel knew he meant Aislinn, not the Summer Queen. “I’ve done more than just see her. I managed to tie myself to her, by convincing Caoilainn Elspeth Muirgheal that she was my preferred choice for court guide during my stay. Once I discovered Aislinn’s recent breakup, it wasn’t difficult to convince the queen the pairing would be beneficial for Aislinn. The queen seemed amenable to helping one of her favorites. So now I have an excuse to seek her out and spend time with her.”
The Shadow King had no queen and the Summer Queen no king. They’d lived for centuries that way and there was some speculation that relations had not always been so icy between them. Gabriel had always wondered at the look the Shadow King got on his face whenever Caoilainn Elspeth Muirgheal was mentioned. Right now Gabriel couldn’t see the king’s face, but his shoulders had tightened the moment her name had wafted to his ears, the bloodred-tipped ends of his hair shifting over his shoulders.
“And?”
“And did Aislinn come to my bed, fall in mad, passionate love with me, and ask to do anything I wished of her?” He smiled. “No.”
The king turned. His eternally handsome, pale face was set in grim lines. His light blue eyes snapped with irritation. “Why not? I thought you’d have the job done in no time. I thought she’d swoon at
your feet like all the other women and this would be no trouble at all. I was surprised and displeased you didn’t have her with you tonight. Don’t tell me I have to send someone else to fetch her.”
Someone else. Gabriel knew what that meant and it was nothing good . . . for Aislinn, anyway. Gabriel wasn’t sure what the Shadow King wanted with Aislinn Christiana Guinevere Finvarra of the long silver blond hair and gray eyes, but he didn’t think the king meant her bodily harm. Still, the “someone else” the king was referring to would not be as pleasant on the eyes or as gentle as he would be and would likely frighten her.
Gabriel shifted in his seat and sighed. “Let’s try it my way first. I haven’t failed yet; I just need a few more days. You’ve gone a long time without this woman’s presence in your court. You can spare another week or so, right?” He paused. “But I need to know why she’s so important to you.”
Aodh regarded him silently for a long moment. “She’s a distant relation. I don’t have many of those, so I intend to lavish upon her all she deserves. Please, don’t fail me in this, Gabriel. This means more to me than I can say. I don’t have many—any—relations.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. There was a slight resemblance in the chin and the hair color was right, otherwise he would never have guessed they were blood relations. Aodh had the light blue eyes of icy water or a husky. Aislinn’s were gray like gunmetal or stormy skies. Close, but no cigar. “You can count on me, my king.”
The king took another drink and then turned back to the window. “Good. Now leave and do your duty. I can hear the souls calling.”
Gabriel could hear them, too. What was more, he could feel them pulling at him. If he let his work go too long, they would start screaming and clawing at the inside of his psyche. It was time to do what he’d been born to do. He couldn’t escape it. Gabriel didn’t want to escape it. It was his sacred duty.
He stood. “I’ll return to give you a progress report after I’ve actually made some progress.” But the king had already tuned him out and stood deep in thought at the window once again. Gabriel showed himself out.
