by Anya Bast
Of course, she had no illusions about her fate.
If they got what they wanted, they would probably let her go. They didn’t need to sow discord with the fae, who were, for all intents and purposes, under their thumbs so thoroughly as to be completely helpless. One little Unseelie queen meant nothing to the Phaendir. As long as they got the Book of Bindings, they would let the fae keep their Unseelie queen and their silly, harmless customs. Hatred burned up bile from the back of her throat.
But they would never get the book.
Gabriel wouldn’t give it to them. He couldn’t. He knew this issue transcended his love for her, transcended even her life. If he turned the book over to the Phaendir, they would destroy it. If they destroyed it, all hope the fae had of getting out of Piefferburg would die. She would never forgive Gabriel for that and he knew it.
Her people wanted out of Piefferburg.
Looking at the arrogant, black-cowled tyrants that held her now, fury ignited and raged in her stomach, racing through her veins and keeping her warm in the chilly room. Now, more than ever in her life, she wanted them defeated. She wanted revenge.
Freedom for the fae.
She wanted her hands filled with weapons or her mouth filled with magick and her immediate surroundings bursting with legions of unforgiven dead and goblins. She wanted to defeat these men who oppressed them and made them feel so much weaker than they were. But all she had were bare feet and a filmy nightgown that barely covered her icy skin, charmed iron against her wrists, and her magick stoppered up inside her by a supernatural plug. Even the tattoo burned into her flesh seemed dull and faded where she could see it on her chest.
The only weapons she had at her disposal now were her mouth, her mind, and her cunning.
“Why do you hate us so much?” she asked the man who guarded her.
His black-cowled head turned toward her and all she saw was blackness. “I’m not here to have a conversation with you. I’m here to guard you and, perhaps, execute you.” His voice was flat, but human sounding. Emotionless. That was no good. She needed him worked up.
“They’ll never hand over the Book of Bindings, which I’m certain is what you’ve asked them for. Therefore, I’m a dead woman. Can’t you honor a dead queen’s last request and talk to her?”
He only stared out over the expanse of pews that filled the temple.
“You must be really worried about the fae breaking free, right?” she goaded quietly, her red-tipped hair shifting over her shoulders as she gazed up at the druid. “I mean, you’re going to such extremes to get the Book of Bindings. This must be the first time you’ve dared to enter the city. After all, you must know that if you’re found out, you’ll be ripped from limb to limb and, at least in this part of town, eaten. Odd that you chose Goblin Town as the place to make your stand.”
“Don’t presume you know our intentions or our purposes.”
Oh, there had been a note of anger in his response. Now she was getting somewhere.
“Well, all I can do is presume, since the Phaendir aren’t exactly forthcoming. I know my history, of course. I know about the grudge you bear the fae.” She tipped her head to the side and affected a light, innocent tone. “Is it because we snubbed you? We smacked you down and humiliated you, didn’t we? Considered you less than ourselves? Especially the Seelie Tuatha Dé Danann. Of course, they have snobbery down to an art form.” Interesting how she could say “they” and not even care she wasn’t a part of them. “The Unseelie or the troop would’ve accepted you, but you were too good for them. I’m Unseelie, but on this issue I think I agree with the Seelie.”
“You have no comprehension of what you speak,” the man ground out.
“Oh, is that not it? Well, if it’s not some sort of revenge for being rejected, then it must be flat-out fear. Are you doing this because you fear us?” She paused. “But, I guess you should. Now,” she tacked on carelessly.
The druid rounded on her. “Fear? Revenge over a shallow social slight? Some event in ancient history that none of us remember anymore? Is that what you think? You think the Phaendir are afraid of you, child? We trapped you here. We did that. While you’re here, we can do anything to you we want. We could convince the human government you’re a threat and have you all exterminated. Cleanse your filthy races off the face of the earth. I would watch my tongue if I were you, queen, and be happy we haven’t killed you yet.”
“You’re lying. You don’t have that much control. You got lucky when you trapped us, but you know that the fae are more powerful than you. After all, the Phaendir resorted to a bunch of cheap tricks to get us in here, didn’t they?”
“Cheap tricks?” He took a couple of steps toward her and the action made his hood fall back. He was a man, just a man. There was no monster in the blackness. No ugly creature. Flesh and blood and a paunch around the gut. He was a middle-aged, balding man with brown eyes and thin lips. Euphoria filled her. They were defeatable.
“You heard me.”
“Faith. Righteousness. Cleanliness. Duty. Think on those words for a while and maybe you’ll get a clue.” His face came down so close to hers that his utterances moved the hair around her face. She smelled his lunch on his breath. He bared his teeth. “There are those men in the Phaendir who would wipe you all off the face of the Earth and be done with this stinking prison completely. Think on the name Gideon and fear it.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
“Conlon!”
The man stepped back and whooshed his hood back over his head at the voice of reprimand ringing across the pews.
TWENTY-SIX
THE stench of the marketplace filled Gabriel’s nose and he tried to black out the knowledge of what he smelled. It wasn’t often the rest of the fae races visited Goblin Town and the goblin diet was one reason why.
They had just finished one of the three major holiday festivals they had each year. They didn’t celebrate Yule, Imbolc, Beltane, Samhain, and the rest like the other fae. Instead they had Yarlog, Lugoc, and Warmok festivals to mark the passing of the seasons. They’d just finished with Lugoc, which marked the world’s entrance into spring. A wind-tattered banner had half fallen into the street in front of them and goblins hurried to and fro, treading it to dirty shreds.
He passed the mouth of the street that contained the goblin market from which emanated the stench. No sticky sweet fruits were for sale there, like the Christina Rossetti poem described. It was flesh, mostly dead, but some still living to be dined upon in dubious circumstances. Small shops lined the crammed and dirty streets.
The goblins’ population had exploded since the Great Sweep, but Goblin Town hadn’t been able to expand, making it overcrowded. Even though Piefferburg City comprised only a small part of the Piefferburg Detention Compound, the goblins showed no inclination to move to the country. The district was hemmed in on two sides by the ceantar dubh and the ceantar láir with clear borders marking each. The goblins chose not to mix with the other fae, for the most part.
Behind Gabriel walked his host—Melia, Aelfdane, Aeric, and Bran. On either side of him walked Ronan and Niall. They were all dressed for battle and ready with their most powerful magick. Dominating the entire cobblestone street, they stopped traffic and turned heads.
Gabriel didn’t notice much but the road in front of him, the one that would bring them to the Grand Temple and to Aislinn, but he did see the goblins stopping on the sidewalk to stare. The women, dressed in bright colors and carrying bags of food home to their many children, dropped their clawed, bony arms at their sides and watched them pass. Some of them formed clumps and whispered and pointed. Behind them gathered a clutch of goblins, following them toward the temple, which was exactly what they wanted.
The Unseelie Tuatha Dé Sídhe were almost never seen in Goblin Town; the Seelie Sídhe, never. The trooping fae didn’t venture here and the goblins most certainly never saw the wildings. They had to be wondering why they were being visited by outsiders now.
In t
he note, the Phaendir had said Gabriel couldn’t tell the masses. Undoubtedly they would know via magickal means if he did. This was his way of getting around that. He wouldn’t breathe a word to the masses of the Phaendir’s presence, but nothing had been said about the masses coming of their own volition. Leading goblins to them this way wouldn’t violate the order.
Of all the places to orchestrate a meeting, Goblin Town wasn’t the brightest idea they’d ever had. Yet Gabriel could have tried this same thing in any part of Piefferburg with the same result. Even the gentle wilding fae who lived in the Boundary Lands would be happy to have some druids to rip apart.
He wondered how the Phaendir had gotten in. The main entrance to Piefferburg was watched carefully by the fae and every entrant was reported to both the Rose and Black towers. It was possible the Phaendir had hidden in a shipment of supplies, but every vehicle was thoroughly searched twice, once by the Phaendir on the outside and once by the fae on the inside.
No matter how they’d gained entry, it was clear the Phaendir were desperate to get their hands on the Book of Bindings. Undoubtedly these druids they’d sent were expendable. They had to know they’d never get out alive. Of that Gabriel was sure.
He wasn’t sure if Aislinn would get out of this alive, either.
So, as they walked down the street, Gabriel’s heavy black boots falling on the littered cobblestones and his long dark coat flapping behind him, they gathered the army that Aislinn couldn’t call and brought them along for the ride . . . right into the laps of the Phaendir.
He had no doubt the goblins would thank him for the tasty meal.
The Book of Bindings was still in its secret place. The decision to leave it still churned in Gabriel’s stomach—fear of losing Aislinn, fear she was already lost. It fueled his rage. Fire arched through his veins, hotter with every step he took toward the cathedral he could see in the distance.
When they were about two blocks away, his host fanned out and disappeared into the side streets, leaving him with the mages and the ever-growing legion of curious goblins behind them.
They halted one block away from the cathedral, waiting. One heartbeat. Two. Three. Gabriel’s fingers itched for action.
Four. Five . . .
Wordlessly, he looked at Ronan and Niall each in turn and nodded at them. They walked toward the front doors of the church, magick gathering around them.
Gabriel called Abastor. The horse swooped down from the Netherworld, and he jumped astride, sailing up past the gasping goblins, just as Ronan and Niall burst the front doors of the church from their hinges. If his host had done their job, the druids inside would soon be surrounded from the back, thanks to a secret entrance revealed to them by the Black Tower’s goblin liaison.
The Phaendir were stupid to fight them in their own territory.
Abastor’s hooves hit the red-tinted glass at the top of the church, shattering it. Gabriel’s objective was one thing—find and protect Aislinn. Inside was chaos—the Phaendir fighting the host and the mages in bursts of magick and mayhem.
AISLINN leaned against the wall at the feet of the goddess and waited. Glancing up at the pale red windows at the top of the temple, she could judge that it was almost five. Conlon stood near her, silent and still. Like her, he waited. She hadn’t been able to get him to speak after he’d been reprimanded by his peers.
Moments later, the doors to the temple blew open in an explosion of magick she recognized. After the smoke cleared, Ronan and Niall stood framed in the remnants.
Battle broke out all over the church.
So this was how it would go.
Leaning on one side, she lashed out with her feet, hitting Conlon in the back of the knees and crashing him to the ground. Before he had a chance to react, she kicked again, into the blackness of his hood. Soft cartilage cracked against the arch of her bare foot. He grunted and cradled his face, his hood falling back. Pulling his hands away, she saw she’d broken his nose. Blood streamed over his mouth and down his chin.
“Bitch,” he growled. He raised his hand, chanting in some language she didn’t know, and magick blasted into her.
Pain blossomed through her body, quickly fading to numbness. Her back arched and she screamed.
She had to hold on. Had to hold on for Gabriel. She dredged up every ounce of willpower in her body to fight the magick seeping into her body and trying to steal her life. The last thing she saw before the world went black was Gabriel on Abastor, descending from the sky like some avenging angel.
But it was too late.
The next time he saw her, he would be reaping her.
THERE was Aislinn, on the floor at the foot of the goddess Orna, her skin pallid, arms twisted cruelly behind her back, silent, too still. Red-tipped hair in a tangle over her face.
Goblins rushed in to fill the church and found the hooded Phaendir. Magick exploded around Gabriel as his horse touched down in the row of pews, filling his nose with the scent of sulfur, the scent of the Phaendir’s power.
The magick and the fighting didn’t touch him as he slid from the back of Abastor and closed the distance between himself and Aislinn’s too-still and fallen form. Time somehow seemed to slow to a crawl around him.
A Phaendir, his hood ripped back to reveal a middle-aged portly man, leapt to block his path. Blood smeared his nose, mouth and chin. “We told you we’d kill her,” he snarled.
Gabriel punched him.
The crunch of the bones in the man’s face was satisfying, but he had no time to enjoy it. He pushed aside the druid’s fallen body, raced to Aislinn and knelt. Cold, empty grief filled him as he lifted her limp body into his lap. Studying her eyes, he looked for the rise and fall of her chest. He found nothing.
No breath. No heartbeat. She was cold and too pale to still be living.
Gabriel hugged her to him and buried his nose in her hair. “No,” he ordered her. “Don’t leave me, Aislinn. Not now. Not when I’ve just found you.”
They’d been through so much—the attack of the Shadow King and the overthrow of the Black Tower—she couldn’t die now, not when she’d survived all the rest.
His world couldn’t be without her.
He closed his eyes and buried his face in the curve of her neck, unwilling to look around him in case her spirit stood nearby. He wasn’t ready for that. Never would be.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“PHAENDIR were dumped outside the gates of Piefferburg, Gideon. All men known to follow you and your unorthodox ideas about where the Phaendir should go in its policies. They’ve been gnawed on.” He paused. “By goblins.”
Gideon had taken a stance of full contrition, nose to the ground in front of Brother Maddoc, shirt ripped open and pulled down to show his scarred and lacerated back as a mark of piety. He could not deny any of it. He’d been caught. “I ask for your mercy and leniency, brother.”
Maddoc’s boots stepped around him, softly displacing dirt and grass. All of the Phaendir and all their human employees had assembled on the lawn for his public censure. Even Emily. Gideon’s cheeks burned with humiliation.
“I have been merciful with you, Brother Gideon,” Maddoc intoned loudly so all could hear. “I have been more than lenient with your ideas that run so counter to mine. I have kept you in your high position because so many agreed with you and I wanted to respect their beliefs. Men like the ones you used like tools this day, as though they were disposable.” The boots halted in front of him. “In a secret mission you conducted by yourself, sacrificing the lives of good Phaendir. Tell me, Brother Gideon, what price should you pay for these high crimes?”
“What I did, I did in the name of Labrai.”
“And how do you think Labrai feels about the needless disposal of Phaendir lives?” The words roared out of Maddoc with a forcefulness that Gideon had forgotten he possessed. “How do you think He feels about secret agendas and missions? How do think He feels about conniving, deceitful, upwardly mobile Phaendir? How do you think He feels about losing impo
rtant ancient Phaendir artifacts that could endanger all we hold precious?”
Gideon lifted his nose from the ground. His gaze touched a concerned-looking Emily and instantly refocused on Brother Maddoc. “I am so very sorry for what I have done,” he intoned, trying his best to appear miserable and contrite. “I know it was wrong. Please, let me live so that I may serve you and Labrai another day.”
A silence stretched. Gideon’s back clenched. His neck twinged.
“You are demoted, Brother Gideon, a full four places down the power structure,” Brother Maddoc said finally. “And you will take a public lashing for your sins.”
Gideon rested his head on the ground once more and closed his eyes in relief. He wasn’t surprised the weak Brother Maddoc had allowed him to live, but he was relieved to hear the verdict out loud. He might be demoted and humiliated, but he still had his life. If air still filled his lungs, he would not stop in his quest to gain Brother Maddoc’s seat.
Maddoc should kill him. If he was a smarter man, he would.
Even though Gideon had failed in his quest to obtain the Book of Bindings, eventually he would see his agenda take the lead in Phaendir policy making.
Then he would see the extermination of every fae-blooded thing in Piefferburg.
First, unfortunately, he would have to start with his brothers. That was clear enough. It was time to take his gloves off and get his hands dirty. A full four places down the power structure? Pity the men above him.
Pity Brother Maddoc.
Men gripped his clothing, shredding the fabric and leaving him naked on the ground. The creaking leather sound of a whip being unfurled behind him filled the air and made him shiver with anticipation. The first lash snapped against his flesh and his body arched backward in shock and pain, hot blood welling. Sweet, delicious, beautiful agony followed.
