by Terry Spear
Alton was certain the king would do so because the griffin king had held Esmeralda as a prisoner for so many years. If she had been truly a prisoner. What if she hadn't been? What if she was a griffin fae who would tell the griffin fae king all the secrets of the hawk fae court as soon as she had the freedom and could send word?
Again, Alton reminded himself he couldn't be bothered with the politics of the two kingdoms. He had enough to worry about when it came time to moving his own treasure and people here.
"I'd prefer for now for you to remain in your fae forms and not shift into dragons for the time being," the king said. "My people might think you were threatening the safety of our realm, so I wish to let them know you are living with us in peace, first."
Alton hated that. He'd much rather soar high above the land to see the layout of it, the forests, streams, and lakes, the farmlands and villages, the mountains.
But he understood the need to remain cautious for a bit longer.
"I must return to the castle and make sure we welcome you to our kingdom, properly." Then the king and several of his men, presumably his top staff and bodyguards, vanished.
"So far, so good," Ena said as she and the other dragons took a seat on top of the lead wagon, except that Aideen sat beside Ryker.
"Sure, you've already been given a castle, duchess," Alton said.
She laughed.
"You're now royalty, according to the dark fae queen and that gives you the right anywhere that you reside. Besides, the dark fae queen's daughter is queen here, so that means you'll have to be our spokesman if we have any trouble in the kingdom," Alton said.
She shook her head. "I'd say since you saved the king's sister, you might have even more of a leg up than me."
"If she's proved to be his sister. And if he's happy with the notion."
"He's said to be changing the way a king views his family in this kingdom. I'd say you have gone a long way already to making yourself worthy to their cause."
"I did it by default. I had no idea who she was." He sighed. "The rest of us have to return tomorrow. The sooner the better. Prince Grotto will be raging about your disappearance. He was already furious you weren't at your keep when he arrived early to pick you up for the nooning meal," Alton said.
"He wasn't expected to. I was supposed to meet him at the castle." She shook her head. "That's not like him. I wonder what he was up to."
"I wonder if he mistrusted you and thought you might leave. Maybe he had spies watching."
Ryker said, "We killed them."
"What?" Ena asked.
"We knew they were watching everything we were doing to get ready to move your gold. We knew they were some of Prince Grotto's men. Jacob and I killed them and dumped them where they will never be found."
"Ah, Ryker, you should have told me." Ena glanced at Alton. "I'm going back with you."
"I'd rather you waited for us here. As soon as any of his men get word you've returned, they'll grab you. It would be better for us to slip back in, make arrangements to move our treasure, and leave."
She shook her head. "You have to leave our home because of me. I won't let you do it alone."
"We should have done it when the king killed our parents. We should never have stayed."
"We were too young to leave back then. We are highly trained fighters now. It's different for us now. But I'm going with you."
His expression brightened.
"As your friend," she said. "And I have to get word to my brother. If they capture him, I will be forced to return."
"You are the only one who doesn't have gold to move here. Well, and Aideen if she intends to leave it in No Man's Land. Why don't you look for your brother and let him know what has happened?" Olaf asked.
"Maybe I should move his gold for him. It will need to be moved. If somehow we can get word to him afterward, he won't need to travel through the fae lands, but go to Earth world and fly to a location where he can fae transport to the hawk kingdom. It's only carrying the treasure that prevents us from going through Earth channels," Ena said.
"I know he wouldn't want to stay in the dragon fae kingdom without you or the rest of us there, but don't you think he'd be a little bit angered that you'd move his gold without his approval?" Amerand asked. "He's a bit of a hot head, and I know if it were me, I'd be angry."
"He'll be angry, but he'll be safer, too, if we can do this as quickly as we move the others' gold."
"We're going to have more trouble just transporting our property," Kiernan said. "We were free to help you and your people, but we will have so many wagons filled with gold and so many people to move that it will divide us. We can't move only one dragon's treasure at a time as it would take too long. We'd risk having the king confiscate it. But moving it all at once, that's going to be a nightmare."
"Perhaps King Tiernan can help," a man said, one of the hawk fae king's archers as he walked alongside the wagon, listening into the conversation.
"How so?" Ena asked.
"He has a powerful magician, Eleron. Maybe he can spare him. And the queen herself has some kind of unique abilities, powerful enough to stop a mage from killing her. So perhaps she could help?"
"Not the queen," Ena said. If Ritasia helped them and ended up getting herself killed, Ena would never forgive herself. Nor would the king. "Okay, we'll ask the king if he thinks Eleron could go with us and still be safe enough. We leave before dawn tomorrow."
***
That night at the celebratory feast, King Tiernan rejoiced that not only had he found a sister he hadn't known he had—the proof was in a journal written by their own mother documenting the twins' births and then left with the man and woman who raised Esmeralda—but they had a new alliance with the dragon shifter fae also. The king's mage would not be able to help them since he'd been sent on an errand and wouldn't return in time. So, the dragon shifters were on their own. But Ena assumed such.
Ritasia leaned over to speak to Ena sitting at the high table in honor of being a duchess and for having saved her sister-in-law.
"You know this will cause trouble for Alicia, do you not?" Ritasia whispered. She was a dark-haired fae, her dark brown eyes as penetrating as the king's. Her pale ivory skin flushed beautifully whenever the king kissed her, which he did often.
"I do. I hate for it to happen."
Ritasia shook her head and ate another grape. "It couldn't be helped. If her great grandfather had killed my parents, I would have wanted revenge also."
"It's not for revenge," Ena said.
"Yes, to avoid marrying that ogre of a cousin of Alicia's. I understand. He would be the death of you. Still, it will cause trouble for Alicia since she is the next in line for the dragon fae crown." Ritasia glanced at Alton seated in honor next to Esmeralda for having rescued her from the cliffs. "She is very beautiful."
Ena glanced her way and saw the way Alton was looking at the woman, her hair all in rolls of dark brown silky tresses, pinned up with gold and silver pins. She had a most natural elegance about her. Alton caught Ena's eye and his cheeks flushed. Ena looked back to her meal.
"Very beautiful." Ena suddenly felt hot, annoyed, and bothered that a pretty woman could make Alton smile so much and act the fool over her.
"Men can be so fickle," Ritasia said, as if she could read Ena's very thoughts.
"He saved her life. She feels a deep gratitude toward him."
"And the captain."
Ena glanced at the griffin fae prisoner sitting at a lower table, guarded by two men, eating his fill, but knowing very well he was a prisoner of his enemy.
"I'd say she has rather a fondness for the man. She wished to see his accommodations, ensure he ate at the meal with us, and was treated well for having saved her life twice, so she remarked several times," Ritasia said, forking up a piece of venison.
"It would be natural to care for a man who saved your life."
"Like a human?" Ritasia asked, so out of the blue, Ena was startled.
&nbs
p; Ena swung her head around to look at Ritasia. She had said nothing about Brett to the queen, her king, or anyone else in the hawk fae kingdom. Unless one of her people or one of her dragon friends had spilled the beans.
"He is a prisoner of the phantom fae and you wish to free him," Ritasia said.
Ena poked at her greens. "He was mine to protect."
"He is of the fae," Ritasia said, as if she knew the truth.
"We don't know that. No one knows that for certain," Ena said, frowning at her, wondering why Ritasia sounded so sure of herself.
"He is," Ritasia said. "Why else would the phantom fae want him… twice? Once when they thought he was dying, though they wouldn't have wanted a dead human dropped off on their lands, would they have? So why? Because he wasn't dying and they knew it? How would they know that? Because he was of the fae. And they wanted him in payment of an additional toll for staying longer on their lands than you were supposed to. What of the ring?"
"The ring?" Ena asked.
"You gave a phantom fae a ring for payment the first time. Why only a ring?"
Ena frowned at her. "How do you know all this?"
"I was talking to some of your ladies as I visited them earlier, trying to learn what else you would need to set up household for the night. Your other friends said they would stay with you at your castle. All but Alton. My husband wishes him to stay at the castle for the night. He wanted to give him special accommodations for saving his sister."
Ena glanced back at Princess Esmeralda smiling and laughing as Alton was telling her some story.
"All right, I was given the ring in payment two years ago—a phantom fae gave it to me for rescuing her child. She said it was all that she had for payment, but someday it would be the most valuable item I could give to a phantom fae seeking the payment of a toll. 'Wear it always,' she said. 'Whatever you do, don't lose it.' It was the oddest case I had ever undertaken. The woman was on the dragon fae border when she saw me. I was on another case at the time, that I never could resolve. And then the woman needed my help. The child turned out to be a teen and was off hunting. He appeared… unsettled. I thought it was because he was afraid of being in trouble for not telling his mother where he would be. Or maybe he was afraid of me because I was a dragon shifter."
"And the man asked for that very ring?"
"He did. I always wore it, but I'd forgotten about it and was going to give him something else in payment. He looked at my ring and said, 'That will be payment enough.' For a moment, I hesitated, thinking if it was truly so valuable that maybe I should keep it and since I'd grown attached to it because I'd worn it so long. But I had so many wagons full of treasure and he only wanted the one simple ring. Remembering the woman's advice to me, I gave it to him. He was satisfied and left."
"What about the other mission? The one you were on before the woman sidetracked you?" Ritasia asked.
"It was odd. The king often sends me on them. Sometimes, I pick them up when local villagers ask me to help them in some task. There is a board in the village for any of us to see, so we can go by there and pick and choose a task we wish to accomplish. My specialty is rescuing people. But sometimes I get requests to rescue—other things. Lost pets. Farm animals. A man approached me, who I didn't know and said he lived on the border of the phantom fae lands. That his pony had gotten loose and wandered over there. He was afraid to go over there because of thieves and the toll collectors. He thought I could just find the pony and fly her out of there."
"Could you have?"
"No. I would have to have ridden her out, unless she'd had some harnessing that I could have gotten my talons around and safely lifted her. After I found the 'missing' phantom fae teen, I continued to search for the pony, to no avail. No sign of droppings, horsehair left behind on the vegetation, no hoof prints left in the soil, no scent of a horse in the area, nothing. And no one even attempted to collect a toll from me either. No one accosted me for gold. I thought it was all very odd. When I searched for the man's farm to tell him I could find no sign of the pony, I found no sign of his farm or him."
"You were setup to take on an imperative mission for the phantom fae, to keep something safe that was important to someone until it was time to return it," Ritasia said.
"But did I give it to the right person?"
Ritasia shrugged. "No way of telling. But I think you have a greater purpose coming here than just running away from a marriage to the despicable ogre, Prince Grotto."
"Like what?"
"Starting a war."
"I didn't have any intention of—"
Ritasia held up her hand to silence her. Ena hated the gesture that the royals had of rendering their subjects speechless when she wanted to finish what she was going to say. Yet, she realized once again, she was under the rule of a fae court. A different one, but it was the same in so many ways.
"When your king asked you to rescue Princess Alicia, it all began there." Ritasia waited for Ena to work it out for herself. When she didn't respond, Ritasia continued, "It is the same for all of us. We are just pawns."
"But you are a queen and…" Ena knew she shouldn't say what she was going to, but it just irritated her to the highest tops of the mountain peaks. "…you can shush anyone you want with the wave of your hand." Though she had to admit she had used the same gesture a few times with her own people.
Ritasia looked a little shocked at first, and then she laughed joyfully. "I like you, Ena. I can see why Alicia cares for you a great deal. You are a warrior first. Politics are not your forte. Believe me, I wasn't given the choice to wed King Tiernan." She smiled at her husband who was grinning at her. "Not at the first. I had turned down so many suitors, my mother was ready to foist me off on just about anyone."
Ena smiled, loving the way the king kissed Ritasia's cheek and continued to speak to a man beside him, ignoring her comments that might have annoyed a lesser man.
"I don't say that starting a war was intentional on your part, or my mother's—"
"Your mother's?"
"She made you a duchess, thereby insulting your king. He had only given you a human as prisoner in payment. And she gave you two. He had no choice but to insist you wed Prince Grotto. It was inevitable that something should happen after that. That you would seek refuge with my mother, and cause a war in that way, or come here, or at least I had hoped, to seek shelter with us. I didn't know which way it would go. I was certain you were smart enough not to wed the prince."
"He would have been the death of me."
"True. I did not think of how the rest of the dragon shifter fae might decide to leave with you. We knew even your leaving and our harboring you would create the tensions necessary for a war. But with all of you coming here?" Ritasia sipped some of her wine. "We will give you the land each of the dragons need, and with their treasure, they can pay for the building of their keeps, which will provide work for our people, and income."
"And taxes," Ena said.
"But fair. A percentage, but we won't gouge you like Alicia says her grandfather does now. When she rules, she intended to change the taxation of the dragon shifters. So as far as I see it, until that happens, you will live here. When she is in charge, it's up to all of you."
"We are leaving first thing in the morning so we can move the other dragons' households and treasure," Ena said.
"We will watch over your people. I'm surprised that you have two more humans on your staff, however. I am well aware why they are on it, but then again wonder how you will deal with them."
"They can be my gardeners," Ena said, smiling, thinking she would put Brett in charge of them for bringing them here in the first place. Then she looked away, tears filling her eyes when she realized she had lost him. Maybe forever. How could the human get under her dragon scales so thoroughly?
"Why did they take him?" Ritasia asked.
Ena looked at her.
"The other human. Why did the phantom fae want him? No one else. Nothing else?"
He
was one of them, Ena thought.
"Alicia said the fae seers might be of the fae like she was."
Ena stared at her uneaten food.
"If he's one of them, he's safe. Like Alicia, he's home again."
So why didn't that matter to her? Because she didn't know if he was truly safe. He was hers. And he owed her for his clothes. Why did she give him her priceless sword and daggers? As a farewell? Because she knew she'd never see him again, and she wanted to make it right between them? Not owe him any debt for using him to pay the toll to save their lives? When he could have died for it?
"Worry about your brother and the other dragon shifter fae, Ena. It's too risky to dwell on the other matter. If you try to 'rescue' him, you could cause problems with the phantom fae."
"For you and your kingdom," Ena said, understanding now. If the hawk fae kingdom had to fight the dragon fae, they didn't want to have to fight the phantom fae as well.
"Aye, you are getting the hang of the problem with politics. It's a deadly game. One wrong move and alliances shift. We have the upper hand right now, but things could change in the blink of an eye."
"We will leave first thing in the morning," Ena said again. She would do what was right for her brother, even if he was irritated with her for moving his gold. But if it meant he could return home and leave through Earth world more safely, she was all for it.
She just hoped they could move the wagons without losing anyone, fae, horses, or dragon shifter fae. And somehow, she was going to learn if Brett was all right, if he was where he wanted to be, or if he needed rescuing.
Chapter 14
Brett was surprised to be seated at the high table in the Great Hall at the right hand of the queen, the place of honor, from what he was told. Queen Everlee was dressed in ice white tonight and looking as imperious as ever. He was also told she had killed her king over some marital dispute, so it was best not to touch on that subject. A black widow came to mind.
Harps played in the background in a melancholy way and everything was gray here, too, the walls and floors, the ceilings. Except for the brown wooden benches and tables.
