by Dani Harper
For the first time he looked over at the humans who watched him, and Brooke was holding her breath. He lifted a hand, but instead of destroying them all with a snap of his fingers, the silver collar around George’s neck shattered into a thousand pieces. Every one of those pieces, plus the mound of pale white ashes vanished.
The tall dark fae strode forward and knelt to press a hand to George’s forehead, as if feeling for a fever. Brooke was frantic. Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him, dear goddess—I have no magic left! But the fae did not appear to harm him. Instead, he passed his hand over the length of G’s contorted and mutated body. As he did so, the form relaxed into its proper shape, like it was made of soft clay. George lay unmoving, however. Was he dead? Brooke launched herself towards him—but Aidan caught her and held her fast. “It will be all right, cariad,” he whispered to her.
As the fae rose and approached them, Aidan surprised Brooke by tossing his sword to one side. “I have no quarrel with you, Lurien, Lord of the Wild Hunt.”
“Nor I with you, Aidan ap Llanfor, though you gifted me with a fine scar. Celynnen helped to murder King Arthfael. That truth may never have come to light without human intervention.” His black eyes looked down at Brooke, as if considering. “You have much power for a mortal.”
“No,” she replied solemnly. “I have much responsibility.”
Her answer seemed to surprise him. “Well said, good lady. I wish that more of my people understood that. I would not be here if they did.” Lurien paused and looked around at each of them in turn. Rhys still had his sword at the ready, but finally he stepped back and drove the point into the ground at his feet. Morgan slipped beneath his shoulder. All four of them waited.
“What I say, I say in the name of her royal highness, Queen Gwenhidw of the Nine Realms,” said the fae. “I do not have to tell you that the kingdom is in disarray. Its effects are spilling into your world as we speak.”
“People are dying,” accused Rhys.
“Mine as well,” Lurien replied, and Brooke sensed an undertone of pain behind the sharpness. “There was a time when the fae helped to keep the balance in your world as well as ours.”
“Maeve told me that,” said Aidan. “Generosity and unselfishness were rewarded, she said. They punished the greedy and the mean spirited.”
Morgan shook her head. “I’m sure not seeing it. There’s an awful lot of greed and meanness out there. If anything, it’s getting worse.”
“That is because there is no balance in the faery kingdom, and unless the queen succeeds in bringing peace to the realms, both fae and humans will suffer alike.” Lurien seemed to take a deep breath. “She will not be able to do it alone. I am empowered by Queen Gwenhidw to ask for the aid of mortals with integrity and honor. For your help.”
Brooke was astonished. “The fae are overwhelmingly powerful. How could we possibly be of use to you?”
“Do not underestimate the influence of the lives you lead. You help to balance the world simply by being who you are,” said Lurien. “The queen needs allies on the mortal plane, particularly here. Many of the faery kingdoms of the earth have already established themselves in these younger lands. And when our king lived, he had the foresight to draw out a section of yet unclaimed territory and negotiate with other fae tribes in order to claim it. It’s rightly called Tir Hardd.”
“Beautiful land,” Aidan murmured.
“And the queen wishes to announce it as a new kingdom for her people, a colony if you wish. It is her belief that we have outgrown our traditional home.”
“How can that be?” asked Rhys. “The fae realm is so much bigger than what lies above it.”
Brooke remembered that strange phenomenon from old fairy tales she’d read as a child. It had been remarked on by poets and storytellers throughout the ages that the faery lands beneath the ground outshone the mortal country overhead in both glory and sheer size.
“The earth magic that binds everything together is finite. There are too many of the Tylwyth Teg drawing on the magic beneath the Black Mountains of Wales, wresting every bit of power from it they can for position and false strength,” explained Lurien. “We have need of new horizons. It is the queen’s hope that spreading out will help to quell some of the unrest among us. It would have been done a long time ago, had we not been too busy fighting among ourselves.”
“Wait a minute,” said Brooke. “You’re telling me that the fae are going to live here? In this country? Right under our feet?”
“They’re already here,” said Morgan. “Aren’t they, Lurien? You said the king negotiated with other fae tribes.”
“The ones who already lived here, yes. Vast settlements from many places in Europe have been on this side of the waters for a very long time. As for my people, few have made the journey except for a small group of Tylwyth Teg who invaded the land without the queen’s approval. Most of them are fugitives from our justice, but they have not mended their ways. Even now, they are spreading ever-increasing malice and mischief in the human world. By officially announcing Tir Hardd as one of her territories, the queen will have control of it. The Wild Hunt will be empowered to guard it, and our laws will be in force to govern it. More of our people—better ones, I hope—will make their home here.”
“So the plan is to take power away from the rogue fae who are already here,” said Brooke. “Almost like taming the Wild West by turning it all into states and diluting the criminal element with law-abiding colonists.”
Lurien gave her a grim smile. “It may remain the Wild West for quite a while before it’s tamed. But yes, something like that.”
“You’re not here to ask our permission,” said Rhys. “Why bother telling us?”
“I do not require permission. The endless realms below are not under mortal rule. But I do need someone to lead the Wild Hunt in this new territory for a short while. Until I can ferret out the conspiracies that threaten the realm, there is no one left to me in my world that I dare trust with the task.” He looked pointedly at Rhys and Morgan. “Some of you know what happens when the Hunt is not led by the just and the honorable.”
“How long?” Aidan asked suddenly, and Brooke turned to stare at him.
“I will return you to your world in six mortal months from this moment. You have my word upon it. And any protection I can give.”
Brooke put a hand on Aidan’s face and turned it towards her. “What the hell are you doing?” she whispered fiercely. “Are you honestly thinking of saying yes?”
“I vowed to kill Celynnen, to put an end to her evil, thinking all would be well if she were gone. Rhys made me realize there are many more like her, and they will be happy to cause as much suffering here as possible. For endless years I thought only of revenge, but I see now that I was shortsighted. You told me about the Code you follow, the good you try to do, and it made me think. There are three or four lines from it about guarding and balance, are there not?”
With a lump in her throat, she recited:
To hold the Gift is to guard the helpless and to remove power from the cruel.
To hold the Gift is to strengthen the just and to turn greed upon itself.
To hold the Gift is to protect the balance in all things and to restore harmony.
“That’s the very thing. I see you working to make a difference in the world, to improve it for others, and I admire you for it. I didn’t know what I could do that might help, but I saw something in Olivia’s silver bowl that gave me the answer. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I think I do now. It’s about helping to restore balance. For all of us.” He leaned down and kissed her then, long and deep. “I need to do this, cariad. I love you. And I will come back to you.”
She shot a look at Lurien. “Unharmed?” she asked.
The fae nodded. “I will do all within my power to keep him safe. On my honor and my life, good lady. The queen has vowed her protection as well.” He touched his brow and vanished.
Rhys cleared his throat suddenly.
“You’re going to need a good horse, Aidan.” He led Cygnus over. Aidan clasped the man’s hand and took the halter from him. The big white horse bumped him with his nose as if pleased with the arrangement.
Brooke wasn’t liking the arrangement much herself, although she was glad for Rhys’s gift. She looked up into Aidan’s gray eyes. Dear goddess, could she let him go? Yet how could she not, knowing what she did? “Okay, then,” she said with difficulty. “Okay. You help to straighten out the faery world, and I’ll keep working away at balancing this one. But—”
He kissed her again—and disappeared, along with the great white horse. Startled, she stood there with her suddenly empty arms.
“But I’ll miss you.”
TWENTY-THREE
As the coffee maker brewed, Brooke filled the cat dishes with Mighty Bites. Bouncer and Jade paused, sniffing it suspiciously, then tucked in as if they’d been eating it all their lives. Rory seemed positively offended, sitting back on his haunches and swatting the air over his dish as if the smell offended him. Then looked at her as if to say, “Nice joke. Now where’s the real chow?”
“I’m sorry, buddy, the grocery store was out of your favorite yesterday. I’ll have to try that new pet store on the other side of town, but I can’t do it till later.”
He wrinkled his black nose and stalked away, taking up a perch on the couch with his back to her.
Brooke sighed as she filled her cup with coffee and dressed it with cream. At least she’d slept through the night again. Her sleep patterns were almost back to normal now that the nightmares had finally ceased. Olivia had helped her a great deal with spells and potions and a charmed dream catcher—not to mention a listening ear and a wide shoulder—but Brooke had been haunted for the first few months by what she’d done to Celynnen.
“You had no choice, m’ija,” her friend and mentor had reassured her, countless times. “That horrible faery would have killed my George. Perhaps even killed all of you. The Code calls for you to protect the helpless and remove power from the cruel. That is what you did.”
The Code had never said a damn word about having to use violent means. Brooke had decked Aidan once, but that was a far cry from effectively causing the death of a living being. Celynnen was very far from human, and she was as deadly as she was beautiful. Yet Brooke had been jarred awake for weeks by the thunderclap of sound as all those horseshoes obeyed her own command and slammed into the faery princess, maiming her horribly and revealing her true nature beneath the glorious facade. Would she have died of her wounds? Brooke wasn’t sure. Morgan explained that Celynnen’s fate had been the same as the other assassins of the king—their discovery had apparently triggered a spell that incinerated them from the inside out. It was a brutal but effective safeguard. Anyone captured would not live to be questioned, and the identity of the other conspirators would remain a secret. Although Lurien was certain to pay a visit to the king of the Draigddynion…
George had awakened in his proper human form. He was stiff and sore for days, although he didn’t remember he’d nearly turned into a grim. He did remember Felicia’s unveiling, however, and he’d been almost as shell shocked as Brooke over the past few months. At first he didn’t date at all, but finally he met a woman, Shelby Yellowknife, who practiced mixed martial arts in the ring just as he did. They’d been inseparable for nearly three months now. A record, thought Brooke, and smiled a little. George had done something else that made her smile. Yesterday he’d come over with a new comic book—correction, graphic novel—which was nothing unusual in and of itself.
“Remember that time I wouldn’t show you my sketch pad, hermanita?”
“Um, vaguely. I think you slammed it shut, but I thought you were just kidding around.”
He shook his head. “I had the preliminary sketches for this in it. I’ve been working on it for a long time, trying to get it just right.” He placed the freshly published booklet in her hands.
Brooke had expected the latest issue of Devina of Hades. Instead, her mouth fell open as she realized that the kick-ass heroine on the front cover had chin-length black hair marked by a single lock of white the width of a finger. The character even had Brooke’s white eyebrow and turquoise eyes. And damned if she didn’t have tiger-sized versions of Bouncer, Jade, and Rory at her side.
“It’s a brand new series, Bryanna Whitelock. She’s a witch who fights evil,” he said. “I modeled her after you.”
Brooke shook her head in disbelief, and laughed, “But G, my boobs aren’t nearly as big as hers.”
George only shrugged. “Hey, ya gotta sell comics. Besides, you could always get implants, and then you could come to all the Comic-Cons and I could introduce you as the real-life heroine behind the story.”
“Whoa, that is so not happening, bro.”
“Padded bra?”
“No.”
“Well it was worth a shot.” He kissed her forehead. “You’ll just have to be my secret superhero then.” G left to meet up with Shelby for a road trip to Oregon to meet her parents, an announcement that stunned Brooke even more than the comic book had.
Her own love life was sadly lacking, but that was understandable with Aidan gone. In retrospect, he’d left her life as abruptly as he’d entered it. The Lord of the Wild Hunt had promised to return him to her, and even Morgan and Rhys said that Lurien’s word was good, but some nights when she was alone in her bed, she doubted. She’d hoped that Aidan would be able to call or write or whatever the hell fae did when they wanted to get in touch with someone, but there was nothing. Not even scrying brought her any sign of him. Olivia told her that this was because few things originating in the mortal realm could reach into the fae realm. Sometimes scrying would work, but sometimes it wouldn’t. Figures that it wouldn’t. It didn’t stop her from trying again every few days, and it certainly didn’t make her worry any less about the man she loved.
Damn it, she should have asked more questions before letting him go.
The only good thing that had come out of this separation so far was the fact that she now knew she loved Aidan and her feelings were rock solid. Real. Committed, even. She could admit that a tiny part of her had thought those feelings might fade—after all, she hadn’t known Aidan for two solid weeks before he disappeared! It could have been infatuation, attraction, just a fleeting whirlwind romance—
Except for the fact that her heart felt like it was missing from her chest. Her magic worked just fine, but after the intensity of the power they’d shared as a couple, it felt as weak as water.
Last week, Morgan was able to bring Brooke some news from the queen. Aidan was doing great work with the Hunt that Lurien had organized to guard the peace on this side of the waters. Because of it, the Lord of the Wild Hunt had been able to discover the names of more conspirators and bring them to justice. Even Cygnus was doing well, proving a far more reliable mount than the wild and often vicious faery horses. All good, all very good, and she was glad enough for the news, but Morgan’s update didn’t answer any of Brooke’s real questions. Not the nagging insecurities that seemed so silly in the daylight but all too real in the middle of the night in her empty bed. Was there a chance Aidan hadn’t contacted her because she was a painful reminder of his lost Annwyl? He’d volunteered immediately to go to the fae realm, as if he couldn’t wait to leave Brooke behind, and she hadn’t heard from him since. Over the months, she’d affirmed her feelings were real. Had he discovered his were not? The biggest question of all, then, was, how did she get over him? Was it even possible to get over someone like that? Because she was dead certain there was no one like him anywhere on the planet. Although she supposed another grim could always fall through her roof…
Which reminded her, this afternoon she had to go see the glazier who was going to rebuild her skylight. Olivia, bless her, was going to mind the shop for her while she was gone.
Brooke poured another coffee, then picked up her new phone and ran her finger over the screen until she got to her tarot
app. Her readings were simple now, and thankfully, nothing had ever repeated itself. She called up her daily four-card spread.
Nothing really stood out about the first three cards—it was like drawing threes and fours in a game of poker. Pedestrian cards, everyday affairs; their usefulness was all in how you chose to look at them.
The final card, however, the one that influenced the meaning of the previous cards, was the Two of Cups. No matter what deck was used, the card always depicted a man and a woman trading goblets. But this deck was one of her favorites, the artwork particularly beautiful. In the sky above the couple were cosmic symbols and glowing energies of brilliant red and gold. For her clients, it might mean a new relationship, full of passion, or it might mean a healing. For a witch, however, it meant balance in all things had been achieved.
Balance is good. Especially after she’d once worried that the balance of ten centuries might be turned on its head. And now, she was missing Aidan again. Crap.
She jumped up from the table to get her day started. Because so far, the only cure for those feelings was distraction. Lots and lots of distraction.
It was closing time when she returned from her appointment with the glazier. She pushed open the door to her shop with an apology on her lips. “I’m sorry, Olivia, I didn’t know it was going to take three whole hours. I just thought I had to pick out a picture and some glass.”
Her friend emerged from behind the counter and hugged her. “No worries, m’ija. You should see the cash register—I’ve had lots of sales while you’ve been gone.”
“Are you using a spell you haven’t told me about?” asked Brooke. “Because you always seem to sell an awful lot when I’m gone.”
“I simply help your customers to find what they’re looking for.” Olivia blinked innocently, and Brooke knew she’d never reveal anything more.
