“I’m in,” Inga said instantly. “You need someone to keep an eye on you. Most of the rest will probably follow suit. We like our retirement, but we still feel our duty as well.”
“Good. You’re a Guardian now,” I said briskly. “Get as many of the other Valkyries on board as you can, but there’s no obligation here. I’m not drafting anyone, am I clear?”
“Perfectly. And thank you.”
There was more to declaring people Guardians than words. As I gave them titles, I focused power through them.
Only Inga of the three I’d just promoted had been of Noble power level before. Unless I’d severely misjudged what I was doing, they all were now. Guardianship had its perks.
“And me, my lord?” Amandine asked.
“You’re First Guardian,” I told her. “You and Inga will stick with me while we play babysitter for the Queen of the Fae—and start looking to see where the hell the rest of the High Court went.”
From what the Puck had told me, at least some were dead.
“And me?” Mary asked softly. I looked at her and swallowed hard. This was going to be awkward.
“I think you and I need to talk alone,” I said, equally softly.
We stepped into one of the chalets that had been going unused. There was wood in the fireplace, currently unlit, but the room was warm enough. The entire lodge was extremely well built.
I grabbed one of a pair of comfortable chairs and waited for Mary to take a seat across from me.
“So, what, my boyfriend is now a god?” she finally asked.
“A Power. The line is fuzzy, but since at least some of the entities we would historically have called gods were definitely Powers…” I sighed. “It’s an inaccurate but not invalid descriptor. Of course, I have no idea what the hell it means or what I can do with any of this yet.”
“Right now, I think it’s probably important that it means you’re all but immortal, aren’t you?”
“Given the recent turnover in the Fae High Court, that’s not an assumption I’d cling to,” I told her. “But, yes. The Puck is estimated to be at least five or six thousand years old.”
Mary leaned her head on her hands and studied me.
“Shifters live maybe two or three hundred years,” she pointed out. “Double that for an Alpha or Alpha-candidate or a shaman. So…six hundred years for me. Six thousand for you. See the problem?”
I did. My true likely life expectancy was much shorter, but I could see the problem.
“And if I don’t care?” I asked carefully. “You are the woman I love, the second mind and set of eyes that got us this far alive. If I have six months with you or six millennia, it doesn’t matter. They’re with you. They’re us, together.”
“Six months would probably require one of us dying,” she pointed out.
“Or you deciding that you don’t want to put up with a Power for a boyfriend,” I said. “I’m not leaving you, Mary. I love you.”
She sighed.
“And what happens when I can’t keep up?” she asked. “When I’m not an equal partner to a freaking god, or I start aging? Even shifters age, Jason…and I’m not sure Powers do.”
“I don’t recall you needing to be able to throw cars or walk through walls to be my partner before this,” I reminded her. “You’re smart, my love. You see things a way I don’t…and I don’t think that’s going to get any less useful now.”
I knelt in front of her chair and took her hands in mine.
“And as for the rest, I am a Power,” I pointed out. “If you want to be a shaman? I can probably make that happen. If you want to live an extra few millennia? I can be selfish enough to make that possible.”
“Seriously?” she looked down at me with surprise.
“Well, I’ll have to ask Mabona or the Puck how, but I know it’s possible,” I agreed. “Any time I can get with you is precious, my love, but I will make time with you if you’ll let me. I won’t force anything on you, but if you’re prepared to stay by my side, I see no reason to let who we were limit us.”
She finally leaned forward, resting her forehead against mine.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“We need a vacation,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ve stopped running since I hit the ground in Calgary a year ago.”
Mary chuckled.
“I love you, but how are you going to pull that off?”
“I have competent subordinates who know where to find me if they need to,” I said. “I’m thinking we just fuck off once Mabona’s awake. Leave them a week or two to arrange a wedding.”
I coughed.
“If…if that’s what you want, I suppose.”
Mary’s chuckle turned into a full-throated laugh.
“If that was meant to be a proposal, my love, you are terrible at this.”
I laughed—and conjured a ring out of thin air. It was a simple thing, plain gold…but it was more than that as well. This had never been forged or cast by mortal artisans. It was a thing of my power and my will far more than it was a thing of gold.
“Mary Tenerim, will you marry me?”
49
It was another week before Mabona finally woke up. She was out for eleven days total before Niamh came and collected me from the room I’d coopted as my own.
“She’s awake and asking for you,” the Healer told me. “I’m not sure how much she knows about what happened—she certainly seems just as confident as ever.”
“I would guess she knows at least a bit,” I told Niamh. It had been Mabona’s power I’d used to defeat Silverstar, after all.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
The Healer bowed and withdrew, leaving me to turn a tired smile on the video screen.
“Many things change, Lord Oberis, but that I will answer the Queen’s call does not,” I told Calgary’s Fae Lord.
“Go, Kilkenny,” he told me. “I know what’s happened the last two weeks. I don’t think Mabona does.” He smiled. “Confidence is an easy thing to fake with practice, my dear friend. You’ll learn.”
“I’ll have to,” I admitted. “We’ll speak again soon.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Oberis told me. “Grandfather and I have everything under control.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. The concept of what Oberis and Enli would consider appropriate for my wedding was mildly terrifying.
Nonetheless, I shut down the laptop and went to Mabona’s room.
For all of the confidence she was projecting, she was still the second most fragile-looking I’d ever seen her. She was slowly helping Niamh remove the sensors and wires attached to her, but looked up as I came in.
“Jason,” she greeted me, then paused. “Your Majesty,” she corrected.
“Last I checked, if there was anyone on the planet who didn’t need to give me that title, it was you,” I told her. “But yes. Ankaris left the antlered helm to Grainne Silverstar, who betrayed us.
“I killed her—with your help—and inherited.”
Mabona was silent for several seconds.
“Leave us,” she ordered Niamh. “This is now a matter for the High Court.”
The blonde Healer bowed and retreated, closing the door behind her.
“The situation?” she asked sharply.
“The Masked Lords are dead. Asi has been retrieved and is currently in the hands of a Vassal of mine.” I shook my head. “The Wild Hunt is battered but unbroken. It will take us time to recruit back to strength, but my Guardians are already preparing our new base in Calgary and the fortress at Tír fo Thuinn for new recruits.
“Now that you’re awake, I no longer need to keep five troops of Hunters and Companions here,” I concluded. “That will allow them to get to work while I see if it’s possible for me to rest.”
Mabona snorted.
“You’re your father’s son,” she told me. “Rest is not in your vocabulary. And you don’t have time. You aren’t the not-quite-Power Ank
aris was—or that Silverstar would have been, I guess. I never met her as the Horned King.”
“No. My father’s blood, Esras, the regalia and mantle.” I shook my head. “I am a Power, my Queen. And no longer your Vassal.”
The relationship existed still, technically, but the magical bond was gone.
“No. Now, more than ever, you must be my student.”
She was suddenly standing. There was no motion between. One moment, she was half-naked in the bed; the next, she was standing next to me, clad in a dark green floor-length gown.
“What you have come into cannot be lightly controlled. You must learn your Gifts.”
“I will,” I promised. “In time. Right now, I’ve been waiting for you to wake up and take charge of your own affairs. Now I’m going to go take a vacation.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“My Guardians can find me wherever I go,” I told her. “You can find me without much difficulty. And I need time to understand just what has happened to me.”
There was no knock, but suddenly we weren’t alone in the room. The new member was a tall and slim androgynous fae with long copper-red hair.
The advantage of what I was now, I supposed, was that I didn’t need to pick out the horns in the Puck’s hair to know who had joined us.
“You’re awake as well, I see,” I noted.
“We were all taken down as one by the attack on Ankaris,” the Puck observed. “We all awoke at roughly the same time. Like Mabona, I had to let a Healer fuss over me before I made my way here.”
“When did you two meet?” Mabona asked, then paused. “Wait. I remember now. I channeled my power to help you fight Silverstar.” She shook her head. “That’s a weird feeling.”
“You should have been more capable,” the Puck noted sharply. “All of you should have been. It seems that young Kilkenny is not the only Power of the High Court who will need lessons.”
“And that is why this idea of his to just up and disappear is madness!”
“The Masked Lords are broken,” I said quietly. “The war is over. The High Court is damaged but intact. The rest of the courts are in turmoil but at peace. A week, ten days. I won’t be missed. I’m taking Mary and finding a beach somewhere. Hawaii sounds nice.”
That got a small smirk from Mabona, but she wasn’t done yet.
“I need to get my feet under me. Catch up on affairs. We need the whole High Court to pull this together.”
“In that case, we don’t need Kilkenny until we’ve replaced our other losses,” the Puck pointed out reasonably.
“You’re supposed to be helping,” Mabona told the Puck. The smirk wasn’t hiding nearly as hard, though.
“I can recommend some good beaches in Hawaii,” the Puck told me in answer. “You aren’t the first Power to need a vacation away from all of this on being elevated. Someone was the model for half the paintings in Venice for a year, after all.”
“Fine,” Mabona said with a sigh and a barely concealed blush. “You’ll need the time with Mary, anyway. Maintaining a relationship across this kind of transition is difficult, and the Puck is right. We lost more than Ankaris, which means I need to hunt down more heirs than just you.
“But if we need you…”
“You can find me,” I told her. “I want to go rest on a beach, my Queen, not let the world burn down. My Guardians will be able to find me, if nothing else. I even have a cellphone—and I check my voicemails, even if I don’t always answer.”
“I can see that the young one is going to be an…interesting addition to the Court,” the Puck observed. “I look forward to it.”
About the Author
Glynn Stewart is the author of Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible–but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Duchy of Terra, Castle Federation and Vigilante, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.
Writing managed to liberate Glynn from a bleak future as an accountant. With his personality and hope for a high-tech future intact, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife, their cats, and an unstoppable writing habit.
Other books by Glynn Stewart
For release announcements join the mailing list or visit GlynnStewart.com
Changeling Blood
Changeling’s Fealty
Hunter’s Oath
Noble’s Honor
ONSET
ONSET: To Serve and Protect
ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent
ONSET: Stay of Execution
Starship’s Mage
Starship’s Mage
Hand of Mars
Voice of Mars
Alien Arcana
Judgment of Mars
UnArcana Stars
Sword of Mars (upcoming)
Starship’s Mage: Red Falcon
Interstellar Mage
Mage-Provocateur
Agents of Mars
Castle Federation
Space Carrier Avalon
Stellar Fox
Battle Group Avalon
Q-Ship Chameleon
Rimward Stars
Operation Medusa
Duchy of Terra
The Terran Privateer
Duchess of Terra
Terra and Imperium
Light of Terra: A Duchy of Terra series
Darkness Beyond
Shield of Terra (upcoming)
Vigilante (With Terry Mixon)
Heart of Vengeance
Oath of Vengeance
Bound By Stars: A Vigilante Series (With Terry Mixon)
Bound By Law
Bound by Honor
Bound by Blood (upcoming)
Exile
Ashen Stars
Exile
Refuge (upcoming)
Fantasy Stand Alone Novels
Children of Prophecy
City in the Sky
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 27
