A Court For Fairies (Dark Heralds Book 1)

by Lynn S.

  Carla got closer to the youngest O’Reilly, forcing her daughter to move out of the way. She reached out for Esteban, who stood up before allowing his grandmother to sit on the floor. Her words for him were clear and harsh. “One of these days you’ll obsess over someone. It might be such a strong feeling that you will end up calling this infatuation love. Call me cynical, but it is true. All mothers consider their daughters princesses. But I do not exaggerate when I tell you that our family has a claim to royalty that extends for more than a thousand years. As much as I love you, I should not have allowed your mother to fixate on your father. Even if it was but momentary. Their relationship was one defined by duty and not by sentiment.”

  “Grandma, it is not necessary to give this a fairy tale undertone.”

  “Hmm.” Carla chuckled. “It is quite curious that you use that phrase. Because this is precisely a fairy tale.”

  She cradled his face in her hands, her way of asking for his attention. Carla was quite tall, almost as tall as Esteban, and she reached out without much strain. Her touch was caring and warm, inviting, not at all like Isabel’s had been just minutes before. “Your mother, taken as she was, decided to change your father’s course. She revealed our nature and begged him to take her into his world.”

  Esteban was about to protest, but Carla started presenting irrefutable evidence, details he’d promised never to question about his childhood were coming to light. “Have you ever taken ill, young man? Or do you think it is normal to go through life without suffering a minimal affliction? Remember when you were younger and had accidents? Scraped knees, twisted ankles…how fast you healed. Or that terrible, frightful day you stumbled at the top of the stairs and hit head first. Do you recall the sound of the crack along your neck, the one that gave you nightmares for a week? How none of these incidents ever left a trace of pain, or even a scar? For our kind it is easy to regenerate as long as we are conscious. All those lapses in your memory, the blank spaces, were created by your true nature. To protect you and prepare you for the day you were to know not only who, but what you are.”

  Esteban protested, though it felt ridiculous and childlike. He thought about taking a step outside that cabin. He knew that as soon as he did, his life was to take a turn he would never steer back from. It was midway through December and though the winter had been mild compared to the year before, the wood still cracked under his feet, half frozen under the touch of water and the slither of wind. Esteban was barefoot, having rid himself of shoes and socks, wet from crossing to the cabin. Bewildered, he noticed the night’s revelation might have made him impervious to cold.

  He planned to leave, and warned them about it. Where Isabel was almost irrational, demanding he stay, Carla was able to convince him to give them a chance. His grandmother not only talked about duty and inevitability, but also about freedom and choice. If she lied, he wouldn’t know, but before they left the cabin, Esteban was convinced to accept his halfling nature. Deep in his heart, he had always known. Even as a child, he had been able to touch another world through the mist of dreams.

  As they walked across the garden toward the quartz circle he had put in place as a child, the young man felt a heat overtaking him. It was as if he were sweating a fever that drenched his body, plastering his shirt over his torso. He had to remove it as the fabric burned, the cloth grazing against what felt like raw flesh. Once he was rid of it, the younger O’Reilly noticed the patterns running through his body, the circles underneath his skin, words that rushed about like the flutter of dark wings, writing the preface to the story he was meant to live. Words meant to pulse along with him until the day he died, invisible to the mortal world unless he allowed them to see.

  That night, Esteban stood in the circle, flanked by his mother and grandmother. He saw through the dimness of the veil the magnificence of the Court that reigned over the other side. He learned what he was given, the secrets bestowed upon changeling children, about the powers half their lives owed allegiance to. The young man saw a glimpse of his Fae countenance living underneath his mortal coil. It was not as strong as the stuff Isabel and Carla were made of, but it was undeniably a part of him. His better half, they called it.

  The women of House Alexander told him that the Circle was an entrance to the Court of Fae, and being a threshold, it cherished secrets and required truths.

  They forgot to mention, though, that centuries of perfidy and free range on the mortal world had honed their skills. Yes, they were bound to tell the truth within that circle…but who was to judge if they twisted the facts around, committing little sins of omission and guiding his questions toward subjects they had no qualms answering. They didn’t even tell him that outside of the circle, lying to him was vital to sustain their charade. When Esteban asked who Evelyn was, Isabel’s answer was simple, “She is family. Someone from my past I brought here because I didn’t want to feel alone…”

  ***

  Snow started falling softly over the stretch of road. Esteban looked to his right, ridding himself of memories. A storm was brewing. What he could see of the Atlantic coast in the distance looked like a mass of gray swirls crested in white as waves crashed violently against the rocky shore beneath. He reduced speed, ready to enter another suburban area.

  A second and a half, the time it took to blink, was all that was needed.

  The driver coming in from the access ramp got distracted while trying to activate the windshield wipers. It was an old truck and the man was not used to it, so he set off the blinkers instead, making it look as though he was going to take a left turn, and cursed along the way. The white stuff accumulating on the windshield and his negligence didn’t allow for the man to notice the thin layer of ice that formed several meters before the road junction or the car that came in through his blind spot.

  Alarmed, the driver tried to brake, pushing the pedal to the floor, but that piece of junk had nothing close to a decent anti-lock system and tons of steel skidded on the road while the driver struggled to regain control.

  Esteban saw it coming a little too late. It was impossible to turn on that road that only allowed for two vehicles, and the truck collided with his car, the blunt force of speed and impact on the driver’s side. Fiberglass flew about as his vehicle now spun out of control as well. The lateral impact was deafening, metal against metal the last thing he heard. Marissa was present in his mind as the world around him violently compacted. Marissa sleeping soundly, her hair a golden mess fanned across the pillow. The way she slept, stealing the covers, anchoring the sheets under her elbow, and how he kissed the nape of her neck, quite softly, enough to make her react and let them go. It was all lost in a swing of right, then left, and a second impact against a metal guardrail.

  Esteban’s body rushed sideways, hitting his head against the window and then against the steering wheel just a fraction of a second before the airbags deployed. There was blood. Lots of it.

  Moments before losing consciousness, he thought about Adriana. How one night, unbeknownst to Marissa, he had gone to see his girlfriend’s mother, possessed by the need to tell her a secret he had sworn never to reveal: the truth about his nature.

  Adriana smiled, unfazed by the revelation. Inviting him to the kitchen, she opened a small fridge she kept locked and produced a decanter filled with red, viscous liquid, which she poured in a glass. Drinking, relishing it, it stained her lips crimson. “Secrets, my dear boy. Life would be boring without them.”

  Adriana told him some of her own, and Marissa never knew that he knew…things left unsaid that would be taken to the grave.

  As much as Esteban tried to keep awake, his senses drifted. His body betrayed him and he was no longer anchored to the stench of burned rubber or the screech of twisted metal. He didn’t even feel pain as heaviness set upon him like a blanket. But this was not the repairing pause to which he was used to. This was certain, dark, a door to oblivion. It all disappeared as if in a fading dream: the future he had designed, the ring in his pocket, th
e possibilities. His eyes rolled back into his skull and Esteban O’Reilly fell into the grasp of that sleep that led to death.

  Chapter XV

  Friends, Fiends, And Family–Part I

  Esteban O’Reilly’s world came to a halt.

  Images dissipated and there was no longer a thought, care, or desire to keep him bound to the waking world. There was just a long descent into a dark, cold place. His human understanding, that part that tried to make sense of concepts such as time, space, and tangible realities, crashed and shattered. His Sidhe side, however, reveled in the joy of crossing into its home for the very first time.

  The lands of Aval, the inter-world in which the Fae made their home had been visited but by few mortals. Those who have glimpsed it and managed to return are obliged to share the course of their existence with a label of insanity. Legends told that poets were exempt. It was not true. As Bastian used to say, “If fairies ever take a shine to you, they’ll just find lesser pains to impart, but they will always harm you. It is their business to abuse the kindness of those with a good heart about them.”

  Aval was the land the fairies wrested from the heart of the human world and planted in another. Since then, it has managed to survive upon a delicate balance. Humans were summoned, as their vital energy was needed to keep the place alive. Fairies had nothing to give, but they were resourceful when it came to scouting for the right kind of soul to feed their soil.

  Dreaming of a place that looked familiar, but couldn’t quite be pinpointed, drove one deeper to know its location, to escape and discover it, to embark on an amazing journey. Every step taken had an echo that spread across the lands, opening a pathway through a golden mist. The more steps taken, the more there was to discover. By the time the dreamer noticed there was no end to the world they crossed into, it would be too little too late. They might find themselves forever bound to walk those emerald hills.

  It has been said that fairies feed on dreams, and while there were humans willing to sacrifice a bit of their essence with each pleasant escapade, Aval would prevail. The jasper mountains would grow into interminable ranges and rivers of thrumming waters forever would sing their way toward a sea of sapphire blue and waves of golden foam.

  But those were the lands of the most revered hierarchies. The Seelie Court had almost everything and was content to take the little they had been denied without ever crossing back into the human realm.

  The place Esteban visited, House Alexander, the citadel that claimed to be the source of power for both his mother and grandmother, was quite different. The Dark Heralds of Fae, out of which Alexander was the strongest line, guarded the gates of Aval as a nightmare the brave must overcome in order to reach a dream.

  There was no difference between the structure and the stone upon which it was erected. Walls rose, dark granite with deep veins of gray. It lacked a roof—one was not necessary. It never rained, and through the day, the light of the sun was filtered through heavy clouds. At night, not even the stars dared shine upon them, so as not to bear witness to the evil that roamed their hallways. The house was silent. Its walls reeked of death, and once in a while the roar of thunder brought lightning close enough to throw a hint of light upon those windows. There was a constant echo of sobs and the salt of tears scarred those walls in white. It was a depiction of what House Alexander stood for. Alexanders drove their enthralled to suicide and violent demises. In their ample rooms and hallways, like trophies acquired through generations, there were the screams and protests and last breaths of those who lost their bets against the time they were given.

  This was the place where Carla returned for Esteban, where she required an audience, feeling unsatisfied with the answers she had been given so far.

  Esteban’s body rested, suspended above ground. Oozing dark filaments kept him firmly in place, wrapped in the center of a web that stuck to the walls. The tendrils crept through his body like ivy, alive on their own. They worked their magic on him, healing while destroying. Their only intent was to salvage the energy he carried about him through his mother’s blood. Though his face was bruised and bloated, a second countenance was taking shape underneath and a flexible mask of viscosity and keratin scales slipped through his wounds, trying to undo the damage of the terrible accident he had suffered. It looked gruesome and menacing, but it was actually a resource. Magic trying to tap into his Sidhe side, to jolt him awake and restore him. Carla observed that the deep gash on his forehead was still opened, and if anything was even deeper, there was still blood and trauma, even a bit of bone exposed.

  The echo of Carla’s footsteps, the soft, floral perfume that impregnated her clothes, and the lasting impression of sunshine in her hair triggered something. The need to return, a terrible moment of desperation, the realization that Marissa might be in danger. Carla cursed, damning herself, but it was the first time in a little over a week that Esteban showed sign of movement. She conjured what was left of interacting with Marissa off her skin, that scent that she found repugnant but Esteban must have found appealing. The younger O’Reilly seemed to respond, his eyes moving rapidly behind lids that refused to open.

  That might have given Isabel a dash of hope, but Carla observed with dispassion, understanding that it was all a mix of her hopes and the comatose man’s involuntary movements. At any given time, she could have said she loved the boy Esteban was and had high hopes for the man he had become. But unlike Isabel, who had considerable power but was still more human than Sidhe, Carla observed it all with the cold logic of the Fae. There was little to cry over a lost investment. If anything, all efforts were set for salvage. Years of caution and care made redundant over something as trivial as a human impulse annoyed her.

  “You are extremely detached, dear daughter. Even among the Fae the heart has some value. If we had but settled for things being black and white, our house would be in ruin. Our best deals are set for those who’d rather pit their feelings against overwhelming odds.” The master of the house made himself known.

  His voice had the cadence of old. Carla found her father to be in good spirits and willing, as always, to play with words to influence all, even his daughter. The first of House Alexander looked upon her with dark eyes that refused to let go of life. Francis Alexander had several millennia of existence, and though no one in Aval could testify to his ancestors, the Heralds enjoyed giving way to rumors, feeding tales to those who might hear that caused unrest upon the sons and daughters of the Fae.

  It was said that the terrible, deep dark of his eyes and hair was granted the moment he touched his fair eyes and platinum hair with innocent blood. Other said that those blue-black locks were bestowed upon him by the Morrigan themselves. Goddesses of war who, acting upon a maternal instinct, picked an abandoned Fae child and raised him as their own. Unable to properly sustain him, The Phantom Queens fed him from the crimson founts of the battlefield; that was when he developed a certain inclination for warm and fragrant offerings.

  The rock that sustained the Alexander house cared very little about these stories being verified.

  Over three hundred years ago, Francis Alexander turned away from the Court, making a point that the rulers of Aval shouldn’t ask questions about his lineage, but rather recognize his deeds. Little was known about the position of the Heralds, recognized in human legends as Leanan Sidhe, other than they served the interests of Aval as much as they looked after those that solely pertained to them. Through centuries he had worn a thousand masks, but Francis Alexander was his favorite fit.

  He had called several strains of solitary fairies his children, but Kar-lagh was blood of his blood. For years, the Heralds had traveled the lands of mortal men, looking for a place to call their own again. But magic, though not dead, had been forgotten, shunned by the prohibitions imposed by the religion of the God hanging on a cross, and later, obliterated by science. Francis Alexander had an appalling rut on good fortunes until one night, he met a dhampyr on the side of the road. The night dweller was willin
g to exchange knowledge for a fairy boon and Francis had no problem making him believe he was one of the wish dispensing kind. He learned what he needed and set a plan in motion. The precious information he gathered that night was about to be shared with one deemed worthy.

  “Be at ease, Kar-lagh. I can assure you that though we’ve had obstacles along the way, our plans have not been disturbed.”

  Daughter looked upon father with devotion. She might have been indifferent to human emotion, creating a perfect mimicry of sentiment, but her loyalty was undisputable.

  Francis Alexander looked ravaged by time, but his charisma excelled and she was gladly bound to her father’s fate with the conviction of a soldier to colors. Alexander leaned forward on the satin lined chair that served him as a throne while his rickety hands pointed toward a solitary chess board on top of a nearby table. White pieces advanced over black on the board. He moved one piece forward, but it never touched a square. The board swirled into a gray mist and soon the table was cleared and its surface had the sheen of a mirror through which Carla saw the inverted form of a story.

  “Come closer, daughter. Let me show you where we are going.”

  Carla turned the table until that inverted image became as easy to grasp as the reality around her.

  Somewhere along the mists, there was an outline of a road barely illuminated by a shard of moonlight. Two men sat under the protective embrace of an elm. They kept off the dusty road and safe from the peering eyes of anyone who might have ventured those paths close to midnight. One of them was indubitably Francis Alexander. The Sidhe sat on top of a flat rock, keeping his embroidered robes from soiling. He was young, younger than Carla ever thought he could be. His face didn’t have gravitas, that somberness she had grown to know, nor the confidence that had led him to close a great amount of deals over the centuries. But things were soon to change.