by Nadine Mutas
What must it be like to be part of a larger whole, to be surrounded by people who loved her? She’d never know, would she? Because a network like that, it wasn’t built on favors.
Throat raw and aching, she swallowed, jerked her head toward an alley a few paces ahead. “This way.”
Rinnar of Stone lived in a mess of a house in a side street off the main road, or rather, the house appeared neglected from the outside, but surprised with splendor within. The fae they sought let them in after they stood waiting for ten minutes, and only after Isa pushed a note through a slit in the door.
“What did you write on it?” Basil asked her in a whisper while Rinnar hurried down the hall ahead of them, past mosaics inlaid in the walls, over expensive-looking rugs, and underneath several chandeliers of glittering crystals.
“That Hathôm received a valuable dagger of palladium for referring us to him,” Isa replied in a tone low enough that Rinnar wouldn’t hear her, “and that he won’t be happy if we may have to return and ask for it back since we didn’t even get to meet his source.”
Basil chuckled. “Glad your trick worked.”
“It usually does with paranoid chumps.”
The fae led them into a parlor with gilded mirrors, the finest upholstery on the chairs, and a grandfather clock tick-tocking away in a corner.
“Your house is beautiful,” Isa said in English, in an attempt to build some goodwill with the jumpy fae.
“Right.” Rinnar turned around to face them, his hands fidgeting in front of his plump belly. “What ya want?”
So much for polite chit-chat.
“Information.”
Rinnar scoffed, moving around the room, straightening things that didn’t need straightening. “Don’t everybody?”
Isa inclined her head. “Hathôm told us you know of a witch changeling who was brought into Faerie many years ago. We wish to know where you saw her, and anything else you know of her whereabouts.”
The twitchy fae paused for a second in rearranging a vase on the mantel above the marble fireplace, and eyed Isa. “Was long ago. Not sure I remember.”
Basil shifted his weight next to her, and she gave him a subtle sign with her hand to stand down. “Why don’t you recount what you do remember, and maybe the rest of it will come back to you?”
“Why you want to find her?”
Isa took a breath while she measured her words. “She doesn’t belong here. It is time for her to go home.”
“Why you care?”
“Her mother wants her back.”
“She’s a changeling,” Rinnar said with a shrug, as if that explained everything.
“She’s my sister,” Basil snarled.
The fae twitched and leveled his attention on Basil for the first time, narrowing his eyes at his ears. “You half human? Give me your blood.”
Isa tensed while Basil shook his head.
“I’m fae,” he said. “But the witch changeling is the daughter of my adoptive mother. Tell us where you saw her.”
Rinnar frowned. “You don’t look full fae. You don’t feel full fae.” With a shake of his head, he added, “Never you mind what you are. Give me bit of your blood, and I tell you what I know.”
Isa took a step toward the fae. “No blood will be given. Do not overestimate the value of your intel.”
When Rinnar opened his mouth as if to argue, Isa hissed at him. The fae cringed and drew back.
Reordering the crystal bowls on the low table in front of the couch, he said, “You want to know, you pay well. If not blood, then what? Things changing in Faerie. I need security.”
Basil shot her a look. “The dagger was the most valuable thing I carry,” he whispered. He grasped the nape of his neck with one hand. “Maybe I should just give him my—”
“No.” Isa glanced around the luxurious interior, the abundance of precious jewels and shiny noble metals, the high quality of fabric and workmanship in the furniture. With a heavy feeling in her guts, she dove into one of her pockets, pulled out the ruby that would have paid for a brand-new set of armor.
“Here.” She held the gemstone out to Rinnar. “This will do.”
The fae’s face lit up as he beheld the ruby. He made a move for it, but Isa pulled her hand back at the last second.
“Provided,” she said, “your intel does give us an exact location. Swear on this stone that you saw her, and that you’re telling us the true location.”
Rinnar’s eyes glittered with avarice. “I swear I tell you truth. I swear on the bloodstone.”
Isa nodded and handed him the jewel. “Deal.”
The fae snatched the stone and cradled it to his chest. “I saw the witch changeling near the Sar’oa lake. A fae couple had her. They chased me away. Never went back, and don’t want no trouble with them.”
“Where exactly near Sar’oa?”
“Close to village of Tamnar. Hike from Tamnar toward the lake, one hour, and you find a house in a clearing.”
Isa inclined her head. “Be well, Rinnar of Stone.”
“Yes, yes.” Rinnar shooed them out with a wave of his hand. “Be well.”
They walked back through the lavishly decorated hall, Basil’s excitement a palpable force. He was all but jumping out of his skin with agitation, and when he turned to her once outside, his eyes sparkled.
“This is it, right? We might be just one step away from finding Rose.”
“Or not.” For his sake, she wished she could share his enthusiasm, but life had taught her to be less optimistic. “I don’t want to smash your hopes, but be prepared for this not to work out. We might have to keep searching.”
He released a heavy breath while they made their way back to the main street. “I am. This is still the best lead we’ve had so far, and I’d have to be dead not to be thrilled about it.” He paused and frowned. “I’ve been meaning to ask—what did Rinnar mean when he said, ‘Things changing in Faerie’?”
Her nerves fluttered, and she took great care to keep looking ahead. “There has been…a disruption of power.”
“How so?”
She cleared her throat, which felt far too dry. “Recently, the entire royal court of Faerie was murdered.”
Basil halted abruptly. “What?”
She signaled for him to keep moving, and he did.
“How…who…” He shook his head as if to clear it. “What the fuck happened?”
She grimaced. Oh, the tightrope she was walking… “From what I heard, a single attacker entered the throne room and slaughtered them all. The king, the queen, their noble fae…”
“Wait a second.” Basil stopped again, grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. “How recently?”
She hesitated. “The night you came to Faerie.”
He blinked, his mouth opening. “Holy shit. Do you think the fae who exchanged me was in there? If she was murdered that night, it would explain why my glamour and the spell on Hazel were lifted.”
Damn, he was fast. Such an agile mind…
“It’s possible,” she conceded. “However, Faerie is big, and she could well have lived—and died—somewhere else.”
“Sure. But I don’t believe in coincidences, and this smacks of being connected somehow.” He frowned, started walking again when she indicated they keep going. “Did they catch the murderer?”
“No.”
“Who’s in charge now in Faerie?”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “There are some generals who have stepped in to keep the peace while…” A heavy exhale. “I guess they have to find someone who’s next of kin to the royals but wasn’t in the throne room. Some distant relative, maybe? I don’t know.”
She peered at Basil out of the corner of her eye. If not for his mixed heritage, he would qualify to contend for the throne. Provided he lived… Which, considering her plans, he wouldn’t, so it was a moot point.
Shaking off that line of thinking, she continued, “But there is talk about someone completely new taking over
. Some are saying it’s time for fresh blood. A new line of royals, not related to the old ones.”
Basil was silent for a moment. “That’s going to be messy.”
Again, he’d grasped it, his mind truly quick on the uptake.
She sighed. “Yeah. It’s quite possible there’ll be some sort of civil war if this escalates. The military might keep some of it in check, but if there’s discord among the generals regarding whose claim to support, Faerie will bleed.”
“Damn.” He shook his head. “The fae who slaughtered the court sure did some major damage. What’s their motive, if not to usurp the throne?”
Isa raised her brows. “Well…let’s put it this way—every single member of the royal court had blood on their hands, and—as the humans say—an entire graveyard in their closet.”
Basil snorted, then caught himself. “Skeletons.”
“What?”
“The idiom is ‘skeletons in the closet.’” His grin made her stomach flip.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “The fae nobility has been corrupted by cruelty over time, and all of them had more than one skeleton in their closets. Enough to give plenty of people plenty of reasons to take bloody revenge.”
“Are you saying they all deserved to die?”
“No.” Her chest drew tight with the knowledge she was among those with blood on their hands. Or, at least she’d helped the royal fae bloody their hands. Still, the sins of her past paled in comparison to the rotting darkness that had pervaded the court.
“I didn’t wish for them to die,” she said, her gaze on the intricate wood carvings in the facade of a house up ahead. “But I don’t mourn them either.”
Basil exhaled through his nose. “Considering the threat of unrest here in Faerie, I’d say it’s even more urgent to get Rose out.”
Isa nodded. “Then let’s pick up the pace.”
Chapter 12
“I can’t believe Faerie is this big.” Basil stopped and leaned against a tree.
Isa halted as well, and sat down on the trunk of a fallen fir. Her feet ached. Even though she was used to traveling long distances on foot when she was in pursuit of a fugitive, she still felt the toll of the day’s hiking keenly.
“We do sort of…expand the territory a little,” she admitted.
“What?” Basil stopped with his water bottle—made of some lightweight metal, from what she could tell—halfway to his mouth.
“Well, Faerie has the habit of…growing. But not outward. It’s more of a mirroring and folding of space, while nominally staying within the borders that were once set.”
“So…it’s like a TARDIS?”
“A what?”
“So many movies, so many shows…” he muttered to himself, rubbing a hand over his face. Focusing on her, he said, “It’s bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.”
“Yes.” She grinned. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
He took a swig from his water and offered her some as well. “All right, how much longer until we reach that village?”
She drank a bit, calculated in her head. “I’d say probably another five hours.”
“Good gawds.” He banged his head against the tree.
Eyeing the rising moon, she said, “We could rest for the night. We’ve been hiking all day, but we still have quite some distance to cover. I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep going right now.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Yeah, I sure am beat. Sleep does sound good.”
“I saw what looked like a cave not too long ago. We can double back and see if we can camp there. It’ll be good to have a roof above us in case it rains.” The next settlement was too far away, but they did have enough gear with them to spend the night in the woods in relative comfort.
“Sure.” Basil fell into step beside her while she backtracked. “We’ll have—”
“Dinner, yes. For the second time.”
He bumped his shoulder against hers. “You know me so well, Isa of Stone.”
It occurred to her that, yes, she did. To bide their time, eager to distract herself from maudlin pondering, she’d asked Basil to tell her about himself during the long hours of their hike, and he’d obliged with the cheerful openness that was as much a part of him as the gold silk of his hair—which her fingers still remembered, a sensory memory she was constantly tempted to repeat. Over the course of the day, she had to physically restrain herself from reaching out and touching him again so many times, had to curl her fingers into her palm instead, hard enough to snap herself out of the wave of need riding her.
Every time Basil tried to shift the conversation to her, she managed to derail him by following up on something he said with another, more specific question about him, and he took the bait, seemed delighted that she showed such interest in him.
She would have felt bad about deceiving him…except she wasn’t. Not anymore. The more she learned about him, the more she wanted him to keep talking. She found herself entranced by his voice, by the calm yet serene way he spoke about his life, and she wanted to know even more about how he saw the world. She’d always been better at listening than talking anyway, and yet she’d never before met anyone she wanted to listen to for more than an hour.
Basil, however, could talk to her all day, and she didn’t mind it one bit. In fact, she soaked it all up, and relished the way listening to him calmed her thoughts.
Now, as they sat at the mouth of the cave in front of the crackling fire, her belly full of the stew Basil prepared—damn, but that male could cook up something delicious, even in such meager surroundings as a cave out in the woods—she was caught unawares when he leveled the full force of his quiet attention on her and asked, “When was the last time you laughed?”
Blinking, her mind slow in coming back from late-night idleness, she opened her mouth, closed it, glancing around the cave…anywhere except him.
Basil shook his head. “Too long ago, then.”
It was true. She couldn’t even remember the last time she laughed out loud.
He sat with one leg stretched out in front of him, the other cocked up, had his elbow on his raised knee and put his chin on his hand, looking at her with such disconcerting, thoughtful, caring focus, it rattled her.
“Tell me,” he said with a smile that set her nerves aflutter, “what makes you laugh?”
The way he regarded her…so unapologetically interested in her, as if he truly cared about her as a person, a friend…a lover—if she let him. The affection in his gaze hurt her heart, not because it was wrong, or unappreciated, but because it touched upon long-neglected parts of her, and like a muscle that hadn’t been used in a while, the feelings he stirred in her ached from being activated after years—decades—of disuse. His attention made her feel special, treasured, as if she was someone worth looking at, listening to…caring about.
Quickly shaking off those feelings before they pulled her under, she cleared her throat and said, “The hardest I’ve ever laughed…” She broke off, grimaced and shifted her weight. “No, I can’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing.”
Basil perked up. “Well, now you’ve got to tell me. No teasing. Spit it out.”
She took a breath, looked down at her hands. “There was this cat…”
A giggle bubbled up from some half-forgotten corner of her heart, and interrupted her. She tried to stifle the laughter with a hand over her mouth, and forced herself to continue, but barely managed two more words before the full memory washed over her and laid waste to her composure.
She laughed so hard she was gasping for breath, with tears running down her face and her body tingling, nerve endings alive with delight, her chest light even as she struggled to draw in air in between her giggles.
“I’d urge you to calm down and tell the whole story,” Basil said with a chuckle, “but to be honest, just watching you laugh this hard is way more fun.”
“All right,” she choked out, catching her breath while waving her h
ands in wait-a-minute signal, “all right. When I was out in the humanlands on a case, I once saw this cat sitting on a porch. I went to pet it.”
She wiped tears from her cheeks. “It was very majestic-looking and dignified, but then…” She stifled another bout of giggles. “…it had to sneeze”—giggles erupted from her again—“and…” Flopping down on her sleeping mat, she succumbed to belly-aching laughter.
Basil started chuckling along with her. “And?”
“—it farted, at the same time.” She had to laugh so hard, her entire body shook, every muscle sore and tingling.
Basil choked out a laugh of his own. “It snarted?”
“Snart?” She wiped at her eyes.
He grinned. “Sneeze-fart. It’s a thing.”
More giggles burst forth, and she nodded, caught her breath. “Yes,” she said, with the very best straight face she could muster. “The majestic cat snarted.”
“I can’t believe it.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Serious Isa is amused by fart humor.”
“I know,” she wheezed. “It’s so silly.”
“I like silly,” Basil said with a wink. “In fact, nothing’s too silly for me. My favorite movie is Spaceballs.”
Still snickering and wiping her face, she said, “I don’t know that one either.”
“I’ll show you. When we’re done with all this. I’ll take you home with me, and we’ll watch Spaceballs. Of course, we’ll have to watch Star Wars first, otherwise you won’t get all the goofy references.”
Her carefree amusement died as the reality of her situation doused her happiness like a bucket of ice water. She wouldn’t ever get to watch those movies with him. Or do anything fun at all with Basil. And she didn’t have the right to. She didn’t have the right to enjoy his affection, didn’t deserve to be the center of his attention. Oh, why couldn’t she have met him under different circumstances? Why couldn’t he have been someone else, someone she was free to like back, to care for?
Someone she didn’t have to kill…
Pain more awful than what wracked her during the seizures raked through her, made her gasp.
