She was entirely human...but more than human. I recognized her the moment our gazes met. Not because of the throne made of twisted gold wire and studded with gemstones. Nor because of the equally elaborate crown starting at her forehead and shooting up a foot above her head.
Instead, I recognized her because she looked like the shared parts of Erskine and Rune.
Her smile, though, was something entirely different. Cold and evil. Like the water in the Guardian’s creek when she was displeased with my actions.
“Well,” the Queen murmured, “what has the unicorn dragged in?”
The hall fell silent. Hundreds of eyes—red, yellow, brown, blue, and amethyst—bored into me. Bodies swayed sideways...and I could finally see the game on the screen.
Only, it wasn’t a game. The mirror instead broadcast a scene I was intimately familiar with. The forest of Clan Whelan. Wolves, so many wolves, all of whom I knew personally. They fought and fell beneath...tree limbs and roots?
The Guardian had stopped protecting and started attacking. I gasped, hand reaching out to steady myself against the doorframe. I’d made the wrong choice, leaving my pack so I could descend into Faery. I’d hoped Kale would reach his quarry before the Guardian realized what was happening, that I’d return triumphant with everyone’s problems solved.
Instead, I’d abandoned my role of Alpha and left my clan to die alone.
Because, through the mirror, I watched people I knew and loved being swept off their feet by what should have been inanimate objects. As I watched, the earth opened and my old nurse fell in....
“Aw!” The moan of the first fae I’d heard betting was disappointed but not empathic. “Thought the old crone had more time in her.”
“Too bad. So sad,” the being with spaniel ears and fingers made of eels crowed beside him. Then its voice hardened. “Pay up.”
Despite the ebullience of the crowd, the Queen remained still and silent. Her scent surrounded me like frosted flowers. I blinked. How had I gotten nearly close enough for her to touch?
Planting my feet stopped my forward momentum. Her words, however, made everything worse.
“Not what I would have expected my son to be up to,” the Queen observed. “But he is, at the least, good for entertainment.”
Which is when I saw Rune on the vast silver mirror. Rune, hacking with his sword at errant bits of the Guardian’s forest. His eyes were wild. He appeared lost in a berserker rage.
And yet...where he hacked, the ground reopened. My nurse popped out, her face contorted as she coughed out dirt and chunks of rock.
“Not paying!” the male faery roared. “Told ya she’d last fifteen minutes.”
“You’ll still pay,” the spaniel-eel faery retorted. “Nine minutes left.”
Unlike the uncaring fae in his audience, Rune paused for one split second to pound my nurse’s back as if she was a diner choking on a chicken bone. Then he leapt for a limb that threatened a child. Steel swept through plant matter. The girl scurried out of reach.
“A shame he’s only half fae,” the Queen continued, trailing one finger through a bowl of amber stickiness. The sweet aroma of honey curled toward me, competing with her own signature flowers, as she popped a cube of honeycomb into her mouth. “Good for only an hour of entertainment. Honey?”
I blinked and a bowl hovered in front of me. The contents were so sweet and seductive I couldn’t look up from the glistening surface.
My gut rumbled, empty. Not craving food. Craving solace. A replacement for pack bonds. Anything to cover up my knowledge that the devastation being unleashed in Clan Whelan was entirely my fault.
I couldn’t lie to myself, though. And the only way out was forward. So I forced words through lips that felt frozen. “An hour of entertainment? That’s enough?”
I was speaking, but I wasn’t able to draw my gaze back to the mirror. Instead, I watched in horror as a line of drool slid from my mouth onto the honey. A cacophony of tinkling laughter proved that several fae thought I was even more amusing than the battle on the screen.
And, somehow, their awfulness gave me the strength to elbow the hovering bowl away from me. To raise my eyes to the Queen, who watched with greed on her face.
Not greed for food. Greed for my embarrassment.
“You, I’m sure, will provide more than an hour of entertainment.” She leaned toward me, flowing robes curling away from her like wings even though the air was still against my face. “You wouldn’t have been able to pass through that door if my son wasn’t enthralled with you. What will he do when he realizes you’re now my pet?”
And...a chain snapped into place around my throat. A choke collar. It hadn’t fallen over my head. It had simply been magicked there.
The bitter end was in the Queen’s hand. When she tugged, links tightened my breath away. It didn’t help that a haze of magnolia, rose, and lily choked me the closer I was dragged to her throne.
At the same moment, in the mirror, Rune glanced down at a puddle of water. Glanced down, then froze.
And no wonder. Through the mirror, I could see myself there. Myself, the collar, the Queen gloating behind me.
I’d left Rune to protect my pack while I dealt with his mother. But I was flubbing it.
No wonder he dropped his sword.
IMMEDIATELY, A VINE lashed out from a tree and lassoed my pack’s sole defender. Rune’s face contorted in a roar as he was dragged backwards toward the animated greenery.
Meanwhile, the Queen cooed. “Yes, he can see you now. Isn’t this amusing?”
She yanked at the chain again, but this time my hands rose to claw out breathing room. Blood settled beneath my fingernails, leftover from the wound at my throat. The tiniest hint of persimmon broke through the cloying floral awfulness that clung to the Queen’s body. That scent gave me the ability to speak.
“You want your son to lose to the one who betrayed you?”
On the mirror, my image disappeared. I saw rather than heard as Rune sucked in a deep breath and lost the last shred of his humanity. One blink and he’d gone entirely wolf.
His animal form was beautiful, but the haze in his eyes promised no rational thought was present to guide it. He lunged at a tree, biting at bark he had no chance of gnawing through.
Then the Queen was in my face, blocking my view. “Betrayed me?”
I ached to check on Rune. On my pack. But this was my moment. This was why I’d come here.
So I focused...then I reeled the Queen in. “You remember her.” I kept my voice low, an Alpha trick. It worked, too. I had every fae’s attention as I told their Queen what she hadn’t wanted to hear.
“The country girl you brought to Court centuries ago. She tricked you then left you. In retaliation, you forced her sister to spend decades scrubbing chamberpots. But was that really punishment enough?”
The Queen’s perfectly formed nostrils flared. “I’m not amused by this memory.”
My teeth sharpened as I smiled. “I can see why not. But would you be amused by the ability to settle the score? That country girl will return to your Court shortly. I have her true name in my possession.”
Well, I kinda did. I would if Kale got carried back to Faery along with the Guardian, which I thought likely. Well, possible at least.
Ignoring my own uncertainty, I continued. “I could give you that name, let you torment her for the rest of her life....”
“Full fae live for eternity,” the Queen corrected.
“Then you can torment her for eternity.”
The hall fell silent. No one spoke. As best I could tell, no one except me breathed.
The Queen’s eyes narrowed as she considered. Her finger skimmed the surface of another bowl of honeycomb, but she didn’t consume the sticky sweetness this time.
Finally, when I thought I’d lost her interest, the Queen took the bait. “What do you want in exchange?”
“In exchange,” I told the one being able to make it happen, “you will give a huma
n child a small nudge to help him stab the one who betrayed you.” I raised a finger when her lips curled upward. “No, that’s not the entirety of the bargain. You’d do that anyway, I know, to get your wayward subject back.”
“What else?” The Queen leaned even closer, her floral scent surrounding me. “Best spit it out. Your pack will be in shreds if you don’t hurry up.”
Images of what was even now happening among Clan Whelan flickered through my mind. But the Queen, for once, was right. The only way I could impact that horrifying battle was to make a deal and make it quickly.
“The rest of the bargain is simple,” I told her. “You’ll release both sons from your service. Then you’ll seal the borders between earth and Faery for good.”
Chapter 38
I thought Erskine and Rune would be the sticking point, but the Queen listened impassively through the mention of her children. When I asked her to seal the borders, however, she shook her head.
“That’s impossible. Even I can’t halt the flow between our worlds at Samhain.”
Which meant the Guardian could come back after I betrayed her. Fae like Lenny’s wife would continue inserting themselves into human and werewolf lives.
I understood, at last, why Rune had felt duty lying so heavily on his shoulders. But the Samhain Shifters had kept the peace thus far. I would trust them to continue protecting our world.
“Alright,” I agreed. “You’ll seal the borders on every day other than Samhain. And you’ll let your sons stay on earth in human form.”
“Your Butch is nothing but a mongrel.” The Queen twirled one hand as if she’d dismissed him long ago, as if the entire reason Rune had lived like a monk for a decade was irrelevant. “I release him.”
I inhaled deeper than I’d been able to a moment earlier. One person I cared about was safe. Now to ensure the others.
“And Erskine?”
The Queen cocked her head, her long neck bending in a curve that was unbelievably beautiful. “But does Erskine want to abandon the world of Faery? Perhaps we should find out?”
She raised her chin and the mirror floated forward. Now it hovered so close I almost felt like I could step through it back into my world.
Or, rather, into the stone circle. There, Erskine paced across his mossy prison. Pounded his fist against a stone wall. Roared his frustrations at the sky.
I felt the same way. The Queen was drawing this out unnecessarily. Who knew how many of my pack mates were dying while she indulged in her love of theatrics?
Just when my patience was about to snap, the Queen spoke. “Son.”
I’d thought the mirror didn’t transmit sound. But Erskine turned toward us, his eyes so much like the Queen’s that I shivered. “Yes, Mother?”
“I’ve made a bargain that involves you. This mortal”—she shook my chain—“has requested that I give you a choice between the human world and Faery. Of course I’ve agreed.”
As if she was a benevolent monarch. As if she wasn’t watching shifters die for mere entertainment.
“If you leave my service,” the Queen continued, her voice merry but her words dark, “you will never be able to return here. You’ll be stuck in the filth of earth among mortals whose lives pass like mayflies.” She paused long enough to yawn. Then: “But, of course, it is your choice.”
Not much of a choice when the Queen put it that way. “Erskine needs to know that on earth, you won’t tamper with him. And that he can always change his mind and return to Faery.”
Because Rune might not trust Erskine, but he loved him. I couldn’t allow Erskine to be dragged back into the awfulness of the Unseelie Court because he thought trying out humanity would be a one-way ticket to eternal boredom.
The scent of flowers exploded around me as the Queen smiled. “But if Erskine leaves me, I don’t want him back. And you requested border closure. That closure will impact movement in both directions. Unless you want to remove that stipulation from our deal?”
I barely got a single word out between gritted teeth. “No.” I wanted to help Erskine, but not enough to lose sight of the safety of everyone else in the process.
The Queen shrugged then turned back to the mirror. “So, son, what is your decision? The drab human world for an eternity, no contact with your beloved mother? Or home for feasting and frivolity?”
Erskine’s eyes met mine. He swallowed. “Tara, do you need...?”
My muscles relaxed then tightened. I’d been wrong to think Erskine would be tempted by the land of the fae. Despite his enjoyment of a glittery mane while four-hooved, he was too much like his brother to ignore the obvious. The chain at my throat was his only focus now.
But the chain was mere frippery. My bargain with the Queen outweighed that.
So I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Make your own decision.”
Erskine was silent for a long moment, then he nodded decisively. “I choose....”
“Yes...?” The Queen leaned closer to the mirror.
“...The human world.”
“GO THEN.” THE QUEEN was furious, but she hid it well. Only because I was so close did I see the twitch of skin beside her eye before her face once again smoothed to fae perfection.
I saw and I was ready for her to take vengeance upon me. Instead, she clapped once and the mirror faded to gray. Gray then green as our view returned to the battle in Whelan territory.
The battle which was going far worse than I’d anticipated.
My pack was losing. That much was clear at a glance. Why else would pack mates be huddled up in a circle, children and non-fighters in the center, those with blades ringing the outside?
The cluster was far smaller than it should have been. Names echoed in my mind as I picked out those we’d lost.
I couldn’t see Ash. I couldn’t see Caitlyn.
Rune was still present, though. In wolf form, he ran frantic loops to protect the pack from a foe that couldn’t be protected against. He seemed to have found his footing inside the beast’s body, but his efforts wouldn’t be enough.
Not when branches lashed out from every direction, striking pack mates who should have been protected. Slashing and slicing, almost sword-like. I couldn’t hear screams, could only see faces contorting. Despite my intention not to show the Queen how much I needed the Guardian vanquished, I coughed out: “You have to make this stop!”
“And how do you expect me to tamper with a world beyond my reach?” The Queen’s eyes bored into me. “Will you grant me a toehold into your pack?”
“I offer you a connection, but only for an instant.” As I spoke, I twirled one of the last tethers I owned around my finger. The tether to Kale. The tether I hoped would let the Queen end this awfulness while at least a few pack mates remained.
Giving Kale a nudge had been part of our bargain. Plus, the Queen should have leapt at the chance to force the Guardian back to Faery.
But she tapped long-nailed fingers on her throne arm rather than accepting the tether I held out to her. She watched as a hole opened up in the earth of my forest, shifters falling into darkness and only a few scrambling back out.
After yawning once, she finally asked: “You have no other tethers? That one is puny.”
I swallowed, tempted to offer more if she’d hurry. But that was what the Queen wanted.
And I was Alpha. Even if there was only one pack mate left by the time this was over, I would fight for their safety from fae depredations.
So I didn’t speak as another hole appeared, this one closer to the center of the huddle. One second ago, my nurse had held a baby in her arms, two toddlers clinging to her legs. Now, they all fell into the earth together. No one reemerged.
I waited two more seconds, even though the time felt like an eternity. Then I told the Queen, “This tether is the only one available.”
She considered me, then shrugged. “Alright then.”
With a pop, the mirror darkened. A roaring wind swept through the hall, pushing fae back a
gainst the walls.
I clung to the arm of the Queen’s throne. She sat, unmoved. Watching. Smiling.
And when the wind broke, the most beautiful teenage girl I’d ever seen stood on the tabletop in the center of the room.
THE GIRL STRUCK A POSE as if she was a model and this was a catwalk. Jutted out her hip and grinned. She was the most beautiful being I’d ever set eyes on. It took an effort to tear my gaze away long enough to note the huddled twelve-year-old behind her back.
In one arm, Kale clutched Hazel. In the other, he clung to a bloody dagger.
So...this girl was the Guardian? And Kale, it seemed, had achieved his quest.
He’d won, but his face was impossibly pale and his voice came out as a squeak. “Tara, I didn’t think it through. Hazel.... You have to get her home....”
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do at the moment to remove the baby from Faery. She—and Kale and the Guardian—were twenty feet away from me, separated by chairs and tables and a buttload of fae.
I couldn’t save Hazel, but I could make sure the Queen didn’t harm Kale or his sister.
To that end, I grabbed at the tether the Queen had been manipulating, fully expecting her to stop me. But her attention was on the Guardian. So much so that I was emboldened enough to yank the trailing edge of my chain out of her grasp as well.
The links slid free. The Queen didn’t even glance in my direction. Instead, she cooed out a question to her recovered lackey. “What do you have to say for yourself, child?”
The Guardian was no child. She’d made a deal with my grandfather decades ago. Still, she made no complaint about the appellation. Instead, she grabbed Kale’s wrist and raised it up, up, up, until she could lick the blood off the tip of his weapon. He winced, cringing away from her. And, smiling, she stabbed him with words more painful than any knife.
“Act like a man,” she admonished. “Not that you have a chance of becoming one.”
Then, having cut into the heart of Kale’s insecurities, she knelt, head bowed before her monarch. “My Queen, I’ve brought you changeling toys.”
Charmed Wolf Page 20
