by Jessa Slade
Shit. Even the giant cat with its mouth full of blood hadn’t wanted to toy with him like this. He wished he hadn’t whispered Adelyn’s name aloud as he stepped through the fairy ring, but his heart had been in his throat—pushing her name to his lips—as he longed for her.
Too late. “I am...” Standing in this chamber of beautiful horror, he felt less than nothing. But he had let too many he loved walk away without a word. This time he would speak. He straightened, locking his elbow so the spear filled the space between them. “I am a prince from the land of Oregon, and I have come to reclaim my love.”
With a hushed gasp, the crowd drew back another step, even farther than the iron had pushed them.
The Queen did not flinch though. “How tiresome that your love left you behind. Not even your iron could keep her in place.”
He didn’t flinch either, but he knew she’d seen something of the remembered pain in his face because she smiled. He pictured the mountain lion’s bloody fangs when it snarled at him.
He straightened. “In truth, she might not have known how I felt when she left.”
“Ah, truth.” The Queen swept a hand to encompass the room. “Then by all means, proclaim yourself now, and let her step forward if she feels the same.”
The way the Queen said feels raised his hackles, and Josh shook his head. “And have you kill her where she stands? No. I’ll find her myself.”
He took a step forward and the crowd fell back again. His heart thudded hard. Would Adelyn be willing to come through the pain and the exposure of having her glamour stripped away by the iron? Should he even ask it of her?
He did not say her name aloud, only whispered it in his head with longing. Could she hear him somehow? Did he believe in such magic?
He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.
Question was, would she believe?
“There she is,” murmured the Queen from behind him. “Take her if you will.”
And as the crowd edged back, she was revealed. In the fall of silky crimson around her, she was every bit the erotic fairy princess. She held out one hand to him and he let the iron spear waver to one side, so he didn’t hurt her.
The eyes were too pale, a blue almost white with coldness.
He snapped the spear ahead of him and the fake Adelyn recoiled with a growl. The illusion wavered and he caught a glimpse of bristling fur.
Behind him, the Queen pealed with cruel laughter. “At least that one would keep you warm at night, human. The musetta can offer you nothing of herself. After you strip past the veils, there is nothing to her, only a reflection of what you make of her.”
Josh gritted his teeth. How did the Queen know who he was looking for? And how could he be sure when he actually found Adelyn if these lies were all around him? He had done a terrible job of spotting such illusions before: I promise...To have and to hold...’Til death do us part...
He wavered.
Another phae waited in his path. She also looked like Adelyn, with her veils in a simple drape around the body he had come to know in such a short time. But what could he really know after such a short time? Could he believe even what he saw? Though his scarred eye seemed clearer than his good eye in this place.
He kept the spear point out, but the one ahead did not flinch. She stared at him over the half-mask of her veil. “Why did you follow me?”
It was Adelyn. He didn’t have to see her. He could feel it. “Because I had to know...” He had to know if what they had was real, if anything that had been whispered or shared had been true, or all just one of her illusions.
He took another step toward her and still she did not back away from the iron. Around her form, the air seemed to flicker, alive with secrets.
Did he want to know? The tip of the iron spear hovered at her breast.
“Now you’ll know,” she said. “You’ll see what I really am.”
She took one deep breath, and the iron touched the curve of her breast. A twist of smoke marred her skin, then her glamour fell away in a blink.
Dozens of snakes circled her head and shoulders. They struck at the spear with sibilant hisses, and it was his turn to recoil.
Though he pulled out of range, the silky dark locks he had run his fingers through did not return. Her serpentine hair writhed around her, revealing the delicate pattern of scales that spread over her shoulders and up the sides of her neck to her temples.
She stepped closer, so close the bright scales sent glimmers of jeweled color dancing over the spear’s gray iron. His heart pounded and his suddenly sweaty grip slipped on the spear, but his gaze locked on the phae before him.
Behind him, the Queen laughed. “Did you not know the truth of your own love, poor man? Every inspiration can turn around and bite you. Which is why every musetta is a medusa.” Her laughter edged higher, and the black veins in the white marble thickened.
He dragged his gaze off the hypnotic sway of the snakes to meet the phae’s eyes.
Her emerald eyes sparkled diamond-brilliant with unshed tears.
“Josh...” she whispered.
He swung toward the Queen, angled the pistol upward, and fired.
The Queen shrieked as the chandelier shattered.
Pierced by the iron round, the illusion flew apart in a stink of ashes. A thousand tiny lights scattered in all directions, chiming like miniature cowbells.
Phae scattered in all directions too, with less musical shrieks.
Josh shoved the pistol into his pants and grabbed Adelyn’s hand. The scales across the back of her hand slid under his thumb. “I always wondered how fairytale princesses kept their hair so lively and full of bounce.”
“Josh, you shouldn’t have come. Now you’ll be trapped too—”
“If I shoot the Queen, will that free us?”
She hesitated. “No. And her power holds phae here that should never be freed.”
“Something worse than snake-women who can turn men to stone?”
She lifted her chin. “The other side of inspiration has always been paralysis.”
“That’s not going to be me.” He pulled her toward him and kissed her, hard. “Which way do we run?”
Chapter 12
Through the chill of exposing her true nature, Adelyn felt the heat of Josh’s unfailing grip. It roused her where she thought nothing would again.
“This way.” She tugged him into a stream of phae fleeing toward the nearest corridor.
Behind them, the throne room was in an uproar. The will-o’-the-wisps, freed all at once from their marble prisoner, shot through the room like sparking bottle rockets. Tiny fires flamed in their wake.
The Queen screamed, a furious cry that cracked through the stone illusion more thoroughly even than Josh’s iron bullet.
The whole structure of the phaedrealii trembled at the Queen’s rage, and in the corridor, the phae cowered.
Josh hauled Adelyn around them—beings strange and stunning—as if they were nothing more than inconvenient boulders in his field. Her heart thumped with painful pride at his determination. She supposed a man who worked with unyielding metal and recalcitrant cows wouldn’t allow himself to be sidetracked by mere phae.
They sped through the corridors where the walls were terrifyingly blank. The Queen’s power should have held her illusions in place, even against an intrusive iron bullet. She ruled for a reason.
Something had the phaedrealii more rattled than a bullet overhead.
But it was no longer Adelyn’s concern. Whatever inspiration she had given the phae, it was no longer her place. She had shed that illusion with her glamour.
Her true place was here, beside Josh, for as long as they had.
Which wouldn’t be long.
She squeezed his fingers, interlaced with hers. “Josh, we don’t have a way out.”
“There’s always a way out.”
“Not from the phaedrealii,” she said grimly. “Do you know what Vaile had to do to escape with Imogene?”
“No, b
ut whatever it was, we can do it too.”
From behind them, a dog bayed. In another heartbeat, a multiplicity of eerie howls echoed it. The sound carried up the corridor, lacing the stark walls with curls of crimson that dripped down like blood.
Josh slowed to point the tip of the spear at the warning. The bloody streak curled back, as if pushed by an invisible force but did not disappear.
“The Queen appears to have recovered from her shock.” Adelyn tugged him onward, anywhere farther from the throne room. “And she has set the Hunters’ hounds on our trail.”
“I take it we’re not talking wannabe Wollys.”
“If Wolly had three heads, and all three wanted to dig your bones from your flesh.”
“Ah.” He slanted a glance at her. “You seem every bit as dangerous.”
She blinked. Did she? She’d never thought of herself as dangerous. She touched her hair with her free hand, the one not linked to Josh, and the serpents twined around her fingers. Their tongues flicked her skin with a cool caress.
“Only some of them are venomous,” she said modestly.
“You’ll have to show me which ones. After you show me a way out.”
Her little burst of happiness that he still wanted to know her evaporated. “I told you, there is no way out, not without gate spores, and I gave mine away.”
“Can we get them back?”
“Not soon enough to save ourselves.” She hesitated. “And we’d make escape impossible for anyone else.”
His jaw worked, and she knew he was torn. But of course he would not sacrifice others for himself. “You can’t tell me the Queen sprouts mushrooms from her dustbin every time she wants to mess with us humans.”
She flushed at the note of exasperation in his voice. “She has her own rings, but of course those may not be used upon pain of death.”
“Pain of death? I think we’re well past that risk, don’t you?”
She turned at the next corridor and sped into the darkness. A few wisps had caught up with them while they debated; a bad sign, since the black dogs would be following the same trail. But the faint light let them move faster.
“There are places in the phaedrealii that remain the same no matter how the illusions of the court change,” she told him. “One of those will be a permanent gate, our way out.”
“Find the closest.”
The featureless hallway turned sinuous, curving so that they could see neither far ahead nor far behind. The gray walls echoed with their footsteps.
From behind, the hounds bayed again, an eager note that threaded through the curves to taunt them.
Josh grimaced. “Not good.”
“We’re almost there.” Adelyn pulled them around another curve.
Raze the Ruiner stood in the way, almost—but not quite—invisible in his gray robes.
Adelyn gasped. “No.”
Josh sprang ahead, spear raised.
The vizier slashed out. The wide-bladed athame shone in his hand and knocked the spear aside.
Josh staggered toward the wall but instantly whirled, the pistol in his hand. “Back off,” he snapped. “Unless fairies fly faster than iron bullets.”
The vizier paused, hand still raised with the dagger exposed. “I am not here to fight you.”
“Really?” Josh challenged. “The knife must have confused me.”
Raze chuckled. “Such a simple human.”
“But better armed.”
Slowly, the vizier lowered the athame and sheathed it at his belt. “As humans have always been.” He turned his fathomless gaze on Adelyn. “I take it you found the missing Hunter.”
She lifted her chin. “You might stop us, but not him. And he will find a way to free others who weary of the Queen’s reign.”
Raze sneered with scorn as withering as Josh’s iron. “Who do you think will reign in this Queen’s stead?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“The walls of the phaedrealii are crumbling, and what the Queen holds, she holds only with the power of her madness.” The vizier shifted his gaze to Josh. “Your world stands to lose even more, should the phae break their bonds.”
Josh held his hand out to Adelyn. “Whatever I lose, I won’t lose her.”
Raze smiled thinly. “You think your world is ready for a snake-haired girl who cries a king’s ransom in jewels?”
With the warmth of Josh’s hand over hers, Adelyn took a step forward. “His world is cows and dogs and stars and other runaway phae. They take me as I am.”
The vizier’s lips twisted toward a laugh. But in the end he only sighed. “Then take this too: a message to the Hunter and his sylfana who would fight a war against the Queen. Tell him there are battles even a phae cannot imagine.”
Closer now, the black dogs howled, as if in agreement.
Raze lifted his head. “You are more of a menace here than gone. So go.” He stepped aside.
Without another word, Josh dragged her past the vizier.
She glanced back once before Raze vanished behind the curve of the hall. Gray on gray, he should have seemed part of the corridor itself. Instead, he seemed to float, cut off.
She shuddered. She had been that lonely too. But no more.
She gripped Josh’s hand as they fled.
A blast of light from behind them rattled the hall and she stumbled. Josh dropped the spear to haul her upright. Before he could grab the weapon again, a chunk of the ceiling fell toward them.
She yanked him onward as the corridor shuddered with crashing debris.
There was only one way out now. They ran.
Until the next curve brought them to a wall of steel.
Chapter 13
Josh slapped his hand against the doorway. It was a double door, floor to ceiling, the giant padlock in the middle beautifully executed in heavy brushed steel.
And very, very locked.
He took Adelyn’s hand and whirled her to one side as he yanked the pistol from his waistband.
“Josh, no—”
He fired a round into the lock.
The iron bullet ricocheted with a screaming whine and buried itself in the wall opposite them.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“Not everything phae is an illusion.”
“Too bad the lock is one of the real things.” He stared back the way they had come. “No sense digging out right into the mouths of those devil dogs, but the rubble won’t hold them for long.”
Adelyn touched his hand. “Can you put the gun away? The iron...”
With another curse, he tucked the pistol in the back of his jeans. “Sorry. I forgot.”
She averted her gaze. “What I am must shock you.”
“I knew you were phae.”
“I mean...” She brushed one hand over her bare shoulder where scales dappled her skin. “When you saw the skin in the toadstool ring, you said ‘damn snakes’.”
He dragged one hand through his hair and glanced at her sidelong. “Is that why you left?”
“I couldn’t hide what I am.”
“Adelyn—”
“I don’t mean just the hair.” She wrapped her arms around herself. Even the serpents seemed to coil protectively tighter. “By leading the imp to the valley, I wrecked Vaile’s refuge. I only wanted to save myself, but you saved me instead. I might as well have been a snake without hands I was so useless. You showed me how to use my hands—to touch, to make, to hold—and I wanted to show you...” She caught her breath.
Slowly, he spun on his boot heel to face her. More slowly yet, avoiding the serpents, he raised his hands to frame her face. Under his fingertips, the scales at her temples were silky-smooth, like polished stone but yielding.
“Adelyn.” He waited until she raised her green gaze to his, more shy than he had ever seen her. “You said not everything phae is fake. This—” He took a step closer to her, his heart pounding with the boot-fall. “This thing between us is real. And I’m going to hold onto it no matter what i
t looks like, not matter what you look like.”
He leaned down to kiss her.
Her lips parted beneath his on a soft sigh, a sigh echoed by dozens of tiny tongues flickering around him. He closed his eyes—it would take him a couple kisses to get used to this—but not seeing only intensified the pleasure of having her mouth under his, the curves of her body under his hands.
“So,” he murmured against her mouth. “Tell me about Medusa who turned all the Greek warriors into rock.”
“The Greeks got her name confused, but I suppose even musetta can have an uninspired day.”
“You rock me. Part of me anyway.” He traced his way from her face, down her shoulders, over her breasts, to settle on her hips and pull her close so that she could feel the hard truth, his truth. “I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“Do you want badly enough to get us out of here?” She met his gaze when he opened his eyes. “You are a smith at heart, Josh. You could command these doors.”
He shook his head. “Command the doors how? With magic?” He took a step backward. “I’m not like you. I’m just a...cowboy.”
She followed, edging him toward the locked gate. “You stepped into the circle without hesitating. You said my name and found me. There is magic in your heart, Josh Reimer, should you desire it. What do you want?”
He stood his ground. “You. I want you. Back in my valley, back in my bed.”
She took one more step that brought her into his arms again. “I want to be there.” She kissed him. “Now let me inspire you.”
Her hands went to the fly of his jeans.
His brows shot up. “Whoa! Here? Now?”
She smiled up at him. “What better time?” But her hands stilled on his belt. “Think how you would have me do it, Josh. Imagine how the buckle comes apart. Dream how the edges unseal to release your desires.”
Blood pooled hot and heavy in his cock.
In his chest, his heart strained with equal yearning. This was not the place for them. Here, under the lies was only this cold, hard, steel gray. They should be back in his valley, the sun shifting to stars as they made love through an entire day and night.
