Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here
Page 17
It could have been a cave. For a wild moment, Danice wondered if she’d forgotten descending a stairway or five on the walk from their room, but she knew she hadn’t. They couldn’t possibly be underground, but the arch of natural rock walls overhead, the pillars bearing more than a slight resemblance to stalagmites, the uneven surface of the floor, all of those things painted a convincing enough picture to make her doubt her own senses. She could even swear that she heard the squeaking and chirping of bats from the darkness hanging over them.
Torches mounted on the pillars and walls at slightly-too-distant intervals provided a wan light, elevating the atmosphere from inky to dim. Enough light to see by, but not enough to move without caution. Overhead, chandeliers (real ones, the kind filled with candles, not light-bulbs, and made of metal, not crystal) seemed to float in midair, offering marginally more flickering illumination. Actually, Danice admitted to herself, she guessed they really were floating in midair, since she could see nothing supporting them from either above or below, and they were, after all, in Faerie. Here, she reminded herself, magic just happened.
Surprise had halted her steps just inside the door as she turned her head this way and that trying to take in the scene. Morag and her gal pals, though, seemed disinclined to allow either of their prisoners time to gawk. A hand in the middle of her back shoved Danice forward, sending her stumbling her first few steps into the room. When she turned around to glare, the self-satisfied smirk on Catrin’s face left little doubt of the assault’s origin.
Glaring back, Danice flipped her middle finger at the woman. It might not mean anything in Faerie, but it gave Danice a sense of personal satisfaction. At least temporarily.
At first, as they made their way into the chamber, Danice thought it must be empty. The king, she assumed, wanted to keep them waiting to remind them of his authority, and so that they would be suitably alert when he decided to make his grand entrance. It was a tactic the senior partners used often on newer and younger members of the staff. But when they passed the first set of pillars, she peered toward the far end of the room and saw what looked like a huge, flat-topped boulder positioned in the middle of the central space. On it, she could make out several objects like chairs, two large ones in the center, flanked on each side by a smaller one, more like a stool than a chair. The ones in the center undoubtedly functioned as thrones.
They walked closer, Danice silent as she tried to absorb the sights and sounds around her, Mac for reasons of his own. Ones she really wished he would share with her. They’d become oddly close in the short period of their acquaintance, but she wanted to remind him that that didn’t mean she knew everything he did. For instance, she had no idea what to expect here; she knew nothing about the customs of Faerie, let alone the customs pertaining to the nobility of Faerie. Knowing her luck, she’d wish the king a good morning and not find out until she watched her own head roll off the guillotine that doing so was considered a grave insult at the Unseelie Court.
In other words, it would really help if he would talk to her just now.
Danice glared in Mac’s direction, and either it had no impact on him at all, or he had just decided to ignore it. Since that didn’t work, she moved on to clearing her throat. Pointedly.
And again.
“Cease making that disgusting noise, human,” Catrin barked from just over Danice’s right shoulder. “You’ll offend the king’s ears. And even if you don’t, you’re offending mine.”
Danice ignored her.
“Mac,” she hissed, leaning slightly toward him. “Now would be a really good time to fill me in on our game plan. You know, for dealing with the king?”
He didn’t even glance at her. “We don’t have one.”
“Say huh?”
Mac stared straight ahead, his eyes already locked on the figure lounging in the left-hand throne. “We don’t have a game plan for this. We were going to avoid the king, remember?”
“Yes, well, that strategy seems fraught with problems right about now. So how about plan B?”
“Plan B was to run like hell for the nearest gate back to the city.”
Danice let her head fall backward so she stared up into the ceiling and groaned. “So then, we’re just going to stand here like we’re screwed and not worry about it?”
“Oh, I’m going to worry about it,” he assured her, gaze focused straight ahead. “But we are just screwed. Sorry.”
“Great. There go my visions of you as a dashing romantic hero.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
The guardswomen continued to prod them forward, Morag leading the way to the odd natural dais at the end of the room. The closer they came to the thrones, the better a look Danice got at the figure seated there, and the more her skin began to crawl.
She couldn’t define precisely why, but something about the Unseelie king made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Not to mention the ones on her arms. Hell, if she didn’t wax religiously, she’d bet the hair on her legs would stand up, too. And this reflex had very little to do with the kind of electricity she felt every time she got near Mac; this was the kind of thing she imagined a rabbit felt when it looked into the eyes of a predator. Being in the presence of this particular Fae gave Danice a very keen sense of her own mortality.
Nothing about his outward appearance could explain the blaring of her internal alarms. He dressed all in black, from the shimmering material of his tunic-like shirt, to the leathery sheen of his trousers, but Danice was from Manhattan where black was practically a uniform. The king—Dionnu, she thought Mac had called him—was an incredibly handsome man, with the kind of unearthly beauty Danice was coming to expect from the Fae. Human models and actors might have beauty that could take a person’s breath away. Mac had that; just looking at him sometimes made Danice want to jump on him. But the Fae took perfection of form to a whole new level. Every one of their features matched its mate with perfect symmetry. Every patch of skin looked smoother, every woman more feminine, every man more stunning. Even their hair and eye colors were somehow more. The Fae weren’t just blonds or brunettes; their hair was silver or gold, jet or mahogany.
Dionnu had hair as black as obsidian and skin as pale and rich as cream. Despite his lazy seated pose, Danice estimated he stood over six feet tall, with the kind of lean, deceptive strength of a long-distance runner. His dark hair curled in loose waves over his collar, framing the perfection of his face, from the high, noble brow to the sharply defined jaw and slightly pointed chin. He possessed a strong nose and two blades for cheekbones that only served to draw attention to a mouth almost hypnotic in its sensuality. He appeared no more than thirty, younger even than Mac, except for his eyes.
His eyes were ancient, black, and empty, like the eyes of a snake. Or like looking down into an endless pit. Or up into the dark, blank nothingness above his throne. The longer Danice looked into those eyes, the colder she could feel herself growing. A shiver finally shook through her, and the reflexive motion knocked her gaze away from him.
Dionnu saw it, and the corner of his mouth quirked in amusement. The amusement of a Roman emperor watching his lions feast on martyred Christians. Immediately he dismissed her and turned his stare on Mac.
“My guards informed me I had uninvited guests in my castle, but I thought they told me one of you was a half-breed,” he drawled, his eyes raking over Mac’s steady form. “I suppose I expected something a little more obviously…special.”
Mac didn’t utter a word. He gazed back at the king, his eyes steady and his back straight. Danice didn’t know how he did it, how he could bear to look into those eyes. She had to settle for watching a spot over the Fae’s left shoulder, though she was glad when he spoke to Mac, because then she had an excuse to look at the changeling instead. That quieted some of the voices in her head, the ones screaming at her to run.
“Who did you say this mutt belonged to?” Dionnu asked Morag, his tone casual, his gaze never moving from Mac’s face.
A shadow parted from the others and shifted forward until the light hit it and Danice recognized the face of Mac’s mother. Tyra wore blue, the color of midnight, shot through with silver thread and spangled with glittering jewels so that it appeared as if she’d wrapped herself in the night sky. Her golden hair had been pulled back to cascade in shimmering waves behind her, and atop her shining head she wore a small circlet of silver, intricately worked to appear like a crown of snowflakes upon her brow.
She moved to stand beside Dionnu’s throne, pressing herself against the side and wrapping her arms around the top corner as if to embrace it, or the man it seated.
Dionnu turned his head to smirk at her and held out a cool, elegant hand. “Really, my sweet. I thought you had better taste than to consort with a human. Just look what it got you—a mongrel brat. And a troublemaking one, at that.”
Tyra placed her hand in the king’s, and Danice wondered that their skin didn’t clink together like ice cubes. Even when Dionnu brushed a kiss over the back of the woman’s fingers, there was no warmth in the gesture. Oh, it gave the appearance of intimacy between them, which is what she supposed he wanted, but Danice didn’t see any sparks there. Ambition and greed apparently could attract two people together into a kind of icy passion. Just the thought of it brought on another shiver.
She snuck a glance at Mac, who watched the couple above them with a coolly remote expression of his own. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she could see the tic of the muscle in his jaw and knew he must be fighting back some strong emotion. She wanted to reach out to him, but thought better of it. The king would likely read it as a sign of weakness, and that was the last thing she would willingly convey to this man.
“Tell me, my star,” Dionnu continued, looking back at Mac. “What do you call it?”
“Then or now?”
Mac finally spoke, and Danice felt a surge of pride at his steady voice and the tone of utter boredom he managed to convey. Unlike Dionnu, though, his disinterest came encased not in ice but in obvious disdain.
“Now, I believe she’s taken to calling me Callahan,” he continued, “which is my father’s name. But in the beginning she didn’t bother to call me anything. Whoever dropped me off on my father’s doorstep—and I hesitate to assume she performed such a meaningless task herself—left a note with what my father thought must be my name, so he adapted it as best he could for me to use. Too bad I was legally McIntyre by the time I realized that all the note had said was that I was the son or daughter of Tyra. ‘Mac. Ni. Tyra.’ One or the other. I doubt she bothered to check.”
Danice listened to the king’s laughter while sickness welled up in her stomach. That was how Mac had come by his unusual name? She’d assumed it must be a family name—something passed down from a previous generation, a connection to a beloved or revered ancestor. Not a misreading of the callousness of the woman who had abandoned him. It boggled her mind that any woman could be so heartless that she didn’t even bother to communicate the sex of her own child to the father on whose doorstep she had dropped him.
Thankful that the folds of her dress concealed the way her hands had clenched into fists, Danice concentrated on battling back the urge to hop up onto the stone platform and smack the pretty right off Tyra’s face. Only the knowledge that the guards surrounding her would probably interpret her actions as a threat to their king and gut her before she even got close managed to stop her. And still, her fingers itched to dish out some punishment.
“My father calls me Mac, though,” he said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. “And since I’m happy to be his son, I call myself Mac Callahan. I don’t care in the slightest what you call me. Neither of you means enough to me for me to be bothered.”
“Now, don’t be grumpy, my darling boy,” Tyra chided. “If you’re mean to me, I might decide not to plead your case in front of His Majesty. And he can be so severe on those caught trespassing on his lands. What was it that happened to the last one, my love?”
“Oh, let’s don’t waste time threatening the children, my sweet,” Dionnu said, waving his hand in dismissal. “After all, these miscreants are not the only game in town. My hunters are standing by, eager to resume the chase for the prey who slipped past us yesterday.”
Somehow, Danice got the impression that the “prey” Dionnu hunted didn’t run on four feet and grow antlers. The longer she stood in the presence of the king and his mistress, the more she began to understand and even appreciate Mac’s attitude toward his mother.
No, actually, the Fae female didn’t even deserve that title. Toward the woman who had given him birth. And honestly, Danice thought even that was giving the creature too much credit.
“Let us get right to the point.” Dionnu dropped Tyra’s hand and leaned forward on his throne, bracing his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers together beneath his chin. “By what right have you intruded on my court, McIntyre Callahan? What business could you possibly have in Faerie, a place you have never had claim to before?”
Mac answered calmly, his impassive expression never shifting. “I never intended to intrude on your court. I was brought here along with my companion against our will. Your guardswomen discovered us in the forest and took us prisoner, although I confess that none of what I know of Faerie convinces me they had any right. I was under the impression that until the hinge swings at Samhain, the rule of law rightly belongs to Mab and the Summer Throne.”
That last statement seemed to affect Dionnu like a slap to the face. At the sound of the name, one that meant little to Danice, his lips curled and his hands fisted and he hissed like a Hollywood vampire just doused with holy water. Beside him, Tyra stepped forward, rage twisting her features for a split second before she schooled them again into a mask of haughty amusement.
“That was very naughty of you, my dearest son, to tease our king in such a way.” Her tone stayed light, but her eyes flashed like silver-blue blades in the dim light. If the blades had been real, Mac would be bleeding from a thousand precise wounds. “Even someone as ignorant as you should know that name is not to be mentioned in this palace. You will teach your little whore some very bad manners.”
Before Mac could react to the slur on her character, Danice made a great show of shrugging the insult off, taking her cue from her companion. “I’m not worried about any manners I pick up from Mac. I’m perfectly capable of telling a good influence from a bad one.”
This time, she pointedly met a Fae’s eyes, and she saw the seething rage beneath Tyra’s pretty, poisonous surface.
Dionnu regained control, though his knuckles still looked white where his hands clutched the arms of his throne. “How quaint, half-breed. It appears the human wishes to champion you. Perhaps I should direct my questions to her instead. I’m certain I could have any number of amusing ways to persuade her to share with me.”
For the first time, the king turned his basilisk stare on Danice, and while she didn’t turn to stone, she almost wished she had. The feel of his gaze on her was like having thousands of creepy, slimy crawling things moving under her skin. Her stomach turned, and she had to fight not to gag. She had a feeling throwing up in front of the royal person would not do anything to help her situation.
Danice turned her face away, unable to even look at the monster in Faerie form. It was like gazing on the face of the devil, concentrated evil in pretty, perfect clothes. Her gaze fell on Mac, and though he didn’t look at her, she could feel the concern radiating off him, concern and anger and frustration. He must know (hell, even she knew, and she knew as much about the Fae as she did about particle physics) that attacking a creature as powerful as the Unseelie king would be an act of suicide. But the urge was there. Danice could read it in every tense muscle, and it made her ache a litt
le bit inside.
“I doubt my business here could be of any interest to you,” Mac said tightly. Danice could hear the strain in his voice. “I’m trying to locate a missing human, and I had reason to believe that the one who hired me to do so is Fae. I came here to find either my client or the human.”
“As if a sidhe would require the services of someone like you to locate one puny human,” Tyra scoffed. She looked as if she would like to say more, but Dionnu waved her to silence.
“Ah, so you did intend to disturb my court,” Dionnu concluded silkily, his anger back under control. “Just not me, I would assume.”
“I intended to do my job. Nothing more.”
“Is that so?” Dionnu’s eyes narrowed for a moment. When he spoke again, his mouth curved into a smile that threatened to overwhelm Danice’s control over her gag reflex. “Do you know, I believe I am feeling uncharacteristically magnanimous today? McIntyre Callahan, I insist that you not exert yourself over this trivial matter of a missing human. Instead, you and your…friend will enjoy my hospitality and rest. I will undertake myself to locate the human. Consider it a gift to one who might have been my subject.”
Tyra looked stunned at the offer. Mac looked suspicious.
Danice just swallowed hard.
“Morag,” Dionnu called, snapping the guardswoman to attention. “You will recall that yesterday, my hunting party set itself on the trail of a stranger wandering through the woods north of the palace. My hounds insisted the creature was human, but I myself believed no human would be foolish enough to wander unprotected across my lands. Surely, I told myself, it must be one of Mab’s little minions thinking to play a trick on me.”
Danice struggled to piece together his meaning. While she didn’t know all the ins and outs of Faerie politics, she had a hunch that Mab must be the ruler of the Seelie Court, the other half of Fae society. In comic-book parlance, she thought Mab must qualify as Dionnu’s archnemesis. None of that, however, concerned her much.