by C. T. Adams
“That’s not possible.” The king’s rage had gone from hot to cold. Brianna could hear it in his voice. She suppressed a shudder. “The painting portal is specially keyed. It can be used only by you and me.”
“When I arrived some of the doxies fled through the painting,” Brianna replied. “I assume they came in the same way. But when we followed, we found ourselves in a field, not the palace.”
The silence in the room had weight, as if the air had thickened. After an interminable moment the king spoke. “Kenneth.” Brianna heard the booted footfalls of the Chief Captain of the High Guard move past her, toward the throne. There was a rustle of fabric; Brianna’s past experiences told her Kenneth had dropped to one knee to await orders.
“Take two each of your best investigators and magicians. Check the princess’s human apartments and the portal. Bring whatever evidence you find directly to me.”
Brianna heard the captain’s murmured, “Yes, sir,” despite the muttering of the various nobles who’d wrangled a spot in the audience. She remained silent while he rose and walked past her and, she assumed, out of the room.
“Continue your tale,” the king said.
“The doxies had killed the mother cat, who was the prized companion of Pug the gargoyle.”
The king snorted in acknowledgment of that. Like everyone else, he knew that gargoyles developed almost insanely devoted relationships with their cats. He probably thought it was silly, but he was too much the diplomat to say so.
“Pug called on an honor debt, and I was required by duty to try to save the kittens, although frankly, I might have done so anyway. I did not like that the doxies had been able to raid my home.”
“No more do I,” her father admitted. “And if my carelessness is a cause of this, I will owe you a debt.”
Now that his anger was no longer directed at her, Brianna risked a glance upward. Dressed in a simple green tunic and trousers with black trim that matched his boots and in no way distracted from his regal air, Leu was pacing back and forth on the dais.
“Go on.” His eyes met hers and Brianna returned her forehead somewhat guiltily to the floor. Still, she managed to adjust her position so that she could see a little bit of what was going on while maintaining her obeisance.
“We came as individuals, intent only on stopping the raid and retrieving the kittens. In order to make sure that our actions were not seen as an act of war, we brought no bows, guns, or edged weapons with us. Nor did I cut my hair.”
The king paused in his pacing, and she could sense his approval.
“Instead we dressed to protect ourselves, and brought weapons that were only meant to capture or wound.”
“The enchanted net.” He returned to the throne and took his seat, draping one leg over the arm of the carved marble chair in a provocatively casual pose. “Honestly, daughter, I would never have believed you capable of that level of magic. A net for one doxie, perhaps as many as ten. But hundreds, including King Moash himself? Has your power grown so great in the human lands?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Interesting.” He waved his hand in an indolent gesture. “You may rise.”
“Thank you, your majesty.”
Brianna would have liked to rise gracefully to her feet before so many witnesses, but that was impossible. She’d been prostrate long enough that her body had grown stiff. Still, she managed to stand without assistance and kept her head bowed, not even daring to glance at Pug who stood at her left side. The king might be feeling less furious, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet—not by a long stretch.
“You’re welcome.” Leu gave his daughter a long, assessing look. “Tomorrow we will meet with the ambassador from the doxies to negotiate and sign a suitable treaty. Tomorrow night there will be a state dinner followed by a ball in honor of the agreement. Until then, Gwynneth and a set of guards will escort you and your … guests”—he glanced at David, who was standing miserably in the middle of a tight grouping of guards—“to Abracham House for the night. The other human is already there, receiving treatment from my personal healer. All prisoners are to be turned over to the seneschal, who will provide food and housing in addition to any needed medical care prior to exchange and release after the treaty signing.”
He turned to address Pug. “I have received a request from the Diamond King that you attend him and his court at sunset. I will not offend a fellow royal by detaining you from such an appointment.” His tone was dry. King Leu of the Sidhe had never quite gotten over having to acknowledge as a fellow royal a creature who’d once been his mistress’s pet. Brianna doubted he ever would. Still, he was too much a king to let it interfere with the performance of his duties. “I suggest you leave now.”
Pug bowed and backed down the main aisle leading away from the throne. Like all courtiers, he would not show his back to the king.
As Leu turned to Brianna, she caught a momentary glimpse of an unguarded expression. He was exasperated, but also proud. “Brianna, you may go.”
Brianna bowed deeply from the waist. “Thank you, your majesty.” She made sure her voice showed that she was, indeed, grateful.
Abracham House was the manor that had served as her mother’s prison for the long years Helena Washington had been under house arrest. It was impossible to perform active magic within its walls. Brianna was going, under guard, to a very nice, well-appointed jail.
But David and Nick were going to be there with her, and her father had arranged to have Nick treated by the best healer in the kingdom. The seneschal would take responsibility for the injured and captured doxies and for Camille’s kittens, all of which Brianna would have found nearly impossible to do. She just hoped the negotiations and rituals of appeasement could be done quickly. If King Leu were irritated enough, he might well choose to change the way time ran in Faerie. Then it might be weeks or months—or more—before Brianna and her companions were allowed to return home.
She stood quietly, waiting as Gwynneth made obeisance to the king and gathered twelve warriors to make up the escort. There was an equal mix of male and female and none of those selected were familiar to Brianna—they’d probably enlisted after Brianna left Faerie. In Gwynneth’s place, she’d have made similar choices, but there was a certain ominous feel to marching out of the throne room and past the throng in the halls in the midst of a grim escort.
Guests of the king were allowed to use dog carts to travel between the various buildings of the royal encampment. Prisoners walked. David and Brianna were marched down the cobblestone road that led through the palace gardens and manicured lawns, past the dryad’s tree, following a familiar route toward Abracham House. Brianna hadn’t seen it in more than a decade, but even from a distance she could see that it hadn’t changed. As ever, it looked more like a walled estate than a prison. Surrounded by well-tended lawns, the building was a three-story mansion of grayish-tan stone. The simple, mostly rectangular structure design was symmetrical, with two towers connected by elaborate loggias on both the first and second floors.
French doors led into the main building, which had a beautiful open-air courtyard in the center. Every stone was perfectly fitted; the ornamental carvings on each column were a work of art. Brianna knew that every one of the manor’s seventy rooms were exquisitely appointed. It was a cage, but a well-gilded one.
David turned a worried face toward her. “Do you think Nick’s okay?”
“The king said he sent his best healer. That means Morguenna, and she’s studied human anatomy and medicine.” She tried to sound reassuring, though her own stomach was in knots. She wouldn’t be able to relax or concentrate until she heard for herself that Nick was all right. He had come here under her protection, and she’d failed him. If he died, Brianna would never forgive herself.
“It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on coming, he wouldn’t have joined us, wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” David’s voice was tight, as though he were fighting tears. Perhaps he was. Nick had
certainly been badly injured when they’d pulled him from beneath the crushing weight of the bag full of doxies. But he was alive, and if it was possible to heal him, Morguenna would do it.
“Don’t think like that. You did what you thought was best. Nick is a big boy. He knew it was dangerous.”
“Yeah, but he figured it was cop dangerous, not magic dangerous.”
There wasn’t much she could say in response. Fortunately, they had reached the elaborate, wrought-iron gates.
“Brace yourself,” Brianna warned her friend. “This is going to hurt.”
She was rewarded with a puzzled look, but as soon as David’s feet hit the first stone beyond the gate he stumbled. If a guard hadn’t been there to catch him, he would have fallen. Brianna wasn’t surprised. Anyone with the least magical sensitivity couldn’t help but react. There was a sense of absence, a wrongness burned into each and every stone of the walkway, every inch of the grassy grounds. It not only sucked at a person’s power, leaving them helpless to work any magic, but sapped the will to do anything at all.
For Brianna, passing over the fitted stones of the nearly one hundred stairs leading up to the house was like passing back in time, back to the unhappy years of her adolescence spent in a perfectly appointed prison. As she passed through the arched walkway Brianna shuddered from a chill that had nothing to do with the coldness of the stone. Flinching inwardly at each blow of Gwynneth’s mailed fist on the oaken front door, she wished her father had sent her anywhere else.
Brianna had no doubt the king knew this, of all places where captives were kept, would bother her the most. It was a petty cruelty, and showed more than any words could just how angry with her her father was—and not just because of the doxies. At least not entirely. No, Leu still hadn’t forgiven Brianna for leaving, for choosing to cross the veil with her mother and live among the humans.
Even that might have been forgiven, because the king knew full well how much Brianna had loved her mother. But Helena Washington was long dead and gone, and still Brianna preferred the company of humans to life at court. To her father that was a slap in the face, an insult that he might never completely forgive and would never forget, no matter how much he loved his daughter.
The door swung slowly inward; Brianna expected to see the majordomo who had run the prison household since it was first built. Instead, she was greeted by her half sister Lucienne.
Standing in the foyer of Abracham House, Lucienne looked even more beautiful than Brianna remembered. Her floor-length gown of shimmering layers of sheer metallic gold fabric left little to the imagination as it whispered around a body that managed to be both slender and lush. Lucienne’s thick red-gold hair hung in perfect curls down to her knees. Her skin was smooth cream, without the hint of a blemish or the freckles so common in human redheads. Her eyes were the green of new spring grass, flecked with gold. They would have dominated her delicate heart-shaped face even without the artfully applied makeup she wore.
Of all of their father’s mistresses, Lucienne’s mother had been far and away the most beautiful—and dumb as the proverbial post. Brianna had met many a rock with more brains. Though Mara hadn’t known it, it had been a sad day when she caught the king’s eye, because while Asara, Leu’s primary mistress, was not subject to human jealousy, she would never tolerate a true rival, or risk that anyone other than one of her children would someday take Leu’s place on the throne.
Asara was discreet. Mara’s death had been officially deemed an accident, but if every Sidhe in Faerie who believed that gave Brianna a dollar, she still wouldn’t have enough to buy a cup of coffee at Denny’s.
“Lucienne!” Brianna didn’t bother to keep the surprise from her voice. While she had always gotten on reasonably well with Lucie, she couldn’t imagine why her sister was here.
“Greetings, Sister, and congratulations on your victory.” Lucie swept into a low and graceful curtsey that gave David an unobstructed view of her formidable cleavage. “I would beg a private word with you,” Lucie continued.
Beg, my ass, Brianna thought. None of her siblings had ever begged for anything in their lives. Still, she managed to keep her expression utterly bland, falling back into the habits of court as if it had been minutes, rather than years, since she’d last been in Faerie.
Lucie rose with a graceful gesture, motioning for Brianna and the others to come in—as if there were a choice. Still, if she could be gracious, so could Brianna. She manufactured a smile and walked through the front door and past her sister.
David followed at Brianna’s heels, and she was pleased to note that he didn’t seem to be paying undue attention to Lucienne, despite the fact that she was shining like a star and that her outfit, while perfectly acceptable in Faerie, would be considered indecent back in the human world. Lucie raised an eyebrow at that, a flicker of annoyance passing briefly over her lovely features. Brianna, however, was quite pleased. Whatever latent talent David had for resisting Sidhe shining was holding, which would provide him a measure of safety even when Brianna wasn’t present.
Once Brianna and David had stepped across the threshold, the guards’ duty was done. At a gesture from Gwynneth, the men rose to attention, bowed in unison, then turned and marched off. It was odd … very odd. She was, after all, a prisoner, and while she was an acknowledged member of the royal family, she wasn’t a potential heir. Confused, she stood staring at their retreating forms for a long moment.
Lucie closed the door firmly behind the guards. Turning to Brianna, she said, “Like your escort, I’ve no doubt our father will find, once again, that you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. When he does, he’ll appreciate that someone thought to greet you and see to your comfort.” She was acting both smug for having thought of it and resentful about the perceived necessity.
Brianna sighed. Though Lucie pretended that she was as stupid as Mara had been, Brianna had no doubt that her sister manipulated things so that most thought her survival—despite her mother’s death and their siblings’ machinations—stemmed from phenomenal luck.
She’d liked Lucie. At one time she’d thought they were close. Until one night, in her cups, Lucie confessed that one of the reasons she’d been deliberately nice to Brianna was that it brought her favor in King Leu’s eyes. The words had stung, badly. Fool that she was, at the time Brianna had been naive enough to think Lucie actually liked her. Instead, Lucienne was one of the many Sidhe who believed Brianna to be their father’s favorite child.
She sighed again. She was tired. Too weary to want to play stupid political games. “Well, it was kindly done, whatever the reason. Thank you.”
Lucie gave an equally gusty sigh and cast a disgusted look in her sister’s direction. “Gods, but you are such a saint. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?”
“Pardon?”
Lucie’s patience evaporated, and she snapped, “Bri, will you grant me an audience or not?”
“Lucie, you don’t have to ask. You outrank me.” Brianna didn’t bother to hide her confusion. “If you wanted you could order me to strip and do handsprings and I’d have to do it.”
Lucie gave an unladylike snort of amusement. For just a moment Brianna saw a flicker of friendliness, but it disappeared so rapidly she decided it must have been her imagination. “Only for a day and a few hours. When the list comes out at sunset day after tomorrow you’ll be on it. I won’t. There’s limited space you know. Your victory over the doxies has moved you above Rihannon and dropped me from the list altogether.”
Oh, shit.
Brianna’s knees didn’t give out, but she couldn’t hide her shock and dismay. The list was exactly that—a list maintained by the oracles of the potential heirs of the High King that would be acceptable to Faerie. At regular intervals the oracles sent runners from their home in exile with the current list. But rumor moves faster than the fleetest messenger and news of changes to the list always seemed to leak before the actual announcement.
The last thing, the very la
st thing Brianna wanted was to be considered in line for the throne. Plenty of people, including some of her siblings, hated her enough to wish her dead already, without any added incentive.
In addition, Brianna truly believed she would be a bad choice. She had never understood people well enough to succeed at politics. Worse, if she ever were chosen, there’d be civil war. At least half, maybe more, of the people would refuse to follow her based on her mother’s history alone.
“You honestly don’t want it.” Lucienne stared at her, eyes wide with shock. “You always said you didn’t, but I never really believed you. After all, how could you not?”
“Easily.” The word popped out of Brianna’s mouth without thought.
Lucienne’s laugh was as rich and sweet as poisoned honey. “Diplomatic as always.”
“Just one more reason I’d be a disaster on the throne.” Brianna shook her head. “I don’t believe this. Your sources must be mistaken. The oracles would never consider me.”
“Oh, there’s no mistake. Trust me.” She would’ve said more, but fell silent at the sound of footsteps approaching from the main hall.
David managed to stay silent in the background, but he was shifting restlessly from foot to foot, obviously worried. He opened his mouth to speak into the silence, but the newest arrival beat him to it.
Morguenna appeared, blonde and elegant in her rose-colored healer’s robes. At her heels was the majordomo, in his usual impeccable navy uniform with a double row of polished gold buttons. He bowed low enough that his silvered braid trailed onto the floor. “It is good to see your grace again. How may I serve?”
“Hello, Saturnino.” Brianna gestured toward David. “Could you please escort my guest to his brother’s room and see to their comfort?”
