by Nocturne
Maybe she was right, and he was the one who had always been afraid....
Slowly, letting the slick moisture bind their lips until the last possible second, he lifted his head to look down into her dazed eyes.
He skimmed his hands up her gold sleeves to the too-sharp point of her shoulders. “You need chocolate.”
She took a shuddering breath—whether at his touch or the thought of chocolate, he wasn’t sure—and swayed toward him. “I need only one thing…”
His body yearned toward hers in answer. “Yeah?”
She leaned fractionally closer to him, so her nipples—peaked through the silky gold—grazed his bare chest. “I want you…”
He swallowed hard.
“To let. Me. Go.”
She put no magic in the words, but his hands sprang open as if gremlins had wrenched back his fingers.
She stood there a moment without fleeing, poised with her wings half spread. Her unflinching gaze pierced him like the devastating light of the blue-amber sun, shredding him inside. It was he who stepped back.
A faint, mocking breeze swirled between them, bearing a drift of poppy petals. In the shadow under the tree, the blossoms were dark as old blood. He had told her once that his only fear had been not catching her. He had found her—it was his knack, after all—and yet somehow he had lost her too.
She finally averted her gaze, but her words seemed to pin him still. “If my wishes had any power, Hunter, I would wish that I would never see you again.”
As she turned on her heel, the obliging breezes billowed the train of her long skirt out behind her as she walked away, leaving him with the withering petals and the wild-sweet taste of her on his tongue.
Chapter Seven
Out in the sunlit world, the moon was waning, thinning the barriers between the realms until the gate magic was accessible even to the weakest phae—not that Imogene had seen sun or moon lately, since she lacked the spores to create even the smallest, shortest passage.
But the Queen had summoned all her courtiers to her, which meant some agitation in the phaedrealii. Perhaps the restlessness preceded a jaunt across some starlit moor or maybe a wild tear down some unsuspecting Main Street; the Queen’s stables provided horsepower in many forms.
Whichever way the phaedrealii went, Imogene knew she would not be attending, not since she had declined the Queen’s command to procure another victim for her magical dissections.
Imogene hadn’t denied the Queen to her face, but the goblin chancellor—who had relayed the command—looked as aghast as if she had.
“You must go.” The overbearing goblin slicked back his long, pointy ears in dismay. His sallow skin was more ghoulish yet in the pale blue-green light of the stolen smart phones strung on a cord around his neck. The phones blinked on and off with the images of ghostly faces. The glass and precious metals could be spelled to hold various magics, but Imogene didn’t want to know if the faces were leftover avatars of the former owners…or perhaps the former owners themselves. “The Queen says you seem to have a knack for bringing back the most expressively emotive subjects.” The goblin peered at her through his tiny white eyes.
No phae could force out the true nature of another phae’s knack—not even the Queen—though tricking, wheedling and guessing were considered acceptable tactics. But taboo or no, even the most obsequious courtier in the phaedrealii would be reluctant to find his knack the sole focus of the Queen’s formidable attention.
Imogene forced herself to remain impassive, her wings slack from her shoulders, while her mind whirled at the chancellor’s evident interest on the Queen’s behalf.
Why had the Queen noticed her? Were the impulsive little breezes a manifestation of a stronger knack? Imogene let out a slow breath to calm her racing pulse. She had always thought merely being sylfana had attracted the poor humans who had followed her to their doom. Yet now she wondered… Once, before her wings had unfurled and before the sylfana allure and aphrodisiac had fully manifested, she had freed a nameless wounded whelp to fly.
The memory of the full-fledged Hunter under her hands in the ruined cabin—his pulse and his cock rising to her touch—threatened her illusion of detachment. What else could she set free? For a moment, the possibilities diverted her. What if she was not as weak as she had always thought?
Just as quickly though, the truth broadsided her, knocking the breath from her lungs as easily as a tornado shred frail sylfana wings.
What she had most yearned for—to feel, to live, to be free—had run riot over the humans’ caution, loosed their inhibitions, unfettered their emotions…and ultimately meant their magical dismemberment to feed the Queen’s pitiless curiosity and need for power. And Vaile had taken a bigger risk than he knew, using her knack against her to ensnare her senses and ultimately her body. If she had Undone his phae prohibition against true emotion, he might have become like the old, mad Lord Hunter himself—or another victim of the Queen’s gruesome thievery.
Discovering her own power to set spirits free, now, when she was most thoroughly imprisoned, made her laugh until her throat burned as if she had swallowed pure iron.
The chancellor perked his ears and gave her a peg-toothed smile. “So you will go?”
She leaned down to return the smile. “Never, ever again.”
To her surprise, he had let her walk away, and the Queen had not pursued the matter. No one was pursuing her anymore. Maybe she had finally become the nothing she had feared, less meaningful even than her errant breezes.
So while the rest of the courtiers made their way to the throne room, she went the opposite direction, down into corridors of the phaedrealii she had never roamed. A few wisps accompanied her, and their tiny lights reflected off the old white tiles that lined the walls. When she trailed her fingers over the tiles, pieces flaked away to reveal packed earth. A red worm curved out of the dirt below her hand and plunged right back in, scattering dark crumbs on the cracked stone floor below.
The Queen’s illusions had not graced these halls for a very long time, perhaps not since iron ruled the sunlit world. For a moment, Imogene almost understood the need to fill the halls again with phae power…until the old tiles gave way to iron doors, staggered at intervals down the corridor into the shadows.
The metal filled the hall with cold power, older than the phae, and the wisps whirled in agitation. But Imogene crept to the first door.
It stood ajar, and the cell beyond was empty. She crossed the hall to the next door, two solid blocks of embossed iron. She reached for the small wooden latch in the center of the door and then hesitated.
Even through the iron, she sensed silence waiting on the other side—a silence so vast, the mischievous wisps hung motionless.
Ice rimed the doorway a hands-breadth thick, and as she watched, words appeared, melting into the white frost to reveal the black iron underneath: Touch. And die.
She hurried on.
The next cell was closed with nothing more than a churchyard gate. The whitewash had chipped off the iron bars, and the decorative spear points did not even reach the top of the door frame.
Not that this particular prisoner could escape…
In a rush of sick shock, Imogene wondered why they had bothered to lock the man up when they had taken his second leg.
She must have gasped because he pushed himself up onto his hips to stare at her with his one remaining eye. His collared shirt hung open, framing the ruin of his chest where the Queen had taken her prizes. “You.”
Hazel. His eye was hazel, and his hair was sandy; she hadn’t remembered those details about him. Now she would never forget, although there was nothing of blame in his eye or the hatred she expected. He was empty—that hatred having been taken by the Queen for her magics.
Imogene sank to her knees beside the gate. The nearness of the iron made her skin prickle like the first sunburn she had gotten on the Oregon coast, but the stone floor sucked the warmth from her palms. “I am so sorry. I didn’t kn
ow…” She swallowed back the pointless excuses.
“I did.” He pulled himself toward her and wrapped his fingers around the bars, immune as any human to the touch of iron. When he tipped his forehead into the gate, the metal rang with a hollow gong. “I knew better than to follow a pretty young girl into the alley, but we’d danced together all night and I wanted to think I’d be getting something more.” When he laughed, there was no humor in it, and the sound grated like the broken edges of tile. “I would never have believed this.”
She hunched her shoulders to avert her gaze from his mangled remains. “I almost don’t believe it myself.”
For a minute, they sat in silence. The wisps floated between the iron bars without touching.
Then the man reached out to grab her hand. “Can you make this all a bad dream?”
At the clammy chill of his skin, she felt as if a dozen red worms had squirmed down her spine. “This time, it isn’t an illusion.”
“I want to go.”
“I might be able to get you out of the cell, but you can’t leave.” She eased out of his grip. “The Queen’s magic is the only thing…”
“The only thing holding me together?” He snatched at her wingtip instead, holding on with more force than she thought could still remain in him. “I wish what is left of me would just fall apart, and then I’d be gone.”
The crumpled edge of her wing ached, but she was frozen by the tear that welled up in the man’s hazel eye. Apparently the Queen hadn’t taken everything from him.
The wounds… The tear… The wistful words… Though the white stone hallway was nothing like the blood-soaked Hunter den where the old Lord had come Undone, Imogene stiffened against the intrusive memory.
Except… The broken whelp who became her Hunter had wanted to fly again, and her knack—not just a wayward breeze, but a powerful yearning—had knit phae magic and sylfana wishes into his wing, just as it had loosed him from his chain.
Could she do it again?
Hesitantly, she closed her eyes. From nowhere, a faint draft ruffled her lashes, and her eyelids fluttered with the effort to restrain herself from the urge to rise and run from this man whom she had once led astray. At least this time he could not follow her. She tightened her hands into fists, as if she could hold herself in place.
“I just wanted…” he murmured.
Of course the poor man had wanted; as a sylfana, she had made him want. Now she had to deliver something real, not illusion. And if he wanted to leave the phaedrealii, well, she could certainly understand that.
She summoned up the sensations she had pursued in the sunlit world, how she had felt when she was free, the wind under her wings…
The gust that whirled down the hall whipped her face with dust and the stinging ends of her hair. Her clenched fists—and her eyes—sprang open in surprise, and she braced herself against the man.
The dead man.
She sat back hard against the wall, and her knuckles glanced off the iron. She bit back a scream, but the smell of seared skin made her eyes water and she clutched her hand to her chest.
The man had been dead enough before, considering all the Queen had stolen, but something had remained as a spark in his hazel eye. Now that too was gone, leaving him just another pile of dust and dirt in the abandoned cell block. And she had forgotten to ask his name.
“Is this how you wished to be gone?” The whisper of her breath set the wisps dancing. “Because this is not how I meant to free you.”
Was she the first sylfana ever to kill a man? The court had its share of murderous phae, but its fairy princesses would never dream of such mayhem. Though Vaile had told her she had launched an exodus with her escape, she had never wanted to change so much that she became a killer herself.
Her eyes burned with the wind-flung dust and tears she would not allow to fall. No one would share her horror and guilt—except maybe a Hunter who had killed his own Lord.
Of course, Vaile had conjured other feelings in her she wasn’t sure the phae even had words for…
Thinking of him triggered a hot rush of longing, and she clamped her arms and wings tight as a cocoon around her, as if she could ward off her own wishes.
She didn’t want to want—not anymore.
Though everything in her wanted to flinch away, she looked at the husk of the man slumped against the iron bars. The Queen’s magic, which had animated him, was gone, and already his remains were crumbling into the exposed dirt between the tiles and broken stone.
This was her other choice. The poor man had his emotions stripped from him by force, but if she backed down, she would be giving hers away for free.
No, she didn’t want the burning in her throat, the sick churning in her stomach as she reached down to stroke her fingers over the dead man’s lashes to close his eye before the worms claimed him. To avoid such ugliness, the phae had relinquished their true feelings to the Queen in return for sheltering under the power of her illusions. But their sanctuary had become a prison.
The man’s emotions had been stolen. The phae had deliberately forgotten theirs. Was she deluding herself to believe she had any other choice besides these two?
She could sit here beside her last victim until she too moldered, or…
Imogene snapped her wings wide, which yanked her to her feet.
She had run away once. Maybe the time for running had passed.
Chapter Eight
The court was restless. It breathed out of time, and the languid glory that was its specialty seemed to have morphed into a blend of crouched to pounce and poised to flee. The vaulted crystalline walls—the illusion du jour in the phaedrealii—resonated with the edgy mood, like a thinly blown glass goblet about to shatter.
Even the will-o’-the-wisps were jittery, their normally drifting flight patterns spiking like a seismograph predicting the end of the world.
Vaile stalked the outer edges of the throne room, equidistant from his brethren patrolling nearby. The nearness of the Queen’s magic stripped them of their camouflaging Hunter mist, so he kept his wings folded in a high, tight arc behind his head. The intimidation factor added by the talon-tipped vanes was worth the tension in his shoulders from holding his wings in suspension.
Whispers spooled out around him as he walked toward the throne room doors.
“Hunters…” he heard. “Dirty, dangerous… Shouldn’t be in here…”
“…after the sylfana…”
He refused to listen to more.
Dirty was justification enough to bar Hunters from the potent beauty of court. As for dangerous, well, some were just better at hiding it.
But they were right; he was dirty. Before he had been abruptly recalled to service the Queen’s gathering, he had been tracking a manticore. The half lion, half scorpion had slipped out through an unwatched gate. Although the man-headed creature was clever enough to sneak away unnoticed, that particular gate was unwatched because it opened to an ice field in Greenland. Vaile had found the desert-born manticore half frozen, and only the scorching fire of the blue-amber sun had melted the wretched beast out of the tundra. But he had refused to consider euthanizing the creature, not when it begged for a second chance. Instead, he used almost all his gate spores to sprout a circle of lichens large enough to drag the manticore back to the phaedrealii. Who was he to condemn the creature’s hopeless but heartfelt desire to run under the desert sun?
The reminder of his own failings stabbed him like the manticore’s scorpion tail. With his leathers still dripping from the ice and tracking muddy boot prints behind him, his mood was every bit as foul.
So dirty, yes, and dangerous too… The phae were wise to avert their gazes and step back from his impatient circuit.
From his position a quarter way around the hall from the Steel Throne, he had only a sharply angled view of the enormous double doors. At the moment, the doors were fashioned into two half circles of shining wood etched with steel filigree, closed tight together like an inescapab
le spiderweb. Within the throne room, the glimmering veins of steel grew ever thinner until they converged on the throne itself. Some other time, the Queen might conjure another look, but this one was a classic. Maybe she, too, felt the restlessness and hoped to keep the rabble in line with a reminder of her abiding power.
Vaile ran one finger under the edge of his studded Hunter collar and flicked out a chunk of ice that had been melting down his chest, unnoticed. When had he gotten so cold?
He cut a glance toward the throne where the Queen sat at the center of all those steel threads, appearing to beam with silvery light. She posed with her head tilted to one side, listening to her favorite courtier, the elf who seemed to be trying to compensate for his rounded human-looking ears with the pompously high points of his collar. Streaks of silver decorated the Queen’s black hair, but that too was illusion; her beauty was ageless and infinitely sharper than the elf’s collar, a match to the net of honed diamonds that ringed her bared neck.
As a powerfully attractive phae and as his liege, she should have won all his attention. Still, his gaze skipped past to the grouping of her attendants. Undines, dryads, nymphs and the squat goblin who served as her chancellor stood arrayed on the tiers of risers that spread out around the throne.
But no Imogene.
As if the ache in his shoulders wasn’t bad enough, his chest tightened with misgivings. He hadn’t seen her since the poppy field when she had turned her white-winged back on him and walked away, with crimson petals drifting behind her. The memory still burned in his mind.
He touched the blue amber pendant through the front pocket of his leather jeans. Giving her the necklace had been madness when she could have turned its power upon him. He hadn’t needed the touchstone on her person to track her; his knack didn’t require help. But at least the amber warned other Hunters to stay away, that she had been claimed by one of their own. When she had thrown the necklace back at him, she had lost that protection.
