But the question remained, why would Henry want Emrys to build a creature army for his defense? Wasn’t the house itself enough? Did Henry even know what his Trapper’s plans had been? She could only assume he had been responsible for bringing so many centaurs and gryphons to Wenderdowne, had overheard pieces of conversation hinting as much.
If this was true, then it was obvious where Emrys had gone during her escape into the caves. He hadn’t fled, but did what he did best, killed. Somehow this knowledge troubled her more than the mutilated creatures her plants had swallowed whole in the gardens. Amie was uncertain of which side Emrys was on, especially since reading Grim’s stolen parchment. So she had to wonder, if she crossed his path, would he kill her too?
“You all right, darling?” Dearg asked, gripping her elbow.
Glancing up to face him, she offered a quick smile before nodding. “Kind of afraid of what we’re going to find.” His eyes burned with compassion, sharing in her sorrows.
“I ken what you glimpsed Faye do has troubled your soul. So much has changed your perspective in so short a while. But I have seen thee wrap thyself around all of it in a way no one else could, my love.” He brushed her cheek with a stray flame-touched fingertip.
“I couldn’t get through this without you.”
“So let us finish it, Amie.”
Amie turned to face the familiar winding staircase and took her first steps. They passed Henry’s study, Underhill’s favorite haunt and the secret passage to the kitchens. Though the trail of blood and bodies had ended on the stairwell, as people struggled to run from each other and Wenderdowne’s solid walls, an echo of the dead followed her subconscious. Hopefully the something other in her gut was leading them straight to Henry instead of into the hands of her enemy.
Her room was almost exactly as she left it with her books sprawled over her bear rug. Evidence of Underhill’s rush to ready her for the ball was strewn over her unmade bed. Glancing about she wondered why the house would lead her here, until Dearg growled low behind her and his upper body sprouted with threatening flames.
She wasn’t expecting to find a figure staring out her window. With his back turned to her it was impossible to tell who she was waiting for to acknowledge her intrusion. Without his large feathered cap she had not recognized the golden hair now tied at the nape of his neck behind his head.
His silky cultured voice however was another matter. “So you’ve come back to us at last, in the final hour, aye?”
“Grimwich?” Amie tentatively approached before Dearg stopped her.
“Do nay go near that wirm, lass! He is a Rumplekin!”
Grimwich turned his head slightly to the left, revealing a tiny smirk. “Leave our Queen to make her own judgment, dragon! After what she has seen this night, I am certain she is ready to start calling the shots, as they say. Such actions are considered heroic, are they not, Jessamiene? According to form some other obstacles must have come in your way. Indeed, you have been your own obstacle from the start.”
Amie ignored him, pushing Dearg’s hand gently aside as she approached with silver and purple-hued sparks popping from her pores. Grabbing Grimwich’s arm, she swiveled him round to face her. “Where is everyone? Where is Henry?” She drew back when she saw the change that had come over his pretty features. His glamour was gone once again, revealing his indigo-tinted skin and large dark eyes. With his golden hair tied back and most of the frippery ripped off his costume he was even more unnerving than before.
His bold eyes raked lazily over her battle wear and a sardonic smirk tilted half his face. “Such a shame really. You could have been so much more than the archetypal heroine.”
“Oh my gosh, are you serious? We’re talking about literary structure now of all times?”
Tilting his head to the side with a ghost of a smile on his lips, he tested her further. “Writing meant everything to you, once. I read the files on your laptop.” Leaning forward he winked at her. “Compelling stuff.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the angry finger she was now shaking at him. Meddlesome Rumplekin, Underhill had called him and Amie finally understood why. Poking him in the chest, her protest came out as a strangled whine. “You stole my laptop! How did you even get it in the first place? And what about all the other things I brought with me? Did you steal them too?”
Covering a grin with his hand, he rubbed the laugh lines in his face. “Oh, I was tempted. Your unmentionables were very pretty.” A boyish laugh escaped from between his white teeth when she slapped him in the chest. “Swear upon my honor I’ve not told another soul about your writing or your…ahem…satin knickers. Except for the dragon, now he knows too.”
Glancing back to Dearg, she found his eyes downcast and a furious scowl on his rigid features. “Told you not to listen to him, love. He be a no-good meddler of the worst kind.”
Grimwich snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. “Aye? Truly, you would know something about that, wouldn’t you, Eddie.”
Amie frowned between them. “What are you talking about?”
“Has he not told you?” Grimwich smiled cruelly. “’Twas I who hired this miserable soul to kill you, my Queen.”
Amie couldn’t help the unhinging of her jaw or her shock. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but what she learned next went beyond surprise.
“’Twas Morcant who first commissioned me to find a means to the end of the threat of you. Aye, the very idea of you, this perfect specimen, with all our strengths yet none of our weaknesses. Should you return then she would never have had a chance to be at Iudicael’s side. Though I suppose she told herself it was only to appease the Exiled factions who also wanted you dead. Would you like to know what changed her mind, lassie?”
“Shut up!” Dearg roared, stepping between them, his flames now a dark blue and black shade. Amie grasped him, unhurt by the fire.
“Dearg, it’s okay. He’s just trying to get a rise out of us.” Then more loudly she said, “And it’s not working. I already knew Dearg was the one who was ordered to kill me. Obviously he failed. So what now? You gonna finish the job?”
“She would not allow it, lassie, not for one second could she destroy the child who so resembled her secret lover.”
To her ever-growing frustration, Grimwich returned his gaze to the war of powers outside. Sound climaxed beyond the walls with loud booms and cracks of fluid electricity, a necessary reminder of the world beyond her window. They could see the powers mark the dark sky in streaks of color. Unseelie were marked by the darker tint of their nixy, and the erratic violence with which it took form on the air. They had returned with the last of their army.
Grimwich’s voice was without its smooth foolishness now and heavily accented now. “For a girl with so many odds against her, you have done well. Couldn’t have penned it better meself.”
“Do you even know how to write?” Amie snapped, while continuing to calm Dearg with her inner nixy.
“Better than you know. I made more than a few enemies with my pen, Jessie.”
She froze at the nickname, the name no one ever called her but her family. “How do you know that name?” she demanded.
“Did you know my true name, Jessie? It should have been Grimm Rumpelstilzchen at birth, but my father changed the family name an age ago. We developed quite the reputation, Unseelie marrying into a Seelie fortune we could never inherit. Me father came from outside and seduced me rich mum inside before the war that split our two worlds. In all my two thousand years I’ve never met another like myself, like you.
“I wrote the stories of the Vale and published them through our human servant, lore I had picked up from my travels. Jacob and Wilhelm were happy to carry on our legacy from the outside. They helped me do what was forbidden and lost all chance of coming back for the chance at fame. ”
“Wait a minute, you said Grimm?” Amie blanched. “You make me feel seriously juvenile, you know.”
“I’ve been watching your st
ory play out for some time and those who came before you. But your story, Jessie, is the most compelling of all. The half human and half Sidhe daughter who was raised in both worlds and in time forgot both. The ending is unwritten, but you always have had a choice.” She opened her mouth but he silenced her with his next words. “Oh, I’m sure you think you already made it. But you cannot know what will happen next. Are you certain you’re ready for it?”
Amie observed him, this stranger, traitor and savior, and wanted to desperately unravel his story. He had read her books, her drafts, her hidden journals and therefore knew her more intimately than anyone ever had in her entire life. Almost like meeting her maker, Amie felt exposed and also curious. But there would be time for that later. Grim had directed her on this last leg of her journey and she was ready to know how it ended too.
Slipping her hand in Dearg’s, she set her chin and nodded. “Besides the fact I think it’s weird that all of you make your living being stalkers, I think I’m ready.”
Grimwich smiled, lifting his arm to point across the room and to the twin doors. One led to a secret passage which twisted through the dungeons and out the grounds. The other had ever remained locked. “They’re waiting for you.”
Amie gaped, disbelieving that after everything, Henry and the others had only been a room away. Dearg was only too eager to lead her away from Grimwich’s presence. Understanding his dislike for the man who had misled him, Amie was more than ready to follow him. Yet she called back, hand on the door’s handle, “I want my laptop back, you know.”
Grimwich tilted his head so a stray dirty lock fell in his gaze. “You belong here, Jessie, but don’t let them decide for you. Make your own way.” And then he turned from them, leaving the room so quietly it was as though he had never been there.
…
Past the doorframe was a long, downwardly sloping tunnel. They followed this by light of one of Amie’s white orbs and the ball of flames rotating above Dearg’s palm. Eventually they saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and at its end, a vast room older than any other part of the house. Beams supported rafters that no longer ended above them. The dank smell of the caves was fresh in this room, another of the hidden passages open nearby. It was with an odd sense of relief she entered the cradle of her home.
A fire smoked at the center of the wood-planked floor. Rugs and tapestries kept the small hall from being too chilled. But the image before her eyes made Amie wonder if she would ever feel warmth again.
Henry lay prostrate on a heavily furred pallet by the fire pit. Morcant sat perched at his side with his pale hand between hers. Brushing aside the surge of anger she felt seeing that woman comforting Henry, as if she had a right, Amie approached.
Polar opposite from the resplendent king among lesser men of the ball, her blood father was pale as a Tuatha and sickly as a Gremlin. Yet she wasn’t so much focused on his state but the way his dulled eyes shone as Morcant softly sang over him, the way he clutched her hand as if it were his lifeline.
Before she could take another step a tattered figure in purple skirts threw herself around Amie’s middle. “Milady!” Underhill exclaimed, “You have come back to us! Alastair, come hither! Oh, sweet Creator and all the blessed bildgedragons! We’ve been positively poshumicked with worry for ye, Lady Wenderdowne!”
Amie gasped for air and nearly managed to return the greeting when a pair of bear-sized arms hefted the both of them into the air and into his chest.
“’Bout bloody time, Jessamiene! Any later and I’d have been slashed for dead with this one in the room.” His voice had hidden the sorrow worked into the lines about his mouth. Cook was truly happy to see her but not for the reason she initially thought. Setting them down, he pulled back and settled his perceptive gaze first on the heiress and then to the weary stable hand behind her.
From across the ancient hall a feeble voice intoned, “Jessamiene?”
Breaking from Alastair’s embrace with a confounded mix of relief and regret, Amie rushed to his side. “I’m here!” Exchanging worried glances with a fretful Morcant, she surprised herself by the wave of compassion she felt for the murderous widow. Haltingly, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Morcant Hogswillow had, for whatever insane reason, saved her life at least twice. She had looked after Henry and gone turncoat on the very army she helped bring across their borders. The battle had worn away at her lavish dress and her tight chestnut curls frizzled around her head. Yet she was still somehow frighteningly beautiful and gentle at once. Pushing aside her own sorrow, the Unseelie inclined her head as a sign of respect before moving to stand with the others.
Amie grasped Henry’s hand in her own, locked eyes with him and was taken aback by the amount of love and penitence shining through the glaze clouding his vision. All the confusion and resentment she felt towards him for shielding her past blew away like chaff. “Henry…please stay with me. I can’t bear to lose you too,” she whispered, choking on a sob, then beckoned. “Everyone always leaves me.” She buried her face in his chest, shivered as something warm and sticky pooled beneath her cheek.
His hand lifted to stroke her hair. “Shh…it’s all right, child. It’ll be all right.”
“You’re hurt. Haven’t they tried to heal you yet?” Amie clutched onto the ruined fabric of his shirtwaist, afraid to move. His muscles clenched beneath her as a wave of pain flushed through his system. Squeezing her eyes shut she began to call on her inner nixy. They had the ability to make things grow, to infuse life into the darkness. If they couldn’t heal this, she would. Hadn’t Grimwich said she was stronger than them?
“No!” he harshly said, his grip tightening against her hair.
She pulled away at this, determination solidifying her resolve. “Are you kidding me? After everything you’ve put me through, everything you kept from me you just want me to give up?”
“Jessamiene,” Henry began but faltered at the hot tears pouring from her eyes.
“No! You can’t ask me to do this. I can’t watch you die!” As soon as the words had left her lips she realized that even though he had only been in her life a short time, losing him would be like losing herself. Instantly she had felt closer to Henry than the man who had raised her. She turned her vengeful eyes on a defeated Alastair and Underhill. The big man’s arms held the little hobgoblin maid close to him but Amie refused to acknowledge the apology on his face.
“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you going to do something?” Turning to Morcant she challenged her. “You’re supposed to be in love with him, aren’t you? Do something about it!”
“Jessie…” Henry whispered the treasured nickname, the one he had given her. Henry had never called Amie by this name since her return and it was enough to give her pause. “Some wounds are not meant to be healed. You and I still have one final task before the end. Healing me would claim too much of the strength you need, dear one.”
“You can’t ask me to let you die!” Bending over him, she found herself already memorizing his features and saw the telltale marks that whispered her true parentage.
We have the same chin, the same nose.
His smile was faint. “I should never have let Drustan take you away from me. Had I known he wasn’t coming back, I never…” His strength failed him as another wave of pain shook him.
Amie held on and let tiny rivulets of her power sink into him. “I know you’re my father. I’ve had dreams about that life ever since I was a kid. When I came back they started again, but I only recently realized what they meant. I want to hear the truth from you, Henry.”
After clenching her hand through another bout of pain, he rasped, “We both loved her, you know. She was like the sun and spring, like a draught of water we were incapable of not thirsting for. In those days she went by a different name, Isolde.” His eyelids fluttered closed as the memories swept over him. They opened with a new light, accompanied by the secret smile he only gave her. “You remind me so much of her sometimes, my little one. In the
beginning he did not love her, even though she was promised to be his bride. He was unaware of our involvement. Only later, after the first attacks came and I left the Vale to lead the army, did this change. I might have truly questioned which of us was your father had I not known the instant I held you in my arms. Isolde knew the truth would ruin Drustan. Even so, it was not easy for him to forget our betrayal. You should know you were happy living in Xcalibure. Drustan thought of you as his, I think, as you share one particular trait.”
Amie squeezed her eyes shut.
“But he had already given himself to another long before we made our pact with Dameri and her father. Alastair’s mother was never very strong. He rescued her from the wights’ attack, nursed her the last year of her life in secret. I believe Drustan loved her very much.”
Morcant gasped in disbelief, and Amie recalled what Grimwich had hinted of earlier about she and Drustan’s relationship. From behind them a chortled cry escaped the mountain of a man. Amie marveled how the tables had been turned. She recalled the cart ride back to Wenderdowne with Cook, learning about his ruined mother. Never could she have imagined the confused and awkward lad was her cousin.
Henry continued, his voice fainter with each unveiling of the truth. “Somehow those exiled from the Vale learned of your birth, a half human Seelie with the Emerald Eyes. Drustan heard whispers of the pending attack and stole you away the night they came. He promised to return to us as soon as it was safe, and I believe he would have. But they found him first.”
And then Amie recalled the mysterious visitor Faye had overheard in Drustan’s study, the sudden move and endless stream of society dinners. They had been so isolated before and Amie detested her parents’ sudden social climbing agenda. Now she wondered if the past had simply caught up to them. Had the exiles been prepping her for their own agenda all along?
Henry gasped, began to choke on his own blood, and Amie propped his head up with her hands, desperately searching for help. “Help us!” she shouted at Morcant. The widow had sunk to her knees, however, buried her face in her hands to mask her despair.
Silver Hollow Page 38
