A Tale of Two Kingdoms (Knights of Black Swan, Book 6)

by Danann, Victoria

  “If your graces would indulge me, I’d like to ask for a guideline waiver. A young couple in Loti Dimension in need of sanctuary.”

  “Loti Dimension?” Culain looked up.

  “Yes. Of all things the prince of fae and princess of elves are a mated couple whose families have separated and imprisoned them because of an historical misunderstanding.”

  “You see?” said Ming Xia. “Culain’s children are always getting into trouble. I told you it would be a mistake to interfere. All we had to do was remain detached,” he looked at Heralda pointedly, “and objective and let them die out, which is what a strain ruled by passions is supposed to do.”

  “Kill each other off you mean,” said Rager drily.

  “What’s the difference?” Ming then changed to a falsetto tone to mock Culain, even though Culain didn’t have a high singsong voice. “I’ll give them arts – song, dance, and storytelling to use as an outlet for their passions so that it isn’t always expressed in war or lust.” He switched back to his normal voice. “Then when that didn’t work out, you got witch girl to meddle with the genetics so that they’re monogamous and mate for life. You thought then they’d stop killing each other over women.”

  “And they did, didn’t they?” said Heralda. “So why don’t you mind your own fucking business. Go back to your sudoku.”

  “Since when is Council business not my fucking business, Gothmerelda?” Theasophie drew air through her teeth when she turned over the next tarot card in the spread she was reading. “Every time we muck around stuff goes further off track and you know that. Look at this very thing. You introduced a new code to the genetics to spark the instinct toward mating and it was that very thing that almost ended the entire race when those twins were born and both of them wanted the same girl. Isn’t it ironic?”

  “Ming’s just jealous because he doesn’t have any children,” said Heralda.

  He gaped. “ JEALOUS?!? Look at the muddle your vampire have caused. I thank atoms every day that I don’t have children.”

  “Where’s Etana?” asked Hu. Culain, Heralda, and Minq all looked at him. “What!”

  “We all agreed when we started that if any of our hobby projects started to get out of control that we would take steps to insure that no individual interest threatened the group assignment. We don’t want to be stuck here forever, you know,” Ming continued even though no one was paying attention.

  “How long do you think it’s been since she was here?” Heralda cocked her head to the side and challenged Huber Quizno with a borderline sneer.

  “It’s been a long time. I know that. I’m just saying that maybe it’s time someone questioned where she is. Don’t you think? I mean in Earth terms it’s probably been…”

  “…two thousand years,” said Ming.

  “There! Two thousand years!”

  Heralda shook her head. “That’s not very long, Hu. She can’t stand to be around us because…”

  Hu took his cue and made the turkey gobbling noise that he did so well which had become their private code for the constant in-Council squabbling.

  “Exactly. You know she’s flitting from dimension to dimension trying to start peace movements.” Heralda laughed and shook her head. “She kills me. She was probably Cervantes’ muse.”

  Culain flopped into his chair and let his long athletic legs dangle over the arms. The movement drew Heralda’s attention. He was everything in the world she shouldn’t want. Copper hair, flawless skin that glowed, and eyes that twinkled so that he actually seemed to be a flaming light. What in the world would the mistress of dark magicks do with the master of arts and passions? Well, some ideas did come to her mind, but Culain had been far too busy bedding her creations the past six millennia to take notice of her. “What do you want to do about this, Culain?”

  At length, he sighed, then looked around. “Did any of you interfere with my peeps?” Silence. “Did any of you do anything that would cause the royal house of fae to mate the royal house of elves?” Silence. “Very well then. ‘Tis a trick of fate. Nothing more.”

  “Okaaay. Do you want Kellareal to help them or stay out of it?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at Heralda until she began to feel uncomfortable and squirm just a little. Then he grinned. Bastard. “What do you want?”

  “I’m a woman, Culain. That means I vote for true love.”

  He cocked his head. “True love. The mating instinct isn’t true love, love. It’s mating instinct. Not the same thing at all.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is true love?”

  “Who says I believe in true love?”

  It was Heralda’s turn to stare. At length she said, “Yes. I think we should allow our Enforcer to help them.” Her head jerked toward Hu as if she’d received a jolt of brilliance.

  “What!”

  “Hu.”

  “What!”

  “We do need to find Etana.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a perfect opportunity for a mediator. When Kellareal moves the young couple to a different ring, the ruling families, who will also be grieving families, may be of a mind to negotiate for a real and lasting peace.” She turned toward Culain. “Assuming that’s what you want.”

  Culain waved his hand in dismissal. In turn, Heralda nodded at Hu, who, said, “Yep. Perfect. How do we find her?”

  Once Ming was on a roll, he couldn’t be derailed easily. “And what about Theasophie’s religion gene? Now there was a great idea!”

  Theasophie looked up from her tarot spread. “They needed an outlet for the spiritual side of their natures.”

  “That’s what they’ve got us for.”

  “Oh. Us, is it? We’re no better than they are,” Heralda said.

  “We don’t have to be better to be worshipped. We used to have to do tricks from time to time. Now we don’t have to do anything. Thanks to Theasophie’s little experiment, if we weren’t here, I think they’d make us up.” Ming stood in front of the centerpiece in the room. It was a large holograph of the Earth spinning with its web of thousands of dimensions rising horizontally, circling, connected to the planet like an anchor. Each of the cells in the web was a reflection of that dimension that could be targeted or enlarged if any member of the Council wanted to see something specific.

  “Right,” said Rager. “I’ve always thought that blind worship was one of their better qualities.”

  Ignoring Rager, the others looked at each other. Culain spoke up. “Maybe, but I’m thinking Pierce and Prick Posse won’t agree. Could be hard to cover without notice now.”

  “We would have caught it earlier if someone hadn’t gotten lost in his little games when it was his watch.” Ming was looking at Huber.

  “Two words, Ming. Perfect storm,” said Hu. Ming sniffed and turned away. “Remember what happened when you tried to hide the fact that you gave crystal technology to Atlanteans by cleaning it up with water? It spawned myths all over about great floods, disappearing continents. Pierce went volcanic. He was literally foaming at the mouth. You remember that?” He looked around for confirmation.

  “Look,” said Heralda. “We agreed when we set all this in motion that we’d take turns watching the project. When everybody does their bit, it works. The trouble occurs when one of us comes up in the rotation and loses focus because he has the attention span of a human.”

  Everyone looked at Hu.

  “That’s right, Huber. I’m talking to you. Remember the Witch Trials in Volsrave Dimension? When Thee’s children were torturing mine? You were off watching pirates in the Caribbean.”

  He looked anything but remorseful.

  Heralda shook her head. “Okay, Theasophie needs to stop playing Solitaire sometime this century and deal with her religion gene mess before we have another Inquisition that no one is expecting.”

  “Ha! Oh!” Hu clapped. “Inquisition that no one is expecting. Heralda. You’re my favorite.”

  She
went on. “Right now let’s see if we can score redemption points by solving this little problem with Culain’s kids. What do they call themselves?” she asked Kellareal.

  “Elves and fae.”

  “Elves and fae. They don’t know they’re the same.” She glanced at Culain.

  Heralda loved Culain’s children like she loved her own. Each one of them had something of him in them. If they couldn’t sing, they could dance. If they couldn’t dance, they could spin a tale. If they couldn’t bind a spell with a story, they could light a room with the twinkle of an eye. If they couldn’t be optimistic, they could joke about their misfortune. He was the very embodiment of the Earth plane.

  “Now, these two pretty children are compelled to each other because of our mating impulse. Let’s fix this.”

  Huber looked at Heralda closely. “Why is it so important to you, Magick?” She blushed. “You’re a romantic!” Huber squeed and clapped his hands. “It has something to do with that vampire, doesn’t it? Tell us. Tell us what it is.”

  “It has nothing, or, er, little to do with the vampire.” She blushed harder and glanced toward Culain, but his attention was fully occupied with a Rubik’s cube.

  “What you’re working on then? What is it?”

  “What I’ve been working on? Um, well, I was thinking that it would be interesting to see what a fully actualized coupling looked like.”

  “Which language are you speaking right now?”

  “Social science. I mean, males and females experience sexual completion in entirely different ways.”

  “From the standpoint of brain chemistry,” Ming interjected.

  “Hmmm. They’re created in our image, but there’s a flaw in the design. Regardless of rumors about ‘coming hard’,” she put that in air quotes, “males always have the exact same orgasm. On a scale of one to five, it’s a five every time. Maybe they care who their partner is before and after, but during? No. Not at all.

  “When you scan their brains during climax, there’s a little portion that lights up. Look there. See that red spot. Females, on the other hand. Well, it’s like the stuff they sell at the fireworks trailer. Look here at the range. Tiny pop to whole brain light up explosive. I thought it would be an improvement on design if males could experience what females experience and the only way I could think of to create a shared experience was to have them ingest the chemicals flowing through veins near the brain.”

  She flushed again when she realized that Culain had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her with genuine interest for the first time in, well, ever. “And what was your conclusion regarding that experiment?”

  She smiled at Culain, loving that she had his interest for a moment. “Would you like to observe?”

  Culain came close enough that she felt his breath on her face. “No. I don’t want to observe.” He bent to her ear. “I want to participate. Show me.”

  “Ahem.”

  “Oh. Kellareal. Sorry. Didn’t mean to leave you waiting. Go grab the kids and find a suitable place to put them. Find Etana, fill her in on the details. Tell her we want her to come up with a story and sort this mess out.” He bowed. “You can go.”

  “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Elora reached for the phone, hoping to stop the ringing before it woke Helm.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “You need to get up and get dressed. I’m coming to get you.”

  When she heard Litha’s voice she came fully awake and sat on the side of the bed. “What? Why?”

  “Just do it. I’ll explain. I’ll be in your living room in three minutes.”

  “What is it?” Ram sounded sleepy, but was alert.

  “Litha will be in our living room in three, um, two and a half minutes. I’m supposed to be dressed. She’ll explain.”

  “Okay.” He found jeans where he’d left them on a chair and drug them up his body commando. He walked into the bath, swirled mouthwash, and ran a hand through his hair. A day’s growth of beard didn’t look bad on Ram because it was so blonde. He heard a rustle in the front part of the apartment. “She’s here.”

  “I’m hurrying. I need another two minutes.”

  Ram found Litha in the kitchen. He walked straight to the coffee server and looked at her. “You want?”

  She hesitated then said, “Yes. That would be helpful.”

  “She says she needs two minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “This about my sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “’Tis good?”

  He looked and sounded so hopeful, she was glad to get to be the one to tell him it was going to work out. “Yeah.”

  Ram smiled and nodded. “I’m no’ mad about the London shoppin’ trip. I know you have plausible deniability.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He found that snicker-worthy, even if it was too early to be funny.

  “If he’s laughing, it must be good news.” Elora came in, still straightening a sweater. “Got some of that for me?”

  “Comin’ up.” He looked at Litha. “Tell.”

  Litha turned to Ram. “Maybe you should leave first. I’m offering you plausible deniability.”

  He laughed. “Whether I deny or no’ ‘twill be determined, but no one is expecting plausibility from me. Consider me cautioned and proceed.”

  “Okay. I have this friend who’s an elemental, calls himself an angel, but… you know.”

  Ram and Elora looked at each other as if to silently say, “No. We don’t know.”

  “He works for this group called The Council. I don’t know what they are exactly, but they’re a species that’s way, way, way out of our league. Anyway, they maintain a kind of handbook for behavior of species that can travel interdimensionally, like myself. In other words, I couldn’t just pick you up and drop you in another dimension without the kind of trouble nobody ever wants to be in.

  “So my friend suggested that we grant Aelsong and her mate sanctuary somewhere off world until we can get some peace negotiated between the elves and fae, but we had to get permission first.”

  “So you got permission?” asked Elora.

  “Yes. Better than that. We got permission and they’re going to send someone to mediate between your family,” she looked at Ram, “and the fae.”

  “Litha. You did it.” Elora was looking and sounding a little awestruck.

  Litha laughed. “Well, yeah. Isn’t that what you were expecting? You did call me.”

  Elora rushed her and gave her a big hug. “You’re the best.”

  “That’s right. You’re still embarrassing me.”

  “So why am I getting dressed in the middle of the night?”

  “You’re going to be the cushion.” Ram was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and his lips pinched between two fingers. He and Elora exchanged a look. “I started thinking about how alarming it would be for the prince to have anyone simply appear in his secure quarters, much less a stranger asking to lay hands on his person so that he can spirit him away to another world.”

  “I see what you mean.” Elora’s gaze flicked to Ram and back to Litha. “So you think that if I, being someone he knows and trusts, appear in his quarters, he’ll be more inclined to go peaceably.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. So my plan is to go get Aelsong. My friend is going to take you to talk to the prince and then bring him to an undisclosed location that neither of you would be able to divulge upon questioning by Ram’s family.”

  “And Elora is bein’ left behind?” Ram asked. “I assume that someone will be gettin’ my mate out of the prince’s apartment before someone discovers that he is no’ there and she is?”

  “There is that risk, but it’s pretty small, a two or three minute window. I’m going to drop Song and go right back for Elora.”

  “That’s no problem,” Elora said. “It’s pretty unlikely, but if someone does catch me there with the prince inexplic
ably missing, I’ll just say he stepped out for a moment. By the time they’re able to process and form words, you’ll be there.”

  “And you think it would no’ be a problem to say that no’ only is the prince missin’, but two women were first there and then no’?”

  “Nobody believes stuff like that, Ram.”

  He lifted both his eyebrows and shoulders, then dropped both abruptly. “Okay, then. Have fun.”

  Elora stepped over and gave Ram a kiss on the ear, which never failed to make him smile. “Message for your sister?”

  “Oh, aye. Tell her all will be well.”

  “I will.”

  He caught her back as she turned away and spoke low into her ear. “You’re my cushion. Be safe.”

  Third Floor, North Wing, Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh

  Elora and Litha emerged from the passes and came to such an abrupt stop that it made Elora both dizzy and queasy. Apparently Litha felt like there wasn’t much room for error and, of course, she’d been right. The shadowed close had extremely narrow walls, but a good view of both the palace and pedestrian traffic a few steps away on High Street.

  “Elora Laiken, this is my friend, Kellareal.”

  Elora took his hand and tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. The combination of white blonde hair and black eyes was so exotic it was disconcerting. It took her a minute to realize that those eyes reminded her of Deliverance.

  “Hello. Wow.” She looked at Litha. “He’s even taller than Kay.”

  Litha chuckled. “He is. So we all know what we’re doing?”

  They nodded.

  “Let me check it out and make sure he’s alone,” Kellareal said. Elora opened her mouth to say, “Okay,” but closed it when she realized she would have been responding to air.

  She turned to Litha, wrapped her arms around her middle and jumped up and down in place. “You know some of us are at the mercy of weather.”

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t think…” Litha’s gaze jerked back to Elora. “I could start a fire.”

  Elora laughed loudly enough to make one person on High Street turn their head to see who was in the little alley. Luckily, they turned the other way before Kellareal reappeared.