by D. D. Miers
"Did he ever tell you about the time he tried to capture the questing stag?" Gwydion went on.
One of Hern's dogs started growling, and Hern gave it a strange look.
"Idiot thought he could lure it by turning himself into a doe. After two weeks of prancing around the King's Wood flirting with any ungulate he came across, he'd fallen down a ravine twice, nearly been shot on three separate occasions, and ended up pregnant by a completely mundane deer. The fauns were born with six legs apiece."
He imitated the wiggling faun legs with a decidedly spidery gesture of both hands, and the giggles in the crowd erupted into genuine laughter. Hern's dog barked, drowned out by the mirth of the court.
"What about the time he let a hag lure him into bed?" Gwydion kept going, apparently intent on trotting out every humiliating anecdote he knew about his brother. "When he saw her by the light in the morning, he tried to steal her horse to run away, and she cursed him to follow the horse around eating whatever it 'produced' until Arthur returned to England. You wouldn't believe the feats I had to achieve to get him loose. It took me a month of work. And all the while he's dragging himself after this horse, feet worn bloody, face streaked with tears and horse mud, bawling like a child for me to save him. What a miserable, piteous, revolting, spineless, vain excuse for a—"
"Shut up!"
Hern's dog barked and rose up on its hind legs, becoming, in an instant, Gilfaethwy himself. Gil stormed forward to grab Gwydion by the front of his shirt, murder in his eyes. "You swore never to speak of the horse incident!"
"And in return, you swore to never again steal from me," Gwydion replied, all the humor gone from his face. "As you have clearly not held up your end of the bargain, I am under no obligation to maintain mine. I could return you to following that horse around with a snap of my fingers if I cared to. But instead, I'll just do this."
He turned to look at Titania.
"My brother, delivered as promised, and all without leaving this courtyard."
Gilfaethwy paled, realizing he'd been baited. Titania did not look pleased. Her amusement had vanished the moment Gilfaethwy revealed himself. "Indeed."
"But, as usual for this place," Gwydion went on, "the game was rigged from the start. You knew where he was and what he was doing from the beginning. Though your consort, I'm assuming, did not. Did you, Hern? She sent you after prey she would never allow you to catch!"
Hern's face went through a complicated progression of shock, hurt, and finally anger.
"You have forgotten your law, servant of Mab." Titania spoke, her voice like a sudden summer downpour as cold as it was unexpected. "And your place as a guest in this court. By law, he is an exile from this court. I could no more order him to do anything than I could refuse to order his capture and execution on sight."
"No, but you could certainly turn a blind eye!" Gwydion said, pulling away from Gilfaethwy.
Several of Titania's guards brandished spears as Gil tried to back out, though they were clearly uncertain whether or not to arrest him.
"Pretend not to notice his presence as he walked through your forest, as he stood before your very throne, as though you would not recognize him and any other member of your court the moment he set foot in Tir Na Nog. No, you could give him no orders, but you could certainly ignore his presence while he carried out orders that benefited you. And who gave him those, I wonder?"
The air had grown painfully warm, and Titania grew larger on her throne, the branches of the tree spreading to become the pillars that bore the sky, her eyes like the sun itself. But Gwydion was unafraid and raged on, shouting at her.
"I have forgotten no law! I have kept and followed the law as none of you have, you who would twist it into whatever shape benefits you most! By letter or spirit, your deal was a lie, and I have performed for you an impossible task—returned to you that which was never lost without taking a single step—and I am owed a question answered truthfully! By the law, you must answer!"
"Ask, fool." Titania's voice was the roar of the fires of the sun and the furnace at the core of the planet. "Pray I find your question amusing."
Gwydion smiled.
"What did the mortal Aethon Tzarnavaras offer you?"
"He offered nothing," Titania said, the earth shaking, the mosaic tile beneath us cracking and spewing jets of burning steam. Ethan dragged my body clear of one, looking for an escape and locked eyes with Gilfaethwy, who stared at him with a strange intensity. "But his victory will mean final, eternal victor for the Seelie. Aethon Tzarnavaras will murder death. He will bring an end to entropy, to cold and to winter. The Unseelie who feed on death will weaken and diminish in the face of an immortal world, an amarantine summer which will burn like an eternal wildfire across this and all realties.
"He's insane!" Gwydion shouted. "He'll destroy everything! Life can't be without death!"
Ethan scrambled to his feet to drag me away from another explosion of steam. From the broken tile, plants heaved, and trees burst, growing at such speed that we were surrounded by a primeval forest in a second. Hern's hounds ran howling around his feet, nearly tripping Ethan as he tried to keep me away from the boiling steam and wild growth.
"But we are not alive." Titania was a monolith among the massive trees, a sculpture on an ancient temple, a mountain, the sun itself glaring down through the branches. "We are eternal. Our lives are unbroken rings. I will scatter your atoms across a billion stars and still you will exist and one day walk once more. When you do, I, too, will be here to tear you apart again.”
"But not today," Gwydion declared. "Now!"
Ethan snatched the teleportation staff out of Hern's startled hands, throwing it toward Cole, who snatched it out of the air and hurled it at Gwydion. Gwydion caught it with one hand, the other fisted in Gilfaethwy's shirt. He slammed the staff into the ground and hurled his brother through the portal, swiftly followed by Ethan, carrying me. Cole was an inch behind him, grabbing Gwydion's hand to ensure he wouldn't be left behind.
They landed in a jumbled tangle of limbs in the middle of one of the backrooms of Julius's bar, smashing a table on the way down. The people currently in the room shrieked, running for the door. Julius appeared a second later before everyone could even get off the floor.
"Help her," Ethan said before Julius could even ask a question, holding up my unconscious body. "Please."
Chapter 4
There was a confusing rush of activity because Cole's exhausted relief at being safe again affected the memory. He knelt by my unconscious body, watching things happen around him. Ethan, sprawled on the other side of me, looked in shock. He and Cole shared a look of perfect understanding that only people who have been through terrible things together know.
I'm pretty sure Julius clapped his hands and split into two perfect clones of himself, one of which gestured and caused the broken table to reform under me (Ethan and Cole fell back, startled, into chairs) and the other grabbed Gilfaethwy by the scruff of his neck as the clearly disoriented Fae tried to stand up.
"Sorry for the intrusion, Julius," Gwydion said with deceptive calm as he got to his feet and straightened his clothes. "Just caused a bit of a scene at the Seelie Court. You know how it is. Might need to lie low for a moment."
The Julius I was mentally referring to as Julius A leaned over me where I lay on the table, taking my pulse and checking for signs of injury. Through Cole's senses, I knew he scanned me magically as well.
"Oh, I've been there," Julius B said to Gwydion. "Your brother might not appreciate my hospitality here, however. As you recall, his welcome has been revoked."
Another vague memory of Cole's informed me that magical beings who forced their way into private areas where they hadn't been invited lost all their power. I tried to ask him if that was where the vampire thing came from, but he just hushed me because we were almost to the end of the memory.
Julius B held Gilfaethwy up a little higher. Gil hung limp as a kitten, pale and miserable.
"Ho
w did you get in here, anyway?" Julius B asked. "Teleport spells don't usually work when they target this place. In fact, I've put a lot of effort into making sure they don't."
Gwydion picked up the teleportation staff from the floor and gave it a flourish, offering it to Julius B, who took it with a nod.
"Ah, the Opener of Ways," he said, gazing at it like an old friend. "I once used it while, ahem, courting someone trapped at the center of an unsolvable maze. Very convenient. And a dangerous loophole in my security!"
"Luckily, there's only the one these days," Gwydion replied. "And assuming Gil doesn't get his hands on it again, it should remain tucked safely away in my umbrella stand for the foreseeable future."
Julius B offered Gwydion his brother and Gwydion took an awkward step back.
"I was actually wondering if you wouldn't be willing to babysit Gil for a while," Gwydion said. "He broke my best cage and I can't let him run free as he's apparently working with Aethon and you're the only one who can handle his shenanigans. Standard boons would apply, of course."
"Of course," Julius B agreed.
"I'll cash in one of those boons right now," Julius A said, pushing up one of my eyelids to peer into my eyes. "Get me the Death Rattle."
"If it's for her, it's on the house," Gwydion said at once, and Julius B handed him the staff back. He opened a portal, vanished for less than half a minute, then returned with a leather rattle that, when shaken, always sounded like it was directly behind you. He handed it to Julius A, along with a heavy beaten copper palm-sized coin marked with a caduceus, a skein of ragged black fabric, and a humming misty orb.
"I brought you the Invitare Hermes, the hide-me-from-death, and, uh, this thing. I'm not sure what it does but I was told it has healing properties."
Julius B had been building a set of silver manacles out of thin air for Gilfaethwy and looked up at this, raising an eyebrow at the orb.
"Magically preserved aether testicle," he declared at once, turning back to his work. "Interesting as a taxidermy specimen, but they're only useful when fresh, I'm afraid. I hope you didn't spend too much on it."
Gwydion cursed his eyes briefly murderous. Whoever he'd bought it from was in trouble.
"The other thing you have in your coat might be more useful," Julius A said casually. He had draped the black cloth over my eyes, set the coin on my chest, and was shaking the rattle over my body, head cocked and listening carefully. "Don't pretend you don't have it."
Gwydion looked briefly guilty, then pulled the Candle of the Covenant out of his coat, carefully wrapped in a paper gown from the hospital and an insulating layer of woven magic, glittering silver.
"You took it?" Cole said, eyes widening, surprise swiftly turning to anger. "And you didn't tell us?"
"When should I have told you exactly?" Gwydion said with cool indifference. "While we were leaping through the portal? While we were trying to escape Titania? I was simply going to hold onto it until its rightful owner awoke."
Julius A took the candle carefully, the magic keeping it from coming in contact with his skin.
"I'm surprised you managed to take it at all," Julius A said, turning it as he looked it over curiously. "The security magic on this is significant. And I should know."
"Well, I am an expert in handling dangerous enchanted objects," Gwydion said with a small sniff of pride.
"You've killed both of us by taking that."
Everyone's head turned as Gilfaethwy spoke up, slumped against Julius B in his new silver manacles, looking half dead.
"Aethon will never forgive you," Gil went on. "He'll tear the world apart to kill you for this."
"Well then it's a good thing I'm not interested in being in his good graces," Gwydion said lightly. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm already opposing him rather actively."
Gil shook his head. "Idiot," he muttered. "You never did know how to pick the winning side. Aethon is a power this world has never seen. He's going to succeed. And when he does, it will shift the power balance between the courts forever. My involvement would have been enough to restore my position!"
Gwydion scoffed. "Titania will never restore you," he said. "You insulted her personally. She'd die first."
"She let me back into Tir Na Nog! I stood among the court!"
"In disguise. As part of a subterfuge. She was using you. Do you honestly think she would ever acknowledge you after what you did?"
"What did he do exactly?" Julius B asked. "I could never convince him to tell me."
"He got too ambitious and attempted to cultivate a rivalry with a Lord of the Court," Gwydion said with a weary sigh. "A Fae so far above his station that he might as well have challenged Oberon himself, for this was in the days before Oberon's death. A foolish move which he might have still turned to his favor, but instead he decided to steal the Silver Stag mirror from me and humiliate the man. Cornered him at a party and had him spill his most embarrassing secrets for the entertainment of the crowd, insulting his sexual prowess in particular. Until finally, he used the mirror to force the lord to point out his most recent partner, that he might give the unfortunate person his sympathies. And the lord pointed out Queen Titania, humiliating her in front of her own court and her husband."
"No wonder she wanted him dead," Julius B said, shaking his head. "Poor Gil. You always bite off more than you can chew."
"Not this time," Gil insisted. "This would have saved both of us! We could have gone home, Gwydion!"
"If you had ever paid an ounce of attention to anything but yourself you would know I have no interest in going home," Gwydion replied evenly. "The politics, the constant backstabbing, the hypocrisy. I hated every moment of it. I hate what the courts have made of the law, and I hate what the law in their hands makes of us. I tell you in perfect honesty, I have been far happier in these years since our exile than I ever was in my eons of service to the court."
Gil, if possible, turned a shade paler, shocked and bewildered.
"Come along, Gil," Julius B said, adjusting his grip on the Fae to hold him up a little better. "Let's find you a nice locked room to rest in."
He carried the limp Fae out while Julius A remained, examining the candle.
"How is she?" Ethan asked, voice tight with anxiety. "Is she all right?"
"It looks like she took the full brunt of the candle's warding spells," Julius A said with a frown. "Probably a defensive hex of some kind. I'm surprised it didn't kill her."
I listened to the conversation I'd heard earlier, this time from Cole's point of view. What I'd missed when my ability to listen had cut out was just him carrying me to a small, empty room with a bed. There was no window, but he summoned two chairs for Ethan and Cole, who insisted on staying with me.
"You're about caught up now," Cole said, trying to stop the memory.
"Wait," I said. "Hang on just a little longer."
Ethan sat sitting beside me, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Hideous guilt ripped through me. I needed to be there, I needed to comfort him.
"Really, there's nothing important after this," Cole tried to insist, but I dug my metaphorical nails into the memory and held on. Ethan was right there, right beside me from the perspective of Cole's memory. And I couldn't do anything to help him. I saw Cole's hand twitch, raising an inch before aborting the gesture. I realized my guilt had an echo. Cole was feeling it, too. His emotions in the memory were a tangle of worry and longing and sympathy for Ethan that were so intense, they hurt even to experience secondhand. Cole found the courage to put a hand on Ethan's shoulder, and Ethan leaned into the contact, taking a deep breath as he tried to get control of himself.
"Everything will be fine," Cole said quietly. I heard the war in his thoughts. Meaningless platitudes were useless and would just cement himself as an idiot in Ethan's eyes. He endured these thoughts and pushed past them with a kind of tired resignation. "She isn't dead, so there's still hope. Julius will figure something out."
"If he doesn't, we will,"
Ethan replied, taking his hands from his face. His eyes were red but steely with certainty. "She was willing to do anything to stop the curse. I can't do less for her."
Cole recoiled instinctively from the word “we.”
Doubts shouted from the back of his mind. Not my responsibility, just here for the candle. Can't help anyway, only screw it up worse. I'm not yours, she's not mine, don't act like we're something we're not because if you keep acting like it I might believe it and then when it falls apart—Cole shook it off, the only visible reaction a certain tightness in his jaw.
"I'll do whatever I can," he said finally, pulling away. "But if she does die I'm taking the candle. I've got my own plans for it, remember?"
Cole tried to ignore the hurt Ethan tried to hide. His thoughts drifted toward those reasons, memories bubbling up dark and old, and I realized I could easily leave this memory to explore them.
"Cole," Ethan said quietly, reaching for the other man's hand. "You know, you don't need to pretend—"
"That's enough."
It was Cole, but not the one in the memory. It was one in my head with me, who threw on the brakes all at once and tore me out of the memory.
I was back in the endless dark space. Cole sat in front of me, face red, looking pissed.
"Don't do that," he snapped. "Ever. Just because I agreed to show you some memories doesn't mean you have a free pass to run around in my head."
"Sorry," I said immediately, guilt gnawing me. "I got carried away. I'm just worried about Ethan."
Cole frowned, then stood up.
"Anyway, that's everything you need to know," he said, shrugging his jacket higher on his shoulders. "We have the candle. We're going to the Curators tomorrow to see about breaking whatever the spell on you is. Julius is still looking, too. Everything will be fine, so just sit tight."
I realized he was getting ready to leave and scrambled to my feet.
"Wait, don't leave," I said, embarrassed by how desperate I sounded.
"I can't stay in here this long," Cole said. "And I've got research of my own to do."
