by R. F. Long
“Aidan!” Daire yelled, as understanding came over him. “The other way! It’s a trap!”
Like a silent explosion, light and air burst from the tree line in a concussive wave. It struck Aidan and his charge full in the face, snapping their heads back as if they’d run into a wall, and they tumbled back on the rough ground. A stunning spell. Daire could feel its vibrations reverberating through the air. It left a taste of cloying honey-sweetness in the back of his throat. He turned and staggered forwards as it impacted against his back. His balance shook, but held.
Lorcan attacked, his fae-enchanted sword cutting through the air so fast that it sang, the death cry of the banshee. Daire barely got the parry in, twisting his blade to position at the last minute, the shock of the collision running up his arm. Blade for blade, Lorcan was Daire’s match. They had learned together, trained together, traded blow for blow for all the years of their childhoods.
And old habits, old mistakes, died hard.
Lorcan overreached his blade, and Daire thrust in under his sword arm, the blade nicking clothes and skin underneath. Lorcan cursed and Daire lunged in to finish the job.
Lorcan dissolved before him, a column of smoke that dissipated on the night’s air, and fluttering leaves came to rest on the grass. Gone, for now, but only driven off, not defeated. Not gone far.
Daire ran to Aidan’s side, not daring to sheathe his sword. His brother stirred weakly and only then did Daire realise he was hurt. Leaves and dirt masked no wound, but his brother lay as one dead, still and limp, unresponsive.
“Aidan?” Daire whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Aidan squirmed at the sound of his voice, but didn’t open his eyes.
The wind was rising, stirring the leaves around them, driving dark clouds across the sky and blotting out the remains of the daylight. She was coming. Daire knew it. And in their current state, neither he nor Aidan was any match for Aynia Ní Fuamnach. But Lorcan was her liegeman, her servant and he must have told her they were here.
Daire took his sword and plunged it into the soft earth, feeling the blade bite deep and hold. Then he knelt beside his brother.
Aidan moaned as Daire slid his arm under his shoulders, preparing to lift him. “If you can hear me, brother, listen. I’m going to try something. We’ll need to act at once when I do.”
“You shouldn’t move him,” said the girl, her voice more strident than he would have expected. She had been terrified, helpless, and now she decided to argue. Now, when he needed her to be silent and obey, she argued.
Daire bit back a snarl. There was no time. His strength was failing in this mortal world and Aidan’s was almost spent. If they were to have any sort of chance, it had to be now.
“I do what I must. Get to your home and be safe. Forget what you have seen. This is no place for the likes of you.” He lifted Aidan, holding him as gently as he could.
“The likes of me?” she exclaimed, pushing her unruly hair back from her face. “What is that supposed to mean? Just what do you…?”
Her voice fell to shocked silence and the air around them stilled abruptly. Daire cursed beneath his lead-weighted breath and within him an ancient instinct sighed, “Too late.”
Aynia glided from the tree line on artful feet, beautiful and sleek, a huntress. Lorcan trailed behind her like a dog. Four of her other guards flanked her. Daire’s sense of danger grew. Not from her guards. He could handle such scum. It was Aynia. Her face remained calm, but he could see the glint of triumph in her violet eyes. She shook back her hair, glossy and dark like a raven’s wing, and smiled her cutthroat smile.
Daire gripped the sword and unleashed his power. Magic spiralled down the bronze blade, the entire store of magic within his heart, crackling against the metal and burrowing into the soil, driven by his will.
The ground reared up under his opponents as root and vine erupted, seizing her guards and tossing them left and right.
Only Aynia stood unaffected, the calm at the centre of his world-storm, her hair billowing out behind her. Once he had run his fingers through that hair, whispered words of love while his lips had brushed against her flawless skin. Before she turned traitor.
“You’re weaker than I remember, Daire.” She stretched out her hand. Something thudded against his stomach, almost bowling him backwards, but he kept his footing, holding Aidan and trying to push all the remaining energy at his disposal through the sword and into an attack. But it was slipping away, his strength fading. Cursing the mortals, their world and their iron, he strained to renew his efforts, but the magic within him spluttered and failed. The garden and the forest beyond it started to calm and Aynia’s companions picked themselves up.
Daire swore as his vision blurred. He was weakening. The putrid air and the frailer nature of this world not only drained him, but made the environment more difficult to control.
“Two princes of the Seelie Court,” Aynia gloated. “Our rewards will be without measure. And what entertainment you’ll both provide. Take them.”
Before the Dark Sidhe could move, the mortal woman reached out and closed her hand over Daire’s where it rested on top of the sword hilt. Her palm felt like something carved from ice. The jasmine-and-orange-blossom scent of her overpowered him again, and with it came something else, something totally unforeseen.
Power flooded his system, glowing through his eyes, through the pores of his skin, warm and blinding, speeding his heart and wringing breath from him. Such fire could not be wasted, would not allow itself to be wasted. It seized him with an imperative all its own.
Rushing to obey while its power burned hottest, he turned it directly on Aynia. She screamed in fury, falling back against the onslaught. The Dark Sidhe dissolved to shadows once more.
“What did you do?” the woman gasped.
“What did I do?” He pulled his hand clear of both her and the sword. His skin tingled where she had touched him, glowed everywhere else. “I used whatever you just gave me, woman. But we haven’t much time. I must get him to safety.”
He hadn’t expected her aid, but she moved without his say-so and between them they lifted Aidan and retrieved the sword. Was it his imagination that the hilt still felt warm, or that the back of his hand itched with a need he couldn’t define, a need to feel her touch again? Madness. And thoughts that did not become a prince of the Sidhe.
Daire led the way, swiftly as he dared, through the woods to the stone circle where the veil parted. Evening wore on and the moon would soon rise. With sun or moon falling on it, the gateway would not budge without the most powerful enchantments—magic far beyond him—and he needed to get his brother to safety.
The woman, brown haired, solemn eyed, helped him carry Aidan through the forest without a word of complaint. For that Daire felt grateful because he couldn’t be sure he would have been able to carry him alone. He needed whatever help she could give. She staggered under the weight of the unresponsive body, her body still bearing the hallmarks of one left dazed from such a powerful casting. She would sleep sound tonight, if the nightmares let her. Even so, Daire could not allow her, a mortal, to see the way back. The old saying was ingrained in his memory, as much a part of his early lessons as how to count or write in ancient ogham.
Iron born and iron bred.
Trust not iron, it will see you dead!
On the banks of a stream, within easy reach of the slope leading to the circle, he stopped and laid Aidan on the ground.
“My thanks, milady,” he told her with a bow. “But you must leave us here. I am sorry for any distress my brother and I might have caused you.”
“But…but who are you?” She gazed at him with eyes bright as amber and pushed her hair out of her face with a trembling hand. An attractive thing, though her looks were nothing like the beauty of the Sidhe. Frail and mortal, a mayfly existence, yet beautiful nonetheless. In another time, another place, he might have—
Daire shook his head, dismissing that fantasy for once and for all. With
another man, perhaps… Aidan had been right and Daire could admit it. He had not been made for love.
He caught her face in his hands, cradling her for a moment. She jerked back, but not so far as to escape. Beneath his touch, with glamour flowing from his palms, she stilled, gazing at him in wonder. Her soft skin warmed him. Part of him wanted to linger there, but it was impossible, impossible. He leaned forwards, brushing his lips to hers, letting her gasp of surprise fall against his mouth and he released a final spell, one of forgetting. He relinquished her with an unexpected tinge of regret.
“Go,” he told her. “Shut your doors and turn your iron keys. You’ll be safe at your own hearth. The moon has almost risen and we must be gone.”
She nodded solemnly as the enchantment encircled her, or perhaps she truly understood the gravity of the situation. It would be nice to think so. It was only after she had gone that he realised he hadn’t asked her name. A small discourtesy, but less so than seeing her become a toy of the Dark Sidhe. Still, it grated.
Aidan came to as they reached the veil, groggy and with legs as wobbly as a newborn lamb. He groaned, trying to pull away and stand alone, but he wilted a moment later. Daire caught him before he fell.
“Are you ready for home then?” asked Daire with a laugh, pulling his acorn key out from his shirt and closing his hand around it to activate the spell. Only one Sidhe at a time could pass through the veil and the key, this tiny pendant in the form of a golden acorn, was the Seelie Court’s chief defence against infiltration by the Dark Sidhe.
Aidan reached inside his collar for his own key. His face turned the white of a swan’s wing. “It’s gone,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and pained. “My key’s gone.”
Behind them, Daire could feel the light of the moon creeping through the trees. Briefly he wondered if the young woman was safe, if she had made it home. But the problem at hand loomed larger: one key, two Sidhe, one of whom was hurt. Time had just run out.
“Damn it Aidan, you’d better send help fast!”
Daire wrenched the key over his head and slid the chain around Aidan’s neck. He pressed the golden acorn into Aidan’s hand and pushed him through the shimmering mists of the veil.
The gateway to their world snapped shut, leaving Daire alone in the mortal realm. Moonlight enveloped him and his strength, such as it remained, gave out.
Chapter Two
Rowan stumbled through the trees, feeling like a sleepwalker newly woken from a nightmare. Every shadow loomed darker, every noise startled her, sounding much louder than in daylight.
You should go back, her mind kept saying. Check that they’re okay. Check that he was real! But her instincts took control, leading her home as quickly as she dared go through the forest at night. If she tripped and broke her leg out here, who was going to find her? No one, not until morning, and then only if she was lucky. Why had she thrown the mobile away? What sort of self-obsessed prima donna had she become?
The kind that saw monsters made of smoke and forest mulch. The kind who needed to be rescued moments later by an Adonis made of gleaming copper and his golden brother. Both dressed in leaves.
Did you get that, subconscious? You’re seeing men dressed in leaves.
God, the way he’d moved. Fluid and precise, rapid and feral. The way he had handled the sword.
A bloody sword!
Rowan stopped, leaning on a tree for support as she bent forwards to catch her breath. It couldn’t be real. Her heart hammered at the base of her throat, trying to beat its way through the knot of cold air lodged there.
Maybe this is a breakdown? Maybe I’m hallucinating?
The lights of her cottage beckoned her home. They promised warmth and safety, the wonders of modern appliances and instant coffee. She climbed through the broken fence. He had crashed through the fence to defend her, had actually run into the aged wood without flinching. That meant something. The debris all around her meant it was real, didn’t it?
Oh God!
Rowan brought her hand up to her throbbing head. Her stomach did a somersault and the next thing she knew she was on her hands and knees in the long grass. Struggling to push herself back up, she noticed moonlight glinting on a rounded edge. She reached out and found a necklace, a thin golden chain with an acorn dangling from it. A golden acorn.
Aidan’s or Daire’s? she wondered. The names sprang from the confused jumble of memories. Daire’s face, sun-kissed and determined, his hair like burnished copper and his clothes the colour of autumn leaves. A necklace just like this hanging below his throat. How on earth had she noticed a detail so small? And yet, everything about him had seared itself into her mind, branded an image of him there that would never fade. His clothes, the muscles of his arms and chest, his high cheekbones and the burnished tones of his skin. And his eyes.
Rowan had never seen eyes so green, the green of new leaves, of the fresh shoots in spring. She closed her fingers around the little acorn and his image grew even brighter in her mind. His skin glowed with inner light, like the flickering of a candle flame. Her lips still tasted the soft saltiness of his. She could smell him; new-turned earth and the forest in sunshine, just after rain, all the verdant and vibrant scents of nature.
With a gasp she slipped the pendant into her pocket. Her chest tightened and her stomach started churning again. She needed to get home. Inside, behind closed and bolted doors. Safe. Forcing herself up, she staggered back to the house and closed the door firmly on whatever spirits her fevered imagination had conjured up. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
And yet she knew in her heart it was real. Too real.
She sank into the armchair and closed her eyes. After everything that had happened today was it any wonder she was hallucinating? She had been working all week on Peter’s installation, getting everything at her gallery ready for the painstakingly exact artist. The bane of her life. The man who had ruined her.
Drowsy warmth spread through her body, her skin shivering, her cheeks warming. It felt as if she had been kissed, as if someone was still holding her and kissing her. Such a kiss. She could not recall ever experiencing such a kiss in her life.
The gallery… Her chest tightened again. Her eyes stung and she tried to push away the thought of what Peter had done. It probably had not even been intentional. Just a better offer. Totally understandable. No one would even blame him, not in the long run.
She would have to ring Matthew. What was her brother going to say? Not “I told you so”. She couldn’t bear it if he said “I told you so”. In the morning. It could wait until morning…
She almost dozed off before she recalled her phone. She had thrown it away like some sort of petulant child right before…what?
Rowan frowned as the memory slipped away the moment she tried to grasp it. Logic said to wait until morning, to look in daylight, but even if it didn’t rain, a night spent amid damp and rotting leaves would do the phone no good. The way things were going she wouldn’t be able to afford a new one by the end of the week. Besides, everyone she knew had that number.
And she was going to need to contact and be in contact with everyone she knew if she was going to remain solvent, if she had even a hope of hanging on to her reputation, her business and her home.
Against her better judgement, which just wanted to curl up and go to sleep, to forget everything about her disastrous evening, she got to her feet. Her muscles protested and her head throbbed. She fought disorientation and the sensation of trying to recall something that had just been on her mind.
The phone. Right. Find the phone.
Her heavy wool coat muffled her up to her chin and she found her Wellington boots after a brief struggle under the stairs. Out too came a hefty flashlight, the one she always meant to carry in the boot of her car but never got around to putting there. It formed a comfortable weight in her hands. Let anyone try to jump her with this in her hands.
Rowan paused at the door, wondering what on earth would make her think of such
a thing as an assault. Weathermere was a small village, far away from the problems of more densely populated areas. She didn’t think muggers were likely to commute out of the city in the middle of the night expressly to mug her. And despite the tropes of television dramas, little villages in the countryside weren’t known for their serial killers.
Something worried at the base of her brain, a distant warning signal, a half-recalled alarm. She’d grown up here, had spent her childhood and teenage years scrambling around those wood, with their streams, stone circle and caves. Why on earth would she hesitate to go back outside now?
She shook her head in an effort to clear it and the throbbing started again. Paracetamol, she promised herself, as soon as she came back. And a really hot cup of tea. Then bed. Definitely.
Rowan flicked on the torch and the beam cut through the night like a sword blade. The image flashed into her mind at once, a sword jutting from the ground while the earth churned and bucked around it. A hand holding the hilt, long fingers which curled elegantly. Her own hand covering his.
She staggered back a step with the force of it. Whoa, way overtired, she told herself. Make this quick, Ro. You really need your sleep.
She retraced her steps to the foot of the garden, the way she had gone to pick up the signal more clearly. Shame about that really. She might have been better off with all the crackle on the line. She hadn’t been able to believe her ears anyway.
Anger surged back into her chest, setting both her heart and head pounding again. The betrayal felt worse than ever. She had been a moron to trust Peter. She knew how self-obsessed he was. That was the main reason she had broken off their engagement three years ago. But business was business, a deal was a deal and all that jazz.
Surely he hadn’t done it on purpose? A little payback for his ex? It all slotted into place with sickening accuracy and she stopped, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away furiously.
