Changeling Illusion (Thirteen Realms Book 3)

by Marina Finlayson

  “Do they work for Night, then?” I might not have been too thrilled with Raven at the moment, but I had trouble imagining his family employing a guild of assassins to do their dirty work.

  “No. They take their name from the night viper, a snake that is fortunately extinct. It made no sound, and its bite killed in seconds.”

  Willow chewed her lip in thought. “But that means they could be working for anyone, correct? They sell their services to the highest bidder.”

  “Yes.” Kyrrim’s lips were a grim line. As if we didn’t have enough trouble with Summer trying to kill us, now we had to add a legendary guild of assassins to the list of our enemies. Though it was most likely Summer who’d sent them after us. I wouldn’t put anything past that worm, Kellith.

  Willow cast me a suspicious look. “Anything else you’re not telling us? You’re actually the long-lost ruler of Illusion?”

  Willow was still sore that I hadn’t told her I was fae as soon as I’d found out. We’d all been up most of the night before while Kyrrim and I filled my friends in on what had been going on.

  I snorted. “As if. My aunt is apparently a healer, married to a skincrafter. And we all know Lord Perony has been dead for years, not lost.”

  “Maybe you’re his secret love child,” Sage said, joining the speculation with her usual enthusiasm, “and that’s why Kellith has this deep and abiding hatred for you.”

  “First of all, how the hell would Kellith know anything about Perony’s love life? And second, Kellith doesn’t need any more reason for hating me than that I managed to whisk the king out from under his nose. That makes me Summer Enemy Number One.”

  “You had a little help with that,” Sage objected.

  “Well, maybe the assassins were meant to kill all of us. Vengeance, wrapped up in one tidy package.” I caught Zinnia’s eye as I spoke. Hers were open wide in shock—all this was new to her, of course, since the servants hadn’t been part of our discussions. “Except for you guys,” I said to her and Yarys. “You would be more like collateral damage.”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to know anything about it,” she said faintly, bringing the plate of hot buttered bread to the table. “Jam, anyone?”

  Willow caught her wrist. “Zinnia, sit down and have something yourself. You’re too pale.” Then she looked past Zinnia’s shoulder, and her expression changed to one of loathing. “There’s that damn cat again. When are you going to find another home for him?”

  Kel stalked into the kitchen, tail waving like a flag above his fat, furry butt. He had belonged to Edgar, a changeling friend who’d died recently. Got himself killed, actually, throwing in his lot with the bad guys. I’d hardly known whether to mourn my friend or resent the fact that he’d tried to get me killed. But either way, none of that was his cat’s fault, and it didn’t seem right to just leave Kel to his own devices, even though we cordially loathed each other. So I’d brought him here while I considered what to do with him.

  The little devil sauntered over to Willow, an insolent look in his eyes, and wound himself around her bare ankles.

  “Why does he do that?” she demanded, ineffectually trying to shoo him away. “I don’t even like cats! Can’t he go wipe himself on someone else?”

  “That’s probably exactly why he does it,” Sage said, grinning hugely. “Cats are arseholes. They zero in on the one person in the room who doesn’t like cats, just because they can.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure that Willow was the only person in the room who didn’t like cats. Kel had always treated me with contempt, even though I was now the person who fed him. If my life would just stop being crazy for five seconds, I would be more than happy to find a better home for him.

  Zinnia sneaked a bit of hot bread under the table and offered it to Kel. He sniffed doubtfully at it, then turned his little pink nose up in disgust.

  “I don’t think bread is quite up to his usual standard,” I said. “But I gave him fresh salmon for dinner and he lapped that up.”

  “We’d be better off with a dog,” Sage said. “At least that might have given us some warning.”

  Willow shuddered. “Please, no pets. I don’t want them digging up the garden and crapping everywhere.”

  “Just think of it as free fertiliser,” Sage said.

  “I prefer to think of it as hell no, not in my sith,” she said frostily, giving Kel a nudge with her foot.

  He moved, but only far enough to allow him to jump up into her lap. The look of horror on her face sent Sage into a fit of giggles, and I felt my own lips twitching. Maybe we were all a little drunk on survival, but it seemed like the funniest thing I’d ever seen.

  Kyrrim rose with his usual fluid grace. “I’ll head into The Drunken Irishman and see if I can find Nevith.”

  I stood up, too. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Me, too,” Sage said, no longer smiling. She was closer to Nevith than any of the rest of us.

  A look of irritation flitted across Kyrrim’s handsome face. “I don’t need an escort.”

  “What you mean is, you don’t want us coming because you think you’ll have to protect us,” I said. His protective instincts, especially where I was concerned, were very strong. And a pain in my butt. “But we’re perfectly capable of looking after ourselves, thank you very much.”

  He scowled. “You should stay here where it’s safe.”

  “Who says we’re safe here?” Sage objected. “We don’t know how these guys got in—there could be another attack any time.”

  I could tell from the look on Kyrrim’s face that he’d already discarded this as a possibility, but poor Zinnia looked horrified at the thought.

  Willow laid a comforting hand on hers. “We won’t be taken by surprise again if they do. I’ve got this. You guys go find Nevith and make sure he’s safe.”

  “Will do,” Sage said determinedly.

  Kyrrim grunted, but seemed to accept that we wouldn’t change our minds.

  The three of us returned to our bedrooms to change. I slipped off the T-shirt I’d been wearing and handed it back to Kyrrim, still warm from my body. He sighed with appreciation at the sight of my nakedness and pulled me into his arms for a kiss.

  “Damn you, woman,” he growled, after a long, delightful moment in which I forgot all about assassins and plots and missing people. “I’d drag you back to bed right now if I could. Maybe that would make you stay here where it’s safe. But you attract trouble like flies to roadkill.”

  “Oh, nice.” Clearly, my refusal to jump to his commands still rankled. I punched his bare chest hard enough to make my knuckles sting, but he gazed down at me, unmoved. “Flies to roadkill? You couldn’t have said bees to nectar or something?”

  “I call it as I see it.”

  “Clearly, your mother didn’t smack you enough as a child.”

  He shrugged his T-shirt on, a reluctant smile tugging at his mouth. “Perhaps you would like to remedy that.”

  “In your dreams, buddy.”

  He was still smirking as he buckled on the scabbard that held Ecfirrith. Once fastened, the sword disappeared from view, hidden by the strong and very specific Aversion he had on it. “You have no idea of the kind of dreams I have about you.”

  There was a hunger in his eyes that made me want to shove him down on the bed there and then. Instead, I pulled on jeans and T-shirt, too, lacing my boots with impatient fingers. My blood was up; I was sick of being Summer’s punching bag. There would have to be a reckoning soon, before one of these constant attempts on my life succeeded. I had too much to live for now.

  We met Sage at the entrance to the sith. She was dressed as I was, in black jeans and T-shirt, with sensible boots for running or delivering a swift kick where it was needed. There was a slight bulge under her jacket that might have been her gun, but I made no comment. My own jacket hid two knives, hastily cleaned of blood.

  We stepped out onto the street. It was four o’clock in the morning and not a soul was in sight. Kyrri
m’s Maserati sat at the kerb where he’d left it, apparently untouched. I patted it absently as we passed; I loved that car. A couple of cars belonging to the neighbours were parked on the other side of the street. The only sign that something was off was the fact that the streetlight that stood outside the house two doors down was out.

  A wind sprang up out of nowhere, picking up dirt from the neighbour’s garden and whirling it down the street.

  “Is that you?” I asked Kyrrim, hand slipping inside my jacket for a knife.

  “Yes. Just checking for hidden assassins.”

  Just as that assassin had discovered where I was, even though I’d been invisible. Must be a common trick among Air fae. My cloak of shadows was in my pocket, ready to be used again if needed. I scanned the darkness around us, checking the shadows around parked cars and in people’s front gardens.

  Sage lifted her head, sniffing the disturbed air. “What is that smell?” She moved towards our neighbour’s front yard, following her nose.

  A coppery tang was in the air, and my heart sank. I knew that smell. The neighbour’s yard had no front fence. Instead, a straggly hedge separated it from the street. Sage pushed through a gap and gave a wordless cry of dismay.

  Kyrrim was at her side in a moment, and I wasn’t far behind. My breath whooshed out in a troubled sigh as I stared down at what she’d found.

  It was Nevith, and he was dead.

  4

  “Lady save us!” Zinnia breathed, her hands covering her mouth, as Kyrrim carried Nevith’s body into the kitchen. We’d only been gone five minutes, and the others were all still there.

  Willow leapt up, her expression stricken. “Where did you find him?”

  “Just outside,” I said. “They didn’t make much effort to hide him.”

  “Forced him to let them in, then killed him as if he was no more than a bug to squash.” Sage’s fury was evident in her voice. “Where shall we put him?”

  Willow pushed his soft, blond hair out of his face. Her own face was white with shock. She’d dispatched those assassins without blinking, but this was different. Nevith had lived here in the sith since she and Sage had arrived in the mortal world. He was—he’d been—a friendly soul, and nothing had ever been a trouble for him. He had also died shockingly young for a fae, at no more than thirty years old.

  She glanced at Zinnia. “We’ll have to take him back to Spring, to his family.”

  Zinnia nodded, tears running unashamedly down her face. “They would want to say goodbye to him.”

  “Put him on his bed for now,” Willow said to Kyrrim. “Zinnia will show you where it is.”

  The mood was solemn as the two of them left, Kyrrim bearing his heavy burden with great gentleness. I went to the sink and washed some of Nevith’s blood off my hands, watching the red swirl against the white porcelain in a kind of daze. I’d seen so much death lately, you’d think I’d be inured to it, but the shock of it never failed to rock me.

  A deep hatred for Kellith rose in me. All of those deaths could be laid at his door. It was his mad lust for power that was driving everything that had happened in the past few weeks. He was a poison, a rotten piece of flesh that needed to be cut out of the Realms if they were ever to heal. The sooner he died, the better. That was one death I wouldn’t mourn.

  When Kyrrim reappeared, it was evident he’d stopped to wash his own hands and change his bloodstained T-shirt. There was a grim set to his mouth that reminded me of the hard knight I’d first met. If I was burning to put an end to Kellith, how much worse must he feel? Kellith’s schemes had ruined the last twenty years of his life. When the day of reckoning came, Kyrrim would be right there, a winged justice ready to mete out punishment.

  If we both lived that long.

  He met my eyes, as if he’d heard my thought. “We need to plan our next move.”

  “You’ll be safe here,” Willow said.

  Sure, as long as none of us went outside. The assassins could use anyone in the same way they’d used Nevith; all they had to do was catch us. Kyrrim’s sword, Ecfirrith, could open gates for people to leave undetected, but he was a Knight of the Realms. He couldn’t stay here forever on gate duty. At some point, he would be gone, and someone would have to venture out the usual way.

  “I feel like my staying here puts you all in danger,” I said. “I’m betting Kellith sent those bastards for me—so if I go, they won’t bother you anymore.”

  “Maybe,” Willow said. “Or maybe you’ve got tickets on yourself, and they came for me.”

  But she sounded as though she was arguing for the sake of it, rather than from any real conviction that she was right. Not so unusual for Willow. She did love a good argument.

  “Where else would you go?” Sage asked. “To your new place in Autumn?”

  The king had gifted me an estate in Autumn for services to the Crown. Things hadn’t calmed down enough yet for me to check it out.

  “Not there,” Kyrrim said with a fierce look. “Not secure enough. You’d be better off on Oldriss.” Oldriss was his own private flying island.

  “But you’ll be at the palace. You’re a Knight of the Realms; you can’t just disappear.”

  “But you can. You’d be safe there.” His tawny gaze was intense. “Please. I need you to be safe. I’d join you whenever I could.”

  “No.” I wasn’t about to hide, alone, waiting for him to make time for me. That could be a long wait, considering how busy the king kept him. Sometimes I really wished he wasn’t a knight. “I have a better idea: Arlo. I want to go there anyway. And no one can get past their wards.” If they could, the lost island of Illusion would have been found long ago. It was currently hidden away in the depths of Night, its presence known only to a few.

  I had two reasons for wanting to go there: first, I had family there, family I’d only just met and barely knew; and second, my injured bondmate, Squeak, was there. Morwenna had said he’d probably sleep for three days because of the drugs she’d used to knock him out. That was only two days ago, but I still itched to be with him. The little drake had wormed his way into my heart even faster than the knight still staring at me as if he’d like to lock me away somewhere safe and throw away the key.

  “Very well,” he agreed grudgingly. “That’s not a bad idea. But first, we should visit the king and let him know what has happened here.”

  As if poor King Rothbold needed more bad news. But I nodded. “Perhaps we can set up a meeting between him and the Illusionists while we’re there. That would make my welcome on Arlo warmer.”

  Morwenna, my new aunt, had been particularly unimpressed that I hadn’t sorted that little detail already. Coupled with the fact that Squeak had been so badly injured on my watch, she was barely speaking to me, and I was keen to change that. I had so many questions for her, having grown up with only my mother. I’d had no idea that we’d even had any other family. My mother had never spoken of them. I had so much to catch up on.

  “And if we show our faces at Whitehaven, the assassins will know you aren’t here anymore,” Kyrrim added. He glanced at Willow. “Will you be all right with getting Nevith home?”

  “Of course. You go. We can handle everything here.”

  He nodded and drew his sword. Kyrrim was a man of action. Now that we had a course laid out for us, he saw no reason to delay. I considered asking him to let me change my clothes—we were going to see the king of all the Realms, after all—but decided against it. He was only wearing T-shirt and jeans. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. Beside, jeans and sneakers were easier to run in than dresses, and there’d been so much running in my immediate past that it seemed wiser to be prepared.

  I would have made such a good Boy Scout.

  With the point of Ecfirrith, Kyrrim drew three quick slashes in the air in the shape of a doorway. The slashes glowed with light, lingering in the air as the space between them went opaque and suddenly billowed with mist.

  “Ready?” Kyrrim reached for my h
and with his free one. “We should get moving before the sun comes up. The king won’t appreciate being kept from his bed.”

  “Ready.” I took his hand, and together, we stepped through the gate.

  ***

  We arrived, as always, outside the great, jewel-encrusted gates of Whitehaven. The wards wouldn’t allow gating within the palace grounds themselves. The gates were as white as the walls, and taller than three men standing on each other’s shoulders. Two dragons roared at each other from either side, with rubies as big as my fist for their eyes. Dolphins danced in the waters beneath them—the dolphin being the sigil of the king’s house. The top of the gates was shaped like the canopy of the Lady’s great silver Tree, spreading its leafy, emerald-studded boughs protectively over the kingdom.

  The gates were closed at the moment, but the guards posted inside stiffened to attention as they recognised the Hawk. One of them stepped forward and opened a smaller postern gate.

  “Sir Knight. Welcome back to Whitehaven.” If he thought there was anything odd about a Knight of the Realms turning up in jeans and T-shirt, his dark locks still ruffled from bed, he made no comment.

  Kyrrim nodded to him as we passed through the gate and made our way along the shining path through the gardens.

  The world was pale and grey, showing how close dawn was. I’d never yet seen the fabled white walls of Whitehaven in sunlight. They were said to be so bright it was impossible to look at them directly. Perhaps this would be my chance to check out whether the rumour was true.

  The many roofs and towers of the sprawling castle rose above the trees ahead of us. Kyrrim moved quickly, my hand still firmly tucked into his. He wasn’t shy about letting people know about our relationship even though, to all but a few, I was still nothing more than a lowly changeling—albeit one with some notoriety. My part in rescuing the king had brought with it more fame than I was comfortable with, but Kyrrim took it all in his stride. He was comfortable in himself, and the strength that gave him was one of the things I loved most about him. That and the fact that he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him.