Cold Iron Heart: A Wicked Lovely Novel

by Melissa Marr

  She walked toward him.

  “Bananach is War. That is her reason for being,” Irial explained. “She wanted me to be distraught. To attack Keenan.”

  “And I let her manipulate me.” Thelma bowed her head. “I am sorry. I simply don’t ever want to be captured by the Summer King.”

  “He is no longer a threat to you,” Irial said, dreading this next revelation even more.

  “Could we stay here then? You, me, our daughter.” Thelma looked so hopeful that Irial lost his good intentions.

  He kissed her, lost himself in her lips and touch until he was kneeling before her, partly hidden by the skirt of her dress. His beautiful mortal was lost in pleasure. Would that he could have this always. Would that there was no curse, no threat, no reality.

  Afterward, when she was gazing on him with heavy eyes, he stilled her attempts to draw him to her.

  “As much as I would sell my very soul to follow the thoughts I see in your expression,” Irial began, “I have to tell you about the curse.”

  She frowned and stared toward the now-closed door. “But I’m free of it. You said--”

  “I did.” He caught her hands in his as he stayed on the floor before her. “Thelma, love, you’re free because the curse has passed on to Elena.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong. There’s no way you could know that. That’s not reasonable. Fair. Any of it.”

  Irial held her gaze. “The curse passes from mother to daughter, and it has since it was created. The Summer Queen is hidden in your family, Thelma: your mother, your grandmother, for centuries. It is passed on to the next generation, the eldest daughter.”

  She kept shaking her head.

  “Mortals die. It was the only way to be sure there was always a mortal, always a beautiful woman who carried sunlight in her.” He took a breath before saying, “There was a lovely woman, a Sighted mortal, centuries ago and she looked at the man—the faery—who created the curse. He thought himself clever, and he tied it to her Sight: to her, to her daughter.”

  “No. Please, don’t say--”

  “I had no idea that I was cursing my own daughter centuries into the future. You must believe me, Thelma. I would never have done this thing if I knew about Elena.”

  Tam

  Tam stared at him in horror. She’d had no desire to be a parent, but Elena was here. She was born. She was theirs. And she would suffer because of a curse, as Tam had, as countless others had.

  “I am sorry, Thelma.” He reached for her hand, catching and holding onto her as if she’d flee. “The curse . . . I cannot undo or break it. Elena will need to go to the mortal world. She must be there when she is of age.”

  “I’m her mother.” Tam sobbed. She’d avoided her own fate, but in the process, she’d condemned Elena. “You can’t take her.”

  “I’m not taking her. You can go back with her. You already own several jewelery shops, so you’ll have you own income. You don’t even need me if you cast me away,” He obviously was trying to reassure her. It wasn’t working.

  “She cannot be cursed.” Tam glared at Irial, her sorrow shifting to rage. “Undo it.”

  “I would that I could. She can stay here a few months, but she must live in the mortal world.” Irial shook his head. “The curse cannot be unbroken until Keenan finds his queen.”

  Tam thought about her baby, her innocent child being caught in the thrall of the Summer King. “I’ll go back. I’ll do it. I’ll marry him and—”

  “You cannot, my love. Not now.” Irial pulled her into his arms, and she didn’t resist. “Even if I could let you go, you cannot be his queen now. She carries the summer. And her daughter will, too, unless Keenan finds Elena.”

  “Our daughter.” She tried to shove him away. “You cursed our daughter. . . Me. Her. You did this.”

  “And your mother. And her mother.” Irial held Tam as he confessed the extent of his sin. “Yes. I did. Most of them were untouched by it. He did not find them. You were the first he came near to finding. I can hide you. Hide her.”

  “I hate you right now,” Tam swore between sobs. “I hate you, Irial.”

  “I didn’t know you, any of you, when the curse was made. You weren’t even born. Centuries, Thelma. It was centuries ago. Your ancestor was a pretty mortal, and I thought of her and—” He stopped himself. “You know what I am, Thelma. Who I am. I’ve never hidden it. I cannot undo a thing I did centuries before you drew breath.”

  Tam shoved him harder. “Get out.”

  He released her this time. “I never wanted to hurt you; try to remember that. I tried to save you, Thelma. I risked war, my court, my life. I would destroy the world for Elena, but I cannot un-make this curse.”

  She shook her head. “Get. Out. Get out of my home and my life.”

  As she crumpled to the floor, she heard him leave.

  The worst of it was that she feared that she had only herself to blame. She knew she risked passing on the Sight. She knew he was inhuman. And she certainly knew how babes were made. Tam had chosen this path at every step.

  She might not have known the full cost in those moments, but she’d learned what it meant to love--and her every fear about how much love destroyed a woman was proven true.

  She pushed herself to her feet and went to her daughter’s cradle. Tam stared at her and swore, “I’ll protect you. I’ll teach you everything, and you will stay hidden from the Summer.”

  Tam was sleeping beside Elena’s cradle when Irial returned. She knew without opening her eyes when he entered the tiny cottage. Her body felt alive as it only ever did when he was near or she was creating art.

  “I’ll give you my vow,” he said from the other side of the darkened room. “No one under my rule will hurt you or her.”

  Tam laughed despite everything. “I’m not afraid of the dark, Irial. Or you. Not now.”

  He sighed.

  “But if you come to visit us in the mortal world --”

  “They’ll find out,” he finished. “They’ll follow me sooner or later, and they’ll find her.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Stay with me, Thelma. I can turn our home into a fortress. I’ll build us a castle. We can live far from people in a remote place, so I can protect you both, and—"

  “No.”

  “Dragons. I’ll add dragons. Monsters of the sort humanity only imagines,” he continued. “I’ll wage war against the other courts.”

  Tam stood and walked to him. She took his hand in hers.

  They left the room and their sleeping daughter. With a wave of his hand, the fire sparked to life. It wasn’t a thing he’d been able to do in New Orleans, but here, in Faerie, the laws were different.

  “The curse means he must have a reasonable chance of finding her,” Tam said.

  “Yes.”

  “If we stay with you, he will not have any chance of finding her. I don’t know much about curses, but I understand faeries better than most mortals. They’ll come after us in an onslaught, and eventually they’ll win. They’ll steal us or--”

  “I’d die for my daughter,” Irial interrupted.

  “I know, but I don’t think that would change it. You’d be dead, and she would still be trapped in the Summer Court.” Tam sat and patted the sofa beside her. Once he sat, she asked, “Would you sacrifice her to save her? Sacrifice me?”

  “Thelma—”

  “I have a plan. You cannot visit us. Not you. Not Gabe. No one.” Tam stared at him as if will alone could reach him. “I’ll teach her to hate what you are. Hate all faeries. She’ll be safe from Keenan that way, and then I’ll teach my granddaughter someday if one is born. My very human granddaughter. You said he hadn’t come near finding the right mortal ever before. He nearly found me because of your attention.”

  Irial looked as heartbroken as she felt. Inky black tears slid down his cheeks.

  “I wish we would stay here, be a family. I’d watch her, teach her, and you could create your art. At nigh
t, I’d tell her stories. With actors or a band or whatever made her smile . . .”

  “Irial—”

  “And then, she’d sleep, under guard, with dragons patrolling and monsters at every window and door.” Irial smiled sadly. “And I would be happy. Is it written somewhere that I cannot have that?”

  “I love you,” Tam reminded him. “But she deserves a chance at a life without faeries, and that means . . . you have to let me go. You have to let her go. For our daughter.”

  “Thelma . . .”

  “We have a couple months. Sorcha said we had that here, that it was why Elena was born so quickly, but after that, when I return to the world, you must never visit us again.” Tam was not weeping, despite the pain in her heart. She would protect her daughter, hide away from faeries, and teach Elena to do so.

  “Not New Orleans,” he said, voice urgent. “Keenan knew you were there and Niall knows about you—”

  “No, not there. I can’t go to the house where we were without you at my side,” Tam whispered. “I couldn’t bear that.”

  He rested his forehead against hers. “I hate him. Hate Beira, too. I want to raise our daughter, be with you, and watch our grandchildren and have none of them ever fall into his clutches.”

  “I know. In a few decades, though, I’ll be gone. You can stay away from us that long at least. If Elena makes another choice, she’ll find you.” Tam’s words were as much question as order, but she needed his word on this. Another vow.

  Faeries don’t lie. That fact was, once again, essential.

  Instead of answering, Irial kissed her. His lips were a sort of magic that had nothing to do with what he was and everything to do with who he was. The first kiss they’d shared made her think it was simply that she’d been faery-struck, but she knew better now. He tasted like shadows and temptation, and Tam let herself melt into his embrace.

  Irial

  Late into the night, when both Thelma and Elena were asleep, Irial stood at the side of the cradle longer than he’d planned. She was his, and he might never see her again. He wouldn’t watch her grow or see what she was like. Would she be an artist like her mother? Would shadows cling to her as they did to him?

  A stray thought that he could steal her, hide her, protect her drifted through his mind. That was quelled by his love for Thelma, but he knew himself. He was the embodiment of the Dark. Self-control and reason weren’t his greatest strengths by far. He did, however, know the faery who held such traits in excess: the High Queen.

  Irial kissed Elena’s head, and then he went to the private gardens of the High Queen. No one stopped him. Instead, a guard opened the gate as if he was expected.

  “Sometimes your ability to see the future is irritating.” He took the seat across from Sorcha, though, and he looked at the fine glass of whisky she’d poured for him. “Generous.”

  She met his eyes. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “What if I kill Beira? Go home. Murder her. Would that help?”

  Sorcha frowned, but he knew that expression was part of her process. The frown was her looking at threads, different possibilities for futures. She’d study them, follow them, compare them to other threads.

  “Your court would weaken. Then, I’d become dangerous.” She met his gaze. “We cannot allow that, Irial. You know better than most any creature alive that I must not walk in their world.”

  Irial repressed a shiver. Sorcha no longer left Faerie, and even that was only because he was strong enough to keep her in check. He wasn’t strong the way Winter was, but the High Queen heard him when he said no—just as he listened when she did. Right now, she was telling him no.

  He nodded. “What about Keenan? I could stab him and—”

  “The world would freeze. Death everywhere.” Sorcha sighed. “You could come home. All the courts here but in time . . . no. The cold would destroy many here, too. Keenan should not die right now.”

  “What if I convince Thelma to hide with me? She and Elena and I could—”

  “Irial,” the High Queen interrupted. “There are no other answers you will like. No thread that can be found. Do you not think I’ve looked?”

  He drained the glass and refilled it.

  “Summer must be able to find his missing queen,” she said. “The curse was well crafted. Absolute. There are no exceptions.”

  “My daughter, though . . . she’s a babe.” He wasn’t sentimental in the way of Summer, but he had feelings aplenty. Even if he hadn’t, fatherhood was a strange leveler.

  “Elena will not be his queen,” Sorcha said. “He’ll find her daughter, though.”

  “If Elena never marries, or what if she weds a woman or—”

  “You created this curse, Irial. There is no way that the child with summer-light in her will not be born.” Sorcha reached out and touched his wrist in a brief show of affection. “You and Thelma weren’t able to resist, and you knew who she was. What chance will Elena have? Her daughter? They will be swayed by their fates. Each woman in the cursed line will give birth to a daughter, and each daughter will give birth to a daughter, and so on until the curse is broken. The instant Thelma rejected her fate successfully—the night she chose to come to you and hide--Elena was destined to be born. Had you not met Thelma, or had you rejected her affections, there are other threads that would have led to her birth. Instead she was born of love.”

  “So, there’s no thread that spares her?” His voice was heavy with the impotent rage that twisted in his stomach. Whisky didn’t quench it, and willpower didn’t ease it.

  “Some things must be. The details can change, but the ends are sometimes . . . inevitable. If you agree to Thelma’s plan, Elena will not wed Keenan. If not, she will.” Sorcha looked away, and he knew that whatever she was thinking was not about his daughter. All the queen said, though, was, “The child of your child will meet Keenan. That much is certain. It must happen. The cold grows too strong.”

  The two old friends drank in silence until the whisky bottle ran dry.

  “Can you protect her from me?”

  “You are not a danger to Thelma or Elena.” Sorcha shook her head, and he knew she was resisting chastising him. He heard it all the same. Countless centuries balancing one another made them at ease as he was with few people. Once he had that with Miach, but the last Summer King was dead now.

  “If I know they’re out there, I won’t be able to stay away from them. I’ll start a war. I’ll die or kill Beira, Keenan, all of us.” He tossed the bottle at the wall behind Sorcha, but it reformed and soon rested on the tablet the moment it shattered. Full now.

  “You won’t.”

  “Because you’ll make me forget,” he said. “That is what must happen. I know it, and I accept it.”

  The High Queen nodded. “Little by little, you’ll remember details about Thelma. You must: your court has met her.”

  “They know she left me,” he said.

  “And so, you will think she left, and that you did not find her.”

  “But—”

  “And you will seek her someday, to verify that she is well.” The High Queen had the far-away tone in her voice, as if she was watching the future now. “You’ll notice she had a child, and that will make you stay away. The Dark Court is no place for a child.”

  “My child.”

  “You will not consider that she is yours when you check on Thelma.” Sorcha refilled their glasses to the top as if it was water they drank. Then, she said, “Later, you’ll meet Elena again. Threads will move, and I cannot say when or why, but in each possible world, you will speak to your daughter when she is an adult. She will hear your voice tell her that she is loved, and she will understand the choices you made.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  Sorcha ignored him and added, “And neither my own nor your court shall harm the children born of your blood, Irial. This will be as law. My vow.”

  He bowed his head, even as tears fell like spilled ink on his face.

 
“My vow that none of the Dark Court shall harm my daughter or the children of her blood,” he swore, “unto eternity my daughter and hers will be safe.

  A loud chime echoed through Faerie as the vows of both High and Dark Courts were made law. He didn’t ask how or why it would work without anyone under his command actually knowing who they were. It simply would happen that no faery of either court would be able to hurt them. Irial knew far too well how absolute binding could be. The one he’d placed on the Summer King was about to effectively steal away Irial’s own child.

  Bindings were immutable things.

  “And when my future grandchild or great-great-a dozen times great-granddaughter becomes the Summer Queen?”

  Sorcha laughed, and it was a strange, lovely sound, as if the world itself had burst into symphony. “Oh, she’ll find you.”

  A quick gesture in the air, and before them was a hazy figure. She looked enough like Thelma that he knew without asking who she was. The Summer Queen. A girl born of his blood in years to come. With her was Keenan, looking full of himself. Unbound.

  Irial stood and walked closer.

  Looking rather like she could be one of Gabriel’s daughters, arrogant and powerful, the image of the Summer Queen cocked her head and stepped forward—toward Irial, as if they were actually in the same place.

  Keenan didn’t move to stop her.

  The Summer Queen let a trickle of sunlight seep into her voice, a tiny reminder of what she was, what she was capable of. She was close enough that the desert heat of her breath scorched Irial’s face when she whispered, “Don’t threaten me.”

  Irial couldn’t take his gaze away from her. His child would lead to this magnificent queen. The sweet baby in a cradle would either give birth to this future queen or she’d give birth to another child, who would birth a daughter. Either way, this magnificent faery queen was his blood. His future heir.

  “Is she happy?” he asked, not looking away from her.

  “She will be.”

  Then the apparition kissed Keenan’s cheeks. “Go on. I can deal with him.” She waved her hand at people Irial couldn’t see.