by Melissa Marr
For all that was right in his life, Niall was unable to have a single month without drama. This time—hell, a lot of times—it originated in the faery who had bequeathed the court to him. Niall stood in the hotel lobby where he’d finished up sorting out the accounting discrepancies at the two new Atlantic City casinos the Dark Court financed. For all his comfort with the dark, Niall preferred when vices were controlled.
Irial’s voice, from when they’d first met, came echoing over the years: You like them. Mortals, that is. Genuinely like them.
Some things were unchanged. Irial wasn’t prone to liking humans. He’d bedded his share, but genuine fondness for them was as rare as a blizzard in the Mojave. It could happen, but now that the last Winter Queen had been replaced, it was unlikely.
He looked again at the text Leslie had sent a few hours ago: “With Iri. Airport. NOLA. Love.”
He could reply, but getting answers when Discord was involved was as likely as turning coal to diamonds. It could happen, but not without a degree of pressure that Niall was unwilling to apply via another person.
Niall glanced at the time. By now, they were on the ground. Why? That was the real question. Of all the cities in the world, that was one of the few Irial avoided. That hadn’t always been the case. Niall remembered seeing him there, thinking that it was a city positively designed for the Dark Court. Back then, Niall had been advisor to the Summer King, and Keenan had toted the court there in pursuit of a potential Summer Queen—one who’d vanished.
He called Irial. Once. Twice. Tried Leslie’s number, too.
Then he did what any sane Dark King did when Discord was not easily located: he booked a trip of his own. His, however, was a bit more primal than steel tubes hurtling through the air as if by magic.
“Chela?” He spoke the word into the air, the shadow slithered across the ground, and the word moved at the speed of darkness. He ought to call her by her title, but he’d known her too long for that. Before her, her mate—Gabriel—had led the Hunt, but upon his death, Chela assumed the mantle.
“Gabriela,” Niall added, using the title out of respect.
Then he ordered a coffee. There was no way to keep up with Irial in New Orleans of all places and catch a bit of much needed sleep. Coffee was the best solution. Again. Some days, Niall wondered if he’d have flat-out refused the crown if he knew how little rest there would be.
Before an hour had passed, Niall could feel them: The Hunt rode. The earth itself seemed to quake, as if the soil would shake loose the dead. The weight of the fear that rolled out before them made the very air heavier, thicker, as if moving was impossible. Several mortals in the street shivered. The roll of terror that surrounded the Hunt made more than a few passing mortals look to the sky as if a storm rode overhead.
“We come,” the voices echoed. No mortal ear would hear. No human eye could see.
Chela and the Hounds never moved at a saunter.
When they arrived, Chela did not get off her steed, Alba, who appeared to be a massive lion currently. Chela’s shifted shapes the way some people changed clothes. Alba expressed his feelings with his shape. Since Gabriel’s death, Alba was often leonine, feral and ready to hunt anything that threatened Chela—or looked as if it could.
None of the steeds were in car form. Instead, they looked like a deadly menagerie: an oversized lion snarled next to a lizard-like beast; something that resembled a dragon paced next to a chimera; and scattered among them all were skeletal horses and emaciated red dogs. Atop the steeds were equally fierce Hounds.
The leader, Chela, dipped her chin. It was the closest to a bow that most Hounds offered. They weren’t strangers to the etiquette of court, but they weren’t subjects of any court either—and Chela was keen on reminding him of that truth. They stayed because she chose to stay. The fears they roused by their very presence were nourishing to the Dark Court. The terror that rolled off their skins was like the finest wine. And they, not shockingly, liked to be appreciated.
“Home?” The Hound paused and grinned. “Or has the old King done something troubling again?”
Niall walked up to her and said, “I don’t know, but I need to go find out.”
Chela grinned. “Where to?”
“New Orleans.”
Her pause would’ve escaped his notice if several of the Hounds accompanying her hadn’t frozen, too. For one extended moment, they all seemed to stop moving, as if time itself had held its breath. Then, with a falsely casual expression, Chela said, “Sure. We haven’t been there in ages. A little bayou excursion sounds good.” She motioned him toward her. “We’ll drop you at the house and go—”
“The house?”
Several Hounds exchanged glances.
“In the Garden District . . .? I thought Iri would be at the house,” Chela said haltingly.
“What house?” Niall rubbed his temples and lit another cigarette. At some point, Niall figured he might know all the secrets the last Dark King held, but some days he suspected that was impossible.
“You visited,” a Hound said.
“The court owns that house?” Niall clarified. He remembered. It was an ostentatious Garden District mansion, but he’d assumed that Irial had merely rented it as most courts did in most cities.
More shuffling and their glances went everywhere but him. Niall couldn’t order them to obey him. The Hounds only obeyed Chela.
“Sentimental reasons,” Chela offered. “We all do things for reasons other than logic, don’t we?” She glanced at the steed that kept pace with her, riderless still.
The steed that had belonged to Gabriel had remained in the form of a giant black horse with a reptilian head. It flashed pit-viper fangs at Niall, not in threat but in a smile of sorts. Aside from Chela, the steed had only allowed him, Irial, and Leslie to ride. Niall suspected the Winter Queen could, but she simply visited the nameless creature from time-to-time.
Chela could order it to shift or choose a new master, but she had done neither.
“Why do I feel like there is more you could tell me?” Niall asked.
“Because you’re not as dim as I once believed.” Chela watched as Gabriel’s steed stomped over to him.
A rush of sheer exhilaration rolled over Niall as the beast nickered through those pit-viper fangs and tossed its head.
“I’m coming,” he murmured. With a leap he was astride, and the steed was already tensed for motion.
“New Orleans,” Chela said as soon as he was mostly, but not quite, seated.
And the world blurred in a way that was both dizzying and beautiful.
Leslie said nothing as Irial opened a door to a house that seemed more haunted than anywhere she’d been. If a building could be melancholy, it would be this one. The building was in immaculate condition, the marble floors inside the door gleamed as if they’d been polished that morning. The tall wooden balusters lining the upper floor had the patina of hands gliding over them often. The Turkish rugs seemed as bright as if they were new.
But as she followed Irial into the house, she saw that every room was filled with sheet draped furniture. No one lived here. Irial pulled a few sheets away, revealing books that were still open to assorted pages on end tables. An empty tea cup sat next to a pair of hundred-year-old glasses.
And Irial looked into corners as if his memory and will alone could summon a body from the past.
Faeries were magical creatures, capable of any manner of impossible things, but not returning faces from the past or making ghost breathe again. The look of sheer pain on Irial’s face made Leslie wrap her arms around him. There were no words, but she could offer him comfort.
At first he said nothing, simply pulled her closer to his side like a child holding a stuffed toy. Then a few moments later, he said, “I loved her. I would’ve loved my child, too. I do even though I’ve never met her.”
Leslie couldn’t pretend to understand his pain, but she listened and she held him.
Then, they went to the din
ing room and uncovered a table that would seat a dozen guests. There, Irial spread out the letters and files he had, and they began to read.
When Niall arrived, the last thing he expected to see was what looked like a midnight study session. Containers of take-out, a bottle of wine, and the unmistakable scent of chicory coffee assailed him when he opened the door of the Garden District house he hadn’t entered since the late 1800s.
“The door was unlocked,” he said in lieu of a greeting.
Irial nodded. “I figured you’d be here sooner or later since she texted.”
Leslie was more enthusiastic. She crossed the few feet between them and pulled him into her usual welcoming hug and kiss. Exhaustion fled in that moment. He was home—because home was wherever these two baffling creatures were.
Mutely, Irial kicked out a chair and resumed reading.
At Niall’s querying look to Leslie, the calmest of the three, she sighed and quietly walked over and plunked her hand over the middle of the letter Irial was reading.
“Talk. To. Him.”
Irial stood and paced across the room, where several bottles of whiskey had been hidden under another sheet. “Whisky? Gin?”
Niall nodded. He didn’t simply grab Irial and kiss the answers out of him as he might if they were alone. Sometimes there was a wall that they kept around Leslie still—not that they lacked affection in front of her, but faeries who were well over a thousand years old could be more violent in their affection than he thought Leslie would understand.
“You’re stalling,” Leslie said.
Niall smothered a grin with a sudden need to cough.
“I have—had—a child,” Irial announced as he handed Niall a beautiful crystal highball glass that would’ve hit the floor if not for Irial’s reflexes. He handed the still-full glass back to Niall. “Thelma had a babe.”
“Thelma? The young . . . the potential Summer Queen you spirited away?” Niall emptied his glass and stalked past Irial to refill it.
“The what?” Leslie asked. Her arms folded. “The people who were seeking her were faeries?”
Irial shrugged.
And Niall knew. He knew the secret that Irial hadn’t shared back then. “You made the curse.”
“True.”
“Did you always know?” Niall stared at the faery he’d finally started to figure out the past handful of years.
Again Irial shrugged.
Niall half-fell into the chair Irial had offered when he’d arrived. “So you shagged the woman who would have been the Summer Queen if Keenan had found her, and she had your child?”
Again Irial shrugged.
“We suffered over a hundred more years of winter because you felt like hiding the queen?” Niall wanted to throttle him, simply squeeze until Irial had sense in him, but as such a thing was neither possible nor wise—and the events were all in the past—he simply stared at Irial.
After a few moments, Irial stood and walked away. Niall wasn’t wrong, and Irial was sure that from the outside it probably seemed like a heinous thing he’d done. It wasn’t that simple, though.
Thelma was special.
He didn’t risk the wrath of both Summer and Winter casually. Admittedly, such a thing wasn’t out of character for him, but he wasn’t foolish.
Except when it comes to love.
He turned the door knob, feeling a sharp edge of the glass knob, a memento from when he’d thrown a few things in anger. Just inside the room, Irial paused. The last time he stood here was the day after Thelma left. The room had still smelled of her perfume. Her sheets had smelled the same.
He’d brought her beignets and coffee, as they had shared the first time they had a meal together, and for the first time in centuries, Irial was truly happy. He had been well aware of her mortality, of the fact that loving her as he’d allowed himself to do could only end badly. He’d been equally aware that the then-weak Summer Court and the over-strong Winter Court would both have him skinned alive if they knew that the missing Summer Queen was nestled in his sheets.
What he hadn’t know was that Thelma would leave so soon.
“You weren’t trying to thwart Summer, were you?” Niall’s voice came from the doorway to the room.
Irial had heard his steps, known that the first wave of anger would pass once Niall tasted Irial’s feelings.
“Iri? I was rash,” Niall said, not quite an apology, but they’d never been much for such words.
Irial shrugged. When he’d met Niall, Irial could taste every feeling, every glorious bit of desire, of hope, of joy. It was a skill unique to the Dark King. He romanced Niall, Thelma, Leslie, and then Niall again with the unfair ability to taste what they felt. He negotiated with kings and queens with that same gift. It had made him formidable. And still he lost more often than made sense. Sometimes knowledge—or love—was not enough to overcome fears or doubts.
“I hadn’t planned to love her,” Irial admitted, back still to Niall. “Or you. Or Leslie. I’m terrible at it, you know?”
“No,” Niall corrected. “You are terrible at dealing with the fears that come with loving, not at being in love.”
Irial walked over to the bathtub, a claw-footed indulgence that Thelma had thought the single most remarkable part of the house. . . other than books. She’d read the way most mortals breathed or slept, as if death himself would come if she went too long without words.
“I had a child,” Irial repeated. The letters that had been delivered the week prior, the strange missives from the past that had been all addressed to him but never sent, had finally arrived a century late.
Irial turned to face Niall. “My daughter wrote to me, and Thelma saved each letter. She wrote, too.”
Memories of the past crowded in as Irial tried to contain the massive well of loss, of anger, of confusion that threatened to swallow him.
They stood, awkwardly in silence, until Leslie joined them. Her hand was shaking when she held up a letter.
“This was delivered to the house,” she said. Before he could panic much at the thought of Leslie unprotected, she added, “Chela brought it to me.”
Irial opened it and pulled out a single page of spidery handwriting.
Father,
I grew up hearing of you. I wrote letters as soon as I could write—at Mother’s order. Mother wrote as well, but she often wept when she did. I don’t know how things ended, but I know that she never married. As I grew older, never quite aging as children should, we moved a lot. We stayed clear of fey things, and she often spoke in terrified words of the Summer King . . . and of my father, a beautiful man who saved her.
What she failed to tell me, of course, was that the man who saved her was also the Dark King. I knew your name, but not what role you filled in that world. Had I known, I would not have written.
When the Summer King—the same faery that you saved my mother from—came to my door for my daughter, Moira, I tried to figure out how to find you. I discovered then that my beloved grandfather, a good faery in a sea of monsters, was the king of the worst of fey. Still I was prepared to reach you, but Moira died, and she left behind a child. No tale my mother told was enough for me to risk that love had blinded her, that you were as awful as I feared.
I believe you are already acquainted with your great granddaughter, Aislinn.
Ash is powerful enough that I thought about writing to you when she became fey.
At the least I wanted you to have the letters I wrote before I knew what you were. I decided that if you came to the house where I was conceived, I would tell you. Mother said you left the house boarded up because you could not bear to be there without her. Every so often, I would check to see if it stood empty. One of my granddaughter’s faeries has been watching it for me—the whims of an old lady--so if you ever read this, I believe you’ve proven that Mother was right, that you loved her. If so, some day, if you would like, I would welcome the chance to meet you.
I have questions about my longevity that sooner o
r later I’ll need to address with Ash. I was old (despite appearance and strength) when my own daughter was born, and I seem to age no further despite the passing of years. I’ve learned to appear to age, but often I simply moved. Now, though, I’d rather not leave Ash. Perhaps it is time for meeting.
your daughter,
Elena Foy
Irial handed the paper to Niall. “My daughter is alive.”
As Niall and Leslie read, Irial knew when they understood the import of what the letter contained.
“Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be her?” Niall muttered.
“So the women in Ash’s family were always the ones who would be the Summer Queen,” Leslie pronounced. “Grams, Ash’s mother, Ash.”
“And Thelma,” Niall added.
“Thelma had the Sight,” Irial said. “She saw me, and she still chose me.”
The three stood in silence as the sheer enormity of the thing settled on them. He was blood family to the Summer Queen. Aislinn Foy, the Summer Queen, was Thelma’s great-granddaughter. His great-granddaughter. How in the name of all that he held sacred was he going to navigate that relationship? He couldn’t fathom her taking that well.
Her partner, at least, tolerated him. He and Seth weren’t friends precisely, but they had a relatively congenial acquaintance.
Then Irial grinned. “Wait till the whelp realizes you’re his stepfather-in-law!”
“Not quite how that works,” Niall pointed out.
But Irial was, in his heart of hearts, the embodiment of Discord. He wasn’t going to do anything to hurt his daughter or great-granddaughter, of course, but his mind was already spinning on the possibilities of teasing Seth and on strengthening the alliance between Dark and Summer. It might not seem like discord or chaos, but it strengthened some court alliances, which necessarily weakened others.
