“Hmm,” was all I received in reply. She stepped back from me and studied me in some detail. “You do look like him.”
“I am him,” I said.
“Perhaps, or perhaps you are witch, a warlock, a shifter, a changeling or a warthog, who knows or cares,” she said heavily. “But you do want something from me, so what is it?”
I turned around. “Just clothes. I’ve been in a fight and find myself dressed inappropriately.”
“You are dressed as a human.”
I grew bored with her slightly derogatory tone. “Can you help or not?” I asked.
She swept her arm out. “We sell clothes, help yourself, your Highness.” Olwen turned her back to me and concentrated on her father. I scowled, irritated by her but not really knowing why.
Gifling reached for my hand and dragged me to the other end of the shop. “She’s very pretty,” the small woman said with wide eyes.
I grunted and began sorting through clothing made from hemp, leather, silk and linen.
“She likes you,” Gifling said.
I peered down at the mass of hair and animal skins. “I don’t care how she feels about me.”
“She wants the sex,” Gifling announced, circling her hips in a terrifying manner.
“Gifling,” I snapped. “I’m here to save Marcus, remember?”
“He can’t give you sex,” she said.
“Un-fucking-believable,” I muttered, pulling out a dark blue shirt made from silk, a pair of leather and hemp black trousers and a jacket of even heavier leather. “These will do,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” Olwen said from the other side of the counter. “You won’t be at all noticeable, he of the golden good looks and the black leather.”
I ignored her and began stripping off my jacket, shirt and trousers. I heard some appreciative coos from Gifling. Olwen turned her back to me. After I dressed more conventionally for Elfhame I felt better.
“I need weapons,” I stated.
“Oh, alright,” Olwen said. “I’ll conjure some from the fresh air.”
“I know a human you’d get on with really well,” I said, thinking of Bethan.
The old man stirred from the chair and raised his watery eyes toward me. “Weapons for a prince,” he said quietly and pointed to a cabinet.
“One stop shop,” I muttered, reaching for the cabinet.
“No! You don’t want to –” Olwen yelled.
I yelped like a scolded puppy and my feet left the ground. The air rushed past my head and my recently healed back screamed in shock when it hit something solid moments before my head cracked on the same thing and everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Please, wake him up,” came a sultry voice.
Small and familiar hands tapped my face gently. I groaned and opened my eyes to look at Gifling. “Ah, pretty eyes,” she said.
“What?” I asked, blinking heavily. Gifling helped me upright and I glanced up the long slim body of Olwen.
“I am so sorry, the cabinet is laced with guards to stop anyone from stealing anything in it. Father did it years ago. Long before he grew sick,” she said and her hands twisted.
“Water,” I managed. The backlash from the smack had made me feel sick and dizzy. She moved away and I held my head in my hands, trying to breathe normally. Tremors ran through me. “If that old man did those wards he was a powerful old bastard,” I muttered.
Gifling didn’t say anything, she just rubbed my hands. “Birdie, alright?”
I glanced at her. “Any chance you could remain sane for longer than ten minutes at a time?” I asked, feeling cross and uncomfortable.
Gifling squatted on her heels and giggled. “No, Birdie. Silly Birdie.” She poked my face.
The woman appeared again and handed me a cup of water. I drank slowly and felt better. “I need weapons,” I said. “Where can I get them?”
“You can have what’s in the cabinet, we just have to work out how to switch off the spells,” she said, now kneeling back on her heels.
“I think I’d rather buy something,” I said.
She reached for my knee and stroked it, her hand warm and gentle. “I am sorry. He’s a paranoid man... Was...” she said and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Life’s hard isn’t it?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Tell me,” I said.
She glanced into my face and I held her hand to lend encouragement. “You don’t care. None of them care,” she whispered.
“‘None’ being the royal household?” I asked.
She nodded. “They have stripped the land of everything and people are disappearing, we don’t want to know why. The old king hasn’t been seen for years. Her Highness is in control. If you really are the Crown Prince you need to do something.”
“I am the Crown Prince,” I said.
“You need to do something, kill your father, as in the old days and take the throne. Make Elfhame strong. We are dying,” she said.
I drew back. “You know nothing of the ways of power,” I said coldly.
“I know I am watching people starve to death because Elfhame doesn’t know who’s in charge,” she said.
I grunted, not in the mood for explaining my world to her. Instead of continuing the conversation I fought my way to my feet. I approached the cabinet and felt the energy of Elfhame come to me with shocking ease. The world wanted me and was willing to give me anything I needed so long as I stayed and took the crown. Olwen was right, in the old days the prince would kill the waning king and take his place until the next prince became stronger than the father who sired him.
I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to hurt my father. I wasn’t going to take the throne and Elfhame would just have to learn to live without me.
My eyes closed and the matrix of energy surrounding and flowing around the cabinet sprang to life inside my head. I sighed, this would not be easy. Two choices lay ahead, the subtle approach meaning I unpicked the spell carefully but didn’t make ripples in the world, or the more brutal version where I simply burned through the spell and created a huge wave my sister could use to pinpoint my location in Gimlé.
I sighed heavily. “Face it, Falcon, she knows you’re here anyway.” I turned to Olwen. “Once I do this you are going to want to take your father somewhere else for a few days. It’s going to annoy my sister.”
Olwen’s eyes narrowed. “How annoyed?”
“How annoyed do you think Leo is capable of being?” I asked.
“I’ll try and get my father to undo them. You want these weapons, they are good and if you are going to protect us lesser Seelie from the insanity in the royal house then I’m going to everything I can to help,” Olwen said.
I studied her for a moment. “I don’t think there’s anything lesser about you, Olwen.”
She flushed red and turned away from me to talk to her father. I looked down at Gifling. “She’s not lesser Seelie is she?”
Gifling grinned at me and winked. I rolled my eyes. “Just reassure me she isn’t related to me.”
Gifling laughed and rocked her hips in that unnerving way. I chose to watch Olwen’s straight back as she spoke to her father. Her words were soft but insistent and she eventually drew him toward the cabinet. He looked at it vaguely until Gifling slipped her hand into his and his back snapped straight. Olwen stepped back into me in surprise. I caught her waist to prevent us from falling over. My hands almost circled it perfectly. A small sound of pleasure escaped her control and she leaned back into me. I could smell her hair – deep spice.
My hands squeezed and I sucked in a sharp breath growing hard quickly. I bent my head to her neck, so close to my mouth. Her hands touched mine and my lips brushed her skin. That spark arced between us and we both flinched. Olwen moved away instantly.
“Who are you?” she asked. Her eyes were dilated, her lips moist, and her shoulders hunched in the way of all good predators who needed to defend themselves.
; I didn’t know what to say. I stared into those brown eyes and felt lost. “Olwen, I’m sorry... I... I really am the Crown Prince. I don’t mean to hurt you. I don’t understand either. I’m sorry...” I stumbled through the speech while Olwen’s father talked to the cabinet and I missed his words completely.
Gifling watched me and watched him, clearly processing things I didn’t understand. She and I would be talking about this very soon and firmly.
The lock on the cabinet clicked open and broke the tension between Olwen and myself. I glanced inside. “Wow, that’s beautiful,” I whispered, drawn to the contents, behaving like a goblin looking at gold.
A sword lay inside thick velvet. A fine and practical rapier, the likes of which I hadn’t seen produced in the human world since the seventeenth century. Its blade, long and slim, would cut and pierce with precision, the basket hilt would protect my hand and give perfect balance, while the quillons would catch and snap an enemy’s blade quickly. A fine dagger matched it and a small crossbow.
I reached to touch the hilt, covered in fine twisted metal to help give the user grip when the hand sweated. Olwen’s father slapped my hand down.
“You want her?” he asked. “You pay.”
“What’s your price?” I asked, willing to give anything.
“You,” he said.
It took a moment to process the information. “What?” I asked.
“You beholden to my daughter if she ever needs you. Promise to become her protector and you can have the weapons,” he told me.
“I could just take them, old man.”
He matched my angry tone with a sly one. “But you won’t.”
I glanced at Olwen. “How dare you, father!” she snapped.
They rounded on each other and I listened to language more foul come from that pretty mouth than I’d heard from the lowest of whores in my days on the Vice Squad.
Her father stuck to his deal and Olwen stormed from the shop more angry than a wasp. He turned back to me. “Do we have a deal? If she calls, you will come?” he asked.
“If she calls, I will come. I swear it,” I said.
He nodded, his eyes glazed and he wandered back to his place behind the counter. I reached up and took the sword down, retrieving her sword belt, the scabbard and the dagger. I strapped the weapons in place and took the crossbow and quiver, both sitting over my back in their own straps. Everything was finely tooled leather, with a subtle pattern of ivy leaves decorating the surface.
I tried to thank the old man but he’d gone far away, so I found some parchment and ink behind the counter. I scrawled Olwen a note, giving the full name I owed her if she needed to call me, and I left the shop with Gifling chortling to herself about something I decided I didn’t want to understand. Marcus was my priority.
I opted to pick Gifling up and run through the rest of the city, the paved streets easy to navigate, nothing changing since my childhood and my debauched adolescence until Marcus and I were shipped off to become Hunters. Then the sporadic returns for family duties and Hunter business.
We reached the quarter of the city housing the wealthy and the nobles. I slowed, memories surging out the hidden places in my mind. The homes of the wealthy, those who could live near the royal citadel, were tall and dark; crowded together while also trying to claim their unique attachment to my family. They’d always sickened me, but many of them had found new and interesting ways to reach my father’s powerful ear to influence him far from the machinations of court. Or reach their lovers in the palace.
“This one will do,” I said. The memories surfacing as I stared up at the house surprised me. I’d lost more than just Marcus when I’d left Elfhame.
Gifling frowned at me. “Door that way,” she said, pointing to the east.
“How do you know?” I asked.
She clamped her mouth shut and pressed her lips together, her eyes becoming large and round. “Hmm, innocent you aren’t,” I said, turning my back on the strange creature and kneeling in front of a small door. I knew this house well, and the young Seelie who’d inherited it in something of a coup, he was an old... Associate. One I hadn’t thought about for a long time, always focusing on Marcus, but... Now I stood here, back in Gimlé, I remembered a great deal.
I placed a hand on the lock, pushed my mind into my hand and then through and into the lock, just as I had done with the helicopter. A powerful spark flashed and the lock shivered, rearranging itself in such a way as to give me access. I pushed on the door and it swung inward silently.
“I’d forgotten how easy being Seelie could be,” I told Gifling. Trying to be human, trying to hide among the humans, meant I restricted all of my movements and patterns of behaviour to smother my Seelie gifts. It made for a dull life but it did mean I couldn’t be found. I walked on silent feet into the dark room and stood still, listening, I wondered about the quiet. It was still light outside, there should be people moving around, slaves and servants at least. The door I used was private, only his lordship allowed to use it, but I should hear people in the house.
I felt Gifling holding the hem of my jacket and I smiled. It felt good to have her with me, someone on my side and someone who understood my desire for freedom among the humans.
We continued though the quiet corridors, the place stripped of art and furniture. The first time I’d been here I’d been very drunk and the orgy had been particularly good leading to some severe punishment from Marcus, but I definitely remembered a house stuffed with beautiful objects from this world and the human one. This family was one of the few powerful enough to rival my father. The last time I’d been here... I flinched back from those memories, they were too painful.
I stopped. “Leo,” I whispered, finally putting the pieces together and knowing the abandoned building had been left so unloved for a reason. I gave up with caution and walked swiftly to the stairs. I ran upward, Gifling squeaking loudly about time. The building inside was far more elegant than the outside, the stairs a sweeping spiral. I hit the first landing and paused for a moment, trying to remember the layout accurately. I located the right memories and took the next set of stairs three at a time, my long legs making light work of them. When I reached the next level I began opening doors.
“Paris, Paris!” I called out, flinging doors open and searching each room quickly. I reached the last but one room in the long hallway and flung the door open. The smell hit me first and I gagged. It stank of waste and rotting food. I covered my mouth with a sleeve and walked into the room. “Paris?” I asked, trying not to breathe.
“Oh, poo,” Gifling said behind me. “Smelly Seelie.”
I approached a large chair in front of a long window. “Paris?” I asked as I reached out to touch the shoulder of a figure in the large wooden chair.
A man, a Seelie man who was once famed for his beauty, sat in the chair a dried husk. His skin was paper thin, his long and, if I remembered correctly – creative – fingers merely claws. His full lips were wasted to nothing and his cheeks hollow caves, the imprints of his teeth clear through the sunken flesh.
I knelt before the body, thin and wasted. “Paris, I am so sorry,” I whispered. The stink in the room was dialling back now I faced a worse horror, the death of a true friend.
A soft exhalation leaked from the body. I froze. Was there someone else in the room?
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“Fal...”
I glanced up, all the hairs on my body rippling in response to the strange sound. An eye, the right, faded and shrivelled, rolled downward toward me.
“Paris?” I whispered.
A soft sigh and more eye rolling.
“Fuck me slowly,” I said. “You’re alive.”
A hand twitched.
I reacted quickly. “Gifling,” I yelled. “I need hot water and I need it now.”
While I yelled I rose and hooked my arms under the bag of bones on the chair. I lifted and I might have lifted the weight of a chicken stripped of meat. Ignoring the foul smel
l coming from the body, I walked quickly from the disgusting room.
“Gifling – bath,” I shouted.
A small tousled head appeared. “Here, mighty Birdie,” she said. “Any more orders for poor old Gifling?”
I peered down at her over Paris’s body. “You might think about a bath too.”
She stuck her tongue out and walked off mumbling about my general nastiness.
I carefully carried Paris’ body into a large room and found a vast stone bath set high on a plinth in the centre. Water poured from two golden taps, steam rising from one. I placed the body on the ground and cut the clothes off the wasted limbs, moving each one more gently than the thinnest glass. Paris whined horribly, the movement obviously painful. Once free of his clothes, I tried really hard not to look at the damage done to his once strong and graceful body. The hollow chest and stomach, protruding hip bones and his once elegant cock, all now wasted.
I’d enjoyed that particular member more than once over the years. In fact, at one point we’d been considered a loving couple. I rarely touched those memories, too confusing and complex considering my loyalty to Marcus.
I left him for a moment, checked the temperature of the water, stripped off my own clothing, including the weapons, and retrieved the breathing corpse from the stone floor. Carefully I carried him to the bath, stepping over the edge and when I sank into the hot water we both sighed. I think he wanted to cry but his body was too wasted to manage such an effort.
“Shh, you are safe, brother,” I whispered over his bald scalp. “Pull on Elfhame, she’ll heal you.”
He moaned and thrashed as much as he could and I struggled to hold him gently. “Paris, stop, I’ll break something.”
He tried to speak but nothing happened, except he made his desperation clear. I placed a hand on his head and reached inside his mind. I’d only ever done this with Marcus when he’d been badly wounded on the battlefield one terrible day.
Seelie (The Falcon Grey Files Book 1) Page 17
