“She was from my brother’s Summer Court,” he chuckled. “A scandalous love interest considering I was born to lead the Spring Court. But she was beautiful. A water nymph with a heart of gold.”
“She sounds lovely.” A pang of jealousy struck her chest, but Morgan reminded herself she had no right to be jealous. The woman was no longer in the picture, clearly. And he was a faerie. They had more partners than they had memories.
“Every bit of her was lovely, so much so she made mortal men weep just at the sight of her.” His hands flexed, turning into claws. “I don’t know why they killed her. Only that they thought perhaps it would serve them in some way. They took something beautiful and because it was different, they decided she was terrifying.”
Morgan didn’t want to know how they’d killed a faerie. Back then, they would have thought of her as a demon who could destroy their families. The nymph would not have had a quick death.
She shivered. “So that’s why you hate them.”
“I don’t hate them.” His gaze narrowed upon the city. “You can’t hate beings that are like insects. Even worse. They are a stain upon the world and all they do is spread their disease.”
Morgan reached out and took his hand in hers. She linked their fingers together, tightening her grip until he had to look at her. “I thought the same, but after looking into that boy’s mind... What is the one thing immortals cannot do? Or at least easily?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. Immortality provides many ways to succeed.”
“Love,” she whispered. “Can you honestly say in all your thousand years of life that you’ve loved something? So much you’d be willing to die for the person?”
Liam’s gaze turned heated, warming into something she’d never seen before on his face. He squeezed her fingers in return. An answering pang twisted in her heart.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“They do.” She pointed toward the city. “They love their animals, their cars, their family and friends. All of it spills out of them and feeds the magic of this world. Their lives are so short, less than a heartbeat to us. But they love more than we do in a thousand years.”
The words were poetic, but true. Humans were necessary because immortals couldn’t feel the way they did. Hundreds of years dulled the heart and the mind until love seemed so far away. So out of reach.
He turned back to the city, staring at it as though the flickering lights were suddenly more important. A puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “Maybe so,” he murmured. “Does that outweigh the bad?”
“I think so.” That’s why she’d saved the boy. His future might not be earth shattering or cancer saving. He was still important, though. And that’s what mattered most.
Liam sighed. “Either way, we can’t stay here. I called a friend who’s letting us stay in his home for a while. In the city.”
“A friend?” Surprise lifted the hairs on her arms. “Who do you know in the city?”
He didn’t look at her. Something was different today. Something strange and ominous boiling underneath his skin.
Liam took a while to respond, and when he did, it was nothing more than a brief shrug. “I might have disappeared from this realm, but my court didn’t. The Spring court remains.”
Why did that make her stomach tighten in fear?
20
Liam let the elemental take control to ease them out of the tree. The magic it used was almost beyond him.
There was no spell. No flexing of power. Just the knowledge that whatever it wanted, it would get. Sometimes, he wished he lived life as the elemental did. Other times, he wondered if its selfish ways were a curse.
Morgan remained quiet until they got to the ground. She glanced around them, then back at him. Nerves made her eyes darker than normal, although he couldn’t tell if she was uncomfortable or just worried for him.
“I’m fine,” he told her, reaching out and placing a hand against her back.
She was warm against his palm, supple where most women might have been weak. Her body had been made strong by years of witchcraft and hiding from the rest of the world.
“I’m not sure I am,” she replied. “Liam, listen. I didn’t go to a witchcraft council. The coven will be looking for me. I’ve probably been labeled as some kind of outcast witch and they don’t suffer to live.”
“Let them hunt you then.” He shrugged, even though the elemental raised its head deep within him. They both wanted a fight. It sounded like more entertainment than taking on the humans she pitied so.
“I don’t think you understand what that entails. The witches hunt together as a coven.”
He slid his hand up her back to her shoulder. Tugging softly, he tucked her against his side and walked them through the forest. “The faeries will help you, Morgan. Let the coven try to test their might against my people.”
“Starting a war is the last thing I want to do between the magical communities.”
“Then perhaps they won’t hunt a hedge witch who lives alone in the forest.” He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. Her hair was soft as silk against his lips, and the strands smelled like mint. “You might be important to myself and my people, but the coven of witches may overlook your transgression.”
She shuddered under his arm. “Witches aren’t all that likely to forget.”
Then it was a battle he’d fight for her. He didn’t know why, but her words had stuck in his mind.
When was the last time he had fallen in love with someone? Well and truly fallen in love?
He couldn’t put his finger on the time. The nymph killed by humans had a special place in his heart. She was a wonderful creature, a breath of life in this forgotten world. But had he loved her?
He hadn’t felt the way he did for Morgan. This woman made him want to break things. To shatter the world just to ensure she was protected, even though he also knew she could protect herself.
Liam had found himself infatuated with many things. Never for very long, however. His attentions shifted in so many directions, especially when he was younger.
This woman held his attention at all times, however. Just the way she moved was like watching her dance. Her words were poetry, though he rarely understood her meaning.
Love.
The word burned in his mind. Why? He wasn’t certain. He knew what the word meant. So many people claimed to have felt it in their lives. The emotion plagued humans and poets for centuries.
He helped her over a fallen tree trunk and guided them away from the destroyed cabin. The elemental sent out a few tendrils of magic to make sure the boy she wanted to save had left. He had. The tinge of sweaty fear still clung to the roots.
Now, he just had to get them somewhere safer. Somewhere no one but his own people could find them. The Spring Court were the only ones he could trust these days, it seemed.
“Where are we going again?” she asked.
A smudge of dirt streaked her nose. Her clothing was equally soiled, but he couldn’t do anything about that right now. He licked his thumb, then cleaned it off the tip of her nose before responding. “One of the faeries has a house in the sky.”
“A what?”
He tried to remember what the faerie had said when he reached out. The pixie had been shocked to hear the Mountain King in his head, but he’d been most helpful.
Liam hadn’t reached out to any of his court for a very long time. They ran mostly without his intervention, although sometimes he would invite visitors to his hidden realm. The Spring Court was filled with well behaved creatures, though. His counterparts weren’t so lucky. The Autumn Court in particular needed an iron fist to rule.
Shaking his head to clear the memories, he replied, “A house of pent, I believe he called it. In something that cuts the sky.”
Her eyes grew round as dinner plates. “Someone in your court has a penthouse in a skyscraper?”
“Yes, those are the word.”
“Wow,” she muttered. Morgan stepped ahead of hi
m, guiding them toward the road with confident steps. “Who knew the Spring Court was doing so well in the human realm?”
“They like to fit in.”
“Apparently so.” She stood next to the dirt road with her hands on her hips. Morgan surveyed left and right before turning back to him and asking, “How are we getting there?”
He wanted to speak the same way she did. His vocabulary was lacking in this realm. The words sounded like they were English, but they didn’t move the same way on his tongue.
Liam reached her side and searched for something that might resemble a “car” or whatever it was his faerie had stated. “They were sending someone to pick us up. That’s what he said.”
“Gotcha.” She cocked her hip to the side and placed her hands on her waist. “Well, I guess we wait then.”
Liam wasn’t a patient man.
He reached out through the root system connection he had with the entire Spring Court. In his mind, he connected with the pixie once again. “Where is this ride you spoke of?”
“They should be there any moment, my king.”
“And what precisely am I looking for?”
“A silver Charger, Your Majesty.”
As if those words meant anything to him at all. A charger was a horse, but he had a feeling that wasn’t the case. Humans had changed too much since the last time he’d been here.
He missed his own realm. The simplicity and quiet was all he desired out of life.
A rumbling sound down the road caught his attention. Dust plumed before the metallic beast, hurtling toward them with surprising speed. Considering Morgan didn’t run from the beast, he assumed it was acceptable to remain where he was.
Still, he closed his hand into a fist and gathered a ball of energy. Just in case he needed to protect them.
Morgan glanced over her shoulder at him. “That’s what your faerie sent, I assume.”
“It is.”
The silver “car”, as the humans called it, was terrifying. It moved with wheels instead of legs. And when it stopped, the dust plumed around it like the entire thing had snorted.
Liam didn’t want to touch the beast. A chariot would have been far more efficient and easier to drive. Where were the horses? Why would anyone choose this over what had worked for centuries?
Morgan started toward the car without a backward glance. She opened its side and stepped somewhere beyond his sight.
What in all the faerie realms had she done? Did the beast eat her?
Her head poked back into view, and she gestured for him to come with her. “Come on, faerie king. Get inside and it’ll take us where we need to go.”
As if he wanted to be eaten by a creature that coughed toxic poison into the air and gleamed in the sunlight like armor.
He frowned at the car, but supposed there was no other choice. Liam had to get to the city with this woman. He had to know what it was like to be human, because the elemental within him was curious. It wanted to know what else the humans had done to their realm.
Why? He wasn’t confident.
The elemental had always known its purpose. End the human realm and the suffering of the planet they were destroying. But there were always other options, other paths they could take.
In his heart and soul, he’d always thought they would destroy the human realm. What else could they do? The humans didn’t listen to reason. They were foolish creatures who never understood what pollution could do.
Morgan thought otherwise. So, with the hope of love in his chest, he got into the belly of the creature that would deliver them to this house of pent.
He jumped when the beast growled as soon as he shut the door behind him.
Morgan chuckled. “It’s just the engine.”
“Humans have created monsters to do their bidding for them, then?” he asked.
She reached out and took his hand in hers. Her fingers twined with his helped ease his anger and fear. Liam felt strange knowing that such a simple connection could soothe his torment.
“The humans have created many wonderful things and many terrible things. Just like us.” She squeezed his fingers, and everything was fine again.
He didn’t know how to reconcile that. Fine? Nothing could be fine when he knew coming back to the mortal realm was a task waiting to be completed. The elemental would eventually take control again and he wasn’t in his own little realm where its magic could run rampant safely.
If he lost control here, then he would destroy everything in his path.
So many sights flickered past him on their ride. Everywhere they went was something new. Cars like this one in all shapes and sizes. Buildings that stretched up into the clouds. People wearing clothing that was far more revealing than he ever remembered humans being comfortable with.
He saw tiny objects in their hands that they stared at with complete confidence. Lights that told them when to walk and when to stop. Food on every corner in so much abundance he wondered how they weren’t all overweight.
They lived with so much around them. Pictures in the sky that changed colors and moved like giants lived among them. The humans didn’t even look up, however. They just kept staring at the objects in their hands and ignoring life.
Liam didn’t notice he’d pressed his nose against the window until he moved back. The smudge on the glass was embarrassing enough. Let alone his expression. He must have been open mouthed and drooling.
“It’s okay to look,” Morgan murmured. “A lot has changed since you’ve been here.”
She had no idea. All these changes were overwhelming and not enjoyably.
There were no plants. Nothing was left in this hunk of metal other than a few green specks on porches that were badly cared for.
He could hear them screaming. There was something called a park nearby, at least that’s what the trees said. They were manicured until they couldn’t even breathe. They wanted to be wild and free like their cousins. They called out for his help, but he knew he couldn’t do anything.
He needed a distraction. Something that would take his mind away from all the horrible things happening here. He wanted to believe the humans could be good. He wanted to believe they were more than what he had always thought.
Distraction. Anything.
Liam turned toward Morgan and asked, “When are we seeing this house of pent?”
She leaned forward and asked the faerie in the front seat, “How much longer?”
“We’ve arrived, Your Majesties.”
“Oh I’m not-” She didn’t get the chance to finish her words.
The metal beast stopped, and the faerie in the front seat got out. The side of the beast was opened, and the faerie stood to the side as he awaited the king’s exit.
This, Liam was comfortable with. He knew the court system like the back of his hand. The faeries should bow to him. He was their leader, but more than that, he housed the spirit of spring within his chest.
He wished he could explain to Morgan how the faeries worked. While the coven might vote in their leader, faeries respected only power. And there had always been the same power in the chest of each and every king.
But he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the creature inside him.
He stepped out of the car, and a blast of stale air hit him in the face. It smelled like gasoline, trash, and the ever present odor of metal. He coughed, pressing his hand against his mouth and nose to somehow preserve his lungs.
They lived in this? The humans lived in a city where the air was killing them?
Morgan got out of the car and stepped up to his side. “Come on,” she mumbled, lacing her fingers with his once more. “Let’s get inside.”
The faerie who had been driving them dropped into a low bow. Then, surprisingly, he reached out and caught Liam’s free hand.
No one of the court touched the king without permission. Liam frowned down at the young fae until he realized the creature was desperately trying to send a message through their mental connection.
He was still very young and needed physical contact to speak through minds.
Liam allowed access only to wince as a scream blasted through his mind.
“Save us, Your Majesty. We’ve suffered in silence all these years as the dying plants screamed for our help. We are outnumbered, but now that you’re here, we can rebuild the earth.”
The faerie released his hold and ran to the front of the metal beast. It started once more, the grumble of the engine roaring as the faerie guided the beast away from them.
Save them?
Had the boy been asking for the Spring Court, or was he speaking on behalf of the trees? The grass? The forgotten places buried under miles of concrete?
Morgan tugged on his hand, guiding him toward the front of the entirely glass building. “Let’s get out of the street, shall we? I know this is all new for you, Liam. I don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”
He was more than overwhelmed. He was angry.
The humans had destroyed something proud and grand. He could feel the spirits of the plants that had once been here. The forest that had stood tall and noble until man had walked among the trees and thought they would be better as furniture and houses.
He could feel every step of the centuries. Every moment when the trees had been hacked and destroyed. Their screams were sown into the earth like a tapestry of pain and anguish.
His ears rang with their screams until he could hear nothing else.
Morgan dragged him through a doorway. Cool air eased the heat of his cheeks. It smelled better in here, but not by much. Cucumber and mint assaulted his senses. She forced him to move to the front counter where a salesperson stood, or maybe a guard. He couldn’t tell anymore.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice eerily polite in a way he’d never heard her speak before. “We were told to stay here by a friend. There should have been a note for Liam...” She glanced back at him.
“Liam MacCarrick,” he murmured. He’d always used the same name in the human realm. Hopefully those in his court remembered his preference.
The man at the counter frowned at him, then looked through a stack of papers on his desk. “Here you are. Penthouse suite! Lucky woman.”
King of the Mountains Page 16
