ELEVEN
AISLINN sat in her bed, covers around her ankles and
her arms around her knees. The Valentino hung on a hanger near her
closet. Rain pattered on her bedroom window, coming down from
clouds as dark as her mood. It had been a week and the acute loss
she’d felt had not dissipated.
The queen had been
extra chilly to her—she could expect that treatment for the next
fifty years at a minimum—and all the Seelie had some sort of
comment to make, most especially Kendal. All of them thought she
and Gabriel had been lovers.
That was fine. She
wanted to remember Gabriel that way—as a lover.
All of them thought
she’d been used and discarded by the Unseelie incubus, just like
Kendal had used her. Two weeks ago she would’ve cared about the
gossip, but not now. She had far more weighty issues on her
heart.
Despite not sleeping
with him, Aislinn had never been with a man who’d affected her so
much. She’d never been with a man she’d missed as much after he was
gone.
She gazed out the
window, fingering Bella’s sapphire pendant. If she wasn’t such a
coward, she’d get up and leave right now. Just leave this place and
start over somewhere they’d appreciate her, somewhere she could
develop her magick and be the person nature had intended—one with
dark power. She could be with Bella and Ronan.
She could be with
Gabriel.
So what if she’d be
leaving everything she’d ever known? Wasn’t it time she stretched
her wings, discovered new things? Left fear behind her and forged
new paths?
Yes, it was
time.
What did she have
here anyway? Her mother, who was one of the coldest people she
knew; a woman who really only cared about one thing—her daughter’s
upward mobility at court. Since that mobility was officially
downward these days, her mother probably didn’t care if she was
even still alive. There was Carina, but Bella had always been far
closer to Aislinn’s heart. She would miss Carina but she shared a
shallow friendship with her, based on shopping and
gossip.
Hollowness filled her
body. Gods, she missed her father so much. Her thoughts strayed to
the book in the safe. Her fingers itched to pull it out, utter the
words, call him.
But it was selfish to
want that. She shouldn’t want it. Her father was . . . wherever he
was, and she shouldn’t call him back. He was where he was supposed
to be, doing whatever it was they did in the Netherworld. It
couldn’t be right to call him.
Could
it?
The frustrating part
was that she simply didn’t know and had no one to ask. No one here
to confide in. Here, she could never be the person she was born to
be. She would never meet her full potential magickally, never have
a greater purpose for her life. She’d never truly fit
in.
In the Black, she
just might.
Never, ever, would
that thought have occurred to her before she’d met Gabriel. He’d
completely changed her life.
It didn’t take her
long to finally come to the decision she’d been toying with all
week. All the same—even knowing somewhere deep within she would
finally make the decision to leave—it felt impulsive.
Reckless.
The hollow feeling in
her stomach turning leaden, she packed a bag. Her money was in a
bank in Piefferburg. She would always have that and could buy new
clothes and items she needed once she relocated. So she took only
the most valuable and sentimental things from her apartment.
Jewelry, the gown and lingerie Gabriel had given her, photographs,
and the book.
She wrote a note to
Carina with the intention of slipping it under her door on the way
out. No sense in allowing people to worry about her. Despite the
queen’s current displeasure with her, she wouldn’t go to arms
against the Black Tower if Aislinn defied her wishes and left the
Rose for the Black. The note was just extra insurance—Aislinn
needed the queen to know she’d left of her own free will and hadn’t
been taken. No one needed a fae war on their hands.
Taking one long last
look at her former life, she closed the front door of her apartment
and walked down the corridor toward a new one.
GIDEON concentrated on a small patch of the warding
around Piefferburg, just the tiniest bit, not big enough for any of
the Phaendir to notice. Collectively, the Phaendir maintained the
power mesh warding in a pocket of their twilight subconscious mind,
a pocket that was a hive mind—forming a seamless net that
imprisoned the fae. Since Piefferburg had been created, this had
been the way, power passing from father to son.
No female children
had ever been born of Phaendir couplings with human or fae women,
not since the dawn of their time. No muddy half-blood genetic
messes, either. Phaendir blood ran strong and true, eclipsing weak
human and fae DNA.
So it had been
decreed by the one and true God, Labrai, just one more symbol that
the Phaendir were the special ones, the chosen people.
The only exception
were the two sons born of a Phaendir and wilding woman mating,
Ronan and Niall Quinn. No one knew why those two men had turned out
such an odd mix of fae and druid. No Phaendir wanted to examine it
too closely. They hated that the two mages had certain skills
beyond a Phaendir’s scope, because didn’t that make them superior
in a way?
Gideon was the only
one who wanted to examine it more closely. A lot more closely. If
it were up to him, he’d kill them both and put an end to that
bastard genetic line before either of them had a chance to
procreate.
He leaned down and
examined his work. Yes, this little rip and repair would go
unnoticed. At least, he hoped so. Gideon knew he was taking a risk,
but drastic times called for drastic measures. The space was only
large enough to admit one man. One man at a time. If worse came to
worst—and it was looking like it might—he would send more than one
man in for the book.
But not
himself.
He would never enter
Piefferburg, but he would send his minions. Men he could trust and
who were loyal to him. Men who supported the True Path—his vision for the future of the Phaendir. Men who
believed Brother Maddoc coddled the fae, made their existence far
too comfortable. Men who believed—as he did—that the fae shouldn’t
exist at all, comfortably or
not.
Gideon knew he might
be sending his minions to their death. Any Phaendir discovered
within the territory of Piefferburg would be torn limb from limb
and possibly digested if there were any goblins around. But
sacrifices had to be made. In order for Gideon to gain control of
the Phaendir, he needed to make Maddoc look incompetent. Finding
the Book of Bindings before Maddoc did would make that happen.
Gideon would take Maddoc’s place, institute the True Path, and even
get the girl—Emily.
He glanced up and
down the warding, using his second sight to see past the haze of it
to the other side. This part of the Piefferburg Boundary Lands was
largely uninhabited. A distance away lay quiet brackish waterways
where some water fae lived.
Feeling the thread of
power pull on his body as he sewed the last bit of the hole up,
loosely for future use, Gideon snapped off the tendrils with a few
uttered words of Old Maejian and stepped back.
If those under his
power did as they were told, he wouldn’t have to use it. If he did,
he felt sure he would emerge victorious.
Labrai loved him best
among his peers. He would see him through.
IT was when she passed the statue of Jules
Piefferburg, in that twilight area of Piefferburg Square, that
things got dark.
Her footsteps
faltered on the cobblestones just a little once she made it past
that point. She may have cast a backward glance once or twice and
cursed herself for not being stronger or more courageous. She
didn’t stop, though, not even when she passed a group of dark fae—a
cluster composed of half-breed creatures who looked human, yet not
quite—who stared at her hooded figure and her white hand clutching
her suitcase and snickered as she passed. Not even when she
glimpsed a bedraggled boggart covered in old newspaper sleeping
against a wall, or passed by a beautiful and deadly Hu Hsien—a
Chinese woman who could take the form of a fox with poisoned
fangs—sipping a drink on the patio of a nocturnal
café.
Gods, was she doing
the right thing?
If she returned now,
she could take back the note from Carina in the morning and no one
would ever know she’d tried this. Things could go back the way they
had been yesterday . . . the same way they’d been three weeks ago,
five years . . . two decades . . .
She walked
on.
The shiny black tower
loomed above her as she reached the double front doors. Behind her
the Rose Tower gleamed in the moonlight where the rain clouds had
parted. It seemed miles away, not just on the other side of the
square.
Tall gray goblins
guarded the thick wooden doors of the Black Tower. One on each
side. Her steps faltered once again and her heart rate ratcheted
into the stratosphere. She’d seen them before, of course, just
never so close. The goblins resided in Goblin Town, away from the
rest of the fae because their culture was so alien. Mostly they
kept to themselves, unless they were called to battle by the Shadow
King—then they were ruthless, brutal killers who ate their enemy
even while it screamed for mercy.
They peered at her
curiously with slitted pig eyes as she approached. For all their
tendency toward the unspeakable in battle, when they were given a
set of rules they believed in, they would defend them to the death.
They were loyal as well. For these reasons they made good guards as
long as their liege was able to inspire them and hold their
loyalty, a thing the Shadow King had been able to do for hundreds
of years.
She halted before
them and clutched the handle of her suitcase so hard her hand went
bloodless. “I am Aislinn Christiana Guinevere Finvarra, formerly of
the Seelie, come to seek audience with the Shadow
King.”
CARINA ripped through Aislinn’s closet, pushing shoe
boxes from shelves and pulling clothing from hangers. “Where is it?
Where did you hide it, Aislinn?”
Gods, she’d waited
too long to do this. The book was nowhere to be found. Maybe
Aislinn had never had it and they had been wrong.
No, they were never
wrong. It had to be here somewhere.
She pulled everything
out of her drawers, then she checked under the bed and everywhere
in the palatial bathroom.
Nothing.
Carina made a loud
sound of frustration and slid down the bathroom wall to sit on the
floor opposite the huge spa tub. Surely Aislinn hadn’t put it in a
safe somewhere. Aislinn would’ve had no idea of the book’s worth so
she wouldn’t have bothered. Danu, they
would have Carina’s skin if she couldn’t produce it. It was the one
task they’d set for her and she’d managed to mess it
up.
Worse, they’d have
Drem’s skin.
As soon as she’d
picked up the note from beneath her door that morning, she’d known
there was no hope of finding the book. She’d searched Aislinn’s
place three times and had never found it. Why should this time be
any different? And now Aislinn was gone and Carina’s hope of
finding the book had gone with her.
She’d befriended
Aislinn almost two years earlier. Even getting close to her had
been difficult. Aislinn was more of an introvert than an extrovert
and she didn’t share much—not about her life, anyway. Plus, she’d
had Bella, who had been Aislinn’s confidant in all things—the
position for which Carina had been competing.
When Bella had been
banished from the Rose, Carina had thought she’d had a real shot.
But her personality was the opposite of Aislinn’s—loud where
Aislinn was quiet and strong, outspoken where Aislinn was
thoughtful and honest, more self-serving and shallow where Aislinn
was compassionate. Carina knew her own shortcomings as well as her
strengths. She and Aislinn had never quite meshed, never totally
connected. She’d never managed to get close enough to Aislinn to
coax her to tell her all her secrets . . . specifically the one
about the book they thought she had.
She’d miscalculated.
If she’d known then what she knew now, she would have skipped the
soft stuff and gone straight for the hard core. But now it was too
late to take another course. She was running out of
time.
What would they do to
her? What would they do to Drem?
A tear rolling down
her cheek, she pushed up from the floor of the bathroom and went to
gaze out the window in the living room. The Black Tower gleamed
shiny and imposing in the bright midmorning sunlight. Aislinn was
there chasing Gabriel right now, no doubt.
Never in all her days
had Carina ever thought Aislinn would hare off to the Unseelie.
What was in her head? She had everything a pure-blood Tuatha Dé
Sídhe could want: a beautiful apartment, high social status, money.
Why give all that up to go and live with monsters? It just didn’t
make any sense. It wasn’t as though Aislinn had Unseelie blood in
her. All her magick was white, harmless.
How could they hold
Carina responsible for Aislinn’s flighty, completely unpredictable
behavior? How could she have known that Gabriel would turn down the
Summer Queen’s invitation? It was completely unheard of! It was
even more amazing that the incubus had managed to keep his head
after doing so.
Still staring at the
tower in the distance, she pulled her cell phone from the pocket of
her jeans and punched in the charmed, masked number she tried so
very hard never to dial.
“Hello?” she queried
once someone picked up.
Silence on the other
end. Only breathing. Then, finally: “Why are you calling me?” His
voice was a low, magick-laced rasp that made her backbone go cold
and bowels want to let loose. She didn’t know his name. She only
knew he was high up in the Phaendir power structure, though not
quite at the top.
She licked her lips
and steeled herself. “Aislinn’s gone. I’ve searched her apartment
and . . . the book is nowhere to be found.” She paused to gather
her courage. “Maybe she never even had it.”
“She has
it.”
“She went to the
Black. Maybe she took it with her.”
Silence.
Magick coursing from
the other end of the line made her fingers and ear tingle. A low
static sound filled her head. Her breath caught painfully in her
throat as she wondered if this would be her end.
“S-sir?”
“I will give you one
last opportunity to right this wrong. Find the book.”
Click. The line went dead.
She lowered the cell
to her side, marveling that it was only the line that was dead.
Drem! They’d threatened his life. It was how they’d snared her into
this in the first place. Clutching the phone in her hand, she ran
out of the apartment and back to her quarters, heart in her throat,
straight into her husband’s arms.
“Oh, thank you.
Danu, thank you,” she sobbed into the
curve of Drem’s collar. She held him tight, tight enough that no
one could take him from her.
“What’s wrong, my
love?” Drem murmured into her ear. He stroked her hair and kissed
her head, holding her close. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m
here.”
She shivered and
shook, unable to form words. Tears wet his shirt as she clung to
him.
He pushed her back at
arm’s length to study her face. “Carina, tell me what’s
wrong.”
“I-I love you, Drem.”
She wiped her cheeks and tried to smile. “I want you to know that I
love you more than anyone in this world and I would do anything for
you. Anything.”
“Okay.” He looked
bewildered.
She melted into his
arms and they sank to the carpeted floor, clinging to each other as
if in rough seas.
Because they
were.
Oh, how they
were.
THE Shadow King was a very good-looking man. Pale
like a winter moon, but his features were chiseled and handsome.
His hair was striking in its length and in its graduation of color
from silver-blond at his crown to bloodred at the tips. Amazing
that he only looked to be in his early thirties. The Sídhe were a
long-lived species, but they did age. By all accounts, the Shadow
King was one of the oldest fae around, equaled in years to only a
few of the wildings. The Shadow Amulet had given him immortality,
locking his age in at whatever age he’d first put it
on.
His creature, Barthe,
was an Unseelie beast like she’d never before encountered. She
couldn’t keep her eyes off the hulking thing that stood so
protectively near his liege. He seemed imbued with some Zen-like
ability to remain perfectly and utterly still and quiet, but she
didn’t doubt for a moment that he was rapid and deadly when the
object of his protection was threatened.
But Aodh Críostóir
Ruadhán O’Dubhuir could take care of himself. It was said that when
the Phaendir trapped him to put him in Piefferburg, he fought so
hard he killed fifty of their men and tapped all their magickal
resources. It took the Phaendir a month to recover. The Shadow
King, like the Summer Queen, had many different kinds of magick—all
of them lethal. His only equal was the Summer Queen herself, and
because of that they remained immortal enemies, locked in an
eternal cold war.
Aislinn had never met
him in person, had never even glimpsed him from afar even though
he’d lived across the square from her for her entire life. Unlike
the Shadow King and unlike Gabriel, she’d been born in Piefferburg.
Likely she would die in Piefferburg. The thought made her heart
heavy, but it was something she’d reluctantly accepted long
ago.
At the moment, the
man in question was staring at her from across his living room. It
had surprised her to be brought by the Black Tower majordomo,
Hinkley, to the Shadow King’s living area and not to a throne room.
It appeared this royal did not stand on ceremony.
At least there were
no goblins here. They gave Aislinn the heebies.
She hadn’t had the
luck of running into Bella or Ronan, and she acutely regretted not
asking for Gabriel before coming to see the king.
There was something
about the Shadow King that made her nervous, though she couldn’t
pinpoint exactly what it was. Her intuition again, telling her
something her eyes could not see. Of course it made sense she was
uneasy; she’d just drastically altered every aspect of her
life.
“I am so glad you
decided to come to us, Aislinn. Gabriel has told me so much about
you.” The Shadow King’s hobgoblin servant arrived with a tray
holding a flute of what appeared to be sparkling water and she took
it gratefully. “I think with your skills, you’ll be a real asset to
the tower.”
Her grip tightened on
the glass. “So did Gabriel tell you about my . . .
blood?”
“When he came to me
to ask for forgiveness for his transgression, he mentioned you to
me. He said there was more to you than met the eye and I should
consider you an asset to the Unseelie Court if you decided to
defect.” He smiled, but the sight didn’t reassure her. “And here
you are.”
“Here I
am.”
“I know you must feel
out of your element right now, Aislinn. I realize what shaded
truths are told about us in the Rose Tower.” He spread his hands.
“I don’t care how the Summer Queen rules her people. The Seelie,
most of them anyway, are of no value to me. However, it does prove
to make the misplaced Unseelie nervous when they first arrive.
That’s an inconvenience.”
“Misplaced
Unseelie?”
He motioned to her
glass. “Please, drink, Aislinn. Relax. By misplaced Unseelie, I
mean people like yourself. Unseelie born into the Rose Tower and
raised to believe they are Seelie. Unseelie keeping the truth of
their dark gifts a secret.”
She choked on her sip
of water and coughed. It was the first time she’d ever been
referred to as out-and-out Unseelie.
“We’re happy to have
you, Aislinn. Your blood is esteemed within these walls.” He paused
and smiled wolfishly. “In fact, I could hardly wait to get you
here.”
She blinked. Her
vision was going a little blurry. Maybe it was exhaustion and
stress. “What do you mean?” She set her glass down and touched her
forehead. A horrible pounding pain had started in her temple as
well.
“And you came of your
own accord to boot. That was a treat. I feared I’d have to send
some unsavory characters to fetch you. Looks like Gabriel didn’t
fail after all. He just brought you here in a way that was
unorthodox for him . . . through honesty, well, mostly, anyway, and
without the use of sex.”
Her head snapped up.
“You sent Gabriel to lie to me and seduce me to your
court?”
“Actually, I sent him
to fuck you, addict you to him, and lure you here. He
failed.”
Shock surged through
her veins. “Why?”
The Shadow King took
a few steps toward her, his pale brows rising into his hairline.
“Why?”
She gasped as pain
shot through her stomach. She rolled off the couch, to her hands
and knees on the soft plush of the carpet. Glancing up at her glass
on the end table, she put two and two together.
Danu, he’d poisoned her drink. Her vision was
fading to black.
The Shadow King
leaned forward and bared his teeth. “Because the Unseelie blood
running through your veins is mine . . . daughter.”