Child Of Darkness
Jennifer Armintrout
At a Lightworld royal gala, Queene Ayla announces the betrothal of her daughter, Cerridwen, to a high-ranking councilor. Though strategically brilliant, the engagement comes as a shock—to Cerridwen especially. Infuriated by her mother's high-handedness, ignorant of her own true origins, she flees the court—leaving herself vulnerable to those who would see the Lightworld destroyed.Amid burgeoning unrest, desperate desires become divided loyalties and terrifying mercenaries lurk in the shadowy space between rebellion and anarchy.
Praise for the novels of Jennifer Armintrout
“Every character is drawn in vivid detail, driving the action from point to point in a way that never lets up.”
—The Eternal Night on The Turning
“[Armintrout’s] use of description varies between chilling, beautiful, and disturbing…[a] unique take on vampires.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
“Armintrout continues her Blood Ties series with style and verve, taking the reader to a completely convincing but alien world where anything can—and does—happen.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Possession
“The relationships between the characters are complicated and layered in ways that many authors don’t bother with.”
—Vampire Genre on Possession
“[This book] will stun readers. Not to be missed.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
on Ashes to Ashes
“Entertaining and often steamy romances run parallel to the supernatural action without dominating the pages.”
—Darque Reviews on All Soul’s Night
“Armintrout pulls out all the stops…a bloody good read.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
on All Souls’ Night
Books by Jennifer Armintrout
Blood Ties
BOOK ONE: THE TURNING
BOOK TWO: POSSESSION
BOOK THREE: ASHES TO ASHES
BOOK FOUR: ALL SOULS’ NIGHT
The Lightworld/Darkworld novels
QUEENE OF LIGHT
CHILD OF DARKNESS
and
VEIL OF SHADOWS
Available December 2009
JENNIFER ARMINTROUT
CHILD OF DARKNESS
A LIGHTWORLD/DARKWORLD NOVEL
This book is dedicated to Tez Miller.
Not just because she won the Twitter contest
and this was the prize, but also because she is
one of the nicest romance bloggers I have met.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgments
Prologue
On the night she was born, the Palace rejoiced.
But her mother did not.
Lying in her bed, the infant tucked closely to her side, Ayla despaired. Protect her, the Goddess had said. It had been so easy when the child had been a part of her. Now, she was a part of the world, a world that was more cruel and difficult than one of her race should have to face. Protecting her would not be as simple now.
The child was perfect, though more Human in appearance than even her mother. Faery babes were born pale, tinged with green, and spindly like the roots of a plant. This child was plump and pink, with a shock of flame-orange hair sprouting in tufts from her head. Two feathered, black wings were tucked against her small back, and they stirred as she slept, as though she dreamed of a day when she could use them.
The door to the Queene’s chambers opened to admit the child’s father. Malachi, once divine, now mortal. He approached carefully, as though afraid to see what lay beside Ayla in the bed.
“She is…whole?” He had voiced his fears to Ayla only once, late at night, when he’d recounted for her the sights of the pitiful children he’d had to escort to Aether, the domain of the Angels on Earth. He had been afraid that the child would be malformed, as a punishment for his fall.
It relieved Ayla that she was able to show him how foolish that fear had been. “She is whole.” She hesitated. “But her wings…they are the same as yours. Everyone will know she is not Garret’s child.”
Emboldened by the news that his child was not deformed as a consequence of his actions, he came forward to see her. “I am glad they will know. I would not care if that traitor’s name was never uttered in the Palace again.”
Ayla stroked the downy skin between her daughter’s wings. “No. No one must ever know. To keep her safe.”
“It would be safer for her to be thought of as a bastard,” he argued, and Ayla could not be surprised. She’d thought of it, herself.
“It would be. She would never be Queene, and so, she would never be a target for an Assassin’s blade. As heir to my throne, she will be,” Ayla mused aloud, as if thinking of it for the first time. “But if she were revealed to be a bastard, her inheritance of my throne might be compromised.”
“Your throne,” Malachi repeated. The words sounded like poison he needed to spit from his mouth.
Ayla did not bristle, as she used to. Over the months since her coronation, it had become clearer and clearer to her that while Malachi loved her and would stay at her side in the Lightworld, he hated the Faery Court. She’d feared, for a time, that it was her he hated, that he stayed in the Lightworld simply because he had nowhere else to go. But she had resolved to tolerate it, because she’d caused him to lose his immortality, and the kind Human who’d saved his life had died because of her.
It had only been when Cedric, her closest advisor, had politely suggested the real reason for Malachi’s hatred of her position—that it kept her from him, in all but the physical sense—that it had become clear. And now, she felt foolish at the mere memory of those fears.
“I do not worry for myself. Or, perhaps I do. If the child is known to not be Garret’s, those who wished to remove me from the Court could use it against me. If I were officially declared a traitor, think of what might happen to her.” Speaking of death aloud, in this room where Queene Mabb had fallen under Garret’s hand, sent a ripple of apprehension through her, as if her own death brushed over her on its way to the future. “No, it would be safer for her to be thought of as the heir to the throne, and endangered in that way, than to be cast on the mercy of the Court and be subject to their machinations.”
She pulled the blanket over the child—her daughter, how strange to think those words!—so that her form was obscured. “Bring Cedric. I need his counsel.”
Malachi’s fists clenched at his sides. She knew his feelings for her advisor. Malachi wished to be the closest to her, in every way. And he was, in most ways, though he would not believe it no matter how many times she reassured him. But Cedric knew the Lightworld as no one else did, not even Flidais or the other members of the council, and Ayla called on him when a problem seemed too large or complicated to solve on her own. It was impossible to convince Malachi that she did not view his inexperience with Lightworld politics as a lack of ability.
He did not argue and, with a last, longing look at his child, turned and left. He returned with Cedric quickly; no doubt both men had waited in the antechamber beyond for the child’s arrival.
When the door was shut, Ayla pulled back the covers to reveal the tiny babe at her side. She studied Cedric’s expression carefully, but he gave nothing away.
“She is perfect, Your Majesty. You both should be very proud that your union resulted in such a beautiful child.” His tone was schooled through years of politics; he never missed a step by disclosing something too soon. “Have you a name for her?”
“Cerridwen,” Ayla answered, though she had not thought of it until now. “After that face of the Goddess.”
“It is a strong name,” Cedric said with a Courtly bow. “The Royal Heir, Cerridwen.”
“It is a mockery of the true God,” Malachi put in, but without malice. He often made such pronouncements, without feeling, betraying that he had once been a creature without emotion or will, completely subservient to the One God of the Humans.
Ayla ignored him, choosing instead to press on with her advisor. “And what of her appearance. Do you not see anything odd, Cedric?”
As if freed of some invisible bond, Cedric spoke in earnest now. “She appears to be Human. That is explained away easily enough, as you are half Human yourself. Plus, most Fae have little experience with young of their own species to tell the difference readily, especially from a distance. But her wings, Your Majesty. There are already rumors that you will make Malachi your Royal Consort. If she is seen to have such a similar feature as him, especially one that is so unlike anything born to the Fae…No doubt you’ve thought of this already.”
“She has,” Malachi said, coming to sit on the bed beside Ayla, as if he could no longer stand the separation. “And we have decided that it is in the best interest of the child that no one discover her true parentage.” He leveled his gaze at Ayla, and the sudden sorrow in his eyes jolted her. “Not even the child should know, lest she let the information loose by mistake.”
“That is wise, Malachi,” Cedric acknowledged with a nod of his head. “However, it is not practical to keep the girl locked away forever. The Court will question her absence at royal functions. Her existence might even be called into question. Even if hiding her was possible, she will have to be attended by servants, and servants do talk.”
Ayla waved a hand to stop him. She was tired, and wished to be alone with her child on this first night of its life, without the nagging fear that so much was left to do. “I agree with you. We cannot hide her away. As for the servants, I will leave that to your discretion. You know which servants in the Palace can be trusted, not only to keep her secret, but to care for her as she deserves.” She tapped one finger on her lips, as if considering, though her mind was already made up on the next matter. “I believe I shall enact a new law. All Faeries at Court shall bind and cover their wings. In homage to Mabb, of course, who always hid her own. The anniversary of her death is only a few weeks away. Surely we can keep Cerridwen hidden until then?”
Cedric did not respond immediately, and he looked as though he worked over the problem of what to say to her in his mind. “I do not believe Your Majesty has thought of all the implications such a declaration will entail. There will be those who resist.”
“And they shall be turned away from Court until they comply with my wishes. This is not unheard of. Mabb often used such tactics,” Ayla answered quickly.
“With respect to Mabb—” and Cedric did not need to assure her of his genuineness in this respect “—do you truly wish to be seen as her equal in the eyes of your subjects?”
“My subjects clamor to be Human, though they don’t admit it.” She thought of the words of the Goddess, who’d delivered her from death, who’d revealed Ayla’s purpose to her in the barren in-between of the healing Astral plane. Nearly struck down by Garret’s ax, she had been spared to rescue the Fae from their obsession with Humanity, an obsession that the Goddess had blamed for destroying the Veil. An obsession that the exiled Fae races did not even see. Was such a proclamation, to dress in such a way as to appear more Human, a violation of the charge given to her by the Goddess?
No, it was for the greater good of her race. It was buying time for her tiny daughter. She continued, “This will allow them to indulge their sick fantasy of mortality. I do not believe there will be so many protesters as you imagine.”
Cedric did not argue, though whether he was in agreement or simply did not wish to pursue it further, Ayla could not tell. “I will make a pronouncement on the anniversary of Mabb’s assassination. In that time, you may keep the child’s wings disguised easily, and perhaps the Court will not link her birth as the cause for the new law.”
“They will. And they will think she is deformed,” Malachi said bitterly. “But if it is to protect the life of my child, I will bear it.”
“You would bear it, no matter the cause,” Ayla snapped, and she knew then that she was too tired, from the birth and from the meeting that had followed, to be reasonable any longer. “Thank you, Cedric. You may go and announce the birth of the Royal Heir, noting, of course, that she will be presented to all in a few weeks, when she’s of an appropriate age.”
“It would be my greatest honor, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing low before exiting her chambers.
Malachi stayed at her side, looking longingly at his daughter. As though Ayla were not there to hear it, as though it were meant for no one but himself and the child, “It is for the best,” he said quietly.
Her heart tore for him, but Ayla knew he was correct. Though it would pain him every day, disclosing the truth about her parentage would only harm Cerridwen.
The babe stirred, rustling her black feathered wings. A small, angry sound issued from her lips, but hushed as she drifted into sleep once more.
As they watched, awed by the mere presence of their daughter, Ayla found she was not as tired as she had thought. In fact, she felt she could study her child endlessly.
One
It was easy to slip from the Palace unnoticed, when you knew exactly what to do. A mistake could get you returned to precisely where you did not wish to be—confinement, boredom, the duties of a Royal Heir—but she’d learned from her mistakes in the past. Now, it was nothing at all to duck her governess and gain her freedom.
It was especially easy on this night, when so many Faeries poured in through the Palace gates that the guards would not concern themselves with the ones going out.
And this was why Cerridwen did not object to yet another royal party. She’d complained on the surface, just enough so that her compliance would not arouse suspicion. And her governess had dressed her hair and helped her into her gown, all the while ignoring the expected grumbling and protesting that she had become so used to over the past twenty years.
Twenty years. Really. Who still had a nursemaid at twenty years old? Not even the Humans kept their children as children for that long!
Twenty years, this night, and a party to celebrate it. A party to celebrate one more year that the Royal Heir was not dead. What importance was an heir, really, in a race that did not die, or, at least, did not die naturally? There would be another party like it, and another, and another, always with the same Faeries, always in the same, boring pattern. A feast, then dancing, and conversation with the few faeries she was allowed to know, all of her mother’s friends and advisors. How many evenings of her life had already been wasted in awkward chatter with Cedric, her mother’s faithful lapdog, who never said or did anything interesting, lest he offend Her Majesty? Or Malachi, who glowered and stared in the most uncomfortable way, who, it was rumored, was not even a quarter Fae, but was kept because of some bizarre devotion to her mother?
“It is not a waste,” Governess would say sagely while she pulled and pried at Cerridwen’s tangles. “If it is the will of the Gods, you will never die. You cannot waste that which is infinite.”
It did not make Cerridwen glad to know that her boredom would be infinite.
After she had been cleaned and dressed and made to look far more fine than usual for these occasions—which aroused some suspicion on her part that quickly faded when she remembered her plan to escape the party altogether—she had dutifully followed the guards that would escort her to the ball. Then she had promptly allowed herself to become separated from them by the chattering throng of arriving guests, and her escape was made.
It had not been hard to disguise her leather breeches under her gown, and when she reached an alcove, covered over by a tapestry of her mother, the Great Queene Ayla, slaying her father, the Betrayer King, she ducked behind the heavy fabric and shucked her dress, pulling on the shirt that she’d folded and hidden in her bodice. She kept her wings bound—where she was going, they did not know her as the Royal Heir to the throne of the Faeries, nor as a Faery at all. Among them, she was Human, and the ruse suited her.
The blowsy Human shirt—a ruffled, silk thing she traded with Gypsies for—would have covered her wings without their binding, but she had worn them bound since before she could remember. She felt almost naked without them secured to her back. Into her sleeve, she tucked a scrap of a mask. It would guarantee her entrance tonight, to a gathering much more desirable than the one she’d been expected to attend.
She left the dress and her shoes in the alcove. Better to go barefoot than break her neck in those flimsy slippers. She took a deep breath and slipped from her hiding place, but no one noticed her. As she wound her way through the crowd, deftly avoiding her abandoned and confused guards who stumbled, helpless, against the flow of bodies moving into the Palace, she pulled her hair over her shoulder and worked it into a loose braid, making sure to cover the wisps of antennae that sprouted from her forehead. By the time she reached the Palace gate, she could have been any Human slave being sent by their Faery master on an errand in the Lightworld.
Cerridwen spotted two such slaves following their owners into the Palace. In a time before her mother’s reign, they all said, this would never have been tolerated. Queene Ayla herself did not care for the practice, either. It brought the Fae races too close to Humans, blurred the dividing line between them. No doubt the Faeries who brought Humans into the Palace tonight would either be turned away or have their names marked down somewhere to note that they were out of favor with the Queene.
Cerridwen’s fists clenched at her sides as she marched away from the Palace. Her mother’s hypocrisy never failed to ignite fury within her. She was half Human, and yet she criticized full-blooded Faeries for consorting with them? And she kept a Darkling at her side, yet railed against the Darkworld, as well?
The flames cooled as Cerridwen realized how far she had already traveled from the Palace, and how close she was to the freedom of the Strip. Already, she could hear the sounds of it echoing through the concrete walls of her prison world. She came to the edge of the Faery Court, nodded to the guards who stood dressed in her mother’s livery, and broke into a joyous run toward the mouth of the tunnel.
The Strip was the neutral ground between the worlds of Dark and Light. A huge tunnel, reaching far over the heads of the creatures on the ground, with dwellings and places of commerce stacked on top of each other, the Strip was home to those who took no side in the ongoing war between Lightworld and Darkworld. Mostly Humans, the fascinating ancestors of Cerridwen’s mother, and, she sometimes reminded herself with pride, of herself. Gypsies, who considered themselves apart from Humans, who claimed kinship to immortal creatures long ago. Bio-mechs, still Human, but fitted with metal parts.
Then, there were those that were not so fascinating, not so much as they were repulsive or frightening. Vampires, with their thirst for the death of any mortal creature. The Gypsies that even other Gypsies would not consort with, who lured creatures away from the safety of the Strip to harvest their parts. They pulled stinking carts, hawking their wares, eyes and teeth and horns, and nameless, slimy things that no one, at least, no one that Cerridwen could think of, would want. She could not fathom why any Human would chose to live in the Underground with the very creatures their race had banished below. After the destruction of the Veil between the world of the Astral and the world of mortals, the Earth had to be shared. The Humans had taken more than their share by driving the races of the Underground into their sewers and cellars. Why some of the Humans would follow the creatures into their skyless prison, Cerridwen could not explain.
She pushed her way across the wide tunnel, toward the stand that sold sweet Human bread, and the smell reminded her that she had not brought anything to trade with. She reached to her hair, where Governess had pinned a jeweled ornament. It was worth too much to trade for simple bread, but the sticky, spiced scent teased her empty belly. Tonight, she would be generous.
A soft, tutting sound came close to her ear, and a voice whispered, “You know better than that, Cerri.”
She jumped and laughed as she turned. “Fenrick, you frightened me!”
As he always frightened her, a little. And thrilled her. He smiled, and his teeth stood out, brightly silver against the blue-black of his skin. “You should be frightened of me. You, Human, me Elf—we are, after all, mortal enemies.”
“Mortal enemies,” she agreed, good-naturedly, but she wished he would not make such jokes. They were enemies, more than he knew. Between Elf and Human, no love was lost. But the animosity between the Faery Court and the kingdom of Elves went back much farther than their confinement in the Underground.
He took the hair ornament from her hand and made a soft whistling sound as he examined it. “This looks like Faery craft. It fairly burns my skin to touch it.”
“I found it in the mouth of a tunnel to the Lightworld.” It was not a complete lie. She had found it in the Lightworld.
This impressed Fenrick; his pointed ears lifted as he smiled. “So much bravery for such a small thing! No doubt you’ll be at the front line when the great battle comes.”
The great battle. They often mocked it together, the lust for blood and war and victory that both the Lightworld and Darkworld professed at length. It was speaking out against such ideals that had gotten the Elves expelled from the Lightworld in the first years since the Great War with the Humans. And it was what had gotten Fenrick’s father expelled from the Darkworld Elves only twenty-five years previous. Fenrick had grown, as Queene Ayla had, in the hardship of the Strip.
Strange, Cerridwen thought, that it made her mother so angry and hardened at Humans, so different from Fenrick, who embraced the difficulties of his childhood and held no one unduly accountable.
Fenrick motioned to the stall owner and handed over his trade—a few water-stained packets of sugar from the Human world above, a booklet of paper scraps held together with coiled wire, and two or three small, coppery coins, also Human in origin—and waited for the thick-armed man to assess the value. He nodded, unsmiling, and broke off a large chunk of the sticky sweet bread for Fenrick.
Fenrick held up his hand. “For the Human. She was willing to part with something much more valuable for it.”
At this, the shopkeeper’s eyes widened in disbelief, and he made to pull the bread back, but Cerridwen snatched it and she and Fenrick ran laughing into the crowd at the center of the Strip.
When they stopped again, near one of the tunnels to the Darkworld, she meant to thank him for the bread. But Fenrick spoke first, and she used the opportunity to bite into the delicious Human confection.
“You look different tonight,” Fenrick said, gesturing to her face. “You’re wearing paint on your eyes. Trying to impress someone?”
She had forgotten to remove the cosmetics Governess had applied for the royal party. She swallowed carefully, the sticky bread sliding down her throat in a raw lump. Then, she put on a wicked grin, the one she had practiced in the mirror until it looked both teasing and good-humored. “Perhaps. Or several someones. The night is long.”
He took a step forward, then another, until they were so close that his chest brushed hers. His gray tongue darted over his blue-black lips, his unsettlingly yellow gaze fixed on her mouth. He leaned down, and she did not know what to do, other than to flatten against the slope of the tunnel and move the bread to her side so that he did not crush it between them. His mouth covered hers—how often had she thought of this happening in the weeks since she’d met him?—and it was exactly like, yet strangely nothing at all like, what she had imagined it would be to be kissed. She heard a small noise from her throat before she could stop it; it was a shame, she wanted to appear experienced and unaffected.
When he moved back, it seemed to have been finished in a blink of an eye. For another blink, she waited, wondering what he would say, if this was when he would declare some feeling for her. Her heart stuck in her throat, or it might have been the bit of bread, but while she gaped at him wide-eyed, his serious, intense expression changed into one of laughter.
“Come on. The night isn’t that long.” He tugged on her hand and she followed him into the tunnel, bracing herself against the stench of decay that lingered in the Darkworld.
So, that was not what he meant by the kiss, though she did not know what he had meant. It did not matter. She could laugh and dance and be young, unencumbered by the strictures of Palace manners, the seriousness that pervaded every facet of her life in the Lightworld.
She let him take her hand and pull her deeper into the Darkworld, and she thought she could already hear the pulse of the music that awaited her.
“Your Majesty?”
Ayla looked up, away from the revelers who crowded the Great Hall. Cedric, seated at her side, turned his attention to the guard who had approached her, as did Malachi, who stood at the foot of the dais, in deep discussion with two other Faeries on her council.
Angry as she was with her daughter, she would not show it. Nor would she show any concern, though in the back of her mind it crept in to spoil her annoyance. “Yes? Have you found her?”
“No, Your Majesty. We did find a dress, which her servants have confirmed belonged to her, and shoes.” He cleared his throat, obviously nervous to have to speak to his Queene thusly. “Is it possible that she has left the Palace? We do not wish to presume—”
Ayla cut him off with a glare. “If she is not in the Palace,” she began, her voice low and serious, “then she has left the Palace. You do not need my permission to think so. Organize your men and find her!”
Cedric cleared his throat. He did not approve of her tone, or what she had said, that was certain. But she did not give him leave to speak. Nor would she meet Malachi’s concerned gaze.
It was all too appropriate that her daughter would demonstrate her willful disobedience tonight, of all nights. It proved that she needed guidance, and if she would not listen to her mother, she would have to be influenced by someone far wiser, and more patient.
It had not been an easy decision to make. Ayla had first thought of assigning her a position on the royal council, but Cedric had warned against it. There would be too many opportunities for her to discover the truth about Ayla’s past, too many chances for an untrustworthy member of council to flaunt their knowledge in an attempt to hurt the Queene.
A Guild, then, seemed far more appropriate. When Ayla had come to the Lightworld, the Assassins’ Guild had taught her discipline, and respect for her race. But she could not choose the life of an Assassin for her daughter. It was too dangerous. The Healers’ Guild accepted only those with an established gift for healing, and Cerridwen had not displayed such a talent. The other Guilds also fell under Ayla’s harsh scrutiny, and were rejected.
Her only course of action, the only sensible course of action, was the one she had determined to take long before this royal feast had been planned.
“Perhaps,” Cedric began quietly, “we should put it about that the Royal Heir is ill, and cannot attend this evening?”
Ayla drummed her fingertips on the table. Whenever Cerridwen went missing, there was some lie about her health to cover the disappearance. Doubtless, no one believed the stories any longer. “No. We’ve made her sound as sickly as a changeling as it is.”
The servants cleared away the plates from the meal; already members of the Court stirred, restless for the dancing and merrymaking to begin. There would be no other opportunity.
“Cedric, tell the herald I wish to make an announcement.”
An announcement her advisor would not, she suspected, be enthused about. But he was dutiful. He would obey her and put on a good face before the Court. She was sure of it.
As if sensing some unpleasantness to come, Cedric nodded warily and pushed back from the table. Though their wings were bound, the Faeries in the great hall perched upon low stools, so that the tips were not bent by the torturous contraptions that were Human chairs.
Within moments, the herald sounded the call that would bring the entire assembly’s attention to their Queene. At the loud, metal clanging of the bell, Ayla rose and fixed her face with a serene smile.
As she opened her mouth to speak, panic hit her full in the chest. How could she do this? Only a handful of years separated her from the babe who’d snuggled at her side, the gangling, near-mortal child who had nestled clumsily in her mother’s lap after a scrape. If she could have, she would have kept her daughter from growing at all.
Kept her from growing into the alien creature who had seemed to replace that sweet child overnight.
The anger at her daughter’s ill-timed “disappearance” flared to new life and fixed her resolve.
“Friends,” she began, her throat constricting as though to prevent her from speaking the words she was sure to regret. “My daughter, high-spirited as she is, seems to have slipped away from the festivities. That is unfortunate, as she is unaware that there is so much more to celebrate on this night. More than the reminder of her joyous birth, more than our gratitude for the continuance of the royal bloodline she descended from. Tonight, we celebrate her betrothal.”
There was a rumble of approval. Every Faery present would be delighted to hear this news firsthand, and relate it to those who were not fortunate enough to be there for the historic announcement themselves.
Ayla continued, “As I have said, my daughter has a reputation for high spirits, and that reputation is well earned. She is a creature more Fae than many of us, in many ways. Her mate should be, then, someone who remembers how to be the way we were. Someone who knows how to live with and appreciate the gentle nature that she exhibits, and who will respect her position as heir to a cherished bloodline.” She took a breath, which others almost certainly judged a dramatic pause. Truly, she teetered on the precipice of a moment she could not reverse, words she could not revoke. “That Faery is my chief advisor and close personal friend, Cedric.”
A mixture of murmurs, gasps and applause rose from the hall, but all of it sounded pleased, and the ball of anxiety in Ayla’s chest unclenched.
And then she caught sight of Cedric, standing in the crowd, ignoring the congratulations of those who gathered around him, staring in shock and—anger? Was he angry—at his Queene?
Ayla looked away, too uncomfortable under Cedric’s glare—for that was what it was, an angry, disbelieving glare—and found Malachi. His expression was much the same.
When she looked away, to Cedric again, her advisor pushed through the crowd, brushed aside all of those Faeries who wanted to congratulate and envy him, on his way to the doors.
Ayla waved to the leader of her musicians, and they began a lively dancing tune on their bells, harps, and whistles. The commotion around Cedric’s departure wouldn’t be forgotten, but for a moment, the dancing would take the place of the gossip.
Ayla looked for Malachi. But he, too, had disappeared from the gathering.
He stalked through the tunnels almost without seeing, so blinding was his anger. How could she have done this? Without consulting him, without warning him, at least?
He would not take this. For twenty years now, he’d stood by her side and played the faithful servant. When her regard had faded to expectation and every day she took him a bit more for granted, he had ignored it. When she had begun to question his advice, then blame him publicly for decisions whose consequences could have firmly been laid at her feet, he’d stayed silent. And after all he’d done. Without him, she would have been executed, or rotted away for the rest of her immortal life in King Garret’s dungeons. This was how she repaid him.
No more. She would regret this callous disregard she’d dealt him.
He’d already passed through the Strip, into the tunnels of the Darkworld, more familiar and welcoming now to him than the place he called home. Perhaps it was because the menace here was on display, not hidden beneath layers of pretty trinkets and vapid treasures. Here, he could slay those who harmed him and not be fooled by his own sense of loyalty.
In the darkness ahead, a figure moved. Small, almost shrinking from the shadows, its voice called out in a ragged whisper. “Cedric?”
“It is,” he called back, in the mortal tongue he had learned but not fully mastered. He often wondered if he sounded foolish or stupid to the Humans, the way the Queene’s Consort sounded to his ears when he attempted to speak the Fae language. But his self-consciousness was forgotten when the figure broke into a run, and he braced himself for the slight weight of her body colliding with his, her arms twining in his hair.
Dika. An ugly, mortal-sounding word for such a creature. Soft, and somehow clean when all around her was sordid and filthy. Cedric buried his hands in the coiling fall of her dark hair, pressed his lips to hers, finding her mouth hot and eager under his, as it always was when they had been apart.
“I worried you would not come,” she gasped against him, her hands clutching to fists in the fabric of his shirt. “That you no longer wanted me.”
He would have laughed at her if he hadn’t known that such an action would anger her. She, like many of the Humans he had met through her, did not enjoy being laughed at. But how could she have thought he would abandon her? The only thing that pushed him, mechanical, through his days and nights was the prospect of being with her.
“That is absurd. I would never wish to be parted from you.” He inhaled the perfumed scent of her hair, wanting to hold the fragrance in his mind so that he would remember it in the smoke and spice of the Lightworld. He was never able to.
“I am glad to hear it,” she whispered, still clinging to him. “Because we have confirmation from our Upworld contacts. We are leaving.”
He stepped back, though all he wanted was to pull her closer. “When?”
“Soon.” She reached up to touch his face, smoothed her hand over his antennae, which he knew glowed with his anxiety. “I want you to come with us.”
They had discussed this before. He did not wish to do so again, and especially not now, when they had been apart for so long.
But later, as they lay together, awake but not speaking, in the tangle of rough bedding in the secret room that was for them only, for their meetings, the unavoidable notion of her leaving the Underground could not be ignored. The thought nagged at him, like pain from a wound seen but not yet felt.
And yet, it was something of a relief, too. If she left the Underground, there would be no longing for her after the Queene’s ridiculous proclamation was carried out. No wondering if she still felt for him, as he surely would, always, for her. And most importantly, no need to lie to seek her out. That was something he could never do, no matter how repulsive the thought of the marriage would be. Though his race might view the mortal concept of fidelity as antiquated and quaint, Cedric had lived long enough to know that lies, of any kind, destroyed one’s self faster and more efficiently than a blade ever could. Though murdered, Mabb had brought on her own end through constant duplicity. Her brother, her murderer, Garret, had gone in much the same way. Cedric would not repeat their missteps.
“You could come with us, you know,” Dika said quietly, her breath teasing the skin of his chest where her head lay. “I know you’ve said that you don’t want to. But you could pass for Human, and my people will protect you. We protect our own.”
“I will give it thought.” He wanted to believe that were true. That he could go with her, escape what life had become all those hundreds of years ago when the Veil first tore in half. But he could guarantee her nothing.
He could guarantee himself nothing.
Two
The music thrummed through her veins like a secondary heartbeat, an all-consuming imperative to move among the seething mass of bodies around her. They were all different shades and varying species, not like the uniformly lithe and perfect forms of the Faery races.
Cerridwen had lost track of the time, and she did not care. She had lost track of Fenrick, too; that was more worrying. But the part of her that cared was enslaved by the part of her that wanted to remain where she was and dance. Fenrick would turn up. She did not want to stay at his side like a mewling kitten.
Unless someone else was at his side.
She stood on tiptoe to see above the heads that bobbed in time to the music around her. It was dark; she would not be able to spot him, another degree of darkness in all of the moving shadows.
The tunnel where they gathered was another of those crisscrossing tunnels that comprised the Underground, holes once made by the Humans above for their great trains to rush through. This one was not decorated with tiled patterns, or arranged like the Great Hall in the Palace. Here, they danced wherever they could find the space, and the music came from loud, Human machines, not tin-sounding whistles and bells. This music was alive.
Though she was loath to the leave the dancing behind, Cerridwen could not shake the thought that Fenrick might be one of those shadows, in one of those corners, with another. And what will you do if he is? she chided herself. Demand that he turn his attentions to you?
She shoved the voice of self-doubt away and pushed through the crowd. It was much harder to move in the room if one was not dancing, like pushing one’s hand against a current of water. She reached an edge, the platform where the big trains would have stopped to let Humans on. She came upon it faster than she’d thought she would, and for a dizzying moment realized she could have easily stepped over. She felt her way to the ladder and followed something vaguely mortal—she hoped it was not a Vampire—down to the next level. Beyond the reach of the lights, a bit of a Human train remained, though the tracks had been scavenged by Gypsies and Bio-mechs long ago. There was a door, and crudely constructed steps leading to it, and someone inside.
She knew, without actually knowing, that she would find Fenrick there. Once up the wobbly set of steps, though, she faltered. Did she knock, or simply barge in, trusting that her bravery and brazenness would impress him as it had in the past?
If he is with someone else in there, he might not appreciate the intrusion, the doubt crept in again. Before she had time to force it aside, the door popped open, nearly toppling her from the steps. She backed down as Fenrick emerged, his expression angry for the barest of seconds, then pleased and surprised.
“I’d thought I’d lost you,” he said, the flash of his silver teeth the only indication of his smile in the darkness.
Cerridwen smiled back, to show she had not taken his disappearance too seriously. “I thought you were trying to lose me.” Movement in the dirty windows of the train caught her eye. He had not been in there alone, nor in a romantic engagement. The movement was accompanied by a muffled shout of voices in unison. “What were you doing?”
Fenrick came down the steps, his body language easy, but he did not look behind him. “Just chatting with a few old friends.”
A cry went up from the dance floor above their heads. Not the enthusiastic shout that sometimes came from a group having a good time. The screams of a crowd interrupted by something unexpected, unpleasant.
“Watch out,” Fenrick said, strangely calm as he pulled her out of the way of a large, furred beast jumping down from the level above. He backed them into the safety of a narrow space between the train car and tunnel wall, even as those inside the train rushed out.
As they watched, more creatures jumped from the upper level, some landing on their feet and running off down the tunnel, others falling roughly, only to be crushed by the next creature who jumped down. The less-brave partiers swarmed another ladder, and slipped down it in a hurry to get away from whatever pursued.
“What is it?” Cerridwen whispered, aware, but only fleetingly, that their bodies were startlingly close together in this space, and that he had not let go of her.
“It could be anything,” he whispered back, his breath stirring her hair. “Wraiths, maybe. Or Demons. But Demons are running from whatever it is…they would fight another Demon.”
She shivered, from the fear and from the proximity of him.
And then, the pleasant shivers faded. Shouts, in the Fae language, angry male shouts, drifted to her ears, and soldiers, wearing her mother’s seal, followed the crowd over the edge.
If not for the confusion of the scene, they might have spotted her, but they pursued the Darklings down the tunnel, away from her hiding place.
“Lightworlders!” Fenrick rasped vehemently in her ear. “What are those scum doing here?”
She knew what they were doing. She could not let them find her.
“Let’s get out of here,” she insisted, trying to move past him, down the tunnel blocked by the train. “Come on!”
She’d expected him to mock her. “Are you afraid?” she’d thought he’d say. But he did not. He gripped her arm and pulled her, inching their way past the train car, to the open tunnel where they could run. And he pulled his knife, a wicked, curved thing, from under his shirt.
They ran until they were out of breath, until her legs ached and her wings strained at their binding, as if arguing with her that flying would serve her better. She forced herself onward, until she could no longer stand it, and collapsed to her knees, her breath coming from her in loud, frightened sobs.
Fenrick knelt at her side, and tossing his knife away, put his arms around her. “It’s all right. We’re safe,” he assured her between panting breaths. “It’s all right.”
He kissed her hair, held her head to his chest, kept her close to him. All she had to do was catch her breath, and tilt her face up….
When she did, he kissed her, hard and furious, as if he could expel all her fear and exertion of their flight by channeling it into himself. And she melted under his mouth, his tongue. Melted into him.
She pushed her hands under his shirt, found the blue-black skin beneath warm under her fingers.
“You’re shaking,” he said against her mouth, and he reached for the ties of her shirt.
She caught his hands, her heart thumping hard. “Did you hear that?”
“I didn’t hear anything.” He leaned to kiss her again, trying to shrug aside her hands, but she resisted him and climbed to her feet warily.
Down the tunnel, where a shaft of light from another, intersecting route pierced the darkness, something moved. Cerridwen thought of Wraiths and the destruction they could wreak.
“What are you afraid of?” Fenrick asked, an edge of impatience in his voice.
It was not a Wraith. It bobbed as it moved, as though it were walking. The Wraiths glided above the ground…. At least, that was what she had heard.
“I am not afraid of anything,” she stated boldly.
He rose to his feet and pulled his shirt over his head, tossed it aside. “Then come here, if you aren’t afraid.”
She looked away, for although she could not see his, he would be able to read her expression in the dark. And she spied his blade on the ground.
She stooped to grab it and walked slowly down the tunnel, toward whatever the creature was that continued toward them.
“Cerri, what are you doing? Come back,” Fenrick called.
The creature in the shadows halted.
“Cerridwen?”
Her heart lurched in her chest at the familiar voice.
“Cerridwen? The Royal Heir?” The creature stumbled closer, two spots of angry red light forming in the darkness, where his antennae would be. “Is that you?”
He stumbled close enough to see her, and she looked over her shoulder for Fenrick. He was invisible in the darkness, or maybe he’d left her there. She hoped that he’d left. She did not wish for her game to be given away so soon, just as things were becoming interesting between them.
Cedric gripped her by her arms and shook her, nearly knocking the knife from her hands. “What are you doing here?” he shouted, his hands crushing painfully. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this area is?”
Now, she knew that Fenrick had gone. He would not have let someone lay his hands on her this way. She pushed Cedric back. “How dare you!”
“I should do worse,” he threatened, coming a step closer, looming over her.
She laughed, tried to make it sound as scathing and bitter as she had heard from Courtiers. “No, I mean how dare you follow me here, like my mother’s obedient dog! How dare you show yourself such disrespect!”
“Your mother?” he asked, his expression suddenly confused.
Something mean and vicious blossomed in Cerridwen’s chest. “Yes, my mother. She’s sent soldiers here to find me. Her soldiers, into the Darkworld. And you…you didn’t know?”
“If I had, be assured I would not have let it happen.” He grabbed her arm again, and pulled her toward the crossing of the tunnels.
“You didn’t know, and you didn’t know to come look for me,” she accused. It made more sense, now. Why he’d been so surprised to find her. Why he’d been in the tunnels with no guards. “You were here on your own business.”
“Of a sort,” he admitted sourly. They reached the intersection and he started off in the wrong direction.
She yanked him the right way, preferring to glare at him rather than argue, and tucked the knife into her belt. “And what business could you possibly have in the Darkworld, oh shining beacon of loyalty?”
“My own,” he snapped. “This is not the right way.”
“I was unaware that you were so knowledgeable about the Darkworld.” She pulled free from his grasp. “I will be sure to tell my mother about your expertise.”
“Your mother already knows.” He followed her; she heard his boots splash through a puddle, and a curse. That made her smile.
“You could tell your mother about how I found you.” He sounded no less angry, but it seemed as though he tried to mask his wrath. “Or I could tell her about how I found you.”
“And you would be admitting to your own guilt,” she reminded him, turning a corner. He was not expecting the bend, and she heard a loud exclamation as he collided with the wall.
“Which is why,” he seethed through his teeth, “I suggest we reach an agreement. I will tell her I found you on the Strip, and you will not contradict me. The consequences of that accidental meeting will be far less than the ones attached to the truth.”
“She will still wonder why you left the Lightworld,” Cerridwen pointed out, feeling very satisfied to have the advantage.
But the advantage disappeared as he muttered, “Your mother will be aware of my reasons.”
It was cryptic. Cerridwen did not like cryptic responses. But ahead loomed the path to the Strip.
“Do we have an agreement?” he asked her, no urgency in his voice, no pleading.
She crossed her arms, pretending to consider. But this manipulation failed, as well, for Cedric said nothing, made no further offers.
“We do,” she said with a sigh. It would have been so sweet to catch her mother’s favorite in a useful web, but he was right. The punishment her mother meted out to her would be far less severe if she’d been caught somewhere else.
They proceeded to the Lightworld and passed the borders without further speech, but when they approached the Palace, he stopped her.
“When we enter, go straight to your chambers. Wash all of that off your face, and change into something respectable before you are presented to your mother.” He would not look at her.
She tilted her chin up, trying to look confident when now all she felt like was a child. “How do I know you will not simply run to her and break our agreement?”
“I will not. With more reason than you know.” With that, he turned and stalked through the Palace gates.
“We have some reason to suspect that she has left the Lightworld.”
The words froze Ayla, the way she imagined a prey animal would cower before a beast. She’d long since retired from the party, but it continued, the noise thrumming like the workings of some great machine throughout the Palace. The dull pounding of drums, punctuated by the sharp staccato of voices raised in laughter, served to cover the startled thump of the blood in her veins. “Where is Malachi?”
“He has organized a few discreet guards into a search formation.” The captain of her guard bowed. “We are keeping this secret, Your Majesty.”
“As well you should,” she said, amazed to find her voice working under its own power. “You may go, now, Captain. Keep me informed of your progress. And bring her to me the moment you find her.”
The guard bowed as he left, but she did not acknowledge him. Instead, she waited, seated on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. Waited for the guilt to come crashing over her, as it always did. The questions that she would torment herself with: How could she have let this happen? Hadn’t she been a good enough mother to Cerridwen? Of course, she had not. She had been too wrapped up in Court politics and her own selfish pursuits! She could not blame Cerridwen, only herself.
But this time, the guilt did not come. She was angry, angrier than she had ever been with her daughter.
Perhaps it was because Cerridwen had left the safety of the Lightworld. Perhaps it was fear that drove her anger. She certainly knew, better than most at Court, of what danger there was to fear beyond the boundaries of the Lightworld.
No, it was anger. An ugly, naked anger not polite enough to wear a mask of fear for her convenience.
She could not bear to stare at the walls of her room any longer. Beautiful though it might be, with its configuration of electric stars on the ceiling and the grass growing forever verdant beneath her feet, she did not take comfort in fine things the way Mabb had. Tying the ribbons of her bedrobe, she went to the passage in the wall, the one that Cedric had begged her to seal off, rather than risk dying as Mabb had. She had refused for a number of reasons that had sounded sane and logical on the surface. Truly, she had done it because the way to the King’s chamber, now the chamber of the Queene’s Consort, was too public, and she did not wish her servants to know her comings and goings. Mabb, though she had never had an official Consort, nor a King to rule at her side, must have felt the same.
Ayla slipped out of the secret door and walked cautiously, looking for guards. Revelers from the party would not be in this part of the Palace, but she did not wish to listen to another report of her missing daughter, or be reassured that she would be found.
She went through the passage to Malachi’s chambers and fished the door key from her sleeve, where she wore it loosely tied at her wrist. The door opened and she stepped through just as the main door to the room slammed open and against the wall.
Malachi stood in the doorway, his expression changing from surprise to anger. Ayla moved to quickly close the door behind her, so that no passing servant would see.
They stood in the antechamber. Malachi had been Garret’s prisoner there, until Ayla had come to save him. She remembered how she had trembled that night, in fear and uncertainty, and the feeling crept back to her now.
He stared at her, his face gray with fatigue. He looked different now than he had when he’d first come to live in the Palace. Since his fall from his former, Angelic nature, he’d aged as a Human, rapidly. In what had seemed a blink of an eye, his features had become sharper, etched with hard lines. A streak of silver stood out from the ink-black of his hair, and though he was as large and physically powerful as he had been twenty years before, he did not exert himself with the vigor that he had in his youth. Every day he seemed older, the way mortals, distressingly, became. Ayla did not wish to dwell on it, and she looked away from his hard expression.
“How could you do this?” he asked in a raw whisper.
Ayla snapped her head up, glared back at him. “Cerridwen has run off on her own! If you wish to blame anyone, blame her governess, blame her guards!”
“I am not talking about her running off!” He slammed the door closed behind him, and it shook as though it would fall from its hinges. “Do you have any idea what you have done? To her? To Cedric? They have both run off now, and if I were him I would never return!”
This stunned her. Over the past twenty years, they had disagreed. And how they had disagreed, and over such petty things. But while he’d raged at her—his emotions ran high, another mortal trait—what he said now was somehow more hurtful.
Most hurt was her pride, and she sought to defend this crumbling wall without reason. “I did what I had to do! Cerridwen is out of control. She runs from me, she runs from this Palace. At this very instant she is out of the Lightworld altogether. She needs someone who will be better suited to keeping her here, and safe.”
“And she won’t run from Cedric? He is centuries old! She is a child!” He swallowed, and looked as though it pained him. “And what is to say that Cedric would not run from her? And from you?”
“Cedric will do as I command. I am Queene!” It sounded so meaningless, like a child threatening during a tantrum.
Malachi laughed. “Yes, he will bow and scrape, as all of your Courtiers do—because he must. How does that feel, Ayla, to know that those closest to you only do as you ask because they are accustomed to being ruled? To know that they do not do these things out of any love or respect for you?”
“My Court respects me! If they did not, I would no longer be Queene!”
“You would not be Queene if Cedric had not willed it so!”
A knock sounded at Malachi’s door, and they both fell silent, not wishing to continue the fight, but not wanting to admit defeat, either.
“Malachi, I have news.” It was Cedric.
Ayla’s anger had not abated, and she glared at Malachi, defiant, as if daring him to open the door, warning that if he did, she would not relent in her argument with him.
“Come in,” Malachi said, all the fight gone from his voice. He looked tired, as if every mortal cell of his body were weary. And in that moment, Ayla lost her anger with him, and it was replaced by that fear which had become all too familiar. Fear that he would succumb to his mortality soon, and that she would waste the time they had in petty arguments. They had already wasted so much time.
Cedric entered, and, spying Ayla, carefully masked his expression. “She has been found.”
Relief weakened Ayla’s knees, and Malachi uttered a quiet, “Thank God.”
“Where was she?” Ayla would not allow even the ghost of the earlier tension to remain. She would not discuss the betrothal now.
“She was on the Strip. Disguised as a Human, watching a game of Human gambling.” He cleared his throat. “I found her there, and brought her here.”
“Thank you.” The fear in Ayla’s breast loosened its hold a bit. She had not ventured into danger, not as much as she could have. “Malachi, do you have a way to contact your search party? To call them back? I do not wish them to go far.”
She did not wish them to go into the Darkworld, where their presence could begin a war.
Wearily, Malachi rose. “I know where they plan to search. I will go to them.”
“No,” she said, realizing too late how commanding she’d sounded, and how little Malachi would appreciate her tone. She forced herself to soften, willed away the anger and anxiety of the night. “You are tired. Send someone, but do not go yourself.”
He should have argued with her; it alarmed her that he did not. He waved a hand to Cedric. “Can you find someone?”
“I will see to it myself.” He turned toward the door, and paused. “Your Majesty, I did not tell the heir of what transpired at the feast tonight. I sent her to her chambers…I thought perhaps you would wish to speak to her, before she heard it from another source.”
“I will speak to her. About your betrothal, and about her disappearance.” Ayla loathed the need to apologize that clawed its way up her throat. She forced it down. “I hope you realize that I am only thinking of what will be best for my daughter. And for you.”
His wings, confined by his robes, rustled under their fabric prison. She saw the movement, a furious shrug, and again the apology that some regretful part of her knew should be delivered tried to escape.
She was Queene. She would not let him force his guilt onto her.
Cedric did not face her. The weight of his words was measured carefully. “I realize that you believe you know what is best, and that you are acting under that belief.”
When he left, he did not slam the door, but it was, without a doubt, closed.
“I do not do this to hurt either of them,” Ayla said helplessly, turning to Malachi. He’d already removed his robe, revealing his now-scarred skin and the metal-patched black wings that had not been seen by the Court in over twenty years.
He looked up at her, not bothering to conceal his anger or hurt. “Get out, Ayla. I am tired.”
She could have reminded him that she was Queene…. But she had never been his Queene. She could have ignored him and stayed…. But she had done so before, and had accomplished nothing. No subtle shift of power between them, no grudging reconciliation. He would forgive her when he chose and no sooner.
Three
It was simple enough to find the search party Malachi had ordered—what had he hoped to accomplish by sending them into the Darkworld?—and convince them to give up their search. He insisted on staying behind, in case there were stragglers, even after the soldiers insisted there would not be.
And there would not be. That was not Cedric’s purpose in staying.
When he’d put enough distance between himself and the guards, he changed direction, and pulled from his shirtsleeve the rolled paper diagram that would lead him to the Gypsy camp.
The tunnels were not named on the drawing. Many of them went unnamed in the Darkworld, so it would not have helped. And only a few symbols, known only to those who were intended to find the place, indicated that it was a map at all. Dika had gone over it with him many times, though he’d protested ever needing to use it. He did not like to be in close proximity to mortals—at least, not large groups of them—and did not know how they would react to his presence. She’d been correct in her assumption that someday, his need to find her would be stronger than his desire to stay away.
He followed the map, doubting every turn, fearful of what might lurk in the shadows. It had been a long time since he’d had to use his battle training, and despite what most outside of the Guild believed, he’d rarely gone on missions as an Assassin, content to orchestrate the assignments and send others to do the fighting. He knew of the horrors that could lurk in these tunnels, knew in theory how to protect himself, but he’d not had the practice for a long time.
It was a relief when the tunnels became less dark, less damp. He knew it was a trick of his mind to equate light with safety, for untold horrors already stalked through both dark and light. But there seemed to be a life energy pulsing along the walls that Cedric could see in bright handprints and hurried smears where shoulders and limbs had brushed the cement in passing. These mortal imprints did not flare with terrified or angry energy, but happy excitement—the feeling of being home.
It was a feeling that Cedric could easily recognize but not truly understand. Faeries did not have homes. A dwelling to return to every night was a prison. The true joy of their existence had always been in the roaming, the never knowing where you would wake that morning or sleep that night. Trooping, that was what they had been made for. It made their lives in the Underground a particularly cruel hell.
Here, the feeling of home was pleasant, not stifling, and he continued on, alert for the rising of sound, which always accompanied the living spaces of mortals. The tunnel bent, and there were no more electric lightbulbs, but grates that let in the starlight. The scent of wood smoke, a smell he hadn’t experienced in decades, drifted up the tunnel, and, sooner than he expected, the buzz of mixed music and conversation. He rounded another bend and staggered on his feet at the sight of his destination.
It was as if the Underground had disappeared. The ground was Earth. Hard packed, dotted with bits of crumbled cement at intervals, but real Earth. The walls were not the carefully constructed tunnels the Humans had burrowed through the ground for pipes and trains and sewage, but rough rock walls that arched high, surrounding a hole with irregular edges and no grates, no barriers between the Upworld and the Underground. Through it, the view of the starry sky was blocked only by the black shapes of trees, reaching into the night above the heads of the mortals below.
And how many mortals! Cedric was certain the Humans here numbered far more than all the creatures on the Strip. Their dwellings were clustered in untidy, winding rows, pieces of property claimed here and there by stakes in the ground. Some of the dwellings were simple cloth tents. Others were built side by side and joined together by common walls of cinderblock and other materials. There were roofs made from blue sheets of mortal plastic or metal hammered flat, and some homes had no roofs at all. Mortal children ran without heed past mortal women stirring pots over communal fires or hanging sodden garments over lines stretched between tents. There seemed to be fire and joy and life everywhere, and for a moment, it truly overwhelmed him.
There was something else, too…. A sense of expectation, of a burden lifted. He remembered Dika’s words, and it froze the joy within him to ice.
He remembered why he had come. It occurred to him for the first time that, although he had found his way here, finding Dika would be a much different task. He would have to enter the settlement, not just survey it from afar.
Dika had never told him what to expect of her home, nor what to expect of the people there. It was possible that she had not properly thought through the consequences of his being there, that she had no idea how other mortals would react to an immortal creature in their midst. But such carelessness was not like Dika, and so he concluded that it would be safe to enter the camp.
There were no guards; at least, no formal display of armed might, but a few males wandered at the outskirts of the camp, and one, upon spotting Cedric, approached.
“Do you speak our language?” he called, pulling something off of his back. A gun, one of those strange Human weapons that incorporated the magic of fire and force. Cedric stepped back instinctively. He did not care for such objects.
“I have this,” he called out in lieu of answering the question. He held out the map, and when the mortal came close enough, he let the man take it.
The man frowned at the paper. “Who gave you this?”
“Dika.” It was the only name he had. Did mortals, Gypsies, have other names? Secret ones that only they used with each other? “She told me her name was Dika.”
The mortal laughed. “Dika is a very common name. I suppose next you will tell me that she has dark hair and eyes?”
Cedric had nothing to say to this. The man continued to regard him with wary amusement. He did not return the map.
“I can walk you back to the Strip, friend,” he said, tucking the folded paper into the pocket of his shirt. “But you cannot become lost in our land again.”
“I must speak with her.” Though Cedric tried to keep his voice even, he heard the desperation in his words. “She has told me that you are leaving soon. That this will all be gone. I cannot chance not seeing her…I have made a terrible mistake.”
The mortal’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know of our leaving?”
“Because Dika told me. She told me. I can’t give you proof, but please, I must find her.” Cedric could say no more, only look to the man with what must have been pleading on his face, and wait for his decision.
Finally, the man sighed the heavy sigh of something giving way. “You are an outsider. You will have to take your case to the Dya.”
“Dya,” he repeated the word, rolled the unfamiliar shape of it around his mouth. “Dika did not mention this.”
“If you wish to see Dika, you will have to obey our rules, friend,” the mortal said, his smile not so kind.
There was little else Cedric could do but agree and follow the man through the maze of the mortal city. They passed the rough dwellings, came to cleaner, neater homes—as clean and neat as anything in the Underground could be—made from the same mortal materials, but with a certain air of pride about them. The children running the winding paths here were not as dirty, and the garments hanging to dry were much finer.
The people stared at Cedric as they passed. Mortals were roughly shaped, as if each was cut from a spare scrap of cloth, rather than crafted from the finest bolt. Of course, his appearance would stand out to them. Could they tell he was not mortal? He was built larger than most Faeries, but he stood only as tall as an average Human woman. The Gypsies were small people, though, wiry and compact, and Dika had not known him to be Fae, when they’d first met. He’d thought then that it was something of an insult, to look mortal. He still did, when other Fae muttered it about him. But now, now it might serve him to appear Human.
The mortal man led him to the center of the city. Only here did the plan of the settlement make sense. All of the winding streets led to the center hub, where a huge, communal fire blazed. Groups of singing, dancing, feasting Humans clustered around the wide pit of flames, mortal bodies writhing like salamander shadows in the firelight. Cedric’s guide skirted these groups, smiling or calling out to wave at someone, but he never veered from his path.
It was only after they had rounded the fire pit and started down a wide avenue that Cedric noticed people following them. On the other streets they’d taken, he’d assumed the traffic behind them had been the normal progression of bodies moving to their intended destinations. But this street was empty of dwellings, lit only by the flickering light from the communal fire, and the trailing mortals were evident. Cedric looked over his shoulder once, saw the eagerness and anticipation in their eyes, and did not care to see them anymore.
At the end of the path loomed the ancient, gnarled roots of a tree, the top of which would stretch into the Upworld sky, but the trunk and branches were not visible here, beneath the ground. The looping tentacles lay like the sleeping form of a Leviathan, those underwater creatures that mortal men no longer feared, though they should. It caused a shiver to crawl between Cedric’s wings; Faeries, too, feared the horrors of the deep.
A Gypsy wagon, like the ones Cedric had spied tramping through the forests of the mortal realm centuries ago, sat beneath the cascading roots, dwarfed by the coils that unfurled around it like embracing arms. This was where the mortal led him, and the people behind them stopped, either from respect or fear.
A small fire crackled beneath a smoke-blackened cauldron, and a female knelt beside it, the flames gilding her glossy black curls. Cedric stopped, though the Human continued on without him. “Dika?”
She turned, seeming to see the other Gypsy man first, then himself, and then the crowd at the edge of the camp. Her smooth face creased with confusion. “Cedric? You’ve come here?”
The answer was obvious, as he stood before her, but he did not say so. “You are the leader here?”
She came forward slowly, shaking her head. “No. No. I stay here with her…to help her.”
The mortal who had led him there drew himself up to his full height. “This stranger has come to this camp uninvited, and he must face your grandmother’s judgment.”
“He was not uninvited. I gave him a map to find us. I invited him here.” She squared her shoulders and glared at him, unblinking. It seemed neither of them would ever look away from the other, then the door of the wagon opened, and their attention shifted.
A lamp of many-colored glass hung beside the wagon door, and it swung wildly, sending a rainbow of shadows across the figure that emerged. At first glance, the figure seemed not even Human; a hunchbacked thing, like a rune stone jutting up from the ground, with a head covered by a leather cap with dangling flaps that obscured her face. She shuffled, and with each step the shells and trinkets wound on cords around her neck and arms clanked and jingled. The Humans waited with speechless patience as the woman made her way forward with a maddeningly slow gait.
When she was close enough to be heard, she pushed the flaps of the cap away from her face, revealing a countenance so marred by age that it resembled to Cedric some kind of rotted fruit shrinking in on itself. Two shrewd black eyes peered out from beneath eyebrows grown thick and white with age, and her seemingly toothless mouth worked from side to side as she regarded the mortals. “Dika, go and stir the stew pot.”
Dika left. In her obedience, she did not say a word for Cedric’s defense, as though she was not concerned about leaving him to this crone’s devices.
Then the old woman looked past the mortal who had led him there and declared with delight, “Why, Milosh! You’ve brought me a Faery!”
This was obviously a surprise to Milosh, as well as to the audience clustered behind them. But to the Dya, this development seemed as natural as if she’d found a coin in the street. “I think,” she pronounced with gravity, “I shall call him Tom.”
This, finally, moved Cedric to speak. “I am Cedric, lady. Of the Court of Queene Ayla of the Lightworld.”
“Yes, yes, and before that the Court of Queene Mabb, far beyond the Veil.” She turned to Milosh. “Go. And take them with you. I don’t suppose this one Faery is going to invade our camp. And if he is, well, I shall have to take him hostage.”
Milosh, his chest swelling with anger, would not be dismissed. “Your granddaughter gave him our location. She led him here and told him of our migration plan.”
“She’s told him more than that, I’ll wager.” The Dya raised her voice so that it would be heard by not only Milosh and Cedric, but Dika as well. “I’m sure she’s told him a great many interesting things.”
Dika’s head and shoulders sagged as she stirred the cauldron.
“Come, Tom.” The Dya no longer spoke to Milosh, as though he’d obeyed her and already left. “We shall talk about this transgression you’ve committed.”
She shuffled toward the side of the wagon away from the fire, where a small iron table and chairs sat rusting in the shadows. “You aren’t really allergic to iron, are you?” she asked with a wink, already knowing the answer.
“It is true, we can touch it. We are not fond of it,” Cedric said through gritted teeth as he sat down on the unforgiving metal. “Why do you keep calling me Tom?”
“I saw a Faery once, when I was a girl.” The Dya’s expression took on a faraway look. “I strayed from my family’s camp, lured by the sound of Faery music. And I saw the sweetest Faery you’ve ever seen. She had golden hair, and wings made of light. And a fiddle! She had a Human fiddle, and she plucked it with her fingers. She didn’t know what to do with it. But the music was so beautiful. I will never forget that sound.”
Cedric did not know how to respond. The age of this mortal made him uncomfortable…though she was far younger than his years, he did not doubt that. But her flesh had aged. It was an experience that Cedric had nothing to compare to. Perhaps that gave her wisdom he could not claim.
After a long silence, he said, “Dika did nothing wrong.”
The Dya chuckled, a bubbling, wet sound. “You know our ways so well, do you, that you can school the Dya of this camp on what is right and wrong?”
He said nothing.
“Why would a Faery come into the Darkworld, Tom?” There was no humor in her face, nor the far-off look of a Human with a wandering mind. “Why would he come and seduce our secrets out of a girl stupid enough to give them freely?”
“It was not my intention.” He thought back to that first day, when he’d strayed over the border to follow Dika. He’d seen her on the Strip many times, but they had never spoken. She’d taunted him with teasing glances, and once even dared to toss him a beaded scarf that she’d used in her hair. The hours he’d spent stroking that scarf, pressing it to his face and inhaling the scent of her. Long, torturous nights that drove him from his bed and to the Strip in the vain hope of seeing her.
And she’d been there, coy and teasing as ever as she’d led him on a dancing chase toward the boundary of the Darkworld. A boundary that, it was apparent, she didn’t believe he would cross. But he did cross it, without a second thought, and caught her in the tunnel and took her there, without even knowing her name, against the rough concrete wall.
A shudder he could not suppress went through him at the memory. “I was bewitched. I did not seduce her.”
“And you did not press her for our secrets?” It was an accusation, not a question. “You did not make Faery promises to dazzle her?”
“She loves me,” he said, coldly, haughtily. It was all he knew to be true in this place.
“She is elfstruck.”
“She loves me! And it was she that sought me out!”
The old woman nodded, as if somehow satisfied. “You do not love her?”
He thought of it, carefully considered what she asked. “I do not believe we can love as mortals love. Your love is bound by time. That makes it more constant. Perhaps desperate. But in the way I am able, I love her.”
“Your love is also bound by time.” The old woman looked toward the flickering firelight. From where they sat, they could not see Dika tending the cauldron, but the Dya’s gaze was pulled that way, just the same. “Shorter time than you know. If she were to grow old, withered like a grape left on the vine, would you love her then?”
He could not say. “I would cherish her as something dear to me. It is all I can promise.”
“And that is a promise that you must make to her, and make clear.” The Dya’s voice was sad, but that sadness fled as she turned back to him. “I wonder, though, what your purpose is, coming here. Though we live in the Darkworld, my people have no quarrel with you.”
“I am not here to quarrel. In truth, I do not believe my Queene has so harsh a view of the Darkworld as her predecessor. I am here for Dika.” He looked down at his hands. “I am here because I no longer wish to be a part of the Lightworld.”
“Wishes are what your people deal in, Tom. Not mine.” The Dya fixed him with a cold stare. “You cannot choose to be apart from your kind. You could not survive.”
“I can no longer survive among my kind, either. Perhaps you would let me choose the course of my own future.” He nodded toward the fire. “Perhaps you would let Dika choose hers.”
He had the old woman at a disadvantage now, and they both knew it. “My Queene will be able to take no action against you. You are leaving, and will be gone long before she can find this place.”
“You will be hunted on the surface,” the Dya remarked, not wishing to relinquish her hand so soon.
“You are hunted there, as well. Your people tell fortunes and create elixirs. The Enforcers could not let such a thing go.” He leaned back in the chair, though the iron made him uneasy and his paper-thin wings bent under him, and crossed one leg over the other in a Human gesture. “You will be in a unique position, though. You will have a Faery to hand over to them. A Faery who was close to the Queene, who knew her plans. They may not bother with us on the surface, but they do not like us. You could make a valuable trade and protect your people, if it should come to that.”
The Dya chortled. “And how do you know I would not simply sell you to the Enforcers the moment we stepped on Upworld soil? I thought Faeries knew better than anyone what tricks could be played in a deal.”
“I am aware of what tricks you could play on me,” he stated simply. “And I am aware that your people fear my kind. You will not play me false, lest you suffer unintended consequences.”
She smiled at him, displaying a mouth that was toothless but for two golden stubs that peeked over her bottom lip. “You would find your footing among us, in time, I suspect.”
For a long moment, she contemplated him, then called for Dika. The girl could not have been far, certainly not as far as the stew pot, for she appeared, as if a shade summoned from the Ether, at their side.
The Dya pointed a gnarled finger to Cedric, and did not look at the girl. “Dika, Tom wishes to stay with us.”
“Oh?” She tried to sound disinterested, either for the Dya’s benefit, or for his.
“What say you in the matter?” The Dya turned and fixed a critical eye on her granddaughter. Her mind was made up, that Cedric could tell. But Dika did not realize it.
Cedric saw the turmoil behind her eyes and almost smiled. But he did not wish to offend her, or the Dya. He could wait a moment to express his happiness.
“I think that if…Tom…wishes to stay with us, it is not our way to refuse him.” She said it as though it were an answer she’d been taught.
The Dya nodded. “That is what I thought, too.” She turned to Cedric. “Well, Tom, it seems we can welcome you into our clan. For now.”
“For now,” he agreed. He had no doubts that, should there come a time that handing him over to the Enforcers became convenient, they would do so. But that time was not now, and he would deal with the Enforcers if they came for him.
“I am tired, Dika,” the Dya said, rising to her feet. “Bring me my dinner inside.”
The old woman held out her arm, and Dika helped her rise, casting a look to Cedric that implored him not to leave. He waited until they were gone, then rose, brushing the feeling of the iron from his body.
When Dika emerged, she looked for him, held out a hand with her index finger raised, and hurried to the cauldron, where she dipped a dented metal cup into the pot. She rushed this back into the wagon, and did not emerge for a long while.
As he waited for her, he settled into the curve of one of the ancient tree’s wide roots, and closed his eyes. If he ignored the cavern ceiling high above, he could almost imagine how it would feel to be outside once again, to feel the wind, to speak to the trees. He would have to live as a Human, but it was a small price to pay for the freedom so long denied him.
And what of the price she will pay? the tree asked cheerfully, in the quiet way trees had of invading Faery thoughts. To give up her one life bound to a lover who cannot love her in return? Doesn’t seem fair, that.
Then the tree, apparently pleased to see something passing through the forest above them, began to speak of rabbits. Dika emerged from the wagon, looked about, confused, until she saw him, and ran toward him, her face alight.
Cedric forced the tree’s unsolicited opinion from his mind and met her halfway.
“I can’t believe it!” She threw her arms around his shoulders, kissed his face. “I can’t believe you really are here.”
“I am here.” He smoothed her black curls from her face. Unfathomable as it might have been to him previously, he wanted nothing more than to never return to the Lightworld, to stay here, with these strange people, to insinuate himself into their company. “There is something I have not told you about my life in the Lightworld.”
Where to begin? Would he tell her how many years he’d existed? That he’d seen women as old as her grandmother born and dead ten, fifty, a hundred times over? Should he tell her of watching the Earth slowly shift apart, of walking the Human world and watching them “discover” the magic in plants to cure sickness, the sun to tell time?
No. All of that could come in good time. Now, she needed to hear this, without any embellishment or Faery tales to dazzle her. “In the Lightworld, I am not an ordinary…man.” What a strange word when applied to himself. “I am an advisor to the Queene of the Faery Court. Her closest advisor. And recently she has charged me with a very important task.” He wondered if the stories of jealous Human women were true, and if this would seem to her as ridiculous as it did to him, or enrage her. “She wishes that I should mate myself to her daughter.”
“Oh.” She did not meet his eyes.
“I will not. She is a mere child.” He stumbled over this, as he wasn’t certain Dika was much older than Cerridwen. He wasn’t sure how Human age worked, really. “She is old enough to find a mate, but she has been coddled and spoiled. I do not wish to spend an eternity with her.”
Dika looked up, a glint in her eyes that was caught between amusement and anger. “And me? Would you wish to spend an eternity with me?”
He opened his mouth to answer, and realized it was a trick. He could no more spend an eternity with her than she could spend one with him. “If it were possible, yes.”
“Then you content yourself to living with me until I am as old and withered as the Dya?” She came closer now, and gripped the front of his robes to pull their bodies together. “Will you still love me then?”
“I will love you for as long as I am able.” He knew now what had taken so long in the caravan, what the Dya’s muffled voice had been saying. “You know that I am merely an inconstant Faery, with no heart for Human love.”
“I know this,” she said, rising on her toes to touch their mouths together. Her breath moved over his lips. “I wanted to know that you knew it.”
Four
Cerridwen did not go to her mother that night. She didn’t have the stomach to, after the scare in the tunnels, and after she’d left without telling Fenrick goodbye.
Fenrick. His face tumbled over and over in her memory. She brought her fingers to her lips to better remember the touch of his mouth. In the safe darkness of her room, her refusal of his advances made no sense. Why had she not let him do what she had secretly wished he would do—what she had been wishing he would do for the long weeks since they’d met?
She was a coward, she decided. And she did not like cowards.
You are furthermore being cowardly by not going to your mother and facing whatever punishment she has in store for you, a nasty voice taunted in her head, and she blocked it out.
She would face her mother. After the Great Queene made her morning audience, before the Royal Heir’s day became another endless series of dutiful appearances at her mother’s side.
It was so she could learn the way to be Queene, or so everyone told her. When would she ever need such knowledge? The Queene that had ruled before her mother, Mabb, had only fallen when slain by her brother.
Cerridwen did not like to think of her gone father murdering his own sister, so she put that from her mind.
But Fae were an immortal race, and, despite her mother’s half-mortal blood, she had never grown older once she’d come of age. No one would kill Queene Ayla, worshipped as she was. And if someone did, well, there were others who were more qualified for—and interested in—ruling the Faeries. Cerridwen would happily quit the Faery Court altogether.
These thoughts, and thoughts of her impending punishment, and thoughts of Fenrick—she tucked his knife under her pillow and rested a hand on it—kept sleep from her. By the time it arrived, it seemed only to pay her a short visit before Governess was shaking her awake, muttering angrily about her mother wishing to see her.
Cerridwen sat silent through Governess’s torturous grooming, though she scrubbed her skin raw and pulled at tangles mercilessly. She was thinking of a plan.
Cedric had made a bargain with her. Had he kept to it? What if he had not? Should she barge into her mother’s chambers and tell her exactly where she had been, stand defiant and argue that it was her right as a grown Faery to go where she pleased and do what she wanted? Or would it be more prudent to stay silent, play the wide-eyed innocent if her mother already knew of her stray into the Darkworld? She’d overplayed wide-eyed…perhaps outrage would suit her. Wait and see if her mother knew about the Darkworld, about Fenrick.
She smiled at her freshly brushed and scrubbed reflection in the mirror. No matter what took place this morning, she would not let her mother get the upper hand. She would pretend to be the dutiful daughter for a few days, perhaps a week. And then she would resume her life as normal, and as she pleased.
The morning audience was over, but the guards led her to the throne room and not to her mother’s chambers. Courtiers clustered outside of the doors, whispering behind their hands at the sight of her. This was not unusual, and she ignored it, lifting her chin as though she could not even deign to look at them.
“Congratulations, Your Highness,” someone called out, and this bizarre exclamation was met with a smattering of applause and few huzzahs. For the most part, though, the Courtiers kept up their malicious whispering.
“Congratulations?” she muttered under her breath, wondering what she’d done to be congratulated on, what foolish new story her mother had concocted to excuse her absence.
The guards standing at the doors pushed them open, while the guards at Cerridwen’s back kept the Courtiers from streaming in. A private audience between the Queene and the Royal Heir in such a formal setting? This would certainly set the whisperers gossiping at a frantic pace.
Her mother sat on the throne, an uncomfortable-looking rock thing covered on the sides by clumps of quartz. She dressed in less formal robes than she would don before her evening audience with the Court. The morning audience was when everyday business was proposed to the Queene. In the evening she would hear more important petitions.
The rest of the room was empty, not even a guard remained. But her mother’s faithful mortal servant stood at her side and showed no signs of leaving. There had long been rumors that he was the Queene’s Consort, and the thought of it, once she had come to understand the term, made Cerridwen ill.
“Is he going to stay?” she asked, and cursed herself inwardly. She’d already gotten her back up, as she had sworn to herself she would not do.
Her mother nodded, seemingly unperturbed by her daughter’s strident tone. “Come closer, Cerridwen. You do not stand awaiting your execution.”
It certainly felt like it. Normally, her mother was in a full rage before the doors closed, screaming down the walls over whatever transgression Cerridwen had committed. This solicitous nature made the skin on her neck creep.
“You missed an important announcement last night,” her mother said, still in that maddeningly kind tone.
Was this the time, then, to burst out in her own defense? To break her bargain with Cedric? She opened her mouth to protest.
Her mother shook her head. “I do not wish to hear your excuses. I was angry with you, but now that anger has passed. I trust you will not leave the Lightworld again.”
And that trust was woefully misplaced. “Of course not, Mother.”
“Cedric brought you back to the Palace?” Though phrased as a question, it was a statement of fact, so Cerridwen did not answer. “Did he tell you anything of what occurred at the feast?”
Cerridwen shook her head slowly.
Taking a moment to rephrase her question, her mother asked again, “Did he tell you why he had come looking for you?”
“I was unaware that he looked for me.” The traitor had spun the story in his favor! How like a Faery male. “I thought his own business had brought him…to where we were.”
Beside the throne, Malachi spoke up. “Likely, it did.”
Her mother ignored him. Of course, the one time he seemed to be on Cerridwen’s side, the Great Queene Ayla would consider his opinion beneath her. “He looked for you because of the announcement I made. Last night was a celebration of your coming of age. I had hoped you would have been proud to show the entire Court the fine Faery you have grown into.
“Instead, you showed the Court the reason I had to make a very difficult decision. I know you cherish your freedom, Cerridwen. I know you feel you are stifled by life at Court, but if life at Court had truly clipped your wings, you would not have been able to fly from the Palace at a whim.” She stood and came down from the throne, down from the dais. Malachi stayed behind, watching the exchange from beneath his dark, furrowed brows.
“I fear I have not taught you the discipline you need to grow into your full potential as the Royal Heir. And I’ve come to accept that I am not the one to teach you. The influence of someone more experienced with Court manners and life, but someone who has also managed to balance the demands of Court with the demands of a happy life, is what you need.” Her mother reached out, touched Cerridwen’s face briefly. “That is why I have chosen Cedric to be your mate.”
Individually, all of those words made sense to Cerridwen. She knew what it meant to choose something, knew what it meant to choose a mate. She understood that, occasionally, Faeries decided to bind their lives to each other for reproduction and mutual gain.
What she did not understand was the concept of someone making this choice for another person. The idea that her mother had chosen a mate for her. And that the mate she had chosen was…Cedric.
The room seemed far warmer than it had a moment before, and her feet did not rest easy beneath her. She pressed a hand to her stomach and took a step back, hoping her balance would return. She closed her eyes, but it only made the feeling worse, so she opened them again.
“It seems that, despite your confidence, the Royal Heir does not see it from your perspective,” Malachi said and laughed bitterly.
“Shut up!” Cerridwen shouted, hearing the tears in her voice. That he had uttered his opinion, that he’d been privy to this humiliation at all, was more than she could bear.
“I did not make this decision to punish you!” Her mother held out her arms, as if to comfort her.
Cerridwen backed away. “No!” Her breath burned in her lungs, and no words, no matter how hurtful she might be able to make them, would put out the fire. “No! You do this to…to push me off on someone else! To get rid of me!”
“Cerridwen, please.” Queene Ayla did not look so queenly now. Just pathetic and sad in her daughter’s eyes. “You cannot understand—”
“No, I cannot understand!” Cerridwen’s fists pounded her thighs of their own volition. “I cannot understand how you think I could love him. That I could…lie with him. It’s disgusting!”
Her mother’s expression grew hard at this. “To become Queene, I had to do a great many difficult things.”
“I do not wish to become Queene!” Her shrill scream rang off the stone walls of the throne room. “And yes, you did a great many difficult things! How difficult was it to kill my father? If he were still alive—”
“Your father is not still alive, and thank the Gods I saw to that!” Her mother’s words, dark with rage, rang out even over the loud crack of her palm colliding with Cerridwen’s cheek.
She expected the blow to her pride to be greater than the physical pain, but the intensity of the sting shocked her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and though she wanted desperately to stop them falling, they poured onto her cheeks.
“I hate you,” she spat, and turned to flee the room.
Her hand still throbbing from the slap, Ayla stared at the closing doors her daughter had fled through.
“You did not have to strike her so hard,” Malachi said quietly from his place on the dais.
Ashamed, Ayla could not face him. “I should not have struck her.”
The sound of his descending footsteps echoed through the empty hall, but they did not drown out the searing memory of her daughter’s invective. “No, you were well within your right to strike her. I’ve wanted to, myself, on occasion.”
“I am a poor mother.” Self-pity was not becoming of a Queene, and Malachi certainly did not allow her to wallow in it in his presence, but she did not care at the moment.
He took a breath, his mouth close to her ear, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “You are stubborn. And prideful. So is she. But you cannot truly judge yourself a poor mother, as you had none, and I cannot judge you one, either.”
“Twenty years have slipped through my fingers like water. Try as I might, I cannot hold on.” She closed her eyes. “I am a fool to think that Cedric will be able to hold her, either.”
“You are fool to ask it of either of them,” Malachi agreed with a gentle squeeze. “I will put an extra guard at her door. No doubt she will run away again.”
“And this time, for good.” Shaking her head, Ayla turned. “Perhaps she is right. Perhaps, if her father were able to have a hand in raising her…”
Malachi frowned down at her, and the frown deepened the faint lines on his brow. “If Garret had lived, he would have killed you and her both.”
She had not meant Garret. It surprised her how easily Malachi confused their daughter’s parentage himself. But now was not the time to correct him. “Cedric did not return last night. He was not at my morning audience. Do you think—”
“I think he is still angry with you. And I think you would do well to avoid each other for a while. But he is too loyal to ignore your orders for long. He will return.”
Malachi spoke of loyalty as though it were something foul. It seemed strange to her that he, of all the creatures in the Lightworld, would have this opinion. He’d been wholly, unquestioningly subservient to his One God—he still was, she knew, having overheard his whispered prayers—and content to stay that way, it seemed, mourning his separation from that life of duty. If he looked down on such a quality in Cedric, she could only surmise that it was because Cedric’s devotion was to his Queene, a being Malachi knew as imperfect and prone to mistakes.
In truth, Ayla would not have preferred the same slavish dedication from Malachi. It was one of the things she treasured most about his company; he did not find her infallible. The adoration and confidence the Courtiers all showed her seemed to disappear at the worst of times, and Malachi would not disagree with her then. But when the Court loved her, he became critical, lest she forget how tenuous her grasp over her kingdom was.
As they were alone, she let him take her into his arms. Closing her eyes, she remembered a time not so long ago, when she had run through the perils of the Darkworld for him. There were moments she wished she could escape to that time again, to not know of the dangers that had laid ahead of them or of the hardships they would endure. To not have the worries of running a kingdom, raising a daughter, being under constant scrutiny…feeling suffocated by duty.
There were times that that escape seemed possible, when they lay together in the dark, limbs twining, skin sliding over skin. Though so much had changed over time, that never had changed, and she was glad for its familiarity.
His mouth moved against her ear as he spoke and he did not speak to her as her advisor or her friend. He spoke to her now as her lover, her life mate, and without judgment in his tone. “If I do not understand your choice in this, I do not doubt you mean only good. Do not grieve the loss of my faith in you, for it is still strong.”
The doors of the throne room scraped open without a warning from the other side. Ayla and Malachi stepped apart quickly, their reaction honed by years of practice.
Though the doors were barely parted, a slender figure slipped into the throne room. Flidais, a member of Ayla’s council, recently charged with the important task of Lightworld defenses, ran down the polished aisle, toward her Queene. She bowed with uncharacteristic agitation before hurriedly asking, “With your Majesty’s permission, might I be granted an audience?”
Ayla had never seen the Faery in such a state. Her yellow hair floated around her head as though it had been invigorated by the run to the throne room and did not wish to settle down. Her antennae buzzed against her forehead and shone startling green.
“Of course, of course,” Ayla said quickly, motioning that she should follow her to the dais. “Shall we call in the Court?”
“No, Majesty, I beg you, not right now.” Flidais’s tone was grave, pleading. “I hope you will understand my caution.”
Ayla could only nod in response. She sat on the throne and beckoned Malachi to stand beside her. “Tell me, what has vexed you so?”
As if suddenly aware of her appearance and manner, Flidais quickly smoothed her hair and visibly tried to calm herself. When she spoke, it was in her usual, measured tones, though it seemed a strain. “There is news. From the Upworld.”
Ayla tensed. For over a hundred years, the Upworld had not interfered with the world below. It would only be a matter of time, she had assumed, before they grew tired of ignoring the pests below them. “What news?”
“There is news,” Flidais took a gulping breath, “that Faeries remain on the surface.”
Ayla took a moment to be cautious, thoughtful. For many years now it had been common knowledge that some Fae lived on the surface, masquerading as Human. If this was Flidais’s news, then it was nothing to cause a stir over. However, Flidais was intelligent enough to know this, and so Ayla asked, “In what capacity do they remain?”
“Free. Living as Fae in small groups.” Thank God she did not say as prisoners. That would have been Ayla’s worst fear, that they would have impetus to go to battle with the Upworld.
“Are they…do they have political motivations?” When the question escaped, she knew how it could be interpreted. That she feared someone would come for her throne, someone with a more valid claim. And that was not what she feared. “They do not wish to overthrow the Human world?”
Flidais shook her head, calming some. “I do not believe so. That is, they have not announced any such intention at this time. They have, however, sent an Ambassador and entourage, in the hopes of making contact with you.”
“An Ambassador?” She wished Cedric were not missing. She needed him, desperately. “Without sending word ahead?”
Flidais considered. “When the Dragons came to us during Mabb’s reign, they sent several of their Human servants uninvited, in the hopes of expediting a meeting.”
“But Dragons…they do not expect to be turned down for an audience,” Malachi said quietly. “I believe this puts Her Majesty in a difficult position. If she does not wish to have contact with this Upworld settlement, she cannot politely refuse contact. They are already here, and already awaiting her reception.”
“I do not believe they mean any malice,” Flidais protested. She had never liked Malachi’s presence at the side of the Queene and considered a Consort’s place to be in the bedchamber only.
“I will need time to think on this,” she pronounced. It would keep the peace between Malachi and the Faery. “Flidais, tell the Ambassador that she—or he—is welcome in the Lightworld, and see that the entire party is provided with appropriate accommodations. But on the subject of a meeting, you must be vague. I have not—and will not—make up my mind on this matter until I have given proper thought to what their sudden appearance might mean, and to what it might mean for all of us to come into contact with the Upworld. Also, I wish this to remain as secret as possible. I want no plotting behind my back on this, which I fear will happen if the Courtiers are informed before I make my decision.”
Flidais bowed and left to do her Queene’s bidding. She would do it well, of that Ayla was certain. Of all her council members, Flidais knew best how to handle a delicate situation, and she would do whatever needed to be done in order to see that her Queene’s wishes were carried out.
As soon as the doors were closed behind her, Ayla rose from the throne and stalked toward the doors that led to her chambers. Malachi followed, as she knew he would. “I need Cedric,” she said, not bothering to couch her command gently. “Bring him to me. I’m sure you know where he’s gone.”
“I do not,” Malachi responded smoothly. The liar. The two of them were thick as thieves most days. “But I will find him.”
“Good.” She stopped, halfway through the little hallway to her chambers, and turned to face him. There was no sense in parting angrily with him, when it was not him she was angry at. “Thank you. I…appreciate that you are willing to do these things for me. And for the Faery Court.”
“I do these things because I love you. I do not care about the Faery Court.” A smile ticked the corners of his mouth, where the ghosts of smiles past lingered. “Shall I come to you tonight?”
The words elicited a spark that flared to full flame in her, and she nodded. She would be grateful for the respite of his arms, his body, his presence after a day that had already, in its infancy, proved trying.
He stepped forward and drew her into his arms, his lips finding the skin between her ear and the high collar of her robe. Her Guild mark was there, indelible black against her skin, covered unintentionally by her hair and her robes, but the part of it he could reach he touched, traced with his tongue, and she shivered.
Just as abruptly as he coaxed the flame to life within her, he doused it by stepping away. “I will find Cedric for you,” he said with another smile, and then turned and left in the direction they had come.
Five
No matter what Ayla accused him of, Malachi did not know where Cedric hid. It was a testimony to how very easily her suspicions gripped her, that she imagined her two closest friends and allies somehow plotting to hide themselves away from her.
Cedric had every right to leave the way he had. But leaving once was one thing. Leaving again, and staying away, was another altogether.
The best place to start looking, Malachi supposed, was with the guards he had been sent to call off the search the night before. He made his way to the barracks, a distant part of the Palace that was too close to the dungeons for his tastes. He found, as he had expected, that the guards who’d been sent off to search for the missing heir had been granted a day of rest. They were making use of it, too, as evidenced by the Faeries lounging on their crudely constructed bunks.
“Do not rise,” he said, holding up a hand when they first noticed his presence. As Consort to the Queene, he was due a certain amount of respect from the Court, but display of that respect seemed cheap to him, and made him uneasy. He would rather they respect him not because of their Queene’s preference, but because of the times he had fought at their side in the past twenty years. It was a vain hope, he’d concluded, but that did not stop him from wanting it.
“Last night, Master Cedric found you in the Darkworld and ordered you to call off the search, yes?” He watched as they nodded uniformly in response. “And did he return to the Palace with you?”
“No, Sire,” one of the soldiers spoke up. “He stayed behind, to look for any of us that got separated.”
That did sound like something Cedric would do. “Had any of you become separated?”
“No, sire.”
That, also, sounded like Cedric. “And did you tell him this?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Thank you.” Malachi nodded to the guards and turned to go, when a voice stopped him.
“Sire, I may know where he is.”
There was a noise of clearing throats and the rustle of movement. Out of these, Malachi distinctly heard someone whisper fiercely, “You keep your mouth shut!”
Malachi turned. A young Faery—or perhaps he just appeared young, as Malachi could never tell the difference—stood apart from the others. The rest all watched him with daggers for eyes.
“You know where Cedric is?” Malachi asked, flicking his gaze over the guards who sat in sullen silence behind him.
“Do not tell him,” one of the guards advised the young-looking one. “He is not one of us. What Cedric does is between himself and the Queene.”
“What do you know?” Malachi asked the young guard again, ignoring the others. “I need to find Cedric. I seek him on the Queene’s orders.”
The Faery squared his shoulders. “On our patrols near the border, we have observed Master Cedric in close contact with a Human. A Gypsy. He has been spotted meeting with her on the Strip. I believe…we all believe…that he goes to the Darkworld to be with her.”
That, of all things, did not sound like Cedric. But Cedric had always been private. And he’d been so angry at Ayla’s announcement the night before….
No, Cedric had enough reason to be angry at that, without a Human mistress. Cedric, the most noble and incorruptible of all the Fae in the Lightworld, toppled from his virtuous pedestal by a mortal? And a Darkling?
“That seems…very unlikely,” he told the guard, though he still let the thought tumble around in his mind. “But I thank you for your trust.”
He left then. Let them think what they would of him. He’d become so used to the disdain the Fae showed toward all mortal creatures that it only surprised him when one of them treated him with respect. Not Ayla or Cedric, of course, but they alone knew what he had been in his former life. If the rest of the Court knew, well, they might not respect him, but they would fear him.
He shook off the self-pity that would usually follow such thoughts. Right now, his only concern was finding Cedric. The guard’s story—and the zeal of the other guards to suppress it—troubled him. This was not the first time Cedric had left the Lightworld with no explanation. He always turned up later, but never offered where he’d been. Ayla had not pressed…perhaps she knew any answer would be a lie?
It would not be like Ayla to voice concerns about Cedric, who was, at times, closer to her than Malachi himself. She rarely questioned him and had never, to Malachi’s knowledge, voiced any displeasure with him, even in private. The Queene bowed to Cedric as much as Cedric bowed to his Queene.
But now, the faithful servant had gone missing. The guard’s story did not make so little sense, in this reasoning.
The years had flown—over half of Malachi’s own mortal life—but it had not been so long that he could not remember the ways through the Darkworld, to the Gypsy encampment. He made his way through the Strip, to the entrance of the Darkworld, to the place where the Gypsy markings began. Symbols meant to ward off evil—to ward off the Death Angels whose ranks he’d belonged to—all the things that crawled and slithered in the Darkworld that were so hazardous to mortal life. The symbols were useless. Malachi did not like them, did not need the reminder that there were things capable of destroying him here in the Darkworld.
He had not been across the Darkworld border since before Ayla had officially become Queene, when he’d returned at Cedric’s pleading. Now, he hoped Cedric would return at his pleading.
After hours of walking, he found that the camp was the same as he remembered—dirty, crowded, smelling of fire and too many unwashed bodies. It was also guarded still, though on his last visit those guards had not seen him slip in, their eyes blind to the messengers their God sent to bring them home.
They were not blind to him now. And they were not blind to what he was.
A group of children chased each other near the mouth of the tunnel, and a Human woman ran to them, crossing herself, looping her great fat arms around them and clutching them to her as she backed away, never taking her eyes from Malachi.
A warning call in a language Malachi could not understand rang out from one guard to another, and they came toward him warily, as if recognizing him as mortal, but unable to reconcile that with what their stories and legends told them about the Death Angels’ purposes.
“I am looking for one who is not of your kind,” he called out in the mortal language before they could get too close, before they could seize him, do him harm. They still might; their fear glittered in their dark eyes like the glimmer off of spilled blood.
“You are one who is not of our kind,” a thin man called to him. “And you are not welcome here.”
“I will leave, and gladly, once I find who I came for.” He considered for a moment that Cedric might not have told them his identity, that he was masquerading as Human. Among these people, as keen and superstitious as they were, it seemed unlikely that they would not know what Cedric truly was. “He is a Faery.”
A murmur went through the Gypsies who stood before him. Something that sounded suspiciously like “Tom.”
Had another Faery come to live among Humans? To have tracked the wrong Lightworlder into the Darkworld would be the perfect end to an absolutely fruitless day.
The thin man nodded, once. “We cannot take you to him. We can bring him here, to you.”
“That will be enough for me.” Malachi bowed his head briefly, to show them deference. “I will go into the tunnel, and wait there, so I will not further upset your people.”
“And after that, you will not come this way again.” It was not a question, but Malachi answered with a nod, all the same.
He waited, as he had promised, in the tunnel. What would have possessed Cedric to come here, to cast his lot with these strange creatures? All mortal beings were strange, and Malachi did not excuse himself from that description, but Gypsies were among the most bizarre. And for a Fae to knowingly pursue one, when mortal lives were so terribly short and fragile…
It was something Malachi found himself thinking of far more often lately. The fragility of mortal life, the interminable length of immortality. He was not unaware of how his mortal body had aged. What had been full and strong in youth was now lean and tough. Lines marred his face. Those lines had not been there before, nor had the strands of silver that had grown into his hair. He had more years to live, true enough. But he could not imagine what it would be like to watch Ayla age, wither and die, as she would watch him fade away. Their circumstance, he had thought, was exceptional. Why would another immortal seek out such an unhappy situation?
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