CHAPTER 19
“I don’t care how many times I mull this over in my mind, something about this smells to the high heavens, Rodney.” Queen Cerridwen paced across his private chamber in her nightgown and stood by the window to watch the coming dawn.
“I agree, but we must strike while the sun is to our advantage.”
She closed her eyes as he came to her and allowed his warm palms to slide down her arms. Leaning into his embrace, she soaked in the heat of his chest against her back.
“Call it feminine intuition. call it whatever you will, but I feel we must employ shrewd strategy here. We are dealing with Vampires and also demons. Bargains with them are not always clear-cut.”
Sir Rodney placed a gentle kiss against her neck. “Sounds like you have intimate experience in negotiating with them, love.”
She drew herself up slightly, tensing, and opened her eyes, then answered him carefully. “Yes, unfortunately. that is true.”
His thumb caressed her neck where he’d left a kiss and he spoke slowly and calmly, never raising his voice. “I know and we both know that I know.” He shook his head and released her. “With all your beauty. and all your glamour, I can see where Vlad has riddled your body with his fangs.. I can feel it with my heart where he’s desecrated the one sanctuary I had.”
“We’ve both had other lovers,” she whispered, neither turning around nor denying the charge.
“So true, and I think that you can hear from the tone of my voice that I care not to challenge you or your choices.. It’s just that this one makes me very, very sad.”
She spun on him, tears glittering in her eyes. “All of yours made me sad.”
“The cold taketh away and the summer gives,” he murmured, going to the dining table across the room. “I’m not in a contest with you this morning, my love.” He poured himself a cup of tea and added cream to it, thoughtfully stirring it. “But I never took up with a Vampire against you.” Sir Rodney took a slow sip from the porcelain cup and set it down very precisely and then looked at her. “I never breached your sidhe with demons sent from my ill-begotten folly. Last night took all that I owned not to allow the summer to die within me.”
Cerridwen placed a trembling palm to her chest. “Oh. Rodney. I. ”
He held up his hand and to her horror she saw tears glittering in his eyes. She watched them balance at the precipice of his thick, dark lashes. “The Gordian knot has frayed and dawn approaches. I see clearly and have no more shield or defense against you. A woman can always fight more deadly than a man, can always cut deeper, war longer, and will always triumph after the last man stands. I am felled.”
She swallowed hard as he took up his tea again with a shaky hand and brought it to his lips, then cleared his throat. “But did you not see last night why I love the humans so—why I rally to their condition? Could you not see with your own eyes how their weakness, and even their frailty, is their beauty. why I have instructed my Faries and Pixies, all manner of Seelie, to assist them in their firefly-like existence?” He set down his tea and held her gaze. “Cerridwen, they don’t have long to live. To torture them with cruel Unseelie tricks is like pulling the wings off butterflies. To what end?”
When she didn’t answer him immediately but looked away, he crossed the room in a sudden explosion, grabbing her by both arms. “To what end!”
“I don’t know?” she wailed, and snatched herself away from him to hug herself. “Guilty as charged, but I have changed!”
“Did you not see that poor girl’s parents? Demons in my dining hall? Dead fucking palace guards dropped like bloody confetti from the ceilings above my guests’ wedding! Why, Cerridwen? Because you entered into a deal with Vampires who’d made a pact with a demon?”
He walked away from her breathing hard. “And no matter what, I still loved you. No matter what, I would not give you over to your ex-lover’s rage. I would face all of Hell alone before I gave him the satisfaction of beheading you.”
Sir Rodney’s hands were shaking so badly when he picked up his teacup that he flung it against the stone wall with a crash. “And no matter what, I wouldn’t listen to the sage advice of my closest advisors. nor would I ever tell that poor young woman who had her wedding night ruined by death and damnation that you were a party to her being abducted and nearly sacrificed to her husband’s insane aunt.” He drew a shaky breath and leveled a hard point in her direction. “Cerridwen, I swore I would never allow you to make me say these things to you, but after last night I am filled to the brim and so close to murder that it frightens me.”
Sir Rodney turned and looked at Cerridwen, this time unable to stop the tears from spilling over his lashes. His voice was a hoarse murmur as he spoke: “Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think I didn’t wrestle with my own outrage to see you standing at the edge of my Sidhe seeking asylum after all you’ve done? Did you think you’d tricked me, played me like a house fiddle? No, I’m not blind or thick. It was a matter of choice to lower my drawbridge to let you in. So, no, I wouldn’t abandon you at your lowest ebb, my love, because although deserved, that would be cruel. and I have been called many things, even daft—but never cruel.”
“What can I do?” she whispered, stricken.
Sir Rodney shook his head. “I don’t know.”
For a long while she stood at the edge of the bedchamber they’d shared just staring at him, her heart shattering like broken glass as she looked at the damage she’d wrought and the pain she’d caused him, now wondering why.
“I will fix this, Rodney,” she whispered.
“You cannot,” he replied, and then finally sat and dropped his head into his hands. “Come daylight, infantrymen, cavalry, and Dragon riders will expect their monarch to lead them. and one poor little girl, a woman not yet twenty years old, and her husband, my good wolf friend, will be hunted forever for something they didn’t do.”
“Do not open the graves at first light,” she said, rushing to him and going down on her knees before him. “Rodney, I beg of you. Allow me the chance to fix what I’ve wrought.” She gathered his hands within her own and looked up at him. “The one thing they never bargained on was this. Us.” She squeezed his hands within hers, noticing that they’d begun losing their customary warmth. “This is not a deal, nor a marriage of convenience.”
He smiled a sad smile. “No, that is true. It has never been convenient.”
She swept his mouth with a brief kiss and returned his sad smile. “Never convenient, always complex, but it was not theirs to understand. It was ours.”
He touched her cool cheek and studied her panic-stricken gaze. “Some things are beyond repair, Cerridwen.. That is why it is ill advised to ever break them if you cherish them.”
“It can be fixed!” she said, tears now streaming. “Don’t say that!”
“How?” he asked quietly, wiping her face as she drew closer to him.
“I don’t know.. ” She released a long, agonized sob and he gathered her up into his lap and simply held her.
“I will go to Vlad,” she said after a moment, pulling back and wiping angrily at her tears.
“He will kill you on sight. I will not allow it.”
“No. He will not.” She stood and paced back and forth in front of where Sir Rodney sat. “Lady Jung Suk used a coven to try to amass more power than me because she was jealous of the. attention. and respect that Vlad offered me over her. To him, she was a tool. To him, I was a powerful ally. Being aligned with a coven would give her access to make her own deal with the demons.”
Sir Rodney sat back in his chair and dragged his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Go on.”
“But she was indebted to Vlad—was to be his assassin forever. That was the deal she and Vlad struck when he gave her Amy’s body after she’d fled court. The demon that Empress Lady Jung Suk raised with her possession spell simply wanted a virgin as a sacrifice. Vlad is panicked. Vlad is not thinking. He could give that demon any young girl and get out of his contract.”
“If you have a hand in such matters, Cerridwen, I swear we will be done forever.” Sir Rodney just stared at her until she looked away. “Do not even tell him that. Promise me, so that someone else’s daughter doesn’t wind up missing.”
“I promise,” she said, finally meeting his unblinking gaze. “This is for us to know, not to give Vlad an easy way out. but what is critical here is the fact that the only way to override one demon deal is to replace it for another, stronger one.. This is where the Erinyes fit in, I’m sure. They did not breach your dungeons for the body of one young woman. No. That had to be the result of a larger deal entered into by Lady Jung Suk—but since the Vampires didn’t pay up for her, they could leverage the Vampires. I know she had to do this, because the one thing I’m sure a woman of power like the empress loathed was being indebted eternally to a cruel and worthless bastard.” Cerridwen stopped, winded, and stared at Sir Rodney. “Vlad is a cruel and worthless bastard.”
Sir Rodney lifted his chin. “I’m sure I’ve been discussed in as colorful terms.”
She shook her head and their gazes locked. “Never.”
“Never?”
“I spoke of you in fury. Called you a gallivanting cad. but never cruel. Never worthless. Your heart is as large as your castle.” She came back to him and stood before him, waiting until he accepted her back into his arms. “Please let me help.”
“And should the Vampires decide that you are their sacrifice. what then?”
“Then perhaps justice will be served,” she said, stroking his dark spill of hair away from his face. “For all the wrongs I have committed against you and mere mortals. for the duplicity and backroom deals so numerous I shudder to remember. Maybe it is just my time.”
“And what crime have I committed so egregious that my heart be served to the Vampires on a silver platter?”
A rush of air left her lungs as she pulled his head to her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut. “I love you so, milord. Too much to allow you to ruin the House of Inverness once this is all said and done. We may win the battle once the sun comes up but then lose the war once all of this nasty business is unfurled.” She looked down at him. “Rodney, they will demand your throne for sending the Seelie to war on behalf of the Unseelie queen whose hands were dirty and who was literally in bed with a Vampire. I shan’t allow it.”
She stood and walked away from him clutching her heart. “The night I entered this castle, all I could think of was my own self-interest. My empire of ice, my vassals, my constituents—my life. My guards. Garth was right to hate me for that. But. ” She shook her head as new tears rose to her eyes. “The ice around my heart has thawed and melted away. You did that with your generosity. You even buried my men who were savaged in your dungeons by the Erinyes. I now see your wolves as friends; they held demons at bay and stood with us. I now see, for the very first time, the humans you used to weep for when we were younger. how their condition kept you up at nights, just as it did last night. I saw, Rodney.”
He stood and lifted his chin and swallowed hard, taking his time to find his voice. It was raw but filled with pride when he spoke. “That is all I ever wanted from you, Cerridwen. for you to see that part of me. For I have always seen your warmth, that part of you that no one else understood to be there. Is that not what partners do? See the details no one else can, flaws and all, and still love what they see. still find it beautiful, regardless, simply because it is a part of the grander mosaic of that person.”
“There was a time when I thought your words were the lofty ruminations of a frustrated poet, or a boy king who had too much free time on his hands. I missed the simplistic truth while empire building. not realizing that seeing the world and seeing its citizens as you do is the real magick.”
They stared at each other for what seemed like a long time and finally she went to him and he gathered her into his arms.
“I will not allow you to go to Vlad to be taken hostage or to be harmed in any way, Cerridwen.”
“Then at least let me get word to him that he may have been cuckolded by Lady Jung Suk, who used her relationship with the local dark covens to do a secondary, backdoor deal with the Erinyes. They are the only demons strong enough to have broken her ties to Vlad, and Vlad never gave her a body—so whatever he had was overridden.”
Sir Rodney pulled back and stared at Cerridwen. “But how can you know for sure? When we made the empress’s twisted spirit leave Amy Chen’s body, Sasha Trudeau commended it to the Light.”
“But the empress had already gone dark, Rodney. The Devil already owned her soul. No doubt she went to the Light, but the Fair One spit it back.” Queen Cerridwen gently extracted herself from Sir Rodney’s embrace. “We don’t have much time before sunrise. I will compose an ice missive for Vlad. You hold your garrisons; tell them to wait for your strategic command. By day, I will need to work just outside the walls of your sidhe, for the safety of your set demon barriers.”
“I don’t like it when you get that look in your eyes, Cerridwen. What will you do?”
“I will call in some markers I have in places you don’t want to know about.”
“It is almost dawn and we must go down into the vault,” a breathless Vampire sentry said as he went down on one knee before Elder Vlad. “Caleb never came back. We have searched high and low for him. He could have been injured or killed by our enemies.”
“I highly doubt that,” Vlad said coolly, feeling his energy waning with the approaching light. “My registers would have informed me of his extinguished existence. Find him, now!”
“Your Excellency?” The bewildered sentry looked up and then glanced at the blue-gray sky through the mansion window.
“Have our human friends hunt for him by day. Be gone from my sight before I decide to allow daylight to make you wiser next time.”
The sentry stood and quickly backed out of the room. Elder Vlad released a weary sigh and then stood to go to the false wall that would lead him down to the sun-proof vault. But just as he turned, his floor frosted over and the message from Queen Cerridwen Blatant of Hecate was crystal clear.
“Will it always be like this?” Jennifer asked in a tight whisper, pressing her face into the crook of Crow’s shoulder.
“No. uhm, you mean war? Naaaah. things will normal out. Just—”
“War? That, too? Dragons?” she said in a high-pitched whisper. “Plus, all the women in your family, when they saw me they, they, turned into really angry wolves and then your big pack brother, Bear Shadow, he got in between me and them—thank God he was there—then dragons showed up. I thought I was hallucinating, and then everything went black.”
“Look, baby, don’t mind them. They were just trying to battle-challenge you to see what your rank would be in the pack, you know?”
Jennifer rapidly shook her head. “No! I don’t know, Crow! Are you crazy?”
“Uh, well, yeah, I feel you. That probably didn’t come out right. But what I meant was, you were new.”
She drew back from him and stared at him with wide eyes. “I’m new?” She looked around the beautifully appointed room. “No. this is new.”
“Yeah, the Fae are kinda cool, if I must say so myself. Very fly how they hooked up the room with the Fairy dust and Pixie sprinkles and whatnot, clothes, food, hey. and their baths, man. wait till you get in the tub.”
“Fairies did this?” She squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “Now you’re telling me there are actually Fairies?”
“Yeah, girl. where you been? Beats Vampires and demons—but, like, we can talk about all that other stuff when you feel better.”
When she began to hyperventilate he gave her a kiss and smiled a wolf smile, then took her by the hand to lead her to the bathtub. “So, if the rustic outdoors just isn’t you. Sir Rodney might be cool with letting us rent a room in the palace or something. He doesn’t have a problem with you being a human and me being a wolf. Besides, the more I think about it, this really isn’t a bad place to raise a kid.”
“You haven’t slept at all,” Shogun said, spooning Amy in a possessive embrace.
“How can I sleep, Husband? People died because of me. my parents—”
“No one died because of you.” Shogun climbed over Amy’s body and faced her. “No one. You must never think that. This was the doing of demons and Vampires.”
“No,” Amy said quietly, sitting up. “I can feel her, still, your aunt. She is not in me, but she is still. somehow—she exists.”
“Sasha sent her to the Light. We killed her in the bayou. What you have left is horrible memories and some of the physical traits that she left in your body when she tried to take you over and possessed you. but that is all.”
Amy shook her head. “Shogun, just saying something is so doesn’t mean that it is. I know what I feel.” She hugged herself as though staving off a cold chill. “There is a good witch in the castle. the one who became blinded by your aunt when she was helping Sir Rodney help you search for me.”
“Esmeralda? Yes, she lives here in the sidhe,” Shogun said in a worried tone. “But what would you need—”
“I want to talk to her. She is also psychic, yes?”
“I don’t feel comfortable about any of this.” Shogun stood and paced at the foot of the bed. “At sunrise, we go to war with the Fae. We will overturn every Vampire grave until there are no more. I will not let them harm you. The sidhe has been sealed to demon breach. I swear upon my life—”
“That’s just it,” Amy said quietly. “I don’t want you to swear upon your life or to go to war. There must be another way.” She stood and searched for a robe. “My decision is final. I want to speak to Esmeralda before anyone else has to die.”
Somewhere in the night, Hunter had climbed into bed beside her. But she’d been so exhausted that she never even stirred. Now his warmth soaked into her bones. The steady rise and fall of his chest and his deep breaths kept her hovering in the twilight between being awake and not quite. But she knew she had to get up. Morning was not long away, and if they were going to redress Vampires they would need every moment of available sunlight to lob a strategic offensive.
Yet when she tried to extricate herself from Hunter’s arms he slowly tightened his grip on her.
Sasha smiled and yawned. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was,” he said in a deep rumble, and kissed the back of her head.
“We have to get up; daylight’s about to burn, man.”
“You promised you’d kiss my boo-boo, later. It’s later.”
She chuckled and snuggled back against him. “You do realize we don’t have time for that this morning, don’t you?”
“Yeah. but since I was half-asleep, it was nice to dream.”
She snuggled more deeply against him. “How’re you feeling?”
“Much improved, can’t you tell?”
Her chuckle deepened as she felt his morning salute against her backside. “Uh, yeah. But I’ve been thinking about this whole demon-deal thing. Something about a fighting force as strong as Erinyes breaching a sidhe stronghold, all over some young woman’s body they were promised, seems a lot like overkill. I think we’re getting played somehow, and I wanna talk to Rodney and Cerridwen before this thing gets even further out of control.”
“Okay, I’m up,” Hunter said, sitting up and scratching his head. “But damn, Sasha, can a man get a cup of coffee, first?”