Niall nodded as if that made perfect sense. “If you had something . . . some component of the Convergence spell, would that help?”

  “Help? Are you kidding? That would mean everything. But we can’t even get into Faerie. How the hell can we get anything related to the spell?”

  “Well, as to that . . .” Niall reached into his pocket and withdrew a small velvet bag. “I believe this is what you’re looking for.”

  Bryce took the bag, his eyebrows bunched over the top of his glasses. “What is it?”

  “He called it a binding stone. It was supposed to be presented at some point in the ceremony. I’m not even sure what point. He— He was supposed to signal me when it was time.”

  “‘He,’ huh?” Bryce opened the bag and upended it. The instant the contents dropped into his palm, his eyes widened. “This is an adder stone. A Gloine nan Druidh.” The stone was dead black and perfectly round. “It’s been coated with something. Pitch? Something else too, but that begs the question: what the hell is one of these doing in Faerie?”

  “Not one,” Niall said. “Two. The Queen has the mate to it. I expect the coating was to shield it until it was time for it to be used.”

  Bryce’s eyes narrowed. “If the Queen has the mate, it would make sense for Eamon to have this one. So why doesn’t he? Is this what cause the spell to mutate?” He lunged for Niall, and Gareth stepped in front of him.

  “Stand down, Bryce. He’s been through enough.”

  “Out of the way, Gareth. I’m not going to hurt him.” The fire in Bryce’s normally mild brown eyes belied that. “But I need to know. If he stole it, if that’s why he ran, he could have put Mal and Alun in danger.” He clenched his fist around the stone and glared at Niall over Gareth’s shoulder. “Are you taking vengeance on Eamon for kidnapping you? For torturing you?”

  “Eamon didn’t torture me. He saved me.”

  Gareth turned at the stunned outrage in Niall’s voice. He put his hands on Niall’s shoulders and gave him a tiny shake. “You may not remember it, Niall, but he’s the one who took you. I saw him, that last night in Corwen.”

  Niall blinked, the anger on his face fading, replaced by . . . shame? Regret? Sorrow? It was hard to know. “You saw me go off with Eamon?”

  Gareth nodded. “Yes. Even if you don’t remember everything, I do. And I know you wouldn’t have left me voluntarily.”

  Niall’s gaze locked with his. “I wouldn’t have. Believe that. No matter what, you have to believe that.”

  Hope burbled in Gareth’s chest. “You remember more? You remember that night?”

  Niall closed his hands around Gareth’s wrists gently. His mouth quirked up in an almost smile, a ghost of his former cheeky grin. “I remember, Gareth. I remember everything.”

  The dawning joy in Gareth’s eyes nearly stole Niall’s resolve. This is the last moment when he’ll still love me. But he fought the urge to stretch out the moment. Taking a breath, he dropped his human mask and bared his true nature.

  Bryce gasped and David murmured in distress, but Niall’s gaze never left Gareth’s as confusion replaced joy.

  “No.” Gareth shook his head, his hands raising as if to ward off a blow. “You— It can’t be. You’re—” Hurt followed by revulsion chased across Gareth’s face as he backed away until he bumped into Bryce’s shoulder. “You’re fae. You’re Unseelie. You’re one of them.” He turned away, face to the wall, shoulders shaking.

  Niall’s chest felt as if it were packed with ice. He wanted desperately to soothe, to comfort, but he’d lost that privilege. He might never be mine to comfort again.

  David edged away and tugged on Bryce’s sleeve. “Um . . . Bryce? Can you show me that thing about the . . . the thing?”

  Bryce was goggling at Niall, his gaze tracing a path in the air. He’s got druid sight. He can see my aura now. “What?” He shook his head as if he were coming out of a trance and glanced at Gareth’s back. “Oh. Right. The thing. Sure.” He let David tug him out of the house, although he kept glancing over his shoulder at Niall the whole way.

  Niall waited until the door closed behind them. “Not much for subtlety, your brothers-in-law, are they?” When Gareth didn’t respond, Niall inched toward him, craving the touch of his hand. A glance. Even the shrug of a shoulder. Something. But when he tried to place his hand on Gareth’s back, Gareth jerked out of reach.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Gareth. I’m sorry. Sorrier than you can ever imagine that I—”

  He whirled, his curls writhing around his head as if the ethera were dancing there. “You’re sorry? You think I can’t imagine regret? Remorse? Disgust? Do you know what I’ve done in your name to my family, my Queen, my realm? All because of my poor kidnapped lover, the human victim? Do you know what I’ve done to myself, thinking I brought it on you by my attention? I know all about those things, and more. And it was all because of a lie.”

  “It wasn’t all a lie. I loved you. I love you still—”

  “Stop. Was this the plot all along? Just one more attempt to destroy me? First my dog, then my horse, then my groom? Then what? My virginity? My— my heart?”

  Niall grimaced, tempted to fob off the question, but the time for lies was past. “In a way, but not how you think.”

  Gareth snorted, eyes flashing. “How I think? You have no idea how I think. I’m not sure I do either, because everything I’ve done in the past two hundred years, every action, every thought—Goddess, every song—has been colored by what happened to you. The memory of my perfect lover. My grief at his death—yes, I thought you’d died, either in Faerie or somewhere lost in the Outer World in some time not of your choosing, a random place and time that I had no hope of finding. A fork in the stream and we meet. An eddy, a stone, and we part. What a cosmic fucking joke.”

  “Gareth, if you’d let me explain—”

  “You didn’t have amnesia, did you?”

  “Well. No. But I’d heard you talking to Alun, how you felt about the Unseelie. I didn’t want to risk . . . to risk . . .” This. I didn’t want to risk this. “I thought if I could just have a little more time to recover, I’d be ready to face you again. To explain—”

  “Do you know . . .” Gareth advanced on him, teeth bared, “I was ready to forswear my heritage. Have Bryce sever my connection to the One Tree. Make me mortal. Because I couldn’t stand to live without you forever in a kingdom half ruled by the man who’d stolen you from me, who’d brutalized you, who’d . . . who’d k-k-killed you.”

  Niall reached for him, this wild and vicious stranger who’d possessed his gentle lover. “Please, love, if you’d only let me—”

  Gareth backed away. “They were right about you. They were right all along.”

  “Who was?”

  “The Voices. The criminal dead.” His lips twisted in a sneer. “My fucking legacy.”

  “You don’t understand. If you’d let me—”

  “No more.” Gareth shook his head. “I can’t— It’s too much. I can’t talk to you, I can’t see you, not with two hundred years of deceit to unwind.” He gripped his hair with both hands. “Goddess, I’ve got a concert tonight. I—” He whirled and bolted for the door.

  “Gareth! Wait, please.”

  Gareth didn’t stop, and the slam of the door behind him rattled the pictures on the wall.

  Niall’s shoulders sagged, and he dropped onto the sofa, belly roiling. “Shite.” What was he supposed to do now? He should have found another way. He shouldn’t have ever left Faerie in the first place. “I should have taken the crossbow bolt and ended it all there. Better for both of us.”

  The French doors creaked open and David peeked inside. “We saw Gareth peel out of here like his hair was on fire.” He came in, Bryce behind him. “Are you okay?”

  Niall slumped back on the sofa and gazed up at the two men. “I don’t suppose achubydd can heal stupidity, can they? Or time-travel? Because I’ve bolluxed things up from the first moment I met him, and my decision-making isn’t getting any better. It appears that when given the choice between any two options, I’ve always chosen the wrong one.”

  Well, that had been his one undeniable skill, hadn’t it? To instantly see which path would lead to the maximum amount of chaos. He’d never realized he’d be one of his own victims.

  Bryce advanced on him as if he were in a trance. “Eamon’s brother. David told me, but I should have realized it from your aura. It’s almost identical, except his had red undertones and yours are blue.”

  “That’s because his mother was a Welsh lake maiden and mine was human.”

  David sat next to him and took his hand. The warmth flowing into Niall threatened to soothe his lacerated feelings. No. I’m not worth it. He snatched his hand away. David glared at him. “Let me guess. You don’t think you deserve to feel better.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That is just so . . . so Alun.”

  Bryce dropped down on Niall’s other side. “Mal too. I think it’s a Kendrick family failing.”

  David scowled. “Well, the youngest Kendrick hasn’t ever suffered from that. He spent most of his life convincing his brothers they were right to feel unworthy.”

  “Don’t.” Niall rose, suddenly feeling hemmed in. Danu’s tits, he’d spent two hundred years chained in a cave, but it took two men sympathizing with him to make him feel like a prisoner. “He has every right to be angry. It was a betrayal from the first. Maybe it turned into something else later, but it didn’t start out as anything more than one of my gods-bedamned wagers.”

  “Do you mean you planned to abandon him?”

  “Abandon him? No. I was supposed to kill him.”

  The two men stared at him, eyes wide and mouths identically agape. Niall nearly laughed, because two less identical bookends would be hard to find.

  David recovered first. He shut his mouth, and his throat worked as he swallowed. “K-k-kill him?”

  “Oh yes. It was to be my crowning achievement. Proof I wasn’t a dilettante worse than any of the sycophantic courtiers, since at least they stroked my father’s ego, whereas I did nothing but flaunt his authority at every turn.”

  “But you— I mean, I know Mal and Alun have . . . you know . . . done that. Killed people. But that was in combat. Or to carry out a sentence.”

  “Do you think that makes the death any more justified?”

  David frowned. “I have to admit, as a nurse and I guess as an achubydd, I’ve never liked the idea. But there’s at least one person I would have preferred was erased from the world, preferably before he was ever born.” He shared a glance with Bryce, and they both said, “Rodric Luchullain.”

  “Tiarnach’s esteemed colleague. Excellent choice.”

  “Were you a warrior too?”

  “No. That’s the irony. Or is irony the word I want? I was the only greater fae in the Unseelie court who’d never killed. I confined my mayhem to murdering reputations. Even during the Oak Wars, I refused to join the combat.”

  Bryce nodded as if he were on the same pacifist train, but David simply asked, “Why?”

  “Because the people who died were never the ones who caused the conflict. They were just fae going about their business, following their instincts and nature, until the politics swept over them like a wave. Do you think the greater fae risked their precious necks in those bloody woodland skirmishes? Not likely. They sent out the cannon fodder. The lesser fae died in droves while the greater fae stood back and waited until they could indulge in their pretty swordplay.”

  “I thought—that is, Alun has always said that the Daoine Sidhe lived for war, which is why they’re such a pain in the butt now that they don’t have anything better to do.”

  “They may have lived for war, but not for battle. They didn’t ride in on their precious steeds until the field was already littered with the bodies of the foot soldiers, the lesser fae. I wonder if the elder gods foretold that? That’s why lesser fae can reproduce but the greater fae require divine intervention—or an unwilling fertile partner.”

  Bryce nodded. “Mal told me he wasn’t born like we are. But Heilyn had offspring when we met.”

  “Yes. The lesser fae aren’t as long-lived as the greater, but that may be because they’ve always been abused and sacrificed at the whim of the greater, who always seem to be the ones in power.”

  Bryce regarded Niall, head tilted to one side. “You know, you sound more like a revolutionary than a murderer.”

  “Much good it did me. The best I could do was annoy them. I hadn’t any real power to effect change.”

  “But why kill Gareth?”

  “It didn’t start out that way. It was originally a way to prove that subterfuge could get better results than head bashing. During the wars, because I can pull my mother’s human guise over me at any time, I could mask myself from the enemy. Infiltrate. Bring back news.” He snorted. “Not that I brought back all of it. Just enough to try to keep our own troops from slaughter, never enough to decimate the opposing ranks. Because what choice did any of them have, Seelie or Unseelie? They had their orders to die on command.”

  “Not exactly a shocker. War has always been harder on the front lines. That’s why it’s better to avoid it.”

  “Try telling Tiarnach that. He doesn’t appreciate the subtle distinction between physical force and societal subversion. I made the mistake of challenging him.”

  That night, Tiarnach had been brooding at the head table in the Great Hall. The usual sycophants had been at his elbow, plying him with mead and flattery, while the rest of the court feasted with one eye on the King—because no one ever knew when he’d take it into his head to make an example of one of them for some imagined slight.

  Niall avoided the feasts altogether if he could, since they were nothing but an excuse for the greater fae to lie to one another about their exploits, drink too much, and make work for the Keep staff. They’d become doubly tedious now that Tiarnach was obsessed with his ludicrous vendetta against Gareth Cynwrig. Niall arrived—late as usual, and the instant he’d swaggered into the Great Hall, Tiarnach called him out.

  “You! Coward! I know what you did.” Tiarnach glared from his perch on his pretentious throne-like chair. Danu’s tits, did the idiot need the throne to remind him of his power? Maybe he used it to remind everyone else of his power—just as he always wore his crown. Bastard probably wears it to bed.

  Niall spread his arms and bowed. “I admit it. I ate the last venison pie. It put up a valiant fight, but—”

  “Silence! I speak of the desecration of the war spoils: your unlawful removal of my warriors’ trophies.”

  Trophies. The last had been the head of an elderly bauchan, Gareth Cynwrig’s poor groom. The sight had so distressed Peadar and the rest of the staff that Niall had removed it in the night and buried it under a rowan tree.

  He forced his expression to remain bland and kept his gait even and unhurried as he trod between the long tables to stand before Tiarnach. “Surely we’re not at war any longer. Isn’t that what the Unification treaty was about?”

  Tiarnach’s jaw worked, his eyes flashing red. Niall hoped his own never did that—it was disgusting really. “As long as there are Seelie swine in Faerie, the war will never end.”

  “Hmmm.” Niall tapped his chin. “That’s not what you swore to the Seelie Queen that day in the Stone Circle.”

  “What I said matters not. It’s how we were bred, in our bones and blood.” The toadies flanking Tiarnach nodded in pompous approval, which naturally encouraged him to natter on. “Seelie and Unseelie will never mix, just as no high fae would sully his honor to pander to the lesser.”

  “Honor?” Niall laced his tone with astonishment, glancing around at the crowd to gauge its temper and perhaps identify a like-minded rebel or two. Not promising, but when has that ever stopped me? “I wasn’t aware honor was one of our tenets. Surely that’s the purview of the Seelie. You’ve mocked them often enough for it.”

  “You owe me fealty as your King, as your . . . father.” Tiarnach hunched over his flagon. “Yet you do nothing but sow discord in my court, depriving me of one advisor after another—”

  “Ask yourself what value their advice, when they could be seduced by their own avarice and ambition. I did you a favor.”

  “You think you can do better? You think you can rid the Queen of her bard?”

  “I couldn’t very well do worse than your bumbling assassins.”

  The smile that spread over Tiarnach’s face caused the bauchan serving him to tremble and spill mead onto the tablecloth, earning it a backhanded slap from Tiarnach’s currently favored courtier—what was his name? Gwin? Tionn? Niall never bothered to remember their names. He only paid attention when he wanted to remove one, and that slap had put this one in his sights. He’d ask Peadar later who it was.

  Tiarnach stood. “Hear this,” he boomed, quelling all other conversation in the room. “Until such time as Niall MacTiarnach rids the Seelie Queen of her bard, he is banished from this court and from Faerie.” He stared at Niall, eyebrow raised. “You have your orders.”

  Niall nearly backed down. To accomplish the task fully in the Outer World would be difficult. Who knew whether the bard ever ventured there? But then his own smile answered his father’s.

  A challenge. What better way to pass the time, away from court and his father’s presence. Although he’d miss his brother, Peadar, and the other staff. Worse, they’d miss him, with no champion to protect them from his father’s worst excesses and the casual cruelty of the rest of the court. He’d speak to Eamon before he left, to engage his assistance—

  “Leave. Now. This instant. My guards will escort you. You think yourself so clever and resourceful? See how you manage with nothing more than your so-vaunted wits.”

  A murmur swept through the crowd, and Niall caught the satisfied smirks on the faces of his most vicious critics. How they’d love to see him sweat, see him struggle, see him fall. He refused to give them the satisfaction. He straightened his shoulders and forced a confident grin. “I’ve never failed yet when I’ve set my sights on something. You’d best keep that in mind, Father, before you make a threat you might be hard-pressed to keep.”

 

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