She hoped that Dan and Nadia could be patient in the visitors’ chamber, which to them would feel like a five-star prison cell. Their sense of time was different than her own and far different from that of her 1100-year-old mother, who had already kept Holly here for an hour.

  Dan and Nadia were restless, impulsive, and impatient by nature. Holly loved them for these traits. With Dan and Nadia, time dilated. Every second took on meaning.

  She only hoped that they could remain patient until she was finished with her mother. Their arrival hadn’t exactly gone smoothly.

  Why did Briar have to be so difficult?

  But she knew the answer, even if she didn’t understand it. In the decades since roving slavers had killed their older brother, Nettle, Briar had churned with rage.

  Holly remembered being a young girl and standing in this very room beside Briar and Lily, weeping and trying to make sense of the fact that Nettle wasn’t sleeping on the table and wasn’t going to wake, not ever.

  She remembered her father’s face, the jaw tight with emotion, the dark eyes streaming tears. And she remembered Mother walking around Nettle’s corpse, examining wounds and taking notes.

  From that day forth, Briar had rejected druidic studies to train relentlessly with weapons. He rushed into violence and fought every fight as if avenging the death of their brother. Above all else, Briar hated humans, because the slavers who had killed Nettle were humans.

  Holly felt a spasm of guilt for bringing Dan and Nadia to the grove. Life was so different at college. She was so different. Sure, she had anticipated difficulties, but she loved Dan and Nadia so much that she had foolishly downplayed the inevitable.

  She needed to talk to Briar. Needed him to understand her perspective.

  Unlike her brother, Holly could understand that the humans who had killed Nettle were monsters first and humans second. They were no more representative of the entire human race than were the heroic humans in the Legion of Light.

  Humans were fascinating and exquisitely varied. They led short, fierce lives, fueled by passion and pain. They matured too quickly, charging into the future without ample time for reflection. Therefore, they lived without insight and developed into true individuals.

  Bright flames, all of them.

  And none brighter than Dan and Nadia.

  Briar would have to understand. Dan and Nadia were family now.

  The timeless clock ticked on—tick, tick, tick—reminding Holly that the future could never really escape the past.

  At last, her mother closed the lid and turned from the box. “Now we can see the whole shape of your grandmother’s corporeal life,” she said.

  Holly stood. “Will Father join us soon?”

  “No,” her mother said. “He and the council are delving.”

  Holly nodded. Once a month, the druidic council called upon the great delving tree at the heart of the grove and tapped into the collective consciousness of the forest. The ritual was hallowed, could be neither postponed nor interrupted, and took an entire day, either from sunrise to sundown or sundown to sunrise, depending on the month.

  “Tonight,” her mother said, “we will feast in the great hall. Afterward, your father will lead us as we return his mother’s head to rest alongside her body at the heart of the grove.”

  Feasting in the great hall meant the entire grove would participate. But would the feast be a welcome or a farewell? Was the grove saying goodbye to Grandmother or hello to Dan and Nadia?

  Of course, Holly would not ask. Her mother didn’t appreciate questions that would be answered in time and for which there could be no preparation or modification. To ask about the feast would merely illustrate impatience and anxiety, two weaknesses her mother would not tolerate.

  “Tell me again of this beast,” her mother said, staring down at the petrified monster.

  Holly told her tale, careful to keep things factual and free of the powerful emotions that she had felt during the experience. Her mother leaned close to the dead beast, studying its stony hide through the magnifying loupe which she wore at all times on a chain around her neck.

  “This is a new species,” her mother concluded. “No such creature has ever been reported in this forest or, to my knowledge, in any forest. Tell me again of the crevasse.”

  Holly repeated everything, underscoring the thing that she hadn’t yet bothered to tell Dan and Nadia. This rift had opened directly above the catacombs where her grandmother and Griselda the necromancer had killed each other.

  Her mother sniffed at the petrified corpse and jotted down several lines of notes. “Fetch the small rock hammer and a diamond file,” her mother said, “and several sample vials. If we start the autopsy now, perhaps we will finish before the feast.”

  Holly retrieved the items and handed them over, smiling uncomfortably. “Mother,” she said, “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to assist you.”

  Her mother, who had begun gently filing at the rocky hide, looked up with confusion. “Won’t be able?” She blinked. “Ah, your humans.”

  Holly nodded. A wild impulse seized her then. She wanted to bat away the tools, rip the loupe from around her mother’s neck, and demand that the woman listen. Really listen. Instead, she simply told her again, “Dan is my husband. Nadia is my sister-wife.”

  Holly’s mother stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing. The clock ticked on, marking seconds, though one could never know whether those seconds were ascending or descending through time.

  Then the Chief Scholar bent over the rigid corpse and started tapping gently at a fang. “Marrying these humans was a mistake, Holly. Why did you do it?”

  Holly felt a rush of warmth in her face. She had expected some degree of conflict with her brother and a full-blown explosion from her father, who wanted her to focus solely on following in his druidic footsteps, but she hadn’t expected her mother to protest.

  And because she was caught off guard, Holly replied with an answer that her mother couldn’t possibly understand. “Because I love them.”

  Her mother craned her neck, chipping delicately at the dead beast.

  Tap, tap, tap, went the hammer.

  “Love,” her mother said without looking up.

  Tick, tick, tick, went the clock.

  “When I was a girl,” her mother said, “I loved flowers. I cut them and put them in a vase with water and set them upon my desk. Do you know what happened?”

  “They gave you joy?”

  “Briefly,” her mother said. “Then they died.”

  “Mother,” Holly said, not wanting to hear it. “Really… I—”

  “I was young and distractible,” her mother said, switching from hammer to file. “When the flowers began to wilt, I forgot to water them. Once they began to rot, I forgot them all together. And then one day I realized that the flowers were dead. I tossed them onto the compost heap and from that day forth never cut flowers again.

  “A flower is a bright and fleeting thing, daughter, a thing better left in the ground. We can enjoy their beauty without taking possession, and after they have withered away, more flowers will crop up, bright and beautiful, to take their place.”

  A rush of emotions flooded Holly. Anger and fear; doubt and panic; desperation, sorrow, and love. “Dan and Nadia are not flowers,” she said, hating the quaver in her voice and hating even more that her mother would note that wobble and record it into her never-ending study of her daughter, labeling it as the moment when Holly saw a sliver of truth and understood that she had been living in denial.

  “No,” her mother said, “they are not flowers, but they will die. And before they die, they will grow old. They will wilt and fade and suffer, all while you are still in full bloom.”

  Holly felt like the walls were closing in.

  “And what will you do?” her mother asked. “Will you have this man’s children?”

  “Yes,” Holly said. She’d meant to speak boldly, but her voice came out in a frightened whisper. “No time soon, but yes, I will, and our children will preserve him.”

  Her mother looked up then, her beautiful features devoid of contempt or pity, and shook her head. “If you have his offspring, these children will not be elves. They will be half-elves. You will watch them age, wilt, and die. Just like your husband and sister-wife, just like my flowers.”

  9

  I Hate Cages

  Dan stared down out of the tower window at the cobblestone courtyard below.

  Dozens of elves drifted through the courtyard. Most paused to stare up at the window where Dan now stood.

  One elf had been leaning against a courtyard wall, staring up at them ever since they’d arrived here.

  Judging by the fancy armor and sword, golden hair, purple eyes, and psychotic stare, Dan guessed that the lingerer was none other than Holly’s brother, Briar.

  What an asshole.

  Holly’s angular, fine-boned features made her exotically beautiful. But those same tendencies in her brother made him look foppish and haughty. Dan wanted to drill the guy with a right cross and snap that long, thin nose like a wishbone.

  Otherwise, the elves hadn’t been so bad. Healers had cured Dan’s wounds, and the visitors’ chamber was like a fancy hotel suite, with food and booze and everything.

  The only thing was, hotels didn’t lock their guests inside the suites.

  Dan flipped Briar the bird and turned from the window.

  “I hate cages,” Nadia said, pacing back and forth.

  “Me, too,” Dan said, crossing the room and refilling his goblet. This was the best whiskey he’d ever tasted, smooth and smoky and way stronger than it tasted, based on the buzz settling over him. “But at least it’s a well-stocked cage.”

  “Fuck that,” Nadia said. “A cage is a cage.” She crouched, pulled something from the seam of her boot, and went to the door.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  The lock clicked and the door opened a fraction of an inch. “Taking a walk.”

  “You’re going to get us into trouble,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  Leaving the room, they started down the hall past ornate tapestries showing what looked like elven mythology. Many of the heroes depicted had golden hair and purple eyes. Maybe history, then, not mythology.

  “What are we doing, anyway?” Dan said, wishing he’d brought the decanter of whiskey along.

  “Just taking a look around.”

  “You’re not going to steal something, are you?”

  Nadia frowned at him. “Are you shitting me? You really think I’d steal from Holly’s family?”

  “I guess not.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Holly’s my friend. Besides,” Nadia said, “everything’s probably protected with elf magic. If I pocket so much as a letter opener, it’ll probably start whistling like a tea kettle.”

  The hallway curved. Dan didn’t like not being able to see far ahead.

  “What do we do if we run into somebody?” he asked. Whenever he’d broken out of a cell in T&T, he’d killed anyone he’d met on his flight to freedom. Here in his wife’s grove, however, going full-on murder hobo seemed a tad extreme.

  “We’ll ask them where Holly is,” Nadia said.

  They came to an adjacent corridor that connected this tower to a larger, more centralized tower.

  “Let’s go,” Nadia said, heading for the larger tower. “No smart thief slips into a dragon’s lair to steal a copper piece. If we’re going to risk pissing off the elves, we might as well make it worth the danger and see some cool stuff.”

  “I like the way you think,” Dan said and squeezed her ass, which looked perfect as always in skintight black fabric. “Plenty of little alcoves if you want to have some fun.”

  Nadia rolled her eyes. “You’d be a terrible thief,” she said. “Stay focused.”

  “All right,” Dan said, “but at least keep an eye out for more of that whiskey.”

  As soon as they entered the large tower, Dan forgot all about whiskey.

  “What is that?” he said.

  Nadia stared down the hall, her lips parted slightly. “Singing.”

  “Yeah, singing,” he said, “but how? I mean, I’ve never…”

  The sound coming from down the hall was more beautiful than anything he’d ever heard before, more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen or tasted, smelled or felt. This was perfection on a whole different level, as if a chorus of angels were singing just down the hall.

  His feet moved him toward the sound. Nadia followed.

  The hall opened onto a central shaft that reminded Dan of a massive silo. A circular path with a stone railing ran all the way around the perimeter of the shaft. Glancing up, he saw several floors above them, each with its own balcony-style walkway.

  Looking down, he saw the singers, a dozen female elves, all Holly’s age, give or take the equivalent of a few human years. They were stunningly beautiful, dressed in bright yellow gowns, and singing in two ranks of six, facing a large fountain at the center of the circular room.

  Their singing gripped him. He felt as much as heard their voices, which wound through him, triggering powerful emotional responses, first one thing and then another, making him feel like laughing or crying or marching proudly onto a battlefield, ready for death. As their heavenly voices dipped and lilted, the water gushing from the fountain shifted colors, transitioning from red to blue, blue to green, green to yellow.

  An elbow from Nadia snapped him out of his daze. She pulled him down the hallway.

  They descended a stairwell and slunk past a massive kitchen bustling with activity and billowing smells that made Dan’s stomach growl.

  Nadia stopped abruptly, suddenly tense. “People coming,” she whispered.

  Dan couldn’t hear them but didn’t doubt her.

  They ducked into a darkened room and watched from the shadows as a pair of elderly elves shuffled past, talking softly in Elvish. One carried a large, green book. The other held a scroll. They looked studious as fuck, like a couple of hardcore professors who’d given up teaching because it bit into their reading time.

  Once they disappeared, Dan poked his head into the hall. “The coast is clear,” he whispered, and they started walking again.

  The second time, a door banged open just around the corner, and the hallway filled with the sound of laughing children.

  Dan’s heart leapt. The laughter was coming this way!

  He and Nadia ran in the opposite direction but skidded to a halt when they spotted the old scholarly types walking back toward them.

  “Come on,” Nadia whispered and pushed through a door. “Let’s go outside.”

  They stepped from the tower into a shady courtyard thankfully empty of elves.

  Cutting across the yard, they came to a stone wall. Beyond the wall rose a grove of massive trees, like a stand of redwoods.

  “Must be the heart of the grove,” Nadia said, excitement twinkling in her emerald eyes. “Holly says this place is amazing.”

  “Let’s see for ourselves,” Dan said, opening a door in the stone wall.

  The air of the grove within the grove was cool and damp and full of good forest smells. Overhead, the giant trees blocked out daylight, but the forest was illuminated in blue light.

  It’s coming from the moss, Dan realized. Thick moss covered the forest floor and crept up the huge tree trunks. Sprinkled throughout the moss were points of blue light.

  A stone walkway wound between columnar tree trunks. Here and there to either side of the path, oblong hummocks bulged from the glowing moss.

  Nadia froze, looking around. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

  “Hear what?”

  She squinted, turning her head back and forth, listening, then shrugged. “Could’ve sworn I heard voices. Really faint. A bunch of them, all talking at once.”

  They continued down the path.

  With its huge trees, carpet of moss, and glowing light, this place was pretty cool.

  Then they followed the path between two huge trees, entering a clearing, and Dan knew that they’d made a big mistake.

  A circle of elves sat holding hands on the mossy ground at the center of the clearing. All but one had their eyes closed and appeared to be in some kind of trance.

  The final elf stared at the holographic images flickering in the air at the center of their circle. In the hologram, Dan recognized the crevasse, green steam, and a dark shape scaling the cliff.

  Then all Hades broke loose.

  The elf who had been watching shot up off the ground and shouted a stream of Elvish. The hologram vanished. The other elves jerked from their trances and cried out in surprise.

  “Sorry,” Dan said and turned to leave, but his entire body went rigid.

  Beside him, Nadia had frozen in place, too.

  Angry shouting filled the clearing.

  Hands grabbed Dan, yanked his arms behind his back, and lashed his wrists together. He watched as two elves bound Nadia similarly.

  The elf who had paralyzed them appeared before Dan. Tall for an elf, he was only a few inches shorter than Dan and broad across the shoulders, with dark hair streaked in gray. He radiated strength. He looked intelligent, tough, and strangely familiar.

  The elf cleared his throat. His dark eyes flashed dangerously.

  Seeing that flash of anger, Dan suddenly understood why the guy looked so familiar. The elf’s hair wasn’t blond, and his eyes weren’t purple, but now Dan recognized his jaw, forehead, and especially that flash of anger.

  Brandishing a glowing shillelagh in one hand, the elf explained that he was about to dispel Dan’s paralysis in order to interrogate him. Any resistance would be punished severely.

  Dan felt the spell lift, releasing his muscles.

  “Who are you,” the elf demanded, “and what are you doing here?”

  Dan smiled. “My name is Dan,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Dad.”

  10

  The Feast of Fury

  Dan knocked back the remaining whiskey. It didn’t burn going down. It glowed. His whole head felt that way now.

 

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