A Sliver of Shadow (30 page)

“What is this?” I said finally, my voice a husky whisper. I caught the impression of amusement from the tree, though that seemed impossible.

Talivar crouched beside me, one hand upon my shoulder. “They say when Lucifer left the heavens, God was stirred to tears and this is where they fell. She holds all knowledge of the past and future within her branches. She’s the one who gave your father the gift of prophecy.”

I pulled away from the tree, the music dimming into something less overwhelming.

He chuckled softly at my expression. “I grew up playing beneath it. Its song doesn’t sing quite so loudly to me these days. Or perhaps I have grown used to it. Mortals have forgotten so very much,” he mused, his voice dropping
low. “Do you understand what we fight for now? We are its guardians and its keepers. Regardless of what happens with the Queen or Moira or even your father, Abby … this is what is important.”

I only nodded, a lump swelling in the back of my throat making it hard to breathe. For an uneasy moment I wondered if this was how the Queen convinced Thomas to go with her.

Answers would hopefully come in time and until I met him, what was the point of speculation? A crimson fluttering caught my attention. “What is that?” I pointed at the silk rag knotted elegantly on one of the branches.

“A wish.” Talivar got to his feet, pulling me up beside him. “People come here to make requests of the Tree. Wishes and hopes and dreams, each represented by a piece of cloth.”

“Everything here is about wishes,” I said sourly, thinking of my own Contract with Moira. I supposed I’d lost that particular benefit when I’d signed on with Talivar. “Do they come true?”

He shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t. The Tree keeps her secrets.” I took a closer look and realized the Tree was covered in them, in all different cuts and quality. Some were quite new and others twisted, thread-worn and nearly disintegrating in the breeze. I resisted the urge to touch one.

Dreams were sacred and I had no such illusions of what they might mean to others. On impulse I tore a piece of the underskirt of my dress, knotting it tightly around one of the other branches. No wish sprang to mind, and I let the cloth slip from my fingers to blow with the others. “Just in case,” I said to the bemused prince, pushing the hair from my face. “What now?”

“Our camp is past the crest of the hill. Gives us a good view of the land, so to speak.” His fingers wove through the
tree’s lower branches for a moment. “No one would be so crass as to actually pollute this place with an army.” His face became grim. “Not even the daemons.”

“I hope you’re right,” I muttered. I waited for him as he retrieved his horse, letting it trail behind us as we started the climb. The hillside was more of a gentle slope, but I leaned on Talivar anyway, my knee still aching from the day before.

Not that it mattered anyway. I cocked my head, recognizing what sounded like the chorus to Wolfmother’s “Joker and the Thief” wafting on the breeze. Nothing serious, then—Mel was merely playing for an audience as opposed to rousing the troops to war.

My mouth curved into a grateful smile. At least one thing was still right in this world. If she could continue to play music, things couldn’t be quite so bad, could they?

Talivar was now in deep conversation with what looked like an elvish scout standing sentinel, his chain mail glittering in the sun. Below us a series of tents were laid out in layered semicircles, a large pavilion set up in the center of the farthest ring. It wasn’t enough to be considered a full army, but clearly the Fae were at least attempting to make show of their force without escalating into something more.

Clusters of elves in pale armor dotted about the camp, everything a flurry of metal and horses, campfires and messengers. And sure enough, I could see Melanie’s familiar form standing in a loose circle of warriors, her bow moving madly upon the violin.

Leaving Talivar to his own devices, I limped down the slope. Melanie paused when she saw me, her face splitting into a wide grin as she wrapped up the song with a flourish. Bowing to the small crowd gathered before her, she quickly bundled the instrument into its case before heading toward me, the two of us falling into a friendly embrace. “Where’s Phin?”

She rolled her eyes, linking her arm through mine. “Think he talked someone into carrying him around. He got stepped on during the stampede and he’s milking it a bit.” One brow rose when she saw my neck. “Nice to see you had a good night.”

I scowled at her. “Yeah, you could say that. Sorry we didn’t meet up with you earlier, but I was really dragging when Talivar and the others found me.”

She sobered. “Yeah, I saw the Protectorate when they brought her in. They’ve got her wrapped up on one of the wagons. I suspect they would have burned her body by now, but …” We walked in silence for a few minutes, my skirt swishing through the long grass. “It looked like someone beat her head in with a rock or something. Primitive.”

“Well, something tells me Tresa doesn’t exactly fall into warrior category. But anyone can pick up a rock and chuck it. Maybe she got lucky. Or hell, for all we know there was some sort of intricate setup and someone wants us to
think
it was simple.” I shook my head. “I didn’t get that good a look at her honestly—she was half in a pond when I found her and it was pretty dark. Plus I was trying not to freeze my ass off.”

I gave Mel the rapid-fire account of what had happened to me, leaving out the more intimate bits of the evening. She glanced up to where the prince still stood, gesturing madly at the encampment. “What the hell happened to his hair?”

“Had me cut it for him this morning. Not sure what that was all about.”

She shrugged. “I’m sure Moira will love it … Not.”

My heart beat a little faster at the mention of the princess.
Sister,
my inner voice said gleefully. “Is she … um … here?”

“Yeah. She’s been going back and forth all morning between here and the daemon encampment on the other side
of the valley. Doesn’t sound like it’s going too well.” Her gaze flicked toward my neck. “They know it’s here, that the Key is awake. They want Maurice for sure, but they want that too.”

“They do realize they can’t use it themselves, I hope.”

“Maybe not, but how hard would it be for them to find a mortal willing to bear it and do their work for them? It’s not like you can’t be killed.” Her voice became distant, quiet beneath the weight of her own memories. “We’re moving into dangerous territory here, Abby. Unless the Queen reopens the CrossRoads, I think some serious shit is going to go down.” She stopped, resting her hand on my shoulder. “And we’re going to be in the thick of it. Again.”

“The cake is a lie,” I intoned gravely.

She stuck her tongue out at me. “It always is. But we need to be a bit more alert to what’s going on this time.” Her mouth curved into a wry smile. “There’s science to do.”

“Well, the first thing I want is shoes,” I said, wiggling my toes. “As much fun as this is, I find I run a lot better when I’m not worried about stepping in horse crap.”

“I’ve got an extra pair,” she offered. “Probably the fastest thing. I’m next to Moira’s tent.” She pointed to the largest tent beside the pavilion, gauzy with pink and cream cloth, a set of royal pennants snapping briskly beside it.

“Nice and simple,” I quipped. “I like it. It’s got that whole Barbie’s My First RPG Campaign thing going on.”

“Did Talivar take you to see the Tree?”

“Yeah. It kind of freaks me out, honestly. There’s a part of me that wanted to throw myself down and never move again.”

“I often wonder how much history would be changed if it had been me, instead of Thomas. Or someone like me,” she added hastily, kicking the ground roughly. “Though I imagine the end would be the same, either way. Perhaps the
King would have ridden by instead … or maybe I would have chosen a different path.”

I gave her a sideways look. “Look, I know you’ve got your thing going on with the Dev—”

She raised a finger to my lips. “Don’t. Not here. To say the name draws attention, and that’s the last thing we need.”

“One of these days you’re going to have to give me the whole story.” I paused as she ducked into her tent, a simple muddy brown thing. Next to Moira’s monstrosity, it looked a bit like a squashed mushroom, but Melanie had never stood on ceremony about such things before. As far as I knew, if it kept the rain off her head, she was pretty good about sleeping anywhere.

She emerged a few minutes later with a pair of socks and leather boots. They didn’t match my dress in the slightest, but they didn’t have heels either, and that more than made up for it. I’d had visions of stumping through the field, sinking into the ground every few feet. Plopping down on the ground, I slipped them both on. A bit of a tight fit near the toes, but nothing I couldn’t put up with for a few hours.

“Right here is good, ladies.” I glanced up to see Phineas being carried upon a velvet cushion by a set of bored-looking serving girls. One of them gave me a long-suffering sigh as they set down the pillow and beat a hasty retreat.

“I hope you weren’t too rude to them, Phin.” I propped myself up on my elbows, poking him with the toe of my boot. He made a big show of struggling to his feet, limping over to me.

“Be nice. I was stepped on. Nearly broken beneath an ocean of clumsy feet. Battered by a wave of idiots. Crushed—”

“—by his own overbearing pride,” Melanie interjected.
“If you’d stayed by me instead of running off, none of this would have happened.”

I picked him up and put him in my lap. “What about your horn? Can’t you heal yourself?”

“I was saving it for you,” he said sourly. “We didn’t know if you would even still be alive after that damn stag took off with you.” He butted my belly gently, resting his head in the crook of my elbow with a sigh. “And there’s no panties to roll around in.”

“Guess you’re out of luck then,” I sniggered. “I’m not exactly wearing any at the moment either.”

“Well, isn’t
that
good to know,” a dark voice purred behind me. I froze, closing my eyes against the sound.

“Ion.”

Melanie bit her lip. “I didn’t know he was here until a little while ago,” she said miserably. “I was trying to come up with a way to tell you.”

I struggled to look up at him, watching as his boots came into view at my side. I quelled the rush of nervousness that threatened to spill from my mouth, but I couldn’t quite help the guilty flush from rising into my cheeks. He was in his human form this time, wearing his old trench coat. The curved perfection of his mouth turned down he approached. The fall of his midnight hair framed the high cheekbones and familiar line of his jaw. I sucked in a ragged breath, the ache of seeing him here as opposed to the Dreaming making his beauty that much worse.

He crouched beside me, one hand tipping my chin up to look at him for a long moment, without a hint of gold about his fathomless eyes. Anger and embarrassment roared to life within me, but I stared him down, refusing to give him the satisfaction. He took my hand, his gaze lowering to rake over the love bites at my neck, his elegant fingers stroking Talivar’s ring.

And then he released me, standing swiftly to walk away.

I would have known that easy saunter anywhere, but I also detected a stiffness in his posture that made a lie of it. What had I had been expecting? Hell, for that matter, what right did either of us have to expect anything at all?

T
alivar led us into the no-man’s-land between the two encampments, Melanie and me striding behind him. Phineas was still in my arms, lolling over my shoulder like some kind of big baby. The only reason I even allowed it was because it hid the way my hands were shaking. That and he’d healed my knee with that magic horn of his. As paybacks went, this wasn’t too bad.

We were flanked by twelve elven warriors that I could see, their swords drawn loosely at their sides. I suspected there were quite a few others obscured from my vision, arrows nocked at the ready if this should turn out poorly.

Of Brystion, I had seen no other sign. Talivar had taken one look at my face when he found me a short time later, his mouth twisting as Melanie told him the incubus was also in the camp. He’d given me an awkward kiss on the forehead and murmured that I shouldn’t worry, but something in his expression made me wonder if he’d already known.

But no time to worry about that. My personal fuck-ups were going to have to wait until we got through the daemon business.

Moira stood outside a small silver tent halfway between
the camps, a white flag fluttering in the wind like a lady’s handkerchief. Wearing a resplendent dress of pale green and gold, the princess was the epitome of grace and beauty, her hair twisted in a series of elegant braids. In the distance I could see the black smoke, ugly and shadowed, rising up in a sea of oily canvas. The daemons had quite clearly made themselves at home.

Talivar stepped forward first, placing a kiss on both of Moira’s cheeks. She frowned when she saw his shortened hair, but said nothing. The glance she sent my way probably meant there was a long discussion in my future. I opened my mouth, not sure of what I would even say, choosing to set down the unicorn instead. I took a hesitant step toward the Faery woman.