Bride of Fae (Tethers) (30 page)

A force tugged at her awareness and demanded her attention, wanting her to turn around.
This way!
It felt just like a trace. In her gut she believed it was, despite all knowledge to the contrary. She trusted her gut.

Of course it took her the other way, past Sturm and Drang and into the heart of the faewood. She passed a few brownies and pixies. They looked at her and furtively glanced away. The two pixies whispered something about a tall goblin woman. Beverly smiled, remembering what Max had said.

She came to a huge room where the trace was strong. At the far end of the room she saw Aubrey, passed out, draped over a dazzling throne. The trace led to him, but that couldn’t be right. Cautiously she moved closer, moving through the disgusting scene. Fairies and leprechauns and even humans were drunk, self-absorbed or asleep. 

There was no sign of Idris. Cissa must have been successful in distracting him.

The trace led behind the throne where a red-haired fairy was bent over, digging into the pocket that held the abomination.

“Cissa!” Beverly half whispered and half hissed.

Cissa’s head jerked up. “Idris saw you,” she said. “He’s coming.” She stuffed the glass into her hidey pouch. “Get back to the tunnel.” As Cissa disappeared, Beverly heard one last word:

“
Run!”

Beverly fled from the throne room, down the hall and once again into the tunnel. She really, really wished she could transport. Fairy magic had its advantages, she had to admit.

Great gods, no!
She stopped in her tracks.

Idris stood in the tunnel at the Bower of Elyse. The doors were open, and Sturm and Drang were lying on top of each other, knocked out.

Beverly had to catch her breath. She’d never seen Idris up close and personal, but Elyse had, and her body responded with desire according to Elyse’s memory. So creepy; she must have really felt something for the guy.

He smiled, and that was creepier.

“What did you do to them?” Beverly said.

“Something painful.
Nothing final.” His voice was seductive but she heard the thin vein of cruelty. She thought of Dandelion’s agony in the iron cage and Max’s sister trapped in the glimmer glass. Idris was a monster. He raised his arm to throw a spell.

“Cage,” Beverly said without thinking.

Idris screamed. His eyes flashed with rage, and he pounded against invisible walls. “Let me out of here, you bitch.” He pointed straight at her to throw the spell. “You can dance yourself to death!”

She jumped, but nothing happened. This was no time for questions. She lifted the boundary with Idris
captured inside it and directed it into the bower.

“No!” he yelled. “Stop, it hurts!”

“Good.” She threw him into the cage he’d made for Dandelion. “Maybe King Dandelion will show you mercy,” she said.

She created a hologram of the fairy cup and left it on the pedestal where the real one had been.

“I don’t feel merciful today.”

P
AIN SNAKED THROUGH DANDELION'S
body. His feet arched with spasms. His knees, hips, and elbows shook with sick, toothache-like pain. Tucked under his scapulae, his wings burned inside his back. His head pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded, pounded. With every movement razorblade-like pain sliced through his muscles.

Yes, the earth he’d dug out and spread through his hair and over his face relieved the pain of the cold iron—from one hundred percent to ninety-eight percent. When the glimmermist came off, even that small relief evaporated.

He’d dug a tunnel as wide as a gopher hole, the length of his arm. Something so close to his reach felt good. Just beyond his fingers he could feel it, whatever Max had hinted at.

But it was too late. Even thoughts of Beverly no longer helped. When he pictured her in his mind now, instead of resolve he felt failure. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud. “Forgive me.” Everything went dark. Blessed unconsciousness washed over him like a blanket—or was it even more blessed death?

He heard the sound of water, a brook running over rocks. A lark sang, and the aroma of newly-blossomed lilacs filled the air.

“Dandelion.”

The voice was both male and female, like moonlight and sunlight all at one time.

“Have courage. There is a reason you and Cissa were spared bondage to Idris. You must end the regency and restore the proper monarch to the moonstick throne.”

Ack!
Pain ripped through him. He was in the panopticon. The vision was gone, and someone was coming. With one last effort, he burrowed into the dirt and stretched his arm another inch and found it, a tether jewel.
Max, I’m going to trust you on this one.
As footsteps approached, he pressed the jewel to his throat.

It worked. He was back at Mudcastle, sprawled over the threshold. The pain was gone, but he was so weak he couldn’t extend his wings. Two young faelings found him and carried him to his bed.

Within a week, Dandelion had rejuvenated. In fae, Beverly too had begun to grow younger-looking and younger-feeling, but once she returned to the human realm her body resumed its inevitable decline.

She sat on the marble steps of the Temple of Joy and Wonder, looking at the lake. Dandelion sat two steps below and leaned back.

 “Fairies never fall in love.” He looked up at her, his green eyes brilliant in the sunlight. “Except when they do. And when they do, it’s forever. I love you, Beverly. Stay with me. As I will be king, so you’ll be queen.”

“I’m too old for you,” she said. He was gorgeous and fit and young. “Can’t you see that?”

“That’s a bit ridiculous, you know. I’m twelve hundred years older than you. Or is it thirteen?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.” She believed he didn’t see their
physical age difference, but she did and it drove her crazy. “Besides, once the Oracle ring was removed from my hand, I started to die. Soon I’ll be gone.”

But gone where? Will Igdrasil accept me as it did the others?

“Not a bit of it.” Dandelion smiled as if she’d said the silliest thing in the world. “Wyrding magic doesn’t work in fae. Everyone knows that.”

“But it did,” she reminded him. “For me, at all events.” No one had any idea why.

Dandelion kissed her fingers. “When I was in the panopticon and so riddled with pain I wanted to die, Brother Sun and Sister Moon appeared to me.”

Beverly’s fingernails sparkled with fresh color left by Dandelion’s kisses. Without thinking, she ran her hands through his hair.

“They said to have courage,” he said, “that there was a reason for everything. I believe it’s the same with you, Beverly. Your wyrds worked in fae for a reason. You aren’t meant to die.”

He puffed out his chest and extended his hand. With an incredibly bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impression he said, “Come with me if you want to live.”

She burst out laughing.

Beverly still had her same room at Faeview. James had closed it up when she disappeared. Lily and Cade were staying at the Tragic Fall Inn until Faeview renovations were complete. After returning from fae, they couldn’t be in the house more than five minutes without getting a splitting headache, so all the
square and rectangular cold iron door and window frames were being replaced by round ones of wood or Dumnos steel.

Beverly finished dressing and opened her secretary for the last time.

She’d decided to accept Dandelion’s offer. She had felt fantastic in fae, and the moment she returned to the human realm everything had started to fall apart again. She didn’t want to die. And maybe the Oracle ring’s power
didn’t
work in fae. Or maybe she would die—but at least she’d feel good until day came.

The
truth was, she loved Dandelion. He didn’t see her age. He didn’t care that she was a wyrder. He saw her, Beverly. The only thing he knew about her was that he loved her.

Even if she was going to live forever, she would want to be with him.

She searched the journal one more time for something about the Oracle ring, some clue that in fae she could escape death. Instead, she found a sentence in Lydia’s hand which she must have read a hundred times and never fully understood:

If ever you are fortunate enough to come upon a cloak made of goblin mist, do what you must to possess it. Your power will know no bounds.

What was Lydia Pengrith’s life really like that she knew so much? Beverly closed the journal.

Cade and Lily had invited all the Dumnos fae to Faeview’s rooftop for the dandelion wine ceremony. When the fairies returned to the faewood, Beverly would go with them. She left Morning Glory’s love potion in the secretary and took the key to pass on to Lily, but she put Lydia Pengrith’s journal in her bag.

The fairies were already on the roof, dancing and singing. Cissa and Morning Glory danced in the air, spinning in circles and throwing fairy dust over the people below. The dust exploded like little firecrackers.

Cissa had cut her hair short, and it stuck out all over in bright red spikes. She was wearing a fabulous emerald necklace. She looked deliriously happy.

Beverly joined Max at a table outside the fairy circle. With a sad smile, he watched Cissa and Morning Glory dance in the air. Well, mostly Cissa. What a gnarly goblin, decidedly not a pretty man, yet his nobility was its own kind of beauty. The chair he sat in, made by human hands, seemed gross and unworthy of him.

“I hear we’ll have a new queen soon,” Max said. “The gobs will enjoy making another moonstick throne.”

“I’m going to live at Mudcastle at first,” Beverly said. “Until the fae get used to the idea of a human queen.”

“You won’t be human forever,” Max said. “You’ll turn fae if you don’t die—and I’m sure you won’t die.” He turned red with embarrassment. “I only mean the wyrding thing is more objectionable than the human thing—oh.” The red deepened to purple.

“I hope you’ll stay at Mudcastle.” Beverly changed the subject.

“Thank you, but no. When Dandelion’s safely king once and for all, I’ll go back to the vale.” He patted a pocket in his waistcoat. “I forgot to return Vulsier’s summoning candle when I brought Boadicea to him.”

Beverly shuddered at the mention of Max’s sister. When she and Sturm and Drang had made it out of the panopticon and back to Max, he was just about to light the candle and summon a horde of goblins to battle Idris. Things could have gotten messy. She was only sorry she hadn’t been able to separate Boadicea from Idris’s glimmer glass.