For Your Heart (Hill Dweller Retellings) (19 page)

    
But she does
.

    
Only because I’ve proven myself to be.

    
Leah, looking wide-eyed, steps in front of me and puts her hand on my shoulder.  I flinch.  I literally flinch.  What kind of knight am I?  Have I become one of those people who doesn’t want to be touched?

    
I only want to be touched by Jean.

    
Leah, slides down beside me.  “Are you okay?”

    
I shake my head.  “I can’t do it.”

    
Her hand slips along my leg.  “Oh, is that all?  I can help.”

    
“No,” I growl.  Grabbing her wrist and pushing her hand away.  “I can’t do this with you.”

    
Realization dawns in Leah’s eyes and she presses her lips together.  “Your little human?”  She shakes her head in disbelief, her eyes wide and trailing the floor.  “She’s got you whipped.  I never thought I’d see the day.”

    
I lift a shoulder.  Compared to the courtiers I’ve been dealing with, Jeanette’s a benevolent mistress.   

    
Leah sits and stares at me, long and hard.  “What is the appeal of these human girls?  You and Connor both.  I don’t get it.”

    
I cock my head.  “Connor?”  Connor McKinley is probably the closest thing I have to a friend and his sudden infatuation with a human is as surprising to me as my own unreasonable attraction to Jean.  Like me, he lives between Earth and Otherworld and, also like me, Leah has a particular interest in him that stems off of Roxel’s interest.  Though, unlike me, Connor’s safe from Roxel because she wouldn’t dare touch him and risk the ire of the Spring Queen.  Leah’s glee comes entirely from the fact that she can have him whenever he needs something from her while Roxi can only admire from afar.

    
Leah lifts an indignant chin and pouts.  “He hasn’t come to see me for a while, either.  My
Dragora
tell me he’s too preoccupied with some girl that has recently shown up in Baileville and he’s getting himself all mixed up with the Winter Prince again because of it.”

    
I sigh.  Connor never could keep himself out of a fight with Taylor Bain.  One day, one of them is going to kill the other.

    
She barks a laugh, her tone dismissing.  “I suppose it’s stupid for me to wonder about it.  Obviously there’s something mesmerizing about humans, our ancestors wouldn’t have fallen otherwise, right?”

    
I nod once.

    
“By the Dagda, you’re depressing me, Tam.  Just get the hell out of here and see Roxel.”

Roxel trots her gelding across the gravel and dismounts in a flurry of skirts.  She lands soundless and graceful among the mulling mass of
cu
, her faerie hounds.  With a wave of her hand, she gives a command to the other members of her hunting party.  Two centaurs trot off toward the kitchens with the limp and bloody body of a stag weighing between them, its antlers dragging deep gouges into the gravel.  She sees me standing under the awning and waves; her trodden, queenly air dropped in a girlish gesture of flirtation.  “Tamrin!”

    
Wincing at her voice, I slip out into the harsh sunlight.  I try to look pleased as I approach.  I don’t want her to see how tense I feel, how much I don’t want to be here – with her.  This is the dangerous part.

    
“Where have you been?” Her voice implies a punishment I don’t want to think about. She must’ve sensed I was here those three days, and didn’t come to see her. 

    
I swallow.  According to Otherworldly time, it’s been more than two weeks since I last saw her.  I wonder if she knows what I’m up to.  She tends to turn a blind eye to what I do with the other
Aos Si
in her court or the mortals who catch my eye on Earth, so long as I come home to her at the end of the day and perform as she desires.

    
She examines me out of the corner of her dark eye.  Roxel’s eyes, like all
Aos Si
, change color from time to time, but they are always a dark shade.  Some in the Summer Court say it’s because her view of the world is eternally darkened by the weight of her mantle. 

    
It’s well known throughout Otherworld that the rulers of the Spring and Summer Courts must endure the greatest sorrows so that the entirety of the collective Seelie Court may survive.  That sorrow manifests itself in the ruler being charged with the task of choosing the tithe to Hell.  Every seven human years, the Seelie
Aos Si
buy themselves out of damnation by sacrificing the greatest and best among them.  It is the ruler’s task to choose wisely or risk Hell sending forth its tithe collector, The Hunter, and his ghostly hounds.

    
I don’t know how old Roxel is, but I know she’s paid more tithes than she can count and I know she learned the hard way that there is no way around the tithe’s demands.  I know those demands have taken her best friends and family – they’ve even taken my family.  It’s said she sacrificed her own husband and she refuses to love another for fear she’ll have to sacrifice him.  I don’t envy her position and I don’t blame her for behaving the way she does.

    
“I know you visited with Morgan the Speaker,” she says, voice cold.

    
Visited.
What a quaint way of saying I know you screwed someone I don’t like and I’m not happy about it. 

    
I don’t meet her eyes and I don’t explain myself.

    
Roxel purses her lips and her jaws move as if she’s trying to dislodge something from her tooth.  It’s the closest she’ll come to showing annoyance in front of the other Hill Dweller courtiers.  “What knowledge did you seek that I could not bestow upon you?”  Her voice sounds a little hurt, as if I don’t appreciate everything she’s given me thus far.

    
I give her a distressed look.  For as long as I can remember Roxel has been my patron.  She’s the one who gave me my station in the court.  She’s the one that encouraged the other Hill Dwellers to spoil me and lavish gifts and knowledge upon me, despite my handicap.  It didn’t seem to bother her that I was one of the rare few
Aos Si
who hadn’t been born with Talent.  It didn’t bother her that my eyes didn’t shift in color or that my skin was free of markings and didn’t glow with internal ambience.    

    
I owe Roxel a lot and it makes me feel guilty to hide things from her.  I want to fall to my knees and confess how I’ve failed her.  But I can’t do it.  To do so would embrace my inferiority to the Summer Court.  To do so would reveal the stinging fact she entrusted me to do what I could not.  It would show weakness in my loyalty to my queen and endanger Jeanette to Roxel’s ire.

    
I fear Roxel’s anger.  I have always known only the tenderest of Roxel’s demeanors, but I have seen what she can do in anger and I fear her turning it on Jean.  I was not lying when I told Jean death by my hands would be more merciful.  Far, far more merciful.

    
Roxel is still watching me, waiting for an answer.

    
I let out a long breath.  If I don’t tell her, she’ll find out another way, most likely torturing it out of Morgan and I have no desire for Morgan’s blood on my hands.  “I wanted to learn the language of the heart and…Spanish,” I say with shame.

    
Roxel cocks her head and laughs a high, tinkling laugh.  It takes her a long moment to compose herself and when she finally does, she still can’t quite contain her breath.  “So, my young Tamrin, have you intentions toward becoming another court poet?  Does your bodily prowess not serve you well enough that you must entice ladies with mortal words of the heart?”

    
I try to hide my surprise.  She thinks I’m attempting to learn a trade to further my place in court.  I grin sheepishly and she pats me on the shoulder.

    
“I assure you, no such action is needed,” she whispers.  Her fingers slip around my arm and she pulls me toward the courtyard steps.  “Especially with this new ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ tactic.  What’s the big idea disappearing like that?  I thought I was going to have to send someone through the Summer Gate to search for you on the other side.”

    
My breath catches, making my heart thud faster in fear.  What if she
had
sent someone?  What if she came herself to search for me?  What if she went to the garden and saw a rose had been dislodged?  What if she found me with Jean?  What if she hurt Jean?  “It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

    
Roxel gives me one of her unreadable sidelong glances and then pulls up a wolfish grin.  “So, you missed me, too?”

    
I nod, feeling comfort in the familiar lie.  I owe Roxel.  I respect Roxel.  I would never willingly hurt Roxel.  I would do anything to please Roxel.  But I will never love or miss Roxel.  I love her as my queen and nothing else.  I know my duty.  It was my duty that made me bend to her lust in the first place.  After all, why would a young
Aos Si
take the woman he regarded as his guardian to bed? 
Because I know the bend of icy lust
. 

    
Perhaps at some point Roxel knew what love is.  But it was her love that destroyed her as surely as anything.  Fore her love branded them as the tithe.  Her love burned them, incinerated them.  So, she turned to lust, freezing others into eternity.

    
Yes
, I think to myself,
I know the subtleties of fire and ice quite well
.

    
Roxel leads me through the white marble halls of Summer Court, dull despite their luxurious splendor, mirthless despite their howling faerie revelries, unfriendly despite their amorous courtiers.

    
“Tell me of Benders,” I request as nonchalantly as I can.

    
Roxel’s mouth turns suspiciously, but she keeps her gaze trained on the high bank of windows reaching floor to ceiling.  “What a strange turn of thoughts you’ve had lately.”

    
I batter down my fear that she suspects something.  “Is it strange?  I’m only asking because I wish to know you better, Roxi.”  I use flattery and her nickname because it will please her, make her more pliable to my requests.  “I wish to know how your powers work.  Especially on humans.”

    
Roxel gives me a harsh look, the color in her eyes wheeling from forest green to fertile brown.  “It is the Unseelie Court that uses their powers against the humans, not we Seelies.  Why should we?  It does us no good, doesn’t pay our tithe.”

    
I crunch my brow, distressed.  “I hadn’t meant it in that manner.  It was a purely curious question.”  Realizing I sound too anxious, I smile and try to laugh as I say, “Don’t you ever wonder what you could do?”    

    
Roxel faces forward and sticks up her nose.  “I’m a Bender, I can do anything I wish.  But really, I don’t care.  It’s none of my business.” 

    
Except when it comes to me fornicating with humans
. 

    
Then she says, “I don’t understand why you’re so interested.”

    
“Well, perhaps I am not only different from my brethren in appearance, but in thought, too,” I reflect, trying to sound bitter…It’s not hard.  I pause for a moment, wondering if she’s got something to say, but her expression remains stoic.  “I wondered if a Bender could ever lose control of a Bend, if perhaps it could influence someone that they hadn’t meant to.”  At her flaming expression, I add, “I could wonder that of any Hill Dweller, really, couldn’t I?  I could wonder if a Manifester thought to bring up a bit of thread but called up the whole spool or that a Seer looked only for one person, but traced three.  For whatever reason, I was not born with the Talent, so these answers don’t seem intuitive to me.”

    
Roxel’s face falls and she sighs, shaking her head so dark hair brushes her golden shoulders.  “If you had Hill Dweller Talent, you would know it’s impossible for an Awakened and Claimed
Aos Si
to lose control of his or her Talent.  That’s why we are Claimed by a court when we are Awakened.  The Claiming binds you to your court and the entire power of the court to which you belong serves as both a well and a grounding stone for your energy.”

    
Then why is Leah’s Bend spilling into Jeanette’s and my sub consciousnesses?
  “And a Bender can do anything?”  I ask.  “There are no limits, nothing that would cause some kind of backfire?”

    
Roxel drags me into her chambers.  Twyla is there, like always a fly on the wall.  I give her a nod and she returns the gesture.  “Do you understand what the Talent to Bend is?”  Roxel asks, taking my hand and tugging me toward the bed.

    
I resist.  For the first time in a very long time, I resist.  I don’t want to go to Roxel’s bed, just like I didn’t want to go to Leah’s bed.  The only bed I want to be in is Jean’s.  Soft jersey sheets, fat comforter, pillows that smell like cinnamon and cocoa, my body cupped around Jean’s.