Shadows and Light (17 page)

“Has ‘Fae’ become another word for parasite?” Aiden asked bitterly, his temper pushing aside all prudence as his mind’s eye put before him images of hovels, of broken-down cottages, of broken bodies. “We feed off the labor of others, giving nothing in return.”

“If there are any parasites, it’s the witches, who have sunk their claws into the Old Places so that we
have
to keep watch over them in order to protect what is ours.”

“They’re the Mother’s Daughters,” Aiden cried passionately.
“They’re the House of Gaian
. When are you going to accept that?”

“Never!”
Lucian shouted. “And I insist that you stop spreading those lies. The House of Gaian disappeared a long time ago.”

Aiden shook his head.
“They
are the House of Gaian. They are the Pillars of the World, the ones who created TirAlainn. Mother’s mercy, Lucian, we have written proof of —”

“We have nothing!”

“We have the journals written by a family of witches, which are the record of their history and the Old Place in their keeping.”

“We have the scrawlings of women who wanted to be more than what they were,” Lucian said. “Where is your proof that there’s any truth to what was written? A passing bard could have told a tale about the House of Gaian generations ago, and the woman who heard it took it for herself, claiming to be something she was not, something
she never could be
. One family, trying to assuage their own inadequacies by pretending to be something they’re weren’t. Have you come across any other mention of it, Bard? Have you?”

I’ve lost them
, Aiden thought, knowing none of the Fae in this room had missed his moment of hesitation. “No,” he said quietly. “I have not found any other record that the witches are the House of Gaian.”

“Then, by my command, there will be no more talk of this. Not here. Not in the other Clans. Is that understood?”

The Lord of the Sun. The Lord of Fire. The male leader of the Fae.

Lucian, you’ve condemned us all
. “I understand, Lightbringer,” Aiden said softly.

He couldn’t look at Lyrra. Maybe it would be better if she severed her ties with him, went back to her home Clan, or
any
Clan instead of traveling roads that were getting more and more dangerous.

The Lightbringer had commanded, and he would obey — up to a point. He would be exiled for what he intended to do — assuming that he
could
do it — but he couldn’t see any other road left open to him.

Bowing formally to Lucian, he left the common room and retreated to the room he shared with Lyrra, knowing she would follow him there in a little while. The things he needed to tell her were best said in private.

Lyrra watched Aiden leave the room, her heart aching for him.

One of the older women next to her
harrumphed
in satisfaction. “It’s about time the Lightbringer put the Bard in his place and put a stop to these …
tales.”
Her eyes slid to look at Lyrra. “And you would do well to take another lover, a man who will bring no shame to you or your Clan.”

Lyrra gave the woman her coldest stare. “If my Clan thinks my being with the Bard shames them, then I have nothing to say to them, nor they to me.”

She walked away before she could say anything else that would cause trouble. She knew, without doubt, that her words would find their way to her Clan within a handful of days — and she knew, without doubt, that if she went back to her Clan while she was still with Aiden, they
wouldn’t
have anything to say to her.

She moved from one end of the long room to the other, paying no attention to what was around her until a hand firmly grasped her elbow. She tried to pull away. When she couldn’t, she turned toward the person who held her.

“This is an open-air room,” Falco said. “Another few steps and you’ll go right over the balcony. Since you can’t sprout wings, it would be a hard fall.” He smiled shyly, hesitantly. “Blessings of the day to you, Lyrra.”

A witch’s greeting. The same greeting he’d offered every morning when she’d lived at the cottage that had belonged to Ari’s family, as if to remind himself of the young witch he’d been acquainted with briefly. Or to take to himself one small custom that belonged to the Mother’s Daughters.

“Blessings of the day to you, Falco,” Lyrra replied softly. Dear Falco. A year ago, he’d been an impetuous young man, too quick to speak without thinking, so sure that the Fae, who called themselves the Mother’s Children, were superior to anything else that lived in the world. Then he went down to the Old Place with Dianna, Aiden, and her to celebrate the Summer Solstice with Ari, and, that night, saw the power a witch could command. The past year had been a hard one for everyone in the Clan whose piece of Tir Alainn was anchored to the Old Place near Ridgeley, but Falco had surprised her. He’d accepted the need for so many of the Fae to remain in the human world in order to keep the shining road open with more grace than she’d thought he had in him. And he’d been a friend to her during all the months she’d stayed at the Old Place to be the anchor the others needed to keep the magic alive.

“What brings you so far north?” she asked.

“I’m … visiting.” He released her arm and walked the few remaining steps to the balcony.

Lyrra followed him, trying to sort out all the nuances in his voice. “Did you come with…” Lucian’s name stuck in her throat. She wondered if it always would after today.

“No,” Falco said, staring at nothing. “It was unfortunate timing that he arrived here the day after I did. He …wasn’t pleased.”

“You’re entitled to some time away from the home Clan to … visit,” Lyrra said, still trying to decipher the underlying meaning to his words. For a Fae male, “visiting” meant enjoying the bed of one, or more, ladies in the Clan where he was guesting. If Falco had become restless for that kind of “visit,” there were other Clans closer to his home Clan where he could have found a lover for a few days.

“You’re not going back,” Lyrra said, suddenly understanding. “That’s why you’ve come this far north. You’re not going back to your home Clan.”

“No,” Falco said, his voice holding a deep-rooted unhappiness. “It’s not like it was when you were there, Lyrra. Dianna left you there to do what
she
had promised to do, but you never took it out on the rest of us. You never —”He bit off the rest of the words.

Lyrra rested a hand on his arm. “Darling, I know Dianna can be difficult, but —”

“Difficult?” There was more than unhappiness in his eyes. There was anger, too. “She resents all of us. Her kin. Her Clan. Nothing we do is good enough. Ever. She’ll jump her pale mare over the wall enclosing the kitchen garden and trample the young plants past saving, then complain about the sparsity of the food set before her. We give her more than her share of the food grown in the human world because it
does
taste better than what we grow in Tir Alainn, and she takes even more than that. She has two rooms of her own while the rest of us sleep wherever we can, and it’s not enough. If she walks into a room, she gets the chair. If she walks into the kitchen, she expects to be served food, no matter the hour. And she reminds us, constantly, that her sacrifice is the reason the rest of us can still ride up the shining road and enjoy Tir Alainn.”

“Hush, Falco, hush,” Lyrra said, glancing over her shoulder to see too many of the Fae starting to pay attention to them. “Don’t call attention to yourself.”
Think before you speak
, she pleaded silently, knowing it was useless. He may have matured in many ways, but he was still Falco.

Surprisingly, he paused, then continued speaking quietly. “She resents me most of all.”

Lyrra frowned. “But…why? You did everything you could to help the others get settled in the human world. And I’m sure it would have been harder on all of us if you hadn’t hunted to provide some meat for the table.”

“That’s just it, don’t you see? I hunted, at Dianna’s command, to provide Ari with some meat after Dianna gave her that puppy. And I hunted for you.”

“Not just for me,” Lyrra protested.

“So I’m not doing anything … special … to show my appreciation for Dianna’s sacrifice. And she resents that the other Fae in the Clan ask me what Ari was like. They want to know anything I can remember about her and about the night we were at the cottage to celebrate the Summer Solstice. I’m not a bard,” he added quickly, “and I’m not trying to tell a tale. Truly I’m not. But…”

“But everyone is so unhappy because Dianna is acting like a selfish fool that they’ve begun to wonder about the witches, about Ari, about how things might have been if they’d tried to know her before it was too late,” Lyrra finished for him.
And that’s exactly the kind of wondering that could change the Fae’s attitude about truly helping the witches. If Lucian and Dianna are determined to have the rest of the Fae continue to believe that the witches are supposed to be some kind of servants to us, they’d be especially displeased about a shift in attitude in their home Clan
.

Falco nodded. “And Lucian is furious because Dianna gave him a cold welcome when he came back to
Brightwood to see her. He can go anywhere he pleases.
He
isn’t chained to the human world. So Dianna resents her twin for all the things he can still do, and Lucian is bitter about her reaction to him as well as losing Ari.”

A twinge of guilt pushed at Lyrra. She couldn’t give Lucian any hint that she knew what really happened to Ari. She
couldn’t
. But if his heart ached for the loss of someone dear to him … “Did he truly care so much for Ari?”

“Don’t waste your sympathy on Lucian,” Falco said harshly. “I’ve heard the Lightbringer rarely sleeps alone, and rarely spends more than two nights in the same bed. The only reason he still thinks about Ari at all is because he didn’t have her until
he
was ready to walk away — and because she’d chosen to wed a human instead of being his mistress until he tired of her. Well, she would have wed the man if the Inquisitors hadn’t gotten to her first,” he added in a sad voice.

Lyrra sighed. An hour spent talking to her own kind made her feel as weary as spending a day traveling over a hard road in the human world.

“They both resent you and Aiden,” Falco said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Because I chose to go with Aiden instead of remaining at the Old Place so that Dianna wouldn’t be inconvenienced. Yes, I know.”

“Because of that, yes. But more because you supported Morag when she refused to bring Ari back from the Summerland instead of siding with them. That’s really why both of them will deny anything you say about the witches.”

“Morag is the Gatherer,” Lyrra said angrily. “She did what she had to do.”

“I know. But they exiled her because of it, Lyrra, and if you’re not careful, they’ll do the same to Aiden and you.”

Would it make any difference?
Lyrra wondered.
We’re hardly welcome as it is
.

“What can I do?” Falco asked.

Lyrra shook her head. “You’ve done all that you could, Falco.”

Now he shook his head. “I believe you and Aiden. I believe the witches deserve whatever help the Fae can give them. What can I do?”

“The Fae are already keeping watch over the Old Place this Clan’s territory is anchored to,” Lyrra said carefully.

Falco snorted. “They go down the shining road, find one of the Small Folk, and demand to know what the witches are doing. That’s hardly keeping watch. They never actually go close enough to
see
anything.”

Something in his voice. Something beneath the annoyance. Wistfulness?

Suddenly, Lyrra understood exactly what Falco was asking — and why. He wanted a way to justify getting close enough to become acquainted with the witches who lived at Willowsbrook.

“Well,” she said cautiously, “the witches who live at that Old Place aren’t very pleased with the Fae upsetting the Small Folk.”
And Breanna threatened to shoot any Fae she found trespassing on her family’s land
. Having met Breanna, she didn’t think it was so idle a threat as it might have been coming from someone else.

“You’ve met them?” Falco asked eagerly.

Lyrra winced. Mother’s tits. Today she was as bad as Falco usually was about speaking without thinking. But she had to say something now, and she simply couldn’t lie to him. “Yes, they gave us shelter last night.”

“You
stayed
with them? What was it like? Did you tell them you were Fae? Would they really be upset about having another visitor if the Small Folk weren’t bothered?”

How was she supposed to answer when she could see anticipation instead of unhappiness in his eyes?

“I think if approached cautiously, and respectfully, it might be possible to become acquainted with them.”

He smiled at her. “I’ll be careful, Lyrra. I promise.”

She pictured a careful Falco — or as careful as Falco ever was — meeting Breanna. If the Lord of the Hawks expected every witch to be like Ari … Poor Falco. She couldn’t turn down what he was offering since she and Aiden had gotten so little help from the Fae, but at least she could send him down to the human world with one important piece of advice.

Placing a hand on one side of his face, she said, “Falco, if you
do
decide to make the acquaintance of the witches in this Old Place, don’t let Breanna talk you into taking the dog.”

Well
, Lyrra thought a few minutes later as she left the common room and made her way back to the room she and Aiden shared,
at least I’ve made one man I care about happier. Let’s see what I can do for the one who is dearest to me
.

When she slipped into the room, she saw Aiden on the bed, one arm flung over his face to hide his eyes. He gave no indication he knew she was there until she lay on her side next to him.

“Perhaps…” Aiden said. He swallowed hard. “Perhaps it would be better if you went back to your home Clan for a while.”

She wanted to ask him if he’d tired of her already, but the sharp tease would only bruise them both. So she said, quietly but firmly, “We’re in this together, husband.”

He moved his arm so that it rested behind his head. His blue eyes didn’t hold the passionate anger they would have at another time. Instead, she saw determination and … fear?