Stone Song (21 page)

“He already has,” she confessed. It had been too painful to share the worst part of it, the encounter she had stupidly brought on by going back to his house the next afternoon and trying to fight for him. “He’s sleeping with Deirdre again.”

“Oh.” Then a moment later, “How do you know that?”

“He told me. I went back to his house the next day. It was filled with Fae from out of town and he even had Finn there.” She shuddered thinking of it. When Deirdre had refused to help her free Miach from his son and a cult of mad Druids, Helene had gone to the only Fae powerful enough to help her: Finn. And he’d demanded her freedom in exchange for Miach’s life. She had only escaped that fate because Miach had made a sacrifice for her, allowed his granddaughter Nieve to see her husband, Garrett, Finn’s son, once more.

“What did he say to you?”

“That I could leave if I wanted to, but that he was Fae and couldn’t be expected to do without a woman in his bed and that Deirdre was only too happy to oblige him.” The thought of which made Helene feel ill.

“I don’t believe it,” said Beth.

“Miach isn’t Conn,” said Helene. She’d tried to tell herself that he could be like Beth’s brawny champion, but Miach was too steeped in deviousness to make a commitment as pure as Conn’s.

“I still don’t believe it,” said Beth. “Miach broke my
geis
on him to be with you. He severed his connection with Elada for you. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it for you. We need to find out what’s really going on.”

• • •

Sorcha told Miach about her
encounter with Deirdre the next day.

“I’m not sure how I did it, but I pitched my voice at . . . the illusion. And I didn’t kill Deirdre,” she said brightly.

Which was very nearly the truth. Deirdre hadn’t been hurt, exactly. Or at least there hadn’t been any blood like there had been with Keiran. And Elada had been proud.

“She gave as good as she got,” her Fae lover had said supportively. “Deirdre wasn’t playing fair.”

Deirdre had shrieked like a banshee and collapsed, but with a headache, not a hemorrhage, and Sorcha counted that as progress. Up to that point, her voice had been a force of unmitigated destruction. Miach had spent their training sessions inside a silence he cast over himself, watching rocks explode.

“And would you be able to shatter a pebble in the street without killing the child playing with it?”

“We’re not playing with children,” said Elada. “We’re up against Finn and Donal and probably the Prince, if he hasn’t lost interest.

Miach looked suddenly troubled. “I can’t say that he has lost interest, but he is pursuing other ends. One of our other potential Druids has disappeared. The Prince may have her.”

Sorcha felt sorry for whoever this latent Druid was, but she couldn’t stay at Deirdre’s forever. And neither could Tommy.

“I’m tired of hiding,” she said. “I don’t want to end up like Deirdre, a prisoner of my own fear.”

“An admirable sentiment,” said Miach, “but premature.”

“And Deirdre’s fear of Druids has turned out to be well founded,” said Elada. “You’re proof of that.”

Sorcha was about to argue when the house shook. It felt a little bit like an earthquake in some ways and nothing like it in others, in that the motion was confined entirely to the house. The trees in the garden didn’t move a hair’s breadth.

Elada’s sword was in his hand in the blink of an eye. Miach took a position flanking his former right hand, and Sorcha realized that she was seeing firsthand the tandem fighting Elada had described.

Both Fae disappeared from the parlor and reappeared in the drive, visible through the windows, just as Kevin came running down the stairs and a black Range Rover rumbled up the drive. Sorcha ran outside to follow them, then paused on the porch.

The car stopped. Elada and Miach both cocked their heads, a shared gesture, and watched the doors open. First, a little boy who looked to be about five years old leaped from the backseat and tore across the gravel to wrap himself around the sorcerer’s knees.

Miach lifted the child to his shoulders, an automatic gesture but no less affectionate for it. His eyes remained on the car and fixed on the woman who emerged from the passenger seat.

She was tall with long blond hair and blue eyes filled with worry. This had to be Helene.

“It doesn’t seem like much of a love nest with Elada here,” Helene said drily, but for all the casualness she affected, there were tears in her eyes.

Miach cursed. He did so in a language Sorcha didn’t understand, but the sense of it was obvious from his tone.

“I’m sorry, Helene,” said the sorcerer. “I thought it was safer for you to be mad at me and out of harm’s way. But I can see I’ve harmed you myself.”

A girl of no more than twenty-five came around from the driver’s side of the car. She had Miach’s black hair and a trace—no more than that—of his Fae features. And the child was very obviously hers. “I told her,” she said, looking at Miach and nodding toward Helene. “I told her you weren’t sleeping with Deirdre.”

“Thank you, Nieve,” said Miach MacCecht, “for the vote of confidence.” He beckoned Helene into his arms and managed to hold both the child and his wife close. “But I’ll thank you in future not to meddle in my affairs. It was very dangerous of you to come here.”

“No it wasn’t,” shot back Nieve, who seemed to have no fear of Miach MacCecht. “We brought Conn and Beth.”

Now Sorcha saw that the back doors of the Range Rover were open and a couple had emerged. The Fae was tall and pale blond and shared Elada’s broad build. The woman was petite and dark haired and dressed for a long walk in the country. This had to be Beth Carter, the Druid Miach had trained.

“Were you followed?” Elada asked sharply.

“No,” said Nieve.

“Possibly,” said the Fae who must be Conn of the Hundred Battles.

“Yes,” Beth said. “Although I’m not sure by whom.”

Miach shook his head and set the child down on the cobblestones. “Then it is no longer safe here and we are faced with a choice. We can try to move Sorcha and hide her elsewhere, or we can attempt to negotiate with Finn and Donal.”

“We run,” said Elada, because, Sorcha knew, he loved her.

“I’ve been running ever since I escaped Keiran,” she said, crossing the courtyard to take his hand. “I won’t do it anymore.”

Miach and Conn both looked to Elada, who sighed but said, “If that is Sorcha’s choice, then I support it. No more running.”

• • •

The conference that took place
in Deirdre’s dining room wasn’t the first such council of war in that space. Elada recalled the last time they had met like that to counter one of the Prince’s plans. Now it was not as easy to know who their real enemy was.

“We must think in terms of our vulnerabilities,” said Miach. He was looking at his granddaughter and his wife, and Sorcha was looking at Tommy Carrell.

“Thanks a lot,” said Helene. “What happened to me being your strength and reason for living?”

Miach smiled wryly and said, “I said you were my strength. Not my armored minivan. You should go to the weekend house, and so should Nieve.”

“That’s silly,” said Nieve. “If I leave town, Garrett will miss his day with his father and Finn will know something is wrong.”

“Finn already knows something is wrong, he just doesn’t know where we’re keeping Sorcha,” said Elada. “You should go to Essex and stay put there with Garrett and Helene.”

Miach was right. They had three potential hostages sitting at the table, and any one of them in the Prince’s hands, or Donal’s or Finn’s, for that matter, could put Sorcha’s life in danger.

“What about Tommy?” asked Sorcha.

The fiddler perked up at the end of the table. He was never without his smartphone, texting and fidgeting, and such was the case now. “I can’t go heeling off to Essex, Sorcha. I’ve got gigs set up for us for next month. I’m working on more now.” He held up his phone. “For when life goes back to normal.”

Sorcha’s expression was pained. Someone had to tell Tommy Carrell that for those who encountered the Fae, life rarely went back to normal. You couldn’t unknow that the strange and secret race walked among men.

“Fairy ointment,” said Sorcha kindly. “We have the fairy ointment, Tommy.”

“I’m the mother of his favorite grandchild,” said Nieve, speaking of Finn, who was as ageless as Miach and did not like being referred to as a grandfather. “He won’t hurt me.”

Miach’s face was bleak, but Elada said it for him. “You know the patriarch and the crime boss. You have never seen the war leader in him. If he thinks a Druid is establishing a place for herself in his territory, he will act without reason or mercy.”

Sorcha knew she needed to talk to Tommy alone. She’d been so caught up over the last few weeks with learning to control her power and with getting to know Elada that she had neglected her best friend and former lover.

Former, not sometime. It was impossible to imagine sharing anyone else’s bed now. She needed to talk to Tommy because he was going to be bundled off to Essex with the women and children, quite literally, and he didn’t deserve any further surprises—or any more blows to ego delivered without kindness—but she needed to talk to Elada first.

They had agreed to Miach’s plan, and it might get them killed. The sorcerer had been plain: they could not prevail against the Prince, Donal, and Finn if those Fae were united. Once Tommy and Nieve and Helene were safely removed from Boston, Miach was going to approach Finn and attempt to strike a bargain.

“What kind?” his granddaughter had asked, with decided wariness. She’d clutched her little boy a bit closer then. Sorcha had been surprised to learn that the child was only three years old. He looked at least five. Elada had explained that Fae children grew quickly, both inside and out of the womb, and that Nieve, being mostly human, had nearly died bringing the little boy to term. Her elopement with Finn’s son, and the danger the pregnancy had put her life in, had reignited the old feud between Finn and Miach—only recently—and imperfectly—healed.

“I will make no limits on your child’s visit with his father,” said Miach, “but I can make concessions on the subject of your husband’s training. He wants to learn magics that would give Finn’s house a decided tactical advantage. I have refused to guide his education in this direction, for obvious reasons, because I don’t trust Finn. And most of the techniques he wants to master are dangerous to practice without supervision. But if Finn will ally himself with us against the Prince Consort, and accept Sorcha as part of that alliance, then I will teach Garrett everything he wants to learn.”

Elada had agreed that it was a good plan. Deirdre had advocated anything that would get Sorcha out of her house, although she’d insisted that Nieve and Garrett should stay with her. “They are Fae, or part Fae, and always welcome here. And Kevin and I are more than capable of protecting them.”

She’d surprised Sorcha by putting her hand in her husband’s then, and Kevin had taken it and covered it with both his own. Sorcha couldn’t pretend to understand their love, but it was real and she was ready to find something like it with Elada.

They retreated upstairs to the room they had shared for a week to talk privately.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, my brown-eyed bard,” said Elada, as soon as the door was closed.

“That’s good, because I’m not going to let anything happen to you either. But something could happen to both of us,” she said, “and I want things clear between us now.”

He tensed, ready to do battle.

“This isn’t going to be a fight,” she said. “Unless you no longer want me. Then I’ll fight you, because I want to be a part of your world, even if it’s sometimes scary.”

“You find Nieve scary?” he teased.

“I think she’d be very scary if someone threatened her child, or you, who she seems very fond of.”

“She is small but tough,” Elada agreed, “like you. And like Beth Carter. She’s part of my world and she’s a Druid.”

Sorcha had barely had the opportunity to speak with the woman who had beguiled Conn of the Hundred Battles, with whom she shared a troubling heritage. She wanted to ask her a thousand questions, about how she had grown up, when she had discovered her abilities, how they differed from her own, when she had met her first Fae, and what it was like to be a Druid in love with one of your ancient enemies.

But all that could wait. Elada was here, now, and she was ready.

“I want to make a commitment with you,” she said. “Like Beth and Conn have. I’ve only known you a short time. I still haven’t been to your favorite coffee shop, and I’m not sure I’ll ever learn to make it well. I’ve only seen a few of your favorite movies. I’m not sure I want a house in Quincy, and I don’t think I can live with an armored minivan as my family vehicle, but leaving aside all that, I want to wake up next to you tomorrow, and the day after that.”

“I hate the minivan, too. I’m flexible about Quincy. I can’t budge on the coffee.”

She felt tears prickle her eyes. “Is that it? Isn’t there some ceremony? Do you have marriage among the Fae?”

“We can make our vows with as much ceremony as you like, human or Fae, as soon as Finn and Donal and the Prince have been dealt with. Or we can say them here now and they will be equally binding.”

“I was hoping there would be a tattoo,” she said.

He raised one golden eyebrow. “Really?”

“No, not really. They’re romantic in theory and beautiful on you, but I’m not sure I would wear it well. My skin isn’t exactly a fashionable shade for a tattoo. I’m paler than you are and I don’t tan.”

“I like your skin,” he said. “I’d show you how much I like it right now if we had the time. I’ll show you how much I like it every day for the rest of my time on earth, if you’ll have me.”

There was that same heaviness in the air that she’d experienced the last time he’d made a vow, and now, with her Druid senses trained, she could
hear
it, the molecules resonating with magic.

“I will have you. And I promise you the same.”

“At human weddings they say, you may now kiss the bride,” Elada mused.