The Dark Huntsman: A Fantasy Romance of The Black Court (Tales of The Black Court Book 1) (25 page)

The stones slammed over the entrance and she was shut into the darkness.

She grabbed the sapphire and wished hard for light. The familiar blue glow sprang up and illuminated the tunnel. Before she could stand Logan and the hounds were back. She struggled to rise against the tide of huge dogs pushing past her into the small space. Her chest tightened and she reminded herself to breathe. Just breathe.

“What were you thinking?” Logan’s furious eyes reflected the sapphire’s magical glow. “I left you safe in bed and here you are under the queen’s nose.” Logan grabbed her arms.

His body shook. She shrank within his grip but she would not let him intimidate her.

“You’re only using me to find my family, then you’ll kill us all!”

“What would make you think that?” His arms dropped to his side, his anger dropping from his face, leaving only stunned confusion. He backed away from her, nearly hitting the opposite wall of the tiny rock chamber.

“I heard you telling him you had a lead. Do you think I will help you slaughter my family?” She clenched her fists at her side. “Who did you kill at the house? Bryanna, Cassie?” The thought of her beautiful cousins dead and burned formed a lump of betrayal in the back of her throat.

“Is that what you thought you heard? I did tell him I had a lead. Have you ever tried to lie to a fae?” His eyes sparkled with fiercely controlled anger. “No. I can see that you have not. Well, let me tell you, you can’t. We smell lies. It’s even more difficult if you are one yourself. We cannot lie.”

“What does that mean? Everyone lies.”

“No, the fae do not. Or I should say, we can, but we have to be tricky about it. Everything that leaves my mouth has to be the absolute truth. It’s a part of our magic. None of the true fae can lie.” She inched away from him, backing step by careful step further into the depths of the tunnel. He caught hold of her hand.

“So you are betraying me!” She tried to pull away from him, but he held her fast.

“No, I am not.”

“You either were lying to him or you are lying now to me!”

“Listen to me Trina,” he said. “I cannot lie, but I can dissemble. I can say enough of a selected truth that he will believe me. I told him the truth. I have a lead, but I left out that I have you.” His words rang loud in the tunnel. “And I have no intention of turning you over to the queen, or of killing you.”

She stopped struggling. “Look at me and tell me you are not going to kill my family.”

He let go, straightened to his full height, and held her eyes with his. “I am doing my best to save you, your family, and myself from the wrath of the queen.” She couldn’t look away as magic twined around them and his words poured out. “You have my word, as Logan Ni Brennan of the Fir Bolg and as the Huntsman of the Black Court of the Tuatha De Danann, I have no intention of killing you, nor your family.”

Under his gaze, steady as truth, her anger deserted her. But there was still one fact left.

“If you can’t lie, then who did you kill at my house?”

“I killed a doe, and presented its heart to the queen. I have risked my life and this is what you think of me?” His words spat out like bullets. “I have had to walk a very thin line for you.”

“You didn’t wake me up, didn’t say good bye. What was I supposed to think when I followed you here and found you sneaking around behind my back with that sleazy elf?”

“I left you sleeping.” His body seemed to release, the tension draining out as he sighed and brushed a few escaped strands of long hair back from his face. “You looked so comfortable and it had been a difficult night. I saw no reason to wake you. I couldn’t bring you here to meet with him,” he said, looking tired without his anger to support him. “I don’t expect you to understand the politics of my situation. I may be hundreds of years older than you, but I am very young compared to the majority of those at court. I have few contacts, and fewer still that I trust.”

“Why did you meet with him? Isn’t he the enemy?”

“Yes, he’s the enemy. But if I don’t look like I’m doing something, the queen will demand my head.” A twinkle started in his eye and his lips began to slide up into his now-so-familiar teasing grin. “And I rather like my head.”

She couldn’t resist smiling back. “Men!” She laughed. It echoed off the rock walls as Logan swept her up in his arms and spun her around the tight tunnel, the hounds fleeing to press against the sides. She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his neck, and inhaled his smoky scent.

He hadn’t killed anyone. He wasn’t turning her family over to the queen. But could she really trust him the way she wanted to?

Logan put her down and led the way into the tunnel.

“Did you ask Haddon about Aoife?” she asked. At least she was sure now that Mariella had been wrong. Creepy, green Haddon wasn’t someone to rely on in their search for clues to the queen’s vendetta.

“No. I have no confidence in him at all.” He strode ahead, casting frequent looks back, almost as if reassuring himself that she was still there. “Haddon has never been anything but the queen’s man. I’ll start my search for Aoife tomorrow.”

“You mean
we
will start our search tomorrow.” He stopped and turned to face her so fast she bumped her nose into him and stumbled.

“I won’t risk exposing you. If I find her, I’ll bring you to her. But only if I deem the odds acceptable.” He placed a finger lightly on her lips. “Remember, this is your first hunt, and you are unfamiliar with the ground we must cover. If I’m to serve your interests, I need to be focused on the hunt and not on protecting your sweet ass.” He grinned again, his arm swooping behind her to swat her on the backside.

She snorted at his bright eyes and high-handed attitude and decided to leave it. For now.

“So, if I’m to understand your decision making process, you expect me to simply follow your lead in this hunt and stay home. You need to explain some of what has gone into your decision.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, why does the queen expect you to be like your father?”

He kept walking, and she waited for him to fill in the silence.

“My father wasn’t much of a father, by human standards.” She drew closer to hear his quiet words. “By elvetian standards, he was adequate. He ignored me until I was old enough to be of use to him at court, and then he took me away from my uncles and introduced me to the queen. The Black Court was—is—a miasma of fear, negativity, and beauty.” His voice drifted off. “Such beauty.”

Trina grew impatient waiting for him to continue.

“I was lucky,” he said, finally. “Prince Kian liked me. I became one of his favorites and he protected me from the worst of the court. But the queen always kept an eye on me. And when my father came to his untimely demise, she wanted me to replace him. Take over the family business.” The weight of the sarcasm in his voice filled the silence as they walked…the only other sound besides their boots, the soft padding of the hounds, and the occasional whoosh of air.

“I would have resisted her invitation had it not been for the prince. She threatened to send me away if I didn’t take on the position and I wouldn’t leave Kian.”

“Why you?”

“Not everyone can be a Huntsman for the Great Hunt. I have the necessary Gifts and I inherited many things from my father, such as the hounds.” He reached out and fondled the ear of the hound on his right, who lifted his head and waved his tail in gratitude. “And so began my descent into the belly of the court. I don’t know how depraved I would have become in her service if she hadn’t pushed the prince too far.”

He slowed, and they stopped. “The prince rebelled. I was thrown into the queen’s dungeon, a confinement from which I have recently been released.” He leaned low and dropped his voice to a dark whisper, breathing his words on the sensitive skin of her neck. “My release was contingent on my killing a certain family of gypsies. Instead, I found you, my naked witch, casting spells in the gloaming.”

He had every motive to kill her, to use her to track down her family and kill them as well. His honor and commitment to the prince pitted him against the queen, but his survival depended on serving the same queen. Her fate, the fate of her heart, depended on his making a choice. Had he made it? Was she right to put her trust in him?

He reached for her hand, tracing a shivery pattern on her palm. “What spells have you cast on me, my witch?” His haunted eyes gleamed in the dark, and a cold shiver crept down her spine.

Chapter Fifteen

Haddon flexed his fingers and folded them behind his back.

“What do you mean she still lives?” the queen demanded. Her voice rose, vibrating the crystals of the chandelier in Owen’s tiny room. “That stupid boy gave me her heart. I have it in a box in my treasure chamber!” She leaned in and stared at Owen, her black tresses coiling and uncoiling around her head.

The mirror shrank against the wall, his eyes flitting back and forth between the queen’s mottled face and the tinkling, swaying chandelier above his head.

Owen flailed his hands. “I d-d-don’t know what to say, my queen. It isn’t clear. All I can see is th-th-that she is living in the Black Forest and is under th-th-the protection of the Seven Brothers of the Fir Bolg.” He extended a trembling hand out to Haddon, his eyes begging for help.

Haddon kept his face blank and made sure he, himself, was not in the path of the heavy light fixture.

The man was a fool. They needed a new mirror. Why risk his own neck for the used up psychic as he had in the past? It would do no good anyhow. The man’s news was horrible, he was as good as dead.

“How dare they?” The queen’s wings beat hard and fast.

The walls of the room shook. Dust from the cracking stones choked the air. The mirror squatted, throwing his hands over his head, hiding from the queen’s angry shrieks. A stone worked its way free of the wall and toppled. It crashed to the floor, shattering on impact, and left behind a ragged crater in the marble floor.

The queen’s voice grew louder. Her wings flapped scraping the sides of the small chamber and raising a cool wind. Haddon flattened against the wall. Edging along it, he ducked under a flaring wing as he headed for the exit. A cloud of dust swirled and he covered his face and coughed.

The chandelier shuddered. Individual crystals dropped one-by-one, shattering as they hit the floor. Haddon ran for the door.

“Help me!” Owen screamed.

Haddon glanced back. The old man cowered under the dropping danger of the crystals, trying to shelter his head under his bony arms. Haddon had a flash of the boy Owen once was years ago, cowering in a corner from the queen and Haddon soothing him, seducing him into becoming lovers. Haddon snarled and went back, darting through the avalanche of rocks, dust, and glass, he grabbed the stupid oaf, dragging him to the relative safety of the hallway.

“I will find her!” the queen raged. “I will destroy her. And then I will destroy all who have helped her!” As the queen’s voice escalated into an unintelligible mix of words and shrieks, Haddon waited in the hall for the storm to subside, subduing his desire to kick Owen, who crouched at his feet. He bitterly hoped the huntsman would show up again soon. He would serve his head to the queen on a silver platter, along with a side of the MacElvy girl’s real heart.

Deceiving the queen was a mistake, but deceiving him would be fatal.

As he listened to the old man’s pathetic wails and waited for the queen to finish demolishing the mirror’s chamber, he plotted. It wasn’t that he cared for the useless wretch, but until they had obtained another psychic, Owen was all they had. And he still had some uses. Too bad he couldn’t use the red-headed MacElvy that Owen had identified as a fellow far-seer, then they could have killed this one and been done with him.

The dust settled. The queen sat in the middle of the devastation, her robes torn and disarrayed, her snaky curls standing on end as her wings slowed and grew still. A chill skittered up his spine.

He’d never seen her look quite like this, her demeanor an oasis of eerie calm.

“Haddon.” Her voice was quiet.

“Yes, my queen?”

“Haddon, I’ve been going about this all wrong.”

The wait for her to speak was interminable. As unbelievable as it seemed, this calm queen scared him more than the earlier, out of control queen. With her in this state, she was completely unpredictable.

“Haddon, I’ve been sending out flawed, untrustworthy, incapable people to do a job that I should have been doing myself. Who better than me to understand the necessity of all of the MacElvys being gone? Who better than me to be sure that my precious son is safely out of harm’s way? And who better than me to be sure the job is actually done?”

She rose and brushed at her face, leaving streaky smears of dust on her cheekbones. “Come, Haddon. You and I will concoct a plan to sneak in under the noses of the Fir Bolg. That ridiculous king will never know that we have violated the treaty. And once we have killed the girl and taken care of that lying son-of-a-bitch huntsman, we will deal with the stupidity of the Seven.”

She moved her wings gently to free them of dust and stepped over the old man. “Haddon, Owen will need new quarters so he can focus all his energies on finding this girl.” She swept from the room, adding over her shoulder, “If the huntsman shows his face, be sure to take him alive. I will deal with the bastard myself.”