Deception (22 page)

The next morning we set out for home without Pike seeing us off.   When we’d walked a little ways from the camp I turned sideways to ask about it and discovered Ian was no longer next to me.

Remaining still, I whispered his name. I turned very discreetly and looked for the guards.  Danella.  They were too far back to see.  All I saw was green, green, and more green! 

I drew the tiny dagger Ian had given me for the trip having no idea how to use it, but what could I do.  Ian never left me.   Something was moving in the brush. I whispered his name again.  A branch broke above my head.

I looked up to see Ian jumping down to land in front of me.  Down I went.  After he finished adjusting my own landing, he dusted his hands off and pulled his lip up into the smile I loved, but
not
at the moment.   I was furious.   “What were you thinking, scaring me like that?  That wasn’t funny, at all!” 

“I wanted to know how you would react when I am gone and how you intended to protect yourself.  Now, I am really worried,” he said with a condescending smile, arms folded. 

Standard posture for the, full of himself, male ego.  Why do men feel like they should remind us they have the need to feel dominant over us?  And worse, we comply.               “You said before, with the “daft” goblins, that your boredom finds you wanting a good challenge.  I hardly find me a challenge worthy of your fight.”  There, I thought, come back with that!

“On the contrary, you have been quite the challenge for many years now.  Or maybe just playing hard to get?”

Well!  Two can play the BOLD game!  I didn’t want to say something I’d regret so I stood, brushed off my dress for the effect of it even though there was nothing on it and said, “Perhaps you could teach me to defend myself so I am not so helpless without you.  Laughing at my apparent weaknesses in your eyes isn’t a becoming trait.  I am starting to like the old Ian a bit more now.”  I’d hit below the belt without really meaning too.  He was hurt by the look he gave.  Well good.  Maybe he needed that.

“I didn’t mean to, I am sorry,” he straightened up.  “I should have thought of your feelings first.  I just thought I was protecting you or trying to make myself feel better about your own protection.  It is all I have ever done.  Besides, do you really think I don’t know where you are at all times? That I don’t have a plan?”              

I could understand that.  And I understood his reasoning even if I didn’t like his method for delivering it.   I put out my pouty lip he could never resist.  He was just being protective after all.

“Oh, don’t give me that face," he pouted.

Score! 
I looked down at the intricately designed dagger.  It had a maple leaf edged in the side of a beautiful white ivory hilt.  I returned the dagger to my side with a grin to ease is pain.  “You know,” I said, “You could teach me how to use it.”

My hands were still on the dagger.  Before my hands folded away, he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me close enough to whisper in my ear from behind, “I am sorry.” He brushed his lips against my ear, purposefully or accidentally, I wasn’t sure.  I melted either way.  He pulled the dagger from my side before my head had time to think and sent a trigger to my hand that I was being turned to face him.  I was so shocked. 

“Let’s hope no luring tree elves try to seduce you into fighting.  You will be in trouble then.”

“You!  You!” I balled up my fists.  I bent down on one knee, breathing hard.

“Is that all you have?” he looked at my hands.  “Defend yourself, Grace.  I promise I have done this for over a century.”

I stood up again after crouching, “You are how old?”  I swaggered a bit from the violent waves of nausea erupting inside of me.  He is older than my grandma’s grandma.

He guessed my skepticism.  “We
age
very slowly in human eyes.  I told you some of this before.”

“But you left out a detail.”

“I told you, I have waited for you a long time.  Now defend yourself.”  He dropped the dagger in front of me.  It landed between our feet.

I kept my eyes on him as I picked it up feeling ridiculous.

“Keep your eyes focused.  Look up!”

So fast, he whipped around and turned my arm backwards with the dagger in it.  I could tell he was going easy on me.  He bent my arm, but without pain.  Suddenly, I remembered a trick my best friend Caylie told me about.

My mom made me take a self-defense class when I started driving.  Caylie practiced on me for two weeks in both our bedrooms while watching Neo in the
Matrix
over and over until we both felt like we should join the team who chases the white rabbit.   Miss Dan just shook her head and pressed replay for us as we reenacted our favorite scenes.  I miss her terribly.  Miss Dan was always there for me. 

I reached my free elbow around and jabbed as hard as I could in his ribs and half turned with a knee to his family jewels.  When he doubled over I smiled feeling his pain, but only slightly.

He coughed and raised himself up just a bit to sputter, “Well, a move I didn’t know you had.”  He was obviously in more agony than I thought.

“There are so many moves you don’t know I have,” I winked, “and only two weeks of training.”

“You know, maybe we ought to map out the moves next time if you want to have children with me.”

My eyes went wide with embarrassment.  “I—did no--mean to hurt you.”

Children
? I had not ever entertained that idea.  At least not at this point in my life.

He kind of laughed and exaggerated his tone, “
Really
?”  He stayed doubled over for a minute or so longer and then stood a little crooked.  I was still in a stunned silence and realizing too late he was answering the “not hurting you part” of what I said aloud, not the children part.

He seemed to be regaining his composure and dusting himself off when he smiled a little deviously at me for a man in such pain.  He reached up so fast and my body went frigidly still.  And before I could try the same elbow trick again, he said, “Not again, my queen.”  He held his arms around the back of me so tightly I was almost losing my breath.  He scooped my legs up in the air and I tried to kick him in the same spot again.   No score!   He realized the move and turned me quickly to face him with his arms and legs locked. He had me pinned against him.  He was so quick.  How is he so quick?

He leaned one arm out to fall against the tree, missed, and pulled my flailing arm into him, then over we fell together to the ground with a thud. 

“Ouch!” I said into his face, “that had to hurt.”  I was pinned with him beneath me and him taking the brunt of the fall.  Both of us were breathing hard, but I was completely out of breath. 

He blinked up at me and took a turn for bold, “This is not how I pictured it.”  He grinned devilishly.   Our lips less than an inch apart and eyes glowing with the bright silvery shine that made me finally clue into the signal of what I was doing to Ian.  It was only then that I realized how much of me was touching him.

His eyes were silver because he was “feeling frisky” as Caylie called it
. 
I realized what he meant so I came back with the obvious, “We are feeling bold lately.”  I was still pressed against him.  I wiggled trying to loosen his grip on me and felt his body freeze with mine.  I’d never had anyone this up close and personal and he knew it.   He didn’t seem to be letting me up anytime soon so it was my turn, “You have pictured it then, have you?”

“Many times,” he said.  He gazed out into the trees slightly catatonic. 

Heat flushed my face.
Men! 
I changed the subject quickly, “Are you going to let me go?”

“No, never.”  This was not over. The topic will resurface.  My inner devil said a huge “you go girl” and waved a dangerous white flag of just give it up.
 

I rolled my eyes in amusement to hide my palpitating heart, “This is not exactly comfortable.  Breathing is optional, right?” I countered.

He started to say something by the way he remained amused by my discomfort, but decided to let the moment keep its spark. He loosened his arms and watched as I desperately tried to rise gracefully.  Before he got up, he whispered under his breath, “Another time then.” 

My eyes danced back and forth but pretended not to hear and hid a barely there smile.  My hand jerked a reflex upward too near him and he caught it holding me there.  We just stared for a little too long and he dropped it gently and reached down to pick up something I didn’t see. 

Soon, we were off again.

When we were home, we were greeted before we made it near the boundaries of the court garden.  Dozens of creatures ran to us, “The queen is alive!  The queen is alive!”

Ian and I looked at each other, both alarmed and comforted at the same time.  We didn’t waste time with words.

He ran up along side one of his personal guards who told him, “Yes, she seems no different.  She even asked for you.”

“Where is she?”  Ian asked without an ounce of feeling.

“In the garden,” the guard responded.  Ian made it there before I rounded the corner.  When I caught up, he was burning his heels not to run into the queen.  “Mother, we said our peace, but by the light, you are alive.  What does this mean?”

With me, it was like he fell into the same rhythm we had always belonging to together in a sense for years and a comfortable vibe stayed there, holding us bonded.   With others, it was a different sense of being.  I found myself always listening intently to how he spoke more authoritative and reserved to others and less formal with me.  He really belonged to a different world or from another time, yet we were one a long time ago.

“Son, the seer is trying everything he can to figure this out.  I don’t know yet.”

He did notice something different precisely when I gasped aloud to show my own observance.   “Mother, your eyes are brown.”

I was intrigued with the part where he called her “mother” having not heard him speak in a tone that would become a son.  That was something new like the eyes changing and not changing. My own eyes hadn’t changed.  But Queen Lazyra’s were assuredly not the yellow catlike slits I’d seen the day she welcomed me so warmly to their world.
 
I stepped forward enough to let Ian and his mother exchange silent comparisons of mine to hers.  They both held the same reserved look.  It was the first time I’d seen a resemblance of any relation.  Beside each other, the both had the same fine boned cheek structure that made them both stunning to look at. 
Among other qualities.

The queen turned back to Ian with a less than pompous attitude,  “I don’t know why I am alive, but I do know one thing, I am not the current queen of the Seelie court.” 

Ian didn’t have any words to respond with.  Neither did I.

She continued since all of our tongues seem tied.  “I have no abilities.  I cannot read you now, son.  And my “persuasiveness” as you call it, couldn’t even get me a
cup of tea
this morning.  I am still waiting,” she said sounding agitated and looking towards several Fey standing nearby.

She still sounded the same, but I could tell now, she seemed a little less..
uptight
.  Ian snapped at a little Fey floating near the door and it was gone in a flash.  Before too long, it returned with a cup full of steaming tea.

“See.  My son has more power than I,” she smiled.  She didn’t seem the least bit disappointed.
She sipped for a minute and then Ian suggested we go see the seer.

“He is already expecting you,” Lazyra answered.

We arrived at the small campfire and found the seer smiling widely.  He had something cooking up in his brain more so than what was on the fire but it didn’t look the least bit like food.  It was more along the lines of dirty socks and smelled like vomit.  His long gray hair was smoothed behind him in a knotted ponytail and fitting the very essence of “wise” in my opinion.

He turned his busily kept hands up to me and said, “I knew this day would come.  What confounds me only points me towards more questions than answers.”  That was funny to me considering I was under the impression he knew the answers to everything. Next, he turned his twirling hands up towards the sun in the sky forcing me to squint upward a brief second, but allowing me to clear my thoughts.  I felt uneasy at his confident air that surrounded him only because his conversations always seem to surface with my name in it.  He didn’t seem so excited the last time we saw him.

The queen admonished him, “You were still indecisive this morning, Al.”

AL!
  His name is Al!  That didn’t fit the picture of what I considered a great and wise one. 

“But, my lovely, Lady Lazyra, you have a new role, that this morning, I was unaware of.”  He lifted his eyes to see the effect on the others.  The queen, Lazyra, took it with more grace than I would have thought.  The seer made a terrific effort to find comfort for Lazyra, asking if she needed a pillow to sit on.  A pillow?

“Then why am I alive?” she said.

“Sit, everyone.  I have some news to share with you.”  We all three sat around the fire, Lyzyra on the pillow that appeared from nowhere.  I was forced to sit opposite of Ian feeling disoriented since we had rarely been apart for the last two days.  I didn’t appreciate it till I saw the grin on his face as he read me like a book. 

The queen, Lazyra, was looking at
only
the seer, Al! 

“I didn’t have any answers for any of you until Grace reentered the court just now.  She is glowing, do you see it?  Her aura is pulsing strong and ready for go.”

All three turned to gawk at me.  I wanted to hide from this interrogation like feeling coming over me as if I was a circus freak and being examined.  Ian rubbed his eyes as if trying to look closer at me, “No sir!”

“
You
are not seeing clearly then.  She has crossed over.  Somehow, the prophecy was not completely answered on the ceremony night.  All of our guessing has been wrong.  Yes, perhaps the human part of her kept her eyes from turning, she was there, away from us, for a lengthy portion.  Yes, maybe the scratch altered one minor detail for Ian...mostly.”  The seer touched his own head and Ian seemed to light up immediately. 

“And,” Al, the seer, looked almost giddy, “Oh, what to tell first?” he clapped his hands.  He looked as if he had a dozens candies before him and couldn’t choose what to start with. “We shall go in order of events then.”  He turned to Ian, “Do you mind sharing with us if you will, Prince Ian, the struggle between you and young Pike during your little visit to the Nyms.”

“All in good time,” he said without looking at Lazyra.  The seer appeared to have heard Lazyra’s thoughts and wanted to stop her before she moved off into wrong paths.  The seer let me see this for some reason, but the images were all twisted in my head and confusing.    The queen, Lazyra, started to protest at the mention of anyone seeing Nyms, but the seer put his hand up to stop her. 

Ian was upset he said that though I acted indifferent. 

“Let me jog your memory,” the seer said eagerly. 

He didn’t speak again, but I could tell he was sending some kind of message to Ian nonverbally.  I was completely lost and every bit the newcomer and considered walking away from this whole conversation since a new hidden fear was finally surfacing and stabbing me in the vocal cords.  Searching my memories for a reasonable way out of this letting fear build up and push me towards leaving.  I was everything to do with whatever memory he brought up, but in every way, just plain scared.  And no real reason why.

Ian raised both eyebrows looking at me and opened his mouth to speak.  It was easy to see, he knew exactly what the seer wanted.

When the seer waved his hands back and forth I focused back on Ian, gluing my hands to a folded corner of my lap.  Hidden under the properness my fingernails were digging holes into my skin. “Right before the meeting with the Nyms, Pike saw something in your head.”  He looked at his mother and back and visibly swallowed.  “Keep in mind this is hard to put in words, because it is mostly in pictures.  Grace’s brain works mostly that way, more so than words.  Pike saw you picturing “you and I” kissing or rather what you imaged there.”  This was really awkward in front of his mother whom didn’t look at her son once during this obviously painful endeavor.  “He then purposely projected himself kissing her to anger me, or rather, her purposefully kissing him.  So I stepped to hit him, but stopped myself, and simply told him as quick as I could before I pummeled the fool that Grace was mine alone
until she said otherwise.”  He kind of growled at the last part as if the memory was an event happening all over again and this agitated him.   He left his face in a gaze for a second too long, then shook his head a little and looked at me, then Lazyra, and back at me.  Everyone seemed fine to let him get past his anger—or whatever it was.

“I remember,” I whispered calmly.  “You said it out aloud.”

“Did I?” he asked with surprise in his voice.

“Very well spoken.  It was just as I saw it.”  The seer paused. 

I couldn’t stand it. “And what does all that really mean?  What’s the point of saying it aloud?”  And how did this old man see things that had already happened?  Doesn’t he see the future!

“It means, dear girl, for the first real time, the guardian himself has “claimed you” for his own.  The prophecy said that the guardian had to name her to his own.  Don’t you see he was the only one who never claimed you, but offered himself to you?  He had to
claim you
.”

The seer faced me, “And you have something to tell yourself, my queen.”  He didn’t falter at the title change though Lazyra turned her head from Ian to me finally giving attention to her son and hating her all the more for it.  Ian craved her approval and she didn’t seem to care.

“I—I do?” 

I kind of liked the vixen feeling awkward.  She gave me visual threats as if including me was beating out her popularity contest I didn’t want a part of in the first place.  I was perfectly content to be a fly on the wall and watch her do the dirty work.  That is, if it didn’t include tyranny.

“Something happened after he claimed you, didn’t it.”   I had no idea what he was talking about. So when I felt a tingle in my head and there was an image I knew I didn’t conjure up, I realized instantly, he was putting it in my mind. 

“Um, now I do.”  Goosebumps ran up and down all over. It was almost invading.  “Right after I spoke to the Nym.  I didn’t say much, or rather didn’t have to, because he did whatever I told him to do.”  I blushed at the thought of it.

“He was drunk, on her,” the seer said to him. “Your claim ignited her abilities to further develop.  Her magic is growing stronger now and Ian’s claim set it in motion with more to come. Just as I suspect Miss Grace had to have put a claim on young Master Ian to make it possible.  Oh yes, there are more steps, but now is not the time to disclose them.”

How could he know such things?

“And Lady Lazyra, I come to you.”

She looked at me again.  I wanted to hide.  “Seems my “persuasiveness” was passed along to you.  Your mother was quite a woman, I see.  She trained you well knowing your potential.”

Trained me?

The seer grunted to attain the attention back on him and receive his prophetic glory. 

“And now, my lady, why you are alive?”

Everyone sat up taller. 

“I thought you might like to hear this.  Because the night ended and the prophecy wasn’t fulfilled, you are alive.  Oh, don’t worry you have your queen, but somehow because all of these events happening, past events involving history in itself, changed our fates forever.”

“Meaning that the queen doesn’t have to die to have a new queen?” I inquired.

“No, we won’t know if that is changed completely until the age of a true born Fey is returned to the throne and others find their way back to us.”

Well, that’s in like...
forever!

“And for the finale,” he paused, “if I may, and I am only guessing at this point that the ceremony was never completed the other night.  It, if we can give life to
it
, is still in limbo,” he chuckled to himself.  “If the Lady Lazyra, and shall we call you Grace for now, will stand with me.”

All stood and faced each other waiting impatiently but none feeling exactly comfortable. 

“Follow me,” the seer said.

Ian followed last to the throne.

The seer asked us both to stand in the same position we did on the ceremony night when the queen crowned me.  We did.  He had Ian summon for the crown to be brought out.  It came.  We stood and waited.

It seemed a bit ritualistic, but I rolled with it in hopes that this “finale” was every bit the suspense he was making it.  Danella ran in with an herb packet but was told that was for betrothing only. We were already betrothed. 

“Now, recite the prayer again, and have the crown placed on Grace’s head all in the order the magic requires of the new queen.” 

We followed the order of events with Lazyra in front of me as I kneeled and the crown lifted high.  I repeated the binding words for the second time in my life.

“To all those behind and beyond

To all those to come

I give my life to the Fey

I relinquish my own

The union I will bond

Each season to the next

I’m bound to you.”

Lazyra placed the crown atop my head sending tingles through me.  I reached up with my head still bowed to grab my ears to stop the ringing.  I’d hoped for a beam of light the last time I was in this position, but this was more than just a magic tingly feeling.  I felt every ounce of my weight build into this almost bubbling effect and then it was gone faster than it came.  I leaned my hand on the ground to hold myself up.  Ian didn’t follow protocol almost falling over to lift me up as I propped myself on bended knee.   Lazyra was up close to me now too.  When he reached me, he was pulling me up from the back but I myself felt like I was pushing my way back down.  Cradling my head, I rushed to right myself on my own. Dazed and unbalanced didn’t explain it enough. When I opened my eyes, both Lazyra and the seer jumped back a step like I was a piranha on steroids about to eat them.  Ian detached his arms firmly but gently and turned me to face him.