“I don’t care how many times I mull this over in my
mind, something about this smells to the high heavens, Rodney.” Queen Cerridwen
paced across his private chamber in her nightgown and stood by the window to
watch the coming dawn.
“I agree, but we must strike while the sun is to our
advantage.”
She closed her eyes as he came to her and allowed his
warm palms to slide down her arms. Leaning into his embrace, she soaked in the
heat of his chest against her back.
“Call it feminine intuition. call it
whatever you will, but I feel we must employ shrewd strategy here. We are
dealing with Vampires and also demons. Bargains with them are not always
clear-cut.”
Sir Rodney placed a gentle kiss against her neck. “Sounds
like you have intimate experience in negotiating with them, love.”
She drew herself up slightly, tensing, and opened her
eyes, then answered him carefully. “Yes, unfortunately. that is
true.”
His thumb caressed her neck where he’d left a kiss and
he spoke slowly and calmly, never raising his voice. “I know and we both know
that I know.” He shook his head and released her. “With all your beauty.
and all your glamour, I can see where Vlad has riddled your body with his
fangs.. I can feel it with my heart where he’s desecrated the one
sanctuary I had.”
“We’ve both had other lovers,” she whispered, neither
turning around nor denying the charge.
“So true, and I think that you can hear from the tone
of my voice that I care not to challenge you or your choices.. It’s
just that this one makes me very, very sad.”
She spun on him, tears glittering in her eyes. “All of
yours made me sad.”
“The cold taketh away and the summer gives,” he
murmured, going to the dining table across the room. “I’m not in a contest with
you this morning, my love.” He poured himself a cup of tea and added cream to
it, thoughtfully stirring it. “But I never took up with a Vampire against you.”
Sir Rodney took a slow sip from the porcelain cup and set it down very
precisely and then looked at her. “I never breached your sidhe with demons sent
from my ill-begotten folly. Last night took all that I owned not to allow the
summer to die within me.”
Cerridwen placed a trembling palm to her chest. “Oh.
Rodney. I. ”
He held up his hand and to her horror she saw tears
glittering in his eyes. She watched them balance at the precipice of his thick,
dark lashes. “The Gordian knot has frayed and dawn approaches. I see clearly
and have no more shield or defense against you. A woman can always fight more
deadly than a man, can always cut deeper, war longer, and will always triumph
after the last man stands. I am felled.”
She swallowed hard as he took up his tea again with a
shaky hand and brought it to his lips, then cleared his throat. “But did you
not see last night why I love the humans so—why I rally to their condition?
Could you not see with your own eyes how their weakness, and even their
frailty, is their beauty. why I have instructed my Faries and
Pixies, all manner of Seelie, to assist them in their firefly-like existence?”
He set down his tea and held her gaze. “Cerridwen, they don’t have long to
live. To torture them with cruel Unseelie tricks is like pulling the wings off
butterflies. To what end?”
When she didn’t answer him immediately but looked
away, he crossed the room in a sudden explosion, grabbing her by both arms. “To
what end!”
“I don’t know?” she wailed, and snatched herself away
from him to hug herself. “Guilty as charged, but I have changed!”
“Did you not see that poor girl’s parents? Demons in
my dining hall? Dead fucking palace guards dropped like bloody confetti from
the ceilings above my guests’ wedding! Why, Cerridwen? Because you entered into
a deal with Vampires who’d made a pact with a demon?”
He walked away from her breathing hard. “And no matter
what, I still loved you. No matter what, I would not give you over to your
ex-lover’s rage. I would face all of Hell alone before I gave him the
satisfaction of beheading you.”
Sir Rodney’s hands were shaking so badly when he
picked up his teacup that he flung it against the stone wall with a crash. “And
no matter what, I wouldn’t listen to the sage advice of my closest advisors.
nor would I ever tell that poor young woman who had her wedding night ruined by
death and damnation that you were a party to her being abducted and nearly
sacrificed to her husband’s insane aunt.” He drew a shaky breath and leveled a
hard point in her direction. “Cerridwen, I swore I would never allow you to
make me say these things to you, but after last night I am filled to the brim
and so close to murder that it frightens me.”
Sir Rodney turned and looked at Cerridwen, this time
unable to stop the tears from spilling over his lashes. His voice was a hoarse
murmur as he spoke: “Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think I didn’t
wrestle with my own outrage to see you standing at the edge of my Sidhe seeking
asylum after all you’ve done? Did you think you’d tricked me, played me like a
house fiddle? No, I’m not blind or thick. It was a matter of choice to lower my
drawbridge to let you in. So, no, I wouldn’t abandon you at your lowest ebb, my
love, because although deserved, that would be cruel. and I have
been called many things, even daft—but never cruel.”
“What can I do?” she whispered, stricken.
Sir Rodney shook his head. “I don’t know.”
For a long while she stood at the edge of the
bedchamber they’d shared just staring at him, her heart shattering like broken
glass as she looked at the damage she’d wrought and the pain she’d caused him,
now wondering why.
“I will fix this, Rodney,” she whispered.
“You cannot,” he replied, and then finally sat and
dropped his head into his hands. “Come daylight, infantrymen, cavalry, and
Dragon riders will expect their monarch to lead them. and one poor
little girl, a woman not yet twenty years old, and her husband, my good wolf
friend, will be hunted forever for something they didn’t do.”
“Do not open the graves at first light,” she said,
rushing to him and going down on her knees before him. “Rodney, I beg of you.
Allow me the chance to fix what I’ve wrought.” She gathered his hands within
her own and looked up at him. “The one thing they never bargained on was this.
Us.” She squeezed his hands within hers, noticing that they’d begun losing
their customary warmth. “This is not a deal, nor a marriage of convenience.”
He smiled a sad smile. “No, that is true. It has never
been convenient.”
She swept his mouth with a brief kiss and returned his
sad smile. “Never convenient, always complex, but it was not theirs to
understand. It was ours.”
He touched her cool cheek and studied her
panic-stricken gaze. “Some things are beyond repair, Cerridwen..
That is why it is ill advised to ever break them if you cherish them.”
“It can be fixed!” she said, tears now streaming.
“Don’t say that!”
“How?” he asked quietly, wiping her face as she drew
closer to him.
“I don’t know.. ” She released a long,
agonized sob and he gathered her up into his lap and simply held her.
“I will go to Vlad,” she said after a moment, pulling back
and wiping angrily at her tears.
“He will kill you on sight. I will not allow it.”
“No. He will not.” She stood and paced back and forth
in front of where Sir Rodney sat. “Lady Jung Suk used a coven to try to amass
more power than me because she was jealous of the. attention.
and respect that Vlad offered me over her. To him, she was a tool. To him, I
was a powerful ally. Being aligned with a coven would give her access to make
her own deal with the demons.”
Sir Rodney sat back in his chair and dragged his
fingers through his disheveled hair. “Go on.”
“But she was indebted to Vlad—was to be his assassin
forever. That was the deal she and Vlad struck when he gave her Amy’s body
after she’d fled court. The demon that Empress Lady Jung Suk raised with her
possession spell simply wanted a virgin as a sacrifice. Vlad is panicked. Vlad
is not thinking. He could give that demon any young girl and get out of his
contract.”
“If you have a hand in such matters, Cerridwen, I
swear we will be done forever.” Sir Rodney just stared at her until she looked
away. “Do not even tell him that. Promise me, so that someone else’s daughter
doesn’t wind up missing.”
“I promise,” she said, finally meeting his unblinking
gaze. “This is for us to know, not to give Vlad an easy way out.
but what is critical here is the fact that the only way to override one demon
deal is to replace it for another, stronger one.. This is where the
Erinyes fit in, I’m sure. They did not breach your dungeons for the body of one
young woman. No. That had to be the result of a larger deal entered into by
Lady Jung Suk—but since the Vampires didn’t pay up for her, they could leverage
the Vampires. I know she had to do this, because the one thing I’m sure a woman
of power like the empress loathed was being indebted eternally to a cruel and
worthless bastard.” Cerridwen stopped, winded, and stared at Sir Rodney. “Vlad
is a cruel and worthless bastard.”
Sir Rodney lifted his chin. “I’m sure I’ve been
discussed in as colorful terms.”
She shook her head and their gazes locked. “Never.”
“Never?”
“I spoke of you in fury. Called you a gallivanting cad.
but never cruel. Never worthless. Your heart is as large as your castle.” She
came back to him and stood before him, waiting until he accepted her back into
his arms. “Please let me help.”
“And should the Vampires decide that you are their
sacrifice. what then?”
“Then perhaps justice will be served,” she said,
stroking his dark spill of hair away from his face. “For all the wrongs I have
committed against you and mere mortals. for the duplicity and
backroom deals so numerous I shudder to remember. Maybe it is just my time.”
“And what crime have I committed so egregious that my
heart be served to the Vampires on a silver platter?”
A rush of air left her lungs as she pulled his head to
her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut. “I love you so, milord. Too much to
allow you to ruin the House of Inverness once this is all said and done. We may
win the battle once the sun comes up but then lose the war once all of this
nasty business is unfurled.” She looked down at him. “Rodney, they will demand
your throne for sending the Seelie to war on behalf of the Unseelie queen whose
hands were dirty and who was literally in bed with a Vampire. I shan’t allow
it.”
She stood and walked away from him clutching her
heart. “The night I entered this castle, all I could think of was my own
self-interest. My empire of ice, my vassals, my constituents—my life. My
guards. Garth was right to hate me for that. But. ” She shook her
head as new tears rose to her eyes. “The ice around my heart has thawed and
melted away. You did that with your generosity. You even buried my men who were
savaged in your dungeons by the Erinyes. I now see your wolves as friends; they
held demons at bay and stood with us. I now see, for the very first time, the
humans you used to weep for when we were younger. how their
condition kept you up at nights, just as it did last night.
I saw,
Rodney.”
He stood and lifted his chin and swallowed hard,
taking his time to find his voice. It was raw but filled with pride when he
spoke. “That is all I ever wanted from you, Cerridwen. for you to
see that part of me. For I have always seen your warmth, that part of you that
no one else understood to be there. Is that not what partners do? See the
details no one else can, flaws and all, and still love what they see.
still find it beautiful, regardless, simply because it is a part of the grander
mosaic of that person.”
“There was a time when I thought your words were the
lofty ruminations of a frustrated poet, or a boy king who had too much free
time on his hands. I missed the simplistic truth while empire building.
not realizing that seeing the world and seeing its citizens as you do is the
real magick.”
They stared at each other for what seemed like a long
time and finally she went to him and he gathered her into his arms.
“I will not allow you to go to Vlad to be taken
hostage or to be harmed in any way, Cerridwen.”
“Then at least let me get word to him that he may have
been cuckolded by Lady Jung Suk, who used her relationship with the local dark
covens to do a secondary, backdoor deal with the Erinyes. They are the only
demons strong enough to have broken her ties to Vlad, and Vlad never gave her a
body—so whatever he had was overridden.”
Sir Rodney pulled back and stared at Cerridwen. “But
how can you know for sure? When we made the empress’s twisted spirit leave Amy
Chen’s body, Sasha Trudeau commended it to the Light.”
“But the empress had already gone dark, Rodney. The
Devil already owned her soul. No doubt she went to the Light, but the Fair One
spit it back.” Queen Cerridwen gently extracted herself from Sir Rodney’s
embrace. “We don’t have much time before sunrise. I will compose an ice missive
for Vlad. You hold your garrisons; tell them to wait for your strategic
command. By day, I will need to work just outside the walls of your sidhe, for
the safety of your set demon barriers.”