Min didn’t entirely understand how her
baby sister, who had never showed much aptitude for magick, could
be a threat to any of the fae, not to mention the Queen of Winter.
But there they were, up to their knees in the hellish snow and ice
of the Winter Court of the fae, and they were going to find her
sister. She still had a hard time reconciling that she wasn’t going
to be able to save her—that was what she did, what she was there
for. That she was just there to show Andy that she would
try…
How ridiculous!
But she would. She would try until her
last breath to get to Andy…and hope the rest would work itself out
like the Summer Queen thought it would. But if not, she’d die
fighting.
“
Fine,” Min said, and
gripped tighter to the Summer Queen’s silver dagger. A surge of
primal power flowed from it into her, and she smiled viciously at
the cat. “But betray me, and I promise you you’ll burn
first.”
The words had been all her, but her
voice had rung with a subtle power, something wholly inhuman that
was not. Graysyn cringed, his ears folding flat against his head,
as if her voice hurt them.
“
I understand,” he
whispered.
“
Good.” Suddenly Min found
herself standing beside the shadow cat. She reached down and
stroked an idle hand down the creature’s back, making it shudder in
what looked both like pain and pleasure. “That’s my good
cat.”
Min wasn’t in control, and she knew
that she had to get it back immediately. She pushed the thoughts of
the Summer Queen from her mind and walked over to Luca and touched
him gently on the shoulder. Immediately she felt less like a part
of a faerie Queen, and more like herself.
Thank god
. She shuddered in relief. At least she knew how to keep the
faerie at bay.
But she heard a voice laughing in the
distance, somewhere in her mind.
I was just making a point to
the cat. Only I can truly touch him. Did you not feel his essence,
and not just a handful of smoke?
Min pushed harder, and the faerie
Queen’s laughing voice faded to nothing.
Stay out of my head…I’m here
to save Andy, not to serve you or to be your puppet!
There was a reluctant surge of humming
power from the dagger in her grasp. No words, but Min knew the
Queen understood.
Bitch…
She turned and scowled at the shadow cat.
“
Okay, take us to Winter’s
Keep.”
~*~
They followed the shadow cat
through the vast forest of frozen trees. The terrain was rough, not
only strewn with rocks the size of skulls, but also full of jutting
tree roots, some broken from other traveler’s gaits, but all ready
to reach up and trip you. At some point Min realized they were not
traveling on flat ground any longer. They were trekking across a
downward slanting slope. Which didn’t make much sense: they were
headed
toward
a
mountain.
“
Cat,” Min said, but the
rest of her question went unsaid, for just then the forest of dead
and frozen trees thinned and she saw exactly where they were. And
all she could think was…
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod…
They stood on the edge of a cliff that
looked over a huge valley that must have dipped a thousand feet or
more—probably more—into a twisted shadowy nothingness. The wind
howled and threatened to knock Min from her feet. And there, right
across from them, but what was surely miles away, was the great
black mountain Luca had told her about. Winter’s Keep. It was as
stark and evil looking as anything she’d ever imagined.
She gulped, her mouth had turned dry,
and her body, though still warmed by the power of Summer the dagger
afforded her, shook with fear.
Min was afraid of heights. It was the
only fear from childhood she had never been able to conquer. And
when a fear has lasted that long, it was ingrained on one’s
soul.
A physical jerk from her nervous system
pushed her back and she fell in her haste to scramble back up the
slope and grabbed for the first frozen tree she could find. The
brittle wood whined at her ardent embrace, but thankfully held. All
rational thought had left her, and she was sure she was screaming
like a banshee.
I’m going to die…
~*~
Luca stared at the mountain of
pitch-black stone they stood across the lethal drop from and
wondered what trick the shadow cat had in mind. He hardened his
grip around the hilt of the broad sword and prepared to decapitate
the faerie creature if he dared move a muscle. But then he felt it,
Min’s fear. It boiled up and spiked, and he turned to see her
clamber up the grade of the mountain they were on, and fasten
herself to the nearest tree.
Her fear was overwhelming, a psychic
scream that made every muscle in his body tense. It tasted of
stomach acid and bile, and made his legs shake for a moment. He
felt her fear completely. Not a surprise, but that such a powerful
and fearless warrior as she could hold such a menacing thing inside
her was horrific.
He saw a flash of her memory, the first
time she’d been touched by this fear…
She had been young and the world looked
so large to her. On a dare from another child, one day she’d
climbed a large cypress tree, and about twenty feet up, her feet
slipped. For a moment all that held her from falling and certain
death was her frantic grip on a smaller, weaker branch. It held
just long enough for her to grab for the larger branch again before
the weaker cracked off in her hand. Somehow she managed to wrap
herself around that branch and close her eyes.
Something inside her had turned off
that day. Her mother had had to come and get her. Somehow she’d
pried Min’s limbs from the branch and gotten her down from the
tree, but Min had never remembered any of it. All she remembered
was holding onto that branch, and then much later holding onto her
mother with the same helpless terror.
If she’d known then what she learned
later, that fears left unchecked could choke the life from a
person, she would have forced herself to face that one maddening
fear. That a phobia like this could fester, even though you
couldn’t feel it, into something insurmountable. Something that
could get you killed.
The memory and Min’s inner thoughts
simply stopped, and Luca felt her fear of falling cease. She was
frozen, inside and out, by that fear. It had literally switched her
off.
He approached her slowly, taking his
time to talk to her, ignoring the impatient shadow cat and placing
all his attention on the woman he loved. He had to do something to
lessen the fear that held her, but what?
His instincts told him to touch her, so
he did: first tentatively on the shoulder, and then another hand,
this one on the nape of her neck, making skin on skin contact. She
was warm, but that sense of connection, of a living electrical
pulse was missing. He swallowed and ignored the doubts that
flickered in his head. This was Min. The fiercest mortal he had
ever met, the woman he loved. She would not lie down and die, she
would fight.
And he would help her. It was what he
was there for. To love and help her in every way he
could.
Min?
His thoughts echoed back to him, as if she were empty. But he
knew she was still in there, somewhere.
Can
you hear me?
Still nothing.
I know this is a lot to ask,
but you have to push your fear away from you. You have no other
choice.
He tried to press some of his
strength into her, as he had done before when she was injured after
the Winter Queen had attacked her. But it wasn’t her body that
needed repairing. He hissed in aggravation. But his touch had
helped balance her not long ago, hadn’t it? His touch had helped
her overcome so much already.
But that was just magick. This was
something real, something that had been with her, every day since
it had happened, and it was a tangible, immutable thing.
Then he thought of something else that
was as much a part of her as anything else, if even more
so.
“
Andy needs you.” Over and
over, as gently as he could, he repeated those words.
Slowly her blank, staring eyes closed,
and she licked her lips. When her eyes opened again, tears streamed
down her face and she shook violently.
“
I can’t…” She held all the
harder to the frozen tree she had attached herself to. “I c-can’t
do this.”
Luca closed the distance between them
until his lips were practically touching hers, her breath mingled
with his. He looked deep into her big, brown eyes.
“
Yeah…but
we
can.”
Chapter 28
Min blinked at her vampire. Luca’s eyes
shined not only with the warm green of Summer’s magick, but with
love. It made the cold, tight stranglehold of her fear loosen. He
really loved her. He was so in love with her he was at her side as
they marched most certainly to their deaths.
And he believed in her. She felt that
from their connection. His belief and love for her throbbed and
flowed into her from where his hand clasped the back of her neck.
For what seemed like forever she’d held desperately tight to the
frozen tree, and she’d been all alone. She hadn’t felt him, and
hadn’t even been able to think of anything but how high up they
were, as it had felt all those years ago to have almost fallen to
her death from that blasted tree.
Why hadn’t she faced this fear before
today? Was she growing feeble, or had her fear been so great that
it was powerful enough to hide in plain sight?
Oh god, she was giving an emotion
nefarious characteristics and sentient intelligence.
“
I’ll be holding onto you
the whole time,” Luca whispered. “I won’t let you fall.”
She believed him. But the roiling
emotions of her fear seized her again, even through the warmth and
power of their connection. It made her arms jerk and her
stranglehold on the frozen tree intensified. Her eyes snapped
shut.
Luca laughed. Not a kind chuckle. No,
this was a mean, mocking little laugh. This laugh made her blood
boil.
“
Fine, fine…” he chortled in
a mollifying tone. “I could carry you across. It’s not the first
time I’ve had to rescue a damsel in distress.”
Anger ignited in Min’s chest and her
eyes flew open. She felt the palm of her right hand burn and itch,
power building there for a fireball.
“
Who the hell do you think
you are? I ought to burn you to a freaking cinder!”
He locked her gaze with his and slowly
nodded. “There’s the Min I know.”
She was close to throwing a punch at
his handsome face when it dawned on her. “You just pissed me off to
get my mind off my fear, didn’t you?”
“
Yep,” he made the word pop
with humor. “Did it work?”
Min reached out and grabbed Luca by the
collar of his bedraggled silk shirt, and pulled him into a brief
though heated kiss. “Damn straight it did.”
She let go of him and turned to the
seemingly endless chasm between where they were and the mount of
Winter’s Keep, and the petulant shape of the shadow cat waiting on
them.
“
So how do we get down off
this damned mountain and up the other?”
The shadow cat closed his eyes for a
beat, and seemed to smile to himself. “We won’t be going down.
We’re going across.”
“
Across?” she asked. “Can a
shadow cat sprout wings? Because I left my jet pack at
home.”
In a tone one would use for the very
young or mentally infirm, the cat said, “Many of the Sidhe, of the
assorted faerie Courts, cannot fly. That is why the secret bridge
was fashioned.”
Min laughed and made a show of looking
over the cat’s head and back. “Bridge? I don’t see any
bridge.”
“
And why should you?” the
cat said smoothly. “It wouldn’t be a secret if you could see
it.”
Min looked nervously to the fathomless
canyon and gulped. Luca walked past her to the edge of the cliff.
He leaned down and picked up a handful of pebbles, then tossed them
out in front of him. The pebbles fell swiftly into the pitch
nothingness of the chasm and disappeared.
Luca stood and shook his
head. “I was sure this was one of those
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
things.”
“
No,” taunted the shadow
cat. “It’s one of those
you have to
physically step out onto the expanse for it to solidify
things.”
“
Well, that sucks,” Luca
growled. He turned back to Min. “So we have to trust this
faerie—”
The shadow cat hissed, his fangs
glowing sharp and white in the cold night.
“
That there’s a bridge that
stretches from this point to somewhere on Mount Crazy?” Luca
continued. “Boy, our choices are getting better and
better.”
The shadow cat cleared his throat
indignantly. “If it will appease you, I shall go first. I would
hardly throw myself off a cliff, now would I?”