Yes, he was polished in the womanizing department. He obviously loved them and had seduced many in his lifetime. Yet he wasn’t cruel, misogynistic, or skanky about it. For as much as he enjoyed sleeping with women, he seemed to respect them just as much, even worship them. Yes, he was arrogant as all hell. But he was also witty and intelligent, caring in his own way, scarily insightful, and not as self-absorbed as she’d first assumed. He was fun to talk to and when he wasn’t near she noted his absence.
Her heart felt a bit heavy at the prospect of losing another friend to the Unseelie Court.
“The Summer Queen will be very angry when she finds out you’re declining her invitation to stay.”
Gabriel turned from where he stood at her living room window, looking down at the square. She came to stand next to him. Night had fallen long ago and the sky was strewn with glittering stars. Across the square, the Black Tower stabbed upward.
He turned back to observe the square. “How do you know I intend to decline her invitation?”
“I just do.”
He said nothing for several moments, letting her know that she was right. “If I were to stay, it would be for you.”
At the beginning of the week she would have instantly believed that was a line, but now she felt he meant it. “But you won’t.”
“My heart is in the Unseelie Court, Aislinn. I know that now more than ever.”
“You don’t like it here because the focus of our lives is on the social.”
“Aislinn, this place has no magick in it and magick is the core of who we are.” He spoke with deep passion in his voice. “I’m surprised so many Seelie Tuatha Dé are happy with their lives here.”
“Magick is the Summer Queen’s domain within these walls. Not ours.”
“And that’s wrong.” He turned toward her. “Magick is in our spirit, Aislinn. It’s what we’re made of—take it away and we’re just like the humans; there’s nothing left to make us different or special. Take away our strengths and we’ll wither and die slowly as a people. Especially now. This is not the time to weaken ourselves.”
She looked up at him. “You mean in the face of the Phaendir.”
“That’s one of the issues where the Shadow King disagrees most with the Summer Queen. She keeps her people pampered and distracted when she should be keeping them strong. She should be preparing them for battle.”
She shook her head, looked out the window, and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s not true that the Summer Queen wants to keep us weak.”
“She’s vain, Aislinn, worried that someone in her court might turn up more powerful than she is. No woman is permitted to be as beautiful as she is. She desperately wants to be the focal point, the adored one. Most of all she wants to be the one you all need.”
Suddenly Aislinn feared a knock at her door, the Imperial Guard coming to take Gabriel away for voicing heresy against the queen.
She snorted. “You’re saying that Caoilainn Elspeth Muirgheal, the direct descendant of the original High Royal of the Tuatha Dé Danann, is insecure.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
Aislinn shook her head, but didn’t deny it. What Gabriel said was true. It was just the kind of truth that no one really wanted to face.
Gabriel shrugged. “In the Black, magick is emphasized as important from birth. Formal education begins at five years old and is taught alongside a child’s ABCs and one-two-threes. It’s required we learn Old Maejian fluently. We all are encouraged to develop our skills and hone them, to be able to control them at all cost. Because the Unseelie can use magick to harm and to kill, it’s not a safe place, but it’s an interesting place.” He flashed a smile at her. “Never boring.”
“I can imagine.”
“You can’t, love. You can’t imagine it. It’s so different from here.” He paused. “I think you’d like it. I think you would fit in there and be content. You would find a meaning and a purpose to your life that you lack here. I believe you would feel less alone.”
She looked down at the square. Join the Unseelie? She had magick that could kill, if she truly was a necromancer . . . but live in the Black Tower? It was inconceivable. But if she was a necromancer, it was imperative she learn about her magick, that she understood it and could control it.
Gabriel had just opened a pathway she’d never believed she could take.
She frowned. “You don’t think I fit in here?”
“No.” His answer came fast. “I think you’ve made yourself try to fit the best you can out of a sense of self-preservation, but you don’t belong here, Aislinn. Your magick is too strong and you’re doing yourself a disservice by suffocating it. You have a secret, a dark one, like the one Bella was keeping. I can feel it in you.”
A week before she might have been offended by the notion that the Seelie Court was anything less than perfect, but not now. She said nothing for a long moment. “How do you know so much about me?”
He turned her to face him and tipped her chin up, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I watch you. I’m interested in you. I want to know who you are inside and out. So I tune in and pay attention.”
“You’re very perceptive.”
“Only because I wish to perceive every aspect of you, Aislinn.”
A shiver ran through her. His eyes were a rich, warm blue and his voice a low, rolling seduction. She believed him.
The world seemed to shift under her feet.
She trusted him
. Her instincts screamed that she could. Maybe she couldn’t before, but now something between them had altered and not just on her end. Gabriel had begun to genuinely care for her at some point and that had changed everything.
How nice it would be to have someone to confide in, to talk to, someone to understand who she was under the ball gowns and jewelry. Bella was the only one who knew the true Aislinn. How strange it was that Gabriel might also know the true her when she’d disliked him so much in the beginning.
There was so much more to Gabriel Cionaodh Marcus Mac Braire than first met the eye.
“And I don’t mean only sexually,” Gabriel added, his voice low and as smooth as warm chocolate, and probably just as bad for her health. “In case you were wondering.”
She hadn’t taken his comment that way when he’d uttered it, but now she did. A flush suffused her body. Images did, too. She’d brought him here with the intention of sleeping with him and she wasn’t typically shy about sex. The fae, the ones who were so long-lived, rarely were about such things. Yet with Gabriel she’d developed a sudden case of bashfulness.
She turned away from the window and walked back into the living room.
“Aislinn?” he questioned from the window.
She turned. “Have you ever known any necromancers?”
He jerked and then went very still. “No. They’re very rare. There has never been a necromancer in Piefferburg to my knowledge. The Shadow King’s maternal line has them. We learn about those necromancers, among others, in school.” He paused and turned back toward the window in a gesture that seemed almost too nonchalant. “Why do you ask?”
She frowned, trying to interpret the odd body language. “I’m curious about them.” She wasn’t going to give more until he did.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
She moved to pour them drinks. Gabriel liked his whiskey straight. She wanted a glass of red wine. “Then pick a necromancer and tell me everything.”
He was still standing by the window. “Brigid Fada Erinne O’Dubhuir. She was—”
“A woman?” Her hand tensed on the bottle of whiskey.
“Yes. Necromancers are usually women. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.” Were her hands shaking?
He walked over and took the glass from her hand. His fingers brushed her slightly and it made her feel hot. “That’s basic. It amazes me how sheltered the Summer Queen keeps you.”
A tornado of defensive rebuttal rose up in her throat, but she just swallowed it down. He was right. There was no sense in denying it. She took a sip of her wine.
“Brigid Fada Erinne O’Dubhuir was the Shadow King’s mother. She ruled the Unseelie before her son took over. She was very powerful, very feared, and was allied with the Lord of the Wild Hunt. He was her consort, in fact.”
She sank down into a chair, her fingers tight around her wineglass. “So, she had control of the sluagh?”
He nodded and sat down on the couch. “The Lord of the Wild Hunt could call them, but it was Brigid who controlled and commanded them. As is the Shadow Royal’s right, she also held the amulet that allowed her to command and control the goblin army. She was invincible.” He smiled with that wry twist she was getting used to seeing him wear. “Or so everyone believed. Necromancy is one of the more feared abilities to have, the power to control the dead.” He smiled ruefully over the rim of his glass. “Everyone is afraid of the dead, of dying. A person who lives alongside that ultimate change and is friends with it is terrifying to even the most powerful fae.”
“And to you?”
“Death comes to us all.” He looked down into his drink. “It doesn’t scare me.”
“What happened to this necromancer?”
“Someone killed Brigid Fada Erinne O’Dubhuir during the night, in her sleep. Someone she trusted, someone who could get past the Shadow Guard. The Lord of the Wild Hunt was found guilty of that crime and executed. They say he was jealous of her power. Necromancy is not an easy path to follow.”
She pressed her lips together and looked down at the floor. Every fiber of her wanted to tell him her secret. She wanted so much to trust him and now she was feeling she could.
He downed the rest of his whiskey. “Aislinn, I know you want to tell me something. You can stop looking like all the answers to life’s questions are somewhere on the tip of that beautiful shoe I bought you and tell me. I already told you I know you’re more than you project, so why not just come out with it.”
She plunged right in. “I think I have Unseelie blood. No. I
know
I have it.” She looked up at him, but he didn’t look shocked. Of course, why would he be? He was Unseelie, too. “I’m not sure where it comes from. My family is said to have blood straight from the veins of the original Seelie Tuatha Dé and the power I have . . . it’s very dark. I seem to have”—she swallowed hard—“a lot of Unseelie in my DNA.”
He laughed. “Look, don’t say it the same way you’d say you had
troll
in your DNA. It’s really not that bad.”
“It’s just that I wonder about my bloodline. How could it have Unseelie in it? I wonder who strayed, who lied, how it even happened.”
“The Seelie and Unseelie mingle more than you might think. It’s more of a shameful secret in the Rose than it is in the Black. Tell me about why you think you have Unseelie blood, Aislinn. What kind of dark power do you have?”
She leaned forward, excitement welling up in her. “Souls come to me. I can see them, talk to them. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and they’re there by my bedside, desperate for someone, anyone, to acknowledge their existence while they wait for the Wild Hunt.” Now that she’d begun talking, she couldn’t stop. She licked her lips and continued, unable to look at him while she spoke. She set her glass down on an end table and bolted up to pace. “It started when I was a child. I’ve never told anyone but Bella, not my mother or even my father. It got worse as I grew older because I never had any training, no way to control it.”
“It’s not an uncommon ability among the Unseelie.”
She glanced at him. “I thought you said it was a rare talent.”
“
Necromancy
is a rare talent, Aislinn; being sensitive to souls isn’t. Necromancy is the ability to call souls from the Netherworld and control them, to make them do the summoner’s bidding.”
She stopped and turned toward him. “But I can call them.”
That made him blink. “You can?”
“I found a—” She stopped and started again, not certain she should reveal the book to him. “There’s a spell. I said the words the other night and a soul appeared. I did it accidently.” She didn’t want to reveal whose soul it had been.
“Under your command?”
“I hope not.” She’d been excited at first, but now the thought turned her stomach, horrified her. “I don’t know. The soul disappeared almost right away. I would never try to call and command a soul. It seems kind of . . . rude.”
He blinked and then gave her a slow, sexy smile that made her stomach flutter. “If you really think that, you would make a good necromancer.”
“So what do you think?” She gazed down at him, chewing her bottom lip. Suddenly she felt the way a human might feel awaiting final word from her doctor on a serious health issue.
Gabriel set his glass aside and rose. He stepped toward her. “I think you’ve got Unseelie blood, and I think it’s possible you’re a necromancer.”
“What do I do about my ability?”
“What do you want to do about it? You have two choices, Aislinn. You can stay here and bury your ability for your entire life and try to keep your secret. You can shop and go to balls and gossip in the hallways. Or you can take a risk, change all that you know, and come to the Unseelie Court to live free, develop your skills, and gain a purpose to your life.”
Live free. She’d never thought of it in those terms. Her face probably showed it, too. Clearly she had some thinking to do. She needed to figure out what her goals were and prioritize them. She also needed to come to terms with the lifetime of mistruths she’d been told about the Black Tower and those who lived within it.
“Know what else I think?” Gabriel said in a low voice. He stepped closer to her and hooked a tendril of hair that had fallen from her updo behind her ear. “I think you’re strong, intelligent, and powerful. I think you’re more courageous than you believe yourself to be and you’ll make the decision that’s the best one for you.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I have faith in you, Aislinn. Whether you stay here or choose to leave, you’ll be just fine.” He leaned forward and kissed her. This time it was soft, sweet—qualities she’d never imagined Gabriel possessed. His lips skated over hers, raising the hair along the back of her neck and goose bumps along her arms and legs. Her fingers curled into his shirt at his shoulders and she hung on for dear life.