His creature, Barthe, was an Unseelie beast like she’d never before encountered. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the hulking thing that stood so protectively near his liege. He seemed imbued with some Zen-like ability to remain perfectly and utterly still and quiet, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that he was rapid and deadly when the object of his protection was threatened.
But Aodh Críostóir Ruadhán O’Dubhuir could take care of himself. It was said that when the Phaendir trapped him to put him in Piefferburg, he fought so hard he killed fifty of their men and tapped all their magickal resources. It took the Phaendir a month to recover. The Shadow King, like the Summer Queen, had many different kinds of magick—all of them lethal. His only equal was the Summer Queen herself, and because of that they remained immortal enemies, locked in an eternal cold war.
Aislinn had never met him in person, had never even glimpsed him from afar even though he’d lived across the square from her for her entire life. Unlike the Shadow King and unlike Gabriel, she’d been born in Piefferburg. Likely she would die in Piefferburg. The thought made her heart heavy, but it was something she’d reluctantly accepted long ago.
At the moment, the man in question was staring at her from across his living room. It had surprised her to be brought by the Black Tower majordomo, Hinkley, to the Shadow King’s living area and not to a throne room. It appeared this royal did not stand on ceremony.
At least there were no goblins here. They gave Aislinn the heebies.
She hadn’t had the luck of running into Bella or Ronan, and she acutely regretted not asking for Gabriel before coming to see the king.
There was something about the Shadow King that made her nervous, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. Her intuition again, telling her something her eyes could not see. Of course it made sense she was uneasy; she’d just drastically altered every aspect of her life.
“I am so glad you decided to come to us, Aislinn. Gabriel has told me so much about you.” The Shadow King’s hobgoblin servant arrived with a tray holding a flute of what appeared to be sparkling water and she took it gratefully. “I think with your skills, you’ll be a real asset to the tower.”
Her grip tightened on the glass. “So did Gabriel tell you about my . . . blood?”
“When he came to me to ask for forgiveness for his transgression, he mentioned you to me. He said there was more to you than met the eye and I should consider you an asset to the Unseelie Court if you decided to defect.” He smiled, but the sight didn’t reassure her. “And here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“I know you must feel out of your element right now, Aislinn. I realize what shaded truths are told about us in the Rose Tower.” He spread his hands. “I don’t care how the Summer Queen rules her people. The Seelie, most of them anyway, are of no value to me. However, it does prove to make the misplaced Unseelie nervous when they first arrive. That’s an inconvenience.”
“Misplaced Unseelie?”
He motioned to her glass. “Please, drink, Aislinn. Relax. By misplaced Unseelie, I mean people like yourself. Unseelie born into the Rose Tower and raised to believe they are Seelie. Unseelie keeping the truth of their dark gifts a secret.”
She choked on her sip of water and coughed. It was the first time she’d ever been referred to as out-and-out Unseelie.
“We’re happy to have you, Aislinn. Your blood is esteemed within these walls.” He paused and smiled wolfishly. “In fact, I could hardly wait to get you here.”
She blinked. Her vision was going a little blurry. Maybe it was exhaustion and stress. “What do you mean?” She set her glass down and touched her forehead. A horrible pounding pain had started in her temple as well.
“And you came of your own accord to boot. That was a treat. I feared I’d have to send some unsavory characters to fetch you. Looks like Gabriel didn’t fail after all. He just brought you here in a way that was unorthodox for him . . . through honesty, well, mostly, anyway, and without the use of sex.”
Her head snapped up. “You sent Gabriel to lie to me and seduce me to your court?”
“Actually, I sent him to fuck you, addict you to him, and lure you here. He failed.”
Shock surged through her veins. “Why?”
The Shadow King took a few steps toward her, his pale brows rising into his hairline. “Why?”
She gasped as pain shot through her stomach. She rolled off the couch, to her hands and knees on the soft plush of the carpet. Glancing up at her glass on the end table, she put two and two together.
Danu
, he’d poisoned her drink. Her vision was fading to black.
The Shadow King leaned forward and bared his teeth. “Because the Unseelie blood running through your veins is mine . . .
daughter
.”
TWELVE
GABRIEL
sat on a charmed iron bench in a charmed iron cell wearing charmed iron cuffs and nursing a raging headache from where Barthe had used his big, hard head to knock him unconscious. Even days later the memory—and the bruise—of that hit lingered. He was surprised it hadn’t cracked his skull. The beatings he’d received from his captors once he’d come to in his cell would have killed a human. As it was, they had knocked him out again for over a day.
Iron sickness, an illness the fae contracted when exposed for long periods to charmed metal, had long since set in. He was sweaty, though his extremities were ice-cold and he couldn’t stop shivering. He’d heal the injuries from the beatings slower with the sickness on him.
His magick was obliterated in all this metal. His powers as an incubus neutralized. Ordinarily those wouldn’t help him here, but his jailer was female.
Oh, the irony.
He also had no way to call the sluagh from here. Instead, he was wrapped in charmed iron, rendered magickally impotent and fearing for Aislinn.
It had been about a week.
When the Shadow King wanted something, he got it. It was only a question of time before they got to Aislinn and either convinced her to come to the Black Tower of her own free will or took her by force.
Somehow, Aislinn was the Shadow King’s direct descendant —
his daughter
. Since Aodh had said that Aislinn was both a necromancer and his relative, that meant she had inherited the magickal abilities of his family’s maternal line. That could only mean she was the granddaughter of Brigid Fada Erinne O’Dubhuir.
The Shadow King feared Aislinn’s strength. She was the heir to the Unseelie Throne and the king knew he could never hold his seat against her if she decided she wanted it. The only way to ensure he kept his throne was to kill her. He needed to do it before Aislinn learned how to wield her significant power.
The door to the cell opened and the one person he wanted least to see walked within. “Gabriel.”
Gabriel spit on the floor near the Shadow King’s expensively shod foot, narrowly missing the crystal-knobbed fighting staff he used as a walking stick.
Silence.
“I’d appreciate it if you would leave so I can rot in peace,” said Gabriel in his iron sickness-ruined voice without looking up.
The Shadow King’s shoes stepped back and the royal paced to the opposite side of the tiny cell. “Come now, Gabriel. I don’t want you here any more than you want to be here.”
He lifted his gaze and cemented it on the Shadow King’s eyes. “Harm Aislinn and I’ll find a way to destroy you. Count on it.”
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that before, though I fail to see how you’d be able to keep your word.” His gaze strayed to the charmed iron. “I think we have the better of you.”
“I’ll find a way,” Gabriel ground out.
“I did what I had to do. You, of all people, should understand that sometimes you have to do unsavory things to survive. I know all about your teenage years in the back alleys of Piefferburg.”
Gabriel didn’t hear anything but the tense the Shadow King spoke in.
I did what I had to do
. Past tense. Aislinn,
past tense
.
Gabriel was up and running at the Shadow King before he even realized he’d moved. The cuffs snapped his arms back when he reached the end of the chain, like a dog on a leash. “What did you do to her, Aodh? I swear to the gods if you hurt her, I will make you pay.”
The Shadow King blinked innocently at him. “There we go with the empty threats again. Gabriel, as I said, I did what I had to do. It’s as simple as that. Now, please, forgive me and let’s allow this to flow under the bridge. I need you exactly where you are—leading the Wild Hunt. I’m sorry you became so attached to this woman. It was . . . unfortunate.”
“This woman?” Gabriel roared. “She is
your daughter
. She is
your blood
.” He refused to use past tense when speaking of her. He pulled on his chains, making them clank. Every square inch of his body throbbed. “If I ever get out of here, I’ll take you off that throne you love so much.”
“I intend to keep my throne,” the Shadow King barked. “The woman came to the Black of her own free will. I have you to thank for that. She never would have come if not for the part you played.”
Gabriel closed his eyes against a swell of nausea.
Gods, no
.
The Shadow King sighed and turned toward the door. “I’ll give you a week to come to your senses. Aeric is covering you at the moment, but if you still feel this way when I return, I’ll have to make his temporary position permanent and you know what that means.”
Gabriel seethed and stared at the closed door, his chest rising and falling rapidly in his rage. The rage was good, better than the despair and grief that nibbled on the edges of his mind. If he gave in to the despair and grief he truly would be helpless, but rage was a tool he could use. He’d learned that as a child and it was a lesson he’d never forgotten.
Aislinn was dead and it was his fault.
He’d trusted where he shouldn’t have. That was a lesson he’d learned as a boy, too—never trust. Yet he’d trusted the Shadow King not to harm her. Stupid, foolish man. It was his fault Aislinn had met her end; his fault one of the brightest lights in Piefferburg was now extinguished.
That odd feeling that he’d identified as guilt was now completely eclipsed—drowned—in a sensation he hadn’t felt since he was a child—grief. It was an open wound in the middle of him and would cause him pain for the rest of his life.
Which, blessedly, wouldn’t be very long.
DRIFTING.
The pain in his wrists kept Gabriel from sleeping at night, that and his failure to find a way to escape. His mouth was dry, his head pounded, and his body felt drained of energy constantly as a result of the charmed iron touching his skin.
Shifting on the thin mattress of his bed, he allowed his arms to dangle suspended above his head by the chain. They were asleep, but it didn’t matter. The dangerous despair had nibbled its way in and settled into the center of his bones. It gathered at the back of his throat like a poisonous berry he couldn’t quite swallow.
Aislinn was dead and there was no way things could ever go back to the way they had been before. It didn’t matter that the iron sickness had leached into every pore of his body or that he couldn’t even feel the trail of blood snaking its way down his arms from his wrists.
For most of the night he’d drowsed, slipping in and out of awareness, the scent of blood and unwashed body caught in his nostrils. It was toward the edge of dawn that he heard the scuffle in the corridor.
Raised voices, shouting.
He made no move to sit up. There was no way to do that without extreme pain and, anyway, likely it was only a prisoner uprising of some sort. His eyelids drifted downward and he wished whoever it was well. May they cause the prison guards hell.
Drifting
.
“Gabriel.”
He forced his too-heavy eyelids open to find Aeric staring at him. Licking his dry lips, he stared back. This had to be a hallucination. He’d finally gone over the edge of his sanity. There was no way anyone could break into the prison. With the possible exception of Ronan or his brother Niall, but it was Aeric looking at him now.
“Get up, Gabriel. We’re getting you out of here.” Aeric grinned and dangled a key in front of his eyes.
Gabriel grimaced and closed his eyes again. “Go away.”
He wanted to dream of sweet Aislinn of the silver blond hair and gray eyes, of the sweet curves he could explore at his leisure in this place while her sighs and murmurs filled his ears. In his dreams she was warm and alive, laughing and dancing. Happy and in love with him. In his dreams he’d done things differently and she’d survived the insane Shadow King. Bells tinkled here and contentment reigned. They were together.
He liked his dreams.
Above him, the hallucination of Aeric growled, his light Irish brogue suddenly thicker. “You’re getting up if I have to rip your arms off. We’re risking our lives to get you out of this hole. Don’t give up on me, man, or I will kick your ass.”
“We’re?” He opened his eyes to view his host blearily. All of them had come. Melia stood behind Aeric, and Aelfdane was guarding the cell door. Ah, and there was Ronan standing near Bran. And was that Niall over there? Maybe this wasn’t a hallucination after all.
Aeric yanked him to a sitting position and unlocked his cuffs. Gabriel grunted in discomfort. “You didn’t think we were just going to leave you in here, did you? I don’t aspire to lead the hunt, my friend. That’s your job.” He gave his head a sharp shake. “I don’t want it.”
Pain shot through his arms and into his hands as the blood rushed back through. He made fists and gritted his teeth. The ache was good; at least it was something other than the bitter numbness that had been ruling him.
“Aislinn,” he pushed out. “The Shadow King killed her and it’s my fault. Just leave me here.”