“King of the Fairies, Daigh the Chaotic, I call you to me,” Aline intoned. She leaned over the mirror, smearing her blood across the glass.
“King of the Fairies, Daigh the Merciful, I call you to me.” I copied her, dragging my own arm across the glass. I expected the mirror to feel cool against my hurt skin. Instead, the surface burned. I yelped and whipped my hand away.
From behind my back, Aline touched my shoulder, and a shiver of spirit power flowed through her fingers and jolted down my arm. I added a tiny piece of my own – I didn’t want to waste the deep well the guys raised up inside me – and directed the stream of power into the mirror, focusing my will on the face of the fae king. I gasped as a dark mist rose from the surface of the mirror. The mist thickened, becoming long black tendrils, like the fog that seeped from the cracks at the church.
The mists shifted. Daigh’s face appeared in the mirror, his emerald eyes wide and searching. The flowers in his crown had wilted, hanging off the twisted vines like the dry skeleton of fall. Instead, jagged bones jutted from the crown – talismans of his dominance in the world of the dead.
My spirit magic tugged at me, drawing me closer to him, holding me in his sway. The power he exuded even through the mirror terrified me. It took all my will not to sink back behind Aline and let her face him alone.
“My daughter, we meet again.” His tongue flicked out and licked along his lips. I wanted to throw up.
“Hi. I actually don’t want to talk to you, since you’re trying to kill my coven and bring the dead back to life to terrorise the world and all. But I figured since you’re doing this all the name of some new utopia you foolishly believe is going to happen, I’d better set you straight on a few matters.”
“I know you’ve seen the vision,” Daigh said. “You know that we are victorious. This castle crumbles to dust, and all the witches who stand around you burn at the stake.”
Behind me, I heard a gasp.I guess the guys know about the vision now.
“You got the vision right, but you extrapolated your victory from it, and you got it wrong. That future is not your world. It will be Liah’s.”
Daigh snorted. “Liah is one of my most loyal fae.”
“Is she? Or is she the fae plotting to steal your crown?” I pressed. “Liah knows that this battle your fighting isn’t about returning the fae to their rightful realm or freeing the ghosts of long-felled trees. She knows you’ve dragged the fae to ruin for your selfish desires.”
“And what desire is this?”
“You want your family back,” I said. “You want to be a part of a family again. That’s why you want me to join you. It’s got nothing to do with my power. It’s because I’m Aline’s daughter, and you loved her.”
“You’ve been reading too many fairy stories, daughter.” Daigh laughed. “The fae do not love, least of all the Unseelie. Blake will tell you. I was nothing but cruel to him.”
“What about his fae day?” I asked.
Daigh opened his mouth, and shut it again.
“If love is a weakness, then you’re the weakest fae of all. You’re losing them,Father,” I grinned. “If Liah gets the other fae on her side, she’ll never allow you to have what you truly desire. And she’s already turning them. After all, her vision is purer than yours.”
“If you called me here to gloat over some victory, then you call is premature.”
“I called you because I think we can help each other. I think there’s a way we can both get what we want, and no one has todie. Mostly, I called you because I met someone who wants to say hi.” I stepped aside, giving Daigh his first look at Aline since the night she banished him back to the fae realm.
His reaction was…interesting. His expression remained the same – stony, ethereal. But heblinked. That blink said more than a gasp or a frown ever could.
“Hello, Daigh,” Aline flipped her wavy hair over her shoulder and smiled that kind smile of hers and gave him a little wave.
“This is a trick,” he growled.
“I am no trick.” Aline slid her hands over her hips in a suggestive way. “I am flesh and blood again.”
Daigh laughed. “Nice try. You’re Blake wearing a glamour. You can’t fool me.”
Blake stepped forward so he stood between Aline and I. He wrapped his fingers around my hand. With his other hand, he gave Daigh the finger.Flynn must’ve taught him that.
I grinned. “No glamour. Here’s Blake, and this is Aline.”
Daigh’s eyes widened. “You can’t be real.”
“I am.”
“You told me that you and my mother had a single…” I searched for the right word. “Dalliance, down by the sidhe. But that’s not true. You were compelling Robert Smithers for months and months. You tricked her into sleeping with you, into creating a binding. Why didn’t you say that before?”
