As I looked out at a sea of bloodstained caps, monstrous faces—or the lack thereof—and ravenous eyes, dread washed over me, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.Mab help us all.
As I turned to my steed, the Dark Fool entwined his fingers and helped me to mount. “Very well played, Your Majesty,” he whispered. “You have won their allegiance quite nicely. I have hopes for you after all.”
I had passed his test, but on some level had failed my own.
Forty-Eight
With every step I tookaway from my mortal life I grew colder and harder, and encompassed my Unseelie side more and more. It was necessary to feed my people, to save them, but that does not mean there was no cost. Lileas became a stranger to my bed. She served me still, fed me breakfast and combed out my hair, but the companionship we knew once had long passed. Amadan could not or would not provide the same companionship. When he saw my spirits were down and I was lonely, his solution was to throw another party, get me drunk out under the trees, and make love to me out under the stars. An adequate distraction, but afterwards I was always left wanting.
At last, I grew too frustrated with the flippancy of the Dark Fool and the apathy of my other companions. There was muttering again of dissent among the Aos Sith, the juniper nymphs had an overabundant harvest and kept trying to foist off their latest vintage on me, and Jamie was at an awkward stage where he did not wish to spend time with me indoors. I needed advice, from someone who would neither tease nor flatter, who would be honest and not hold back her thoughts.
I needed Morven.
I wandered out to the scrying pool, idly running my fingers along the knife I now kept at my waist until I drew blood. The wound stung more than I had expected, for who can cause us as much pain as ourselves? I resisted the urge to lick the blood from my finger and, without a moment’s thought, let the blood spill into the pool.
The drop of blood floated for a moment on the surface of the water, ribboning out in lazy spirals, far more than I had surely bled. Then, like a stone, it began to sink.
My sacrifice accepted, I spoke.
“Show me where the brownie Morven now dwells.”
The roseate liquid swirled in the depths, and an image coalesced: a cottage on the edge of the village, with a thatched roof and a yard to grow herbs and vegetables out front. Round the back, I knew, one would find a sheepfold, abandoned now, and with no leaping Cullen to tend the flocks. My eyes stung at the recollection, and something caught in my throat, but I did not look away.
The door seemed to disappear, or I passed beyond it somehow, to see the bare dirt floor inside the cottage and a hearth overly filled with smoke. Sparse bachelor quarters, these were, though once I thought love made them big enough for two.
I could hardly believe the shepherd and I once lived here. My eyes passed over the mattress where we had slept, its blankets pulled up to cover its current occupant, though a single red-gold plait peeped out. I could not bear to look at her and moved my attention to the cabinet Thomas had built to put my herbs in. The hearth where I had prepared my pottage and brews.
And the copper pot hanging just over it, out of which dangled two scrawny legs.
“Morven,” I cried out, though she could not hear me, as I was not there. “Oh, she is still at the cottage, looking after it even now I am long gone.”
Envy filled every corner of my being. I had given up my place to the true Bess, for it should have been hers all along. But I never intended to give up my friend.
Friend? Have ye not all but forgotten her since ye moved to the realm of Faery? She is naught but a subject to you now.
No.
I closed my eyes and pulled all the magic that belonged to me in this world to the core of my being, clasping it tight. “Hawthorn and alder, ash and yew, bring me again to the home I once knew.”
The magic came as a rush of wind, a sudden gust, and I stood in the shepherd’s cottage, just as Morven’s copper pot fell to the ground, landing with a thud on the dirt floor.
She rocked it back and forth, tipped herself over like a tortoise for a moment, then threw the pot back and away. It was then she noticed me.
For a moment, we froze like thieves in the night, hearts pounding, eyes wide. But Morven recovered first, slowly backing away from me, and would have crawled back into the pot had I not caught her arm.
She blinked.
Smoke assaulted my senses, I tasted iron, shut away in the cabinet, locked up in the kist, it did not matter. I had no tolerance for it anymore.
And that insistent pushing and pulling, sharp as knives and crackling like lightning, the sensation of being in the same place as the woman I had once been.
Bess Grieve.
Lying on the mattress behind us, she must have felt it too, for she tossed and turned in her sleep, moaning softly, sweat beading upon her forehead as she exposed the red birthmark on her throat. I touched the side of my own throat, where once that rose had bloomed, but felt only the torc I wore, its sharp silver thorns.
“Dinna wake the mortal,” Morven hissed.
“Of course not.” But her concern roused a pang inside me, an ache that she had taken True Bess as her charge instead of me. I swallowed deep. “Thistle and broom,” I murmured. “My words to your ears only. Your words only to mine. Let there be silence in this place.”
