By the Light of the Moon (23 page)

And now there was some little blond boy, trying to catch her attention while she’d fucked some lowly wolf. And then she’d glowed and her magic shone clear and sweet through the door. None of it made sense, none of it was acceptable at all.

“Who … who is it?” the voice exhaled again and Brock’s face hardened against the strange little creature.

• • •

In the end, he rushed away, trying to make as little noise as possible as he headed for the visitor’s wing. That little bitch of a crossling better explain herself before he exploded. The lighting still too low, he allowed a hint of glow to emanate from his features; who was he hiding from now if the daughter of the house had suddenly exploded in a bright light up there? How could this have gotten past him? Was she a changeling? And who’d had the gall to bring a changeling into his domain? And why would she have felt so incredibly human all those years? Strange and odd, yes, but definitely human.

He quickened his steps, shaking his head as he went, gown fluttering behind him. The visitor’s wing was guarded; a fact that only caused him another growl of annoyance in a night where his control of the Keep seemed to running through his fingers like water or sand.

“Your witch,” he growled, “I have to speak with her. Now.”

The guardsman looked confused, but the hit of compassionate glow received through the wood of his door made it almost child’s play to bend his mind to the idea of letting this harmless old man pass. What harm would it do to let the old crone see a boyfriend? The boy even cackled a little when Brock rushed past him and toward the room in which the faintest of crossling energy glimmered.

• • •

“Explain yourself,” he growled, less than a second after throwing her door open. She was in her bed, awake in an instant and pulling a sheet over her nightgown. Humans.

“What?” she asked, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as they tried to adjust to the darkness. She was staring at him, swallowed and then shook her head. Oh, the guilty always looked the same.

“Now.” Brock closed the door behind him, his brows raised high and his arms folded across his chest.

Iris’s eyes were wide with fright; it was a state he liked them in. Frightened people told the truth so much more easily, especially frightened humans. He had seen it time and time again. There was nothing quite so effective than to threaten their teensy little brains with the loss of their worthless lives, or maybe just a limb or two. She didn’t look like she would hold up to much questioning.

“I thought we had an understanding, crossling; you tell me everything I want to know and I will let you live the few years you have left in that sack of old bones you call a body.” He paused for effect, glaring at her as he pulled the silver knife from his pocket. “But you lied to me. Lied straight in my face. It wasn’t you that day and you know it. What were you doing in her room?”

• • •

Again, Iris tried to take a breath but she faltered even there. Just a few hours ago, she had been confident that together, she and Maeve would find a way to fix it all; that Moira would be fine.

“How … ?” she stammered. In an instant, the Fae was upon her, his knee on her bed, his hand roughly pulling her hair back and his knife at her throat.

“I’m asking the questions and I believe I have. Talk. Now.”

“I was … I was trying to … see her. But she wasn’t there.” Iris stammered. Her body was rigid and shaking and she had utterly no control over it. She knew that heroes were the kind of people who kept their mouths shut. They were the kind of people who looked danger in the face and risked their lives to save others, but then she had never been a hero, had never cared for anything enough in her life, thanks to Fae like him. “Then … then she came back, g-glowing.”

“Why did you lie?” he continued, “and why are you here?”

“I … I just … I just came here to help him arrange a marriage that’s … that’s … ” her words faltered into a high-pierced, strangling sound. She could feel the knife cut through the outer layers of skin, and then deeper.

“You know … even a crossling like you … that blood of yours is quite valuable. I assume you use it for that excuse you call magic? You think if I took just a little, you wouldn’t mind, would you? A flagon or two?”

It was then that she started to shake in earnest.

“Please … please!” she spluttered out, breathing fast in and out and shaking her head like a crazy person. Blood. Always blood. Fae and their obsession with blood. Suddenly, she was two years old again, was tiny and helpless and there was blood everywhere, tinting her vision scarlet.

“Please. I’ll tell you, I don’t care, I’ll tell you everything … please!”

“Better … start talking,” Brock almost soothed. In that moment, he looked nothing like an old man. Not at all. It was like his disguise slowly started to melt before her eyes, but she still saw everything in a frighteningly red hue.

“I … I knew she’s not human so I went to see if I could sense it. If everybody could. I didn’t know about you.”

“How did you know?”

“I … ”

Her hesitation earned her another, almost gentle cut, right under the first one, both oozing blood. Her tears were streaming over the wrinkled and hollow cheeks; they stung in the wounds and watered the thick red liquid.

“I’m her sister,” she got out, then coughed and shook her head. “I … she was hidden here, and … I wanted to make sure she’s all right.”

“Why Fairester? And don’t even try.”

“He … there’s F … there’s crossling in his family history. We … I thought if she married him, she’d be hidden if her powers ever … well.” Her chest felt hollow. She could breathe again, but now she knew she deserved the pain and the panic and the life of loss and hardships she had lived.

“Who is we?”

“My mother … and I.” It was almost easy now, her voice all but lifeless. “M … Maeve.”

Brock exhaled a deep sigh and nodded. It made sense.

“Goddess … ” he whispered and shook his head. “Where is she now?”

“Please … she’s the … the only thing I have left … ”

“Where?”

“The … the village. She … she didn’t know about you either. She just, she’s just trying to protect her daughter, that’s all. She’s not … she doesn’t want anything else. I promise!” Rambling and continuing to talk seemed the only way forward now, as though the moment he’d leave the room, her mother’s and the girl’s life were forfeit.

“Please! She’s just a girl and … and none of them … ” Again she shook her head, then rubbed her face, but Brock was already backing away. Almost tenderly, he scraped her knife along her throat and collected the blood on its blade. It sparkled in the reflection of his glow.

“You made a mistake, crossling. This Castle is mine. This fief is mine. This little girl … is mine. Don’t get in my way again.”

Shuddering at the way Brock was examining her blood closely, bringing the knife close to his eyes, then sniffing it and turning his head this way and that. Finally, he took a finger, dipped it into the blood and brought it to his tongue like a nobleman tasting expensive wine. Iris wanted to throw up. Instead, she looked away, trying to keep breathing.

“You went through our crossling rituals, didn’t you?” he asked almost quietly, lifting his eyes from the knife. “Declared non-Fae.”

Iris nodded, fear and spite fighting in her face.

“And then your mother thought, hmm … with this next one, I want to do what I think is best. And she abducted her from the hands of the Fae who tried to help coax out her magic … didn’t she? That’s why she’s on the run, that’s why she’s wanted.”

Iris wondered for a moment how much he really knew and how much was guesswork. How long had he been Lakeside and how long had it been since he had been
Across
. She looked down, for fear her thoughts could somehow be divined from her eyes and then shrugged.

“It didn’t feel like a good thing,” she said hollowly. Blood. All this blood.

“That is not for you to decide, crossling. Someone like you could never understand our ways. Pain has its rewards for those strong enough to take them. You were not. You were all too human. Pity.” There was absolutely no sympathy in his voice and finally, he shrugged and pulled a tiny vial out of one of the folds of his robe. Almost tenderly, he spit onto the knife and used his finger to mix blood and saliva until it was liquid enough to drop into the vial when he coaxed it in. He didn’t spill a single drop.

“I have your blood now, crossling. I hope you know what that means.”

Iris nodded again, her fingers pressed against the fine cuts on her neck. She looked a mess to Brock, so human, so over-ripe in the late autumn of her tiny life. Half-life really, the version humans called life as though they had any idea what life was, or where its power came from and what fuelled it inside.

“Try your hardest not to be a nuisance to me anymore, will you? I would hate to kill a pitiful little creature like you.” Staring at her out of cold eyes, he turned abruptly and left her room.

Iris got out of bed. With a shaking hand, she went through her storage of herbs and plants and finally found the broadleaf she was looking for. Almost fresh. She quickly stuck it into her mouth. It was harder to chew into a mash when it was half-dried and when her throat seemed parched and scorched. Finally, though, the fibrous matter coalesced with her saliva enough to form a thick paste that she spread over her cuts. Only then did she allow herself to cry again.

She had ruined any chance of success. She had finished them, finished Maeve and all for nothing. Her mother’s sacrifice would be meaningless and Moira was right there in his clutches. She couldn’t even warn either of them.

After a long time, she crawled back into bed, leaned her head against the wall and sat there, waiting for the morning, for a scream, for the feeling of death or fear. But nothing came. Morning dawned hours later and Iris felt as though she had aged ten years in a single night.

• • •

The morning dawned behind the eastwards window of Moira’s room. It was harsh almost, glaring and strange to her still red and puffy eyes. Her skin had stopped behaving so strangely hours earlier but she didn’t fall asleep again. Not that night and it didn’t feel like she would be able to in any of the nights to come.

She could still feel him. His warmth and heaviness on top of her, his fingers between her legs, the fullness of his manhood inside of her. It had felt so different and so new, almost painful but in that space on the edge that balanced just the side of incredible. And then he had spilled his seed on her stomach, and she hadn’t washed it away. It was still there, dry now and cracking when she moved or breathed.

There was a sense to her where she was still aware of him, not too far away now. It was new, but she was quite sure that he was also awake, and unhappy. The wolf was the stronger impression somewhere at the edge of her consciousness just like the fleeting images of a dream trying to escape into the abyss past memory. But the wolf stuck there, sad and whining for a scratch or a cuddle.

She had stopped crying hours ago. Every once in a while when she recalled his words, it happened again but mostly, she just stared ahead unseeing. She wanted to climb onto the window ledge and throw herself onto the rock-side. She wanted to cut off all her hair and dress in boy’s clothes and run away — run away and never see this place again, never see this bed again or the orchard or the garden. She wanted to rewind time and never, ever meet him. No … even in impossible fantasies, she could never maintain this. She wanted to rewind time and not be a freak, to not begin glowing like an oil lamp after they made love. After she became his and he spit her back out.

Of course, that bordered onto the bigger issue; even she, in her agony knew that. She wasn’t Fae. How could she be? She had a human father. And therein lay the utter possibility if she managed to believe that Fae were real. She had always known that Lady Cecile was not her true mother. Her true mother had been some girl her father had bedded before his marriage. Was it possible? Could he have been with a Fae woman?

It wasn’t the kind of question she could ask her father, but it made simply denying it almost impossible. She couldn’t deny what she didn’t know for sure. And hadn’t she seen it with her own eyes? There were stories of Fae, many of them. And in some of them, the legend did have it that the light of the moon made their skin luminescent. But those were legends, metaphors. Except here she was, with the clear memory of her glowing arms and legs burned into her mind.

There was nobody she could have asked. Not a single person to even go to for help; and without that, she didn’t know what else to do than sit in her room and stare ahead. Her father would think her even more insane than he did already, Owain hated her, Bess would be scared, and she didn’t know anybody else she trusted.

Except Brock. Her teacher had been with her for so many years. All she knew of Fae — and not all of it was terrible — she knew from him. He would know. At least, if there was anyone alive in the castle who could help her now, it was her tutor. But wouldn’t he think her crazy too? Wouldn’t he go to her father and talk to him about his scared girl’s insanity? Was she insane? An affliction of the mind would explain so many things; except the one; Owain’s expression when he’d looked upon her skin. He had seen the same thing. There was no doubt in her.

And he would be the best person to ask; but then she would have to speak to him again. She would have to be in his presence and ask for a favor after he had scorned her so horribly. The very idea made tears of anger and hurt pride and fear and heartache glimmer in her swollen eyes. She couldn’t go to Owain. Not about this, not about anything. Judging by his expression, he would ask to be let go and leave the Keep and that was the best thing he could do. Except that thought made the tears roll down her cheeks again, where she dabbed at them angrily. They hurt, raw and aching skin.

With nowhere to go, Moira didn’t open when Bess knocked at sunrise to help her wash and dress. When Bess called, she didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, when Bess was ready to fetch her father to check if she had gotten out again, Moira answered.