The Danger of Destiny (45 page)

A form flitted past the window, then returned to hover. The Asrai stared at me, arms folded, wings blurring. He was Ken-sized, wearing a blue jacket, thigh-high boots, and what was either a pair of hose or some really tight pants. His hair was white, and it flowed down past his hip.

“Ralph?”

He dipped his head in a curt nod. And with a small motion I knew all I needed to know. But in honor of my mom, who was a princess and a woman who always had a gracious word, no matter what the provocation, I said, “Thank you for all your help.”

His eyes shone white.

That's creepy.

I was glad when he flew away.

My friend Merry had tiny, tiny white teeth. “You must leave. Now. We could kill only those we could reach. Those who are blinded will recover soon and your chance to leave this world will end. There are three miles of Fae land to cover before your people are safe.”

“Agreed,” said Trowbridge. “Mouse, if you've got people you want to bring, you get them now.” He gazed at me. “Ready to book it to the Safe Passage?”

Oh hell yes.

*   *   *

Lexi was unsteady on his feet, so the best horse in the Royal Court's stable carried him all the way to the Gatekeeper's swaying rope bridge. And there, in front of his Merenwynian pack, my lover did something extraordinary. When Brutus moved to help Lexi off Jaden's personal mount, Trowbridge stopped him.

“I'll do that,” Trowbridge said.

He didn't say that Lexi was forgiven for his dark past. He didn't have to. The pack watched as the Son of Lukynae looped my brother's arm over his shoulder, and then they followed their Alpha, and Lexi, and me across the swaying bridge and up the mountain, all the way to the narrow stairs cut into the rock face and from there up to the wide ledge that looked over a vista of improbable beauty.

I understood another truth during that hurried retreat to the Safe Passage: what people do means more than what people say.

And perhaps Merry figured that out too, because she stayed beside me, her wings a golden blur, her presence a continuation of a lifetime of belligerent devotion. Yes, she stayed by my side—seeing me all the way to my own freedom—but she didn't sit on my shoulder. She hadn't touched me, not once, since she'd gained hers.

An uneasy silence had fallen between us.

She was the being who'd witnessed every good thing I'd ever done—a ruefully short list—and all the bad things I'd ever done: the thefts, the lies. She was the sister who had been there for all weak moments in my life, to comfort me through the whimpers, the tears, and the fears.

I knew that I was going to lose her.

I was both glad and heartbroken.

*   *   *

It's ridiculously easy to open the Safe Passage once you have the right word and the right coin. I paused to toss another pebble through the cave's mouth. The wind caught the piece of quartz and took it fast, and judging from the pings and dings echoing down the black tunnel and the sudden sweet burst of scent that followed the eventual silence, the current had carried the small stone all the way back to the Peach Pit.

I inhaled deeply. “Smell that?”

Trowbridge nodded. “Apple pie.”

I blinked hard against the sudden burn in my eyes.

“You go first,” Trowbridge said. “Show our pack the way. I'll watch for the Fae, and be the last through.”

Oh Goddess, this was it.

I looked over Trowbridge's shoulder to where Merry hovered. The motion of her wings caused her hair to feather. It was bewitching to watch, as colorful as the maple trees in the fall when their leaves rustle in the wind.

Trowbridge rubbed his mouth. He jerked his head at Lexi and Danen. “I need to talk to you before we start the evacuation. Let's take a little walk.” He led them to the edge of the promontory. Mouse kicked a clod of dirt, then followed.

 

Chapter Thirty-one

“Alone at last.” I lifted my shoulders at Merry, helpless in the need to find the right words to say. I needed good ones, multi-layered and multi-meaning. Ones that were easy to say because I had a freakin' lump in my throat.

She flew closer, bridging the gap between us until she was so close I could have balanced her on my palm if I'd lifted it and turned it upward in appeal. I didn't. I wouldn't. I looked past her, to the trees. “You're not coming with us to Creemore, are you?”

“No,” she replied, her voice a musical sigh.

I couldn't get used to hearing her talk. I'd imagined her voice so many times—my fantasies providing her with a gruff growl or perhaps a rasping purr. Never once had I given her a celestial one. And yet why hadn't I?

She'd been my angel with bloody knuckles.

“This is where I belong.” Her arms rested by her sides, oddly lax. Those years of forced immobility had left her stiff. Perhaps one day her limbs would move as fluidly as her amulet once did.

I just wouldn't be there to see it.

“I don't see Ralph anywhere,” I said with a touch of bitterness. He'd stayed long enough to make sure that the King of the Royal Court was thoroughly dead—according to Trowbridge Ralph had taken a piss on Jaden's body—before he'd flown away, without so much as another kiss-my-royal-ass good-bye. “Couldn't he have waited to accompany you home?”

Unless she wasn't welcome home. And if that was the case, then—

“I don't need to be led home,” she said.

I picked up another pebble and jammed it into my pocket. “I don't either.”

Silence greeted that.

I glanced to her.

She looked away first, refocusing her gaze on Merenwyn's hills. “It's so green,” she mused. “I've seen everything through brown glass. The colors of my home world almost hurt my eyes.”

My grip tightened on the stone.

“The Asrais have been without the prince's leadership for a dozen or more of your lifetimes,” she said, returning to subject of Ralph. “He has returned to gather them into a strike force.”

“Lucky them.”

Her profile was to me, but her mouth lifted in a faint smile. “The Royal Court has, to use your language…”—she paused to make a deliberate switch into English—“got their asses kicked. This is a wonderful opportunity for my people.”

“The Asrais are going to war?” I asked.

“We've always been at war.” Her gown swirled as she pivoted back to face me. “It is our way.”

“You're too good for him,” I told her, meaning Ralph.

“I know.”

“He doesn't deserve you.”

“I know that too.”

“And if he doesn't—”

She interrupted me. “There are people I have missed,” she said. “Ones that mean the world and beyond to me. I'm going to find them, and when I do, I will stay among them for the rest of my life. I don't want to travel anymore.”

“Your family.”

“My loved ones.”

Did she have a Trowbridge? “You've missed them.”

“Always.”

“I'm so sorry,” I whispered.

And then, because she was who she was despite how she looked—and that meant forever fiery, feisty, and impatient—and because she would always be who she was, whether imprisoned inside a hunk of amber or free to roam the worlds, my dearest friend delivered upon my cheek one of her trademark slaps.

“What was that for?”

“Don't get weepy on me. For I can't cry. None of the Asrais can.”

Perhaps not but they can express themselves. As I watched, the hues that twisted in her hair—the burnt browns, the bright golds—became suffused in a warm flush of red.

“That changing-color thing—that was never part of being enchanted, was it?”

“No,” she said simply.

The color of love is, and shall always be for me, a deep hearth red. The same shade I'd seen beating from the heart of Merry when I was just a dumb kid, scared of the shadows in my bedroom, and all I had was her light.

A red, protective, loving glow.

I swallowed against the hurt in my throat. “I'm going to miss you forever.”

Her mouth thinned in pain; then she said in a tone so low that I knew only I could hear her, “Try not to get into too much trouble. I won't be there to fix you anymore.”

“I know.”

“We do not say that we love,” she whispered.

I nodded.

She didn't say good-bye; she just patted my face again—an angel's kiss—before she flew away. I held on to my tears until she was naught but a tiny fading light in a sky full of celestial lights.

She was going home.

It was time for me to do the same thing.

THE LEAP HOME

I took one big step into the portal, holding Lexi's hand, leaving behind my love, and the gathered throng waiting to take that fateful step into the Safe Passage.

The first twenty feet of the windy ride back home were horizontal and painless. Then, the Safe Passage curved sharply downward and Lexi and I were free-falling.

Lexi and I plummeted in absolute dark, with no sense of how long our descent would be. I'd used up all my breath on my first shriek and was sucking in the required oxygen for my next when I saw a faint light below. That source of illumination grew as we whistled toward Earth, and made it possible to note the Safe Passage's walls in better detail.

They were highly polished.

I thought I saw shadows moving behind their reflective surface and I swear, I heard people crying from behind that smooth wall of rock. Those lost cries should have wrung pity from me, but all I could think of was this:
Get me the hell out of here. I want to go home. Back to Ontario, and the Trowbridge manse, and even the League of Extraordinary Bitches. Please, my kind and wondrous Goddess, return me to the small-world worries of Creemore, and let me enjoy once more the blessed world of cars, and refrigerators, and chlorinated water that came out of a tap.

Yup. Totally done with the hero shit.

Lexi's legs were longer; thus he hit the ground first with a grunt and a pillow of dust. My own landing was a trifle softer—mostly because I fell on him. He swore in Merenwynian, then choked out, “Move your knee.”

My knee complied, which earned another pained hiss from my twin.

Four shallow stairs led to a doorway and my own particular promised land. Through it daylight spilled and blue skies beckoned. Cold air stretched icy fingers toward us, announcing that it was late fall in Ontario.

Home, home, home.

I shoved Lexi playfully aside to double-time up those stairs. But since I knew what obstacles were waiting for us aboveground—the preserve of stone statues, the miniature train tracks, the chain-link fence, the total glory of the Peach Pit—I slowed down as soon as I cleared the last step.

My twin didn't. He'd found his second wind, and he thought he was home, you know? He could smell pie. And earth. And—

Lexi skidded to a stop a scant five inches from the iron rails. He stared at them for a split second, his expression perplexed; then his eyes slowly rolled in disbelief to the wolf monuments and thence to the fence.

Trowbridge had torn up the chain-link fence when he followed me to Merenwyn. Two posts had been completely unearthed. They lay on their sides, their ends heavy with cement. A third and fourth post had been partially excavated; these leaned drunkenly to one side, still connected to the twisted carnage of the remaining chain link.

However, in our absence repairs had commenced.

An open-bed truck had been driven down the Peach Pit's sloping hill (the bakery's owner was going to have a hissy fit about the flattened grass) and parked on the pedestrian pathway between the exhibits. The printing on the side of the Chevy read: “Gene's Fantasy Fences.” In smaller print, it said: “Unique custom wrought iron.”

Poisonous cold radiated from the truck. With it came my halfling reaction to the Fae's kryptonite: numbing fatigue and shivers. So much iron inside, all of it nearly pure. A barrier made from such pure iron would slow down a horde of incoming Fae.

If not kill them.

New postholes had been dug. But the shovels had been abandoned. And what we had left was a pack of Weres milling about up in the parking lot, none of whom looked all that friendly.

I knew them.

For they were Creemore Weres.

*   *   *

Crap.
I knew that Trowbridge and I would have to eventually face the itty-bitty problems we left in our home world. I just didn't expect them to be
waiting
for us. My gaze scanned the half-dozen wolves standing in the parking lot up the hill, noting the presence of my old enemy, Rachel Scawens. Standing beside her was her daughter, Petra.

Petra wore a neutral expression.

I couldn't say the same for the rest of our greeting party. Two days ago, the sum of the Creemore Weres' aggressive scents and brow-lowering scowls would have made my sphincter tighten. But I'd seen stuff since then, you know? I'd seen people fight for their lives, not just because their feelings were hurt or because they were hoping to upgrade their position in the pack, but because they had no choice.

It was either fight or die.

And it was like that for the Raha'ells every freakin' day of their lives.

Rachel had a rifle. Typical.

Two other Weres had brought their boomsticks too.

Also typical.

I smothered a sigh. “Last time I saw you, Rachel, you were walking away from me, leaving me and the others to duke it out with some bikers. And now here you are, with your daughter”—I nodded relatively benignly to Petra—“and a few Creemore wolves. How'd that happen?”

Petra answered, “Cordelia called from a pay phone and said that our Alpha and his mate needed us. Then my mom called my cell and said she needed to be picked up. Once we got her, we came back here because it's the last known location for our Alpha. We found St. Silas and his men digging a new fence.”