Tressa's Treasures (The King's Jewel Book 1) (27 page)

Now that I had experienced the world with her, I knew I would want her forever. I understood why Connor couldn't let her go.

We said our goodbyes and walked home, Tressa holding one of my hands, Sophia holding the other. I couldn’t get my mind off of Connor’s words. I hadn't realized that it had put me into a brooding silence through dinner and getting Sophia off to bed.

"What's wrong with you tonight? You're so quiet," Tressa asked as we got into bed. She curled on her side, putting her head on my shoulder as usual. I pulled the sheet up over us.

"I heard part of your conversation with Connor earlier."

"Please don't tell me he makes you jealous. He's nothing but an old family friend." I smiled grimly.

"I think he wants to be more than that."

"But—" I put a finger to her lips.

"It's okay to admit it. If I thought for one minute you wanted that too..." I shook my head, disagreeing with what I had been about to say. "No. I was going to say I would get out of the way, but that's a lie. I could never just hand you over to someone else. I'm not that selfless. I want you too much. Suffice it to say, I know you aren't interested in him."

Her brow crinkled.

"Then what is it?"

"I’ve been wondering if he’s right. If I'm no good for you." I coughed to cover that I had choked up.

She surprised me by laughing. She pushed herself up to sit on her knees, tugging on me until I sat up too so we could lean back together against the headboard.

"Xander, nothing in this world could be as good for me as you are. I have never felt such unadulterated joy as I do with you. This can't possibly be wrong."

She laughed again when my expression lightened. I pulled her to my lap where she sat, straddling me. I reached up, wrapping my fingers into her hair pulling her to me. Her mouth was warm, soft, and yielding. She trailed gentle kisses from my mouth down my neck, to my chest, and lower.

It wasn't until much later, when I was drifting off to sleep, that I realized I had forgotten to tell her about my discovery.

CHAPTER TWENTY

TRESSA

I expected to drive at least partway to our destination, but instead, Alexander led me north into the tall pine trees that lined the property behind the lake.

"Where are we going?" I asked him for the third time.

"I'm not telling you," he said. "I found something, but I want you to see it for yourself.”

We hiked through the woods without a path to follow. He was quite solicitous of me as we navigated the terrain, holding my elbow for extra stability whenever the underbrush became especially thick or uneven. However, I felt an urgency in him to move quickly. The obvious excitement that ricocheted through him amused me as I considered what could possibly make him react in this way.

After an hour of wrestling through thicket the woods began to thin, the terrain smoothing out and making it easier to walk. No longer worried for my safety, Alexander couldn't keep himself in pace with me. He kept walking a few yards beyond me before returning to my side, as though torn between staying with me and running ahead.

Each time he returned, he pointed out a different landmark: a boulder with a peculiar shape or a stream that flowed over moss covered rocks.

"You're making me think you want me to remember how to get back here," I said after his third lap.

"Exactly," he nodded
,
grinning.

"Do you really think I'd come here without you?"

"You’ll want to know the way back, just in case," he said with confidence.

I tried to imagine what he had found. He was looking for River Rock, which only existed in Faery. Even if my grandfather had planted stones for him to find, it wouldn't be enough to merit such a fuss.

I noticed a patch of dandelions and out of habit, squatted to pull one out by the root.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Dandelions have several healing properties. It's always good to have a supply on hand."

"Really? And here I've spent years trying to kill them out of my yard." His voice held a note of amusement. "You may not have noticed, but I'm kind of in a hurry."

The understatement caught me by surprise, and I laughed. An odd gurgling noise cut my amusement short. I went still, concentrating on the sound.

Alexander caught the change in my body language.

"What is it, Love?" he whispered.

"I hear a rasping noise... as if someone's struggling to breathe."

"An animal?"

"No, it's a person."

I ran toward the sound, wondering if I could flit to the right place using the raspy breathing as a locater. Alexander, in step beside me, seemed to read my thoughts.

"Tressa, don't do it. There's a cliff on this side with at least a hundred yard drop. You could miss. Anyway, you don't know what happened to this person; it may not be safe."

"I see him."

I could see a spot of florescent orange about a mile in the distance. A few steps closer and I could identify the orange as a stripe on a shirt. With a destination in sight, I flitted, leaving Alexander to follow on foot.

I recognized the lost hiker from his picture on the news. He was in bad shape. I would have thought him dead if it weren't for the horrible noise he made as he struggled to draw in each breath.

The blue puffy skin of his face and hands indicated hypothermia. My mind raced to think of possible remedies or any means of helping him. Building a fire would help, I thought, but I blanched at the idea. Maybe Alexander could build one while I flitted to get help.

I knelt beside the hiker. I took his hand in mine to offer comfort and dropped it immediately, yelping with surprise. His hand was burning hot. I touched his forehead to confirm what I had already guessed; a fever, far above anything an ordinary illness would induce, was ravaging his body.

Terror filled my chest, impeding my own breathing. I pulled back the collar of his shirt to look at the skin of his neck and shoulder. As I had feared, a dense web of deep purple lines covered his shoulder, thinning as they reached up his neck.

What can I possibly do for him? This is my fault. This attack was because of me.
I took a deep breath to calm myself.

I barely remembered what jewels I had put on that morning, but I felt the weight of a necklace. I grabbed the bottom of it and yanked it sharply. It sliced into the back of my neck, drawing blood, but eventually it snapped.

I watched the stones fall to the ground, knowing it didn't matter what gemstones they were. I desperately wished for a means to help him. But stones took time for their healing properties to work. They were no help in an emergency.

The hiker stirred and opened his eyes. He looked up at me with heavy lids.

"Are you an angel?" he asked, his dry lips cracking and bleeding as he formed the words.

The question startled me, but then I remembered that by ripping off the necklace I had dropped my glamour. He saw me as I really was, and surely he had never seen a Sidhe. I started to deny it, but Alexander, coming up behind me, spoke first.

"Yes, she's an angel." He moved around to kneel on the opposite side of the man. "Isn't she beautiful?"

"Beautiful," the hiker mouthed.

I watched as the life began to leave his eyes. He was dying because of me.

"No!" I shouted, as though I could stop his death by making the demand. Alexander put two fingers to his neck, looking for a pulse.

"He's gone, Tressa."

"John T. Sullivan,” I said, recalling his name from the news story, “you will not die today," I yelled, staring into his lifeless eyes as though I could keep him here by holding
Dominion
over him. I wasn’t fooling myself; I knew it wouldn't work. The tears I had been holding back spilled over and flowed down my cheeks, like the spring coursing over the rocks we had walked past minutes ago.

This was my fault. The thought seeped in through the fog in my brain. I lay my hands flat on his chest and pushed my essence down to infuse it into him. What was my essence, if not my life light? It might save him.

"Tressa, honey, he's gone. There's nothing you can do," Alexander said gently.

"This is my fault." I said it aloud this time in a sobbing, tear-stained voice. I continued to let my essence flow into the dead man.

"How is this your fault? Sweetheart, please stop."

I barely heard Alexander's voice anymore. An all-consuming weakness fell over me. I was dangerously close to exuding too much of myself. I tried to pull my hands away, but the flow of energy had created a connection I no longer had the strength to break. The realization fell over me: the hiker was dead, and I would die too. Exhausted, my eyes began to close of their own accord. I forced them opened for one last look at Alexander.

He must have seen it in my eyes; as soon as our gaze met, he launched himself at me. Pushing his shoulder into my chest, he wrapped his arms around my torso and tackled me away from the hiker's body.

Then he scrambled into a sitting position and gently cradled me in his lap.

"My god; Tressa, are you okay? Did I hurt you?" he asked as his trembling hands turned my face to his.

I buried my head in his chest, sobs shaking my entire body as though they would never end. Alexander let me cry, holding me close and occasionally kissing my hair. I finally gained a measure of control, my body stilling though the tears continued to flow.

"Please tell me why you think this was your fault,” Alexander said when I had finally quieted. “Is it because you couldn't heal him? You must know you can't save everyone. He had been lost out here for days."

"Fae fever," I choked.

"What?"

"I've never seen it, but I've heard about it. He had a fever burning his brain and purple webbing on his skin. It's the Unseelie’s favorite sickness to cast on humans. They must be here, and if they are, it's because of me."

Alexander called the state police and gave them rough coordinates on how to find us. We sat under a tree a short distance from the hiker's body while we waited for them to arrive. I sang a funeral lament for the poor man softly under my breath as Alexander sat quietly listening.

It took an hour for the authorities, a half dozen of them, to reach us. One officer attended the body while another took photographs. Several others scoured the area, starting close to the body and systematically moving further away.

Meanwhile, a detective questioned Alexander and me. He had wanted to interview us separately, but we refused. He asked us the same questions multiple times, changing the wording slightly each time: What were we doing there in the woods? Why did we come where there was no path? Had we known the hiker previously? Did he say anything before he passed? The questions droned on.

After a half hour, I swayed as I struggled to stay standing. Two minutes later, I sat down abruptly, trembling with mental and physical exhaustion.

The startled detective stopped speaking mid-question. He called out to the nearest police officer.

"Jones, we need to get an ambulance for this lady."

"Out here?" the officer asked incredulously.

"No," I said, swallowing to control the edginess in my voice. "I'm fine. I just need to rest."

"You may be going into shock," he warned. "You should go to the hospital."

"No, really—"

"Tom, over here!" Alexander yelled, interrupting me. Tom Lynch had just arrived. "This officer knows us, he can tell you where to find us if you have any more questions."

Tom scrutinized the activity around the dead hiker as he walked over to us. "You guys found him?" he asked when he reached us.

We both nodded.

"Tressa is a little overwhelmed. I need to get her home. Would you vouch for us with the detective here?" Alexander said.

Tom did as Alexander asked. He even offered to drive us home, for which I was grateful. I didn’t think I could make it back the way we came. It was a much shorter hike to Tom's police cruiser.

Instead of taking us to our homes, we asked him to drop us off at the Manor House. Alexander and I sought out my grandmother and Shamus and asked to meet with them in the privacy of Mamó's bedroom suite.

When we explained what had happened, their first questions were amazingly similar to the ones the detective had asked. Our answers, however, were more forthcoming.

"Are you sure it was Fae Fever?" Mamó asked for the second time. I understood her hesitancy. I didn't want to believe it either.

"I'm sure," I said.

"And you're sure you didn't know this man? Maybe from the store?"

I nodded. "Aye, I'm sure."

"It still sounds like the Unseelie," Shamus said as he chomped on the end of his pipe. He was smoking in Mamó's room, which spoke to how disconcerted this incident had made him. "I'm sure they’d prefer to attack people who are important to you. These assaults on random people are misdeeds of opportunity. Practice, so to speak. But they're getting closer."