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A Short Tale of Appointed Tasks, Cinderella's Curfew, and a Dark Whisper of the Past
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Peabody had been on board after Dylan had explained the situation. Part of Dylan's field studies in college had forced the psychiatrist to work with the police fairly early on in her career. At twenty-one, the same age as Dylan at the time, Charlotte Peabody had been an officer fresh out of the Academy. Dylan had been in her third year at NYU. That first case - Officer Peabody the first on scene, and Dylan brought in by one of the department's negotiators - had been the start of an almost decade-old partnership and casual friendship, which had then extended to Sergent James Donovan. The only thing that kept the three from being real friends was that Dylan knew if Peabody and Donovan ever heard that the psychiatrist talked to fairies in her backyard, they'd think Dylan had lost what few marbles people thought she had left.
John and Nuada were both a bit harder to convince.
"I will not leave you among these..." The prince trailed off, biting back the word humans. Though the pitiful and irritating human male who claimed kinship to Dylan knew that Nuada was fae, the warrior also knew he did not need to announce his true identity to the herd of shuffling mortals milling about.
Yet she could not be serious. I'll be fine - you should wait for me at the cottage. I'll be there as soon as I can. An attempt to send him away, as if he were an unruly child or a lady's lapdog. A dismissal. A subtle command to go away. Well, he would not.
Fury sparked in his eyes. Even the glamor could not hide his anger from the mortal woman. His honor - and any peace he might ever manage to scrape from his father's ire for haring off with Dylan - demanded he stay at her side. Of course the Elven warrior did not want to go to a human police station. The very idea made his skin itch. All that iron and the noxious stench of humanity... A sharp longing to draw his lance made his fist clench. But it had to be plainly obvious, even to someone as naive as Dylan, that her safety from any of Eamonn's men was not guaranteed by pathetic human police.
"And I'm not taking you anywhere until you tell me who this guy is," John snapped, absently rubbing his wrist. Already pale blue bruises were spreading like a sickness under the skin. Who was this faerie with his sister? "Today's supposed to be my day off, Dylan."
Nuada opened his mouth, hate burning in his eyes, but Dylan - exhausted, freezing cold, leg aching abominably, and irritated with the entire world at the moment - beat him to whatever scathing insult might have been coiled like a snake on his tongue, waiting to strike. "All right." A quick glance told her no one was close enough to hear, but just in case, she dropped into the old "twin" language she and John had often used as children when whispering secrets to each other. "Yem demeste droll, sih layora nesigh, hrone eckinfra Nuada Silverlance, ere ot da yalla char fol Bethmoora." Then, with a smirk, she added just to be cruel, "Nad seya, eh si yem yobniefen."
John blinked at her in shock as her words translated in his head: My esteemed lord, His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Nuada Silverlance, Heir to the Golden Throne of Bethmoora. And yes, he's my boyfriend.
"What?"
The tired amusement in her eyes and her smirk told the twenty-one-year-old that his sister was probably jerking his chain, at least on that last part, but... she had said "my lord." Esteemed lord, even. What did that mean exactly? He knew his twin. She always chose her words with care, except when exhausted or under some serious strain. Years of dealing with the Fair Folk had taught them both to do so. So when she said "my lord," that meant something. Loyalty. Trust, which was not the same thing. John's sigh was half a growl as he shoved a hand through his hair.
"Whatever. This the guy that saved you before?" Dylan nodded. John stuck his hand out toward the tall blond man. "Then I can't thank you enough for protecting my sister."
Nuada eyed the proffered hand with revulsion, then stared down his nose at the human. "I do not want your pitiful, meaningless thanks for succeeding at the task in which you failed." He ignored the razor-edged glare Dylan shot him. "Only humans are so careless with that which is supposedly precious to them."
"Now wait just a minute-"
"Guys!" Maybe if she pressed really hard against her temples, the headache taking root inside her skull would wither and die before it bloomed into a migraine. And maybe Nuada would drop down on bended knee and propose. Pfft. Yeah, like that would ever happen. "What are you, four? Jeez. Nuada, I'll be fine with John. Really. I can't have you distracting me, okay? I need you to not be... I can't have you there."
The look she gave him now held none of the defense and anger from when he had called out her brother for his inefficacy at protecting her. Now there was only equal parts determination and beseeching, gilded by a shine of pain. The prince realized, from the way Dylan kept touching her temple, that she had a headache. Why did she never give voice to her pain? It irritated him to no end. And what did the human mean, I can't have you distracting me? If she could not focus on whatever needed doing, it was no fault of his. Only mortals blamed their lack of mental discipline on others.
Yet now was an opportunity to take what he had wanted for a while - to get away from her. To have a moment of peace away from all who watched him with voracious expectation. To escape the farce of courtship, as well as the frustrating awkwardness so foreign to his nature that had plagued Nuada since recognizing the intimacy of the night before. And of course, an opportunity to plan his next maneuvers in the dangerous game his father played. With the idiotic urge to smile constantly assaulting him around the irritating (albeit often amusing) mortal, the Elf prince could not think clearly when around her. She twisted up everything somehow, including the honor he guarded so preciously.
Dylan was a living contradiction: a mortal with honor where none should exist; a human who strove to fight for his people in nearly all she did, despite her iron-laced blood; a Child of Mud with a fey-like heart where only a dark hollow should have been. Somehow this infuriating human had managed to win his protection more than once. Bought her honor with his own royal blood. Her peace of mind had been paid for with the coin of his own humiliation. He had even - he realized, suddenly and with a jolt of shock - defied his father and king for her. Risked punishment yet again for this mortal woman who did not even want him by her side. Who preferred her ineffectual and pathetic human kinsman over an Elven prince and warrior.
Suddenly Nuada could hardly stand to be near her. To even breathe the same air as she. How had he fallen so far without realizing it? Was this how it had been for his father all those centuries ago? Had the sucking tar pit of humanity slowly pulled King Balor further and further away from the path of true kingship as time - and the plague of mortality - eroded Balor's honor? Was the prince cursed to have it be so with him, as well? Nuada prayed not. To any god that might hear him, he prayed not.
"Very well," the prince said in a voice carved from ice. He had to get away. This instant. "I await you at your cottage. Try to be quick." And he turned and strode back to the carriage, leaving Dylan gazing after him with a sudden heaviness in the pit of her stomach.
"You were kidding about the boyfriend thing, right?" John asked after the thing that looked like a limo - a shiny black limo that seemed to blur into the November bleakness like mist and glowed faintly with eerie green ambiance, even to his pitiful excuse for faerie Sight - drove away. "Because if he's really your boyfriend, I'm gonna have to protest the way he talks to you."
"Oh, yeah?"
Dylan turned to study her brother - her twin, though he was so much younger now. Six years trapped in a place where time never passed. Only the briefest of mental contact every year on her birthday, when their connection was the strongest. And then he'd come home. Somehow, on his own power, fueled by desperation and maybe a little of her own need, John had broken through whatever barrier stood between him and the regular, mortal world and come back. Still twelve years old. Still a kid. But they'd known each other the moment they locked eyes, even though she was eighteen then and she'd changed so much. Even though he hadn't changed at all.
Their parents refused to take him. Refused to believe he could be John, though he hadn't changed at all. So Dylan had let him live with her in her tiny apartment while she went to college and worked weekends as a waitress at the Pandemonium Club and early mornings at Persephone's as a cashier. It had been so strange to come home from work or classes and find her twin, long thought dead, doing homework and scarfing down cheesepuff, peanut butter, and pixie-stix sandwiches that had made her nauseous to even look at, much less try. It had been strange and yet... it had made that tiny apartment home, too, in a way that their parents' house had never been for either of them.
Home for her, she realized, had been John. Just John. Now, in some ways, it was Nuada, too.
I'm such a sap-sucking idiot, Dylan grumbled silently. He doesn't even like me, but I... love him. He really is like my best friend. I trust him completely, and I can probably tell him almost anything and his regard won't change. But that's because nothing will make him hate me - or like me - more than he already does. No wonder John's all brother-bear about him.
"Don't worry about it, John," she said only, and laid her forehead against his upper arm. For just a moment she let herself relax and only think about how much she loved her twin. How much his solid presence reassured her. Comforted her. "He's not really my boyfriend. And he's just having a bad day." More like a bad year, the psychiatrist thought, remembering gunshots echoing in the subway; golden blood sheeting down a bare back under the bite of an iron-tipped whip; the shattered look on his face when the courtship scheme had come out. Dylan fought back a sigh and said, "Let's go to the cop shop, yeah?"
"And then are we the ones taking Lisa to Saint Vincent's?"
Dylan shook her head as they started for her brother's Mustang. A few kids standing near an old yellow van waved to her. She recognized some of her Sight kids - the three Grace children; a small girl, maybe seven years old, with black hair and the wild eyes of a changeling; twelve-year-old Jaenelle with her maelstrom eyes and diluted faerie blood; Rosie and her older brother Gus. When the changeling, Kate, hopped up and down and waved her arms in exuberant greeting, Dylan waved back, gave the children a smile that made her face hurt. The older kids immediately relaxed. They knew she wouldn't be smiling if Lisa were in any kind of serious, unfixable trouble.
"She's already being processed, I expect," she said to John as if there'd been no pause in the conversation. "No, what I'm setting up is how long she's going to be there. Hopefully not long. I also want to see if I can figure out how much her bail is going to be so I can pay it in advance and keep her from getting chucked back into jail when the suicide-watch time limit ends; gives me about a week. If - big if - Peabody's managed to set the court date and stuff already, I can maybe phone the judge."
Not that she had that many judges on her contact list. More like three, max. All of them went to her church, along with Peabody and Donovan. Most of her "legal connections," in fact, were people she knew from teaching their kids or younger siblings/cousins during Primary and Nursery. But she could always hope.
"And," the psychiatrist added suddenly, in a voice like shards of ice, "I'm going to make sure Doctor Westenra isn't her primary counselor while she's there. If I have to break legs or bite someone, it doesn't matter. He is not going anywhere near any of my patients. I want either Doctor Hollis or Doctor Colfer."
John didn't say anything to that. When Dylan talked about Doctor Westenra, one of the top psychiatrists at Saint Vincent's, it was best to stay silent until there was a chance to change the subject. Not that he could blame her.
The twins slid into the car and John started the engine. Sting's low voice crooned from the crummy radio speakers. And then the twenty-one-year-old government agent took the opportunity to switch the subject. "Where's Lisa gonna go if you post her bail?"
She remembered stricken eyes as dark as the New York City night already beginning to fall. Lisa's trembling mouth as the teenager fought tears. The fear warring with determination and trust in her expression as Donovan slipped handcuffs on her. And Dylan's own unwavering, encouraging gaze locked on Lisa's frightened eyes as she watched the girl being driven away in the back of a police car. "She can stay at the cottage."
"They'll make you stay with her." Under the simple words were a thousand questions. Two of the biggest were, Will His Royal Pain-in-the-Butt allow that? and Does your new life have room for the people you're responsible for?
Dylan bit her lip and looked out the window at the city zooming by. In a single eyeblink, the boiling sky ripped open and torrents of freezing rain and sleet smashed down on New York. She could tell John wasn't mad (or at least not as mad as he sounded). But he was right in his subtext, if not in the actual questions. Dylan knew she had to reconcile the situation with Nuada with her life in the mortal realm. One could not take precedence over the other.
A fork of lightning, electric pearl against black skies, reminded her of the night before. Reminded her of the feel of Elven arms holding her against the dark and the fear. A soft voice like lullabies singing away the shadows. Something feral and otherworldly that soothed every dark thing inside her. It had been raining then, too.
Dylan suddenly remembered the words to one of her favorite songs: I dream of rain. I dream of gardens in the desert sand. I wake in vain... An odd frisson of what felt like precognition sizzled down her spine. Gardens in the desert sand; an impossible dream. Just like trying to meld the two pieces of her life? She hoped not. Because she'd promised her life to the children who needed her... but her life would be poorer for losing Nuada. Just the thought left her feeling like one of those baubles her brother hung at Christmas - hollow, thin, and fragile as hand-blown glass.
"Then I'll cart her around if I have to, when I go to work and stuff."
The "and stuff" could be a problem, but right now, she didn't care. This could not happen again. Her kids had to be able to get in touch with her whenever they needed to. Nuada would have to understand that. And if he didn't...
Deal with that if and when it comes, she told herself. Aloud she continued, "And I have to talk to Garret, the chief medical examiner. Have to figure out the paperwork for getting Rafael's body released to someone who's not family. I'll have to call his parents - how exciting; his dad's ticked because apparently two teenagers from the wrong parts of their respective neighborhoods falling in love makes Rafael a traitor. And I have to talk to him. Get him to agree. Make some preliminary arrangements for Rafe's funeral. Hafta call Ceśar, too, and talk to him about letting Lisa go to Rafe's funeral; since she's not actually part of the Rojos, he might not give me too much trouble."
And if the leader of the Lobos did decide to give her some grief, she knew how to get around it. Her trump card was eight years old, lisped badly still from the time he'd broken his jaw in the school yard, and his breath whistled through his gappy teeth whenever he spoke. He was still on her patient roster, came to her house one Tuesday a month, and she was half of the reason he wasn't wasting the best part of his childhood in juvenile detention. His mother called him Miguel, but his older brother called him Mickey because of his gap-teeth, and so did she.
"D..."
His twin wasn't looking at him, or seemingly at anything. She'd changed since her attack back in December. At first, he hadn't realized how much. But she was more serious now. Less likely to let herself off the hook over something. Everything was life and death to her. Sometimes it actually was a matter of life and death, but not always.
And right now... he could tell by the weird, cold heaviness in his stomach that she was blaming herself for what had happened today. John knew nothing he said would change her mind about that; in fact, what he'd said before had most likely contributed to it. He hadn't meant it; he'd just been so worried. So now he only murmured gently, "I can do some of this stuff for you, ya know."
Dylan shook her head. "No, it's fine." It wasn't her brother's responsibility. He had his own issues; like dealing with the government trying to fit him into an appropriate slot in one of their super-secret-but-not-really departments. So far, every job interview he'd gone to had turned up zilch for him. That was probably at least partially her fault, too, now that she thought about it. Like the time with the MIB where he'd passed out during a moment of super-connection between the two of them.
Ugh, whatever. Gotta focus on this right now.
"Besides," she added, giving nothing of her thoughts away. "I promised Lisa I'd handle it."
"You sure?"
"Yep," Dylan replied, forcing lightness into her tone. She smiled at her brother. "I got it covered."
John knew she probably did. It was one of the things she was really good at - planning, plotting, figuring out ways to get around the obstacles in her path. But he also knew she was tired. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes. He even felt it in the strain in his own face, an echo of hers, that told him her forced smile almost threatened to crack her face in two, like fragile glass. But he didn't say a word; just kept driving.
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Feral golden eyes sliced to the little clock perched on the stone mantel above the fireplace. Nearly midnight. Over six hours. What could possibly take that infuriating mortal more than six beastly hours to complete?
Father is not going to be pleased. Nuada bit back a snarl and crossed one leg over the other, glaring into the crackling fire. He could sense Becan's little eyes on him, guaging his mood. Well, no matter. Let the Wee Fey do as he pleased. It was not the brownie who drew the prince's ire, after all.
Try to be quick, he had commanded. Could she not obey a simple order? How had he let her convince him to leave her in the care of her brother? The simpleton clearly did not recognize the value of his sister; or, if he did, did not treat the woman accordingly. Imbecilic hollow creature that he was.
Could it be you are worried about her? A small voice, one Nuada had not heard in some months, niggled at him. Concerned for a human woman's safety?
If my honor depends on it, the prince replied with the venomous sharpness of a hornet's sting, of course I am. How I allowed her to convince me to compromise it, I do not know. If any harm befalls her, it will disgrace me. And Father will not be pleased. Or forgiving.
Is it your honor that concerns you? Or is it that Nuala has it right? Has the human perhaps... snared your affections?
Nettled, the Elf prince frowned at the fire. Do not be ridiculous; I hold her in the same esteem as a well-bred hunting dog. She is merely useful, and only stands above her kind because she is an annoyance only some of the time.
This was what came of brooding in a human dwelling: half-mad thoughts influenced by the late hour and Dylan's continued absence. He should not have left her behind. What if Eamonn...? But no, Wink had only recently appraised him of what he had learned last night and today over the course of the last several hours, including Eamonn's whereabouts. The silver troll had left not half an hour ago, to gather more information on the dark Elf and his potential allies.
The Elf of Zwezda was holed up somewhere in the Kingdom of Cíocal. That did not surprise Nuada in the slightest. Cíocal was one of the Irish fayre kingdoms that was rather... imparticular about who they let within their borders. So long as the immigrants paid homage to King Elatha, the Fomorians accepted all and sundry who had been turned out of their own homes: refugees and criminals alike. It had always been the law of Cíocal; even if Nuada brought this information before his father, nothing would be done. Balor would remind the prince of the alliances between the thirteen Elf kingdoms and command him to leave be. Even Nuada's old friendship with Crown Prince Bres would not be enough to have the dark Elf extradited back to Bethmoora.
And so now I know the price Father has laid on my blood, Nuada thought with no little acrimony. The fire crackled and blazed, and the seconds ticked by in the near-silence. On my sister's blood. On the blood of the royal family of Bethmoora. On Dylan's honor. Stars curse you, Father - how could you do this to Nuala? To Dylan? How am I the monster, when you have sold 'my lady's' honor and your daughter's blood as the price of your peace with Elatha?
Wink had brought his prince even more ill news than that. As Nuada recalled the silver cave troll's words about Princess Ming Xian, the prince scowled. Wed a child of barely three centuries? Even the Jade Emperor, mad as he was, would not insist on that; three centuries for an Elf was as perhaps a mere three or four years to a human. The Dilong princess was practically an infant. But what would the fallout be from King Balor's machinations regarding Dylan, once the Emperor Huizong learned that the prince his eldest daughter had been saved for was courting a human woman of no status?
Why did Father never nullify that promise, after the Empress of Dilong did not produce a girl-child for so long? He had thought the informal arrangement a thing of the past. Now, on top of the courtship charade with Dylan and Eamonn's attempted coup (had King Elatha, or any of the nobles of Cíocal, been involved in the assassination attempt? The prince knew his father refused to even consider the idea that his allies might be false), now Nuada had to concern himself with a stiff-necked, half-mad Elven Emperor who took offense at every little thing, and a potential child-bride. And here I thought exile would spare me these political games. How foolish I was.
And why was the human not returned yet? Bronze eyes sliced to the clock as it began to chime the midnight hour. Where was Dylan? That fool of a brother had best protect her, and keep her safe, or I will hunt him down like a-
A clicking sound from the direction of front door drew Nuada's attention. The prince turned in time to see the last bolt slide back and the heavy granite door swung open. Dylan stepped in and quickly shut and locked the door. Then she leaned back against the stone before letting herself slide to the floor. As Nuada rose from the chair, surprised and furious (and perhaps a little concerned?) at the mortal's haggard appearance, Dylan dropped her face in her hands and sighed heavily.
"I hate my life," she muttered, her voice shaking. "And my leg is killing me."
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Politics was a game - let no one ever say different - but the stakes were high; often lethally so. Tonight, as whispers of the crown prince's whereabouts circulated through the court, the stakes were not quite deadly. But pride, honor, and kingly standing were on the table tonight. As three distinct penants flew from Findias' high tower - the king's banner, and the personal standards of the crown prince and the princess - the king's twin children should have been in the receiving Hall when the envoy entered.
By rights, the prince should have greeted Bres as one warrior to another. They had fought side by side long ago, in the final war with the humans. And all knew that Bres was interested in Princess Nuala's hand in marriage. She, too, was meant to greet the prince of Cíocal that night. Yet only the king and princess were there when the great double-doors swung open and the envoy from Cíocal entered.
Balor did not let his eyes waver from the prince that strode forward, head held high and an affable smile fixed on his face. Blue eyes like the summer sky gleamed with good humor as Crown Prince Bres of the Kingdom of Cíocal came forward and bowed, as a foreign prince to a king. Behind him, his four retainers made obeisance to the One-Armed King of Elfland as well.
The king of Bethmoora studied the six core members of the Fomorian envoy: Bres himself, of course; the tall, wiry bodach with his dark, feral beauty on the prince's right, whom the herald introduced as Lord Lí Ban of Gomrath; the hideous, fleshless nuckelavee, Arrachd, who stood as another guard to Bres; and the ancient crone with the rheumy eyes who stood to Bres's left, that powerful sorceress known as Biróg. Guarding the prince's back was a Fomorian Elf with eyes as dark as malachite and a pale, thin scar running the length of the side of his sun-kissed face. But it was the young woman in the party who stole King Balor's very breath.
Memory, even immortal memory, could be a slippery thing. The mind - and the heart - could, and often did, play tricks. So when the king's old eyes rested on the young Fomorian noblewoman that Bres had brought along, it was not with his power and his own kingly Sight that he saw her. It was with his ancient and twice-broken heart, and his sorrow, and his memory. It was with the ghost of a wise queen still haunting him. And so the glamor passed over him without trouble, and no one knew the true identity of the jade-eyed woman.
Green eyes like emeralds shone out from a moon-pale face. Thick, glossy hair like spun rubies twisted and coiled in intricate braids atop the woman's head. Dark jade ribbons wove between the braids. The green velvet gown, and the eyes and garnet-dark hair reminded Balor of someone. Someone from long ago, that he could scarcely remember. Someone he had forced himself to forget.
Cethlenn, the king thought. Cethlenn, the king's heart pleaded.
Cethlenn, the glamor whispered.
She looked so much like Queen Cethlenn. Not identical. Not even as if they could be sisters, or cousins. Only that it had been so long since Balor had seen one of the jade-eyed Fomorian women with hair like spun garnets. They were a rare breed in ancient days. Even rarer now. When the king saw her, his heart bled and the festering soul-pain of his wife's passing lanced him.
"Your Majesty, allow me to present my most trusted companions," Bres said, with another short bow. "Biróg and Lí Ban have been named and presented, but I give you the MacAengus of Caer Ibormeith and his honorable sister. Lord Ciaran MacAengus," and here the dark-eyed Fomorian bowed to the king once more and gestured to the fayre behind him. "And the lovely Lady Dierdre."
"You are most welcome, Lord Ciaran. Lady Dierdre," the king murmured. Ciaran bowed. The fiery-haired noblewoman swept into a low curtsy. No one saw the satisfied smile curling her coral-painted lips. If they had, the Butcher Guards would never have let her survive the night.
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