Garnet 4 - The Red Queen's Invitation

"I'm concerned," I told Jack as we threaded through the packed hallway toward the cafeteria. The kids who obviously belonged to the Red Court gave me a wide berth. Half the White Court—the half that belonged to Gavin—did, too. But what gave me a funny little glow in my chest was when a few kids sporting black and white outfits gave me tentative smiles and waved at me. I grinned at them and waved back or nodded, depending on how bad the crush around me was.

So far today, I'd been pretty much left alone. Probably because Gavin was still busy licking his wounds and Lily's people were wondering what I was going to do about them. I was still trying to figure that one out myself. And Geneva's goons weren’t going to possibly tip the outcome of our whacked out Wonderland tea party before it even happened. The Red Queen would kill them. Possibly literally.

"Concerned?" Jack echoed as we made it to the cafeteria door. He held it open for me, which always made me feel weird. I still wasn't used to the whole chivalry thing. It didn't make me feel all weak and wimpy, or like the boys thought I was too pathetic to get my own doors. It actually felt nice. And I'd get the door for them, sometimes, too, and they gave me weird looks, so we were pretty much even.

"Yeah."

"About what?" He asked as we slid into the lunch line.

I drew a deep breath. He was going to like this about as much as a cat liked getting a bath. Exhaling slowly, gathering my courage, I finally said, "About Lily."

To my surprise, he actually smiled. "Thank you," he said, sounding relieved. Um.... "Thank you! Finally you've seen sense. So," my dearg added, suddenly full of good cheer and fun. "When do we kick her out?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Pause. Rewind. Now, what? Kick her out?" I could tell from his expression he fully expected me to do just that. "What crack-acid are you smoking?"

"I... isn't that what you meant?" He asked, frowning. Dark eyes watched me as if I'd transformed into some kind of dangerous, venomous snake. "That wasn't what you meant," he said slowly. "All right. What are you talking about, then?"

"I'm concerned about Lily the person. She seems... depressed."

He blinked. "I'm sorry, but what did you say?"

Oh, brother. "She. Seems. Depressed."

"And I am supposed to, as you say, give a flying rat's buttered carcass because why?"

Oooh, he'd stolen my phrase. Sneaky, smexy phrase-thief. I'd get him back for that—after we addressed the Lily situation. "Look, I know you guys hate each other but—"

"I don't hate her," Jack replied, as if commenting on the weather. A double-take was necessary because at first glance he seemed perfectly serene. Only the sizzle of black fury through our bondline—the magical doohickey that connected my soul and emotions to his, and vice-versa—told me differently.

"You don't?" Why did I not believe him? Hmmm…gee, I wonder.

Jack gave a shrug, a liquid motion as if his limbs weren't attached the way normal people's were. "Of course not. Don't be absurd."

He'd just called me "absurd." Part of me wanted to make sure his limbs were no longer attached the way a normal person's were…but I loved him too much. Dang it.

"I just want her ripped into a million painful and incredibly bloody pieces so I can sprinkle her on my porridge most mornings." He said it the way most people said they liked milk with their cereal.

Sometimes Jack would make a comment, or smile in such a way that I was forcibly reminded that he wasn't human. It was easy to forget sometimes that he was Fayre, an old and almost completely alien race. Did that scare me? I'd say it made me a tad nervous, but scared? Me? Of Jack? Please. Besides, after everything he'd been through—being forced to do all kinds of horrible things because of the former soul-contract between him and Lily, serving as one of the main punching bags for Lily's entire family, and almost being molested by Gia Whitmoor, Lily's psychotic b-with-an-itch of a so-called mother—he had a right to the creep-edge that sometimes showed up in his behavior.

"Jack, as long as she lives at my house, I don't want her suicidal or depressed or anything like that." I snagged a couple bags of chips and dropped them onto my tray. I'd been informed by Fiver, my favorite flesh-eating Bunny Wabbit, that bringing my own lunch to this meeting would be considered incredibly rude, so I was stuck with cafeteria food on a day lacking pizza or tatertots. Which meant I was stuck with chips and maybe a chicken burger. All for the cause, though. Rah-rah and Team Spirit and all that stuff.

"I don't see why you worry about someone like her. She's not a threat anymore."

"What if she decides to blow us up or put anthrax in our morning orange juice?" I paused, considered. "Does anthrax even work that way? What does anthrax even do?"

"I'm sure I don't know anything about anthrax," Jack said in the slightly condescending tone boys used when they thought girls were talking nonsense. "And if you're that concerned about her, why don't you throw her out?"

I glared at him as I grabbed the chocolate milk. Maybe I was just a touch on the paranoid side, but it seemed really strange that there wasn't any regular milk out. Just chocolate and strawberry. Black and red. Well, brown and pink, but still…was that weird?

I knew what was weird—me, defending the White Queen to Jack. Except with the Julie thing, he'd never actively opposed me on anything important. And it turned out he'd been right to be suspicious of Julie Frost, the Queen of Spades. She'd been a spy sent by Lily to get close to me so she could seriously injure and/or kill me. But we'd become best friends instead, and Julie had died saving me from Doreen when the Red Court witch—basically acting on Lily's orders—had tried to throw me down two flights of stairs.

David Jacobson, Julie's former Knave of Spades, was not invited to this meeting. Captain of the swim team, topping off at almost seven feet tall and weighing in at more than two-hundred-fifty pounds, the wereotter wanted Doreen's head on a plate. He'd known and loved Julie almost his entire life. Of course, he also wanted Lily dead for forcing Jack to kill David's little brother.

But David was willing to abide my new rules…for now. Having to tack on for-now at the end of that made me just a little bit nervous. Okay, more like a lot nervous.

It was giving me a headache that Jack, who normally backed me up, chose to argue with me about this, especially right now. "Where is she supposed to go?"

He slashed me with an obsidian look. "Try 'I don't care.'"

He wasn't getting it. He might not care, but I did. Wasn't his job as my King supposed to be helping me run my Court? I certainly didn't want him for hired muscle. Patching him up always made it difficult to breathe, seeing how he was both bleeding and usually shirtless.

"It's my fault she can't go home—" I began.

"No, Alyssa, it isn't."

Jack stopped suddenly and whirled on me. His eyes began to bleach to white and his teeth started darkening. People behind us hissed insults or snapped for us to hurry it up, stop holding up the line. Jack flicked his inhuman eyes at them, and they fell silent. Only someone suicidal tried to tangle with a dearg when his teeth came out.

My very ticked off dearg growled, "It's not your fault. It's Lily's fault. Lily is the one who tortured the people who should have been able to trust her. Lily is the one who attacked you, repeatedly, in an attempt to make you give up and either bow down to her or kill yourself. Lily is the one who sent a spy into our midst. Lily is the one who ordered the hit on you and Julie, and Lily is the one who's responsible for her own actions."

None of which I could argue with. But Lily was caught in the system, too, just like the rest of them. It seemed I was the only who had a problem with the actual system, not just the people in it. Then there was her dad. I'd never tangled with an adult before, but I wanted to tangle with Lily's dad, who thought it was okay to beat Jack and Lily whenever either of them made him mad. And there was something I didn't think Jack had thought of yet.

"If you thought you were going to lose me—if you thought I was going to leave you—what would you do?" I asked softly.

"I...." He blinked, paused. His eyes were slowly darkening to onyx again. His teeth gleamed pearly white and had gone back to being nice and straight and even, instead of needle-thin and pointy. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question." Although I was positive I already knew the answer.

He frowned. "I don't know."

"Would you let it happen?" I demanded. This part was important, and I couldn't afford to give an inch. I'd had theories about Lily and Geneva—a lot of theories—and this past week or so of having the White Queen sleeping on my floor and getting on my nerves had solidified some of them. "Would you just let me traipse off into the sunset with Darren? Or even—blech—with Fiver?"

At Darren's name, Jack's eyes flashed and he jerked away from me, went back to sliding through the lunch line. I winced. Darren was a big button for Jack that I didn't like pushing, since Darren had made it very obvious he wanted to replace Jack as both my King and my boyfriend (not happening), but it was a valid question.

"No," he growled as the lunch lady rang up the stuff on our trays posing as food. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Would you attack Darren or Fiver to get me to stay with you? To get them out of the way? Would you do anything to me? Would you hurt me? Hurt them? Hurt anyone?"

Indecision warred on his face, in his eyes, arced along our bondline like electricity. He stepped out of line, away from me, to give himself time to compose, to think. But he couldn't decide. I could feel that. He couldn't decide whether he'd attack or hurt someone just to keep me around.

With most guys, especially all the human ones, that would normally be the behavior of a stalker. But this was different. Jack loved me, but that was only part of his motivation. He needed me, just as much as he loved me. His parents didn’t care about him. They'd let Lily's family rip him to pieces again and again. There was special niche in Parent Hell for Jack's mom and dad. He didn’t have any siblings. Except for Lily, until we'd bonded he hadn't had anybody. So I got why he'd hurt someone to be with me, to keep me with him.

Plus, without me, he would probably die. He'd be tortured by the White Court or the Red, they would break him, and then they'd kill him. There would be nothing to stand between him and the pain if I left him, because I was the one who was supposed to protect him. The only one who could. The only one who would even try. And the only person who would bust down doors, knock out teeth, and put people in the hospital if I had to in order to keep him safe.

It had taken me a while to realize that Jack had been the only one who could or would willingly protect Lily from anyone. She had needed him just as much as he needed me. Now she didn't have him. She was alone.

I remembered the voice screaming, Please! Don't leave me! Please, don't leave me alone! The day I'd shattered the soul-contract—and the soulbond—between Jack and Lily, I'd heard that frantic, desperate scream echoing through the Void.

Lily's voice, Lily's fear, Lily's need.

Obsession? No. Necessity. And a bond there, too—she loved him. I was the only one who could see it, because I was the only one who didn't think of Lily as the Big Bad Whatever, the Head Honcho of the Evil Department. In her own messed up way, the White Queen had loved—still loved—Jack. It was why she had held onto him, with chains of magic and chains of sparkly enchanted witch-iron or whatever. Punished him for, in her eyes, straying.

Would Jack do the same for me? To me? No, but that was because he knew I wouldn't leave. He trusted me. He wouldn't have bonded with me, thrown in his support to me, if he didn't trust me. After everything that had happened to him, he was too cautious to gamble with his life. I'd had to earn his trust first. That was the only reason he wouldn't hurt me.

But the others?

I hadn't looked away from his eyes, twin pools of obsidian fire, while he struggled for an answer. He opened his mouth as decision suddenly hummed across the bondline.

"I—"

"It's show time, you guys," Harriet Marshal interrupted. Another Faerie, Harriet was something called a Sluagh—basically a type of Faerie vampire, but instead of fangs, she had teeth like shards of broken glass, and her eyes glowed aquamarine when she got ticked off. She'd glided silently up to us and neither of us had noticed, because she was just that epic. The moment she spoke I jumped. "Hattie and Doreen are waiting...nice shirt, Alyssa."

Grateful for the interruption, I glanced down at myself and smiled. I'd borrowed one of Jack's only black shirts—nine-thousand thread-count Egyptian cotton or something like that; whatever, it was expensive and pretty—and wore it like a jacket over a white silk shirt with a black fractal pattern spattered across it like dark blood. Nobody had had a chance to get a good look at it yet except Jack, who'd winced when he saw I wore white. I thought it was nice and symbolic and stuff—black over white, and of course black comes out on top, just like it did at Homecoming.

And they all thought I sucked at diplomatically sending a message. Silly, silly Faerie people.

"Darren's waiting by the table, to show good faith," Harriet added, shooting a nervous look at Jack. His jaw muscle twitched. Oh, brother. Harriet was bonded to Darren, and I was pretty sure she loved him. Maybe not in love with him, but I could tell she adored the guy. Considering how he treated her—as opposed to how he always hit on me like a sex-crazed schmucky horn-dog—I understood why. And she liked Jack a lot. Jack liked her. But Jack hated Darren (for obvious reasons) and still didn’t fully trust him not to hurt me.

Considering Darren was one of only three people I knew who knew the big bad secret of me being not just a demon, but the Alice from Lewis Carroll's coded prophecies—the other two being Jack, of course, and Fiver, who could read minds—and Darren hadn’t ratted me out yet, I had to admit I trusted him. And I liked him…when he wasn’t being a douche.

Ignoring the silent byplay between Jack and Harriet, I headed for the lunch table where the Lady Dormouse—aka Doreen Moss, Darren's twin sister—and Geneva's Mad Hattie waited for me. Talk about a mad tea party. What was next, croquet at the Queen's?

Cold, dark eyes slid up from the table to stare at me as I sank onto the bench, flanked by Harriet and Jack. Darren, with a weird smile, sat next to Harriet. Doreen, the owner of those chilling eyes, glared at her twin brother before turning to Hattie Marshal.

Hattie Marshal looked better than she had after the Homecoming battle in the school parking lot, but that wasn't saying much. The giant gaping chunk that Jack had bitten out of her that night still hadn't grown back completely, and the lopsided way her shirt and jacket hung on her told me just how much bandage she wore on her shoulder. Bruises painted a violent watercolor across her face. Still, I didn’t feel too bad. She'd been trying to kill Jack.

"Greetings, Black Queen," Doreen said after a long pause. She glanced at Hattie again, but the look on the Sluagh girl's face made even a whacko like Doreen nervous enough not to push for her to be chatty-chatty and polite. Hattie was the kind of person who would ask in normal conversation if you wanted to know what your spleen looked like in the light of day, and be completely serious.

"Greetings to the emissaries of the Red Court," Darren said in his smoothest, silkiest voice. Hattie flushed and Doreen glowered. Considering that, in their eyes, he'd stolen Hattie's twin sister to be his brainwashed slave—Love slave? Ew, don't think like that, Alyssa, yech!—and was a traitor to the Red Court, their reactions were understandable. But if it came down to a fight against Geneva's Mad Hattie, I wanted someone physically stronger than her who was also immune to magic and could take Doreen in a one-on-one fight, leaving Jack and Harriet free to deal with Hattie. The only person I knew who fit the bill was Darren.

"Looks like we're all here," said bill-fitter continued, "the Hatter, the Hare, both Dormice, and Alyssa."

"And the Black Jack," Hattie growled through peeled-back, black-painted lips, showing serrated teeth like shards of silvered glass. Her eyes glinted like ancient gold coins, but they weren’t glowing yet. Hunger burned in their depths.

Hattie was Sluagh, too, descended from the Faerie Wild Hunt—those magical creatures who randomly chased after anyone in their path. If the person ran, they were torn to bloody bits by Faerie hounds. If the person didn't run—and who wouldn't run from an army of sweaty, hairy, toothy Faerie guys on horseback with crossbows and swords and ravening, salivating, man-flesh-desiring demon-poodles?—then they were made part of the Hunt, and cursed for their courage (see suicidal tendencies) to ride through the skies forever or until they chose to hop down off the Faerie Ponies of Doom and die. Sounded kind of like a Johnny Cash song, actually, except without the awesome, croony cowboy voice.

Because Hattie was one of them, she craved blood the way crack addicts craved their drugs. It wasn't like actual nosferatu vampires (which didn't exist, apparently), where they fed on the blood of the living to survive. If the Sluagh didn't eat regular food and drink regular water or whatever, they'd die even if they had blood. But that didn't stop Hattie Marshal from craving Jack's blood like a meth-head craved crystal crack. They'd always been rivals. I didn't get that, but I wasn't a blood junkie or a psycho, so obviously I didn’t get to join the club. Not that I wanted to.

"And the King is here, too, of course," Darren said, as if he didn't see the glint of raw bloodlust and hatred in Hattie's eyes or, if he did, didn't care. Harriet kept a wary eye on her sister, but Darren merely shot Jack a look before saying, "So—down to business."

§

"So now that we're all here, what do you want, exactly?" My Queen demanded, propping her elbows on the table. A casual observer would think she didn't take this meeting seriously, but the fact that she was dressed up told me otherwise. I wondered what she might get from this conversation that the rest of us would miss. She had such a unique way of looking at things.

I wasn't worried about how she'd handle herself. What worried me was Darren, and the fact that she'd brought him along with us in the first place. I understood her reasoning, I did. But Darren could not be trusted. He'd already made it clear he was after something other than Alyssa's wellbeing. Whatever it was—and I doubted it was just her body, though the fact that he wanted that as well made me want to rip his appendix out—I wouldn't let him have it.

However, I could appreciate the spit-in-the-eye symbolism of bringing Darren to a meeting with Doreen. The only two people Doreen had ever lost a fight to were her twin brother and Alyssa. A narcissist to the core, no doubt that rankled her quite a bit.

"How about we eat first?" Doreen replied to Alyssa's prompting, with all the manners of a society hostess. A muscle in her cheek twitched when she began almost spastically rearranging the plastic-ware around her lunch tray. No doubt she was imagining carving Alyssa up with the shards of her plastic knife and fork. Doreen liked cutting things up.

"I can never eat when I'm excited," my Queen replied with chilly politeness. "Let's cut to the chase. Why did you set up this meeting with us?"

"We're here to offer an invitation, nothing more," Doreen said. Hattie said nothing, just watched me with half-mad eyes.

"An invitation to what, pray tell?" Darren asked his sister.

"Geneva is hosting a tea social two weeks from now. Until that time, we propose a ceasefire between the Black and Red Courts. We can't make promises for Gavin Whitmoor and his people, obviously, but for our part, no violence. In exchange, you agree to come to the aforementioned tea social."

"I don't even know what a tea social is," Alyssa replied.

Hattie finally tore her gaze away from my face to stare at Alyssa with a WTF expression on her face. "It's a fancy word for tea party, all right? Humans are so stupid."

"Geneva wants me to come to her tea party?"

Doreen nodded. "Precisely."

"Not to be rude or anything, but uh…why?"

"She doesn't want bloodshed. She doesn't want a battle like the one you had with Lily. She certainly doesn't want a war."

"Meaning she doesn't want to get her ass kicked and lose the right to try for the Garnet Crown," Darren interjected.

"Wait, what?" Alyssa stared from Darren to Doreen, who glared at her twin as if she would cheerfully claw his eyes out with her bare hands. Darren just offered his sister that bland "oops" smile that made most of the guys in the senior class want to deck him. I could actually appreciate it, though, since it made Doreen grind her teeth.

"Can't you ever keep your mouth shut, warlock?" Hattie snarled. She started to lunge to her feet, but Harriet and I both stood up before she'd finished moving. Alyssa propped her chin on her hand and looked bored, but I felt her fury sizzle along our bondline, hot enough to burn. She wouldn’t go out of her way to attack Hattie or Doreen, but if they attacked someone she cared about—including Darren, unfortunately—she would come down on them like an avalanche. Considering she'd nearly beaten Lily to death in a fit of rage at Homecoming, neither Doreen nor Hattie wanted to deal with enraging the Black Queen that much.

"It's not my problem if the Red Queen is a coward," Darren replied airily.

Doreen leapt to her feet this time, eyes blazing, reaching with one hand for Darren. "How dare you—"

"Okay, everyone shut up!" Alyssa suddenly yelled, and the cafeteria fell silent. She eyed the rest of the room, baffled, before turning back to Doreen and Darren. "Jeez! What is this, kindergarten? Do I have to make the quiet sign? Now no more name calling or someone's gonna end up in time-out."

"Don't you dare mock me, human," Doreen snarled.

Alyssa folded her arms. "I'll mock you if I want to, if you decide it's socially acceptable to act like the last fourteen years of your life never happened and you don't know how to behave. What are you, two? Act like a teenager and I'll treat you like one."

"How do you put up with her, Darren?" The warlock's sister demanded. Indignation spread across her face like a disease. "I know you have sick tastes, but seriously!"

Alyssa stiffened. I tasted rot on the back of my tongue and knew I was in danger of going dearg in the middle of lunch if someone didn’t do something to make Doreen stop talking. Rumors like that, of the Black Queen bypassing her King for the Black Knight—especially when that Knight was Darren Moss, demon-possessed warlock—were dangerous on a good day.

"Well, it's so nice to see the children can behave themselves without adult supervision," a familiar voice said behind me. I turned to see Fiver Rairah approach the table and take a seat next to me, sandwiching me between the ash-blond dearg and my queen. "Doreen, I had no idea you had such a twisted, depraved mind."

Alyssa smiled. "Yes, you did."

"Hmmm, you're right, my Queen. I did. Now, Doreen, you asked how we put up with Lady Alyssa? I will admit, she may be a bit eccentric, but at least she's not…what do you call them, my Queen? Homicide Barbie?"

Alyssa shot him a look that plainly ordered him to behave. To my surprise, he subsided, smiling. Then I realized—we were in public. Of course he was going to act as if he obeyed her every whim. In reality, he drove her crazy. Strangely, she seemed to find that comforting.

Darren grinned. Alyssa suddenly stiffened again beside me.

§

Something touched my thigh, and I froze. I glanced under the table and realized it was Darren's hand, stretched across Harriet's petite figure. The scheming warlock replied, "The benefits of being bonded to the Black Queen far outweigh the negative aspects."

"You better get your hand off my thigh or I'll demonstrate some negative aspects," I growled, and jabbed his forearm with the prongs of my plastic fork. He barely stifled a yelp and jerked back from me. Turning to Hattie and Doreen as if nothing weird had happened—and considering this was Darren we were talking about, nothing weird really had—I said, "Tell Geneva she'll have my answer in a few days. I have to talk it over with my Court."

"The sign of a weak Queen," Hattie muttered. Oh, well now she was hurting my widdle-bitty feelings. Boo. "Why not simply order them to obey you?"

"Because they might have valid reasons why I shouldn't go, like the fact that you're all certifiably crazy. Or that this might be some kind of trap. In which case I'd have to go all gung-ho on your butts and beat you into turkey stuffing before sashaying off into the sunset like the epic ninja I am."

"A Queen should have absolute control over her Court," Hattie spat.

I snorted. "Yeah, we saw how well that worked with Lily."

"Lily Whitmoor is weak."

I couldn't help it—I smirked. Maybe it wasn’t politically savvy, but I couldn't help myself. "I didn't see your Queen stepping up to the plate at Homecoming. She just stood there with her cutesy-wootsy widdle crown on her head, doing the Beauty Queen wave. We were all very impressed." I nodded with a mock-amazed expression on my face. Of course Doreen leaned forward, eyes blazing, teeth bared. Honestly, she looked like a rabid spider-monkey.

"I ought to rip your face off," she hissed.

Jerking my chin at the crimson blouse she had on—normally she didn’t wear ruffles; must've been the occasion—I said, "You'd get blood on that nice, silk shirt. If you're anything like Darren, that would make you really unhappy."

For a second I saw something flicker in her eyes. She glanced at her brother, then looked back at me. Her expression turned mean again. "I'm nothing like Darren."

Darren glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows. He smiled politely and said to the Red Court girls, "I take it this means we're done, then?"

Hattie and Doreen rose to their feet, matching looks of disdain on their faces. That was the problem with mean girls—they would've been knockouts if they didn’t insist on twisting up their faces like angsty pretzels all the time. Hattie said coldly, "Four days, Black Queen. Geneva will have your answer after school, this Friday."

"Fine." I waved at them. "Now go away. I'm hungry."

They left. I looked at Harriet, at Darren the Schmoozer, at my favorite albino Bunny Wabbit, then at Jack. They all looked relieved more than anything. I felt great. I'd gotten through my first political meeting and nobody had died. Go, me.

Now if only I had some tatertots…

Sayuri 4 - Planet-Side

"Your child's training begins between the ages of four and six, and can end anywhere between eighteen and twenty-two, depending on how well a potential pilot does in his or her classes. Now remember: not everyone is pilot material. Your child has to want to be bonded with a łyzør'vÿnðe, or Polaris Corporation unfortunately cannot take them. Some other trade-companies and military branches will, and that is always an option, but Polaris knows the best and strongest vÿnðe'oðr bonds come from willing, happy children. Before registration begins, three specialists will interview your child to ensure he or she truly wants to be a part of the Polaris family."

Your Child Wants to Be a Pilot!
From the Polaris Corporation

ØØØ

Five-year-old Sayuri Asbjørnsen clutched her mommy's hand and kept an eye on her daddy, as a blond woman in the black and silver uniform of Polaris Corporation led the Asbjørnsens down the black-and-chrome hallway. Special reinforced view-ports every few feet showed the little girl glimpses of radiant diamond stars sparkling against black velvet space. The big blue marble of Zephyr II, the only planet people could live on in the entire star system where Polaris had its base, seemed to glow against the backdrop of black.

Sayuri stopped to press her face against the view-port. Cold crept into her nose and forehead and the part of her chin that poked the estel-glass plate. She knew all about estel-glass. It was okay to touch, but only for a few minutes. Whatever it was made of kept the cold from space out of the stations and transport ships. If someone touched it for too long, though, they could get frostbite.

But she wanted to eat up the sight of that ginormous, glowing sapphire ball with her eyes. She could've stared at it forever. It wasn’t the same as when her daddy had showed her holograms of the different star systems. This was real. And it was beautiful.

Her mommy gave her hand a tug. "Come on, Sayuri-chan," Mommy said. Sayuri shot one last longing glance at the sight of Zephyr II and all the twinkling stars before she let her mommy lead her away.

The lady in the uniform had paused politely, waiting to get Sayuri's attention again. She smiled at Sayuri and nodded to the view-port. "You like outer space?"

Shyly, she nodded. Outer space was so cool. There were stars and planets that glowed because of the light bouncing of dust in the air and nebulas that looked like clouds of neon cotton candy and the ships…She'd seen the łyzør'vÿnðe a million times, and they always looked so beautiful, gliding through space like big, sleek, silver whales. The łyzør'vÿnðe were awesome.

The lady smiled at Sayuri's parents. "That's typical of potential pilots," she said, turning and starting down the hallway again. "They love looking at the stars. They find space fascinating, even when they're young."


Daddy laughed. "I wanted her to be an astrophysicist like me, but all she can talk about at home is going out with a łyzør'v
ÿnðe and going to the Horse Head Nebula or Pavonis Mons. I didn’t even know she knew what Pavonis Mons was!"

"Is a volcano," Sayuri whispered. The lady looked back over her shoulder at the child, nodding encouragingly when the little girl pressed herself against her mother's pant-leg. "On Mars. In Tharsis."

The lady's gray eyes widened. She actually grinned, showing teeth. "Very good, Sayuri! Do you know what kind of volcano?"

Sayuri shook her head. "Is like this." She held up her arm straight, then tilted it upwards a very little bit. "It's tiny." She looked out the next view-port as a comet streaked by, thin as a pencil because of the distance but blazing pink and yellow like a streaking birthday candle-flame nonetheless. "I like space."

"And you want to be a pilot when you grow up?" The lady called back, keeping one eye on her. Sayuri's lips twitched and she nodded. She wanted to smile, but she still felt shy about this pretty lady in her cool uniform asking her all these questions. She was glad her mommy and daddy were there. They made her feel brave enough to talk a little. She thought maybe she could open her mouth and talk some more when the lady said, "Here we are."

Tall, chrome doors slid open with a hiss of hydraulics and the lady led the Asbjørnsens into a cozy room with plush, cream-colored carpets and six dove-gray chairs, three of them facing the other three. A small, white bookcase with only two shelves stood between two of the chairs. The books were all for children. Sayuri's fingers itched to go look at them; they probably had pretty pictures inside. But she wouldn’t, she didn’t dare, because three grownups were sitting in three of the chairs next to the bookcase—a man and two women wearing the same uniform as the blond lady.

When Sayuri and her parents entered the room, the three new grownups stood up. The man, who had gray hair and nice brown eyes, held out his hand to Sayuri's daddy. Daddy shook the man's hand.

"Dr. Asbjørnsen, it's an honor to meet you, sir. Mrs. Asbjørnsen. And this must be Sayuri," the man said, smiling down at her. He held his hand and she held out hers because she knew she was supposed to. He shook it very gently. "I'm Dr. McGeorge. This is Dr. Edsel," he added, gesturing to a woman with pretty silver hair cut close to her head like a pixie. "And this," pointing to the other woman, whose auburn hair only had a few white threads, "is Dr. Taylor. We just want to ask you some questions, okay?"

Sayuri nodded. She knew they were going to ask her questions. Her mommy and daddy had told her they'd want to. They had to make sure she really did like outer space and ships and really did want to be a pilot, so she would be happy. She knew she would. If she could just have a łyzør'vÿnðe of her very own, a best friend, someone who would always love her, she'd take good care of it and love it and be happy.

So she hopped into the chair Dr. McGeorge told her to sit in and folded her hands in her lap so they'd know she was being polite. She smiled at the grownups, showing her teeth. Her mommy had made sure she brushed them before they got off the transport ship that had taken them from Neo-Tokyo Station to Polaris. Mommy and Daddy sat on either side of her.

The grownups all smiled. Dr. Edsel asked, "So, Sayuri…how long have you wanted to be a pilot?"

Sayuri started to relax. This was going to be easy.

ØØØ

Clawing through choking blackness, sweat pearling on her skin like beads of liquid ice, Captain Sayuri Asbjørnsen jolted upright with a gasp that was half a shriek. Memory-flashes flooded her mind, lightning-strike recollections of smoke suffocating her, shooting sparks burning, claxons deafening, crimson warning lights piercing…

"It's okay," a firm but impossibly gentle voice cried. Strong hands gripped her right wrist, squeezing them just enough to get her attention as she sucked in panicked gasps of air. A sheen of white had spread across her vision as she braced for impact, braced for the savage blow of gravity slamming her and Boreal into the planet's surface with merciless fury. Her brain screamed that they were about to hit, that the engines couldn’t compensate for the gravity, that the heat of hurtling through the atmosphere was eating away at Boreal's hull, burning him. But that voice repeated, "It's okay. You're safe now. It's okay. Take a deep breath. Just breathe. Everything is all right."

Sayuri sucked in air. The cool slide of it spilled down her smoke-raw throat, filling her lungs. She forced the iron bands of panic to ease the pressure on her chest so her lungs could expand properly, but taking deeper breaths sent hurt echoing like a vicious drum down through her left side, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Air escaped her in a rush.

"Take shallow breaths," the voice said through the roaring in her ears, laying a hand on her shoulder and one on her back as if he could control her diaphragm with his touch. "You've got cracked ribs. No deep breaths yet."

Her next breath was soft and shallow. Sayuri found the air didn’t hitch in her chest and threaten to snap her bones this time. She let it out, drew in another. Forcibly suppressed the nearly overwhelming urge to panic. Boreal. Where was Boreal? Where was she? Who was the owner of the voice? A man, she knew that much. How had he gotten her out of her ship? Boreal had to have been hurt by the crash, so where was he?

The fresh oxygen allowed the whiteness to fade from her vision. Her head didn't stop spinning, though. A dull ache throbbed through the back of her skull and behind her eyes. She blinked to bring the world into focus and found herself staring into a familiar pair of dark eyes.

It was the man she'd seen with her æspÿrøn just before they'd entered the wormhole. His dark gaze held concern and a promise of safety. She'd seen him once. Did that make him an ally? A future friend? Or had her æspÿrøn been warning her of a potential threat?

"Do you remember anything?" The man said. He loosened his grip on her wrist, drawing his hands back but holding them up and out as if to show her he meant no harm. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Though it made her head pulse with pain, she managed a nod. It felt like the pain was swelling at the base of her neck and flooding her skull, ready to split her head wide open. She tried to raise her left arm. Hollow, black, wicked heat raked across the side of her arm, biting to the bone. A small cry of pain caught in her throat. She raised her other hand to her forehead and her fingertips jerked away from a butterfly bandage and a stinging zap of hurt. The man snagged her fingers.

"Don't touch that," he said with the stern compassion of a medic. "You're hurt. You have a concussion and some deep lacerations on your forehead. I got the bleeding stopped, but they're gonna be tender for awhile. Would you like some water?"

The man reached for a small cup made of what looked like cloudy estel-glass, but people didn’t use estel-glass to make dishes. It looked like…what had her history book called it? Plastic, right. It looked like the all-purpose substance from a few centuries ago called plastic. Transparent liquid filled the cup half-way.

Water. As soon as the word flitted through her head, Sayuri realized how brutally thirsty she was. She opened her mouth. Tried to speak. The words rasped in her throat. The man understood, though. He lifted the cup, helped her to hold it with her right hand—the one that didn’t feel hollow, trembling-weak, suffused with icy needles burning her to the very bone—and helped her bring the cup to her lips.

The first drops of water touched her lips. Stung in the cracks she hadn’t known were there. Cool water spilled past her lips into her mouth. Saturated the dried husk of her tongue, soothed the dust-dryness of her mouth, eased the raw smokiness in her throat. She coughed. Winced. Sipped some more.

"Slowly, now," the man—the medic? He spoke like a medic—murmured. "Easy. Small sips. Don’t overdo it. You've been unconscious for almost twelve hours and you're dehydrated, but don't drink too fast. You can make yourself sick. You okay?" He added when she lowered the cup. "Can you try to talk?"

She swallowed. It didn’t feel like swallowing shards of glass and bits of wire this time. Taking a small breath that still managed to flick her ribs with pain, she whispered, "Yes."

"Okay. I'm Eric. Eric Waverly," the medic said. "You're in my apartment. And you're Sayuri, right? Captain…I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name."

Sayuri licked her lips. "Asbjørnsen—Az-bee-yorne-senn," she managed to murmur.

"Captain Asbjørnsen. Right. Do you know what happened?"

She nodded. "Where's my ship?" Boreal's absence gnawed at the back of her mind like a neurological toothache. She could just barely feel the faintest edge of the depths of his agony as his body slowly knit back together. But where had this man, this Eric Waverly, left Boreal? How had he even known how to get onto the bridge and get her off-ship?

"Yeah, your ship," Eric mumbled. "Boreal. Right? Like borealis. North." Sayuri nodded again, very carefully, feeling the pieces of her skull sloshing around near the top of her spine. "I left him at the crash-site. You crashed into our planet. My dog found you. Sort of." At the mention of a dog, a dash of brilliant coppery gold zoomed into the room. A dog barked once before dropping its head onto the knee of Sayuri's wrinkled, dirty, and torn uniform pants. Æspÿrøn tickled the back of her mind as she looked into big, brown, canine eyes. "That's Wendy."

When Sayuri tried to move her left arm again, this time instinctively to pet the dog, the pain shooting up and down her forearm was almost nauseating. She gasped. Her torso spasmed as her cracked ribs shrieked in protest. Eric gripped her shoulder, pressing his hand to her back. The heat from his palm through her shirt soothed her.

Her shirt…

"Where's my jacket? Where’s my…" She whispered, looking around as fresh panic tried to claw at her throat. It subsided when she glimpsed her uniform-jacket on a wire hanger on a doorknob. Her captain's wings glittered in the pale light from a single overhead light. Underneath the jacket sat her gray, canvas ready-case. There were weapons in there, emergency rations, water, some supplies…and the six-million terabyte jewel-chip they'd picked up from an æsÿn'jähär space-station out near Alpha Centauri. Everything she needed was right there.

Her gaze drifted toward a window; she noticed the darkness of night beyond the glass, darkness streaked with toxic city-glow. She was in a city. Not a big one like Tokyo or New York City, but not a village or a town. Somewhere in a city's outlying suburb. In an apartment.

A quick look around told her she'd come farther back into the past than she'd first imagined: on the tiny but very clean kitchen counter sat a microwave, something she'd only seen in museums and history books. Scientists had discovered a replacement for the mid-twentieth century device in the tail-end of the twenty-first century.

"So here's the deal," Eric said, breaking into her thoughts. She flicked her gaze to him, and for the first time compared the æspÿrøn-vision of him to what she saw now. His hair was longer than it had been when she'd first seen him—his chocolate-colored scalp didn’t show through the short, black curls—and in the vision, he'd had a thin scar running along his jaw. A deep scratch or cut had taken its place. So whatever she'd seen had occurred after that cut had scarred over.

Eric cleared his throat. She blinked, startled. Stared at him. He'd been talking. She hadn’t noticed. Everything seemed…distant just now. A bit floaty. The after-effects of shock? Or a result of the concussion banging through her skull?

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I…where am I?"

"You're on Earth."

She bit back a sigh as more ouch kicked her in the back of the head. Every species called its planet "Earth" in their language. The concept of home-earth was what made people call Terra "Earth" to begin with. She had no idea if she was on Terra or another planet with a bipedal species. There were a few planets scattered across the explored parts of the galaxy that boasted colonies of æsÿn'jähär, Nĵörðunn refugees from their arctic planet that had escaped during the bloody civil war during what had been the Cro-Magnon period on Terra. She spoke two dialects of Nĵörð fluently—it was a required course at Polaris's flight academy because of the war—but her head ached so mercilessly, she couldn’t focus long enough to figure out if Eric was speaking English or Japanese or Icelandic, her three native Terran languages, or Nĵörð. He could’ve been speaking Drókvæðä for all she knew. It hurt too much to concentrate.

But then she realized she'd automatically spoken to him in Japanese, her mother's native language, and he'd responded. She blinked. Stared at him as if dazed. He knew Japanese? She was on Terra, then. Had to be. Earth-Prime, as some called it. She was on Terra in the Sol System. But where? What continent? What country? Japan? There was no way Boreal could’ve taken a nosedive all the way from Pluto's orbit into Terra in a country as small and densely populated as Japan without being noticed. So where…?

"You're in the US," he added. "Pattou, Arizona. The desert. You crashed out in the desert. I got you into my truck and drove you back to my place. Your ship said a hospital was a bad idea."

Nodding, she pressed her right fingers against her temple. Winced. Realized the headache from the concussion wasn’t so bad, but that it had decided to mix with the throbbing from the cuts on her forehead, the knot on top of her head, the bruises on her face, and Boreal's pain feeding through their vÿnðe'oðr bond.

Three small things were pressed into her good hand. She looked down and saw they were little, brown tablets. The number stamped on them told her exactly what it was—painkillers. She looked up at Eric.

"Now that you're awake, we can risk giving you something for the pain. Here's some more water." He helped her to swallow the pills one at a time, then got to his feet. "You're going to need to eat something with that. I don't have much, but there's some hotdogs."

Sayuri nodded, offering a tight smile. "Thank you. Something to eat would be—"

A high-pitched, rapid beep echoed off the apartment walls. A small light flashed red inside her ready-case; she could just catch a glimpse of it sticking out of a half-closed pocket. She reached for it, but Eric got there first, handing her the shrilling mini-sensor she carried whenever she was planet-side. She stared at the two-by-two-inch view-screen. Swallowed.

"What's wrong?" Eric asked, crouching down beside her. Her good hand shook as she clutched at the mini-sensor. "What is it?"

Everything was wrong. Everything. Because somehow, even though everything she'd ever been taught told her it was utterly impossible, something was approaching Terra's atmosphere. Something extraterrestrial. A handful of somethings that shouldn’t have been there.

Nĵörðunn ŧrø'ayłe—war-cruisers. The same ones that had chased her through the wormhole.

Darkness There, and Nothing - CH. 4 - No Friendly Drop to Help Me After

Chapter Four

No Friendly Drop to Help Me After

.

.

The question you should ask is not what was she to me, Thor. The proper question is, what was she to　you?

Loki's words reverberated through Thor's skull as he lay in bed that night, staring into the darkness of his chamber as if that would give him some insight into his brother's cryptic words. No epiphany emerged from the shadows. No moment of enlightenment found the crown prince, in waking or in dreams. He woke the next morning near dawn, bleary-eyed, head aching from the questions circling in his mind. Who was Sophie, this child who was somehow connected to Loki and, apparently, to Thor? How had Loki found her? How had he come to care so deeply for her? And care for her he did; Thor couldn't find it in himself to discount his foster brother's visceral reactions whenever Sophie came up in conversation. What did the child have to do with the mysterious Thea?

The prince was still pondering all of this as he trudged into the dining hall and slumped onto the bench. Within moments Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun had taken spots on either side and across from him. Remaining in a fog of exhaustion, Thor basically ignored the Warriors Three as they filled their plates and began eating. It was only when Fandral and Volstagg both fell silent that Thor realized one of them must have said something to him, and he'd missed it.

"Thor," the corpulent Volstagg said, catching the other Asgardian's eye. "Will you not take some time to spar with us this morning?"

He shook his head. After he finished his meal, he needed to speak to Loki again. He'd already reported yesterday's happenings to his mother; now he needed to know more. He couldn't leave things as they were between himself and his little brother. Like a boorish idiot, he'd lashed out at Loki in attempt to get him to speak, attacking the only two things that seemed to be capable of truly hurting him—the mysterious Thea and Sophie.

"Sif will be there," Fandral added, then casually took a sip of wine. Thor frowned at him.

"Where?"

Now all three of his friends were staring at him. As if speaking to a particularly dull child, Fandral said, "At our sparring session. In the salle. Which we just invited you to."

Thor shook his head. "I can't. I have an important matter to attend to."

There was a long silence. It was Hogun, who was so taciturn that many called him Hogun the Grim, who finally broke that silence. "You are going to see Loki." He waited for Thor to cant his head in acknowledgement before adding, "You are with him often these past weeks." Thor said nothing, thinking of the illusion of the child called Sophie, and the unknown Thea, and Loki's claim that the Chitauri had imprisoned him. It was not something to share with his friends. Not yet, if ever. Hogun sighed. "He cannot be helped, Thor. He is lost."

"You do the queen a disservice by making her think otherwise," Fandral added softly. Thor shot him a look of glacial sapphire and his friend mumbled an apology, hiding from the prince's ire behind his goblet of wine. Silence fell again. Any attempts at restarting the conversation were feeble, easily shot down with one slashing look from Thor.

At last the Asgardian prince decided he could eat no more, and rose from the table. His friends—three brave warriors who had once been Loki's friends as well—watched him go. Their gazes were heavy on his back as he left the dining hall.

.

The walk to the dungeon hall led the prince down corridors of stone that echoed with his footsteps and shaded pathways where sunlight dappled across the floor and briefly warmed his skin. Beyond the arched roofs, he could see the sun still soft and golden with the last kiss of dawn in the sky with its peach and amber clouds. Birds sang to welcome the new morning. Thor sighed, wondering if his little brother missed sunrises, sunsets. Loki had always been fond of the stars, as well. Did he miss being able to gaze up at the star-studded night sky?

From morning light to timeless shadow, Thor stepped into the dungeons, where only torches held back to darkness. With every step the birdsong grew dimmer and dimmer, until it had been silenced all together, leaving only oppressive quiet.

Have you ever been shut up in pitch blackness for so long that you cannot remember the feel of the wind, the song of the Asgardian Sea roaring over the edge of the abyss, the sight of sunlight or moonlight or even the faint glimmer of the stars? Have you any idea what it's like, to be wrapped in silence so absolute that you only have the sound of your heart roaring in your ears and your own screams to listen to?

Did the shadows and the quiet remind Loki of his time in the Chitauri dungeons? Or the time he claimed to have spent, anyway? What had helped him through such terrible times, Thor wondered? He resolved to ask his brother when he arrived at his cell.

But Thor slowed as he approached when he heard a snide voice ask, "Another drawing? Quite the artist, aren’t you, little brother?"

Tyr, Thor thought, rolling his eyes. Didn't his older brother have anything better to do an hour after dawn besides taunt Loki? Tryst with a chambermaid or get drunk, for instance? Or pound on someone in the practice yard? Squaring his shoulders, he picked up the pace.

"I've heard the guards say you're drawing a woman," Tyr continued to jeer at his foster brother. A jolt of electricity snapped through Thor's body. A woman? Was it Thea? "Feeling lonely, are we, little Frost Giant? Who is she, the woman in your drawings? Your current favorite? Maybe I should pay her a visit; she must be something special if she can hold your interest this long. What's her name?"

"If you do not stop talking, I will—"

"You'll what?" Tyr demanded, laughing. "Reach through the shielded glass and kill me? As if you could. And even if you were able to, well…Thor would really hate you then. And what would Mother and Father say? That would be your second attempt at fratricide. Who's next on your list? Balder? Besides, you don’t need to answer. I merely wished to see if you would. I already know your woman's name. Thea, wasn't it?"

At that, Thor launched into a run just as the sound of something heavy hitting glass echoed down the corridor. Thor rounded the corner to see Loki plastered to the large pane of ensorcelled glass, lips twisted into a feral snarl, eyes blazing. Only Tyr's broad back and the back of his crow-dark hair were visible to Thor, but the prince was fairly certain his elder brother was sneering.

"Shut up!" Loki yelled. "Shut up!"

"Oh-ho!" Tyr folded his massive arms across his chest and laughed. "Well, well, well. Don't you remember Mother's lessons about sharing, Brother? I promise not to hurt the silly little slut. I only mean to—"

But Loki rammed the glass hard enough that even Tyr went quiet. Dark brows knotted, shoulders and chest heaving with every ragged breath, Loki spat from between clenched teeth, "Get. Out. You filthy swine, get out!"

"Swine, am I?" Tyr's voice turned savage. "You treacherous little bast—"

"Tyr!" Thor snapped, imbuing his voice with that regal coldness his father had taught him in his youth. His elder brother turned and grinned when he saw Thor, glacier-blue eyes warming slightly, but the grin slipped away when he caught sight of the crown prince's expression. Tyr opened his mouth to say something but Thor cut ruthlessly cut him off. "You will not speak to Loki, or of someone under his protection, with such disrespect."

Clearly flabbergasted, the elder prince said, "Thor…he's under house arrest. Bor's ghost, he's in prison."

Icily, Thor said, "Which changes nothing. He is still a prince of the royal household."

"He's a Frost Giant," Tyr hissed.

"He is my brother and a prince of Asgard, and you will speak to him and of him with respect, or I shall take this matter to the king," Thor snapped. Wide-eyed, Tyr offered him a mocking, truncated bow and shoved past him, disdaining to bid him a proper goodbye. Thor didn't care. He didn't know what had possessed him to threaten his elder brother with kingly interference, since Odin probably would have done nothing—he'd yet to even reprimand Tyr for his jibing Loki—but the half-insane rage and grief in Loki's eyes had forced Thor to act before he'd actually formed a thought.

Dismissing his elder brother for the moment, the crown prince focused on his younger brother. Loki's forehead was pressed to the glass; he ignored the needle-pricks of the seiðr meant to keep him imprisoned. His hands had relaxed from their tense fists. Now they lay palm-down against the window. Loki's breathing had evened out. He no longer panted for breath like a rabid wolf.

"Why?" Loki demanded softly, not looking up at Thor.

"Why what?" Thor replied, voice just as soft.

"Why did you defend me to him?" Because Loki kept his head bent, Thor couldn't quite gauge the new expression twisting his face. "Maintaining unity among the ranks, were you? Except Tyr is your brother—your real brother. So why?"

A sigh heaved through the prince, then he gestured to a guard for a chair. He'd made provisions to have one brought last night. Now the guard dragged the comfortable seat to the big Asgardian, who dropped into it with another sigh. Leaning forward, he propped his elbows on his knees and studied his younger foster brother—the bowed head, the slumped shoulders, the exhaustion in every line of his body. Had Loki been sleeping these last several weeks? Seconds ticked by in silence, then minutes. Loki didn't move. Neither did Thor. It was almost like those staring games they'd played as boys, seeing who would blink first. In the end, they both moved at the same time, Thor leaning back as Loki lifted his head.

Thor folded his arms across his chest. "I'll make you a bargain, Brother. For every question of yours I answer, you answer one of mine. Deal?" He ignored the pang that always shot through him when he thought of deals…when he thought of Jane.

Pale lips pursed as Loki considered. After a moment, the disguised Frost Giant nodded slowly. "Very well…but the answers to the questions must be of equal value. I'll not trade my soul for the knowledge of what you ate for breakfast."

Inclining his head, Thor replied, "Fair enough. Why did I defend you to Tyr? Because you're his brother and he has no right to attack you in such a way; because no matter what you've done, no matter that the king has judged you a criminal, you don't deserve to be tormented by your own kin; and because you're my little brother, and that's what elder brothers are supposed to do for their little brothers."

Pushing away from the glass, Loki scoffed. "When will you get it through your thick skull that I'm adopted?"

Unperturbed, Thor asked, "When will you get it through yours that I don't care?" Loki shot him an indecipherable look, but said nothing. "I've known you were adopted since before I came to Midgard to bring you home. Do you think it mattered then? It didn't. It certainly doesn't matter to me now."

"Well, then, what about…" A muscle flexed in Loki's jaw, and his hands convulsed into fists before he forced them to relax. "What about…Thea? She is no kin of yours. Why should you defend her to Tyr?"

"Because it is very obvious to me that you cared about her a great deal," Thor said gently, "and Tyr should respect that, as I do."

This time his little brother's expression was clear as a cloudless sky. "Oh?" He snarled. "Do you?"

"I should not have said what I did yesterday," Thor said. "I was angry. You're very good at provoking me. But then, that's what little brothers are supposed to do to their elder brothers, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised."

Loki stared at him for a long moment, then asked, "Are you drunk?"

Startled, Thor blinked. "No. Why?"

"Did Fandral get you to drink poppy juice again?"

"Get me to…no. Why?"

Long moments of intense scrutiny passed, then emerald eyes at last looked away and Loki said wearily, "Why are you here, Thor?"

"Because I promised you I would listen."

A wry chuckle echoed down the corridor as Loki shook his head. "We both know you're incapable of pulling that off. I told you to go away. So why are you here?"

"Because I promised."

The two brothers regarded each other for a few moments. Loki stood beside the fireplace now, slender arms folded and laid against the side of the fireplace mantel. His face was thin, and paler than ever, his eyes vibrant jade against his unhealthy pallor. There were dark shadows beneath those eyes, firming Thor's conclusion that he hadn't slept, and Thor saw that Loki's nails on the hand closest to the window were ragged and torn to the quick, bloodied in places. Scrapes marred his knuckles. What had he been doing to himself?

"My turn for questions now," Thor said, "unless you have something else you wish to ask." When Loki shook his head, the prince asked, "How did Thea die?" Because if Loki had killed her, then there was no point in continuing the conversation; if Loki could kill someone he cared for as deeply as he obviously seemed to care for Thea, then he was capable of anything, any treachery.

Dropping his chin to rest atop his forearms, Loki replied in a tight voice, "The Chitauri killed her. Poison."

"Were you with her?" Thor pressed.

A slow, somber shake of the head as jade eyes stared off into the distance, gazing down roads of memory. "No…but I should have been."

Baffled, Thor asked, "Why?"

Squeezing his eyes shut, shifting to grip the mantel tightly with one hand, Loki drew a short, sharp breath. Let it out slowly, as if fighting for control of himself. He bowed his head; his hair fell around his face like an inky curtain, obscuring Thor's view of his expression. He rasped, "Why does it matter?"

"Because you feel guilty for not being with her when she died," Thor said gently. "I want to know why." When Loki said nothing, he added, "Do you remember when we were boys, and Tyr stole your favorite storybook? Ripped out the pages and threw the binding on the midden pile? You remember that; I can see you do." Loki shook his head and rolled his eyes, but when Thor just stared at him, he gave a grudging nod. "You remember how Mother found you crying in your room and you wouldn't tell her what had happened? You wouldn’t explain to Father, to Víðarr or Hermod or even Balder, and we could always talk to Balder. You wouldn't speak to anyone…but you spoke to me. You trusted me then."

"I was a boy," Loki said coolly. "Children will trust where they shouldn't. Look at your precious mortal. Midgardians are very much like children, and your little Midgardian trusted in your promise to return…and yet here you are."

Anger flashed through the Asgardian prince, but he swallowed it back—with difficulty. Giving into his anger had pushed Loki away every time. He couldn't afford to let that happen. It seemed as if, despite his younger brother's reticence, they were making a little more headway. He wouldn’t let that progress slip through his fingers. So he tamped down the irritation and regret that always plagued him when he thought of Jane, and focused on his little brother.

"I wish you would trust me, Loki."

"Yes, of course I'm going to trust you when you are the reason I'm here in the first place instead of with—" He cut off abruptly, glaring fiercely at the prince. A malevolent spark burned in the depths of absinthe-green eyes.

"Tell me," Thor said softly. "What were you going to say? Who are you supposed to be with? Tell me, Brother."

But his brother shook his head. "I will not be tricked into baring my soul for your twisted pleasure, Odinson. I owe you no answers."

"You promised to answer my questions, Brother. I'll forego the second to receive an answer to the first—why do you feel guilty for not being with her when she died? Because you could have saved her?"

"No," Loki spat. "I couldn't have saved her. You made sure of that."

"Then why—"

"Because I promised her!" Loki suddenly snarled, taking a single shaking step toward Thor. A feverish light burned in his eyes as he cried, "She was afraid to die alone. She was so afraid, and so I promised her, only to be far from her side when she succumbed at last. Because of you! She died, alone and frightened and in pain, because of you!"

"Loki—"

"Do you know what Chitauri poison does? To a mortal woman? To a child? To an…" He trailed off and turned away, to slam his fist into the wall. It left a smear of blood on the white stone, but it didn't seem to affect the pseudo-Æsir at all. Pressing his hands flat to the wall, he hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, mumbled something so softly under his breath that Thor couldn't hear it.

"Loki…Brother, I never meant…"

His brother twisted around, green eyes blazing, and he fixed the Asgardian prince with a hostile look. "I don't care what you meant. That doesn't bring her back. That doesn't bring either of them back! That doesn't erase the fact that Thea's last hours were filled with suffering and agony. I was told her death was a hard one, that she died cursing my name with her last breath for betraying that vow. But then, I suppose you're not surprised that I didn't keep my promise. After all, I'm never sincere, am I?"

Thor stared at him, at the way he shuddered, the sweat dampening his forehead and temples, the anguish in his eyes. Suffering and agony…because of Thor, because he'd stopped his little brother from murdering innocent people…at least, that’s what Loki claimed. Though he wasn’t certain of the verity of the details, Thor believed Thea had died, and died a hard death, for it to strike Loki so.

"I'm sorry, Loki, for what happened to her," Thor murmured. And he was; surely his brother could see that. After struggling with the idea that it might not be the best question under the circumstances, Thor finally asked his brother, "Did you love her?" He knew the answer, or was fairly certain he did…but he wanted to hear what Loki would say.

The disguised Frost Giant scoffed, sounding weary again. He leaned against the mantel. "Don't be stupid. I? Love a mortal? A mere child compared to our kind? You really are a blithering idiot, Thor."

And yet…the words didn't quite ring so sincerely this time. Or was that lack of sincerity just another ploy of Loki's to manipulate his foster brother? Ignoring his brother's hostility—the only way they'd actually have a conversation that lasted more than five minutes that didn't involve curses and shouting—Thor asked, "What were you muttering before?"

"Nothing," Loki snapped, his expression hardening. "A bit of verse that seemed apt; you wouldn't know it, it is from Midgard." A momentary softness crossed his face. "Thea told it to me," he said, as if to himself. "She had a gift for remembering such things."

"Will you not share it with me?"

Loki shot him a look that plainly said he was intruding on some important private recollecting with his very stupid question. "Why? It's not important."

"Then why not tell me?"

Shoving off from the mantel, Loki replied, "Because you're wasting my time. But since you'll not cease whining for it like a neglected puppy, I suppose I must indulge you." Staring into the fire, voice empty of any emotion, he recited as if dead, "'What's here? A cup, closed in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been her timeless end: O churl! Drunk all, and left…'" There was a hitch in Loki's voice, just the slightest waver, before he concluded, "'And left no friendly drop to help me after?'"

Wondering how to keep Loki talking, Thor murmured, "I didn't know her fate was mixed into the balance, Brother. Why didn't you tell me about her?"

Exhausted emerald eyes flicked to him, then away. "It wouldn't have changed anything; you wouldn't have believed me." A pause, then Loki asked in an emotionless voice, "Do you even believe me now?"

"I see how much her death has hurt you."

Verdant eyes drifted shut. "Oh, you see, do you, Brother? You see. Tell me, what do you know of pain, Thor? What have you ever truly lost during the span of your perfect life?"

"For one terrible night and day, I thought Father was dead," Thor said coolly, and he thought he saw Loki flinch, almost imperceptibly…but it might have been his imagination. "You told me Father was dead. You looked me in the eye and lied to me, made me think that the last thing I'd ever said to my father, the last thing I would ever be able to say to him, was that he was an old man and a fool." Loki said nothing, but his expression seemed to soften for a moment, and his eyes when they opened seemed full of sorrow. Acting on instinct, Thor didn't push the moment of softening. He merely asked, keeping his voice as gentle as he could, "And what of the child, Sophie? How did she die?"

Loki's eyes widened and his features twisted as if he'd been stabbed. His hand crept toward his heart before tightening into a fist. He squeezed his eyes shut. For several moments his throat worked convulsively, and he swallowed hard. The color drained from his face. Thor had to fight the urge to jump to his feet and demand if his brother was all right.

"Poison," Loki choked out, and the misery and hatred saturating that one word struck Thor like a fist to the belly. "The same as her…the same as Thea. And for that, when my sentence is ended here, I will hunt down Thanos, even if I must sojourn to the ends of the universe, and I will drive a sword through his heartless chest. I'll have his blood, even if I have to crawl over broken glass for it. Even if I have to drink it. Nothing in this universe will stop me from killing him."

Loki locked eyes with Thor and the crown prince's brow furrowed. Somehow, in the light, his brother's eyes looked almost electric blue. It was there for a moment, a flicker of all-too-familiar cerulean, before it faded away, leaving only viridian in its wake. Had the crown prince simply imagined that change? He couldn't be sure, but it reminded him of…of something. Nonplussed, Thor tried to find something to say, but could think of nothing. He could only stare at his brother, at the mad gleam of hatred burning in his gaze, before Loki cleared his expression of all emotion.

With a sigh, Loki moved to the table and sank into his chair. Papers covered the smooth wooden surface of the table, many filled with Loki's handwriting. A few seemed to display unfinished sketches, but they sat at such angles that Thor couldn't decipher them. For several long moments Loki shifted papers to and fro, eyeing them with a strange apathy. Then the pseudo-Æsir held up his pointer-finger as if in warning.

"One question left, Thor," he said tonelessly. "Use it wisely."

Buying time to figure out a good question, Thor sat back and watched his brother as Loki picked up a half-done sketch and studied it with an unearthly intensity. Emerald eyes narrowed as they took in every charcoal-etched feature. The Asgardian prince wished he was in a position to see the drawing but…wait…

"May I see that?" Thor asked, a spark of triumph beginning to grow in his chest. If Loki was drawing the Midgardian woman who seemed to constantly occupy his thoughts, then at last Thor could put a face to her. But his hopes plummeted when his brother sneered and denied him. So much for getting his hands on one of the drawings. Ponderous silence descended once more.

At last, unable to think of anything more pertinent, he asked, "Why did the Chitauri even have a child like Sophie?"

Loki sighed, shoulders slumping. He dropped the drawing to the table and let his head fall backward against the chair. Closing his eyes, he passed his hands over his face, as if attempting to smooth away any telling emotions. Thor merely waited for his brother to speak. At last Loki said, "If I say this, I want no more questions. I will answer no more questions. Do you hear me? You will leave me in peace."

"As you wish, Brother. After this, I'll go. You'll not see me until tomorrow."

"Very well," Loki murmured. "The Chitauri had Sophie because they had Thea…and because they'd captured me."

Chapter 4 - Second Night

that is

A Short Tale of Tears, Memories, the Fate of an Elf Queen, and a Bath

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Her silent screams choked her awake. Dylan bolted upright as panic shrieked under her skin and pain burned through her. She fought desperately against the urge to be sick, biting down on her fist until blood welled up and dripped down her arm. Only then, as memory slowly seeped back into her mind, did the sheer terror ease its throttling grip on her throat a little, and she remembered how she'd gotten here.

The Elf had carried her to this bed, hadn't he? He must have, as she'd fallen asleep (or possibly unconscious), soothed by the comforting warmth of the Spirit in her chest, leaning against the table where he now sat. Was he awake?

Dylan shot the Elf prince one wild-shy glance and saw the pale man in a red tunic and black breeches asleep in his chair, his head tilted forward so that his chin rested on his chest and his long, blond hair curtained his face, shielding him from view.

At the sight of him, memory flashed through her mind - hands choking, fists beating, bones cracking, flesh tearing, and the blood, so much blood - and she gasped softly as her body constricted in pain, both physical and not. Tears burning her eyes, she curled in on herself like a snail, cradling her pain to her chest. Had he... had he done anything to her? Touched her? Or... or...

A sharp heat flared in her chest, a soothing balm against the icy terror threatening to shake her apart. No, he wouldn't do that to her. He'd saved her. He wouldn't hurt her, at least like that. No. Not this one.

But others would. Others had.

Not wanting to wake her rescuer, she didn't cry. Dylan had no idea as to whether he would be angry at being awakened by mortal weeping, and she didn't have to touch the raw necklace of shadows around her throat to remember how much damage he could do when enraged. But her entire body shuddered with pain and fury, shuddered because it had happened again. Those monsters... those monsters...

A whimper managed to escape her, and the slumbering Elf in the chair stirred. Dylan immediately forced herself to get quiet. To hold herself together, she clutched her fragmenting soul to her chest and bit her lip until her tongue tasted the copper tang of blood. Tiny tremors shook her body. She wouldn't cry. She would not. She wouldn't wake the Elf. From the look of him, he needed to sleep for a lot longer if he was going to recover. He seemed worn, stretched, too thin in body, soul and mind.

And she... she...

When her body had stopped shaking, the brunette reached up and hesitantly touched her face. Dylan found hard, crusted lines where her attackers had slashed her face, thin and thick scabs that hurt whenever she changed expression. Sighing, she allowed her hands to fall back against the soft quilt. Her brother had warned her about this when she'd decided to counsel troubled teens. Those men had attacked her not to kill her, but to send a brutal and terrible message from Tito, from their leader. They'd wanted to make sure it was driven home, right to her heart. Make sure she knew not to mess with them or one of theirs again.

Just the thought of their rough hands, like coarse animal hair, and their hot fetid breath... their beady, bestial eyes... Dylan fought hard not to be violently sick. As a child, she had seen... some awful things. Experienced far worse things. It was one of the reasons she could possess any measure of calm now.

"We warned you, puta. Never mess with our chicas, yeah?"

Lisa, they were talking about Lisa, but she'd had to. She'd had to. For Lisa's sake. For the girl who needed help and couldn't trust anyone but the therapist who Saw what she Saw, who knew about the magical world that existed like blood beneath the skin of the mortal realm. She'd had to help that girl, the girl who was so much like her beneath the skin.

And still the wolves growled and snarled, "Now you'll remember... every time you look in the mirror."

Her nails had left bloody crescents in her palms and her throat ached from holding back her scream by the time the memory faded enough for her to beat it back into the depths of her brain with a mental sledgehammer. She'd woken in an icy terrified sweat from dark memory-dreams nearly her entire life. After eleven years of poisonous thorazine pumped through her blood, Dylan knew how to deal with nightmares.

She could handle this. She could handle this.

Coldly, logically, she thought hard about her situation, trying not to think about the attack itself. With a mind as icy and clinical as she could make it, she assessed the damage done to her body. Dylan allowed the part of her mind not occupied with conscious thought to dwell on the pain in her body, the only thing keeping her collected.

Her face had more than twenty cuts criss-crossing her features, but there was no nerve damage. Of course, there would be scars, though she didn't really care. There was always the viable option of covering them with makeup. Or getting rid of the mirrors in her cottage. There was only the one in her bathroom.

Or she could simply get used to seeing the thin, raised lines the wounds would leave behind, as if her face had been flogged by the thin lash of a faerie waggoner's whip.

Then there was the bruising. She knew from the difficulty she had breathing that her ribs were cracked, but having had broken ribs before, she knew that this time, hers were not. Still, if the pain worsened at all, or anything else hit her torso, she'd have to find her way to a hospital immediately. Punctured lungs were one of her prime fears relative to broken ribs.

Her cheekbone was cracked, but since her eye was still in its socket, she seriously doubted it was broken. None of her limbs or fingers or toes were damaged, though she'd lost a fingernail in the scuffle with her attackers. The main threat to her health was the effects of her rape.

She had not been a virgin, thanks to the hell her life had been in the institution. Thanks to two vicious monsters who thrived on the pain of others. That fact had most likely saved her life. The blood and pain were from minor tears and severe abrasions, but she had seen young girls bleed to death from a hymen savagely ripped through during a rape. Luckily, she wasn't bleeding anymore; she'd made sure of that before going to sleep, and surreptitiously checked again now. No fresh blood. So that danger wasn't quite as prevalent in her mind any longer. It seemed that all she would need to do once she'd healed up a little was get therapy.

Therapy.

Two scalding hot tears rolled down her cheeks and soaked the pillow she rested her head upon. The idea of talking to a psychiatrist, even though that was her profession, made her shudder with revulsion, with a child's shame of weakness and a woman's rage at being made to feel helpless yet again. Shudder from phantom memories. The echoes of old wounds. The pain of the betrayed and confused. Self-loathing so deep only a child would understand where and when it came from, how it still breathed and festered.

She ignored it, refused to let it hurt her. Refused to acknowledge that she felt any of it.

It's not my fault, she thought. None of it was my fault. It has never been my fault. I won't let it be my fault. Memories more than two decades old. Memories more recent than those. A child's memories, and a girl's. A woman's pain mingling with a child's nightmare. But she wouldn't let herself be that child anymore. She wasn't seven years old anymore, or twelve, or fifteen, or nineteen. She was twenty-eight, nearly twenty-nine, and strong and she would not let those memories hurt anymore.

Dylan fought the tears back. A study-partner of hers in med school had often said she would die an early death from fighting back the urge to cry the way she did, and refusing to allow herself to vent disappointments in any way. As a psychiatrist, Dylan even knew that it was unhealthy. She thought her old partner, Julian, might have been right about the early death; every time she suppressed her tears, it became harder, and her chest ached, as if she were having a minor heart attack. Maybe she was. Maybe her body was storing up all the angst like a battery, and one day her defenses would crumble under the D-cell power.

"I will not fault you for weeping," the ice-cold voice murmured from the chair. "You need not stifle your tears."

Dylan jumped at the sound of his voice and winced when her body protested stridently. Glancing over at him, she opened her mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. She had no idea what kind of footing she was on with this person.

But she had to say something about the tears. She felt stupid, letting him see how shaken she was, how much the attack had upset her. After all the brutality she'd dealt with in her life, was she really going to cry about this? Cry, like some naive child who had no idea that men were vicious, cruel monsters? She wasn't Sorcha of Sevenwaters, after all, that innocent daughter of the forest from one of her favorite books, an untested girl taken unawares. Rape should have been nothing new to the teary-eyed woman.

It was nothing new, she reminded herself. She wouldn't let herself cry over old memories again. Nor new ones, either. She'd sworn to herself years ago never to cry over anything that happened to her. Never again. Never.

"You may not fault me, Your Highness," she muttered. "But I'd fault myself. I don't have a good reason to cry." The words were more for herself than him. "I'm alive, aren't I? I'm not going to die anytime soon. This isn't going to kill me. I'd only be crying about... anyway, it's stupid to cry over something I can't change." After all, all crying ever got her was a soggy pillow and a brain and body too exhausted to fight back when the time came. That route was never an option. Fighting back was the only choice, even if she died fighting.

"I am used to human weakness. It is considered acceptable by your people's standards to cry."

"But not by mine," she hissed. "I will not be weak." Never again. Never.

"Those are the words," he said coldly, "of one who has learned the painful lesson that enemies do not respect tears of grief, and only rejoice in their making. Is this not so?"

His words lanced her. She never cried if she could help it; it brought the predators down on her like rabid dogs. Self-preservation demanded she keep the tears back. But how could he know that?

And why was he suddenly being so kind to her? His voice, like ice. His words, like friendship. It was almost as if he were trying to console her, trying to tell her that he understood. The thought made her face burn and her hands clench beneath the quilt. He didn't understand. She was so sick of people saying they did. At the most, he might think his words applied to common human bullies or perhaps torturers who worked for her enemies. Maybe her attackers. After all, he was an Elf in a time many fey considered to be wartime.

But that wasn't what she meant. It wasn't what she was referring to at all.

Suddenly, the faces of her family swam before her eyes, and she gritted her teeth. Loneliness and a feeling like homesickness, but different, a longing for a person instead of a place, welled up in her chest. She missed her twin brother. And how she despised the rest of her family, even though she didn't want to. Even though she loved them, too. How she hated the world, and humanity, and yes, even the rescuer who had been too late to save her before such vicious damage had been done. Men. She hated them, all of them, even though she knew it wasn't fair.

For just a moment, Dylan allowed her loathing, her hate, her rage, to wash up and over her, to pour off of her like a black tsunami; all of that pain, all of that anguish and hatred, directed at men.

With something that might have been a snarl, she flung back the quilt and got to her feet. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she wasn't just going to sit here and stew in her own distress. Dylan noticed distractedly that her abrupt movement had caused the Elf in the chair to suddenly jerk upright, eyes intent on her form. Her face, she knew, was a mask of ice-cold rage.

Unfortunately, the effect of her mini-tantrum was thwarted by the fact that she then had to sink back down to the bed as a roaring filled her ears and her vision began to go gray.

"I hate you," she moaned softly.

Images of her parents, her siblings, the men who'd attacked her, all filled her mind. Her eyes burned. The mortal had no idea whether or not she were speaking to the Elf in the room with her, her treacherous family, the twin brother that had never been there when she needed him, the wolf-men who had attacked her, the demons from her childhood, or herself, huddled and pathetic on the bed. I'm not a little girl anymore. They can't make me a little girl again. Not ever.

Biting down on her lip until fresh blood from the cuts flowed, she sank her nails into her palms. Her shoulders were shaking, and her mouth was twisting into a grimace of despair. Dylan covered her face with bleeding hands to hide the evidence of her lack of composure.

"I hate this. I hate this." The word 'this' referring to her ever-increasing compulsion to weep aloud, sobbing like the terrified child she'd been all those years ago. She couldn't be that child again or she would shatter into a million pieces.

A hand fell on her shoulder, and she jerked back in surprise, a soft sound of fear escaping her lips. She looked up quickly into the blank, empty face of the blond Elf standing above her. He was expressionless as he sank onto the bed beside her. With a wild cry, she scuttled off the bed and hunched against the nearby wall, shaking. Too close, he was too close. How had she allowed herself to be so consumed by her own thoughts that she hadn't noticed his approach? Never mind the fact that he was an Elf. She couldn't let her guard down! She'd only slept because she'd been so exhausted and couldn't help it!

He said, very, very softly, "I hate humans. I have always hated them, nearly as far back as I can remember. They are empty creatures without hearts or souls. I despise them. Every act of cruelty and pain and suffering they inflict on themselves is well deserved by their breed. If not for the debt I owe you, I would cut off your head before you could draw a full breath. I hate you."

He fell silent for a while, as if thinking, and her tears cut at her eyes. Her lips trembled. Why was he saying these things to her? Was he trying to say the attack was her fault?

Dylan drove her nails into her forearms, trying to suppress the hurt and black emotion in her chest. She narrowed her ice blue eyes at him, knowing and hating the fact that her nose was swollen and red, her eyes flecked with gold, her eyelashes spiked by tears, her cheeks splotchy with color. She hated that. She hated to be vulnerable, but more importantly, she despised looking that way. Why was he saying these things to her?

Not my fault. It's not my fault.

Then he said, "I have a twin sister, Nuala. She is my life. But when I was a boy, she and I were very close to our mother, Queen Cethlenn. A mortal like yourself, born after the time of magic and wonder that you humans could never fully come to appreciate, has never seen a creature like my mother." For a moment, Nuada trailed off as memory swamped him, and he spoke almost to himself. "A creature of grace, ethereal beauty, dazzling charm. The fey praised my mother for her wisdom, even though she was Fomori and we were Tuathan. For centuries, she was my father's greatest advisor. Unlike my father, her hair was... blood red, rubies and garnets spun into the finest silk strands. Eyes like leaves hammered from emeralds, but they turned to beaten silver in the moonlight. Skin the color of marble, like an alabaster statue. My mother was so very beautiful, and kind. So very kind. I... my sister and I... loved her very much.

"One day, over three thousand of years ago, we were walking in the woods of Renvyle, my mother and sister and I, thinking it safe, and humans attacked us. Men, thirteen of them. A pack of wolves in men's clothing. They murdered our simple guard and defiled my mother. They...." The Elf prince's hands curled into fists that trembled slightly. "They used more than their bodies. She fought them, but she was not armed for war, and there were too many. Still, she tried... desperately, she tried to give my sister and I a chance to escape. We ran, but we were only children. They caught us.

"My mother bled to death from what they did to her. Having made us watch our mother's desecration, they were going to kill my sister and I, but a passing troll warrior attacked and killed them, saving us. That is why I saved you," he added softly. "I would not have what happened to my mother happen to any woman, ally or enemy, mortal or immortal, Elf-kind or human. I would," he said softly, tonelessly, "that I could have been there before any damage had been done. You are the only human who has ever forced me to taste the bitterness of regret. The only human," he whispered, "to whom I owe a debt. Think on that."

He got up and went back to his chair, propping his chin on his fist and looking resolutely away from her.

Dylan blinked, and wondered why she had felt revulsion radiating off of him when he'd been near her, even as he'd been speaking to make her feel better. Why had he confided such a painful memory to her? Unless he was trying to tell her something, and she had missed it.

Sighing, she realized she would probably never figure it out while her skin crawled like a thousand insects and her eyes burned with unshed tears.

Dylan asked tentatively, "Your wounds, Sire... how do they feel?" She felt like she ought to do something to break the ice, even though all she wanted was to run and hide in the shower and never come out. Water had always made her feel safe.

"They are well enough." His voice was firm again, and icy. The brunette woman felt as if she'd been tossed into a mountain stream in January.

"May I see?" Dylan asked softly.

When in doubt, she thought, resort to medicine. Excellent conversational topic. Her sarcasm could, unfortunately, only be appreciated by herself inside her own head. Wiping at her cheeks, she wondered absently how much longer she could hold back her tears before they broke out of her in a flood. Days? Weeks? Months? A year or two more at the most? She doubted it would be longer.

But only a portion of her mind dwelt on this. The main part of her consciousness was spent trying to futilely exploit her nearly non-existent psychic powers against the Elf in an attempt to force him to remove his clothing, so that she could examine his injuries. He only turned to stare into her eyes, the pale yellow ice of his gaze boring into her skull.

"You're not going to let me see, are you?" She muttered. Somehow, he shook his head without moving a muscle. It boggled the mind. Sighing, she asked, "In that case, is there any chance I could take a bath, Your Highness?"

He gestured impatiently towards the door to the left of the fireplace, which she assumed led to a wash room. Slender etchings of golden-haired nymphs frolicked in a pool on the door. Dylan glanced at the Elf, but he wouldn't look at her anymore. Great. Now he was just making her nervous.

Irritated, she got up slowly, her knees quaking, pain radiating from her joints, and, after grabbing her purse - and its comforting collection of stones - made her incredibly slow way to that door, wandering how she was going to manage all by herself in there. Trying unsuccessfully to put the thought out of her head, she opened the gold-etched, wooden door and slipped into the room.

Nuada waited until Dylan had quietly shut the door behind her before the Elf muttered something that sounded like,

"Candles. Rose.
Towels. Clothes.
Water hot and blue,
Soap and shampoo."

For some reason, a reason the Elf prince had never been able to discover, crinaeae and other elemental faeries had an affection for silly rhymes. They liked them, apparently, and so silly rhymes so simple and ridiculous that a child might have invented them were then recited as spells. It was basically all a game of pretend, but the chores got done. He felt an acknowledgment from the crinaeae, salamander, and sylph that were bound to the bathing room, and knew they would easily handle his wishes.

.

Dylan found the bathtub full when she closed the door to the wash room. It was a gargantuan bath made of white marble veined with gold and silver, in the shape of a tree. A foot of tub wall stood between the floor - which was rough, red stone - and the surface of the water, which steamed. The white mist rising off the water smelled of rose petals. Placed in little cubbies set about a foot apart in that wall were candles, fat pillar candles the color of a twilight sky. Tiny candle flames flickered and danced, illuminating the room. Beside one of the candles was a shelf that held an ivory bar of soap in the shape of a sea shell, and a dark green bottle of what was probably shampoo shaped like a rose. Rising up behind that shelf and cubby was a wall, set apart from the actual walls of the room, carved by thousands of tiny shelves to create a waterfall effect.

Carefully undressing, Dylan laid the sash, dress, and shift over a chair by the door and walked slowly to the edge of the bath. Steps led from the floor into the tub. The rails gleamed golden. She walked into the water, grateful for the steaming liquid and its soothing touch against her skin. The brunette ducked under the water, and held her breath, relishing the feeling of weightlessness and isolation the water offered.

She wanted to stay there forever.

.

Nuada had not the slightest idea what to do with this human that his sense of honor had dropped into his lap. Dylan was more of a trial than he had anticipated. He had forgotten, in his long exile, that women who had suffered defilement were skittish, paranoid, and hydrophiles. The human moved around him as if he were one of the craven beasts that had forced themselves upon her. She flinched every time he glanced her way. The competent, truculent, if somewhat nervous human who had seen to his wounds had vanished while he had slept. Perhaps he'd dreamed of the primitive surgery and Dylan's skill with the needle, her incogruously gentle bedside manner and strange sense of confidence.

But his fingers slipped beneath the collar of his shirt and unerringly found the wound in his shoulder, puckered and warm from the sickness he knew would be there. He fingered the end of the sewing thread in his flesh.

Could Dylan truly be a human? She did not move like a human, or speak like one - for the most part, anyway. No vile expletives, no blasphemies or curses. The only thing human about her was her scent and her features. That alone informed him that she was exactly as she said. She was mortal, a daughter of mankind, a Child of Mud. Yet this daughter of the Mud People had doctored his wounds, tenderly washed the blood from his skin, even though it was plain for all to see that she was stark terrified of him.

She made no sense. Of that, he was certain.

So wrapped up in his own thoughts was he that he didn't at first hear the soft, heartbroken singing coming from the bathing chamber. When the soft sounds reached him, he found himself on his feet before his abused ankle had enough time to protest. The Elf prince limped to the door. The melody was off-key and yet, hoarse and out of tune as Dylan was, Nuada felt as if he ought to recognize the tune.

"For you know, once even I was a
Little child, and I was afraid,
But a gentle someone always came
To dry all my tears,
Trade sweet sleep for fears,
And to give a kiss goodnight.

"Well, now I am grown
And these years have shown
That rain's a part of how life goes,
But it's dark and it's late,
So I'll hold you and wait
'Till your frightened eyes do close,
And I hope that you'll know..."

Then he heard a soft sob and a splash. There was no more singing.

Nuada waited for what seemed like hours. Seated at the table, absently tracing the bullet holes on his torso through the thin linen shirt, he watched as the sand in his tiny, copper and unpolished crystal hourglass trickled into the bottom. The sand was whiter than bones. Even as he watched, the little hourglass flipped itself over, marking the end of the second hour since the singing had so abruptly ended.

He did not wish to admit it, but he was starting to become concerned for the mortal. His honor demanded he keep the human alive as long as she remained in his care. How long could one mortal stay in the water? Had she possibly drowned?

Muttering to himself, he got to his feet, intent on discovering just what she did in the bathing room, her bath having most likely been over for some time. He refused to allow her to indulge in laziness while she remained at his sanctuary.

.

Dylan blew the air in her lungs out with a whoosh that surrounded her with bubbles. She almost smiled. Every hour, it seemed, this bathtub drained completely and refilled. It didn't seem as if there were enough time for it to be done, but somehow it took moments only. She was grateful, however, as it kept the water deliciously hot.

Her skin, though she had scrubbed it until her flesh should have been rendered a raw and bloody mess, was sparkling clean and rosy pink, fragrantly scented with the essence of lilies and roses. There was no blood on her skin, either from the attack or from any bleeding that may have occurred during the night. That made her relax even further into the steaming hot water.

Leaning back to allow the cascade of hot water from the carved waterfall to pour over her hair and back, she sighed.

Dylan hadn't felt this relaxed or safe in years, since she was a child in Pennsylvania, surrounded by the forests and meadows that lay all around her parents' house. Grateful for the peace surrounding her, the glow of the candles and the sound of the water singing over marble, she smiled wanly and closed her eyes, allowing the tension to drain from her body completely.

Safe. This place was safe.

The door slammed open.