Garnet 5 - Silver Feathers Have Fallen

We were walking home from the bus stop—okay, I'll admit it, I was practically skipping after my amazebeans performance at lunch earlier—when Jack leaned down and whispered, "What are we going to do with Lily?"

I bit back a sigh. Why did we keep having to have this conversation? "We're not doing anything with her," I replied.

"What about when your parents come home? If your parents find out Lily's here without parental consent, they'll just ship her right back to the Whitmoor house."

I bit back a Homer Simpson "d'oh!" and tried not to grind my teeth. I hadn’t even thought of that. I didn’t know how I was supposed to handle the secret about my parentage. I was apparently a Boajuun, a demon from Fayre. Jack had triple-checked by making a tasty snack out of my neck (with my permission) and tasting the starlit demon magic in my blood. Apparently this also made me incredibly tasty. Yay for him, I guess. But the fact that I was a demon meant one of two things: either my parents had lied to me for eighteen years and I was adopted, or my parents had lied to me for eighteen years and they weren’t human, either. At the moment, I wasn’t sure which one I was hoping for.

If my parents were human and I was adopted, they had no clue about the world of faeries and witches I'd stumbled into by punching Lilith Whitmoor in the face on the first day of school. Since they didn’t know about that, they wouldn’t understand why I had to keep Lily at our house. I couldn’t lie and say her dad was molesting her or something, because then the cops would get involved. And who knew? Mr. Whitmoor might try to kill them to get Lily back.

Not that he loved her. I knew that. He wanted her back because someone had taken his property. I still couldn’t believe the creep thought of his own daughter that way. Liars or not, I was so glad my parents were homicidal, über-possessive warlocks like Lily's dad.

Don't even get me started on her mom. I still wanted to take a tire-iron to Gia Whitmoor's supermodel face for all the things she'd done and said to Jack and Lily. The ho-bag needed to die. Like, pronto.

"Well?" Jack demanded, nudging me with his elbow.

Part of me did a happy dance because I loved it whenever he touched me, for a thousand reasons—the two biggest being, he was the hottest thing since the sun had exploded into existence, and because it meant he wasn’t afraid to touch me—but at the same time, I had no idea what to do when my parents arrived.

So I just shrugged. Go, the eloquence of me.

"You'll have to think of something soon," my King reminded me. I bit back the expected retort of no kidding, Sherlock. He added, "When are your parents coming home?"

"No idea," I muttered. "They're still at my grandfather's. They know I've got some friends staying over for pretty much every weekend, but they think you're all girls. I didn’t know how to tell them we had dudes involved without my dad freaking out and telling me to chase after you with his claymore."

Come to think of it, maybe I should've said something to my dad. I'd commit metaphorical murder to get permission to put my hands on the claymore he kept hung up on the wall of his office. I wasn’t allowed to touch it until after I'd had at least a year of sword-fighting lessons, which were not the same thing as fencing. So my fencing lessons apparently didn’t count. Boo.

"They're scheduled to call me again tonight," I added. "I'll ask them when they're coming back then." I scratched the back of my neck and looked around. "This is so weird," I mumbled, eyeing my quiet neighborhood. The only noise came from my Black Court's inner circle trudging and talking behind us.

"What?" Jack asked.

"It's quiet," I complained.

Jack shot me a look and raised a single golden eyebrow. "The proverbial 'too quiet?'"

I nodded. I didn’t like it. Until I'd defeated Lily, I'd pretty much gotten into a fight or had some sort of altercation with someone pretty much every day I'd gone to school. I hadn’t been attacked since Homecoming. It made me itchy, waiting for some assault. Maybe we had a temporary ceasefire with the Red Court, and White Court currently called me Queen of the Universe, but Gavin's psychotic little groupies were still out there, and Gavin wanted me dead. Maybe raped and dead. I wasn’t sure about that.

Why hadn’t Gavin attacked yet? Was he trying to get Lily away from me first? Because he couldn’t possibly be afraid that she would help me if he attacked. Everyone and their dog knew Lily would've rather played a very violent game of cat's cradle with my intestines than help me out. Her one show of support—throwing me her bondline so I could hook into her nexus (the magical hook-up in her chest that controlled her psychic connections to everyone in her Court and Coven)—had been an act of self-preservation. It was either she let me hook into her nexus with my dominant bondline, or I shatter every connection she's ever had with anyone. I'd still broken her connection to her dad, the High Priest of the Coven of White, but somehow I didn’t think Lily minded that so much. She hated her dad almost as much as Jack and I did.

"Whoa," Chantal chimed from behind us. "What's wrong with Bianca?"

I'd been staring at my shoes, a bad habit when I was busy thinking too hard about something I couldn’t figure out. Now my head snapped up in time to see Bianca Rairah, Fiver's fourteen-year-old sister, tripping over her black Vans and the straps on her pink-trimmed bondage pants as she came running down the sidewalk, platinum braids streaming out behind her. Her ice-blue eyes were wide with panic.

Fiver shouldered past us and moved to intercept. Bianca threw herself into his arms, gasping and crying. The crying galvanized me; I was running before my brain had processed the word tears. I snagged Fiver's shirt and swung myself around so I didn't trip and skin my palms on the pavement trying to stop on a dime.

"…don't know where it came from, but it's pulling at me, Hrair, it's horrible, make it go away, I can't make it stop, it shouldn't be here…" Bianca sobbed into her brother's shirt. Chantal got to Bianca and put her arms around the kid, hugging her while Fiver stroked her hair. I noticed a bruise darkening her cheek.

"David," I said sharply, catching my Knave's eyes. I'd learned over the past three months that a Knave's job was to protect his Queen—and anyone else she told him to watch out for. Protecting Lily had been Jack's job until I'd broken his soulbond with her and he'd hooked up with me instead.

David Jacobson wasn’t just my Knave. He was almost seven feet of solid muscle. The phrase "play dodge ball with your head?" David could totally do that to someone. He had a two-inch fro going on, eyes that were normally the color of melting chocolate, and a smile that always promised a good time. Lily had used magic to force Jack to kill David's little brother Larry a couple months ago, but David didn’t blame Jack for it. David had also been the protector and Knave of Julie Frost, the Queen of Spades. My best friend. David had been with Julie all their lives. He probably would've still been with her if Doreen hadn’t killed Julie by shoving her down a flight of stairs. Magic had done the rest.

Now David moved into position on the sidewalk, effectively blocking an attack from the street with his body. Aoife Dodarino and Wilhelmina McGill, two former Red Court girls who'd teamed up with me after I'd had my throat ripped out by the Knave of Diamonds, flanked him. Tacit backup.

Eddie Wong, the guy who'd ripped my throat out, moved to protect our other flank. Eddie didn’t look intimidating unless you got close enough to see his teeth. A therian who should've been able to transform into a giant Moray eel, Eddie spent his days as a scrawny Asian kid with glasses, with perpetual but invisible neon sign overhead blinking the words, Please steal my lunch money. He moonlighted as my second Knave and one of my Chessboard Knights. On the Twilight Chessboard, he scared the jeepers out of people.

Harriet took her place with Eddie, tugging on the hem of her black Happy Bunny shirt so everyone could see the words I have fun when I break stuff written in gold above a corpse-blue rabbit smiling like an axe-murderer. But that pretty much described Harriet. She was quiet most of the time, but when things got crazy, she went right along for the ride.

And of course Darren stayed behind us. Sadie and Mouse stayed with him.

I wasn’t sure if Darren was actually watching our backs or just didn’t feel like dealing with a crying freshman. But since we were pretty much covered, I decided to let it go and focused on Bianca again.

"Hey," I said gently. "Rabbit Ears. Snap out of it, I need you to take a breath." Bianca shoved her face into Fiver's shirt. "Bianca. Rabbit Ears. Hey. I'm right here with you, okay? Whatever just happened, whatever tried to grab you, it's okay. No one is going to hurt you, okay? They have to go through me and everyone else first. It's okay."

Bianca loosened her death-grip on Fiver's Ghostbusters t-shirt. Her shoulders hitched and she gulped loudly, which was kind of icky, but then she swiped at her face with the back of her arm and forced herself to breathe evenly. My overwhelming, panic-induced urge to track down random bad guys and punt their faces with my knee slowly faded. I laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Okay, you okay?" I asked. She nodded. Fiver kept his hand on her head and Chantal kept her arms around the younger girl. "Okay. Can you tell me what happened?"

"There's an ayza hole in your front yard," Bianca whispered.

Fiver stiffened. Chantal gasped and her hair did this weird rustle like it had tried to stand on end but was too heavy. Jack managed to choke on his own spit from sheer surprise.

When he finally stopped coughing, he growled, "What?"

My super awesome spidey-senses told me "ayza holes" were another thing that, as the Black Queen, I should've known about, but somehow had fallen into the Abyss of Stuff Everyone Forgot to Mention Because It Would Never Come Up in Conversation. Except it just had. I was pretty sure everyone needed to rethink this approach.

"What's an ayza hole?" I asked, wondering if I was actually going to get a viable answer. I knew the Ayza were the royal family of Fayre, and they were all demons (apparently, according to Darren, marrying into the royal family involved a transfer of power that turned non-demons into demons somehow).

Jack bit out, "Something that shouldn’t be at your house."

Well, that was a no on viable answers, then.

My King continued, "Did anyone see it?" Bianca shook her head. "Did anything come out?" This time she nodded. Jack's hand flashed out and he gripped her shoulder. "What was it? What came out of the hole?"

"A silver feather," she whispered. Reaching into the massive pocket of her bondage pants, she pulled out a shiny, silvery thing and held it up. It was a huge feather of hammered silver, perfect in every detail. As big as it was, it probably belonged to a harpy eagle. When I looked at it, I smelled rotting honey. Demon magic.

Jack reached for it, then snatched his hand back before he could touch the sharpened silver. Bianca was careful to hold it by the two-inch quill. I had a feeling anyone who touched the feather-part was going to lose a lot of blood. Maybe a finger.

"Is that a Jubei feather?" I asked, possibilities crashing around in my brain. Jack and Fiver both nodded. Chantal and Bianca just stared at it. "Is it Janee's?"

Janee Avix was a Jubei demon who'd come to Tucson just in time for Homecoming. She'd shown up on the Homecoming ballot somehow, and won a slot in the Homecoming Court because for the first time ever, Pillar Prep had been hit with a three-way tie, and Principal Burton was such an idiot that he didn’t know how to break said tie. And any tie for the Homecoming crown should have been between me, Geneva, and Lily. Instead, it was between me, Geneva, and Janee. We'd all been crowned Homecoming queen, and Janee's king had been Gavin Whitmoor. I was pretty sure, after all that, that Janee was out to get me, too.

Pretty much, after the three months I'd had, it was just better to assume everyone was out to get me. I kept an open mind in case they proved me wrong, but except for my inner circle, I didn’t trust anybody.

"I don't know," Fiver mumbled.

Jack stared at it for a long moment. Then he plucked it delicately from Bianca's fingers and brought it to his nose. He sniffed once, gently. Sniffed again, a deep suck of air. He closed his eyes and lines wrinkled his forehead as he seemed to taste the scent of the feather.

He opened his eyes again. They looked gray, black irises and pupils half-bleached by dearg power. He shook his head. "It's not hers. It's someone else's."

I wanted to face-palm. "Are you serious? Someone else trying to kill me?"

"We don't know Janee's after you, Alyssa," Jack reminded me. I gave him my best duh look and didn’t bother arguing. He knew my policy. "And we don't know this Jubei is after you, either."

"Opening an ayza hole in her front yard doesn’t really speak to friendly motives," Fiver muttered.

Jack shot him a savage look. He was doing the protecting-me thing again. It was cute, really, and I understood why he wanted to protect me. I'd nearly died during my fight with Lily at Homecoming. Jack had thought I had died for a minute. That was the closest I'd ever seen him come to crying in the real world. So I got it. And I knew that even though so far I'd survived this little war of the witches, I wasn’t invulnerable if any big bad faeries wanted to bring some smackdown.

But I was the Queen. I needed to protect my people. Bianca wasn’t officially part of our Court yet, but I liked her, and she was Fiver's sister. She counted. So if this ayza hole was so bad, I needed to know why.

"An ayza hole is supposed to be a secret form of travel," Fiver said, literally reading my mind. Jack opened his mouth to protest, got one look at my face, and shut it like a steel trap. Smart guy. The albino dearg continued, "It's supposed to be used only by the Council of Wings or their people. No civilian just throws open an ayza hole willy-nilly. Most of us don't even know how."

"That's why I couldn’t use it to bring you to the Chessboard," Jack added. "It's the easiest and safest way, and you actually go to the Chessboard physically instead of just psychically, but it's almost impossible to do if you haven't been taught by the Wings."

The Council of Wings wanted me dead. They didn’t know it was me, but I was the Alice, the girl from Lewis Carroll's prophecies who was apparently destined to break the famous Treaty of Jubei. According to Jack, the Council of Wings would do anything to stop that from happening because once the treaty broke, the magic that had gone into forging it would be let loose on the world. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the Council didn’t want that to happen. Once it did happen, all the faeries in the human world would get the full complement of their powers back. Even more important, humans everywhere would be able to see the Fayre. They would remember faeries actually existed.

That would be chaos. I knew that. But during all the crazy shenanigans, people screaming about Justin Bieber being the spawn of Satan, and everyone cringing from any sign of the impending apocalypse, one very important thing would happen.

The warlocks and their corrupt, pet witches would go down. So even though trying to break the Treaty—which was an actual magical force—would probably result in me dying, I was totally okay with that. At least I'd bring people like Lewis Whitmoor down with me.

Unfortunately, Jack was not okay with that. He would do anything to protect me. And if I died, he'd probably off himself because he thought I was the only person who really loved him. I knew his parents didn’t care about him, but I wasn’t sure about Lily.

I didn’t get Lily. Everything in me screamed that she loved Jack…but she also loved cutting him open when he made her mad. I just didn’t get it.

"So what's it doing on my front lawn?" I demanded, dropping the thought of Lily for the moment. I worried about the White Queen a lot. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was afraid she'd snap one day and try to kill us all, or if I wanted to fix her.

I jumped a mile high when Darren chimed in from behind me, "There's only one way to find out." I whirled on him.

"Aren't you supposed to be guarding the rear?"

"I left two very competent people in charge," he said, voice dripping acidic sarcasm. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Mouse and Sadie.

Pulling a Spock, my eyebrow popped up. "You left the humans without offensive powers to guard our backs?"

"Gotta let them off your apron strings at some point, Alyssa."

"Shut up." But I agreed with Darren about one thing—I needed to go look at this thing. Agreeing with Darren was probably a harbinger of Armageddon, but whatever. "Let's go."

I marched past Jack before he could do more than say, "Wait—" The others moved into formation around me. Oh, it was nice to have friends. To have backup. To not have to worry that anything might come slamming into me at any second and I'd have to unleash my fantabulous ninja skills because no matter how amazing I was with Alyssa-fu, I still ended up getting hurt. A lot. Backup meant I got hurt a lot less.

When we came to my house, I had to stop. The thing was impossible. It just didn’t make any sense to me. I knew what I was looking at—a hole in my yard—but that thing wasn’t just a hole. It was…I didn’t even know what it was.

Someone nightmare giant had reached down and scooped a huge divot out of my front yard. Darkness swirled inside. The rocks in the front yard closest to the hole sparkled with flecks of gold like someone had dumped glitter all over them. The few green weeds that had sprung up since my parents had been gone—yard-work was another of my enemies, like school dances and those killer I'm-gonna-stab-out-your-eye-when-I-kick-your-face heels—had turned blue. Not been tinged blue. They were neon blue.

The same color as the butterflies that always flocked to me when I went to the Twilight Chessboard; the blue butterflies that were the symbol of the Council of Wings.

Another silver feather, longer than the one Bianca held, jutted up from the dirt between the rocks right at the edge of the hole. A piece of blue paper with familiar, looping scrawl written in glittering, yellow gel-ink fluttered on the wind.

I moved toward it, but Jack grabbed my arm. "Wait, Lyssa-love. It might be a trap." Subtext of that statement: it might be them. They might've found us already. Crud.

"I'll get it, Lady Alyssa," Mouse cried, leaping forward. The kid was human, one of us should've been able to catch him, but he slipped through our collective fingers and frolicked over to the hole like it wasn’t the freakiest thing he'd ever seen.

Then again, his stepmother was an exiled demon from Fayre. Maybe it wasn’t the freakiest thing he'd ever seen.

Mouse knelt next to the paper. Carefully pulling the feather out of the dirt by the quill, he lifted the note and scanned it, a frowning pulling at his freckled face. Then he looked over at us. I could read confusion easily on his face.

"It just says, 'Remember what the doorknob said. The Smoke has been blown away.'" He frowned harder. "What does that even me—"

An arm, pale as ivory, shot out of the hole, grabbed Mouse's sleeve, and yanked him into the hole. With a sharp cry of fear that might've actually been Darren's name, he disappeared into the darkness.

Darkness There, and Nothing - CH. 5 - Deep in the Dark

Chapter Five

Deep in the Dark

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.

"The Chitauri had Sophie because they had Thea…and because they'd captured me."

"Because they'd captured you?" Utterly baffled, Thor shook his head. "I do not understand. Were you and Thea bait with which to trap Sophie?" Loki shook his head, looking exasperated. "Loki, I don't understand. Explain it to me, please."

But the pseudo-Æsir merely shook his head again. "You're out of questions, Brother, and you gave me your word you would leave me in peace. Go now."

"Loki—"

His brother bit out from between clenched teeth, "Get. Out."

Instinct told Thor that pushing Loki now would be a very bad idea. There was a brittle tension in him that the other prince could sense, even though Loki held himself stiff and aloof from Thor. So the crown prince inclined his head in acquiescence, even though everything in him clamored to stay with his little brother, and Thor left the dungeons. He had much to think about…and just perhaps, a plan to set in motion.

.

The sun rose and set a half-dozen times without any more progress being made regarding discovering the story of Loki, Thea, and the child known as Sophie. As before, when Loki sensed Thor's presence he would stop whatever he was doing and either sit at the table or lie down on his cot and stare at the ceiling until his foster brother went away again. He hardly responded to any of Thor's questions or promptings, except a few times when the crown prince came to see his brother late in the night. Sometimes then, Thor would speak to Loki for hours at a time, only to receive a small bit of information in return.

"Did you know anything about her family?" Thor might ask near the end of the night.

"Her mother is a musician," Loki would say. "Her father was a brute and a fool that abandoned Thea, her mother, and her siblings."

"What did she look like?"

"You've never seen someone so lovely."

"How old was she?" Thor might ask.

"Too young to die so brutally," Loki would reply, tone arctic, cutting Thor to the bone. "Too young to be caged in the dark and then murdered thanks to the treachery of a supposed kinsman."

But these exchanges were brief and rare. Through them all ran one common vein, however—Loki would, no matter the cost, deliver swift and brutal justice to the Chitauri ruler, Thanos, for what he'd done to Thea and Sophie after he was released from the Asgardian prison. And because of that, Thor at last had something to bargain with. He merely needed his father to agree.

.

"Absolutely not," Odin snapped.

Thor gritted his teeth, but didn't lash out under the influence of the hot frustration boiling in his blood. He'd learned his lesson after those three days spent on Midgard. He'd learned what it felt like to know that the last thing ever spoken to a loved one were words drenched in cruelty. So instead of snapping back at Odin, he drew a deep breath and fought for calm.

It had been three weeks since that last full conversation with Loki. Thor chafed under the need to know more of his brother’s story. Something, some instinct, told him that time was of the essence. Now he, his mother, and his father sat alone in his father’s conference room, discussing the matter. Rather, Thor was petitioning Odin for help.

"Father…if Loki is telling the truth…if the Chitauri did what I suspect—imprisoning him, torturing him, and then killing the woman he loved and a child he cared for—do we not owe it to him, and to them, to see them avenged?"

"You should know better than anyone that your…that Loki is incapable of truthfulness. He's manipulating you. He would never fall in love with a Midgardian. Or do you not recall his words to the Midgardian warrior known as Fury? 'An ant has no quarrel with a boot.' That is what he thinks of mortals. Does that sound like a man in love? Does that sound like someone who is being forced to conquer a world? He sought to rule them, not save them. He cared for no one's well-being but his own. Certainly not this Thea or this Midgardian child."

But the crown prince shook his head. "Father, I'm telling you—he spoke with real sincerity! Whoever Thea was, he loved her, and the Chitauri ruler murdered her. I think they were forcing him to lead the invasion by threatening her and then…" And then he’d gotten in his brother’s way. The Asgardian warrior couldn’t regret saving Midgard, helping his new mortal friends and allies…but if he’d known about the woman his brother clearly loved, how would it have changed things? "I believe the Chitauri blackmailed Loki somehow, using Thea and perhaps Sophie."

Odin scoffed. "How? What was this child to Loki? Surely not his own offspring."

Thor shook his head. "I don’t see how she could be; she was too old in the illusion he conjured. But he does care for her. I could see that plainly in how he spoke to her. Somehow he allowed himself to soften towards this child and this woman."

Leaning back in his chair, he turned to Frigga, who sat beside him, quiet and somber in her navy blue gown. Thor bit back a frown. His mother had yet to change out of such dark colors, even now that they’d found Loki and brought him home. Where the strain of Loki’s treachery had manifested in his father as more lines marring his weathered face and a thinning of the thick white hair and snowy beard, it had unfolded in the queen as melancholy impervious to everything Thor and his brothers attempted to raise her spirits.

Frigga brushed her hair back, tucking a stray bronze lock behind her ear. "Thor…I want to believe Loki can be…helped, just as much your father does. Just as much as you do. But what you’re proposing is madness. It could spell ruin for the entire kingdom, perhaps even all nine realms. Loki cannot be trusted as yet."

"Mother, I know him. I know him. Let me try this. Let me attempt to bargain with him. After all, he is the one who must convince Father that he is trustworthy. I’ll make certain he understands that. Please, Mother…I truly believe that this will work. Won’t you let me try? Father, please."

The king and queen exchanged uncertain glances, then Odin turned back to his son. The single burning blue eye roved over Thor’s features as if searching for some sign. The crown prince didn’t know what his father sought; he only gazed back, face regal and gaze beseeching, hoping with all his heart that his father would trust him in this. If Loki was telling the truth…it changed many things. Not everything, but a great deal.

At last Odin sighed. "Even if you are right, even if Loki was blackmailed regarding the mortal realm…what of his betrayal before the shattering of the Bifrost? What of his attack against you? He sent the Destroyer to kill you, attempted to slaughter the Frost Giants. Has he made some excuse about that?"

"No, but I can speak to him about it. My instincts tell me there is more there than any of us know yet. I feel…" Thor lifted his hands as if he could grasp the words from the air. They curled into fists as he sighed. "Father, I feel there is more to all of this than we know."

"And you believe you can convince Loki to give up his secrets so easily?"

"Not easily," Thor contradicted. "But he thirsts for vengeance against Thanos and the Chitauri. It burns in him, Father. I can see it. We can use that to our advantage. Please, Father, let me try!"

Silence stretched between the king and his heir as they regarded each other. Thor couldn’t read his father’s expression. Would Odin understand that Thor could feel something, some small part of Loki, reaching out to him? Like a drowning man desperately reaching for a safe shore, Thor’s younger brother strained toward him, even while his grief-fueled, half-mad rage held him back as surely as iron chains. How to convince Odin of this? Without the full story of what had happened after Loki fell from the Bifrost, Thor didn’t think there was a way to make his father believe.

But finally, the king of Asgard nodded once. "All right. Offer him your bargain. We shall see what happens."

.

Thor felt it the moment he stepped into the dungeons. Seiðr, sparking and buzzing with power, rippled through the air and hummed along the corridor leading toward Loki’s cell. A fleeting panic lanced the crown prince, but he suppressed it. Last time he’d felt such power from his brother’s prison, it had been because Loki was summoning the illusion of Sophie. It had been weeks since Loki had attempted such a thing, though. Uneasy, the prince picked up his pace, approaching his brother’s cell with caution. He halted just out of Loki’s line of sight, so that he could observe the pseudo-Æsir without being seen.

As he had that first time, Loki hunched against the plain white wall of his prison, knees drawn up to his chest. But this time both hands were stretched palm-out before him, shaking with some terrible strain. Loki's sleeves were rolled up and chords of muscle strained against the pale flesh. Sweat streamed down the white brow, plastering strands of ebony hair to temples, cheeks, and neck. A terrible light burned in the verdant depths of his gaze as he watched the twining shadows and wisps of emerald light twist together to form the familiar illusion of the dark-haired child Loki called Sophie.

Loki’s breath whistled between his clenched teeth as he struggled against the bonds of his prison. The seiðr that the All-Father had placed around the prison and laced throughout the room vibrated and hummed as the pseudo-Æsir fought to bring his spell to fruition. The ensorcelled glass shield rattled in its casement with the force of the magic battering at it, but the disguised Frost Giant ignored it as he twisted his hands back and forth, as if weaving the magic of the illusion. A thin trickle of blood leaked from both nostrils as Loki leaned forward, brow furrowing in fierce concentration. Wrinkles snarled across Loki's forehead and between his eyebrows.

"I must," Loki whispered, eyes narrowing. "To avoid it is…is cowardice. I must do this." Taking a deep breath, the prince stretched his hands out toward the child and seemed almost to smooth down the air in front of it. As Thor watched, the illusion began to shrink.

No, Thor realized. Not shrink. The girl was getting younger. The dark curls shortened, the child’s body slimmed out and shrunk down as the limbs grew shorter, plumper with baby fat. Loki’s entire body was shaking violently as this point. His breath came in ragged gasps and his chest heaved with the effort of manipulating the illusion. Wetness gleamed in his emerald eyes. Anguish twisted the pale features. Thor frowned. What was his brother doing? And why?

When the illusion showed a child of perhaps two years of age, suddenly Loki jerked his hands back with a sharp intake of breath that was almost a sob. Clutching his hands to his chest as if wounded, he whispered, "I cannot…I cannot. Thea, forgive me, I cannot bear to…"

Somehow the illusion held—though Loki shuddered and sweated—an illusion of a two-year-old girl with wisps of baby-fine black hair in a green velvet smock embroidered in gold, typical Asgardian dress for a child that age of a rich family. The stuffed black bear with its green eyes had made a return, as well, clutched now in the chubby arms of the toddler. The girl’s small head was bent over the bear so that Thor couldn’t see her features.

Why had Loki made her younger? Was he trying to remember a time before the Chitauri? But no, he’d met Sophie after being taken prisoner by the Chitauri, he’d said. Unless he’d been lying. Why was he changing the illusion?

In a voice choked with grief, Loki whispered, "Oh, Sophie…you look so much like your mother. I always wondered if…wondered…little one, forgive me. Forgive me for what they did to you. I’m so sorry."

The illusion lifted its head, but the fall of dark curl and the angle prevented Thor from seeing anything but the chubby roundness of Sophie’s cheek and the delicate curve of her ear. She must have done something, however, because a look of intense pain flashed across Loki’s face and he reached out one trembling hand to her. His fingers touched her cheek before he lifted his hand and laid it atop her head. The thin lips formed a trembling smile and to Thor’s astonishment, a tear welled up from the wet green eyes and spilled down Loki’s cheek.

"You would have been so beautiful when you grew up," he whispered. "Just like your mother. I’m so, so sorry, alskling. I’m so sorry."

He slumped back against the wall as the vision faded and closed his eyes. Thor watched in heartbroken silence as his little brother, who always tried to appear so strong, so indifferent, quietly fell to pieces. A few silent tears slid down his cheeks before he dropped his face into the cup of one hand and merely sat there, silent and still save for the occasional shudder racking his long, lean frame. At last he dropped his head back and heaved a sigh.

"I’m sorry, Thea," Loki murmured, staring up at the ceiling. "I couldn’t do it. I cannot look at her as…as she…I cannot do it. Forgive me."

Loki had sat in silence for several long minutes before Thor had the courage to step out of the shadows and call his brother’s name. Loki didn’t look toward him; merely closed his eyes and sighed.

"I am not in the mood today, Thor. Go away."

"I’ve come to make a bargain with you," the crown prince said, as if he hadn’t seen his brother weeping over the changed illusion of a little girl only moments before. "I want to know what happened to you after you fell from the Bifrost."

Without his customary sneer, Loki murmured, "Don’t you know it is unhealthy to get everything you want?"

Coming to a stop just at the window, Thor said, "We can both have what we want. I have spoken to Father, and he is willing to obey the conditions of this bargain. If you tell me what happened to you—the entire truth, all of it, and you can convince Father—then we will help you get your revenge on Thanos."

Now Loki looked at him, brows slightly furrowed, mild incredulity on his face. Dark shadows circled his eyes; Thor thought he looked a bit like he had on Midgard after the Chitauri had sent him there. How had he not noticed how sick Loki had looked then? Well, other than because he’d been preoccupied with stopping his brother from slaughtering the Midgardians.

"You will…help me…kill Thanos," Loki said. Thor nodded, never taking his eyes from his brother’s face. Loki shook his head slowly, obviously puzzlement twisting his features. "Why would you do that?"

"To kill the villain who murdered the woman my little brother loved."

Closing his eyes, Loki turned his face away. "What do you know about it? Nothing. I never said I loved her. And I doubt the All-Father is going to let me out just so I can seek my revenge."

Thor shrugged. "He has sworn it to me and to Mother. Why would you doubt him?"

The sardonic look Loki hit him with could have drawn blood from a stone. "Forgive me, Brother, but that is a very stupid question. I wouldn’t trust the All-Father as far as I could throw him."

"Then trust me, Brother. Have I ever deceived you?" When Loki said nothing, Thor ran a hand through his hair and tried to think. Sometimes when his little brother was being particularly obstinate, he could get Loki talking by changing the subject a little. Asking a different question. But what question? There were so many he still had…but one, Thor thought, that he really should have asked a while ago.

He had a choice, the crown prince realized. He could satisfy his own curiosity, or he could ensure that the Chitauri weren’t as much of a threat as they all feared. That was, of course, assuming Loki was telling the truth…and assuming Odin believed whatever his foster son said, truth or not. That was why Thor had made the All-Father's belief a hinge-point for Loki's plans for revenge.

"Tell me, Brother…could Thea truly destroy an entire realm with merely a wave of her hand?"

To his surprise, Loki threw back his head and laughed. There was just the faintest mocking edge to the foster prince's amusement, but Thor ignored it. When he'd finally stopped laughing, the pseudo-Asgardian said, "You really are a fool, Thor. Of course she couldn't. No Midgardian I know of possesses that much power. Even Odin cannot do that without the use of his mighty Infinity Gauntlet. You'll believe anything, won't you?"

Bratling, Thor thought, but didn’t say aloud. Now wasn’t the time to indulge in insults. Instead, glaring, Thor demanded, "Had she any power at all?"

The amusement on Loki's face vanished like night mist in the morning sun, to be replaced by something betwixt wistful pain and awe. "Oh, yes. Hers was the wonder of dreams brought to fruition, the power to make memories live again, the magic of illusion as real as life." He held up his hand, curled into a fist, then snapped open his long fingers, flexing them. Staring at his empty palm, Loki murmured, "That was her gift, and the Chitauri desired to study it and its myriad effects once they saw what it could do in battle." Shaking himself as if from a dream, the other prince said coolly to the Asgardian, "But I’m a bit busy at the moment, Brother, so perhaps you'll be a decent fellow and leave me alone. Go polish your helmet."

A muscle twitched in Thor’s jaw. Would his brother never cease mocking him over that blasted helmet? As if his was any better. Feathers versus cow-horns, as they’d jibed each other often enough. But instead of snapping, Thor said, "One last question. A simple one."

"Erm…no."

"It's a very simple question, Loki, it will cost you nothing. In the illusion of Sophie, she held a stuffed bear; black, with green eyes. Where did she get it?" When Loki hesitated, eyeing Thor warily, the prince shrugged. "A simple enough question, is it not?"

A blatant challenge, that. One Loki could not back down from—his pride wouldn’t allow it.

After an excruciating silence, broken only by the crackle of flames and Loki's increasingly harsh breathing, the adopted prince said tersely, "I made it for her…but I never had the chance to gift her with it." Seeing Thor's expression, he added in a voice sharp with accusation, "She was murdered before I had that chance."

And Thor thought of his foster brother weeping silently for the dead child, and felt something twist savagely in his heart. "I am sorry, Loki."

Loki sneered. Viciousness twisted his features and that icy hatred, which Thor had hoped he wouldn't see today—it had been absent until now—filled his brother's gaze like abyssal fire. "Oh, you're sorry. Tell me, Thor, what do you dream of these days? Is it still the glories of war and the pleasure of women?" Before Thor could reply, his younger brother spat, "Do you know what I dream, Brother? Do you know what fills my slumber?" Numbly the crown prince shook his head. "A woman's screams and the sound of a…" Suddenly Loki frowned. Something that might've been horror flickered in his eyes before vanishing. "What is that?"

Puzzled, Thor scanned the corridor, but saw nothing. All was emptiness and shadows dancing across the walls. He turned back to Loki. "What's what?"

"That sound…don't you hear it?"

Thor listened, but there was only the steady drum of his heart and his breathing mingled with his brother's. "I hear nothing. What is it?"

But his younger brother shook his head. "Nothing. My imagination, I suppose." But Thor knew Loki was lying, even as he said, "It doesn't matter. Go away, Thor. You've used up my patience; now you're boring me."

"Tell me what happened, Brother," Thor said softly. "What happened when you fell from the Bifröst? If you tell me, I can help you avenge them. Tell me."

"I owe you no answers."

"Loki, I'm trying to help you! I'm trying to understand! Why do you fight me? Why won't you let me help you?"

In a voice that was a mere thread of sound, a thread that threatened to strangle Thor, the pseudo-Æsir said, "You can't help me, Thor. Every time I look at you I see Thea's blood on your hands. I see Sophie…my little Sophie…her blood…she never even had the chance to…and it was your fault! Your fault they killed her! Your fault she's dead!"

"You didn't tell me! How was I to know?"

"Because you should have known me! You should have trusted me! Why would I butcher innocent people? Why would I invade Midgard, launch an attack on them, without good reason? You should have known there was a reason! You should have left me alone to do what needed to be done instead of interfering!"

Swallowing back sudden rage, Thor demanded, "How was I to know? You tried to kill me, Loki. You usurped the throne in my absence when Father fell into the Odinsleep—"

"Mother declared me king!" Loki snapped, surging to his feet. "I never wanted the throne! I only took it because Balder and Hermod weren’t of age, Vyðarr was off on his coming-of-age quest, you’d gotten yourself exiled, and Mother—"

"What about the Destroyer?" Thor demanded coolly.

Loki snarled an obscenity under his breath. "We have been over this. What do you want me to say?"

"Explain why you sent it to kill me."

"I didn’t," Loki snapped. "I’ve said this before, if you’d been paying attention. I told it to make sure you didn’t come home because if you had, you would have ruined everything."

"Everything? What is everything? What were you trying to do? Slaughter the Frost Giants? Because yes, Brother, I would have ‘ruined’ your attempt to murder an entire race."

Loki thumped his fist against the glass. "How dare you? I was forced to take drastic action in order to clean up your mess. The Frost Giants had declared war on us, Father was in the Odinsleep, we had no idea when he would awaken, and the Fates only know what other trouble you would have brought down on us. Without Father, we couldn’t have won a war against Jotunheim. The Frost Giants would have butchered us all."

Thor stared at him, jaw slightly slack. Loki glared back, eyes blazing with that odd mix of emerald and cerulean again. "What?" Thor mumbled. "You…my mess?"

"I told you to leave the Frost Giants alone. I told you not to go to Jotunheim, I told you to let it go when the Frost Giant lord tried to pick a fight with you, but you—wouldn’t—listen. You sparked the war, remember? Not me. I did what I had to do in order to protect Asgard."

Blinking, flabbergasted, Thor demanded, "That is why you did all of that? To stop the Frost Giants? But why kill them all?"

Loki scoffed. "How else did you expect me to stop them? At first, I thought I would simply get rid of Lauffey, throw the Giants into chaos so they couldn’t move on us. After all, Lauffey had tried to kill me once upon a time, and he desperately wanted to kill Odin. But then I learned I couldn’t trust any of the courtiers here," the smooth voice deepened into an infuriated snarl, "couldn’t trust Heimdall or Sif or the Three. My so-called friends. How was I to win a war, if it came to that, without soldiers I could trust? And I couldn’t trust them because you were the one they wanted! You were the one everyone loved, Mother and Father’s favorite, the true heir to the throne! You left me no choice!"

Unable to shake off his astonishment, Thor said, "Loki…why…but you never said any of this. If this is true, why did you not explain?"

"’If this is true?’ Of course you don’t believe me," Loki hissed. "I am not a fool, Thor. I know you only mean to pry my secrets from me in the hopes of finding some weapon to use against me. You can tell the All-Father what he can do with his little bargain."

"Loki, please," Thor pleaded, leaning in. "Please. I’m trying to help you. I…I have to know what happened. Tell me, and I will help you get your vengeance, Brother. I swear it. But I must know what happened. You say there is blood on my hands," he added softly. "The blood of the woman you loved and the child you cared for." There was an almost imperceptible flinch from Loki. "I must know how it went, Loki. You must tell me."

For a long moment, Thor didn’t know if Loki had even heard him. He didn’t react to Thor’s words, didn’t so much as bat an eye. But then the emerald eyes focused on the crown prince’s face. A savage, mad hatred flared to life in the depths of Loki’s gaze. Unease shivered through Thor as that icy loathing filled his brother’s eyes and suffused his face, turning it into an inhuman mask.

"You must know?" Loki echoed, voice a mere breath saturated with black rage. "Oh, yes, you must know. You need to know the purity and beauty of the lives you snuffed out. You need to know the depths of your sins. Yes, Brother, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I met Thea…and how you killed her. And when it’s over, you will help me hunt Thanos and put an end to him. Then I’ll give you the knife and let you cut your own throat as penance for what you have done."

Blankness descended over Loki's face, erasing hatred and its underpinnings of grief or loss or regret or manipulation. Loki moved to the table and sank down into the chair, never taking his eyes from his brother.

"When you dropped me off the edge of the Bifrost, I tumbled through the void of space, through its deathly cold and its star-spangled blackness until at last I plummeted through noxious silver-gray clouds of some poisonous miasma. At last I hit solid earth. The impact jarred my skull, shattered several bones. Only luck kept me from breaking my neck."

Thor's eyes widened, but Loki seemed not to notice.

"For what felt like an eternity I could do nothing but lie there with my body racked by the pain of my injuries," he continued tonelessly. "What your monstrous green friend did to me was nothing compared to that time. My blood soaked the sand and stones beneath my body and the moon burned white against my eyelids until I saw it always, sleeping and waking. I see it still when I close my eyes. And then　they　found me."

He was almost afraid to interject, but Loki fell quiet and did not speak for so long that Thor had to ask, "Thea and Sophie?"

Loki shook his head. "No. That would be too easy for you. No, I did not meet Thea for sometime after that and as for…as for Sophie…"

Though his face remained empty of expression, though his tone was as hollow as that of a dead man speaking in a dream, a terrible agony filled his eyes. For Thor, it was as if looking into his brother's gaze was like being raked with poisoned jade talons that burned like acid. It was the same agony he’d seen when Loki had wept over the illusion of a younger Sophie.

"As for Sophie," Loki somehow managed to continue, though his voice shook and his eyes gleamed as if wet. "I did not…I never…I was never allowed…never truly…"

The pale lips quivered and Loki covered his mouth with one shaking hand, looking away. Thor wondered what could possibly crack Loki's composure so. Who　was　Sophie, that she affected the green-eyed prince so dramatically?

At last, his younger brother spoke again, his voice somewhat steadier. "No, it was not Thea who found me, but the Chitauri. They brought me to their fortress and healed my wounds. Throughout the weeks it took for my bones to knit and my injuries to mend, the second-in-command of the Chitauri armies came to me often with an offer—a command couched in pretty words. I was to join their ranks, for they knew of my powers. They wanted the Nine Realms, and they wanted my help in conquering them. If I agreed, I would become king of my own realm, and win glory for myself and the mighty Chitauri Empire. If I refused…well, one does not refuse Thanos for long."

But Thor knew his younger brother, and knew that receiving an order like that would have been tantamount to a slap in the face to Loki. As proud as Odin had raised his foster son to be and as proud as Asgardians naturally were—as proud as Loki had always been—there was no chance the green-eyed prince had accepted such an offer, threats or no.

"So they imprisoned you."

A regal cant of the head acknowledged Thor's words. "And though I was left to die if I did not give in, though it was as if I'd been sealed away inside a death-casket and left to rot in the wet dark earth like a moldering corpse, I did not give into their demands. I refused to take part in their invasion of Asgard and Midgard."

Thor jolted. "Asgard?" He echoed sharply. "They wanted Asgard?"

Loki smirked. "Thanos, Lord of the Chitauri, fancies himself in love with Death's fairest Avatar, my brother. He slaughters trillions in an attempt to win her favor, in his mad lust to woo her. Of course the Chitauri want Asgard. Don't you understand, Brother? The Chitauri want the universe."

A chill settled in the pit of Thor's stomach. He knew the Chitauri hadn't been killed during their invasion of Midgard, merely thwarted. He knew they could return at any time…or turn their sights somewhere else, like the realm of Asgard. The All-Father would have to be told; Heimdall would have to be enlisted to spy upon the battle-crazed invaders, to monitor their movements should they choose to aim for the home of the Æsir. If it came to war, Asgard would—

"They locked me away in the darkness," Loki whispered. Thor's attention snapped back to his brother, who stared unblinking and unseeing into the hearth fire. His throat worked convulsively for a moment. Then he said, almost as if he were speaking to himself, "The darkness has eyes and teeth, claws to rake and fangs to bite. It presses against your eyes until there is only blackness slithering into your skull to devour your mind. Silence deafens, darkness blinds. Hunger gnaws and thirst burns. They gave me just enough to keep me alive, just enough to keep the pain sharp in my throat and in my belly. I thought I would go mad in the dark. I thought I would shatter under the silence. And then…"

Those sightless eyes suddenly focused again, coming to rest on Thor's frozen countenance. Some of the hollow sickness festering in that gaze faded, to be replaced with a dull sort of agony. Somehow Thor knew just what his brother would say next.

"Then I heard her voice, muffled by the stone wall. It had been so long since I'd heard another being speak. So long. I’d lost count of the days, the weeks…the months. I heard her as she raged at the Chitauri, demanding to know who they were, what they wanted. She shouted that her mother would come after them, would make them pay if she wasn’t released…and then she said something interesting. She said that she would never, ever, so long as she lived, use her powers for HYDRA."

Thor's brow furrowed. He knew of HYDRA; Coulson had explained that SHIELD, the Midgardian organization in place to protect the country known as America, had its enemies. The greatest of these was the foreign group called HYDRA. But he'd also been told that most Midgardians didn't know of these organizations…so how had Thea learned of it? Or had Loki plucked the name from the mind of the Midgardian archer known as Hawkeye?

"How did she know of them?" Thor asked, eyeing his brother. Was that the smallest quirk of a smile curving the corner of Loki's mouth? "Was she a member of SHIELD?"

Loki arched a brow. "No. She learned of them from the one you call Coulson."

Chapter 5 - In the Insomniac Night

that is

A Short Tale of Mistaken Intentions, Fresh Blood, Another Promise, the Revelation of Names, and a Tale From Dylan's Childhood

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The door slammed open.

Dylan's eyes popped open, and she shrieked. Her hand found the exquisitely-shaped, green glass bottle of rose-scented shampoo, grabbed it in white-knuckled fingers, and threw it as hard as she could towards the door before scrambling madly out of the tub and grabbing the towel. She refused to be attacked while naked – call it a self-confidence thing, or just inconvenience. Having random parts of her anatomy flopping around while she ran was also distracting, not to mention painful. She couldn't afford any sort of distraction in a fight. Hastily covering herself, she reached into her purse and snatched up one of her rocks. She needed to get more soon, she thought a bit wildly. She was running out.

Then Dylan's wide eyes focused on the – quite furious – personage standing in the doorway and felt the blood drain from her face.

"I-I-I-I thought y-you were... I'm s-sorry, Y-Your Highness, I thought... you're g-g-gonna k-kill me now, aren't you?"

"Can you think of a reason why I should not?" Nuada demanded from the door.

In one upraised hand he held the bottle of shampoo, caught after Dylan's hasty throw. She had tried to attack him. This... this filthy, ungrateful, putrescent human, whom he had saved at risk to his own life, had dared to attack him. How dare she even consider the idea?

Rage burning in his veins, he took a murderous step forward, his dark bronze eyes tinged with the color of fresh mortal blood. A thrill of satisfaction shivered up his spine as she shrank away from him, trembling.

"Tell me, human," he snarled, and felt another shuddering thrill as he saw her flinch at the thunderous sound of his voice. She hid behind the curtain of her dripping wet hair. "Why should I not kill you here, now? You have attacked me unprovoked-"

"You scared me!" She yelped, voice fraught with panic. "I thought... I thought you were the enemy. You can't p-possibly kill me for that!"

"What enemy?" He demanded incredulously. Was she lying? Or simply daft? "There is no enemy that can defeat me, and no one can get into this sanctuary unless I invite them."

"Well, how am I supposed to know that?" The mortal demanded waspishly.

Dylan was suddenly furious. She hated feeling like a moron, but somehow the Elf in front of her was making her feel incredibly stupid for not realizing that an enchanted place like this probably couldn't be broken into without at least a lot more noise than she'd heard in the last two and a half hours. But she'd been so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she'd reacted without thinking, her fight or flight instinct triggered. With nowhere to run, she'd grabbed the nearest object of any worth as a weapon and flung it as hard as she could, albeit with little accuracy.

And now that her reverie was broken, suddenly she could feel what she'd done to herself in her aborted attempt at flight. Chest and side aching dully, her breath came in shallow pants that she couldn't control. Her face, which she'd accidentally hit against the corner of the little waterfall, throbbed in tandem with her heartbeat. The cracked cheekbone burned like blue fire. She felt a trickle of wetness on her cheek, and when she wiped gingerly at it, the back of her hand came away bright red and dripping wet.

"Do you think a warrior such as I would have an unguarded sanctuary?" The Elf demanded, voice cracking like a whip.

Dylan allowed herself to feel the burning in her face, the ache in her ribs, and even the sting of her missing fingernail, before allowing the scream rising up in her throat to rip out with her fury.

"I don't know!" She yelled. "I'm human! What do I know about enchanted holes in subway walls and stuff like that? I'm a psychiatrist, not one of the Brothers Grimm! What do I know about the fae? I know a lot, but not that much. I haven't been a kid for almost twelve years! The average dog doesn't even live that long. Good grief, you're such a jerk!" Why did he have to try and make her feel so blasted inferior? Forget this crap! Fury rose up in her, sharp, hurting, black.

Then the Elf moved, a single motion, and the fury dissipated like mist in the harsh morning sun, to be replaced by ice-cold fear.

He stepped to the edge of the bath, the only thing standing between them. His eyes bored into hers like wasp stings, frosted bronze promises of pain. Her chest ached. She couldn't catch her breath.

Suddenly, he leapt. Dylan lost sight of him in the moments he was airborne.

He landed with frightening grace only a few feet away from her, taut with menace, eyes full of hatred.

Then he faltered, and fell.

He hit his knees on the rough red stone of the bathing room floor, clenching his teeth to stifle the sounds of his pain. Blood, a dark stain, spread across his tunic from belly, side, and shoulder. Tiny streams of it ran down one leg to puddle upon the floor. He clapped a hand to his chest, ducking his head so that the human before him would not see how the wounds burned and cut at him.

The Elf did not realize it – if he had, he might have forgotten his honor and killed her out of fury – but he looked as if he were bowing to her. Dylan didn't say anything about that, however. She only gasped, steeled herself to do something positively suicidal, and moved herself underneath his good arm.

"You must have ripped your stitches," the irritated woman muttered. Her head felt cobwebby from panic and the brief moments of hypoventilation. Trying to stand was making her gasp, and pain was lancing across her chest. Being so close to a male was making her heart thunder. It felt as if her sternum might crack. But surely, in his new state of injury, the Elf wouldn't harm her? Despite what she'd thrown at him? After all, it hadn't been a rock. She wouldn't have missed with a rock. Trying to mask the quivering fear that slid through her guts, she mumbled, "Come on, Your Highness, we need to get back out there."

"Why are you helping me?" He growled halfheartedly. Dizziness sucked the breath from his lungs and made him gasp.

"Same reason as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that," she snapped, finally getting her feet under her. Her shoulder was not going to appreciate this in the morning. The Elf didn't weigh much, but now that she'd had a good soak, her bruises, aches, and pains were starting to settle in again, and new ones were coming out. Through gritted teeth, she commanded, "Now lean on me, Sire. I don't know what kind of damage you've done to your leg, so it's best not to put too much weight on it."

"I was moments away from killing you," he informed her through his own clenched teeth, baffled at her behavior. Could she have misinterpreted his intentions? Was this perhaps why she was aiding him?

"Really?" She asked, sarcasm tingeing her breathy voice. "Well, good for you. I totally had no idea that the angsty Elf prince with the blood-red eyes wanted to do me in. I thought he was kidding about axing me. Silly Dylan, what could I have been thinking of?" Dylan hated being angry, but she had to force herself to stay furious with him for frightening her, or she would become terrified and be unable to treat his wounds, frozen by her fear. She didn't have time for terror. Instead, what was needed here was sarcasm of the most acidic type – her specialty. "Now stop being such a baby and do what the nice doctor-lady tells you, all right?"

"Do not patronize me, human," he snarled at her as she helped him into his chair.

She ignored him. Hustling butt, she ran back into the bathing room to grab her purse. Remarkably, she found laid over the chair where her soiled clothes had been, a fresh batch of garments: a white shift, a green kirtle, and a golden rope that was probably meant as a girdle. I don't wanna be naked, it'll make my hands shake, she thought to herself, and hastily donned the shift, tying it with the rope. She'd put the gown on later. It wasn't necessary now.

Clutching her leather purse in trembling hands, she ran back out and dumped the contents on the floor. She grabbed spool and thread, needle and scissors, her lighter, and found gauze, bandages, masking tape, and hand sanitizer. As a child, she'd once thought this bag was magic. As an adult, she realized she just forgot to take out almost everything she ever put in there. Perhaps one item in five ever saw the light of day again.

The only reason she carried the inconvenient parcel around, she reflected almost absently, was because it had come in handy at the most remarkable moments.

"Shirt off," Dylan ordered briskly. Swiping at her face with the back of her hand when she felt a strange tickling, she glanced down to see her skin was still wet and red. Under her breath, she muttered, "Ow. Crud." Laying out everything she'd set aside on the small table, the human woman watched warily as the Elf slowly, gingerly pulled off the deep red tunic stained dark with his blood.

"Could you not find the decency to dress properly?" Nuada demanded when he caught sight of her in the plain shift and girdle. Her blue eyes leveled on him like ice, and for a moment the Elf prince felt himself frozen in place, even his thoughts stilled by the chilly gaze. There was a strange, vast emptiness behind her pale, mortal eyes that held him. A fury that was more than fury. A grief that was more than grief. A feyness that he hadn't seen in a human in thousands of years, if he'd ever seen it at all.

"Shut. Up. Your survival is far more important than how I dress, Highness. In case you didn't notice, you're bleeding, and I'm not sure why, though I have several viable theories, so let's check that out and you can eat my face off another day, all right? So I'll say it again – shut up."

The woman knelt, cringing when her knee – which she'd hit against the pavement in her flight the day before – took her weight. Needles of pain shoved deep into her leg, but she ignored them. Shoving her unbound hair out of her face, she peered intently at the bullet hole above the waist of the Elven warrior's trousers. Dylan bit her lip when she saw the thin lines, angry and bright gold, running from the wound down the Elf's belly and disappearing beneath the fabric of his leggings. As she checked the stitched wounds in his arms and shoulder, she saw that they were the same – lines of a sickly golden color marred the white skin. The mortal sighed, and went through her bag again, muttering under her breath.

"Not you... not you... no, no, no... nope... ah-ha!"

Out of the bag came a jar marked with a handwritten label: Echinacea/Goldenseal Salve. This seemingly remarkable item was always on her person because it helped prevent and fight infection, and she was both very clumsy (see prone to injury) and highly sensitive to her random injuries becoming infected.

Not to mention, tetracycline is crazy expensive, she thought, and added with a touch of sarcasm, Blast my delicate constitution.

She also grabbed a tiny set of Q-tips (part of her portable first aid kit) and a pack of tissues. Placing those on the table as well, she carefully wiped the fresh blood from the Elf's chest. Biting her lip, she set to work. She'd have to cut the stitches already there and pull them out. The wounds were bleeding badly – she needed to figure out why.

"Okay," Dylan mumbled to the Elf, trying to ignore the way his eyes followed her movements, trying to ignore the way his hands clenched into fists. She wasn't sure if it was the pain, or the sight of her, that brought out this reaction. His face, as inscrutable as darkness, made her heart thump. "Okay, let's get started."

Then there was a long silence. Dylan was fine with that. Silence was great when you were trying to concentrate.

"What is your name?" Nuada asked when the empty silence had stretched into long minutes, perhaps even an hour. He wondered if he still frightened her. She moved with a surety that he had missed at the day's beginning, but she still refused to really look at him. The Elf had to wonder if she would even answer his question. For several moments, as she pressed her lips together and poked into the wound at his belly, she did not speak. Her eyes were focused on her bloody job, and one corner of her mouth turned downward in concentration.

"Dylan," she said abruptly. She took the metal flame-maker and flicked it open, so that the metal would heat up. "I told you that," she added.

"Your full name."

She gave him a poignant look and did not answer him, but only pulled the thread from the bleeding wound at his shoulder. The look told him much, if not all. This strange (and irritating, he snarled silently) human woman knew the power of names. Perhaps she was a reader of the old tales. It mattered little. Nuada was almost certain that without some sort of promise from him, he would get little in the way of that sort of information from her. Infuriating mortal.

If he possessed the telepathic gifts his far more talented twin could claim (specifically, the ability to walk through mortal minds without being sullied by the contact), he could have simply ripped the knowledge he sought from her mind. However, he did not possess Nuala's delicate mental touch. Everything she was, he was not. Everything she claimed – the power to heal, the full magic of the Old World, their father's love – he could not. So he had to use... charm... persuasion... and other such soft methods, to learn what he wished to know. Or torture, which yielded not altogether-reliable results. Only in direst need would he attempt to pull the thoughts from a human mind. The last time he had been forced to do so, the poisonous mind had made him physically ill.

"Do not worry," he said tonelessly, breaking the silence that had descended after her abrupt answer. "I give my word as the crown prince of Bethmoora that I will not use the knowledge of your true name against you, nor allow any other of my kind to do so, save for your own well being or if you were to betray me." An event, the Elf prince fully believed, would not be long in coming, so the promise cost him nothing. "Now I ask again – your name, human?"

"You just said it," she growled under her breath, and plucked a thread from his flesh so deftly he barely felt it.

"What?"

"You just said it," Dylan repeated, voice tight. "Highness."

"I said only 'human.' What are you babbling about?" Nuada demanded, gritting his teeth. Would she always speak in these frustrating riddles?

"You call me 'human' as if I had no other name," she informed him, eyes like cobalt ice. She glanced at the lighter, tried to ignore the searing heat beginning to scorch her skin. "So begging Your Highness's pardon, but I'm sure as heck not going to tell you my real one."

"I..." The Elf prince gritted his teeth against the invectives he wanted to spit out. Swallowed back the curses. When he was certain he could speak without snarling (and could resist the urge to drive the razor-sharp knife the warrior always carried into that empty void where a heart should have been), Nuada said tonelessly, "I meant no offense. Will you tell me your name?"

"No."

Dylan flicked her eyes to the Elf's face and back to his wound. Her fingers were starting to hurt. The metal of her lighter was becoming too hot for her comfort. It was almost ready.

"And this," she muttered, "is really going to hurt. It's the only thing I can do, with what I've got to work with. The wound in your stomach won't close. I can't get the bleeding stopped."

She glanced at the hot metal and hissed at it. A droplet of saliva touched the metal and sizzled.

Nuada understood what she was going to do, and braced himself. He would not allow the human to receive enjoyment from his pain by crying out. Somehow, he did not doubt that the mortal spoke the truth about what she would do, and how needful it was.

"I am ready."

Dylan glanced at her patient, at the mouth set in a tight line, the cold eyes, the proud face, and sighed softly in exasperation. For a moment, she was reminded of her brother, John, whenever he'd been hurt as a child. Reluctantly, she said, "Myers. Dylan-Roberta Sahara Niamh Myers."

Nuada opened his mouth to speak, paused, and looked down at her.

"Niamh?"

"My uncle Thad's wife. Brace," she replied shortly, and pressed the hot metal to the skin. The Elf jerked, then stilled. His fingers bit deep into the soft wood of the chair arms. A feverish light glinted in his eyes. Dylan spoke to cover the hideous sound of sizzling flesh. With her mind drawing irritating parallels between the Elven warrior and her twin, she suddenly couldn't stop talking. "My brother John's middle name came from him. He's my mother's older twin brother. My aunt Niamh is my father's younger twin sister."

Finally, she pulled the lighter away, and waited while the Elf's harsh breathing eased. Perspiration glistened against the moon-pale skin. After several long moments, Nuada's death grip on the arms of his chair loosened and he very slowly relaxed. It took another moment for her words to penetrate the fog of agony.

"Sahara?" The Elven warrior's pain was audible in the growl of his voice. "Is that not a desert?"

"My mother," she mumbled, with a flash of her old irritation, "was a neo-hippie from Arizona who loved the Lion King. And she was a bit dyslexic." Hence why Mrs. Heidi Myers had mistaken the Savannah desert for the Sahara desert.

"Dylan-Roberta?"

"My father was a Bob Dylan fan, but my mother told him he couldn't name me after someone famous. So he snuck it in there backwards. Robert Dylan – Dylan-Roberta. My mom didn't realize what he'd done till after they took me home from the hospital. By then, it would've been too much effort to have it changed. What's your name, Your Highness?" She asked suddenly. "It's not Roiben, is it?" The corner of her mouth twitched, as if this were some sort of private joke. "Or Oberon? Airgetlam? Iubdan?"

He blinked as the pain receded further. Thank the gods for the healing magic in this chamber. Yet he had not told her his name? Somehow that seemed like a grave oversight. And where had she heard the name Roiben before? He knew that name. Knew an Elf that carried it; King Roiben Darktithe. Why did she suggest it? Why would she think of any of those names?

"No," he muttered. "It is not Roiben, Oberon, Airgetlam, or Iubdan. I am a bit too tall to be Iubdan, anyway."

"Very true, Highness. So what is it?" As she moved to cauterize the other wound, the one in his shoulder that refused to close, she glanced at him, saw his eyes were like frozen pools of amber. Blue lines of pain stood out around his mouth. Dylan sighed and murmured, "You don't always have to be brave, you know."

"I am a warrior. I fear neither pain nor death. These wounds are as nothing," he said coldly. "Though the concept is not something a frail human female would ever understand."

"Men are stupid," she said, and pressed the hot metal into his skin.

The only thing that stopped him from striking her as searing agony burned in his shoulder was the tears that welled up and rolled down her cheeks. His pain truly distressed her. It made no sense. She, a human, wept for pain that he would not show to her. As he clutched at the arms of his chair and clenched his jaw against the fire ripping through him, he stared at her, focused on the diamond tears streaming down her face.

Nuada had to sit with gritted teeth for a long moment after she pulled the metal away before he could force his body to relax. Pain surged through him like some hellish and fiery tide.

Thankfully, she moved on to other wounds. These only needed to be re-stitched, as he had torn the thread from his body with his leap. As she worked, he watched her. Watched the light glittering off the tear-stained cheeks. Noticed the cool determination in her expression, and the grief in her eyes.

"I saw a demi-merrow once," she said suddenly. He blinked, the only outward sign of surprise that she could see. "Well, more than once. But the first time I saw her, she was sick. I didn't understand why at first."

Nuada glanced down at the human as she took up a pair of scissors and, without so much as a 'by your leave,' cut a huge hole in his trouser leg over the bullet wound in his thigh. It, too, had traces of amber blood-poisoning under the skin. She sighed, but continued with her story.

"I realized," she went on, and grabbed her hand-labeled jar of salve, placing it next to her, "that she came from the creek behind our house. The creek where my sisters would go with their boyfriends, goofing off and having fun. The creek where they would dump all of their trash. The creek where my oldest sister, Petra, threw her used cigarettes so my parents wouldn't catch her. My sister Victoria used to dump out all of her nail polish and her makeup so that my mother couldn't force her to dress up for my father's dinner parties. Mary used to shoot soda cans out there. If they landed in the creek, she scored points. Never mind she wasn't supposed to be using my father's gun in the first place.

"And they said I was the difficult one," she grumbled, no little bitterness in her voice.

"When I saw the demi-merrow, I realized that I had to do something. So I ratted out Mary to my dad about the gun. He locked it in the shed on a shelf too high for her to reach without climbing, and she's dead scared of heights. I ratted out Victoria to my mother. I forget what happened to her. And I ratted out Petra to our teachers one day when I knew she was smoking in the girls' bathroom. They obligingly called my parents. Then my twin brother and I cleaned up the creek."

Nuada was interested in spite of himself. He could tell by the way she spoke, by the way she moved, that she was telling the truth. As she sewed up his left arm as carefully as she could, he watched her face. There was bitterness there, and anger, but not at him. Not at anyone in the room. Her eyes glittered.

"And the demi-merrow?" Nuada could not help but inquire. He could feel tiny eyes on him and Dylan, and knew it was the little crinaeae that lived in his well, watching him, listening intently to the tale of the other water faerie.

"She survived, thank goodness. I had to nurse her back to health, which was scary. I mean, I was five years old. Anything could've gone wrong. I only knew from books the kind of thing to do – let her swim in fresh rain water, which I collected in a real glass fish tank. Plastic isn't exactly friendly to the Lords and Ladies, is it?" Dylan heaved a sigh. "I went to the dairy farm a few miles down the road and asked to have some of the milk straight from the cows, which I put in glass bottles. I didn't want to risk contamination by plastic or chemicals. I also asked the farmer for some of his wife's bread, since they use their own homemade flour and such. It was as old-school as I could get it. I even fed her with my baby spoon." At his questioning look, she elaborated, "My mother bought all of us baby silverware – knife, spoon, fork, bowl, plate, sip cup - from this place called Things Remembered when we were born. Had it engraved with our name, date of birth, whatever. Real silver. I figured silver was better than steel, and it seemed to work."

"Why silver?"

"I read in a book once where a witch had to tame a unicorn because it was lost in the human world, and the only way to take it back to the Faerie World was to tame it long enough for them to lead it back. It was a very young unicorn. One of the ways to tame it, the witches found in this book, was to shoe it, but horse shoes are made out of iron, and they didn't want to hurt it. So Granny Weatherwax, the oldest and best of the witches of that kingdom, melted down her silver tea set to make silver shoes. I figured that if it worked in a book, it might work in real life."

"Go on," he prodded when she fell silent. She was wiping away the blood caked around the cut on the back of his ankle now. "What befell the demi-merrow? You said she recovered?"

"Yes, Sire. I set it up so she could take moon baths and everything. I was only five, so I took every precaution I could think of. Even then, I knew that being young and small meant more things could go wrong for me than otherwise. It was difficult – I was grounded most of the time for doing things my parents had forbidden me to do but needed to be done, like visit Farmer Cotton down the road. He lived three mile away, and my parents said it was too far for me and my brother to walk."

"Your brother helped you?" He asked, surprised. Not only one, but two human children had saved a demi-merrow, cleaned up the human filth in her home, and nursed her back to health, for no reason? Unless there had been a reason behind it all. Perhaps they'd lusted after her magic. Even humans at that young age could be vipers.

"Yes. John always helps me when I need him. He was the only person who believed me about the merrow; he's got a bit of the Sight, but not as strong as me. I think he was besotted with her. He used to talk to her for hours. I would've been jealous, but I totally understood. After all, a merrow! And a demi one, too. John and I were both small for our age, so meeting a faerie that was small too made us feel... better about the whole thing. And we'd read so much about the merrows, and now we had found one. She was so beautiful. For years after that, I wanted to grow up to be a demi-merrow. Then I realized I'd have to shrink by quite a lot if I wanted that to happen, so I decided I wanted to be a dryad instead, except I was too fat."

"As a boy, I wanted to be a troll. I found them to be formidable warriors," Nuada murmured, almost to himself, without thinking.

Dylan giggled.

"I can't see you as a troll, living under a bridge, scaring little children, Your Highness," she said. Then he moved, a ripple of menace, and she dropped her eyes back to his ankle. Then again, she thought, suppressing of shiver of apprehension. Maybe I can, at that.

"You took her back to the stream, I hope," Nuada said, his voice thick with venom. How dare she laugh at him. Had she ever seen a troll, she would not be so quick to laugh at his childhood wish. What boy, having been saved by something that loomed nearly two feet over his own father's head (antlers and all), with more muscle and temper than a team of angry draft horses, would not wish to become like his rescuer? Every time he forgot for a moment that Dylan was a disgusting mortal, she would remind him with her actions or her words.

"Yes, we did. She gave us permission to fish in the creek whenever we wanted after that, as long as we only fished for food, and not for sport. Maybe she did something, I'm not sure, but when our family fished out there, only my brother and I ever caught anything, and it was only ever enough to feed the two of us. If anyone but us tried to eat the fish, it tasted disgusting to them." At the memory, she laughed, though there was something bitter and sad in it, and it made him uneasy. "It served that lot right, I suppose. They never appreciated the beauty around them."

"And you did?" Nuada demanded, the words bit out from between clenched teeth. He had not the slightest conception under the sky why he was suddenly furious at her, but his rage was a pulsing, seething thing beneath his skin.

"I try," she said softly as she placed the final stitch, added the first dab of salve. "I always try to appreciate it. I try to teach others to do the same. That's all anyone can do." Dylan grabbed the jar with the homemade label off the table and unscrewed the lid. "This is a salve made from Echinacea and goldenseal. It's to help fight off infection. I made it myself, in my garden, under the sun. No contaminants."

"Impressive." His voice was like acid.

Dylan ignored him. Her own voice remained professional as she continued, "Your wounds are infected, no doubt from the human metal."

"No doubt," he commented sarcastically. "Your powers of deduction are incredible."

"I'm sorry, Your Highness," she whispered as she began to spread the salve on his ankle. "About the shampoo bottle. You scared me. I thought something had happened, and the men who... the men that attacked me had somehow... found me again."

He stared at her, and he knew she could feel it, the weight of his gaze, even if she couldn't see it. She had thought herself in danger from that pack of human predators? But he had slain them before her eyes. Or did she not remember? But how could she not? Despite his thought that it was impossible for her not to know, he told her, "Those humans are dead. I killed them myself."

"I know that," Dylan said, looking anywhere but at him. "Fear doesn't always make sense. I'm sorry. Look, can we change the subject? You never told me your name when I asked. What is it?"

"Nuada. I am Prince Nuada, Silverlance, son of King Balor-"

"Balor? The One-Armed King of Elfland? 'Hail Balor,' " she whispered suddenly, eyes alight with some half-remembered wisps of thought. " 'Great King of the Tuatha dè Danann. See the ranks of his unconquerable Golden Army! See how they parade in their glittering pride before him! His splendor is very great. He bows down all resistance.'" She noticed him glance at her in surprise, so she added with a modest shrug, "I know the speech. I read a lot. Your Highness," she added belatedly. "Wait... you're an actual prince?"

Nuada inclined his head in a regal and icy gesture he'd learned from his father. Dylan's eyes widened almost comically.

"I beg your pardon, Your Highness," she said softly. Ducked her head.

After a long moment of silence, Nuada asked, "Tell me... what do you read?"

"Legends. Myths. Fairy tales. My patients read those kinds of things as well, and it's common ground between us since they consider me to be an old lady."

Nuada barked a laugh. She? An old lady? She was a mere infant compared to most of the people he knew. And was this what they would talk about? Tales? Speeches? Childhood stories? Did that make her feel safe to be around him? Did that make it easier for her to deal with him? She seemed so skittish and yet... he had known women who'd tried to slit their own throats for less than what she had been through.

As she spread the salve on his wounds, he listened to her talk of tales, books. It was interesting, seeing as how he had not picked up anything other than research volumes (and a rare book of poetry, in capitulation to his twin) in several centuries. Things certainly had changed in the last few hundred years. The last time he'd talked of literature, it had been with Nuala, who loved books as dearly as he loved to piece together intricate bits of goblin-mechanics or work with his carving knife or at his forge. How odd, to find himself discussing something Nuala treasured with a mortal he could never trust.

But the longer they conversed, the less reserved she became. Without the thick tension permeating the air, the healing magic of the sanctuary was allowed to work much more speedily. His wounds, sustained only a few days ago, seemed to have gained more than a week of healing – those that weren't infected or had been ripped open. They hurt, fiercely, but he no longer felt so exhausted, so shaky.

He would have wagered the same about the human, though he was surprised that she hadn't yet wept wildly or gone into hysterics since her attack.

When she was finished tending his wounds, she carefully washed away the dried blood from the reopened cut on her broken cheek and added a bit of the salve. Then she put all of her things away in her bag. She had to fight to stifle a yawn.

"If it wouldn't kill you, Your Highness, I'd suggest a hospital for both of us, but I know better."

"Your wounds," he demanded suddenly. His voice was harsh. "They pain you. Do you... need anything?"

"No," she replied, too quickly. "No, thank you. I just need to sleep. Being in water for a long time always tires me out, not to mention that tookc what? Six hours?" With a wry twist of her lips she added, "Quit moving around so much, Your Highness, you're going to kill yourself."

"We both require some rest." After a second of thought, he added gruffly, "You will take the bed. I will take the floor." Last night, he had simply waited until she slept to move her to the bed. This time, he would save himself the trouble. And this way he would not have to contaminate himself with her mortal stink again.

"But you just had basically major surgery! Again! While you were awake!" She cried. "Are you nuts?"

"It is," he told her firmly, "the chivalrous thing to do." Although the idea of honor or chivalry applying to a human revolted him. He thought of chivalry, of valor, and wondered if his posterior would appreciate his gallantry in the morning.