Tithed to the Fae: Fae Mates - Book 1 Page 19

  “Then we have but one possibility remaining. At least, I hope that we do.” Cuan’s gaze flicked from her to Motley. “I think it is time that you two told me everything.”

  Chapter 28

  “Are you really sure about this?” Tamsin asked, worry clear in her voice.

  Cuan didn’t pause in fastening his armor. “It is the only way.”

  He pulled the last buckle tight, then flexed his wrists, testing his range of movement. He would need all the speed and skill he could muster.

  He had fought blindfolded, once, so that a cockatrice’s gaze could not turn him to stone. He had braved manticores in their lairs, and battled trolls in the high peaks. He had even crossed into seelie territory, alone and unsupported, and lived to tell the tale.

  But this…this will be the most dangerous place I have ever ventured.

  “I will not be in the human realm for long,” he said to Tamsin, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “My nose is keen. Assuming that your hamlet is not inexplicably overrun with hellhounds, I will be able to track down your friend Betty swiftly.”

  Tamsin let out a brief, hollow laugh, scrubbing her hands over her face. “What does it say about my life that I can’t promise that my neighbors aren’t all hellhounds?”

  “More likely to be dragons,” Motley said brightly. “Lots of dragons in the human world.”

  “Thank you for that helpful reminder.” Cuan finished adjusting his gear. “I will endeavor to avoid them.”

  “And regular humans,” Tamsin said, casting his armor a dubious look. “Are you sure your glamour is going to work over there? You, uh, kind of stand out.”

  “I am certain. Passing unnoticed among your kind is our oldest magic, as instinctive as breathing. No one will see my true form unless I will it so.”

  Or am knocked unconscious. Or killed.

  Neither of those was a helpful thought. He set them aside, firmly.

  “Here.” Aodhan handed him back his callstone. “I’ve fortified the enchantment, so it will allow you to send a message to me between the realms. It’ll only let you contact me, mind, and it’s one use only. And the spell won’t last for longer than a day or two.”

  “If I am in the human realm that long, things have gone very ill indeed.” He pocketed the small, polished obsidian pebble. “Motley, Aodhan will tell you when to reopen the door. You must stay here with him, do you understand?”

  The raven shifter nodded, one hand resting on the door handle. “Will be waiting, holding the door. Ready as soon as you call. Move fast, though. Can’t open it for long. Too many doors, recently. Too many eyes on the sidhean now. Teeth in the cracks. Big teeth.”

  “Then make sure to shut this door behind me as soon as I cross over,” Cuan told him. “And I will be poised to leap through the instant you open the way back.”

  “Cuan.” Tamsin caught his arm as he turned toward the door. “We could still just run. Together.”

  Cuan cupped her face in his hand, wishing that he wasn’t wearing his gauntlets. He would have liked to feel her bare skin, one last time.

  No. I cannot think that way. This is not the last time. I will be successful. I will return.

  …I hope.

  “If all else fails, you must indeed flee before Morcant can take you,” he said. “But simply running away blindly, without a destination, is too risky to be anything but a last resort. Your hellhound friend intended for you to take shelter amongst the seelie. Even though whoever was sent to rescue you seems to have failed.”

  If they had even made the attempt. Cuan had serious doubts about that one.

  “I will find the hellhound,” he continued. “Once she has told me where this safe haven lies, I will return, and take you there.”

  Tamsin’s teeth worried at her bottom lip. “And you’ll come too. We’ll both claim asylum with the seelie.”

  He couldn’t lie. He kissed her instead, long and lingering, until she melted against him.

  “I will return,” he murmured against her lips. “I vow, I will return. An unseelie does not break a vow.”

  It was hard, but he made himself step back. He nodded to Motley, who stood poised by the door.

  The raven shifter was even paler than usual, but his chin jerked in an answering nod. He started to turn the handle.

  “Wait!” Tamsin blurted out.

  Aodhan raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Herne’s hooves. Haven’t you had enough tearful goodbyes?”

  “I nearly forgot.” Tamsin snatched up Angus and held him out toward Cuan. “Here. Take him with you.”

  Cuan blinked at the animal, who looked equally dubious. “Ah. Not to doubt the valor of your faithful hound, but I do not think I require an escort.”

  “It’s not that.” Tamsin thrust the dog into his arms. “If…if it turns out I can’t go home, at least he can.”

  Her voice was firm, but her chin trembled, just a little. Angus whimpered, struggling to get back to his mistress. Cuan’s heart broke anew.

  “Are you certain?” he asked, very quietly.

  “Yes. Take him to Betty. She’ll look after him.” Tamsin swiped a hand across her eyes, and bent to press her face into Angus’s soft fur. “You’ll be okay, baby. Everything’s going to be okay. I love you.”

  She pulled back, looking up into his eyes. Her own were very bright.

  “I love you,” she said, and this time it wasn’t to the hound. “Come back to me.”

  “Time, time,” Motley said urgently. He still gripped the door handle, holding it half-turned. “There’s a gap. Eyes blinking. Go, go now.”

  There was no time for all Cuan wanted to say to Tamsin. A thousand years would not have been enough. He could only press his lips to hers, one final time.

  And then he was running, throwing himself forward, as Motley opened the door.

  Chapter 29

  His first impression of the human realm was the smell.

  Shining Ones. What is that?

  Cuan inhaled deeply, without conscious volition. Scents sparkled through him. The glorious symphony separated into individual notes.

  Rosemary and bay. Tarragon and sage. Bread, oak, honey, apple…

  And there were other things too, that he couldn’t even begin to identify. Something black and bitter but somehow invigorating; something else sharp and clear, almost like peppermint tea but earthier, richer. And something that he would have called lemon, save that the word was laughably inadequate for the way a single breath of it seemed to contain the distilled essence of an entire grove of summer-drenched trees.

  And underpinning it all, like the base note in the finest perfume, was Tamsin.

  That faint, indefinable scent surrounded him like an embrace. He should have been on guard, poised for action—but instead he found his knotted muscles relaxing.

  Home, that scent whispered to the deepest, most secret parts of his soul. Home.

  Angus yapped and wriggled free from his arms. Without so much as a backward glance, he trotted over to a ceramic water bowl. Noisy lapping commenced.

  With some difficulty, Cuan untangled himself from his intimate embrace with a fallen rocking chair. In his haste, he’d launched himself through the portal full-tilt, without so much as a glance at where he was going. He’d intended to hit the ground in a rolling dive and come up on his feet, ready to face any enemy.

  Rocking chairs had not featured in this plan.

  He set the chair back upright, carefully. It was looking somewhat worse the wear for going toe-to-toe with a fae warrior, but at least he hadn’t smashed it into splinters. He looked around.

  Kitchen. I am in Tamsin’s kitchen.

  That explained the avalanche of smells. She had enough spices to supply a small coven of witches through an entire year of rituals. Even though they were sealed, his nose was sensitive enough to pick out all the ghostly traces of scent from when they had last been opened.

  Astonished, he ran a finger down the ranks of glass containers. He had alw
ays known that Tamsin was a queen, but he hadn’t realized that she was literally a queen in her own world. But what else could explain such a casual display of extravagant wealth?

  Saffron. She has saffron. An entire jar of it!

  Shaking his head in disbelief, he picked up a larger container, from which one of the mystery scents emanated. Opening the lid, he found it was full of some kind of small, dark bean. Their black, bitter scent shot straight up his sinuses and sank hooks into his mind.

  For the love of the Shining Ones. He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting back a sudden intense desire to bury it in the fragrant beans. You are meant to be infiltrating enemy territory on a desperate, deadly mission. Not rolling in scent like a hound in fox scat.

  Cuan screwed the lid back on the jar, not without regret. He did not, however, replace it on the counter.

  Tamsin might want it. Yes. That is definitely why I am taking this.

  He belatedly realized that he should have asked Tamsin if there were any small items she wanted him to retrieve, while he was here. Even if—when—she found refuge with the seelie, there was still the issue of the tithe-curse. She could be trapped in the fae realm for a long time.

  Without him.

  He swallowed the pain, angry with himself. There was no time to wallow in indulgent angst. He had to find Tamsin’s hellhound friend, the Wild Hunt woman.

  Still, he picked up the jar of saffron as well before he turned away. Surely Tamsin would want that treasure.

  He noticed a small, bright image of Angus—not a painting, but something else for which he did not have a word—fastened to a pin-board on one wall. Tamsin would want that, too. And the bottle of lemon-scented liquid by the sink, which must be some kind of priceless perfume. And perhaps the soft woolen wrap draped over the back of a chair, and…and…

  He turned helplessly on the spot, his hands already full. Realization finally struck him.

  Of course. This is why she cannot leave.

  Everything was a treasure. Because everything was Tamsin.

  Every item had been chosen by her. Touched by her hands, arranged to please her eye.

  The whole room fitted her perfectly. He could see, as clearly as if she was present, how she would move around the kitchen, humming. Taking quiet joy in sweet, simple things—honey on fresh bread, hot tea on a cold day, the silent companionship of her dog.

  He had grown up in the wild, hunting for his meat and curling in burrows for shelter. When he had come to Maeve’s court, he had been overwhelmed by the elegance, the grandeur, the sheer beauty of the high sidhe. He had thought that there could be no finer place in any realm. He had hungered to belong there, with his whole soul, his whole being.

  Maeve’s entire palace was nothing compared to this one cozy room. Shadows and glamour, cold and hollow.

  He had fought and bled and endured a thousand slights to win a place in the sidhean. He would have traded it all in a heartbeat for one day, one hour with Tamsin, here, in her home.

  “I didn’t know,” he said to Angus, softly. “I am truly a fool. I did not know.”

  Angus looked up from his water bowl. He licked his wet black nose, as if in agreement.

  Cuan sighed. He put Tamsin’s belongings dow on the worn kitchen table. “Guard these for her, faithful hound. Until she returns. For she will return.”

  Angus cocked his head to one side. One of his pointed ears swiveled. He barked.

  “You are right. I have wasted enough time.” He strode for the door, which stood ajar—just an ordinary door now, not a portal back to his own realm. “Stay here. I must find—”

  And that was as far as he got, before someone hit him very hard over the head with a cast-iron frying pan.

  Chapter 30

  “He should be back by now.” Tamsin twisted her sweating hands in the loose folds of her tunic. “It shouldn’t have taken him this long to find Betty.”

  She’d changed out of her ballgown into plain, sensible clothes. For a while, she’d been able to distract herself with packing—spare clothes for her and Cuan, his cleaning kit for his armor, blankets and canteens and dried travel food. Everything they might need for a desperate flight into the seelie lands.

  Everything, that is, except a destination.

  And Cuan.

  She moistened her dry lips. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly midnight,” Aodhan replied, his voice grim.

  Aodhan didn’t have any form of watch or clock that she could see, but she had to trust that he had some magical way of keeping track of time. The butterflies in her stomach multiplied.

  Motley still had one hand clamped on the door handle. He’d been poised there for hours, ready to open the portal the instant Cuan contacted them. Tamsin had never seen him stay so still for so long.

  “Are you sure your magic pebble thing is working?” Tamsin asked Aodhan. “It couldn’t, like, lose connection due to a flaky signal or something?”

  The alicorn shot her an exasperated look. “Human, callstones do not stop working because someone is going through a tunnel. This is highly sophisticated enchantment, not your laughable human technology. Yes, I am very certain that it is still working.”

  “Then why hasn’t he called?”

  Aodhan’s mouth flattened. “Well, at a guess, either he’s unexpectedly picked up last-minute discount tickets to the opera, or he’s been attacked. Which do you think?”

  The sarcasm was biting, but the alicorn’s sapphire eyes betrayed genuine concern. For all his studious, posed indifference, Tamsin could tell that he was worried about Cuan.

  “Something’s gone wrong,” she said. “Even if he wasn’t able to find Betty, he would have returned before now. He wouldn’t leave it this late. Motley, can you open the portal so we can at least look through and see if we can spot Cuan?”

  The raven shifter twitched, face twisting with agitation. “Can’t. Eyes. Something would come through. Not from your world. Not from this one. From the gap. Bad.”

  “Bad is an understatement,” Aodhan said grimly. “A few mages have been foolish enough to attempt to study such things. I have to keep their notebooks chained in an iron-bound lead casket under a great deal of blessed water, surrounded by nine circles of salt. It is my considered professional opinion that we really do not want anything other than Cuan to come through that door.”

  Tamsin stared at the plain wooden door. “There has to be something we can do.”

  “At this point, I think Cuan would want us to go to the fallback plan.” Aodhan did not look at all happy about this prospect. “Run, and keep running. Pray we can stay one step ahead of every war band in the unseelie lands. Not to mention a prince who is likely to be extremely annoyed.”

  “But if we leave the sidhean, Motley won’t be able to get Cuan back if—when—he does call.” Tamsin looked at the raven shifter. “You said you could only make portals to the human world from here, right?”

  Motley’s chin jerked in a sharp, nervous nod. “Only at special places. Some other ones, elsewhere, but they’re guarded. Can only enter this sidhean because Cuan lets me. He’s part of this court. Gave me permission to go through the wards.”

  “Permission that Maeve will override the moment she realizes what’s going on,” Aodhan said, jaw tightening. “Which she will, pretty damn quickly, if the human leaves the sidhean.”

  “I’ve been out of the sidhean before,” Tamsin pointed out.

  “Yes, but you were with Cuan then. Technically you were under guard.” Aodhan rubbed a hand across his face, grimacing. “The instant you set foot outside the sidhean without a high sidhe escort, nine kinds of hell are going to go off. And before you ask, no, I can’t undo those magics to let you slip away quietly. They’re all tied up in the tithe-curse. I’m a mage, not a miracle worker.”

  “I’m not running,” Tamsin said firmly. “Not when it means abandoning Cuan. You two stay here. Do anything you can to try to make contact with him.”

  “Where are yo
u going?” Motley asked worriedly, as Tamsin reached past him.

  She nudged him away from the door, opening it herself. She stepped over the threshold—not through a portal, but into the dark stone corridors of the sidhean.

  “I’m going to buy us some time,” she said. “I hope.”

  * * *

  Tamsin hesitated just outside the archway to the great hall. She could hear the low, musical murmur of fae voices inside. It was pretty, as long as you couldn’t make out the words.

  She brushed the wrinkles out of her tunic, and made sure that her iron collar was hidden under her scarf. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her spine.

  Don’t let the bastards see you sweat.

  The court fell silent as she swept into the room. Tamsin kept her head high, not looking to either the left or the right. The back of her neck prickled under the weight of all those gleaming, avid stares.

  Maeve and Prince Morcant were at the high table. Tamsin was pettily pleased to see that Morcant had claimed Maeve’s silver throne, leaving the high sidhe lady to make do with a lesser seat. His owl-griffin hunched behind him, wings folded and golden eyes half-lidded.

  Morcant lounged on Maeve’s throne, looking as bored as his steed. He no longer wore his armor, but his silver tunic was so thickly embroidered with gold thread and moonstone beads that it probably could have stopped a sword all on its own.

  The prince sat up as she approached. Those cold eyes—one green, one blue—swept over her.

  “Excellent. You are dressed for travel.” He clicked his fingers, and his griffin stretched and got up, making a low grumbling noise. “We will leave at once.”

  “Not so fast, buster.” Tamsin folded her arms. “You haven’t won this duel yet. I still belong to Cuan.”

  “And where is my beast?” Maeve sounded as languid as always, but her crimson eyes were narrowed. “It is not like him to be late.”

  Tamsin jerked her chin up at the ceiling. An illusionary moon sailed through glamoured stars, echoing the real night sky above the hill.