She nodded. “Thank you, Hopkins. You’ve always been there for us. I can’t imagine surviving tonight without you.”
“You don’t understand, Fiona,” Christophe said. “The Fae said only the two of us. The Summer Lands have a magical entrance, similar to the Atlantean portal. It will only admit the two of us, and it won’t let anyone at all enter carrying weapons.” He forced the words out. “None of this does us any good. Once we’re in there, we’re on our own.”
Chapter 37
Fairsby Manor, midnight
Christophe tightened his grip on Fiona’s hand and knocked on the enormous wooden door. Oak, he thought. Beautiful carving in all of the many panels. Funny how the Unseelie Fae always surrounded themselves with beauty, when they were so ugly on the inside, where it counted.
A tiny shiver passed through Fiona, but she hid any nerves behind her “lady of the manor” serenity. “Just coming to call,” she said. “I’ve been here before.”
“That’s it. You can do this.”
“Before I knew my best friend was a Fae princess and kidnapper,” she continued relentlessly. “Before some crazy elf stole my brother and wanted to hire out my uterus.”
Christophe grimaced. “I don’t think he has hiring in mind. What were you talking to Justice about, by the way?”
She shrugged her shoulders under her long, heavy coat. “Nothing much. And now? I’m going to kick some elf ass,” she said, smiling at the door.
“We’re going to kick some elf butt, Partner.”
She reached up to kiss him and he just barely had time to hope it wasn’t the last time he ever kissed her, and then the door opened. His jaw dropped open in shock.
“Lucinda?” Fiona leapt inside and helped support the bloody and battered shifter. “Who did this to you?”
Christophe thought, Trap, but it was too late, far too late, and so he followed Fiona inside and watched the door slam shut behind them.
Lucinda fell to the ground heavily. She was bleeding from so many different places that it was a wonder she was still alive.
“Why don’t you shift and start healing yourself?” He crouched down next to her. “We’ll stand guard.”
She shook her head; a tiny movement, but even that caused her pain. “No, you don’t understand. He has the Siren. He can keep us from shifting. Right now he’s only playing with it and there are hundreds of us near death. If you teach him how to access its full power, we’re all finished.”
“No worries there,” he told her. “There’s not a chance in the nine hells I’ll help him with anything.”
The sound of boot heels ringing on marble sounded in the foyer, though there was no one there, until suddenly Gideon na Feransel stood there watching them. “Such a disappointment. Here I’d hoped it would be easy.”
The Fae slowly and carefully rolled up the sleeves on his tailored shirt. “I think I need a little snack for this demonstration.”
As if on command, three shifters dragged a fourth out of a doorway behind the Fae and dropped their struggling captive in front of him. The shifters, all but the captive, were enthralled. The one on the floor looked up at them, and it took Christophe a minute to recognize Evan, Lucinda’s mate, in the mass of torn and tattered flesh that was all that was left of his face.
“What did you do to them?” Fiona demanded. “Gideon, how could you?”
“It’s not the Gideon you think you know,” Christophe reminded her. “He was an illusion.”
“Yes, he was an illusion,” the Fae repeated, mocking them. “But this isn’t.”
He yanked Evan up off the floor with one hand and brutally jerked the shifter’s head up at a painful angle. Then he leaned forward until their faces were almost touching and he . . . inhaled.
That was all. He inhaled. Nothing more, and yet Evan began to scream and fight even harder than he had before, to get away. Christophe pulled his daggers, but the Fae pointed a single finger at Fiona, and the shifters attacked. The three were pure, single-minded, deadly determination in their enthralled state, and it took everything Christophe had to fight them off. By the time he’d killed the third, Gideon na Feransel was dropping the husk of Evan’s drained body on the floor.
That single action caught at something in Christophe’s mind and sliced away all of his years of denial in a single vicious swipe, and the memory played in full, living color.
His mother, her drained body falling to the floor. His father, only a dried-out husk remaining, thudding to the floor.
The same man the cause of all of it.
The same Unseelie Fae.
He turned blind eyes to Fiona, and she caught his arm. “What is it? What’s wrong? What did he do to you?”
“He finally caught on, Lady Fiona,” the Fae said mockingly. “That’s all. He finally remembered that I’m the one who killed his parents.”
Fiona knelt on the ground, Lucinda dying in her lap, and watched the man she loved shrivel away as if the Fae had drained him instead of Evan. The agonizing memories were too much; she could feel them screaming through his brain, and she wondered how either one of them would survive it.
“That’s it. Fall apart, Atlantean. I need you a bit more malleable,” Gideon said. “Be a good boy and fall asleep again, like you did when you were a sniveling brat all those years ago.” He laughed. “Your parents did taste so delicious. Enough life force to last me for almost a year. You Atlanteans are special. It was your fault, of course.” He stalked closer, but Christophe just stood there, shuddering. “Your fault,” the Fae repeated. “If you hadn’t run away that day; if they hadn’t wasted the time to try to find you, why, they might have escaped. You murdered your own parents, you pathetic, whining brat.”
His eyes shone with a dark and evil glee, and Fiona’s head nearly split with the weight of guilt and pain he was piling on Christophe with his lies and manipulation.
“No!” she screamed in Christophe’s face. “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t let him do this to you, or he wins.”
Christophe slowly raised his ravaged face to meet her gaze, and then, just as slowly, he nodded and spoke inside her mind.
He will never win while you are mine to protect, mi amara.
She could feel the Herculean effort it took as Christophe forcibly pushed his pain and terror aside and locked it into the back of his mind in a box of his own, to deal with later.
Together. We’ll deal with it together, later, she promised him, sending the thought from her mind to his with all of her focus.
But Christophe fell on the ground and huddled in a ball, rocking back and forth, and only the calming feel of his thoughts kept her from believing that he had given up entirely. Hopefully, he had fooled the Fae.
“It’s too late, Fiona,” the Fae said, all false pity and concern. “He’s no good to you. Luckily you have my offer of marriage, even though you’re soiled now. All I need is to lock you in a room for at least half a year, to prove to any naysayers that none of his fucks bore fruit in your delicious body.”
But then na Feransel made his first mistake. He took his eyes off Christophe, just for an instant, so he could leer at Fiona.
An instant was long enough.
Christophe leapt to his feet and shot an energy bolt through the air at the Fae. Power thundered through the room and smashed into Gideon, knocking him through the air and into the wall.
But a heartbeat later, Gideon was back on his feet and hurling his own power at Christophe. Back and forth, first one had the advantage and then the other—it was a towering magical battle between two masters, and all Fiona could do was drag Lucinda over to the wall and hope they didn’t get caught in the cross fire.
It lasted forever, or it ended in mere minutes, she couldn’t tell, but suddenly the door behind Gideon opened again and a shimmer of hot green light poured from it.