Right now the apartment felt like a cage. He thought about smashing his fist into the plate-glass window, just to see it shatter and to feel the wild wind rush in.
He closed his eyes. Swiftly like a predator, the vision of his death struck. This time it would not be denied.
The white ground, black rocks, and red drops of his heart’s blood growing on the ground like blooming roses. He lost himself in the sensation of liquid warmth flowing between his fingers.
When he could finally see again, he found himself kneeling on the floor, shoulders hunched. That damned scene hung like an albatross around his neck, until he almost wished it would go ahead and happen, just so that he could get it the fuck over with.
He had carried that albatross for almost two hundred damn years—exactly from the moment when he had responded to a damsel in distress and had embroiled himself in another man’s curse.
And wasn’t that too much to swallow as a coinkydink.
It was all connected. He knew it.
Stiffly, he forced himself to his feet, walked to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. After taking several deep pulls from the bottle, he scrolled quickly through the contacts on his phone until he found the right one.
He punched the call button.
Despite the late hour, the person on the other line answered almost immediately. “Hello?”
The feminine voice sounded cautious and guarded. In the background, he could hear sounds of Elven music, quick moving and passionate.
“Linwe,” he said. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. Linwe knew very well who had called her, even if she refused to say his name aloud.
Over the connection, he heard quick, light footsteps, and the music faded. His mind constructed an image from the sounds. She was walking out of the great hall in the Elven home.
“What do you want?” Linwe asked.
He drank scotch. “She doesn’t answer my phone calls or texts.”
“She doesn’t answer anybody’s phone calls or texts.” The young Elven woman kept her voice low. “She doesn’t carry her phone anymore, not since . . . not since what happened in March.”
He held his phone tightly. “How is she?”
“She’s recovering, like everybody else in the Elven demesne. Look, I shouldn’t talk to you about her, or tell you things. It doesn’t feel right. You need to stop calling me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I do need to stop.”
When he closed his eyes, he saw the colors. White, and black, and red like roses. Those colors looked a lot like destiny.
“It’s nothing personal,” Linwe said, her voice softened. “You saved her life. All of us are grateful to you for what you did.”
“Tell her I’m coming,” Graydon said, keeping his voice as soft as Linwe’s. Soft, courteous and inexorable. “I’ll be there by morning. She and I have things to discuss.”
And a demon to exorcise once and for all.
Her indrawn breath was audible. “I absolutely will not. She’s gone to bed, and I’m going soon too. Graydon, you can’t come into the Elven demesne without permission.”
“Fine,” he said. “Just whatever you do, don’t tell Ferion.”
He hung up, turned off his phone and went to stuff things into a backpack. Weapons, clothes, basic toiletries, cash and credit cards, and a couple sandwiches for the road. When he was finished, he jogged up the stairwell to the roof, shapeshifted into his gryphon form and launched.
Usually the city of New York shone with panoramic brilliance, but the snowfall had grown thicker and obscured much of its brightness. As he flew through the keen sharp night, his obligations to the Tower fell from his shoulders, and in the silent, solitary space that remained, other images came in.
Only those images weren’t of the future, but of the past.
From two hundred years ago, when it had all begun.
TWO
London, December 1815
Nerves knotted Bel’s stomach. Even though Ferion had promised to attend her at the masque, she couldn’t find him anywhere.
At least, she noted, the Great Beast had not yet arrived. His absence might be the only bright spot in what was rapidly turning into a tense, wretched evening.
Flanked on either side by two attendants, she forced herself to take the path at a leisurely seeming stroll, while she searched the laughing crowd.
Blast Ferion. She shouldn’t have taken him at his word.
Instead, she should have insisted he accompany her directly from their rented house in Grosvenor Square. But she had wanted so much to trust him. She had wanted to believe he had finally gotten through the worst.
As she searched for her stepson, huge snowflakes wafted through the air, each one sparkling with magic. No matter what the weather was like throughout the rest of England, for the last several years on winter solstice, snow always fell in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
The enchantment was courtesy of the Daoine Sidhe King and his formidable wizard knights. The most mysterious and Powerful of all the Fae, the Daoine Sidhe were split into two distinct peoples—the Light Court, or the Seelie Fae, ruled by Queen Isabeau, and the Dark Court, or the Unseelie Fae, ruled by Oberon. Tonight, the gardens were closed to the public, as the King hosted his annual Masque of the Gods.
Eerie, fantastical ice sculptures decorated the paths, glittering from the light of white witch lights floating a few inches above the ground.
A Sidhe knight prowled along the path, dressed in black. Bel thought he might be Ashe, or Thorn, but she couldn’t tell for sure. His face was obscured by a harlequin’s mask, his long, dark hair bound back in a queue.
Black velvet bows and crystals adorned the trees, while invisible musicians played a sharp, tinkling music. Open flame from gigantic braziers lent a dash of heat and a feral quality to the scene.
Smiling jugglers performed for the crowd, and magicians pulled party favors made of paste and paint from behind onlookers’ ears. Occasionally, a delighted scream pierced the air as a magician revealed the gleam of a real jewel nestled in a painted robin’s egg.
The refreshments were equally fantastical, served by Dark Court attendants dressed in spotless white, intricately embroidered uniforms.
Baked cockatrices, a classic medieval dish created from half pig, half rooster, and cooked with saffron and ginger and gilded with edible gold, steamed in the chill night air. Strange, delicate meringue structures, sprinkled with sugar, tilted and swirled on glass plates. Savory jellies of lamb, lavender and lemon had been set in molds shaped like roses, the dishes interspersed with bowls of cherries, oranges, nuts, and sausages. A cocktail of brandy and champagne bubbled in ice fountains.
Everybody who was anybody traveled from all over the world and swathed themselves in wool, furs and jewels to attend the King’s masque.
Eventually, Bel knew, the fashion would change. It always did. Some other spectacle would become de rigueur, but in this age and place, Oberon and his strange, elegant Dark Court held sway. Despite the history of enmity between the two Courts, even the Seelie Queen Isabeau put in an appearance for a short while.
In order to attend without squandering months on travel, those who lived in faroff lands, such as the Elves in the South Carolina demesne, often bargained for transportation from the Djinn, to which the Djinn comfortably agreed.
Quick transportation was an easy task for the Djinn to perform, and in return they collected a fortune in favors. The winged Wyr smiled in pity at such pedestrian arrangements, and generally almost everyone found a way to feel superior.
Very few humans were invited to attend the King’s masque, although Bel noticed one or two in the crowd. Usually they were fantastically rich or well favored in Power or political standing. Oberon liked to cultivate opportunity wherever he might find it.