Her father would succeed in destroying her. All she could hope for was to ensure that he got no gain by it. She was so afraid that she would fail even in that.
She stood up carefully, but although she was dizzy and weak, the pain of her injuries was fading quickly.
“How long this time?” she asked Haida as Ariana walked out of the kitchen and down the hall with the poise her mother had drilled into her before she left. The advantage of moving with grace was that it kept her centered, so she didn’t fall on her face. Every time her bare feet touched the floor, she drew magic from the earth to strengthen herself just as the food she’d eaten had strengthened her.
“Four days,” Haida told her. “He left as soon as the dogs finished.”
That was unusual. He liked to supervise her work, though what she did was so far outside of his forest-bound magic that he could not follow it. There was something she should remember about the dogs . . .
The color of old blood and snow, with fangs that tore, the hounds delivered pain and terror to freeze her forever. That was the gift of the white and red hounds of the forest lord, terror that stopped the breath and heart.
“My lady?”
Not that. She couldn’t remember that, or she wouldn’t stay in control. If she were reduced to her other aspect, the one who could only follow the orders of the power that gave a forest lord dominion over the beasts in his forest, all would be lost.
There was nothing left, now, of the father who had loved her. The one who had taken her on long walks in the woods and taught her to speak to the deep-voiced oaks and the quivering willow. No more than there was anything left of the daughter who had loved him and believed that he could do no wrong.
He’d told her that he had a commission for which he’d been well paid in favors and power—the power was what he craved, almost as much as he wanted to see her reduced to something that could only obey him, something he had no reason to be jealous of. She was to make a weapon that could be used to siphon the magic from any fae, sidhe, hobgoblin, and anything in between.
Her father couldn’t or wouldn’t see beyond his immediate goals to what such an artifact meant.
He was not the only fae who had lost power beneath the growing tide of iron, nor was he the most corrupt. The Tuatha Dé Danann who commissioned the work was powerful—but there were others yet stronger. By the artifact’s very existence, it would cause a war that would not end until there was no one left who desired it. Ultimately it would bring an end to the fae and everything they would destroy in their wake.
Her father, blinded by need, was determined to force her to use her magic to make the artifact. She was more determined that she would not.
Ariana turned into her workroom and looked at the fist-sized lump of silver that lay on the table. As soon as she picked it up, she understood that she had failed.
“The main spell is set,” she told Haida, her voice raw. She held the destruction of the world in her hand. “We are undone.”
“Can you use it to destroy him?” asked the hobgoblin, ever practical.
“When the sight of him turns my knees to water?” Ariana said bitterly. “He has changed me. Made me a frightened and powerless creature who is as obedient to his command as any of his hounds ever were. I cannot move against him in his presence.” Once, she’d been strong-willed and powerful, but now she was nothing, a shadow of what she had been—broken to her father’s will except in these stolen moments.
But there was something about her father’s hounds, something she should remember.
“Then we are undone,” said Haida practically, licking delicately at her hand, then smoothing it over the hair on her cheeks. “If you have finished what he wanted, we should leave. He will follow—he cannot be what he is and not give chase. But he will play with his new toy first. It will give us a chance to lose ourselves in the world. I can keep us hidden from his hounds for many days. My magic is not powerful, but it is subtle.”
Courageous hobgoblin. Haida always examined a problem and found the best path from where she found herself to somewhere she might survive.
Ariana drew upon her example and examined what had already been done and sealed within the silver. Until this time of awakening when her father was gone, she’d been able to destroy the work she’d done before he noticed. Once a spell was sealed into the silver, she could not unwork it—any more than anyone else could. She held her hand near and watched as the silver called her magic.
“As I said,” she told Haida slowly, “this will eat the magic of any fae.” She paused, examining the flow of the magic in the silver because there was something unexpected that she had to work out. “Maybe I can squeeze the flow until it is only a bare trickle. If it can only pull a little, how much harm can it do?”
The hobgoblin sank down on her haunches and smiled, revealing sharp green teeth. “I told you. Told you that you would outsmart him.”
“When all he has to do to keep me stupefied with terror, obedient to his command, is call on his hounds?” Ariana asked. “You are overly optimistic. As long as he has the hounds . . .” And for an instant she knew why he’d left, knew that it was important, but she couldn’t get past the thoughts of his hounds, and the reason for his departure trickled out of her grasp like water.
Survival meant that she pay attention to the embryonic artifact in her hands—and not pull the beast inside her back to the forefront by fretting about the hounds. She turned to Haida. “Even if I slow the draw to little more than nothing, eventually it will amass power. I can make it take years, centuries maybe, but eventually it will hold enough to be valuable.”
“What it holds someone can take,” the hobgoblin agreed. “Can you stop that?”
“No.” She was powerful but not as powerful as some. To lay such locks on the artifact that no one could break it open was beyond her. And it would be unwise, even if she could. If it did nothing but sit in the cottage and steal magic from the fae that passed near it—eventually it would eat all magic and concentrate it in the lump of silver that fit into her hand. She didn’t know how much the metal could hold—but an explosive release when the silver could hold nothing more would be destructive on a scale she could almost not comprehend. Not as horrible as what would happen if it was able to hold all of the magic indefinitely—without magic, all life would cease.
“But I can make it so the magic it collects dissipates back to the Heart of Magic.” The Heart of Magic was the center of the world. Magic held in the Heart did not come readily to anyone’s hand but caused the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Ariana smiled fiercely at her little friend. “And—thus fulfilling the geas and thwarting my father.” She considered how to do that. “I need you for this, Haida, and it will probably not be easy.”
Haida bowed low. “It is my joy to aid you in any manner I might. But himself will be back soon—it is unlike him to be absent for long. Is there time?”
“Yes,” said the beast that now dwelled within Ariana. “The hounds have fled, and he seeks the means to recall them.”
Ariana closed her eyes and took in a shaky breath, waiting for the beast to subside. That was what she had needed to remember. His hounds were gone.
She should have felt relief but could not shake the feeling that her father was more dangerous than ever. Could not quiet her fear of him, and that fear made the beast stir again. She could not afford to let her beast take control, not with such delicate magic to embroider. She collected herself and looked at the hobgoblin, who was watching her warily.