Shadowspell

Chapter Twenty-Seven

We didn’t talk anymore as the Erlking guided me through the twisting labyrinth of the tunnels. He never showed a moment’s hesitation, though I was hard-pressed to tell the difference between one tunnel and another.

Eventually, the tunnel we were traveling along led to a lighted section, and soon we arrived on familiar ground, the entrance I habitually used to go into the city proper. From there, I could find my way back to the safe house with ease.

I dug the Erlking’s charm out of my pocket. I desperately wanted to get home to the safety and security of my bed, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t looking forward to plunging into the darkness on my own.

“I don’t have to leave you here,” Arawn said, once again reading my thoughts. “I can accompany you farther without announcing myself to your bodyguard.”

I took a deep breath for courage. “I appreciate the thought, but I can take it from here. I’ll be home in just a few minutes.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Such a stickler for independence.”

Yeah, that was me all right. But I had a feeling that if I let myself chicken out of navigating the tunnels by myself now, I might have trouble letting go of my fears later.

“Thank you,” I said, though the words seemed awkward in relation to the Erlking. “You saved my life tonight. I won’t forget that.”

He waved my gratitude away. “You needn’t thank me for acting in my own best interests,” he said, and the reminder that he hadn’t saved me for my own sake helped me put the situation back into perspective.

I opened up the brooch, exposing the needle-sharp point. This was only the third time I’d used the charm, but I was already getting sick of jabbing myself. I did it anyway.

When I’d used the charm before, there had been no outward sign that anything had happened, no tingle of magic to let me know it was working. This time, however, I felt a tingle just above my left shoulder blade, a tingle that quickly turned to a sting. I looked up at Arawn in alarm. He reached out and took my hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

“It will pass in a moment,” he said soothingly as the sting intensified until it brought tears to my eyes.

“What have you done?” I asked through gritted teeth. There was plenty of accusation in my voice, but even so I was gripping his hand like it was a lifeline.

“Nothing to be frightened of,” he answered, and the pain faded as quickly as it had come.

I finally woke up to the fact that I was holding his hand, and I let go with a jerk, taking a step backward. “What have you done to me?” I asked again, and this time it was almost a yell. After everything I’d been through that night, I’d begun to think my body had used up all the available adrenaline, but my suddenly speeding pulse proved to the contrary.

He patted the air in a calming gesture. “Nothing dire, I assure you. Some of the most intricate magic can be triggered by blood and by the power of three. You have now activated the charm for the third time with the use of your blood, and that has triggered the secondary spell I put on the brooch.”

Shit, shit, shit! The bastard had played me yet again! Fear and anger warred within me as I waited for the Erlking to explain what he’d done to me.

“You’ll find you now bear my mark on your shoulder. It doesn’t have the power of the mark my Huntsmen wear, but it will allow me to locate you wherever you are. Not in the mortal world, of course, but at least in Avalon or in Faerie.”

I opened my mouth, ready to call him every filthy name I could think of and then some, but he shocked me to silence by putting his finger to my lips.

“It is not a malicious spell, Dana. Should you ever find yourself in need of my aid, simply feed some magic into the mark, and I will come to you as quickly as I am able. I cannot always count on you having Ethan by your side to alert me should danger befall you.”

I jerked my head to the side, and he let his finger fall. “So it’s for my own good? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

I snorted and shook my head, disgusted with myself for being so gullible. I’d felt vulnerable enough as it was when I learned he knew where I lived and could get to me there despite all my protections, but this was far, far worse. I could never escape him, never hide from him, and instinct told me I would one day need to. “You were so convinced it was for my benefit that you decided to do it without telling me what would happen if I used the brooch a third time.”

“I am not a fool, and neither are you.”

Debatable at that point, as far as I was concerned.

“The spell is not malicious, and you can use it to your advantage. Your aunt Grace was only a minor threat compared to your true enemies. I can help you against them if you need it. But I won’t pretend the spell isn’t equally useful to me, and I know you would not have used the brooch a third time had you known what would happen.”

He was right on the second count, that was for sure. I felt like a dog who’d just had a microchip implanted. Maybe in the future, I would remember to be wary of Faerie Kings bearing gifts. I held the brooch out to him, and I thought for a moment he was going to take it back as I intended. Instead, he folded my fingers around it once more.

“It will still work as always,” he said, “and there are no other spells to be triggered.”

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to believe you?”

“When you catch me in a lie, you have my leave to doubt my word. But I have not once lied to you except by omission, nor will I ever.”

“Okay, if the brooch still works like always, then why can you even see me?”

He looked amused. “Because it is my own magic you’re using. It doesn’t work against me, though it will work against my Huntsmen and against Ethan.”

Wow. Volunteering information. He was obviously very anxious for me to keep his stupid gift.

I wanted to stand firm, to tell him I would never make the mistake of believing anything he said again. I wanted to drop the brooch on the floor by his feet, then walk away with my head held high.

The problem was I couldn’t bear to part with it. It was my ticket to independence, or at least a semblance of it. Without it, I would never be able to leave my safe house again without at least one bodyguard by my side, and that was no way to live my life.

I glared at him, just to let him know how unhappy I was about the whole situation, then stuffed the brooch back into my pocket. He gave a slight nod but didn’t say anything as I turned my back to him and hurried into the tunnel that would lead me toward home.

I made it home without any further adventures, thank God. It was after two in the morning by the time I got there, and Finn had made up the sofa bed and turned in. He slept facing the entryway, and I was sure he would spring awake at the slightest disturbance, but the Erlking’s brooch allowed me to sneak in without alerting him.

Once I was back in my own suite, I wanted to collapse into bed and sleep for a week, but I couldn’t resist the urge to check out the Erlking’s mark on my shoulder. I stripped off my shirt and sweater, then stood in the bathroom with my back to the mirror, craning my head to see.

The mark was smaller than the ones the Huntsmen wore, but it was otherwise identical, a stylized blue stag in mid leap. If I didn’t know what it was and what it signified, I might almost have said it was pretty.

I was never going to activate it, I decided. I couldn’t make it go away, and I couldn’t keep it from being a homing beacon for the Erlking, but that didn’t mean I had to use it. In fact, if I could avoid ever having to see or speak to him again, that would be best all around. I had no defenses against his cunning, no matter how wary and cautious I thought I was. If I couldn’t defend against him, then the best I could do was avoid him.

But was avoiding him really such a good idea? He was by far my most powerful ally, even if his motives were far from pure. Even the Faerie Queens were afraid of him, and as long as he wanted something from me and harbored some hope of getting it, he would defend me to the best of his considerable abilities. Of course, eventually he was bound to realize that I would never give him what he wanted, and his mask of pseudo-friendliness would come off and I would be faced with the Nightmare of Faerie.

I didn’t come up with any satisfactory answers. The lack of answers didn’t stop my mind from whirling, and when I climbed into bed and tried to sleep, the whirling increased.

It was while I was tossing and turning and generally feeling miserable that I really started to understand everything Grace had told me in her attempt to torture me before killing me.

Grace was old enough to remember the time before the Erlking made his agreement with the Queens. So was my dad. Aunt Grace was able to extrapolate from what she knew that the Erlking would be looking for a way to trick me into giving him my virginity. So did my dad. Aunt Grace had known when the Erlking freed Ethan exactly what I’d had to promise in return. So had my dad.

Aunt Grace had been so hell-bent on revenge that just killing me wasn’t enough. To make me as miserable as possible, to make me feel like a total fool, she’d broken her ties to the Seelie Court so she could tell me the Erlking’s secret power. And that was where she and my dad differed.

Knowing what was at stake, knowing the kind of danger I was in, he still hadn’t been willing to break with his precious Seelie Court in order to warn me. Instead, he’d stuck with his vague, useless warnings about how I mustn’t do what the Erlking wanted; warnings that were so vague they were easy to ignore.

Granted, even without any warnings from my dad, I’d known from the beginning that there was something more to my bargain with the Erlking than met the eye, and I’d had no intention of going through with it until I figured out the ramifications. Also granted, my dad didn’t know that having me under twenty-four-hour guard wasn’t enough to stop me from seeing the Erlking. Maybe Dad would eventually have decided he had no other choice but to sever his ties to the Court so he could tell me what I needed to know. But I wouldn’t, couldn’t forget that for the time being, at least, he’d chosen to leave me in ignorance.

I clung to the belief that my dad loved me, and that he loved me for reasons other than what I could do for his political career. But not only was he Fae, he was old Fae, and the old Fae in particular had a very different value system than us mere mortals. I vowed that I would never again allow myself to forget that.