Sirensong

Chapter Twenty-Four

My father had once told me that because I was the daughter of a Seelie Fae, I was automatically considered part of the Seelie Court. But having other people assume I was a member of the Seelie Court was not the same as being a member of the Seelie Court. I wasn’t bound by any oaths, and Titania had no right to order me around. But if I swore allegiance to the Court …

I glanced at the Erlking, who wasn’t quite smirking, but who definitely had a hint of knowing triumph in his eyes. I understood exactly why he liked where this was going. If I swore allegiance to the Seelie Court, then I’d also be bound by his agreement with Titania not to tell anyone that if a virgin gave herself to him of her own free will, he could steal her powers, and even her life. The geis around this agreement was so strong that my father hadn’t been able to give me even an oblique warning about it. Which meant there would be no one who could warn Elizabeth that her new “friend” had ulterior motives.

I shook my head at him, my hands clenched into fists in my lap. “I fall for your tricks every time,” I said bitterly. “You’d think I’d know better by now.”

“There was no trick,” he said. “Not this time. You were the only one who could kill Henry, and if you didn’t do it, both you and Elizabeth would have suffered.”

“And you didn’t give a thought to how it might benefit you when you pushed me into doing it, right?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I won’t claim I was unaware of the advantages. But that isn’t why I did it. I am not the monster you like to think me.”

“Yeah, you’re a candidate for sainthood.”

As usual, he laughed at my sarcasm, but the laughter faded quickly. “Have you ever considered that once Titania gave me permission to hunt you, I could have bound you to the Wild Hunt and forced you to take me out into the mortal world whenever I wished?”

“Oh, and that’s not what you were trying to do when you had Ethan try to kidnap me in the middle of the night?”

He gave me a condescending look. “Think about it a minute, Dana.” His expression turned wry. “And assume I am not stupid.”

That was one thing I was sure he was not.

No, he wasn’t stupid at all. So why on earth had he used Ethan to try to capture me? Thanks to the mark on my shoulder, Arawn could find me wherever I was, and if he and his Wild Hunt found me, there would be nothing I could do to escape them. If Arawn hadn’t tried to use Ethan, I wouldn’t even have known he was hunting me. Not until it was too late, at least.

And then there was the way he’d had Ethan try to capture me. Ethan had said he’d fought the orders as best he could, making as much noise as possible so that Keane and Kimber would wake up and stop him. But surely the Erlking knew better than to allow any wiggle room in his orders. He could have ordered Ethan to sneak me quietly out of camp, maybe even knock me unconscious so I couldn’t fight him, and Ethan would have had to do it.

“But why?” I asked, totally bewildered. Every time I thought I had the Erlking figured out, he’d do something to prove I was completely wrong.

“Had such an opportunity presented itself to me in the early days, when I did not yet know you,” he said, “I would have taken it. I still want very badly to hunt in the mortal world, and if I could persuade or coerce you into taking me, I would. But I would not see you destroyed in the process. Being bound to my Hunt would destroy your special spark. And remember that mortals who are bound to the Hunt cannot survive it for long. Your Fae blood would preserve your life for several years, maybe even a decade, but you are too mortal to survive it indefinitely.”

I rubbed my eyes, exhausted and headachy from all the stress and the constant intrigue. I was pretty sure he was telling the truth about not wanting to bind me to the Hunt, but I wasn’t sure his reasons were anything so benevolent. After all, he still had hopes that I would give him my virginity, and that he could claim my Faeriewalker powers as his own. If he did that, he’d have access to the mortal world anytime he wanted, not just for as long as my body could survive the rigors of the Hunt. Reasons within reasons within reasons, all tangled together and confusing.

“Whatever,” I mumbled with a shake of my head. Maybe he’d set me up, or maybe he hadn’t. In the end, it didn’t much matter.

I wrenched my gaze away from the Erlking and faced Titania instead. “You realize that if I am a member of the Seelie Court, I can’t warn Elizabeth about him.”

“Don’t forget that Connor is still a member of my Hunt,” the Erlking reminded me.

I flinched, because I had kinda forgotten about Connor. When I’d first learned the Erlking’s secret, he’d promised me that if I told anyone, he’d make Connor pay for it. I couldn’t say I actually knew my brother, so maybe I was protecting someone who didn’t deserve protecting. But Connor was Fae, and therefore immortal, and the suffering the Erlking could inflict on him if he wished to …

“It will be my responsibility to protect my granddaughter,” Titania said. “She is not the only girlchild I have had to keep from Arawn’s influence.”

Something about her tone of voice chilled me, though I couldn’t say just what. But I knew the most foolproof way to protect Elizabeth from Arawn without actually telling her the truth was to make sure she didn’t stay a virgin very long.

Was Titania that cold? That ruthless? I wished like hell my dad were here so I could ask him. I was in way, way over my head. I’d thought I’d had some clue about what Fae politics and intrigue were like, but it was worse even than I’d imagined. Maybe saving Elizabeth from Henry’s clutches wasn’t going to turn out to be such a good thing after all.

“Come now,” Titania said. “You are a natural child of the Seelie Court. It is only fitting that you take your proper place. Swear allegiance, and we can put all of this unpleasantness behind us.”

It was a no-brainer, right? Join the Seelie Court and live, or refuse to join and die. But if there was one thing I’d learned through hard experience, it was that nothing about the Fae was simple.

“I want to talk to my dad before I decide,” I said.

“You already know what your father would advise,” Titania said. There was an edge of impatience in her voice. She probably wasn’t used to people not doing exactly what she told them to, when she told them to do it.

My dad would tell me I had no choice. But then my dad had also believed I had no choice but to give up on Ethan once the Erlking had captured him. I didn’t like the deal I’d made with the Erlking, but the fact remained that if I had it to do over again, I’d do the same thing. I could never have let Ethan be enslaved to the Wild Hunt, not when I could save him.

My instincts—or over-the-top paranoia, take your pick—were telling me that if I agreed to the Faerie Queen’s deal, I’d be as much a slave as Ethan had been. I wanted to live, but not like that. Maybe I was being stubborn, or immature, or just basically stupid, but I’d walked into one trap too many, and I wasn’t willing to walk into another.

When Henry had been coming for me, the magic had come to my call faster than ever before. I’d had the element of surprise on my side, but then I figured I’d probably have it now, too. Titania was too sure of herself to think I’d put up more than a token resistance. I was just a scared kid, after all. But I was a scared kid who was sick to death of being manipulated and pushed around. I might be in a room with two of the most powerful people in Faerie, but thanks to my unusual magic, I was one of the most powerful people in Faerie, too. And it was time to prove it.

I rubbed my lips with my thumb, pretending I was thinking it over while I hummed so quietly the sound was no more than a faint vibration in my throat.

The magic had no trouble hearing me, and suddenly the room prickled with its energy. Titania gasped and leapt to her feet, though Arawn only raised his eyebrows. He’d said once that my spell might not work against him because he wasn’t Sidhe, so maybe he wasn’t all that worried. Then again, the Bogles hadn’t been Sidhe, either.

“I’m not planning to cast anything,” I told Titania, then hummed again to make sure the magic didn’t lose interest. “Just reminding you that I can. I don’t want to join the Seelie Court. I just want to go home and be a normal teenager.” Hah! Like that was ever going to happen!

I hummed a little more. “If you’re worried about how dangerous I am because of my magic, then I’ll let you put a geis on me not to use it except in self-defense. Like the deal Arawn has with the government of Avalon about not attacking its citizens.”

Titania was practically trembling with fury, and if she hadn’t been an out-and-out enemy before, she sure as hell was now.

“I’m not threatening you,” I said. “I called magic because I was afraid to say no to you without some way to defend myself when you’ve made it clear you’re going to kill me if I don’t agree.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Yes, having the magic primed and at the ready might discourage anyone from trying to kill me, but my decision to call it had been based more on anger than fear. But Titania didn’t have to know that.

My words didn’t seem to appease her much. In fact, I could have sworn her eyes were going to start glowing red any moment.

“Titania, my dear,” the Erlking drawled. “I suggest you refrain from doing anything rash. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Dana over the course of our acquaintance, it’s that she will defend those she cares about with single-minded ferocity. Harming her father or her friends would be … inadvisable.”

My heart stuttered, and my voice faltered. I hadn’t even thought about what Titania might do to her helpless captives if she was pissed off at me but couldn’t hurt me. Anger had stolen some of my common sense, and if Arawn hadn’t spoken up, I might not have recognized the threat until too late.

I recovered my composure quickly, before the magic could seep away. My hum was pretty tuneless, but it was enough to keep the magic swirling around me.

“Give us all safe passage back to Avalon,” I said. “Me, and my father, and Ethan, and Keane, and Kimber, and Finn. And Elizabeth!” The last was an unexpected addition, but hell, after what I’d put her through, I figured I might as well include her. “You do that, and I’ll accept the geis never to attack anyone of the Seelie Court with my magic unless they attack me first.”

Titania dropped back into her seat. She’d put on her courtly mask again, her emotions hidden beneath the surface, but I knew she was still seething. She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair as she thought. I kept humming, though it was hard to keep it up when the magic made the air so thin.

Titania seemed to think about it forever before she finally came to a decision. She made one more try to recruit me, though it seemed a bit halfhearted.

“If you swear allegiance to the Seelie Court, it will not only make peace between you and my people, it will also protect you from my counterpart of the Unseelie Court. Mab has wanted to eliminate you from the first moment she learned of your existence, but she would not dare to act against a member of my Court.”

“I bet if she knew what I could do, she wouldn’t be so hot to make an enemy of me,” I countered. Arawn laughed at that, though Titania looked very much unamused. “So do we have a deal, or don’t we?”

“You may not take Elizabeth,” Titania said. “She is my kinswoman, and therefore mine to protect.”

“You mean control.”

“You may not have her,” she repeated. “I will grant safe passage for you and the others, but she remains here with me.”

I’d have liked to have helped Elizabeth, but I could tell Titania wouldn’t budge. Plus, she was right. Elizabeth was her granddaughter, and I was just going to have to hope she’d take better care of her than Henry had.

I shivered, wondering if I had thought of everything, whether I’d left any kind of devastating loophole open that would get me or the others hurt. But I couldn’t think of anything, and the constant press of the magic was starting to make my vision go blurry around the edges.

“I guess we have a deal then,” I said, standing up and holding my hand out for her to shake.

She looked at my hand like it was a dog turd and she didn’t want to touch it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Arawn finally rise from his chair. He pulled a knife out of his boot and handed it hilt-first to Titania.

“Don’t get jumpy,” he told me when I took a hasty step away. “The deal must be sealed with blood.” He grinned at me. “I don’t think either one of you would like to seal it with a kiss.”

Oh, hell no! When I’d made my deal with Arawn, we’d sealed it with a kiss and the magic had made me so out of control I’d practically been ready to tear my clothes off and do him on the spot. I was so not going there with Titania, even though Arawn had warned me that a deal sealed in blood involved a fair amount of pain.

I finally stopped humming, because I was going to pass out if I didn’t. I half-expected Titania to plunge the Erlking’s knife into my chest, but instead she grabbed my wrist in a bone-crushing grip and then slashed my palm.

The pain was a shock to my system, and I let out a strangled cry that wasn’t quite a scream. She had cut me so deep I could see a hint of bone, and I couldn’t suppress the tears that sprang to my eyes. She made a much shallower cut to her own palm, then pressed our bleeding wounds together as magic slammed into us both.

This time, I did scream. I’d thought the wound hurt before the magic enhanced it. It was all I could do to stay conscious while Titania repeated the terms of our deal. Even though her wound wasn’t as deep, she had to be hurting, too, but you couldn’t tell by her face or voice. She was once again the cool, emotionless Queen of Faerie, while I was sobbing like a little girl.

Somehow, I managed to stammer out my own part of the agreement before my vision went black and the pain abruptly stopped.