Gareth stomped down the Wildwood Trail, brushing irritably at the drooping fir branches. “I don’t know why you can’t wait until tomorrow, after the concert. It’s not as though Alun and Mal haven’t stayed away more than one night before.”

David pattered along at his side. “Yes, but Faerie was never getting an extreme makeover before. Come on, Gareth. It can’t hurt you to check. We wouldn’t ask you if either one of us could do it.”

Gareth glanced back at Niall, who was keeping a safe distance from both David and Bryce, who was bringing up the rear. And since David was sticking to Gareth’s side like a cute but annoying burr, that meant Niall was keeping his distance from Gareth too.

Gareth pushed aside another surge of guilt. He’d been so sure he was rescuing Niall from captivity and torment—and considering his wounds, it was true. No matter what else happened, Gareth had to believe that had been the right thing to do. But if Niall never warmed to him again, if Gareth had to learn to live without him when he was right there—

He’d probably be spending way more time with Hamish in the future. Maybe he’d see if the fight pens would accept a fae.

He leaned down to murmur in David’s ear. “I wish we could have left Niall behind though. Do you really think he’s up to this kind of hike? Just yesterday, his back looked like raw meat.”

David glanced behind them. “He insisted. And he’s an adult, Gareth. It’s his choice whether to accept our advice or not.” David’s gaze met Gareth’s. “Just as it’s his choice whether to accept you.”

“I know. But—”

“Don’t worry.” David patted his arm. “When Alun gets back, he can put on his therapist hat and start the old head-shrinking routine. I mean, think about what those wounds mean. If anyone has some trauma to overcome, it’s Niall. If nothing else, he can join the human PTSD group. Although . . .” David tilted his head, gazing at the trees overhead until he stumbled over a root that laced the path.

Gareth caught him before he fell. “What? You’ve thought of something.”

“Way back when I was first temping for Alun, I . . . um . . . got hold of your solo CD.”

Gareth’s hand tightened on David’s arm. “How— Goddess, that wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. I only made it as a sort of catharsis and gave it to Mal so I wouldn’t have it around.”

“Well he gave it to Alun. And I . . . um . . . found it. I played it in the lobby while the PTSD group was waiting for their session.”

Gareth released David and ran his hands through his hair. “Oak and bloody thorn, I was playing Gwydion’s harp. Tell me you weren’t inside a circle.”

David scrunched up his face. “Weeelllll . . .”

“Goddess strike me blind. They all were forced to dance, weren’t they?”

“Yes. And, um, me too.”

Gareth snorted at that image. “I’m not the only one who’d be struck blind then. I’m surprised you didn’t set their treatment back months.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that night was a breakthrough. For me and Alun, it was totally awesome.” David blushed, and Gareth wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more about what kind of breakthrough was involved. “But it made a difference to the group too. I mean before, they hadn’t even looked at each other, let alone smiled or talked. But afterward . . . Well, they weren’t all heading out for a beer together, but they were interacting. I think your music helped them. What if your music could help Niall too?”

Gareth stole another glance at Niall, who was peering into the woods, a frown creasing his brow. Was that a grimace of pain? It was hard to know. “Do you think so?”

“He got orders of magnitude better overnight when you were singing to him. It wasn’t only Bryce’s supercharged potion.”

“Maybe that was just your imagination.”

“Gareth, I’m a nurse. I’m trained to notice this kind of stuff. He got better faster when you sang. In fact, afterward, I’m not sure the potion did anything other than keep everything from getting worse. Have you ever tried to weave a healing spell with your music?”

Not since he’d healed his own broken hand—and gotten outed as a bard. “I never try to do anything at all except play and not hit a wrong note.”

David glared at him. “But is that because you can’t or because you won’t? I know all about your passive-aggressive stance with the Queen.”

“I am not passive-aggressive.”

“What do you call it then? You show up when ordered and do the bare minimum of what’s required. Maybe it’s time to let loose and see what you could do if you try.”

“Even if it does help heal his back, that’s no guarantee it will heal his mind too.”

“Don’t be so modest, boyo. You can do anything you want. Remember those lessons? You could make him love you.”

Gareth slammed that thought down hard. The coercive nature of music . . . what Gwydion hadn’t taught him, the Voices had filled in with glee. Gwydion himself was a stellar role model; he’d started a war and assassinated a king just so his brother could commit a rape.

Gareth had done everything in his power to distance himself from that side of his spectral tutor. But if it could spare Niall pain? He’d dust off the memories and see where they led.

They reached the spot where they split off from the path, heading toward the threshold ford, and stopped to let Bryce and Niall catch up. Bryce strode over to them, but Niall hung back. Gareth sighed.

Bryce peered up the hillside. “I don’t like it. We’re not supposed to leave the path, otherwise we risk damaging the park’s ecosystem.”

“When we were here for the Midsummer Revels,” David said, “Mal led the way and the trees sort of . . . moved aside for him. I don’t think we left a mark.”

Now that Gareth knew how to do. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.” While Mal had probably just called on the One Tree to convince the forest to let them pass, Gareth never asked the One Tree for anything if he could help it. But one thing he had learned from Gwydion other than how to keep his instruments in perpetual tune had been the secret of getting the trees to walk.

He glanced at Niall. What would make him smile? Niall had always loved a jest. Maybe he wouldn’t understand this particular joke, or at least wouldn’t understand the reference, but the subtext in the song, in Gareth’s voice, would be the same.

He started to sing “I Talk to the Trees” as he struck off the path.

Bryce snorted, and David rolled his eyes and said, “Seriously?”

And Niall—Niall grinned at him in the old way, the way that had made Gareth follow him anywhere.

Once they’d passed through the woods, Gareth stopped next to the ford. The weather had taken a turn for the chilly. Was that why Niall was huddled in his sweatshirt, visibly trembling, or was it something else? I should have found a heavier coat for him. The creek burbled over the rocks, a little swollen perhaps from recent rains, but otherwise perfectly ordinary.

Let’s get this over with. Gareth took a deep breath and let it out on a low hum. He stepped onto the first stone, but when his second step should have taken him to another stone as the creek expanded into Faerie, instead he stepped onto the bank, skidding in the mud, his arms windmilling to keep his balance.

He frowned and met David’s worried glance across the water. “Sorry. Must not have been concentrating. I’ll try again.” He leaped over the creek to the starting point—it wasn’t that wide in the Outer World—then positioned himself. This was the right place, he was sure of it. He could even still see the spot in the mud where he’d dragged Niall clear of the water on their crossing, when he’d turned to block the trows from following.

“Ah, shite.” He’d locked the door with one sustained note. Was that the problem? Well, he’d just have to unlock it and hope the guards weren’t still lurking on the other side.

“What’s wrong?” Bryce’s voice still held an edge of anger. Thank the Goddess David had stepped in earlier. For all his fine words to David about never using his music as a weapon, Gareth had been tempted when Bryce had called Niall’s rescue into question. He’d been on the verge of hitting his brother’s lover—if not with his fist (he had a concert to play later after all), then with a tune that would’ve made him double over in pain.

“When we crossed before, I shut down the gate to keep a couple of guards from following us.”

“Wait.” Bryce took a step forward. “You never told us someone chased you. Didn’t that ring a few warning bells? If all fae needed to be present, maybe they were just doing their job, trying to keep you inside.”

“Trust me, they weren’t doing any job of Eamon’s,” Niall mumbled.

Gareth didn’t want to hear any more of what Niall thought of Eamon. “Now that I remember, I’ll just undo the lock.” He sang the counterspell, this time forzando. However, instead of the second stone, he ended up on the other bank again. “I don’t understand. I can feel the resistance, where the threshold should be, but I can’t interact with it.”

Bryce frowned. “The One Tree won’t respond?”

“I never connect with the One Tree. Not anymore.”

“Is this more of your rebellion against the Queen, now that we know she’s really the One Tree?”

Gareth scowled at Bryce, who scowled right back, his arms crossed and his boots planted wide on the other side of the creek. “It has nothing to do with that.” In fact, he’d refused the One Tree connection ever since the Queen had refused to help him recover Niall, long before Bryce’s discovery that she was the avatar of Faerie itself.

“In that case, don’t be so fucking stubborn. Use the connection and get it over with.”

Gareth jumped the creek again. “I don’t see what—”

“Please, Gareth.” Niall’s plea, low and urgent, stopped Gareth before he could go toe-to-toe with Bryce. “If we caused a problem, we need to fix it. For the sake of Faerie.”

“So altruistic. Is he begging for the sake or Faerie, or the sake of his ravisher?”

Gareth clenched his fists. Why was he still hearing the thrice-damned Voices? He’d never heard them before in Niall’s presence.

“Maybe because he’s not truly yours anymore, boyo.”

“All right. But it’s been a long time.”

Bryce canted one eyebrow. “Hedging? Because from what Mal says, it’s instinctive. Part of your DNA.”

“Whatever.” But the worry in Niall’s dark eyes made Gareth’s resistance seem petulant and petty.

He faced the stream again and closed his eyes, calling on the place just below his heart where the link to the One Tree nestled in every fae.

It wasn’t there.

His eyes flew open. Was this his own doing? Because he’d denied the One Tree, denied Faerie for so long, had it decided to return the favor? He tried again, reinforcing the call with a hum. This time he could detect something, but it was faint and twisted as if the normally shining thread were tangled and dulled.

Nevertheless, he latched onto it. Trusting it to guide him, he stepped into the creek. The stone wobbled under his foot, but then steadied. He took the second step, forming the image of the threshold in his mind as he hummed a martial tune under his breath, and his foot landed on a stone. Thank the Goddess.

He opened his eyes, and for a brief moment, he saw the tor with the Stone Circle on its crown. But when he took the next step, he was ankle deep in frigid water with nothing but the park in front of him.

He returned to the bank, shaking water out of his trainers, and shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“No!” Niall rushed forward, splashing into the creek and glaring wildly around. “It must be here. We have to go back.”

“How about that, boyo? Is that the reaction of a bloke who’s ready to give his ravisher the boot and come bounding into your bed again?”

“Shut up,” Gareth growled.

Bryce pressed his lips together, looking incredibly grim and far more druid-like than Gareth had ever given him credit for. “Let’s go home then. We need to talk.”

Niall kicked himself for losing control in the park, but with the binding stone all but burning a hole in his pocket, he’d given in to his desperation and guilt. Now Gareth was looking at him with decided suspicion, David with disappointment, and Bryce with speculation.

Of course, that could be his own paranoia talking. If he were them, that’s what he’d be thinking. But settled here around the wide oak table in Bryce’s dining room—which looked exactly like David’s in reverse, other than the furnishings—he tried to put his remorse aside and focus on a solution.

Gareth was pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor—:Cork!:—his hands slicing the air to punctuate his words.

“It’s the Unseelie. It has to be the Unseelie. Why would they want to submit to the new rules? They always do exactly what they please, with no regard for how it affects anybody else.”

David gathered several ceramic mugs in brilliant rainbow hues onto his fingers like rings and brought them to the table. “Isn’t that a little harsh, Gareth?”

“No. It’s the precise truth. That’s one of their tenets. They’re motivated entirely by self-interest.”

Bryce dodged past Gareth with the coffeepot and poured them each a cup. “If you could leave your prejudices behind for half a minute—”

“They’re not prejudices. They’re facts. Faerie is governed by the rules of the original spell, and the tenets of the courts—”

“Are a lot more flexible than you give them credit for. It’s all a matter of perspective. Of the way you justify your actions.”

Gareth scowled at Bryce. “That’s exactly the kind of argument I’d expect from an Unseelie. Self-justification is their way of life.”

“I thought you just said they didn’t care about anyone else. Why would they need to justify themselves?”

“And that is the kind of argument I’d expect from a druid.”

“Enough!” Bryce slapped the coffee pot onto a ceramic trivet. “Blame is irrelevant. What we need to do is figure out what the underlying problem is—if there even is one—and form a plan to remediate it.”

“Spoken like a college professor,” Gareth mumbled.

Niall glanced from one man to the next—a druid, an achubydd, a Seelie fae bard . . . and me, the dog in the manger. As far as any of them knew, he was the only one without a stake in the game. They didn’t know Eamon was his brother, didn’t know Faerie was his home. Although they might suspect he hadn’t relinquished his ties to Eamon—:Stockholm Syndrome!:—they didn’t know for certain. And Niall wasn’t about to tell them, not with Gareth certain the whole thing was an Unseelie plot.

For all Niall knew, it was an Unseelie plot. The presence of Tiarnach in the woods—with guards who did his bidding rather than restraining him—was troubling. What if Eamon hadn’t ordered him to be there? What if there were other factions with a stake in the outcome of the Convergence, their own reasons for wanting it to fail? :Hidden agenda!:

Niall barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. As much as he appreciated the way the ethera made him at home in the Outer World so quickly, the random communications—:Instant messaging!:—were extremely distracting.

He shifted in his chair, and David immediately focused on him.

“Is your back bothering you? Is it time for another dose of the potion?”

“No. I’m fine.” Physically anyway, but trying to untangle potential Unseelie conspiracies made his brain spin.

“Have you remembered something else?” Gareth’s tone was hopeful.

Niall shook his head. “Nothing.” He cradled his coffee cup in his hands. “What do you suggest, Bryce?”

“First—” Bryce took a sip from his own cup. “Christ, that’s good, David.”

David dipped his chin. “You always say that. Thanks, but it’s nothing. Please go on.”

“Right. First, I need you two to tell me everything you remember about the ceremony up to the point where you bolted.”

“We didn’t—”

“Gareth.” Niall cocked an eyebrow. “We bolted. Wouldn’t self-justification be an Unseelie trick?” :Cheap shot!: Fabulous. Now the ethera were rating his remarks. What next—sex tips? :Lubed condoms!:

Bugger.

Gareth carded his fingers through his curls, sending them awry, more than ever like a golden halo. “A point, I suppose. All right. I’ve told you everything already.”

“Are you sure?” Bryce asked. “Any detail might be relevant, no matter how small.”

The binding stone seemed to pulse against Niall’s thigh. Even if it was a key to the ceremony, or at least Eamon’s handfasting, if he couldn’t return it, there was no point in revealing its existence and enduring the awkward questions about why Eamon would have entrusted it to him.

Still, there was some information he could share. He cleared his throat. “There were some fae who hung back in the woods. I think they were probably among the ones who are most opposed to the Convergence.”

Gareth stopped pacing and sat down heavily at the table. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

“It didn’t seem relevant. There were so many on the plateau. I thought maybe they just didn’t want to be part of the crowd. I mean, I didn’t.”

Bryce leaned forward. “Did you recognize them?”

Niall avoided Gareth’s sharp gaze, looking directly into Bryce’s eyes with the false sincerity he’d perfected in the days when he’d hidden the worst of his rebellion from Tiarnach. “No.”

Bryce slumped in his chair. “Damn it.”

“I’m sorry.” Gareth stood. “I have to go now or I’ll be late for our sound check. We can talk later.”

“I’ll be with the druid council, but if either of you remember anything—anything at all—for God’s sake, call me immediately.”