David shot out of the back door as if he’d been launched from a catapult. “It’s down this way. I think. I mean Bryce said it was in the wetlands, but I’ve never been in there. He’s offered to take me in, but—” David shot a mischievous glance over his shoulder. “I got enough of the nature-boy stuff when I was growing up. I never knew it was druid-related. My aunt never told me she was a druid, just as she never told me I was achubydd.” He slowed, allowing Niall to catch up with him. He had a scowl nearly as prodigious as Bryce’s on his face. “When I found out what she’d been hiding from me all my life, I was not a happy little camper, let me tell you. I mean, she put spells on me to invert my abilities. I caused riots everywhere I went!”

Niall glanced away. Hadn’t that been what he’d done with Gareth? Would Gareth be just as angry as David had been? Although apparently David had gotten over his anger. “Do you still hold it against your aunt?” He followed David onto a raised path that cut through a shallow pond. “For hiding things from you?”

“Oh I got over that. I call her my aunt, but there’s no relation really. She took me in and gave me a family. She loved me unconditionally, and I love her.” His scowl deepened as he watched a trio of ducks cutting a V across the water. “Although when I found out she’d put herself in danger—she nearly died!—to protect me . . . well.” The ducks took flight and David continued on the path. “I still haven’t quite forgiven her for that.”

Would Gareth feel the same? Would Niall’s sacrifice be gratefully accepted and understood, or reviled as a gross impertinence?

David glanced over his shoulder as he led Niall into the woods at the far side of the pond. “Look, Niall. I get that letting Gareth in on your true nature will be . . . awkward, but I have to say that I think continuing to hide it from him is a mistake. I mean, hiding it from him in the first place wasn’t the best idea anyway.”

Niall shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, still astonished when the action didn’t set off an ache in his back. “You think I don’t know that? I never planned to—” He swallowed convulsively and blinked the moisture from his eyes.

“To fall in love with him?” David’s voice was gentle and soothing, and made Niall want to weep even more. Could achubyddion heal with voice alone? Niall had never heard of such a thing—although those in the Unseelie harem had little opportunity, or cause, to exhibit such a talent.

“I’ll tell him. When I find the right time. I’d planned on telling him, back then.” That very night, in fact. He’d amassed all his arguments about why a mating between a Seelie bard and an Unseelie prince, albeit one with a slightly tarnished reputation, would be a brilliant idea.

But before he was willing to put his heart on the line, risking Gareth’s refusal, he needed to get his father’s consent, and get him to call off the vendetta against Gareth. It had been easier to contemplate his father’s apoplectic rage, because that wouldn’t be any different than any other interaction Niall had with him, than the chance that Gareth might turn him down.

David picked his way around a boulder mottled with gray and green lichen. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was . . . overtaken by events.” Niall paused when he picked up traces of bauchan scent, and not just any bauchan, but one he knew. Heilyn. Heilyn had been here—not recently, but more than once. “This way.”

He took the lead, finally stopping next to a stream. On the far bank, two birch saplings leaned toward each other, branches intertwined. A glimmer of the other still hung about the place. “That’s it.”

“You can tell?”

“Yes. Heilyn’s tracks lead straight here, but then disappear abruptly between those trees.”

“All righty then. Do your thing. You know, magical appearing stepping stones and all that.”

Niall frowned, tilting his head. “I— Something’s wrong. Off. Like a hole in an icy pond that’s frozen over.”

“Isn’t that normal? I mean, these things don’t just hang open, inviting people to waltz in and out. It’s a . . . thing, a process. You have to try, right?” David was bouncing on his toes, anxiety leaching into his tone.

Well naturally. His husband was in there. Of course he’d be worried.

Very well. Maybe the odd feeling was simply the result of too many years spent not using the gates. Niall’s memory was normally eidetic—for both information and sensation—but two hundred years as the slave of a god might affect anybody.

He positioned himself on the bank of the creek, directly opposite the birch archway. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on his center, his Faerie heart. It pulsed with life, but it beat erratically. My body isn’t the only thing that’s battered. My spirit needs recovery too.

He called on his connection to the One Tree, the birthright of every fae, Seelie or Unseelie, greater or lesser, and got . . .

Nothing.

No, not nothing. A thread of something, faded, almost like a faint plea for help, a mere shadow of the magic that had always been there before.

Perhaps this was another residual effect of his captivity. He hadn’t called on the One Tree often, even before he’d been severed from it in the underworld. Had he lost the trick of it?

He closed his eyes, breathing in the scents of the earth and water and sky. The ethera danced around him, awaiting a chance to share their knowledge treasures with him.

Wait. Maybe he could ask them. He’d always been a passive observer of their comments, viewing them with amusement or sometimes irritation, as he would a child’s patter. But he should know, better than anyone, that simply because an entity had different abilities, it didn’t mean they weren’t worthy of respect.

He sent out a query: Your aid?

Immediately, he was surrounded by a veritable whirlwind of ethera.

:Yes!:

The One Tree. Can you reach it?”

The whirlwind lost velocity. :Not ours.:

Damn it. Of course not. The ethera were of the Outer World. How could he—

:Not anymore.:

You were once of Faerie?

:We are the bridge.:

The bridge? What the hells did that mean. The gates?

:Gone.:

Shite. Forever?

:You have seen.:

I’ve seen what? When?

A vision of his quarters in the Keep rose in Niall’s mind, his table covered with rolls of parchment. Danu’s tits, he was a bloody fool. So intent on pretending to forget that he actually had forgotten.

The Convergence spell. He’d seen it. Now if he could only remember the details—

“Um . . . Niall?”

Niall opened his eyes to meet David’s concerned gaze. “Sorry. What?”

“Do you realize that your hair has taken on a life of its own? I mean, there’s no wind but—”

Niall chuckled as the ethera twirled another lock of his hair. “Just some friends.” He turned back. “Come on. There’s no point in trying to get into Faerie. There’s no gate here.”

“But . . . but there was. Mal and Bryce used it multiple times.”

“Yes, but it’s not there now.” He motioned for David to follow him back the way they’d come. “Think of Faerie and the Outer World as two spheres. Faerie, as the magical construct, is held within the sphere of the Outer World.” Niall sketched a sphere in the air with both hands. “Faerie itself is two interlocking spheres, one Seelie and one Unseelie. The portals are the points where the inner and outer spheres align, and allow passage for someone with the right magical signature. But with the Convergence—” He rotated his hands. “Those points don’t line up anymore because the inner spheres are being remade. None of the gates will function until the spell is complete and the alignment points are reestablished.”

David’s eyes grew round. “You mean it’s like a prison. A room with no doors.”

“Pretty much. My brother showed me the schematics for the new spheres—”

“Wait. You have a brother too? Does he know something about this? Is he a magician?”

Niall smiled crookedly. “Not exactly. He’s the new King.”

“Holy super freaking cats. I’ll bet you dollars to Voodoo doughnuts that Gareth doesn’t know that little tidbit.”

“No. And you can’t tell him. Please.”

David’s steps slowed. “Niall, I really think—”

“I’ll tell him. I promise. But I need to find the right time.”

“Oookaaay. But you have to talk to Bryce. He was dying to find out about the spell, and you’ve seen it.”

They passed under an oak tree, sending a jay squawking into the sky, its raucous call like another accusation. “I know.” I just hope it’s not too late.