Niall’s shoulders sagged, and he dropped onto the sofa, belly roiling. “Shite.” What was he supposed to do now? He should have found another way. He shouldn’t have ever left Faerie in the first place. “I should have taken the crossbow bolt and ended it all there. Better for both of us.”

The French doors creaked open and David peeked inside. “We saw Gareth peel out of here like his hair was on fire.” He came in, Bryce behind him. “Are you okay?”

Niall slumped back on the sofa and gazed up at the two men. “I don’t suppose achubydd can heal stupidity, can they? Or time-travel? Because I’ve bolluxed things up from the first moment I met him, and my decision-making isn’t getting any better. It appears that when given the choice between any two options, I’ve always chosen the wrong one.”

Well, that had been his one undeniable skill, hadn’t it? To instantly see which path would lead to the maximum amount of chaos. He’d never realized he’d be one of his own victims.

Bryce advanced on him as if he were in a trance. “Eamon’s brother. David told me, but I should have realized it from your aura. It’s almost identical, except his had red undertones and yours are blue.”

“That’s because his mother was a Welsh lake maiden and mine was human.”

David sat next to him and took his hand. The warmth flowing into Niall threatened to soothe his lacerated feelings. No. I’m not worth it. He snatched his hand away. David glared at him. “Let me guess. You don’t think you deserve to feel better.”

“I don’t.”

“That is just so . . . so Alun.”

Bryce dropped down on Niall’s other side. “Mal too. I think it’s a Kendrick family failing.”

David scowled. “Well, the youngest Kendrick hasn’t ever suffered from that. He spent most of his life convincing his brothers they were right to feel unworthy.”

“Don’t.” Niall rose, suddenly feeling hemmed in. Danu’s tits, he’d spent two hundred years chained in a cave, but it took two men sympathizing with him to make him feel like a prisoner. “He has every right to be angry. It was a betrayal from the first. Maybe it turned into something else later, but it didn’t start out as anything more than one of my gods-bedamned wagers.”

“Do you mean you planned to abandon him?”

“Abandon him? No. I was supposed to kill him.”

The two men stared at him, eyes wide and mouths identically agape. Niall nearly laughed, because two less identical bookends would be hard to find.

David recovered first. He shut his mouth, and his throat worked as he swallowed. “K-k-kill him?”

“Oh yes. It was to be my crowning achievement. Proof I wasn’t a dilettante worse than any of the sycophantic courtiers, since at least they stroked my father’s ego, whereas I did nothing but flaunt his authority at every turn.”

“But you— I mean, I know Mal and Alun have . . . you know . . . done that. Killed people. But that was in combat. Or to carry out a sentence.”

“Do you think that makes the death any more justified?”

David frowned. “I have to admit, as a nurse and I guess as an achubydd, I’ve never liked the idea. But there’s at least one person I would have preferred was erased from the world, preferably before he was ever born.” He shared a glance with Bryce, and they both said, “Rodric Luchullain.”

“Tiarnach’s esteemed colleague. Excellent choice.”

“Were you a warrior too?”

“No. That’s the irony. Or is irony the word I want? I was the only greater fae in the Unseelie court who’d never killed. I confined my mayhem to murdering reputations. Even during the Oak Wars, I refused to join the combat.”

Bryce nodded as if he were on the same pacifist train, but David simply asked, “Why?”

“Because the people who died were never the ones who caused the conflict. They were just fae going about their business, following their instincts and nature, until the politics swept over them like a wave. Do you think the greater fae risked their precious necks in those bloody woodland skirmishes? Not likely. They sent out the cannon fodder. The lesser fae died in droves while the greater fae stood back and waited until they could indulge in their pretty swordplay.”

“I thought—that is, Alun has always said that the Daoine Sidhe lived for war, which is why they’re such a pain in the butt now that they don’t have anything better to do.”

“They may have lived for war, but not for battle. They didn’t ride in on their precious steeds until the field was already littered with the bodies of the foot soldiers, the lesser fae. I wonder if the elder gods foretold that? That’s why lesser fae can reproduce but the greater fae require divine intervention—or an unwilling fertile partner.”

Bryce nodded. “Mal told me he wasn’t born like we are. But Heilyn had offspring when we met.”

“Yes. The lesser fae aren’t as long-lived as the greater, but that may be because they’ve always been abused and sacrificed at the whim of the greater, who always seem to be the ones in power.”

Bryce regarded Niall, head tilted to one side. “You know, you sound more like a revolutionary than a murderer.”

“Much good it did me. The best I could do was annoy them. I hadn’t any real power to effect change.”

“But why kill Gareth?”

“It didn’t start out that way. It was originally a way to prove that subterfuge could get better results than head bashing. During the wars, because I can pull my mother’s human guise over me at any time, I could mask myself from the enemy. Infiltrate. Bring back news.” He snorted. “Not that I brought back all of it. Just enough to try to keep our own troops from slaughter, never enough to decimate the opposing ranks. Because what choice did any of them have, Seelie or Unseelie? They had their orders to die on command.”

“Not exactly a shocker. War has always been harder on the front lines. That’s why it’s better to avoid it.”

“Try telling Tiarnach that. He doesn’t appreciate the subtle distinction between physical force and societal subversion. I made the mistake of challenging him.”

That night, Tiarnach had been brooding at the head table in the Great Hall. The usual sycophants had been at his elbow, plying him with mead and flattery, while the rest of the court feasted with one eye on the King—because no one ever knew when he’d take it into his head to make an example of one of them for some imagined slight.

Niall avoided the feasts altogether if he could, since they were nothing but an excuse for the greater fae to lie to one another about their exploits, drink too much, and make work for the Keep staff. They’d become doubly tedious now that Tiarnach was obsessed with his ludicrous vendetta against Gareth Cynwrig. Niall arrived—late as usual, and the instant he’d swaggered into the Great Hall, Tiarnach called him out.

“You! Coward! I know what you did.” Tiarnach glared from his perch on his pretentious throne-like chair. Danu’s tits, did the idiot need the throne to remind him of his power? Maybe he used it to remind everyone else of his power—just as he always wore his crown. Bastard probably wears it to bed.

Niall spread his arms and bowed. “I admit it. I ate the last venison pie. It put up a valiant fight, but—”

“Silence! I speak of the desecration of the war spoils: your unlawful removal of my warriors’ trophies.”

Trophies. The last had been the head of an elderly bauchan, Gareth Cynwrig’s poor groom. The sight had so distressed Peadar and the rest of the staff that Niall had removed it in the night and buried it under a rowan tree.

He forced his expression to remain bland and kept his gait even and unhurried as he trod between the long tables to stand before Tiarnach. “Surely we’re not at war any longer. Isn’t that what the Unification treaty was about?”

Tiarnach’s jaw worked, his eyes flashing red. Niall hoped his own never did that—it was disgusting really. “As long as there are Seelie swine in Faerie, the war will never end.”

“Hmmm.” Niall tapped his chin. “That’s not what you swore to the Seelie Queen that day in the Stone Circle.”

“What I said matters not. It’s how we were bred, in our bones and blood.” The toadies flanking Tiarnach nodded in pompous approval, which naturally encouraged him to natter on. “Seelie and Unseelie will never mix, just as no high fae would sully his honor to pander to the lesser.”

“Honor?” Niall laced his tone with astonishment, glancing around at the crowd to gauge its temper and perhaps identify a like-minded rebel or two. Not promising, but when has that ever stopped me? “I wasn’t aware honor was one of our tenets. Surely that’s the purview of the Seelie. You’ve mocked them often enough for it.”

“You owe me fealty as your King, as your . . . father.” Tiarnach hunched over his flagon. “Yet you do nothing but sow discord in my court, depriving me of one advisor after another—”

“Ask yourself what value their advice, when they could be seduced by their own avarice and ambition. I did you a favor.”

“You think you can do better? You think you can rid the Queen of her bard?”

“I couldn’t very well do worse than your bumbling assassins.”

The smile that spread over Tiarnach’s face caused the bauchan serving him to tremble and spill mead onto the tablecloth, earning it a backhanded slap from Tiarnach’s currently favored courtier—what was his name? Gwin? Tionn? Niall never bothered to remember their names. He only paid attention when he wanted to remove one, and that slap had put this one in his sights. He’d ask Peadar later who it was.

Tiarnach stood. “Hear this,” he boomed, quelling all other conversation in the room. “Until such time as Niall MacTiarnach rids the Seelie Queen of her bard, he is banished from this court and from Faerie.” He stared at Niall, eyebrow raised. “You have your orders.”

Niall nearly backed down. To accomplish the task fully in the Outer World would be difficult. Who knew whether the bard ever ventured there? But then his own smile answered his father’s.

A challenge. What better way to pass the time, away from court and his father’s presence. Although he’d miss his brother, Peadar, and the other staff. Worse, they’d miss him, with no champion to protect them from his father’s worst excesses and the casual cruelty of the rest of the court. He’d speak to Eamon before he left, to engage his assistance—

“Leave. Now. This instant. My guards will escort you. You think yourself so clever and resourceful? See how you manage with nothing more than your so-vaunted wits.”

A murmur swept through the crowd, and Niall caught the satisfied smirks on the faces of his most vicious critics. How they’d love to see him sweat, see him struggle, see him fall. He refused to give them the satisfaction. He straightened his shoulders and forced a confident grin. “I’ve never failed yet when I’ve set my sights on something. You’d best keep that in mind, Father, before you make a threat you might be hard-pressed to keep.”

He turned and walked straight out of the hall, well ahead of the guards when he passed through the door.

“Master.” At Peadar’s whisper, Niall’s stride faltered, but he recovered before the guards could notice. “Your cloak. And—” He thrust a leather pouch, heavy with gold, into Niall’s hand.

Niall took the cloak, but closed Peadar’s hand around the pouch. “Hold on to this.”

“But, master, you will need it.”

Niall gripped Peadar’s shoulder and grinned down at him. “You may need it more. Besides—an adventure! I could ask for nothing better . . . although I appreciate the cloak.” He flung it around his shoulders and fastened it with a copper oak leaf brooch. Take care of yourself, my friend. Go to Eamon if you need anything.”

Niall clutched the edge of the mantel until his knuckles whitened, the scene still fresh in his memory. “It was ridiculously easy to track Gareth to the eisteddfod.” He released his grip and faced the two men again, smiling crookedly. “His reputation was . . . shall we say . . . formidable?” :Rock star!:

“So you destroyed Gareth by making him fall in love with you and then leaving him?” David’s eyes clouded like a storm over a lake. “Really?”

Niall shrugged. “No. I fear the joke was on me. I’d intended to find his weakness, get him to indulge it until it consumed him, just as I’d done with so many other corruptibles. But with him, I found I didn’t want to. Instead, I was the one who fell.” He touched a picture on the mantel, Gareth and Mal flanking David and Alun at what must have been their wedding, judging by their clothing. “My weakness, as it turns out, is Gareth.”

“But he says he saw you leave with Eamon. If you didn’t intend to destroy him, then why not come back?”

“Ah, but you’re forgetting the terms of my banishment. I needed Eamon’s help to get back into Faerie before I’d fulfilled them. I couldn’t return until I’d rid the Seelie Queen of her bard.”

Bryce’s eyebrows shot up. “You were going to keep the letter of the order, not the spirit?”

“Got it in one, Sir Druid. The way I planned to rid the Queen of her bard was to propose that I be allowed to take him as consort. Then he’d no longer be Seelie. Or at least, not entirely.”

“I take it,” Bryce said, his tone dry, “that the King didn’t see that as a brilliant policy decision.”

“No. Not one for subtlety, my dear father. He considered it a betrayal of family, King, and court. He ordered me to kill Gareth outright. Ordered me to bring him to the Stone Circle and slit his throat on the altar.” Niall closed his eyes, the horror of that notion twining thorns around his heart. “I refused. He swore I’d follow his orders—that Gareth would die and that mine would be the hand to do it. When I refused, he—well, he sentenced me to serve at the underworld forge as a slave to Govannon until I repented and carried out my task.”

“Wait a minute.” Bryce leaned forward, the light of a druid in pursuit of knowledge in his eyes. “When Eamon deposed the king, he took him and Rodric to the underworld. You’re the one he rescued that night.”

“Yes.”

David frowned. “But why were your wounds so fresh? Had he . . . beaten you?”

“He didn’t. He wouldn’t sully his royal hands with any weapon less exalted than his sword. But he ordered Govannon to do it. Every year, on the anniversary of my folly, Tiarnach showed up at the forge and asked me if I’d repented. When I said no, he’d have Govannon flog me.” Long habit made him curl his shoulders forward, as if anticipating the first blow. “Later on, he’d have the flogging first and the question afterward. He wanted me to beg, you see. Beg to kill Gareth.”

David was solemn. “But you didn’t.”

Niall glared at him in disgust. “Of course not.” He scrubbed his face with both hands. “Two weeks before Eamon released me, Tiarnach told me he’d tired of waiting. After the beating, he said he’d killed Gareth himself.”

“Ooohh.” David’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “You must have . . . wow. I don’t even know how you must have felt then.”

“I felt like Tiarnach was damn lucky I was still shackled to the rocks,” Niall growled, “or I’d have strangled him with my own chains. Since they were forged by a god, they’d have had half a chance of doing the trick, too.”

“That must have been one hell of a beating, considering the state of your back when you arrived.”

“Oh. That. That was actually the accumulation of all the beatings that I’ve received since I last escaped into the Outer World. The underworld is a place out of time, out of space, you understand. Anything that happens there—well, it has to happen again when you leave, unless you’re escorted by someone with proper authority. It’s supposed to discourage prisoners from escaping.”

David leaped up. “You have to tell Gareth. The whole story.”

Niall retreated behind a wingback chair, in case David decided he needed comforting again. “He doesn’t want to hear anything more from me. Besides, how would ‘I was sent to kill you but decided to fuck you instead’ go over? Doesn’t make me sound like an honorable kind of man, does it?” He spread his arms and took a bow. “But I’m Unseelie. I don’t know what honor is.”

“Stop it. You fae are just . . . augh!” David clutched his hair. “You’re so fixated on your stupid tenets, and how everyone has always followed them in the past, that you never think of how open to interpretation they are. I’m surprised your heads haven’t all exploded from the contradictions.”

“Well, I can’t say I haven’t tried to skate on the edge of them myself.”

“Everybody does. They have to. But it’s easier to follow other people’s patterns and paths than to make one of your own. That’s why fae have such a hard time with change. Personally?” David crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air. “I think you’re all just lazy.”

Niall was surprised into a laugh. “You’ve never seen how hard the lesser fae work to keep up with the capricious orders of the courtiers.”

“Not physically lazy. Actually, I think inaction is one of the problems. I mean you’re all so freaking ancient that you can’t think outside your own little box. Don’t you see? You sacrificed everything for Gareth. Don’t you think he’d appreciate that?”

“Not with the way he feels about Unseelie.”

“Gah!” David clutched his hair. “Why are you fae so freaking stubborn? The reason he feels that way about Unseelie is because of you. Because he thinks they abducted and brutalized you.” David squinted one eye, releasing the death grip on his hair. “And actually, they did. Well, one of them did, but not in the way he thinks. If you explained to him—”

Niall folded his arms across his chest. “And make me sound even more pathetic than I am? No, thank you. Besides, I don’t want him to come to me out of gratitude or obligation or pity.”

“Well, I think he has a right to know.”

“No!” Abandoning the chair’s dubious protection, Niall dodged around it, palms up in supplication. “Please. Don’t tell him.” He dropped his arms to his sides. “If we’re to find our way through this, we’ll have to do it with our eyes facing forward, not back.”

“Weeeellll, I still think you should tell him. I mean, look what hiding information from him has gotten you so far. You think keeping this from him will make him happy?”

“I think what would make him happy,” Niall said, baring his teeth in the mockery of a smile, “is if I disappeared again.”

“You are sooo wrong. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my nurse’s training—the psychology part—you can’t take away someone’s cause without giving them something in its place. He’s been focused on you and your fate for so long—what’s he going to replace that with?”

Niall looked away from the sympathy of David’s gaze. “Whatever it is—whoever it is—it’ll be better for him than I am. I should go.”

But where? He had no home here, no clothing, no money, no acquaintances other than Gareth and his family and friends—who, when given a choice between an Unseelie con artist and the one true bard, would probably make the right choice.

:Trust us!:

Ah well. The ethera were on his side. But he rather doubted they could run to a stiff drink, let alone a getaway car.

David apparently reached the same conclusion because his eyebrows shot up. “Go? Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere . . . else. So it’s not awkward when Gareth comes home after the concert.”

“Oh, that’s not an issue. He usually gates back to LA after—d’oh! He can’t. No gates. Hmmm.” David screwed his mouth up, thinking. One more person who has to solve the problem of Niall O’Tierney.

“You can stay at my place.” Bryce had been so silent in the shadows that Niall had forgotten he was there.

“Really?”

“I’d rather have you than Gareth. Besides, I have a feeling there’s a hell of a lot more you can tell me about the spell, and our time is running out.”