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EMELIA PUSHED AWAY from me just as Leroy cautiously poked his head through the wall. “Is the evil Jake gone now, mahfa?” he asked me warily.
“He’s gone,” I confirmed, feeling wrung out from the spell. Taking the gem out of my back pocket, I put it on the coffee table, then sank down onto the human sized armchair.
The ghost withdrew, then returned with Pru, Harley and Asha. They were understandably wary until I grinned at them sheepishly. “Sorry about being evil,” I said.
Asha looked at the pixie who was still perched on her shoulder. “What do you sense now?” she asked her tiny friend.
Squinting at me, the pixie relaxed slightly. “He’s more Seelie than Unseelie now. He’s like a living version of both realms, almost equally balanced, but slightly more good than evil.”
“Neither of the realms will remain balanced for much longer,” Emelia said. The small chair Rudy usually sat on vanished and another human sized one took its place. “Thank you, Tomlin,” she said and took a seat.
A brownie appeared on the coffee table next to the gem. I’d had no idea Gorm had a brownie living with him, but it explained how my coffee had appeared in front of me earlier. “You’re welcome, mistress,” he replied, then turned to me. “I am glad you were able to overcome your Unseelie rage, master. Your friends were afraid you wouldn’t be able to return to your normal self.”
“How did you come back from the darkness?” Pru asked curiously.
“It was thanks to this,” I said, holding up the ring. “Queen Wysterial gave it to me. It had a spell inside it that helped me balance myself out again.”
“Is this going to be permanent?” Asha asked. She was perched on the edge of the sofa between Harley and Pru and seemed on the verge of fleeing. My threat to take her to the Unseelie realm was probably still fresh in her mind.
“Yeah, darlin’,” I told her. “I’m not going to lose myself to my rage again.”
“What happened to you when you were in the Unseelie realm?” Harley asked.
I gave them a condensed version of my time spent hunting and killing things in the goblin dungeon, then the deaths of two fairies that had caused the imbalance. “My father gave me a quest to bring Asha back, but he didn’t give me a specific timeframe,” I finished up.
“My father is the Goblin King?” Asha asked. She was still horrified to have the truth about her origins confirmed.
“Now I understand the meaning behind your name,” Irindal said, snapping her fingers in realization. Asha had introduced the pixie to me before I’d launched into my explanation.
“What are you talking about?” the dryad asked in confusion.
“You said your name was Asha Trinity, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Asha means ‘balance’ in the dryad language.”
“Doesn’t trinity mean three?” Harley asked and received several nods. “I don’t get it. What three things is Asha supposed to be the balance for?”
“I’m guessing it’s three realms,” I said.
“That’s my thought, too, half-blood,” the pixie replied. “Asha has blood from both the Seelie and Unseelie realms, but she was raised on Earth. Queen Wysterial predicted she would become a queen. With the bargain you made with Lord Nicolaia and King Lod, I’m assuming they want to put her on Sindarian’s throne. That would bind the goblins to the Unseelie Court for the duration of her reign. Why else would those two have conspired to topple the Dark Prince?”
“If they intend for Asha to be their queen, whom do they intend to become the king?” Emelia asked. We were all wondering the same thing and no one had an answer.
“They didn’t tell me who their king would be,” I replied when everyone looked at me.
“Are you going to take me to them now?” Asha asked. She was pale and was trembling in fear.
“Nope. I’m going to delay for as long as possible, darlin’,” I said and she sagged in relief. “We still have a mission to complete and I’ll need my whole team to help me accomplish it.”
“We’re going after the Master Archivist?” Harley surmised.
“Yep. I spoke to Brandon just before I came here. He still hasn’t found a way for us to defeat her. Apparently, gorgons aren’t easy to kill.”
“That’s an understatement,” Irindal said and rolled her eyes. “It’ll take something close to a miracle to pull that off.”
As if in response to that thought, Harley’s phone rang. He fumbled it out of his pocket and checked the number. “It’s Brandon,” he said, then answered it. His eyes flicked to me when the Archivist asked if I was there. “Yeah, he’s here,” he said. I grinned when Brandon asked if I was acting normally and that I’d seemed a little strange. “He was evil, but he’s back to being himself now,” the kid told him. “I’ll tell you about it later. Is there a reason why you called?” He listened as the Archivist told him there was a very good reason for his phone call. “Hang on,” Harley broke in. “I’ll put you on speaker phone.”
My fae intuition had told me that Brandon Cooper would be at the heart of our mission even before I’d known what our quest would be. I had a feeling we were about to find out why he’d been chosen by destiny to be a part of our cause. “My program has searched through every record about gorgons that’s on every electronic file in every Archives in the world,” he said. He sounded more excited than tired despite the late hour in the US. “None of them had anything that was particularly helpful,” he added.
“We know that already,” Harley said impatiently.
“But I just had a revelation,” the Archivist said, ignoring the interruption. “Only one being has ever managed to resist the death-stare of a gorgon,” he added. “The program found a scrap of information about it that dated back several thousand years. I discarded it to start with because I thought it was just another old myth.”
“Get to the point already,” Leroy complained, but the Archivist couldn’t hear him.
“The story fragment was about a battle between a gorgon and a dragon,” Brandon said triumphantly.
“And?” Harley asked in bafflement. “I hope you have more than that, because I have no clue what your point is.”
“Dragons are the most magical creatures in existence, barring unicorns,” Emelia said in rising excitement.
“Do we have to find that dragon you told us about and get her to eat Sheridan Harwood?” Asha asked me. We had one dragon left here on Earth, but I had no idea where she was.
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “How did the dragon defeat the gorgon?” I asked, raising my voice so Brandon could hear me.
“The fragment was too faded for me to learn the whole story,” he said, enthusiasm waning a bit at that admission. “But in the end, the dragon was alive and the gorgon had turned to stone. I’m guessing the dragon somehow managed to reflect the gorgon’s spell back at it.”
“I think I might know how the dragon pulled that off,” I said with a weary grin. “Thanks for your help, Brandon. We’ll be in touch.” Harley leaned over and disconnected the call and everyone looked at me expectantly.
“Come on, honky!” Leroy said impatiently. “Tell us your plan!”
Glancing at the gem, I gave it a mental command. It pulsed softly, then my red and silver shield appeared on my lap. “A dragon in the goblin dungeon gave me this scale,” I told them.
“It’s pretty,” Pru said, leaning forward to peer at the designs. “But how is it going to help?”
I turned it over and held it up so they could see the highly reflective silver interior. “That’s how,” I told her. Tomlin saw the broken straps and fixed them with a flick of his hand. I nodded my thanks and he bowed in response.
“It could work,” Emelia conceded from her seat across the coffee table from me. Her mind had gone into overdrive as she started working on a plan. I had a few ideas myself. Maybe together we could come up with something that would succeed.
