I promised.
Cuinn stared at the ceiling, arms crossed behind his head. He was acutely aware of Rian, asleep beside him—finally asleep. Cuinn’s cock and ass were both still singing in chords, after what it had taken to get his scair-anam to the place where he could fall asleep.
The moon was riding high tonight. Cuinn could feel it. Feel her. Every Fae who had ever come through the Pattern and survived the experience could feel her, thanks to him.
I promised I’d set her free. Cuinn closed his eyes—not that that mattered, he could still feel her. There’s no Pattern left for her to guard. No reason to keep holding her prisoner.
If only it was as easy to confront an angry goddess as it was to come up with reasons to do it.
Maybe if I lie here long enough contemplating my trora, the moon will set.
Stifling a sigh, Cuinn Faded up to the roof. As good a place as any for what he had to do; the moon was the same in all places, and all times. If she weren’t, “Cuinn an Dearmad” would quickly have become a curse in at least two worlds, a long time ago.
When Cuinn took form again, he was lying in the same position he’d been in, only now he was up on the roof of the brownstone. And he was staring straight at the moon, a sight he normally avoided as assiduously as any other Fae in the human world. He’d never felt so naked.
Of course, he was naked. Sweaty, too. He’d gotten a workout in the hours just past—Rian had needed more than a little of his old favored consolation. And the wind was brisk, raising prickles everywhere he had hair.
Pants wouldn’t hurt, I suppose, if I’m going to be having an audience with a goddess. And it was simple enough to channel his favorite leathers, now that no Fae had to worry about how much magick he channeled any more. So what if they were assless?—this was going to be a face-to-face conversation.
Assuming it happened at all.
Concentrate, amad’n.
Concentrate. Pfft. Call down the moon. Easy enough, right?
How had he done it the first time? Desperation had probably had a lot to do with it, the need to slam the door to the Realm shut in the Marfach’s face.
For some reason, he found himself remembering a cartoon he’d seen years ago, back when human newspapers still held news and were still printed on paper. There had been a kid—probably a Fae changeling, if his temperament was any indication—trying to figure out which muscle to flex to make his ass light up like a lightning bug’s.
Cuinn could empathize.
He didn’t want to look at her, which meant he probably should. Wronging others was a Fae art form; the desire to acknowledge a past wrong and repent was unheard of, and even the concept bordered on mental illness. Not a lot of precedent for him to follow, in other words. But facing what he’d done seemed like a reasonable start.
Slowly, he got to his feet. And it looked as if the moon grew larger. Cuinn was sure his imagination was to blame. Fairly sure.
She won’t crash herself into the earth just to get her karmic justice, will she?
Maybe I should have thought of that sooner.
“Will you come down and speak with me, Lady?”
Silence.
“Will you speak with me at all?”
More silence. Or maybe it was just the same silence.
Cuinn guessed he understood. If someone had enslaved him, then waited a couple of thousand years before coming back to find out what he thought about the situation, he would probably flip them the Great Cosmic Bird by way of reply, too.
Empathy was something Cuinn had learned from his SoulShare—something pretty, something nice, but he wasn’t about to let it come between himself and what he needed to do. The prospect that the goddess in the moon might be as obstinate as a Fae wasn’t exactly attractive, but at least he had a few ideas as to what to do about it.
The channeling he’d used to bind the moon in the first place had mostly been improvised, and he wasn’t sure he remembered all of it. He remembered enough, though, to channel a temporary binding, enough to draw her down for a proper conversation. He hoped.
Closing his eyes, he reached for the living magick now woven back into the fabric of the human world. It came slowly, almost by osmosis, but it came. And when it started to overflow, he spun it into silver-blue cords, and cast the cords upward.
Fishing.
Cuinn hated fishing. He’d been tricked by a salmon, once, in the Realm, and being laughed at by a smart-assed fish was an experience no Fae would ever want to repeat.
The cords caught, tightened.
Here goes nothing. Cuinn wasn’t sure turning his back on the moon was a good idea, especially in assless chaps, but it was going to be fucking hard to haul her down while facing her. He turned, and he planted his feet in the cool concrete and he squared his shoulders and he pulled.
Absofuckinglutely nothing happened. He might as well have anchored the cords in the ground three stories below and tried to drag the earth around with them.
Which made a certain amount of sense, he supposed. Since this was the moon he was messing with.
Sense had stopped mattering a long time ago, though. A couple of thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries. Cuinn wanted to give his scair-anam the moonlight, and that was all that mattered.
Swiftly drawing in a fresh supply of living magick, Cuinn sent a blast along the magickal cords. Not a blast, really—just an attention-getter. A knock at the door.
The jolt traveling back down the cords staggered him, nearly dropping him to his knees, scattering tiny bursts of light behind his closed eyelids.
“Fuck!”
That does seem to be your solution to almost everything.
The voice in his head sounded coolly amused. Cuinn hoped that was a good sign.
Slowly he turned to face the moon. It was still an orb in the night sky, rather than a woman, but he thought the dark patches he’d always seen as a woman combing her hair in front of a mirror looked more womanly than usual. “I’m a reformed Fae, your Worshipfulness. I’m only interested in that kind of solution if it involves my mate.”
I... think I am relieved.
Cuinn tried very hard not to sigh. “Will you come down, Lady? I would like to talk with you, and this way of doing it is very hard on my neck.”
I suggest you learn to deal with it—is that the phrase? The smile in the voice was still there, but Cuinn thought he detected more than a little smirk. I am a prisoner, and cannot come down.
Cuinn clamped his jaws shut on what would undoubtedly have been a very unfortunate retort. There are times when social skills other than seduction would be nice things to have.
When he thought he could probably reply without finding himself on the receiving end of a lightning bolt, or whatever goddesses did when they were pissed off, he took a deep breath and tried again. “I was actually hoping to talk with you about that. I’d like to try to set you free. Now that the Pattern and the Marfach are both gone, and there’s no need to guard the way between the worlds any more...” His voice trailed off. “You’re laughing at me.”
Not really.
Yes, that woman in the moon was looking at him. And settling her skirts more comfortably as she did so, as if readying herself for an audience.
She nodded, as if she could see him looking at her from a few hundred thousand miles away. The magick I share with my Bride is the stuff of time. Do you think a time-bound creature such as yourself could have bound me had we not allowed it?
Cuinn gaped. He couldn’t help it.
The laughter in his mind was cool, but not unkind. You were not meant to know. Your pride need not suffer.
“It’s not my pride I’m worried about, for a change.”
What is your concern, then?
“I admit, I wish there had been a way to handle everything, back in the day, that didn’t involve imprisoning a goddess and essentially killing off two races of the Tirr Brai. But wishes are a spectacular waste of time.” Suddenly tired, a couple of thousand years’ worth of tired, Cuinn sat down heavily on the cement ledge running around the roof of the brownstone. “I just want to give my scair-anam back the enjoyment of moonlight.”
I... do not understand.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” Cuinn’s pale jade gaze wandered out over the lights of Greenwich Village, the high-rises of lower Manhattan and midtown peeking up over the nearer buildings. He’d come to love this place, once his almost-human Prince had reminded him what love was.
And taking in midnight Manhattan beat the shit out of trying to convince himself that what he was feeling every time he looked at the moon wasn’t guilt. Fae barely had a passing acquaintance with the concept—even the word had been borrowed from ancient humans.
Confession was almost as rarely encountered a concept. With this kind of luck, I should be playing the lottery.
“When a Fae left the Realm, through the Pattern, you were the last thing he saw before the most excruciating pain he’d ever known or would ever know.” Cuinn started to take a deep breath, but sighed it out before he finished. “The only channeling I could figure out how to craft that would trigger a transition without using living magick—which we knew was going to run out sooner or later—was one that automatically released the barrier keeping the worlds apart when you appeared through a window in the Pattern-tower.”
The silence that followed stretched out for so long, Cuinn started to think he’d been forgotten. I wondered why your kind avoid me now, in the human world, the moon whispered at last. In the Realms, they dance in my light.
“Realms?” The woman in the moon had Cuinn’s full attention once again.
Yes. The end of the Marfach gave birth to a Realm that has never known it.
Conversing with deities, Cuinn noted, was not unlike being repeatedly upended with two-by-fours to the head. He was beginning to understand why Fae had apparently decided the practice wasn’t worth the headaches. “You’re telling me there’s another Realm.”
Yes. But only as long as I watch over it, to connect it to the Realm-that-Was. If you unbind me, it will cease to exist.
“You mean I’d end up destroying an entire world. A hell of a lot more efficiently than the Marfach ever could have.”
I’m afraid so. And your conscience has carried enough; it does not need this burden as well. The cool voice seemed just a little warmer than it had been.
Cuinn tried not to roll his eyes—a quarter of a million miles away the moon might be, but he was sure she’d see it. “I left my conscience sound asleep downstairs, rolled up in all our blankets.”
You will tell yourself that, until you do not need to believe it any longer.
“You sound awfully sure of that.”
I told you, my magick is that of time. I am sure.
Even the cool breeze winding lazily between the rooftops wasn’t going to stave off Cuinn’s incipient headache much longer. But he wasn’t going to let go of this conversation until he had at least some of what he’d come up here for.
“Lady, I’ve watched Fae suffer through transitions for the last couple of thousand years. One of them means more to me than my own life. Rian was raised as human—he has a human’s love of you, a poet’s soul.” A poet of suffering. Most Fae would find the concept exquisite, would give anything to witness it, savor it.
Cuinn, though, didn’t have the luxury of being ‘most Fae’ any more. “But he can’t bear the sight of you, love or no love. I would change that, if I could. But freeing you was the only way I could think of to do it. And if that’s impossible...”
She was smiling. Cuinn knew she was.
Luckily, you need to do nothing. Except ask.
Cuinn was getting tired of staring with his mouth open. “That’s all? Ask?”
How often does one Fae care enough for another one to ask a goddess for his healing?
“Can’t think of the last time, since Fae don’t have gods.” Though maybe the middle of a conversation with one wasn’t the best time to bring that up.
Cuinn could still sense her smile, but he hoped he was only imagining the slight edge it seemed to have taken on. You believed in me enough to bind me, yes? But that was my doing, and my Bride’s, as much as yours, so no matter. The woman in the moon slowly waved a hand, sketching a tiny, perfect silver crescent. By my light, and the light of my Bride the Sun, may the memory of past pain fade like the echo of moonset. And from this day forward, may moonlight ever be a joy and a blessing to every Fae soul, and moondark a cloak to wrap your hearts and hold them safe.
For the third time in his very long life, Cuinn an Dearmad knew himself to be the recipient of a gift completely undeserved—Lochlann’s friendship, Rian’s love, and now this... forgiveness? Blessing?
They are all one, Loremaster.
“What th’ feck are ye doin’ up here when there’s a perfectly good bed and your Prince downstairs?” Rian’s voice was blurred with sleep. He stood in the open doorway of the stairwell leading back down into the brownstone; his luscious forelock looked like it had been combed with an eggbeater, and he hadn’t bothered to belt his thick terrycloth robe.
The moon was silent, and whether she was watchful was her own affair at this point. Cuinn took a deep breath, and beckoned to his Prince. “Come here, dhó-suil. Let me show you something.”