Zeke opened his eyes to the ugliest creature he’d seen in his entire life. And in his life he’d faced everything from young rodents to old cowboys.
“Holy crap…”
He instinctively bolted back from the thing, hand out in defense. It was wrinkled and small and nut-colored, with the palest blue eyes he’d ever seen, and sharp, pointy teeth.
He thought it might be smiling. Or grimacing in pain. He wasn’t sure. But it stood there at his feet, gnarled little hands on lumpy old hips, indeterminately colored hair frizzing around pointy ears and falling in its eyes like a badly groomed pony. Or donkey. Or rhinoceros. Something ugly. Really, really ugly.
“What the he—” He cleared his throat, remembering Nuala’s warning about not insulting anybody.
At least he thought this was an anybody. It hadn’t spoken yet, or moved, or made its character known. The last thing Zeke remembered was Nuala holding him in her arms. Well, that and another of those erotic dream-states that involved Nuala and her mother. Definitely not something he was going to pursue right now. Probably, if he were smart, ever. Besides, he had bigger problems to worry about.
Where was Nuala? Zeke battled an instinctive flare of panic.
He hated that. He was sure there was a perfectly logical explanation—as logical as it got here. Nuala hadn’t left. She hadn’t…but that thought wasn’t going to be finished. Zeke wasn’t going to fall prey to old nightmares, even though he seemed to be caught in a place that fairly bred the damn things. He especially wasn’t going to waste his energy on nothing more than a character in a lurid dream. He was going to wake up soon, anyway. He would move on, just like always.
“I’m sorry,” he tried again, pulling himself to a seated position to find that he was on some kind of bed. A soft bed, with the whitest, best-smelling sheets he’d ever enjoyed. Hyatt could make a fortune putting these sheets on their beds. They really did smell like fresh air and flowers. Lavender and lilies. Something like that. The bed was even long enough, which was completely disorienting, since it was tucked under the eaves of what looked exactly like one of those odd hobbit houses.
Then he realized what he should have seen first off. He was naked. Stark, staring, hairy-legged naked, his legs protruding from under the far edge of the pristine white sheet that suddenly didn’t seem big enough to cover his pertinent parts.
“Can you tell me where Nuala is, please?” he asked, trying like hell to arrange the sheet for best coverage as he tried even harder to pull what had happened into focus. His head still hurt, and he fought a bit of residual dizziness. And that damn burn of old fear, right below his breastbone.
He looked up again, bracing himself for that ugly face. “Can you tell me what happened?”
He couldn’t tell if the creature understood English. What did trolls speak? he wondered, just before he remembered that these people seemed to be able to hear thoughts.
“And don’t you be forgettin’,” the thing said in the most calm, sweet voice he’d ever heard in his entire life, a voice that promised warm biscuits and lemonade and a big, soft lap for hugs. “I can hear you just fine, all right. And don’t be calling anybody a troll in this glen, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry.”
He seemed to be saying that a lot. And the sheet just got smaller. He could feel a distinct breeze against his backside.
“So you fell down a fairy hole, then, did you, mannie?” It shook its head, huffing a bit. “You’re a clumsy lot, you mortals. Always tripping over perfectly good fairies and then not knowin’ what to do with them.”
Again he was mesmerized by that voice, by the certainty that he could smell those damn biscuits baking. If he could just close his eyes, he could drift away on that voice. Pretend it was his mother’s, and he could barely remember a time when his mother hadn’t sounded thin and frayed with pain. If she’d stayed healthy and strong, though, this was the voice she would have had. She would have smelled like sunshine and lavender, instead of medicine and decay.
He was sure, however, she would never have stripped him and given him nothing but a handkerchief to cover himself with.
“So, you’re a…um, fairy?” Very carefully, both hands anchoring the perilously small bit of linen, he swung his legs off the long-enough bed and damn near smacked his knees on a little chest of drawers that sat against the wall.
The minute his legs were off the thing, the bed seemed to shrink to normal size…or rather, hobbit size. He focused on hanging on to the sheet, terrified it would disappear altogether.
“I’ll thank you not to be calling me a hobbit, either,” the thing snapped. “Hobbits are hairy, and they can’t dance.”
Zeke just about managed to blink his eyes. “You know hobbits?”
“Of course not!” it retorted, hands still clenched on those lumpy hips. “Hobbits aren’t real!”
Zeke fought the most overwhelming urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.
“Oh, you’re awake!” he heard from the doorway.
He didn’t even need to look up to know it was Nuala. No matter how nice other voices were in this deranged place, they weren’t hers. He looked up, ashamed that he felt the urge to weep in relief just at the sight of her. He looked down to see an expanse of hairy chest and knees and decided he couldn’t possibly feel any more uncomfortable.
“Would you tell me what happened?” he begged.
Nuala tucked herself into the doorway and smiled at him, bringing the sun in with her.
“He called me a hobbit, this one,” the creature who resided there complained, waving an impatient hand at him.
Nuala laughed, and Zeke smiled, even though he still felt fuzzy and a couple beats off rhythm. And naked.
“Ah, Bee, he can’t help himself. Sure, he’s never met anything like us before.” She leaned closer, her grin impish. “He doesn’t believe in us at all, don’t you know?”
The Bee creature huffed again, hands back on hips. “Then how does he explain sittin’ on our bed and insultin’ us, I’m askin’?”
Zeke rubbed at the side of his head. “Even if I did believe in…you know, I sincerely doubt I could explain any of this.”
“You’ll be wanting to thank Bee,” Nuala assured him as she stepped around the little thing to stand within inches of his bare toes. “She’s our healer. Our own bean tighe. I brought you to her when you…when you weren’t feeling well.”
He still wasn’t feeling completely well, and he was hearing things again. Murmurs and whispers at the edge of his thoughts. He swore he could hear his name, as if somebody were calling—or commanding—him.
“You’ll be after listenin’ soon enough,” little Bee told him with a grotesque smile and a pat on his cheek that felt like thistledown. “For now, go play with the girl. She’s the one healed you, not these old hands.”
Zeke looked up to see that Nuala was blushing. “No, Bee,” she was protesting. “I just…”
Bee smacked her like a recalcitrant child. “I know it better than any, girl. It’s time you did. Now, go play with the lad.”
“The lad has no clothes,” Zeke reminded them both with the barest civility. “At least give me my boots. I hate walking around barefoot. You never know how many fairies you’re going to trample.”
Nuala giggled like a waterfall. “Sure, and I think we ladies would much prefer you just as you are. Don’t you think, Bee?”
The little fairy’s face folded into a thousand creases. “Ah, and didn’t it make my day?” Zeke thought it might be smiling.
He just closed his eyes. It was better that way. He could just see himself back at the university. “So there I was, sitting naked in this fairy house…”
“Ah, now, give the man some dignity,” a new voice interrupted from behind Nuala. “We’d ask the same for ourselves, now, wouldn’t we?”
Little Bee huffed in annoyance. “And doesn’t she just take the joy out of everything with her perishin’ thoughtfulness?”
Nuala chuckled and turned, and Zeke saw who she’d been hiding. Another fairy girl stood behind her, smaller, and slighter than Nuala. Slim as a reed, sharp-eyed, and capped with a nest of blonde curls. If she hadn’t been in one of those amazing dresses, this one in a silvery blue color that seemed to ripple into lavender, he would have sworn he was looking at Peter Pan.
“Zeke Kendall,” Nuala said, swinging her arm toward the girl, “I’d like you to meet the best friend a fairy ever had. Sorcha, the seamstress.”
The blonde shot Nuala an impatient scowl. “Sorcha the seamstress who also just happens to be your sister.”
Nuala leveled a beaming smile on her. “Ah, how could I be forgettin’ that?” she demanded. “Weren’t you the one stole the blankets when we were young?”
“And weren’t you the one who stole my first spells?”
“They never would have worked, Sorcha. I couldn’t just let you be mistakin’ the words and turn our good farrier into a newt.”
Sorcha’s eyes got even brighter. “It would have been a great improvement on him.”
“Well, you’re after making a better magpie than a seamstress,” Bee snapped. “Give the man his clothes, so.”
Sorcha blushed. “He would have,” she muttered, then stepped forward. For the first time Zeke saw that she was carrying his clothes, evidently cleaned and pressed and presentable.
“I was after trying to craft a good set of immortal clothing, like,” she said, her face pursed as she looked on his folded and pressed jeans as if they were an alien growth, “but they refused the forming. It was Nuala finally convinced us we couldn’t wait any longer to give you your things back. You understand, I was only using them for size, not takin’ them away.”
She wasn’t close enough for Zeke to grab his pants, and he couldn’t figure a way to reach over and snatch them without letting go of a vital piece of protective property. “Of course I do. Now…”
“But that’s all right, you know,” she said with a sudden sweet smile. “Sure, we’ll figure it out. I have the size now, and you have the time, all right.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Nuala insisted, grabbing the clothes out of Sorcha’s hands. “The queen and I are about to have a talk.”
She tossed Zeke’s clothing to him, her attention still on her sister. Zeke grabbed the suddenly soft, suddenly fresh clothes and took in a good breath of them. They smelled like breezes and mist and meadows. Damn, he could get used to that. Usually his clothing smelled like sweat and dust and thousand-year-old remains.
“If you don’t want him, can I have him, then?” Sorcha asked sotto voce. “Wouldn’t he be just grand to wake up to of a morning?”
“Nobody’s havin’ him,” Nuala insisted, then turned on Zeke as if it were his fault. “Come along, then. You’ve no more business here.”
He just sat there. The fairies just stood there.
Finally he had to cough. “Um, I’m not sure how this works in your world, but in mine, a man is given a bit of privacy to dress.”
The three of them grinned like wolves.
“You had none when we undressed you,” Nuala reminded him with a wicked glint in her eye that suddenly called up those salacious dreams all over again.
Zeke prayed for anatomical restraint and frowned. “I wasn’t conscious when you undressed me. For some odd reason, it makes a difference.”
Bee laughed so hard, her little ears quivered. “Sure, and I hope he’s not around for a festival. He’d be havin’ seizures.”
Zeke scowled.
Nuala grinned. “He’s only a mortal, Bee. They’re a much shyer lot than we are.”
“I don’t hide under flower petals,” Zeke growled.
Nuala chuckled. “And I’m not usually after wearing so many clothes. Faith,” she said, flicking at his jeans, “you could smother in this heavy business.”
Zeke refused to be charmed. “This heavy business protects me from the brambles.”
“Sure, we’ll have to at least keep him for Samhain,” Sorcha insisted with another of those knowing grins. “I’d be willin’ to bet I’m not the only one would offer pure gold to see him dance around the bonfire as the good mother made him.”
“That’ll be enough of that,” Zeke chastised, holding his clothes closer, since the sheet had shrunk again. “And you can stop playing with the covers, if you don’t mind.”
That quickly, the sheet was full-sized and his knees warmed considerably. Not to mention his rump.
“Now. If you’d give me a minute,” he said with a quick flip of his hand in the direction of the door, “I’ll be glad to be up and about.”
“Ah well, we might as well give in,” Nuala sighed, shepherding the others out the door. “Sure, as hard as it was to get those blue things off his legs, imagine how hard it is to get them back on.”
“And what about those loose things he’s after wearin’ underneath?” Bee demanded. “Whatever are those for?”
“I’ve heard they’re called boxers, Bee,” Sorcha said. “It seems to be a question mortals are obsessed with altogether. Boxers or briefs.”
Fortunately for Zeke, the door closed at that point and he was free to contort himself sufficiently to get his clothes back on. Truth be told, he’d never thought that much about clothing. It was just something that kept you warm in winter and out of police stations in summer. But he had to admit that faced with these people…or whatever, he appreciated the barrier that a good pair of jeans offered. Not to mention the camouflage. For a minute there, he’d been thinking about how little Nuala did wear, and truth be told, that sheet just wasn’t going to be enough to prevent major embarrassment.
After quickly tying his shoelaces, he got to his feet, head bent like a dowager to avoid banging it on the ceiling, and took the three steps necessary to open the front door. Evidently there had been quite a gathering around Bee’s house to see the mortal. The minute he opened the door, they scattered like leaves in a wind.
Literally.
Zeke couldn’t help staring. He’d seen people run away when threatened, but he’d never seen them fly. Or flit. Or disappear altogether. Only Nuala, Bee and Sorcha remained.
“People come and go so quickly here,” he muttered to himself.
“They were after worryin’ over you,” Nuala assured him, that sly grin still tucking up the corners of her mouth.
“They were after being curious about the big strapping mortal in their midst,” he disagreed.
“Ah, well, that, too.”
“All right, then,” Bee said with a flick of her hands, as if brushing them away. “Off with ya. No reason to be in a healer’s house when the business is finished.”
Zeke smiled, and bent way over and bussed the tiny healer on her leathery cheek. “Thank you for your help,” he said, realizing that he’d grown quite fond of the old girl.
She gave him another cuff, but he could have sworn she blushed. “Now that’s the way to be thankin’ a person,” she informed Sorcha.
“I wouldn’t know,” the sweet blonde said, her tilted blue eyes suspiciously bright, even for the pout on a face it didn’t fit. “And here was I after spending my whole afternoon on his clothes and all. My whole afternoon…”
So of course Zeke had to buss her just as firmly. “Thank you for cleaning up my clothes. They haven’t smelled this nice ever. And it was a nice gesture to try to put me in the local uniform. But I have a feeling I’m just not made for it.”
“Isn’t that just what I was trying to tell them?” Nuala demanded.
Sorcha was still blushing rosily from Zeke’s kiss. “Whiskers,” she said with a giggle. “Now there’s somethin’ I could get used to altogether. Are you sure we can’t keep him, Nuala?”
“Play with somebody else’s mortal, Sorcha. This one’s goin’ home.”
Sorcha made a point of sighing. “Ah well, then. I’d be fierce grateful if you’d muck yourself up again, mortal. I figure every time I clean you up again, I get another taste, which I’m thinkin’ I’d enjoy prodigiously.”
Zeke couldn’t remember when he’d last been more delighted. “You really spend your time cutting cloth and wielding a needle?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s much more complicated than that,” Nuala assured him, smiling on her sister. “Our garments and gemstones reflect us, our talents and strengths and spirits. It’s Sorcha who sees how. The color, the material, the structure. She attends every birth, every coming of age. She is Keeper of the Stones.”
“She can speak quite well for herself,” Sorcha said, hands on slim hips.
“But she never says enough about herself. Does she, Bee?”
“None of the good ones do, girl.”
Zeke was still a couple of statements back. “And you see Nuala in peacock blue?”
A huge smile broke over Sorcha’s pixie face. “Oh, aye, cannot you see it? Our Nuala is such a rare spirit, sure her raiment could be no less bright. It is the color of her sight, her sharp mind, her music. Especially her music.”
“Then why in God’s name is the Queen in white?” Zeke demanded. “No offense, I’m sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who belongs in that color less.”
“Ah, well, white is the royal color hereabouts, the measure of her place. Not her personality.”
“So she changed clothes with the job?”
Sorcha smiled and nodded. “Most of us are born to our colors, our stones. See the rings we wear? Each has different power stones that reflect the wearer’s strengths. But the queen, now, sure she doesn’t know she’ll have the job till later. ’Til the old queen leaves.”
“And what was Mab’s color before?”
Even Nuala was grinning now. “Scarlet.”
Zeke nodded. “Well, that puts my universe a little more in order. What color am I?” he asked.
Sorcha tilted her small head again and sighed. “Well now, isn’t that the problem? I think you’re the very material you’re wearing, and it isn’t fairy material at all.”
“Yeah,” Zeke agreed. “I’d probably be pretty hard on cobwebs and moonbeams.”
Sorcha laughed, again sounding like birdcall, bright and chirpy. “Well, then, I’ll be after seein’ you both tonight, will I?”
Nuala kissed her sister’s cheek. “Oh, we’ll be there, all right. Right alongside herself, if I’m a judge of anything.”
Sorcha nodded briskly. “Then I’d better prepare, shouldn’t I? There’ll not be an empty seat, I’m thinking, and there’s a particular seat I’m wantin’.”
Nuala smiled at her sister, but Zeke saw that there was sadness in both their eyes, the language of history and kinship.
He kept his place as the interloper and waited until Sorcha tripped off down the path before returning his attention to Nuala. “Now what?”
She smiled and began walking. “Now we find a place for you to rest ’til the banquet.”
“I did rest.”
“And a good job you did of it, too. But I doubt you’d suffer from a little more.”
Not knowing what else to do, Zeke followed her. It was then that he took his first good look around since stepping outside the clever little house. That quickly, he came back to a complete stop, astounded. They stood amid the cluster of houses he’d noticed before, all with smoke curling from their chimneys, and flowers running riot over fences and doorways. There were people tending gardens, and cattle and sheep scattered over the fields. He thought he’d imagined it before, especially since there should have been no chance it really existed.
“It’s a village,” Zeke announced, as if Nuala didn’t already know as much.
“Of course it’s a village,” she said with another musical laugh. “Where do you think we live, then? Out in the rain?”
Zeke stopped a moment in the middle of a well-trod street. “Well, yeah. I guess I did. You know, on the petals of flowers, that kind of thing.”
“Ah, well now, there are those who do just that. Flower fairies, they are, and they don’t mind a bit of mist and bother. But we like our comforts about us like anyone else.”
Zeke stayed right there in the middle of the path, distracted by the creatures around him. “Oh,” seemed all he could manage. He was rubbing at his temple again, trying to get all this to make sense.
“Are you feeling all right?” Nuala asked, watching him.
He turned to see that she was frowning at him. He suddenly couldn’t bear to see the twin furrows between her eyebrows and felt compelled to rub them away with his thumb. He didn’t, though. He at least maintained that much restraint.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, although his head still throbbed a bit, and he could hear those voices again in the distance, fading in and out like a radio somebody had left on. “How did I end up in Bee’s house?”
Her frown eased only a fraction. “Ah, well, you did hit yourself a great whack comin’ down that hill and all. You said it yourself. You just needed a bit more time to be restin’, is all.”
“And how long did I do that? Rest, I mean?”
She smiled then, at once rueful and shy. “Well, now, we don’t really feel the need to be measurin’ time like you do in your world. It was early when you came to us. It’s closin’ in on night now. They’ll be preparing the banquet.”
He looked around to gauge the light, trying to more accurately measure the passing of time. It was impossible in this place, though. If you couldn’t see the sun, how could you measure its trajectory? All he could tell right now was that the light that seemed to permeate this place had softened, become more dispersed. It was harder to see all the denizens, although he did notice that like kids everywhere, fairy children were cramming in their play until the very last minute of the day.
For a second they distracted him, those fairy children. Bright as pennies, they had wise, sly eyes and enchanting giggles. Red hair and blonde hair and blue-black hair like ravens’ wings. And all with those faint points on their ears. All watching him as if he were the latest thing in video games. Also like children everywhere, it took only a moment for their attention to wander.
All except one. A small child, with copper hair that seemed to fluoresce in the half-light and the darkest, gravest eyes he’d ever seen. For a minute the child just stood there, clad in some kind of tunic top and leggings and soft slippers on his feet, all in forest greens and royal blues. He stood so still that for a moment Zeke wondered if he was really there. His eyes were dark, and so old in that young face. They frowned, as if the boy were trying to decipher something. And then, like a shaft of light, he smiled. Nodded. And then just turned away.
Zeke was stunned to hear Nuala gasp beside him.
“What?” he asked, turning to see that she, too, was watching after the now-gamboling boy.
She shook her head a bit. “Nothing…”
“You’re not looking like it’s nothing. Who was that?”
Still watching the children, Nuala smiled. “That is Kieran,” she said. “We get to borrow him sometimes, from over to Castle Matrix.”
“Borrow him?” Zeke asked. “What do you mean? Isn’t he a fairy?”
“Oh, aye,” she said, still caught in some kind of spell. “A throwback from two mortals who didn’t know they had the blood.”
Now Zeke watched the boy and thought how, once seen, it was near impossible to take one’s eyes from him. “Kind of like a recessive trait, huh? Who knew?”
“He will be our next seer,” she said in tones of reverence.
“Your what?”
Nuala lifted a hand, as if the explanation encompassed more than words. “Every so often, when it is most needed, the faerie are blessed with a seer. A great gift altogether, but a heavy burden. Sure we haven’t had one since you mortals strung up the electricity the first time. You can’t know what that does to a fairy’s spirit. Well, now, the time has come again. And our first glance at Kieran, didn’t we know he was the one? He was only three, and there he was, seein’ us right in the middle of the day. So his parents agreed to share him, for us to teach him what he must know. But it must be his choice to stay or leave.”
“A seer. And what does he see?”
“The past. The future. The pattern.”
“The pattern?”
Again that lift of the hand. “Where it all fits together, this world and yours and all the others.”
Zeke couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow. “The others?”
That quickly, Nuala’s attention was back on him again. She smiled and patted at him, just as she had at Bee, although Zeke bet Bee hadn’t had the reaction to Nuala’s touch he always did.
“Ah well, that might be something you may not be ready for just yet. First, why don’t you let us entertain you with our food and our music and our ways? After, sure, you can ask all the questions you want.”
“After you tell me why he nodded at me.”
Nuala tilted her head, much as her friend the seer had done. “Ah well, that’s simple. He’s been away from basketball now this long while. He’ll be wanting to ask you scores and such, and about a team named the Knicks.”
Zeke lifted an eyebrow. “Basketball?”
Nuala smiled. “Mad for it. But he’ll find you when he wishes.”
There was more she wasn’t saying. Zeke very much wanted to ask, but one look at her suddenly serene face decided him. It wouldn’t do any good. Inscrutable, these fairies.
Besides, she’d started walking again among those quaint houses and old, majestic trees, that gossamer dress drifting about her like a nimbus.
“And should I eat any of the fairy food?” he asked instead as he followed along. “I have heard that it’s a bad idea. For mortals, anyway.”
Nuala nodded, her hair trembling again, catching fire in distant light. “In the usual course of things, I wouldn’t want you to be eatin’ here. But the queen has given her protection.” Her smile reappeared, literally stabbing Zeke in the heart with its purity. “Sure, you should enjoy it. Few mortals get to taste such a meal and come back to tell the tale of it.”
Zeke couldn’t take his eyes off her. He couldn’t imagine how he was going to keep his hands off her. Her skin glowed in the waning light, as if lit from within. Her eyes were deep and mysterious, a cool glade at dusk. Her hair…God, her hair. He wanted to touch it, to winnow it through his fingers and wrap it around them both like a curtain no one could penetrate.
He wanted her in every way he could think of. And standing there in the middle of Main Street in Fairyville, he suddenly couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t have her.
Zeke loved women. All women. Any women. He loved the mystery of them, the illogic of them, the smell and the taste of them. Never before had he questioned an attraction. And he knew from long experience that nothing increased the pleasure of them more than patience. Well, he could certainly be patient with his fairy princess, if it meant he could spend more time with her. If he could dally at her feet.
If, in the end, he could claim her.
“And you?” he asked. “What do you like? What is your story, Nuala? I believe I was going to ask before, but we got sidetracked.”
“So you were,” she said, not meeting his gaze. Instead, she smiled at the children and nodded to those who passed. “Ah, I don’t have much of a story, now. I’ve lived here all my life, then, haven’t I? I learned the harp from Agheam himself, who is master harper to the Tua, and I’ve learned scrying…well, that on my own. And…and, well, I’ve prepared for the time when Mab leaves these shores and doesn’t return.”
“She really is going, huh?”
Nuala looked up at him with those fathomless green eyes, suddenly vulnerable and hesitant. “Aye. She will leave in her time, and take the old ones with her.”
“How many does that leave here?”
She shrugged. “Oh, still too many to count quickly. Enough to tetch at your poor mortals for a few years to come.”
Zeke looked around again at the dimpled earth that cradled these delightful little houses, at the swift-footed men and graceful women who drifted about their day, and the children who scampered through the woods. He thought of all the magic he’d lost in the hard glare of the reservation, where dreams couldn’t hide. Of the mists and enchantments forfeited to technology and science. He thought of all the tales his sister-in-law had saved from his great-great-grandmother, the powwow woman.
“I’m glad,” he said, because it didn’t cost him anything in a dream to believe in this. “I’m glad there are some staying. It would be a sad old world without a little magic.”
Nuala seemed to feel the same way he did. “Aye,” she whispered, as if it were a burden. “It would that.”
Around them the bees hummed, and evening birds chittered and swooped. The other fairies were slipping into their houses, leaving the path empty for Nuala and her mortal. Fairy lights flickered among the trees, and a deer paused at the edge of the field.
The world was perfect, colored and scented and sounding of peace. Soft and sensuous and soothing. Zeke couldn’t help being drawn to it, even the drip of water from the leaves, the shadows that pooled along in the lane. He wanted to stay here, and he wasn’t sure whether it was because of the gentle fading of light around him or the beautiful woman at his side.
“There is darkness here, too,” she said, her voice hushed. “It isn’t wise to idealize any place or person.”
Zeke looked over to see that she was gazing into the deepening evening around her. He saw the shudder of fairy light limn her face and thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
He wanted so much to touch her. To hold her and search out every nook and cranny, to incite smiles and sighs of repletion. He wanted to explore those visions he’d had of her breasts and thighs and tongue.
She turned to him, and the images returned.
Her hair a waterfall against his chest as she leaned over him, her peach-tipped breasts brushing against his skin, her eyes glowing and her voice breathy with desire. He swore he could feel her fingers on him, could smell the musk of desire on her. He stood there not even touching her, and he knew he could taste the honey on her lips.
And he knew, seeing her standing there as still as a deer that sensed danger, that she could taste it, too. Her eyes grew large and dark, and her hands fluttered up, but only briefly, as if trying to capture the lightning that sparked between them. Her breasts lifted with her quickening breaths.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked, amazed at how flushed his poor battered body felt.
She couldn’t seem to take her gaze from him as she shook her head, the fire in her hair licking against the night. “I was going to ask you, so. I’ve never…”
He couldn’t help lift an eyebrow. “Never?”
This time the wave of her hands was impatient. “Like this. I’ve never seen…never tasted…”
Zeke nodded his head, as if he understood. “Then this isn’t normal courting practice for fairies?”
He startled a laugh out of her. “Ah, no. I can’t say that it is.”
Zeke nodded, never taking his gaze from hers. Never chancing the loss of the sweet fire in those eyes. “I have to kiss you,” he said in wonder.
She only nodded. “Yes.”
He leaned forward, seeing her eyes dilate, her nostrils flare. He heard the sharp intake of her breath and felt the silk slide over her arms as he wrapped his hands around her. He saw her eyes close, and he kissed her.
Gently, no more than a whisper. A greeting, a grace. Knowing that if he took more, he would be lost.
He was lost even so. Once, when he’d been up on a mesa out in the middle of nowhere, he’d been caught in a lightning storm. There had been no rain to defuse it. The Four Corners was usually too dry for that. The air had crackled all around him, skittering along his nerve endings and standing his hair on end.
It felt just like that right now. As if, if he opened his eyes, he would see a lacework of lightning shatter the sky. It shattered him, stunned him. Sent him reeling.
He heard a small whimper and knew it was Nuala, and he held on more tightly, wrapping his hands around her back. He eased her mouth open beneath his and got his first real taste of her.
He knew there would be honey, and there was, honey and smoke and the tang of cloves. There was mystery, and there was madness, and he didn’t care. He couldn’t care. If he cared, he would have to let her go.
And he couldn’t let her go.
“Excuse me,” a massive voice said.
Nuala stiffened. For a second Zeke held on, not willing to break this incredible connection.
“Nuala!”
Nuala elbowed him hard. Zeke pulled away, still thinking that it would only be a moment. No, it would be a lifetime, but he could wait until the interruption was past.
“Darragh,” Nuala said, and she sounded stricken.
That got Zeke’s eyes open to find a man-fairy standing before him. He had silver hair and dark, dark eyes, and a tunic the color of smoke or rainclouds. The thunder in his face matched it perfectly.
“Can we help you?” Zeke finally asked.
“No, but maybe I can be helpin’ you,” he said, his voice too deep a rumble for such a slight being.
“Darragh, leave him be.”
The fairy faced her then, and seemed to grow even darker. It felt as if the air seethed and crackled with his anger. “Are you after havin’ another consort, then, Nuala? That you’d display yourself so in the middle of the street?”
“It’s not like that,” she protested, graceful hand out to him. “He’ll be leaving soon. Herself will see to it.”
“She’d better,” he said with a scowl. “It would be a trial, now, to have to break the laddie here.”
Zeke bristled. “The laddie…?”
But Nuala put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Go now, Darragh. Find your place on the seat of the council and remember who you are.”
“I remember just fine. It’s you who seem to have forgotten.”
And with no more than that, he turned and stalked off.
“Pleasantguy,” Zekesaid, still distracted by the residual lightning that flickered along his arms. “Who is he?”
Nuala shook her head. “Well, in human terms,” she said with a sigh, “I imagine he’s my husband.”
Young Kieran O’Driscoll stood before the queen of the fairies without trepidation, because he was the only one but the bard who would dare to give the queen the truth.
“Have your say, then, little boy,” she said, standing tall and regal in the Tua crown. “You’ve come back to tell me about Nuala’s guest, you say.”
“His coming may well spell doom for the Tua, my lady,” the boy said, his own posture regal. “He brings the Dubhlainn Sidhe.”
It was a sentence that should have sent the queen trembling to her knees. Nothing was more feared than the Dubhlainn Sidhe, who rode the wind and sowed strife behind them.
“A dire warning,” she said, sounding oddly unconcerned. “Do you suggest we send him back?”
“It’s already too late. All was set in motion the minute you brought him through.” The boy took a breath, truly troubled. “He may well be the catalyst for a great Fairy War.”
The queen lifted an imperious eyebrow. “You expect me to simply accept this?”
For a long moment the boy just looked at his queen, his expression grave. “I expect that you must, since you have long known this would be the inevitable outcome when you failed to help the Dubhlainn Sidhe recover the Dearann stone when it was first lost so you might have reestablished balance.”
It seemed a dark wind suddenly blew, swirling around the little boy in a sound of whispers, of moans and sighs of despair. It seemed the queen grew in stature, her eyes glowing as bloodred as the ruby in her crown. “You wouldn’t be thinking to chastise the Queen of Faerie, now,” she said, very softly.
He never flinched, looking oddly her equal, even for the disparity of their sizes. “I’m thinking to fulfill my duties. The time has come, my lady, as I’m sure you knew it would. The court of the Tua is in great peril.”
“From the Dubhlainn Sidhe.”
“They will ride.”
“And I cannot stop them?”
The little boy looked grave. “Maybe by calling truce. Working with them to restore order.”
“They don’t want order,” the queen snapped. “They want my power.”
The boy simply kept his silence. The queen looked out over the verdant hills, as if she could see the Dubhlainn Sidhe approach on their fire-eyed steeds. She stood so still, it seemed she had been cast there. Finally, though, she simply looked hard on the seer who stood no higher than her waist.
“It will be considered,” she said.
“Soon,” he begged, finally looking like a frightened boy. “Please.”