The Western Sidhe was home to the White Court, the Eastern Sidhe to the Red Court, and the Northern Sidhe to the Black Court. Those weren’t the Sidhes’ real names, of course, but we humans did love labeling.
The Western Sidhe was known among the Fae as. Maghmael, or Land of Joy. The Eastern Sidhe was Eamhna, the Isle of Apples, from which the mythic Isle of Avalon borrowed its name. The Northern Sidhe, home of the Black Court, was both the oldest and largest of the three. Tír na Nóg, fabled paradise of legend. Land of everlasting youth and plenty. And, according to my mother, home to the Fae’s High King and Queen, Finvar and Aine. They’d gone by many names over the course of history, their most widely known Oberon and Titania, thanks to a certain English playwright.
My mother told me the Sidhes existed in an intersection between what is, what was, and what will be. Whatever that meant. Outside the river of earthly time, they couldn’t be geographically placed, though Eamhna was always bordered by water. Delilah’s last intel placed it near New Zealand, and Tír na Nóg somewhere in northern Europe. Maghmael, domain of the White Court, was currently somewhere on the western coast of the United States.
In spite of my bragging to Connor, I didn’t know much at all. With only a week to prepare before my visit to the White Court, Delilah had stuck to basics that would help me not get killed. Like always waiting three seconds before entering someone’s home, never eating food I didn’t see prepared, and the delightfully random tip of never crossing my legs while seated.
Fae laws were intricate, often inexplicable, and unchanging. They boiled down to a few general principles.
Serve and Obey.
Don’t Ask Questions.
Humans are Weak, Mindless Beasts. Screw Them, but Don’t Bring Home the Babies Unless They Have Magic Powers.
Okay, so the last one was prejudicial. But not unfounded. It was why my Fae father had left me in the human world, and why Marcus’ father had taken him from it. Which begged the pressing question of why the White Queen wanted me now, when I was powerless. There was no way it was to attend a family reunion.
The answers could be locked somewhere in the memories of the month I’d spent in her domain, but despite the disjointed flashes I’d experienced while looking at her, they continued to float out of reach.
I contemplated this dilemma, and a million others, as I sat twiddling my thumbs in a lavishly appointed bedroom somewhere in the palatial seat of the White Court. The single window displayed a dizzying drop into a circular courtyard of pale stone, bordered on all sides by shining gray walls. The door to my room was an unbroken slab of the same stone, no handle or even a latching mechanism.
As far as prison cells went, there wasn’t much to complain about. Food magically appeared inside the door three times a day. Whole foods like sealed cheeses and apples, so someone clearly knew I wouldn’t eat prepared meals. The bathroom boasted a soaking tub, plumbing, and heated floor tiles. The bed was the perfect combination of soft and firm. I didn’t sleep much, though.
I paced. Did pushups. Meditated in laughably short intervals. Mostly, I practiced my limited self-defense skills. They wouldn’t help me against a magical assault, but I might be able to break a rib or two on my way down.
The only answers I had were that I was in Maghmael, I was a prisoner, and my grandmother was the Queen of the White Court.
Days passed. I tracked them by tearing tassels from the bottom of a curtain and collecting them on the surface of an oak desk.
Three days.
Four.
On the fifth day, as dawn spread its light across the courtyard and suffused the stone walls of my room with growing illumination, there was a scratch at the door.
I’d been up for a while, had finished my breakfast of cheese and a hardboiled egg. The soft, incongruous sound jolted my whole system, freezing me in place. The door didn’t look any different. There was no movement. No handle appeared. After a minute of staring so hard my eyes ached, I wondered if I’d imagined the sound.
Then it came again.
Someone whispered, “Fiona!”
Relief poured through me, curbed almost instantly by suspicion. Did I trust Lucian? Did I even know anything about him? He was a loyal subject of the White Queen. Wasn’t he?
I stepped carefully to the door, my senses on high alert. When I was close enough to feel the cool air coming through the doorframe, I whispered, “Lucian?”
He mumbled something under his breath, then said more loudly, “Stand back.”
I made it maybe five feet before the door went molten white. I cried out, covering my eyes with an arm. Whatever he did didn’t take long. Within moments, the room went dark. Blinking away the aftereffects of the light, I looked at the man standing where the door had been.
His white hair was free, falling in ragged strands around his naked torso. From his hips hung fawn-colored trousers, stained and torn. One eye was sealed shut and black, the other framed by an angry cut.
“What happened to you?” I blurted.
“The queen,” he rasped. “You are not her granddaughter, Fiona, although you bear a striking resemblance. The last female of Morrighan’s line died thousands of years ago.”
“Did you say Morrighan?” I shrieked the name, then slapped a hand over my mouth. “The Irish Goddess of War and Death?”
He nodded. “She’s absolutely mad. She thinks you are her granddaughter and will keep you forever. She will breed you to every male in this Court. We have to go. Now.”
It took all of a second for me to decide.
“Amen,” I gasped and ran to take his outstretched hand.
The hallway outside was empty, made of the same pale stone that brightened and dimmed with the cycle of the day. We ran, our bare feet soundless, past colorful tapestries and niches occupied by marble statues and strange objects on pedestals. One of them looked very much like a human head dipped in gold. And there were more doors. Tens of them, all without any visible access, spaced randomly on either side of the hallway.
We ran for what seemed like forever, lungs and muscles burning, and finally came upon an intersection point. Lucian skidded to a stop, panting and wiping sweat from his eyes. I followed suit, dropping to rest my hands on my knees. Seconds later, a high, unnatural keening shattered the silence. I jerked to standing, every hair on my body standing on end. Four hallways branched around us; it was impossible to tell where the sound was originating, only that it was growing nearer.
Lucian cursed.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered, fighting the urge to cover my ears. I thought I heard a snarl.
“Hounds,” he said flatly. He grabbed me by the shoulders, yanking me so close to his face that I could see the tiny flecks of green in his otherwise pale gray eyes. “This is going to hurt, but we no longer have a choice.” His arms locked around me. “Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
“Wha—”
I screamed as heat and light consumed me, then choked as ice encased my bones. I saw nothing but darkness, a thick and soupy black, broken at intervals by sparkling dots of color. Gold and red. Violet and sapphire. Then white. Bright and brighter, until heat replaced cold and I was burning again.
Lucian stumbled and we fell, breaking apart to collapse on our hands and knees. Beneath my clutching fingers was soil, dark and damp. Dense forest pressed around us, crowding the violet-blue sky.
A breeze drifted across my sweaty, flushed neck. I shivered, gulping cool air past a throat gone raw from screaming.
“Lucian, for the love of Light!”
At the voice, I lifted myself carefully, then collapsed to a sitting position as my legs refused to work. Greta fell to her knees beside her son, her hands moving swiftly and gracefully around his head and shoulders. I couldn't see the transfer of magic, but it was there, because within moments Lucian’s trembling eased and he, too, shifted to sitting. His good eye trailed over my face, then closed wearily.
“Are you okay?” I asked hoarsely, and he nodded.
We sat in a small clearing before a quaint cottage, almost completely overgrown with flowering vines. Vegetable gardens flourished to either side of a stone path leading to the front door, and smoke puffed from a brick chimney. Beams of sunlight pierced the canopy above, dancing over the scene and tricking my eyes into seeing tiny winged figures in the glowing shafts.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Greta hummed worriedly, brushing a hand over Lucian’s brow, then answered, “Near the border of the Sidhe, close enough to the Mists that until now, I have been left alone.” She paused, then spoke to Lucian. “She will come here first.”
He said softly, “I’m sorry. I know what I’ve cost you.” He glanced at me. “I couldn’t leave her to the fate the White Queen decreed.”
Greta stood, smoothing hands down a worn, dirt-streaked apron. Her ageless face suddenly didn't seem so, carrying immense weariness, burdened by a sorrow I couldn’t understand. It didn't take much to read between the lines—Morrighan’s fury was going to come down on anyone who harbored us.
When her eyes shifted to me, I expected to see hatred in them, or at the least, resentment. But there was only kindness in the gray depths. “Come inside,” she said gently. “By Oak and Ash, I offer you hospitality, Fiona Sullivan.” A sudden pressure in the air released, causing my ears to pop.
Lucian sighed sadly and pushed to his feet. I took his offered hand, letting him leverage me to standing. His grip was firm, his palm radiating heat onto mine. Static rushed up my arm and danced down my spine from the contact. My legs wobbled, weak from sprinting for my life. If I didn’t stretch soon, I wasn’t going to be walking tomorrow.
Greta was already halfway across the clearing, her long skirts brushing the stone pathway. I squeezed Lucian’s fingers, both to stall him and, if I was honest, to prolong contact. He had what I’d lost, and being near it was heady. “I don’t want to put your mother in danger,” I said, struggling to keep the words even. “Is there nowhere else we can go?”
He shook his head. “Morrighan has closed the Sidhe’s borders to your world.”
I swallowed. “I’m stuck here?”
His good eye blinked. “For now, yes. It will take at least two days for the hounds to reach us, less if she sends out the ravens.” At my look of horror, he added, “But it’s unlikely. She has not loosed the warbirds in many centuries. We have time to plan.”
His fingers slipped from mine and he walked, limping slightly, toward the cottage. “Plan what?” I called after him.
Lucian glanced back and said grimly, “How to get past the guards of the portal to the Eastern Sidhe.”
I hustled after him. “What’s in the Eastern Sidhe? A way back to Los Angeles?”
“Someone who can protect you.”
“Who—”
“Your father,” he said and disappeared inside.