“What is wrong with you?” she demanded of the witch. “Do you do that to every stranger that steps into your glade?”
The witch shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. You are the first two fae who have ever dared to enter.”
Arianne twisted to look at him, her face wide with shock. She turned back to her sister. “Since when?”
Because the witch was half human, her mortal side had the power to feed his fae magic with negative emotions. Though she tried to maintain her air of apathy, Tearloch sensed a deep emotion beneath the facade. A sadness.
His magic rejoiced, even as his heart ached.
“Ever,” she finally said.
“Oh Callie.” Arianne clutched a hand to her chest, just above her heart.
The look on her face nearly broke him.
Tearloch knew without a doubt that, were the princess human, his magic would be fully charged by the pain and guilt that were flooding through her. Even without that magical connection, he could sense her pain.
He didn’t know what urged him to do so, but he reached out and took her hand, laced their fingers together. To reassure her that he was there, and to reassure himself that she was. She rewarded his instinct with a tight squeeze.
“I got your raven,” the witch said, clearly diverting the conversation away from the subject of her isolation. “You said you need my help.”
Arianne took a step back. Maybe surprised by the sudden shift. Tearloch ran his thumb in reassuring circles over the back of her hand. He had no place in this conversation, but he could at least make his support clear.
She recovered quickly.
“We do,” Arianne said, stepping forward once more. “I do.”
The witch laughed. “What can I,” she said, “a solitary witch, high up in the White Mountains, possibly do to help you, High Princess of the Clan Deachair?”
“Callie, please,” Arianne began.
The witch bowed low to the ground. Her voice dripped with sarcasm as she said, “I am your humble servant.”
Arianne looked at Tearloch, clearly at a loss.
“The Moraine are hunting a traitor,” he said. “The Princess thought you might be able to help us locate him.”
The witch turned her dark eyes on him. Studied him so intently that he swore she was reading his thoughts.
With powers like hers, she quite possibly was.
He stood strong, even had to bite back a smile when he felt the princess’s thumb rubbing circles on his hand in the same way he had just done for her. He had the strangest sensation that, together, they could face any foe.
“A traitor?” The witch smiled wickedly. “Sounds like my kind of Moraine.”
Her disdainful gaze swept him up and down, as though she were judging him and finding him wanting. As if he cared for her approval.
“They think we are sheltering him,” Arianne said. When the witch’s eyes flashed at the word we, the princess quickly amended, “They believe he fled to Deachair lands. If we don’t find him, the clans will be at war.”
The witch seemed to consider this. Tearloch could not be certain if she was deciding whether or not to help or just wasting their time. They did not have time for such nonsense. Not when a traitor was on the loose and two clans were on the brink of war. He would not stand there being toyed with. They needed results.
“If you cannot help us,” he said, “we will be on our—“
“She has not told you the entire truth,” the witch said to him. Her gaze flicked to her sister. “Have you?”
Arianne tensed.
The witch stepped to within inches of him, closer and closer until they stood toe to toe.
“She has not told you,” the witch gloated, “of the curse.”
“Callie, no!”
Tearloch lifted his brows. He wasn’t sure what kind of game the witch played, but he knew she was trying to drive a wedge between him and the princess. She could not know how futile such a task would be.
He gave Arianne’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“All we seek is the traitor’s whereabouts,” he replied.
The witch’s sickly smile made his hair stand on end.
“Very well,” she said. “I will tell you where the traitor can be found.”
“Thank you,” he started to say.
But she interrupted. “After,” she said, not breaking their eye contact, “my sister finds our father.”
“Finds your…?” It took several full seconds for Tearloch to register the meaning of her words. What she suggested.
He looked at Arianne. “Princess?”
She dropped her head, closed her eyes. Their fingers were still entwined, and through that touch he felt the weight of her despair.
“King Drustan,” she said, her voice tight with emotion, “is missing.”
He had to force his jaw to unclench. “For how long?”
Arianne raised her head, looked directly into her sister’s gloating eyes, and said, “Since shortly after Callie ran away.”
“Ten years ago,” the witch said. “Almost to the day.”
“Ten years?” he echoed.
The Deachair king had been missing for a decade? And no one had noticed? How was that even possible? Surely someone would have realized the king was gone. There had been diplomatic envoys and royal events and meetings of the unseelie council. No, the king could not have missed all such things for a decade without notice.
“Impossible,” he said.
But the turbulent look in Arianne’s eyes told him the truth. In them he saw shame and horror and, deeper below, pride.
He instantly understood. Somehow she had managed to keep secret the king’s disappearance—a fact that would have left her clan vulnerable to attack from virtually every side, both friend and foe—and had ruled in his stead with no one the wiser.
Ten years? Arianne couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old at the time. Not more than a year or two after the night he found her in the hedge maze.
All he wanted to do was stare at her in complete and total awe. How had he ever viewed her as weak or frivolous? How could he not have seen the inner strength that made his own look weak and frivolous by comparison. At her core, she was stronger than any warrior he had ever known.
He had only one question. “How?”
Chapter 13
Arianne choked out a laugh at Tearloch’s question. How indeed.
“Stubborn will,” she replied sheepishly, her cheeks burning with shame. “And a palace full of clever, dedicated fae.”
Looking back, she could almost not believe it herself. A child of eight, taking the place of a powerful king? Pure folly.
She had been lost. Her mother dead, her sister fled, and then her father after. Alone in the world, with nothing but her title and her clan to rely on. And so she did what she had been trained to do. She ruled. She had never stopped to think of the impossibility of her pursuit.
He stared at her. Would not stop staring. She threatened to crumble under the scrutiny.
He should not have learned this. No one outside of the palace should know. That Callie had somehow found out, that she knew and still stayed away…
Arianne shook off the fear and self-pity. Now was not the time for questions and clarifications. They were here on a mission, and her sister would have to make another demand.
“I have no idea where to find King Drustan,” Arianne said.
If she had, she would have found him and brought him home long ago.
Callie surprised her by saying, “I do.”
She said it so casually, so… dismissively. As if this life-changing information were no big deal. As if finding their father hadn’t been Arianne’s greatest wish for the last ten years.
Clenching her fists against the overwhelming urge to launch herself at her sister, she spat out, “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”
Callie shrugged.
“Why?” Arianne demanded. “If you knew where he was, you must hav
e known how alone I felt… Why didn’t you go to him? Why didn’t you come back and bring him with you?”
Her unspoken question hung in the air between them, as tangible as the grass beneath her feet and the mountains looming above her. Why did you leave me all alone?
As the seconds ticked on, Arianne gradually realized that she was holding Tearloch’s hand like a vice. He had been so quiet, so silently supportive that she almost forgot he was there. But she had felt his strength, drew on it to maintain her own.
Embarrassed by her desperate grip, she tried to let go. He did not release her. Instead, his own grip tightened.
Arianne could not have put into words how much that meant to her. It gave her to courage to stand tall as she waited for her sister’s answer.
“Because,” Callie said finally, her dark eyes filling with a sudden sheen of tears, “I cannot.”
“What?” Arianne gasped.
“The price of the curse.” Callie spread her arms wide, gesturing at the relatively small expanse of the glade. “I cannot leave this valley.”
Arianne stared at her sister. Callie had been trapped in this glade, just as Arianne had been trapped in her role as de facto queen. Each sister had spent the last ten years, unable to move on from a moment in the past. The last traces of the anger and rage and bitterness she’d felt of the years since Callie left seeped out of her as she finally realized the whole truth.
“You,” Arianne began, but emotion choked her voice. She started again. “You can’t undo it, can you?”
This time, her sister’s laugh was tinged with tears and self-mockery.
“I was very specific with the spell,” Callie explained through her emotion. “I didn’t want to regret it the next day and be able to simply remove it because I felt bad.”
Callie wiped at her eyes.
“And did you?” Arianne asked. “Feel bad?”
The tragic look on her sister’s face was the answer.
“What will break it, Callie?”
“Only the thing I wanted more than any else in the world,” Callie replied, the tears now streaming down her cheeks. “For my family—my beloved sister and the father who had shunned my mother—to love me enough to find me.”
Arianne’s knees buckled. If not for Tearloch’s quick reflexes, she would have collapsed to the ground.
But he released her hand in a flash and his arm wrapped around her waist, held her upright. He pulled her close to his side, letting her use his body for support.
Arianne had always prided herself on her strength, her independence. Over the years, she’d had to possess both in endless quantities. Both drained from her.
She saw it all so clearly now.
Callie’s mother had been a human witch, she had enchanted their father and conceived a child. When Callie was born, her mother returned to the palace, tried to use the baby as leverage to become Deachair queen.
Drustan had taken in the baby, but turned the mother away. He had a wife he loved and their own baby on the way. Callie’s mother had never been seen again. Though the girls had grown up as sisters, there was always the sense that Callie was different. Other. Lesser.
When Arianne’s mother, Queen Bronwyn, died on her la ainmhi, the palace fell into mourning. Many blamed Callie’s mother for the death. The other palace children were the worst. She was teased, taunted, shunned, and more. They called her the Queen Killer’s Daughter. Arianne never had, but neither had she stopped them.
Then, one day, Callie was gone. Disappeared through their secret cavern beyond the palace walls. Many had presumed her dead. Their father went mad with the double loss. He disappeared shortly after.
Then they received notice that Callie had been seen heading into the White Mountains.
The next day the curse fell over the kingdom.
It had all happened so quickly. So many tragedies in short succession—losing her mother, her sister, and her father, all in one chain of events. Arianne had been bitter, angry, furious at her selfish sister for leaving her so utterly alone and for the curse that came after. She had never once stopped to think of things from her sister’s perspective.
How alone Callie must have felt. Without even a palace and a clan to stand beside her.
While Arianne had been resenting her own fate, Callie’s had been even worse.
No wonder she lashed out, no wonder she conjured the curse. Arianne was surprised her sister hadn’t just wiped out the entire clan that, from her young point of view, had deserted her.
And, in truth, they had.
“I’ll find him, Callie,” Arianne said, pushing away from Tearloch and grasping her sisters hands. “I’ll bring him back, and you can be free. Just tell me where.”
Callie gave her a watery smile. “I can do better than that.” The skin where their palms met began to tingle. “I can send you to him.”
Arianne smiled.
“When you are ready,” Callie said, “call my name.”
Then, in a flash, the glade was gone.
Chapter 14
Tearloch had his hand around the witch’s neck before she could blink.
“Where is Arianne?” he demanded. “Where did you send her?”
She lifted her hands, made a small gesture, and suddenly he was floating above her.
“Fret not, warrior,” she said in a tone that did not reassure him at all. “She is safe.”
He gave up his struggle, realizing the futility of fighting the air. And in truth, the witch had done nothing to indicated she wished to harm her sister. He had to believe that the princess was, indeed, safe.
As soon as he relaxed, she lowered him back to the ground.
“Do you call all royal princesses by their given names?” the witch asked.
Tearloch frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Where is Arianne?” she asked, mimicking his voice. “Not Princess or her highness. Arianne.”
He clenched his jaw.
“You care for her,” the witch said, turning and walking away from him like she had no care in the world.
As the distance between them grew, he called out, “So do you!”
She laughed. But kept walking.
He had the strangest sensation that a sort of peace had been declared between them. This half-fae witch was not the monster he had long believed her to be. She was, in truth, a lost girl who had perhaps finally been found.
His chest filled with pride at the thought that he had played a part in finding her.
Chapter 15
For several seconds, Arianne was blinded by the flash of light from Callie’s magic. Disoriented, she closed her eyes until the sparks faded. When she opened them again, she found herself standing in front of a rugged thatch-roofed building. No windows broke up the facade. Only a large black door, with a roughly carved bird in the center. A slightly more refined sign hung next to the door, proclaiming this establishment to be the Black Dove.
“A tavern?” she whispered.
There were no signs of life from within—no sounds echoing through the door, no light slipping through the cracks. It looked as if it had been out of operation for quite some time.
She glanced around. No other buildings were anywhere in sight. The Black Dove was situated deep in the middle of a dense forest.
There was not even a path that she could make out. Whoever visited here did not wish to be found.
Had Drustan fled here in his madness?
She reached for the door handle. Her hands shook. Either out of fear that he would not be discovered within or excitement that he would.
Her father, found. After all these years. Was it even possible?
In a moment she would know.
Arianne pushed open the tavern door.
What had looked from the outside to be an abandoned building blared instantly to life. Sound washed over her. Voices. Laughter. Music. Clinking mugs and clattering plates.
The Black Dove was very clearly still in business. And her patrons had taken
a sudden interest in the new arrival. Some turned to stare at her, while others glanced at her askance. Still others did not have to turn for Arianne to know their other senses were keenly tuned on her.
She had no idea where in the veil Callie had sent her. She had never heard of the Black Dove. It could easily have been located within the territory of an enemy clan—and one far more powerful than the Moraine. If she had landed in the realm of the Arghail or, worse, the Roghann, the situation could be dangerous.
When none immediately leapt to their feet and cried enemy in their midst, she let out a breath. Her vision cleared and she saw, across the crowded tavern, her reflection in a cloudy mirror.
A laugh barked out before she could contain it. Her worry over being recognized were for naught. In her current state—disheveled hair, dirt- and tear-streaked face, desperate eyes—even her own clansfolk would be hard pressed to recognize her. She had spent years perfecting the royal image. The wool-and-trousers-clad-girl before them was anything but.
Still, that did not mean she was in no danger. The clientele of the Black Dove looked to be a rough sort. She needed to discourage any unsavory attention. She needed to get in, find her father, and get out without drawing any more notice than she already had.
Squaring her shoulders, she strode into the building with as much confidence and certainty as she could project. She cut a path toward the bar along the back wall, scanning her gaze side to side as she went. Cataloging face after face, looking for familiar features.
For the first time, she doubted her seven-year-old’s memory of what her father looked like. It had been many years, and the only portrait of him in the palace had been painted long ago, when he was not much older than she was now. What if she did not recognize him?
She would. She had to. Even without a recent image, she knew enough to narrow the field.
She ruled out any men who were obviously too young or too old. Ruled out the ones with red, blond, or light brown hair. He could have been shorter than she remembered, but Drustan had always been lean, so she ignored any with a wide girth or massive muscles. And his eyes, the part of him she remembered most clearly, were a crystalline blue. Which meant any with green, brown, or otherwise not-blue eyes were also out.