Chapter Eighteen
“You’re absolutely right,” Kathryn replied. “His health is much more important than whether or not people like me, although…” Covering Oberon’s hand on her shoulder, she squeezed his fingers and told him, “…I appreciate everything that’s been said. Oberon had to undergo major surgery for me to successfully remove Morgan’s needle. That’s what Owen was alluding to. He can’t do any heavy lifting for one week—four more days. He can resume training carefully in two weeks, but he can’t go into physical combat for three and a half more weeks. If he takes a hard enough blow to the chest right now, it will very likely kill him.”
Dismayed silence greeted her words.
Then Annwyn said heavily, “Then we have to make certain he doesn’t take a hard blow to the chest.”
“Exactly,” Kathryn said. “Thank you. I didn’t trust him to tell you, which is why I went against every ethic in my profession and broke doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Anger resurged. He snapped, “That was not acceptable, Kathryn.”
“I’m not sorry, so there’s no point in yelling at me for it,” she told him. She rubbed her face. “But I promise I won’t do it again.”
“There are other ways to fight than the physical,” Oberon reminded their onlookers. “Moving on—our troops are scattered, with some stationed in various places here in Lyonesse and some on assignment in Other lands. And Lyonesse hasn’t seen a decent harvest in years. Should I assume food stores are low?”
“You should,” Annwyn said grimly. “We’ve begun to rectify that by transporting in grains and other supplies, but there’s more than one problem—some shipments have reached Raven’s Craig, but not nearly enough. Then there’s the problem of what to do for food here in the city. We’re going to get more and more refugees pouring in, and Owen was just telling me that the granaries in the lower city were flooded. The stores there are ruined.”
Gawain pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hopefully those flocking here will bring some supplies with them, but how much that might be will be anybody’s guess. And it won’t be enough, not for anything long term.”
Oberon watched Annwyn. “How are we doing on funds?”
“We have investments in England that have done very well recently,” she told him. “But, unfortunately, the capital has gotten depleted, especially with a few recent major transactions.”
“Don’t worry about money right now,” Kathryn spoke up unexpectedly. “I have some. There’s quite a bit in the family fortune, which I have almost never touched, and I’ve made a good amount on my own. I own my apartment in Manhattan, which is worth a couple million dollars. I also own another flat in London that’s worth at least that much.”
Silence fell in the room, and everyone regarded her gravely. Deeply moved by their expressions, Oberon squeezed her shoulder again.
Gawain said softly, “That is extraordinarily generous of you, Doctor.”
She shook her head. “I made the choice to stay, and I’m not going to do it halfway. I’m all in with you now.”
“And we will be the better for it,” Owen told her.
He’s right, Oberon told her telepathically. I couldn’t have chosen better if I had sat down and written out a list of requirements for what I would have liked in a mate and a Queen.
She looked up at him with a gleaming smile.
He cleared his throat. “So—our fighting force is depleted and overextended, we have a population that’s already been uprooted and is about to become more so, and the housing here is damaged and inadequate. We have some food, but not enough, and it’s in all the wrong places.”
Rowan added, “And we only have one puck, who doesn’t have the best track record for showing up and following through with tasks.”
Oberon nodded. “Now, let’s talk about Isabeau.” It was growing difficult to discuss the challenges they faced without engaging in physical activity. He let his hand drop from Kathryn’s shoulder and prowled around the room. “Annwyn, you said her army was scattered and depleted as well.”
“It is. The problem is, she’s not here with her army.” Annwyn rubbed her face. “Gracelyn, show them what you’ve got.”
One of Oberon’s senior captains, Gracelyn stood. Mostly Light Fae, she had a streak of troll in her ancestry, which gave her a height that nearly matched Oberon’s, along with gray, heavy features, and a wide, powerful build.
For the first time he noticed she had been gripping a rolled cloth throughout the meeting. She shook it out and threw it on the table. It was a banner from an Elder Races demesne he didn’t recognize. He stared at the red-and-black castle. Underneath, the word ARKADIA had been stitched.
“Does anyone know who this is?”
Silence around the table until Kathryn said tentatively, “I think I might. Arkadia is a Light Fae demesne out of Russia.” She twisted around in her seat to face Oberon. “I didn’t want to tell you some things while you were under Morgan’s spell, and I certainly don’t want to tell you like this, but I met with Morgan several times in New York before coming here.”
“You what?” He could barely believe what he was hearing.
She winced. “I knew you wouldn’t take it well, not until you’d had a chance to absorb the fact that he had been Isabeau’s slave. He was never a willing participant in the things she made him do, but he was part of the focus of your hatred for so long….” She let her voice trail away.
He stared at Annwyn. “Did you know about this?”
With a sour tilt to her mouth, she nodded. “I initiated the meeting. I still want to kill him, but I’m willing to concede that desire may be irrational at this point.”
His gaze snapped back to Kathryn. For a terrible moment the old paranoia came back. How could he mate with someone who could withhold such vital information from him? And Morgan’s spells were so sophisticated. How could he trust that the sorcerer hadn’t unduly influenced Kathryn in some diabolical fashion?
She saw his instinctive withdrawal, and she didn’t flinch away from it. “You may have to take a while to digest this information, and that’s perfectly okay and normal.” The expression in her steady gaze was calm and accepting. “Just don’t let your reaction keep you from hearing the rest, okay?”
After a moment’s inward struggle, he bit out, “Fine. What else?”
Kathryn continued. “Morgan and a perfectly wonderful musician named Sidonie met when Sidonie was kidnapped and taken to Isabeau as a gift of tribute. They fell in love and started working together to break the geas. Robin was there too, but they didn’t tell me much about his role in things. While they were searching for a way to free themselves, there was a Light Fae nobleman named Valentin at Isabeau’s court. He was visiting from another demesne called Arkadia and courting Isabeau’s hand in marriage. Sidonie ended up killing him when he threatened her with rape. Then Isabeau tried to force Morgan into betraying who had done it.” She took a deep breath. “It was clearly a very painful subject for them, so I’m a little sketchy on the details of what happened next, but that crisis created an opportunity for Morgan to break free from the geas.”
“Why did they tell you this?”
“Since I had already agreed to come, I think he was trying to warn me about the various players that might be in action in your conflict,” she said thoughtfully. “He said he always wondered what would happen when Arkadia discovered one of their own had been killed. He’s been hoping it wouldn’t bring more trouble for Sidonie—they have a small band of Hounds with them, and the group has been living at high alert since breaking free from Isabeau’s control.”
“So somehow Isabeau persuaded Arkadia to go to war with her?” Rowan swore. “Why in hells would they do that? We can’t catch a fucking break here.”
Oberon let out a sigh that turned into a low growl of frustration. “Maybe we’ll find out what motivated them, but at this point the whys don’t matter. They’re here now, and we’ve got to figure out how to get rid of them. Gracelyn—how did you capture that banner?”
She compressed her lips while unshed tears glittered in her small eyes. “I was in command of a hundred troops and charged with defending the Tellemaire crossover passageway. We were pretty confident we could hold it. You know what defending a passageway is like.”
He did. Crossover passageways were a specific kind of land magic that created narrow pathways from one land to another. To use one successfully, one had to enter at one end and follow the correct path of magic. Walking at a diagonal line across a crossover passageway didn’t work. You had to walk through it.
In many ways, protecting a passageway was like defending a narrow mountain pass, just without the high physical walls. It took relatively few soldiers to defend a passageway against an invading force.
“Go on,” he said.
“They took out the troops I’d stationed on the other side of the passageway, in Wales, but we caught them before they got all the way through, and for a while we did well at holding them back.” Gawain gripped her shoulder when her gravelly voice broke. After a moment, she continued, “But it didn’t matter how many Arkadians we killed—they kept coming and coming, and the dead kept piling up…. After a while we were fighting on a hill of bodies. Most of my hundred troops died in that passageway. When I realized we weren’t going to be able to hold them, I sent riders to Raven’s Craig and the other passageways. The last of us held on as long as we could to make sure they got away with the news. The six I brought with me are the last troops from Tellemaire.”
Grief and anger—it always came back to those when dealing with Isabeau, he thought. The room was heavy with it when she finished.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Were you able to get any idea of how many Arkadian troops they have?”
“There must be thousands,” she whispered. “Maybe five thousand? Seven? We were too busy running to get an accurate count.”
“Dear gods!” Owen’s face blanched.
“She really means to exterminate us this time,” Malin said bitterly. “Because there’s no way we can hope to hold against an army of that size, not as broken as we’ve become.”
“That’s enough,” Oberon snapped. “I don’t want to hear any of you talking like that again.” He stared around the table. Every one of them had arrived exhausted and spent. With calm deliberation, he told them, “You have fought against impossible odds for too long, and it’s a major triumph that we can all sit here together again. I’m incredibly grateful that I now get the chance to look you in the eye and tell you how proud I am of what you’ve accomplished. You are miraculous and heroic, and I’m honored to call you my friends.”
Annwyn wiped her face. She was so fierce and strong-minded, he had not seen her tears since they were children. Not until today.
He paused to let his words sink in. Then he said, “Now, I’m going to order you to do the same thing as the others—go eat and rest. Get your needs met and be prepared to ride at a moment’s notice. I’ll let you know what my plans are soon enough, so you’d better get at it.”
Everyone except Kathryn rose to their feet and obeyed. When the last one left, Oberon closed the door again, leaving him alone with Kathryn.
Leaning back against the door, he smiled at her. She didn’t return it. She sat with her chair at an angle from the table, her legs crossed and chin resting on the heel of one hand as she regarded him with that steady, intelligent gaze.
Admiration stirred. She had a spine made of steel. Crossing his arms, he told her, “You can always change your mind again and leave. I guarantee no one would blame you if you did, not even me.”
Her eyebrows rose, and a spark of anger snapped across her face. “Fuck. You.”
He laughed quietly. His cat was a little confused that he was mating with a bird, but other than that, it was deliriously happy. Living in the now.
She studied him as if he were a strange biological specimen she’d never seen before. “I’ve never heard a briefing so grim,” she remarked. “It was already clear before that Lyonesse is broken. There’s no way you can stand against an army of that size.”
“No, we can’t,” he agreed. “Right now, we can’t even muster a decent enough guard to protect this city. Thankfully, the Tellemaire passageway is far enough to the west that we have some time before the Arkadian forces can reach here.”
Rubbing her forehead, she studied the map spread on the table. “That gives us… what, maybe three weeks’ time to figure something out before they get here?”
“If we wait that long before we take action, they’ll be spread all over Lyonesse like a terminal disease,” he replied wryly. “I can’t let that happen. Besides, three weeks isn’t going to give us enough time to fix what’s broken here. If I stretch your restrictions…”
She snapped, “I said three and a half weeks, and with good reason. I never said three or less.”
He raised one eyebrow at her interruption, but now was not the time to get sidetracked into another argument. “…I said if, Kathryn. Then I might theoretically be able to go into battle, but I would still have no army to march against them, so this conflict can’t be won by physical means. Are you with me?”
She scowled at him, but said, “Fine. Yes, I am.”
“We have only one thing in our favor that Isabeau can’t know.”
“What’s that?”
His teeth felt a little too sharp as his smile widened. “If she has heard anything about my condition, she must believe I’m in a coma, but I’m not. I’m alive, and I’m awake. Arkadian army notwithstanding, I don’t believe she would invade if she thought otherwise. She wouldn’t dare.”
Launching from her chair, she headed around the table and stalked toward him. She said, “You already have a plan.”
“Oh, no.” He shook head. “I don’t have anything nearly as put together, optimistic, or functional as a plan. But I do know what I’m going to do next.”
“Which is?”
As she came to stand in front of him, he rubbed her arms. “Something long overdue—I’m going to go talk to my puck.”
* * *
After thoroughly kissing Kathryn, he made his way out of the palace, and as he heard people nearby he cloaked his presence, so they couldn’t distract him from his mission.
Outside the city, he walked along a very old, overgrown path. At one point it seemed to run right over the edge of a cliff. Only when one stood at the very edge of land was it possible to see a series of narrow protrusions—by no means could anyone have called it a path—that might allow someone with the grace, nerves, and balance of a mountain goat to climb down to the sea-drenched rocks below.
Oberon had climbed down the cliff with some difficulty before. This time it was easier, now that he had his cat form to assist him. When he had very nearly reached where the sea crashed and foamed against the rocks, what had appeared to be a dark fissure in the side of the cliff became the narrow opening of a damp, brine-scented cave.
He made his way inside. It grew dark, then light again as the fissure delved deep into the land and widened after some distance. The morning sun slanted through dense, tangled vegetation overhead to light the narrow, rocky area below. Mosses, lichen, and stray tufts of grass grew along the sides of the fissure, and a thin trickle of fresh water ran along the floor.
It was a very private place. The only sounds were the distant wind, the echo of surf, the stream’s quiet trickle, and the occasional birdcall. To the best of Oberon’s knowledge, he and Robin were the only two individuals who knew it existed.
Up ahead, a narrow figure in a coat and blue scarf crouched beside the stream. Oberon felt a tingle of the puck’s wild magic. As Oberon picked his way across the uneven ground, Robin looked over his shoulder. For a moment he looked as feral and dangerous as Oberon had ever seen.
Then with a blink, his tense posture softened, and he slipped something into his pocket.
Unhurriedly, Oberon finished the journey and sat on the flat surface of the rock beside him. Looking around, he remarked, “It’s been quite some time since you and I have been here together.”
“That it has,” Robin agreed. His voice was hushed. “Too long.”
“I agree.” He knew how strong those thin shoulders were, but now there was a distinct fragility in the way Robin held himself that made his chest ache. Carefully he flattened one hand on Robin’s back. “I should have made a point to talk to you before now. I apologize.”
“You were busy fighting for your life.” Robin’s gaze cut to his, then skittered away. “And before the surgery, you weren’t very nice about it.”
He chuckled with a distinct lack of humor. “No, I wasn’t, was I? That needle—it was making me grow numb and cold as it killed me. I could remember having emotions, but I didn’t feel them.”
Robin looked at him again. “You’re different now, warmer. You’re like him again. Your old self.”
He nodded. “Yes. Anyway, I’m sorry I was such an ass when you arrived. I’m glad Kathryn was there to step between us, but mostly I just wish I could take it back. Will you forgive me?”
Robin gave him a quick smile and leaned toward him, not quite enough to come in contact with his body, but enough to let him know there were no hard feelings. “There’s nothing to forgive, sire.”
Oberon let silence fall. As they sat together, he listened to the calming trickle of water and the distinct caw caw caw of a crow flying overhead. Then, very quietly, he said, “While I don’t know any details, I heard she hurt you.”
Robin made no reply. He looked down at his long, thin fingers, rubbing them together as if they ached.
The puck was no child. He was as ancient as Oberon, if not more. But sometimes even the oldest and wildest of creatures still needed to be touched and held.
Moving as gently as he knew how, Oberon gathered Robin into his arms. As he did, a hoarse keening sound broke out of Robin. It was the sound of an animal that had been injured beyond its endurance or understanding.
He pulled the puck onto his lap and held him as he sobbed uncontrollably. “If I could take that from you—if I could take it instead of you, I would. I don’t want you to ever hurt like that again, and I will do everything in my power to see that you get to live wild and free again, the way you are meant to be.”
“The cage is still around me!” Robin wailed. “No matter what I do, it surrounds me wherever I go. I cannot bear it!”
He wanted to savage something. The wilder creatures of Lyonesse were some of the things he loved the most.
Holding Robin tighter, he said softly, “It won’t always be that way. I swear on my life it won’t. We can get help for you if you will only trust me enough to explore the options.” Kathryn was familiar with advances in modern medicines. He felt certain she would be able to recommend something. “Can you hang on a while longer? It must have taken incredible strength, but you’ve gone this far—go with me a little farther, and I’ll see that you get home. Maybe you’re like I was. Maybe you can’t feel it yet, but can you remember what home feels like?”
The silence stretched on for too long. Then Robin gave a tentative nod.
He felt his own eyes grow wet, and he kissed the puck’s forehead. “Good job. If you ever feel that memory slipping away, I want you to find me, and I’ll remind you of it. All right?”
Robin nodded again. His body felt light and boneless against Oberon’s, as if his magic was almost spent.
Oberon could not allow that. Gathering his own Power, he poured it into the puck. It was not quite a healing spell but more like a transference of energy. He had to give quite a bit before he sensed Robin couldn’t absorb any more.
When he was done, he told Robin, “I’m so proud of you for surviving everything. I’m proud of how hard you fought…”
“I made so many mistakes,” Robin muttered.
He continued without missing a beat. “And I’m proud of all the mistakes you’ve made because you cared enough to try. You are important to me, and I value you now more than ever. If you feel like you can’t do more, I will understand and support you. I want you to know it is all right, Robin, and I will love you just the same.” He took a deep breath. “But if you can do a bit more, I need your help.”
“Aye.” Robin sighed. “I expected there would be more to do. How many troops do you need me to transport?”
“There won’t be any troops,” Oberon said.
The puck pushed out of his lap to whirl and crouch at his knees, staring up at him wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”
Oberon told him what he had said to Kathryn. “We can’t win in a physical battle against the army Isabeau has brought with her, so we will have to win with a magical one. Robin, the only person I want you to transport is me. Will you carry me to Isabeau and her army, so we can drive them out of Lyonesse if we possibly can?”
A smile broke over Robin’s narrow face, as bright and keen as his earlier pain had been black and bleak. Oberon recognized the expression. It was the look of a hungry predator who had been forced to wait for far too long to taste his prey.
“It has always been my highest honor to carry you,” Robin said, “I will always take you wherever you need to go.”
“Excellent,” he said fiercely. “We’re not going to make an announcement. That would open the door for people to argue and create delays.” He paused, thinking. “I do have to tell Kathryn, but other than that, we’re simply going to leave. Meet me in the palace gardens in an hour. And for the gods’ sake, eat something before you get there. You’re nothing but skin and bones, and you’ve got a long road ahead.”
“Aye, sir,” Robin said with a vicious, anticipatory smile. “That I do.”
Oberon clapped him on the shoulder and stood. As he made his way out of the cave, he started thinking about how to have an extremely difficult talk with Kathryn.
He knew in his bones she was going to resist everything he had to say—and he wouldn’t blame her, especially after what they’d just committed to. If she ever tried to come to him with this kind of plan, he would lose control.
It was only when he was almost back to the palace that he realized he had forgotten to ask Robin about Morgan’s thrice-damned needle.