“It sounds lovely Christian,” I said as he drew me to his chest.
“It is,” he promised, as we sifted out.
* * *
π
Lovely was an inadequate word. Once I got over the sheer terror of being held and flown, and the fear that he might drop me, I was dazzled by the night beneath my toes.
“I won’t drop you, quit digging your nails into my shoulders,” he growled.
I was counting on that. If he’d wanted me dead, he could have killed me in my room.
Eventually, I relaxed, still holding tightly to his shoulders, cradled in his arms. Distracting myself from the presence of an Unseelie prince by watching the world unfurl beneath us, pondering the blessing his presence implied—the promise that darkness within did not necessarily equate darkness without.
I would never be able to read his eyes, one of the easiest ways to take the measure of a person’s soul—and I often wonder if anyone else can see the many nuances in an iris that I do—but I could feel him with my gift, with my heart.
Deep inside Christian, so deep I’d almost missed it, nestled an evil black pearl within a tightly closed, blindingly white clamshell.
But it wasn’t a small pearl. It was gargantuan, filling every atom of his being, and he’d compressed it somehow. He’d taken an inconceivably vast, twisted, terrifying abyss of darkness that churned within him and turned it into a zip-file of sorts, buttoned it up and locked it down. A darkness that could swallow whole, obliterate. A darkness that seethed with ambition, hunger, mind-boggling sexuality and need.
He’d managed to contain an infinity of evil within a tiny glowing white shell in which I couldn’t spy even a hairline crack. “How?” I asked, as we passed over Belfast, soaring toward the ocean.
I’ve felt the capacity for such evil in only two other vessels: the Sinsar Dubh and Cruce. I’ve never seen such enormous darkness contained. Locked so completely away, I couldn’t even get a feel for what it was. There was something, a subtle flavor of him that identified him as the prince he was…
“Death is my kingdom. As the Light Court is one of dreams and illusions, the Dark Court is one of realities and nightmares. The Seelie have Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. We have Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But hold your questions, lass. It takes energy to maintain that control, and yet more to mute the Sidhbha-jai. So long as I’m diverting power, the most taxing of my abilities are challenging. We’ll stop in the Highlands to rest and I’ll tell you what I can. For now, enjoy the view.”
We flew out over the angry, frothy, whitecapped ocean pounding at the shore, then farther still where the swells gentled for miles into dark starry glass.
When we passed over the lowlands, he swooped beneath the clouds to graze clearings where night creatures leapt and played, then soared again for the bird’s-eye view of patterned acreage, field and stream.
When we finally arrived in the Highlands, the beauty took my breath away. Mountains soared to majestic peaks before plunging sharply to carpeted vales, lush and burgeoning with life. The Song had awakened Scotland as vibrantly as Ireland, transforming the plants, shrubs, and trees to a verdant sprawl, giving rise to a population boom in the animal kingdom.
“Nessie’s back,” he said dryly. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things that have returned.”
“Such as the old gods?” I said.
“You know about them.”
I swept a tangle of hair from my face. “A bit. We could certainly use more information.”
“Almost there, lass. I’ve a favorite peak. We’ll talk soon.”
I returned my gaze to the heather tumbling in lush profusion over the hillsides, the silvered grasses, the flowers that bloomed between every crack in every stone.
I’d never been to Scotland. I’d never left Ireland. I would bring Rae to see this. I wouldn’t let her grow up as sheltered as me. I wanted her to see the world, experience every wonder, know them intimately, the better to love them.
We touched down on a large flat rock atop a whitecapped ben. As he lowered me to the ground, I stumbled, unaccustomed to having my feet on the ground, and he set me steady again.
“What did you think?” he asked and, in that moment, I heard only a Highlander, proud of his country, seeking a compliment from a tourist.
“Scotland is enchanting. And now I know why angels have wings. It’s their reward.”
He smiled, pleased, and waved a hand. “Pull a cushion near the fire, Kat. There’s a chill up this high.”
I glanced where he’d gestured. A crackling fire leapt and blazed in a stone pit that hadn’t been there before. A cushion and a blanket waited nearby. “How did you do that?”
“Small things are easy. I encourage matter to shift forms, become what I want it to be.”
“This?” I reached for the cozy throw of purple and black tartan.
“The Keltar colors. Fashioned from a carpet of moss beyond the rocks.”
“The fire?”
“A thought. Stones become logs, a combustion of air, an invitation of heat.”
“I thought Fae magic was mostly illusion.”
“Aye, for the Seelie. They favor form over function, beauty over value. Transforming matter takes more energy than sketching illusion, and they’re lazy fucks. Still, you’d do well to never underestimate them. The moment I assume it’s an illusion, I end up trapped in it.”
“Then you’ve had dealings with them.” I settled on the large flat cushion near the fire.
He dropped down to a boulder near the flames and laughed darkly. “That I have, lass. They’ve been trying to capture Sean and me for quite some time. When that failed, they began to offer various enticements. We’re enemy number three. Mac’s enemy number one. I hear Jayne is enemy number two. But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s much I need to tell you.”
Wrapping myself in the woolen throw, I drew nearer to the fire to listen.
In a gadda da vida, baby
ELYREUM IN “FAE” LOOSELY means “the forbidden garden” or “dark paradise,” depending on who you ask, and it was overload.
The only thing about the club that wasn’t in-your-face erotic, enhanced by opulent illusion, was the exterior, faking normal in a faking-normal city.
Once you passed through those tall gold and alabaster doors, reality fell away and the dream began. The music was surreal, sensual, erotic, with a rhythmic, driving beat that made me think of an old Enigma CD blended with Puscifer.
The club was an anachronistic mix of exotic natural beauty and ultrasleek technology. Blossoms tumbled from stately urns, scenting the air with night-blooming jasmine, amaryllis, lily, and winter hazel. Lush vines bursting with black and red poppies twined around grand Romanesque columns. The place smelled of verdant forest, steamy tropical hothouse, and sex.
The walls, ceiling, and floor of the foyer were giant, borderless LED screens smeared with Fae/mortal porn unfolding in graphic detail, (God, I so did not need to see that) in off-putting, larger-than-life format, with Fae-enhanced color, texture, and sound.
As I stalked across the anteroom, two enormous, stunning Fae males having sex with seven humans ground and pumped beneath my feet and, I swear, both Fae turned their heads in the floor to look up my dress. When I stomped sharply on one of their eyes, the bastard laughed.
Exiting the foyer into the second anteroom beyond brought us out on a balustrade draped with yet more vines and drugging blossoms from which we could view the entire club. They’d further taken a page from Chester’s by dividing Elyreum into numerous, individually themed subclubs, staged around a single, central dance floor that was packed with humans and Fae gyrating, grinding, having sex.
I’d never seen so many castes of Seelie before, vibrantly etched in the dazzling, seemingly Photoshop-enhanced shades of the Four Courts: the blush and rose of Spring threaded with metallic green; the dazzling, countless golds of Summer; Autumn’s copper and crimson fire; a thousand frosted shades of Winter’s ice. Tall, tiny, large, dainty, some flew, some glided, all hunted.
I narrowed my eyes. I’d dialed back the volume on my sidhe-seer senses the moment we stalked into the club, muting the cacophony of so many Fae clustered in close quarters.
Mac told me she hears the individual castes as melodies, pieces of song that play inside her head. I do, too, but my perception of the various castes is heavy on the percussion, a kind of Godsmack’s battle of the drums meets Roisin Murphy’s “Ramalama (Bang Bang).” There’s some serious dissonance for you.