CHAPTER EIGHT
“Lyrus,” Syla said. “You’re looking well.”
Lyrus didn’t bother to reply. I realized he was checking out the room. Syla was sitting on her bed, holding that leather-bound book. Marus was standing at the table. It was like the standoff in an old spaghetti western. Marus was practically vibrating with suppressed rage.
The tension was so thick I couldn’t stand it.
“Marus tried to kill Allard,” I said to Syla.
She glanced at her son. “Tried?” she asked, and he flinched as if the contempt in her voice had physically wounded him.
“He came,” Marus said, sounding like a sulky toddler as he pointed a bony shoulder in Lyrus’ direction.
Syla turned her attention back to my father.
“Where is Allard now?”
“Back in the land of light,” Lyrus snapped. “Where he belongs.”
Syla’s mask of cold contempt slipped a bit.
“It used to be my home too.”
She put aside the leather-bound book—her Book of Secrets—and rose to her feet. It might have been a trick of the light but it seemed that she was several feet taller than usual. “You made a mistake exiling me here, Lyrus. What you did was bottle up the Verge’s magic while letting fae and mortal magic leak in at the borders. I’ve been soaking it all up for almost a quarter of a century. I’m stronger than you are now.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, witch,” Lyrus responded. “You cursed Allard and you’ve held my daughter against her will. She’s coming with me now.”
I felt Syla’s malevolence as a physical force just as I became aware of a sudden heat in the pocket of my tunic. The stone Allard had given me was suddenly glowing so brightly I could see it through the fabric.
“What makes you think I intend to let her go?” Syla asked, reptilian lips curving up in a mimicry of mirth.
“Because I’ve asked you for her,” he said. “And I won’t ask twice.”
Wow, Dad’s a bad ass. Who knew?
Without looking at me, Lyrus said, “Fetch me the book on her bed.” Syla looked alarmed for a second before she mastered her emotions again.
I stepped forward and Syla made a twitching motion with her hand that stopped me in my tracks.
“You do not want to bring this fight here,” Lyrus said. “Not here and not with me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marus move.
“Lyrus,” I cried, and he turned to meet the threat, holding up his hand like a traffic cop.
Marus fell as if he’d run head-first into a concrete wall.
Syla didn’t react.
“The book,” Lyrus said.
I nodded and took another step toward the bed. Syla made that odd twitching motion with her hand again and this time I felt a cold hand clutch my heart. I cried out and she smiled. Lyrus glanced at me and in the instant his attention was off Marus, the witch-boy sent a bolt of some sort of energy at him. It bounced off Lyrus and rebounded on him.
As the energy hit him, Marus exploded into a million pieces. There was no blood, only a faint spray of what looked like brackish water.
That did get a reaction from Syla.
“Marus,” she screamed and ran to his remains, trying to gather them up as if they were ashes spilled from a hearth.
I could feel an implacable pity radiating from Lyrus. He hadn’t wanted to kill Marus but he felt no guilt either.
She looked up at us and spat, and where her spittle hit the floor, it sizzled.
“You’re just like her,” she said to me, nodding at the book in my arms. “Always wanting what was mine.”
“Is that why you drove her to kill herself?” I asked. “By kidnapping me and Hugh?”
“You were meant to be killed. I did not know the mortal I trusted to the task would be so tenderhearted as to let you live.”
She said this casually, as if my continued existence was a total nuisance to her.
“Why?” Lyrus asked her.
“Because I loved you and you loved her.”
He shook his head. “There was never any love in you,” he said. “You coveted my talent but that was all.”
“We were twins,” she said. “As alike as peas in a pod.”
“You were nothing alike,” he said. “Your evil made you ugly.” He glanced at me, saw that I had picked up the book he sought. “My daughter and I are leaving now,” he said. “We won’t see you again.”
She looked bewildered for a moment. “But…you can’t leave me here alone.”
Her plea came out as a whine.
“You’re free to go back to the mortal world,” he said. “I was wrong to deny you that passage.”
“But I want to go back to the land of light.”
He shook his head. “That border will remain closed to you forever.”
Her disbelief slowly morphed into fury. “I will kill you, Lyrus.”
Lyrus did not look particularly alarmed by that threat.
“Farewell, Syla.”
In answer, she curled her fingers and then gestured like she was unleashing a fast ball over home plate.
Straight at me.
I felt the tattoo on my hip pulse with heat and instinctively brought the book up to shield my face.
Whatever dark magic she had flung at me hit her Book of Secrets instead.
“No,” she screamed as the book disintegrated, just as Marus had.
“No,” I echoed, realizing my instinctive action might have doomed Allard to a life trapped in a beastly body. Nononononono.
Syla took a step forward and Lyrus muttered a few words that stopped her.
She crumpled to the floor in utter defeat. “My book,” she said. He said nothing.
I was left with empty hands and a burning pain on my hip.
“Come,” Lyrus said, ushering me out of the cottage ahead of him. I was glad to have him at my back because I was sure the furious witch was going to loose a few more lightning bolts at us in parting. But no such magical attack came, and when we left the house, we found Geweih, the silver-horned stag, waiting for us.
Lyrus helped me mount, then got up behind me.
“Take us home,” he said and the animal obeyed.
We traveled in silence for a little while, and then I said, “It might have been kinder to kill her.”
My father snorted. “You mortals are much too sentimental.”
His voice was cold and I shivered.
***
Though there was no border that I could see, I knew the moment we crossed from the Verge into the fae-lands. Everything suddenly seemed more vivid, like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when everything transforms from black and white to color.
Geweih picked his way along a path of mossy stones that wound between dozens of little lakes fringed with a riot of wildflowers. We eventually came to the foot of a granite mountain incongruously topped with snow although the air was very warm.
“It snows here?” I asked, surprised.
“No,” he said, looking up at the snow as if he hadn’t seen it before. “That is just a bit of magic.”
“Set decoration,” I said but he didn’t seem to understand what I meant, so he didn’t answer.
There was a cave-like opening hidden behind a barrier of rose bushes filled with great double blossoms. The stag moved through the bushes as if the thorns were made of rubber and totally harmless.
He stopped at the entrance so we could get off his back and then Lyrus sent him off with an affectionate slap to his flanks. Geweih gave him such an adoring look I thought he might roll over for a belly rub.
I don’t know what I expected a fairy’s home to look like. Maybe something like Rivendell from Lord of the Rings. This was not that.
Lyrus’ home was carved out of living rock covered in moss so thick it looked like green fur. It was filled with fantastical furniture crafted from woods I didn’t recognize and hides from creatures whose names I couldn’t begin to guess.
But I wasn’t there to gawk at my surroundings like I’d just rented a particularly exotic Airbnb. “Where’s Allard?” I asked.
Without looking at me, Lyrus said, “I will take you to him but then you must go.”
Go?
“I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s okay.”
Lyrus did look at me then. “Nothing good will come of it, Hildegarde.”
“That’s not really your decision to make, is it?”
I was starting to get the hang of this “standing up for myself” thing.
“Come then,” he said.
We found Allard lying on a bed in a tower that was part of a massive Sequoia tree. Dozens of the little firefly fairies were in attendance and when Lyrus entered the tower, their color changed from purple to a deep green. It seemed to be some sort of gesture of respect, for after Lyrus nodded gravely in response, their color returned to “normal.”
Allard looked peaceful, but he was so still it looked like he was laid out on a bier rather than sleeping. He had been draped to the neck in a living coverlet woven of wildflowers and butterfly wings and his long fur was braided with more flowers. Absurdly, I thought of a Pinterest page I’d once seen that was devoted to pictures of men with flowers in their beards.
“Allard,” I said softly, moving to the side of his bed. He did not stir, but several of the butterflies on his coverlet were agitated by my presence and rose to dance around my face as if scolding me for disturbing his sleep.
His arms lay outside the coverlet and I picked up one of his hands and held it in both of my own.
There was an old scar on his palm, the remnant of a horrible injury. I kissed an irregular, raised mark. “Come back to me,” I whispered but there was no response.
I don’t know how long I stood there before Lyrus spoke.
“If he could be brought back to us by sheer force of will, your devotion would have achieved that goal already.”
I turned to smile at him, knowing he meant the words kindly even though they held no comfort at all.
“Hope springs eternal,” I said, just to say something to fill the silence between us and the hollow feeling growing in my belly.
He frowned. “Hope,” he repeated, as if it were an unfamiliar word, and then he said it again with a different inflection but no real feeling.
He really is bad at this, I thought.
“When I told you I did not approve of your affection for Allard, I was not being truthful,” he said, his voice low and his eyes on the man we both loved.
“My words were not truly rooted in disapproval, but rather in fear.”
“Fear?” I asked, giving him my full attention.
“We fae look human enough but we’re not. And that can be ….”
He searched for a word and I fought the impulse to fill in the blanks. Troublesome? Worrisome? Disastrous?
“Tragic,” he said finally.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “Half of my heart is fae after all.”
“But will half be enough?” he asked, but didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I kept silent.
After a while, Lyrus patted me awkwardly on the shoulder and left soundlessly, leaving behind the slight smell of violets he seemed to carry around like a tangible aura.
Alone, I took up my vigil, staring at Allard’s sleeping form and my mind wandered to a conversation he and I had had about fairy tales. Allard had told me that many of the fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers actually had their basis in fact. “Sleeping Beauty” was one of the best-known fairy tales on the planet.
Could it be? I thought. Could a kiss be the way to end the curse?
I looked at Allard.
He did not seem to be in any distress but his eyelids were so thin I could see his eyes dancing behind them in the grip of some dream.
His fur was drenched and matted with fever sweat even though the little fairies seemed to be fanning him with their wings.
I bent down and closed my eyes and kissed him.
It was like kissing a shaggy bathmat.
Until I felt the fur melting away and opened my eyes.
And where the beastly Allard had been a moment ago, there was now a man lying on the bed.
And he was beautiful in a way that was very different from Lyrus’ perfection. For one thing, he shone. Literally. His hair was silver-gilt silk and long, framing a face that was pale and metallic looking. But as I stared in wonder, the silvery cast of his skin was replaced by a healthy pink blood-blush, and his hair faded to the color of ripe wheat in sunlight.
It worked! I can’t believe it freaking worked!
I have confidence in you, Hildegard, Allard said in my mind. And then he opened his eyes.
“You have saved me,” he said. “I thought I would be cursed forever.”
“I don’t think she’ll be cursing anyone for a long time,” I said.
“I dreamt of that,” he said, “when you destroyed her Book of Secrets.”
It hadn’t exactly been on purpose but if he wanted to give me credit, who was I to deny it?
He threw off the coverlet, scattering the tiny fairies. He thanked them for watching him and dismissed them as he stood up.
Oh my God.
His body made Michelangelo’s David look like a pencil-dicked troll. He was slender, but his muscles were well-defined, without that exaggerated man-boob thing that so many muscular guys get. Shirtless Chris Hemsworth.
That. Only better.
And not to objectify, but Allard had a gorgeous cock.
Not that I’d had a lot of real-life experience for comparison, but my mother had taught art history and there’d been all those paintings of naked saints and martyrs to look at in her books.
“How did you know how to break the curse?” Allard asked, as my gaze lingered at his waist.
“You are not looking at my waist,” he said out loud with a faint smirk.
I blushed all the way to my toes, although he spoke the truth.
“It’s in all the stories,” I said. “True love’s kiss.”
“The storytellers often lied,” he said. “They knew if they revealed the truth of what they saw while they were in the land of light there would be consequences.”
He took a step toward me. “But happily, in this instance, they seem to have shared a truth.”
“What kind of consequences?” I asked because I could feel his arousal even though he was not yet erect and even though we were not yet touching. That felt strange.
But in a good way, because I was drowning in my own anticipation.
“The fae would have moved on to other realms if they thought their secrets were being revealed.”
“I’m glad they didn’t,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Why are we still talking? I thought and a moment later we weren’t.
Kissing is better when both people are participating and kissing Allard was worth the wait. His mouth tasted incredible, like honeyed wine.
Fairies must have incredibly good dental hygiene I thought, wondering what my own must taste like since I’d been away from a toothbrush for several days.
Allard raised his head from mine and looked at me quizzically. I felt the ache of separation all the way down to my throbbing groin.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a Pisces. We’re really bad at this romance thing.”
“Perhaps you have not read enough fairy tales,” he said and then he kissed me again.
And then we did other things…and all thought was lost in overlapping waves of sensation.
He took me to his flower-covered bed and I realized I could feel his pleasure as keenly as my own. The experience was…transcendent.
He knew without asking what I liked. He nibbled on my earlobes as if they were tender fruit, lighting a fire in my nether regions that I knew only one thing would quench. And when he lifted my breast and licked around the nipple, I almost came right off the bed.
He knew how to use his hands and where he touched me, he left behind little pulses that electrified my senses.
“Now,” I whispered, or maybe simply thought and I felt his smile.
“Yes,” he said, and I could feel his heart going like mad. “Yes.”
He plunged into me then and the heat of it was so intense I thought it might fuse us together forever.
I pulled him closer, wanting all of him, wishing I could enter him as completely as he’d entered me and then I realized I could because I was in his mind and there was no boundary between what he was feeling and my own sensations.
We rolled together, and the loving went on and on—no fifteen minutes and then off to sleep. Sometimes he was on top, sometimes I was. We went up Magic Mountain, my back against his chest as he drove deep into me, going way past my G-spot and creating a brand-new H-spot.
Our tangled limbs wove together in patterns maybe the Kama Sutra could name, but I couldn’t.
I made noises I’d never made before and heard them echoed in his mind.
I didn’t know it was possible to have more than ten orgasms in a row and not die. Although I might have actually lost count.
***
Afterwards, Allard must have sent out some nonverbal command because human-sized fairies came into the tower room with towels and basins of sweet water and fresh clothes for us—ordinary, everyday clothes, which surprised me. He answered my unspoken question.
“I thought you might want to see your brother,” he said. “I thought these clothes might be more appropriate.”
“You know where he is?”
“I walked into a dream of his,” he said, “while I was waiting for you.”
“Where?”
He touched the tattoo on my hip. “At the place where you received the Ascaris.”
“What is the Ascaris anyway?”
He looked surprised that I didn’t know.
“It is the symbol of the house of Lyrus, your house. That’s why Lyrus came when you were attacked in the woods. The symbol called to him.”
“Like the bat symbol,” I said. Allard looked perplexed.
“Never mind,” I said, picking up my cell phone and the little pink stone that were on top of the folded clothes. One of the fairies must have taken them out of the tunic I was wearing.
The phone seemed to be fine, but there were deep cracks on the surface of the stone, as if it had been subjected to high heat.
I held it out to Allard. “What happened here.”
He took it from me. “It absorbed some of Syla’s dark magic,” he said, “as I hoped it would when I gave it to you.”
I was touched. Even before he really knew me, Allard had been protecting me. I felt another sweet rush of love toward him.
***
My car was still in the little clearing, so deeply embedded into that giant Douglas fir that it looked like two different species were trying to mate. And I shuddered when I saw the crumpled metal and thought how plausible it had been for me to believe Syla when she told me that I had died in the crash.
Allard saw me shiver.
“You are distressed, beloved,” he observed. “We should leave this place.”
Beloved. I liked the way that sounded.
Allard took my hand and kissed it and where his lips touched my skin they left little fiery imprints that I could feel but not see.
In truth, the little pocket of forest looked very ordinary in the daylight and though I’d felt a brief frisson, it was more a reaction to the sudden cold than anything else.
The snow had melted and though it was not raining, the air was fragrant and green as if freshly washed.
Except for the tree I’d mangled in the crash, it was a beautiful place. Still, compared to Allard’s home, it looked a bit drab. Even though I’d only spent a little time in the land of light, it felt like home. I would be glad to return there after I saw Hugh and made sure he was all right.
“Yes,” I said. “We should leave.” I was anxious to see Hugh again and reassure myself that he was in fact, doing fine.
“Paint a picture in your mind of where you would go,” Allard said, “and I will take you there.”