Gossamyr (36 page)

A lover? Shinn and the Red Lady? He had not told her such!

Your truth will impede your safe return to Faery.

"It is most curious Shinn chose to keep the truth from you
all this time. Quite the feat, I am sure. Though a mortal who lives
very long in Faery does become Very Close."

"I am half-blooded," Gossamyr growled. Or she thought
she spoke with a forceful snarl, but it seemed to come out as a
whimper. "Fathered by Lord de Wintershinn and my mortal mother,
Veridienne of..." Of where? Paris? Veridienne had never told her
whence she'd come.

Steel pins clicked against one another as the pin man took one
more step. Toe to toe they stood. He had gained presence in these few
moments. A tilt of his head leveled his eyes with Gossamyr's. Menace
glittered in the violet depths.

Kiss me.

Would a kiss bring memory flooding back?

Dare she?

Of a sudden the malice in Avenall's stare softened, and he smiled.
"Shinn has not told you of your birth? Your...coming to Faerv?"

"You cannot know things about me when you do not even
remember we were once lovers!"

"Lovers? Indeed? Hmm." He strode a gaze over her body,
his face almost touching her for their closeness. Sweet his breath,
sweet with memory. But foul his hair, tainted with the Red that
attacked the Disenchanted. "Mayhap. But you fight to change the
sides of this exchange. Be you lover or warrior matters little to me
of so pale memory. All I know is what she tells me. 'Tis only what
concerns me."

"You should strive to remember."

"Have you not ever wondered why you are wingless?"

Heartbeats pounding in her breast, Gossamyr swallowed. Too close
for her bruised heart. "M-many fée are wingless."
Try as she might, she could not step away from Avenall. She wanted to
stand close to him, in his scent. But this air—heavy, not
right.

"Yes, there are wingless ones, but their eyes be not muddied
by the Otherside."

"It is my mortal blood that makes them brown."

"Oh no, half bloods always wear the violet eyes of the fée."

"You spin tales for your mistress. Slave to a succubus! You
will die pining for your essence, pin man."

"And you will die a mortal death, false daughter of Shinn."
Now he pressed his palms to the wall above her shoulders.
Too
close!
Hot breath hissed across her nose and lips as he spoke
rapidly. "My mistress adored the pompous lord of Glamoursiege.
They were to be wed—to unite Glamoursiege to Rougethorn. But
when Shinn learned she dabbled in magic, he spurned her and took
another. Yet the Red Lady remained his slave. He toyed with her
affections, you see, trapping her heart for eternity, then discarding
it as if a fall-sapped leaf. Shinn took Veridienne of the Otherside
as his wife and she became full with child."

"Me—me," Gossamyr stammered.

"Oh, no, mortal fool." A silver pin tapped her chin.
"The Red Lady pined for the love she once had. Shinn ignored
her. So to avenge her broken heart she bespelled the child in
Veridienne's belly. It was born a hideous changeling. Enraged, Shinn
marked the Red Lady with banishment and cast her from Faery. The
troop commander possesses a quick temper. He reacts without regard."

"No."

"Oh, yes! That much I do recall from my banishment. Swift and
unforgiving."

Gossamyr gasped. Shinn had banished the Red Lady. But even more
remarkable— They were to wed? To unite—

But—

Such knowledge pried into her courage with vicious precision. Why,
to learn this from so horrible reminder of a bittersweet past?

...
trapped her heart for an eternity...

Like Gossamyr's own trembling heart?

"You know it has been but a mortal year since the Red Lady
was banished?"

Gossamyr lifted her chin, taking this announcement with a hard
jaw. She had learned the measurement for
year.
It was not so
long as to have occurred before she had been born. Yet, Ulrich's
claim to have lost twenty years—it did not figure!

"Faery time is different from time here in the Otherside. So
mutable, twisting this way and back, forward and then quickly past.
Twenty years pass in Faery while one or two passes in the Otherside.
Vice versa, widdershins and thus," he hissed into her face.

Time was indeed the enemy.

"H-how long have you been here?"

He shrugged. "That is not in my memory. A few mortal weeks?
Less than a moon cycle."

Impossible! It had been so much longer... Gossamyr had aged many
dozens of moons since Shinn had banished Avenall.

"My mistress strives to survive, but it is difficult. There
are fewer and fewer Disenchanted who journey to this mortal city.
What is it, changeling? Cat gnawing at your tongue?"

She wasn't hearing, for the title "changeling" stuck in
her skull like the tip of an obsidian
arret.

"Not a changeling." Gossamyr shook her head, unwilling
to accept the man's lies. But knowing, for fact, Shinn had many
secrets. "I cannot be..."

"No, you were not the changeling babe," the pin man
spat, his breath covering her face with odorless heat. "You were
the mortal exchange. You understand?"

She stared deep into his red-glossed eyes. A glint of humanity
sparkled, drawing her into his truth, the will to believe, to trust
and know. Could she make him believe his own truth?

Of what matter to her now? Be he enemy or lover, this knowledge
threatened far worse than lost memories. Everything she had ever
believed—had it all been a lie?

A wooziness shimmered inside her skull. Avenall's image blurred
then sharpened.

"Shinn took his befouled babe to the Otherside and exchanged
it for you, warrior bitch. Veridienne wanted a child—and if it
be mortal, like herself, all the better. Shinn created a lie to keep
you safe in Faery, claiming you were the child of Veridienne's belly,
half-blooded, descendant blood to the Glamoursiege reign. Imagine
that!"

Now Avenall pushed away trom the wall and spun in a macabre dance
step. Gossamyr could not focus for more than a moment. The weird
blurring and sudden clearing of her sight made her nauseous.

The pin man stopped, crouched before her, wings flittering
annoyingly, and then rose, a sinister grin curving his thin lips as
he straightened. The Red Lady's influence grew into his dark hair,
coating him with wicked red soot that befouled Gossamyr's memories of
him. But the roots of the succubus's thrall dug far deeper, right to
his being.

"You are mortal, false child of Shinn. Nothing but. Not a
drop of Faery ichor runs through your veins. 'Twas the Red Lady who
cursed Shinn, and you yielded from the exchange. Yes, you benefited!
What a life to be raised in Faery! Oh, what I wouldn't wager to
return."

"With your essence?" Gossamyr spoke, but the words
weren't truly conscious. Benefited by the exchange?

Believe and you Belong.
All this time she had believed—no!

"You spin lies! I—I will see you to the Infernal before
I allow you to return to Faery. As well, your bloody mistress!"

"Ah? Cast your lover to the Infernal? Not very romantic of
you."

"The succubus's
erie
has changed you. Blight, what is
your name? Avenall of Rougethorn..."

"I see now why Shinn sent you," Avenall declared as he
danced up and down the steps. The essences sung a frightened dirge.
"A strong wench, be she!"

"I stand here on the Otherside of my free will. Shinn did not
want me to leave..."

Had Shinn knowingly sent off his only daughter? A mortal, unable
to return to Faery? A child born to mortals?
...to unite
Glamoursiege to Rougethorn.

Gossamyr felt her knees weaken. Icy, the pain streaking from her
knee to her ankle. Bile curdled at the base of her throat.

"Indeed a wise choice," Avenall said. "The Red Lady
would not recognize a mere mortal come sniffing about her lair. And
what sweeter revenge than to send the mortal beast Shinn calls his
own to avenge the Red Lady's curse!"

"No!" Peeling herself from the marble wall, Gossamyr
swung her staff out before her, forgetting it was but half size. The
serrated end swished the air. "It is all a lie!"

A changeling? She, a mortal exchange?

Rare, a changeling was born in Faery. Always they were swapped for
a sickly mortal babe. It was the way of the fée. None of the
mortal children ever survived longer than a day or mayhap a
se'nnight...

It seemed an odd ritual now Gossamyr thought on it. Why a sick
child? A healthy babe would survive— Had she been sick?

"No." Her voice gasping out in a dry breath, Gossamyr
shouted, "It cannot be!"

"Embrace your truth," Avenall said and stepped to the
bed, sliding his arm along the silk and stretching out on his back.
Unfurled wings and red-and-black hair littered the counterpane. "And
mayhap the Red Lady will prolong your life."

"By stealing my essence, like yours?"

"You've no essence to steal, mortal."

"Very well." Gripping the half staff in both hands, she
worked at the wood until she felt sure the carvings would etch into
her palms and out would pour blood. Not
ichor. You are mortal.
"I
shall leave you with a bit of your own truth, Avenall of Rougethorn.
It was my father, Shinn, who also banished you."

"This I know."

"And yet—do you know the reason you were sent from
Faery without so much as a by-your-leave?"

Rolling to stretch on his side, he propped his chin in hand. "I
guess you will tell me."

Gossamyr stepped up to the bed and gripped a thick spiral post
fashioned of the same marble as the floor. She knew the Red Lady's
heart was colder than the stone. If she possessed a heart. "I
will, and then I will consign you to my past and think not another
moment for your life."

Avenall sighed and spread out his arms in a waiting gesture.

"My father banished you from Faery because you chose to court
his daughter after he had forbidden such a match. He would not have a
Rougethorn marry his own. On the night we were to make love, Shinn
sent you off. I loved you, Avenall."

Gossamyr turned and strode from the room. Her footsteps increased.
Her arms pumped. And her heart pounded. She ran down the hallway. The
gargoyles' flames flickered and brightened in her wake.

All this time—her father—

I
will not have a Rougethorn in my family.

She entered the darkness of the Paris night with a cry that echoed
out and spiraled into the heavens.

Dominique San Juste startled at the female cry drifting over all
of Paris. He could not fix a location to the sound, instead it
encompassed all, the air, the cobbles, the stone walls and creaking
wooden signs, and finally, resonated in his bones. Mournful and
vehement, the howl was tinged with a glimmer of which he had never
known—but had always carried within him—Enchantment.

Unsettled, he stroked a palm across Tor's bone-white withers and
searched the darkness.

"You feel it, too, my friend," he said to his equine
companion. "What mischief have you led me to?"

The stallion bristled and reared upon its hind legs in brilliant
display.

And Dominique sensed every moment that followed would place him
closer to a most dangerous Enchantment.

"Where is he?" Gossamyr stumbled across the threshold
into Armand LaLoux's home. The old man nodded toward the ladder.
Gossamyr scaled the rungs two at a time. Ulrich met her at the top.
She plunged into his arms but took no time for courtesies. Pulling
him across the floor toward the window, she stood for a moment,
catching her breath. Not once had she broken her stride from the Red
Lady's lair.

Manic visions twisted her thoughts here, there and widdershins. A
changeling? Completely mortal? Believe and you Belong...

Where
did
she belong?

So much she had always accepted, thought to know as truth!

"What is it? Did you track the pin man? Sit on the floor, my
lady, you're out of breath."

She followed his direction and sat, crossing her legs. When he
remained standing, she clung to his wrist and pulled him down,
leveling his face with hers. Gripping his head between her palms, she
ignored his wince when she pressed upon the bruise staining his
cheek. Heaving yet from her race, she was unable to get out the
words.

Warm hands bracketed hers, pulling her shaking fingers from his
face. "Gossamyr? If you do not speak I shall assume the worst.
Have you been followed? Harmed?"

Harmed? Mayhap by the very man she had called father all these
years.

"You are bleeding."

She shook her head that he should disregard that insignificant
bother.

Oh, but an ache had begun to pulse in the depths of her being. The
old wound had been scraped and now this new knowledge tore open her
bleeding heart.

"Gossamyr?"

She shot a gaze into the man's eyes. "What did you call me?"

"It is your name."

Yes, her name. Was it? Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of
Glamoursiege. Truly?

She had not been able to conjure Avenall's name complete. It was
there, just at the edge of her mind. Ah! He had utterly changed.
Physically and mentally. He knew nothing of himself. Puppy? Yet, he
claimed to know much about her.

Could he speak the truth of her?

"Tell me you are not harmed elsewhere," Ulrich
whispered. "You tremble so—"

"No!" That shout released her dry and twisted tongue,
and Gossamyr began to cry long-buried tears. She could not keep them
back. Be blighted, the champion, the wandering refugee from Faery
simply needed to let out some pain.

"Mon Dieu,
this is serious. Faery princesses are not
supposed to cry."

Ulrich pulled her to him. His hair brushed her face and for a
moment Gossamyr recalled that time long ago, when she had been but a
child and had stood watching the dancer...