Gossamyr (42 page)

Believe? In what? And where to belong?

This mortal world—no, she was not fascinated by it—horrified
her. It offered nothing but filth and depravity and war. The people
were not friendly; they did not look at her with smiles but
downturned faces. They did not care about Gossamyr, daughter of
Shinn. They struggled to survive.

As would she. She could not believe in this mortal realm. But no
longer could she believe in Faery. Or the idea that Faery was her
home.

When you stop believing you cease to belong.

"I want to return," she whispered. "I do believe. I
will always believe."

But she could not return should the alicorn be restored to the
unicorn. Could she stop Ulrich from seeking his wish? Had she any
right to keep him from summoning his daughter from death?

So important, family. Hers had suddenly been yanked away.
Not
even a real family.
Yet, according to Shinn, Gossamyr had family
she had not even known.

The d'Anges were murdered.

Verity d'Ange. Such a peculiar name. But it intrigued in that it
belonged
to Gossamyr. Her birth name. Verity—a secret
name that had always been hers.

No!

She could not belong to a family that no longer existed. But there
remained a sister—this unknown sister might be all Gossamyr had
now. Might she ever hope to find her? For Shinn's betrayal had
cleaved Gossamyr from Faery.

You love him despite his cruelties. He is all you have ever
known.

They did love one another, had grown closer following the
departure of Veridienne. Gossamyr had learned to love—the faery
way. A surface emotion that never truly rooted. Or had it? She was
not capable of hating Shinn. Love, the mortal passion. "It has
always been mine."

She thought now of the decimated castle she had explored. How
might her life have been had she grown up on the d'Ange demesne?
Would she have romped through the meadows with a sister? Were there
other siblings? So much to wonder about.

"I want to know them." The words slipped from Gossamyr's
mouth without volition. She wandered forward, not really seeing, her
mind stuffed with noise from the past.

"Always mortal?" She tripped, but braced herself, both
hands to each end of her staff against a pole fleched with torn
public announcements.

To her left the careful clops of horse hooves neared. Measured,
almost as if the beast was...looking. Timing its steps. A massive
animal, for the echoes filled the air with a march worthy of a
gallant parade.

Gossamyr straightened, listening. The back of her neck prinkled,
akin to fear, but more so, anticipation.

A force approached. Be it good or evil? Armagnac, Burgundian, or
English? Either would taste her skill with an
arret
to the
skull.

Abandoning foolish wonders about her stolen past, Gossamyr slid
her hand down the silk bodice of her gown and unhooked an
arret.
She began to spin it for release—but immediately
relinquished her defensive stance at sight of the brilliant white
horse that advanced. No, not a horse. The beast verily gleamed in the
clouded twilight, its snow-white hide casting about it an aura of
illumination.

A rider sat upon its back but Gossamyr could not drag her
attention from the beast. She held out a hand, thinking to touch its
pale pink nose. Long witch locks, elegantly braided with fine strands
of silver threading, hung between the animal's violet eyes.

And there, between the plaits of mane and above the eyes shimmered
an ovular spot, the hide bare of hair and looking pink and open. Like
a wound, but not seeping.

Sucking in a gasp, Gossamyr recoiled. Realization felled her to
her knees before the magnificent beast. Bowing, she pressed her
forehead to the cold dirty cobbles.

The rider's dismount clacked boot and spur against cobblestone.
"My lady?" a deep male voice inquired.

Rising, but slinking backward, Gossamyr hissed at the insolent,
"How dare you?"

The rider, cloaked in black and hooded, tilted his head
wonderingly. Dark stones set about the perimeter of the hood clacked,
glinting in metallic rays with a strange beauty of their own.

"You ride the unicorn!"

A smile eased onto the rider's face and he stroked a gloved hand
across the unicorn's braided mane. "You are most perceptive,
fair lady." He eyed her staff and looked over her motley
clothing, assessing but not judging. "I ride Tor because he
allows it."

"T-Tor?" came out in but a squeak smaller than a mouse's
sigh.

The gall of this man to be so casual about the sacred beast.
Lacking an alicorn. This be the one Ulrich sought!

Or had the unicorn come to her? She had held the alicorn, had felt
the power. Had that moment drawn the creature to her? But she had not
thought a unicorn would ever allow a man to ride—

Stepping closer, Gossamyr examined the man's face, finding his
movement tilted his eyes out of the shadows and into the pale light
of evening. They were deeply colored a darkest violet.

"You cannot be here," she gasped as another awareness
struck. "You dare to approach the Red Lady's lair?"

"I know naught of a red lady,
demoiselle.
I go where I
will. Rather, this journey finds me following Tor's path."

"But you...you are fée?"

Another bemused smile curled his lips. A handsome man—
fée—Gossamyr corrected her silent summation.
Or is it
Verity?

"It surprises me you know so much. You have sighted a unicorn
and a faery in less than a breath. I have always thought the common
man blind to our true identities."

Gossamyr straightened, one hand fisted about each end of her staff
and leveled at her hips. "I am not common."

"Indeed not." The man bowed and offered, "I am
chevalier Dominique San Juste. You have already met Tor. We've been
on a journey—or rather Tor has. I suspect he seeks the missing
alicorn."

"I know he does." Gossamyr made to pet Tor, but recoiled
once again. She could not touch the unicorn. 'Twould be sacrilege.
But oh, did her fingers itch for one stroke of the silken moon-bright
hide. "I know where it is."

The faery lifted a brow. Tor whinnied and stomped the ground with
a fine hoof.

Gossamyr nodded in answer to both.

And so fate had been decided for her. 'Twas destiny had brought
the unicorn to her.

Goodbye, Shinn,
she thought wistfully.
I
do love
you. But I choose to do what is right.

Gossamyr beckoned as she started down the street. "Come. I
will take you to what you seek."

Hands clutching the air before him, his neck stiff from the tilt
of his head, tears spilled down his cheeks and sweet liquid seeped
into his mouth. The false child of Shinn had thought to touch it!
His!

"Mine,"he hissed.

It glowed seductively. Palest of yellow. Thick and full. Unlike
the others. His mistress had not drained it. She wickedly teased him
by keeping it whole and out of reach. Dare he take it back? Could he?
He lingered in a purgatory of not-dead and not-life. Yet he did not
dissipate or rot as he suspected he should. Nor did one of those
skeletal creatures lurk within him. Mayhap.

Alive? No. But neither dead.

So long as it glowed and no one pulled it from the wall, he
remained.

"Mine," he whispered again, savoring the sound of the
word, floating on the resonance of that claim.
His.
'Twas all
he owned. Yet even that he could not touch.

Ah, but he had gained a new possession, yes? Information. How his
mind bounded with such!

The Red Lady would be pleased to hear Shinn's false child had been
here. But sporting such revelations?

I
know you, Avenall. Do you not remember me?

Yes.

No?

Pretty Faery lord's daughter, pristine in her blue marble
castle. Don't touch. Exotic...

No, not a faery! She is mortal. A changeling!

Exotic?
Why did he want to remember those muddy brown eyes?

You are Avenall of Rougethorn...

Rougethorn? It was familiar because his mistress so often
mentioned it. He muttered it slowly, over and over. Rougethorn.
Rouge. Thorn. Rouge... Rogue. Torn?

Avenall shook his head, rocking the provoking memories about in
his brain. Rogue? Rogue. Torn.

Avenall?

He wondered.

Hmm. Yes. Avenall.

"My name."

A smile curved his mouth. The realization put him straighter,
sucked in a breath and filled his chest with air. Yes. "Avenall...of
Rogue—Torn."

Indeed, he had come from the place named thus. Rougethorn. The
tribe whence his mistress had hailed. Yet, there remained a missing
piece of his name...

He had courted—

The clatter at the door bent him into a crouch. All productive
thought dissipated. The Red clamped hold of his volition and he
hobbled over to greet his mistress. Regal and lovely, she stood in
the doorway, alabaster shoulders erect and one long leg bared to
reveal a slender ankle ringed in silver chains of mail. Something
dangled from the fingers of her right hand. A...head. Attached to a
body.

She deposited the limp body of a man near her feet. He rolled down
the step, arms slapping the marble and skull thudding, and landed the
main floor on his back. Parti-colored black and yellow hosen wrapped
his legs. One arm splayed above his head. Blood purled from his lips.
And there, drawing a slug trail across his cheek, glittered a hint of
Faery. It was the man who had earlier kept Avenall—yes,
Avenall!—from pinning the essences. The man who accompanied the
female—Shinn's daughter.

Do you not remember me, Avenall?

Yes...I...I courted you.

"Puppy?"

What distraction was this? Had not the Red Lady gone in search of
Shinn? He looked up into her red eyes.

"My new pet," his mistress announced with a flirting
air.

The satisfied curl on her lips dug into the thrill Avenall had
felt at gaining his name, mayhap even more—
New
pet?

"No. My lovely pretty. I—I am your puppy."

Striding past him, her plush skirts sweeping his face in a
brushing slap, she paced before the wall of essences. "Worry
not. You will always be my puppy. I will make this new one
my...kitten."

"No!"

She waved a naughty finger at him. "Ah, ah, ah. Mustn't be
jealous."

"Do you not know who he is? He be that woman's man!"
Yes, Gossamyr!

No. Avenall coiled into himself.
Only for Puppy's ears.
He
would not give her a name. She did not deserve it now. Oh, cruel
mistress!

"Yes." Pausing, she considered with a sad moue. "Her
man... So little you know, Puppy."

"I know you were led from your goal by this insignificant
mortal!"

"I had thought to draw Shinn into my arms, but instead this
bit of skin and bone wandered up. Useless, I had initially thought,
until—" Avenall's mistress drew an object out from her
sleeve; a bit of black cloth wrapped about something narrow and long.
She tapped it against her chin. Menace glittered in her eyes. "I
must keep him alive for the moment, for that will bring her to me.
Or, if Fortune answers my beckon, it will bring Shinn to me."

He shrugged. There was that.

He'd be damned if he'd tell her the wench had been here not an
hour earlier. Nor would he mention her strange tale of them having
been lovers. If they had been lovers—
I
think we
were. I don't know...

Kitten? "You—you have kissed him?"

"Not... completely."

She teased the tip of the wrapped thing near one of the undulating
essences. The viscous blue essence actually cringed, then it
brightened to a marvelous indigo, expanded, and suddenly, it burst,
showering the Red Lady's face and shoulders with a mist of glimmer.
The essence pure. She licked at the splatter, sighing and giggling at
the wonder.

Stretching the cloth-wrapped item high in triumph, she announced,
"Lovely thing, this!"

"But." Avenall sank to the bottom step and tucked his
arms about his bent knees. A forceful breath blew a hideous strand of
red hair from his face. He glanced to the sprawled mortal.
"You...
plan
to kiss him?"

"Did you not listen, pin man?"

He cringed deeper into this new misery.

"I must keep him alive until we've lured the female here. I
know not what her intentions, but I suspect it has something to do
with this."

"She—" Avenall bit his tongue. No. His mistress
was undeserving of his confidence. So much she knew about Shinn.
Could she confirm his connection to the warrior bitch?

Now she beckoned him closer with a crook of her finger.
Balking—she had brought a new pet into her lair!—Avenall
finally scrambled up and knelt before her, the wall of essences but a
reach to his side. Sniffing, he detected no discernible odor from the
cloth bound about her new toy, save the remnant of mortal aroma. The
man's scent.

Avenall sneered and crossed his arms over his chest. "What is
it?"

"You must guess."

"I don't want to. It reeks of that man. You are most cruel to
your puppy."

"You wear jealousy like a silken robe, sweet one. I want to
devour the fire I see in your eyes."

She bent to tap his forehead then teased her fingernail down the
center of his nose. A lunge and she lapped up the slide of his nose
with her pink tongue. He snuggled his face into her palm, seeking
assurance of her love.

The inadvertent touch of the wrapped thing to his chest ignited a
violent spark. Avenall was flung backward, landing against the wall,
the cold caress of a violet essence hugging his cheek. Scrambling
away from the slimy coldness, he pointed to what his mistress held.
"It is powerful!"