Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel (20 page)

The others took up the cry, and “Changeling” brushed past my ears like a breeze through a forest. I stood up straight. Fifteen of the little fairies stood at the outskirts of the ring of flowers. No wonder I'd barely seen them. Their bodies were light green, with dark green stripes, like a tiger. If I hadn't been looking for them, they would have faded into the surrounding grass, invisible. Though they were humanoid in shape, none of them wore any clothes. They didn’t look frightened or angry. “I’m here to take back what’s mine,” I said to them. “The Queen took something that does not belong to her.”

“It speaks against Grian.”

“And in her own realm.”

“It should be careful not to blunder into things it does not understand.”

“And it understands so little.”

And with that, they disappeared into the grass. I rested for a moment longer before picking my sword and shield back up. I checked the doorway. Still there—a shimmer in the air. Kailen hadn’t come through to help me. I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved or disappointed.

I continued on toward the palace, careful to avoid any circles of yellow flowers. My palm was slick with sweat, the hilt of the sword slipping as I tightened my hand around it. What had they meant, about blundering into things I didn’t understand? Clearly, I’d made a mistake with the fairy circle. What else lay between me and Tristan?

The palace grew closer, the land surrounding me empty. Was this the way the Fae realm always looked—devoid of life until you stepped into the wrong place? Two black doors stood at the front of the palace, carved in swirling patterns of the same black stone as the rest of the palace. They stood twice as tall as the door in my house and twice as wide. I could see no one in the windows. When I reached the doors, I tucked the sword beneath my arm and lifted a hand to knock, a lifetime of habit shining through.

No. Despite what the fairies had said, I wanted to take Grian unawares. Since no knob or handle appeared in the surface, I leaned my shoulder into one of the doors. To my surprise, it creaked open.

The entrance hall of the palace was lined with crystal chandeliers that seemed to glow of their own accord. A rich blue rug lay on the floor, stopping just short of the walls. Black pillars lined the walls. I held my sword in front of me and shifted the shield on my arm. Still not a soul in sight. A set of broad steps ascended to a place unseen in front of me. I went for them, my footsteps echoing off the stone as I climbed.

When I reached the top of the steps—three flights, at least, at least—I saw Grian. She sat in a great black throne, lit from all sides by the glowing crystal chandeliers. Her skin was pale and smooth, like newly unwrapped soap; hair the color of corn silk pillowed at her shoulders. She wore a dress of dark blue, the same color as the rug on the first floor.

At her feet, playing with a golden ball, was Tristan.

“To catch a wild beast, one must choose the correct item to bait the trap with,” the Queen said. She regarded me with frigid blue eyes, a smile curving her rose-colored lips.

“My nephew,” I growled, “is not bait.”

“On the contrary,” Grian said, “bait is anything that gets the job done. I notice you do not disagree with the comparison of you to a wild beast.”

“Give him back.” I lifted both sword and shield.

“No. He fell through a doorway, has eaten of my food, and drunk of my water. According to the old laws, he now belongs to me. There is always an exchange with Changelings. A mortal for one of the Fae. The Aranhods neglected this bit, so I have rectified things.”

Bitch. My sister was at home, crying her heart out. Tristan belonged with his family. He wasn’t anyone’s property. “What do you want? My death? That won’t close the doorways.”

“But it
will
restore the balance of power and prevent other Fae families from breaking our laws,” Grian said. “The doorways need not concern you.”

“They do concern me. My family and friends are at risk from the Fae and mortal worlds mingling.” How unreasonable was this woman? Everyone spoke of her as if she was some sort of malevolent dictator. Surely it didn’t have to come down to fighting, to my death. “I can close them,” I said. “The doorways. Isn’t this reason enough to let me live?”

The Queen lifted her chin. “No.”

I gritted my teeth. “You’re not making this easy. Just give me back my nephew. Give him back, or I’ll…” I lifted my sword, swung the tip around to face her.

“Or you’ll what?” the Queen said, her voice sharp. “Did you truly think you could walk into my palace and take what you wanted by force?”

Tristan didn’t notice any of this exchange. He stared at the ball in his hands, unnaturally focused. I sniffed the air. Lavender. “You’ve charmed him somehow,” I said.

“Very bright, this Changeling,” the Queen said. She stood, and the floors of the palace trembled. The chandeliers dimmed. “Kill her.”

The air around me solidified, revealing eight Guardians, dressed in silver armor. They advanced.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The sword and shield felt suddenly inadequate—play toys in my hands. My confidence eroded as the Guardians rushed toward me. This was the end. I was going to die here, sliced up by eight swords, no one at home aware of what had happened to me. And then Kailen’s words rang like a bell in my mind.

“I invoke my right to challenge!” I cried out.

The hall ceased to tremble, the lights returned, and the Guardians stopped in their tracks. My nephew, unperturbed, continued to pass the ball from hand to hand, a faint smile on his lips.

“I challenge the Guardians,” I said, “on behalf of the Aranhods.”

For a long time, no one moved.

Then one of the Guardians spoke. A man with black hair pulled into a tail. “Such a request is unprecedented.” He looked to Grian, as did the others.

Grian sat back on her throne and took a moment to arrange her skirts. “An interesting request,” she murmured, “and one you did not come up with on your own. What are you playing at, Kailen?”

I waited, sword and shield limp in my hands. It seemed everyone in the Fae world knew Kailen. He’d said he wanted me to know him better, and yet at every turn, he withheld information from me. What did Grian know of him? “Will you accept?”

“It is up to the Guardians to accept.” Even as she said the words, she gave the barest of nods to the man, broad as two of me put together.

He stepped forward. “I am Haldor, and I will accept this challenge on the Guardians’ behalf. If you win, the Guardians will no longer come after you.” He held out his hands, palm up. In the next instant, a fire sparked to life in one hand, and ice formed in the other. “If you win.” He smirked and turned away.

“The challenge will take place three days hence, mortal time,” Grian said. “In the Arena. No one will be allowed to harm you until then.” She leaned down and picked up Tristan, placing him in her lap. He giggled as she bounced him on her knee, his wispy brown hair falling across his forehead. He did not drop the ball. “Now leave my realm.”

“Not without my nephew,” I said.

“Go on,” Grian said. “Try to take him then.”

I moved the sword to my shield hand, took two steps toward the throne, knelt, and held my arms out. “Come on, Tristan. It’s your auntie, Nicole. Your momma’s waiting back home for you.”

Tristan didn’t even glance in my direction. Grian smiled.

I hadn’t become the top salesperson at Frank Gibbons, Inc. by being shy. I pushed past the Guardians and headed for the throne. Before anyone could stop me, I’d plucked my nephew from the Queen’s knee.

He screamed, and his face went pale. I reached to dislodge the ball from his hands. As soon as I touched its golden surface, a jolt went through my body. It felt like an electric current, hard as a slap. My breath went out of me. Tristan continued to scream.

As soon as I could breathe, I tried again to touch the ball. The shock this time was harder and made me fall to my knees. I cradled my nephew to my chest. His screams had reduced to low sobs. I barely felt the stone beneath me. I must have bruised myself, but the pain running through my chest obfuscated any other discomfort. Time to change tactics. I concentrated, lifted a hand, and tore a doorway through to the mortal world.

“If you take him through with the ball, he will die,” Grian said, her voice filling the hall.

“Then we'll go without it.”

“Each time anyone but me or the boy touches it, the pain gets stronger. It will kill you.”

I met her cold blue gaze with my own and grabbed for the ball again. The world around me faded into black and red. The pain numbed my brain, became my center. When I came to myself again, I was stretched on the floor. Tristan had wandered away from my arms and into the folds of Grian’s skirt.

“Get out,” Grian said. “Before I change my mind.”

Wounded, defeated, my heart in the vicinity of the soles of my feet, I stumbled through the doorway and back into the mortal world.

I landed on the side of the road in a heavily forested area I didn’t recognize. I closed the doorway behind me and leaned my back against a nearby pine tree. I’d failed. I had to find a way to win against the Guardians now, if only to live long enough to bring Tristan back. That golden ball—there had to be a way to get it away from him.

I climbed the slope to the road. Trees and asphalt stretched as far as I could see. I didn't have a phone on me, or any money. When I picked a direction and started to walk, my feet ached in protest. I turned the sword and shield back into a coaster and a stick, dropped them back into my pocket.

The sweater I wore was torn, the knees of my jeans covered in grass stains. I probably hadn't brushed my hair in a day. A couple cars passed and I put out my thumb, but neither stopped. I couldn't blame them. I didn't look very reputable at the moment. How had this happened? I'd gone from a woman with a promising career to someone on the run from the laws of both the Fae and mortal worlds. Owen had been right, though. I had to stop blaming everyone else. I wasn't perfect. It had been stupid of me to turn Jane into a mouse. I'd let my temper get the better of me. Sure, I hadn't known I had magic, but my anger should have been focused at Owen, not Jane.

I could have had both a career and a life at home—I'd chosen not to. I'd gravitated toward Owen in college because he'd been fun, different. Too different, apparently. I wouldn't take the blame for his cheating—that was
his
stupidity, not mine. At the same time, I hadn't been kind to him. He
had
tried to talk to me, several times, and I'd constantly dismissed him.

And I'd been too upset about these changes in my life to concentrate, as I should have, on learning magic. Now my nephew's life hung in the balance. Doorways were opening between the mortal world and the Fae world, swallowing unsuspecting mortals. I'd not been the first to dance in that fairy circle. The strange murders with the impossible time frames? Something or someone in the Fae world must have committed them. It was the only thing that made sense.
Time passes differently in the Fae world
. People were dying because of the doorways—doorways I could close if I could turn off the big "kill me" sign I seemed to have hanging over my head. And since no one else seemed invested in it, I needed to find out who was opening them in the first place.

Damn it, this was
bigger
than me and my problems. To hell with Kailen and Owen, Penelope and Grian. I had to get my shit together.

The sound of an engine rose from the distance. I stuck my thumb out. This time, to my surprise, I heard the car rumble to a stop.

“I’ve heard hitchhiking can be dangerous. Mortal world 101.” Dorian, the Sidhe man we'd fought the night before, had his head out the window of a beater car. The paint peeled, and one window was missing, replaced with duct tape. The bumper was dented. He still wore the black silk bathrobe.

“Are you here to finish me off or something?” I asked. My hand crept toward the pocket with the stick and coaster.

“Grian called for a ceasefire. The other Fae families echoed it. You're dead as doornails in three days anyways.” He jerked his head toward the car. “Come on. I'll give you a ride.”

I hesitated and then strode to the passenger door. Grian had said that no one would hunt me until the challenge had taken place. Besides, I really didn't want to keep walking, and Dorian had been polite about trying to kill me. The door stuck when I tried to open it, but with a tug it swung wide. I slid onto the cracked vinyl seat. It didn't have a seat belt. “Do you even have insurance?”

“In-shore-ents?” Dorian raised an eyebrow.

“Never mind,” I said. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

He pulled the car back onto the road. “As I said before,” Dorian said, “I don't have any hard feelings against you in particular. You seem like a nice enough lady. I'm not fond of Kailen, but then, a lot of the Sidhe aren't.”

I leaned my head against the window, my hand in my pocket, just in case. “Is it because he pissed off the Arbiter?”

“Nah,” he said. “That's between the two of them.”

I threw up my hands. “Okay, what is it then? He said he wants me to get to know him better, but it seems like everyone knows more about him than I do. Every time I feel like I've learned the last secret about Kailen, someone or something pops up to tell me that's not all.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“What's that supposed to mean? Hmm?”

“I've just never met a Changeling before,” he said. He tilted his head to the side. “But as I was saying—I don't like Kailen, and you're not doing yourself any favors by associating with him.”

“Tell me why.”

“He's Grian's son.”

If I'd been drinking anything, I'd have sprayed it all over the front windshield. “
What?
”

Dorian gave a noncommittal shrug. “Kailen's a liar. Everyone in the Fae world knows it.”

“Then why do the Aranhods...?”

“Trust him? I don't know. Probably because there was no one else. He used to be one of the Guardians. Real bastard, that one. Did a lot of shady things—anything Grian didn’t want to dirty her hands with. Confiscated things that others rightfully owned, interrogated Sidhe and Fae that did nothing wrong. He and I used to be friends when we were both young. Fifty or so years back, he quit the Guardians and disappeared into the mortal world. Before he did, he came to me, asked for my forgiveness, and wanted to know if we could reconcile. I opened my home to him, gave him my hospitality. The next morning, he'd gone, and had stolen a piece of moonstone.”