Midnight Enchantment (30 page)

His gaze turned intense. “You
are
special, Elizabeth. I’ve met many women in my life, but none of them have been like you.”

Her mouth went dry and her smile faded at the sound of his voice and the look in his eyes. He really meant what he was saying. He really thought she was unique and wonderful. Emotion clogged her throat. “I guess growing up sheltered out in the Boundary Lands has its advantages.”

Reaching across the table, he took her hands in his. “No matter where you grew up, you would have grown up to be the exceptional woman you are. It’s simply built into you. Strength. Intelligence. Protectiveness. Cunning.”

“Stop it.” Of course, secretly she loved it.

He pulled her out of her chair and into his lap. “Sexy as hell. Gorgeous beyond measure.” He nuzzled her throat, holding her close, and she wound herself around him, closing her eyes. “Willing to risk your life for someone you love.”

“Go on,” she breathed.

He found her mouth and whispered against it. “Vulnerable in all the right places.” He slid his hand into her robe, between her thighs. “And—”

Someone rang the doorbell.

She groaned. “I guess you have to get that.”

He straightened, looking suddenly serious. “It might be your mother.”

Elizabeth slid from his lap, the sense of comfort that he’d wrapped her in suddenly gone and that familiar, cold knot slowly tangling through her intestines once more. She followed him to the door and stood beside him as he opened it. Thea stood on the other side, dressed warmly in an expensive coat that had undoubtedly been offered to her by the Black Tower.

In exchange for her life.

Niall backed away from the door, and Elizabeth hugged herself, staring at her mother for a long moment, before Thea finally broke her gaze and moved inside.

Thea spread her hands, her eyes glistening with tears. “I had to do it.”

Elizabeth swallowed down the sob that had lodged itself at the back of her throat, then reached forward and pulled her mother into an embrace. “I really wish you hadn’t,” she murmured.

Her mother backed away, wiping tears from her eyes. “Thank you for loving me so much, Elizabeth.”

“Come on in,” said Niall. “Sit down.”

Thea gave her daughter one last long look, then went to sit on the couch. Elizabeth sat down next to her. “Did they manage to assemble the
bosca fadbh
?”

“Yes.”

Thea’s hands clenched in her lap, betraying her nervousness. She was a brave woman, bent on doing the right thing for the good of all, no matter what it cost her yet it was clear she was uneasy about what was to come. “So, now what? I want to be… prepared.”

Niall nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin as he sat on the armrest of one of the easy chairs in his living room. “The Book of Bindings cannot be opened until noon today. So, we hold our breath, hope nothing catastrophic happens. Until then we prepare to battle anything that comes our way in the meantime. At noon we’ll open the back of the book and—hopefully—find the magick within to break the walls.”

“So,” said Thea, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner, “I have less than four hours left on earth.”

Elizabeth’s hands knotted together so hard she feared breaking her fingers.

“I’m sorry, Thea.” Niall sounded heartbroken, but how could he be? It wasn’t
his
mother who’d sacrificed her life to do the right thing. It wasn’t
his
last remaining family member he was about to watch die.

Thea shook her head. “What is will be.”

Elizabeth wanted to scream at her calm acceptance. She didn’t possess any of the zenlike qualities of her mother. She wanted to fight for what she wanted right up to the very end. Never give up, no matter how bad it got.

Thea raised her gaze to Niall’s. “Thank you for everything you did yesterday. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know what I
would have done. I was completely overwhelmed when I arrived here. If you hadn’t met me and brought me to the queen, I’m not sure I would have ever been able to turn the pieces over.”

Every molecule in Elizabeth’s body went cold. Her body went rigid and her gaze snapped to Niall, who was watching her carefully. “What?” The word snapped out of her.

Thea turned on the couch to look at her. “He found me wandering the foyer yesterday, not knowing who to go to or whom I could trust. I was too afraid to tell anyone I had the pieces. I spotted Niall, and he brought me up to see the queen. He didn’t tell you?”

“No, he didn’t tell me.”

Her gaze swung to Niall as anger clenched in her stomach. Of course Niall had bustled Thea right upstairs with hardly a thought. He wanted the walls to fall, so his actions didn’t come as a surprise. Yet there was something especially awful knowing that it was
Niall, the man she loved and the man she’d grown to trust
, who had led her mother to her end. She wasn’t sure she could stomach that knowledge.

“Yes,” continued Thea, “he even tried to find me at the house.…”

Her mother continued speaking, but Elizabeth could barely hear what she was saying because of the dull buzzing in her head.
Of course
Niall had gone to her mother’s house, had intended to tell her what her daughter had done. His last shot had been to try and get Thea on his side. Elizabeth should have known he’d do that.

Still, this changed everything.

Her gaze met Niall’s. “You helped her kill herself, Niall?”

“Elizabeth—”

“No!” she cut him off. “You just told me you loved me, yet, just yesterday you took away my mother? How could you!”

“This is the way it has to be, Elizabeth,” Niall said, rising. “I
do
love you.”

Fisting her hands in her lap, she looked up at him. Her thoughts swirled just as fast as her emotions, making her feel sick.

She loved him, too. She always would. Yet this wasn’t going to work. Every time she looked at Niall, she would see
her mother’s death. For a moment she’d actually believed they could have a relationship, but that had just been an illusion, a mirage—like an oasis in a desert.

She and Niall could never be together because too much lay between them.

Elizabeth stood, shook her head, and moved toward the bedroom. She was going to dress and get the hell out of here. Pausing, she turned toward him. “Last night was just a fantasy. Those pieces of the
bosca fadbh
will always be wedged between us, Niall. You and I can’t ever be together. We couldn’t before and we can’t now.” She paused, staring hard at him. “
Especially
not now.”

Tightly leashing her emotions, Elizabeth pulled off Niall’s robe and jerked on her clothes. In the other room, low voices murmured. Just as she was sitting on the bed and leaning over to pull her second boot on, something powerful hit the tower.

The force of it knocked her off the bed onto the floor. A second explosion rocked the tower, and she curled in on herself as plaster rained down from the ceiling.

“ELIZABETH!” Niall bellowed.

Elizabeth pushed to her feet and lunged into the living room. Another blast hit the tower. Elizabeth was thrown off balance, barely catching herself on a chair as she passed. Her mother stood near the door, hands pressed tightly to her mouth, eyes wide, while Niall stood at the window, looking down at the square.

Fear exploded through her. “Niall!” Elizabeth yelled. “Get away from the window!”

“They can rock the building, maybe do a little damage, but they’ll never break through the Shadow Queen’s shields.” He motioned to her. “Take a look.”

She had a bad feeling she knew who “they” were.

Elizabeth glanced at her mother, who had gone incredibly pale. Her curiosity getting the better of her, she stalked over to the window just in time for another volley. Niall caught her as she stumbled and she pulled away from him, giving him a cold glance before she directed her attention out the thick pane of glass.

Down in the square, Gideon stood alongside the Summer Queen. Behind them stood a small army of cloaked Phaendir,
head bowed, faces shadowed, hands clasped inside the voluminous sleeves of their robes. Apparently Gideon and Caoilainn were through with shadowy collusions and secret operations.

This was a full-on frontal assault.

It made something bitter sting the back of her throat to see the Summer Queen standing in alliance with the archdirector of the Phaendir against the Black Tower.

The square had cleared of fae. Not even one human soldier could be seen. Apparently they’d retreated at the first hint of malicious magick. Smart on their part since bullets wouldn’t help them much. Maybe they had orders to stay out of what occurred between the fae and the Phaendir.

Gideon and the Summer Queen had, of course, a magickal protective shield around them. There was no other way they could be standing so boldly in the middle of Piefferburg Square otherwise. Just as Elizabeth had considered the shield, a group of men rushed out from the base of the Black Tower.

Niall leaned forward. “The Fianna. Those idiots.”

The Fianna were men who were descended from the original Fianna of lore, though they also possessed the blood of the Tuatha Dé. Once they’d been fierce warriors, their ever-sharpened swords for hire to the Irish kings of old. In Piefferburg, without the tradition of warring kings to employ them, they lived privileged, idle lives in the Rose Tower. The group of men were known womanizers and tended to get drunk a lot, fight a lot, and play sports.

From the way they were charging into the square right now, Elizabeth assumed they’d forgotten that centuries had passed since even one of them had fought anyone but each other.

“Poor deluded bastards.” Niall’s voice sounded grim. “I give them ten seconds.”

It didn’t take even that long.

Elizabeth turned her face away as magick exploded. The Fianna were left burning on the cobblestones… in pieces. “Sweet Danu,” she breathed. “The Summer Queen just murdered members of her own court. Has she gone insane?”

“She was never all that stable.” He paused. “The goblins will be next, but they’re a lot harder to kill.”

Indeed, as soon as he’d uttered it, goblins began streaming out of the Black Tower commanded by the Shadow Queen. In
a killing frenzy, the mass of tall gray creatures swarmed toward Gideon and Caoilainn. There were too many and they moved too fast to kill, though that didn’t stop Gideon from trying. Burning goblin carcasses began to fall around them.

It made a lump rise in Elizabeth’s throat. The goblins, having no choice in the matter, had been used like cannon fodder over the years by the Shadow Royal.

The unharmed goblins bounced off the invisible barrier surrounding Gideon and Caoilainn like something out of a cartoon. The barrier was definitely the Summer Queen’s, though her magick wasn’t all that different from Gideon’s.

Normally, the Summer Queen could only wield magick in defense of the Rose Tower. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if this situation counted. But, after all, the Rose Tower was, indeed, at risk. The Summer Queen herself had ensured
that
.

Thwarted in their efforts to reach their intended targets, the goblins roamed Piefferburg Square, snarling and snapping. No one could envy the Summer Queen and Gideon when they were surrounded by hundreds of slavering goblins thirsting for a taste of their flesh the moment the barrier faltered. The goblins were under direct command of the Shadow Queen—part of the Shadow Guard—they wouldn’t stop until they had destroyed—in this case, consumed—their targets.

Once the king and queen called the sluagh, things would go from worse to hellish for them.

Gideon and the Summer Queen lifted their hands in unison, and another wave of magick rocked the Black Tower. Both she and Niall stumbled back. Plaster rained down from above them, and a crack zigzagged through the living room wall.

She glanced at Niall. “What was that about a barrier protecting the Black Tower, Niall?”

His expression looked grim as his gaze followed the crack in the wall as it snaked up the ceiling. “Maybe it’s the nature of their combined power. It’s the Phaendir out there, after all. That’s not all fae magick.”

Elizabeth turned to her mother. “We need to get out of here.”

“Great idea. Come on,” said Niall, going for the door. “I’ll show you a secret way out of the tower.”

The corridor was a mess of fae who’d remained in the tower after the evacuation order for the children. Now the rest of them were fleeing, and she didn’t blame them. Apparently everyone had received the same message at the same time—Gideon was going to bring this tower down around their ears.

Of course, Elizabeth doubted he’d really go that far. At least, not until he’d secured the Book of Bindings and the
bosca fadbh
. Even from a distance, she could see that Gideon looked crazed. He wasn’t going to be denied this time.

Elizabeth just wanted to get her mother as far away from this place as fast as she could. Her goal was to get to the Boundary Lands and hope like hell the sprae didn’t follow the rest of the fae if the walls came down. It was her mother’s only chance.

Elizabeth hated relying on luck.