Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (101 page)

She pushed her father’s hand away from hers. His emotions were distracting her. He hadn’t wanted this meeting either, and he had insisted on going along only so that he would knew what she was doing.

“Well, then.” Jewel pushed her chair out and leaned back. Panic flared in Nicholas’s face, then disappeared. She wasn’t sure what he thought. Was he afraid she would attack them? “We have a problem. You could slaughter all of us, if you could find us all, but that’s only a temporary solution.”

Her father was stiff beside her. Burden hadn’t moved. He was the good listener she had thought he would be.

“Temporary?” the King said. “We could go back to our lives.”

She nodded. “Until the Black King comes to Blue Isle, looking for his son and granddaughter.”

“Why hasn’t he come yet?” Nicholas asked. The question wasn’t impertinent: he sounded curious, as if he had been wondering this for a long, long time.

“He has the details of his own rule to deal with on Galinas. He expects us to report back to him. There is quite a window of time for that—wars are never quick and easy things—and if we haven’t reported back after what he considers to be too long, then he will send ships for us.”

“Too long?” Lord Stowe asked. His face betrayed no nervousness, but his voice shook a little. “What’s that?”

Jewel shrugged. “Three years, five, ten. I don’t know. If my grandfather has died, it will take a bit longer because my brother will have to get used to the reins of power. Once he is used to being Black King, he will come here.”

“Eventually,” Rugar said in his command voice even though he didn’t know what Jewel was trying to do, “the Fey will come to Blue Isle in such numbers that we will rule this place.”

The King took his hands off the table. A little pool of dryness outlined the place where they had been. “Such threats do nothing for your position,” he said. “We can still wipe you all out.”

Jewel leaned forward. “If you were able to wipe us out,” she said softly, “you would have done so already. You have had several chances, and you have never managed to destroy us.”

“Given time—” Lord Stowe started.

“Given time,” Jewel agreed, “we would probably die. But you don’t know how much time you have. If the Black King does arrive while you’re still killing us, you are in even more trouble. And so are we.”

Rugar stiffened beside her. Burden shifted slightly in his seat. Neither of them knew what she was going to do or what she was going to offer. She had discussed this with no one, even though she had been thinking about it for weeks.

Go with the
magick,
her grandfather would say. And she was.

The King started to speak, but she put up her hand. “Give me just a moment to explain,” she said. “You can kill us, small group by small group, but some of our people will survive. It is just our way. You can’t reach all of the magicks at once. We, on the other hand, would live in constant fear, making small raids on your people and holding skirmishes in order to survive. We would probably find a place like Daisy Stream, which is easy to defend, and take it over, and then there would be battles for that spot. More of your young people would die, and so would our people—one at a time, slowly and painfully, and with no gain.”

“It seems we would gain if you go away,” Lord Stowe said.

Jewel gave him a gentle smile. She saw how they were playing this. The King was the reasonable one, while he had given Stowe the opportunity to argue the extreme position. She didn’t quite know Nicholas’s role yet. She was sure she would find out.

“But that’s my point, Lord Stowe,” she said. “We won’t go away. You might have a year or five or maybe even a decade without us. But then the Black King will arrive, and he will have no mercy for you. You will have killed his troop and his family. In those circumstances the Black King
cannot
show mercy, or someone might try such a thing again.”

“You obviously have a plan, something to propose that will benefit all of us?” the King said.

The mist still fell, thin and cold, leaving little drops on her skin and her hair. It felt as if the sky were crying. She licked her lips, felt the cool water on her tongue. She did not look at her father as she spoke. “I propose an alliance,” she said.

“Between us?” the King said, his voice rising with surprise.

Jewel nodded. “It must be an alliance that the Black King recognizes. One that he cannot break.”

“There is no such alliance,” Lord Stowe said. “The Fey are known for betraying agreements when the agreements no longer suit them. We would be fools to negotiate such a thing.”

“You would be, yes,” Jewel said, “unless we can offer you something that would make the alliance impossible to betray. Something the Fey would have to agree to. Something your people would have to honor as well.”

“What do you have in mind?” the King asked.

Jewel raised her chin. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was suddenly dry. “I would like to marry your son.”

Burden gasped beside her. The King’s pale face turned even whiter. Lord Stowe opened his mouth in surprise. Rugar grabbed Jewel’s arm and she shook his hand off. But Nicholas stared at her, his blue eyes warm. He appeared thoughtful, as if the idea had not occurred to him before.

“Marriage is sacred among the Fey,” Jewel said before anyone else could speak. “We mingle bloodlines, we mingle magick. We do not do such a thing lightly, and marriage vows cannot be broken. From what I understand, anyone married within your religion cannot break those vows either, and members of the royal family, once pledged, are wedded to that person for eternity, even into death.”

The King’s smile was a shaky attempt to cover his discomfort. “Eternity, yes, but we are allowed to remarry after death. The family grows bigger then.”

“So,” Jewel said, “I take that to mean you agree with my proposal?”

The King’s smile grew wider but did not reach his eyes. “No. It’s out of the question.”

Nicholas put his hand on his father’s, then leaned forward so that his face was closest to Jewel’s. She could feel the warmth of his skin. Her gaze met his. His eyes were a deep blue.

“It would have to be a true marriage,” Nicholas said.

“Nicky!” his father said.

Nicholas ignored him. He was staring at Jewel with an intensity Jewel had seen only once—when they had met in battle. She felt the spark between them. They were equals, whether he had magick or not.

“I mean for it to be a true marriage,” she said. “I do not suggest such things lightly.”

“Jewel, a nonmagick bloodline—”

“Hush, Papa,” she said.

“A true marriage,” Nicholas said, as if her father hadn’t spoken, “means, for Islanders, children.”

Jewel nodded. It wouldn’t be hard to make children with this man. She had thought of it often enough. “Children would be the only security,” she said. Then she looked at the King. “If I am with child when the Black King arrives, or if we have a child already—if the bloodlines are mingled—the Islanders become honorary Fey.”

“So we lose after all,” the King said bitterly.

“No,” Jewel said. “It is the only way you can win. The Black King will not attack the Isle. There will be no more war, and your family remains in power. You will continue to rule, and then Nicholas, as it is done here, and then our child. Nothing changes except that one day Blue Isle will have an important position in the Fey Empire, not as a conquered place, but as a place where Fey rule.”

“Jewel,” Burden whispered. “You can’t do this. You have no authority—“

She whirled on him. “I am the Black King’s granddaughter. I have all the authority I need.”

He leaned back, away from her. She had never turned on him before, not in all their years of friendship. She had never had to.

The King was watching her. When she turned her attention back to him, he said with a seriousness she hadn’t expected, “I need to talk with my son.”

“Please do,” she said. It would give her a moment to calm her own people.

The Islanders withdrew to the edge of the bowl. They huddled together so that the Fey couldn’t see their faces.

“You have no right to do this,” Rugar said in Fey. “You pollute the Black King’s bloodline.”

Jewel sighed. “I have every right. We have married into nonmagickal families before. It always makes the magick stronger. You know that. It is the best way.”

“But the Black King will have to acknowledge these people.”

“Only the ones I designate as family,” Jewel said. “I may choose to designate no one but my own children.”

“Jewel,” Burden said, “you can’t copulate with that thing, not even for the sake of the Fey. You can’t—”

“I can do as I choose,” Jewel said. His self-interest at this time angered her more than her father’s blundering. “What, did you think that you and I would become mates? If I am going to chose a nonmagickal being, Burden, I will choose someone whose blood will enhance my line.”

A flush built in his cheeks, and he stared at her, his eyes wide.

“You need to think of someone other than yourself, Burden,” Jewel said. “If this works, and the Black King never comes, we have a chance to rebuild our own force. The children will grow. We will have new fighters, new Doppelgängers, new Shape-Shifters. We can develop a new strategy and, with my help, know where the weaknesses are in the Islander defenses.”

“It seems wrong to me,” Burden said.

Rugar was watching the Islanders speak. Finally he turned to her, a frown bringing the tips of his eyebrows down. “Jewel,” he said so softly only she could hear, “all of those people were at that ceremony in your Vision.”

“Except Lord Stowe,” she said.

“A wedding is a ceremony, Jewel. You will make your Vision come true.”

She shook her head. “No, Papa. If I do this right, I make that Vision a false one. We control the ceremony. In that Vision I was caught by surprise. It will not happen. We will allow none of their poison near us during the service. It has to be a condition of this agreement.”

Rugar took her hand, thereby giving her his permission. “You take a large risk, daughter.”

“Without some risk,” she said, “we will not survive.”

EIGHTY-EIGHT

The mist tasted of salt. Nicholas’s ponytail was heavy and wet against the back of his neck. He wished he had clothes like the Fey, clothes that kept the water off everything but his skin. This bowl near the Stone Guardians was a dismal place, even though the sky was blue and the air smelled fresher than anything near Jahn.

His father glanced over his shoulder. The Fey were sitting at the table, Jewel in the center, arguing with her father and with the young man beside her. She seemed thinner than she had been before, but her thinness only accented her cheekbones. Her exotic eyes flashed with intelligence and humor each time she looked at Nicholas, as if remembering their first meeting. And when he had said he would marry her, he felt a flush of warmth that she seemed to feel as well.

“You had no right to speak,” his father said in Islander. “I was conducting this negotiation.”

“Marry a Fey, boy, what were you thinking of?” Lord Stowe asked.

Nicholas took a small step backward, his calves hitting the rock incline. The mist fell around him like a soft rain. “I was thinking of several things,” he said. “While it seemed to me you were reacting and not thinking at all.”