Stone Song (18 page)

On the other hand, there was no one to spar with at Deirdre’s. Deirdre herself didn’t practice at arms and Kevin refused to touch Fae blades, though he was a crack shot with a pistol and could hold his own in a fight. But Elada was used to daily sword training with Miach’s children, and his children’s children, and all the followers in South Boston who could claim Fae blood and a tie to the MacCechts. Even Nieve sparred with him sometimes, and Miach had been trying to convince Helene to acquaint herself with a blade.

It might have been easier to occupy himself at Deirdre’s if the tension between the Fae artist and her human lover hadn’t been so palpable. When he encountered Deirdre in the kitchen in the morning, where, thank Dana, there was fresh coffee brewing, he’d tried to thank her for her hospitality.

“Don’t,” she had said. “I wouldn’t accept your Druid under my roof if I had another choice. But my husband tells me that he will leave again if I don’t shelter the little bard.”

“She’s blameless, Deirdre,” said Elada. “Sorcha isn’t responsible for what her ancestors did to you—to
us
—two thousand years ago.”

Her eyes burned bright, but she looked straight through him and said, “For me, it was yesterday, and it always will be.”

He’d taken his coffee and his blade into the courtyard after that and practiced and honed the enchanted silver’s edge and considered their options. Deirdre’s house was undoubtedly the safest place to keep Sorcha while Miach worked with her, but that didn’t mean it was safe. Deirdre was damaged and dangerous, and the last time they had imposed on her hospitality, they’d driven a wedge between her and her lover—and Kevin was the chain that anchored her to reality and the present.

An hour later he was reminded that there were other perils in this unconventional household. He’d gone in search of Tommy Carrell, because Sorcha cared about the fiddler and the musician had gone from a night of torture at the hands of the Prince Consort to imprisonment in another Fae’s home. Elada didn’t like having Sorcha’s sometime lover under the same roof while he was trying to woo her himself, but the poor bastard had tried to defend her from the Prince, and in Elada’s book that counted for something.

He’d last seen the fiddler in Deirdre’s studio, the light-filled space that occupied the second floor of the house’s service ell, the projecting wing at the back that had been built for kitchens and servants’ rooms. The door was ajar, which he considered an invitation to enter, but when he stepped inside, he realized the invitation had been meant for someone else.

Deirdre was reclining in the window seat on a heap of silk cushions with her legs spread and the fiddler’s head between her pale thighs. It was none of his business. He had never been attracted to Deirdre. But the scene was Fae and erotic and seeing her revel in her sensuality made him want that for Sorcha—and not just under the influence of Fae wine.

He wanted Sorcha to feel the heat of her own passion. His heart had ached for her when he’d seen that dreary iron-girded house in Jamaica Plain. There was too much coldness in her life. Her grandmother had deprived her of affection, her love affairs were tepid at best, and even the temperature of that house was chilly. But he was certain that Sorcha had a fire inside her that wanted out.

Not necessarily this publicly, however. . . . Deirdre clearly wanted an audience today, though Elada suspected he was not the one she desired. He lingered a moment anyway. Deirdre’s head was thrown back, her lips parted; her hair was loose, and the golden silk of it spilled like a waterfall over the embroidered cushions and cashmere throws. One perfectly made foot was perched atop the window seat, the other rested on the fiddler’s unhurt shoulder. She’d pulled her skirts up to pool around her waist and her shirt up to reveal one round full breast, which she was clutching in her hand and caressing, her thumb fretting the dusky nipple.

Her other hand held the fiddler’s head between her legs.

She opened her eyes and smiled at Elada, then stretched like a cat and arched her back.

He turned on his heel and left them. The fiddler wasn’t being coerced. Deirdre didn’t like to use her voice on her partners. Her beauty was such that she didn’t have to. And her vanity was such that an unwilling lover held no appeal.

He passed Kevin on the stairs, carrying two mugs of coffee. His destination was obvious. Elada stopped him.

“I’m sorry that our stay here is causing difficulties between you and Deirdre,” he said.

Kevin rolled his eyes. “She’s got the fiddler in there, doesn’t she?”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Deirdre and I have . . . an arrangement in these matters. Certain freedoms.”

“Which she exercises and you don’t.”

Kevin shrugged. “Does it matter? She loves me, not the fiddler, or any of the others. I don’t mind the occasional guest in our bed, but I have no desire to invite anyone else into mine on my own.”

“But you still don’t like it.”

“The fiddler I mind less than another Fae,” he said pointedly.

“I’ve got no intention of accepting any invitations from your wife. And we’ll leave as soon as it’s safe for Sorcha. It’s obvious that our presence has added to the tension in your home.”

“It’s not about you,” Kevin replied.

“But we’re making the problem worse by being here.”

“This isn’t about Sorcha or Druids,” said Kevin. “This is about the things that happen when one of your kind takes a human partner.”

So he was one of his kind yet again. “What happened between you and Deirdre when Helene was here?”

Kevin held up his left hand. On his fourth finger he wore a cold iron band. “I always wore it around my neck, because I didn’t want to hurt her with it accidentally. When Helene asked us for help, to save Miach from the Druids, I decided to go with her. Deirdre snapped the cord my ring was on and ordered me not to.”

“Because she feared for your safety.” As Miach feared for Helene’s. And his fear caused him to do stupid things, like conceal the truth from her about his plan to kill Sorcha Kavanaugh.

“It wasn’t her choice to make,” Kevin said. “And the ring means nothing if she can snatch it away at any time.”

“You’ve only met Beth and Sorcha. You don’t know how dangerous Druids can be.” It was what Miach had said to Helene, but Elada knew that it didn’t justify Deirdre’s behavior—or Miach’s.

“I know that my wife doesn’t think I can protect us—her—from this threat, and that she’s slipping further into herself every day now, imagining them coming here for her. The problem is that I can shoot a Druid dead to protect her, but I can’t take away her fear, and that’s what will kill her. This is the only way I know to try to help her, to force her to face this head-on. Having your Sorcha stay here.”

Elada wasn’t so sure that would help. “Beth and Sorcha are not typical Druids. The ones the Prince is training are as dangerous as Deirdre fears. Has she ever told you what happened to her?”

“They held her prisoner. They hurt her. That’s all I know. She won’t talk about it. She’s afraid she’ll start conjuring images of it.”

It wasn’t Elada’s story to tell, but Deirdre had had a hundred years with Kevin to confide in him, and had not managed to do it. And he would never understand her if he didn’t know.

“I was there,” said Elada. “When we found Deirdre, I was there. It wasn’t like the other mounds. I was kept chained along with two other sword Fae. Our torture was straightforward. The Druids flayed skin and sliced muscle and severed tendons to try to understand why we were faster, stronger, more dexterous than humans. Miach, they cut open from neck to navel, trying to find the spark that generated his power.”

“She has no such scars,” said Kevin. “Her skin is unblemished, save for the Druid patterns on her shoulders.”

“They never cut her, no,” said Elada. “They weren’t trying to understand her art; they were trying to warp it for their purposes. The Druids never mastered Fae painting. They couldn’t conjure lifelike images out of the air, couldn’t create the animated dioramas and living canvases that Deirdre can. They had no use for such diversions. Their goal was to find a way to make a weapon of her art, the way they made a weapon out of their bard’s voices and instruments.”

“I know they wanted her to create images that disturbed her.”

“She is Fae, Kevin. We have a capacity for cruelty and depravity that dwarfs human understanding. The things they wanted her to paint were nightmarish enough to drive a Fae mad. Their efforts were pure hubris, and they got what they deserved for it. Deirdre, though, got what no creature deserved.”

Kevin swallowed hard. “Tell me,” he said.

“She unleashed hell on them. The images they’d asked for had provided a window into their minds, into their own fears. She was chained inside the mound where they were holding her, and she cast a panorama so horrific that the Druids inside the chamber with her bashed their skulls out against the stone walls. No one could get inside the mound without going mad. And the spells they’d cast on her to force her art from her were impossible to reverse. So they buried her alive with the horrors of her mind and the bodies of her victims. She was barely alive when we found her, and she never saw the Druids defeated. That is why she has feared they still existed, all this time. You cannot fix that, Kevin. No one can.”

“She always told me that Miach rescued her. That’s why I never minded her occasional trips to his bed.”

“Miach dampened the spells and ventured inside her mind long enough to disperse the images. Then I carried her out of that place. The mound had been abandoned. That is why we did not find her sooner. There were no Druids left there, just grass and earth and stone and the stench of decay.”

• • •

Sorcha was too tired to
eat by the time Miach finished with her. She’d relearned how to send her hearing over distances and tried to master identifying the signature resonances of individual objects and beings, so that someday—soon, hopefully—she would be able to send her voice as well, with laser-like precisions, instead of bringing down a city block with a single note.

It was progress. But Deirdre’s icy smile and Sorcha’s general exhaustion made dinner in the dining room an unappealing option.

Elada was waiting for her in their room. He was lying in bed with a laptop open beside him. His sword lay on the floor beside the bed. The juxtaposition would have been more surprising if he was an ordinary Fae, if he surrounded himself with profligate luxury and walked a path apart from human life, but with Elada the combination seemed natural.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Well, your best friend didn’t kill me, so I think that’s a win.”

Elada’s face darkened. “Did he threaten you?”

Yes. “No.” She wasn’t sure. “And I’ve started remembering things I used to do when I lived with Gran.” It was still startling to her. “I can hear . . . almost anything.”

He closed the laptop. “Like what?”

You.
She’d been able to send her hearing up the stairs ahead of her, to find him. She’d known he was there, in bed, waiting for her, and the thought had filled her with pleasurable anticipation. Gran hadn’t kept any pets while Sorcha was growing up, but they’d taken in a stray kitten that had wandered onto the property, and every day the kitten had lived with them, Sorcha had watched the clock at school, waiting for the bell, anticipating the moment she could get home and see the kitten again. Until one day the kitten had been gone, adopted by a friend of Gran’s, never to be seen again.

But Elada was here, now, and the thought had made her climb the stairs a little faster. She hadn’t been able to “see” the laptop with her hearing, but she’d been able to find the Fae’s steady heartbeat. It was slower, she was surprised to discover, than a human heart. And it had guided her, like a bell in the fog.

“People, animals, appliances.”

“So refrigerators won’t be able to sneak up on you,” he teased.

“Or Fae,” she said. “Like Donal’s followers. I could have heard them, if I’d been listening.”

“And your voice?” Elada asked.

“We left that for another day. What did you do?”

Her Fae rolled his eyes. “I did a poor job staying out of our hosts’ relationship troubles, sharpened my sword, and corrected this morning’s coffee deficit.”

And he’d put his life on hold for her, to get her here safe. He’d made a promise to her last night, and he’d fulfilled it.

“You know you don’t have to stay here for me. Miach says Donal and Finn won’t look for me here and that the Prince can’t scry me because of the wards on the house.”

“You’re safe here, for the moment, but I want to stay, Sorcha. I was serious about what I said at your grandmother’s house. I’ve wanted the chance to know you for a long time. If I didn’t destroy that last night, then this is my opportunity to prove to you that I’m not like Keiran.”

“I know you aren’t.”

He rose from the bed in one graceful movement, all coiled strength and speed.

“No. You
hope
I’m not. You don’t know me well enough to be certain. I was drawn to your voice, I’ve admitted that. In that way, I’m just like Keiran.”

“But you didn’t abduct me. And you tried to warn me about the danger I was in. And I think you let me hurt you in the alley, didn’t you?”

He cocked his head. “Did Miach tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to. I’ve seen how fast you can move. You could have taken the harp away from me in the alley, but you didn’t.”

“If I’d introduced myself to you a month ago and we’d been able to do normal things, like go on dates, show each other our favorite parts of the city, favorite foods, favorite movies, then you might be able to fully trust me now. But we’ve got time here at Deirdre’s, and I don’t want to throw this chance with you away. If you don’t want me in your bed, I’ll sleep in another room, and we can forget about last night and start again as strangers.”

“I don’t want to start again. I want to pick up where we left off last night.”

Chapter 12