Stone Song (6 page)

“Who are you?” she asked. She realized she didn’t even know the name of the Fae she had spoken to earlier in the night, but she suspected she knew the name of this one.

Her question appeared to amuse him. “I am,” he said, considering, “shortly to be the one fixed star in your dwindling universe.” And he smiled as though pleased by the thought.

Suspicion turned to certainty. “You’re the Prince Consort,” she said, wishing she’d asked her earlier visitor more questions.

“At your service,” he said, managing to bow—gracefully, the hem of his coat swirling around his knees—without removing the silver knife from Tommy’s throat.

“Put the harp down there against the wall, gently,” he said, “lest it make some unpleasant sound and I flinch.” He turned the pale blade against Tommy’s neck to catch the light. “Your friend might not enjoy that.”

Without the harp, she’d be defenseless against the Fae’s glamour. She hesitated. The Prince Consort flicked his blade again, and this time a red spot bloomed on Tommy’s throat.

She set the harp down.

“Come closer,” the Prince Consort said.

She walked to the center of the room but kept a table between herself and the dangerous Fae. His assessment was as blatant as the one she had received from her unnamed visitor earlier that evening, but there was a coldness, a clinical quality to the Prince’s perusal. It was the opposite of the warm appraisal she had been treated to by
her
mysterious Fae, the one who had only sought to warn her, and she suddenly very much regretted felling him in the alley with her harp.

“Let Tommy go,” she said.

“I think not,” said the Prince Consort. “At least, not as long as you’re wearing cold iron.” His eyes slid over her neck, her wrists, and her ankles, searching for the metal.

He wasn’t going to find it. And she wasn’t going to take it off. If she did, she’d be his puppet, powerless to resist his commands. Like she had been with Keiran. This Fae would be able to reach down into her soul and take her very identity from her, as Gran and the old men had warned when she’d been too young and too foolish to listen.

“I won’t take it off,” she said.

“Then I will kill him,” said the Prince.

Chapter 4

S
orcha tried not to focus on the knife at Tommy’s throat. She looked the Prince in the eye and said, “You won’t kill him.” She prayed she was right.

“Why not?” he asked. It sounded like he was quizzing her.

“Because you want something from me, and Tommy is your only way to get it.”

He looked pleased, which was worrying. “You reason well,” he conceded. “Not all artists do. Some of you are skilled, and some of you play by pure instinct, and there are those who can bring both to their craft, but intelligence is the rarest component. We will deal well with each other, I think.”

She had no plans to deal with him at all. “I won’t be your trained lap-Druid.”

The Prince sighed. “I suppose that is what Elada told you, but then he is Miach MacCecht’s lapdog, so he would put it that way.”

So his name was Elada. “Elada didn’t seem like anyone’s lapdog.”

“Even Fae dogs are superior in all ways to human men.”

She could see only one weakness in this glittering creature: his vanity. She had no other weapons to use against him, so she struck at it. “‘Superior’ isn’t the word I would use for your kind.” Cruel. Soulless. “But Elada at least seemed somewhat human.”

“He’s not,” said the Prince flatly. “And I would caution you against making that mistake with any of our kind. A flannel shirt and an affinity for electronics don’t make a Fae human. What makes you think the sorcerer and his right hand have your best interests at heart any more than I do?”

“I don’t,” she admitted. “But Elada never held a knife to my friend’s throat.”

The silver blade glimmered and then disappeared in the blink of an eye. “There,” said her adversary. “No knife.”

Tommy scrambled to get away from the Fae, but the Prince said, “Sit,” in a voice resonant with power, and Tommy dropped to the floor, obedient as a dog.

As Sorcha would be if she took off her cold iron.

“Now can we talk?” asked the Prince, indicating a chair. He took a seat himself—the silver leaves in his hair tinkling like bells when he moved—and waited for her. She looked at Tommy’s pleading eyes and knew she didn’t have a choice.

“What did Elada offer you?” asked the Prince.

“Nothing but a warning about you,” Sorcha replied.

“Because he and Miach wish to exploit your power for their own ends,” said the Prince pleasantly.

“So do you.”

The Prince shrugged. “You have a choice between two masters. We all answer to someone, and derive our place in the hierarchy, our prestige, from the one we serve. Miach MacCecht is a petty criminal and Elada is his right hand. They are exiles from the Court. When the Wild Hunt returns—which it will, have no doubt, whether you help me or not—Miach and Elada will die, along with all their followers.”

“Why? When there are so few of you left, why kill your own kind?”

“Because Miach MacCecht has possessed the power to free the Court for two thousand years. Because he has thwarted others who sought to do so. He is a traitor to his race and he will be punished for his treachery. And he has fathered an army of bastards who fancy themselves equal to the People. They will not be tolerated by the Queen when she returns.”

“It seems to me that I have a third choice,” said Sorcha. “That’s to have nothing to do with either of you.”

“Neutrality is not an option for you. Even if you sit this fight out, once the Court returns, they will find the last of the Druids. Some they will keep. The ones they know they can trust, the ones allied to true Fae. The ones who make themselves of use to us. The rest they will kill.”

“You say that, but if I don’t help you free them, who will?”

“There are others like you. Hundreds, possibly thousands of latent Druids. If you don’t help me, others will. Refuse me and your friend dies for nothing. Accept my offer, accept my training, unlock your gifts, and you will be rewarded.”

She knew better than to accept rewards from the Fae. She didn’t believe the Prince’s brothers and sisters would spare her if she released them, but she couldn’t let Tommy die.

She would have to go along with the Prince’s plan until Tommy was safe.

“Let Tommy go and I’ll help you,” she offered.

“Remove the cold iron you are wearing and we will strike a bargain.”

“I can’t.”

The Prince’s perfect brows rose. “Can’t, or won’t?”

Both.

“Can’t,” she replied. “It’s a piercing. I can’t remove it here.”

He smiled. His nostrils flared, his eyes widened fractionally, and he assessed her once more, this time with avid interest.

Cold terror washed over her. Keiran had never looked at her like that. To him, she had been an object. The Fae were not fond of recorded music. They were sybarites, hungry for sensation, because their own ability to feel was so atrophied. They prized the physical sensation, the vibration of real music. They acquired musicians the way rich men acquired stereo components, and gave them as much thought.

They did not become aroused by them, and the Prince was clearly—
visibly
, through the denim in his jeans—aroused.

“Show me this piercing,” he said.

“No.”

The Prince snapped his fingers. “Come,” he said in a voice that Sorcha could tell was resonant with power. The iron allowed her to hear
through
it, to understand the sense of the word without responding to its command.

Tommy had no such protection. He leaped up like a dog and trotted to the Prince’s side, eyes alive with terror and guilt.

“I’m sorry, Sorcha,” he sobbed.

“Quiet,” said the Prince.

“It’s all right, Tommy,” Sorcha said. “This is my fault, not yours.”

“How gracious,” said the Prince. “I knew you had no family, and I feared you might have no attachments, possess no lovers or friends. That would have made it hard to convince you to act in your best interest. And then I would have had to hurt you to compel obedience.”

The knife reappeared in his hand and he tossed it high in the air and said, “Catch!”

Tommy dove to the floor and caught the knife, clumsily, blade first, his fingers closing around it convulsively, blood running down the blade.

“No!” Sorcha cried. If the blade cut his tendons, he might never play again.

“No?” asked the Prince. “Perhaps Mr. Carrell should try again.”

Another blade winked in the Prince’s hand.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” said Sorcha. “Just leave Tommy alone.”

“You will consent to let me train you as a Druid?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The Prince nodded, crouched to retrieve his blade from Tommy’s bleeding fingers, and wiped it clean on the fiddler’s shoulder. Tommy sat huddled at the Prince’s feet, clutching his injured hand.

“Now,” said the Prince, “show me this piercing.”

“I don’t see how that’s related to training me as a Druid.”

“Iron is a Druid weapon against the Fae. So long as you wear it, I won’t be able to trust you. And I won’t unleash the power of a Druid I cannot trust.”

“You mean a Druid you can’t control.”

The Prince shrugged, as though they were one and the same. “Show it to me, so I can determine what kind of threat it poses, or we have no bargain.”

And he would go on hurting Tommy.

She reached for her collar. Her fingers felt numb, the silk of her blouse slippery. She started with the hook and eye at the top and unfastened every single button below, hoping the Prince would lose interest. Instead, his
interest
only grew.

She had not anticipated that the Prince might find her appealing in that way. Keiran had favored models, the smooth perfection of youth, girls of fifteen and sixteen he picked up from photo shoots and parties. Gazelle-like creatures with the coltish slenderness and dewy skin of adolescence. Not women like Sorcha.

Evidently the Prince was different. It wasn’t the slow striptease that aroused him, she realized. There was nothing sexy about the goose pimples beading her pale skin, nothing sensual about the frayed elastic strap or the worn nylon cups of her bra, thin and glossy with age. It was her humiliation that turned him on, that held his eyes riveted on her breasts.

Her nipples were hard from the cold. She could see them—and the Prince could see them—through the threadbare fabric of her bra. The iron ring was clearly visible as well, tucked up under her left nipple, a hard outline beneath the cloth.

The Prince reached out and traced her offending aureole, careful not to touch the iron ring even through the cloth, making a complete circle and then sliding his palm beneath her breast to lift and test the weight of it.

He sighed. “These,” he said, handling her breasts, “please me, but cold iron is an ugly metal. I could rip it out, and see if you scream as prettily as you sing, but that would damage you permanently and make it impossible to replace the ornament with silver, later.”

Her skin crawled at the thought.

“For now, though,” he added, “there are other ways to motivate you.”

He drew a small, stoppered bottle from one of his deep pockets. It was a sinuous vessel of wrought silver, and it rang like a bell when he set it on the bare table.

“Fetch us glasses,” said the Prince.

Tommy rose, clutching his bleeding hand and Sorcha watched him shuffle to the bar, her heart in her throat.

“Let Tommy go,” she said. “I’ll take the ring out.” It was difficult but not impossible to remove.

“Soon,” said the Prince. “You’ve engaged my interest, Sorcha, with your hidden iron ring and your determination to thwart me.” He grinned wide. “I like you.”

But he didn’t mean he liked
her
. He meant he wanted to
own
her, like a pretty toy, and she suspected that, unfortunately, he was not careless of his toys as Keiran had been. Now she began to think she had been lucky in that gilded house, to be treated as an object, ignored unless her master was in want of music. The Prince wouldn’t be content to just possess her like that. He wanted to
play
her, like an instrument, and see what noises she would make.

Tommy shuffled back to the table, his injured hand tucked up under his arm, a pair of blood-streaked drinking glasses clutched in his other hand. He placed the gruesome goblets on the table.

“Sit,” said the Prince, as he would to a hound, and Tommy dropped to the floor once more.

“That’s cruel,” she said. “He did what you asked. There’s no need to humiliate him.”

The Prince reached out and ruffled the hair on Tommy’s head like he was a Labrador. “You mistake the fiddler for a member of your own race, but you are no more human than I am. Your fiddler is like the rest of his ilk, happiest when he is under the yoke, when he doesn’t have to think for himself.”

“He doesn’t look very happy now.”

“That is because he has not been properly trained.” The Prince removed the stopper from the bottle and poured a clear fluid into one of the goblets. Pale mist rose from it.