The Trouble with Fate (44 page)

I gazed at her with agony. Not like this. Not in front of her. Wasn’t it enough to
read my face? For all the tears in heaven, I’d loved him since I was twelve … despite
what I thought he’d done. Goddess, even when I’d sworn to myself I loathed his wicked
heart, I’d never been able to scrape him from mine. Did I have to say those words
in front her, kneeling in the pebble-strewn mud?

Yes,
Cordelia’s hard eyes said.

There was no choice. There never had been.

“Trowbridge,” I said, as I pushed my hair back. I guided his mouth to the spot he’d
tenderized the night before. “Take my blood.” His lips softened into a kiss on my
skin. “Trowbridge, bite me.”

But he wouldn’t.

He turned his head.

“Bite me!” I said brokenly. “I can heal you. Take my blood.”

He was dying. Thump, thump. His heart slowing. Thump, thump.

It was my father again. My mother once more.

Thump, thump.

No. I wasn’t that girl anymore. Crouching in the cupboard again, watching everything
that mattered to me slip away. I wasn’t going to sit there and listen, useless tears
dripping down my face, as the mate of my heart breathed his last.

I steal. It’s what I do.

I wiped my face with my elbow. Cleared the hurt with a deep, shuddering breath, and
then I found a spot: a silent, safe place inside me. I gathered up all that was left
breakable in Hedi, and told it to stay there. Cover its ears and close its eyes. I’d
come back for it. I’d come back for
me.

Then I stepped outside of myself, and became what I needed to be.

Face shuttered, I softened my voice as if I were soft, and sweetened my tone as if
I were as toothsome as Candy. My sooty fingers left smudges as I stroked his skin.
“You never made me your mate.” My throat—it ached. “You said that you wouldn’t let
me die alone again. Never again … Remember?… You promised me.”

His eyes were milky and blind, but his face—oh Goddess, his face-brow pleated, lines
bracketing his mouth, bruised and bloody—none of it was as bad as the look of tormented
guilt I’d just carved into it.

“Wife?” he asked weakly.

“Mannus has come. Do it now.” I bent closer and pressed my counterfeit flesh to his
lips once more. “Make me your mate.”

An endless moment before his mouth opened. His teeth settled on my tendon. He touched
it once with the flat of his hot tongue, and then suddenly, I felt a tearing pain.
Hot, burning, and fiercely welcome. He sucked my blood into his mouth, and I said
the words, my eyes on Merenwyn. “Heart of my heart.” … My Fae essence flowed into
him … “Mate for all my years.” A joy-filled quiver from my Were … “I offer you my
life.”

“Quickly,” said Cordelia. “Take his.”

I am a thief
.

I set my teeth. I broke his skin. I swallowed his silver-tainted blood.

And as I drank, and felt a strange, soul-soothing warmth spread over me, Cordelia
roused him back to consciousness and forced him to say the vows, giving him a pat
of encouragement at the end of each one.

It was done. The heat inside me kept growing, growing. Were-hot, love-warm.

Trowbridge’s face grew calm and peaceful. When he spoke his voice was so soft I had
to ask him to say it again. “Don’t know why … I waited.”

“You’re a stubborn man.” I tucked his curl behind his ear. “Do you feel stronger?”

A pause. And then he said, “Yeah.” This time I could smell his lie. His fingers reached
blindly for mine. He twined his gently around my blistered ones. “Don’t cry, kid.”

And with that, his eyes closed one final time.

His grip loosened.

Thump, thump.

My fingers lay in the cradle of his open palm.

Those were his last words.

*   *   *

Little snatches of it will forever haunt me. Cordelia leaning down to pick up Bridge.
Her red hair sweeping over her shoulder, her white face set as she carefully gathered
him up. Trowbridge’s limp form hanging from her ropy arms. His head thrown back, exposing
his throat, vulnerable and naked, and the teeth marks I’d left on his skin.

The slow thud of his heart. So much slower.

We had so little time.

“Hurry!” said Cordelia, shifting him higher in her arms. “Biggs, grab the Fae!”

And then, indeed, it seemed we flew. Cordelia kicked off her shoes, clutched him like
her baby, and ran. I followed her, Merry bumping on my chest, running for my life
and his. Close behind us, Biggs followed, Lou thrown over his shoulder.

“George,” he yelled, passing the sniper. “We’re gonna need a hand.”

The water sheeted over the floating log as the five of us peeled down its length.
It started to roll. “Go!” said Machete-guy, bracing his hands against it. “I’ll hold
it.”

We reached the midpoint. The portal floated over our heads. A hint of Fae magic streamed
through the gate, ghostly and fragrant, carried by its soft wind. Strengthening me.
Sharpening me. Could Trowbridge feel it too?

“You’ll need to go up first,” Cordelia said harshly to Biggs. “I can’t make the jump
with him in my arms. I’ll pass him to you.”

The diminutive Were emptied Lou into George’s grip. Then he lifted his chin and squinted
at the curling mist above him. What was Cordelia thinking? Biggs couldn’t be strong
enough to haul Trowbridge up. Why not Machete-guy or George?

Biggs rubbed his hands on his jeans, crouched, and suddenly sprang for the sky, arms
flexed. Up he flew, light as a dancer, straight up and over the lip of the portal.
Gone for a second from sight, and then his lean face appeared over the edge. He extended
his arms. I watched, biting my lip, ears straining to measure the sluggish thumps
in Trowbridge’s chest as Cordelia gently lifted him high. Biggs caught my mate’s shoulders,
and hefted him over the ledge with supple, breathtaking strength.

Cordelia turned to me. “You next.”

Her face was half man, half woman. Tired. The face of a fifty-year-old survivor who
understood tomorrow she’d wake, feel the pain, and somehow, get out of bed, make the
coffee, and go on. A life of compromises and buried dreams … “He knew,” she said shortly,
as if the words hurt her to say. “He knew it was you.” Cordelia’s eyelids dropped
and her lips twisted. Then her hands bit into my waist, and I was tossed high. Biggs
plucked me from the air, and deposited me on a floor that shouldn’t have felt solid,
but did. Mist swirled around my ankles.

I knelt, shaken, beside my mate.

Oh Sweet Fae Stars. The closer I was to the gate, the better I felt. Was it my imagination
or was Trowbridge’s heartbeat a little stronger? I flattened my ear on his chest.
Yes, not by much, but perhaps by just enough. Merenwyn’s wind reached for my hair,
tugging it with coaxing fingers, urging me to turn my head and follow it to Merenwyn.
Its touch enslaved. Seduced. Beckoned.

Merry made a sudden, sharp movement against my breast. A short spiked strand shot
out seeking a handhold. She found it, twined herself around the rope of gold, and
rappelled upward, frantic and clumsy in haste. “Careful,” I said, reaching for her.
She swarmed over my hand, evaded my grimy fingers, and scuttled onto my shoulder.
I tucked in my chin and twisted my head, so we could be eye to eye, and then said,
“We’re going to make it. I can feel it.”

The light inside her amber core flashed orange.

Danger. “What? Where?”

She stabbed a bristling leaf over my shoulder. I turned my head. Behind us, Biggs
was crouched over, his hands reaching down for Lou.

My stomach tightened. “If I could, I’d kill her for what she has done to you … if
I had ever thought she was that dangerous…” My voice trailed off. A lie. I’d always
known she was deadly, but I hadn’t anticipated her hurting me or mine. So I mixed
a morsel of truth with a tidbit of false promise and fed it to my friend. “I can’t
do anything to her because we need her. Once we get to Merenwyn…” A weak threat. Lou
would be stronger in the Fae realm.

Merry’s ivy prickled needle-sharp. “Listen!” her body silently screamed. Her stone
pulsated with hues. Red. Purple. Orange. A hysterical flurry of flash cards. Love.
Pain. Danger. “Listen!” She gestured to the water once more.

My eyes searched the pond. Water, iron-tainted. Floating body. George staring up at
us from the log. Lilies …

“Oh Sweet Jesus!” Biggs exclaimed, recoiling from Lou’s limp body.

The mist licked over my aunt’s torso, sipping at the Fae in her, but Lou lay quietly
under its caress. She was oddly limp, her face frozen in an expression of fixed hunger.
Her mouth slightly open, her eyes unblinking.

“What is it?” I heard Cordelia say.

No, no, no.
My hands crept up to cover my mouth.

“She’s dead,” said Biggs. “I didn’t do it! I put her on the floor and she … was just
gone!” He touched her chest, his face appalled.

A sweeping tsunami of cold horror swallowed me whole. “She killed Mannus,” I said,
feeling the panic rise. “I forgot about the mate bond. I knew it was hurting her,
but with everything that happened … oh my Goddess, I wanted her dead. I wanted to
kill her myself. And now she
is
dead and she can’t guide us.” My eyes flew to the gate. “Without her, we can’t find
Merenwyn. I don’t know the way. You have to know the way! The winds … we’ll get lost
in them.”
“An endless hell for the wrong traveler,”
Mad-one had said. Those voices! Not demons from the land in-between, but lost souls
screaming from within the portal walls.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

My mate’s life was leaking away, right here, while I knelt beside him, staring in
growing hysteria at Merenwyn’s green fields. Yes, Trowbridge’s pulse was a little
stronger. His breathing a little less shallow. But for how long? Not forever. A little
bit of fairy juice riding a current of air couldn’t be expected to support his life—and
for crap’s sake, mine—for eternity. Its healing touch was ephemeral and unreliable;
not a cure, only a promise of one.

Merry stretched an insistent tendril toward the water. “What
is it
with the freakin’ water!” My gaze roved over it and found the answer.

One Royal Amulet, floating on a lily pad, at the deep end of the pond.

I raised my hand, pointed my finger, and said, “Up.” And nothing happened. “Up!” There
was no itch in my fingers. No exultant rush up through my veins. My magic slept. “He
will have to wait.” Merry sent up a color flare of distress. “I don’t have any juice
left, and he’s safe enough now…” My voice floundered. Merry jabbed at the Royal Amulet
again. “I
know
, Merry.” Her jabs turned into stabs—furious, pointed, and urgent. “What do you
want
from me? Can’t you see…” The tip of her leaf touched my mouth. Lay there trembling,
the same shushing gesture she’d used to calm me when I was little. She pointed to
herself, then to Bridge, and then, finally, to the portal.

Hope flamed inside me. “You know the way. You can take Trowbridge to Merenwyn. You’ll
get him to the Pool of Life…”

My words dribbled away, because a warning blip of purple began throbbing in her center.
She turned a leaf flat to me, poised it like a crossing guard’s sign. Then very slowly,
she tipped the leaf toward me, and then down to the Royal Amulet floating on his precarious
leaf.

Ah. I saw it then. A trade.

“You’ll do it if I stay here and rescue your prince.” She made a go-on motion. “Help
him heal … keep him safe from harm. Sure, Merry, I can…” I could hear myself speak.
The glibness. The quick assurance.

And something strange happened. It felt like I stood outside myself for a second,
and saw all of us. My unmoving mate. Cordelia’s heavy frown. The gate’s glittering
vision of Merenwyn. And me, the girl with the quick, meaningless promise, with an
amulet perched on her shoulder.

And in so doing, I saw the thorn in me. The thing Merry already had recognized.

The balance of our future relied on the value of the one quality I’d forgotten I’d
ever owned.

My word of honor.

My cheeks burned with shame.

“But for that to work,” I said, quietly, “you’d have to believe that I’d keep to my
word. That I’d feed him and protect him. That I wouldn’t forget or rationalize that
it was too difficult.” I stared at Merenwyn, where all hope lay, but inside my mind’s
eye, I was seeing something far less pretty.

All the lies. All the twists from truth, and the quick-steps away from responsibilities.

“I know the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes I make the wrong choice,
but it’s never because … That’s a lie, isn’t it? I don’t make decisions based on right
or wrong. I always opt for the easiest thing.” I touched my mate, and felt the coolness
of his flesh. Then I slanted my eyes to my friend. “I’ve lied to you at least a hundred
times. And to others, whom I love, I’ve lied … And broken promises more times than
I can count … forgotten stuff I shouldn’t have … but if you can tru—” I looked away
and swallowed hard, but the burning ache in my throat didn’t go away. I felt her heat
warm my shoulder, encouraging me to go on.

It came out raw. “Trust me. Just this one more time. Please, Merry. Trust my word.
I will rescue him and care for him as if he were my Trowbridge.”

For the space of two of Bridge’s wet breaths, she thought about it. And then from
deep inside her, I saw a warm dark ember of red.

I held out my palm.

She crawled into it and curled a leaf around my thumb.

My chin crumpled.

*   *   *

And so, the last of the worst.

Cordelia cradled Trowbridge’s head as I carefully drew Merry’s chain over his matted
curls. I hid my sadness with lowered eyes, and nestled her in the hollow of his throat.
A warm pulse, a little cradle to keep her snug as they soared to Merenwyn. She shortened
her chain, and tightened her grip, twining her tendrils securing links of her gold
necklace.
Seat belt on, ready for the perilous winds.