Blood Kin (38 page)

Guy’s chest still rose and fell. Just. He was bleeding, though the blood collecting beneath him was not nearly the size of the pool surrounding my father’s corpse. I had to stop the bleeding. I tore frantically at my robe, but the silk resisted. “Somebody fetch a healer,” I said again.

“Come away, child.” It was the queen’s voice. “We will attend to him.”

“You have to save him,” I said brokenly.

“We will do what we can.” Her voice was still cool, unfeeling. I wondered if she felt anything at all. Ever. “Attend to the victor,” she said to someone behind me, and then someone lifted me to my feet, arms around my shoulders guiding me away. I looked back to see Guy, but he was surrounded by Fae, hidden from view.

I couldn’t stop crying. Tears streamed down my face no matter what I tried to do. I couldn’t see, couldn’t think. The arms at my shoulder tugged at me and I followed blindly. The noise of the court vanished suddenly and someone passed me a handkerchief.

I mopped at my eyes, hiccupping in the effort to stop my sobs. When I could see enough to take in my surroundings, I saw the queen watching me, her veils white and sheer.

I could see her face, finally. Her eyes were a deep green, like the needles of a Hallows tree. And her hair, what I could see of it, gleamed bronze like the streaks in mine. She looked more like me than my own mother.

I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to process anything more. I felt dizzy, sick from fear and grief, my eyes burning from the tears.

“Is there something we can get you, Holly?” the queen asked gently.

“Yes,” I gulped against another wave of rising tears. “I want my mother.”

* * *

“Mama,” I said from the doorway.

Reggie turned from her seat by the bed. “She’s asleep.” She blinked tired eyes at me and once again I was struck by the thought that Reggie resembled my mother far more than I.

Fair and girlish. Nothing like me.

I watched Mama sleeping. Spoke softly to Reggie while we waited, apologizing to her. The Fae hadn’t let me see them immediately; they had wanted to see to Mama and to Reggie. And they’d done something to me that had sent me into a deep sleep when I couldn’t stop crying. I slept for two days.

When I woke I asked again for my mother. And for Guy. Guy, I was told, was still being treated for his wounds. That started the tears again. Any wound that took several days for the Fae to heal was near fatal.

I wanted to be happy he was still alive, but I couldn’t help dreading that he would still die. Even if he lived, I had lost him.

Mama stirred on the bed, lifted her head, pale blond hair tumbling down around her face. Though really it was now more silver than blond, I saw with a pang. Only seventeen when she had had me. Only just forty-two now. Too young to look so old.

Her face was horribly thin, the lines around her mouth and eyes standing out starkly. Her cheeks were pale and her eyes reddened, as mine were, from crying.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, and the pain in her voice tore at me. Too close to the pain in my own heart. All these years and it seemed I hadn’t really learned the most important lesson I should have learned from her. Not to fall in love.

“Yes, Mama,” I said gently, walking to her. Reggie relinquished the chair and I sat and took my mother’s hand. “He is.”

Sticklike fingers tightened on mine and tears bubbled over. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t think there was anything I really could say. She had lost the man she loved, and whether I thought him worthy of love or not, that hurt. As I was discovering.

I held her hand and stroked her hair and eventually the sobs stopped and she slept again. At some point Reggie had slipped away. I was alone in the room by the time I’d stopped watching Mama’s chest to make sure it still rose and fell.

Or rather, not quite alone. The queen stood by the bed, gazing down at my mother. Her veils were white. Near transparent. I could almost see her face unobstructed. Still too beautiful to look at for long.

“How sick is she?” I asked.

“Very. Your father . . .” She paused, seemed to reconsider. “The last few days have been very hard on her.”

“Can’t you heal her?” The queen had the power to do almost anything. I had brought Cormen’s plot to her attention—telling her what I knew of his connection to Ignatius and the attacks on the Templars. How he’d set me to spy on Simon. What I had discovered. Simon and Guy might hate me for that last part, but I had decided that the truth was required. The queen had a better chance of defending herself if she knew what might be coming. She was the only one who knew I’d found anything at all. She was even now, no doubt, working on finding out who my father’s fellow conspirators were.

Politics. I was sick to death of politics. I wanted to go somewhere where no one cared about politics, buy the little house I’d always wanted. Take my mother home. Surely the queen owed me that much. She could give my mother back to me.

“Not if she doesn’t wish to heal. Her heart is broken. I can mend her body, but it won’t help if her mind wants to die.”

And there was the thing I hadn’t wanted to face. Could my mother live with Cormen gone? “Broken because of
him
.” The words were sour in my mouth.

“Yes.” She paused again, and then sighed, the sound a breath of silk in the air. “We are an arrogant race, Holly. We live so long, it’s hard to be otherwise.”

“It doesn’t make it right. To treat people as though they’re worth nothing.”

“My court is fickle and I have been binding them to my will, to this treaty, for a long time. There are some smaller fights I cannot fight while that is so.”

“My mother’s life is a smaller fight?”

She nodded. “To me, yes.” Her tone was implacable.

“The greater good,” I said wearily. I was sick to death of the greater good. It had lost me everything.

“Yes.”

“Can I take her home?” I didn’t want to leave her here, amongst those who thought her nothing important, merely a human, gone in a fleeting moment.

“She won’t last long. She doesn’t want to.”

“I know.” I bit my lip, breathed deep before I continued. “But she’ll be loved.” My voice cracked on the last word.

“There’s an alternative,” the queen said.

“Oh?”

“Leave her here. She can sleep a long time here and not grow old.”

“How long?”

“I can’t tell you that. If her heart mends, she will wake up. If not she will sleep until she fades away.”

“So lose her now, have her perhaps wake in a hundred years after I am gone, or die even longer from now than that? How is that better?” I fought against the tears that threatened yet again. Mama would be lost to me either way. All that I’d risked and fought for and I was never going to have what I wanted. The home with the peaceful garden. Mama healthy and happy, smiling at me.

The man.

“Her dreams will be happy, I can promise you that much.”

Happiness. There’d been little enough of that in my mother’s life since Cormen left us. Could I really be selfish enough to deny it to her now? Surely she deserved that much?

Surely I deserved to be happy too,
part of me protested. To have my mother with me, even for a short time?

I blinked away tears. More tears. I felt as though I’d cried more in the last few days than I had in the last ten years. Then I looked up at the queen. “Can you wake her up for me?”

She nodded. “Of course.” She leaned forward, touched Mama’s forehead lightly, then drew back.

My mother opened her eyes, the faded blue lighting a little when she saw me. “Holly,” she said softly. “My Holly girl.”

Then I saw it, memory flooding across her face. Loss. Pain. I couldn’t hold her to that. I clenched my jaw, willing the tears away, leaned forward, kissed her cheek. Her skin was wrinkled—more than it should be at her age—but soft, and the scent of her filled my lungs. My mother. My throat ached. “Mama, I have to go. But you can rest here for a while, if you want.”

She smiled again, touched my cheek. “All right. I’m tired, Holly.” Her fingers closed around mine. “You’re a good girl. I always loved you, you know.”

The tears rose again, my throat tightening more than it had when the geas had ridden me. The pain was worse too. “I love you too, Mama. You rest now.”

I looked around to the queen, eyes beseeching. Then held my mother’s hand while her breath gentled to the slow rhythm of sleep and her grip loosened around mine. “Sweet dreams, Mama.”

When I stopped crying, the queen was still there, her veils floating around her. Her expression, what I could see of it, was gentle.

Reggie touched my shoulder. “She looks peaceful,” she said.

I nodded, reached for her hand. “I want to go home now.”

“You can stay here. You are both under my protection, but Summerdale is the safest place for you.”

I shook my head. “Thank you, but no. My life is out there.” I rubbed my throat where the absence of my father’s chain still felt strange. I’d been able to take it off after his death. I’d given it to the queen to be buried with him. I didn’t want any reminder of him and what he’d done to me.

I stared down at Mama. My life. What was left of it anyway. Reggie squeezed my hand and I forced a smile.
Nothing for it, Holly girl.
I had to go on. Or I’d be the one who might as well sleep forever. “Besides, we have a diva waiting for her clothes.”

The queen smiled at that. “Very well. Is there anything else I can do for you, Holly Evendale? I am in your debt still.”

“Yes,” I replied, and then I told her what I wanted.

Chapter Twenty-four

GUY

Getting
information out of the Fae was somewhat akin to getting blood from a stone. I knew Cormen was dead, but no one would tell me anything about Holly or her mother.

Or even when they might be letting me go home.

For all I knew, the City could have burned to the ground, news from outside Summerdale being another thing my Fae healers didn’t wish to discuss.

The healing wound in my side still hurt, which I took to be a measure of how lucky I was to be alive. A week in Fae care and I was still in pain.

I should probably be dead.

I was starting to feel as though I would die from frustrated boredom when the door to my sunny little prison cell of a room opened and the queen walked in.

I tried not to gape. I hadn’t expected to see the Veiled Queen again any time soon. I bowed my head. “Forgive me if I don’t get up, Your Majesty. Your healers have threatened me with dire consequences if I rise from bed without their permission.”

I kept a wary eye on her veils, but today they were yellow and green and pale pink. Like spring. They were almost transparent, revealing her face and green, green eyes.

She came toward the bed, sat in the chair the healers used.

This close, the power around her made the air buzz against my skin. The hairs on my arms stood on end.

A cozy chat with the Fae Queen? Perhaps I should’ve let Holly’s bastard father kill me after all.

“Perhaps I can do something about that,” she said as I stared at her expectantly. “After you and I discuss some things.”

I managed not to wince. Just. “Your Majesty?”

“Holly has told me of your brother’s activities. His and the vampire’s,” the queen said.

I nodded. I’d expected that much. You didn’t lie to the Veiled Queen if asked, and I hadn’t expected the queen wouldn’t ask. “She told you the truth. He’s looking for a cure.” My fool brother. How much of this lay on his head? How much on Lucius’? How much on those foolish enough to think the four races could live in peace in the first place? Like the woman seated beside me.

“The treaty negotiations start in a few weeks. You tell the sunmage to be ready.”

Ready for what? To present his cure to the world? As far as I knew, he didn’t exactly have one yet. If he said that, then the Blood would be even more eager to kill him. “Yes, Your Majesty.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

Her head tilted. “You don’t approve of what Simon is doing?” She sounded surprised.

“No. I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think it will cause more trouble. I don’t think we should be doing anything that will encourage people to choose the Night World.”

“You think that’s what a cure would do?”

“Yes. If you take away the consequence that frightens people, then I think more of them will be stupid enough to give in to their curiosity. And that won’t be good for anyone.”

“You and your brother have different views of the world,” the queen said, her voice curious.

“My brother’s an idealist. I have more sense than that.”

Her head tilted, veils fluttering. “Strange words from a man who’s dedicated his life to protecting people.”

“That’s not idealism. It’s practicality. Someone has to stand between the Night World and the humans.”

“Yet you believe in the possibility of a better world.”

“I believe that that’s most likely to be in the next life, my lady.” Though I found myself curiously happy that I hadn’t yet discovered if that theory was true or not. My world was fucked up, sure enough, but I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. Not while there was still work to do.

“You don’t have much faith in people themselves, then?” She sounded amused.

“I’ve seen a lot of people not worthy of faith, Your Majesty.” Including the man I’d killed in front of her. But Cormen was just the latest in a long line. A line I was growing weary of.

“I see. Then perhaps, I can do a little to restore some of your faith,” she said. “Hold out your hands, Guy.”

I looked down at my hands where they rested on the counterpane. My journey from the Door—of which I now had only the haziest memory—had torn my palms half to shreds. Cormen had added to the tally of scars on my body. But the hells-damned beast tattoos had somehow survived intact.

“Hold out your hands,” the queen repeated. Her voice commanded obedience.

I lifted my hands. She took them in hers. “I bring you a gift, Guy,” she said.

“Oh?” For some reason my heart was hammering, blood roaring in my ears. “From whom?”

“From one who could have chosen to use the gift for herself,” the queen said gently. “She could have chosen my protection or my favor.”

“Holly?” I said somewhat stupidly. Holly, who always had one eye on the deal, who knew how to make the best of a situation for herself? Why would Holly turn down the Fae queen’s gift? “Is she still here?”

I didn’t know what I wanted the answer to be. Did I want to see her? I’d been so angry. I’d hurt her. Part of me was still angry, but killing Cormen had gone some way to assuage my rage.

“She and Regina have returned to the City.”

“Only the two of them? Where’s her mother?”

“Her mother will stay with us for a while. She took the death of the sa’Inviel hard.” The queen’s voice hardened on Cormen’s name. “She does not want to live without him.”

Holly’s mother had stayed here to die? Hell’s balls. She’d done everything she could to save her mother and now she was losing her anyway? I closed my eyes for a minute, thought about Edwina, lost so long ago, and yet still the hurt seemed new.

Now Holly was going through that same pain.

“I don’t want it,” I said suddenly. “Whatever she asked for. Heal her mother.”

“I can’t do that,” the queen said gently. “I cannot change a person’s will to live. And the boon is Holly’s to give, not yours.”

I was the one who’d bloody well killed the traitor. Where was my fucking boon?

The queen laughed suddenly, as though she’d heard my thoughts, the sound beautiful as a spring day. “Let us proceed.”

Her hands tightened around mine. Warmth flowed over me, and the air suddenly filled with the smell of every good thing I knew. My vision blurred, colors flashing before my eyes as though I were crying, though there were no tears. It felt very different from Simon’s healing. Different even from Bryony’s. Vaster. As though it could sweep me away in its tide.

“There,” the queen said. She let go of my hands as my vision cleared.

I stared down at my hands where my crosses glowed, fresh and red and unmarred, looking as though nothing had ever happened to them. “Bryony said tattoos couldn’t be removed,” I said, wondering if I was seeing things.

“I didn’t remove them. I restored them.” The queen flicked one of her floating veils back with the snap of a hand, the gesture reminding me suddenly of Bryony tossing her head in irritation.

I hid a smile.

“Besides, Bryony sa’Eleniel is not Queen of the Veiled World.”

“No, Your Majesty,” I murmured, still staring at my hands. My side didn’t hurt. “Holly asked you to do this?”

“She was most insistent.”

“But why?” I didn’t understand. Why would Holly choose this over protection for herself and Reggie? I was a means to an end to her. A way to get to Simon. A tool to help her save her mother. Or was I?

The queen shifted in her chair, her veils turning even brighter shades of spring. “She said she wanted you to have your life back.”

HOLLY

The return to warmer weather hadn’t improved the smell in Seven Harbors any. The smell of rotting food and unwashed bodies and other things I didn’t want to think about carried on the warm night breeze and seemed to settle around me in the little sheltered niche I’d found between two gables.

Nor did warmer weather really make hanging around on rooftops at midnight any more comfortable. Though at least now I could be happier with my client. I’d chosen a side. Maybe a foolish choice, but the last few weeks had changed me. The treaty negotiations would begin soon and the City was going to change one way or another.

I wanted it to be for the better. Even if that made life more dangerous for me. Besides, working like a madwoman kept me from thinking too much about Guy.

Or rather, I hoped that it would . . . eventually. Hanging around on rooftops involved entirely too much time to think. To remember. To regret.

I knew Guy was back. That he was alive. But I hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t tried to see him. And he hadn’t come looking for me.

That told me all I needed to know.

One day it might not hurt so damned much. I wiped my face as I stared down at the windows I was meant to be watching. This time, I hadn’t been so lucky. The shutters were closed. But my charms were in place and hopefully recording the words being spoken between one of Ignatius’ circle and one of Henri’s little conclave of disgruntled Beastlings. The Veiled Queen might be perfectly capable of hunting out the traitors in her court, but I—and Father Cho—wanted to know exactly how far the plot reached.

Whether Lucius’ attack on Simon was the beginnings of it or whether the Blood had formed a new plan after Lucius had died. Knowledge was power. And the humans would need power at the negotiations. I didn’t know if Simon was going to come forward with his research, but I wanted to help arm those who would support him if he did.

Which was why I was up here on another rooftop, soaking up the reek of Seven Harbors, at Father Cho’s direction.

Working for the Templars, Holly girl
. Who would’ve thought it?

I smiled bitterly. I was working for the Templars, yes, but the only one of their order I wanted to see was forever out of my reach.

Something creaked above me and I glanced upward. A man’s silhouette loomed on the rooftop. I started and almost lost my footing. But I’d learned my lesson and I was firmly tied in place. Of course, that meant I couldn’t get away quickly if I needed to.
You’re invisible,
I reminded myself, staring up at the figure.
He can’t see you
.

Then something arced through the air toward me. I put out a hand and caught it by reflex. Felt the buzz of the charm. Felt my own charm stutter and die. Saw my hand blink into solidity in front of my face.

Lords of hell. He’d killed my charm. I tugged at the knot at my waist as my pulse sped.

“Good catch, darlin’.”

I froze. I knew that voice. Though a roof in Seven Harbors was about the last place I’d ever expected to hear it.

I pitched my voice low. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Guy said. “Come on up.”

I felt my jaw drop, closed it with a snap, reached for the razor in my boot, and sliced the fool rope. Knots be damned. I felt my way up the roof to the ridge where Guy perched.

“Are you trying to get us both killed?” I demanded in a whisper. “Anyone could see us.” I tried not to stare at his face, not to drink him in. “How did you know where to find me anyway?”

Guy pushed back the hood covering his pale hair. Making us even more visible. I fought the urge to slap him. Or kiss him. Or both.

“There’s a window open on an empty room on the other side,” I said. “Follow me. And be careful. There’s no one to catch you.”

His soft laugh made my heart clutch. I told myself not to be foolish. Father Cho had probably sent him to give me another mission.

Still, my hands shook a little as I swung down to the railing outside the window and slid myself through to safety. I stood in the dark room, heart pounding, waiting for Guy to follow.

It didn’t take him long. Apparently it wasn’t his first time climbing on a roof judging by the ease with which he came through the window.

He moved easily, more confidently than I had. He must be fully healed. My heart clutched again.

“Are there lights in this place?” Guy asked.

I nodded, stupid when he probably couldn’t see me. I had a lantern stashed by the door. I lit it with unsteady fingers and carried it to the middle of the room, hanging it from the rope I’d used to ensure that the window stayed open.

Only then did I let myself turn and look at Guy.

Whole.