Cassandra's Dilemma (20 page)

But she would. He promised her they would be lovers.

Her pussy clenched.

And best not to focus on that too much.

“Okay, my therapy session is a success.” She thought about letting go of their hands, but neither seemed in any hurry to let her go. They sat there, like a triangle, gazing at each other.

“So,” she murmured. “You brought me here to tell me something? I don’t want to sound pushy, but we are on a deadline.”

Jacob turned a flinty gaze on Helcyon. “You’re up, Elf. Tell her the story.”

Animosity rocked their balance, the two men—the Wizard and the Elf—glaring daggers at each other. The angry silence stretched, fraught with unspoken recriminations and barely checked hostility.

“You’re enemies.” Enemies. A three-syllable word that shivered with the potential for violence. She pressed past that, urging them both to talk with a squeeze to each hand. “The Fae father children with human women…”

“Elves father children with human women.” Jacob’s tone remained gentle in its correction, but his fingers bit into hers, holding fast. She couldn’t be sure if he was seeking or offering comfort.

“So none of the other Fae father children with human women?” Could this just be a genetic thing? It wasn’t like humans didn’t have racial problems or issues with mixed races. It seemed very 1950 to her, but hell, it happened.

“They do—sometimes, though it is forbidden.” Helcyon spoke before Jacob could offer his opinion once more. “The Wizarding lines are products of Elven males mating with human females. At first, it was only one or two, often during the great celebrations, the Solstices, the Beltane, the Ostara, and these children were special. Their fathers and their fathers’ comrades would tutor them. They would grow to be leaders of men, guiding hands to keep the children of men away from the darkness.”

Helcyon sighed. He looked away from Jacob and Cassie to look up at the stars. An inexorable sadness drifted across his features, turning his lips down and his glittering gaze flat. An ache curled around Cassie’s heart, strangling it.

“One or two children per generation, it was acceptable. It provided guardianship to areas that Underhill did not always touch. Occasionally, the darkness escapes from Underhill. If left unchecked, it can ravage the land, destroying human settlement after human settlement. If we don’t learn about it quickly enough, entire populations of humans could be wiped out.”

“So they created soldiers out of their children?” Cassie chewed at her lower lip. Even a pretty face could mask a monster. What else did one label someone who created children purely for the purpose of war? “Did they not care what happened to their children?”

Helcyon shook his head, a gesture that shucked away the sadness on his gaze, displacing it the way a dog shakes off water. “You misunderstand, Cassandra. Initially, the Elves who fathered children did not do so to create weapons.”

“
At first
,” Jacob said sourly.

“At first.” Helcyon sighed. Shame stained his features. The breeze pushed his long, dark hair around his face, shrouding his visage. “Yes, at first it was not the intention of any of my kind to father soldiers in our own private war. But an advantage was seen. An advantage that allowed our warriors to sate their own needs while fulfilling a greater purpose.”

Cassie stared at Helcyon, mouth agape. She understood the Fae were older than humans and mired in ways that seemed antiquated and medieval. But this bordered on barbarism.

“Do you seriously believe that?”

“I have never been fond of the practice. But the Wizards, sweet Cassandra, the Wizards could protect other humans. They were born with gifts, with magic, and they could do more for their people than we could. They could be among them. They could be with them. They are
human
.”

“I beg to differ. We’re not human. We look human. We sound human. We can walk among humans. But we’re always apart. We can see what they can’t. We can feel what they can’t. We’re
different
.” Jacob leaned forward, muscles in his chest and arms tightening. “You can tell yourself any fairy tale you want about trying to do the right thing and that we fit in better with the humans, but we didn’t—we could pretend with them, but when we acted, when we had to act to defend them, they grew afraid of us or they hated us or both.”

Anguish coated Jacob’s words. Raw anguish. He’d experienced that loathing, that loss of friendship. In high school, Cassie’s best friend turned on her over an innocuous act on Cassie’s part. Bev had fallen for one of the football players but always seemed to swallow her tongue when he was around. Cassie encouraged his pursuit, wanting Bev to be happy. Cassie had no idea that he’d only gone along with it because he wanted to score with her. She’d had no idea until he’d spewed that venom at Bev, bathing their friendship in acid.

She had tried to do the right thing. Intentions were a bitter comfort to the lonely.

“Our children did not have an easy path.”

Cassie sighed. Helcyon’s words just added more kindling to the already-flaming anger between the two.

“No, they didn’t. Kind of you to acknowledge it.”

Anger surged with the tide, the dark skies stained red on the horizon, and Cassie squeezed their hands where she still held them. Jacob’s face betrayed his pain, despite schooling his features. He couldn’t hide the emotions that churned beneath the surface. Helcyon’s guilt was not subterfuge nor was his bewilderment at Jacob’s reaction.

Cassie wasn’t sure how to defuse the situation. Helcyon’s words drifted across her mind. His guilt and sadness seemed genuine, particularly when he said our children.

Our children.

“Helcyon, have you any children?”

Silence thundered down. Cassie stared at Helcyon, waiting for his response. Jacob gazed steadily at Cassie. She could sense his belief that she was about to be disappointed. It was odd how easily she could read both of them in this place.

“Helcyon?” she asked again. She was terrified of the answer.
What if he says yes? Can I hold it against him? I barely know him. Why does it feel like a betrayal?
She sucked in a deep breath, avoiding Jacob’s gaze and trying to rein in her churning emotions.

“No,” he answered finally, reluctantly.

“Wrong question, Cassie.” Jacob lifted her hand to his lips and kissed just behind one knuckle, extinguishing the relief racing through her. “Ask him if he
had
any.”

Cassie debated pulling away from both of them and running down the moon-drenched beach. But her spine stiffened at the thought, stiffened and straightened. She wasn’t a child. She wasn’t having her fairy-tale hopes and dreams dashed away.

Life was about the hard times, the difficult choices, and the strength to face both. Her mother instilled that in her from a young age. All the waffling, crazy thoughts, and rampant emotion stilled within her. Lifting her chin, she canted her head to catch Helcyon’s gaze and to hold it.

“Have you ever had any children?”

The length of the pause between her question and his answer was all the answer she needed.

“Yes. But the Danae forbid her personal court from consorting with humans until now.” Helcyon looked very unhappy with the admission, but he didn’t look away from her gaze. The moonlight reflected off the verdant green in his eyes, turning them an opaque sheen of silver.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a very long time ago, Cassandra.” If he was surprised by her sympathy, he didn’t show it.

“The Danae forbids it now. But she didn’t always.” Jacob scooted forward until the heat of him washed over Cassie. Her reluctance to face his anger paled in the need that swam up over his nearness.

Stop it. Stop thinking about sex. Stop thinking about their bodies. Just think about the situation and what needs to be dealt with. You can twist the sheets up with them later when you’ve solved this dilemma.

“Why?” Cassie pulled her hands away from both of them. Her momentary reluctance to release them drove the desire to do just that. She needed to stop hanging on to them.

“Wait.” She held up her hands and slid to her feet. Jacob’s heat was delicious, and the scents of cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt were making it hard to think. She needed all her faculties, even those deviating to some
Supernaturals Gone Wild
beach blanket party.

Three steps away from them, the air in her lungs cleared. She wasn’t drowning in their musk. Her mind sharpened, and the sheen of desire glistening on every thought evaporated.

Better.

“Okay.” She fisted her hands onto her hips and turned to face both of them. “I need to understand this better, and you’re both being very careful about what you tell me. Wait.” One hand shot up to stifle words that both men looked about to speak. “I get that you’ve got secrets, and you’ve probably been keeping secrets since God was a boy. I get that. I also get that there’s a threat, a real threat out there, and that the two of you fighting and picking at each other isn’t going to help us.”

“Then we leave the Wizard…”

“Then dump the Elf…”

Any other time, their
Odd Couple
bickering might have been adorable. At the moment, it just aggravated her. An aggravation that she was strangely buoyed by, but Cassie left that to examine for another time. The annoyance was giving her another much-needed jolt of clarity.

“I am not leaving Jacob,” Cassie informed Helcyon with a stern frown, but she didn’t miss the smile that pulled Jacob’s mouth wide and experienced a small pang of remorse because her next words would quash it.

“And I am not
dumping
Helcyon. You two want to help me? Then you’re going to have to get over this…whatever it is. Put it aside. Bury it. Let it go. Tell me why the Danae forbids consorting with humans now.” Because if the Danae really did forbid intimate relations, or any relations, with humans, it made no sense why she would want her people out in the world.

And that would be a question that Cassie would ask her.

“Why does the Danae forbid it now? What happened?”

“Ask the Wizard.” Helcyon’s voice thickened with anger and frustration. Cassie looked from the quiet anger on his countenance to the pensive expression on Jacob’s. Dread tasted like a salt penny on her tongue. The flavor was wrong, it didn’t belong in this vision of the world, but she bit down on it, waiting.

“The Inquisition happened,” Jacob said. “We murdered them.”

“Them?” Cassie asked, horror unfolding within her.

Jacob’s tortured gaze met hers, unflinching. “We killed them. All of them.”

Chapter Thirteen

“In the 1400s, two Wizards found a way to punish the Fae for their slights against us—for fathering and abandoning us. They were both fathered by Elves. Neither met their fathers. Both their mothers were marked as scarlet women for having children out of wedlock.” Jacob exhaled. “They didn’t have pretty childhoods. They were raised by the Church and taught from the beginning to abhor magic, demons, and the devil in all its forms. On their eighteenth birthdays, they began to manifest their abilities and their fathers appeared to them—to teach them.”

“Oh.” Cassie sucked her lower lip into her mouth. Her stomach hurt at the emotions chasing across Jacob’s expression. Her skin was ice cold and clammy.

“Needless to say, the two Wizards were furious, terrified, and confused. They helped draft the Malleus Maleficarum. When it was published, the treatise was used against wise women, witches, and…” Jacob hesitated, but he didn’t need to say anything else. “…the Fae.”

“The Wizards killed them.” Horror filled her.

“We killed them all. The women were easiest to target—the Elven women particularly. The Maleficarum contained enchantments that bound them—they were drowned, stoned, burned, and hanged. The Wizards around the world, with all their daddy issues, struck back at them.” Jacob sighed, exhausted and drained.