Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (140 page)

Cade must have been waiting for something, because he continued to stand at the door, looking straight ahead. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I knew his eyes were trained on me. After a few more seconds I realized he was waiting for me to give him permission to enter my room. My dark, cluttered, too-many-personal-things-left-out-for-him-to-see room. I bit my lip. Should I let him come in? I glanced around in embarrassment. Dirty clothes were scattered everywhere, my desk was untidy and my bathroom could have used a good cleaning. I was dressed in nothing but some unfeminine boxer shorts and a hole-ridden t-shirt, my hair a rat’s nest and my face looking like a demented artist’s pallet.

I glanced back up again. Cade still stood there but Fergus seemed to have wandered off, perhaps to act as a lookout. I wasn’t ready to face Cade yet; at least I didn’t think I was. I still wasn’t sure what his intentions were. From the beginning he had seemed to be there to help me, but in retrospect, why would he? I was a stranger and his job was to round up wayward Faelorehn and the lost creatures of the Otherworld to bring them back to where they belonged. So why hadn’t he done that with me? Why hadn’t he returned me to the Otherworld when he had found me to begin with? There had to be a reason and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know that reason yet. The Morrigan could have been lying when she had said something about Cade having a mission, but she also could have been telling the truth.

I sighed. I shouldn’t let Cade in but the fact that he was waiting for my permission was a good sign. Besides, deep down, I really wanted to know if that had been him on the other side of the dolmarehn. If he had saved me in the end or if it had just been an illusion on my part. And if he had saved me . . . Well, then perhaps he wasn’t as bad as the Morrigan had tried to paint him. And I really wanted to see him again, desperately, if only to hear his voice and simply bask in his presence.

Taking a deep breath, I looked up and nodded once. My door must have been unlocked because he slid it open with a cool swoosh. Funny, I’d been so careful to keep it locked of late . . .

Stepping out of the fog and into my room, Cade delicately pulled back his hood and began to take off his trench coat. He folded it and set it on the small futon against the far wall of my room and padded silently forward. He wore his customary jeans, t-shirt and boots, but there was something about his stance that was off. He was still walking around as if he had been running a marathon every day for the past several weeks.

The lighting was bad in my room, the only brightness coming from the foggy dawn outside and the weak night light in my bathroom. As dark as it was it still couldn’t hide the signs of stress on Cade’s face. I almost gasped when I finally got a good look at him. He was incredibly pale, much more so than the last time I had seen him. Dark circles shadowed his eyes and his breathing even seemed troubled; shallow and uneven. If I didn’t know any better I would have said he’d just been released from a quarantined room after barely surviving a bad case of the Ebola virus.

I cast aside my uncertainty. “Cade,” I whispered, reaching out a hand and forgetting about my ridiculous pajamas.

He grimaced and avoided my touch. That’s right. It wasn’t as if he was
my
boyfriend. Who was I to offer comfort?

“I’m so sorry Meghan,” he whispered, his voice raspy and full of remorse.

I opened my mouth to argue with him but realized he had said nothing worth arguing with.

He ran his hands over his gaunt face and through his hair. If he had been trying to wipe away his weariness, he had failed.

“This is all my fault.” He glanced at my cast-encased leg.

I self-consciously threw my comforter over it and blushed. When had my covers shifted off of me?

“I should have explained more to you, much more, but I didn’t think . . .”

He heaved a sigh of frustration and just barely kept himself from punching the wall. He glanced around my room, spotted my desk chair (strewn with all my sweatshirts and jackets) and dragged it over so that he could sit facing me. My wayward clothing fell off in an accusing manner as he pulled the chair in place. He dropped into it, the legs creaking under his weight.

He rested his elbows on his knees and thrust his hands through his hair again, his face bent towards his lap. I got the impression he wanted to pull his hair out.

An eternity seemed to pass and I had no idea what to say, to do, to think. Just a few short hours ago I was sure Cade wanted nothing to do with me, that he had betrayed me and had been using me all along. But his behavior now proved otherwise.

Finally he spoke, though he still sat with his head in his hands.

“You should never have crossed over into the Otherworld.”

His statement was so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.

“And because I was so arrogant and preoccupied with my own troubles, I never stopped to consider that
she
would figure it out. It’s my fault, all my fault.”

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going; Cade talking as if I wasn’t sitting right in front of him and not explaining anything he was saying. He didn’t sound right, as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders; as if Atlas had given Cade his burden and now he searched me out as someone to confide in. Only, Cade seemed to be confessing, not confiding.

Eventually, he sat up and looked me straight in the eye. His eyes, usually always so dark green, looked impossibly pale now. Pale and empty, just like the rest of him. What had happened to make him look so sickly? A pang of fear shot through me. Yes, I may have been slightly angry with him and terribly confused, but that part of me, the part that created my sentimental emotions, reminded me that no matter what he said or did, I would still love him.

“Meghan, do you know what a geis is?” he finally said.

Uh,
geis?
“No,” I answered honestly. To my great relief he elaborated.

“A geis is like a taboo, something that you must never do or else there will be dire consequences. It is prevalent throughout the old Irish folk legends, but it was really a safeguard instituted by the Faelorehn when we first crossed over into this world.”

He paused and gave me his characteristic grin. Only, there was too much sadness behind it for me to really enjoy it.

“It kept our kind in check, so that they would not take complete advantage of the human race. It gave us limits, boundaries you could say.”

Okay, I think I got all that, but why was he telling me this now?

He gave a huge sigh and when he spoke to me next, he kept his eyes lowered and his voice soft.

“I have a geis, and so do you. Well, I should say we each had a geis.”

I felt my mouth go dry. “
Had
?”

Cade looked up at me then, his eyes haunted and his mouth grim. He nodded once, and then lowered his eyes again.

“Wait, what do you mean,
had
?”

“You had a geis, and because of me it has been broken.”

“What?” I blurted, sitting up straighter. “What do you mean, my geis is broken? How can someone break their geis if they don’t even know what it is?”

He grimaced again. “Believe me,” he grumbled, “it happens all the time in the Otherworld. Here on earth humanity might call it irony.”

My head was spinning again, and not because of the crazy antibiotics and painkillers the doctors had subscribed for my injuries.

“Cade,” I licked my lips and swallowed my fear, “please explain. What happens if you break your geis?”

He nodded and took a deep breath. “I never thought you would actually come after me, but I should have seen it coming, especially after I learned who had spoken to you . . .”

I cringed. Oh. So he knew that the Morrigan had paid me a visit? I merely nodded for him to go on, once again hoping my bruises hid my red face.

He sat up fully and drew his shoulders back. He gasped and clutched his arm. Without thinking, I reached out to him again.

“No,” he murmured, his eyes drifting shut, “I do not deserve your compassion.”

More stung than anything, I let my arm drop, the hurt written all over my battered face.

“When I tell you, you will understand,” Cade said as way of an explanation.

“In those first few weeks after I discovered you, I came to suspect there was much more to you than I originally thought, Meghan Elam. When all evidence proved as such, I made it my own personal goal to find out as much about you as I could. I tracked down an acquaintance who was able to help me discover who your real parents are. He is the one who suggested you might be Tuatha De and Fomorian. But I have spoken to him since I passed this information on to you, and if he is correct in his most recent discovery, then you are far more than a simple half Tuatha De, half Fomorian castaway stuck in the mortal world.”

I felt a strange shock of fear and delight rush through me. Who was I then?

Cade held up a hand. “It’s just speculation. We have no real proof yet, but the longer I consider it, the more firmly I believe it.”

“Who am I Cade?” I had to know. After learning about the Faelorehn and discovering that I was one of the immortal beings of the Otherworld, I had been dying to know who I was, where I had come from. Who I belonged to.

Cade smiled sadly. “I’m sorry Meghan, but I cannot tell you that. Maybe one day, but not now.”

Severe disappointment hit me first, then anger. I crossed my arms and let my chin drop. Tears pricked at my eyes once again.

“I deserve to know,” I whispered harshly.

“You do,” Cade agreed. “But I cannot tell you. Not now.”

He sounded pained, as if he wished to tell me more than anything. Then it dawned upon me.

“Your geis,” I said simply. He couldn’t tell me because it would break his geis. But hadn’t he implied he had already broken it? Yes, when he had been talking about mine.

Cade nodded. “It is more the consequences of my actions. I violated my own geis and now I must pay. One of my punishments includes keeping certain information to myself. I have no control over this.”

I looked up at him. “How did you break your geis?” I didn’t really expect him to answer, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

He took a long, deep breath, as if he were preparing to brace himself against something terribly unpleasant. “I violated my geis the night that you were attacked, but even much longer before that. What the Morrigan said to you that night was true. It was my job to find you and bring you back, though she didn’t know it would be you in particular I would find. It was sheer luck that I stumbled upon you. When she found out, she wanted you dead.” I gasped and he held up a hand. “Please Meghan, I must tell you this.”

I nodded for him to go on, as shocking and frightening as it all was.

“I stalled, tried to change her mind, did everything I could to get her focused on something else. But she wanted you and she wanted you eliminated. It is hard to kill a Faelorehn and only the gods and goddesses themselves cannot die, but I would not kill you Meghan. I
could
not.”

He took a deep breath and seemed to become lost for a second. Then he started speaking again. “When she found out I would not follow through with her plans, she distracted me with an assignment in the Otherworld. I
hate
myself for that.”

This last part he said so quietly I had to crane my neck to hear it.

“That’s when she enticed you into our world, in order to destroy you. For, you see, in doing so your geis was broken.”

Ah, so we were back to where we’d started.

Cade glanced up at me, a look of determination on his face. “Meghan, I cannot tell you who you are but I can tell you about the geis that was placed upon you. Your parents knew that someday you would be hunted by the Morrigan, so they did what most of our kind do when their child is in danger because of who they are; they sent you to this world. Now your mother was smart. She not only hid you among the humans of this earth, but she placed a geis upon you. And as you now know, no geis comes without a price.”

I nodded, the dread in my stomach starting to coagulate like cottage cheese.

“You would remain safe always from the horrors of the Otherworld, if and only if you never crossed into the borders of Eile. So, because of my foolish reluctance to give you certain information, and because of the Morrigan’s cruel manipulation, you stepped into the Otherworld and broke your geis.”

I didn’t know what to say, and if I was being completely honest, I was a bit confused.

“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “What exactly is,
was
, my geis?”

“Do you remember all the times you were chased or bothered by some Otherworldly creature?” Cade said.

I nodded. How could I forget?

“And did you ever notice how they always stopped short of harming you? As if an invisible shield of protection surrounded you?”

I clenched my hands into fists and thought back. I remembered how the demon goat-man hadn’t been able to touch me, how the raven had slammed into not me, but some force field around me. Even the Cumorrig on that first night I had met Cade . . . Even they hadn’t really been able to quite reach me.

Cade nodded solemnly. “You never would have come to harm. Your geis protected you in this world, but since you have crossed over to the Otherworld and stepped foot on Eile’s soil . . .”

“I am no longer protected.” I looked up at Cade with wide eyes. “I am now free game.” And then something else struck me. “That is why the Morrigan didn’t kill me in the clearing. She knew she couldn’t hurt me here. She knew she had to get me into the Otherworld, to break my geis, to make me vulnerable. That is why she lured me there, not to help you, but-”

I cut myself short when I noticed Cade start. He was giving me his full attention now, gazing at me with those intense eyes of his. “Help me?”

I blushed. Ugh, why couldn’t I stop doing that? I hadn’t planned on telling him all that . . . I cleared my throat and sighed. This time I was the one to lower my eyes.

“Um, yes. She said you needed my help and that I had some special power or gift that could save you.”