Gossamyr (38 page)

"You fear my naked flesh?"

"Fear it? Blessed Mary and all her veils, you really are an
innocent, aren't you?"

"I understand much more than you comprehend. Are you so
unpredictable you cannot look upon a naked woman without lust in your
eyes?"

"That is about the mark of it."

"Bear up, Ulrich. Think of your wife."

"Do not bring Lydia into this, or you slay me with your
unthinking cruelty."

Gossamyr tossed the gown and it landed Ulrich's head.

"Oh Hades."

"Hurry up, soul shepherd, 'tis drafty up here."

"You are naked?"

"Completely." She shrugged her hands over her arms, then
down her thighs. Shiver bumps lifted in her wake. To stand naked so
close to this man... "Start reciting."

"If I do not burn for my past transgressions, surely this one
will cinch the deal for me. Very well! Pix, pax, abraxus!"

With the tip of the dagger Ulrich diagrammed a cross in the air
above his head. Words—that sounded to Gossamyr like utter
nonsense—were spoken with such command she trusted he did know
the spell.

As he began to pulverize the items he'd gathered in the mortar,
she stood and watched, her fate entirely in Ulrich's hands. She
trusted him. They were inexplicably bonded in this quest for truth.
Now, could he give her the answer she needed?

"I need your name."

"What?"

It took all his mortal strength and every moral muscle in his
being to keep from turning to look at the naked woman who stood but a
stride behind him. Ulrich could verily sense her nakedness. He could
feel the swish of the single braid across her bare back and taste the
gooseflesh coating her limbs.

"Your name complete," he forced through tight teeth. "I
must speak it to make you my slave. If you are fée, the spell
will work. If you are mortal, nothing I can command of you will make
you act. You retain your free
will."

"Yes, I... understand."

In the moment of her reluctance Ulrich felt his heart surrender.
He had loved before and he had lost. Who would have thought love
would once again be his to own?

Own? Be you very quick to replace your wife with any fine and
pretty female who befriends you.

No, not my wife any longer. Yet how long must he honor her
memory?

She is not dead, man!

"Ulrich? Yes, erm... Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of
Glamoursiege."

He lifted a brow. Fine, pretty
and
a faery princess. "I
command you, Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege, to do my
bidding. Be thee fée, you will grant me the truth. Be thee
mortal, you will ignore my plea." He paused, and then entreated,
"You ready for this?"

"Do your worst."

He had to smile at her gumption. Holding the mortar high above his
head, he announced,"Kiss me, Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of
Glamoursiege. Plant a fée morsel upon my mouth. I command
thee, Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege!"

Silence filled the room. Ulrich tilted his head, listening for the
sound of bare feet upon the creaking boards. "Gossamyr?"

"I am not going to kiss you. Not like this."

"But you would if you were dressed?"

He turned, thrilled she hadn't completely refused his suggestion.
And before him stood the most gorgeous being he had ever before
placed eyes upon. The mortar settled onto his foot, but he did not
comprehend pain. "Gossamyr." The name slipped from his
throat and became a prayer in the air.

She lifted a defiant chin. But he had fallen into her spell, an
enchantment of the soul that buried itself deep in Ulrich's being. He
had no desire to step forth and touch her. To taste her mouth. To
touch the full and perfect breasts. Nor to slide his hand down her
flat stomach into the nether of her being. He wanted only to look
upon her. Ever after.

"It must be so," she said on a wistful sigh. "I am
mortal."

"A mortal with the power to enchant," he whispered,
utterly beguiled.

But there, blood and dirt on her knee. The sudden jar of that foul
evidence followed a rude tap from Gossamyr. Ulrich shook his head.
"What was that for?"

"The spell worked." She bent to retrieve the gown. "And
you were starting to drool."

"Was not." He dashed out his tongue across his lips. No
drool. A man had to check. "Sorry. Gossamyr, you are wounded."

"It's from the revenant." The gown fell to her knees. A
tug of the braies completed her renegade attire; the entire right leg
was stained brown from dried blood.

"You must let me tend it. It looks bad."

"No worse than a bite from a werefrog. You did put a mustard
plaster to your bite?"

"Anon."

She bent and ripped the front of the skirt all the way up to her
thigh to allow her legs ease of movement, then grabbed the half staff
leaning against the wall. A fistful of
arrets
was retrieved
from the floor in a clatter of obsidian.

"Where be you off to?" He followed her down the ladder.
"Shall I saddle up Fancy?"

"I go alone. Ulrich, you must tend that bite or it will
fester."

"My uncle has prepared a plaster. Will you stop?" He
sprinted to meet her at the front door. "There is danger. You
need protection."

"From Shinn?"

"You go to call him out? But the city...the Red Lady... Will
your father not be in danger?"

"I ride out from the gates of Paris. I must have answers,
Ulrich." She smiled, a brief yet genuine smile. A touch to his
hair, she drew in his scent. Ulrich closed his eyes and tried to
scent her but smelled only the onions his uncle boiled over the
hearth.

"You don't remember me," she said, "but I remember
you."

He lifted a brow.

"When you danced. I stretched out my hand and touched your
hair as you spun past me."

"You...saw me? Yet, I danced but a few days ago..."

"Faery time is confusing."

"Faery time is a bitch."

She nodded. "I truly hope you can get back that which was
lost to you, Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III."

"Do you? I thought you against my quest to bring back the
dead."

She shrugged. "I wish your twenty years returned to you. One
way or another."

With that she leaned forward and kissed him aside his eye, right
over the green bruise. Forgoing a farewell, she left without turning
back.

"Would that you could help me, Gossamyr of Glamoursiege,"
Ulrich said as he watched her approach Fancy. "But I do not
think a mere mortal will serve me now. If there is a unicorn to be
found I shall just have to sniff it out myself."

The city gates were more willing to let one pass out of than into
Paris. Reports that the Armagnacs were pillaging on the west side of
the city provided little relief to the anticipation swirling in
Gossamyr's gut. She traveled south but kept her eyes peeled and ears
pricked for danger.

The evening beckoned with soft
schusses
of meadow grass and
the brays of a flock of sheep waiting entry.

When Gossamyr reached the water mill where yesterday she and
Ulrich had stopped, there was no need to summon Shinn. She
dismounted, dropping Fancy's reins and leaving the mule to root at a
patch of trampled grass. Striding toward the stream where she had
bathed in the rain, Gossamyr fisted her fingers at her thighs and
tightened her jaw.

Chiding words spoken by Mince visited her thoughts.

Do not react. Listen with an open heart. Your father acts only
as his wisdom allows. He knows little of growing girls and their
hearts.

And if their hearts be mortal?

The nemesis Shinn had bid her seek solace from had been placed
there by Shinn himself.

Her strides were unhampered by the heavy gown, for the cut exposed
her braies to the thighs.
Arrets
clicking at her hip, there
was no need to call out to announce her presence.

Shinn did not turn around. Cloaked by the feathered cape, his
broad shoulders squared him, increasing his presence. Hyacinth
perfumed the air. So very light, the paleness of sky that surrounded
the formidable Glamoursiege lord. Truly, a man who could command
troops with but a word.

Gossamyr faltered as she gained him. Was that it? Shinn was a
leader, not a compassionate father. He had lied to her only because
that is all he could muster.

Not an excuse.

Fisting her fingers at her sides, she opened them, then closed
them tight. If he did love her, then he owed her an explanation.

"I would beg your forgiveness,"he said as Gossamyr
stopped behind him. He swept out an arm and lifted an entreating palm
upward. His blazon, which ended in his palms, sparkled with the rays
of the setting sun. Still he did not turn to face her. "But I
have never been one to beg. And I fear your anger is too strong to
allow such mortal emotional fumbling."

The fetch had clued him to all.

"Why did you not tell me? Ever? When I was younger?" So
wanting to beat upon his shoulders, to empty out her anger, Gossamyr
suppressed her rage—for the truth. But not all of it.

She gripped him by the shoulder and shoved. He turned to her. Fine
lines creased from the edges of his eyes and mouth. And his hair! She
had not remarked it, but—it was silver. Now the small horns had
darkened and tightened in, standing out against the long strands of
faded hair. Bronze glinted in twists about his crown. "Wh-what
happened to you?"

"I have been battling the revenants."

"I have been gone but a few sunsets!"

"Many more moons than you can imagine have risen in Faery."

"Be time so mutable as to steal many moons from me? To do
this to you?"

She thought of Ulrich's horrid dance and all the time he had lost
here in the mortal realm. And Avenall; he had stated but a mortal
year had passed since his mistress had been banished; less than a
moon since his banishment. How to comprehend?

Had she lost Time since Passaging to the Otherside?

"My trips to the Otherside are risky in that the passage of
Time takes from me that which Faery holds off—mortality. You
will not understand, but I have mourned your absence far too long."

"An absence you could have prevented!" Clutching her
chest, she gasped at the weight of her heartbeats. Such pain did
pierce her there in her heart! So much she needed to learn, and yet
she should have known all along.

Shinn turned a stern eye on her. "I did not want you to
leave."

True. But he hadn't been overly aggressive at making her stay.
Mayhap that is how he erased his mistakes, by sending them to the
Otherside? To think of herself as such, a mistake? No, if she truly
was a changeling, that would mean she had been chosen. Yet, would not
Shinn have expected her to perish?
They take sick mortals.

"You knew the Disenchantment would be permanent. That, as a
mortal, my return to Faery could prove devastating."

"I took a vow never to reveal your truth."

"But why?"

"To keep Time from you!"

"Time? I—I don't understand. Shinn, you sent me off for
ever!"

"The rift will allow your return—though it may yet
prove dangerous."

"Then why did not Veridienne return?"

"She is dead."

"So you say." Did he keep that truth, as well? This man
she had trusted!

"I made a vow to Veridienne, Gossamyr." He closed his
eyes. The muscles on his face tightened, the vein in his temple
pulsed. "Veridienne so wished to break our marriage vows that
she would sacrifice for her return to the Otherside."

"Sacrifice?"

"The mortal passion was strong, so strong." A falter in
his voice.

Gossamyr stepped closer. "The mortal passion...it is love,
yes?"

A smile, so small, but tremendous in meaning, curved Shinn's
mouth. "You are right about that. Veridienne loved the
Otherside. I...loved her. I did not want her to leave me. But even
more, my mortal passion for you was great. I could not bear to see
her take you away from me."

"My mother—Veridienne, she wanted to bring me to the
Otherside with her?"

Shinn nodded. "Of course."

Such discovery made Gossamyr wobble. The air, once so light,
settled heavily in her lungs. She had always thought Veridienne had
not cared. Yet she had loved her so much as to— "Why did
she not?"

"It was her sacrifice. You for her freedom. She sacrificed
one love for an even greater love."

And the stunning realization of her father's cruel dichotomy
cleaved a sharp blade into her heart.
The Faery prince took my
sight for the wonders I had seen.
Twenty years stolen for a few
moments of revelry. A child sacrificed for the freedom of one's
homeland.

"You forced her to leave her child behind? How dare you!"

"You are my child, too!"

Shaking her head vigorously, not wanting to allow the truth to
settle in, for then it would be so, Gossamyr stomped against the
pain. "I am not your child! I am not Veridienne's child! Why
keep this cruel secret for so long?"

Still so utterly emotionless, Shinn answered, "Before she
left, Veridienne begged me to keep you safe. To not reveal the truth,
for she feared such knowledge would hurt you more than help. She
feared knowing your mortal heritage would increase your risk of
succumbing to the mortal passion."

"And so you allow me to believe I am something I am not? You
have known of my mortal passion with the Otherside. It is as if my
very being were trying to make me understand. I am what the fée
so fear!"

"I could not have prevented you from leaving. I thought to
keep the truth from you would keep you safe. So long as you never
left Faery your Enchantment would remain." He sighed. "You
would have never stayed in Faery. Admit it."

"I did desire adventure." Drawing a staunch face,
Gossamyr wrestled with the inner struggle of emotions. Yes, emotions.