Gossamyr (46 page)

"Yes, Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege. I know
your name. I remember. I remember you. We...loved."

"Yes!" She reached to embrace, but he jerked into a
defensive crouch.

The shivering minion shook his head and his wings coiled tightly.
"But a fée heart knows not love."

"If you believe, Avenall, you can, you can know love. It
is..." So he had the mortal passion, as well. He'd suffered it
unknowing.

"I..." A tilt of his head swept thick red hair tipped
with black across Gossamyr's thighs. "I...saw you as no other.
It mattered little that you were not full-blood fée. Why did
your father despise me so? I only wanted to court you."

"My father...had his reasons."

"I did not dabble!"

"Shinn knew that. He—"

"Shinn." He nodded, knowing. "A mighty fée
lord. Together we betrayed his trust. Oh." His wings curled
about his shoulders as he inclined forward into a rocking bow. "My
mistress," he hissed in a reverent sigh. "She has taken so
much from me, much more than my essence. Memories of you. Our
kisses."

Gossamyr clasped her fingers up through his hair and drew his
forehead to her cheek. Heliotrope, his aura, deliciously reminiscent.
"Yes, many kisses. Your touch made me light, as if I had wings."

"Exotic."

She nodded. A burst of nervous laughter calmed her fears.

Manic and red, his eyes, he shuffled back and pressed himself to
the wall. Wings made a papery crunch.

"We must get the alicorn from her. Is there a way? A
weakness?"

A male cry echoed down the hall. Not Ulrich, but the changeling.

The collection room undulated with humming essences. The unicorn
was nowhere to be seen. Dominique, his cape abandoned at the doorway,
slowly approached the Red Lady. She lured him with her call. Volition
abandoned, he strode with head up and arms stretched to caress.
Vibrant violet wings curled forward to receive her strokes.

Wielding a spinning
arret
Gossamyr dashed forward. She did
not aim for the Red Lady; it would serve little against her powerful
mix of magic and glamour.

The obsidian arrow released, it connected with the back of
Dominique's left thigh. He cried out and gripped the injury—direct
hit, for he was pulled from the succubus's lure.

The woman hissed at Gossamyr and twisted the alicorn in her
fingers like a marshal's baton readying the musters for the call to
attack.

Another
arret
hit its intended mark—the Red Lady's
wrist— sending the alicorn flying against the wall of essences.
It landed point first next to the yellow essence that had been pinned
highest of all. Knocked loose, the essence began to fall, ever so
slowly.

"Oh, Hades." Ulrich stumbled into the room and sucked in
a gasp. "So many of them!"

Keeping an eye on the Red Lady, Gossamyr called to the soul
shepherd. "Do you feel them? Can you command them?"

"I can feel them...all." He plunged to his knees. "There
is one..."

The yellow essence floated past the Red Lady's grasp. Shimmering,
floating on wings unseen, it bounded above Dominique's head. The
pinned entity soared toward Gossamyr, a strange weapon aimed for her
heart.

"What is it?" Dominique called.

Dodging, Gossamyr avoided getting hit, and at the opportune moment
managed to reach out and catch the yellow essence. It shushed between
her fingers, but the pin did not wound nor tear the essence asunder.
Heavy, its weight, and scented with life—heliotrope. Humming
loudly, the essence did not make to leave her carefully netted
fingers.

"Mine!"

From behind the curtained bed Avenall rushed toward Gossamyr. Eyes
red with rage, he dodged Dominique's attempt to deter him, only
flinching as the soul shepherd's fingers skimmed his wing.

Gossamyr could not stop her lover as he plunged into her. She felt
resistance, and heard a strange mellow sigh—a return.

The point of the silver pin exited Avenall's back and he collapsed
into her arms.

"Avenall!"

Gossamyr juggled the oozing yellow essence and the wobbly limbs of
the pin man. Avenall had speared himself upon the pin in a manic
sacrifice.

Now the pale-winged fée, quivering and slipping his fingers
into the viscous essence, looked up to Gossamyr. A smile, so bright,
filled his violet eyes. Red spilled down his cheeks. "Thank...
you...

"No!"

"My... Gossamyr," he said on a gurgling gasp. Red
splattered her breast as he spat out the words. "I have
loved...you. So. Exotic."

A death sigh escaped. With that breath the yellow essence seeped
into the fée's body through his pores. Gossamyr watched the
mark of banishment gleam and lessen and vanish.

"Puppy!"

"What is it?" Ulrich asked. Of course he could but see
the essence she held in her arms, not the faery.

"Avenall," she whispered. "He is speared upon the
pin."

The Red Lady stretched out a hand, butchering a flock of essences
as she slapped the marble wall.

"Please, Ulrich, come to me." Dead in her arms, Avenall
was released into Ulrich's hold. "Can you feel him?"

Ulrich wrestled with holding the fée, but Avenall's
shoulders slipped against his chest and he nodded. "Got him."

"Gently, please." Drawing in a choking breath, Gossamyr
raised her sight to the succubus.

He held a being. He could not see it, but he knew whoever it was
had meant much to Gossamyr. The pin—suspended in nothing, it
appeared—wobbled between his curled arms. Ichor oozed from the
pin, spilling over a shape of a body, yet unseen. Pierced through the
heart, Ulrich guessed. Final remnants of the essence dissipated,
mayhap seeping into the dead fée's body.

Now he felt the fée's very being tap him and seek guidance.
A familiar call. He would not refuse. Drawn into the Send, he
directed the essence onward. Heaven or Hell? No such choices.

"Go in peace," he whispered. "Ever after in his
grace."

The body fell limp and began to slip from Ulrich's arms. Hooking
under the invisible arms, Ulrich held strong. Together, the two men
slid to the floor.

Arret
spinning, Gossamyr spared a moment to turn and look
to Ulrich. Avenall lay limp in the soul shepherd's arms. But
peaceful, yes? A horrid loosening of tears pushed from her eyes. It
was not fair that he had suffered for loving her! Be this his
punishment for the mortal passion, a cruel sacrifice always demanded
of the fée.

But there, the glimmer of Faery burst out from Avenall's chest. It
stretched the height of the room, and then with a blink, spanned
horizontal, running the length and out the door into the hallway.
Bathed in the golden glow of his essence, Gossamyr closed her eyes
and smiled. With another blink, the glimmer dissipated.

"The final
twinclian,"
she said.
I love you,
Avenall.

"Not my puppy!" the Red Lady spat at Gossamyr. "You
have taken much from me, warrior bitch."

Wiping spittle from her arm, Gossamyr approached the succubus. "No
more than you have taken from my father."

"Shinn's cruelties touch all. Why is he not here to answer to
his crimes? Does he hide behind a helpless mortal?"

"Helpless? You must have lost half your sight too, red
woman." She spun the
arret
into a frenzy. "I've yet
to fall babbling from your pitiful song."

"My puppy is gone!"

"You killed Avenall."

"You were the one who wielded the pin!"

"You took his essence and taunted him. He was dead long ago."

Avoiding contact with the wall of essences, Gossamyr stalked the
succubus widdershins toward the edge of the marble steps. If she
could throw her off balance she gained opportunity to strike. But
how, exactly, to take her out without a sword or weapon larger than
an
arret?
She seemed impervious to the staff and its stealthy
blows. Must she kill the woman?

Either that or be killed,
Shinn's words revisited
Gossamyr's thoughts. Or had she heard them, plain as ever?

Her aggressor stood stunned, yet a malicious grin stretched her
lips to an open smile. It was then Gossamyr felt the new presence.

Shinn stood in the doorway.

His presence filled her heart, pounding, expanding, urging... All
she had ever known—a father's love—overwhelmed. Gossamyr
wanted to rush to Shinn and embrace him. To plead, "Take me
home; I believe."

She believed in love and that it knew no bounds.

She glanced to Ulrich. He gathered Avenall into his arms as gently
as a father would a child. He had fathered a child not of his blood
and had loved her.

Yes, she felt loved. And why not? She was Verity d'Ange: mortal.

Vengeance, valor—and now, the truth.

But in her heart she could not abandon her mission to such foolish
emotions.

Keeping the
arret
spinning and ready for release, rage over
Avenall's senseless death worked tears at the corners of her eyes.
Courage shimmied through her being, far more powerful than any
glamour. And fear loomed close. Not fear of the enemy, but fear for
the well-being of Ulrich, and now Shinn. Why had he come here? He
risked Disenchantment, or worse, the Red Lady's bane.

"Father?"

Shinn lifted a hand. "Gossamyr, stay back. Would I had done
this before, I would have never had to send you off on such a
mission."

"But—"

"You've come for me, Turiau de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege?"

At the succubus's announcement, Gossamyr saw Shinn stiffen,
fighting the
erie
of his Naming.

The Red Lady glided across the marble base, the essences quivering
with her pass, right up to the staunch Faery lord. "So little
time has passed, and yet—" she sneered, displeased with
what she looked upon "—you have aged centuries."

"I have not come to welcome you back to my bed, Circelie
Sangreul of Rougethorn. I banished you with good reason, and the
banishment holds."

She pouted out a thick red lip. "Your recital of my name
wields no power against my magic. What do you desire, Turiau? Do not
tell me you've come to rescue your false mortal child."

"Never false in my heart."

"Ah. So honorable, to the bitter end. Such a horrible
confession to love a mortal makes me quiver, Turiau. Twice now. But
you are too late. She knows her truth; Faery will now only eat her
away."

"Enough!" Shinn nodded toward the wall, high above. "The
alicorn's power is not for you to possess."

"Who sayeth?"

Gossamyr eyed the pinioned alicorn. Using her staff—even
half-size—for a levered jump, she might make the leap.

Shinn's voice boomed throughout the room. "Me for the
alicorn."

"No," Gossamyr gasped. 'Twas as if the gargoyles' flames
sizzled in her throat that she could not speak another word.

"Oh?" The Red Lady spun around. Malice twinkled in the
look she speared at Gossamyr. A twist at the waist turned her back to
Shinn. "You offer your...essence?"

"The Disenchantment has yet to touch me; I offer you an
essence strong and capable—"

"—of seeing my return to Faery?"

"If that be your desire."

"But you are not so strong, I see you age before my eyes."

The Faery lord spread his iridescent emerald wings wide. Hyacinth
perfumed the room. A swoosh of his wings breathed a strong wind,
stretching out the Red Lady's hair and skirts from her body. He spoke
forcefully, "Yet strong."

The Red Lady clapped her hands overhead and spun. "Yes! I
will agree to the exchange."

"Gossamyr! Retrieve the alicorn," Shinn demanded.

While her body moved toward the wall, Gossamyr felt heavy tears
streak her cheeks. The burning in her throat, acid and hot, choked
her from crying in protest. Shinn must not sacrifice his essence to
this wicked succubus! Nor could he allow her return to Faery!

She stopped beneath the alicorn and looked to Shinn. In her
father's eyes she saw the mirror of her tears. With her truth, he had
sacrificed something greater—his own truth. For he had fallen
to the mortal passion by loving her.

The Red Lady whisked between the two of them. "Take it then,
false child of Shinn. Be quick with it."

"Turiau de Wintershinn," sang the succubus, "bold
lord of Glamoursiege."

Shinn stiffened, his jaw hard. He could not move, Gossamyr knew,
so great was the Red Lady's hold.

You can overpower her.

"Don't," Shinn croaked as Gossamyr lifted her staff
behind the Red Lady's head.

I
love you,
she mouthed to the Faery lord as the Red
Lady approached him, her palms rising to bracket his face. She would
kiss him, suck out his essence. Gossamyr knew not how the foul
extraction manifested, nor did she wish to witness.

She jumped and missed the alicorn.

Landing the floor in a graceless sprawl, she spied as Ulrich
carefully arranged Avenall upon the crimson bed. A man blind to the
figure in his arms, yet he managed to remove the leather hip sheath
of pins.

She jumped again and her fingers skimmed the alicorn. A vibrant
burst of Enchantment drifted from the horn. "Achoo!"

"Take this!" Ulrich called. He pulled out the clacking
pins and tossed the leather bag to her.

As Gossamyr turned to catch the bag, she saw the Red Lady press
her lips to her father's mouth. And she froze in that moment, a
reluctant witness to her father's sacrifice.

The mighty Faery lord, arms spread wide in resistance—you
shall have me, but you shall not have my fealty—took the kiss
without moving. Clinging to her former lover, the Red Lady kissed him
for what seemed to Gossamyr, evermore.
Too long.
A heart pulse
caught up in a net.

In that instant the fetch buzzed into the room and swept over
Shinn and the Red Lady's embrace. The dragon fly fluttered before
Gossamyr.
Look away.