Authors: Kim Harrison
From the balcony walkway, clusters of overdressed women kept watch as the darkness took hold and the butterflies dwindled. As a member of the elven royal house, it was Ceridwen’s right to summon demons, expected and encouraged until she took a husband. Tradition dictated that the ruling personage in waiting was to learn all they could of the arcane. It was just as expected that her station would grant her the privacy to do it wherever she wanted. So her fluttering ladies waited in the torchlight, holding Ceri’s little dogs as they yapped furiously at him. They knew the danger, and it was a delicious irony that no one listened to them.
Looking closer, he gauged her aura to see if a rival had been poaching on his claim which could explain the three-month lapse. Ceridwen’s aura, though, was as he had left it; the original bright blue marred by a light black coating of demon smut that was all his own.
Seeing the yellow rose in his hand, a heavy tear brimmed in her deep green eyes, unusual for the emotionally balanced woman. Her head bowed as it fell, but pride brought it up again immediately. Chin high, she looked behind her to her tarot cards, beginning to cry all the more. Her hands stayed stoically at her sides, fisted as she refused to wipe her tears away.
Hell and damnation, I’m too late,
Algaliarept thought, taking an angry step forward only to stop short as the barrier she’d summoned him behind hummed a familiar, vicious warning. “Love, what’s wrong?” he asked, pretending to be oblivious, though inside, he was scrambling. He had not labored seven years only to lose a Dulciate elf to marriage! “Why are you crying? I’ve told you not to look at the cards. They only lie.”
Crestfallen, Ceri turned away, but her pale fingers straying to touch her tarot cards were still bare of gold, and Algaliarept felt a glimmer of hope. “I’m not your love,” she said, voice quavering as she turned the lovers card face down. “And you’re the liar.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” he said. Damn it, he was not going to lose her to some inane cards! Frustrated, Algaliarept nudged a booted toe at the circle’s seam to feel her power repel him. Never had she made a mistake in its construction. It both infuriated him and kept him coming back, week after week, year after year, and now, because of it, he was going to lose her.
“I had to tell you good-bye,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, pleading as she fingered a gold-edged card. “They told me not too, that with the responsibility of marriage, I must sever all ties to the arcane.”
Agitated, he gripped his rose until a thorn pierced his glove and the pain stifled his fidgeting. “Good-bye, my love?” He had to make her control lapse—if only for an instant.
“I’m not your love,” she whispered, but her gaze was upon the cards. There were no others like them, having been painted by a second-rate Italian painter who had attempted to put the royal family within the artwork. It hadn’t pleased him to find out Ceri was on the death card, being pulled away by a demon.
“Ceri, you
are
my unrequited love,” he said earnestly, testing the strength of her circle until the stench of burning leather from his shoes drove him back. “Tell me you’ve not wed. Not yet.” He knew she wasn’t, but to make her say the words would make her think.
“No.” It was a thin whisper, and the young woman sniffed, holding a hand out for a tiny blue butterfly seeking warmth in the fading day. He’d seen them only once before in this profusion, and it was likely the wedding had been planned around the beautiful, fragile creatures. But butterflies like carrion as much as flowers, battlefields as much as gardens.
Algaliarept looked at the yellow rose in his grip, his thoughts lifting and falling as the music rose high in celebration. Fast. He had to work fast. “Why do you hurt me?” he said, squeezing his hand until a drop of blood fell upon it, turning the entire rose a bright scarlet. “You summon me only to spurn me?” He dropped the rose, and she blanched, eyes rising to his bloodied glove. “To say good-bye?” he accused, allowing his anger to color his voice. “Do our seven years mean nothing to you? The skills I’ve taught you, the music, ideas that we shared from across the sea? It all means nothing? Was I just your demon, your pet? Nothing more?”
Distressed, Ceridwen faced him, the butterfly forgotten. “Talk not to me of love. They are naught but pretty words to trap me,” she whispered, but under her misery was a frantic need he had yet to figure out. There was more here than she was saying. Could she be unhappy about the marriage? Was this the key to making her control lapse?
“As you trapped me!” he exclaimed, jerking his hand back when he intentionally burned himself on the barrier between them. Excitement was a pulse when she reached out, concern for him showing briefly. “Ceridwen,” he pleaded, breath coming faster, “I watched you grow from a shy, skittish colt to a rightfully proud woman, fiery and poised to take responsibility for your people. I was there when all others grew distant, jealous of your skills. I didn’t expect to grow fond of you. Have I not been a gentleman? Have I not bent to your every whim?”
Green eyes deep with misery met his. “You have. Because you’re caught in my circle.”
“I would regardless!” he said violently, then looked to the darkening sky as if seeking words, though what he was going to say he’d said to untold others. This time, though, he meant them. “Ceri, you are so rare, and you don’t even know it. You are so beyond anyone here because of what I’ve shared with you. The man who waits for you . . . He cannot meet your intellectual needs. When I hear your summons, my heart leaps, and I come directly, a willing slave.”
“I know.”
It was a faint affirmation, and Algaliarept’s pulse raced. This was it. This was the way to her downfall. She didn’t desire her husband. “And now you’ll abandon me,” he whispered.
“No,” she protested, but they both knew tradition dictated otherwise.
“You’re going to wed,” he stated, and she shook her head, desperate as her tiny feet tapped the flagstones, coming closer in her need to deny it.
“That I’m wed doesn’t mean I won’t summon you. Our talks can continue.”
Feigning dejection, he turned his back on her, all but oblivious to the manicured gardens going dark and damp. “You will abandon me,” he said, chin high as he probed the circle to find it still perfect. Though he was a demon and could crush an army with a single word, such was the strength of a summons that a simple circle could bind him. He had to upset her enough such that she would make a mistake and he could break it. Until then, nothing but sound and air could get through.
Taking a ragged breath, he dropped his head, his hands still laced behind him. “You will begin with all good intentions,” he said, his voice flat. “But you’ll summon me into underground rooms where no one can see, and our time together once open and celebrated will become brief snatches circled by guilt instead of precious stones. Soon you will call me less and less, shame dictating that your heart be ruled over by your head, your responsibilities.” He took a breath, turning his tone thin. “Let me go. I can’t bear seeing what we shared abandoned bit by bit. Make of my heart a clean death.”
The clatter of the gravel sliding beneath her shoes sparked through him like lightning, and he grit his teeth to hide his anticipation. One tiny stone, knocked out of place, would do it. “I would not do that,” she protested as she faced him, a gray shadow against the dark vegetation.
Refusing to meet her gaze because he knew it would hurt her, he looked at the moon, seeing a few lone butterflies daring the dark to find a mate. Crickets chirped as the music from the castle dissolved into polite applause. “Marry him if you will,” he said stoically. “I’ll forever come if you call, but I’ll be but a broken shadow. You can command my body, but you cannot command my heart.” He looked at her now, finding she was clutching a golden card to her chest, hiding it. “Do you love him?” he asked bluntly, already knowing the answer in her frantic expression.
She said nothing as torchlight shined upon her tears.
“Does he make your heart beat fast?” Algaliarept demanded, a shudder running through him when her eyes closed in pain. “Can he make you laugh? Has he ever brought new thoughts to you, as I have? I’ve never touched you, but I’ve seen you tremble in desire . . . for me.”
He nudged at the circle with a booted toe, jerking back at the zing of power. Though her face wore her anguish, her circle still held strong, even when her chest heaved, and her grip on her dress dropped, leaving creases in the otherwise perfect fall of fabric.
“Don’t hurt me like this, Algaliarept,” she whispered. “I only wanted to say good-bye.”
“It’s you who hurt me,” he stated, forcefully where before he had always been demure. “I’m forever young, and now you’ll make me watch you grow old, watch your beauty fade and your skills tarnish as you shackle yourself to a loveless marriage and a cold bed.”
“It is the way of things,” she breathed, but the fear in the back of her eyes strengthened as she touched her own face.
Her fondness for the mirror had always been her downfall, and he felt a surge of renewed excitement. “I will mourn your beauty when you could have been young forever,” he said, looking for a crack in her resolve. “I would’ve forever been your slave.” Faking depression, he slumped his perfect posture. “Only in the ever-after does time stand still and beauty and love last forever. But, as you say, it’s the way of things.”
“Gally, don’t speak so,” she pleaded, and he tensed when she used the nickname she’d chosen for him. But his lips parted in shock when she reached for him only to drop her hand mere inches from the barrier between them. His breath came in with a shudder, and his eyes widened. Had he been cracking the nut the wrong way? He had been trying to rattle her, make her lose her resolve so he could find a crack in her circle and break it, even knowing that her will would likely remain absolute even when her world was crashing down about her. She would not let her circle weaken, but what if she would take it down voluntarily? Ceri was of royal blood, a Dulciate. Generations of crown-sanctified temptation had created women who would not make a mistake of power.
But she might make a mistake of the heart.
And the instant he realized why he had failed these seven years, her gaze went past him to the palace, lit up and replete with joy. Her eyes closed, and panic hit him as he saw everything fall apart.
Shit, she was going to walk.
“Ceri, I would love you forever,” he blurted, not faking his distress.
Not now. Not now when he’d found her weakness!
“Gally, no,” she sobbed as the tears fell and tiny blue butterflies rose about her.
“Don’t call me again!” he demanded, the words coming from him without thought or plan. “Go to your cold bed. Die old and ugly! I would make you wise beyond all on earth, keep you beautiful, teach you things that the scholars and learned men have not even dreamed of. I will survive alone, untouched, my heart becoming cold where you showed me love. Better that I had never met you.” He looked at her as a sob broke from her. “I was happy as I was.”
“Forgive me,” she choked out, hunched in heartache. “You were never just my demon.”
“It’s done,” he said, making a hitch in his voice. “It’s not as if I ever thought you would trust me, but to show me heaven only to give it to another man? I can’t bear it.”
“Gally—”
He raised a hand and her voice broke in a sob. “That’s three times you’ve said my name,” he said, crushing the now red rose beneath his foot. “Let me go, or trust me. Take down the wall so I may at least have the memory of your touch to console me as I weep in hell for having lost you, or simply walk away. I care not. I’m already broken.”
Expression held at an anguished pain, he turned his back on her again, shifting his shoulders as if trying to find a new way to stand. Behind him, he heard a single sob, and then nothing as she held her breath. There was no scuffing of slippers as she ran away and no lessening of the circle imprisoning him, so he knew she was still there. His pulse quickened, and he forced his breathing to be shallow. He was romancing the most clever, most resolute bitch he’d ever taught a curse to, and he loved her. Or rather, he loved not knowing what she would do next, the complexity of her thoughts that he had yet to figure out—an irresistible jewel in a world where he had everything.
“Do you love him?” he asked, adding the last brushstrokes to his masterpiece.
“No,” she whispered.
His hands quivered as adrenaline spiked through him, but he held perfectly still. He would’ve given a lot to know which card she held crushed in her grip. “Do you love me?” he asked, shocked to realize he’d never used those particular words to seduce a familiar before.
The silence was long, but from behind him came a soft, “Yes. God help me.”
Algaliarept closed his eyes. His breath shook in him, hid excitement racing through him like a living ley line, burning. Would she drop her circle? He didn’t know. And when a light touch landed on his hand, he jumped, looking down to find a blue butterfly slowly fanning its wings against him.
A butterfly
? he thought in shock, and then he realized. She had broken the summoning circle, and he’d never even felt it go down.
Oh God
, he thought, a surge of what was almost ecstasy making his knees nearly buckle as he turned, finding her standing before him, nervous and hopeful all at the same time. She had let him in. Never had he taken anyone like this. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, debilitating.
“Ceri,” he breathed, seeing her without the shimmer of her power between them. Her eyes were beautiful, her skin holding a olive tint he’d never noticed before. And her face . . . She was crying, and he reached out, not believing when he ran a white-gloved hand under her eye to make her smile at him uncertainly. It was a smile of hope and fear.
She should be afraid
.
“Gally?” she said hesitantly.
“Do you really love me?” he asked her as the butterflies swarmed, drawn by the scent of burnt amber, and she nodded, gazing at him as tears slipped down and she hesitantly folded herself into his arms.