“I’ll figure it out, Ms. Lane.” He got in his car and drove away.
At eleven o’clock, I was in Punta Cana, walking on the beach with V’lane, wearing a gold lamé bikini (me, not V’lane; tacky, I know; he chose it) with a hot pink sarong.
I’d released his name to the wind and summoned him shortly after Jayne had left, desperate for answers, and not at all averse to a little sunshine. I’d been thinking about the walls all night and most of the morning. The more we knew about them, the better our odds were of fortifying them. The surest bet for information was a Fae Prince, one of the queen’s most trusted, and one who’d not drunk from the cauldron for a long, long time.
First, he demanded to know the latest about the Sinsar Dubh and I told him, withholding the fact that Barrons had been with me to avoid a potential pissing contest. I told him there was no point in my continuing to pursue it right now, because I had no clue how to get close to it, and since he couldn’t, either, there was no way to get it to the queen. As I said that, a question occurred to me that was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.
“You said the queen can touch it, so why doesn’t she come after it herself?”
“She dares not leave Faery. She was attacked recently, and it left her severely weakened. Her enemies in the mortal world are too numerous. She has fled court and sought an ancient place of refuge and protection within our realm. It is also a place of high magic. There, she believes she can re-create the Song. None but those few she trusts can enter. She must be kept safe, MacKayla. There is no other to lead in her place. All the princesses are gone.”
”What happened to them?” In a matriarchal line, that was a disaster.
“She sent them searching for the Book, along with others. They have not been seen or heard from since.”
And they thought I could do this? If Fae Princesses couldn’t hold their own against the many dangers out there, what chance did I have?
“There’s something I don’t understand, V’lane. The walls of the Unseelie prison were put up hundreds of thousands of years ago, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that a long time before Queen Aoibheal erected the ones between our realms?”
He nodded.
“Well, if they existed independently once before, why can’t they now? Why will the prison walls go down, too, if the LM succeeds in bringing those between our worlds down? Why will all the walls fall?”
“The walls have never existed independently. The walls between our worlds are an extension of those prison walls. Without the Song, the queen was unable to fabricate barriers on her own. Separating worlds requires immense power. She had to tap into the magic of the prison walls, and entrust a portion of the new walls’ fortification to humans. A pact of magic inevitably yields stronger results than a solo undertaking. It was risky, but over the protests of her council, she deemed it necessary.”
“Why did the council protest?”
“When first we came here, you were like the rest of life on this world: savages, animals. But one day you developed language. One day the dog did not wag its tail and bark. It spoke. She felt that made you higher beings. She granted you rights and ordered us to coexist. It did not work but, rather than exterminating you—which two thirds of her council was in favor of—she separated us, as part of your new rights.”
It was obvious V’lane didn’t think we’d deserved any rights at all. “Sorry we wrecked your racial supremacy,” I said coolly. “It was our world first, remember?”
Snow dusted my shoulders. “You say that often. Tell me, human, precisely what do you think that establishes? That by dint of fate you happened to begin life on this planet entitles you to it? Under our care your world flourished. We made it verdant; for us Gaea bloomed. Your race has smogged it up, carved it up, concreted it up, and now you overpopulate it. The planet weeps. Your kind knows no restraint. We do. Your kind knows no patience. We are the most patient race you will ever encounter.”
His words chilled me. The Fae could take thousands of years getting around to reimprisoning their dark brethren but the human race would never survive that long. More reason why we had to keep the prison break from occurring. “What’s the LM doing that’s weakening the walls?”
“I do not know.”
“What can we do to fortify them?”
“I do not know. There were agreements reached between the queen and the humans she hid and protected. They must honor those agreements.”
“They have been, and it’s not working.”
He shrugged a golden shoulder. “Why do you fear? If the walls come down, I will keep you safe.”
“I’m not the only one I’m worried about.”
“I will protect those you care for in . . . Ashford, is it not? Your mother and father. Who else matters to you?”
I felt the tip of a blade caress my spine at his words. He knew of my parents. He knew where I was from. I despised any Fae, good or bad, knowing anything about the people I love. I understood how Alina must have felt, trying so hard to keep us hidden from the dark new world she’d stumbled into in Dublin, including the boyfriend she’d trusted. Had her heart battled her head over him? Had she sensed somewhere deep down that he was evil, but been seduced by his words and charmed by his actions?
Nah, he’d duped her. Despite his assertions otherwise, he’d certainly used Voice on her. There was no other explanation for the way things had turned out.
“I want more than that, V’lane,” I said. “I want the whole human race to be safe.”
“Do you not believe your people would benefit from a reduction in numbers? Do you not read your own newspapers? You accuse the Fae of barbarism, yet humans are unparalleled in their viciousness.”
“I’m not here to argue for the world. That’s not in my job description. I’m just trying to save it.”
He was angry. So was I. We didn’t understand each other at all. His touch was gentle but his eyes were not when he pulled me into his embrace. He took his time with my tongue. I’m ashamed to say I leaned into it, lost myself in a Fae Prince’s kiss, and came four times when he gave me back his name.
“One for each of the princely houses.” With a mocking smile, he vanished.