Shadowspell

My frown deepened. “But he was hunting them already, right?”

My dad didn’t answer.

“I think there was another part of the deal,” my mom said, surprising me. “The Erlking lives for the hunt. It’s part of his elemental nature, and yet he allowed the Queens to put limits on him. He must have gotten some advantage out of it. But it seems that the Fae who are old enough to remember are under a geis not to speak of it.”

“What’s a geis?”

“It’s a restriction that’s enforced by magic. The spell was cast by both Queens and binds all the members of their courts. The Fae who are old enough to remember literally can’t talk about it.”

Dad continued stirring his tea, round and round and round. I looked back and forth between him and Mom.

“Are you old enough to remember?” I asked my dad.

He nodded, but said nothing.

“And you’re not allowed to talk about it?”

He turned his head and looked at me, but he still didn’t speak. He didn’t even nod or shake his head.

“It must be a very powerful geis,” my mom said. “They can’t even tap dance around the truth. They just flat out can’t talk about it. They can’t even admit that a geis exists, even though everyone knows it must.”

“And no one has any idea what they’re hiding?”

Mom shook her head. “There are lots and lots of theories, but I don’t think any one is more likely than another to be true.”

I digested all that for a while, frustrated that I couldn’t get the whole story. Obviously, I’d seen more than enough evidence that the Erlking was one scary dude. But I still didn’t get why Dad had reacted as if the guy was a direct threat to me.

“If the Erlking can’t hunt in Avalon,” I asked my dad, “then what are you so worried about?”

Dad finally took a sip of his well-stirred tea. “He can’t hunt in Avalon. That doesn’t mean he can’t kill. Or worse. There is a geis on him that prevents him from attacking anyone within the borders of the city—with the exception of people he chases here from Faerie. The geis does not prevent him from defending himself, however, and he’s free to do whatever he wishes to anyone foolish enough to attack him or his Huntsmen.”

“Still not getting it,” I said. “Who’d be stupid enough to attack him when they know that allows him to kill them?” Certainly not me, which should mean he was no threat to me whatsoever. “Besides, won’t he just go back to Faerie now that his, er, hunt is over?” Once again, I had to fight off the image of that black rider on his black horse raising his sword to kill a helpless, unarmed man.

“The Erlking has a unique ability to provoke people into acting against their own best interests. And no, I very much doubt he’ll go back to Faerie. Every time he’s pursued someone into Avalon, he’s stayed for at least a few weeks. He even maintains a household here.”

I shook my head. There were a lot of things about Avalon I liked—if somewhat reluctantly—but the weird-ass details of its treaty with Faerie weren’t among them.

“Why even let him into the city in the first place?” I asked. “You won’t let Spriggans and other Unseelie monsters cross the border, and he seems way scarier than any of them.”

Dad’s smile turned wry. “Indeed he is. Which is why the city had to make a deal with him. It was either agree to terms by which he could be allowed to come to Avalon, or go to war against him. Most of the Fae are immortal in that they won’t ever die of natural causes. But as far as anyone can tell, the Erlking is literally immortal. Back in the days when there was open warfare between him and the Courts, a Seelie Knight actually managed to behead him in battle. The Erlking picked up his head, put it back on his neck, and killed the Knight. It behooves the people of Avalon not to make an enemy of a man who cannot be killed.”

I saw the sense in it, but I couldn’t say I liked it. It seemed to me that there had to be a better solution. Never mind that I couldn’t imagine what it was. I guessed that considering how powerful the Erlking was, we were lucky he’d allowed any limitations to be imposed on him at all.

What the hell had the Faerie Queens given him to persuade him to stop hunting their people? Whatever it was, it had to be huge. And I very much doubted it was anything good.

Dad put his teacup down and turned to face me on the sofa. He didn’t have the most expressive face in the world, but I got an immediate “uh-oh” feeling even before he opened his mouth. My hand tightened on my own teacup, and I held my breath.

“It’s not impossible that one or both of the Queens may have sent the Erlking here to assassinate you,” my father told me, and the bottom of my stomach dropped out.

Okay, I already knew the Queens wanted me dead. I mean, Titania, the Seelie Queen, whose Court I was technically affiliated with—I refused to say I belonged to it—would have been satisfied if I’d left Avalon never to return. But because Mab, the Unseelie Queen, would hunt me to the end of my days whether I stayed or left, my dad had decreed I was better off staying. They worried that my powers as a Faeriewalker—like, say, my ability to carry a working gun into Faerie—made me a danger to their thrones. Considering my aunt Grace had wanted to use me to assassinate Titania and usurp her throne, the Queens weren’t just being paranoid.

But even knowing the Queens wanted me dead, it was still a shock to hear that they might have sent that terrifying immortal creature—and his pack of Huntsmen—after me. I was just a kid, for God’s sake! It was like using a cannon to kill a fly.