Caledonia Fae 03 - Enemy of the Fae Page 4

The pale sun had begun to rise and cast a faint glow over the horizon. He continued to ponder as he made his way to the villa, where he expected to find the other druids. They all had been changed by their magic and the Otherworld air. Improved eyesight allowed them night vision, their strength and endurance matched many of the fae now, and he and Rory had developed small points on the tops of their once-rounded ears. Munro hardly recognised himself anymore. Despite having become acclimatised to the Otherworld, the druids found joy in the sunrise. During the day, the forests of the Otherworld could almost, but not quite, be mistaken for the humans’ Scottish homeland.

  Inside the villa, Munro made his way to the back. He heard laughter and what must have been Aaron plucking out a tune on his old guitar.

  The atmosphere was comfortable and provided them plenty of space. Every appointment was luxurious, from the marble floors covered with hand-made tapestries to the imposing artwork. It was a home the azuri deemed worthy of important people. The furniture was fae, but the men had incorporated human touches everywhere, things brought from home: photographs, stacks of paperbacks, a basket of seashells and rocks Douglas had gotten from a holiday to Florida, a throw Phillip’s nan had made him, everyday objects the fae found exotic and strange but served to remind the druids of home.

  As usual, Flùranach and Tràth were there too. The girl smiled at Munro when he came in, and the prince gave him a nod. Aaron’s song was far too bawdy for an eight year-old to hear, so he changed a few words, just enough so she wouldn’t quite understand them. Phillip had a slightly disapproving expression on his face, Tràth looked confused but amused, and the others howled with laughter.

  “Special treat tonight,” Phillip said to Munro as he sat. “Me and Aaron went through earlier. Grabbed a few things.” That’s what they called their trips to the human side of the Otherworld gates: going through. Aaron and Phillip, who had changed the least and simply appeared to have good skin and perfect hair, tended to make the most frequent jaunts, while Douglas, Rory, and Munro rarely visited the human realm anymore.

  “Oh yeah?” Munro asked. “Getting bored with your current batch of skin mags?”

  “What’s a skin mag?” Flùranach asked.

  Phillip tossed a cushion across the room at Munro and, if the former copper hadn’t ducked, would have nailed him with it.

  “I believe,” Tràth explained, “we can infer it to be a collection of images of naked human women.”

  Damn, Munro thought as the girl’s eyes went wide. The prince’s grasp of the English colloquial had improved.

  “Just for that, no Yorkie bar for you, Munro,” Phillip said with a laugh. He plucked a candy bar from a plastic grocery-store carrier bag and handed it to Flùranach.

  She squealed with delight. “I love chocolate!”

  Munro didn’t remember when the child had started to seem like part of this hodgepodge family. She’d been curious, like all the azuri fae, when the druids had come to Skye, but she had a special connection with them no one questioned. It wasn’t like the deep, personal bond he shared with Eilidh. At the same time, he felt linked to the girl. He was just glad the fae didn’t think anything of her hanging around when she wasn’t obligated by her demanding study schedule. The way her mentors worked the girl so hard shocked him, but fae culture wasn’t something he fully understood yet.

  “What’ve you been up to?” Munro asked the druids. He wanted to avoid talking about the murder until he knew more, and he hoped none of them had heard about it yet.

  Aaron continued to strum as the druids chatted about the properties of the stone, how they were thinking of trying wood instead. All of them, apart from Munro, were water druids, so they wondered if they might find wood easier to work with. They’d used stone because they wanted something that would last, but the dense rock resisted their flows. They began to discuss whether or not they could find a way to reinforce or even petrify the wood during the process.

  Munro told them about Griogair’s idea of him studying in the Great Library to search for clues as to druidic lore, and that Eilidh had agreed to have him provided with a translator.

  “My father has bestowed quite an honour,” Tràth said. “The runes in the Halls of Mist are the most ancient, the most sacred. We once had a store of knowledge here in Caledonia, but Queen Cadhla had the dubious artefacts destroyed.”

  Munro noticed Tràth never called her mother. On the rare occasions he talked about the former queen, he always referred to her by name.

  “You’re welcome to come along,” Munro said to the prince on impulse. “Perhaps we’ll find information on temporal magic as well.”

  Much to Munro’s surprise, the prince shuddered. “Not yet,” he said. “I’m not ready for more. But thank you.”

  Munro nodded. Tràth had suffered quite a trauma last year. When he’d inadvertently trapped himself and part of a Scottish village in a time bubble, he had swept them seemingly out of existence. Since then, he’d attempted to learn to control and subdue his abilities, unlike most, who wanted to expand them.

  “Not sure what you can find in a book,” Rory said, “but any help at all would be good. Sometimes it feels like we’re working in circles.”

  The idea was simple: to combine their abilities to create one large object of power. They’d found other ways to blend their powers before, but all their recent efforts had proved ineffective. They kept at it because being druids was all anyone required of them, and the magic flows felt so good to work with. Some deep-seated need drove them to keep trying.

  ∞

  Flùranach sighed loudly. Her eyes grew heavy as sunlight streamed into the windows. She didn’t want to miss anything, not a single word. If she fell asleep, next thing she knew, she’d have to go to lessons when she woke at dusk. It required every ounce of stubborn will to stay awake.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Tràth watching her with a tiny grin on his face. “Come on,” he said. “Let me escort you back to your grandfather’s. Save him from having to look for you again.”

  “Just a little longer,” she pled.

  The prince chuckled. “They’ll be at this for hours,” he said, indicating the druids. “With their teeth in this debate, they won’t even remember we’re here. You won’t miss a thing. I promise.”

  She decided to try a different tack. “Remember what you said to me earlier?” she asked. “About the ocean?”

  He pulled his dark brow over his intense blue eyes and frowned. “The ocean…” he muttered, as though teasing the idea with his mind.

  “You said time is the ocean and we are driftwood.”

  His eyes lost focus as he remembered. “Yes,” he whispered to himself.

  “Can you swim in it?” she asked. “The waterfae live deep in the ocean but swim all over.”

  “They do, don’t they?” he muttered.

  “Is that how time works?” With her astral abilities, she skimmed the surface of his mind, feeling him float in his own thoughts.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  She looked at him and realised his gaze had grown sharp. “I want to see what you do. Can you show me?”

  “You want me to show you time?” He frowned again.

  “I’ll use my far-seeing ability while you guide me. Or maybe if you get the picture and let me in, I could see for myself.”

  “I don’t see time exactly,” he began. “Not with my eyes.”

  “Perhaps I can show you.” She waited as he considered. When he nodded, her skin tingled with excitement.

  The prince closed his eyes and reached out to her. She rose and put her much smaller hand into his, then sat next to him. With easy, practiced motions, she released the sights and sounds around her and travelled inward. She needed no words to find Tràth. He opened himself to her mind completely. His trust delighted her.

  “Your talents are astounding,” he said. The voice echoed strangely in her mind. “I have never experienced anything like this. Are we in your mind or min
e?”

  Flùranach considered. “I don’t know. Somewhere between, I think.” Her mentors considered this magic too advanced for her. Most of the time, they would never let her engage so deeply with someone else, unless that person was a master of astral flows. Even still, they required her to surrender complete control to them.

  Suddenly they stood in the centre of the same place in the villa. The room was empty except for her and Tràth. They still held hands. Somehow, she knew not to let go.

  She glanced around. “Is this the same place but a different time, or a different place?”

  “A different place, I think. We aren’t really speaking,” he reminded her. “Notice how quiet it is?”

  He was right. She didn’t hear so much as a creak of the floorboards or chirp of morning birds from the open window.

  “So where is time?” She didn’t want to admit she didn’t understand what he’d explained earlier.

  “We are outside the flows,” he said. When she tensed, he added, “Don’t worry. We haven’t disappeared. We’re using your ability as much as mine. The druids will still see us sitting together. For now, our minds are in a place where we can observe.” He pointed to the window.

  Together they walked toward it, but instead of seeing the morning sun outside, the curtains drifted aside to reveal a distant, whirring storm of blackness and stardust. “What is that?” she whispered.

  “Everything that was, or could have been. Everything that is, or might someday be.”

  “I can’t see anything. It’s too far away.”

  “Not too close,” he warned her. “Time is bigger than you can imagine.”

  “How do you use the flows from so far away?” she asked.

  “Notice the points?” He gestured toward the edge of the storm. “Each one is a point in time. I can move within them, but that isn’t a safe place for you. I dare not travel much myself since…” His voice trailed off.

  “They’re moving,” she said, focusing on the tiny specks of light. They seemed to be infinite in number. As soon as she caught one in her sights, the light would flicker. Whether another took its place or the twinkle reappeared an instant later, she wasn’t sure.

  “When a moment passes, it changes from the future into the past, from a possibility into a certainty.”

  “A little closer?” she asked, fascinated.

  They took a step toward the window. When they did, the storm approached fast with a roar, filling the entire sky. Tràth tensed. “It’s too much,” he shouted over the winds. “I’m losing control.”

  Flùranach couldn’t pull her eyes away from the cosmic dance. What had been pinpricks became deep, glowing balls, each one a universe of possibilities. “Which one is ours?” she asked, curious if they might discover themselves and their possible futures. She reached out just as the music started, a tinkling of a thousand tiny bells.

  “They’re all ours,” he said. “Child, we must go back. We’re too close.”

  “Can you change them?” she persisted. Would it be possible to take the future she wanted, dimming the lights of ones she didn’t?

  “No!” he called out, the wind whipping at his black hair. “They all exist until only one remains, and that one creates others.”

  The orbs gleamed, and Flùranach saw herself reflected in each one. She wanted to find one, the right one, the one that would give her Rory and let her grow up. If she could only pull it closer, turn the maybe someday into right now.

  She reached further and didn’t realise she had climbed to the window ledge. Tràth shouted her name and begged her to step back. She wanted to listen to him. Somewhere in her mind, she understood she must. But a gleam caught her eye and drew her in deep. She leaned forward.

  Tràth gripped her hand with both of his own, the roaring storm drowning out his voice. The moment her fingers slipped from his grasp, everything changed. The world went from a dance of beautiful lights to a maw of blackness, sucking her into the endless well of its cold heart.

  Chapter 5

  Munro and the others stayed awake the entire next day answering questions about what had happened to Flùranach. By nightfall, he was exhausted. Tràth said little anyone could understand, and Griogair descended immediately and sent for healers. He moved his son and Douglas to the castle, as a precaution in case whatever ailed the girl had affected the prince too. Munro hadn’t seen either of them since.

  But without them, nobody could tell Flùranach’s family much of anything. The druids had been hanging out, talking and screwing around like they did most mornings. The girl had wandered over to chat with Tràth. Suddenly she was screaming her head off, and Tràth looked like he’d seen a ghost. She flailed on the couch, and Munro had immediately gone to hold her so she wouldn’t hurt herself. He shouted for someone to get help. By the time a healer arrived, she’d gone still, her skin burning hot to the touch.

  Although it appeared she’d simply fallen ill, because of the murder the previous night, Oron and Griogair were both on edge. Oron had the healer give the druids the once-over too, but none of them seemed to be affected. Judging by Oron’s questions, the elder wasn’t convinced there wasn’t magic at play. Oron made them all repeat the story several times, asking if they’d been mucking about with power objects or testing flows. He even inspected Aaron’s guitar, as though music had made the little girl have a seizure.

  After a long day of worry and questions, Munro crashed at the villa, hoping to catch a few hours’ sleep before Eilidh called for him. At least he hoped she would. Munro usually woke with her around sunset, and Griogair would arrive in the early evenings, wearing Munro’s face, looking pleased with himself for having been up to god-only-knows-what all day. Eilidh would drop the illusion so Griogair once again looked like himself, and the three of them would eat together and talk about the night ahead.

  This time, instead of the expected summons, a visitor arrived while he was eating a quick meal and discussing the previous night with Aaron, Phillip, and Rory. Like most faeries, she looked like a young woman, by human standards. Her green eyes were set a little too far apart and she had a slight gap between her front teeth. In a world where everyone appeared nearly perfect, the minor flaws made her even more attractive.

  Although most faeries had a dubious sense of privacy at best, they all treated the villa with near reverence. They did their best to accommodate the strange human habit of keeping doors closed, only entering with permission. This faerie, however, walked right in. The four druids stopped cold. Aaron stood up, staring. “Hi,” he said. “Looking for us?” His voice had a hopeful note.

  “I am Ríona. I have come for the one called Munro,” she said.

  Rory rolled his eyes. “Of course you have.” Then he muttered, “They always bloody do.”

  A cloud of confusion passed over her face, but before she could ask what he meant, Munro put down his plate and greeted her. “I’m Munro. Does Eilidh need me?” He looked out the window to gauge the time. “It’s still early.”

  She blinked, as though shocked at his casual reference to the queen. Must be new, Munro thought.

  “Prince Griogair appointed me to accompany you to the Halls of Mist and assist you in any way I can.”

  Phillip coughed, and Munro ignored him. They all thought he and Eilidh had split up when she got married, and the assumption was that Munro consoled himself by having sex with anyone and everyone who would consent. Griogair’s daytime activities, performed while wearing Munro’s face, didn’t do anything to put a damper on that reputation. Many faeries considered humans a lesser race, but Eilidh and Prince Tràth, both having bonded druids who were part of the queen’s inner circle, made inroads.

  “Sure,” he said. “I didn’t expect you so soon, or here. I need to stop by my apartment in Canton Dreich first.”

  She followed him to the castle, staying a respectful and silent step or two behind. He grabbed a few things from the room he spent little time in, to cover that he’d come to talk to Eilidh. Not t
hat he needed an excuse. Most had gotten used to him being frequently in the queen’s company because of the magic binding them together. Still, he wanted to be careful in front of Ríona.

  He heard her gasp when she realised he’d led her straight into the queen’s personal quarters. Eilidh was in the adjoining room, being helped to dress by a bevy of attendants. Griogair leaned in a doorway.

  “Hey,” Munro said to the prince. “How’s Tràth?”

  “Resting,” Griogair said quietly.

  “And Flùranach?”

  “The same, I understand.”

  “Damn. If there’s anything I can do, say the word,” Munro said.

  “Thank you.” Griogair glanced at Ríona, who hovered in the entryway. She bowed in response but said nothing.

  “She’s quiet,” Munro whispered.

  Griogair gave a quick smile. “Pretty, though, don’t you think? And don’t worry. She’ll do her job well.”

  “Who is pretty, my mate?” Eilidh asked as she walked in, trailed by a young faerie woman who tried to adjust a sash on the queen’s dress as she moved.

  As soon as Eilidh stepped over the threshold, Ríona dipped into a low curtsy, while Eilidh shooed away the attendant.

  “Morning, Eilidh. This is Ríona,” Munro said. “She’s the Andenan translator Griogair found to help me with my research.” He was surprised at the pang of jealousy rumbling through his connection to Eilidh. She was the bloody queen and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. What could anyone have that she didn’t?

  “You’ll be back by morning?” she said lightly, but the bond told him something weighed on her mind.

  “I don’t have to leave if you need me. I can put this off.”

  She glanced at Griogair. A flicker passed between them that Munro couldn’t interpret. “My mate spoke truly when he said your work may be vital to our kingdom. You must go.”

  Why was she speaking so formally? “I wanted to talk to you about the search…” Munro began.

  No, Eilidh cut him off, her words echoing through his mind. Speak to no one of the murder.