Fae Wolf

Chapter 2-2

MY TATTOO CHANNELED energy into the Queen’s mirror, turning the formerly reflective surface back into the visual portal it had once been. With the borders closed, none of us could physically cross over to earth. But a little boost was enough to morph an already magicked mirror into a window into the past, present, or near future.

Sure enough, the mirror shimmered awake before Copper-Zip-Or-Was-That-Zit? had finished. The surface swirled to display an alley lit by human lampposts. Bodies wove in and out of the half-light so quickly it was hard to distinguish them. All I could tell was that a battle was taking place.

No, that wasn’t all. The scene settled and I saw the fae who the Queen had been questioning, the wound on his cheek present as a fresh cut rather than the scab it was now. If I had to guess, this vision occurred sometime in the recent past, half a week ago maybe.

“Now,” the Queen purred, “we’ll see whether your story is enough to save your skin.”

Here in front of me, the fae in question shrank in on himself. In the mirror, the past aspect of the same fae found himself at the center of the melee.

He and two others fought with nothing but glamour and kindergarten trickery. Having crossed over without the Queen’s permission, they were unbearably weak.

Weak by fae standards, but strong compared to the mortals trying to best them. My gaze caught on one of those enemies, a man as rough around the edges as the Queen was perfectly polished.

He was surprisingly familiar. Tattoos. Stubble. Startlingly blue eyes....

The werewolf from the library. My heart rate sped up.

And a sword sliced so close to the side of his head that hair sprayed out like a halo. Rather than growling, the shifter grinned.

“Did you hear the one about the guy with a sword in his ear?” he asked nobody, the sound not coming through the mirror but his lips easy to read. He waited a beat, during which he parried and attacked before completing the joke that no one other than me seemed to be paying attention to. “Well, neither did he. Hard to hear through a sword.”

I stifled a smile, both because of the awfulness of his joke and because I’d been partially successful. Hiding my own inner animal had done that much, at least. The Queen had stolen enough energy from me to power sight but not hearing.

It was almost as if the shifter was privy to my pleasure. His eyes rose until they met mine through the mirror and his mouth quirked upwards even further. Our gazes locked and something warm tugged at my belly.

Then another fae leapt up behind him and I couldn’t help myself. I pointed....

And the burly shifter twisted away just in time. Twisted and skewered his attacker, who poofed out as all earth-based fae did when run through with steel or iron. The fae wasn’t dead, just sent back to the world in which I now stood.

“Those are mayfly swords.” The Queen broke the moment that had to have been in my imagination only, using the insult fae often threw at mortals. Mayflies—we lived for a mere season. We weren’t worth bothering with.

And now the Queen was growing bored with watching mayflies; I could tell by her voice. Nobody was bleeding in the scene on the mirror, which meant someone in this room would bleed soon. I could only hope the someone in question wasn’t me.

“The Kingmaker hasn’t arrived yet,” the fae who was both in the mirror and here told her. His voice trembled, but he was incapable of lying. All fae were. Likely, he was just scared to death.

“Then why...?” the Queen started.

Before she could finish her query, we saw it. Every one of us saw it—those in the audience chamber and those in the alley. A silver sword with a copper handle popping into existence like something out of an Imbolc glamour show.

But Imbolc glamour shows didn’t happen on earth. No wonder the rough-around-the-edges shifter emoted. Silently yet perfectly understandable.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“What did he say?” the Queen demanded.

“Perhaps you should take a course in lipreading,” I countered.

Which was stupid. I needed to learn to hold my tongue before I lost it. Because my insolence had fixated the Queen’s attention on me. Never a good thing.

Her eyes narrowed. “This vision should be stronger. You disobeyed me. You shifted.”

“I didn’t.” Which wasn’t entirely true. Eight months ago, I’d been unable to resist the glow of the moon above foggy waters when my adopted mother and I paddled our canoe through Faery waters, back when crossing over was something we did monthly. I’d donned fur and swum alongside her for fifteen glorious minutes....

But releasing pent-up energy three seasons in the past wasn’t why the Queen’s scrying had only half-worked this time. The reason was my wolf, hiding so deep inside even I couldn’t find her. The coldness in my belly overtook the warmth from the shifter’s grin and self-preservation kicked in.

Turning the conversation back to the Queen’s original question, I told her: “He said, ‘well, will you look at that.’”

Unlike the fae, I could lie. And I was lying...but only to keep the peace. The Queen didn’t allow expletives in her presence and the shifter had actually said, “f**k a duck.”

“Hmm.” The Queen returned her attention to the mirror. There, her son—one of her two sons, actually, the younger one who was fully fae but who had willingly left Court to live on earth—drew the sword out of the alley’s pavement. The gesture should have taken extreme effort, but he made it look as easy as picking a cookie up off a tray. “And what,” the Queen continued, “did my mayfly-loving son say next?”

This one was easier. “I believe, Your Majesty, that Erskine’s response was, ‘Huh.’”

Then Erskine was using the Kingmaker to swipe through fae who’d frozen into place. Fae who didn’t even try to dodge as he skewered them one after the other, cutting short their jaunt in the human world and returning them here, to the Unseelie Court. Home sweet home for all of us ever since the borders had slammed shut.

Erskine should have been exhilarated at the success. After all, gossip in Court had it that he’d chosen mortals over fae, had chosen to work with the group known as the Samhain Shifters to send fae back to Faery. A selfless gesture, one intended to protect those who had a hard time fighting back against the magically endowed.

And he’d succeeded. As of today, there were no recently crossed over fae remaining in the human realm.

But in this particular vision, Erskine wasn’t elated. He didn’t look like the playful fae prince who’d once blended in with the beauty of Court without ever turning malicious either.

Instead, his eyes were sunken into his head. Lines I didn’t remember bracketed his mouth. And, as the final fae invader faded out of the alley, the Queen’s son turned to the rough-around-the-edges shifter and said, “I can’t do this, Ryder. I don’t want this.”

Ryder shrugged. “Throw it away then. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“The Kingmaker isn’t rubbish.”

A shiver spun through me. Erskine knew what he held, and soon the Queen would ask me to translate....

But she’d seen everything she needed to see. The Kingmaker existed. Her son had the sword. She no longer cared about earth-based conversations.

Turning away from the mirror, she jerked her chin at Zip-Boots. “Peel him.”

“Your Majesty?”

“This faithless courtier. Like a grape. Remove the skin.”

It would grow back. We all knew that. But the pain would be unbearable, the regrowth worse as skin itched back into existence.

The fae being sentenced collapsed into a quivering heap at her feet. “Your Majesty, please. I promise....”

The scene in the mirror had begun lightening back to silver as the Queen’s attention turned to more s******c pursuits. But there was just enough residual magic to let me see what the Queen did not.

The sword—the Kingmaker—had just changed hands.

“Really?” the rough-around-the-edges shifter said. “When I asked for a heartfelt gift, I thought you’d give me something useful. Blood maybe. Get it? Heart? Blood?”

I choked on my laugh. Not at the joke, but at the look on Erskine’s face. He might live among mortals now, but he was fae at his core. Earthly humor was beyond him.

Only, my laughter was a mistake just as it had been before. It drew the Queen’s attention back to me...and to the mirror.

My breath caught. But the scrying surface now shimmered silver and impenetrable. The Queen’s stare, in contrast, was as tangible as a slap.

“You think this is funny, pup?” She took a step toward me...which just so happened to grind her heel into the fallen fae’s fingers. He whimpered, but she didn’t even glance downward. Just twisted her foot to deepen the pain then continued pacing forward until she was in my face.

In my face, stinking of flowers and Queenliness. My wolf wanted to rise up and protect me, but I couldn’t risk it. Not if another tattoo was imminent.

I clenched my fists and stood my ground, no stronger than a human. “No, ma’am. Nothing funny here.”

“What will be funny,” the Queen murmured, voice so low I could barely hear with my wolf hiding, “is when I peel someone else alongside this traitor. Someone who can handle enough pain to be entertaining.”

Her foot shot backwards, right into the fae’s chin. As if she knew without looking where all of his weak spots were.

Just like she knew the location of mine.

“You might consider pleasing me,” the Queen continued, “for your Aiti’s sake. Or should I say...for the sake of your Mom?”