“There she is! She’s beautiful.”
Thank you. Then Sigrid flew toward the stairwell, amidst gasps, and shot straight up the stairs, making a woman coming down them cry out in shock.
Her heart thundering, Sigrid continued to fly up the stairs to reach a higher floor, which would give her more time to get to a chamber door as the fae raced up the stairs like a herd of horses pounding on the stone steps. She dove down a hall and hoped the first door she came to was a woman’s not a man’s chamber. Though she did see an open window at the end of the hall, and she sorely wanted to fly straight to it and outside to safety. But she couldn’t leave Tanya behind. Sigrid shifted and heard the first man on the top steps, nearly to her floor. She quickly stepped into the room, shutting the door as quietly as she could.
She looked around the room—canopied bed, men’s trewes at the end of the bed, a tunic on the floor.
“She had to have flown out the window at the end of the hall,” a man called out from the direction of the open window.
She sighed with relief, then looked inside a wardrobe and smiled. This was a chamber belonging to a couple, so the woman’s clothes were hanging up. Sigrid grabbed a brown traveling gown that was split up the sides and had pants for riding. She found a pale blue one, Tanya’s color, and laid it on the bed. Then she hurried to dress in the clothes over the bathing suit. She studied the woman’s shoes. Too large for her. She wasn’t sure what Tanya’s shoe size was. Maybe they would fit her. She grabbed a pair of blue ones and then tucking them into the blue traveling gown, she waited until all the people had left the floor, some saying it was a shame that they couldn’t have caught the falcon for the queen to use in the hunt. She cloaked herself in the dark fae’s aura.
When the hall sounded completely clear, she carefully opened the door. A man was still watching out the window at the far end of the hall. She stepped into the hall and closed the door. Then in a hurry, she headed down the stairs to the main floor, hoping no one would pay any attention to her. Not only because she would be an unknown dark fae, but because she was running around shoeless.
She reached the bottom step and peered into the common area. Several people were standing around talking. She headed across the expansive stone floor, wishing she could have transported herself to Tanya’s location.
Most of the people were mentioning the falcon, not paying any attention to her. But a couple of younger men around her age, glanced in her direction and their eyes widened.
Yes, a new female dark fae in the realm. They had to be bachelors.
She picked up her pace.
Both men smiled at her.
She walked faster. Of all the times to catch some fae’s interest. That made her think of the possibility that if she were in the falcon fae kingdom, she might find a fae she was interested in, who was interested in her too. Here, they thought she was a dark fae like them. They didn’t know she had magical abilities. She imagined they’d be furious if they learned what she really was.
Then again, a fae who couldn’t take a “joke,” shouldn’t be a fae. Playing tricks on others was a part of their heritage.
“Who are you?” the one man said, catching up to her with his longer stride, glancing down at her bare feet.
The other man zeroed in on her from the other side. He gave her feet the same kind of curious perusal.
“I’m married and my husband, Count Vlad, is here somewhere. Good day to you, gentlemen.” She continued on her way, the men stopping behind her and not following her further. Thank the goddess.
Then she realized they might be watching her, to see where she was going. Why would she go to the dungeon? She paused, then turned. Both were observing her, smiling, arms folded across their chests.
She couldn’t believe what a hassle this was! She waved her arms in their direction, both of them frowning, and then they turned to talk to each other, forgetting all about her.
She hurried into the alcove to the dungeon and headed down the stairs, hoping no one else had seen her.
As soon as she joined Tanya near the door to the cells, she also saw the guard was sound asleep.
Sigrid frowned. “You can’t put people to sleep.” She handed Tanya the other traveling gown.
“Oh yeah? I was telling him all kinds of stories, and the next thing I knew he was snoring. Then I gave him a good dream about fishing on a river, and hauling in all kinds of salmon, cooking them, eating them, and meeting a cute fae.”
“I wonder if he’s married.” Sigrid smiled.
Tanya chuckled. “You took forever.”
“They saw me as a falcon, and thought they’d catch me to give to the queen for hunting.”
“Ugh.” Tanya finished dressing. “Oh, good guess on the shoes.” She glanced down at Sigrid’s bare feet.
“New fashion statement.”
“Okay, I’m ready.”
They climbed the stairs, but before they stepped into the alcove, Sigrid quickly waved her hand at Tanya, wrapping her in the spell that made her appear to have a dark fae aura also. No one would know them so they could still be stopped and questioned. Hopefully, she could do what she did to the last two guys that were giving her trouble.
“Now what?” Tanya whispered to Sigrid, as they headed across the commons, catching a few people’s gazes.
“We’re not seeing Queen Irenis, if you had any notion we intended to. We’re leaving the castle at once so we can transport out of here.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll go to see Kayla. By now, surely Owen and his cousins have been to the dragon fae kingdom and left, if they’d even thought to go there.”
“Then what?”
“That’s as far as I’ve gotten with a plan so far.”
“Works for me. Much better than being in the dungeon.”
They headed for the solid oak, front doors.
“People are looking at us,” Tanya warned.
“They don’t know us as dark fae. Only the guards matter. If we can’t get past—” Sigrid stopped speaking as she saw Queen Irenis headed in their direction, speaking with a black-haired and bearded man, who suddenly saw her and Tanya. The woman was dressed in green gowns of silk, her hair and eyes dark, her gaze glancing around the commons as if checking to see if everyone was heartily employed at some work or another, and not just socializing. The man spoke to her, and she turned her head to see the two-unknown dark fae women.
“Who are you? Guards!” the man called out.
“Wait,” the queen said, raising her hand to counter the man’s command. “Tell us who you are.”
Sigrid waved off the magic hiding her and Tanya’s fae kind and belatedly curtseyed to the queen.
“A falcon fae,” the queen said under her breath, and Sigrid hoped that didn’t mean she was at war with the falcon fae.
“I’m Sigrid. I work for the golden fae queen—”
“A falcon fae working for Queen Avalon. How…interesting. Pray tell, what do you do for her?”
“I’m a magic user.” Sigrid couldn’t come up with another occupation on the spur of the moment. Besides, she could have been using magic to hide her fae aura, so she might as well tell the truth.
The queen frowned a little, and Sigrid was afraid Queen Irenis might have banned magic from her kingdom and would take it as a grievous offense, possibly punishable by death, for them even being there.
“I’m, Tanya, a dream-weaver fae,” Tanya said.
“Dream-weaver? And you both work for the golden fae queen?”
“Yes, your majesty,” Sigrid said for the both of them.
“So, what are you doing here?” the queen asked, one brow arched.
“A man from Raymore has come to force me to go there. I refuse to go. I was born in the golden fae kingdom and make my home there.” Sigrid didn’t want to say Owen was royalty and that she was refusing to do any royalty’s bidding. She could say so to the lowly masses, but not to another member of the royalty. Saying so could irk
the royal person before her.
“And your queen says what about this? Surely, if you have her backing, there would be no reason for you to have fled and come to my territory.”
So much for trying not to reveal too much about the royal part of the equation. “I imagine she has accepted gold from the falcon fae kingdom, and I’m supposed to work for the falcon fae, to help their people fight their enemies. I suspect she believes if I am able to succeed, I will be returned. I don’t believe that’s their intention.”
“You know that she truly wishes this for certain?”
“Why else would the representative of Raymore seek audience with Queen Avalon?”
“True. Come, we will discuss this in my chambers.” The queen walked off, and the man with her gave Sigrid a dour look and motioned for her and Tanya to follow them.
At least the queen wasn’t having them immediately put in the dungeon. Though she might have figured that would be difficult to do when Sigrid was a magic user.
After a few minutes, they reached the queen’s throne room. She took her seat on the ornate gold throne, the seat and back covered in dark red velvet, and Sigrid was glad they had a private audience with the queen. She suspected the man at her side was her advisor. She figured if things didn’t go well, she could just make both the advisor and the queen forget Sigrid and Tanya had been there, and she would cloak Tanya and herself in dark fae auras and leave. In a hurry.
“All right. So, you have fled because you believe your queen wishes you to serve your own kind.”
“The golden fae guard were headed for my cottage.”
“Okay. Tell me why you wouldn’t want to help your own kind,” the queen said.
“My grandmother fled there with my mother and father,” Sigrid said, not needing to go into details about how they were just little, “so they wouldn’t be killed by the king like my grandfather had been.”
Again, the queen raised a brow.
Sigrid figured the queen assumed the king of the falcon fae had been in the right and her grandfather in the wrong. Which could have been true. Sigrid didn’t know for sure. Only that her grandmother feared for her life and that of her daughter and the boy she was raising as her own. “I was born in the golden fae kingdom,” Sigrid added, to clarify again that she hadn’t been born in the falcon fae territory. That she had not run away from there. “The queen had given my grandmother refuge back then. She was the current queen’s mother.”
“I see. And you came here for what purpose?”
“We actually were at South Padre Island and were waiting for the pesky princes to quit looking for us and return home,” Tanya said.
Sigrid bit her tongue, trying not to cast Tanya a look that said silence!, which the queen and her advisor would have noticed.
“The falcon fae king sent his royal son and nephews to negotiate this?” The queen sounded surprised. It would also show how much they needed her.
“Yes.” Sigrid wanted to deny it, but she figured the truth would come out before long, and lying to the queen right now probably wasn’t a really good idea.
“You were trespassing on the dark fae territory,” the queen said.
“We are allied with the dragon fae and they are allied with you. So we assumed it would be all right to be there.” Sigrid wasn’t going to be cowed by the queen. If having powerful magic taught her one thing, she was often able to decide her own fate, and not have to suffer at the whims of royalty.
“We are not allied with the falcon fae. Nor are the dragon fae. Nor are the golden fae, as far as I know.”
That might be true. Sigrid knew nothing about the falcon fae.
“And technically, you are a falcon fae.”
“Under the golden fae rule.”
“Except you are not living by her rules.”
True.
Sigrid was getting ready to cast her magic to make the queen and her advisor forget who they were and that they believed them to be some of their courtiers, when the queen added, “You had to know my guards would catch you playing on the beach and hold you accountable. You seem too bright not to realize this. Which means you had to have some other plan in mind.” The queen paused, then continued, “I think you were interested in what I could offer you if you were to work for me instead of the golden fae.”
Yes, but not if the dark fae queen pulled the same thing with her as Queen Avalon did.
“I had considered it.”
“I don’t know what your abilities are like to even halfway guess at what you’re worth.”
Even though Sigrid should have performed for Queen Irenis to demonstrate some of her magic, just because the queen could have her head if she didn’t, she wasn’t about to. If Sigrid showed off a dozen abilities, would that satisfy the queen? Besides, she kept her abilities secret, unless someone asked if she could do something and offered her payment. If she couldn’t—like raise the dead—she would tell the customer up front she couldn’t perform such a task.
“If the princes thought I could help them win against their enemies, and they were willing to pay the price the golden fae asked for—and you know for her to give me up for any length of time means she received a good deal of gold—then I must be worth quite a lot.”
The queen cast her a dark smile. “I like you.” Then she lost the smile. “If you work for me, and I tell you that you must work for the falcon fae king, what would you do?”
“I would have to object—most strenuously.”
“If I insisted?” the queen asked.
“You are an intelligent queen. You know that if you gave me up to the falcon fae, I might never be returned here. The golden fae queen is already taking that chance.”
“Why would she, I wonder?” the queen asked.
“The amount of gold they offered must have been right.”
“Or you’re not as powerful as you claim to be.”
“Possibly.” Sigrid had no idea what the falcon fae king thought she could do to stop his enemies and a powerful mage. She might be powerful on a case-by-case basis, but to fight another mage? She’d never had to test her skills of that magnitude, which was another reason she didn’t want to go to the falcon fae kingdom. And to think before that, she’d been trying to learn if any of her kind existed! She’d always thought sending the griffin warriors to the unseelie world had been a fluke. She didn’t ever want to send anyone there again either. Once she opened the hole between worlds, the unseelie could enter their world, if they were in the same area at the time and could quickly do so before she closed it up. What if she opened it and couldn’t close it again? She could be responsible for the beginning of a great war between their kinds.
What if the falcon fae king wanted to eliminate her because she couldn’t help him? Or if she was able to stop his enemies, what if he wanted to terminate her afterward, so that she wouldn’t rise up against him like her grandfather had? Seeking revenge? What if he didn’t want her to return to the golden fae kingdom because he was afraid she might help the queen defeat him in some future war?
“I’ll tell you what. I’m feeling in a generous mood. Go to South Padre Island and enjoy your stay there. My people will treat you as if you are one of us. Leave when you feel like it.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Sigrid was surprised the queen didn’t want to use her services. She kind of hoped she might offer her protection, should Owen come here.
“Off with you now, before I change my mind and turn you over to Queen Avalon. She and I do have a tentative alliance, and I wouldn’t want to hurt that.”
Sigrid and Tanya curtseyed, and then headed out of the throne room in a hurry. Interesting that Queen Irenis didn’t want to hurt the tentative alliance with the golden fae, yet she was harboring Sigrid anyway. Maybe she just had to think further on the possibility of keeping Sigrid here to work for her, and consider the consequences—the problem with the falcon fae and the golden fae.
“You do not want to use her abilities?” Sigrid heard her adviso
r say to the queen.
“She is much too willful. You heard her. She wouldn’t listen to anything I said. If I ordered her to do something that she didn’t agree with, she’d disobey me. And I don’t need any trouble with either the golden fae or the falcon fae kingdoms.”
As Sigrid expected.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I’ll tell everyone who goes to South Padre Island that we have the two fae visitors, and they’re to be treated as guests while they remain there.”
“Yes.”
Sigrid was glad she had such great hearing, though she’d slowed her step way down to ensure she heard everything, expecting the queen to tell her advisor a different story. She did wonder if the queen was afraid she couldn’t fight Sigrid if she was all-powerful and that’s why Queen Irenis wanted them out of the fae kingdom and back in the human world.
When Sigrid and Tanya transported to the beach, it was storming, and Tanya and Sigrid’s towels, along with their hats, sunglasses, and flip-flops were long gone. They hurried to the hotel. At least no one would have seen them just appear on the beach suddenly. They still were wearing their bathing suits underneath the borrowed gowns, though they would have to return the traveling gowns and thank whoever they had borrowed them from.
“Someone stole our towels and our other stuff,” Tanya growled, heading into their hotel room. “If I knew who, I’d fix him good.” She grabbed a bathroom towel and began drying her rain-drenched hair.
Sigrid removed the traveling gown and bathing suit, and pulled on a pair of jeans shorts and a gray T-shirt that said: Making Magic Happen. She sat on the bed. “I’d help you, if we could figure out who did it.”
“What now?” Tanya removed the traveling gown and the bikini, and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt also, only hers was all pastels with tropical flowers featured.
“I don’t want to work for the king in any capacity whatsoever.”
“Right, which is why we’re here.”
“I can’t help wondering what it’s like. The falcon fae kingdom. Its people. Don’t you ever wonder about your people?” Sigrid asked.