“No one knows the mind of the deranged,” Volimar said.
“She is not deranged,” Tse-xo-be countered. “She is far from it. Bastien and I have discussed the pairing. I believe she matched Maggie’s parents to draw the two lines together—the two families that produced Maebowns in the past. I tend to agree with Bastien that the families are genetically wired. Sara has confirmed that thousands of human families possess the genetic marker. Most are not as evolved, but it does exist in a small portion of the population.”
“That is hard to believe,” Ostara said. “There would be hundreds of thousands of people manipulating Naeshura.”
“There could be, but most humans are conditioned from birth to ignore their connection to Naeshura. Just three years ago Maggie was no different,” he said.
“Even if we accept that, Maggie’s question remains. Why?”
“The timing of her plan is not tied to Maggie’s existence, but the human condition. All of us predicted the impact humans would have if left to their own devices, but few on the Seelie Council questioned Ozara’s decision to withdraw from human affairs. Ozara had the council and her forces to silence any independent clans who did. The independent clans did what we have always done—bickered amongst ourselves, avoiding confrontation, while humans spread and destroyed.”
“I do not see the logic,” Volimar said.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? The most popular sentiment five thousand years ago was to avoid interfering in the physical world—to leave this realm to physical beings. Ozara needed a base—she chose the strongest side. She adopted the banner, not because she believed it prudent, but because she knew, eventually, it would backfire. To ensure it would fail, she forbade any of us from revealing ourselves to mankind. As we have seen in the last two days, she has not left humanity alone. She has been steering it toward a cataclysmic end for a very long time. She was merely biding her time. The Seelie clan was decaying for centuries—each of us has commented on it. She allowed it to happen. She needed it to happen.”
“I believe Tse-xo-be is correct,” Bastien said. “Not only have humans been conditioned, so have we.”
“Do you believe she knew of Caorann?” Dana asked.
“No, and actually, I don’t believe she planned on perpetrating the ruse of a Second until it became clear that Maggie would be the next Maebown.”
Ostara nodded quickly. “We had many questions when it became clear that Maggie was more than just a Steward.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” I said.
Volimar nodded. “I don’t, either, honestly.”
“Her conniving knows no bounds,” Poseidon said. His deep blue eyes flashed beneath white eyebrows. “If she has orchestrated this, she was behind Atlantis, as well,” he roared. His anger was barely contained, and I understood why. Gavin told me that the Unseelie destroyed Atlantis and that Poseidon was the only member of his clan who survived.
“Yes, that is likely,” Bastien said.
“And that filth…I went to her after Atlantis fell and she promised retribution. She gave me her word. But after Ra died, she told me—convinced me—that sparing him was the key to peace.” The ground shook beneath us when he turned and stormed down the hill, ripping through my Air barrier as though it was a light breeze.
Bastien’s eyes drifted back to me. “I believe she brought your family to the Weald to maintain control over the lines. She may not have suspected you would be Maebown, but even if you mastered the four elements, she probably believed there was no danger. She believed, until just recently, that the only being capable of teaching you Aether was herself. She, like the rest of us, did not know of Caorann. I believe that to my core. When you became difficult to control, demonstrated to her that you were not going to follow her direction like the Seelie guards, she set you up to die. She thought she could erase your mind and make you vulnerable in Florida. The staged attack on the Seelie Council was her alibi.”
Volimar shook his head. “I am not questioning you, directly, Bastien, but I find this too difficult to believe.”
“I must admit,” Dana interjected, “I have difficulty with this as well. We stand with you, of course, but I cannot get my mind to accept that Ozara has, as humans would say, outsmarted all of us for five thousand years.”
At least twelve of the Fae nodded.
Tse-xo-be turned to them. “Is it more likely, knowing Caorann and Maggie as you do, that the events have unfolded for the reasons Ozara maintains? Or, perhaps, you find explanation in coincidence and bad fortune?”
Volimar stared at me, then at Caorann. “No. Yours is the only possible explanation I can think of, but I still find it so convoluted that I have trouble believing it. Therein lies the problem.”
Tse-xo-be nodded. “Indeed.”
“I’m sorry, indeed what?” I asked.
“We have to convince the rest of our kind—and with nothing more than elaborate conspiracy theories, we will fail.”
Caorann finally spoke. “That is true, we need to provide evidence that is unequivocal.”
“There is no incontrovertible evidence to explain what has happened, absent a confession. Ozara cannot be forced to confess,” Zeus said
“That isn’t exactly true,” I replied.
Zeus smiled and shook his head dismissively.
“She is paired with Zarkus.”
Avery, the blond leader of the Portune, was the first of many to object. “I do not believe that. I spent over six thousand years on the Seelie Council and have seen them interact a thousand times. They hold each other in contempt. Unveiled, unfiltered contempt.”
Bastien raised a knotted, withered finger. “Do not be so quick to reach that conclusion.”
Avery’s face twisted in anger. “Bastien, you yourself trained me six million years ago when I entered the physical world, and I have more respect for you than any Fae in the world, but how can you know what you haven’t witnessed? I have seen it with my own eyes and I have felt the bad energy between them. I am convinced beyond any doubt that they despise each other.”
“Then why has he survived all this time?” Poseidon said, storming back up the hill.
Avery straightened his back, keeping Poseidon’s gaze.
“Answer that question, Avery, and answer it convincingly, and I will concede the point. You, who knows Ozara more intimately than I, can start by answering another question. In the six thousand years since you shared her ear, has any Fae survived who challenged her rule directly?”
“None,” Avery said. “But he has never directly challenged her.”
“Ironic, don’t you think, as he is the leader of the clan that opposed her rule for the past several hundred centuries.”
“I know Zarkus,” Volimar said. “Self-preservation has always been his first order of business.”
“And I, Volimar, knew Zarkus as Paytah, the Ohanzee name he took when he joined my clan more than five million years ago—just as I knew Ozara as Aponi.”
The emotion left Volimar’s face. “Of course. Do you believe they are paired?”
“There was a time I believed it was inevitable.”
“There was a time you believed? But now?” Avery asked.
“I believe you cut Maggie O’Shea off before she could tell us how to prove it one way or another,” Tse-xo-be said, turning to me.
“Kill him.” I said.
“Kill Zarkus?” Volimar stared like I’d told a bad joke.
“Yes. If he and Ozara are paired, she won’t be able to hide the fact if he dies. You want evidence—get rid of Zarkus and let Ozara provide it for you. If they are not paired, then there is one less enemy to worry about.”
“Interesting that you’re willing to kill a Fae just days after making an impassioned plea to save humans,” Volimar said.
“Zarkus is not a Fae worthy of your pity or your concern. He and his followers murdered my clan and tens of thousands of humans,” Poseidon bellowed. “Had he decimated the Kobold, tried
to murder you, and destroyed your territory, you would not question his death. You would celebrate it.”
“I agree with Maggie and Poseidon,” Ostara said.
Volimar turned to Bastien. “And you?”
“If I am correct, his death and Ozara’s reaction to it, might prevent the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands of our kind. And I am correct.”
Volimar fixed eyes with Freya, the Kabouter I saved in Veluwezoom. She nodded. One-by-one, they all did. “Then we all agree. I do see a problem.”
“Yes,” Bastien said.
“What problem? What am I missing?”
“He hasn’t left their stronghold since the conflict began. When the Alliance attacked, half stayed behind with Zarkus. Nearly four thousand Fae will be protecting him at any time,” Bastien said.
“Half…four thousand, but they don’t have eight thousand Fae. You said there were—”
Bastien cut me off. “More have joined.”
“That many?” I asked
“In Iran, there were Fae from at least a dozen clans that we did not know had joined the Alliance. Assuming they joined at full strength, Ozara has over eight thousand,” Volimar said. “When you last projected, how many remained with Zarkus?”
“I couldn’t count all of them, but there were a couple thousand, maybe more.”
“You see how difficult it may be to provide the evidence you seek,” he said. “They can attack anywhere in the world with a force three times our combined strength and leave an equal size force around Zarkus.”
“The real problem is that the Alliance is not coming here—Ozara is avoiding me. That has to change.”
“It will,” Caorann said. “While you were gone, we’ve discussed a plan to draw Ozara out—it must be something she hasn’t considered.”
“She has considered a great many things,” Volimar said.
Volimar’s objections to everything were wearing on me, and I wanted to put my two cents in. “I need to go home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, Arkansas. The Weald.”
“The Weald has not been discussed, and with good reason. Beyond the tactical disadvantages, do you really want to bring that much death and destruction to the place in the world you care about the most? Ozara will use that against you.”
“Left unguarded, she can do that now,” I said. “My intuition tells me to go home—I can’t explain it. Why do you think she left the Weald when this started? It means as much to her as it does to me.”
“Your intuition told you that? Really? We should risk everything on a human’s gut instinct.”
“I am ashamed that I have not seen it before,” Tse-xo-be said. “Volimar, you and Maggie have just solved one of the problems I’ve been having since Ozara abandoned the Weald. I could not figure out why. I have spent months trying to determine whether the Alliance’s new stronghold was tactically more advantageous—except for a lack of water, it is not. Ozara is, first and foremost, Water aligned, so the arid desert makes little sense. No explanation made sense, but I was thinking tactically, not strategically. Maggie is right. She wants the Weald preserved. It has been her home with the Seelie for nearly seven thousand years, but before that, she dwelled there with me for thousands of millennia.” Tse-xo-be laughed and shook his head. “That’s why she destroyed the original Seoladán, and that means she has probably destroyed the one we created—she wants to keep us away from it.”
Tse-xo-be was right. He had to be. “In the physical world, I own the Weald—her lease is up. As the owner, I’d like to personally deliver the eviction notice.”
FIFTEEN
FACADE
I walked up to Caorann when the Coalition elders began leaving Cnoc Aine hill. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”
She studied my face, ignoring the wary look Volimar was giving us. “Sure,” she said with a hint of Ozark accent.
We walked away from the cottage, away from the Fae. “What’s on your mind?”
“Candace.”
“Her mother?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “I figured you knew.”
“You didn’t try to keep it a secret—at least from me. Aphrodite concerns you?”
“A little, but only because she’s right.”
Caorann nodded, but twisted her head to the side.
“What?”
“Aphrodite is right about one thing—that the odds of your friend’s family surviving are small. Candace knows it, too.”
I felt cold. “I know she does, but I made her a promise.”
“Of course, I heard you make it. I would like to help you keep it, but I don’t see how that can be done.”
“I know. They’re in the middle of nowhere, and they’re surrounded by Fae. Even if you could free them…”
“There is no safe way to hide them.”
“Exactly, so what do I tell her?”
Caorann lowered her head. “You tell her the truth.”
I felt hot salty nausea wash up the back of my throat, and my chest muscles constricted. “I’ve never been very good with the truth.”
“Maggie, she’s expecting it. Let her prepare for what might happen.”
“I will tell her, but I think you should come along.”
“You want me to compel her?”
“No, I want you to discuss everything we just talked about with the others, and I want you to ask her opinion.”
“You have a great deal of faith in her.”
“Well, honestly, I just want her concentrating on something else. If you ask her opinion, she’ll respond. But you have to mean it—she’ll know if you don’t. She always does.”
Caorann smiled.
* * *
Gavin held my hand as Candace paced the floor, talking to herself. Caorann waited patiently across the dingy living room, her hands clasped. Caorann focused on Candace. I gathered that she was watching the images in Candace’s mind as she worked things out.
Candace stopped and turned to Caorann, “How many of you know Clóca?”
“Bastien, Tse-xo-be, and myself.”
“That won’t do. You need to teach the others, some of them at least—those you can trust, just like Ozara did,” she said, before setting back in motion.
“We could teach the Ohanzee,” Caorann said. “Who among them is proficient with Water and Air?”
“Sinopa, Enapay, Pavati and Amadahy,” Gavin said.
I thought about how she always looked at me with contempt. “Amadahy? No. I don’t trust here. She hates humans.”
Gavin shook his head. “She doesn’t like humans, that’s certain, but I think we can trust her.”
Anger ignited a slow burn in my flesh. “How can you say that? We got rid of one leak here, but there has been another providing information to the Alliance for months.”
“Another?” Caorann said.
“Yes, for months.”
Gavin interjected. “Amadahy may not like humans, but she doesn’t strike me as the type to betray her clan.”
“Sure,” I argued, “even when that clan is doing exactly the opposite of what she wants them to do? Gavin, you’re being naïve.”
“And you’re being judgmental,” he said, as Candace continued to pace the floor.
“Then who else could it be?” I snapped.
“It could be any of them. The leaks seemed to have stopped when Tse-xo-be stopped sharing information with the rest of the clan. What does your intuition tell you?”
He’d just backed me into a corner. My gut told me all along that Amadahy wasn’t the responsible party. Intuitively, I didn’t know who it was, but by far she seemed the most likely candidate of the Ohanzee I knew. I concentrated on calming down.
“Okay, sure, I don’t have a sixth sense of who it is, but you have to admit, if it is someone on the Ohanzee elders, she is the only one.”
“If that were the case that only the elders had access to the leaked information, then, yes, she seems most likely, but that isn’t the case. All three h
undred of them knew we were keeping your family in Fayetteville, and obviously, they all knew the Ohanzee were back in the Weald.”
“Mags,” Candace interrupted us, “How accurate was your journal about astral projection.”
I thought about it and didn’t know where she was going. “Pretty accurate. I can fill you in on anything I left out.”
With a shaky hand, Candace balled a clump of auburn hair on the side of her head and went back to pacing. Ronnie sat back against a chair and dropped his chin to his chest, staring blankly at nothing in particular. I listened to the sound of Candace’s pacing for several minutes, before she stopped in the middle of the room.
“You’re plan is good, but there is a problem.”
Caorann fought a smile. “Pray tell, Candace.”
“The problem is that you are attacking the wrong place, and you’re not joining them. If mom sees that you’re here, she’ll tell Ozara. If mom sees that you’re moving across the ocean, Ozara will know you’re coming for them. You need her to think you’re going somewhere else—you need to be in two places at the same time. How much damage could you, Bastien, and Tse-xo-be do if Ozara was not there. How much danger would you be in?”
“The problem is that you would be in danger here.”
“I think I have that covered.”
Caorann’s eyes darted back and forth for a second. “If I am there, very little. If we infiltrated them while Ozara is away, I could eliminate Horus, assuming he is there.”
“Horus?” Candace asked.
“Jinn elder. He is the fourth Fae, and very powerful. He is much more dangerous than Zarkus or Lucien, the eldest Duende. If I eliminate Horus—or simply chase him away, then Zarkus is quite vulnerable. He is about as powerful as Avery, slightly stronger than Volimar. No match for Bastien, Tse-xo-be, Zeus, Dana, or Sinopa.”
“Great, then they are the ones you need to take.”
“And how do you propose that,” Gavin asked.
“Hello, you need Fae changelings.” Ronnie mumbled to himself.
Candace nodded. “You’re reading my mind.”
Caorann became perfectly erect. “But your mother will know the difference.”