Seven Black Diamonds

  Rhys snorted. “Not all of us need a claymore to feel intimidating.”

  The queen laughed and lowered her sword. “Daggers? Hand to hand? Sickles?”

  “Ladies’ choice,” Rhys said as he lowered his poignard. He slid it into a scabbard and walked over to pick up the one she’d knocked out of his hand.

  While his back was turned, the queen kicked out at his knee, drawing gasps from the crowd and Eilidh’s exclamation of “Rhys!”

  He turned and grabbed the queen’s ankle.

  Endellion dropped to the ground, pulling him off balance and swinging her other foot up and out to kick his forearm.

  Rhys’ muffled grunt of pain was all but lost under the queen’s words. “You forget your childhood lessons,” she said as she scrabbled back to her feet.

  “Never turn your back on the enemy,” Rhys recited as he pushed to his feet without use of his hands.

  Eilidh couldn’t tell if he’d fractured his wrist or simply bruised it. All she knew was that he had the implacable look she had seen so often on his face. He wouldn’t cede defeat though. It wasn’t Rhys’ way, and their mother would be furious if he did so.

  The sheer stupidity of what Eilidh was about to do should’ve stopped her, but if she was going to be regarded as the future queen, she needed to prove it. She felt like she was half-asleep as she reached out for a handful of throwing knives.

  “Mother,” she said, giving warning at least.

  But Endellion didn’t even glance at Eilidh.

  The first blade flew through the air, sticking in the ground where Endellion’s foot had just been.

  The queen spun around, hand on her hilt and blade half-drawn around. “Who dares—” The words died as she saw Eilidh, another knife aloft to throw.

  “I’m better with distance than close combat,” Eilidh said. She shrugged and added, “My fragility of body made me learn to adapt.”

  The queen met her gaze. “Would you fight me, daughter?”

  “I would dissuade you from pushing my brother further this day,” Eilidh answered, cautiously avoiding any words that could elicit the queen’s worst temper.

  For a moment, Eilidh thought Rhys was going to step around their mother and strangle her. His eyes were warning her off this path, but there were times when a future queen needed to prove her mettle. This felt like such a time.

  The queen bowed her head to Eilidh and then turned to Rhys and did the same. “You both do me proud,” she announced. Then she strode over to Eilidh and in a rare show of maternal affection, the queen kissed her forehead. “Well done.”

  The Queen of Blood and Rage swept away in the hush that had come over the assembled crowd.

  A few moments passed before Rhys looked at the fae who stood in a circle around them and said, “You are dismissed.”

  It was a polite way to tell them “be gone,” but her brother wasn’t known for mincing words. He played up his Unseelie traits, emphasizing his ferocity and candor both.

  Once they were alone, Rhys turned to her. “Are you trying to get one of us killed?”

  “You can protect yourself against anyone other than the queen,” she reminded him. “We both know that, brother.”

  “And there are those who do not always heed our queen mother.” Rhys folded his arms with an uncharacteristic slowness.

  “It’s broken, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged awkwardly. “I can fight with the one arm while it sets.”

  Hesitantly, Eilidh suggested, “Come to the tower. I can help.”

  Rhys lifted his brows in a silent question, but she wasn’t going to answer him here in public.

  Mutely, he followed her toward her glass tower. No one stopped them as they walked. It was growing common to see Eilidh walking with her brother, her betrothed—or both. The assumption was simply that Rhys was protecting the heir by determining if Torquil was worthy of her.

  As they reached the tower, they found Torquil there waiting outside the glittering building. His lips were pressed tightly together, and she knew that both fae would be voicing displeasure once they were inside the privacy of her tower. They might be visible to the faeries who stood outside watching, but as long as they kept control of their gestures and actions, no one would know that she was being chastised.

  The three silently ascended the tower. Once they were inside, Torquil was the first to speak. “What are you thinking? It’s bad enough to be seen training with Rhys, but challenging the queen?”

  “He is injured, and I offered aid.”

  Rhys held up a hand. “I could’ve continued fighting. Mother has broken far more than one of my bones in her darker moods.”

  Torquil raised a single brow.

  “I know,” Eilidh said quietly.

  For a long tense moment, her brother stared at her. Finally, he said, “It was you. You’ve done this before . . . I would wake far less broken than made sense to me. When she cracked my spine . . . that was a worse injury than it seemed, wasn’t it?”

  Eilidh nodded. “I drugged your tea the first time and your wine the second.”

  “I knew someone had,” Rhys grumbled. “I had poison testers after the wine incident.”

  “I know. It became more and more complicated to knock you out over time, but I didn’t want you to know.” Eilidh sat on the edge of the sofa, realizing that Torquil and Rhys were standing because she’d failed to sit. Having guests and remembering the propriety involved in doing so was still new to her. “I couldn’t have you see me help you. I didn’t know then if I could trust you.”

  “You can trust me, Eilidh. I swear on it. No one outside this room will know what you can do,” Rhys vowed.

  “I still don’t know,” Torquil pointed out. “Why did you drug Rhys?”

  Silently, Eilidh patted the sofa.

  Rhys sat.

  Eilidh wrapped her hands around her brother’s wrist, letting her sight and touch sink under his flesh until she found the imperfection in the bone. It was something she’d only done with a few people, but she’d healed Rhys often enough that she could see his bone quicker than she would have with someone she’d not healed in the past.

  Vaguely, she heard Torquil say, “Is she . . . ?”

  “Healing me,” Rhys finished. “Yes.”

  Eilidh ignored them, concentrating on the surface of the bone. She drew the pieces together, knitting them steadily as she re-grew the pieces so they could fuse properly. It was akin to coaxing fire from tinder or a plant from soil.

  Rhys drew a sharp breath.

  “Sorry,” she murmured as his body pulsed with pain. It wasn’t an easy feeling, she suspected, to have bone meld together. She condensed the entire healing process into mere moments. There was no way to do it without pain.

  When she released his arm, her usually imperturbable brother looked ill. He leaned back on the cushions and closed his eyes. “Perhaps being drugged first is wise.”

  “I doubt you’d have agreed to that willingly,” Eilidh said.

  Torquil was sitting across from her, staring at her with wide eyes. “Attenuation? That gift is all but a myth.”

  Eilidh offered him a weak smile. Healing made her tired. For a brief few moments, she felt weakened. “It seems that the union of the two courts has had unexpected results.”

  “Do your parents both know?” Rhys prompted.

  She didn’t want to discuss that topic, but she couldn’t refuse to answer him. She nodded. “They are aware.”

  While neither parent had overtly spoken to her about her affinity, they had both—in their ways—let her know that she was not to use it. Leith had said only, “My grandfather once spoke of a fae his grandfather had known who was cursed with an affinity for attenuation. Lessening the injuries of others weakened him until he was so frail that he died. It is not an affinity I would wish on any but those I despised.”

  At the time, Eilidh had bowed her head in silence.

  It was one of the rare moments of affection that
the king had shown her when he tucked his fingertips under her chin and said, “You are my child, Eilidh. I want you well and safe. If I or your mother ever were mortally injured, even then I would not wish that you had such an affinity. Do you understand me?”

  And she had. She knew that she was not to use this affinity. Her mother had said similar things in less subtle terms: “If I were to find that you had used this affinity, Daughter, I would not be pleased.”

  None of those details changed the fact that she’d used it time and again to heal Rhys. There were others she’d healed—including both Torquil and Lilywhite—but it was something she did rarely. Rather than enter a conversation filled with unpleasant admissions, she told her brother and betrothed, “Tomorrow, I need one or both of you to come with me to the mortal lands. I will explain more, answer your questions then, but I do need at least one of you.”

  “I am yours,” Torquil said.

  “I will be with you,” Rhys added.

  Eilidh had expected lectures from both of them, but neither chastised her on anything, not about her secrets, not about standing up to the queen. They held their silence for several moments. Torquil sent a nervous look at Rhys that she didn’t understand. Rhys still looked wan, but there was no danger in that.

  When Rhys finally opened his eyes, he looked from one to the other, and then—in the sort of casual voice that made clear that what he was revealing was anything but casual—he said, “Tell me, Eilidh, what do you know of the king’s affinities.”

  “Fire, compulsion, and air,” she recited.

  Torquil stood and glared at Rhys. His posture was such that Eilidh expected swords to be unsheathed. Clearly there was something here that was not known to her, something her betrothed knew and Rhys wanted her to know too.

  “Do not do this,” Torquil ordered.

  The only son of the Queen of Blood and Rage wasn’t known for taking orders other than the queen’s. He met Torquil’s gaze straight on and asked Eilidh, “Did you know that the king has a fourth gift, one not known to many?”

  “As does the queen,” Eilidh said quietly, drawing the boys out of their stare.

  Rhys rewarded her with a proud smile and said, “You have known and not spoken if it! You are better suited to the Hidden Throne than I realized, sister.”

  “Secrets are currency.” She repeated their mother’s words of wisdom.

  “Indeed. One I would use to pay you now for your gift of health.” Rhys glanced back at Eilidh’s betrothed and said, “Dreams. The Seelie thought it a vanished gift. Very few have it. The king does, but there are whispers that the son of Aden is a rarity too.”

  Eilidh looked at Torquil, her dearest friend, her only confidant for many years. “Truly?”

  “Eilidh . . .”

  Slowly the import of this revelation began to settle on her. “So the dreams I had of you for all of these years, were they . . . my dreams or your manipulations?” Eilidh’s voice shook with the effort of restraining her anger and hurt. “Do you give dreams or can you see others’ dreams?”

  “Both,” Torquil admitted. He stepped toward her, took both hands in his, and held tight to her as if she would flee. “I saw one of your dreams by accident when you were younger, and when I realized that you dreamed of . . . what you dream, I didn’t look again. It’s why I couldn’t stay near you sometimes. You were too young, Eilidh. The queen’s daughter, the heir, I couldn’t let myself see you that way.”

  “I fell asleep in your arms last winter,” she pointed out, not asking, not sure she could stand to know.

  “You were of age by then, and I needed to know if you still dreamed of me,” he whispered. “The queen ordered that I would wed, and I couldn’t do that, not while I was waiting on you.”

  “So you looked,” Eilidh finished.

  He nodded.

  “And?” Rhys prompted.

  Torquil glanced back at Rhys with a scowl. “That is not yours to know.”

  “She is my sister.”

  Instead of answering him, Torquil turned back to face her. “It was not until these past months that I’ve influenced your dreams. I swear. I would’ve waited, but if there was a chance, if there was a glimmer of a hope that you could be mine, I needed to know.”

  “Rhys, I need to speak with my betrothed in private,” she announced.

  “My debt is paid.” Rhys looked at Torquil and then at her as he pronounced, “Your secrets are both safe with me. There is no one else who needs to know either of these affinities.”

  Then he bowed deeply and left them.

  Once they were alone, or as alone as they could be with the watchers outside the tower, she asked, “And those dreams that . . . were unlike my old ones? The ones of us . . .” She couldn’t say the words, didn’t know how to go from thinking she was having dreams to realizing that they had shared those experiences. In a surprisingly steady voice, she admitted, “I don’t know what to say here. Help me understand . . . why did you do that?”

  “The first was an accident. I was weak because I knew that you were not uninterested in me, and my own dream projected to you,” he admitted. “I did not mean to do so that first time, Eilidh. I swear it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . . I looked at your dreams intentionally; I saw a dream not so unlike my own. The second time that I know that you dreamed of what we could be like together—that was your mind’s creation, not mine. I simply saw it.” Torquil stroked her hair tenderly, even as his eyes darkened with something more intense. “The rest were not a coincidence. Some were my doing, and others were yours. I watched them as often as I could. They were all that kept me from believing you found me repugnant. In our waking hours, you were so cold . . . so dismissive. If I hadn’t known of the things you dreamed, I might’ve given up. But I did know. I couldn’t touch another fae after that. All I could do was count the hours until we could dream together again.”

  “Oh,” she said. There were so many things he was saying, so many revelations that she couldn’t fathom how she’d been oblivious to each of them. In the midst of her shock was a not-insignificant measure of embarrassment. To know that she’d directed some of those dreams . . . it was hard not to feel awkward.

  “Do you feel the dream, as I do?” she asked.

  He didn’t make her clarify further, fortunately.

  “Every touch.” He looked at her as she’d seen fae look upon one another, with so much fire in his eye that she could scarcely breathe. “Because of my affinity, it is as real as if we were awake.”

  “I see.”

  “As it is for you,” he continued.

  As he spoke, Eilidh realized that he was the safest possible spouse she could hope for. In dreams, there was no risk of a child. Part of her wished she could tell Endellion of his affinity. If the queen knew, perhaps she would allow a ceremony.

  It was a matter to ponder. Not now. Possibly not even soon, but there would be a time to discuss the matter.

  Then Torquil spoke again. “I wanted to give it time, to court you properly, but then you were walking away. You were telling me to find a wife as if you had no feelings, as if you didn’t dream of me, of us with the sort of passion that I’ve never known. So I declared myself.”

  “Because we dream of mating?” Eilidh tried to dismiss it, to find a way to shelter her heart. “You don’t have to marry for that, Torquil.”

  “I love you, Eilidh.” He swallowed nervously. “I know you were trapped when I chose to marry you, but if you give me a chance maybe you’ll feel differently in time.”

  “I won’t.” She felt tears in her eyes as emotions overwhelmed her.

  “Oh,” Torquil murmured. He turned away in defeat.

  “I already love you,” she clarified. “I have loved you for years.”

  And there, in her glass tower, with faeries of both courts watching them, she kissed her betrothed, not as a maiden kisses, but with the sort of passion she’d only known in dreams. Torquil’s touch and taste we
re as familiar as if they’d done this a hundred thousand times.

  “We can only be where the people can see us,” Eilidh told him several moments later as she stepped back from him, resuming the proper distance to respect the queen’s orders. Kissing wasn’t forbidden, but the things that, in her dreams, came after that would be. She met her betrothed’s eyes and asked, “Would you nap with me?”

  Torquil laughed happily. “I’ve waited months, thinking of telling you, wanting to dream together a purpose.”

  Eilidh took his hand in hers and walked with him to the sofa. They sat, her leaning against his chest and him with an arm around her, until they fell asleep and dreamed together while the spies and fae staring into the glass tower had no idea of the joy that the betrothed fae in the tower were experiencing as they slept.

  twenty-five

  LILY

  The next night, Lily met Creed and Zephyr at the same walled garden where she’d first thought she could be hidden. The fae-blood, because she refused to accept that they were true fae, apparently used it regularly for the same reasons she’d wanted it. There was a privacy in it that was precious to fae-blood trying to hide from the world. She couldn’t begrudge them their need of it any more than she’d expect them to ban her from it. The problem, she expected, would be when she refused to go along with their madness about being soldiers for Endellion.

  The day itself had been uneventful, which was a relief as she suspected they’d need their wits sharp shortly.

  Silently, Lily walked up to them. “You told none of the others about tonight?”

  “I agreed to your terms, Lilywhite.” Zephyr pressed his lips together like he’d bitten something unpleasant.

  “So no one knows we’re here?” she asked them both.

  “I don’t know who Creed has invited here”—he sent a surly look at Creed—“but that’s the only person who knows where we are.”

  “Okay then,” she said.

  She walked into the labyrinth and looked at the hedge wall, willing it to part for her. When it did, she stroked a hand over the hedge in gratitude, and then glanced back at Creed and Zephyr.

  “So you have affinities for water, fire, and earth, but you still insist that you’re not fae.”