Gossamyr Part 37

She could not conjure the scene. A mortal babe lying alone in a cradle. Was there not family about? Not a mother's watchful eyes to protect her babe from mischievous faeries? How had s.h.i.+nn decided Gossamyr would be the one?

"You...knew I was healthy?"

"No, we expected you would live but a few days, so sickly you were at the time. You surprised us both. Never doubt my love for you."

Turning away from s.h.i.+nn she looked up to seek the sun, but as it set so its color was muted and pink. Not bright enough to bring tears to her eyes. The tears were there, but she sought camouflage. Faery love was false, a device modeled after the real thing, but never equal. Not the same.

"You know it is not the fee nature to love as the mortals do." s.h.i.+nn's voice trickled over her scalp. So strange the fee lilt sounded to her now, and here on the Otherside. Alien. Not right. She craved the rumbling tones of Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III. "We are...fickle."

"Oh, I know that now."

"But you...you knew love, Gossamyr. You have always had the capacity for it. I saw it in your eyes when you spoke of him. He- Avenall-woke the love buried in your mortal heart. Which is why I discouraged your courts.h.i.+p. To love as a mortal, and have your heart broken, would have proved painful."

She spun on his erratic explanation. "Should that not have been my decision?"

"I only wanted to protect you. Desideriel Raine is a good man."

"I know that!" She turned and lowered her head. Picking at the fur flowing over her left wrist, she could but summon anger. A bold and furious rush that made her jitter and fist the air. He had thought it all through so carefully. Thinking to protect her from a broken heart? s.h.i.+nn thought only of the political alliance her marriage would promise Glamoursiege. Desideriel was Wisogoth; the ancient faery tribe aligned to Glamoursiege only promised a brilliant future.

To ever keep the Rougethorn taint from s.h.i.+nn's life had meant keeping it from hers.

"He excels in battle," s.h.i.+nn continued. "Desideriel takes command- -has even bested me more than once-and shows no hesitation to do so. He is the only choice to lord over Glamoursiege when I am gone. We have discussed this."

"I do not doubt Desideriel's qualifications-" ...to lord over Glamoursiege... "You just placed Desideriel to the throne instead of me? I understand now." She approached him, anger keeping her stiff, sharpening her words. "You cannot have a mortal sit the throne and so you must marry her to a full-blood fee. Have you planned this since the day you brought me to Faery, s.h.i.+nn?"

"Not so long as that. Gossamyr-"

She put up a hand, hoping to silence his insincerity in her booming heart. But those violet eyes gazing upon her with such sadness, and that sweet hyacinth aura, betroubled her and challenged her need to remain angry with him.

"I begin to understand the strange workings of your twisted faery love," she said. "That is why you wish me to marry a man who can never love me -because I shall never love him. Hence, the mortal pa.s.sion would remain buried."

s.h.i.+nn nodded. "It is for Glamoursiege."

"Indeed. Isn't it always for Glamoursiege? Unless Lord de Winters.h.i.+nn finds a mortal woman he can love over the chance to unite two tribes."

"That is..."

"Not fair? Oh, yes, the fee always require balance. For every good there requires ill. For every trick a trade. For every broken heart...what? It is too late. I know love, s.h.i.+nn. The deep, gorgeous, and yes, even painful love that faeries fear. You could never stifle my truth, yet in attempting to do so, you caused the very tragedy you sought to prevent."

"It was done to protect you, Gossamyr. Should you learn the truth Time will catch up and... The glamour-"

"You worked a glamour on me? Is that why I wore a blazon, because of faery glamour? Why? Why not simply return me to my mortal parents after you saw I was not to die? Should they not have had the right to raise their own child?"

"The d'Ange family was carefully chosen. They were not to survive long after your birth."

"Carefully- They did not- D'Ange?" Unsettled, Gossamyr groped for purchase on nothing more than the air, but stood without falter. Ulrich, where be he to? She needed him to stand by her, to support. It could become romantic, should you allow it. "That is the name of the family you stole me from?"

"Not so much stole, as-"

"Be honest! It is a Faery rite to steal mortal infants to replace sick changelings. Give and take! Good and ill!"

The feathered cloak fluttered out; beneath, s.h.i.+nn's wings coiled open and beat the air once. Trying to maintain calm. Gossamyr knew that telling sign. Please, Father,just open up and give to me my truth!

He gripped the air before him, clenching-keeping back his truths-but spoke yet with calm. "If Circelie did not tell you, how then came this knowledge to you? Who revealed your truth?"

"Avenall."

The Faery lord gaped. Not an expression Gossamyr had ever before seen.

"Yes, my banished lover-to-be has joined forces with your banished lover. Marvelous, eh? But he does not remember me. Yet you left your lover with her memory intact, for that is the reason you now battle the revenants. To think you could have prevented this war with but your own discretion!"

Yes, wince, she thought. Show me emotion. Confess to your indiscretions! To your lies!

"Avenall Eloi Papilion," s.h.i.+nn muttered, marking each name slowly. "I made it so."

"Of course..."Gossamyr whispered. "Papilion. That is his name complete. I had...forgotten. The succubus has him in her erie. Circelie?" She must remember. And: Avenall Eloi Papilion. "Avenall does not remember me. And he's changed so much. And how...how were you able to banish him from Glamoursiege when he was a Rougethorn?"

"I have command over all who have settled in Glamoursiege. Avenall has been there since he was very small."

As she had suspected. "Yet, you deemed him unfit for me with so little time as a Rougethorn?"

"Forgive me, child of mine."

"How can you name me that after all has been revealed?"

"I love you."

"Oh?" His admission meant so little right now. It felt little more than a tap from a damselfly's wings to her nose. Irritating, if truth be confessed. "Well, I hate you, s.h.i.+nn. I hate you for your lies. I hate you for sending me away. I hate you for your smugness and your supremacy. And I hate you for the truth!"

The commander lifted his chin, catching the setting sun in a glitter across his throat. "Your hate, it is just."

Gossamyr stepped around to catch his straying gaze. "So I will wither and die as a mortal? Is that not the way of all mortals? Such a truth is not so fearsome."

"Remember, I have always told you to believe."

"Yes, yes."

"You believed you belonged in Faery and that is all required. The blazon of glamour was yours with Belief. But now...to know the truth..."

"I have not aged since arriving in the Otherside. Time has not touched me."

Gossamyr turned away and twisted her head down against her chest. Tears flowed freely. s.h.i.+nn would be horrified. Ulrich would dance a merry jig at her plunge into emotion. But it felt right to cry. Because she hurt.

Deeply. So deep it seeped from her chest and swelled into her heart and gut. Oh, but the ache had been put there by the only person she had ever trusted! How many more times would he wound her with his mistruths and abrupt reactions?

"I should leave," s.h.i.+nn said softly.

Gossamyr stretched out her arms. "No! We are not finished. There is much to be said. Twice now you have hurt me with your indifference. Look at me! You witness my pain. A pain you put here." She pounded her chest with a fist. The inability to squelch emotion made her lips s.h.i.+ver as she spoke. "It seeps from my heart, s.h.i.+nn."

He tilted his head inquiringly. So dispa.s.sionate. "Does not your hate for me close the wound?"

Cruel, emotionless fee.

Then he did something remarkable. s.h.i.+nn reached out and touched her face. He traced the curve of her eye, wetting his fingertip with her salty pain. Drawing it before him, the sun caught in the glint of her teardrops.

"Worth so much," she said, challenge sharpening her tone. "Mortal tears."

"Worth nothing when I am the cause." He swiped his finger down his cheek, wiping off her tears on his flesh. Briefly, the salted trail sparkled like his blazon before fading and twinkling away.

Shaking her head, Gossamyr wept. "I hate you. And..." She fell to her knees and clutched s.h.i.+nn's legs. All that she had known was her father's heart. And for every ill there had been a right so perfect she had never once doubted his love. "I love you."

Love and hate. Impossible to separate the two emotions, for they were alike in intensity. Both birthed from her heart. Both gushed tears down her cheeks. Both were...so mortal.

Fingers touched her scalp, gently easing into the motion of comfort. Gossamyr continued to sob, pouring out her loss, her reality, into her false father's arms.

s.h.i.+nn knelt and tucked her head against his shoulder. And for a long time the two embraced, Gossamyr's sobbing filled the air, salting it and painting it heavily upon her heart. The rose-colored sky darkened and crickets began to chirp. And with that plunge into evening, and the release of her pain, Gossamyr settled to a sniffling acceptance.

"It was not indifference that hurt you, child of mine, but fear. I feared losing you so much-"

"So you kept a lie in hopes I would return to live ever after in Faery by your side."

"Selfish of me."

Only when Gossamyr heard s.h.i.+nn's sniff did she look up into his watery violet eyes. "You do love? But...I am not your own."

"You are as my own flesh, Gossamyr. The day I sent you to the Otherside I wept. For the first time in my life. It is most...uncomfortable." He touched the corner of his eye and studied a teardrop, jiggling on his fingertip as if an alien thing. "I deserve your hate, but never your love."

And he would have her hate. But she would temper it with the inexplicable compulsion to cling to the only constancy she had ever known -her father.

"What of my mortal parents?"

"They were murdered a few years back."

Gossamyr's jaw fell open.

"I am sorry. The d'Anges. The-that is the castle where you stopped. I saw it through the fetch."

"I was drawn to my place of birth?"

"It is not a wonder."

"But what I found there. It was dest.i.tute. The destruction. Do you know how they died? Have you watched them? Are they all lost to me? Please tell me, s.h.i.+nn, I must know."

"Very well. The d'Anges were murdered by a dark lord, who later fell at the hands of your mortal sister. She yet lives under the watch of an Enchanted, though I know not where."

"I have a sister?" She splayed a hand across the membrane of s.h.i.+nn's wing, which curled around her back. Warm and soft, like an arm hugging her close.

Completely mortal. And a family? A sister? How had her real parents died? Had they suffered? Had they mourned her absence? What had her mortal mother's hands felt like? Had she loved her more than Veridienne ever could?

"I always felt you had a better life in Faery. It pained me, your fascination with the Otherside. But I knew that the mortal pa.s.sion had been yours to own since birth. In a manner, this mission was my gift to you."

The gift of freedom. The price? Truth.

To age and die? "Can I return to Faery? Will Time age me so quickly as it has aged you?"

"I have lived this aging, child of mine. I cannot guess what Time will serve you now that the truth is yours. It is legend a mortal who knows he does not belong will perish once returned to Faery, for the aging takes with great l.u.s.t."

"That is why you kept the truth. To return to Faery now, I would..."

"I guess you would age as you should have here in the Otherside."

"But it has not been so long. Avenall, he claims he has been here less than a mortal moon cycle."

"Time twists widders.h.i.+ns and thus, Gossamyr. No man, beast or fee can stop or control it. While you have lived in Faery, many mortal years have pa.s.sed, and yet, so few."

Gossamyr heaved in a s.h.i.+vering sigh. Her tears depleted, she could feel but an emptiness. But yet, 'twas as if that hole had begun to fill by that bit of wonder that had ever traced her heart. What is the mortal pa.s.sion?

Love.

How she fit into the air here in the Otherside.

"You placed me in the Otherside for a purpose. I have not given up the fight."

"And the man..."

"Ulrich?" She chuckled, mayhap because that was the only emotion she had yet to loose. "But of course. I suspected as much when in the forest. You enchanted him into my life. Did you think I needed protection?"

"Compa.s.sion. He has not proven me wrong."

"Do you know he is a Dancer?"

"Yes, and he possesses the sight because of it. I know you witnessed the Dance, Gossamyr. I saw your foray into the mortal pa.s.sion."

So she had guessed correctly. "He is a good man. Though I dare not leave him alone too long. I fear he will succ.u.mb to the Red Lady's seduction."

"He is more susceptible with the sight."

And determined to follow the lure- "s.h.i.+nn! He carries an alicorn."

The aging fee warrior drew in a hissing breath. "This I have not seen through the fetch."

"It is what will heal the rift, I know it! Ulrich wants to return it to the unicorn in exchange for a wish granted. His daughter, she was sacrificed to a dragon, and he wants her back."

"He asks far too much with its return. One must not raise the dead."

She had believed much the same, until she had learned to know Ulrich.

You think a man cannot love a child not of his blood?