Ethan stood beside me, eyes closed, in leggings and tunic, a heavy iron sword in his hand, streaks of blue across his face.
“There,” Ethan said, and lifted his arm, pointing toward the meadow.
A dozen men and women stood in a circle, moving rhythmically to the soft and hollow sound of a leather drum.
I closed my eyes, let the breeze caress my face, as soft as a mother’s kiss. There was no buzz of magic here. It was the breeze, the tall grass beneath my fingertips, the swell of the cold ocean tide. It was the salt air, the pale mist, the dancers and their music. It permeated every rock, every hill and vale, every person, every thought in the land of fairy, the place where they made their home. A place that was home.
There was happiness here, and pain. Birth and death, and the parade of things that happened in between, the kaleidoscope of experiences that made up a life. But beneath it all, there was contentment, because there was home. Because this was the domain of the fairy. This was fairyland, literally and figuratively.
A sound echoed over the hill, the laughter of a child whom I’d never seen before, but somehow knew as intimately as I knew myself. The giggle echoed across the land, bursting with joy and buoyant silliness.
Ethan’s smile widened, his eyes alight with joy and hope as he watched the horizon, waiting for the child to crest the hill. He moved forward to be one step closer to the child . . . But the wind lifted and turned cold. The earth shuddered, and we stood once again in Chicago.
Wherever we’d gone, we’d come back.
I knew it hadn’t been real, that nothing we’d seen had been real, so it couldn’t have been taken away from us. But that didn’t matter. The grief was instant and as deep as an ocean, leaving me empty and aching, and hollowing out a part of my soul I knew would never be filled. Not when I might have stayed in that world forever, waiting for the child to run into our arms.
The child whose existence was no longer guaranteed.
A hand gripped mine, and I looked at Ethan, found that same look of longing on his face. And as the moment passed, that longing faded to understanding. We’d been there in that world for only a moment. And neither of us had wanted to come back. From the expression of the vampires around us, we weren’t the only ones affected.
No wonder so many fairy-tale characters disappeared, accidentally (or intentionally) stepping foot into the land of the fae, never to return again. They hadn’t been captured by the fae, or not literally. They simply hadn’t wanted to return. They’d have lived contentedly in Emain Ablach for an eternity.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t even heard the phrase before. But it had been slipped into my thoughts like a secret note, a hidden message that I would remember for an eternity, and a place to which I’d probably never return.
I shifted my gaze to Claudia, saw that she knew at least something of what we’d seen, what we’d experienced, and also saw what looked like arrogance.
Claudia looked at me, and I found myself unnerved by her attention. Her eyes seemed to see too much. “You have seen much.”
I shook my head. What I’d seen wasn’t for her. And I didn’t have time to dwell on it right now, so I pushed it aside. “What is Emain Ablach?”
“The green land. Our land.”
“You have access to the green land again,” Ethan said, every word carefully spoken.
Claudia nodded. “I can see home, as I have shown you. I cannot physically travel there, but I can see it. That is . . . a change.”
“And you’re here to show us,” Ethan said. “To demonstrate your power.”
“Or to flaunt it?” I asked.
My tone hadn’t been friendly, and neither were her eyes.
“I chose to sacrifice my connection, however undeserving the recipient of my gift. The deal was done. The power should not have come back to me.”
Her eyes, so vividly blue, darkened, like seas beneath a roiling storm. And there was fear in her eyes. Even Claudia, who was as egotistical and dangerous as they came, was worried.
“Why is it happening?” Ethan asked.
Her brows lifted. “I am not here to answer your questions, bloodletter.”
Ethan’s expression remained implacable. “And yet, you’re here. In my territory, without permission, to seek an audience with me.”
Claudia growled, anger flashing in her eyes. “You did not stop her when you had the chance.”
No question as to the “her” she intended.
“To the contrary. We stopped Sorcha; the humans allowed her to escape. You believe she’s the reason your power has returned?”
For the first time since I’d known her, there was uncertainty in Claudia’s expression. “There is power in this land. Power the shadowed girl worked to contain.”
“The shadowed girl?” Ethan asked.
But I understood. “She means Mallory,” I said. She’d been shadowed by dark magic. “Mallory reversed Sorcha’s magic. There shouldn’t have been anything left of Sorcha’s spell.”
And that had been bothering me—how could there have been magic left over to create the delusions if the battle at Towerline had eradicated it?
With impeccable timing, and before Claudia could answer, Mallory and Catcher strode through the gate and down the sidewalk.
They stopped when they reached us, and Mallory’s eyes grew wide as she took in the spectacle that was Claudia.
Emotions evolved on her face—confusion, curiosity, and, as she probably felt the depth of Claudia’s magic, something that looked like lust. Like need. Something that probably wasn’t good for a woman with an addiction to dark magic.
“Mallory,” I said, making her name a quick snap. It accomplished what I needed it to do, and seemed to pull her out of her momentary magical stupor.
“Hello,” Catcher said, nodding at Ethan, at Claudia. “We don’t want to interrupt.”
But he plainly was here to interrupt, to jump in, in case the fairies were a threat. And with Mallory, to contain them.
“You aren’t,” Ethan said. “Claudia, this is Catcher and Mallory Bell. Claudia is queen of the fairy.”
“The shadowed girl,” Claudia said quietly. Her gaze had skipped over Catcher, evidently unimpressed. But she looked at Mallory carefully, and for the first time since I’d known her, there was something akin to respect in her eyes. Something that looked like recognition, like she’d finally found someone worthy of her interest, rather than the same old stringy vampires.
“You wrought old magic,” Claudia said. “That magic shadowed you.”
“I’ve worked to lift that shadow,” Mallory said, straightening her shoulders.
“And turned away from limitless power,” Claudia said, clearly unimpressed. “You turned instead to words and chants, herbs and whispers.”
“Didn’t you turn away from power, too?”
“You would judge me?”
“If you’re going to judge first, yeah. Maybe we can skip the rest of the intimidation game and get to the point?”
Claudia’s eyes fired—she wasn’t used to smart-mouthed sorceresses—but she let the comment go. Maybe she was intimidated by Mallory, which was fine by me. I wasn’t comfortable without a check on Claudia’s power. We didn’t need another Sorcha.
“I felt your magic, your unraveling of hers. It wasn’t enough.”
Mallory blinked, looked baffled and insulted at the same time. “We reversed the spell successfully.”
“Perhaps. But she did not allow the magic to disseminate after it was unraveled.”
Mallory just stared at her for a moment. “That’s impossible,” she said quietly. “That couldn’t have worked. We knew her magic—her alchemy. We worked the reversal completely.”
She looked at me, at Ethan, at Catcher. “They know the truth.”
Mallory’s gaze snapped to ours. “They do?”
“There had to be leftover magic,” I quietly said. “The delusions were created by magic, and they didn’t set off the wards.”
“But I was so careful.” She reached out, took Catcher’s arm. “We were so careful. We did everything right.”