Surreptitiously, I glanced down at Ethan. He was leaning against the wall of the tunnel, his eyes closed, his face pale. I didn’t think he was unconscious, but he definitely wasn’t in good shape. If I disappeared, I knew without a doubt Grace would use him as a hostage, and since I couldn’t make the charm stop working until time was up, that meant Ethan would die.
“That boy is your Achilles heel,” Grace said. “I knew if I kept a close watch on him, you’d show up on his doorstep eventually, but I never dreamed you’d be so accommodating as to show up alone.” She cocked her gun and pointed it at Ethan.
I didn’t even think about it; I just stepped between them, blocking Grace’s shot. She smirked.
“You can’t protect him from both myself and Fred at the same time. But I’m not planning to kill him. Not unless you make me, that is. And no, I’m not planning to let my friends kill him, either. I want him alive.”
“Why?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine what she’d have to gain by letting Ethan go.
Her smile broadened. “I will explain in just a moment.”
Ethan tried to call out a warning, but it was too late. I started to turn around, but before I could dodge or block or even duck, lineman Fred’s fist connected with my chin and sent me flying into the opposite wall. The whole world seemed to tilt sideways, and the walls of the tunnel closed in on me.
* * *
I woke up to find my situation had not improved. My head throbbed viciously, and my stomach lurched. I blinked and pushed myself up into a sitting position.
I was still on the floor of the tunnel, approximately where I’d landed when Fred had hit me. He stood towering over me, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. He was so big he practically filled the tunnel, and even if my head hadn’t been swimming, I wouldn’t have been able to dart around him.
I turned to look in the other direction, and my stomach gave another lurch. While I’d been out, Grace and her other friend had dragged Ethan about ten yards down the tunnel. Her friend held Ethan’s sagging body up, with his arms pinned behind his back, while Grace held her gun to his head. She smiled at me again. She was having a grand ol’ time.
“As I said, your Achilles heel.” She licked her lips. “You were willing to risk a great deal when the Erlking took him, now weren’t you?”
I didn’t really think that question required an answer, so I just stared at her. How the hell was I going to get out of this? And get Ethan out of it, too? I hadn’t gone through everything I’d gone through just to let Aunt Grace kill him.
“Do you know how old I am?” she asked, and I was totally startled by the question that seemed to come out of nowhere. I shook my head. I might have mentioned that I didn’t care, either, except I was still kind of dopey after that blow to my head.
“I am almost two thousand,” she said.
My mind couldn’t encompass that. I’d known she was old, but I’d somehow thought her age numbered in centuries, not freakin’ millennia.
“When I was a young woman, all of Faerie was practically under siege.”
“By the Erlking,” I said, because I couldn’t imagine any other reason she’d be telling me this.
“Indeed,” she confirmed with a nod. “He and his Wild Hunt were the creatures of nightmare, even to the Unseelie Court, who are nightmares themselves. No one liked to admit it, but he was a match even for the Queens, and his power kept growing greater and greater. Until one of Mab’s spies discovered his secret power, the power that was helping him grow stronger, and Mab spread the word throughout all of Faerie.”
Her eyes shone in the artificial glow of her light spell, and I could tell she was really, really enjoying herself. Which meant that whatever the point of this story was, I was going to hate it.
“It was around this time that Titania launched her great campaign against the Erlking and learned the hard way that he had grown too powerful for her to defeat. He stole my nephew, forced him to become part of the Wild Hunt. It was a bold and brilliant move, proving to both the Queens that he had the power to take from them even those who were closest to them. However, the Courts now knew his secret power and could guard against him using it. And so the Erlking proposed a truce with the Queens. He would never again kill any member of their Courts without their permission. And they would bind their Courts to secrecy, to hide his secret power from future generations.”
This was way more than my dad had ever told me about the Erlking’s bargain with the Queens. He’d given me the impression that the geis wouldn’t allow him to speak about it at all, but apparently that wasn’t the case, at least not for Aunt Grace.
“Shall I tell you the Erlking’s secret?” Grace asked, chortling.
I blinked at her. My heart was beating like a frightened rabbit’s, and my mouth was completely dry. Anything that made her that happy was not a good thing for me. Not at all.
“You can’t,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as dread tried to steal my breath. “The geis…”
She laughed, the sound echoing hollowly against the stone. “Oh, but I can, my dear. You see, the geis only applies to those who are affiliated with the Courts. Those of us who were born in Faerie were dedicated to our Courts while still infants, and unless we perform a ritual to formally sever our ties, we are still subject to them. Avalon may have treaties with Faerie, but if the Queens wanted to call their subjects back, most of the Fae would obey their call.