Adam stopped mid-word; when he spoke again his voice was carefully dispassionate. “When the Sidhe-seer,” he rephrased, “agreed to act as my intermediary and help me find a way to contact you, I promised her safety in exchange. She has risked herself to aid us, we who hunted her people for so long. Her assistance has helped preserve your reign and the safety of all the realms. It has long been our custom to bestow gifts upon mortals who aid us. I promised her we would leave her in her own world when all was done, alive and well, free of any Tuatha Dé persecution, assuring her safety and that of those she loves.”
“Grand promises from such a powerless Fae.”
“Would you make of me a liar?”
“You do that often enough yourself.”
Adam bristled. There’d been no need to say that in front of Gabrielle.
Silence stretched. Then the queen exhaled softly, a silvery sound. “Reveal this traitor for me and I will uphold your promise to the human, but I warn you, make no more, Amadan.”
“Then you agree she should remain here. On Keltar land.”
“I said that I will uphold your promise. But she goes with you. Darroc might wonder at her absence and not show his hand. If he has betrayed me, I want proof and I want it now. Before he acts against me and makes those in my court think it possible.” The queen moved in a swirl of radiant light. “I will be watching. Lure him out for me and I will come. Show me Hunters at my Elder’s side and I will restore you to your full power. And let you decide his fate. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Adam jerked his head once in a tight nod.
A rush of sound spilled from her lips in Tuatha Dé tongue. Beside him, Gabrielle shivered intensely.
“You will wear the féth fiada until this is done, Amadan.”
“Bloody hell,” Adam muttered savagely. “I hate being invisible.”
“And, Keltar,” Aoibheal said in a voice like sudden thunder, with a glance up at the balustrade. “Henceforth I would advise against tampering with my curses. Perform the Lughnassadh ritual now or face my wrath.”
“Aye, Queen Aoibheal,” Dageus and Drustan replied together, stepping out from behind stone columns bracketing the stairs.
Adam smiled faintly. He should have known no Highlander would flee, only retreat to a higher vantage—take to the hills, in a manner of speaking—waiting in silent readiness should battle be necessary.
Gabby went limp beside him with a soft whoosh of breath.
The queen was gone.
22
Early the next morning, Gabby and Adam packed to leave Castle Keltar and catch a flight back to the States.
As Adam was invisible again, they would be traveling cloaked, and Gabby was surprised to realize she was rather looking forward to it. There was a certain intriguing impunity one felt, concealed by the féth fiada. There was also the fact that it meant they’d be touching constantly, and she simply couldn’t get enough of touching him.
Immediately upon the queen’s departure yesterday, Dageus and Drustan had performed the ritual of Lughnassadh. Once the walls were again secured, they’d sat down and rehashed the afternoon’s events, with Gabby serving as Adam’s intermediary.
She’d been surprised by how wired with excitement Chloe and Gwen had been to see—sort of, out of the corners of their eyes as well—the queen of the Tuatha Dé. It seemed Chloe had felt quite cheated that Dageus had encountered her once before and had failed to take a complete accounting of her.
Their reaction—one not of fear but of interest and curiosity—had served to solidify her new slant on things. Yes, the Tuatha Dé Danaan (as Gabby was now calling them) were otherworldly, different, but not the heartless, emotionless creatures she’d been raised to believe they were.
As Gwen had said, they were another race, a highly advanced race. And though the inexplicable could be frightening, learning about it went a long way toward allaying one’s fears.
Further toward that end, the MacKeltars had taken her, with the once-more-invisible Adam in tow, to the other Keltar castle last night, where Christopher and Maggie MacKeltar lived, and shown her the underground chamber library that housed all the ancient Druid lore, dating all the way back to when The Compact had first been negotiated.
Gabby had gotten to see the actual treaty between the races, etched on a sheet of pure gold, scribed in a language no scholar alive could identify. Adam had translated passages of it, emphasizing the part about Sidhe-seers: that “those who see the Fae belong to the Fae,” yet they were not to be killed or enslaved but permitted to live in peace and comfort in any Fae realm they chose, their every desire met, except, of course, for their freedom. I told you we didn’t harm them, he’d said.