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“I am not a man. I can easily—”
“Gossamyr.”
“—gain her lair and take her out!”
Gossamyr twisted her neck to find the glint in Shinn’s vivid violet eyes. The trace of a grin bracketed his pale mouth. Always his emotion manifested in small measure.
Reaching for the applewood staff—her vade mecum—she turned from Shinn, spun the weapon in her fingers, then swung it out before her, spanning a full circle before she snapped it back to rest against her shoulder. She may not be able to shape-change or twinclian at sign of danger, but Shinn had made sure his half-blood daughter could stand and fight. Much as he forbade her to participate in the Glamoursiège tournaments, she had managed a few on the sly.
Gossamyr had developed a penchant for adventure. Danger even. Unfortunately danger had eluded her. Until now.
The thought of this mission verily sizzled inside her. She wanted this! For many reasons. But fore, she wanted to protect her homeland from the threat of the revenants.
“It is the mortal passion, be that so?” Shinn’s quiet words made Gossamyr wince. “It blinds you to the real danger.”
“But I crave danger!”
He caught the end of her staff as she swung it in declaration. The tension strumming from end to end of the staff—Gossamyr’s grip to Shinn’s—felt palpable. Unwilling to concede, she lifted her chin defiantly.
“You have not experienced real danger.” Her father’s stern tone curtailed her swagger a bit. “Bogies and hobs—”
“And that core worm a few days earlier! The thing spat dirt balls the size of a spriggan’s head.”
Shinn turned a wry smirk upon her. “Gossamyr, core worms do not spit.”
“It was spitting at me.”
“Think about it, daughter. How is it a worm exudes dirt from its body?”
“Well, it—” Throws up casts. Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. So the thing had been—Ah. “Don’t you trust I’ve the ability? You have trained me for this opportunity.”
Her father released the end of her staff with a gentle shove. “You are skilled, this I know.”
“Then I am ready. I will return to you—”
“Will you?” So much unspoken in those two words. And the sigh that followed.
“Yes. Of…of course I will return.”
Did he worry that her mortal blood would prevent her safe return? Gossamyr had ever coached herself to resist the mortal passion. If it had seduced her mother, she, as well, risked such temptation, for Veridienne’s blood coursed through her veins instead of Shinn’s ichor.
Or was it that he could not abide her to leave him? The pain of losing Veridienne had changed Shinn, closed his heart. Emotion was difficult to mine from the stalwart fée. Gossamyr would not bring further heartache to her father.
And yet, Shinn had bruised her heart with his own cruel indifference. The memory of a Rougethorn’s kiss would for ever live in Gossamyr’s being, and for evermore close her heart to the mutable love faeries feared.
But it was all for naught. Love was not to be hers. Shinn had already announced her engagement to a most frustrating man, his marshal at arms, Desideriel Raine. Frustrating to Gossamyr’s heart, but certainly deserving where skill and knowledge of the Glamoursiège musters were concerned. When Shinn had first suggested such over a meal the diffident fée had suppressed a sneer as he’d looked across the table to Gossamyr. She had read the young warrior’s look—she is not true fée. The humiliation had prompted her to excuse herself before the final flower course.
She was perfectly capable of ruling Glamoursiège on her own, but tradition required marriage—marriage being reserved for royalty and the upper-caste lords and ladies. And, Gossamyr suspected, Desideriel would represent true fée blood when all in Glamoursiège merely tolerated Gossamyr’s half blood.
“Truth,” Shinn said.
Drawn from her troubling thoughts, Gossamyr approached Shinn.
Truth? Studying the sun-laced tower floor, the blue veins purling through the marble like cold blood, Gossamyr vacillated on admitting the truth. A truth that sat in her heart like the pulses of mortal Time that fascinated her so. How to do it gently?
“Truth,” she murmured. An exhale released reluctance. “I do long to visit the Otherside. You know that.” She met Shinn’s gaze, half-concealed by a fall of his long raven hair. He sought the truth of her, and yet he would hide behind his own hard emotions. “I want to understand that part of my heritage most alien to me. I want to…experience.”
She followed Shinn’s pace to the tower’s edge. The evening primrose that grew in the roots attracted night moths, which then attracted frogs. He nodded. “And find.”
Frustration, muted and held back far too long, oozed throughout her. He would not close out her desires. Not this time. Even more, Gossamyr would have her father know her heart. She whispered, “Love never dies, Shinn.”
“You think to know love?”
“I…yes.” And not the fickle love faeries know. “I know the fée cannot truly—”
Too fragile, the memory of Veridienne, to speak of it. And so Gossamyr would not. But what of her lover? The one her father had banished from her very arms? Then, he had claimed she could not begin to know love. Did they both fool the other with their secret longings for fulfillment?
To continue would gain her no ground.
“Here is my home, Shinn.”
“Yes, because you believe.”
Yes, yes. Always he repeated the mantra to her: Believe and you Belong. She believed. She belonged! Nothing could change that.
“Faery is your home,” he said. “Should you venture away…you must then return.”
To marry Desideriel was the unspoken part.
“Indeed. And my home is no longer safe unless someone stops the Red Lady. I want to help Faery. How will I ever stand in your place if there is naught a place to stand?”
The summer breeze lifted Shinn’s jet hair over his shoulders and twisted fine strands around the horns at his temples. Gossamyr read the pain in his tightened jaw. His own memories haunted. It had been much simpler for her to place aside the memories of an always-distant mother.
“Grant me this opportunity, Shinn. I will return to you.”
“You vow to me?”
A father’s fear: violet eyes unwilling to focus upon hers; hyacinth, heady and oozing with an expectant pulse.
“You won’t lose me, Shinn. I vow it upon my fée essence.”
Gossamyr noted the twitch at the corner of her father’s mouth. Suppression always tightened his features. “This mission is deadly. Time cannot be tricked or defeated.”
A stab of her staff rang against the marble. “I am skilled.”
“A—” Shinn looked to the summer-pale sky “—champion is needed.”
A champion. “Oh.” Her bravado mellowed, Gossamyr bowed her head.
Indeed, a champion.
When had she ever proven herself in battle? Fighting dirt-casting core worms and drunken bogies? Night-creeping spriggans rarely offered more than a few moments’ struggle before scampering away from challenge. Werefrogs were vicious but stupid. Tournaments offered her but display of singular combat skills. There had not been opportunity for real challenge here in Glamoursiège. And she’d never been off the Spiral, not