Beauty [A Faery Story 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

Gabe brought some kind of light and flashed it where Roan pointed. Sure enough, the light shimmered a few inches above the beach. It was odd, like the way the horizon seemed to shimmer in the distance on a very hot day, but this was close and small.

“It smells different.” Kaja was scenting the air. “Dante, I smell fields and forests.”

Dellacourt seemed to catch his wife’s enthusiasm. “I smell an adventure, Kaj. We have fun in forests, baby.”

“It’s going to be tight.” Roan dropped to his belly. “Hurry.” He put his hands through and suddenly his body began to disappear. One minute he was there and the next, his arms were gone, vanished as though they didn’t exist. The rest of his body followed, swallowed up by whatever was on the other side of the veil.

Harry tossed a pack through and disappeared the same way.

Lach turned back to Julian. “You knew. This was here the whole time. You knew.”

Julian’s face was a careful blank. “The king wouldn’t let anyone tell you. He didn’t believe, Lachlan. No one did. Now get rid of your anger and prove us wrong. Your father is betting everything on this. His kingdom. His life. Forgive him and move on. You’ll be happier for it.”

Shim had figured it out the minute Julian had shown up, but he didn’t struggle the way Lach did. He took his brother’s elbow. “Go. We have to go.”

Everyone else was gone.

Lach dove toward the crack, his big body disappearing. Shim turned to Duffy who stood there, axe in hand.

“Go, Duffy.”

The gnome shook his head. “Ain’t going ’til you do. Someone’s gotta watch yer back.”

He could be so stubborn. There were only seconds left. Shim didn’t argue. He threw his body to the ground. “Grab my legs.” He could already see Lach’s big hands coming through, searching for Shim’s arms to pull him through. “Grab my legs, Duffy!”

Shim could feel the veil beginning to close. There was a crack, and it felt like invisible walls were closing in on him. His breath caught in his chest. He was going to die like this, cut in half, so close to her and yet forever far away.

It felt like his arms were torn from his shoulders, but he was suddenly in a completely different place. The sun was brighter. The air warmer.

Shim sat up. He couldn’t feel Duffy at his feet. “Duffy? He was holding on to my ankles. Duffy?”

And then the little gnome appeared just as the crack between the two worlds slammed closed. Duffy was a small cannonball popping in from the other plane. He rolled and grunted to a stop. His helmet was askew and his armor out of place.

“Sorry. I almost forgot me axe. Wouldn’t be nothing of a guard without me axe.”

There was a rich laugh behind them, and Shim looked up. Two identical Fae twins stared down at him.

“Well, look at that. I’ve never seen a gnome warrior before, Max.” The one who had spoken had a wide grin and a hat on his head.

Max looked to be the surlier of the two. “Well, that’s the Unseelie for you, Rye.”

Shim let his head fall back, dragging air into his lungs.

He was finally here.

Lach stared out the back porch and tried to will the sun to go down. It had been hours and hours of waiting. Hours of listening to the Harper twins argue and crack wise. Lach was suddenly deeply appreciative of his own brother.

A huge black dog lumbered into the yard, a gnarly stick in his mouth. The dog was roughly the size of a small pony, though it appeared the Harper twins liked to grow large animals. Their entire stock of horses were oversized and ran the range of colors from a brilliant red to blacks so dark they shimmered blue in the sunlight.

The rest of the group was huddled around the large table inside the
brugh
, enjoying a meal the twin’s wife, Rachel, had cooked. It was a full table. The twins had five children, all but one larger than Duffy.

But Lach didn’t want to eat. He wanted to move. He wanted to get started.

“You should eat, Your Highness, I mean, Lachlan.” Roan walked out, followed by his vampire partner. They wouldn’t enjoy the cabbage and sausages Rachel had cooked. He stopped, staring for a moment. “Unless you take after your vampire half. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen you or your brother eat.”

Lach managed a smile. “I assure you, we’re just fine. Lots of meat, though the hunger for blood grows by the day. Cousin Julian made sure we had meal pills to fill those hungers.”

Roan growled a little. “Meal pills are nothing once you’ve had real blood.”

“I’ll wait for my wife, thank you.”

Roan shook it off. “Sorry. Being near Rachel always gets my blood high. She’s quite the consort.”

Lach understood what he was saying. Rachel glowed, a faint outline around her body that let a vampire know her blood would strengthen him, elongate his life. A sidhe in need of a bondmate would have to get intimate to know if a woman could bond, but Lach had his vampire heritage to fall back on. Rachel Harper had a gorgeous glow about her.

“Don’t tell Max,” Roan said, his eyes searching the horizon. “Rye would laugh it off, but Max takes things far too seriously.”

“How did you find them?” Lach was curious. Roan had a whole setup. He’d made a business out of stealing into Tir na nÓg.

Roan smiled. “I found the crack, and when I managed to get through it, Rye was staring down at me. He found out what I was doing, and I discovered that he and his brother and wife were rebels looking for a way to fuck with the pretender. Rachel had a sister who disappeared with Torin’s guards. This whole little village the Harpers live in is a wee bit radical. They’re protected by the mountains and they have an intensely smart mayor. They’ve managed to survive relatively unscathed, but they intend to give Torin the fight of his life. We have weapons stashed all over Aoibhneas.”

Aoibhneas. Lach knew the word well. Bliss. “Have you told them about the rebellion?”

Roan turned, and Lach saw Rye Harper walking up, his arm around his wife’s waist. Max Harper followed behind them leading a ridiculously large horse with deeply yellow eyes. He seemed to be muttering to the horse under his breath. Rye Harper had his eyes on Lach. The previously friendly cowboy had a serious look on his face.

“We’re ready,” Rye said. “We’ve been ready for thirteen years.”

Rachel leaned into her husband. “Are they really alive?”

It was hard to believe how isolated Tir na nÓg had become. “Beck and Cian Finn are alive and well, and they have formed their true triad. Beck has mastered storms and Cian is a Green Man. Your kings will be back soon.”

Rachel hugged her husband and cried into his shoulder, clutching him. Rye Harper nodded toward Lach. “We’ll be ready. Tell me something, are you really the Unseelie prince?”

Lach nodded. “I am.”

“He is the Unseelie prince, but only half of him. You two should be happy you only share a face and not a soul.”

Lach stopped and sighed because it had been the damn horse that spoke. The yellow eyes should have been a dead giveaway. A phooka. A potentially dangerous creature, but very powerful. They could often be chaotic, but the phooka had been known to band together with other creatures during times of hardship.

Rye laughed. “You have no idea how much I praise the day we weren’t born symbiotic. I can’t imagine having to be in his head all the time.”

“You wish you had my brain, brother,” Max shot back. He looked at the horse, narrowing his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be undercover? Doesn’t that mean not doing the whole talking thing? It tends to give you away, dummy.”

The phooka gave a regal whinny. “I wouldn’t walk around talking about someone else’s intelligence, Harper. And the other horses hate you.”

Max rolled his cool blue eyes. “I doubt that. Those horses love me. And you better love me, too. I could call the guards down on your nasty ass.”

The phooka tossed his head. “I do not fear this, sidhe. I know far too much. Besides, you can grumble all you like, but you would not turn on an ally.”

Max leaned in. “No, I wouldn’t, but I could move your stall away from that pretty little mare you have those nasty eyes on.”

The phooka turned on him. “Don’t you dare. Do you know how long it’s taken me to convince her to let me close? I’m so close, Max. Have you seen her ass? It’s the hottest filly ass in the whole province.”

“Remember that.” Max turned back to Lach. “You want to explain why we should trust you?”

Lach shrugged. “I don’t care if you trust me or not.”

Max huffed a little, his face betraying a bitterness. “Well, that’s pretty much what I would expect from an Unseelie prince.”

The sidhe walked off, after nodding to his brother and wife.

Rye gripped his wife’s hand. “But you’re going to help, right? I thought Roan said the Unseelie are going to back the true kings.”

“My father is sending a force in. I am merely here to get my bondmate and get out. She is too important to risk.” He looked pointedly at Rachel Harper. “I would certainly assume that you’re not going to risk your bondmate.”

Rye’s face got red, his jaw tense, but the words that came out of his mouth were controlled. “My bondmate, my brother, my children, my town have all been at risk for thirteen years. I’ve been forced to raise my children under the tyrant’s reign, wondering every bloody day if Torin isn’t going to come for one of them. My oldest daughter, Paige, has great skill with magic, and I can’t risk anyone outside of this community knowing it because Torin would take her and, if he couldn’t warp her, he would hang her from the palace walls. So don’t pretend that you know what it has been like for me. I’m sorry, Rachel, I thought I could do this. I’ll be back.”

Rye stalked off after his brother.

“Please forgive him. The last several years have been hard,” Rachel said, smoothing back her strawberry-blonde hair. “At first, when King Seamus fell, we all held out hope that the Unseelie would come and save us. Many of us believed this would be the act that reunited our kingdoms.”

Lach would have assumed the very idea would horrify the Seelie. “I don’t think even King Seamus wanted that.”

Rachel shrugged. “Seamus was a good king, but he was a royal. I have yet to meet a true royal who understood the plight of even the middle class. The best we can hope for is a king who has just laws and the means in place to oust sheriffs and mayors who take advantage. Torin simply takes without caring how it affects us. And he’s systematically killing every creature who isn’t sidhe.”

“Then you’re safe,” Lach pointed out. He meant it to be somewhat comforting, but the minute the words came out of his mouth, a vision of Duffy being slaughtered because he wasn’t sidhe assaulted his brain. He opened his mouth to call the words back, but Rachel Harper rounded on him, her pretty face red with anger.

“Safe? So I should allow the tyrant king to slaughter my neighbors, my sweet kin, because he’s not coming for me? Let me tell you something, Your Highness, if you believe that he will be satisfied with killing only those who don’t look like he does, you’re a naïve idiot. When the brownies and goblins and trolls and pixies are gone, he will come for the rest of us. I will not sit idly by and pray to Danu that he not darken my door. I will not allow him to kill and rape and do as he pleases because he was strong enough to wrest the crown from his brother’s head. I will fight. I will fight for my children. So you take your perfect little bondmate and run back to the Unseelie plane. We do not need you here.”

She began to walk away, and Lach realized just how terribly he was handling his allies. “Mrs. Harper.”

She didn’t turn. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“I apologize if I offended. I am not the diplomatic half.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. “I don’t even know much about the situation here. It didn’t seem to be an Unseelie problem.”

She finally turned to him, tears in her eyes. “We’re living, breathing beings, Your Highness. Call us what you will—Seelie, Unseelie, vampire. It matters not. We want the same things you do. We want our mates and our children to be happy. We want our dreams to come true. We’re dying. How is that not everyone’s problem?”

She sighed and walked away.

Lach watched her, wishing he knew what to say, what to do. It had been simple. Come to the Seelie plane. Get his mate. Get out. Let the war happen or not.

Two hours here and he knew he would have to make decisions he wasn’t ready to make.

He felt his fists clench. His father had done him a grave disservice. Since that horrible day when Bron had died and Shim’s power had surged, burning away half of Lach’s face, his father had treated them both like they were fragile beings, not to be tormented with little things like learning how to run the kingdom they would one day inherit. His father had lost Gillian, seen one of his heirs marred for life, and the other go into a fugue state. It was reasonable that he would be protective, but Lach now lacked the tools he needed. He knew nothing because his father didn’t want to tax his frail system.

Dante stepped out, stretching his long limbs. He nodded Lach’s way. “Almost time to head out.”

But they still had hours left. And Dellacourt had left behind a whole rich life to follow his cousins. Perhaps it was time to toss aside his preconceptions and start asking questions.