Beguiled (15 page)

“She’s a strong woman, my Queen,” he said to himself as he walked into the throne room. Here, the walls sparkled in the sunlight, catching the rays of the dual suns and splintering them through their crystal panels until prismed colors danced around the room. The dazzling display of light and color would have blinded a mere mortal. Only those with Fae blood could truly see and withstand the beauty in Otherworld without sliding into madness.

And it was for this, his Maggie Donovan had been born.

He stalked to the intricately carved, silver-sculpted throne, stepped up onto the dais and ran one hand across its cool, heavily jeweled surface. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds winked from their settings on the Queen’s chair. The throne meant for Maggie.

She’d sat here only a few times and hadn’t looked at all at ease. But she had it in her to be a great queen and he would see to it personally that she both accepted and celebrated who and what she was.

He folded his arms across the top of the throne and spoke to the empty room as if facing his Queen herself. “Your place is here, Maggie. With
me
. It’s time you learned that.”

“You’ll see,” Finn assured Maggie again as they walked down the wide hall. “Mab is contained. She will not escape so easily. She had no friends, only subjects. No one is eager to see her returned to the throne.”

Maggie liked the sound of that, but asked anyway, “No one? What about the rogue Fae?”

“Well,” he admitted regretfully, “they are, of course, not to be trusted. But as they’re trapped on Casia in their own prison, they are in no position to offer assistance to Mab.”

Casia. The frozen island where Culhane had stopped a budding revolution. God. There was so much she had to learn.

“Hope you’re right,” Maggie said.

“Ah,” Finn answered with a wink, “I am a wizard. You can trust me. But even were I proved wrong, Maggie, you would have Culhane standing at your side. The warrior would do anything for you. He will keep you safe.”

Would he? she wondered. Or had he given up on making her Queen and decided to pull off a coup of his own? Maybe he’d rather be a king in his own right than be the warrior of a reluctant queen. Was she really all that important in Culhane’s little world?

Maybe all he’d wanted was help getting free of Mab. It was possible he hadn’t wanted
her
for Queen as much as he’d wanted a new ruler. Anyone would have done as long as it wasn’t Mab.

Well, that was a depressing thought.

“Are you thinking about the Dullahan, then?” Finn asked.

“No. How could I? I don’t even know what they are.” She frowned, looked up at the tall wizard walking beside her and said, “I’m thinking about Culhane. And wondering if he really is
my
warrior.”

“Ah, Maggie . . .”

“You said yourself he went into battle without even telling me.”

“It is his duty to protect Otherworld.”

“Yes, but
how
is the question,” she muttered, then followed Finn into a room she’d never been in before. Enormous, she thought, not at all surprised, since this whole place seemed to have been built on a scale for giants. But the difference in this room pulled at Maggie as nothing she’d ever seen before had.

Paintings. Hundreds—thousands of them—dotting the walls in varying shapes and sizes, and she grinned when some of the subjects in those paintings moved. “This is amazing. Eileen’s got to see this. She won’t believe it. Really, Finn, this is—”

A slight sound caught her ear and Maggie looked off to the left. “Eileen? What’re you doing in here?”

The girl whirled around guiltily, clasped her hands behind her back, winced and hunched her shoulders as she looked at Maggie. “Um, nothing?”

“What’s going on?” Maggie had been down this road before with her niece and she knew that when Eileen wouldn’t meet her eyes or answer a straight question, something was most definitely up. Besides, she was really trying to project the whole I’m-too-innocent-to-do-anything-bad look. “Spill. What happened?”

“Happened?”

“Eileen . . .”

“Oh, trollshit.”

Maggie looked at Finn. Finn was staring at a painting. Eileen was staring at Finn. And
nobody
was looking at Maggie. Apprehension coiled into a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. This could
not
be good.

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Eileen said.

“Mean to what?” Maggie asked.

“I’m sure it was an accident,” Finn said softly, still wearing a worried expression, and that more than anything else made those brand-new knots in Maggie’s stomach start writhing as if they were snakes in a pit.

“I didn’t know it was real,” Eileen whispered.

“What was real?”

“I should have locked the door,” Finn said.

“If
somebody
doesn’t tell me what’s happening . . .” Maggie let the vague threat hang in the air until finally, Finn looked at her.

“That painting”—he stabbed one finger at the frame now holding a painting of an empty sky—“was Mab’s prison. She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“I only touched the painting, Aunt Maggie,” Eileen said, her voice going whiny and thin. “I didn’t know she’d land on my hand.”

“Oh God.”

“She shifted and sort of
. . .
disappeared,” Eileen finished.

Maggie needed to sit down. But there weren’t any chairs. So she locked her knees, looked at the wizard and for the first time since all of this had started, pulled rank and demanded in her most queenly voice, “Explain. I thought Mab lost her powers to me. How’d she get out?”

“Shifting isn’t really a ‘power,’ ” Finn admitted. “It is simply a part of being Fae. Once her fall was halted, Mab simply . . . left.”

“Fabulous,” Maggie muttered.

Finn pushed one hand through his thick, blond hair and said, “This has never happened before, my Queen. And the truth is, Mab could be anywhere. But wherever she is, she is no doubt plotting her revenge on you. You are in grave danger.”

“I’m
really
sorry, Aunt Maggie.” Tears shone in Eileen’s eyes, and Maggie reached out to draw her in for a hug.

“It’s okay, sweetie.” Not like she’d done anything on purpose. Still, Maggie looked up at the wizard and noted the flicker of worry in his normally placid blue eyes. “Finn, would you see that Eileen gets home? I need to see Culhane.”

The palace echoed with the sounds of her footsteps as Maggie raced down one corridor into the next. “Culhane!”

She didn’t even stop when one of her female guards flew through an open window and stopped directly in her path. “Majesty,” the tall woman said, “do you require assistance?”

“I require Culhane,” Maggie said quickly, and stepped past the woman. She probably should have told Finn to send Culhane to her back in the real world. But at her house, there would have been too many distractions. Bezel. Jasic. Eileen. Nora. Quinn. Maybe Claire. Nope, she needed some one-on-one time with Culhane and the only place she stood a shot of getting it was here. In the palace. Where she could simply
order
people to leave them alone.

Maggie kept moving, looking into rooms as she ran down the hallway, not sure exactly where she was headed—and it occurred to her that there were probably a thousand or so rooms in the damn palace. It could take her
years
to find the man.

Frustrated, she shouted, “Culhane!”

“He’s in the throne room,” the female now behind her said softly.

Maggie stopped, looked over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at the familiar woman. “Ailish?” The Fae she’d spoken to at the DMV.

“Yes, Majesty.” She smiled, obviously pleased that Maggie remembered her. Well, she was hard to forget. “Have you come to tell the warrior of your decision to allow the females into the Warriors’ Conclave?”

Hell. She’d forgotten all about that in her rush to find Culhane and tell him about Mab. Being Queen wasn’t getting any easier. “I will tell him, yes. But first I have to talk to him about something else.”

“Mab.” Ailish frowned.

Maggie blew out a breath. “Word spreads fast.”

“Bad news does, my Queen.”

“Well,” Maggie said thoughtfully, “at least you think it’s bad news.” She really didn’t need her own palace guard turning on her and helping Mab retake the palace.

“We do. You have our support in the coming fight.”

“Good to know,” Maggie said, turning away again. “Now, which way is the throne room?”

“End of the hall to the left.”

She was running before Ailish stopped speaking. Need pushed at her, fear chased her and at the moment, the only thing that would help, was seeing the fierce, unyielding features of her very own warrior.

Because Maggie needed to know if he really was
her
warrior.

“Free.”
One word and the taste of it was magnificent.

Mab took a deep breath of the icy air of Casia and smiled as if it were the sweet, floral-scented air wafting through the windows of her palace. This harsh, cold, biting wind slicing into her skin, dragging at her hair, was like fine wine, because it represented all she needed.

Opportunity.

Here in this prison she’d created millennia ago, she would find the help she required for ridding herself of Maggie Donovan and the warrior who had helped the human onto the throne. The throne that was rightfully Mab’s.

A smile as cold as the ice beneath her feet touched Mab’s face and she focused her gaze on the village lying at the foot of the mountain. Yes, there was danger here. Some of the rogue Fae she’d imprisoned so long ago would hardly welcome her with open arms. “There will be a few who are willing to look past old grudges to acquire what I now know to be most precious. Their freedom.”

When she had been caught, out of time and space, falling through eternity, Mab had known only frustration and something she’d never experienced before. Fear. Fear that she would always be thus. That there would be no end to her fall. That the great and powerful Mab would become nothing more than legend as she spent perpetuity caught in a frame on a wall in Sanctuary.

“But the gods have smiled on me. Thanks to the mixed-blood human child.” The niece of Mab’s usurper. “One day, I will thank her properly. Perhaps by allowing her to serve me once I kill her aunt and regain my power.”

That thought bothered her, only because of the difficulty in killing an immortal; then she dismissed her concern as she realized one very important thing: The new Queen wasn’t fully Fae yet. Her powers were slowly overtaking her, but she was still part human. Easier to kill. There was still time. Kill Maggie Donovan and Mab’s power would return. And with her power she would retake the throne and spend the next good portion of infinity punishing those who had schemed against her.

With that shining promise firmly in mind, she shifted, going to the village to begin to gather her forces.

Chapter Eight