Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) (43 page)

Dayne was leaning against his car in the parking lot when I emerged hours later, the ever present Irish mist causing his dark brown curls to lay close to his face.

“How’s Phin?” he asked looking down at the black pavement under his feet as a few raindrops trickled off his head.

“Way too healthy to have just suffered a massive heart attack.” I pulled my hood closer around my face and shrugged my shoulders. “They’re keeping him for observation just as a precaution,” I said as I leaned on the car beside him. I reached over and took his hand in mine, the pain of his touch was gone, but I was well aware of the price he had paid for this. “Is LeSheen dead?”

He shook his head. “No.” He looked down at our hands with a sigh. “LeSheen possessed the spirit of the Sidhe, all our animals do—it’s what made him so fiery. I took that spirit from him. He’s as normal as any other horse in the stable now.” His thumb traced over the back of my hand. My chin fell to my chest as a defeated whimper escaped my throat. The memory of LeSheen’s body quivering in the stall as we left came back to me, and a shiver raced across my shoulders and up my neck.

“I’m sure the stable hands will be glad to see such a
change
in him.” Dayne attempted to make a joke, but it lodged in his throat. Neither of us laughed.

I sighed heavily, hating how unfair it was that LeSheen’s power had to be sacrificed to save Phin’s life.

“Are you staying?” he asked me.

“I want to go home,” I said without opening my eyes. I was tired of crying. Tired of losing. I just wanted the day to be over and take all of the bad things with it.

We said nothing on the way home. He turned the radio up loud the moment the engine roared to life, and I was glad he didn’t want to talk about it any more that I did. I couldn’t shake the ugly memories from the day away. They kept coming back to my mind despite my best efforts to think about anything else. I concentrated on counting the telephone poles we past, but the horrible, twisted mask of Rose’s tear stained face when she burst into the waiting room snuck into my mind. I obsessed over the tiniest of hang nails around my fingers only to have a vision of the enormous, white body quaking in the dark stall steal its way in. I didn’t want to think about it. The thought of losing LeSheen’s magic and almost losing Phin was unbearable because everything reminded me that I had almost lost Dayne, and my mind wasn’t capable of processing that.

He opened my door as soon as the car was in park in front of Rose and Phin’s house. I fell out of the car, landing against him, pulling the comfort of his touch to me. My arms squeezed so tightly around him he might have broken if he didn’t have his strength back. I buried my head against the solidness of his chest, and my shoulders shook with the violence of my tears. Tears for Phin. Tears for LeSheen. Tears for us.

“Dayne? Would Phin have…?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word.

I felt his chin nod against the top of my own head.

“Is he fine now?” My voice was muffled by a stuffy nose and the loose cotton shirt he wore despite the misty rain that drenched him.

“Yes.” He tucked me under his arm and led me into the house.

He deposited me on the little couch, wrapping a blanket over my shoulders, and went to the kitchen where he started a kettle for tea.

He handed me a steaming cup and sat down on the brick hearth across from me instead of beside me like he normally would have. A nauseous wave of dread washed up from the pit of my stomach, and I clutched my middle. Every bit of emotion had drained from his rock hard face and I knew there was still more bad news to come.

“Faye, you have to leave. It’s not safe for you here.” His words hit my ears like the clap of a cymbal. I was expecting bad news, but nothing like this. The cup of tea fell from my hands and crashed to the floor, shattering loudly against the wooden boards, piercing the uncomfortable silence, but neither of us moved to clean it up.

“No.” I finally said with an authority I didn’t know I was capable of, crossing my arms in front of me for effect. There was no way I would leave him, not after what I had just been through. I needed him now. He needed me, and he was obviously blind if he couldn’t see that.

“You have to.” He stood up and his figure was so imposing I shrunk away from him and curled my arms around a throw pillow. “I’ve gotten word there’s a hunting party coming through the portal. Suspicions will be raised by what I’ve done to LeSheen.” He began to pace in front of the fireplace. “They can track you if you’re near, and I can’t save you if they find you.” His face was hard as steel and his eyes fell down to the floor when he saw fresh tears begin to trickle down the well–worn path over my cheeks. He clasped his hands before him and began to rub the palms furiously against one another.

“But I’m not human. They can’t take me.” I clenched my jaw against the quivering sobs and stuck my chin high into the air. Even I knew enough to know that.

“It’s not about stealing your soul anymore, Faye.” He let out a half laugh as if soul stealing were mere child’s play compared to what we were facing. “If they find out about your existence, you will be forced back to LisTirna and your life will no longer be your own. Elementals are too dangerous on this side. I’ve told you that.” Our eyes met and held each other in the silence of the room as his words sank into my brain. I let out a long sigh. My eyes widened. My chin quit quivering and my mouth fell open. This was danger on a whole new level. Dayne could save me from soul–snatching junkies, but he couldn’t save me from the will of the queen. “You have to leave—just until they’re gone. It’s the only way.” He wouldn’t look at me.

“I won’t leave you. You need me. You aren’t strong enough.” I stood up from the couch, tossing the pillow to the ground and shaking my head as I pleaded with him.

“I’m strong enough to fool the ones who will be coming. I can tell them I needed LeSheen’s power to protect the portal—which isn’t a total lie.” He nodded his head as if making up his mind as he spoke. “But if someone gets suspicious, they can track you if you are here.”

“I’m not going. Period.” I folded my arms in front of me. The weight of our situation hunched his shoulders and he left the little sitting area, walking over to one of windows that looked out onto Rose’s garden. His hand went up to his face and he began rubbing the stubble at his chin as he looked out the wooden framed window at the simple human world before him.

His silence immediately made me feel guilty for being so stubborn, but I just had to make him see that we were better together than apart. I uncrossed my arms and walked over to him, placing my hand on the power of his shoulder as I looked out the window with him.

“We’ll get through this together, Dayne. I know we will. Don’t you worry about my fate.” I cooed softly into his ear, hoping to change his mood and let him know that I didn’t fear a fate in his world as much as he feared it for me. Life in this world wasn’t nearly as important as life with Dayne, wherever that might be. He turned to face me, but I wasn’t greeted with the same loving look I had on my face. His face was still hard, drawn into deep lines that made me immediately pull my hand away from his shoulder.

“It’s not only your fate hanging in the balance here, Faye.” His hard look turned to anger and the little area around his temples pulsed with his clenching jaw. He turned quickly and walked back to the fireplace. I trailed behind him helplessly.

I stood with my arms dangling at my sides and he spread his upper body, prostrate, along the length of the mantle. His head hung down, and when he finally pulled away I saw his eyes had softened in sorrow. I held my breath not knowing what was coming next in this rollercoaster of revelation.

“I have broken two of our most sacred rules. I have shared Sidhe secrets and I have kept your existence a secret. The queen has every right to order my death for these betrayals.” His words sucked the breath out of my lungs, the horror of his possible fate being more than I was prepared for, but his head shot up in the air defiantly, as if he didn’t fear death. I was shocked to silence, barely able to breathe as my brain attempted to process the impossible.

As his eyes held mine, tiny wrinkles creased around the warm green pools pleading with me to understand, his chin quivered slightly, and I knew that losing me forever was the fate he feared the most in both our worlds.

I shook my head, the tears coming back just as hard as they had earlier and I fell against his chest, into the only arms in the world that could comfort me.

“It’s just one night. Just until they’re gone and it’s safe for you to come back.” I nodded my head against his damp cotton shirt, unable to say yes through the tears and no longer wanting to say no.

I was pretty sure Dayne had something to do with the doctor’s decision to keep Phin another couple of days despite his obviously perfect health. Dayne assured me the hospital was the safest place on earth for them on a night when his people walked the earth.

Sidhe were looking for strong human souls, he explained. Hospitals wreaked of weakness—a smell that repelled his kind. I had to admit it made sense, the suffocating stench of a hospital always made my stomach turn sour.

We were standing on the porch of Rose and Phin’s house. I was nervously pacing as I shook my hands and took deep breaths like an Olympic swimmer getting ready to take his place on the dive platform. Dayne watched me with an amused grin and I wondered how he could be so calm when both of our fates were potentially hanging in the balance.

“Are you ready?” He walked up to me and I took one huge breath.

“Oh wait!” I exclaimed, breaking away and turning back to the house. “I need to lock the door.” I started to walk away. He chuckled, pulling me back to him.

“It’s locked. Sidhe can’t come in without an invite anyway, remember?”

“Oh, right.” I tucked back into his arms.

The world whirred, familiarly, away. When I opened my eyes we were standing in a garden. It was somewhat austere, but breathtaking with its simplistic beauty.

Perfectly manicured patches of brilliant green grass striped their way along the ground to the rocky shore of a small pond. In the center of the pond, rising out of the water, was a magnificent weathered stone horse statue, reared back on his haunches, front hooves pawing the air. It looked like Lisana frozen in time and place.

The path we were on was made of sparkly little sugar–cube stones and snow-white seashells of every shape and size. I jumped onto the grass, not wanting to break the delicate beauty of the little shells. But, when I saw how ugly my boots looked on the manicured grass I jumped back on the path, instantly saddened by the sound of crunching shells.

I looked to Dayne for help. He was amused by my conundrum and laughed as he slung me onto his back and began to carry me along the path.

“I don’t mind breaking them. I know where to get more.” I bounced against his shoulders with every step, staring over his shoulder at the natural grandeur of the place, unable take my eyes off the beautiful garden. It was huge, stretching as far as I could see. The bare backs of large, weathered boulders rounded almost pattern–like into the horizon, mottled by multi colored moss. Maidenhair fern and fragrant lavender grew wildly between rocks here and there, complementing the green grass with sweet smells and crowns of frilly leaves. It was natural and free flowing, but so breathtaking it had to be created by hand.

“Dayne, what is this place?” I rested my chin on his shoulder as I continued to stare, not wanting to miss a single detail of the beauty before me.

“This is where I learned to be a regular human.” I heard the pain in his voice and my head immediately snapped around to look at him. I knew Dayne had lived a million lives before I came along but I had never imagined he had lived one as a child.

“You lived here with your parents?” We had left the magnificent garden and were now on a little path that wound through a crevice cut into larger rocks towering above us on both sides. A few scant trees popped up here and there, sheltered in protective little coves created by the boulders.

“And my sister. Learning to live as humans do is paramount to our survival if we’re going to blend in. It’s one of the last things Sidhe parents do before sending their children into the world. But believe me, they are utterly bored with a normal life before it even begins.” The tips of my boots scraped along the wall of rock, and I watched as they left a little trail in the moss.