Tainted (29 page)

He was behind me so he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes.  “You could have asked me that.   He had the “hands off buddy” alert long ago.”

“But you seem…unable to resist him sometimes.  Why?”

“My theory was just announced.  Since you know he touched my shoulder, then you heard the rest.  This ‘
all three of you’
prince thing,” I didn’t want to talk about them right now.  “There are just too many things that tie us together.  I don’t want him in any way Ian.  But there is something about him that has me tied to him and him to me.  The same thing with Kin.  I just don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s nothing to do with attraction.  Pike mentioned something about the prophecy being true and him the odd man out but what he said didn’t make sense.  Do you know?”

He muttered under his breath and faced the woods.  His words were garbled but I managed to decipher the following.   “…getting closer…damn Kinsler telling her too much…they needed to keep their trap shut and stop leaking too much…not all this strife.”

He was inadvertently shedding light on the other things so I decided I would just be forthcoming about some things too.  Get them off my chest.  “Okay, so you are still able to tingle my brain.”

“I tingle your brain.  This is a first.”

I pulled my eyebrows in to appear mad.  He laughed, but lost the anger that was there seconds ago.  “Tell me you’re not trying to break in to my brain sometimes and I’ll shut up?”

He didn’t flinch. 

There it came.  I felt the tingling and bells a singing.  “There, see.”

He was in utter amazement.  “You can tell?”

“Can’t you?”

“Not the issue.  Can you tell when others are?”

I blushed.  He prodded me with his finger in my ribcage.  “Yes, but it’s not the same.”

“What do you mean?”

My cheeks felt on fire.  “I did some checking and found that everyone else seems to have a different signal.  No tingle.  They just kind of zap and walla!”

He took it all well, mostly.  “And what do I do?”

“It’s like bells.  Soft tingly bells.”

He shrugged. 

“What?”

“Nothing just as long as I’m exclusive.  Don’t care as much.”

Smug man!  Territorial Tarzan!
  “And by the way Lucy, you have some other ‘splaining to do.”

He looked at me funny.

“You have been able to read my
smell
or something all these years too. Talk!”

His sheepish smile told all.  But another emotion played on his face saying that Pike would be martyred by sundown.  “I should have told you when you mentioned it about mine, but the shock of knowing you had two other male scents angered me.  I wasn’t level headed enough at the time to share that just yet.”

“Ian, talk!  Quit beating around the bush.”

“Like lavender, flowers.  You’ve always had a floral scent that begs to be touched and tasted—“

“No other specific flowery scents?”  He looked at me puzzled.  I ignored the
tasted
part.

“No, why?”  He looked scared. 

“We’d said we’d be more honest.  Pike told me I had a scent all these years and used it to trace me.”  I sighed, “He said different things.  He named several scents and that I changed sometimes.”

He didn’t like this at all. “What did he say exactly?” his words were slow and deliberate, in a jealous tone. He was listening.  He didn't hear?

I thought back, “Like a garden that changes with the wind.”  I felt silly saying what was about me.  And I didn’t even want to tell him I had intentions of asking the same question of the egregious Kin who was still somewhat of an enigma to me as he was Unseelie and should be categorized very differently.

“What is it Ian?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me nothing.  We agreed.” I enunciated my words slowly.

“It’s just…I want to be sure it’s me.  This prophecy.  The way we live our lives, Grace.  There has never been any doubt about anyone’s future until you came along.  As we live in our court today, the winter court, all the Fey, we have to rely on you to make the next decision and I am trying like anything to let that play out.  But it is killing my inner instinct to not rely on what the seer tells us or what my mother says.  I’m relying on me and you and everything is uncertain at the moment.  That alone is killing me.  I claim you.  I want you to be mine so we can move on.  Yet I’m uncertain if things will change.  Become more clear.  What if they don’t?  I still want you and I to be a done deal. My prize.  My Grace.  No one else should be able to keep standing in our way if you are mine.”

Danella had once told me about being claimed or something like it was way important.  If that’s what he needs me to do, so be it.  “Ian, there are a few fine lines you’re drawing or leaving open with what you say. The seer is all but truthful when he says that some things are uncertain because the prophecy is a new thing.  We knew this.  I know that I can’t know all the answers just yet either.  I know you are still hiding some things.   If you need me to claim you, so be it.  I said the same words in the Rec center but now I know where it will take us.    I want to marry you, be your wife, be your queen.  I
CLAIM YOU
, Ian. 
Claimed!  It’s just a word.”

My arm started to burn and the sensation twisted around inside all the way to my bones.    I jerked up my wrist in pain, “Oww!”

Ian was all over me flipping arms and hands and shoulders looking for my pain.  When he turned up my wrist his gasp had my vivid attention as I looked down.

Within a minute the garden lit up around me with twinkling lights blinding me momentarily.   Scents hit me from every direction and not just my usual.  I could smell the trees, the flowers, everything.  I swallowed a gush of overload that was inhaled slightly as I tried to identify any unknowns. 

Pike was beside me yelling, “No!  She can’t, not yet!  No!”

Altheon was beside him. 

Weren’t we just alone?

Altheon put his hands on Pike’s chest to stop him.  “You can do nothing more at the moment.  Be gone.”

Pike left cursing the entire way.  He was such an animal.

“Better to have suffered.  Never to suffer would never to have been blessed,” Altheon’s hand for quotes of wisdom never ceased.

Hissing at the pain in my arm, I rolled my eyes out of panic still lost in the whys of a sudden crowd hovering around us.  I knew my pale faced blank stare warranted some answers as to why we’d been privy to an audience possibly this entire time.  And Pike and Altheon no doubt party to our seemingly private conversation.  “What is going on?”  This was like a soap opera movie or something without a clue to the next scene.  What was with the sudden lights on,
da-da-da
effect?  And what’s with the peeping toms?

More started to crowd in.  On instinct I jumped into Ian’s arms and he’d been right there to receive me.  The seer moved closer still reminding me of his poetic quote worthy moments with a mumbled “road not taken.” in the air.  He knew more hidden knowledge than I cared for him too. 

“Yes, my young queen.  Human text is fascinating to me.  But what guarantee do you have that what all you’ve read was human.”

I admit I was curious if Altheon could still read my mind at will.  I was even more curious to think any books I grew up with were possibly not written by humans.  It certainly made me wonder about Mr. Robert Frost.

“You need to shield that better so that it is not I who can, but rather more seedy characters in your new world my lady.”

Ian was lost and I was glad.  I was thankful for that sometimes, and as thankful that I could send a message at will to him with great concentration now too.  I had to get that down.  But when we “unite” it would be greater.  Good answers to the greater dilemmas I don’t want to be reminded of yet.  “I will.”

Altheon flipped up my wrist and looked at Ian.  “Do you understand now why I could give you no answers?” 

No, I was lost.  Ian had more of a clue apparently by the face he gave the seer, but his mind was piecing together the events that happened all in just the last probably two minutes at a quicker speed than me I guessed.  Ian had me so close I was leaning into his hip with mine and feeling his vice grip fingers dig into my side. He held my arm out in front of me with my wrist being twisted in every direction for the group to see as it burned like a torch.  On fire, his cool fingers helped.

“Maybe, but why don’t you help us out.  I assumed we were just alone.  When have you ever hidden others from me?  Tis not wise to let me assume I have less audience than I do,” a half pissed half shaking like a leaf Ian didn’t like being bombarded. I was glad to know Ian wasn't the one who had me on display.

Altheon didn’t answer.

I wanted to step away from Ian to look more queenly..  Too much PDA could downsize the thrill of it, but right now I didn’t care what anyone else thought.  I didn’t want to let go.

“As always, very simple, but ritualistic in itself.”

We waited daring a look at each other not knowing the seer’s next move or purpose in words.

“My dear girl, I’ve watched from the sidelines, as your world calls it in their sports, while you battled internally with our world.  I watched you become a most exquisite queen to ever grace us with her presence while having the knowledge of what you are, the acceptance of what you will be, and most important, the fulfillment of our world’s many prophecies.”

I crinkled my nose at the vocalized possible prediction of most likely more prophecies in my life.  I am sure that my prince trio is all attributed to each other and the one prophecy didn’t say enough about that.  Something else is adrift.

Reading my thoughts again Altheon said, “There will be more.  Oh, yes.  There is one in the works as we speak that is finally complete.  You, my Grace, have finally claimed a king.  We have come to the first pass.”

King?  What pass? First of what?  Many? I looked to Ian for help.  For nothing is random in this world it seems.

“I recall you took a first step with Ian and now Pike.”  I refused to acknowledge what he meant, nor did I want too.

Altheon, compelled by solving all of the world’s mysteries for all to hear and watch him in wonder continued, “You were claimed by three.  All Fey queens claim their own king not the other way around when the king is not in rule.  We abide by this rule and have stood by it since all time. We could not discredit it by simply telling you because you, my dear, were claimed by three and our world knows its rules.”

I jerked my head. “And you simply couldn’t tell me this?  Stupid rules.”

Ian suspected this much on the claims I assumed by the way he said nothing.  Not that Altheon would ever confirm it.

“But what about the ceremony, and binding, and my eyes didn’t change till Ian had claimed me?  You said I was claimed.  I claimed him.”

“Many thoughts.  One answer.  He chose to be your protector, guardian, and yet he also let you guard his heart.  Very poetic prophecy at work, but in the end only you choose the ending.  When he, your guardian claimed
you
, he became one of three who’d claimed you.  But the one significant factor, you’d had yet to claim anyone yourself.  Not as the Queen.  Ian already had his title.  And now we are at the pass.”

Alrighty then!  Seems a little silly and definitely ritualistic like in a scary wicked witch cast a spell on you kind of way, but the fact that he was confirming the Pike and Kin theories freed my suspicions and ignited new ones.  Where can this lead?

“I don’t waste time on idle chitchat, you figure the rest.  But, finally, we have fulfilled this particular part of the prophecy.  And now, the two of you can get on with your lordship.  Queen Lazyra is free again to do as she pleases now.  I will leave you with this.  Take my hand.”  He held out both hands to the two of us.  “Both of you.”

Altheon took our hands, joined them just as I did when Kin forced it upon me, and instructed us to lace our fingers and wrists together.  I stopped him. 

I wanted it to be a little more special and not an “I gotcha” moment.  What he was doing now should be in our wedding?

“Grace, we are Fey.  We have different rules to live by.  You are a queen who just claimed your king.  You will bind it before this nearly over summer night ends or you will lose your claim.  Is this what you want?”

“But I thought you said it was the prophecy.”
              “It is, but a prophecy fulfilled can be completely wrought with disaster if the persons involved choose to walk away from it or ignore its customs.  You had that choice one other day, the day Ian offered it to you in the human world you left.  You chose us.  But this is our custom and we don’t take denial lightly.”

I did have my own choices, I was right.  But there was a certain amount of magic that was involved also. I could handle both.  Couldn’t I?
And he just hinted that I could change it even after today.  That even claiming Ian could be changed.             

“Then this is my choice.  I will fulfill the prophecy and Ian is mine forever.”  I asked this like a question wanting both of them to confirm my deepest desires, even fears and make it known I wasn’t just acting as a dictator.