The Trouble with Fate (43 page)

“Like a chicken on a spit,” I whispered.

We bent to plunge our hands beneath the water, and let the water soothe the heat.
A smile tugged at our lips as our magic dived too, sinking under the oily surface
with our prey. The surface roiled. A big fish, we thought with detachment. Dawn’s
hip crested the surface as she fought for air. We tightened our hands into fists and
sank them deeper. “But so easily killed,” we marveled, watching the animal spasm in
our grip. A stream of bubbles, too small to sustain life, slipped from its gaping
mouth. It gave one final, violent twitch and then fell limp. A great wash of fatigue
swept us. We waited for the animal to breathe again. When it did not, our satiated
magic slithered from our prey. They floated in the red water, twin serpents attached
to the tether of our fingers, waiting.

So tired. We willed our legs steady as our magic waned. Even as we fought the diminishment,
we sank, small and tight, into the place our mortal sister kept us safe. Cocooned
in the deep warmth of her belly, we took comfort from the feral presence curled around
the tail of her spine.

Sleep. Yes. We’ll sleep.

*   *   *

I was cold and soulless but my ears were working again. Mortal-me sat in the stinking
muck at the water’s edge. My throbbing hands lay limp in the frigid, red water.

“Let me go.” Trowbridge’s voice was harsh, desperate. A murmur of another low voice,
soothing. “I don’t believe you. I can’t feel her. It’s just like before.”

I should go to him.
But my legs felt heavy. My hands weighted. I blinked, once, twice, and on the third
squeeze of my lids, the reddish haze blurring my vision cleared and my sight was my
own.
Am I me again? Hedi, without any backseat drivers?
I felt me, mostly. A little empty. Flatter somehow. I tested the odd, longing loss
of that thought as my body started sending damage reports. Hands bad. Hip screaming.
Ribs sore. Ankle throbbing.

Merry moved at my breast. One of her vines disentangled itself from the disordered
nest around her amber-red stone. It stretched up for the chain, found a link and twined
around it. She started the long slow climb to my shoulder. Once there, she perched
on my collarbone and gave me a tentative pat with the flat of her leaf. She trembled
there for a moment, while I breathed slowly through my nose, before she pressed herself
close to the warm beat of the Fae-Were blood thrumming beneath my skin.

Don’t blame her for checking my soul condition before cuddling up. I was asking myself
the same question.
Am I me? Really me?

My eyes continued their restless catalogue. A fairy portal hung over the lily-choked
water. I studied that for a couple of speculative beats, before moving on. A girl’s
body floated facedown, near the old pine log. We killed her. No, I killed her.
I’ll think about that later.
It looked like the fight was mostly over. Sniper-guy was walking around checking
for life signs. Machete-guy was enjoying beating the last bad guy to his very last
breath.
They’re animals
. I listened for the unique beat of Trowbridge’s heart. It was there. Uneven and too
slow, but there.
Animals, yes. But what am I? Something worse. A hybrid Fae without limits.
Something tickled the back of my brain about being Fae. Some thought about water
that seemed urgent to a problem at hand.
What was it?

“I
said,
he needs you.” I slanted my eyes sideways. Cordelia’s bony knee showed through the
tear in her skirt. How long had she been there? Her scent alone should have screamed
“intruder.” Perfume mixed with blood. A subtone of grief. “Get up,” she said sharply.
“And do something about those things.” Her ringed fingers made a gesture to the two
lines of green shimmering under the water. A light breeze licked the surface and gave
them the illusion of scales.

“You can see them?”

“Of course I can.” She grimaced. “Get rid of them before he sees them.”

“He can’t see them; he’s blind.” I bent my head to inspect my hands. Broken nails.
Fingertips stained sooty black in some spots, weeping red in others. Ugly with heat
blisters. From each, a line of magic streamed down to my two well-fed serpents. Their
heads turned back to me as if seeking a command. “These are part of me.”

“Hedi!” Trowbridge called. His voice sounded rough.

“You heartless fairy bitch, either you go to him right now, or I’ll bloody well carry
you there.” Cordelia’s nails were ringed with red. She curled them into her palm,
but she couldn’t hide the stain left on her by this night’s evil. Her first knuckle
was grazed and puffy.

Some things could never be washed clean. Like blood traces and kin.

A heartless fairy bitch
 … The wind from Merenwyn streamed through the portal’s gate, indifferent to my mortal
cares. Come to us, it urged with sweet seduction. Leave your mortal troubles here,
it promised. There is sun in Merenwyn, it promised, and deep pools too, waiting to
soothe your hurt.

Water to soothe your hurts.
The kernel fell. Germinated and grew.

“He’s dying,” I heard myself say tonelessly.

“What?” she snapped.

“Bridge will die because Weres have no cure for silver in the gut.” My voice was flat,
rendered clean of hurt and want. “That’s what Biggs said. No cure.”

“Well, aren’t you a bleeding heart,” she said.

“And so … Bridge will die.”

A pause. Her scent got sharper. Then, a rough growl. “Yes.”

I lifted my gaze to study Merenwyn again. “But the Pool of Life would save him.”

Another pause, during which her grief ebbed to let something warmer in. But just as
suddenly, the warmth melted away and the scent of her grief returned, sharp as aged
cheese. She said harshly, “It would break the Treaty. He’d never agree. He’d die first.”

“We don’t ask. We wait till he’s hardly conscious.” I kept my gaze on the portal.
Merenwyn’s daylight streaked a path of gold across the pond. “He needs to have my
blood in his veins to pass through the gate. If he doesn’t have it, the gate will
reject him.”

“What do you mean, ‘reject’?”

“I think she would have lost them in the ‘world in-between.’ I know this—my aunt never
had any intention of bringing Weres to Merenwyn. The only part of the pack she had
to worry about was Mannus. He was her mate, and she’d brought him through once before.”
In my mind’s eye I saw her rubbing a thoughtful thumb across her emerald ring.

“How?”

“She gave him her blood.”

“The mating bond,” she said, a faint thread of awe in her voice.

I watched one of my serpents roll in the shallow water. “When Trowbridge goes through
the gate, he’ll have mine in his veins.”

“You can’t make that choice for him.”

“Watch me.” I stood. “Cut,” I said. There was a splash and then another, as I turned
and walked to the mate of my heart.

*   *   *

Trowbridge was no longer beautiful. What wasn’t streaked with blood and mud was tinged
putty gray from the poison in his veins. No longer untouchable either. Scars had failed
to crust over the residue of silver left in his wounds. He still bled, which Weres
never do for very long, as witnessed by the thin line of red streaming from the gash
across his abdomen. Trowbridge was slumped against my pirate rock, but as I walked
to him, he put his good hand down for balance and rolled on his hip. His bicep bulged,
but he couldn’t lift himself to his feet. “Take it easy, Bridge,” Biggs soothed. “She’s
coming.”

He’d been beaten, broken, and yet not.

Mine.

“Is that you?” Trowbridge said as I knelt beside him. Merry slid into my shirt as
his left hand searched for my shoulder. Long fingers slid up my neck, and wove under
the loose strands of my hair. He pulled me close until our foreheads touched.

“It’s me.”

“I thought I’d lost you. I couldn’t feel you anymore.” His lips were a bruised purple-blue.
I lowered my gaze, past his blood-speckled chin, down his muddy chest, all the way
to his lap where his mutilated hand lay, palm turned upward. My eyes followed the
blood-caked lifeline running deep across his palm.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His metallic breath warmed my nose.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Trowbridge’s forehead grated against mine as he shook his head in denial. “Don’t know
why I didn’t do it. I should have just done it and died with you.”

“Done what?”

“Should have been there to protect you,” he muttered.

“You did protect me.” He had, in every way he could. “You were wonderful.”

“Wish I’d been a different guy.”

“I don’t.” I could smell death leaking from his lips. Hear it in the rail of his lungs;
in the slowing thump of his heart. Through my numbness, a tiny spot of bleeding hurt
bloomed. My voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t leave me here to die alone.”

“Never again, sweetheart.” His voice was tender. “Love you.”

Tears welled.

His eyelids drooped to half-mast. “So tired, baby.”

“You can’t sleep yet. There’s something you have to do.”

“Just a little nap, Candy.” His lashes fluttered close. “Just a little nap.”

*   *   *

I stopped breathing, while the thinking part of me got caught in a loop, like a scratched
CD that plays four chords before it skips, burps out some static, and then replays
the same damn chords. Except, there weren’t four chords. Just two syllables,
Can
-
dy.
Karma had waited until I believed myself too frozen to feel injury; too numb to flinch
from pain.

Clever bitch, Karma.

Biggs was pretending he’d missed the exchange. Cordelia wasn’t bothering to dissemble.
I could feel her eyes on me, sorting and sifting, weighing and measuring.

I bent my head and hid my face behind a curtain of hair.

Then I started to turn the hand crank on my old friend, rationalization. It was a
name. That’s all. A name. He got confused. Trowbridge loved me, didn’t he? He’d said
so.

No, he hadn’t. He’d said it to
her.

And with that, a flood of hurt broke through the sagging levees of my self-deception.

Oh Goddess. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep reshaping sharp things into round
things—refashioning hard truths into soft, palatable half-lies
.

Trowbridge still loved her. Me, perhaps not.

Bitterness welled.

This
was what all the last ten years had led me to? All that jumping from one wobbling
rock to another, just to get back here? All those wasted years spent smiling to humans,
hiding the tips of my ears, and steadfastly turning my nose from the sweet scent of
fellow Weres? It had all boiled down to this moment
here
—on my knees by the fairy pond in Creemore. Losing again. But this time to a freakin’
ghost named Candy.

There was something almost sniggerworthy about it, if I’d been a bitch named Karma.
I felt a weak trembling of my lips and damned myself for it.

So how about it now, Hedi? Do you still want to give him your blood?

The alternative was to watch him die.

Could I do that? Add this loss to the others, and live with the sharp-clawed remorse
tucked within my chest, nibbling away at me from the inside, without … without what?
I wanted to say “without dying, too” but the word that sprang to my mind was “hemorrhaging.”

It kept coming back to the blood, didn’t it?

I considered my wrist. It was unmarred. Baby soft. Beneath my white skin, my Fae-Were
heritage ran in a blue crooked line to the heel of my palm. It defined me. Neither
Were nor Fae, but both. Was there enough Fae in it to keep him safe from the “in-between”?
I thought back. Remembered, with an inward flinch, how I’d sensed that separate soul—curious,
detached, and alive. Yes … I had enough Fae in me.

With a measure of my Fae essence pumping through his veins, Trowbridge stood a chance
of making it to Merenwyn and healing. Without it? He would die here, slumped against
Lexi’s pirate rock.

A chance. Not a certainty. And if I gave it to him, and he died … the mate bond would
claim its tithe. Could I risk my life on a nebulous instinct?

“Biggs, go watch the Fae,” said Cordelia.

“Why?”

“Do it,” she said sharply.

I looked away from her, thinking hard.

I’d claimed him as my mate. Said that I wouldn’t give him back.

But that was twelve hours ago! Before I was old enough to comprehend that this mate
thing was so much more than just desire and a promise to endure. It was a three-sided
business—the good, the bad, and the oh-so-fucking-ugly.

I can’t do this.

Yet even as I thought that, my ears were evaluating the wet rail in Trowbridge’s chest.
Counting the seconds between his inhales.

A movement out of the corner of my eye. Cordelia’s hand touched the silver-hued vein
on Trowbridge’s face. Old hands, shaking like mine.

Two broken hearts, then.

I’ll be old like her one day. Alone like her.

Cordelia and I reached for Trowbridge as he buckled over in a rib-racking cough. When
his horrible, hacking spasms were finally done, and another splatter of something
tarnished-black had been added to the blood-soaked ground, I touched his cheek with
my charred fingers, and said, “Shhh, Trowbridge. It’s going to be okay now.”

My Fae-Were vein was a twisted road map along the inside of my arm.

Let it be enough.

“How is it done?” I asked her.

Cordelia’s face was bleak. “He needs to bite you.”

“Here,” I said, pressing my arm to his flaccid lips.

“That’s not how it’s done.” Cordelia pointed to my throat. “Pull your hair from your
neck. No, the other side of your neck. You’ll have to put this part—” Her nails skimmed
the area just above my collarbone where my neck muscle was soft and tender from the
attention Trowbridge had lathered on it, just twelve hours before. “Right up to his
mouth. He’ll bite down until he draws blood. As he draws your essence into his mouth,
you have to say ‘Heart of my heart. Mate for all my years. I offer you my life.’”