The Trouble with Fate (45 page)

I bent down to brush Trowbridge’s lips. “Get to the Pool, no matter how you hurt.”
His eyes moved restlessly under his lids. “If you—when you come back, you won’t find
Candy. You need to know that.”

I laid another kiss on my finger then brushed it across my amulet’s amber core. “I’ll
keep my promise, Merry-mine. You know the way. Take him home.” A tendril of gold briefly
touched my finger in response. I smiled. A weak effort. “Remember to abandon ship
well before he hits the water.”

I’ve witnessed enough soul death this day, please let Merry remember the way.

Another loud boom made us flinch.

No more time.

I settled my sooty hands on his legs. Cordelia gave me a resolute smile, the type
Daniel probably gave the lion. She placed her hands, one on his bicep, one on his
hip. She swung her head my way, and raised her eyebrow. The wind whipped her hair
off her face, stripping away her artifice, showing me her bones and grit.

How had I ever thought her plain?

She nodded to me, a silent signal that time had ended.

Together, Cordelia and I sent them to Merenwyn. The wind chimes tinkled their haunting
song as the gate’s mouth caught Trowbridge’s feet, and sucked them inward. His fingers
twitched as his torso was tugged across the threshold. I watched the last curl of
his trailing hair disappear through the mouth, thinking,
Come back to me.

Thump …

Don’t die.

Thump.

And then my world and history changed, one more time. My mate and friend flickered
between this world and that, and were gone.

*   *   *

We waited. I found my lips moving on their own.
One thousand. Two thousand.
Nothing. Merenwyn’s green field lay empty
. He’s dead. It was too late.
A yellow wildflower nodded in its wind.
Twenty thousand. Twenty-two. It’s been too long. What have I done? The land-in-between …
I took a step toward the gate.

“Wait, the bells are still ringing,” Cordelia said. “Watch the surface.”

The faintest ripple shivered across it. It grew, and bloomed, a circle within a circle,
until the entire surface was distorted with concentric rings. Through them, I saw
the broken image of a shooting blur of gray. The image lingered, frozen, as the gate’s
skin gave one last shimmering undulation before it settled.

He landed hard in Merenwyn, all four feet splayed in the grassy field. For a few seconds,
Trowbridge’s wolf just lay there, sides heaving. Then he lifted his massive gray head,
and rolled onto his side. His ears twitched as he inspected the world around him.
He tried to stand. Fell. Tried again and this time made it to his feet. A huge canine
shake, from head to stern. Something bright gold flew off his neck and bounced into
the grass.

Oh Goddess. That was Merry. How will he get to the Pool of Life?

His wolf’s face was lean and angular, with darkly rimmed eyes set tilted in a white
mask. The same black outlined his lips, giving him a clever, foxlike mouth. He had
streaks of blood on his thick coat but still he was large and powerful, even listing
to one side as he stood on his throne of flattened weeds.

His ears flicked forward as he tested the wind for its scents. Then, favoring a paw,
he limped across the grass toward the gate. Closer and closer he came, stopping only
when he was a few feet from the portal. Trowbridge’s wolf made an anxious noise, part
yelp, part yawn, followed by another sharp bark that made my Were tremble.

“Here,” I whispered. His head snapped up. Then, his dark-rimmed eyes looked through
Merewyn’s gate, straight through one realm into another. There was intelligence in
those honey-brown eyes. But they were indifferently predatory, until—

They found me.

For a breath his eyes remained golden. On the next they flared blue. The pure, clean
fire of his Alpha flame tinted my face, reached into my heart and held it warm and
safe. My eyes burned. My chin came up, my face softened, and I flared.

“Look at that!” said Biggs, as everything around us turned turquoise blue.

I was the one.
The
one.

But I’d forgot about Karma, hadn’t I? She sat down beside Fate and murmured something
in her ear. And then because there is a cost to every deed, Merenwyn delivered its
final slap. A breeze ruffled the wolf’s fur, slid over his snout, and slipped through
the gate.

Trowbridge’s scent was hot and layered. A wedge of love, a segment of pain, and a
thick core of fury.

Cordelia’s mouth barely moved. “We did the unforgivable when we broke the Treaty.”

And I am not sweet as Candy.

The wolf took two steps backward. Three more, then another. Alpha proud, he painfully
backed up, veering a little more to the left as he favored his right side. He sank
lower, until he was crouched on trembling haunches. I saw his fierce blue eyes measure
the distance. And then I realized with a sickening drop of my stomach that he was
coming back. Without the healing. Without an amulet to guide him through the terrible
wind.

“You’re not strong enough to do it again. You’ll die,” I said, whisper soft. “We’ll
die.”

His muzzle crinkled up into a snarl.

I’d learned some things over the last forty-eight hours. How you can love, and be
loved, and still not come out of it with a love.

“Sy’ehella,” I said.

The pregnant hush of our realm was pierced by the pitiless screams of a hundred trapped
souls from the land-in-between. In Merenwyn, his gray wolf let out a howl of pure
rage.

And this time, without an Alpha to muck up the works, the gate did what it was supposed
to do. Smoothly, without fanfare, its liquid surface clouded over and choked off those
terrible cries. “Jump, girl!” Cordelia said as she leaped for safety. Biggs soon followed.

It would have been the smart thing to do.

But I stayed, believing the portal would linger as long as I knelt beside it and waited.
Merry would find him. Together they’d make it to the Pool. He’d be back soon.

Heartsick stupid, that was.

The portal to Merenwyn didn’t give a flying fig about my self-imposed vigil of penitence
and woe. Around me, the high, shimmering columns slumped and flattened until they
were nothing more than a lazy circuit of rolling, white fog sheathing the softening
floor. Then the wondrous pink lights dimmed, one by one. The sky grew gray.

It wouldn’t leave, it couldn’t leave.

But it did.

When the gate was less than a transparent wash before my eyes, I raised my hand to
touch it. It scattered like ash.
Gone,
I thought, as the floor beneath me fragmented.

I fell.

Were-sired, Fae-bred, mortal soft, I plummeted earthward. I felt the sharp streak
of pain as my foot glanced off the log; another bone-crunching hurt as my hip smacked
a moment later. And then—

I was plunging into the fairy pond’s bitter cold, feet first, arms trailing high over
my head. Past my knees, just an instant. Past my thighs, just a flash. Past my heart—

Oh Goddess, I still had one.

The iron scum on the pond’s bottom waited. My pointed feet sank into the mud, drilling
deep through accumulated years of rot and slime, cutting like a butter knife through
a bottomless layer of sludge and compost, until finally, my descent stopped.

I floated, feet caught.

The iron-poisoned sludge wrapped cold hands around my ankles and squeezed.

I was just mortal-me. No longer strong-by-three. I felt the cold creep up my legs,
the burn in my chest for air, and realized I
am
going to haunt the fairy pond.

Enough. There was no plan. Just instinct.

Hedi chose life.

Four frantic backstrokes earned freedom for my right foot. I searched for a toehold
and found one as my bare toe brushed against the soft, rounded hump of a large granite
rock—the twin of Lexi’s pirate rock; waiting for me where the last ice age had left
it, patient, under all the lily pads and sludge, knowing that I’d find it again. I
flattened my right foot on its rounded top, bent at my knees and shoved off.

Pop! The mud spat me free. Cheeks fat with souring air, I winnowed my way skyward.
My head broke surface. My first breath was greedy and foul; a mixture of oxygen and
swamp water. Coughing and spluttering, I dog-paddled my way to the log. Too tired
to swim any farther, I stayed low in the water and wrapped a weary arm around the
sacred old pine trunk.

I looked up into the sky.

What was left of Merenwyn’s portal shimmered like a shred of white gauze floating
on a zephyr of air. Then, in silence, it vanished as the sun sank below my horizon.

Gone.

Chapter Twenty-five

“Open your eyes, you bloody stupid girl.” I was being smothered by a wet towel. “Don’t
make me smack you again. Wake up.”

I wish people would stop hitting me.

When I rolled my head away from the wet, breathing became easier. I coughed a bit,
and felt a hand whack me on my back again. My cheek stung. So … I could feel pain
again. I could sense when something was dry, and when something was wet.

“Open your eyes,” said the same throaty voice. “We’re not out of trouble yet.”

I was afraid to open my eyes.

“They’re through the wards.” A different speaker; this one much younger and male.
“We’re shit out of luck if she doesn’t open her eyes and flare. Do you think she can
do it again? We could really use an ace up our sleeve.”

I was sitting upright, my back being supported by someone who felt warm. My ribs and
hips hurt, my hands throbbed. A hand smoothed my hair back. Fingers briefly touched
the curve of my ear. “You can’t let them win,” she whispered. I heard a sniff. Refined.
Snot withheld. “Not now. Not after what we’ve done.”

I opened my eyes, and looked up into her blue ones. Not Trowbridge blue. Not Mannus
blue. Cordelia blue. The cover-up had caked itself into the lines under her lower
lashes. She had a smudge of mascara under one eye, and I could see one end of her
false eyelashes had pulled away, and was coyly fluttering with each of my breaths.

I bit my lip until it hurt. “I closed the gate on him.”

“You did.”

Tears welled.

“None of that,” she said. “Look around you.” I turned my head against her bosom. Biggs
was kneeling beside us. I didn’t know how I felt about that, so I turned my head back
to her bosom.

“No, over there,” Cordelia said firmly, steering my chin upward. An outline of people
stood on top of the Trowbridge cliff. Too many to count. “And here,” she said, helping
my head rotate toward my old home. More silhouettes.

“The pack,” I said.

“They’ve just watched you and Cordelia shove their brand-new Alpha through the Gate,”
said Biggs. “You flared before, please tell me you can do it again.”

“They don’t want me; they want him.”

“Yes, but as long as you’re alive, and bear his scent, you’re proof that he’s living,”
Biggs said. “So, in the meantime, you’re it. If you’ve got any flare that can impress
the bejesus out of them, now’s the time to put on a light show.” Biggs still had clever
eyes. “Anyhow,” he said with a lopsided smile. “He’ll be back. With his luck, he’ll
come back smelling like roses.”

More like freesias.

“I’m not really his mate,” I said.

“Yes you are,” said Cordelia in a hard voice. “In every way.”

“I’d feel it if he was dead, wouldn’t I?” I asked her.

Cordelia thought for a bit, then nodded. “I think you would.”

The first one down the Stronghold path was Geezer-Were.

“Stand up,” she said. “Don’t show any weakness in front of Harry Windcombe.” Geezer-Were
was Harry? My feet felt wobbly, and I couldn’t seem to stop shivering, but I stood.
Cordelia positioned herself close behind me, disguising the fact that the only thing
keeping me mostly upright was her firm grip on the waistband of my pants.

I could smell her perfume, even through the swamp water.

Obsession.

I thought of him. I thought of me. And then I thought of that moment when our eyes
had locked through the gate, before I caught the hot scent of his anger.

I flared. It was that simple. I felt its burn, let it go, and the light poured from
me. I swept my eyes over both ridges, so that they all could taste it. Then I focused
on the white-haired man who was walking down the hill in front of all the others.
Geezer-Were stopped, mid-amble, and let it wash over him. He smiled, briefly, and
I found myself thinking,
Now there’s a man who doesn’t smile too often.
But then he did something I hadn’t expected. He lowered himself stiffly onto one
knee. He bent his head over it, and kept it that way. And then, in the hushed silence
of that moment, they all copied him. One by one, all those other Weres fell to their
knees, toppling down like a line of dominoes.

It would have been a good time for a speech, but I was wordless. I let my flare burn
until my eyelids felt like they were smoking, and then allowed it to fade away. “Was
that enough?” I asked Cordelia.

There was a pause and then she said, “Yes.”

“What now?”

“You have to choose your second. Right now, before they have time to think it through.”

I leaned against her, suddenly weak. “I’m not an Alpha.”

“You’re his mate, which makes you Alpha-by-proxy.” Her shirt was wet, but her inner
heat radiated such tempting warmth, I wanted to press myself against it. “You need
an enforcer.”

“Alpha-by-proxy,” I murmured. “I don’t want to be Alpha-by-proxy.”

“Well, you don’t have a choice.” I let my spine rest, just for an instant, against
her knuckles. In response, her hand quickly twisted at my waistband, tightening her
grip, and then she jerked me upright. “Now stand up strong. You can be a healthy Alpha-by-proxy,
or you can be a dead half-Fae.”