Explosive chemistry, p.20
Explosive Chemistry, page 20
Liliana found she rather enjoyed being fussed over. Siobhan grumbled a lot, but Liliana’s third eyes showed her that the little Fae enjoyed it just as much as the spider-kin.
Siobhan caught her looking and winked.
Liliana smiled into her cup.
When their injuries were completely cared for and they were as comfortable as possible, Doctor Nudd opened the door to allow the others access. “One at a time, please.”
Pete left to give them space.
Colonel Bennet was the first to visit.
Liliana quickly closed her third eyes.
After a brief, cold nod to Siobhan, he focused on Liliana. “The next time you need access to the base, it’s granted. I’ll get you a pass for the gate,” he told her. “That’s the second time you saved my life today, and the third time since we met. I should have trusted you.”
“You didn’t know me, so you had no reason to trust me.” Liliana shrugged. “Just like I don’t really know you.”
The dark prince finished her thought, “So you have no reason to trust me.”
“I need to know you better.” Liliana considered how she might accomplish that. “May I visit your home? Doctor Nudd tells me that it is a social rule to inform someone before visiting.”
“I look forward to it.” He bowed to her slightly.
He turned to leave. The prince had barely acknowledged Siobhan’s existence, even though Liliana recognized the sprite’s work in the unique weapon he carried in the holster on his hip.
Siobhan and Colonel Bennet were of opposite courts. Enmity between seelie and unseelie Fae had existed for millennia, and the spider seer suspected from what she had seen inside him that Colonel Bennet had a personal grudge against the seelie as well.
But the flower sprite had fought so bravely, and Liliana did not like seeing her friend snubbed. “It was Siobhan who saved Doctor Nudd’s life,” Liliana said. “He would not have survived until you or I got here if she had not chosen to fight the pride-king alone.”
Colonel Bennet turned back. He looked to Doctor Nudd for verification.
“That is true, actually.” Doctor Nudd tucked his clipboard inside the sling that held one arm, and drew himself to his full height, even taller than the prince. “I would have died long before help arrived if not for Siobhan.”
The prince glanced at Siobhan. “I understand you owed Nudd a favor.” He had seemed formal when he spoke to Liliana, but with the little Fae, his tone turned icy. He spat the word favor as if it were an insult.
Siobhan nodded, face closed and wary. “He saved my life. I saved his. We’re even now.”
Doctor Nudd tapped his pen but didn’t add to that.
Liliana sighed. So much bloodshed in the past could have been avoided if the Fae did not insist on dividing everyone into opposing camps. Bridges had begun to be built across previously uncrossable lines. The first Sidhe court in North America would not begin by burning those bridges, not if Liliana had any say in the matter.
The prince told her himself that he didn’t intend to let those old lines define or restrict him. She would see to it that he kept that oath.
“Regardless of the reason, she saved a Fae under your protection that you would have failed to protect without her aid.”
The prince turned his dark glare on the spider-kin, but Liliana kept her eyes down on the cup in her hand. This prince seemed to follow the old rules of fealty that had been ignored by so many Sidhe. Rules mattered to him. Order mattered. Honor mattered. But Sidhe tended to interpret the rules to their own best advantage, and many of them would ignore honor when it suited them.
She wondered if this prince would honor his obligations in an age when so many did not.
“I told Siobhan that she would probably die if she came here. Doctor Nudd did not ask her to come, and her obligation to him would have died with him if she had done nothing. Siobhan chose to protect one who serves you, knowing the price could be her life.”
Anger narrowed Colonel Bennet’s dark eyes. A muscle in his square jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. He frowned at Liliana for a moment, then he seemed to grow larger, crowding the tiny space in the examination room.
Doctor Nudd swallowed and backed his lanky body as far as he could into a corner.
The prince didn’t shift to his Fae form, but dark power flowed up from the earth. Silent snakes of smoke in a dozen shades of green so dark they were nearly black crawled around his body until he glowed with an aura of flickering shadow. A ghost of silver spikes wreathed his head like a white flame crown.
Doctor Nudd went down on one knee.
Siobhan’s eyes got very large. If she hadn’t known before what Colonel Bennet was, she did now. She lifted her tiny chin in defiance, but she pulled the blankets around herself more tightly as the unseelie Fae prince turned his full attention on her.
Then the towering prince wreathed in the aura of his power surprised them both. He gave Siobhan a very slight, minimal bow. “I am in your debt.”
Siobhan swallowed and licked her lips. “The debt is paid.”
He shook his head. “Your debt to my Merlin is paid. However, as the spider-kin reminds me, I am personally indebted to you for shielding one of mine with your life.” His lips twisted as if he didn’t like the way the next words tasted. “I owe you a favor.”
The sprite in human form glanced at Liliana, blue eyes huge. A favor from a Sidhe prince was priceless. Siobhan could ask for virtually anything, and the prince would be required by his honor to use his considerable power to grant her request.
Liliana reached over and squeezed the sprite’s hand. Siobhan had earned it.
“What would you ask of me?” the prince said.
Siobhan handed her cup of hot cocoa to Liliana. She straightened her back and looked up at the prince wreathed in shadows of power.
His eyes glimmered red like hot coals in the dark glow of his power, the only sign of anger he showed.
“Look, just…just keep him safe,” Siobhan said. “I don’t want you to give me anything for watching Nudd’s back. Just, if he’s one of yours, then, watch out for him, yeah?”
Some of the red fire from the prince’s eyes faded as his brows pinched in confusion. “Why?” he asked the sprite, towering over her. “Why would a seelie Fae use a prince’s favor to protect a goblin?”
Siobhan’s small body tensed as if preparing to run or defend herself. “Because I don’t let any feckin’ court or any royal toffs tell me who my friends are.” Her faint Irish accent went thick. She trembled under the blanket, but she still spat the words in the face of the unseelie prince glowing with raw power.
Liliana realized that the people she had come to call friends shared one trait. They were all imbued with gargantuan amounts of courage.
The dark prince blinked and took a half step back, stoic face completely failing to hide his surprise. His dark power faded to a less intimidating presence. “Nudd has the full protection of earth and fire.” He bowed a little more deeply to the sprite. “But the debt remains. He was mine to protect already.”
It was Siobhan’s turn to look surprised. “Only a land-bonded Sidhe can offer the…” She swallowed. “You rule both earth and fire?”
The prince shrugged one shoulder minutely. “Within the borders of Fort Liberty, but my influence has been spreading. Some of Fayetteville and the wilderness in this area is mine now as well. I cannot protect him beyond my borders, but you can, and I see now that you will. For that alone, I would be in your debt.”
Siobhan scratched at the dried blood in her short red hair. “I’ve lived nearly two centuries, and no royal of any court has ever said a word to me, much less offered me a favor.”
“One has now,” the prince told her. The ice thawed from his voice, and the red disappeared from his eyes. “It was honorably earned, and it would please me to grant it.”
“If I may, sir?” Doctor Nudd said.
Alexander Bennet nodded permission for the goblin to speak.
Doctor Nudd directed his words to Siobhan. “Colonel Bennet knows about Pete, what he is, and he knows about me taking care of a Celtic wolf since he was a boy. In spite of that, he still offered me a place, and he treats Pete like one of us, even though he doesn’t know what the Colonel is. He’s not cruel and capricious like the Goblin King or Queen Mab. In the nine years since the land chose him, I have never regretted pledging my fealty.”
The prince placed a hand, with its attendant living shadow, on the kneeling goblin’s shoulder with an expression of pride. Some of the shadow of raw Green played over Doctor Nudd’s skin and sank in.
Doctor Nudd shivered. His face, often scrunched with worry, smoothed into an expression of peace that made him look centuries younger.
The edge of that shadow brushed the little sprite where Nudd’s hand rested on her knee.
Siobhan’s face turned speculative, looking down at the connection. “Can I carry my Kel-Tec on base?”
Colonel Bennet’s lip quirked slightly at one corner. “Is that how you would use your favor?”
“Nah, I’ll have to give the favor some thought. That’s not something to waste.” She bounced up onto her feet on the examination table, making her a bit taller than the prince. She tossed the blanket to Liliana and gestured widely. “See, I was thinking I could help you keep Nudd and Pete and your soldiers out of trouble better if I had my weapons with me all the time. I mean, if you want me to protect your people properly, that is?”
The prince watched her pace back and forth on five feet of exam table. “Are you offering me your service as a guardian for my court?” His lips twitched again. Unseelie Fae court guardians were usually terrifyingly powerful Others like rock trolls or dragon-kin.
“Well, I supply your SET unit with custom weapons effective against Fae and beast-kin already.” Her pretty face turned wry, and she waved away a comment the prince didn’t actually seem inclined to make. “Yes, I know about the secret Special Enemies and Tactics force you’re in charge of.” She rolled her eyes. “Every Other in Fayetteville knows.”
“I did not know,” Liliana pointed out. It had never occurred to her to look for such a thing.
Siobhan waved her cybernetic arm at Liliana. “Well, except for Lilly, who was practically a shut-in until recently. The thing is, I always keep an eye on your soldiers, especially at the bars off-base, so I could––” She broke off and looked at the prince with his aura of raw power who was watching her, his handsome face unreadable.
Her shoulders slumped. “I mean I could do it sort of…unofficially. I know you wouldn’t want a cyborg flower sprite to serve you publicly.” She scoffed. “People would probably laugh at a prince with a sprite for a guardian.” She laughed, ugly and bitter.
“I am honored to accept you in my service, Guardian,” the prince said solemnly.
Siobhan blinked once, and a grin dawned in place of the bitterness on her pixie face. “So you’ll give me a permit to keep the Kel-Tec with me on base?”
“Of course.” The prince nodded to the sprite.
“Yes!” She punched the air. “And can I get real grenades for the grenade launcher?”
Alexander Bennet’s mouth curved up a tic at the corners. “Don’t push your luck.” His aura of oppressive power faded into the floor. He appeared, once again, to be an ordinary human, although Liliana thought he was still quite impressive.
She smiled into her cocoa. This prince of shadows was definitely a man worth getting to know more deeply.
“If you ladies will excuse me, I have something pressing I need to take care of.”
Liliana tilted her head and opened her fourth eyes for a moment to see what the prince was referring to.
Oh. Right.
“Don’t stand too close,” she told him.
He gave them each a small bow and left.
Doctor Nudd got up. His face split with a wide grin. “Welcome,” he said to Siobhan and gave her a formal bow. “To the Court of Earth and Fire.”
“Does this mean I’m unseelie now?” the sprite asked. “Will I feel stronger at night?”
Doctor Nudd did not seem to know the answer to that question for certain. “Well, the prince is unseelie. Normally, unseelie rulers don’t choose seelie Fae for their court. The land gives power according to its traditions, and if the peak of its power is at night…” He scratched his stubbly beard thoughtfully. “But the land doesn’t usually change your nature.”
Liliana considered that, looking into the past. “No land in North America has ever chosen a non-native Fae before.” Liliana considered some images of ancient Fae courts in North America that flashed before her fourth eyes. She couldn’t understand any of the conversation and many of the native Others were unknown to her. “I don’t think this land has any concept of seelie or unseelie. I see no separation between Fae and beast-kin either. Even Normals who were wise or had extraordinary skills were accepted in the land’s service. The Green peaks and ebbs with the seasons, neither at noon nor midnight, but it seems to have worked well to nourish all Others in the past.”
Doctor Nudd’s grin nearly split his face. “That means that our prince has the freedom to choose who he will accept without restriction.”
“He told me as much, with the power of an oath behind it. I wonder if that is part of why this land chose him.” Liliana glanced at her sprite friend sidelong. “I think you have chosen the one court where you truly can belong and let your heart choose your friends.”
Nudd grinned at the little sprite. “And you have been chosen right back. I’ve got a bottle of three-hundred-year-old mead I’ve been saving. Tonight seems like a great time to open it.”
Siobhan whooped. “Now, that’s a Fae who knows how to celebrate!”
Her friends’ joy made Liliana happy, but she had seen the prince’s near certain death in less than a year. “The new court may be very short-lived,” she warned her friends.
The tall goblin shrugged. “I know he’s half human and mortal, but some of the great kings and queens of legend were mortal. If it only lasts a few years, then…” He shrugged. “Then I believe they’ll be good years. And I would rather live fifty years in the court of a good king than another thousand alone.”
Siobhan nodded agreement. “You don’t know what it’s like for a Fae to have no court, no tie to the land,” she told Liliana. She rubbed the spot on her leg where the barest edges of the prince’s power had touched her, not like it hurt, but like she wanted to rub the sensation in deeper. “It feels like being…uprooted. You can survive for a while, but you can never grow or thrive.”
“And yet, you both came to this continent because there were no Fae courts here.”
The two Fae shared a look. The smiles left both their faces. Doctor Nudd’s deep voice rumbled low. “Some things are worse than being uprooted.”
Liliana’s decision whether or not to save the prince was now even more important. The land of her home had chosen him to lead. If Colonel Bennet would make a good king, then it would give her friends great joy to serve him. If he would become a bad king, then she should let him die. It would be better than putting her friends through the same horrors that drove them from their homes in the British Isles in the first place.
A knock on the door made them all look up. Detective Jackson leaned in. “My turn?”
“Yes, Detective Jackson, you may come in now,” Liliana said.
She handed Siobhan back her no longer hot cup of cocoa, and the sprite settled cross-legged on the exam table next to her to drink it.
The smile on the detective’s face was triumphant. “We did it! We stopped a murder from happening.”
“Thank you for believing me,” Liliana said.
The detective chuckled. “You just made my homicide detective’s heart happy. No one got murdered!”
“But the would-be murderer got away,” Liliana pointed out.
Detective Jackson made a rude noise. “We know who he is, and he held a hostage at the point of a weapon right in front of multiple witnesses. He’ll get his. If you have any more visions like that, you keep right on coming to me. Promise?”
“I will, Detective Jackson. If you can help, I will make sure that you know.” Liliana had already foreseen several deaths. Her mind wandered, pondering the possible future paths, looking for ways that the detective’s help might save lives.
Detective Jackson offered Siobhan and Liliana a ride home. Siobhan declined, opting to go home with Doctor Nudd to share a bottle and companionship. She could put her bike in the back of his pickup. Doctor Nudd invited Detective Jackson and Liliana to join them.
They both accepted.
Liliana peeked forward a bit and saw all four of them making music together, drinking and laughing until dawn.
She smiled. It would become quite a party.
Not since she was a child in the circus had Liliana attended a party. She had never in her adult life had so many friends.
The bullet wound would, once again, prevent her from dancing, but that would be okay. She had friends now who loved to make music. She would have many other chances to dance as much as she liked.
Detective Jackson gave her a ride to Doctor Nudd’s house. She still ignored the auto-drive’s suggestion to let it take over with the bad weather adaptation application, but she drove at a far more careful and sedate pace. During the ride, Liliana’s thoughts and fourth eyes wandered, turning to the escaped killer.
Periclum had fled in full lion form. Tracking a lion on an Army base would normally be a simple thing, but the pride-king knew the location of all the cameras, and the bad weather still grounded the drones and greatly limited visibility.
Sergeant Giovanni reported to Colonel Bennet that Periclum had eluded capture. The prince accepted the report, then drove northeast in his car with the big tires.
Liliana’s vision was not greatly affected by the rain. She found the wounded lion in one of the empty places on base that were used for weapons testing, the same one the spider-kin ran across when the sound weapons nearly killed her. Here and there, unexploded shells lay around in the place where soldiers tested the larger artillery.
