This is a one-part story I wrote on request. I had a lot of fun with it; it's very much tongue-in-cheek, and is a continuation of the one-shot stories I started with Luck of the Irish. I hope you enjoy it.
Disclaimer: The Nightworld and all its concepts belong to the fabulous L.J. Smith. Everything else is the product of my imagination and is purely for fun.
Cruel To Be Kind
The nagging ring of the phone woke her. Chatoya squinted blearily at her ceiling, cursing whoever had hauled her out of a blissful slumber. For once, her dreams had been absent of Blue and Hael, mercifully peaceful.
She leaned over, not looking at the clock. Light had wheedled its way through the curtains, which meant she had no justification for ignoring whichever demented assassin it was.
"This had better be good," she said in a voice furred with sleep.
"Oh, it will be."
She jolted upright. There were no traces of tiredness in Blue Malefici's cool voice, and she glanced at the empty space beside her as if he would appear in a cloud of sulphurous smoke. "What do you want?"
"A life of hedonistic pleasure. What I've got, alas, is a missing assassin and his wife screeching in my office like a demented howler monkey. At least I managed to silence her vile brat."
"How?" she asked, curiosity overcoming sleepy irritation. She'd been reliably informed that Blue regarded children in much the same way as pedigree dog breeders regarded puppies: stock, a possible livelihood, and if they were no use, there was always a sack and a river to put to use.
"I gave him Schnookums." Blue sounded a little put out. The ginger kitten he'd been given for Christmas had become a savage, drooling brute whose only love was for his equally savage if less salivating master. "The faithless creature appears to be purring."
Chatoya repressed a snigger. "And you called me because...?"
A brief pause. "Pietr was in the middle of some delicate negotiations. Having to rescue him will weaken our stance considerably. Not only do I now require someone with enough political influence to persuade the other party to return that idiot, I also require a powerful spellcaster with a stout backbone. You fit all those requirements, with the added benefit that if you try to do anything stupid, I'll be able to read your mind in time to stop you."
She gawped at the back-handed compliment, and with a hint of savagery, replied, "And what if you try to do something stupid? Shall I stop you, or just make sure I write you a nice obituary?"
"The situation won't arise," he assured her with such blithe arrogance that she considered hanging up. "Besides, I doubt you could do me justice."
"Agreed. Whoever killed you would have done that." She smothered a yawn with one hand. "Look, why do you need me to do this? You've got your own witches, and don't give me that rubbish about politics. Your lot could make Machiavelli cry."
The silence was barely perceptible unless you were waiting for it. "I've no doubt one of them could fumble through the spells, but I require someone I trust. And given that I've seen inside that pitiful thing you call a soul and seen your every thought, fear, need and flaw, I'd say you suit that label admirably."
"And given that I'm the only person who can help you, is now really the right time to be insulting me?" she inquired acidly. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Blue, but last time you decided to involve me in one of your schemes, I ended up covered in burning leprechaun spit and comatose. So given a choice between my nice, warm bed and another whirlwind adventure, I'll pass."
Ire reached her along the soulmate link, bubbling like boiling water. If she could feel it with this distance between them, he was unsettled. And that...that was worrying. Despite the differences between them, Chatoya knew him; knew the triggers that brought his emotions simmering to the surface. Jealousy, anger, passion, yes.
But over a business matter? No...that was one place where he had complete control.
Or so she had thought.
"Pietr was not on Nightfire business," he said at last. "He was representing the Furies, and he was renegotiating a pact that has stood for several thousand years with one of the races who seceded from our world long ago. They may wish to return, and on no account do we wish to let them. If it comes to a battle...sad to say, I wouldn't wager on us winning."
For a moment, Chatoya was speechless, fury flooding up through her body. "And I suppose if your bloody minion hadn't landed himself in trouble, I'd never have heard a word about any of it!"
"Correct." That one word was steel and ice. She wanted to reach down the phone line and throttle him. "Still want to pass?"
"I'd like to pass you through a blazing furnace," she muttered. "Fine. But before I cast any spells – any – you're going to explain to me exactly what I'm getting myself into this time."
"I'll pick you up in thirty minutes."
"Where-"
The phone clicked as he hung up. Fuming, she smacked it back into the cradle and wished she could ignore his impromptu summons. But the mere fact that Blue needed her help – and had admitted it – meant this was serious: and despite everything...she was intrigued.
Mumbling unflattering things about power-mad vampires, Chatoya stumbled out of bed.
By five a.m., she was climbing gingerly into the rusty, clanking death machine that Blue liked to call a car. Over the years, collisions with wolves, trees, other cars and apparently, a maddened demon had left it so battered it didn't resemble a vehicle so much as a large, mobile pencil sharpener.
"Don't you think it's time you got something better?" she suggested.
His affronted look was answer enough. "There is nothing wrong with it."
He started the engine and waited patiently as it coughed and spluttered and finally kicked into life.
"Besides," he resumed as he pulled away from the kerb, "it has hidden qualities."
"It's a Fiat. It's not the Batmobile." She didn't add that she'd heard a number of Pursang's members calling it something very similar, or at least rhyming. "Or have you fitted rocket launchers to the headlights?"
He turned into the main road that ran through Ryars Valley. It was empty, stretching away like a silvery snake in the dawn light. "Don't be foolish."
And then he put his foot down and the car gave the ferocious roar of a lion: it shot forward and she was flung back into her seat, staring as the speedometer dial swung up into triple digits.
"But Aspen did convince me to replace the engine," he continued as the landscape flashed past in a grey blur. "I'm told it's quite an improvement."
A strangled sound escaped her as he swept over the roundabout so fast she was pitched into the door, hitting her shoulder hard.
"I'd put your seatbelt on if I were you," he added. Mockery crept into his voice, suede-sleek. "Apparently, speed kills."
They were out of Ryars Valley and heading towards the highway by the time she'd managed to overcome sheer terror at his driving skills, or lack thereof. His instincts seemed honed to try and mow everything down: she'd never seen anyone have such trouble keeping the car pointed at an empty horizon. As a result, she formed an intimate and lasting relationship with the door panel.
"So," she said from a white-knuckled grip on the dashboard, "who are this race, and why wouldn't you talk about them over the phone?"
"Their existence is only known to a handful of people. Too many would think to exploit them for their own gain, and might break the terms of our agreement."
"Ah, hoarding all the exploitation for yourself," she said with faux sympathy.
"No." That one word was a slash across the air, cold and incisive. "Promises mean nothing to them. Oaths and chains - bar those forged in blood – slide from them like water. They can promise the earth, and in their fashion, you will receive it: a shallow grave, and the dirt piling into your eyes."
Professional respect filled his voice. One callous heart recognising another and appreciating its craft.
She felt all too human, too warm and full of emotion. There seemed only the two of them on the sandy, dark roads, driving into the sunrise and even when they pulled onto the highway, other traffic was few and far between.
"What are they then?" she asked, brittle with the shadow of that fear. "And don't sidestep the question this time."
"Have you ever heard the phrase 'what dreams may come'?" he asked, overtaking a Honda that blared its horn as he cut back in front of it with barely an inch to spare.
"Yes."
"They were the dreams, and they came with iron and ice to conquer." He sounded amused, as she supposed he might at such simple ambition. "They are creatures of immense greed, always hungry for something new to entertain them. And very little entertains them unless there is blood involved."
"Really?" she said. "Are you related?"
He turned his head slowly to stare at her, and his eyes were dark and inky and threatening as a tsunami. That gaze sent shivers down her spine, but brought a new wave of panic with it, because every second he was sat there exuding menace, he was paying no attention at all to the road.
Sod the battle of wills, there was no point in winning it if she was pate on the highway ten seconds later.
"For gods' sakes, keep your eyes on the road!" she shrieked as the back of a truck loomed.
He blinked, then hit the brakes, which screeched; the car lurched-
And she was somehow still alive. Blue's driving made Jepar look like a comparative tortoise. A neurotic tortoise on some kind of mind-altering drugs, admittedly, but a tortoise.
"Anyway," he carried on blithely while her heart thundered in her ears, "The first tatters of the Nightworld were formed when the vampires and witches banded together to fight them. The struggle went on for years, until the Furies forged this pact."
"And just what did they sell our souls for?"
He gave a curt nod, as if he approved of the question. "The witches made them their own land, and concealed it from ours. I understand the Jubatus clan have a burial ground which uses the same spell. Certain rights were granted to them within our lands, and to us within their boundaries."
"What rights?"
"There are...places where they have control. The power of illusion runs in their blood, and so they hold sway wherever the lines between reality and fantasy blur, wherever there is uncertainty or what lesser minds might call mystery. Shadows and moonlight are theirs, as are mist and waterfalls. You can walk through water and find yourself in another world, or step into the shade for a moment and look up to see a strange sky."
The image was odd and yet held a curious fascination: how many times had she stood under the luminous moon, the world born anew in silver and ivory, reshaped, unfamiliar? Yes, it was frightening, but exhilarating too. The stuff of stories – of ancient sorcerers who could slide between the rain into other lands, of magic that was now nothing more than a green ghost in her veins.
If he guessed anything of her thoughts, Blue gave nothing away. "The theatre is theirs too, and I would be very wary of taking a wrong turning in a maze of mirrors because the reflection might not be your own – and even you, my witch, might interest them enough to steal you away and toy with you until you bored them once too often."
"And what rights do we have?"
"They can inflict no harm upon us that we do not agree to – though they have a thousand ways to trick the unwary. They may not invade our minds or take the form of anything they find there. Nor are they allowed to enter our dreams or disturb our sleep in any way."
"What are they?" she asked. "You won't mention them by name."
"For good reason. People tend to have certain preconceptions of them." His tone was withering. "I assure you, they don't talk in verse, and they are certainly not named after flowers, and please put away any ideas you have about sparkly wings."
Wings? But that sounded like he was talking about-
No. Surely not.
She stared at his profile, which revealed nothing except the scornful set of his mouth. "Fairies? We're going to visit fairies?"
"They call themselves the Fey. They tend to get rather...irritable if you refer them to them as fairies."
"But we're going to visit fairies?" she said in disbelief. For a moment, she though it might be a bizarre prank. But...that wasn't his nature. Cruel tricks, certainly; odd ones...no.
"Have you heard a single word I've said?" A sigh, impatient. "Very well, yes. Technically, we are visiting fairies. But I think you'll have a better chance of surviving the experience if you replace 'fairies' with 'bloodthirsty over-ambitious butchers'."
"You should get on like a house on fire."
His smile softened that hard-edged silhouette, despite its cruel curve. "I did."
"What do you mean?"
"I spent a summer with the Fey. They're quite proficient in the darker arts, particularly when it comes to unravelling magic." He paused, and when he spoke once more, his voice had softened, thickened to caress the words, and goosebumps broke out on her arms at the pleasure there. She'd heard him sound like that under other circumstances: skin pressed to hot skin, the lazy nights spooling out about them. "And they have a certain flair for pain that is almost unparalleled."
Those words showed her just how close pain and pleasure always lay with him, how little difference he saw between them. A racing pulse, gasping breath, a slow and intimate touch: and a bloody afterglow. Yes, knowing how he lived, she supposed she could see the similarities.
And the thought, awful as it was, silenced her for a while.
"Where are we going?" she said later, when she could no longer bear the hush. They had left the freeway some time ago, and were now meandering down a criss-crossing network of tiny roads that were becoming more and more worn. "I thought it was easy to cross into their world."
"There are hundreds of thresholds, but most are controlled by the Fey and anyone crossing through them is bound by their rules – whatever they decide they are that day. We would be allowed in, my witch, but we would not come out again, except perhaps in pieces."
"So we're going to one of the thresholds that we control, presumably," she said.
"Correct."
Something was wrong, and at last she put her finger on it: he had been civil. Distant, factual and civil, and that said to her that he was distracted enough not to bother with insults or pettiness. This, she realised, was the professional that was kept buried beneath the mocking, vicious veneer.
So this is serious. We are coming as the supplicants here, even though we must pretend we're not.
On they drove, the car bouncing and squeaking with every bump in the road until she felt her organs were being shaken out of her body. Troubled thoughts kept her silent, and on the edge of her perceptions, she sensed the flickering of his mind, bright and rapid and jagged as summer lightning.
And as the roads became dirt tracks, his presence reduced down from that flurry of thoughts to a decided blade, so still she would not have guessed he lived at all if he had not sat beside her.
He was her soulmate, yet somehow in these hours he had separated himself from her until he was a distant star, high above and uncaring, a gleaming, chilly thing that she would swear knew nothing of love or any human need.
"Are we close?" she blurted, needing to break the silence.
He drove a little further, not answering, then pulled the car to a halt beside a field.
The face he turned to her threw her back five years to when she had first seen him: nothing human in his eyes, which were uncanny and perilous, nothing but her reflection snared in his pupils like a promise of her own burial.
He was a monster then, and she was afraid.
Reaching out, he brushed his fingers over her mouth, down the long plane of her neck, his head tilted as if he had never seen her before. Her pulse pushed in her throat, her mouth dry with sudden tension.
"Close enough," he purred.
His hand tightened on her neck and she felt the intent blossom in his mind like a poison flower: one move, one tug, and she could already hear her own breath coming faster, and hated him for it. The logical part of her mind told her that he wouldn't kill her: it was overwhelmed by her instincts screaming of everything else that he could do, everything that was hovering in his eyes like a raven's shadow; dark, gruesome promises, laced with a strange tenderness that terrified her more than anything else.
Stupid, stupid to think you were safe with him – when have you ever been safe?
She was furious that she could have been so deceived, that she could sit here quivering now.
Chatoya forced her expression into arrogance and let her mind subside into an approximation of calm, and then she let her dragonfire leap free, resisting the urge to fry him to a blue-tinged crisp. She pulled her own power out with it, green and black sizzling through her body so strongly that she felt it must shine out from her skin.
Radiating power, cold as a queen, she faced him down.
I will not fear you or anyone.
He raised an eyebrow. "Hold that thought," he advised, and slid out of the car. "Face them like that and you might survive."
He'd wanted her angry. Her composure wavered – but only briefly. Time had taught her how to hold onto her anger and use it as a tool.
No, Blue had taught her that.
Step after step, humming a song that was all minors interspersed with moments of sudden sweetness, Chatoya walked around the remnants of a stone circle. All of the columns were broken, poking from the earth like half-buried bones which stood barely as high as her knees.
The car was back through the woodland, a slow mile through foliage and mud. Time enough for Blue to explain just what she needed to do and to implant the music into her mind with a touch.
Magic rose in her throat, pouring forth to make that alien lullaby an enchantment and a key to another, secret land. It was a clever spell, one that required precision and memory, but it was easy for her because she had Blue to prompt her, loitering in her mind with the map of the complex route they must walk through the circle: across it, around it, twining through the stones in endless variations as they walked from one land to another, so she needed only to worry about the song and the rhythm of her feet.
One slip, he said, and you will become lost between our worlds, able to see both but touch neither. So dance to their music, and pay them back for the insult later.
She wove around the stones and Blue followed her, treading where she trod, stepping in the shadows of her magic and her pathfinding. And as they walked their self-made labyrinth, she began to notice changes, the song burning back of her throat as if she'd swallowed chilli peppers.
The stones were shifting: now they reached her hips, and the grass around their feet sprang thicker. No birdsong broke across the air, only a heavy hush as though everything living had stopped to hear the sound of worlds opening, worlds closing, worlds meshing like lovers.
On went the song, and she became aware of a cold breeze trying to tease her hair from its plait, of a dark tinge to the sky that had not been there before.
Metres or miles more, and the stones were level with her shoulders. Faded paint showed on them in red and black. Leaves littered the ground and made the footing treacherous, but more careful now, she went on. There could be no turning back, after all.
And now the stones were higher than her head, and bright with what looked like writing, sigils edged with gilt, but still blazing in scarlet on a solid black background. The grass retreated to reveal paving that extended to the perimeter of the circle – and between two pillars, into a smooth path.
With that realisation, the last notes trailed from her lips, and the spell ended with a surge that left her weak and dizzy. She toppled-
And opened her eyes to find Blue sat some feet away, apparently waiting for her to come round. If he was concerned, it didn't show in the brief, impersonal glance he gave her.
"Do you intend to be much longer?" he inquired, as if she was dithering over her hair before a date. "The Fey are bound to be expecting us, and it is unwise to keep them waiting."
"Oh, sorry, am I inconveniencing you?" she snapped.
"As ever."
Fuming, Chatoya staggered to her feet. Yes, she was tired, but not as drained as she feared. Her dragon powers moved through her like sap, lifeblood of a strange but welcome kind that strengthened her bit by bit. It didn't stop her side from aching. "You could have caught me."
"I could have, yes. And if I'd put that last foot wrong, I could also have launched us both into the nothingness between our worlds forever. Are you so desperate to spend eternity with me?"
She shuddered. "Gods, no."
Chatoya could have sworn something close to indignation flickered in his face. But he merely stood and stalked down the winding path flanked by armies of spiny, leafless trees, leaving her to follow him.
They had entered a twilight land, where her breath clouded on the air. It was cast in blue and grey, interspersed with wisps of silver that glistened upon the landscape with cobweb-delicacy. Over it all hovered the gibbous moon, vast and swollen as a blister. Its pitted surface loomed too close, dominating the sky as if these two chilled and empty worlds orbited side by side.
Everything seemed sharp and crystalline; frost crunched under her feet as she moved tentatively after Blue. She wrapped her arms around herself, but the cold was already creeping in, insidious as fear.
The walk seemed endless. The ache in her feet was driven to numbness by the icy air, while rime formed upon her hair and eyelashes until she felt she had become a frost maiden. All the warmth was leached from her body save a scattering of small, hot points: beneath her arms, under her tongue, between her legs, in the hollow fenced by ribs and stomach.
At last a new shape rose in front of them, though she could hardly fathom what it was. Frosted glass, coloured glass, clear, delicate glass which formed this strange construction, a thing of translucency and twisting lines which fooled the eye so it seemed to waver as they approached.
"The Hall Without Heart," Blue said, naming the place as though it had some significance to him.
And strange, like a ghost of a whisper, so faint it was but the brush of a butterfly's wings on the air, his thought:
And I bring you here.
Blue paused.
"One last thing," he advised. "Tell no lies beyond this point, even thoughtless ones. Liars are theirs too, and they treat them as trespassers."
And then he startled her: he offered her his hand, fingers pale as the overhanging moon.
Chatoya stared at him, at his eyes as dark and smooth as ink, at his inscrutable face.
"No lies," he repeated dryly. "Of any kind."
Only half understanding him, she took his hand, chilly as her own, two cold creatures in a cold world. "Why did you bring me?" she whispered as they walked up to the gates, made devilish by fear and curiosity.
His hand tightened on hers with bruising pressure. But he was caught, made an honest man by the very laws of the place.
His voice was flat, but she knew he was displeased with her cunning. "To come here without you would have been a lie."
The gates swung open.
She didn't know what she had expected: not this colourless palace that shifted in unfelt winds. The clear bell-like sound of breaking glass seemed to echo in every corner, and their feet left a mess of webbed cracks upon the icy floors, as if they were unused to bearing such weight.
Mirrors dotted the walls, jagged slabs of looking glass that might have been fragments of some greater whole, divided into chaos. She did not glance at her reflection as she went by. In truth, she was afraid of what might look back and just what it might see.
There was only one long passage that led to a hall, and as they walked in, she searched in vain for the inhabitants of this fey court. Ice sculptures adorned the place and every last one had been unnervingly positioned to watch the threshold that they crossed. In those languid lords and ladies, she saw eerie imitation of life: a glass raised, pale lips parted. A hand reaching, tiny, impossibly thin tendrils of ice-hair that curved as if they were the true thing and not the frozen replica.
There was even a throne at the very end of the room and it was there that Blue led her, never wavering, unfazed.
Another sculpture reigned in glacial supremacy: a woman, shining beneath the refracted light of the chandelier. Her expression was impossible to read with the light playing over it so frantically. Chatoya was starting to think it was all some joke – and then Blue spoke into the silence.
"It seems you were right after all, Titania."
And as if some strange, unholy heart had begun to beat, some monstrous lungs taken breath, she felt a change in the air.
Suddenly, the woman moved and Chatoya found herself agape beneath eyes as the same grey-blue as the twilight sky, eyes that were empty of anything she recognised. Around her, the court was transfigured: though the walls and the floor were still ice, they were adorned with pale tints, like the memory of colour buried deep.
The queen, though, blazed: her dress was the deep yellow of mustard and her hair an echoing auburn that had more of fire than ice in it. Neither softened the power of her gaze, or the odd, sinuous set of her bones. Her eyes were too large, her bones as delicate as china but far too sharp for a human face, and her skin had the sheen of wax.
"We are rarely wrong. And you are still arrogant."
The voice was striking and utterly inhuman. In its slow cadence, she heard seduction and cruelty: to surrender to it would be a last resort and a last madness, but an inevitability too.
"I would not be here otherwise," he answered dryly.
"Have you come for your pet, Bane? No..." That stare moved to her and in it, she saw the merest flicker of acknowledgment. "We see you have brought your own."
"I am not his pet," she answered, finding voice if one shakier than she would have liked. Blue had let go of her hand, as though the gesture had been merely to rouse the queen's interest in her. Perhaps it had.
Titania leaned forward. Her hair was held back by a thin band of glass, or ice, or perhaps even diamonds with a single spike set in it of what looked like ivory. "How interesting. You speak the truth."
Behind them, a faint susurration disturbed the court: the roll of tongues loosened, startled.
"So tell us, witch of the woods," the queen said, "what is he to you?"
She heard the danger in that question – but she heard something else too: curiosity. She gave the slightest inclination of her head, the slightest gesture of respect to annul her words. "I will answer, lady fey, if you will tell me the same."
The queen's laugh was like waves breaking. "He has taught you well. Truth for truth, then."
There was magic in those words and it settled on her like mist. Whatever she had agreed to, there was no backing down now.
"He is my soulmate," she said and then the words were rising in her throat like steam, called forth by the queen's beckoning fingers, searing, bitter – and true. "He is my enemy too. He is all I have when he has taken away everything else – and he is but a shadow when I look beyond him. He is mine and he is not. He is as cruel as he is faithful and he is nothing I want to be – but something that I cannot avoid becoming. He is not the first I have loved and he is not the last, but he is in my blood and in my dreams and in my fears, and in that, he is unique."
On her glittering throne, Titania smiled. It was as rich and cold as everything else about her.
"And if he is in your blood, would you empty your veins to be free of him?"
"No," she said staunchly.
"A shame. It would be easier that way."
Chatoya tried to ignore that sinister remark. "And what is he to you?"
"A changeling child, born in the wrong world. The mirror of us and the reality of you. One who knows the art of blood, one who loves as we do and strips illusions from the world. A visionary – and a fool, an idle child with too much time and not enough hunger. A thing of flaws, and the murderer of our firstborn son. Our nameless heir, if he would but leave your paltry world, and our most exquisite plaything, who broke with such grace."
Chatoya had swung to stare at Blue. He looked bored to death by the whole litany. "Her plaything?"
"How else would I learn their arts?" he answered, as if it should have been obvious.
In that moment, she realised how little she truly knew about him: how much of his black and gluttonous heart he kept hidden, what dark labyrinth he walked that she dared not enter. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.
"Art it is, though few can appreciate it," said the queen. "Your emissary was most...ungracious."
"Ah yes, Pietr," murmured Blue. "Is there a reason you sent me his hand?"
His...
He hadn't mentioned that part. Mute and furious, Chatoya could do nothing but keep her face blank.
"It was the hand of friendship, extended in the old way. Our court expressed a yearning for your presence." That dark, bloodrose mouth smiled. "And in our weak, warm heart, we could not deny them."
"And will your weak, warm heart be persuaded to return my employee?" inquired Blue.
The queen raised one spindly hand and snapped her fingers. "He has grown most dull, Bane. Do you really want him back?"
Chatoya faced the doors, bracing herself. The man brought through was barely recognisable, and she couldn't stop a gasp escaping her. He was held between two guards, and awful, gargling sounds came from him. They had gouged out his eyes, and his flesh had a strange texture: it was ridged and torn and filthy, and...and...
"I'm astounded he consented to that," remarked Blue.
"Flay me if I'm wrong, he said," spoke up one of the surrounding nobles. He was thin and waspish as an icicle, but his voice held a trace of glee. "And he was."
Her stomach lurched as she realised what she saw. He had been peeled like an orange, in rough chunks.
"Are you going to return his skin?" asked Blue in the same uninterested voice
"And deprive our Lord of the Soundless Fens of his cloak?"
Amidst the nobles scattered about the court, one swept a flamboyant bow. Where the queen was colour, he was, like the rest of her terrible court, a thing bleached and stark. There was the same unearthly beauty in his fine features, and the same barren wilderness yawning out in his eyes.
And around his shoulders, a misshapen garment, hung with gobbets of flesh that acted as tassles, the shape of a body clear in its lines.
Don't throw up, she told herself. Not here. Scream and shout and weep later, but not in front of them.
How long she stood there swallowing back nausea, she did not know. It seemed forever until the queen murmured, "Well, Bane? Do you want him back?"
And Blue only looked at that gurgling, wrecked thing – still living, still alive somehow – and said quite coolly, "I have no use for him. Do with him as you will."
Chatoya felt entirely alone then.
"Give him to the children," ordered Titania, twining a lazy spiral of hair around her finger. "They are always hungry."
The Fey applauded and chuckled as if she had made some fine jest, but the man only made a high wailing sound that went on and on-
"And cut out his tongue," she added. "He will need no words there."
"And what of the words I sent him to trade?" Blue said, barely seeming to notice as his former employee was led away. "Did they displease you, or was it just that buffoon?"
"Our argument was not with your words. Fine enough words," she said mildly. "We are content with the pieces of your world we have – the best pieces, full of ripeness and flavour. But we have no taste for covenants bound by paper, Bane. Paper rots. It burns. It can be torn or rewritten. The Fey will grant you your agreement, but it must be made in a more lasting way."
He didn't seem surprised. "Which is?"
The queen's smile was slow and curling. "We would have our oath bound in flesh, Bane of the summer world, nameless heir of the twilight, and in return, our word will endure as long as that flesh does. Carve out our bargain for the world to see and we will leave the summer world to you and your court."
"An intriguing idea," mused Blue, sounding for all the world as if they discussed philosophy. "And whose flesh would you have?"
The queen's eyes moved to Chatoya's and she felt sick to her stomach. That gaze was dreadful in its delight, as carelessly cruel as the deep snows of winter.
And then Titania looked at Blue and said, "Yours."
"Very well," he said, mild. "I hope your touch is as delicate as ever."
And her laughter filled the court, glaciers breaking, mountains tumbling down into dust. "Oh no, Bane. It will not be our hand that wields the blade."
"No?" Chatoya caught the first flicker of uncertainty from him, a gas-flame flare on her senses.
And then queen reached up to lifted the spike from her crown. Chatoya saw then that it was not ivory but the palest gold imaginable, the point lean and thin and wicked. "No immortal can wield the unicorn's horn."
And then those twilight, icy eyes swung to her, filling her world with bleak certainty.
"You are in his blood too," said the queen of the Fey, in her court where Chatoya could not lie. "Let us see if you can empty yourself from his veins."
The uproar was instant and lasting. The court erupted in a shrieking, excited babble. Someone smashed a glass – cheers and laughter filled the air.
And amidst it all, she stood still and shellshocked, horror beating in her ears.
"No," she croaked, and then louder, backed by conviction, visceral and intense. "No!"
Titania stood, tall and beautiful and ferocious. From such a steep angle, her face was all edges and those twilight eyes. "No?" she said, disbelieving.
"I..." She started to say 'I can't', but it would have been a lie. "I won't," she said instead.
"Then we have no truce," the queen answered. "It has been many years since we saw the summer lands. Do you still have so many children? They are most amusing. We have missed them in our court."
Blue brushed the back of her hand with his fingers, and suddenly Chatoya was besieged by images: bodies impaled upon the glassy towers, a court bathed in shocking scarlet technicolour, laughter and tears mingling in cruel ratio. Gaudy and glorious, the Fey wore human hair around their necks like chokers, their beauty made grotesque by bracelets of fingers strung upon wire, belts of bone and hats crowned by human heads. Some sat upon crouched bodies; others walked upon a carpet of prostrate slaves. It almost looked ridiculous, only she knew it was no mere imagining.
"Choose them or choose this," he said, and his eyes were full of contempt. "This is no time for weakness."
"You always mistake humanity for weakness," she whispered.
"Here, they are one and the same. We are making a bargain with the inhuman, my witch, and if it is made in blood, what of it? It is their way, and their way that we wish to keep from our world."
She stared at him, never less able to understand him than at that moment. "No. It's not blood, Blue. They're asking me to torture you."
And if she did that, she would be giving up some part of herself that she had fought desperately hard to keep as she delved ever further into the Furies. The very thought repelled her.
"Wrong. They are asking you to torture yourself. In case you've forgotten, I'm a vampire and I will be healed long before we leave this place, and given that I grew up in Nightfire, I hardly think your fumbling attempts are going to leave me with any lasting damage. This is nothing to do with my pain and everything to do with yours. So tell me, Chatoya Irkil, can you be cruel to be kind?"
She had been asked the same question before in a dozen variations.
And it always come back to one answer that she would not give tongue to. It came back to bloodroses in a garden, and mercy in the form of a knife.
It came back to Sonj.
Cruel to be kind. Yes. I can be that. I can – but I wish I didn't have to.
Yet neither can I let the Fey back into our world to make barbarity commonplace – to come once more in iron and ice and put our soft legends of them to ruin, to rule reality as they rule lies and illusion. Our world, so built about deception, could not survive their arrival. We would all be liars and so all be theirs – sacrificed for a kindness, for saying 'you look lovely' when we can see the tearstains or the bruises; for murmuring 'it was nothing' when it was everything; for speaking of hate and meaning love, for simply being human and mortal and full of emotion.
It is not much of a choice, but I must still make it.
No choice at all, really.
And so it was that she found her soulmate kneeling before her, his back a wide ridged canvas, calm where she was anguished, amused where she was reeling, healthy while she bled out once again in the void between now and then.
And above it all, the queen of the Fey, her eyes fervent and her lips parted, hungry for her entertainment.
The first cut was the hardest: she didn't know how long the blade was poised over him, how long her hand trembled.
And then Blue's voice burst into her mind, impatient and wry and achingly familiar, and she realised he had lowered most of the barriers that he kept so carefully between them so that she could sense his utter lack of fear.
It was, she supposed, a kindness. Yes. He knew how to be kind to be cruel. Of course he did.
Do you think you could stop being an emotional wreck long enough to get on with it? It's not exactly a sauna in here.
I don't want to do this.
Newsflash – this isn't about what you want. This is about what the Furies need. This is business, so stop acting like it's your personal soap opera, grow a spine and get over it.
He was right. Gods help her, Blue Malefici was giving her moral counsel.
And then she shut her eyes and did it. After that, it was all blood and her hand moving and her eyes unseeing as the queen of the Fey intoned their agreement in her thick, satisfied voice, it was the silence filling her head, it was a numbness that she let fill her because it was better than thinking about what she had done and what she had lost.
And when his last cut was healed, Titania pronounced herself satisfied and Blue half-dragged her from The Hall Without Heart, walking out as unfazed as he had walked in.
"Are you going to agonise over this much longer?" he said as they drove back. "I assure you, I shan't be sobbing into my pillow tonight. Or yours, for that matter. You're part of the Furies – and cruelty may be difficult for you, but unless you grasp that it is nothing to us, you will find yourself in the hands of those who are not so flighty as the Fey."
She gave him no reply: but when he was long gone, it echoed around her head.
You've missed the point, Blue. I'm not frightened because it was so difficult to be cruel.
I am frightened because it was so easy. And if I can be cruel to be kind now, how long will it be before I am cruel to be cruel? How long before you and I are merely dark mirrors of one another?
She didn't sleep easy that night: sometime in the grey, secret hours she woke to find Blue sprawled on his stomach beside her, face turned away and only the little finger of his hand barely brushing her forehead.
Whether he sensed her wake or some scant change in her pulse reached him, he shifted – and for one moment, words seemed to gleam on his shoulders, rippling like silver snakes: promises under his skin, bound into his bones.
And then he was still, mere flesh again and walking through whatever dreams he had.
Am I written in your bones too, graffiti lining your veins as if they were subway walls? Did I cut my way into you?
Yes. I think so.
And did you surrender to me as willingly as you did to them?
Perhaps. And whether it was cruelty or kindness that moved you, I doubt you know. The two are so similar with you. Maybe they are one inside your cold heart – maybe you don't even know the difference.
But I do. Cruel or kind, I see the truth and the difference and the monstrosity I could be.
I must find some way to fight it, some way to hold onto the best parts of me. I must find whatever makes me kind and cherish it, nourish it, keep it sacred.
Otherwise I have seen my end: a heartless queen in a heartless world, delighting in the murder of children.
I will not become that, dear heart. Not even for you in all your nightshade glory. Not even for you.
Thanks for reading - I'd love to hear what you thought. :)