"Does everyone who needs assistance have it?" I asked the group and saw them all nod. "Will you all be able to walk?""Yes," a bean-tigh answered, her elderly appearance tugging at my heart. "If you can lead us out of here, we will walk. We'll crawl if necessary."My throat constricted with her words so all I could do was nod. They were all beaten, cut, or broken in some horrible way, and yet they would have dragged their broken limbs across a field of glass to escape the Unseelie Court. After witnessing only one night of what they had been put through, I know I would have too. I would have done anything to escape that existence.I had to take deep breaths to calm my rising anger. I wanted to run out of that room and slaughter all of the Unseelie for what they'd done. Instead, I focused on what I could do to help the injured seelie while we waited for the others to return. I pulled clothes and shoes off the guards and passed them out to the fairies; tearing some of the clothes to ma
We couldn't risk taking the seelie back to the Twilight Castle and have my father discover what we'd done, so we had to take them directly to the Seelie Court. Unfortunately, the fairy mound which led to the Seelie Court was all the way on the other side of the Twilight Kingdom and we couldn't make it that far by nightfall. So, after a few hours, we decided to make camp.When I opened the door of my carriage, the moth that I'd completely forgotten about flew out and landed on my shoulder. "There you are." I gave it a quick glance before I reached up to help my passengers out."I don't know how you did it, but thank you for bringing us a mending moth," said an apsara—a fairy of clouds and waters—as she took my hand."A what?" I cocked my head at her as she found her feet."A mending moth." She drew a graceful finger down the blood-red fur of the moth's body. "They can heal almost anything with their dust." Then she leaned down to speak to the moth, "Thank you again, little one."Th
Tiernan brought us to the edge of camp where a bush grew; heavily laden with large, round, canary-yellow berries. He pulled a handful free and gave them to me before taking some for himself. I popped one into my mouth and savored the honeyed sweetness of it before tossing one to Cat. She snatched the berry from the air and chewed happily before she decided to cut out the middleman and went directly to the source to harvest the berries herself."That was Danu, wasn't it?" Tiernan asked me in between bites of berry."Blocking our pursuers in a creative and very dramatic way?" I asked with a lifted brow. He just lifted his brow back. "I'm pretty sure it was." I shook my head as I watched Cat expertly divest the bush of its bounty. "You know, I was raised Catholic... in a fashion. My rosary was made of rowan wood." I laughed when Tiernan grimaced. Rowan wood is a strong charm against fairy magic. "But I'd never thought to see the day when I prayed to Goddess for help instead of God.""A
It took a full day to get to the Seelie Castle. We had to go through another fairy mound; this one was set with silver gates with a stylized sun in the center of them. Beneath the golden sun was a castle that perched high on a hill, the base of which was surrounded by a forest, just like the other gates, but this castle and forest were carved from ivory.I thought back to when we'd left the Unseelie Kingdom and remembered how the mound we'd traveled through to get there, the one with the golden moon gates, had a different scene entirely on the other side. When we'd returned to Twilight, the gold gates we passed through had a silver star in their center with a silver castle and forest beneath. Just like the door leading from Gentry to Twilight. I was right; the doors were an indication of where the paths led.It was a few more hours to the Seelie Castle from the rath. We once more pulled off the dirt road early so we could sneak up on foot. Although, there would now be quite a few mor
We were almost to the fairy mound that led to Gentry Technologies when Aodh caught up with us. I've never been so happy to see a fairy in all of my life. I screamed like a little girl when he landed on the seat beside me and then jumped up in delight and nearly fell off the carriage."Thank Goddess you're all right," I declared as I hugged him."It's good to see you too, Princess." Aodh laughed and looked around. "Where are we going?""I need to get Amanda home." I waved toward the clearing Tiernan's coach was just entering. "I'm taking her back through the rath in Gentry Technologies, my father's company.""Oh, right, the human girl." Aodh cast a glance down to the carriage. "Is she all right?""I think she will be," I said confidently. "She's been traumatized, but she's already trying to move past it." I pulled the horses to a stop and handed the reins to him. "You couldn't have better timing. I need you to drive my carriage to the Unseelie Castle." Then I saw Tiernan come walki
"That was awkward," Amanda said."And totally stupid." I rolled my eyes. "This is my father's business. All of those fairies work for him so we weren't in any danger.""They were all fairies?" She gaped at me."Uh, yeah." I chewed at my lip. I hadn't thought of how to handle Amanda's knowledge of the Fey. "Look, it could be dangerous for you to talk about fairies. I'm going to take you to the Human Council, and they'll be able to help you get back home and sort things out but they're probably going to tell you the same thing; you need to pretend that you don't know anything about the Fey.""Trust me, I want this all to just go away," she said. "I'm not going to cause any problems. Besides, who's going to believe me? They'd lock me up in the loony bin.""Great." I grinned as we exited the elevator and headed toward the reception desk. "I mean about your not talking, not the loony bin part."Sunlight poured in from the wall of windows; blending with the artificial light shed by the
"Once more, if you please." Councilman Murdock was back to sitting across a tea set from me in the parlor of the San Francisco Council House."I can't give you specifics, Councilman," I said. "Just please help Amanda get home; she's been through a lot.""Of course, we'll help her," he huffed. "But you said you rescued her from the Unseelie. Isn't there something we can do?""Not unless you'd like to storm the Unseelie Castle." Dylan grimaced. "There's nothing that even we can do about it, Mr. Murdock. Princess Seren has done more than any fairy monarch has ever done concerning this situation. The idea that anyone could try and hold the entire Unseelie Court accountable for the abduction of one human girl is, frankly, laughable.""Councilman Murdock not Mr.," Murdock corrected in irritation; probably because he couldn't fault anything else Dylan had said."Ah." Dylan narrowed his eyes at Murdock and then waved a hand at himself. "Duke Dylan Thorn... of the Unseelie."Murdock swall
The entire San Francisco Human Council convened to speak with me. It was a little intimidating to be the center of their attention, especially since that attention was pretty damn intense. They had already been a meeting to discuss the possibilities of my new diplomatic status, and they had made notes, lists, and even graphs of how they saw my role playing out. Graphs! Damn politicians.I sat through most of the political BS with what I thought was a fair amount of poise; nodding my head in acceptance of the standard expectations they had for me: keeping the peace, carrying out execution warrants, that sort of thing. But when they started in on all the diplomatic duties I'd have to perform, I began to get nervous. I hadn't thought about all the parties I'd have to attend as both an ambassador and a princess. Or all the meetings I'd have to conduct with the fairy royals. The thought of sitting down to have a nice diplomatic discussion with my Uncle Uisdean was a little terrifying."We