Cruel Enchantment Page 6

  If he unfocused his eyes, he could see his reflection. His long, reddish blond hair was slipping from the tie at his nape, he needed a shave, and dark circles marked the flesh under his eyes. The reflection showed how worried he was. It had been five days and four nights and no news.

  It should have been an in-and-out job. Once she’d connected with the Faemous crew in the Rose Tower, it should have been easy for her to slip over to the Unseelie side of Piefferburg Square, find the Blacksmith, and have the key made. It wasn’t like a key took a long time to make, right? Even a charmed one.

  She should have been out of Piefferburg by now and safe. He should have had an e-mail or phone call from HFF headquarters telling him she was on her way with the key and to get his diving gear ready. Instead all he had was an empty in-box, a quiet cell phone, and a head full of horrific possible scenarios.

  Not far away, off the coast of Atlit, Israel, lay Atlit Yam. It was a nine-thousand-year-old village that now lay at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Experts believed a tsunami had done it in, since there was evidence that the people who lived there had fled quickly . . . or had been sucked out to sea.

  As interesting as all that was, to David it wasn’t the most fascinating thing about the underwater village. More compelling was the box that lay submerged not far from it. Small, yet mysteriously too heavy for divers to lift, it still rested on the bottom of the ocean. Even the use of mechanical means to pull the box free had time and again met with failure . . . as though the box were charmed. And, of course, it was. Luckily, an HFF sympathizer had been on the crew that had discovered the box and contacted them.

  The HFF had recognized the writing on the box right away as Old Maejian. A partial translation had yielded a riddle, whose answer revealed that the contents of the box was one of the coveted pieces of the bosca fadbh. Well, so they thought, anyway. There wasn’t anyone around to tell them if they’d answered the riddle correctly. All they needed was that damned charmed key and they could find out if they were right or not.

  Thanks to the influence of the HFF, news of the box hadn’t hit the world yet—and therefore, the Phaendir. They’d paid off the humans who’d found the fae artifact. Still, you never knew. The Phaendir gave the term crafty a new definition. Then there was always the chance one of the men they’d paid off might be too greedy for his own good and decide to go to the Phaendir for more money. That would earn him the promise of cold, hard cash until he spilled the news—then he’d get a cold, hard blade in the throat. If the Phaendir found out about the box, David could expect company . . . of the killing kind.

  Someone set a cup of iced coffee down at his elbow. He looked up, surprised, to find a woman standing beside him. Scratch that—a beautiful woman. Long, thick black hair; dark, almond-shaped eyes; and a slender body encased in a feminine, flowing, orange and pink dress. “You are American, right?” She smiled.

  Oh, hell, he hoped she wasn’t a prostitute.

  He nodded.

  She mock-frowned at him. “You are so serious, looking at your computer screen. I thought you must be. Take that coffee on the house. I hope it will cheer you.”

  After flashing him a stunning smile that almost knocked him right off his stool, she turned and swayed her pretty ass back behind the counter.

  David lifted a brow in speculation.

  He lifted his glass to her and said, “Thank you,” then took a sip of the cool, sweet coffee drink.

  She smiled at him again and tossed in a saucy wink to boot.

  Hmm-mm.

  He dragged his gaze away from the beautiful woman and back to the laptop. Maybe it was time he stopped fretting. Emmaline could take care of herself. He knew that better than most. Anyway, there was nothing he could do for her almost halfway around the world. Emmaline, as much as he hated it, was on her own with this one.

  Closing his laptop, he glanced back up at the counter. The woman was gazing at him. He smiled at her and she looked away quickly, a blush coloring her cheeks.

  David drained his glass and picked up his laptop. He hesitated near the counter, wanting to go over and talk to her. Shaking his head, he pushed the door open instead. He didn’t have time for that now. He was working.

  AERIC wasn’t sure when the seed of unease that had been present ever since he’d stripped her glamour had begun to sprout and grow unwelcome little tendrils of uncertainty through his brain.

  It had something to do with Emmaline’s eyes. Mostly it was the way she unflinchingly met his gaze whenever she said something he didn’t like—you won’t hurt me, for example. Or you’re a good man. Worse still was when she said things like, you don’t know anything about the truth.

  Because he’d always thought he had. At least, until she’d shown up.

  Brooding, he sat on his couch and stared at the bottle of whiskey—newly purchased and wholly unbroken—that sat on the little table that held all his alcohol. Usually reserved for guests, the bottles called to him, offering an escape from the hell he’d been plunged into with her arrival.

  This was nothing like how he’d imagined it.

  She was nothing like how he’d imagined her.

  He’d always thought that if this day ever came, it would be easy and satisfying to take his revenge. Now that it had actually occurred, he found himself hesitating, unsure . . . inclined to show mercy.

  Mercy. For Emmaline.

  How many times had he planned her death? How many weapons now hung in his forge that he’d crafted with the intention of using on her? Mercy? He’d thought he’d had none for her.

  He fisted his hands and pressed them to his eye sockets, suppressing the urge to lunge across the room for the bottle of whiskey and guzzle the whole fucking thing down in one go. As if he’d seen her only yesterday, an image of Aileen rose up in his mind.

  Laughing. Smiling. Twirling in the beautiful blue dress he’d given her. It had matched her eyes and set off her creamy skin. Moments after she’d twirled to show him how the skirt belled, he’d begun stripping it off her. Unhurriedly revealing inch by tantalizing inch of her body, he’d kissed and licked her nude and then made slow love to her under a tree.

  He shook his head, trying not to remember the day he’d found her dead, but the images came anyway. Her normally lush skin had been pallid and cold. Her lips thin and blue. The Summer Queen’s assassin’s signature crossbolt, fletched blue and white, unmistakable, had protruded from just left of her spine. Emmaline had shot her in the back. Tipped with poison, as soon as the bolt found its mark, it meant death.

  She’d been lying on a mound of pine needles looking oddly peaceful, like she’d been sleeping. He’d found her in the morning with dew beading on her dead flesh.

  Grief, dark and bitter, rose up from the depths of him. It was like a well that never went dry. Once in a while he tapped it and it flowed into him like toxic sludge, coloring his world a muddy brown.

  He pushed to his feet, rage fueling his movements, and stormed into the forge. Emmaline lay where she’d been when he’d left that morning, curled on her side on the floor next to the tray he’d brought her. He reached toward her throat. He would squeeze until no more breath could make it through. Until she was silent and still. It wasn’t fair—not right—that she should still live while Aileen was ash.

  His fingers closed over the silky skin of that slender, vulnerable column and squeezed. She gasped, her eyes opening wide and her fingers coming up to grip and scratch at his hands. But he was granite and she was feather. She had that much effect. Her legs flailed and her face went pale. In her eyes he saw that she knew this was her end.

  He squeezed harder.

  Her fingers dug bloody furrows into his wrists. She kicked and twisted, but he only tightened his grip, riding her through until all the fight left her.

  You’re a good man.

  No, he wasn’t.

  FIVE

  SHE went still, the depths of her eyes growing dim, her face bright red. Blood trickled down his wrists, but she’d
stopped trying to draw it from him.

  He stared down at her, into her big brown eyes and, again, hated what he saw. Their luminous depths reflected his doubt and magnified the fact that he was not a killer—no matter that he’d been sure he could do this if the opportunity arose.

  With a roar of anguish, he released her. Coughing, she scrambled back away from him with her hand to her reddened throat until she hit the wall. Then she settled down and panted, watching him with wide, frightened eyes.

  He swiped his forearm over his mouth and said in a hoarse voice ravaged with emotion, “You don’t deserve to live.”

  “Maybe not,” she wheezed out, then she went into another coughing fit. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that same question more than once.” Her voice sounded reedy and raspy.

  “Stop it!” he yelled.

  She held her hand to her throat in a protective gesture. “I know you loved Aileen more than anything. I know her death destroyed you.” She stopped and swallowed hard, wincing from pain. “Please believe I didn’t kill her out of jealousy. It was an accident that I killed her at all. I didn’t mean to do it.” She whispered the last sentence, lowering her gaze to the floor.

  Aeric wanted to cast away the seed of doubt that she might be telling the truth. He couldn’t. If she was lying, she deserved an Oscar.

  She looked up at him. “You’re a good man, Aeric.”

  His fists clenched. “I am not. Stop saying that.”

  “You’re not going to kill me.”

  Silence. Aeric turned his face away from her.

  “Yes, you may have fantasized about it, but when it comes to reality, you won’t do it. You can’t. You don’t have it in you.”

  “Unlike you,” he snarled at her, making her jump and press herself backward.

  “Unlike me,” she said quietly. “You’re right.”

  When he didn’t respond, she asked, “If you’re not going to kill me, will you let me go?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You’re staying here.”

  The words went unspoken but still hung in the air between them—but I won’t hurt you.

  Optimism flickered over her face and he hated himself. He was betraying Aileen by keeping her murderer alive and giving her hope.

  HER throat burned.

  She’d thought that had been the end. The look in his eyes and on his face had been so brutal and all consuming. Now she had a sliver of possibility to work with. Perhaps she could leverage it to her advantage. Manipulate this turn of events in her favor.

  Leverage. Manipulate.

  Sweet Danu, she was beginning to think like the woman she’d been so long ago. She was slipping into old patterns of behavior to survive, small subconscious seeds that triggered in situations when she was in danger. Behavior she’d learned as a child and young adult in order to make it through, to survive, to put food in her belly. With the help of Lars, the Summer Queen had taken all that and used it against her, molded her into a tool to have at her disposal. Forged her into a weapon, just as Aeric did every night.

  No, she never wanted to go back to being that woman, that weapon.

  She watched Aeric turn his head away from her, grief overcoming his features. If only a man would grieve for her that way—love her so much that even hundreds of years after her death he still mourned her.

  Aileen didn’t deserve it. Emmaline hadn’t known then, not until that fateful night, that Aileen hadn’t deserved Aeric at all.

  “I can’t let you go,” Aeric ground out in a low, harsh voice, “because I can’t let you go back to the Summer Queen.”

  “The Christians’ hell would freeze over before I would go back to her.” The angry vehemence in her voice surprised her. Emotion flared through her veins and burned behind her eyes. She took a deep, calming breath through her aching throat.

  He blinked at her. “Now, that I almost believed. Good acting.” He turned and walked out of the forge, returning to dump a blanket and pillow onto the floor near her. Wow, a pillow and blanket. She was making progress. Maybe he felt guilty about nearly strangling her to death.

  After he left, she snuggled into the blanket and put her head on the pillow, trying to find a comfortable place on the floor and failing. Cold concrete wasn’t anything like comfy and her throat hurt like hell. Plus, there was nothing like almost being murdered in your sleep to keep a girl awake. Time to give up on sleep. Shivering, she sat up and hugged herself, leaning up against the wall behind her.

  On the upside, she was further along with Aeric than she’d thought she’d get so soon—and she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there. No matter. She had a sliver of hope that she might live to finish her mission and that was all that mattered. It was more than she could wish for, considering.

  She stared into the blackness of the forge and remembered things she wanted to forget. The night she’d killed Aileen, she’d gone to the upper echelons of the Seelie Court to execute one of the worst known torturers of Unseelie, Driscoll Manus O’Shaughnessy, on the Summer Queen’s command.

  O’Shaughnessy had gone outside the bounds of all fae law, capturing non-human-looking Unseelie fae—goblins, alps, and joint-eaters, among others—in the wars. He’d bring them back to his house, where he had a room set up for such things, and would slowly torture them to the point of death, never allowing them to tip over the edge.

  By not killing them he’d avoided the wrath of the Wild Hunt and proven beyond doubt the old adage—there are worse things than death. He would tear off their fingernails, drive nails through their hands and feet, cut off their eyelids, among other fun party tricks, and then abandon them within the bounds of Unseelie land to be found and nursed back to health . . . mostly.

  No one really knew why he did it. Maybe he hated the Unseelie so much he felt driven to such unspeakable acts. Maybe he thought he was serving the Summer Queen in some twisted way. Or maybe, as Emmaline believed, he was just a sick fuck who got off on torture. It didn’t really matter to the Summer Queen why he was doing it. She only cared that his behavior created tension between the Summer and Shadow Royals at a time when a shaky peace was beginning to come about.

  When it became known to the Summer Queen that O’Shaughnessy was the disturbed bastard doing these things, the queen ordered him killed right away. By the time Emmaline had been charged with his assassination, news of his identity had begun to spread through both courts. Since there would be plenty of others ready to kill him, Emmaline was ordered to get to him first, as a show of faith to the Shadow King. It was one death that Emmaline had never been conflicted over doling out.

  Emmaline had donned the guise of his hobgoblin servant and let herself into O’Shaughnessy’s home in the dead of night, her crossbow and quiver concealed on her body. She’d done her research on the Seelie noble and knew the older man had no wife, no girlfriend, no children. All he had in his enormous home were scads of house hobgoblins, all safely tucked into bed for the night.

  She padded silently on plush carpets fit for the Summer Queen, traveling down a corridor toward his bedroom, past the door that she knew led to the room where he did the torturing. Even the air outside of it smelled of foulness—unwashed bodies, sickness, misery, and the very edge of death.

  O’Shaughnessy’s bedroom was dark, except for the slight light of the moon outside his window. He was in bed, just as she’d presumed. Stepping into the room, she changed to her regular form—not her true form, but the red-haired one she used the most—sought her bow, and nocked a quarrel. Drawing the string back to her ear, she sighted a spot on his back. She was no torturer. She made her kills fast and as terror free as possible—even for scum like Driscoll Manus O’Shaughnessy. Killing a mark while he slept was best for everyone involved. If she got the shot right, the mark never knew what hit him.

  She fired.

  The body in the bed arched backward and screamed. The scream was feminine, the curve of the body slender and slight
. Wrong. Cold panic poured into her as she realized what she’d done. It wasn’t O’Shaughnessy in that bed; it was a woman.

  Her crossbow clattered to the floor and Emmaline rushed to the bedside to take her victim into her arms. The poison was working fast, but the woman was still alive. Her face had a stark look of terror on it.

  And, of course, Emmaline recognized her.

  No one could mistake the fall of white blond hair, wide green eyes, perfect skin and face for anyone but the most beautiful of the Unseelie noblewomen—Aileen Arabella Edmé McIlvernock. She looked like an angel; everyone said so. Now she looked like an almost dead angel.

  Aileen gripped her upper arm hard and said, “Tell Driscoll I love him.” And then she died, blood spreading on the bed in a rusty-colored pool. Emmaline had it all over her hands and arms.

  Only a moment after Aileen slumped to the mattress, O’Shaughnessy entered the room, talking to Aileen. It made Emmaline’s stomach roil. He stopped after traveling three steps into the room, taking in the scene with his hand still on the tie of his bathrobe as though he was about to remove it. His face went white, his eyes wide, and his mouth opened and closed. Then he dropped to his knees, crying out Aileen’s name in anguish.

  Emmaline stared wide-eyed at the scene, unbelieving that such a coldhearted bastard as O’Shaughnessy could be capable of grief.

  A moment later he lunged for Emmaline. And Emmaline lunged for her crossbow.

  She was faster.

  Swiping up her bow and quiver at the same time, she nocked a quarrel and leveled the weapon at him.

  He stopped dead in his tracks and held up his hands. “Wait. I know the Summer Queen sent you, but I have money. We can talk about this.”

  “Certainly,” she answered with the cold-blooded ease she’d cultivated over the years, “but we can only talk in the language my crossbow speaks.” Death.

  Her poisoned bolt caught O’Shaughnessy in the throat. He stopped in the middle of the room, gargled blood as he clawed at the blue-and-white-feathered fletching, then collapsed dead to the fancy, slick black stone floor, blood forming a murky puddle around him.