Part 37 (2/2)
Cruel, emotionless fee.
Then he did something remarkable. s.h.i.+nn reached out and touched her face. He traced the curve of her eye, wetting his fingertip with her salty pain. Drawing it before him, the sun caught in the glint of her teardrops.
”Worth so much,” she said, challenge sharpening her tone. ”Mortal tears.”
”Worth nothing when I am the cause.” He swiped his finger down his cheek, wiping off her tears on his flesh. Briefly, the salted trail sparkled like his blazon before fading and twinkling away.
Shaking her head, Gossamyr wept. ”I hate you. And...” She fell to her knees and clutched s.h.i.+nn's legs. All that she had known was her father's heart. And for every ill there had been a right so perfect she had never once doubted his love. ”I love you.”
Love and hate. Impossible to separate the two emotions, for they were alike in intensity. Both birthed from her heart. Both gushed tears down her cheeks. Both were...so mortal.
Fingers touched her scalp, gently easing into the motion of comfort. Gossamyr continued to sob, pouring out her loss, her reality, into her false father's arms.
s.h.i.+nn knelt and tucked her head against his shoulder. And for a long time the two embraced, Gossamyr's sobbing filled the air, salting it and painting it heavily upon her heart. The rose-colored sky darkened and crickets began to chirp. And with that plunge into evening, and the release of her pain, Gossamyr settled to a sniffling acceptance.
”It was not indifference that hurt you, child of mine, but fear. I feared losing you so much-”
”So you kept a lie in hopes I would return to live ever after in Faery by your side.”
”Selfish of me.”
Only when Gossamyr heard s.h.i.+nn's sniff did she look up into his watery violet eyes. ”You do love? But...I am not your own.”
”You are as my own flesh, Gossamyr. The day I sent you to the Otherside I wept. For the first time in my life. It is most...uncomfortable.” He touched the corner of his eye and studied a teardrop, jiggling on his fingertip as if an alien thing. ”I deserve your hate, but never your love.”
And he would have her hate. But she would temper it with the inexplicable compulsion to cling to the only constancy she had ever known -her father.
”What of my mortal parents?”
”They were murdered a few years back.”
Gossamyr's jaw fell open.
”I am sorry. The d'Anges. The-that is the castle where you stopped. I saw it through the fetch.”
”I was drawn to my place of birth?”
”It is not a wonder.”
”But what I found there. It was dest.i.tute. The destruction. Do you know how they died? Have you watched them? Are they all lost to me? Please tell me, s.h.i.+nn, I must know.”
”Very well. The d'Anges were murdered by a dark lord, who later fell at the hands of your mortal sister. She yet lives under the watch of an Enchanted, though I know not where.”
”I have a sister?” She splayed a hand across the membrane of s.h.i.+nn's wing, which curled around her back. Warm and soft, like an arm hugging her close.
Completely mortal. And a family? A sister? How had her real parents died? Had they suffered? Had they mourned her absence? What had her mortal mother's hands felt like? Had she loved her more than Veridienne ever could?
”I always felt you had a better life in Faery. It pained me, your fascination with the Otherside. But I knew that the mortal pa.s.sion had been yours to own since birth. In a manner, this mission was my gift to you.”
The gift of freedom. The price? Truth.
To age and die? ”Can I return to Faery? Will Time age me so quickly as it has aged you?”
”I have lived this aging, child of mine. I cannot guess what Time will serve you now that the truth is yours. It is legend a mortal who knows he does not belong will perish once returned to Faery, for the aging takes with great l.u.s.t.”
”That is why you kept the truth. To return to Faery now, I would...”
”I guess you would age as you should have here in the Otherside.”
”But it has not been so long. Avenall, he claims he has been here less than a mortal moon cycle.”
”Time twists widders.h.i.+ns and thus, Gossamyr. No man, beast or fee can stop or control it. While you have lived in Faery, many mortal years have pa.s.sed, and yet, so few.”
Gossamyr heaved in a s.h.i.+vering sigh. Her tears depleted, she could feel but an emptiness. But yet, 'twas as if that hole had begun to fill by that bit of wonder that had ever traced her heart. What is the mortal pa.s.sion?
Love.
How she fit into the air here in the Otherside.
”You placed me in the Otherside for a purpose. I have not given up the fight.”
”And the man...”
”Ulrich?” She chuckled, mayhap because that was the only emotion she had yet to loose. ”But of course. I suspected as much when in the forest. You enchanted him into my life. Did you think I needed protection?”
”Compa.s.sion. He has not proven me wrong.”
”Do you know he is a Dancer?”
”Yes, and he possesses the sight because of it. I know you witnessed the Dance, Gossamyr. I saw your foray into the mortal pa.s.sion.”
So she had guessed correctly. ”He is a good man. Though I dare not leave him alone too long. I fear he will succ.u.mb to the Red Lady's seduction.”
”He is more susceptible with the sight.”
And determined to follow the lure- ”s.h.i.+nn! He carries an alicorn.”
The aging fee warrior drew in a hissing breath. ”This I have not seen through the fetch.”
”It is what will heal the rift, I know it! Ulrich wants to return it to the unicorn in exchange for a wish granted. His daughter, she was sacrificed to a dragon, and he wants her back.”
”He asks far too much with its return. One must not raise the dead.”
She had believed much the same, until she had learned to know Ulrich.
You think a man cannot love a child not of his blood?
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