Part 45 (1/2)
”But-”
”You've come for me, Turiau de Winters.h.i.+nn of Glamoursiege?”
At the succubus's announcement, Gossamyr saw s.h.i.+nn stiffen, fighting the erie of his Naming.
The Red Lady glided across the marble base, the essences quivering with her pa.s.s, right up to the staunch Faery lord. ”So little time has pa.s.sed, and yet-” she sneered, displeased with what she looked upon ”- you have aged centuries.”
”I have not come to welcome you back to my bed, Circelie Sangreul of Rougethorn. I banished you with good reason, and the banishment holds.”
She pouted out a thick red lip. ”Your recital of my name wields no power against my magic. What do you desire, Turiau? Do not tell me you've come to rescue your false mortal child.”
”Never false in my heart.”
”Ah. So honorable, to the bitter end. Such a horrible confession to love a mortal makes me quiver, Turiau. Twice now. But you are too late. She knows her truth; Faery will now only eat her away.”
”Enough!” s.h.i.+nn nodded toward the wall, high above. ”The alicorn's power is not for you to possess.”
”Who sayeth?”
Gossamyr eyed the pinioned alicorn. Using her staff-even half-size-for a levered jump, she might make the leap.
s.h.i.+nn's voice boomed throughout the room. ”Me for the alicorn.”
”No,” Gossamyr gasped. 'Twas as if the gargoyles' flames sizzled in her throat that she could not speak another word.
”Oh?” The Red Lady spun around. Malice twinkled in the look she speared at Gossamyr. A twist at the waist turned her back to s.h.i.+nn. ”You offer your...essence?”
”The Disenchantment has yet to touch me; I offer you an essence strong and capable-”
”-of seeing my return to Faery?”
”If that be your desire.”
”But you are not so strong, I see you age before my eyes.”
The Faery lord spread his iridescent emerald wings wide. Hyacinth perfumed the room. A swoosh of his wings breathed a strong wind, stretching out the Red Lady's hair and skirts from her body. He spoke forcefully, ”Yet strong.”
The Red Lady clapped her hands overhead and spun. ”Yes! I will agree to the exchange.”
”Gossamyr! Retrieve the alicorn,” s.h.i.+nn demanded.
While her body moved toward the wall, Gossamyr felt heavy tears streak her cheeks. The burning in her throat, acid and hot, choked her from crying in protest. s.h.i.+nn must not sacrifice his essence to this wicked succubus! Nor could he allow her return to Faery!
She stopped beneath the alicorn and looked to s.h.i.+nn. In her father's eyes she saw the mirror of her tears. With her truth, he had sacrificed something greater-his own truth. For he had fallen to the mortal pa.s.sion by loving her.
The Red Lady whisked between the two of them. ”Take it then, false child of s.h.i.+nn. Be quick with it.”
”Turiau de Winters.h.i.+nn,” sang the succubus, ”bold lord of Glamoursiege.”
s.h.i.+nn stiffened, his jaw hard. He could not move, Gossamyr knew, so great was the Red Lady's hold.
You can overpower her.
”Don't,” s.h.i.+nn croaked as Gossamyr lifted her staff behind the Red Lady's head.
I love you, she mouthed to the Faery lord as the Red Lady approached him, her palms rising to bracket his face. She would kiss him, suck out his essence. Gossamyr knew not how the foul extraction manifested, nor did she wish to witness.
She jumped and missed the alicorn.
Landing the floor in a graceless sprawl, she spied as Ulrich carefully arranged Avenall upon the crimson bed. A man blind to the figure in his arms, yet he managed to remove the leather hip sheath of pins.
She jumped again and her fingers skimmed the alicorn. A vibrant burst of Enchantment drifted from the horn. ”Achoo!”
”Take this!” Ulrich called. He pulled out the clacking pins and tossed the leather bag to her.
As Gossamyr turned to catch the bag, she saw the Red Lady press her lips to her father's mouth. And she froze in that moment, a reluctant witness to her father's sacrifice.
The mighty Faery lord, arms spread wide in resistance-you shall have me, but you shall not have my fealty-took the kiss without moving. Clinging to her former lover, the Red Lady kissed him for what seemed to Gossamyr, evermore. Too long. A heart pulse caught up in a net.
In that instant the fetch buzzed into the room and swept over s.h.i.+nn and the Red Lady's embrace. The dragon fly fluttered before Gossamyr. Look away.
And so she did.
She turned and leaped again, this time snagging the alicorn with the bag. In that moment she felt the vibrations of Enchantment. She did not want to hold this object. It was not hers to own. Where had gone the unicorn and the changeling?
With a deft balance to keep the alicorn teetering-without touching it- she slipped it into the leather pouch and ran down the steps to Ulrich. ”Take it.”
He shoved the pins into her hand, exchanging them for the leather bag. Gossamyr was pulled about by a mourning cry from her father. His body plummeted, falling straight backward, arms still out at his sides. Wings drained of life were useless against the fall.
The Red Lady, unloosed from her deadly kiss, staggered and coiled into a fix of squirming limbs. She moaned with such pleasure Gossamyr felt she witnessed a private act.
”s.h.i.+nn!”
”No.”
She wrestled against Ulrich's attempts to hold her back.
”This is your chance,” the soul shepherd pleaded. ”She is in a wicked sort of s.e.xual thrall. Take her out!”
A glance to s.h.i.+nn. He lay perfectly still. Wings flattened upon the cold marble. The fetch landed his forehead. Dead?
”No,” Gossamyr moaned in a rabbity cry.
And in the next instant her fingers clenched about the silver pins. Gathering the dozen long needles with both hands, she pointed them outward and rushed the writhing succubus. Racked with a pleasure most wicked, the Red Lady danced and sighed along the wall, clinging and undulating against the essences. Viscous fluids splattered her arms and neck and face as her movements burst the struggling essences.
Gossamyr wielded the pins overhead and, just as the Red Lady's arm whipped backward, twisting her chest up and high in a spasm of pleasure, Gossamyr drove the weapons into her chest. Silver pin to faery flesh. Pins slid freely through ribs, others, Gossamyr had to shove hard to pierce the resistant bone cage.
The force of the act blasted Gossamyr backward. Flung unfettered and uncontrollably, she landed Ulrich's body. The two slumped to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
Maniacal wails filled the room. The succubus's body s.h.i.+vered upon the wall as if an essence for ever pinned between the Celestial and the Infernal.