Anne Bishop - Shadows and Light

Determination filled Morphia’s eyes. “I know they’re ... different... from the rest of us. Maybe different enough not to dance to the Lightbringer’s tune and shun Morag for doing what she had to do. Besides, that’s the only place left to search, so that’s where I’ll go.”

“Why don’t you ride with us for a while,” Aiden said.

“You’re heading south?”

He shook his head. “North.”

“Then I thank you, but no. I’ll keep riding south until I find a shining road through the Veil. I’ll be able to travel faster through Tir Alainn.” She turned away, started walking toward her horse, then turned back to look at them. “I will find her. I won’t turn away from her simply because Lucian and Dianna want to punish her for doing what was right.”

“It doesn’t matter that she was right,” Aiden said. “The Fae who have shunned her still sleep easy at night.”

Morphia gave him a strange look. “Some of them no longer sleep easy.” She raised her hand. “May your dreams be gentle ones.”

Lyrra felt a little tremor go through her body. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Sleep Sister could have a darker side to her nature. “And if the dreams are not gentle?”

“Then, if I were you, I would try to understand whatever they’re trying to tell you.”

Aiden slipped his arm around Lyrra’s waist. She leaned against him as they watched Morphia mount her horse and ride away.

“Let’s get away from this place,” Aiden said.

Lyrra didn’t argue, didn’t remind him that they hadn’t tried to find out if any Fae had made it to the human world before the shining road closed.

As she mounted her mare, she suddenly realized why Aiden was less generous in his concern. He would have ridden this way last summer, when he’d left Ridgeley—and Brightwood. He would have warned the Clan whose piece of Tir Alainn was anchored to this Old Place. He would have told them about the Black Coats. He would have told them who the witches are and why they needed to be protected.

And still the witches here had died. Despite everything he had said or tried to do, the witches had died. Was it any wonder that he probably felt the Clan deserved whatever had happened to them?

Trying not to take more than his share of the narrow bed, Aiden stared at the ceiling of the tiny room. With the window open, he could hear the men in the tavern below. He should have been down there, playing his harp, singing his songs, listening to the news and rumors about what was happening in other villages. He didn’t have the heart for it tonight, so he’d paid for the room, the meal, and stabling for the horses out of the rapidly diminishing coins he and Lyrra had left. No chance of filling his purse from the Clan chests. If the Clan chests still existed in those lost pieces of Tir Alainn, they might as well be sitting on the moon or at the bottom of the sea for all he could reach them.

The witches had died. More Daughters of the House of Gaian lost. And the presence of the nighthunters meant that the Black Coats hadn’t been driven out of Sylvalan as he’d hoped when he’d seen no further sign of them over the winter months. Or else they’d come back. If that were true, what could he say that he hadn’t already said to make the Fae listen and heed his warnings? If they wouldn’t listen to him, the Bard, was there anyone besides the Lightbringer and the Huntress whom the Fae wouldn’t dare ignore?

There was one. He’d have to think about that. Think hard about it. But right now ...

He turned his head and looked at Lyrra, who lay with her back to him. As a Fae lover, he could simply have left, offering to return when and if she was ready to welcome him back to her bed. As the Bard, he could have had a heated argument with the Muse about who was right and who was wrong back at the Old Place. As a husband, he had the bad feeling that he should apologize—except he couldn’t figure out what he should be apologizing for.

“I would have stayed behind you if I could have,” he said quietly. “I truly wasn’t sure where you’d gone, and I was past the game trail so fast it wasn’t safe to turn back.”

“Stayed behind me,” Lyrra muttered.

Aiden winced at the anger in her voice.

She rolled over and propped herself on one elbow to look down at him. “Stayed behind so that if those creatures caught up to us they would have swarmed over you instead of me.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he protested. Not consciously, anyway.

“We can’t afford to lose the Bard.”

He focused on the ceiling again, not quite sure why her words stung so much. “There would be another to take my place.”

“Not for me,” she said quietly. She raised one hand, rested it on his chest just over his heart. “One day I’ll have the words to tell you how it felt to reach the safety of sunlight and realize you weren’t there. One day I’ll tell you how it pained my heart to stand alone for those moments, not knowing if you were coming back to me. One day. But not tonight.”

She kissed him in a way that made him forget every song he ever knew. He reached for her, then hesitated. Pulled away enough to catch his breath. “Lyrra ...”

She smiled at him; then she released the glamour magic to reveal her true face, the feral beauty of the Fae. Suddenly, she seemed wild and strange, something that frightened him a little and excited him even more.

“ ‘Tis a custom between husbands and wives,” she said, stretching out over him. “We quarreled today, did we not?”

“We did?” He couldn’t remember, not while he was staring into her woodland eyes.

“We did,” she replied. “And when a husband and wife quarrel, they have to make up.”

“They do?”

“They do.” She nipped his chin. “So we’re going to make up, and you’re going to prove you came to no harm.”

He wondered briefly if it was the danger they’d faced in the Old Place or the fact that he still wore the glamour that gave his face the illusion of being human that made her more aggressive and demanding. Then she kissed him and he didn’t care what the reason was.

“Let’s try not to break the bed,” he gasped.

She kissed him again, and he didn’t care about that either.

Liam hesitated for a moment, then knocked on his mother’s morning room door. Entering the room, he saw her at her small desk, writing in that hurried yet careful way she had.

“A moment, if you please, Liam,” she said distractedly.

“Of course.”

He smiled as he wandered around the room while she finished her letter. His father had always been furiously insulted if Elinore didn’t stop whatever she was doing to give him her total and immediate attention. There’d been some fierce arguments about the value of her work for the village and the estate compared to properly sympathizing with her husband about the inadequate shine of his boots. He knew which his father had considered more important.

Elinore set aside her pen, then turned in her chair to smile at him.

She was more relaxed than he’d seen her in a very long time, and she smiled at him a lot lately—ever since he’d gone to the Old Place to introduce himself to the witches there.

“ I met Nuala while I was out riding today .”

“Yes?”

“She told me you called at the Old Place yesterday. And she gently suggested that I remain here at the estate. She said anyone who intended to bang heads with Breanna deserved a sympathetic ear waiting for him when he got home.“

He’d mumbled something to the effect that they hadn’t banged heads, but he suspected Nuala, who obviously knew her granddaughter very well, had the right of it. Dealing with Breanna was similar to dealing with a goat—if you weren’t careful, getting knocked off your feet would become a regular occurrence.