Jenna Black: Shadowspell

“I am not a fool, and neither are you.”

Debatable at that point, as far as I was concerned.

“The spell is not malicious, and you can use it to your advantage. Your aunt Grace was only a minor threat compared to your true enemies. I can help you against them if you need it. But I won’t pretend the spell isn’t equally useful to me, and I know you would not have used the brooch a third time had you known what would happen.”

He was right on the second count, that was for sure. I felt like a dog who’d just had a microchip implanted. Maybe in the future, I would remember to be wary of Faerie Kings bearing gifts. I held the brooch out to him, and I thought for a moment he was going to take it back as I intended. Instead, he folded my fingers around it once more.

“It will still work as always,” he said, “and there are no other spells to be triggered.”

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to believe you?”

“When you catch me in a lie, you have my leave to doubt my word. But I have not once lied to you except by omission, nor will I ever.”

“Okay, if the brooch still works like always, then why can you even see me?”

He looked amused. “Because it is my own magic you’re using. It doesn’t work against me, though it will work against my Huntsmen and against Ethan.”

Wow. Volunteering information. He was obviously very anxious for me to keep his stupid gift.

I wanted to stand firm, to tell him I would never make the mistake of believing anything he said again. I wanted to drop the brooch on the floor by his feet, then walk away with my head held high.

The problem was I couldn’t bear to part with it. It was my ticket to independence, or at least a semblance of it. Without it, I would never be able to leave my safe house again without at least one bodyguard by my side, and that was no way to live my life.

I glared at him, just to let him know how unhappy I was about the whole situation, then stuffed the brooch back into my pocket. He gave a slight nod but didn’t say anything as I turned my back to him and hurried into the tunnel that would lead me toward home.

I made it home without any further adventures, thank God. It was after two in the morning by the time I got there, and Finn had made up the sofa bed and turned in. He slept facing the entryway, and I was sure he would spring awake at the slightest disturbance, but the Erlking’s brooch allowed me to sneak in without alerting him.

Once I was back in my own suite, I wanted to collapse into bed and sleep for a week, but I couldn’t resist the urge to check out the Erlking’s mark on my shoulder. I stripped off my shirt and sweater, then stood in the bathroom with my back to the mirror, craning my head to see.

The mark was smaller than the ones the Huntsmen wore, but it was otherwise identical, a stylized blue stag in mid leap. If I didn’t know what it was and what it signified, I might almost have said it was pretty.

I was never going to activate it, I decided. I couldn’t make it go away, and I couldn’t keep it from being a homing beacon for the Erlking, but that didn’t mean I had to use it. In fact, if I could avoid ever having to see or speak to him again, that would be best all around. I had no defenses against his cunning, no matter how wary and cautious I thought I was. If I couldn’t defend against him, then the best I could do was avoid him.

But was avoiding him really such a good idea? He was by far my most powerful ally, even if his motives were far from pure. Even the Faerie Queens were afraid of him, and as long as he wanted something from me and harbored some hope of getting it, he would defend me to the best of his considerable abilities. Of course, eventually he was bound to realize that I would never give him what he wanted, and his mask of pseudo-friendliness would come off and I would be faced with the Nightmare of Faerie.

I didn’t come up with any satisfactory answers. The lack of answers didn’t stop my mind from whirling, and when I climbed into bed and tried to sleep, the whirling increased.

It was while I was tossing and turning and generally feeling miserable that I really started to understand everything Grace had told me in her attempt to torture me before killing me.

Grace was old enough to remember the time before the Erlking made his agreement with the Queens. So was my dad. Aunt Grace was able to extrapolate from what she knew that the Erlking would be looking for a way to trick me into giving him my virginity. So did my dad. Aunt Grace had known when the Erlking freed Ethan exactly what I’d had to promise in return. So had my dad.

Aunt Grace had been so hell-bent on revenge that just killing me wasn’t enough. To make me as miserable as possible, to make me feel like a total fool, she’d broken her ties to the Seelie Court so she could tell me the Erlking’s secret power. And that was where she and my dad differed.

Knowing what was at stake, knowing the kind of danger I was in, he still hadn’t been willing to break with his precious Seelie Court in order to warn me. Instead, he’d stuck with his vague, useless warnings about how I mustn’t do what the Erlking wanted; warnings that were so vague they were easy to ignore.

Granted, even without any warnings from my dad, I’d known from the beginning that there was something more to my bargain with the Erlking than met the eye, and I’d had no intention of going through with it until I figured out the ramifications. Also granted, my dad didn’t know that having me under twenty-four-hour guard wasn’t enough to stop me from seeing the Erlking. Maybe Dad would eventually have decided he had no other choice but to sever his ties to the Court so he could tell me what I needed to know. But I wouldn’t, couldn’t forget that for the time being, at least, he’d chosen to leave me in ignorance.

I clung to the belief that my dad loved me, and that he loved me for reasons other than what I could do for his political career. But not only was he Fae, he was old Fae, and the old Fae in particular had a very different value system than us mere mortals. I vowed that I would never again allow myself to forget that.

Considering how momentous and life-altering that night in the tunnels had seemed, my life pretty much returned to normal—at least, what passed for normal these days—almost immediately.

There were a few ripple effects, of course, one small one being my need to keep the Erlking’s mark hidden at all times. No more wearing tank tops to spar with Keane. At least Avalon never got hot enough for me to want to wear tanks outdoors. If Keane noticed my wardrobe change, he made no mention of it. He was as surly and unpleasant as ever, and when I made an attempt to smooth over our last argument, he cut me off at the knees. Typical guy, not wanting to talk about it. Which, to tell you the truth, was fine with me.

There was a much more significant ripple when the Erlking paid my dad a personal visit. I wasn’t there to see it, but my mom told me about it afterward. She was pretending our fight had never happened, and I was happy to let her. There were a lot of things I’d done since I’d come to Avalon that I felt guilty about, but forcing my mom to stay sober wasn’t one of them.

Arawn informed my father about Aunt Grace’s death. According to Mom, Dad took the news with typical Fae stoicism, although he was no doubt both relieved and saddened. Grace had been his sister, after all.

Mom didn’t hear the whole conversation, but it seems that somehow, Arawn managed to convince my dad that I was in no danger from the Wild Hunt. I suppose it wasn’t that hard. After all, my dad knew what the Erlking wanted, and he knew I had to be alive to give it to him, so he, too, would realize keeping me alive was in the Erlking’s best interests.