Page 119 of Fortune's Blade

She did not look upset by all this; it was as if she already knew. Perhaps she did by way of her power; she was the Earth’s greatest seer, after all. There was no way to know how much it told her.

But I didn’t think so. It sounded more as if they’d spoken about this before, some of it, maybe all of it. And that made me both sad and angry. I could have helped him, I would have helped him, had I thought there was any way to see my mother again, much less to save her.

Yet he had told me nothing, not even when we spoke today.

But of course, he hadn’t. He wanted me out of Faerie, not given another reason to stay, and it sounded like he had somehow located her. I didn’t understand that, but he had said it; I knew he had: “What the devil am I going to tell her mother?”

Not what would she have said about any of this, but “what am I going to tell her?” He used the present tense, as if she was still alive, as if he was close to obtaining his goal. Only now that he had, he did not seem to know what to do anymore.

“Tell her the truth,” the Pythia was saying, for their conversation had continued while my head spun. “The senate runs on lies, but relationships don’t. It is poison, so if we’re lucky enough to find her—” she shook her head and got up, going to him and grasping his hands. “Tell her the truth. All of it, not to try to salvage your relationship, but because she deserves to know. And because she can help you. The girls are her children, too; she may be able to get through to them in ways that you can’t.”

“If she even wants anything to do with us, after so long,” Mircea rasped. “If we even have anything to say to each other.” He put a hand behind her head, his face anguished as he looked at her, and if this was an act, it was the best I’d ever seen. “I lost you for a woman I barely remember anymore, and never really knew. What if she was just using me, all along? What if my whole life has been a lie, not some grand romantic journey but a lie, one that I never had any chance to undo? Will the truth help with that?”

“Yes.” The answer was stark. “You’re right; this whole situation has been poison, and has now become your obsession. Most vampires don’t live any longer than you already have, because they can’t get past that final test. You have to finish this, for your sake, for Dorina’s, for Dory’s. Even if the answer isn’t what you seek or anything like what you planned, it’s better to know.

“It’s the only way to heal and move forward.”

Mircea looked down at her, and his expression, so tortured a moment ago, was suddenly different: softer, sweeter, gently amazed. “And when did you become so wise, dulcea?a?”

She smiled back, somewhat ruefully. “I’ve always been that way; you just never listened. But Faerie . . .” she looked around and shivered slightly. “It teaches lessons to us all.”

And if that wasn’t the truth, I had never heard it, I thought dizzily. The troll was shifting his feet restlessly, almost marching in place as my agitation and hope and fear and anger all made their way into a mind that wasn’t set up for complex emotions. Any more than I was, it seemed.

I managed to calm him down, but it was difficult with my own mind whirling. They were still talking and I tried to listen, but found it almost impossible. It was too much; I could not take it in, not after everything else that today had brought me.

I felt like a mental punching bag, one with the stuffing coming out and scattering everywhere, or like someone caught in a crowd with every voice shouting something different that needed to be dealt with.

Ray, and the drastic change in our relationship—would it work, and was it fair to him to try and make it work? Faerie was dangerous, and his status as a master vampire didn’t impress much here. I could be leading him to his death.

Dory, how to tell her that I wasn’t coming back, that I wouldn’t be there for her as I had in the past? I had recently made her a promise, that two souls in one body could work, that I would make it work. That we could both have a life, and yet that had been a lie. I hadn’t known it at the time, but I did now.

How could I tell her?

Zeus, or Odin, or whatever name the vile creature was calling himself—what did he want with me, and how close was he to getting it? And could I even remain in Faerie at all if I was being constantly hunted? And by the king of the gods at that?

Mircea, the father I loved and distrusted in equal measure—could he be sincere this time, or was this just another game? And toward an end I couldn’t even begin to guess at, because I couldn’t trust anything he said? And now my supposedly long dead mother was in the mix, as well . . ..

The troll had already recovered and was picking the remains of the sausage out of his teeth, while wishing that he’d bought two. And I viciously envied him that, would have loved something mundane and easy to focus on, because I couldn’t do this. I had the best chance of my life to uncover some of my family’s secrets, right here, right now, and yet I couldn’t do any of it.

It was getting hard enough just to breathe.

And, as it happened, I didn’t have time, anyway. For we were interrupted by an honor guard of massive troll hybrids who were headed this way. They dwarfed mine, with their huge, ogre-like tusks hitting well above his head, yet they looked to be part of the same group. They all wore deep red tunics with the gold and white blossom on the front, which seemed to be the queen’s symbol.

And as if on cue, there was the queen.

“All right,” she said briskly, flying in ahead of her guards. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The trolls lined up all the way down a set of steps leading to a door in the wall of glass. The queen and an entourage of her pixie bodyguards came next, the latter dressed in tiny sets of armor instead of their usual leathers, including helmets, greaves and pauldrons. And we brought up the rear: Mircea, the Pythia, and me, along with a few of the other trolls serving as a rearguard.

The door in the glass wall swung open and we passed through, and began traversing a set of colossal steps carved into the blue-black rock of the cave. They were as oversized as the cavern itself, far more so than any I’d encountered yet, as the ones inside the palace had been based on light fey height. That made them difficult to traverse for someone barley over five feet tall, but these would have given me real trouble had I been in my own body.

The troll navigated them well enough, however, jumping heavily down from one to another, causing all the armor he wore under his tabard to chime. I did wonder how easy it would be for him to get back up again, however. Mircea also had no issue, although the stairs were almost as tall as he was, and the Pythia simply flashed out and then reappeared at the bottom of the steps, waiting for us.

“You shifted,” Mircea called out to her. “Does that mean—”

“There’s another portal near here,” the queen said, before Cassie could answer. “Up in the mountains. Some smugglers used it until it was blocked off on Caedmon’s orders—as if he has a right to order anything here!”

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