Page 29 of Sidhe
She rose, the light catching her as it had the man, and again they were looking at Malak. Red hair in loose curls, slim figure, but her style wasn’t Malak at all. Her dress was red, that one perfect shade that redheads could actually pull off, and much more tasteful than how Malak’s black dress was low-cut and showy. A sheer red scarf wound around the woman’s neck. While there was no denying how much she also looked like Malak, her face was the most striking difference again, because it knew joy that had nothing to do with cruelty. Her eyes were pale blue as were the man’s.
“Hospitable must be a lucid term,” she teased in regards to her companion, who briefly scowled, “but you have nothing to fear from us.”
Nathan honestly didn’t know how he was supposed to respond. He was certainly taken by surprise when Sasha suddenly dropped to the floor in a kneel—a bow.
The incubus spoke softly in Gaelic, which Nathan barely understood, so he caught only a handful of words he couldn’t quite piece together. Sasha’s tone was reverent with his eyes on the floor. The woman laughed, said something in Gaelic back to him, and Sasha rose, looking relieved.
Jim, however, had gone from wide-eyed to pissed in about thirty seconds. “How…how dare you come now?” he growled at the man. “Now, when it’s all over? Why? For what? Why not when we were losing? When Nathan was suffering in the Veil? Why notbeforethat bastard owned our lives?!”
The man’s face remained patient, understanding. He didn’t respond at first but shook his head as if he felt the greatest sympathy and pity for Jim being so angry. “You know the answer already, even if you don’t like it. Free will. And if it weren’t such a great gift, I’m sure I would resent it too.
“When you choose,” he continued with a single, cautious step toward Jim, “when you make any choice in your life, it must run its course. Those of the light fae understand this. We couldn’t interfere before now. Nathan made choices, you made choices, Jim, that left us with nothing. Even you,” he said with a steady gaze turned to Sasha, “had to make a choice. If you had left it to us, we could have rescued Nathan from the Veil without you ever having made that deal. The one who watches over him was ready, but…Malak knew you would not be able to wait.”
The relieved smile slipped from Sasha’s face, leaving behind a sudden sinking horror.
“Time out!” Nathan called, his hands making a prominent ‘T’. He gestured to the strangers with Malak’s face. “Who the hell are you? Why do you guys know them?” he whirled on Jim and Sasha, “and what the fuck is going on?”
“He’s Oberon,” Jim said of the man with a sneer. “That’s why he looks like Malak, why he calls him brother. The kings of the light and dark fae were twins—brothers. I know that’s who you are.”
“No way,” Nathan said, realizing what that would mean. “Light sidhe don’t leave the Veil. Not because you can’t, like the dark, but because you don’t give a shit about this realm anymore. You sit back and stay neutral, and let us fend for ourselves.”
Oberon, if that’s truly who he was, merely smiled at Nathan.
The female voice in the room was less forgiving. “We choose not to interfere because our presence could make things worse. Trust me. But now…what Malak has planned, whatyou’veset into motion, we have to follow the call.”
“And who are you, then?” Nathan snapped at her. “The Faerie Queen?”
“Nathan,” Sasha broke in, “she’s more than just Titania, she’s…the fae from the legend.”
“What legend?”
A small smile curled onto Sasha’s face. “The one about how my kind came to be.”
“And it’s Gwen, actually, not Titania. I never really liked that alias.” The redheaded woman, Gwen, walked toward Nathan, her hips swaying subtly, her sheer scarf floating almost ethereally around her.
Nathan thought of Arthurian Legend and Queen Guinevere as The Faerie Bride. He knew better than anyone not to dismiss myth as purely fiction.
“Once upon a time…” Gwen said coyly, “all fae lived in unity. Then came the dawn of man. For a time we tried to live alongside humans, but some fae thought it would be better if we had a land of our own. Others wanted to rule over man. The court was divided."
"I know this part," Nathan said, disinterested in hearing yet again the same story he had listened to a thousand times since he was a boy. "There was a war.Thewar. The light fae won, brought all fae over into the Veil, and banished the dark fae court and their king from ever returning to the mortal realm. But it only keeps sidhe from messing with us, not lesser dark fae. And even that’s bullshit now with the Veil crumbling. It’s all a big joke."
"Just be glad the war gave you that much. But returning to our story,” Gwen continued unperturbed, “it begins thousands of years after the Veil was created, but still thousands of years ago. One of the dark sidhe discovered a way to return to your world without being summoned—and this well before the collapse of the Veil happening today. He pretended to be human to get a layof things before showing his true power. Everything was working out smoothly too...until he met a girl.”
Nathan snorted. He could see where this was going.
“Oh it gets better. See, little did the dark sidhe know, this girl was pretending too. She wasn’t human either. She was a sidhe of the light fae court. They were both master glamourers. They had shielded themselves from being sensed so well that they didn’t even recognize each other. They fell in love with neither being the wiser of the other’s identity.
“Then, one night, after making love several times, the dark sidhe was so moved by his feelings for what he believed to be a human woman that he told her the truth and revealed his true form. Horrified that he had broken out of the Veil, since the light sidhe didn’t believe for a second he wasn’t evil, she revealed her true form to him and…the rest is history. Of course the story wouldn’t mean anything if there wasn’t a baby.”
Sasha smiled beside Nathan. “She kept it and raised the child with all the love she had once had for her dark fae lover—or so the story goes. And that child…”
“Was the first incubus,” Jim concluded, though his brow was furrowed, still angry and tense. “You’re the mother of Sasha’s kind. And the father…?” He trailed, but the implications dawned on Nathan even before Gwen replied.
“…was Malak.”
Chapter 11
“Thatwasalongtime ago,” Gwen said in regards to being the mother of all sex demons—with Malak as the father, “though with lasting effects I have no problem with. I don’t leave the Veil very often these days. Usually only my…counterpart has to deal with me.” She glanced at Oberon.
