Page 20 of Dark Hunter's Touch
Although the tears seemed to sap Vaile’s power—because he dove toward the shore—he backwinged abruptly, in one leathery sweep, to land them with a knee-jarring thud. He kept a grip on her arm as he circled around in front of her. It wouldn’t take but a moment for the hounds to catch up. For that moment, though, they were alone.
But his expression wasn’t horrified. He looked pissed, his eyes sparking with the same light as the angry hounds. “What you saw the queen do to enhance her power is terrible, no doubt. But the illusions of the faedrealii must remain intact. If all the hunters had been killed the night the old lord came Undone and if all the faewere loosed of the queen’s restraints, do you think they would stay behind the walls of the court? No, they would take to the sunlit world with their havoc. We save two realms by holding ourselves apart.”
“At what cost?”
“It could be worse. It has been worse, though not since the Iron Wars. But now that I’ve found you, that is over. The faedrealiiwill take you back like nothing ever happened.”
“Exactly,” Olette whispered. “Like nothing.”
He growled, making her heart race faster than when the hounds were on her heels. “You. Aren’t. Nothing.”
“But I will be, once I’m back there.”
“At least you’ll be alive.”
She had come alive, one night in his arms. “Never again.”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t answer. He tightened his grip so she had no chance to flee as he reached into his back pocket and withdrew a narrow steel vial. The steel held just enough carbon to contain but not destroy the fae magic inside.
If only humans realized how much protection they had lost against the fae, purifying all their iron into steel. Then again, if they had known, she—silly little sylfana that she was—would never have been able to cross into their world. The steel-born fae were no longer kept at bay by the old charms.
But now Vaile was conjuring the way back. He uncorked the vial and sprinkled the contents in a circle around their feet. The dust drifted into the sand, and the spores sprouted with preternatural speed to mark the shifting boundary between realms. Button-sized caps spread like little golden wings, and Olette couldn’t help but breathe the whiff of honey that floated through the widening gateway.
The fragrance was another lie; there was nothing sweet about the faedrealii. Any human who stepped into the circle before the gate magic dissipated would awaken trapped in a realm that would probably destroy mind and soul if not body.
And if a human ate the spores… The phrase “magic mushroom” was more appropriate than mortals knew.
She closed her eyes as the gate magic encircled her, and she slipped into the dream.
Or, considering the darkly menacing fae hunter behind her, into her nightmare…
Chapter 6
Vaile hadn’t caught even the briefest glimpse of Olette in…forever. In the sunlit world, only a couple of weeks had passed. But in the faedrealii court, the separation stretched like an eternity. That one night of fierce sensation had obviously skewed his perceptions.
The Lord Hunter—one of the hunters who had been away when the old lord had come Undone—had kept him busy since his return. His brethren’s eyes were on him, watchful and wondering why he had taken a full cycle of the moon to find one missing sylfana. Since he couldn’t admit he had found her on the very first day and then proceeded to run after her every day thereafter, on foot, without actually catching her, he bit his tongue and took the hounds’ dung tasks the Lord Hunter slung at him. He had to be the unflinching hunter; if they thought he was losing his edge, they would turn on him quicker than the hounds. And then they would turn their vicious attention to Olette.
But a dozen more fae repatriations—most of them straightforward, though three had been lethal—couldn’t keep his mind off one sweet sylfana. In fact, the captures had only made him think harder.
Just as his brethren were watching him, he was listening to them. The hunters were being called on more and more often to find wandering fae. The mood of the faedrealii, always mercurial and secretive, was changing, and the power of the queen’s illusions—though holding for the moment—seemed to be thinning. He might not have even noticed the pattern except that Olette had forced him to open his eyes. What if the faedrealiideserters had wanted only what she wanted—a chance to feel, to live?
Ever since the old Lord Hunter had tried to unwing him as a whelp, he had believed in the queen’s edict against the Undoing. More than believe in it, he had fought and killed to defend it.
What if he had been wrong?
Certainly the three delinquentfaehe had confronted had been abroad with nefarious purposes. The crazed kobalt had been hacking down a ring of birch trees that marked the queen’s permanent private gate into the sunlit world. When Vaile had tried to talk to him, the kobalt had cackled, “We must close the circles before we all run out.”
Then he turned the ax on himself. Not a pleasant end, and frustrating too since it left many questions in Vaile’s uneasy mind.
The very next night, he had found two missing undines at a human watering hole where they had been killing men in their cups—literally. They were crouched over an unconscious man, pouring the frothy contents of a beer can right up his nostrils.
“He was already drowning his sorrows,” one of the willowy sprites told Vaile.
“We are granting their wishes when we drown them quicker,” said the other.
The undines reminded him of Olette. They were too skinny and sinuous for his taste, lacking the sylfana’s sleek flight muscles, but something about their winsome sideways smiles weakened him. So he followed them to their stream to see why they had left. And it was true, the humans had tossed enough empty beer bottles, snack bags, and cigarette butts along the reedy banks to make a path that led straight to their guilty lips.
“You know the queen won’t interfere if you kill men,” he reminded the undines. The memory of Olette agonizing over how she had been made to do worse roughened his voice. “But you can’t leave your fae waters.”
