Page 12 of Rogue's Possession (Covenant of Thorns 2)

“But you just said—”

“I said love. Period. Plain, old boring love. Nothing magic about it. Love, as a verb, where you actually have to put some effort into it, not waltz around in a glittery cloud of happiness and light.”

“Aha!” She pounced on my words. “So youdobelieve in love, the effort kind. Thus if you try to love Rogue, you will.”

I put the cool wineglass to my forehead. “I should never have taught you logical thinking.”

She giggled.

“No. Don’t be all pleased with yourself. This is what I’m trying to explain here—I don’twantto try to love him, because I don’t believe he has my best interests at heart. Nor those of my potential child. If I love him, I’ll lose the power to resist him. I can’t ever be that again.” My voice cracked, and unshed tears clogged my throat.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Starling looked sympathetic, sat down and took my hand. “Don’t cry, Gwynn. You’re just tired is all.”

“I’m not crying.” I wiped my eyes, to be sure. “But I am tired.”

“Rest, then. Larch is standing watch. You’re safe.”

“What I’d really like to do is talk to your father and get the straight story from him.” I rubbed my aching temples. “But I don’t see how that’s possible if I’m stuck here.”

“Well, that might be difficult with no one knowing where he is.”

“Maybe Blackbird knows more than she’s let on.”

“If she does, you’d have to go to her, as well. I’m not asking her. And it’s not like she’ll come anywhere near Falcon, if you’re thinking along those lines.”

I had been contemplating that, wondering if I could summon her to attend me. I was getting as high-handed as Rogue. And, dammit, I’d forgotten to mention to Starling that he’d be showing up before long. “By the way, Rogue will be sleeping with me at night—new deal.”

“Really?” Starling drew the question out with a suppressed squeal and plucked the empty glass from my hand.

“Don’t get excited. I’ll explain later.” The emotional break had tipped the scales, and the need to sleep dragged at me. I barely heard her humming a happy tune and I fell into oblivion.

*

When I awokefrom the short nap, I blessedly had the tent to myself. The rain continued to fall in the same soothing pattern. The light from outside that gleamed through the clever raised flaps remained the same steady silver. Outside, the camp noise continued at its usual level. Since the mixed fae population seemed to be constantly active—I suspected some species were nocturnal and others might not truly sleep at all, much like insects—music played and various groups cavorted, celebrating today’s “victory.” No telling how far nighttime might be.

I’d love to have a clock of some sort, but a few things stopped me from wishing one up. First, I wasn’t entirely certain how a mechanical clock worked. Oh, I know—gears, cogs and springs and all, but how did you know what size to make them, so they kept the right time? There was a reason I hadn’t become an engineer. Second, if I wished up a fully functioning clock, wouldn’t it be the kind I knew, set to follow earth’s rotation? I wasn’t sure how time flowed in Faerie.

Which led to my third hesitation. Fear.

I had this sneaking suspicion that some days lasted longer than others, and that time here ebbed and flowed more like tides than going in an orderly progression. I thought sometimes of light-deprivation experiments, which caused sleep cycles to alter and fragment. Marquise and Scourge, the sadistic teachers who taught me to control my magic, had deliberately broken my sense of time and self. Sleep-deprived, then sleep-fragmented, starved—nothing of my old cycles remained after that nearly half a year in their tender care. If I conjured a clock to track time in Faerie, it would likely be something out ofAlice in Wonderland,with spinning hands and random alarms ringing. Some things you just didn’t want to know, really.

I wanted to believe that six years would proceed at a normal pace. We clung to our small bits of denial like life rafts.

So I foraged for food from the small buffet always laid out for me and carried the plate to my workbench. There seemed to be no point in getting dressed, since I was in for the evening and, especially given the nightgown beneath, the robe provided the best anti-Rogue coverage, should he pop up anytime soon.

I settled into recording my notes from the conversation with Starling into what I, more than a little sarcastically, called myBig Book of Fairyland.In particular, I wanted to note my new theories on firstborn children. Resolved to discard no avenue of investigation at this point, I even made a section for evidence toward Starling’s “True Love” theory.

I still didn’t believe in it, but I also hadn’t believed wishes could come true in the blink of an eye, so I needed to be willing to entertain a paradigm shift.

Much more likely was that firstborn children tended to be strongest, with the best health. Nice, fresh body to gestate them and all. It wasn’t my field, but I recalled some physiological studies along those lines. It was a particularly cruel joke that I’d always believed I’d have books and databases to access information I didn’t care to memorize. Whatever my neurons had managed to store—which seemed disconcertingly random—was all I had.

A hungry demand invaded my head, along with an image of a mermaid on a plate, just before Darling pushed through the tent flaps. With a prodigious leap, he landed on my pages with wet and muddy paws, slapping me under the chin with a soggy—and somewhat fishy-smelling—tail.

“Hey! Not on my grimoire. This is super-special sorceress work here.” I snatched the book out from under him and set it safely aside.

He sent a disdainful image and purred invitingly, with a cat’s patented combination of contempt and adorable charm. I stroked his tortoiseshell coat and he arched his back agreeably, blinking bright green eyes at me with more intelligence than a cat should have. Something Titania had tossed off the one other time we’d met led me to believe that Darling had once been a fae noble, who she’d trapped into this feline body. He seemed happy as a cat, though. Or maybe those were the limitations of his current brain. He head-butted my hand and sent an agreeable thought when I obediently scratched his ears.

“Did you really get close to one of the mermaids?”

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