Gossamyr. Michele Hauf

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      Much as she did not like to consider that fate, Gossamyr realized it would happen some day. And she was prepared to take Shinn’s place, physically. Mentally, she wondered if her lack of battle experience would make her a weaker ruler. She could sit council and talk politics with the best. But would they respect one without time spent in the musters?

      Pressing her palms to a cool marble crenel cut into the tower, Gossamyr leaned forward. A swirl of white cottonwood kites billowed out from the dense forest spiraling the castle. Laughter smaller than a bird’s tweedle glittered in the air like sunshine upon purling waters—a few skyclad piskies clung to the tails of the seed-kites, stealing a ride.

      Despite the fées’ frustrating lack of regard for Time, she did know it governed the Otherside. Veridienne had been the one to explain to her how the mortal realm used Time to measure everything. During that conversation, she’d told Gossamyr she was eight years in measurement, and that a year could be marked once every mortal midsummer. Which meant Gossamyr was twenty-one mortal years now. It filled her with pride to know that one mortal measurement, but she did not mention it to Shinn. The fée did not measure a lifetime with tangible numbers of years. Once on the Otherside, the fée struggled against Time, Veridienne had said. Time stole Enchantment.

      To race against Time would afford a challenge.

      Faery needed a champion to defeat this vicious succubus.

      A thump to her chest thudded against the arachnagoss-stuffed pourpoint Gossamyr wore when practicing—which was more often than not. “You know I am fit for this mission,” she said with conviction.

      She had absorbed Shinn’s lessons on the martial arts until he had declared her more skilled than he. Since childhood her father had honed her skills to counter the true glamour birth had denied. (She had a bit; her blazon shimmered as bright as any other.) But she knew he would balk. Always Shinn had forbidden her from visiting the Otherside. (Forbid was a favorite word of Shinn’s.) Forbidden to journey beyond the marsh roots, forbidden to take the sinister curve to market, forbidden to court a Rougethorn, forbidden to even suggest a visit to the Otherside.

      Mortals who left Faery could return, but their swift loss of Enchantment—and the fact they could never again regain such Enchantment—made their return visit to Faery dangerous and unthinkably fleeting.

      Time, Gossamyr thought, the true evil.

      But Gossamyr was only half mortal. Might she risk a trip to the Otherside and then return without fear of never regaining her Enchantment? Shinn twinclianed there often.

      “And if you look beyond my skills,” she said, “there is the obvious—my mortal blood. The Red Lady is not interested in mortals, or females, for that matter.”

      “But—”

      “I am not a man. I can easily—”

      “Gossamyr.”

      “—gain her lair and take her out!”

      Gossamyr twisted her neck to find the glint in Shinn’s vivid violet eyes. The trace of a grin bracketed his pale mouth. Always his emotion manifested in small measure.

      Reaching for the applewood staff—her vade mecum—she turned from Shinn, spun the weapon in her fingers, then swung it out before her, spanning a full circle before she snapped it back to rest against her shoulder. She may not be able to shape-change or twinclian at sign of danger, but Shinn had made sure his half-blood daughter could stand and fight. Much as he forbade her to participate in the Glamoursiège tournaments, she had managed a few on the sly.

      Gossamyr had developed a penchant for adventure. Danger even. Unfortunately danger had eluded her. Until now.

      The thought of this mission verily sizzled inside her. She wanted this! For many reasons. But fore, she wanted to protect her homeland from the threat of the revenants.

      “It is the mortal passion, be that so?” Shinn’s quiet words made Gossamyr wince. “It blinds you to the real danger.”

      “But I crave danger!”

      He caught the end of her staff as she swung it in declaration. The tension strumming from end to end of the staff—Gossamyr’s grip to Shinn’s—felt palpable. Unwilling to concede, she lifted her chin defiantly.

      “You have not experienced real danger.” Her father’s stern tone curtailed her swagger a bit. “Bogies and hobs—”

      “And that core worm a few days earlier! The thing spat dirt balls the size of a spriggan’s head.”

      Shinn turned a wry smirk upon her. “Gossamyr, core worms do not spit.”

      “It was spitting at me.”

      “Think about it, daughter. How is it a worm exudes dirt from its body?”

      “Well, it—” Throws up casts. Oh. She hadn’t thought of that. So the thing had been—Ah. “Don’t you trust I’ve the ability? You have trained me for this opportunity.”

      Her father released the end of her staff with a gentle shove. “You are skilled, this I know.”

      “Then I am ready. I will return to you—”

      “Will you?” So much unspoken in those two words. And the sigh that followed.

      “Yes. Of…of course I will return.”

      Did he worry that her mortal blood would prevent her safe return? Gossamyr had ever coached herself to resist the mortal passion. If it had seduced her mother, she, as well, risked such temptation, for Veridienne’s blood coursed through her veins instead of Shinn’s ichor.

      Or was it that he could not abide her to leave him? The pain of losing Veridienne had changed Shinn, closed his heart. Emotion was difficult to mine from the stalwart fée. Gossamyr would not bring further heartache to her father.

      And yet, Shinn had bruised her heart with his own cruel indifference. The memory of a Rougethorn’s kiss would for ever live in Gossamyr’s being, and for evermore close her heart to the mutable love faeries feared.

      But it was all for naught. Love was not to be hers. Shinn had already announced her engagement to a most frustrating man, his marshal at arms, Desideriel Raine. Frustrating to Gossamyr’s heart, but certainly deserving where skill and knowledge of the Glamoursiège musters were concerned. When Shinn had first suggested such over a meal the diffident fée had suppressed a sneer as he’d looked across the table to Gossamyr. She had read the young warrior’s look—she is not true fée. The humiliation had prompted her to excuse herself before the final flower course.

      She was perfectly capable of ruling Glamoursiège on her own, but tradition required marriage—marriage being reserved for royalty and the upper-caste lords and ladies. And, Gossamyr suspected, Desideriel would represent true fée blood when all in Glamoursiège merely tolerated Gossamyr’s half blood.

      “Truth,” Shinn said.

      Drawn from her troubling thoughts, Gossamyr approached Shinn.

      Truth? Studying the sun-laced tower floor, the blue veins purling through the СКАЧАТЬ