Dance with the Fae

Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

K it slid back into consciousness, hearing first. Low voices were talking urgently. Some sort of argument. He decided it was not his problem. The next sensation to return was awareness that he was lying on something far softer and more luxurious than he had slept on in the past few days. His limbs felt heavy, and it was pleasantly like the time he had woken up after the explosion to discover he’d been in hospital for three weeks. The revelations that had accompanied that awakening had been blows he had yet to reconcile himself to. The memories were a jagged knife through his contentment and dragged him fully back to consciousness.

‘…was as squiffy as a marsh goose.’

That was Valentine talking, he was sure.

‘Oh dear, you poor unfortunate thing.’

Silas Wilde’s voice.

‘You can go to the Maidens, Silas!’

Valentine again. Angry about something, which didn’t come as a surprise to him. Kit didn’t have the energy to ponder what.

‘You didn’t even think to demand him as a bondsman for a year?’

‘You know my feelings on enslavement.’

‘I’m awake,’ Kit murmured as he opened his eyes. The billowing velvet of Adelaide’s tent stretched open to the heavens above him. The illusion (assuming it was) was still disconcerting and nausea-inducing. He shuffled himself into a semi-reclined position, saw a pewter goblet of water and reached for it. It was halfway to his lips when he cursed himself.

‘Is this without obligation?’ he demanded.

‘Completely without. I said before that you have the freedom of my camp. That means all food and drink,’ Silas said, crossing to stand beside him. Valentine joined him. Her eyes flickered nervously from Silas to Kit. He wanted to reach for her hand and reassure her everything would be fine, but he wasn’t at all sure of that.

He took a long drink and discovered there was a slightly metallic taste to it but nothing unpleasant. Feeling a little more refreshed he sat upright and looked around.

‘Where is Adelaide?’

A slight murmur of guilt tickled him that she hadn’t been his first thought.

‘I’m here.’ The voice came from the corner of the room where the cradle stood. She was sitting in a large woven basket chair that hung from a hook shaped like a bird’s talon. She was nursing the baby to her breast.

Their eyes met.

‘I’m sorry, Kit,’ she said. ‘I can see that it was very unexpected for you.’

‘You’re damned right!’ He swung himself upright. ‘I would never have betrayed you if it had been me.’

He’d withstood the assault on his mind of adjusting to the reality of this world’s existence and the fact magic was real. He’d endured the long hours walking and the dangers they’d faced, but to realise it had all been for a woman who had fallen into the arms of someone else was crushing. He walked out of the tent. The air outside was fresh and smelled like rain. A few people looked at him curiously but most just carried on with whatever they were doing.

‘Where are you going?’ It was Valentine who had come to ask him. Not Adelaide, who had wronged him. Somehow that didn’t surprise him. He stuck his hands deep in his pockets.

‘I don’t know, but there’s nothing for me here.’

‘I’m sorry about what she’s done. You must be heartbroken.’

‘Yes, I must be,’ he agreed absent-mindedly.

Curiously, heartbroken was low down on the list. Angry. Betrayed. Disappointed. Her infidelity crushed him. Hypocritical kisses with Valentine flickered past his eyes, luridly coloured. Kisses weren’t the same at all.

‘Now what are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure. I still need to take her home, though she might not be so willing to come now she has a child. I’ll have to tackle Silas about that.’

‘The child is only here,’ Valentine said. ‘Her living body is in her bed in your world. It has borne no child nor aged.’

‘Then I can take her and leave now,’ Kit said, reeling around hopefully. ‘None of this is real.’

Adelaide was asleep in Meadwell. He might be there, too, despite what Valentine had assured him. It didn’t matter what had happened here, because as soon as they went home they would wake up and everything would be back to normal. But Addie thought it was real and she’d still done what she’d done. They could talk about her infidelity once they were safely home.

‘You can’t go home without helping us,’ Valentine said, her face dropping.

‘Oh, yes, I can. Just show me the way,’ he said bitterly.

She hugged him, as if she was attempting to stop him leaving.

‘Silas come quickly,’ she called.

‘I don’t want to see him,’ Kit growled.

‘But you need to,’ she urged. ‘Silas, quickly.’

‘No!’ He shook her free more roughly than he intended to. ‘Don’t you understand anything? I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see Adelaide. I need to be alone. I need to think.’

He pressed his hands to his temples and closed his eyes. Tears leaked from his closed lids and he found it unbearable.

He drew a long, deep breath and forced his emotions back into their container, damned if he was going to give into them in front of anyone. He looked into Valentine’s eyes and saw only the compassion she’d always shown. The kernel of blackness inside him softened slightly and he might have mastered his feelings completely if Silas hadn’t emerged from the tent, blinking as he walked into the brightness.

‘Valentine, you called me? Ah, Kit, we need to talk. Come drink with me!’

A burst of fury made Kit’s cheeks burn. ‘I have nothing to say to you, and I sure as hell won’t drink with you. Send us home,’ Kit demanded. ‘Both of us.’

‘No. Adelaide can make her own decision. You don’t speak for her.’ Silas’s voice was like silk, presumably meant to be soothing, but it grated on Kit’s nerves. ‘I’m sorry, now isn’t the time to send either of you home. My world depends on your help.’

Kit gasped at the audacity to assume he would still help with whatever Silas had in mind!

‘Your world can go hang for all I care,’ he snarled.

‘You don’t mean that,’ Valentine said, her face twisted with an anguish that grabbed Kit by the throat and squeezed.

‘Listen to yourself,’ Kit exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You’re standing by the side of the man who enslaved you, and you’re defending him. What are you thinking?’

‘What are you saying?’ Silas interrupted. ‘I haven’t enslaved anyone!’

‘Really?’ Kit reached for Valentine’s hand and held it out, showing the bangle. ‘What do you call this?’

Silas’s face took on a dangerous expression. His eyes elongated and he looked less than human. ‘I call it a wrong that should have been righted long ago. Valentine, did you tell Kit this was my doing?’

She tugged her hands free from Kit and hid them behind her back.

‘I didn’t tell him that … but I might have let him think it.’

‘What?’

Kit and Silas both spoke together. They glanced at each other and for the first time ever, Kit felt a twinge of solidarity with the fae.

‘I thought you hated Silas, and that he kept you prisoner,’ Kit asked Valentine.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I did give that impression. I couldn’t do otherwise,’ she said. ‘Sorry. To both of you.’

Kit raked his hands through his hair in exasperation.

‘This is one of those matters of constraint, isn’t it? Like Merelda’s toad. I never asked you if it was Silas by name, so you didn’t have to correct me.’

‘That’s right.’ Valentine looked sheepish. ‘Silas is a good friend to me. He’s a good man. I know you might not think so given that he left me in your world and has stolen your fiancée.’

‘I do love her, though; I can vouch for that.’ Silas leaned forward, his normal appearance reasserting itself, and with such keenness in his eyes that Kit was charmed, despite himself. ‘It’s true. I was a captivated man the moment I saw her. A lost man the moment she took my hand to dance. And since then, I have been steadily claimed by her each moment we spent together. I am utterly her slave.’

‘Steady on,’ Kit said, his jaw tensing. ‘This is my fiancée we’re talking about.’

He met Silas’s gaze. The fae was standing like a pantomime villain, feet planted apart, hands resting on top of his cane, elegant fingers lightly gripping the silver wolfhound’s head. He was utterly breathtaking. No wonder Adelaide had fallen for him. The sheer, seductive aura that emanated from him was enough to captivate anyone. If Silas had set his sights on Kit, he couldn’t honestly swear he wouldn’t have succumbed.

‘Silas, don’t you have any sense of tact,’ Valentine snapped. She looked at him and there was the slightest hint of tears in her eyes.

‘He has a heartbeat,’ she said to Kit. ‘That probably means nothing significant to you, but it only happens when our love is awakened. We really don’t yield our affection easily and when we do, the effects are long-lasting.’

‘And painful,’ Silas whispered, looking once more human and vulnerable. ‘For veins that are accustomed to perhaps one heartbeat a day, to feel the rapid surging of blood is uncomfortable, to say the least. Loving changes us.’

‘Well, that’s very romantic for you,’ Kit snapped. He crossed his arms and looked away. Did Silas believe that he would revaluate his opinion on the grounds that his love for Adelaide was supposedly true? He swallowed down an uneasy lump of guiltiness as he considered whether his own heart would have started beating in the same circumstances. He wasn’t sure Adelaide had ever inspired such devotion in him.

‘I’ll hear you out if you can be quick,’ he grunted.

‘The man I am seeking to overthrow is the one responsible for Valentine’s captivity. If you help me free our land, it will free her, too.’

‘Tell me more,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust or like you, but Valentine has been a true friend and guide, so for her I’ll hear what you have to say.’

‘Walk with me,’ Silas said. It wasn’t exactly a command, and besides, Kit was curious enough to listen to what he had to say. They left the camp and walked for perhaps half an hour until they emerged on a ridge of grey marble overlooking the city and castle that the cart had been heading for. The pointed, red turrets glimmered like newly spilt blood in the sunlight and pennants billowed in the wind. The ground between it and where they were sitting looked parched, grass scrubby and unhealthy. It gave Kit a chill, reminding him too much of areas designated ‘no man’s land’.

‘The town is Fythcaster. That citadel is the seat of the Faedemesne.’ Silas pulled a leather bottle from a string across his chest and swigged. He offered it to Kit, who refused.

‘This was to be mine, but the man who sits unworthily on the throne is called Caul Gilling. My uncle. When my father died, he claimed I was not worthy enough to command and usurped me.’

‘Why?’ Kit looked at him sharply. He had plenty of doubts about Silas’s suitability for all sorts of things but the fae’s regality wasn’t one of them.

‘My mother was of your world. A human. It should make no difference, however. I am perfectly worthy. Ordinarily, he would not have been able to even breach the defences of the citadel, as there is a rite involving blood that ensures the heritage is passed on accordingly, but things have become troubled and I have been unable to get close enough to the site of the rite to claim my inheritance.’ Silas frowned. ‘What has worked for centuries no longer appears to.’

He dropped into a seating position, legs dangling over the ridge, which dropped away sharply in front of them, and it crossed Kit’s mind that Silas might have lured him here to his death. Conversely, if he pushed Silas, no one would be the wiser and he could take Adelaide and leave the whole matter behind him.

‘Why has it stopped working?’ Kit asked, brushing the thought away. He’d killed in the war but he wasn’t a murderer. He cautiously lowered himself down too, thinking on what Silas had just revealed. He was part human. That was certainly unexpected.

‘I have my theories, though I don’t know if they are correct. I think it’s to do with the amount of iron in your world. You saw first-hand how it affected Valentine. You must have considerable charms to still be in possession of your eyes after doing that, but that’s by the by.’ His mouth twisted into a smile.

‘My theory is that the consequences of your wars soak through to my world. Your recent war across Europe, for example, has seen the ground rained down upon by bullets and shrapnel in a way previously unseen. The shards of iron from explosions, the weapons, never mind the blood itself, seeping into the fields.’

Kit flinched. ‘I’ve seen it. I don’t need to remember it.’

Screams of warning. Screams of agony.

‘My apologies. My point is, that for whatever reason, the order of things here has become unstable and my uncle took advantage. He’s taking advantage of your people, too. I want to rid our land of my uncle. I will be a better and fairer ruler than he ever would care to be. Let me show you more.’

He drew a brass telescope from beneath his cloak and passed it to Kit. The city was surrounded by walls, reminding him a little of York. The land outside was mainly farmland, with a few smaller settlements, and beyond the city was what appeared to be a quarry.

‘The meadows surrounding it were once the lushest grass, the most fruitful fields,’ said Silas. ‘Now look at it, and look at the poor beings toiling away.’

There were people tending animals, digging trenches and engaged in sundry menial jobs, breaking rocks, mending fences, pushing ploughs by hand. Most of them moved sluggishly, heads down and bobbing as if they were half asleep. There was something … mundane about them. Something familiar. The clothes and hairstyles were not like any he’d seen since crossing through the maze.

He tore the telescope from his eye and cried out in shock.

‘They’re human!’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they asleep in my world, too?’

‘Asleep, or moving as if they are. It depends on what their strength of will is like.’

Kit gazed at them, aghast. ‘I thought Adelaide was the only one. No, that’s not right,’ he corrected. ‘There’s the boy from the fete, too. How long has this been going on?’

‘Forever, when the sleepers are only one or two. This scale, on and off for a couple of years,’ Silas said. ‘There have always been cases, but my uncle discovered the way of gathering people in quantities.’

‘It’s horrific! All these people snatched from their lives.’

‘Yes. This is what we are fighting against.’

‘But you’ve done it, too!’ Kit laughed incredulously. ‘You’re just as bad as he is.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Silas glared. ‘Adelaide is the only one I have brought here. Do I make her toil in the mines or fields?’

Kit shuddered, thinking how Silas had tried to persuade him, and how Kit had endorsed him asking Adelaide. How many others were there? Who else had been taken?

‘Valentine said she was sorry about the child at the fete and that it shouldn’t have happened. Did Caul Gilling take him?’

‘Yes. Stealing a child is one of the old ways that he wishes to hark back to. Of course, back then we’d leave one of ours in its place, or a rock.’

‘Is your uncle the one who ensnared Valentine?’ Kit asked.

‘Indeed.’ Silas’s eyes flickered over Kit. ‘You would like to be her champion, I think.’

Kit looked away, then back. Why should he hide the truth? It was nothing to be ashamed of. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. She’s been waiting too long and deserves her freedom. It mayhap that when I defeat my uncle it will happen naturally, but it’s better not to take a chance.’

Kit’s belly tightened. ‘I thought at first that you were her master.’

‘Yes, that deception was rather unfair of her, but it spurred you on to come and find me, so I’ll forgive her.’

‘She said your uncle was a good master, despite her captivity,’ Kit said.

He heard his words and stopped. No man who owned slaves and stole children could ever be described as good.

‘So she believes.’ Silas frowned and glanced over at the castle. ‘He uses and bargains with her to gain favours from others. She has limited memories of those things because I try to hide them from her.’

Silas spoke earnestly. Kit was beginning to understand him a little more. He made bad decisions but it appeared he genuinely did believe that they were for the right reason.

‘A person’s memories shouldn’t be taken without their consent.’

‘Wouldn’t you want yours taken away?’ Silas peered at him, squinting, then sniffed. ‘I don’t know what causes its heaviness, but I can see your heart is burdened. Are you not tempted by an easy mind?’

The heart Silas referred to pounded unbearably.

“I love you.”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Of course it was tempting, but if he lost the heartache, would that diminish the cause and the memory of those caught up in it?

Silas gestured to the castle.

‘Despite what Valentine believes, my uncle is not a kind master, nor is he a benign ruler, and the sooner he is deposed, the better it will be for everyone. He has no qualms about using anyone to get what he wants. Dictators rarely do. I know you owe me no affection, but you must see that I have asked for aid, which is different to abduction and forced labour.’

Silas spoke so earnestly that Kit felt himself weakening. He was enormously likeable when he tried to be.

‘Yes, I do understand. But why do any of you need to involve us?’

‘Why did your countrymen go to fight because a duke was assassinated far across the water? It’s a philosophical argument we could talk about all day, but we don’t have time. My uncle has eyes everywhere. Some willing, some unwilling.’

Kit frowned. ‘What about Valentine? She belongs to your uncle. Could she be his spy?’

‘No. He doesn’t value her for her cleverness or her wit, only beauty and status.’ Silas tilted his head. ‘You’re fond of her. I can see it. The pair of you wear the same colours in your souls.’

‘Yes, I am, though I can’t say anything about souls.’

Silas smirked. ‘What fools these mortals be. And what fools us, too. William Shakespeare, you know. Now, he had some fanciful ideas, but he was before my time of course. It’s practically slander, the way he described us. Horses head and revels in groves painted as barbarians. Ha! I’d like to think we have developed since those times.’

He stood and held out a hand to Kit.

‘Come, you’ve seen what I wanted to show you. Now let’s go back and eat. It’ll be night soon and these woods are not the safe places they once were. Our camp is full of hope and fun, though, and I would like very much for you to see us at our best.’

Kit took his hand and stood. Silas held it for a beat longer than necessary, looking deep into Kit’s eyes. Despite his animosity, he couldn’t deny that he was charmed. Silas was so captivating. So attractive in every possible way.

‘You don’t want to trust me, but I wish you would because I like you a lot. I wish you would work with me on this,’ Silas breathed.

‘You haven’t explained what you need me for,’ Kit said.

‘I’ll be perfectly honest. I came for Adelaide. I didn’t need you, but Valentine persuaded me that you had potential.’

‘Oh.’ Kit sucked his teeth and dropped his head. He was surplus to requirements. Not Childe Roland. Not Orpheus. Not the hero of fairy tales after all.

‘I mean no insult by that.’ Silas touched him on the shoulder and Kit looked around. The fae’s eyes glinted and he stepped closer to Kit, enveloping him in the scent of sage. He slid his hand down Kit’s arm and rested his thumb in Kit’s palm, moving it in small circles, then lifted it to his lips.

‘You and I could do great things together, but only with your consent.’

Kit swallowed, his eyes dropping to Silas’s lips. They were plump and ruddy, with just a hint of moustache, but the budding desire fractured when he thought of Silas and Adelaide together.

‘I don’t want to do great things with you,’ he said, dragging his hand free.

Silas grinned and blew gently on the side of Kit's face, his breath warm and honey-scented. Kit groaned as a surge of desire spiked between his legs.

‘Would you like me to conquer you, Kit? Would you like to conquer me, first of all?’

‘Go to hell, Silas,’ Kit growled. He stepped back, shaken by the strength of the craving that had awakened. ‘I'm not here for your amusement. however attractive you might be, I don't like you. So no, there will be no ‘conquering’, no alliances of any sort. I will do what needs to be done and then get the hell out of here and back to my normal life.’

‘Yes, that normal life, which is so appealing,’ Silas said quietly. Kit looked at him suspecting mockery, but instead, the fae’s face was solemn. ‘The life that is so fulfilling that the lights surrounding you ebb to a dull mustard. Here, you glow vermillion.’

He gave a sigh that exuded disappointment then began to walk back in the direction of the camp. Having nothing else to do, Kit followed.