Chapter Six #2
Latharna and Falcas walked Tiernan and me to the massive golden entry doors and then stood within the archway, watching us as we went down the steps to the courtyard.
To my right were gleaming white barracks, lined up like bookshelves with little gardens and recreational areas between.
To my left were stables and the new garages for the sleek metal vehicles that were waiting for us in the courtyard.
They looked like cars from the future, and in a way, they were.
They were cairs—vehicles manufactured by the Imps that ran on Air Magic.
The Imps had made a lot of improvements to the original prototype.
Originally, cairs relied on their wheels.
Now, they only had wheels as an emergency measure.
If the Air Magic that fueled them was drained, they could be pushed.
But this fleet of silver cairs already floated a foot off the ground, fully fueled.
With their flying capabilities, they could be navigated at top speed without fear of hitting an animal or a carriage.
I had a feeling we'd be pushing them to their limits on this mission.
Tiernan surprised me by climbing into the driver's seat of the closest cair. But then again, Tiernan hadn't been born royalty. He had been a Lord of the Wild Hunt for most of his life, and he preferred to do things for himself.
Two of Tiernan's guards got in the back.
I got into the front on the passenger side.
There were no seatbelts, and the seats in both front and back were benches.
I stroked the green velvet upholstery as Tiernan pushed the button to start the engine.
With a soft whir and a faint glow that seeped through the seams of the dashboard, the cair came to life and rose.
Tiernan adjusted the settings so that we stopped about five feet off the ground, and then he pushed on a foot pedal.
We glided forward, taking the lead in our convoy of four cairs.
The massive golden gate stood open for us, held between gleaming white walls.
This side of the castle walls was bare, but outside, their gleam was merely a background for the golden vines that crawled over them in curling patterns.
I glanced back as we left the courtyard and headed down the winding road.
Atop the tallest tower shone the symbol of Seelie—a gold sun, its rays spread wide.
For a second, another castle superimposed itself over Seelie in my mind, its walls formed of dull gray stone instead of polished white marble, and its shorter towers lacking adornment.
The gate showed only mist through the black bars, and that was the view from either side of it.
The Royal Palace of Hell didn't need to be flashy to instill respect.
Every soul on the planet knew the power of the man who lived there.
I sucked in a breath and looked forward. Twelve days. Star said he'd come for me in twelve days. But he couldn't. Demons couldn't lalek onto the planet of Fairy. He'd have to be brought over by one of us.
“Or walk a rath,” I whispered, thinking about the human attack on Fairy that had prompted the closure of many raths and the installation of rath lords to guard those that remained.
“What did you say?” Tiernan asked.
“Huh?” I looked at him. “Nothing.”
The thick forest surrounding Castle Seelie swallowed us, our cair too low to surmount the canopy. Tiernan took us higher, but still not high enough to see over the trees. We leveled out about ten feet above ground, high enough to fly above any carriages we encountered.
Tiernan hit a button on the dashboard with a long, elegant finger. “Increasing speed now to fifty knots.”
“Copy that,” came three male voices through the speaker beside the button.
We zipped over the beaten earth road with barely a sound, Tiernan focused ahead.
I was still getting used to traveling so fast in Fairy.
My father had been the one to start the trials with magic-powered vehicles over on Earth, at his company Gentry Tech.
But the Imps in Seelie got further with the idea, so they combined their efforts.
Now, there were cairs in all the kingdoms. Only the royals had them so far (and the Imps), but they might become accessible to everyone someday.
The thought of Fairy full of flying cairs made me wince.
It just didn't feel right. But in times like this, when we needed to get somewhere fast and inter-kingdom raths wouldn't cut it, a cair sure came in handy.
And without the exhaust and noise of cars, their presence didn't seem to bother the residents of Fairy, and that includes animal and plant life.
I looked from the blurred view of the forest out my window to the space between Tiernan and me.
Suddenly, the divide seemed vast. Tiernan was my first real adult love.
We had gone through shit no one could understand—torn apart and thrust together by a Goddess, hunted by monsters, and separated by a distance I'd never felt so keenly until that moment, sitting beside him.
We had been through too much to feel this way. Only eight months ago, we'd been solid. But that was before the King of Hell started haunting my dreams. Was what Star said true? Did we share something I didn't have with my husbands?
I tried to remember meeting each of them.
There had been an instant attraction magnified by Danu's Call.
Except for Sever, of course, who had been drawn to me by Anu.
Anu's influence hadn't been much different from the Call of Danu—it was divine manipulation.
And so it had been with Astaroth as well.
We'd been drawn together by Anu. Yet under that divine influence, there had been .
. . something else. Knowledge perhaps—a sense that I had met someone I already knew.
My chest clenched as I accepted the truth. It was right there in our names, as if even our parents had known that we were born for each other. Two stars bound by destiny.
And torn apart by love.
A tear slipped down my cheek. Acceptance wouldn't change anything for us.
It might make it worse. We were stars, but we were also star-crossed, and I'm not talking about my magic.
There was no uncrossing our fate. Astaroth and I hurtled toward each other on a collision course that would result in an explosion so great, it might destroy all the worlds.
Maybe Star was right, and if we had met first, none of my other husbands would have stood a chance.
But that's not what happened, and I was glad it hadn't.
Yes, it was difficult to live like this, but it was worth it.
I wouldn't give up all I had for one man who might have been everything to me in another life.
There was only this life for me, and I would protect it from anything and anyone who tried to hurt it . . . including myself.