Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

followers.
    I looked at their faces, and they seemed to be less . . . blank than the thralls, but I didn’t think that they were free agents either. Maybe it was the way all twenty-eight stared hungrily at the queen, as if they were waiting for any task, any order—anything at all that they could do for their true love whom they worshipped. I’ve been around the fae. I’ve seldom seen any three of them see eye to eye on anything, let alone twenty-eight.
    â€œLook at the scars her father gave her,” said one.
    â€œHow could she live through that—it looks as though she’s been mauled by beasts.”
    â€œDon’t you know the story?” said a third. They all looked at Ariana, instead of the fairy queen, as the third one continued. “Her father called his beasts to torture her every morning for three years.”
    Ariana’s mouth tightened as she remembered, too. And then that three minutes was up as well—she’d won freedom for Gabriel.
    The fae under the cloak began to grow, and Ariana let the cloth fall to the ground. At first I couldn’t figure out the challenge. The creature had changed into another fae, a large male with almost human features. His skin was the color and texture of a silver birch, some places smooth and white and others rough and dark gray or black. His hair looked like shredded bark and hung around his face. He wasn’t ugly or horrible—but then Ariana started to shake.
    Beside me, Samuel stiffened, a low growl beginning in his throat.
    â€œHello, daughter mine,” the fae-man with bark skin said. After that, he switched to Welsh; the accent was so obscure I couldn’t tell what he said. He raised his right arm—and I saw that it had no hand on the end of it—and petted her hair with it.
    Ariana’s father had been a forest lord, but evidently not the same kind of forest lord as the one the fairy queen held, because he looked quite a bit different.
    The fairy queen had been using her people to weaken Ariana for this moment, to remind her of what had been done to her by this man. But she had underestimated Ariana if she thought Ariana was going to lose this easily. Her arms tightened on the man and pulled him next to her.
    Samuel’s Welsh I could understand: he wasn’t talking over the phone, he was speaking slowly, and what he said was pretty simple. “He can’t call his hounds, Ari, my love. Don’t worry. They are dead and gone. I made sure of it. He’s not real, not real. She doesn’t have that kind of power. My da, he killed yours. I killed the hounds, and they are not coming back.”
    Patiently, he kept up the refrain, giving her something to listen to other than the fae, who evidently wore the face and form of her abusive father.
    I was watching the face of the witch, and I wasn’t as certain as Samuel that her father wasn’t real. Witches can do some very scary things. The first three things the fae turned into—fire, ice, and smoke—those all smelled of fae magic to me. This one—other than the scent he bore, which was his own—this one reeked of black magic, witch’s magic—and witches could call back the dead.
    For three minutes, Ariana held the man who had been willing to torture her until she was mindless. At the end of the three minutes, she could have let go and walked out of the Elphame, leaving Samuel and me to stand prisoner. She was tougher than that. So when her father turned into a snarling werewolf that bore more than a passing resemblance to Samuel, she went to her knees so she could pull him close and stared—at Samuel. Her eyes grew black, and her face went blank, but she held on, mouthing one word over and over—Samuel’s name.
    Samuel went to his knees, too, his eyes white and wild.
    â€œNot here,” I told him, and it was my turn to talk. “You cannot change here, Samuel. You have to get her, Phin, and the kids out of here. You have to—she’s not going to be in any shape to do anything. Hold on.”
    She wasn’t going to be able to free me: first her father, then werewolf, and I could take a pretty good guess at what the final shape would be because the fairy queen had no intention of letting me go.
    She who had been Daphne thought I was the proper owner of the Silver Borne. She thought that when she released Gabriel, our bargain about my safety would be over. Evidently, I wasn’t