The House Of Gaian

the Lightbringer. Lucian, this is Ashk.”

    Lucian made a slight bow, keeping his eyes on Ashk. “Well met, Hunter. I’ve heard a great deal about you lately. After so many years of silence, you’ve made your presence felt in Tir Alainn.”
    “As you have made your presence felt, Lightbringer,” Ashk replied. “Your denial of what’s happening in Sylvalan has cost so many people suffering and sorrow, if not outright death. Because you are the Lord of the Sun, more witches have died since last summer, more Clans have been lost. That’s what your presence has done for the Fae and the other peoples of Sylvalan.”
    Lucian stared at her. “You’re blaming me for what the Black Coats have done?”
    “I’m blaming you for not protecting, not defending, not doing anything while the Inquisitors have continued their slaughter of witches and their mutilation of other women’s bodies and spirits.
    “I’m blaming you for being so blindly selfish that even when you understood the cost, you chose to ignore that the Fae have a duty to the world. We’ve always had a duty to the world. Now, instead of fighting against a few barons and Inquisitors, we have armies marching toward us, intent on snuffing out all magic in the world. And that means the Fae as well as the witches and Small Folk. So, yes, Lightbringer, I do blame you for what the Black Coats have done. Without your willful insistence that the Fae didn’t have to do anything to protect Sylvalan, the Inquisitors couldn’t have destroyed so much, couldn’t have killed so many.”
    Lucian paled. “How dare you!”
    “Look at the bodies of those who have died, and you won’t have to ask how I dare,” Ashk said. “Look at the women whose lives have been crushed by the Inquisitors’ words and a physician’s knife, and you won’t have to ask. Look at the Old Places that are gone—and the Clans that are gone with them.”
    “So your solution is to threaten your own kind.”
    “The world was not made to supply the Fae with amusements and treats. It’s time they were reminded of that. It’s time they remembered the world is made of shadows as well as light.”
    Lucian and Ashk stared at each other. Aiden held his breath. Lucian had challenged the new Huntress—
    and lost that confrontation. He couldn’t be foolish enough to push Ashk into a challenge, could he?
    Finally, Lucian said, “I hope you’re right, Hunter. I hope forcing the Fae into this conflict truly is the right thing to do. If it’s not, the only thing the surviving Fae will remember about you is that you destroyed us.”
    He turned and walked back into the Clan house.
    Aiden let out a gusty sigh of relief. One evening. One uncomfortable evening in the same Clan house.
    Surely they could get through a few hours without fighting with each other.
    Then he looked at Morag, saw a bleak fury in her dark eyes, and felt something wash through him that was so cold it bit down to the bone. Before he could decide if he should say something, Ashk linked arms with the Gatherer and walked toward the Clan house.
    Someone touched his arm.
    “Aiden?” Lyrra said, her eyes filled with concern.
    He put his arms around her, needing her warmth. Would Ashk be angry with him for meeting privately with Lucian? Would Morag?
    But this wasn’t about the Lightbringer and the Bard. This was a meeting between two men who were kin.

    Surely they would understand that—and appreciate the difference.
    Nevertheless, he would keep his meeting with Lucian as private as possible—and hope Ashk and Morag didn’t find out about it until they were all long gone from this place.
    “They’re bitches, both of them,” Lucian said, staring fiercely at the wood carefully arranged in the fireplace.
    That was true enough, Aiden thought wearily, since Ashk and Selena were shadow hounds in their other form. At another time, he might have tried to play with words to make bitch mean other than what Lucian intended. But the truth was, he was exhausted. The Clan, taking courage from the Lightbringer’s presence, hadn’t quite told Ashk that they wouldn’t heed her command to send huntsmen down to Sylvalan to help in the fight that was coming; they’d simply insisted that they were keeping careful watch on the witches to make sure the women came to no harm. He would never know how Ashk would have responded because Morag had stood up then and said in a voice that was far too calm and too quiet that if anything happened to the