Gossamyr had lost her mother to the mortal passion ten midsummers earlier. The lure of the unknown was ever beguiling, but Veridienne de Wintershinn had always known the Otherside, for she had been mortal complete.
Shinn stopped abruptly, causing his daughter to collide against his back. Savoring the faintest scent of hyacinth that marked her father, Gossamyr stepped back.
The south tower overlooked a riot of white roses and speckled foxglove in the gardens below. Overhead, the carved marble openwork cast a lattice of shadows across Shinn’s tightened jaw. His blazon, an iridescent tribal marking, curled down his chin and neck and across his upper chest, and shimmered in the blocked patches of sunlight. Glamoursiège blazons showed on neck and upper extremities; placement varied from tribe to tribe.
For all his stern posture and commanding demeanor—even the recent announcement that his marshal at arms should marry Gossamyr—Shinn would ever occupy a soft place in Gossamyr’s heart. All planes and hard slopes his face, only in his eyes could she ever find compassion. And such a find was a rarity to be hoarded. Shinn’s manner switched from cool to disinterested, and then suddenly to genuine concern with such ease. One moment he was gentle and attentive, the next, the battle commander wore a fierce mien. Gossamyr had not known him to be any other way. Attribute to his trying history, she could only assume. They had both loved and lost. Love being one of those mutable words the fée toyed with in exchange for lust, hunger or envy.
“I listened last night to the council’s discussion,” she said. Shinn required she sit as a silent member at council, for her future demanded she take an active role in Glamoursiège matters. “The revenants’ presence in Faery increases. But I was surprised to learn about the rift.” She bent to meet Shinn’s straying gaze. “It has never before been discussed by council. Why did you not tell me of it sooner?”
“It is just something that is…known. The rift has existed since before your birth.”
“That long? And all this time you haven’t once thought to—”
“It has never been in my mind, Gossamyr. Until recently. There are none who can name the reason for the rift cleaved between Faery and the Otherside; only we know it exists. Such a tear in the fabric that separates our worlds allows the revenants to return with ease. I am sure I mentioned it when I explained the revenants to you.”
“You did not.” Hand to her hip, she paced in short turns, pointing the floor with the tip of her staff. Shinn had explained the revenants two midsummers earlier when she had witnessed a natural fée death. Normally the fée essence leaves the body and experiences the final twinclian. But there are those fée—those of darker natures—who do not twinclian to the Celestial. Instead, their essence merely pops, and the revenant follows, its destination—the Infernal. It is a rarity.
The sudden appearance of revenants in Faery—not newly emerged from a natural fée death—had given clue someone on the Otherside was stealing the essences. And so was discovered the Red Lady.
As frustrated as Gossamyr was to just now learn something she should have known about, she took it all in. Knowledge was required for a successful mission. “Still, I do not understand why, or how, those skeleton creatures return to Faery. Are they not dead?”
“Did that creature look dead?”
Actually, yes. However, not if death implied stillness. “So it was alive, yet…I don’t understand.”
“That thing I killed—”
“We killed.”
“Yes. We.” A nod verified her participation in the event. But too brief, Shinn’s reassuring smile. “The Red Lady stole its essence, leaving the revenant in limbo. Somehow she can feed off the essence of another—the essence holds the former body’s glamour—delaying her Disenchantment interminably. The revenant is a shade of the fée that cannot find final rest without the essence, so it returns to Faery in seek of a new essence.”
“But why Faery? Can it not locate a fée on the Otherside?”
“It is compelled back to Faery. The rift literally sucks them back home. I don’t believe it could remain in the Otherside if it wished.”
“This essence…” Gossamyr leaned against a blue machicolation, tapping the cool marble with a thumb. “When I witnessed the fée death something blue rose from the body. Is it something the Red Lady can draw out and…possess?”
“Yes and no. Inside the body it is our very being. Outside the body, well, it either twinclians or it pops.” The elegant fée lord tilted his head to look upon his daughter. A sigh hung in the air between them, a resolute pause. “The essence is akin to…a mortal soul.”
“Ah.”
There was so little Gossamyr understood about mortals. About that part of herself.
Her mother had been mortal, but Veridienne’s sickness—the mortal passion—had kept her focus from her family and eventually lured her home to the Otherside, leaving Gossamyr alone to comfort her heartbroken fée father. And to ever wonder. Why had not her mother taken her daughter with her? Surely she might have wished to raise her own child? Had it been so easy to leave her family behind for the mortal world? She had once begged to stay in Faery—but that desire hadn’t lasted long.
Of course, in terms of emotional distance, Veridienne had much over Shinn. Likely, she had not seen beyond her own self-satisfying desires.
Following her mother’s abrupt departure, Gossamyr had vowed not to become mired in her own selfish wants. And what better way to prove it than to track the Red Lady and protect Faery from further torment?
So this sought-after essence was like a mortal soul. What did it mean to have a soul? And mortal, at that. Gossamyr had known no other way but of the fée. Fathered by Shinn, would she possess both a soul and an essence?
“There are things I would have liked to give you,” Shinn said, looking off into the sky, avoiding her gaze. “Truths.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There is no time for confessions. The revenant is single-minded,” Shinn said, “focused on obtaining that which was stolen from it. So much so, it will kill to obtain the final twinclian.” He focused briefly on her cut cheek, but gave her injury no verbal regard. The fée were not so emotionally delicate as mere mortals. “They are becoming more frequent, the encounters. Streklwood was attacked last eve.”
“The cook?”
Shinn nodded.
A lump the size of an uncooked goose egg formed in Gossamyr’s throat at memory of this morning’s still-shelled offering. She’d thought to complain, to send her maid, Mince, marching down to the kitchen…
“The revenant must be reduced to a fine glimmer,” Shinn continued. “For to leave a single bone intact will not defeat the creature’s quest for wholeness. They are difficult to kill.”
“I noticed. But it felt good, the challenge.”
Avoiding his daughter’s enthusiastic declaration Shinn strode the curve of the tower, hands akimbo, his raven-feather cape flitting gently above the length of his folded wings.
This demesne of Faery was not so much ruled by Shinn as protected and guided—a position Gossamyr knew she
