she murmured. An exhale released reluctance. “I do long to visit the Otherside. You know that.” She met Shinn’s gaze, half-concealed by a fall of his long raven hair. He sought the truth of her, and yet he would hide behind his own hard emotions. “I want to understand that part of my heritage most alien to me. I want to…experience.”
She followed Shinn’s pace to the tower’s edge. The evening primrose that grew in the roots attracted night moths, which then attracted frogs. He nodded. “And find.”
Frustration, muted and held back far too long, oozed throughout her. He would not close out her desires. Not this time. Even more, Gossamyr would have her father know her heart. She whispered, “Love never dies, Shinn.”
“You think to know love?”
“I…yes.” And not the fickle love faeries know. “I know the fée cannot truly—”
Too fragile, the memory of Veridienne, to speak of it. And so Gossamyr would not. But what of her lover? The one her father had banished from her very arms? Then, he had claimed she could not begin to know love. Did they both fool the other with their secret longings for fulfillment?
To continue would gain her no ground.
“Here is my home, Shinn.”
“Yes, because you believe.”
Yes, yes. Always he repeated the mantra to her: Believe and you Belong. She believed. She belonged! Nothing could change that.
“Faery is your home,” he said. “Should you venture away…you must then return.”
To marry Desideriel was the unspoken part.
“Indeed. And my home is no longer safe unless someone stops the Red Lady. I want to help Faery. How will I ever stand in your place if there is naught a place to stand?”
The summer breeze lifted Shinn’s jet hair over his shoulders and twisted fine strands around the horns at his temples. Gossamyr read the pain in his tightened jaw. His own memories haunted. It had been much simpler for her to place aside the memories of an always-distant mother.
“Grant me this opportunity, Shinn. I will return to you.”
“You vow to me?”
A father’s fear: violet eyes unwilling to focus upon hers; hyacinth, heady and oozing with an expectant pulse.
“You won’t lose me, Shinn. I vow it upon my fée essence.”
Gossamyr noted the twitch at the corner of her father’s mouth. Suppression always tightened his features. “This mission is deadly. Time cannot be tricked or defeated.”
A stab of her staff rang against the marble. “I am skilled.”
“A—” Shinn looked to the summer-pale sky “—champion is needed.”
A champion. “Oh.” Her bravado mellowed, Gossamyr bowed her head.
Indeed, a champion.
When had she ever proven herself in battle? Fighting dirt-casting core worms and drunken bogies? Night-creeping spriggans rarely offered more than a few moments’ struggle before scampering away from challenge. Werefrogs were vicious but stupid. Tournaments offered her but display of singular combat skills. There had not been opportunity for real challenge here in Glamoursiège. And she’d never been off the Spiral, not even a near fall from the Edge.
The touch of Shinn’s finger lifted Gossamyr’s gaze up to his. His eyes glittered. With tears? She had not thought to ever see the like. Certainly it was a mirage created by the sun and the glimmer of his blazon.
“Of course you do know champions are not simply ready and able?”
She lifted a brow.
“They are made. Truly, you are the only one for this mission, Gossamyr.” He bowed his head and clasped his fingers, the moue of his mouth frowning. But in a remarkable recovery he lifted a confident eye to Gossamyr. The former commander relayed battle details. “The Red Lady is malicious and is unlikely to rest until her penchant for feeding off fée essence restores her ability to return to Faery. She scents them out, newly arrived in the city, just as Disenchantment has begun to set in, for then the essence still retains its glamour.”
Gossamyr touched the faint blazon curling up her neck in a manner of twisting design. Would Disenchantment steal her blazon?
“But most important…” Another heavy sigh released what Gossamyr guessed to be regret and fear and the intense compulsion to protect his only child. “You are ready.”
A champion? Gossamyr straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. Have at me.
Eagerness uncontained, she blurted, “How will I know the Red Lady? Is she…red?”
Shinn’s smirk teased at a genuine smile. “You will know her when you see her. Banished long ago, she bears the mark.”
The mark. Yes. Horrid memories flooded Gossamyr’s mind. She had witnessed a banishment. The curl of red pinpricks boring into flesh. A cri de terroir. The suddenness of expulsion. And her bruised heart.
“You have seen the mark,” Shinn had the audacity to remark.
A nod confirmed Gossamyr’s understanding. Bile stirred in her throat. “Speak no more on it; I will know it when I see it.”
Swallowing back memory, Gossamyr sorted the facts. A succubus fée. Red. Banished. An unmistakable mark. Paris. Her father never elaborated beyond the necessary information.
“How long ago was she banished?”
“Before your birth.”
“Ah.” And yet, only now the succubus had begun to havoc the Otherside? Hmm…
“Mortal time is different than in Faery,” Shinn commented. “You will find it faster, startling. But most important, you know much about the Otherside; that will serve well.”
“I have gleaned what I can while studying Mother’s Bestiary of Humans—” Gossamyr stopped. Shinn did not appear startled by her confession. She had ever used stealth to steal into the locked study to snoop, much to the horror of her maid, Mince.
Veridienne had been detailing the mortals, magnifying them on amphi-vellum in the most remarkable detail, diagramming their manner and social ways from memory—re-creating her natural history. Gossamyr pored over the articles any chance she could find. The drawings were marvelously rendered in gild and such pigments created from madder, azurite and verdigris. Text gave splendid descriptions of clothing, food and custom.
I know you are half-mortal, Gossamyr. Your brown eyes intrigue. You are exotic…
Shucking off the cloying memory of a Rougethorn’s enraptured voice, Gossamyr looked to her father. He studied her, his jaw tight. Ever visible, the hurt in Shinn’s eyes.
“I wanted to touch a part of her,” Gossamyr offered in a quiet voice. “It was difficult trying to get close to her. She was ever busy.”
“Veridienne
