Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(57)

“You think so, do you?” asked Margaret. “I disagree. Which I have explained in several letters, e-mails, and one . . . no, two phone calls, if you count the one where I hung up on the Council representative. I am here, now, to explain it in person. I will not go. I will not put myself in your power. I have been under the power of the fae before, and I will not do it again.”

“You are fae,” Beauclaire began carefully, but Goreu went on the attack before Beauclaire could make his point.

“You think you can resist us?” asked Goreu, though I don’t think he meant it as a question—his tone was too confident.

“Do you mean to try to force me?” Margaret countered. She looked at Beauclaire. “You—who set the world on this course in search of justice for your daughter—you would seek to imprison me for the crime of being my father’s daughter?”

“There are many,” said Nemane, “who would rather be elsewhere. But we are few, child. Too few to survive a war—no matter what some say. We have to make a show of strength. We need you in order to survive.”

Margaret raised her head and squared her shoulders. “Do you know what I learned when I was trapped in the earth for more than half a century? With neither food to eat, nor water to drink, nor light to see by, when there is no sound except that you make yourself, some things become very clear. Death is not to be feared. Death is easy. It is living that is brutal. The fae may survive or not. I do not care. I am not one of you except through my parents—and they are both dead.”

Goreu reached across the table with the speed of a striking snake and slapped something on Margaret’s wrist that closed with a click—a fine silver bar bracelet with a red cabochon stone. Goreu held a similar bracelet and shut it on his wrist. As he clicked it closed, he drew in a breath as if it had hurt.

Margaret sat frozen.

It wasn’t one of the set of bone cuffs, Peace and Quiet, that had once been used on me. Tad had destroyed those.

“If you cannot be persuaded any other way,” the Widow Queen said, “then you leave us no choice. We owe it to your father to protect you and return you to health.”

Margaret looked down at her wrist. Then she looked at Goreu. “You have made a mistake.”

I couldn’t help but look at Thomas. He was very, very still.

“Perhaps,” said Goreu. “I did argue that there were those who might be of more use to us—we have only one artifact that can hold a fae against their will for very long.”

“You are so arrogant, all of you,” Margaret said. “Goreu, Custennin’s son, you may be powerful, I do not contest that. But it has been a long time since you beheaded your uncle—and that you did after he was already defeated. But these bracelets are not about how powerful your magic is. You have made a mistake.”

The name Custennin rang a bell. Margaret focused on the bald little fae. She said, “Crawl across the table to me.”

Custennin had been a shepherd who had twenty-four children. I remembered that because it was twice twelve, and twelve is a number that occurs quite a lot in fairy tales.

Goreu opened his mouth—then lost his smirk. He braced himself on the edge of the table.

“Crawl,” Margaret said.

All but one of Custennin’s children had been killed by a giant, Custennin’s brother. The single son who remained was named Goreu.

Slowly, very slowly, sweating and shaking, the fae boosted himself up onto the table and crawled. The bracelet made a scratchy sound as he dragged it across the gleaming cherry finish of the table. He bit his lip, and blood dripped from it onto the wood.

There must have been some sort of protocol at work because none of the other fae in the room gave him any aid. They stayed in their seats and watched Goreu struggle. The Widow Queen looked mildly amused. The middle-aged woman took out a file and became engrossed in buffing her nails with vicious, jerky movements.

Nemane and Beauclaire looked as though they were competing for who could look the most relaxed. Unseen by the other fae because of her position at the wall behind them, Edythe smiled at Margaret, lifted a finger to her tongue to wet it, then drew an imaginary point in the air.

If Margaret reacted, I couldn’t tell. I’m not sure she even saw Edythe’s gesture—Margaret was engrossed in the strange battle she was engaged in with Goreu.

According to The Mabinogion, the Goreu who was Custennin’s son had traveled with King Arthur and his knights, eventually returning to his home and killing the giant, his uncle. He was a hero—unless I’d gotten the story wrong, because the Goreu in this room didn’t look at all like a hero.

When the unheroic fae arrived at Margaret’s side of the table, she reached out and grasped his wrist. As soon as she touched it, a thin red line began drawing itself across the plain silver of Goreu’s bracelet. It began slowly, then, as Goreu breathed in quick pants, moved more and more quickly, drawing glyphs that became part of more complex patterns until the bracelet was nearly solid red.

Margaret sat back in her chair, took the bracelet off her wrist and caught the other as it fell off Goreu. She tossed both of them to Zee.

It broke the effect of the light glamour we’d all been wearing. Goreu scrambled backward off the table, half falling in his effort to get away—not from Margaret, but from Zee. The middle-aged woman dropped her file, and the Widow Queen froze.