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And Darling padded across the stones and leaped onto the bench beside me.
His thoughts poured into my mind, vivacious and brightly colored. His pleasure at seeing me again fell like a balm against my wounded psyche. I petted him and he purred, sitting beside me and agreeing the twilight looked most lovely.
He was the one to tell me that I would be leaving. Heading off to the war with him and the rest of Puck’s entourage.
He was bored of being a Familiar for healing, of the leisurely velvet-pillow life. Lady Healer didn’t get out of the palace much, it seemed. Darling wanted glory and excitement. He even had a plan for a kind of shiny cat-armor he wanted me to get for him, which apparently would be my job. Darling didn’t like talking to many people, so preferred to keep a mouthpiece around.
Bemused, I listened to his tales and speculations. Other thoughts ran through my mind. My own thoughts. Maybe fed by a little trickle of hope.
I would be free.
I would have my revenge.
Part III
Early Experiments
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Chapter 11
In Which I Emerge from My Cocoon
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The sun shonebrightly on our procession. The sky lay gentle over us, that same rich ultraviolet blue that so struck me the first day I arrived. As a sign of my newly recovered status as an actual person, I rode my own horse—a pretty white mare with a silky stride. No one asked me if I could ride. Just lucky I could. Darling perched behind me on a special pad Lord Puck had arranged for him, eyes slitted in a doze as contented as if he lounged on a window sill.
Marquise and Scourge’s castle where I’d stayed these last months seemed so small from the outside, glowing with a sick, greasy light and utterly still. As we rode away, I took a long look at my tower room. Then turned my back on it.
As good as it felt to be released from captivity and my lovingly cruel masters, a spinning sense of panic swirled through me. Agoraphobia, a clinical part of my brain informed me. I seemed to be filling up with thoughts again, an empty well slowly adjusting to a new water table after a long drought. I let the thoughts rise up again behind my tightly controlled wall, presenting my null demeanor to the world. Never would I go back to Marquise and Scourge.
Whatever it took.
I tamped down the anxiety, contenting myself with holding my left wrist in my right hand. It appeared as though I was steadying the hand holding the reins, but it also let me feel my pulse. I was both alive and relatively free. I had things to do.
A battle to win. And not for Falcon.
How easy it had been for Rogue to show me exactly what he wanted me to see. How he’d suckered me in and had me dancing to his tune. He was involved with bringing me to this place. Faerie, I decided to call it, now that I had freedom to think again, to observe and assimilate. Parallel universe, underworld, alternate dimension—the exact definition no longer mattered.
I knew now, better than ever, that power was the only thing that mattered in this world. Magic would give me the power I needed to make sure I never went through anything like that sadistic bootcamp again. Rogue thought to use sex against me, but I wouldn’t allow it. Sex was my power to use—I’d learned that much. I’d serve the rest of my sentence and then find my way home. Rogue would never get his baby—I had over six years to make sure of it.
Lord Puck reined up beside me. I cast my eyes down submissively, habitually.
“We’ll keep today’s ride short, as I imagine you are still…tender.”
I said nothing. I didn’t have to unless he asked me a direct question. Wisdom lay in saying less.
“We’ll stop at Castle Brightness, the ancestral home of Lady Blackbird’s family. They’re the last decent lodging we’ll have for some time. After that it’s tents as we travel to the battlefront. You’ll see battle within the week, Lady Gwynn, mark my words!” Enthusiasm made him bounce in the saddle.
Darling sent an image of fat mice waddling slowly through golden rooms, accompanied by a lick of pleased anticipation. I sent him back a smile. At least he was excited about our destination. He also wanted a new name but preferred that it emerge in battle. These ideas were accompanied by an image of himself straddling some limp misshapen form, while his own fur dripped blood of the enemy, tail bristling in defiant delight. I didn’t point out that his cat body looked more mountain lion-sized in these fantasies.
“You’ll understand soon,” Lord Puck said, making me start in my skin. “Why Falcon had us do it the way we did. One doesn’t cross the Great Lord Falcon, you know.”
I slid my eyes carefully up from the brown mane of my horse, to observe his profile through the filmy white scarf covering my head. Lord Puck looked cheerful, as if he might start whistling. Perhaps he was also relieved to have my training done with, and not just because he now could bring a new weapon to the front. To give him a little credit, he’d blanched at my appearance when he came to fetch me. He also stayed far away from Marquise and Scourge, his lighthearted thoughts skittering away from their thin smiles. He didn’t know, really, what all had happened inside that castle, had never had a clear idea of what he’d delivered me into.
Unlike Rogue, who’d given me that searing look of regret and warning, then tossed me at Lord Puck and walked off to while away his time dancing while I went through the fires of hell.
Not that I was bitter.
