Gossamyr

Further reason to avoid delay. Time must be faced. “I can do this.”

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know.”

Why did a prinkle suddenly cleave to Gossamyr’s spine? This is what she most desired.

“I should not send you alone.”

“There are none in Faery who can accompany me.” For there were none with mortal blood to protect them from the Red Lady’s seeking lure. “You’ll need your troops here to fight the revenants.”

“Perhaps a pisky guide—”

“What of Mince?”

“She is far too aged, and honestly, much too plump to keep your pace. The Disenchantment would take her swiftly.”

Indeed. Gossamyr would not risk the matron, even as she dreaded leaving her maternal influence. The only kind arms she had known following Veridienne’s departure, for Shinn did not express his concern with sympathetic touches but with stronger actions, such as teaching her to fight.

“I will fare well on my own.”

“Mayhap a fetch?” Shinn nodded, pleased with his notion. “Indeed, I will send one along to repeat back to me your successes.”

She liked that he already thought of her success.

“Now, Disenchantment occurs quickly,” he warned. “Once you set foot on the Otherside you’ve perhaps less than a day before you lose all glamour.”

“I have no glamour!”

“You’ve a cloak of glamour.” He splayed his fingers before her face, raising a sensation of warmth in her flesh, drawing the shimmer of the fée to the surface. There in the blazon tracing her collarbones and upper chest did she feel the magic, the innate being of her kind. The prinkles dancing on Gossamyr’s spine subsided.

“It has seeped into you over the years,” Shinn assured.

So she twinkled. That did not mean she could perform twinclian. Hers was a false glamour. No flight, no twinclian, no glamour. Lousy fée she had turned out to be. Half-blooded was nothing more than mortal.

Gossamyr tightened her grip about the staff and strummed her fingers across the clutter of stringed arrets dangling from her braided-leather hip belt. “What of my skills, my speed?”

Shinn set a hand on her shoulder. Violet eyes looked into hers, as if to leap into her being. “The skills you have honed over the years are yours to own, Gossamyr. Nothing can strip your physical prowess or your battle technique.”

She nodded and slid a hand upon the Glamoursiège coat of arms that she also wore on her hip belt, her family’s sigil, it was carved from the same applewood as her staff. “What of my essence, er…my soul? Do I have both? Can the Red Lady take either from me?”

“Your mortal blood—as well, the fact you are female—will serve a boon. The succubus will not have the slightest interest in you.”

Her father’s voice, deep and strung with a melodious harmony, vibrated within her. Ever and anon he had protected her—even when that protection had hurt her heart. When all other fée would look upon her with a strange reluctance that would keep them an armshot away, yet still amiable, Shinn stood at her side, his pride in her apparent in the determination that pressed back the naysayers.

“Desideriel will be glad of my absence,” she remarked.

“He is a fine match, Gossamyr. We have discussed this overmuch.”

“I do not like him. Do you not sense his distaste for me?”

“You see things only you wish to see.”

With a sigh she offered a silent agreement. So, too, did Shinn see only what he wished to see.

So little to look forward to with her marriage to a man who saw only her faults, and yet, she did anticipate taking the Glamoursiège reign.

“I have groomed him.” Reluctance cautioned Shinn’s voice. “He understands what is expected.”

“As well do I.” A marriage for Glamoursiège, her heart be cursed to suffer for it. But she did respect her father’s choice.

She would speak to Desideriel Raine. Perhaps look again into his eyes and determine if it truly was only her that thought to see his reluctance.

Shinn reached for her staff and drew it between the two of them. One toise in length, the steel-hard applewood had been carved by the Glamoursiège sage and fire-forged by dragon’s breath. Intricate ribbons weaved into a crosswork of roses and flame about the rich wood.

“I will not bid you farewell,” he offered as he pressed the staff into her hand. “Because you are unable to twinclian, you will have to Passage. There is no way to place you immediately in Paris, so a journey awaits. Take this purse of coin, purchase a swift horse and make haste.”

Slipping a leather pouch from his hip, he then tied it to her belt. His fingers lingered on the coat of arms before relenting and stepping back.

Gossamyr spread her fingers around the ample pouch, feeling rich with its weight. Never had she required coin, for her father’s steward and Mince had seen to her needs and desires. How she would miss Mince!

Shinn touched her forehead with his thumb and closed his eyes, imprinting the whorls of his life upon her flesh, connecting with her hidden eye, the all-seeing and all-knowing. No lack of glamour could dispel intuition.

“Come back to me,” Shinn whispered.

A sudden hollowness in her chest forced her to swallow back a strange sense of loss. It wasn’t as if she would never again see him. And Mince, the fretful matron, would only worry should she seek her for a farewell. Such discovery waited her on the Otherside!

“I will,” she promised. “Set me off, and I shall succeed.”

“I send you forth with my blessing, child of mine. Make right what you shall, and may you discover the solace to the ache that has been your nemesis.”

With a nod, Gossamyr silently vowed that ache—the mortal passion—would not defeat her.

The soft press of Shinn’s lips replaced his thumb. Gossamyr lifted her head and in the violet gaze looming over her she found all the strength she would ever need. “I am off, then?”

Shinn stepped back and nodded.

“Very well, but I’ve no twinclian. How shall I enter—”

TWO

France—1436

“—the Otherside?”

The droning alarm of a cicada announced her arrival. Wobbling off balance, Gossamyr swiftly recovered. She bent her knees and, hands spread, scanned her surroundings.

Every pore on her body sensed the world had changed. The air smelled verdant. Tightly sown moss, plush in density, cushed beneath her bare toes as they curled into the thickness. The musty vapor of earth rose about her. ’Twas a muted aroma of decaying wood and fetid bracken, similar to Faery but…different.

Gone, the Glamoursiège castle of blue marble.