"But it looks like any other-sorry." Ulrich pushed the staff from his bare chest. Offering compliance with splayed hands near his shoulders, he said, "Whatever you bid, I shall do. Lead on, champion."

Tempted so suddenly, Gossamyr kissed him. Quick. A reaction to her heart. A mortal pa.s.sion she had no desire to avoid.

"Remember your eye, Ulrich. You can no longer see the Enchanted. Mayhap that is why you see but a horse."

"You've got a point- Gossamyr?"

She turned another corner and strode ahead, her focus, finding the Red Lady.

Left standing beside the hot flicker of gargoyle flame, the fleeting warmth of a woman's kiss quickly receding, Ulrich surveyed his surroundings.

Empty hall...that led to another empty hall.

To the right, one Faery Not-not skipping down that way. (She needn't his interference.) To the left-one white horse?

"Here, pretty, pretty..."

Gossamyr ran into the pin man outside the door protected by the seven gargoyles. She remembered this place. The room filled with essences was just through the huge marble door. "Avenall?"

A beastly yowl startled her thoroughly. One of the gargoyles tossed its candle at her. Flame burned her elbow. Sulfurous sparkles tainted the air. Spatters of fire licked up her back, tracing the length of her braid.

A force hit Gossamyr's chest. Avenall flung her to the ground. Their bodies crushed together, Gossamyr yelped as the hard surface battered her bones. The roll snuffed out the flame. Tickles of red hair swept her face.

"Avenall!"

He stood and, fisting his fingers in the air, roared and kicked the stone beast.

The gargoyle opened its stone jaw and silently yowled back.

With another warning hiss to the stoic torch, the fee minion knelt at Gossamyr's side. One of his wings bent and brushed her cheek. So dry, the once supple wing. Violet eyes, more red now, blinked as he surveyed her body. "You are fine and well?"

"As best possible." Snapping her right shoulder forward tugged what felt like a dislocated bone back into place. Sitting up, Gossamyr touched the lifeless wing skimming her side; it was cold, not at all warm or iridescent. "You...remember me?"

"I did not remember for so long. Now I do." A quick smile was destroyed by a confused wrinkle of brow. "She took it all from me. Gossamyr?" Red tears streamed across his pale cheeks.

"You remember."

"Yes, Gossamyr Verity de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege. I know your name. I remember. I remember you. We...loved."

"Yes!" She reached to embrace, but he jerked into a defensive crouch.

The shivering minion shook his head and his wings coiled tightly. "But a fee heart knows not love."

"If you believe, Avenall, you can, you can know love. It is..." So he had the mortal pa.s.sion, as well. He'd suffered it unknowing.

"I..." A tilt of his head swept thick red hair tipped with black across Gossamyr's thighs. "I...saw you as no other. It mattered little that you were not full-blood fee. Why did your father despise me so? I only wanted to court you."

"My father...had his reasons."

"I did not dabble!"

"Shinn knew that. He-"

"Shinn." He nodded, knowing. "A mighty fee lord. Together we betrayed his trust. Oh." His wings curled about his shoulders as he inclined forward into a rocking bow. "My mistress," he hissed in a reverent sigh. "She has taken so much from me, much more than my essence. Memories of you. Our kisses."

Gossamyr clasped her fingers up through his hair and drew his forehead to her cheek. Heliotrope, his aura, deliciously reminiscent. "Yes, many kisses. Your touch made me light, as if I had wings."

"Exotic."

She nodded. A burst of nervous laughter calmed her fears.

Manic and red, his eyes, he shuffled back and pressed himself to the wall. Wings made a papery crunch.

"We must get the alicorn from her. Is there a way? A weakness?"

A male cry echoed down the hall. Not Ulrich, but the changeling.

The collection room undulated with humming essences. The unicorn was nowhere to be seen. Dominique, his cape abandoned at the doorway, slowly approached the Red Lady. She lured him with her call. Volition abandoned, he strode with head up and arms stretched to caress. Vibrant violet wings curled forward to receive her strokes.

Wielding a spinning arret Gossamyr dashed forward. She did not aim for the Red Lady; it would serve little against her powerful mix of magic and glamour.

The obsidian arrow released, it connected with the back of Dominique's left thigh. He cried out and gripped the injury-direct hit, for he was pulled from the succubus's lure.

The woman hissed at Gossamyr and twisted the alicorn in her fingers like a marshal's baton readying the musters for the call to attack.

Another arret hit its intended mark-the Red Lady's wrist- sending the alicorn flying against the wall of essences. It landed point first next to the yellow essence that had been pinned highest of all. Knocked loose, the essence began to fall, ever so slowly.

"Oh, Hades." Ulrich stumbled into the room and sucked in a gasp. "So many of them!"

Keeping an eye on the Red Lady, Gossamyr called to the soul shepherd. "Do you feel them? Can you command them?"

"I can feel them...all." He plunged to his knees. "There is one..."

The yellow essence floated past the Red Lady's grasp. Shimmering, floating on wings unseen, it bounded above Dominique's head. The pinned ent.i.ty soared toward Gossamyr, a strange weapon aimed for her heart.

"What is it?" Dominique called.

Dodging, Gossamyr avoided getting hit, and at the opportune moment managed to reach out and catch the yellow essence. It shushed between her fingers, but the pin did not wound nor tear the essence asunder. Heavy, its weight, and scented with life-heliotrope. Humming loudly, the essence did not make to leave her carefully netted fingers.

"Mine!"

From behind the curtained bed Avenall rushed toward Gossamyr. Eyes red with rage, he dodged Dominique's attempt to deter him, only flinching as the soul shepherd's fingers skimmed his wing.

Gossamyr could not stop her lover as he plunged into her. She felt resistance, and heard a strange mellow sigh-a return.

The point of the silver pin exited Avenall's back and he collapsed into her arms.

TWENTY-NINE.

"Avenall!"

Gossamyr juggled the oozing yellow essence and the wobbly limbs of the pin man. Avenall had speared himself upon the pin in a manic sacrifice.

Now the pale-winged fee, quivering and slipping his fingers into the viscous essence, looked up to Gossamyr. A smile, so bright, filled his violet eyes. Red spilled down his cheeks. "Thank... you...

"No!"

"My... Gossamyr," he said on a gurgling gasp. Red splattered her breast as he spat out the words. "I have loved...you. So. Exotic."

A death sigh escaped. With that breath the yellow essence seeped into the fee's body through his pores. Gossamyr watched the mark of banishment gleam and lessen and vanish.

"Puppy!"

"What is it?" Ulrich asked. Of course he could but see the essence she held in her arms, not the faery.

"Avenall," she whispered. "He is speared upon the pin."

The Red Lady stretched out a hand, butchering a flock of essences as she slapped the marble wall.

"Please, Ulrich, come to me." Dead in her arms, Avenall was released into Ulrich's hold. "Can you feel him?"

Ulrich wrestled with holding the fee, but Avenall's shoulders slipped against his chest and he nodded. "Got him."

"Gently, please." Drawing in a choking breath, Gossamyr raised her sight to the succubus.

He held a being. He could not see it, but he knew whoever it was had meant much to Gossamyr. The pin-suspended in nothing, it appeared- wobbled between his curled arms. Ichor oozed from the pin, spilling over a shape of a body, yet unseen. Pierced through the heart, Ulrich guessed. Final remnants of the essence dissipated, mayhap seeping into the dead fee's body.

Now he felt the fee's very being tap him and seek guidance. A familiar call. He would not refuse. Drawn into the Send, he directed the essence onward. Heaven or h.e.l.l? No such choices.

"Go in peace," he whispered. "Ever after in his grace."

The body fell limp and began to slip from Ulrich's arms. Hooking under the invisible arms, Ulrich held strong. Together, the two men slid to the floor.

Arret spinning, Gossamyr spared a moment to turn and look to Ulrich. Avenall lay limp in the soul shepherd's arms. But peaceful, yes? A horrid loosening of tears pushed from her eyes. It was not fair that he had suffered for loving her! Be this his punishment for the mortal pa.s.sion, a cruel sacrifice always demanded of the fee.

But there, the glimmer of Faery burst out from Avenall's chest. It stretched the height of the room, and then with a blink, spanned horizontal, running the length and out the door into the hallway. Bathed in the golden glow of his essence, Gossamyr closed her eyes and smiled. With another blink, the glimmer dissipated.

"The final twinclian," she said. I love you, Avenall.

"Not my puppy!" the Red Lady spat at Gossamyr. "You have taken much from me, warrior b.i.t.c.h."

Wiping spittle from her arm, Gossamyr approached the succubus. "No more than you have taken from my father."

"Shinn's cruelties touch all. Why is he not here to answer to his crimes? Does he hide behind a helpless mortal?"

"Helpless? You must have lost half your sight too, red woman." She spun the arret into a frenzy. "I've yet to fall babbling from your pitiful song."

"My puppy is gone!"

"You killed Avenall."

"You were the one who wielded the pin!"

"You took his essence and taunted him. He was dead long ago."

Avoiding contact with the wall of essences, Gossamyr stalked the succubus widdershins toward the edge of the marble steps. If she could throw her off balance she gained opportunity to strike. But how, exactly, to take her out without a sword or weapon larger than an arret? She seemed impervious to the staff and its stealthy blows. Must she kill the woman?

Either that or be killed, Shinn's words revisited Gossamyr's thoughts. Or had she heard them, plain as ever?

Her aggressor stood stunned, yet a malicious grin stretched her lips to an open smile. It was then Gossamyr felt the new presence.

Shinn stood in the doorway.

THIRTY.

His presence filled her heart, pounding, expanding, urging... All she had ever known-a father's love-overwhelmed. Gossamyr wanted to rush to Shinn and embrace him. To plead, "Take me home; I believe."

She believed in love and that it knew no bounds.

She glanced to Ulrich. He gathered Avenall into his arms as gently as a father would a child. He had fathered a child not of his blood and had loved her.

Yes, she felt loved. And why not? She was Verity d'Ange: mortal.

Vengeance, valor-and now, the truth.

But in her heart she could not abandon her mission to such foolish emotions.

Keeping the arret spinning and ready for release, rage over Avenall's senseless death worked tears at the corners of her eyes. Courage shimmied through her being, far more powerful than any glamour. And fear loomed close. Not fear of the enemy, but fear for the well-being of Ulrich, and now Shinn. Why had he come here? He risked Disenchantment, or worse, the Red Lady's bane.

"Father?"

Shinn lifted a hand. "Gossamyr, stay back. Would I had done this before, I would have never had to send you off on such a mission."