"But-"

"You've come for me, Turiau de Wintershinn of Glamoursiege?"

At the succubus's announcement, Gossamyr saw Shinn stiffen, fighting the erie of his Naming.

The Red Lady glided across the marble base, the essences quivering with her pa.s.s, right up to the staunch Faery lord. "So little time has pa.s.sed, and yet-" she sneered, displeased with what she looked upon "- you have aged centuries."

"I have not come to welcome you back to my bed, Circelie Sangreul of Rougethorn. I banished you with good reason, and the banishment holds."

She pouted out a thick red lip. "Your recital of my name wields no power against my magic. What do you desire, Turiau? Do not tell me you've come to rescue your false mortal child."

"Never false in my heart."

"Ah. So honorable, to the bitter end. Such a horrible confession to love a mortal makes me quiver, Turiau. Twice now. But you are too late. She knows her truth; Faery will now only eat her away."

"Enough!" Shinn nodded toward the wall, high above. "The alicorn's power is not for you to possess."

"Who sayeth?"

Gossamyr eyed the pinioned alicorn. Using her staff-even half-size-for a levered jump, she might make the leap.

Shinn's voice boomed throughout the room. "Me for the alicorn."

"No," Gossamyr gasped. 'Twas as if the gargoyles' flames sizzled in her throat that she could not speak another word.

"Oh?" The Red Lady spun around. Malice twinkled in the look she speared at Gossamyr. A twist at the waist turned her back to Shinn. "You offer your...essence?"

"The Disenchantment has yet to touch me; I offer you an essence strong and capable-"

"-of seeing my return to Faery?"

"If that be your desire."

"But you are not so strong, I see you age before my eyes."

The Faery lord spread his iridescent emerald wings wide. Hyacinth perfumed the room. A swoosh of his wings breathed a strong wind, stretching out the Red Lady's hair and skirts from her body. He spoke forcefully, "Yet strong."

The Red Lady clapped her hands overhead and spun. "Yes! I will agree to the exchange."

"Gossamyr! Retrieve the alicorn," Shinn demanded.

While her body moved toward the wall, Gossamyr felt heavy tears streak her cheeks. The burning in her throat, acid and hot, choked her from crying in protest. Shinn must not sacrifice his essence to this wicked succubus! Nor could he allow her return to Faery!

She stopped beneath the alicorn and looked to Shinn. In her father's eyes she saw the mirror of her tears. With her truth, he had sacrificed something greater-his own truth. For he had fallen to the mortal pa.s.sion by loving her.

The Red Lady whisked between the two of them. "Take it then, false child of Shinn. Be quick with it."

"Turiau de Wintershinn," sang the succubus, "bold lord of Glamoursiege."

Shinn stiffened, his jaw hard. He could not move, Gossamyr knew, so great was the Red Lady's hold.

You can overpower her.

"Don't," Shinn croaked as Gossamyr lifted her staff behind the Red Lady's head.

I love you, she mouthed to the Faery lord as the Red Lady approached him, her palms rising to bracket his face. She would kiss him, suck out his essence. Gossamyr knew not how the foul extraction manifested, nor did she wish to witness.

She jumped and missed the alicorn.

Landing the floor in a graceless sprawl, she spied as Ulrich carefully arranged Avenall upon the crimson bed. A man blind to the figure in his arms, yet he managed to remove the leather hip sheath of pins.

She jumped again and her fingers skimmed the alicorn. A vibrant burst of Enchantment drifted from the horn. "Achoo!"

"Take this!" Ulrich called. He pulled out the clacking pins and tossed the leather bag to her.

As Gossamyr turned to catch the bag, she saw the Red Lady press her lips to her father's mouth. And she froze in that moment, a reluctant witness to her father's sacrifice.

The mighty Faery lord, arms spread wide in resistance-you shall have me, but you shall not have my fealty-took the kiss without moving. Clinging to her former lover, the Red Lady kissed him for what seemed to Gossamyr, evermore. Too long. A heart pulse caught up in a net.

In that instant the fetch buzzed into the room and swept over Shinn and the Red Lady's embrace. The dragon fly fluttered before Gossamyr. Look away.

And so she did.

She turned and leaped again, this time snagging the alicorn with the bag. In that moment she felt the vibrations of Enchantment. She did not want to hold this object. It was not hers to own. Where had gone the unicorn and the changeling?

With a deft balance to keep the alicorn teetering-without touching it- she slipped it into the leather pouch and ran down the steps to Ulrich. "Take it."

He shoved the pins into her hand, exchanging them for the leather bag. Gossamyr was pulled about by a mourning cry from her father. His body plummeted, falling straight backward, arms still out at his sides. Wings drained of life were useless against the fall.

The Red Lady, unloosed from her deadly kiss, staggered and coiled into a fix of squirming limbs. She moaned with such pleasure Gossamyr felt she witnessed a private act.

"Shinn!"

"No."

She wrestled against Ulrich's attempts to hold her back.

"This is your chance," the soul shepherd pleaded. "She is in a wicked sort of s.e.xual thrall. Take her out!"

A glance to Shinn. He lay perfectly still. Wings flattened upon the cold marble. The fetch landed his forehead. Dead?

"No," Gossamyr moaned in a rabbity cry.

And in the next instant her fingers clenched about the silver pins. Gathering the dozen long needles with both hands, she pointed them outward and rushed the writhing succubus. Racked with a pleasure most wicked, the Red Lady danced and sighed along the wall, clinging and undulating against the essences. Viscous fluids splattered her arms and neck and face as her movements burst the struggling essences.

Gossamyr wielded the pins overhead and, just as the Red Lady's arm whipped backward, twisting her chest up and high in a spasm of pleasure, Gossamyr drove the weapons into her chest. Silver pin to faery flesh. Pins slid freely through ribs, others, Gossamyr had to shove hard to pierce the resistant bone cage.

The force of the act blasted Gossamyr backward. Flung unfettered and uncontrollably, she landed Ulrich's body. The two slumped to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Maniacal wails filled the room. The succubus's body shivered upon the wall as if an essence for ever pinned between the Celestial and the Infernal.

"Will she die?" Ulrich whispered over Gossamyr's shoulder.

The succubus spat out oaths tinged with the Red and then ceased movement. Ichor poured from her chest, glistening ooze dripping from the heavy iron b.a.l.l.s that tipped the pins. Her head slumped, folding onto her bosom.

And the wall of essences stopped. All became quiet.

Save the glimmer parting Shinn's chest. A brilliant essence of violet and emerald emerged and severed from the Faery lord's body.

"No, go back!" Gossamyr lunged to her father's side. She reached for the escaping essence, then paused to consider. Should she touch it? She did not want to risk a revenant. Carefully, she placed her palms above the essence to shield it from rising any higher. The cloying aroma of hyacinth set loose tears. "What should I do, Ulrich? I cannot put it back in the body."

"Let it go!"

"No!" Gossamyr clasped the essence to her body and felt it seep into her clothing, through her flesh and into her body. "Oh!"

"Hades," Ulrich moaned.

In the next instant the revenant's bony fingers reached out from Shinn's chest and sprang, fully formed into the room. Heart beating heavily, Gossamyr knew then she should have allowed the essence to leave of its own. She had prevented the final twinclian.

Now she held her father's essence within her. She could feel it pressing inside, filling and glowing. It sought freedom. From a species so foreign?

The revenant spread out its wings. A shriek rattled Gossamyr's concentration. It slapped one wing back against the wall, crushing several stilled essences in a spray that showered distorted rainbows upon the Red Lady's bowed head. Shinn's revenant-it sought an essence to achieve the final twinclian. It would be off to Faery!

Gossamyr reminded herself it was not Shinn, but a creature. Only when united with the essence would it become Turiau de Wintershinn, lord of Glamoursiege. Her father.

The revenant's skull bobbed, searching the room. Hollow red eyes focused first on Ulrich, then Gossamyr. Clutching her chest, Gossamyr's terror mixed with the strange filling sensation that glimmered throughout her being. A fee essence cleaved to her insides. Her mortal insides. She could gauge the strength growing in her muscles. Her thoughts wavered, parting to let in another. Shinn inhabited her. Though her mind remained her own she experienced an overwhelming calm. Of being touched by a being that could only communicate love. Faery, so rich and luscious. Shinn's final gift to her-light.

She began to rise, floating up from the floor.

The revenant slashed out with a long, clawed hand, missing Gossamyr's face by a breath. But she did not dodge. Still rising, shoulders straight, she hung before the creature, ready. Dropping the two remaining pins, they landed in a clatter.

"Gossamyr, no!" Ulrich cried. "You are...do not sacrifice!"

Delicious warmth seeped throughout her. Shinn would protect her. She believed.

Yes, Father, I do belong-in your heart.

"Take the essence if you can," she defied the shrieking revenant.

"No!"

She ignored Ulrich's protest. If she did not do this all of Faery would suffer.

"I love you, Shinn," she murmured. The vibrations of her voice echoed in her bones and the glowing, shimmering essence inside her twitched in response. "This is for you!"

Stretching out her arms wide, Gossamyr lifted her chest, opening herself completely to the oncoming attack. A macabre grin cracked the jaw of the skull that flew toward her. Fingers of sharp bone moved through her ribs. The pain was real, tearing her open and parting her chest. All she could do was gasp as the revenant, its hand embedded deep within her, held her suspended before the wall of stilled essences.

To her right the Red Lady still shivered and fought against death.

Ichor glimmered in a stream from her mouth. And peaceful upon the bed lay one she'd loved, gone to the Celestial.

The hand inside her twisted and began to probe, to summon and gather.

Gossamyr let out a yowl that birthed from a mortal midnight that saw her stolen from her cradle and secreted away to Faery.

Verity d'Ange...

...this day we baptize you in the name of our Lord.

She is so precious. Do you like your little sister, Seraphim?

She's stinky.

Verity is ours to love...bless us all.

The shimmering feeling began to subside, to give way from her extremities, pulling, balling and forming into a central ma.s.s. Gossamyr felt the revenant's bony fingers curl and sc.r.a.pe against her spine to clasp. In that moment she looked up into the fathomless red eyes of the skull and saw the circ.u.mference of the pupils begin to fill with violet. Faery seeped back into the revenant. Shinn returned.

And in his wake, Verity d'Ange rose up from the remnants of Enchantment.

Lifted high, her feet dangling above marble, Gossamyr thought the beast to fling her across the room-but instead it lunged toward the bed. Gently-the hand still within her chest-it laid her upon the red sheets beside Avenall.

As the revenant hand withdrew, Gossamyr groped at the opening in her chest. Everything moved slowly, lengthening the pain. Bones moved out from her body, the creature, not Shinn. And grasped in the skeletal hand the violet and emerald essence.

When the essence pulled free from her body, it brightened and expanded and began to overtake the revenant. Enthralled in a tornado of the brilliant violet and emerald essence, the revenant spun, moving across the room like a windstorm. Past Ulrich, who clung to the bedpost, and above Shinn's empty body.

Gossamyr, eyes fixed to the vision, clutched her chest. The gown had been rendered wide, but beneath, her flesh bore not a mark. A deep inhale renewed her vigor.

She pushed up to the edge of the bed just as the essence devoured the revenant and twirled into a long thin beam. Ulrich's touch stopped her from rushing forward.

The essence poured into Shinn's p.r.o.ne body, covering the Faery lord over with its glimmer. The fetch, fixed to his forehead, fluttered its wings and took to flight. And then, the glimmer dissipated, leaving the dead fee in its wake.

Tears coating her cheek, Gossamyr stepped over to her father's body. "You sacrificed for me." And she pressed her head against his gut and began to cry. She had witnessed his final twinclian.

"Gossamyr!"

At Ulrich's cry, she looked up from Shinn's body. There, pinned to the wall of exhausted essences, the Red Lady's essence began to emerge from the pinnacle of her skull. A dark crimson thing oozed slowly into the atmosphere to hover above its mistress's head. Taunting, as only the succubus could.

"Shall I get it?" Ulrich wondered from over her shoulder. "I'll take your staff and smash-"

"No." She reached for Ulrich's hand and turned to sit at the edge of the marble steps. "Just...witness."

The blood-red essence remained above her head for so long Gossamyr thought the revenant might climb out and smash the thing itself. But suddenly the red globule popped.

"Dragon p.i.s.s," Gossamyr muttered. Feeling every muscle in her body tense she prepared.

"The revenant?" Ulrich said.

"Soon," she called. "Stand back!"