Never to be outdone, the Shadow King, who ruled the Unseelie Court, had allowed a film crew in too, but they’d quickly become someone’s appetizers, or so Bella had heard.
She gazed across the great square to the hulking black quartz high-rise of the Unseelie Court, a place forever locked in a cold war with the shining Rose Tower. The Summer Queen only allowed in those with the untainted blood of the Seelie Tuatha Dé Danann, and even they were subject to a strict hierarchy. Although the occasional Unseelie nobles, if they possessed certain qualities, were permitted residence.
The Shadow King of the Unseelie Court took all kinds, any monster with fae blood, any creature bred between two immortals. The only prerequisite for being a member of the Black Tower was a willingness to spill blood, either into your mouth or onto the floor, it didn’t matter.
Ronan would be welcome. So, maybe, would she, since she wielded the dark arts. But the thought of living in such violence and chaos, among such monsters, made her shudder.
As she watched the soft white flakes of snow fall into the velvety darkness, movement caught her eye across the square. Lifting off into the black was the Lord of the Wild Hunt and his entourage. That mysterious figure and his Host made her blood ice more than Jack Frost’s Yuletide decoration of her windows. No one knew the man’s identity. All anyone knew was that he was a member of the Unseelie Court, and that he and his Host sometimes meted out brutal punishment to those fae who broke the law.
They also reaped the souls of the Fae after they died and escorted them to the afterlife. Every night they collected them.
They’d be coming for Ronan soon.
She turned her face away from the sight of the Lord of the Hunt’s Host rising into the dark, snowy skies on massive stallion hooves and the soft padded feet of netherworld hounds. To distract herself from her thoughts, she grabbed the remote and flipped the TV on across the room. Faemous exploded onto the screen. She should have known; her housekeeper loved the twenty-four-hour-a-day coverage of the court as much as the humans.
As she went to turn it off, Ronan’s face filled the huge dimension of the screen. Bella paused.
“In other news, Ronan Achaius Quinn, once celebrated Seelie Court mage, is scheduled for a morning beheading after working for the Phaendir without the Summer Queen’s leave. It’s unknown what sort of job he performed for the Phaendir, but it was enough to incur Her Majesty’s wrath.” A photo of herself popped onto the screen and Bella rolled her eyes.
“One must wonder how Bella Rhiannon Caliste Mac Lyr is feeling tonight. After a scorching romance all thought long extinguished some thirty years ago, today she attempted to save the mage’s life by marrying him. As we know, she has resisted all suitors and has done so for the last three decades, ever since they parted ways. Apparently our suspicions about her still holding a torch for Ronan were correct.” The announcer’s voice lowered a bit, and you could practically hear the arch of the human male’s brow. “Word is, he said no. We wonder—“
Bella flipped the TV off. She threw the remote to the settee and looked around her spacious, luxurious .
. . empty apartment. There had been a moment or two when she’d been looking forward to sharing this space with someone . . . with Ronan. The announcer on Faemous had been right—she’d never stopped carrying a torch for him. For decades she’d tried very hard to hide that from the rest of the court, but now it would be apparent to all and she would be a laughingstock.
She didn’t regret it. She’d done all she could to save his mangy hide. His death would not weigh on her conscience.
It would only weigh on her heart.
Making a noise of disgust that echoed through her living room and into her darkened kitchen, and made her feel even lonelier than she had a moment ago, she turned and walked into her bedroom. This place was huge, yet she felt strangled most of the time. The Seelie Court was the most luxurious place in Piefferburg, yet to Bella it felt like a morgue. Stifling, too close. She longed just once to go beyond the bounds of the court and see the rest of Piefferburg, like the Ceantar Láir, fae suburbs as they were called, where the trooping fae that weren’t a part of the courts or the wild places lived. Or even the Boundary Lands, where vine and tree grew within and intertwined with the shambles of old buildings, and where the wild and solitary fae had made their homes.
She also dreamt of seeing the human world. Like many fae, she wondered what it would be like to be free. Rumor had it Ronan had seen it. Ronan had been everywhere, seen everything. He was allowed so much more freedom as a partial-blood Seelie mage than she was as a pureblood Seelie Tuatha Dé.
The irony was that she wasn’t pureblood Seelie at all.
It was a secret she’d only ever shared with her best friend, Aislinn. Bella could twist curses with her thoughts. She’d first noticed it around the time she’d turned seven, the same time a fae’s magick normally began to awaken.
Her mother and father had lived in the Rose Tower’s courtyard, next to a great Seelie lady who didn’t like children. The neighbor’s pride and joy had been an elaborate flower garden in her yard which she kept nourished with her magick even through the dead of winter. One day Aislinn accidently left her favorite doll at the edge of the garden and the lady had incinerated it on the spot, making Bella’s best friend cry. Bella had been so angry that she’d stood in her parents’ yard and stared hard at her neighbor’s labor, those roses, lilies, and orchids she kept so perfectly tended, and had wished them to wilt and die.
By the morning Bella’s will had been done. All that was left of the woman’s beautiful garden was rows of drooping gray flower heads and scorched grass.
That was Unseelie magick, dark magick. Bella had begun to wonder about her bloodline. Began to suspect. And then she’d noticed some of her other stray dark thoughts begin to manifest: her wish that her mother’s piano would be destroyed so she wouldn’t have to take lessons anymore; her hope that the water main in the school would break so they would have a free day.
And then she’d known for certain she was strong Unseelie.
She’d wondered if her mother had had an affair with one of the Unseelie court males, but the Rose and Black Towers had almost no interaction at all. In addition, her mother’s blood hardly ran hot, and she was not at all inclined to passion or impulsiveness. No, it was more likely that her father was really her father, but that somewhere down her genetic line someone had strayed to Unseelie and by some trick of fate the blood had shown up so gloriously bright in her.