Now they huddled, panicked, trapped at court, no more able to sift back out than I could sift in. I could feel them, this race I was supposed to save, their shallow fear and unrest. Their impatience and mistrust as they waited for their new queen to move their seat of power from a dying world, unaware it was impossible.
I’d not told them. Apparently Cruce hadn’t either. Only the prior queen had known their fate was irrevocably bound to the planet. Cruce’s silence on that score was a blessing for which I was grateful. If he’d been feeling vengeful (and God knows, he’d looked vengeful when I’d last seen him), he could have told both Courts the truth and led them to war against us, spitefully wiping out as much of the human race as he could, preventing us from escaping off world.
But he hadn’t. He’d vanished and we’d not heard a peep nor seen a sign of him since.
What power Cruce had! He held the fate of an entire race and a planet in his hands. Bitter over the queen’s choice of me as successor, harboring no love for humans and even less for Seelie, what was he doing now?
No doubt hunting for a way to cheat death, seeking some object of power or loophole.
I sighed. If dying would save the Unseelie, I believed Cruce might actually do it. But save the Seelie? What did he care if they died, along with so many humans we couldn’t get off world in time?
Like Cruce and the Seelie, the Unseelie, too, had vanished. I had no idea if he’d taken them off somewhere or they’d decided to flee our dying world while they could still sift, lumber, slither, or crawl into the Silvers.
My parents had finally agreed to leave and go off world tomorrow night but only because I’d promised to join them in two days.
That was never going to happen. Barrons could handle me dying in front of him. I would never do that to my parents. Parents should never have to watch their children die.
I couldn’t shake the feeling there was still something I could do.
But what?
Even the sidhe-seers had given up searching through the old lore, and had either already gone off world or were spending their last days with people they loved, enjoying time on our planet until they were forced off.
I had half a song, Cruce had the other half. And never the twain would meet.
“Ms. Lane.” A man fell into step beside me as I walked slowly toward the brilliant lights of BB&B. Busy admiring my last days of looking at my store, my home, I absently murmured, “Jayne.” Then, “Inspector Jayne!” I whirled in the street to gape at him. If I’d seen him before I’d heard his voice, I wouldn’t have recognized him.
Now I knew why Dani had given me a funny look when Enyo had told us Jayne was dead or missing in action, but she’d never gotten around to telling me he’d turned Seelie prince. “Everyone believes you’re dead or MIA,” I exclaimed.
He smiled faintly. “I left before the transformation became too obvious. They’d not have followed me. I’d trained them to kill the Fae.”
Now he was as Fae as me. The tall, robust Liam Neeson look-alike had become a muscled, younger version of himself with the characteristic Fae long tawny hair, iridescent eyes, and a degree of smoldering sensuality that was disturbing. Like all Fae, he was beautiful.
“The wife’s not complaining,” he said with a soft snort.
“I’m sure she’s not,” I murmured.
“Says it’s like the old days, when we first met. My wee ones think it’s the finest sort of thing. Though I’ve lost the ability to sift. You?”
“A few days back was the last time it worked.”
“We’re dying, aren’t we? Not just the world but you and I.”
I nodded and told him what I hadn’t told most people, cautioning him if he hadn’t already moved his family off world, he needed to see to their safety. Say his goodbyes because even if he left, he wouldn’t survive and his children might end up watching him die.
“Do you know what will happen? Will we simply blip out of existence? Or will we actually die somehow?”
“I have no idea.” I’d wondered that myself.
“I remember the day you fed me your tea and sandwiches. You opened my eyes, showed me what was happening. And you just opened my eyes again. I thank you for that. I’d have died last year, blundered into some alley, probably lost my family, too. I’ll send them through when I must. How long do we have?”
“There’s no telling. A week at best before…” I trailed off, trying to think of a way to explain what I sensed. Not that a black hole was going to touch the Earth but that the distortion they were causing was going to do something wholly new and catastrophic beyond belief. “I’d send them tomorrow night. That’s when my parents are leaving.”
He nodded. “So, you’re the Fae queen now.”
“And you’re a Seelie prince.”
“What the fuck,” he said softly.
“Probably all the Unseelie we ate.”