“Hah!” I said, extremely pleased with myself.
Excellent, he said and I could tell he meant it. This mind-to-mind communication was the best.
I continued playing with the rock as we walked.
Allard told me the forest path marked the boundary of the Verge and every so often he’d have me try to walk through [AW1]the invisible barrier that we’d run into before.
I had so many questions to ask him, and he was willing to answer, but he kept bringing the topic back to how he could help me escape from the Verge.
Syla is planning something terrible, he said, and she will want to use you for some dire purpose.
“We’ll leave together,” I said, because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Allard to the untender mercies of Syla and her son.
He shook his head.
In this shape? How long do you think I would remain alive if mortals saw me?
“We’ll make Syla reverse the curse,” I said.
She will not, he said, and changed the subject yet again.
The sun was nearly down when we came to a part of the Verge I had not yet seen. I saw little winking purple lights all around a bush with dark green berries.
“Fireflies?” I guessed and Allard laughed.
It was a good sound.
Look again, he said.
I did and I realized that what I was seeing was not flying bugs but tiny little fairies. I thought of Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell and wondered if J.M. Barrie had been inspired to write his masterpiece by a visit to the Verge.
They flew up in my face as if to examine me, then flew away.
“I scared them,” I said, disappointed.
No, they simply have a very short attention span.
He held out his hand to me. A tiny, dark green berry rested there.
Taste, he encouraged.
“Thank you, Allard,” I said and took the berry from him and put it in my mouth.
It tasted of nothing more than the inside of my mouth[AW2] but when I swallowed, it hit my stomach like a six-course Christmas feast with all the trimmings. I could taste each dish separately—roast turkey and mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts wrapped in bacon, and warm sourdough rolls and green bean casserole, which I secretly love but always pretended to hate because it was made with canned stuff and my parents hated using canned stuff.
I could even taste the persimmon pudding and sweet whipped cream.
Good? He asked.
“Yes, Allard, it was very good, thank you.”
I wanted you to have your Christmas feast, he said.
I’d forgotten that it was almost Christmas. Allard’s kindness suddenly made me want to cry. Instead I grabbed his furry shoulders and impulsively pulled him close…close enough to kiss.
Hildegarde, he said, and though he wore a rough pair of linen breeches much like those Marus wore, the clothing did little to contain his erection.
He was bending his great beastly head toward mine when Marus suddenly came thrashing down the path, wildly waving a crude iron dagger.
My first reaction was not fear but curiosity. Is that the weapon that ended my mother’s life?
“You human slut!” he roared. “You reject me and treat this thing tenderly?”
I could see the fur on Allard’s back and shoulders rise in a threat-display but I put my hand on his arm. I didn’t want him getting anywhere near that dagger if it were true, as Syla had told me, that iron would kill fairies.
“You’re half-human yourself,” I reminded Marus. “And my cousin. Do you know what happens when cousins have sex with each other?”
“Never say that,” he said. “Never call me human.”
“Okay,” I said, and made myself shrug. “You’re inhuman.”
As I’d hoped, that ratcheted things up considerably. Marus was a bully and I’d had some experience with bullies. Meeting his threats with contempt would enrage him and tempt him to make a mistake.
“You bitch!” he screamed and he swung the dagger in a wide arc.
He was aiming for my neck but before his arm had even begun the downward motion, Allard was on him like a dog on a bone.
They wrestled for the knife as I tried to find something, anything, I could use for a weapon.
And then I heard Allard scream.
I turned, horrified, to see him fall, bright blood spurting from the wound Marus had inflicted.
“No!” I screamed, and rushed at Marus, who easily swatted me away, backhanding me with such force that I fell to the ground.
He pounced then and began tearing at my clothes, ripping the tunic from neckline to hem so that it fell away.
Exposing the tattoo on my hip.
It was glowing as if on fire, searing my flesh as if I were being branded.
I howled in pain and scrabbled away from the witchling who stepped forward with a sneer on his face and then…stopped as another man stepped out of the trees.
“My lord,” he said, and dropped to his knees in a sign of total submission.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The fairy ignored Marus and looked at me.
He was unmistakably my father. He looked like a slightly older, much more perfect version of Hugh, though I’d never seen an expression as cold as his on my brother’s face. I tried to meet his gaze calmly but the anger radiating from him was so intense, I could almost feel it physically.
All of a sudden I found myself thinking that this was like a bad joke. A fairy, a witch, and a mortal walk into the Verge....
For a moment we all stood there, looking at each other. Then, when the fairy turned toward Allard, Marus began moving backwards on his knees, his movements as frantic as a cornered mouse.
I stepped toward him, not sure of what I intended, but I stopped when an unfamiliar voice spoke in my head.
Let him go, the voice said. What has happened here?
“Marus stabbed Allard.”
I looked at Allard again. His fur had faded from a rich brown to a sickly orange. Some tufts of hair were falling out, leaving behind patches of red, raw flesh, as if he had radiation sickness.
“I think he used an iron knife,” I added.
The man’s eyes flickered to the shape on the ground and his cold expression melted into alarm. “Allard,” he said aloud, taking an uncertain step forward.
“He’s under an enchantment,” I said. “He can’t speak.”
The man leaned over Allard, examining the wound and the dagger that was buried hilt-deep in his body.
“You are not mistaken,” he said. “It is iron. I cannot touch it without harming myself.”
Cannot. I’d noticed that the way fairies speak was always quite formal, as if it were beneath their dignity to use contractions. But maybe it’s because English is not their native language.
Focus! my inner voice admonished me as my thoughts skittered off in a dozen directions to avoid the reality right in front of me.
Allard is dying. You can help him. I was not sure if it was my own thought or the fairy’s but it shook me out of my torpor.
“Get out of my way,” I said and the fairy who was my father looked as if he wanted to admonish me for my rudeness but I was tired of being Miss Nice Guy. If iron was fairy kryptonite, then it was time for a mortal to step in.
I leaned over Allard and took his hand. I could feel his pain. I reached out to grasp the dagger’s hilt and a searing pain shot through my arm.
WTF? Yes, I now knew I was part fae but I’d handled iron objects all my life without harm.
It’s the Verge, Allard said. It has brought out your fairy nature.
Well damn.
And then I realized that I didn’t need to actually touch the thing to remove it. I knew from a long-ago first aid class that pulling a weapon out of a wound was not best practices but I could see the iron was poisoning him from the inside. He couldn’t wait for a better option.
“This is probably going to hurt,” I said.
And it probably won’t work, I thought to myself.
I have confidence in you, Hildegarde, he thought back.
I looked at the dagger and concentrated hard. It moved maybe half an inch and as it did, Allard groaned.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Continue,” the newcomer said.
I whipped my head around and met his ice blue eyes. “Do not tell me what to do,” I said.