Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W ith the appearance of Zalan's troops, the Seelie scattered into the woods.

"Follow them and set wards around the stones so they can't get back in," Zalan ordered a warrior beside him.

"I'll show you the way," Saul said and disappeared with a large group to pursue the fleeing Seelie.

"How did you know we were in trouble? I've been trying to contact you for weeks," Eli asked.

"I was in the wilds and had a vision," Zalan said as if it explained everything. "I thought Vincenzo would be here."

"Baby brother didn't seem to think it was important enough."

Zalan pulled a face. "He will now. It matters not. My warriors are more than capable. I see you have a few additions to your own family." Rosa blushed vividly under the splatters of Seelie blood as Zalan's mismatched eyes stared her down.

"Deryn's blood," he stated.

Rosa didn't know whether to bow or not, so she smiled awkwardly. "I'm Rosa. It's nice to meet one of Eli's brothers."

Something in Zalan's face shifted fractionally, and he gave her a nod before searching behind her.

"Balthasar." The Unseelie prince hugged him as best he could in full armor.

"It has been too long, Uncle. Thank you for coming to save the day," Balthasar said.

"Tell me, brother, were my eyes deceiving me, or I did I see your firstborn son? Or was it simply his ghost coming to defend Gwaed Lyn?" Zalan asked.

"Can't it be both?" Eldon replied from the back of the crowd.

Nimue came behind him, bleeding heavily from an arrow in her shoulder. Zalan's face broke into a smile of genuine delight as he looked him up and down.

"My dear boy," he said, holding him at arm's length. "There is much we need to discuss your adventures. I've missed you arguing with me."

"My fire is your fire, Uncle. You're welcome at it anytime you wish."

"Answer me one question, little hawk. Why are you protecting this creature?" His blade was under Nimue's chin in a movement so fast that Rosa's supernatural eyes couldn't follow it.

"She's one of us, Trahaearn." Eldon's golden eyes flashed. At the sound of his Unseelie name, Zalan's eyes went from Nimue to his nephew.

"For her sake, I hope so," he said, lowering his sword. "You'd best get that arrow out of her before the poison spreads."

Rosa loosed a tight breath. She didn't get along with Nimue, but she didn't want Zalan to kill her just for being half Seelie.

"Are you hurt anywhere, my love?" Balthasar's hand was warm on the small of her back. With the question, Rosa was made aware of the hundred aches and stings that covered her from head to toe. Her sword arm was so heavy, she could barely hold it.

"Take Rosa back upstairs," Eli suggested. "She's never wielded the sword for so long before, and it takes its toll." Eli cupped her face affectionately despite the blood that covered her. "It all comes with a price, my dear."

In a daze, Rosa let Balthasar take her back upstairs where he helped to wash away the gore from her and held her tightly when she finally began to shake.

"Sit," Eldon pointed at the chair by the fireplace. He switched the lights on in the cottage and put water on to boil.

This is a stupid idea. You should've asked Eli to do it , he cursed inwardly as he dropped various herbs and barks into a bowl.

As if knowing mishaps were inevitable with the Vanes, the Wylt cottage had a large and well stocked first-aid kit. He pulled out bandages and ignored the medicines and vials of penicillin that would be useless against Seelie poisons. He filled the bowl with steaming water and put it on a tray. Calm your shit, Blaise . He took a deep breath and went back into the lounge room.

Nimue had tossed a blanket over the chair to protect it from the blood that stained her clothes and hair. A sheen of sweat covered her skin, the only sign of the poison that was eating its way through her.

"Here." Eldon handed her towel to cover her other shoulder and chest. "We are going to have to undo…" he gestured to her top. She leaned forward so he could untie the navy strings at the nape of her neck.

"Can you still feel your tongue?" he asked, cleaning her wound with the soaked flannel.

"Yes," she replied through gritted teeth. "Why?"

"I thought I'd better check. You haven't been this quiet since you came back."

"You've made it clear that you don't want to listen to anything I have to say," she replied, her blue eyes lowered to the dead coals in the fireplace. Eldon snapped his fingers, and it flamed to life in a wave of heat and light.

"Show-off." Nimue managed a ghost of a smile.

"I'm too busy to build a fire," Eldon countered.

The shaft of the arrow hadn't gone all the way through. He hoped it didn't have barbed ends. Guilt flickered through him. It should've been him with an arrow stuck in him. If Nimue hadn't acted, he could've been dead. If the Almighty would just let me die, for once .

"Drink this." He passed her a small vial. She knocked it back without question. "You're very trusting. What if it was poison?"

"If you wanted to kill me, you'd leave the arrow in. The Seelie poison would take longer and be crueler," Nimue answered, her pupils blowing out as the drug hit her. "I don't care if I live or die as long as it's in the sun. I'd rather it be at your hand than the queen's. It hardly matters. You've killed me already." The guilt inside him grew at the emptiness in her voice.

"The feeling is mutual then," he said. He twisted the shaft and tugged. She cried out, and he let it go.

"It's moving, Merlin! I can feel it burrowing." Nimue's voice filled with pain and panic. Ridges blossomed under her skin as the copper head of the arrow spread roots.

"I haven't seen anything like this before." He ran his fingers lightly over her skin, hating that he was weak enough to appreciate its softness. "I can't pull it or cut it out."

"Sing…sing," Nimue managed.

Eldon held a cloth to her nose as it started to bleed. "I don't know if it'll work, but it can only be removed with magic."

"If I am to die, I want it to be with your song in my ears."

Pale and bloody, she wasn't the monster that he'd created in his mind over the centuries, only that girl he'd danced, studied, laughed, and fought with.

"You aren't going to die," Eldon said firmly. He lifted her chin and fixed his golden eyes on her. "You and I have unfinished fucking business, and you aren't going anywhere until I get satisfaction. Do you hear me?"

Nimue nodded her head, her eyes not leaving his. "And to think I had to be at Death's door before I could really get you to see me, cariad. "

"It's too hard to look at you. It only reminds me of all that I lost," he admitted, her endearment ripping old wounds.

Nimue's eyes glazed over, the combination of poison and pain getting her to drop her cool facade at last. "I'm so sorry about your mother," she wept. "You were right. I didn't think. I believed they were only after you. I couldn't let them take you, and I didn't consider anything else. You treat me like I'm some monster when everything I did was because I loved you."

"It's been a long time, Nim." Eldon let her face go and held a fresh cloth to her weeping wound.

"To me, it was but a moment."

"And that's the problem right there!" Eldon's voice rose, unable to stop it. "To you, it was yesterday. To me it's been hundreds of years of getting over you. Don't you understand? I'm not the man you think I am. I'm not even a shadow of that man. The person you love is a ghost, nothing more." Nimue's eyes had closed against the tears filling them. He waited for her to argue, to berate him, but she sat so still. "Nimue?" He held a hand under her nose to feel her breath. Nothing.

"Oh, no you don't." He pulled her down on the floor next to the fire and gave her CPR. Her lips tasted of blood, tears, and apples as he filled her lungs with air. "God, help me!" he cried out. "Don't give her back only to take her again."

Power licked up his arms, through his chest, filling him until it felt like the very tips of his hair were on fire. Eldon placed a hand over her heart, the other on her forehead and began to sing.

He sang life, pure and bright as the sun. He sang of her, apple blossoms and laughter. How her joy used to illuminate any room she walked into. He sang to the copper-headed arrow inside her arm, calling it forth and breaking down the enchantments that were still clinging to it. While he sang, he saw her life unfolding inside of him. He felt her driving need to save him, how she'd been mocked and tortured by the Autumn Queen after she'd failed to deliver him. He saw her calling out to her father to save her as the queen had whipped her, how Ryn Eurion had turned his back on her.

Bored at last, the queen had put her in the lake, the cold crushing blackness, locked in a place half alive and half dead. He felt the broken fissures in Nimue's mind and how the queen had created them to taunt her at every moment that she was back in the real world.

Eldon sang until he could sing no more. Underneath his hands, Nimue was glowing with power. The bloody arrow lay beside her, ejected from her shoulder. Eldon tossed the infernal object into the fire. As it caught alight, Nimue shuddered in his arms, and healing light flowed through her. Her eyes opened, and she touched his face, her gaze filled with light and wonder that had been missing since her return to Gwaed Lyn.

"You sang," she said with a smile that pierced him. Her magic rose and brushed against his, sending a tremor through him.

"Rest now," he replied gruffly, placing a blanket over her. "The Autumn Queen will torment you no longer."

"Thank you, Merlin," Nimue whispered as she curled into a ball, bringing the blanket up to her chin. "Thank you."

Eldon watched her a moment longer before stumbling up the stairs and throwing up in the toilet. Magic always came with a price, and healing Nimue was going to cost him more than his dinner. He stripped off his soiled clothes and climbed into the bath, turning on the hot tap of the shower. He watched the water turn red, brought his knees to his chest, and wept.

"I see the Creator has blessed you with the return of your lost, Merlin," Zalan said as he sat in a chair in Eli's chambers. "I imagine it would've given you quite the surprise."

Eli couldn't help the smile that curled his lips. "The return of a son is a joyous occasion, even with one as stubbornly pig-headed as mine."

"His power has changed. He would almost be a match for you if you were really to butt heads," Zalan said thoughtfully. "It'll be good for when she comes. If the gods are kind, we may get to kill her this time."

In the light of the fire, Eli watched his brother's mismatched eyes darken. One was strikingly blue and the other black from an injury of the Autumn Queen's making. The strangely god-touched and beautiful Zalan hadn't stood a chance in the Seelie court when he was a boy. He had suffered in their hands, and he wouldn't miss the chance to get his revenge.

"Can you feel the power returning?" Eli asked softly. "There are so many Unseelie under her rule, and they won't know what is happening to them."

"Are you thinking of going back, brother?" Zalan replied. "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to. The Aos Si, the Dark Lands and beyond are but a hazy memory to me now. You were already a man when the queen betrayed us all, and you remember what it was like."

"I've thought about it, but it's been too long. My family is here now, and the Gwaed Gam…"

"The Gam can manage themselves. We step in only when we have to. Most of them barely know we exist. They fear the threat of you and Balthasar, but they don't need you to babysit them." Zalan took a pipe from his coat and filled the air with clove-scented tobacco. "I follow my studies now, and the Gam under my rule keep to their own laws. The ones that came with me here are my handpicked elite. They come when I call, but they too keep to themselves in their own stronghold. They don't need me watching over them like children."

"Perhaps you are right," Eli sighed, sipping his whiskey. As his power was growing, his want or need for blood was growing less and less. "My family is still here, however. Rosa is new to her powers, and Merlin… I only just got him back. I won't let the queen or any long-forgotten allegiance to the Unseelie compromise that."

"You always were a soft touch with the children," Zalan said. "The girl is going to be stunning when she's trained. I could feel the power rolling off her when she wielded the sword. I don't think there was a soldier amongst my ranks who didn't want her."

"You'd best warn them not to try to seduce her. Balthasar will tear them apart if they so much as breathe in her direction, not to mention what Merlin may do," Eli said and laughed. "I'm pleased that they don't fight with each other."

"Merlin may care for her, but it's the half-breed Seelie girl his soul hums for." Zalan blew a fragrant cloud into the air. "I know I don't have to warn you how dangerous that liaison could be. The queen could be using her even now."

"She won't succeed. The queen has done something to her mind, but once I find a way to release her from it, Nimue will be herself again."

"You're a lot more forgiving than I remember; especially since it was her that cost you Deryn."

" Ryn cost me Deryn. Nimue was a girl that came to us much like Rosa. She was of the lower class but yearned for knowledge and a place in the world. We all loved her and Deryn most of all. She would want me to help her, to see past her rash actions. It was love that drove her, and Merlin is angry enough at her for the both of us," Eli replied with a shake of his head. "Maybe I am getting old enough to crave peace and happiness for my children. Rosa killed Ryn, and it was as if a burden was lifted that I had carried for so long I'd forgotten what it was like without it. Nimue made Merlin happy once. I want that for him, so I will help her and try to move on from what happened. Deryn would haunt me if I didn't."

"Your wife was a good woman. I miss her scolding you," Zalan replied, a smile stretching across his face. "The mighty Seren Du brought to heel by a human woman. I thought of only one other that could slaughter your will so easily. Gods, I adored Eirianwen. She was like ice and fire embodied in a woman."

"Eirianwen Eira," Eli breathed. "There's a name I haven't heard for centuries. Maybe my memory isn't as good as you seem to think."

"Or you've buried her," Zalan said.

"I had to bury my two great loves or drown in their loss. We live too long and love far too hard."

"That might be one of your traits, dear brother, not necessarily the Unseelie." Zalan got to his feet and stretched. "I was far smarter and devoted my life to understanding the unseen world. Women were a mystery I knew I could never solve."

"Wisest of brothers." Eli got to his feet and hugged his brother tightly to him. "Thank you for coming."

"You are the Seren Du. Time and lands do not change that," Zalan said letting him go. "I love you more than the breath in my body, brother. I'll always come to your aid."