The elf, Air King Cloudsylph. One of the four kings. Her mouth dried.
She hadn’t been in the presence of a full elf for fifteen years, let alone a royal. His magic washed over her and her lips trembled at the sweetness of it, the way his energy brushed away the vestige of fear from the Darkfolk, the faintest weariness from the step into the gray mist.
She avoided eyes that she knew would be ice-blue, set in an unlined heart-shaped face with a deep widow’s peak of silver hair. His hair was manelike and flowed to his shoulders, covering his pointed ears.
He wore an exquisitely built suit of pale gray silk, a white linen shirt that was only slightly paler than his skin and a light blue tie. Everything in her shuddered—he was dressed as a human and mortal. Her world tipped.
Jenni reminded herself that they needed her.
His first words emphasized how much she needed the Lightfolk. “We have the best elemental healers on call to repair whatever trauma or physical problems that your brother might have endured in our service…his service to the Lightfolk and the Eight.”
Jenni hunkered into her balance. “So there are rewards for being injured in service for the Eight. I hadn’t noticed.”
The king’s gaze went cold. “The Eight issued formal thanks and paid a rich reward to the proper Mistweaver after the incident at the dimensional portal fifteen years ago.”
Jenni inclined her head. “To Rothly, and I suppose you mean that you tried to heal or help him.” She smiled as cold a smile as she could manage. “Yet I never sensed he was complete, as I would have.” She inhaled deeply. “When I checked on him in the mist this morning, he was still crippled.”
Since she couldn’t look the elf in his eyes without being caught by his glamour, she stared at the perfectly formed pale pink elven lips. “And you must not have rewarded him so well before, since he risked his life for a title of ‘Prince of the Lightfolk.’ You tempted a maimed man and sent him to die.”
The air went still and thin, too thin to breathe.
CHAPTER 5
ARIC STEPPED NEXT TO HER, GRASPED HER hand. Bonds she’d thought were ruptured between them—mental, emotional, magical—snapped back into full being.
Do not anger the king! he warned her telepathically.
Sensations flamed through her with his touch. She couldn’t grasp Aric’s emotions, didn’t dare stop to consider them. He was right, she’d said something stupid, but she couldn’t take it back.
Aric continued his mental scolding. It was the King of Water, the merman, who sent the dwarf to you and Rothly. The and Queen of Earth, the dwarves, approved. The older couples. They did not tell the Cloudsylphs or Emberdrakes.
Great, now she knew more about the Eight’s internal politics than she’d ever wanted, and was tangled in them like in seaweed.
“I will accept an apology for that,” the king said, each word a bullet of ice.
Jenni risked a fleeting glance in his eyes. They remained light, and she thought she’d seen a flash of pain. “Then what I said was not the truth. I apologize.”
“Questioning the actions of the Eight is not wise,” Cloudsylph said with absolutely no emotion in his voice.
Jenni felt all too human, all too vulnerable. A lifting of his finger could remove all the air from the room and she would die…except that Aric’s warm hand was wrapped around hers and he could live without air for a time, and could keep her alive.
She looked out the window at the city, gray-block buildings diminishing in size to the brown-yellow plains. “Yet you seem to think that the Eight need me.”
He tapped his fingertips together. Once. Jenni thought it was a mortal gesture he was trying to mimic. “As you need us to save your brother.”
Again her chest constricted, this time from emotion. She dragged in a breath, wet her lips. “Do I?”
The elf’s brows lifted in the faintest arch. “You may be able to find your brother, but will you be in time to save him? Your father told me once that staying in the interdimension decays the life force. Can you travel through the interdimension to him?”
Jenni figured the king knew the answer was no. Her lips were now cold and she didn’t want to use energy to raise her body temperature.
After a minute-long silence, the king continued. “I didn’t think so. And you can’t tell where he is, geographically?”
“I can’t pinpoint his location.” All she knew was that Rothly was to the northwest.
“We know he is in your ‘gray mist,’ but not where in the real world he stepped into it—geographically. It is my understanding that the closer you are to where he might be in this world, the easier it will be for you to bring him from the interdimension into reality. We sense he is not alone in the interdimension, but shadleeches feast on him, draining his magic.” The king’s fingers curled in a tiny flex. “Can you separate him from his pursuers and pull him out without bringing them, too?”
A shivery breath sifted through her. The elf’s phrasing sounded as if it had come directly from one of the Mistweaver family journals, one she’d thought had been personal. How many journals did they have transcriptions of? How many of the Mistweaver secrets did the Eight know? And how many of the Eight had read them?
“Your father was my friend,” Cloudsylph said.
Jenni didn’t remember that. Didn’t recall Cloudsylph being in their lives. He was of a royal line and the Mistweavers were “mongrels.”
“I can send warriors to protect you and him,” the king said.
“A little late for that.”
For the first time he showed anger. “I was not responsible for the deaths of your family. I fought and suffered. We all suffered.”
“But you survived, became a new royal and part of the Eight. All of the Eight survived and four of the old Eight got to transfer to another, richer dimension. My family paid for your survival and that portal with their lives. You did not save them.”
“You do not know all that occurred. You were not with your family when the Darkfolk attacked. Nor did you save them.”
Jenni went up in flames. Literally.
She let the heat of her fury burn her clothes away, flash her being into fire, then smoke. She shot through the air vent, melting the grate, hurtled out of the building. There was a snow-fat dark cloud in the sky and she grabbed energy from it, drew electricity around her and became a lightning bolt. She concentrated and snapped onto the ground—
—into an icy stairwell. A rectangular concrete hole in the alley six blocks from her home, a basement access to a business.
She collapsed into a heap, so completely drained she wouldn’t be able to move for hours.
She hadn’t been smart.
And she was naked.
And a shadleech separated itself from a brick building and fluttered close.
The gray magical being-scrap bent itself. Jenni’s human sight saw a large crow tilting its head and hopping toward her. Its claws scritched on the stairwell’s concrete. The thing came close enough that she smelled old bubblegum. She shuddered. It would take only a wisp of thought for that dark thing to call others…and the great Dark one, who would feast on her.
If she got a second chance, she would work on anger management. Work on growing beyond grief and guilt.
Another hop and the shadleech’s sharp beak pierced her wrist. Hurt! Like a nail had been driven into her, pinning her. Then she felt an awful tug, as if it drew magic from the very threads of her muscles, the marrow of her bones. She thrashed in pain, but still heard the thing’s clicking noise