Trapped-Legend

By Claudy Conn

Magical powers, a castle, and a charming prince sound like the ingredients for a fairy-tale life, but for BJ Mulroy, reality turns out to be a whole lot more complicated.

BJ is a Fios, which means she can see both the Seelie and the Unseelie Fae even when they invoke the Feth Fiada that makes them invisible to most humans. She hadn’t asked for the magical power, and often she wishes she couldn’t see the evil drones who are appearing more and more often in our human world. But see them she does, and she can’t ignore the danger they pose—nor her responsibility as a Fios to combat the Dark Fae.

The castle is Castlesand, the ancestral home of her new husband, Brian, a warm and caring Druid high priest with only a few months to live. Though they care for each other, the marriage is a strategic alliance rather than a love match. Brian needs BJ’s help in making sure Castlesand doesn’t fall into the clutches of a dangerous relative who wants the estate no matter what he has to do and who he has to hurt—including Brian and BJ—to get it.

The charming prince is Danté, a Fae royal who is too attractive for any woman’s sanity. But while she’s as hot-blooded as the next woman. BJ does not want to be the plaything of an immortal prince, no matter how yummy he is. Besides, there’s the matter of the seventeenth-century hunk in the painting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claudy Conn
• Release date: Dec 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465930903

Claudy Conn

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Claudy Conn is a multi published author who got her start with her bestselling historical/regency romances.She tells us that she fell in love with the fantasy/paranormal genre and created a world of paranormal.She hopes you will read and enjoy and join her on her facebook where she loves to interact with her readers.page.http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claudy-Conn-Paranormal-Romance-Author/135826686471445

Book preview

~ Prologue ~

LONG, GOLD HAIR framed her otherworldly beauty. Substantial height, a provocative form, and elegant style dominated her movements. However, one should not mistake her stunning appearance as her greatest asset. She was Queen Aaibhe of the Seelie Fae and her power was formidable.

The Queen of the Tuatha Dé (otherwise known as the Fae/Faery) had untapped might. Her magic was enormous and her wisdom unfathomable. Those attributes were her inherent right. The Fae were matriarchal, and Aaibhe ruled her Realm with quiet wisdom. She inspired absolute reverence from her Seelie Fae.

Her iridescent eyes were too bright, too full of knowledge for a human to look directly into. At that moment they were narrowed into slits in her extraordinary face. Her nose twitched slightly, and a sneer flitted across her lovely features.

The sneer had been the result of her thoughts, and those thoughts were centered on Gaiscioch, the Fae traitor. He had turned on them all, and he had now accumulated enough power to accomplish his hateful obsessions—if she didn’t act swiftly and wisely.

The queen of the Seelie Fae had been dealing with the very real possibility that Gaiscioch might be able to bring about the destruction of the Fae and human realms. Gais wanted to remodel those realms.

Aaibhe had lived more than seventy thousand years. She had survived the destruction of her world, Danu, and had seen what the ravages of emotions could do to Fae and humans alike. She could not allow the ice-cold anger she felt strangle her clear thoughts because...

Time was running out, and Aaibhe understood this all too well. Time, a thing an immortal Fae never contemplated in the past, had quickly become all-important.

Time was closing in—it crept with terrible tentacles and threatened to choke all living things until there was nothing but decay left in its horrendous path.

The festivals loomed dark and terrifying in the near future. It would be during those upcoming two festivals that the magic fabric of the Walls that held the monsters back would be ripped at the seams—unless they contained the growing power Gaiscioch had acquired.

Gaiscioch had gathered and trained his malevolent Unseelie forces with patience and precision. He was of course quite mad, but nevertheless he was still a brilliant militant. Although he had been an accomplished Seelie Fae warrior for thousands of years, he had turned on his own, to an end that loomed deadly.

What Gais wanted was what he had always wanted—to bring the human race to its knees. He had told Aaibhe and her Council how wrong they had been to sign the Treaty with man on that fateful night. He had told them all Man was meant to worship them—she remembered now the bitterness that had lined all his words.

Aaibhe paced for a moment as she recalled one of so many conversations with her once (she had believed) dear friend, Gaiscioch. He had argued, and not unreasonably, that their race’s god-like status amongst the humans was supreme. He argued that the Seelie Fae’s unimaginable powers demanded they govern the puny, helpless humans. He had claimed Ireland, so like their Danu, belonged to them. His argument had been sound, but she had convinced the Council of what she knew was a fact: humans would always war to be free...and they, the Fae, were sick of war.

She sighed and chastised herself for being blind to what had happened to him over the centuries. She knew of course that he had loved her once...

Yes, he had loved her until he realized she had willingly, devotedly, completely given her love to a human, a high Druid priest...a human instead of him!

Now she knew it was Gais who had murdered her beloved, and now, he meant to destroy the human and Seelie Realms if he could. And that had begun to look more and more possible each day he remained in the Dark Realm to scheme with Dark Queen Morrigu. She wondered how he could tolerate the Dark Realm—for it was a barren world of mist and fog, and Seelie Fae were creatures of light. He was imprisoned within the walls there, but he had managed with his Seelie magic to escape for short periods on many occasions—too many occasions.

Gaiscioch’s intended actions were a threat to all life, as they—Seelie Fae and humans alike—presently knew it. If he managed to free the Unseelies... The notion made the Queen shudder unconsciously.

The Unseelies were the Dark King’s mistakes during his experiments in Fae DNA—close to human cloning experiments. The result was a world of dark, bitter, and murderous creatures. They wanted what Gais promised: the freedom to feed on humans.

With all her might—with all the magic and power at her disposal, Aaibhe did not believe she could capture and execute Gaiscioch without help. In the end, she believed it would be a small band of humans—her Druid priests—and half humans that would bring him low and end the terrible onslaught that had already begun.

Queen Aaibhe closed her eyes and spoke softly in ancient Danu to the bright orb she had called to her private chambers. She held it in her delicate hands and looked deep. What the orb showed her made her feel certain, helpless dread, a feeling she had not had in more than a thousand years.

The orb gave her a clear picture of the Unseelie abominations Gais had freed to roam the Human Realm. They were called Fae because of part of their DNA, but their monstrous minds and bodies were born to maim and destroy. The Dark Fae used Glamour to disguise themselves in the human world, and they were feeding unchecked in three of her favorite cities, Edinburgh, Inverness and Dublin.

Gaiscioch had successfully freed more of the devils than she had thought possible. Every time she repaired a rift in the fabric of the Prison Wall, he managed to develop another portal. What she needed now was to see where he meant to strike next. Aaibhe cooed to the orb, encouraging it to show her with the power it had what the very near future held, but the orb made a whimpering sound. It could no longer see and display the days to come in its magical depths. Something was interfering...

Queen Aaibhe’s eyelids closed.

Her Prince of Dagda, Breslyn, already had enough on his plate. His love of humans, so at variance with most Fae, enabled him to understand and deal with them well, but the latest assignment she had given him had him fully occupied.

It was time she called on her Prince of Lugh, Danté...although his understanding of humans was, at best, limited. However, he would take his mission as absolute, and for this mission Danté was the prince she needed. And it was time for another special human to join their team.

Some women in the human world could see past the magic and human Glamour both the Seelie and Unseelie Fae were capable of creating—illusion if you will. These women could see past the Fae power of Féth Fiada (invisibility), and more than that, a select few had latent, hidden powers that needed to be developed. These women were known amongst the Fae as Shee Fios—meaning Fae Seers.

In ancient times, before the Treaty, Fae warrior hunters had tracked them, gathered them, and blinded the Shee Fios, thus rendering them useless to detect the Fae and warn their villages.

Many Fios were slaughtered at the hands of the trackers. Those times were vicious...and thankfully many Shee Fios escaped and learned to hide amongst their fellow humans. Shee Fios learned how to disguise their talents. They learned how to keep their secrets.

If you are not a Fios—and there are very few—you might notice a group of tall, exceptionally stunning women and men in a theater or a restaurant. You might think them celebrities. They are probably Fae. You would never know—how could you?

But a Shee Fios would know.

She would see through their magic. She would see past the Glamour that hid the innate alien just beneath the surface. She would see the iridescent eyes. She would recognize the immortals—see them as bewitchingly beautiful, but immortals all the same and different than we. A Shee Fios would always know.

Queen Aaibhe looked to one in particular, one with powers the young Fios was yet to discover.

Her name, BJ Mulroy, and this, this is her story.

"Life as it flows is so much time wasted, and nothing can ever be recovered or truly possessed save under the form of eternity, which is also the form of art."

—Santayana

~ One ~

BJ HAD HEARD someone say, when she first found herself alone in the world, the best possible placement for a child when that child has been orphaned must be with the closest relative.

Ha! So not true for me, BJ thought as she straightened her room and made ready for another day, much the same as the day before. Her life was about to take on new depths, although she didn’t know it. At that moment, she had the business of everyday chores, although this day she couldn’t shake all the memories—memories that flitted vividly through her mind.

She had been the only child—the only daughter of parents she had thought were the best in the world. Losing them for her had been an ordeal that had made her grow up almost overnight. However, even then, all those years ago when they had been alive and she had been happy, her life had never been quite normal. It didn’t matter, the abnormality, when her parents were there for her because they had made her feel special, and they had made her feel safe.

She was twelve when that all came to a screeching halt in a car accident.

She survived.

Her mother had been a fairly new Irish immigrant to NYC and didn’t have any relatives in New York. Her dad was Irish too, but he did—a sister, and she took BJ in, but her Aunt Lisa didn’t really want her, and from the start BJ knew it.

She saw Lisa’s point of view, had from the beginning. Lisa wasn’t so bad. She didn’t abuse her. Rather, she didn’t really know BJ was alive. Lisa was young. She wanted a life of her own. BJ was in the way, so Lisa did what she could. Mostly she ignored her young niece. She housed BJ, fed her, clothed her, and washed any guilt away by telling herself the kid was cared for and not shipped off to some foster home.

BJ may have been only twelve, but she understood her aunt’s point of view. She really did. However, understanding and wanting were two very different things. The child in her longed for a bond with her aunt, and that child got zilch.

BJ actually looked up to her Aunt Lisa. She saw her own dear father in her aunt’s features and reached out to her not as a parent but as a friend. Those were the early days when hope still resided in her heart. Growing up for BJ Mulroy was a lonely proposition. And then things got worse.

BJ was what her aunt called ‘knock-down gorgeous’. Aunt Lisa didn’t like that at all. BJ had been sixteen when she studied herself in the mirror and wondered what her aunt had meant. She didn’t see the beauty her aunt Lisa was so ‘concerned’ about. Yes, her hair was an unusual shade of golden-streaked amber, yes, it was thick and shiny, but her aunt was absolutely a beauty, with pure gold hair and china-blue eyes.

BJ told herself that her own eyes were only a dark shade of blue, that her nose was too pert, and her lips probably too full. Her aunt was the beauty—not she.

At any rate, her aunt Lisa made her stay in her room when she had ‘friends’ over. BJ did what she was told, always—she wanted her aunt to love her.

When she turned seventeen her aunt decided she was old enough to be on her own. She found and set BJ up in a small, one-bedroom apartment over a very respectable restaurant in Roslyn, and BJ finished out her senior year of high school there. She didn’t have a car and had to get to school on her bike. Rainy days were hard. She managed.

Now she was twenty-one, and where was she? Still living in that same apartment. She had become friends with the restaurant owner, Izzy—dear Izzy—and had taken a job working there. She used to waitress but now tended bar a couple of nights a week and managed the restaurant the other five. She was putting herself through college, majoring in English Literature, and thought she might like to teach one day.

The Hunt Club Restaurant (not really a Hunt Club) was a casual but very nice place that Izzy had gone to great lengths to landscape and decorate over the years. Inside the bar was separated from the dining area by a half wall that housed large, leafy green plants.

Izzy was leaving for the evening and waved herself off. It occurred to BJ as she watched the plump, dark-haired woman that Izzy Minor was the best friend she had in the world. Izzy was a tough, middle-aged woman who had helped and encouraged BJ from the first day she had arrived. However, BJ never told Izzy she had a secret...a very huge secret.

BJ knew she could never tell her she could see Fae. How could she tell her that? Izzy would think she was nuts. So she kept it to herself. She had to. She knew all the old stories. She couldn’t give herself away to the Fae. Her mother had told her the Fae used to blind Seers, and that was what she was—a Fios (a woman who could see the Fae).

She knew the Fae supposedly no longer blinded or killed Seers. She wasn’t so sure, however, they wouldn’t whisk one off if discovered to live in Faery! No way did she want that. BJ kept a low profile whenever she spotted a group of Fae and never let on that she could see through their human facade.

It was already late May, and although she was used to her awful schedule of school, work, school, she felt a little blue as she realized she didn’t have a life. Because it was a Tuesday it was very slow both in the restaurant and the bar. Only a couple of local men were seated at the bar she tended. They were enjoying their drink and quiet conversation when he came in.

She noticed him at once.

He was tall and thin, too thin. He had a nice, warm smile and soft, gray eyes. She guessed him to be around thirty years old.

He sat down like he was exhausted and took a long breath of air before he ordered a Guinness. She said gently, because he looked like he needed a friend, Rough day?

He scanned her face and made up his mind about something. It looked like he had just made a weighty decision as he replied, Rough day.

He had a lovely Irish brogue, and she thought of her parents. Her dad was Irish American born and bred in New York, but her mother had come to New York all dewy-eyed and eighteen. BJ heard her mother’s Irish lilt in her head. His voice brought that back to her, and she couldn’t help it—she warmed to him at once. Okay, Irish, anything you need to get off your chest...you go ahead.

He looked directly into her blue eyes and said as he extended his hand, Brian—Brian Carrick.

BJ Mulroy, she countered warmly.

Ah, a kinswoman. His smile started in his twinkling eyes, but he sounded tired.

Yup, she answered brightly, on both sides. My mom was a Kilkenny.

He nodded and sipped his beer, and she asked, Are you visiting family or friends here in Roslyn?

A half smile fluttered across his face as he sighed. No...I just had a bit of business to take care of here in the area.

She loved the singsong of his Irish accent and wanted it to go on. I hope it was successful for you? She eyed him doubtfully because his face was drawn in sadness.

Aye, it went well.

Then my next question is why are you looking so glum?

Am I? Tired, I suppose. I probably should go back to my motel room and make my arrangements to return home.

Home being South—or North Ireland? She was fascinated. She had done some traveling with her parents when she was a child. They had gone to Disney, and another trip they had taken had been a beautiful vacation on Shelter Island. Those were memories—the travel brochures in her room were just ‘wishes’.

Aye, home is in southeast Ireland, and...meaning no disrespect to yer lovely USA, but I miss it sorely.

Well, sure you do. Probably have a lady waiting on you back there.

She blushed as she saw the question in his eyes and realized how that had sounded. She was not interested in him romantically. She had no devious intentions by asking the question. It had only been idle chatter.

He answered her carefully. His entire demeanor changed. Anger seemed to light in his tired eyes. Then all at once it vanished, and the quiet that was major to his aura came back as he answered her. No lady back home...and I don’t suppose I’ll have any time now to repair the omission.

Time? You aren’t ancient, fella. You have lots of time. She laughed.

He sighed. Apparently not.

BJ’s eyebrows arched with puzzlement. What does that mean?

Don’t you get enough bad news bartending? You don’t need mine.

"I am only filling in. Lately I manage this place and play hostess. Tell me if you want to get it off your chest. Don’t if you want to keep it to yourself. I don’t want to pry." She had a feeling he really needed to talk.

He did need and wanted to talk—badly. So they did. He started by telling her all about his place in Ireland. It was called Castlesand Grange, which played like a dream in her imagination. She thought to herself—wow! They talked until late, and she was completely impressed with him, but it was his gentleness that drew her to him, not his obvious and understated wealth.

That was how it all started.

At any rate, he left feeling better, and she closed up the restaurant feeling somehow sad. She was sure something was terribly wrong in Brian’s life. She went back to the bar as it was still open for drinks and some of the locals weren’t ready to leave. Finally. She breathed a sigh of relief after the last customer departed and she locked up for the night.

That was when it happened. Sometimes she felt something and knew it was a whisper of things to come—BJ often got those feelings. Other times she got a blast of what was definitely on its way. What happened next foreshadowed what was coming—the Unseelie! She felt something merge with and enter the atmosphere. She brushed it off as one of her many inexplicable premonitions. And then it happened.

She had never seen a dark Fae before, though she had heard the stories from her mother. She knew a great deal of Fae history. However, she would not have believed they had escaped the Dark Realm had she not seen them with her own eyes, and there was no mistaking one of them when she saw it. She had closed up for the evening and was in the shadows of the parking lot when she saw them for the first time—two of them.

Her mouth opened, and she wished silently that it wasn’t happening—that somehow they weren’t there in her parking lot. Things were bad enough without this too...

She ducked her head and averted her gaze, even while telling herself behaving like an ostrich wouldn’t save her. However, they hadn’t noticed her yet as they stood with each other in conversation. Monsters, misshapen, drooling, and looking for food with shark eyes.

She was using the shadow of the building and shrubbery as camouflage as she headed for the narrow flight of wooden stairs to her apartment when she saw a car pull into the parking lot. Two young women jumped out.

She wanted to shout loud and clear, Get back in your car and drive off—go on, go, the restaurant is closed! Couldn’t they see the lights were out? However, if she made so public a display, she would draw the Dark Fae’s attention not only to herself, but to where she lived. Could they shift? Her mother had taught her that not all castes of dark Fae could shift.

The grotesque Unseelie moved closer to the girls, which put them in the glowing light of the street lamp, and BJ saw them in their full glory—abominations. They were things—creatures gross beyond measure. Grimacing in disgust, her hand went out involuntarily towards the young women.

What could she do? She had to do something. These things were throbbing with hunger. She could see the saliva dripping from the openings she presumed were their mouths.

Evidently they had the power to use what the Seelie Fae used to walk amongst humans, Glamour. The beautiful Seelie Fae used Glamour to hide their alien eyes and make them seem more human. These two were using Glamour, but it just barely concealed what they were. BJ heard one of them chanting and decided they were also using a spell to create the illusion of two attractive young men.

The women were giggling like schoolgirls, and BJ had her hand over her mouth with horror as she stilled the scream in her throat. Those two are in trouble. BJ’s mind started working overtime. Must do something. The human Glamour the two beasts used scarcely concealed their spidery bodies, but their mesmerizing spell seemed to have the two girls in a trance. BJ looked around her, determined to do something that would save the girls—preferably while not getting herself killed.

Again she had to consider whether or not this particular caste of Dark Fae could shift. She would be in deep shit if they were able to move that fast. She used her mind and tried to scan one of the monster’s thoughts. Ugh—gross! Okay—no shifters here. They were the lowest cast of dark Fae, and all they had on their minds was feeding on humans...

These were things that looked to her like they had just crawled out of the ‘Black Lagoon’—the muck still hanging off their bodies. Somehow they had found a portal to her world! They were passing themselves off as human men—in order to feed. They would suck those girls dry, take everything they had, and leave nothing but a husk of a body!

The two looked alike (maybe they could tell each other apart—she sure couldn’t). Each thing had two upper rows of jagged teeth and drooled in clumps of thick goo. And yet, these two women were smiling at them in a worshipping mode as they made dove eyes for the dark Unseelie. Definitely spelled, BJ decided.

She was frozen in place and sick to her stomach. It was like watching a horror movie, knowing something was going to happen, and reaching out and screaming, ‘No don’t,’ but the characters in the movie never listen. They always tumble head on into the danger.

She didn’t know how the Unseelie had escaped their prison; however, at the moment that wasn’t her concern. Two things guided her: she needed to protect her anonymity, and she needed to help the two women.

She knew turning around and walking away was not an option. She just couldn’t. So the question remained: how could she help? She had to find a way. One of them put out a clawed thing and scraped it along the woman’s arm. BJ knew he was hurting her, but she seemed oblivious.

Okay, do something, she screamed at herself in her mind. What do you know? I know Fae history. Hundreds of very different Unseelie castes had been created by the Dark King. Not much more was known about them. All had some Fae powers... She had no idea which caste these two uglies represented. She had no idea what she could do to stop them.

Her mom had taught her everything she needed to know about the Fae, but she had only given her a sketchy description of the Unseelies, knowledge passed down their matriarchal Fios line.

As the Unseelies began to seriously hurt the women with their touching, BJ slapped her forehead. Think—stop them! She was nearly freaked as she looked around frantically to see what she could use to distract the girls from the spell. Things in her life were damned complicated enough with the beautiful Fae walking around her world. Now she had monsters to deal with!

If she didn’t act, she knew the night would end with these women writhing in pain before they died. She went into her Fios and screamed at the women. They are bruising you! Wake up! One of the girls shuddered and moved her head oddly. However, she didn’t seem to notice blood was beginning to flow freely from a wound on her upper arm.

Think! The Unseelie had guided the women close to the shrubbery, and BJ supposed they meant to dump the women’s bodies there when they were done with them. Oh-ugh-no—one of them was lapping up the blood from the woman’s open wound. The other one had her other arm...

That was it; BJ was beyond frantic and was just about to throw herself into the mix and pray she might be able to scare them off, when she spied exactly what she needed, and it was just a few feet away. No more than an arm’s length in distance was the switch to the sprinkler system Izzy had long ago installed.

Bless you, Izzy! She would have to act quickly. It would cause a diversion, which was all she needed to momentarily break the spell and get into women’s minds.

She quietly opened the metal door of the box and flipped on the switch. It made a strange gurgling sound before it started to spit out water in spurts. The sudden noise made the Unseelies look round warily.

They saw me. Shit! Damn and double shit! BJ screwed up her mouth, tried smiling nonchalantly, and started to walk backwards towards her apartment staircase at the side of the building.

Bam! The water came on full force, and all four—humans and Unseelies—got instantly sprayed with cold water! The Unseelies put up their appendages—one might loosely call their arms. The women screamed, one of them wildly as she looked down and saw her open wound and the blood streaming down between her fingers.

Mesmerizing Spell and illusion temporarily broken. BJ slammed their minds with, Go home, home, go home!

BJ’s mind shouted, and she hoped her skill was practiced enough to do the job. She wasn’t sure it would really work. She had only started to learn the skill from her mom before she lost her and had been afraid to try and use it since. Once more she tried again. Go now, get into your cars and drive away. Don’t look at them.

The girls were screaming at the top of their lungs, sprayed with cold water, with no understanding of what had happened. They jumped in the car and sped off, tires squealing.

BJ was momentarily pleasantly amazed. It had worked. She had actually managed to get through to them while they weren’t spelled! Neat trick, she teased herself. Maybe I could ace my courses with it? Get into old man Wacket’s head and tell him to give me an A. She smiled to herself and then noticed the two dark Fae were turning away from their lost meal!

She ducked into the shadows, hugged the wall, and ran up the stairs while the Unseelie shouted obscenities at one another. She heard their really awful and disgruntled snorts as they looked around, obviously aware someone had intervened.

Quick, quick. She fumbled for the keys to her door and then closed it hurriedly and quietly at her back. She knew they weren’t sure what had come between them and their prey, but she sank down to her old worn wood floor and held her breath. After a few minutes she got up the courage and went to her window and saw that their vehicle was gone. Spidery Unseelies that drove?

The notion was almost comical. She closed her wood shutters. Even as she sighed with relief, it occurred to her these two would go on hunting until they found humans to feed on. She was sure they hadn’t seen her go to her apartment—right? She then asked herself, if they had, would they try and break down her door? She didn’t think so; their nature was to live and work in the shadows.

There was no doubt in her mind that before the night was over those beasts would find other women to bedazzle with illusion so they could suck the life out of them. That was a fact she could do nothing about. What the hell was going on?

Weren’t the Seelie Fae supposed to round the Unseelie escapees up and put them back in their prison? Someone was getting lax on the job!

~ Two ~

QUEEN AAIBHE OF the Tuatha Dé stood in her private chambers and parted the airwaves. Prince Danté watched her and became somewhat leery. What did she have in store for him, he wondered. This didn’t have the right feel. Why had she made him view flashbacks of Breslyn and the humans? What was it she wanted?

He knew she had—they all had—an enormous problem on their hands. Back in May they had discovered they had a traitor in their court. Soon afterwards, they discovered it was a council member and his name was Gaiscioch.

He knew Gais’s betrayal had been both surprising and hurtful to the Queen. It had not surprised Danté at all. He had never trusted Gaiscioch. He had known him much longer than even his friend, Breslyn, who also had not trusted Gais. Danté had always realized Gais felt scorned by the Queen, and a male Fae scorned was not much different than a female Fae scorned. It usually had disastrous results, but to betray his own kind? Unthinkable—yet that was what Gais had done.

The Queen and her Fae army were battle poised—but Seelie Fae numbers were meager when compared with the Dark Fae. The Dark King had left his monsters to themselves, and they had multiplied easily—so different than the Seelie Fae, who had not been overly successful in reproducing.

Thus, here I am, he thought with a grimace, in her chambers, waiting as she gracefully lifted her hand and parted the airwaves to the human world. He watched as she indicated with a slight movement of her finger as Brian Carrick conversed with BJ Mulroy at a bar and restaurant in Roslyn, New York.

He knew Aaibhe had played with the hands of fate to bring the meeting of these two humans about. He wondered how often she tweaked fate. She had always preached against doing so. He knew she believed that while fate was not to be lightly toyed with, destiny needed touching up now and then.

At her side, Danté moved unhappily, fidgeting and making no secret he was displeased. He rarely, perhaps never was a better word, yes, Danté never fidgeted. He was the eldest son of the House of Lugh, one of the four royal Fae Houses of the Seelie Court. He had been faithful in his service to his queen and beside her longer than any other Fae. His years numbered much like her own, over seventy thousand, and he had learned many valuable lessons during her reign. However, this was one particular mission and perhaps lesson he was not eager to embrace.

Danté knew what his queen thought of him—that he was very different than her other favorite prince, Breslyn, Prince of Dagda. Danté was not overly interested in humans. His friend Breslyn was obsessed with them and their too brief lives. Breslyn was kind hearted and emotional, but Danté was proud of the fact that while he was capable of kindness, he was a practical and analytical prince.

Danté, you are the prince I need for this particular assignment. Aaibhe motioned with her delicate finger for her prince to observe the humans in question and then asked What do you think, my Prince?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the soft smile on his queen’s face. She waited for his answer. He frowned at her, a worried flicker descending from his logical mind to his face. Humans are unpredictable. I never know what to think of them. He sighed and added, This would be more suited to Breslyn.

She nodded, and he felt her gaze as her eyes swept over him slowly. He knew she was amused by his discomfort and not taking his objection seriously. He put a large, strong hand over his slicked-backed, gold-tinted auburn hair. It was braided at the nape of his neck and tied with a leather ribbon. She reached over and tugged it with a warm smile. "Danté, my dear prince, my friend. Don’t look so concerned, and I can see your concern in those beautiful gold eyes of yours. This mission is yours because you are the one suited to it."

His massive arms were folded across his huge hard chest, which was naked except for the gold torque, etched with his royal status, that circled his large neck.

Indeed, she was his queen, and he would do what she commanded, but this mission went against the grain. He was annoyed and made no attempt to hide it. I don’t think that I am suited for this. I don’t deal well with humans. They irritate me.

She laughed, and said softly, Not always.

He frowned and ignored this remark. He took a step away from the scene of Brian Carrick and BJ Mulroy and went to stand by her window overlooking her private garden. She followed him, and although she was tall herself, she had to reach up to touch his lightly shadowed face.

Danté was larger than most of her warriors, probably stood at six foot seven, and had the body, the arms, the thighs to match his height. In spite of her elegant height, he saw her reach up, and he suffered her to take his chin like he was a child.

She clucked. Danté, enough. This does not become you.

He believed he could be used elsewhere, like helping the trackers find and kill Gaiscioch the traitor. He did not like court intrigue and he would not readily accept working with humans, but that was what she had in store for him. He rubbed his palm along his low-cut leather pants as he attempted to make peace with what she wanted. He had no wish to offer her insult.

He felt her eyes on him as he thought it all out, and this agitated him all the more. How could he refuse her? He pulled at his full lower lip. I wonder why we are bothering with these humans...when we are beset with any number of problems all revolving around Gaiscioch. He remembered his manners and inclined his head. My Queen.

You are witness to Gaiscioch’s inexhaustible tricks. He is all too clever to take lightly, my Prince. Just because he has buried himself in the Dark Realm where we cannot get to him does not mean he has no outside contacts. He has been working on this treachery of his for centuries. He has it all well laid out, and he has his pawns in place. He has already released an alarming number of Unseelies amongst the humans. He has already created havoc. We need some of our better humans—our Druids, and others—to help control these deadly abominations.

"I do not see it. Humans are mortal—we will get them killed."

We have already been aided a great deal by our humans. You do not give them enough credit. She continued gently, Witness Maxine Reigate, and there is yet another about to emerge. She raised her chin. You will admit their service to us was great and continues.

Perhaps so, but that one... He pointed to Brian Carrick, still visible as though in the same room, framed only by a round, black emptiness. ...will not be of much help to us.

Oh, but you are wrong. He will be of immeasurable assistance. He has in fact, already started what will prove...shall we say, fateful. The queen smiled softly at her prince.

Danté sighed. He was itching to go hand to hand with the villain, not play nursemaid to a list of humans. What did he