Like toward a liaisonship that would bring the two worlds together.

  14

  THEY didn’t go to simply one destination.

  Throughout the nighttime hours, the Fae procession phased in and out of the mist, appearing in various places. Corn fields in the rural Midwest, sugar cane in South America and rice fields in Cambodia. Thick forests, where local peoples stil relied on hunting for food, not soul ess sport. Some of the places through which they traveled were so untouched by the industrial world that Lyssa felt she’d seen the same tableau hundreds of years ago. Either because the magic portals al owed for time adjustments or because the time zones themselves aligned with the nighttime of the Fae world, al their destinations were quiet and dark, between the midnight to three a.m.

  hours. At each field or forest, the Fae walking on the outskirts of the procession, usual y women or young girls, scattered what looked like seed from large baskets. The seeds floated outward and then down, coated in a soft glow. Once they settled on the earth they disappeared, seeding the earth with good tidings for plenty and abundance.

  Though the sorcerers had set them in different paths, there were a few times they did see evidence of the Haunt’s presence, at a distance. Sirens on mooring buoys in a river, cal ing to young men sitting on the docks drinking beer. Male fairies dancing among enchanted red and white mushroom circles, coaxing young women to join them. They passed through blasts of air from the Gaoth Shee, heard the baying of the hel hounds. She saw humans who had strayed from the populated areas, casting fearful looks into the darkness, sensing the Unseelie eyes watching them, calculating the mischief they would do to the loner. They didn’t see the opulent reassurance of the Fae procession, passing just outside the range of their vision. Tabor’s mouth would tighten, but he did not interfere, the two factions continuing their paral el courses.

  For the most part, the Seelie entourage set a sedate pace. However, when they reached a wide-open pastureland for sheep, dotted with low fences underneath the glowing moon, there was a cry from a section of the procession. King Tabor grinned as Aidan and Leigh pointed out the white hart, lithely prancing on the field several slopes down, cutting coquettish circles. “Shal we have ourselves a little harmless sport?” he queried. “My lady, wil you join us?”

  She could feel Jacob’s eagerness, muscles quivering behind her back, amusingly reminding her of Bran being held back from a treat. She shook her head at the palfrey being led forward and instead, in a lithe move, helped by Jacob’s strength and her own, she shifted herself quickly around his body and adjusted her skirt so she straddled Firewind behind him, setting her hands securely around his waist.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Wel done,” Aidan praised her, giving her a handsome smile. “She’s mine this year, mates.”

  “Not if I get there first,” Tabor laughed, flashing white teeth. Though Dahlia stopped just short of rol ing her eyes at Lyssa in female commiseration, it was a near thing.

  “I have the help of Lord Firewind and the favor of my lady,” Jacob pointed out. “You might as wel give up now. Ha!”

  They tossed back a wealth of deprecating comments, but in the next breath, they’d al taken off.

  Firewind had a forward charge like an airplane taking off. It took him a length ahead, a competitive snort from his velvety nostrils resulting in a short spout of flame wafting by Lyssa.

  She couldn’t see the hart, but she didn’t have to do so. This was what she’d dreamed about. Jacob hadn’t had to tel her what to do. She molded herself to his back, her legs close along the outside of his hips so she felt every flex of his thighs and wonderful backside, the ripple of strength along his back, under her cheek as he and Firewind truly became one. The horse had accepted him as worthy for the moment, but when Jacob truly demonstrated his natural skil , she thought the kelpie felt almost as she did. They were meshed as one, no conflict between them, blood, bone and organs al synchronized together. Jacob’s heart thundered so she felt its reverberation even where her hands clasped his waist.

  First fence, my lady. Just stay in my mind.

  They soared, there was no other word for it. She moved with Jacob’s body as he leaned forward to take the fence, and Firewind came down on the opposite side with a joyous, bloodcurdling whinny, sparks flying off his hooves. Exultation moved through her, a rare, wonderful experience, feeling the strength and grace of man and horse together, the power of the incomparable male to whom she’d given her heart.

  Firewind dodged as they came close to Tabor’s mount. Two other Seelie Fae were on their right as they took the next fence, al close together, the pursuers shouting, encouraging and insulting in the way that men did. She caught a glimpse of Dahlia, who she expected had joined to stay close to the king, but even the ebony woman looked as if she were enjoying herself. She was also a tremendous horsewoman.

  The horses veered as one, and she saw the hart cut back, a lovely ghostlike creature with luminous eyes and gleaming horns. The tail was a taunting flag as the magical beast bounded up the next hil , cut right and soared over the bank of a wide creek the sheep probably used for water.

  Firewind cut on the same path, and she saw quite a few Fae rein back, realizing the jump was more than they or their mounts could handle. Tabor was stil with them, however, as wel as his companions and one or two others. While the others shortened their strides, Jacob leaned forward more, and

  Firewind responded, lengthening his gait.

  Lyssa closed her eyes on a smile, tightening her arms on Jacob as the horse gathered and leaped over the creek, his fiery hooves hitting the far bank with an explosion of flame and a foot to spare. The wind streamed through Lyssa’s hair, her skirt rippling over Firewind’s haunches.

  Then she heard Tabor’s laughter, his friendly curse, and Firewind was slowing. Jacob eased him down, despite the horse’s snort and shuddering response that suggested he wanted to continue to chase. Lifting her head, she saw the hart bounding away into the thick wood on the edge of the pastureland.

  “She’s not ours tonight, lads,” Tabor said. “But she gave us a merry chase for sure.”

  “The best ones always do,” Leigh offered with a chuckle. His brown eyes glinted and he gave Lyssa a half bow before he turned back to his king. “One of these days I’l catch her, you wait.”

  “Aye, and one of these days, you’l be prettier,” Aidan teased.

  Tabor nodded to Jacob. “You are a fine rider. You do your lady credit. Lord Firewind agrees, I think. It is hard to win his approval.”

  The kelpie snorted, but Lyssa noted he bowed the great head briefly, shaking his mane in deference to the king, a wil ing gesture he’d not given Rhoswen.

  “My lady inspires me to great things,” Jacob returned. “Her favor makes me capable of anything.”

  “Also something the best ones do,” Tabor agreed.

  He lifted his voice. “It grows late. We must rejoin the Hunt, and meet back with the Haunt.” He glanced toward the forest, and out over the pastureland, a trace of regret in his eyes. “It is time to leave this world for another year.”

  Though their travails had been from midnight to the three a.m. hours, they’d covered far more ground than those mortal hours would normal y have permitted, thanks to the influence of the magical night and Fae time. And it wasn’t over yet. When they returned to the Fae world, Samhain night would go on even longer. “The sun doesn’t rise until the Ending Ritual,” the Fae ladies riding in the carriage told them gaily. “We’l feast, dance, sing and celebrate until then.”

  Lyssa had returned to her sidesaddle seat in front of Jacob. He stroked back her windblown hair, helping her put it back in presentable fashion, that handsome curve to his lips as he replaced combs and ribbons. She touched his mouth with her fingers while he did, and when their eyes met, she saw the excitement he’d enjoyed in the Hunt stil lingering, and wondered if it reflected her pleasure in it as wel .

  Since he kissed those fingers, giving her a tiny, secret touch of his tongue to tease her on the pads, she suspected it did.

  I love you, my lady. My heart is bursting with it.

  If they weren’t in formal procession, she knew she would have slid both arms around him, put her head back on his chest, felt him dip his head over hers as he did in that position, his own arms strong around her. But since she had to appear as a queen now—

  albeit a windblown one—she settled for stretching up and pressing a kiss on that beloved mouth, cupping her hands around the back of his skul to draw his head down and kiss each eye, the bridge of his nose.

  I find you mildly tolerable, Sir Knight.

  He grinned at her. Then his glance shifted and she fol owed it, since the procession was filing to a halt.

  Or rather, fanning out in a crescent to form a half ring around what appeared to be a human cemetery.

  It was on the outskirts of a lonely swamp, the night air fil ed with the eerie cal s of frogs. Jacob moved Firewind up closer to the king when he silently gestured for Lyssa to approach. The watchful Dahlia and two guardsmen gave him room to take up a position next to the king, where Lyssa could now see who else was in the cemetery.

  Despite the graveyard hour—ironic, considering—

  a man was here. Elderly and wizened, bent by perhaps eighty or more years, he was nevertheless kneeling before a tombstone. Dozens of flowers of myriad varieties had made a carpet over the grave.

  His hands were stil stained by the juices of the stems.

  Though he thought himself alone, the man’s sobbing was silent, but fierce, wracking the thin frame. When he shifted, Lyssa saw the name Rose Lanyon on the stone. It was a wide marker, intended for two. The name etched next to Rose’s, Arthur Lanyon, had no year of death yet.

  “Arthur means bear in Celtic. She used to cal him her bear, because his hair was brown, like his eyes.

  And he was rounder, many years ago.”

  Lyssa glanced left and found Rhoswen there, sitting on her horse. In the shifting darkness on the other side of the cemetery, as the mist cleared, now she saw the outline of the guard and many of the Unseelie procession, arranged in a facing crescent to the Seelie host. The queen looked toward Tabor.

  She nodded, and he acknowledged the gesture, a decision made together. She swung down from her horse.

  As Cayden began to fol ow her, she shook her head, touching his booted calf with a light hand. She gave him a rare smile, one that didn’t hold malice or deception. It was simply a sad, sweet gesture that managed to tug Lyssa’s heart as the Fae queen moved across the graveyard toward the sobbing man. She’d shed the chains she’d worn earlier.

  When Tabor and Rhoswen had said the two groups would rendezvous, Lyssa assumed it would be back in the Fae world, not here. It was clear this moment had importance to both, for al were watching, a motionless silence. Though he was circled by hundreds of Fae, the man didn’t appear to see any of them.

  When Rhoswen reached him, she sat down on a cracked and weathered stone bench, one he’d probably placed there years ago. According to the stone, Rose had died thirty years before, perhaps from cancer or some accident that could take a loved one far too young.

  Reaching out, the queen laid her hand on his shoulder. His head rose and he stared up into her face. Then his gaze drifted right. Now he saw al the Fae, fanned out in an array of multicolored lights and glittering youth. A crooked smile bent his tear-laced countenance, then it crumpled again as he buried his face in Rhoswen’s lap. She cupped her palm over his skul , stroking and murmuring.

  As she comforted him, Robin Goodfel ow moved out of the entourage to stand behind her. Instead of the pipe, he bore a harp in his hand. As al of the assembled stil ed further, he began to strum the strings.

  “Dagda’s harp,” Jacob murmured in Lyssa’s ear.

  “Capable of taking a man to utter despair, or offering him comfort in his darkest moment.”

  In this case, it was the latter. As the music unfurled, poignant, sweet, it took the sorrow and turned it into bearable memory, hope and something indefinable, something that gripped al of them. It made Lyssa twine her fingers with Jacob’s.

  In her mind, Jacob saw she was in Kane’s nursery, pul ing the covers up around his little shoulders. She looked around the room at the things they’d bought to delight his eye, as wel as things she’d placed there from her extensive travels. He was there as wel , coming into the nursery to slip his arms around her waist as they gazed down at their son. The night of this particular memory, she’d lain down on the soft carpet and he’d made love to her there. They’d slept beneath that crib, listening to the sound of Kane’s dreams, the innocent baby noises, as they spooned on the floor near him, too content where they were to contemplate leaving him.

  “There have always been special stories about Samhain night. That those who are torn apart by grief, or regret, or the need for forgiveness, might go to a sacred place, like a burial site. There they might be found by the queen of the Fae. As she holds their heads in her lap, she gives them forgiveness, comfort . . . release.”

  This came from Tabor in a reverent, rumbling murmur, though his eyes did not leave the sight before them. They did not look away, either.

  Witnessing was quite obviously an important part of the ritual. As the man’s sobs eased, that combined focus brought something else. A sense of expectancy. A gathering energy began to grow among the ranks of the Fae, magic spreading out over the cemetery. Firewind’s skin heated, and Jacob held Lyssa closer. The wind stil ed, then slowly began to build again, a quiet, mournful voice accompanying the harp. It was a song of loss, of endings and beginnings, a reflection of Samhain night. Jacob felt it in the heart and soul, the lowest wel of the bel y, a yearning and utter stil ness at once, and every face he saw, including his lady’s, reflected the same feeling.

  The man rose then. He swayed, staring at the Fae queen, his face wreathed with al those emotions and more. Then he col apsed at her feet. Jacob started to dismount to help, but Tabor made a quel ing noise in his throat. Dahlia put up a hand, shaking her head, her blue eyes fastened on the scene.

  Lyssa swal owed. The man rose from a body that had simply crumpled into the dried leaves, becoming decay and ash. He was a young man, as young and fresh as any of the Fae faces around them, yet with the same wisdom of age in his eyes.

  Rhoswen turned his attention toward another figure, coming across the cemetery.

  A young woman, her hands outstretched, those same years of wisdom and loss in her eyes. Past regrets and hurts gone, because now they were pure spirit, everything open to one another. The desire for such soul deep honesty, the effort toward it in their mortal lives, had won them the reward of sharing the gift of it in an immortal one.

  Lyssa shifted her gaze to Rhoswen. The queen was watching them, tears on her cheeks. As she rose, al that power coalesced around her, and the music became a concentrated hum, al organic energy focusing in on her slim white form. Lifting her hands, she appeared to be gathering it in both palms, kneading it, spinning it out from the powerful anchoring energy of that couple. Lyssa remembered the wheel in the upper chamber. As the queen’s hands moved, the sense of expectancy grew. The two groups of Fae had shifted forward, a solid wal around the cemetery, touching elbow to elbow.

  Shadows started to shift over the cemetery as the wind picked up.

  Jacob?

  I don’t know. Maybe—

  Lyssa dug her nails into his palm as the world exploded, like a giant god throwing open a portal. It blinded them al , so that she turned her face instinctively into Jacob’s chest. He covered her eyes with his hand, bending his head over hers. But then she sensed an ebbing, a dispersal of that light, and her gaze lifted again.

  Throughout the cemetery and beyond, floating free of the swamp, coming from the trees, she saw spirits. The Veil is thin, not just between our worlds, but between the here and now and the afterlife . . .

  She remembered Tabor’s words as she recognized most of the spirits were Fae, reflecting the many species that traveled with the Unseelie and Seelie processions. Within the sacred space that Rhoswen had spun, the Fae of the living world now moved forward, reaching out so the corporeal and incorporeal touched. Lyssa saw one of the young Fae who’d been al owed to come in the carriage, reach out toward the spirit of what was obviously a father and mother she’d lost. Their expressions of joy and grief were so closely mingled, Lyssa couldn’t hold back the tears that spil ed from her eyes, already gathered and waiting there from watching Rose and Arthur reunited. She looked to King Tabor, and he nodded. He’d wanted her to see, because they al shared this. Mortals and immortals both understood the loss of loved ones.

  “Lyssa.” Jacob’s whisper pul ed her attention away, as did the shock that fil ed him to the depth of his soul, overflowing to her. When she fol owed his gaze, more tears ached in her throat, a sob and a cry tangling there.

  Three people stood at the side of the cemetery, watching them. As Jacob slid off Firewind, he held up his arms to bring her down, but neither one of them tore their gazes from those three, as if they might disappear if they looked away. When they moved toward the spirits, they held on to each other, not queen or servant in this moment, but two lovers needing the reassurance and support of the other.

  The man and woman stepped forward first. In their faces, Lyssa saw separate and shared elements of Jacob’s physical appearance and character. When the man reached out and touched Jacob, a blue light flared at the contact. Jacob’s knees gave out. The man and woman caught him together. They held him the way they would have held him as a child, instead of the much larger man he was now. The woman reached out to Lyssa to bring her to them as wel , her touch cool and reassuring at once. She was glad Lyssa had brought him to them, that the path of his life had led to this. Lyssa didn’t know if Jacob’s mother knew the other things this path had brought him, but that didn’t matter, did it? She let herself be drawn into that circle, a part of that family.