Page 215 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
That’s when I noticed my backpack. It still sat on the tree stump table where I’d left it the night before, but the zipper was open, and I knew—I knew—that I’d closed it after my bath.
My heart dropped to my bowels as I croaked “No,” and scurried over to an open space where a redheaded rag doll once lived. “No, Pete, youstupidson-of-a-bitch!”
The damn fool was going to use Andy to fake my death! He’d claim something went wrong on the road, that he’d needed to put me down before he could deliver me. Would Gentian believe him? Or would he see the truth? That Pete was no longer demonic, and that he’d let his mark, the crown princess, go.
Still hopelessly rooting through my backpack for a rag doll that clearly wasn’t there, I grazed a note scrawled on a folded scrap of unrefined paper.
Sorry I lied, Shortie, but your mother was righte.
Your humble servent, P.
I shivered, recalling Pete’s hope from earlier that day—that my mother had left my rescue to him because:She saw enough good in me…to ken that I’d do all I could, risk everything, to keep you safe.
P.S., I wager the world according to Amy won’t be so fearesome a thing. Take care of Sionna for me.
Pete wouldn’t have given me Sionna—unless he had no hope of returning.
The man of shadows from my dream—the blackened harbinger who’d captured me for a blood curse—was marching to the Shadow Court to sacrifice himself for my safety.
Damnit, Pete! You chivalrous dumbass! You can’t fucking do this to me!
That world according to Amy—it couldn’t exist without him there to guide its creation. Because I trusted him above all others. Even in knowing he’d just completely lied to me—so he could be true to my mother.
And I refused—Irefused—to lose him the way I’d lost her! The way I’d lost so many others!
I snatched up my backpack. Tied up my hair. Then stomped into my boots. I had to move fast. I could hardly save Pete from his idiocyafterhe destroyed my totem, and I lost my mind—temporarily, I hoped.
“Stay here, girl,” I bade Sionna, who’d risen when she saw me readying for war. “I’ll be back.”
Pete
Petewasseldomsolonely on the road. Without Sionna sniffing around his legs, without Bob clopping at his heels, and without the plucky jabbering of one royal pain in his arse, the jungle was far too quiet. Yet, he loped along at his normal speed, trying to fill his empty mind with several of those melodies Shorty had stamped into his recent memory. Of course, the song that stuck on him was one he detested.
Gah!he seethedat the pesty voices plaguing him.Poets be damned!
No wonder those blasted Brook Lane Fellas—or whatever Shorty called them—were so bloody successful on Earth. Their songs were as catching as syphilis and could drive a bloke just as mad.
Mother, where was a fifth of whiskey when he needed one? Myrrdin’s cider hadn’t quite numbed him enough.
The song’s senseless lyrics, though he abhorred them, spurred him through the hissing, humid jungle—reminding him why he now barreled headlong to his peril. They represented the beyn he was doing it for as much as the rag doll in his rucksack did.
The rag doll of note sat tucked safely beside the detailed letter Pete had penned to the dolt promised to Shorty. No doubt a promise made before she’d been born. As was the way with royal marriages, both in the fae world and on Earth.
All Pete could hope for was that this Briar had genuine care for his betrothed beyond the allure of her crown. Pete was counting on him to come to her rescue. To the rescue of all in Eden.
He was under no misgivings about the danger of his plan. To him, to Shorty’s sanity, and to Eden. His loyalties would be questioned, his demonism too. Demons didn’t often slay marks when they weren’t meant to, even if said mark turned said demon’s own knife on him. They lacked the passion and fear that would provoke acts of self-defense. In truth, demons felt very few emotions—apart from the pleasure of sin. So, despite Pete’s black eyes and pitiless act, Gentian would see through him like threadbare silk.
But Pete had no intention of drinking either from the Well of Sincerity or from a vial of death poppy oil. He’d swallow one of Olea’s Wolver’s Bite capsules before he’d give up Eden—or Shorty. Then he’d die swiftly, painlessly, for the sake of all those innocents.
Of course, he still fantasized that he’d fool Gentian. Would he believe Shorty had ended her own life rather than become the prisoner of the one who’d murdered her parents?
Most magic wielders, like himself, were plagued with an ever-endurant will to live. They’d suffer through centuries of abomination before they’d even consider suicide. Yet, the act wasn’t unheard of. And Shorty, being from Earth, certainly had an unconventional way of thinking for one so full of magic. Perhaps Pete stood a better chance of convincing Gentian that Shorty was prone to human despair and had taken her own life than he did of convincing him that he, a supposed demon, had killed his mark against ordination.
At the least, the story’s plausibility might afford Shorty’s unworthy intended time to safeguard her at the Spring Palace before Gentian nabbed her. Even with a probable infiltrator scuttling around the palace, subverting her family, Pete gambled Shorty’s odds at evading the oncoming horde of harbingers were far better there, surrounded by a trained army, than they were in a time pocket, where anyone with a notion to look could breach the veil of false security.
Still pondering this, he trod into the kaleidoscope post—an ancient copse of crystal willows populated by butterfly-like beings—thedealan-dhè. While they weren’t precisely fae, they also weren’t precisely insects, cognizant and large enough to make brilliant messengers. They were also far more inviolable than birds, few kenning them from actual butterflies, making message theft rare.
Accordingly, Eden’s harbingers, himself included, had been partaking of thedealan-dhes’services since they’d begun populating the garden, sharing information amongst one another through the skies. Pete hoped one of the more robust flyers would purvey Shorty’s whereabouts to the Spring Palace for him.
