Ink Exchange (29 page)

“No.
You
didn’t torment anyone.” He watched her grasp at the horror she wanted to feel, felt it slither into his skin. He sighed. “Don’t overreact.”

She laughed, a sound as far from humorous as a scream would be.

He sank to the floor beside her.

“There are worse things.” He didn’t tell her that those worse things were inevitable if the peace between the seasonal courts grew much stronger, that this was just one step in their path. She stared at him for several heartbeats, and then she leaned forward and laid her head against his chest.

“Can you pick criminals or something?”

Somewhere inside he was saddened by her acceptance of these mortals’ deaths, but that was her mortal essence tainting his judgment. He pushed the sorrow away. “I can try…. I can’t change what I need you for, but I would spare you details of it.”

She tensed in his arms. “And if I can’t take it? What then? What if my mind…”

He said it then, admitted his weakness, “I hadn’t planned this part, Leslie. I just needed your body to stay alive. Most of the mortals from the earlier exchanges…they didn’t fare as well, but I’d like you not to be comatose. If that means a few other mortals die or slip into their own minds while you black out for a few hours or days—”

“Then that’s what you’ll do,” she whispered.

C
HAPTER
35

Niall had stopped by the loft to gather a few belongings when Aislinn walked in. “I don’t want to discuss it again,” he started, but then Aislinn stepped to the side. Leslie stood behind her. She was wan, with dark circles under her eyes. Bluish veins were so clear through her skin that, to his vision, she had a slight blue tint to her.

Aislinn said, “She wants to talk to you…not to me.” Then his queen-no-more left, closing the door behind her, leaving Niall alone with Leslie.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

“Irial sends his regards.” Her movements were as stilted as her words. She wandered away to stare out the window. Shadows danced in the air around her; he’d seen those same shadows dance in Irial’s eyes, formless figures that leaped and spun on the edge of the abyss. Now they hovered around Leslie, a retinue of nightmare’s handmaidens.

Niall didn’t know what to do or say or think. So he waited.

“Can we leave?” She looked over her shoulder. “I can’t do this here.”

“Do what?”

She watched him, dispassionately it seemed. “What we talked about
before
.”

And he knew that whatever she wasn’t saying was horrific enough that she’d decided to leave Irial.

“Will you help me, Niall?” she asked. “I need to set things right.”

For a moment, Niall wasn’t sure if it was Leslie or Irial asking: her voice sounded wrong, her words not matching the intonations he’d heard from her before. But it didn’t matter. The shadows danced around her, and he gave the only answer he could offer either of them: “Yes.”

Leslie felt the strange whisper of Irial’s nature rustling through her, even now. And it was a comfort, even though she was hoping to end it. What he gave her, what he cost her, it wasn’t right for either of them. She would find it easier if she could call him evil, but none of this was about values or ethics. Those answers were too simple. Irial did what he deemed necessary to save his fey, what he thought best for his court—including her. It wasn’t what was best for her or for the people who’d been brought to terror in the hands of the Dark Court. It wasn’t best for the thousands of mortals who’d inevitably get drawn into Irial’s
plans once she grew less important to him or he grew more desperate.

She smiled at Niall. They stood in her old room. She hadn’t been back there since she’d left with Irial. When she’d walked in, the house was empty, as if no one else had been there in weeks. If she could feel it, she might worry about her father, but as it was she merely noted that she wanted to worry.

Deal with that later. After.

Niall pulled her into his arms, holding her as securely as if she’d been falling only to be snatched back from the edge. His hand cradled the back of her head. “Will you look poorly on me if I admit that I wish I weren’t the one to do this?”

“No.” Later, though, when Irial’s influence wore off, she suspected she might.

“Come on.” She took his hand in hers and led him to the bed, her bed, inside her house. It was safe.
Because of Irial.

Niall stood motionless as she sat down on the edge of the faded rose covers. She could feel rare brushes with her feelings—thanks to what Irial had done, thanks to the mortals who’d fallen into the arms of the Dark Court—not all of her feelings, but a few of the stronger ones. She felt disgust at the way the faeries treated the dead bodies, horror at the fact that people had suffered because of her. She cringed at the sin-sick weight of it…and at her yearning to return to numbness so she didn’t have to feel it. That’s what she’d
pursued—numbness—and it wasn’t worth the cost to her or anyone else.

She pulled Niall toward her; he looked at her with sad eyes.

Her stomach clenched at the fear that threatened to smother her—not in the way it once had, but in hunger.

Irial’s hunger.

Then her fear fled, swallowed down by Irial as he sat in one of his clubs, surrounded by the fey who’d been slowly flocking to his side. Hopefully Irial’s hungers would take the edge off the pain she knew was coming.

She rolled over, removing her shirt as she did, and tried not to think of what was about to happen. Eyes closed, she said, “Please?”

Niall lowered his hands onto her skin, onto her ink, onto that mark where Irial’s presence was anchored into her skin. His touch burned from the small ball of sunlight that Aislinn had given him at the loft, that he’d carried inside him, that he’d brought.

At my request.

The frost that the other queen—the Winter Queen—had given him followed the sunlight: Leslie thought she felt icicles piercing her skin. And she screamed, though she tore at her lip to keep that sound inside. She screamed as she’d done only once before.

This isn’t Niall’s fault. MY choice. Mine.

“Forgive me,” he begged as he forced the sunlight and
frost into her skin, freezing the tears in the ink, searing away the tinge of Irial’s blood that was blended into that ink, killing the roots of the black vine that Irial’s ink had anchored in her body.

“Leslie?” Irial whispered.

She could see him clearly enough that he looked like a hologram in the room. If her eyes hadn’t been closed, she would have believed he really was there. Startled, he stood, unsettling the faery who’d been curled on his lap.
“What are you doing?”

“Choosing.”
She bit the coverlet to keep from screaming again. Her hands were fisted so tight that she felt the cover rip. Her spine bowed. Niall’s knee was on her back, holding her down.

Tears were soaking the blanket under Leslie’s face.

“I’m
mine.
Not anyone else’s.”

“I’m still yours, though. That won’t ever change, Shadow Girl.”
And then he was gone, and her emotions crashed over her.

Niall pulled his hands away, and she turned her head to look at him. He sat beside her, staring down at his hands. “I’m sorry. Gods, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” She wasn’t sure of much else, but she knew that. Then the agony in her skin, the memories, the surge of horror, it was too much: she rolled over and threw up in the wastebasket. Her entire body clenched as pain coursed through her. Tears joined the perspiration on her face as hot
and cold flashes switched in and out of control. Muscles she hadn’t known she had were knotting up in response to the pain inside her.

She smiled despite it all; for just a moment, she smiled. She was free. It hurt like hell, but she was free.

C
HAPTER
36

Leslie drifted in and out of consciousness for several days while the world moved around her. Niall stayed beside her. Aislinn and Seth visited. Ani and Tish and Rabbit visited. Gabriel visited, carrying more flowers than could be considered reasonable. He set the flowers down, clasped Niall’s shoulder and nodded, kissed Leslie’s brow, and left. The others all talked—words of support and apology from Aislinn, praise from Seth and Rabbit, forgiveness for leaving the court from Tish and Ani. Irial did not come to her.

She lay on her stomach wearing jeans and a bra. She hadn’t spoken more than a few words yet. There had been too many things in her mind for her to try to formulate sentences. Neither her father nor her brother ever showed up at the house. She didn’t know where they were, if they were coming back, or if they were being
prevented
from coming back. She was in her home—healing and safe. That was what mattered right then.

Niall was putting some sort of soothing cream on the sun-and frost-burned skin of her back. She turned her head to look at him. She saw them, stretched across the room: burned tendrils of the shadowy vine flowing from her skin—a connection still, but not a conduit. “It’s never going to go away, is it?”

Niall stared at the blackened vine. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see it before. I can now.”

“It’s closed off. That’s what matters. And it’s not going to open again.” She sat up and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

“Are you…how do you feel?” He was tentative, still not pushing her to words or actions. He was near enough that she could take his arm if she needed support, but he didn’t get in her space.

“Awful, but real,” she said.

“The aloe should help. It’s the best I can do. The mortal things won’t work since it was faery…. I called Aislinn and—”

“It’s good, Niall. Really. I don’t mind that it hurts.” She watched him look at her with such sorrow that it broke her heart to see it, to realize how difficult the past days had been for him too.

“Help me up?” She held out a hand so he could steady her until she saw how she was going to handle moving. Sometimes standing was painful enough that she’d fallen back down. This time she wavered a bit as Niall helped her to the bathroom, but it wasn’t as awful as it had been. She
was recovering, physically and mentally.
It’s time.
She leaned on the doorframe and motioned toward the cupboard under the sink. “There’s a hand mirror under there.”

Without comment he got it out, and she turned in front of the large mirror and held the hand mirror up so she could see her back. The ink in her skin had faded to white and gray. It was as beautiful as before, but it’d been bleached, lightened by the sunlight and frost Niall had pressed into her skin.

My
art now. My body.
She lowered the mirror and smiled. It wasn’t the tattoo that had changed her, had given her repossession of her body. It was her actions, her choices. It was finding the path when it looked like there weren’t any paths to be found.

“Leslie?” Niall stepped behind her and looked at her in the mirror, holding the reflection of her gaze. “Are you going to be all right?”

She turned so they were face-to-face and gave him back the words he’d offered her their first night together: “I survived. Isn’t that what matters?”

“It is.” He pulled her closer and held her carefully.

They stood there, quiet and together, until she started to sway. Blushing, she said, “I’m still weak, I guess.”

“You’re not weak at all. Wounded, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He helped her to the bed. Hesitantly he said, “Aislinn would come care for you if you’d allow it. I’ve left them, left Keenan, but they’ll look after you. We can sort it out, and then—”

“Niall?” She tried to keep her tone gentle as she said, “I…I can’t deal with your faery courts right now. I just want my life. This”—she gestured around her room—“isn’t good, but it’s better than your world. I don’t want to be a part of the faery world.”

“I can’t change what I am. I’m not a part of the court, but I can’t
not
interact at all with my world…. I…” He let his words fade.

This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, not now, but it was there. “I still feel…something, whatever it was, for you, but right now…I need to start over, somewhere else…on my own.”

“I tried to keep you safe.” He told her that he’d kept guard over her for months, that he—and other of Aislinn’s faeries—had walked beside her in the streets of Huntsdale. He told her that he’d tried to not speak to her before because Aislinn had ordered him not to, that she didn’t want Leslie drawn into their world—and that he’d thought his queen wise to decide thus.

“I want to be with you. I’m not with the court now. I’m…solitary. I could come with you…take care of—”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Right. You need time, but when you’re ready…or if you need anything
at all,
ever…”

“I know.” She leaned back on the pillows. “Can you call Ash to come over? I need to talk to her before I see Irial.”

“Irial? Why would you—”

“I’m not the only mortal. There’s plenty of people he
could replace me with”—she kept the pain out of her voice, but she still had to pause—“if he hasn’t already. I’m not going to walk away and leave someone else in my place.” She thought about the weeping mortals on the floor, the bloody fights she’d seen the starts of before she blacked out, the knowledge that this was all Irial’s being
careful
, gentle with her. What he’d be like without that caution was too much to consider. “I need to talk to Ash before I see him. I can’t wait too long.”

Niall sighed, but he went. She heard the front door open and close as he went to seek whoever waited outside. And she let herself drift to sleep, knowing that she was safe, free, and going to find a way to make sure that her freedom wasn’t at the cost of another girl’s life.

When Leslie walked into the suite that night, there was no one there but Irial. He didn’t comment, didn’t ask questions. He poured her a drink and held it out.