"You cannot summon a demon," the HC scoffed.
"Well, you can't have it both ways, then. Either I'm a demon and can summon other demons, or I'm not a demon at all. Which is it?" I had arms crossed over my chest, now, glaring right back at my would-be torturers.
"You are a demon; our holy writ proclaims that any creature with hair of flame, moving faster than the eye can see is a demon."
"Are you kidding me? My hair is more a strawberry-blonde. Not really a true red." I lifted a stray lock and studied it briefly.
"But none of us saw your movement when you removed Mardis' head." The HC was getting grumpy, now.
"Still not a demon," I denied his allegation.
"Then go ahead. Summon another demon for us. We wish to see this." The HC thought he was calling my bluff.
Connegar, honey
, I sent,
can you bring Garde if he isn't busy?
Connegar didn't bother to reply, he, Reemagar and Garde were there in about a blink. You should have seen the scattering of people when two blue giants and an apparent humanoid appeared inside the tent. It wasn't tall enough for Connegar to stand up straight, so he raised it with Power. Swords came out when that happened.
"The blue ones aren't the demons," I said. Even Solis was backed up against the canvas of the tent, staring. The HC's voice was wobbly when he asked his next question.
"Where is the demon, then?"
"Lissa, why didn't you call me sooner?" Garde came to stand next to me.
"I didn't need a Demon until now," I answered dryly. "I'm fine, by the way, but that schmuck over there is trying to tell everybody here that I'm a demon. I tried to tell him I'm not. He wants to level charges and then torture a confession out of me. I called you because he may need to see a real demon."
"He wishes to torture my mate?" Garde's eyes went hard and he jerked his head around to stare at the HC. Smoke was coming from his nostrils by that time.
"Then what are you, if you are not demon?" The HC kept pushing his agenda, when he should have kept his mouth shut. He'd ignored Garde completely, too, and that wasn't a wise thing to do. There's an old saying on Kifirin—Never ignore the Demon in the room. The HC was ignoring the Demon—and two really tall Larentii because he wanted to torture a confession from the only female in the tent. How typical.
"I'm a vampire," I turned my attention to the HC. "Well, that's not completely true—they call some of my kind the Nameless Ones, but I don't exercise that option very often." Garde was still blowing smoke and staring angrily at the HC. I figured that guy was toast if he didn't shut up soon.
"A vampire?" It was a new word for Solis.
"You don't have anything to worry about," I tried to reassure him. "But I am sick of being here. What say we get this over with, right here and now?"
"Lissa, what do you have in mind, love?" Reemagar was on my other side, with Connegar next to him.
"I think we'll take the ones inside the tent, here, and go have a little parlay with Green Birth. I'm really tired of slogging through the fog and the rain they keep sending in our direction. I think I know what I want to do, anyway."
"Would you like for us to make the move?" Connegar offered.
"No, honey, I can do it," I said, giving him a smile. I went to energy, gathered power and moved the entire tent to the central valley where Green Birth had gathered. Then I caused the sides of the tent to roll up by themselves. If the HC and the others hadn't been scared witless and too frightened to move, they might have taken off running at that point. Instead, they had hands on swords or knives, staring at me wide-eyed.
"If anybody pulls a weapon here, they'll die," I said amiably. The General, who'd been standing and gaping ever since the Larentii showed up with Garde, sat down heavily on a campstool. Garde still wanted a piece of the HC, I think, and was growling, blowing clouds of smoke and watching him like a hawk.
"I have sent out mindspeech for the leaders of Green Birth to come," Connegar informed me. I looked down at my feet where new, green shoots of grass were coming through rich soil with tiny white flowers, here and there. In only a few minutes, four of the Green Fae came walking out of the fog toward us.
"We would not have come if we had not received mindspeech from the Larentii," one of them said, pulling his hood back to reveal blue-green hair. Another, with sun-gold hair pulled his hood back. The other two, both with hair the brown of oak leaves in the fall, lightly tinged with green, also lowered their hoods.
"I think you would have come, if I'd told you," I snapped. They looked at me in confusion. "Now," I said, "I'm here to take care of this mess. General, I know why your King sent you—he has need of funds and looks to the lands belonging to Green Birth to provide those funds for him, in addition to handing out parcels of land and favors to his aristocracy. Does that sound about right?"
"It does," the General replied reluctantly.
"We have paid our taxes to the crown faithfully," the gold-haired Fae remarked.
"No doubt, but the King inherited a lot of debt with the throne," I said. "So he's looking for a quick fix. You were the target. Now," I turned to the HC, "what's the Pelipu's stake in this? Is it because he wants to control the lands or because he can't seem to control these people? Is that it? That he can't say hop and have them ask how high?"
"They are heretics," the HC declared.
"Heretic is such a convenient word," I said. "Nobody does anything like this unless there's something in it for them," I pointed a finger at the HC. "What is it? Control of the masses? Or maybe loss of the control of the masses? That there might be a sect in opposition of the Pelipu's religion—one that doesn't condone torture or scare tactics, or who doesn't believe that you can donate to the church and buy you way into the afterlife? Is that what he's afraid of? That he might not get his cocoa at bedtime?" Garde snickered.
I looked around at the faces in the tent—they were all frightened and trying to determine how we'd managed to travel the distance to Green Birth's lands in a blink, when it would have taken nearly two weeks under ideal conditions to get there on horseback.
"Well, this is what I'm going to do," I said. "I am sealing off these valleys from any other humanoids on this planet. They will be hidden. There will be a buffer zone in between, where trade can occur if Green Birth so desires. Otherwise, the lands will not be reached by others. Your king," I turned to the General, "will have to find another way to fill his coffers. I suggest fishing and sea trade. He has a fleet, tell him to use it. And the lands to his south can be farmed, if he can get those nobles of his off their asses to clear it." The General nodded, still showing signs of confusion.
"Now, you," I pointed at the HC. "I'm going to send you right back where you came from. And if you or any of your religion step foot on the soil of Farus with anything other than peaceful purposes on your mind, you'll die. How's that?" I went to energy again, gathered power and sent him, his seven cronies and all of his army right back to Ialus. I figured the Pelipu was having a hissy fit, even as I watched them disappear.
"You, go home," I pointed at the others, once I was back to myself. They were all staring at me now, their mouths open in surprise. "Solis, I think you and the General can stay here, if you want. That way, you two can actually be together instead of hiding all the time." Yeah, they'd been together for a long time, they just did their best to hide it from everybody.
"You can take them with you, Lissa. We could use extra security on Le-Ath Veronis," Reemagar suggested. I shrugged.
"If they want," I agreed.
"Now, you," I turned to the four Fae.
"We are satisfied with these arrangements," the gold-haired one said. "I am Tiearan Briar."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" I asked as sweetly as I could.
"What?" The blue-haired one asked.
"The reason I came," I said.
"Why did you come? We were expecting a Karathian Warlock. Perhaps the King himself," Tiearan Briar said.
"You don't have his child," I said. "You have mine. I am Lissa, Queen of Le-Ath Veronis. The child you stole was a comesula, not the King's grandson. If you don't mind, I'd like him back now, please. Otherwise I will take this planet apart myself, and never allow two bits of it to join together again."
"I will take the Farus officers back to their camp," Reemagar whispered next to my ear. I nodded while I watched four Fae shoot troubled glances at each other.
"Go," Tiearan told one of the brown-haired Fae, who nodded and took off running.
"The child will arrive soon," Tiearan said softly, holding a hand out to keep me at a distance. He was all Fae, I could tell by his scent, as was the other, brown-haired one. The one with blue-green hair, though—he was half. Nearly twenty minutes passed before the brown-haired Fae returned with two more Fae, one of whom had Toff in her arms.
"You have to understand that we didn't know it had happened until six days after we'd taken the child," Tiearan sighed.
"What?" I said absently, reaching out toward Toff as the two female Fae stepped beneath the roof of the tent. Toff hid his face against the female's shoulder. That wasn't like him. Normally, he squealed with laughter and reached out for me, no matter what.
"Toff, honey, come to your auntie Lissa," I said, reaching out for him. He gave an unhappy little sound and burrowed closer against the female Fae. That scared me, and I lifted my eyes to hers. She was young, as far as Fae go, perhaps two hundred years of age, with hair the color of red that maple leaves turned in the fall. And she looked frightened, too.
"Redbird desired to keep the child," Tiearan's words came from a distance. "She performed the mind-bond with the child, so he would stay with her. We did not intend for this to happen and we deeply regret it." I snapped right back to the present; I think my eyes and fangs were now showing exactly what I was.
"Explain to me exactly what a mind-bond is and what it will do to Toff when I take him away from here," I snarled.
If I hadn't had my Larentii with me, holding me back, I think I might have killed just about everybody inside the tent. Even Garde was holding me back, and he was almost as angry as I was. Tiearan explained that a mind-bond was something the Fae could do if they adopted a child. The child would see the one performing the bond as a parent—and only them as a parent. The child would be their own person once they matured, but by that time, they normally considered the adoptive Fae their parent and no other. I was so angry when he stopped talking that I could have taken Vionn apart anyway.
"I am sorry," Redbird apologized, even while she held my Toff tightly against her. I wasn't buying that apology and she knew it.
"If there is any way to make this up to you," Tiearan said, "we will do our best to oblige."
"And just how would you propose to do that?" I hissed. "If someone stole your child and forced you to come and haul their ass out of a bind, and then ended up taking your child anyway, tell me how that would make you feel?" I was so angry my eyes were likely blood red and my fangs pricked my lower lip. That was nothing compared to the headache I now had.
"We would not like it," Tiearan refused to look at me. "We thought we would have to contend with the Karathian King over this," he muttered. "We expected to die for Redbird's mistake."
"And I want to kill you," I said. "And if my Larentii had not given me mindspeech, telling me that it will harm Toff if Redbird dies, well, you might already be dead," I growled. "Didn't you have enough sense to hand him to somebody who would keep him safe, instead of fucking with his head?" Connegar had also told me that the mind-bond was irreversible in a child as young as Toff—if we tried, he would likely die or be simple from the damage.
"I thought my daughter would keep him safe," Tiearan glanced at Redbird, who was playing with Toff and pointedly ignoring her father and me.
"So I get fucked over, for coming to save your sorry asses."
"There is nothing I can say or do, which will eliminate your pain or anger," Tiearan said quietly.
"So, I'm to go home, without my child. That's what you're telling me. Are you going to do this again? You get in a bind; you kidnap a child to get what you want?"
"We have never done anything of this nature before," Tiearan winced. "And it was to save our half-children that we did it. We understand the threat of loss, but not the loss. We cannot repay this debt. We have no way to do so."
"We will send him to you when he reaches his maturity, so he may decide which world he would rather live in," the other female offered. Her name was Rain, I knew; they'd introduced both of the females after a while.
"Sure, after you've raised him and indoctrinated him," I muttered angrily. "He'll resent the fact that he has to live with relatives he doesn't remember."
"He will not have the talent and capability that we have, and that will separate him from us," Tiearan sighed.
"So, my child gets tortured, no matter what," I muttered, now close to tears. I knew what growing up without belonging felt like, and these Fae had condemned Toff to that existence.
"He will love Redbird, and she will love him," Tiearan tried to calm me.