Ink Exchange (Wicked Lovely 2)

If I could step in…

But he couldn’t, not into her life, not into her home. That was forbidden to him. All he could do was offer her his words—words she couldn’t hear. He still said, “I’d stop anyone from taking that smile from you. I would, if I were allowed.”

Absently, she put one hand on her back and glanced in the direction of Pins and Needles. She smiled to herself, the same smile she’d worn when she left the tattoo parlor.

“Aaah, you’ve finally decided to decorate that pretty skin. What will it be? Flowers? Sun?” He let his gaze drift up her spine.

She paused; they’d reached the restaurant. Her shoulders sagged again.

He wanted to comfort her, but instead he could only give her his nightly promise, “I’ll wait right here.”

He wished she’d answer, tell him she’d look for him after work, but she wouldn’t.

And it’s better this way. He knew it, but he didn’t like it. He’d been a part of the Summer Court long enough that his original path was almost forgotten, but watching Leslie—seeing her spirit, her passion…Once, when he’d been a solitary fey, when he’d had another name, there’d have been no hesitating.

“I agree with Aislinn, though. I want you kept safe,” he whispered in her ear. Her soft, soft hair brushed against his face. “I will keep you safe—from them and from me.”

CHAPTER 3

Irial stood in the early morning light, silent, one of his faeries lying dead at his feet. The faery, Guin, had worn a mortal guise so often that bits of her glamour still clung to her after death—leaving part of her face painted with mortal makeup and part gloriously other. She had on tight blue denims—jeans, she and her sisters always reminded him when they spoke—and a top that barely covered her chest. That slip of cloth was soaked with blood, her blood, fey blood, spilling onto the dirty ground.

“Why? Why did this happen, a ghrá?” Irial bent down to brush her bloody hair from her face. Around her were bottles, cigarette butts, and used needles. None of these offended him the way they once had: this area was rough, grown more violent these past years as the mortals settled their territorial disputes. What offended him was the notion that a mortal bullet had taken one of his own. It might not have been intentional, but that changed nothing. She was still fallen.

Across from him waited the tall, thin beansidhe who’d summoned him. “What do we do?” She wrung her hands as she spoke, resisting her natural instinct to wail. She wouldn’t resist for long, but Irial didn’t—couldn’t—answer yet.

He picked up an empty casing, turning it over in his fingers. The brass shouldn’t hurt a fey, nor should the lead slug that he’d removed from the dead faery’s body when he arrived. It had, though: a simple mortal bullet had killed her.

“Irial?” The beansidhe had bitten her tongue until blood seeped from her lips to drip down her pointed chin.

“Ordinary bullets,” he murmured, turning the bits of metal over in his fingers. In all the years since mortals had begun fashioning the things, he’d never seen one of his own dead from them. Shot, yes, but they had healed. They’d always healed from most everything mortals inflicted—everything but severe wounds made by steel or iron.

“Go home and w

ail. When the others come to you, tell them this area is off limits for now.” Then he lifted the bloodied faery into his arms and walked away, leaving the beansidhe to begin keening as she ran. Her cries would summon them, his now-vulnerable Dark Court faeries, bring them to hear the awful word that a mortal had killed a faery.

By the time the current Gabriel—Irial’s left hand—approached mere moments later, Irial’s winged shadow had spread like a pall over the street. His ink-black tears dripped onto Guin’s body, wiping away the glamour that still clung to her. “I’ve waited long enough to address the threat of the Summer Court’s growing strength,” he said.

“Waited too long,” Gabriel said. “Keep waiting and war comes on their terms, Iri.”

Like his predecessors, this Gabriel—for the name was one of rank, not birth—had always been blunt. It was an invaluable trait.

“I’m not seeking war in the courts, just chaos.” Irial paused at the stoop of a heavily shuttered house, one of the many such houses he kept for his faeries in whichever cities they called home. He stared at the house, the home where Guin would be laid out for the court’s mourning. Soon, Bananach would hear the news of Guin’s death; the war-hungry faery would begin her interminable machinations. Irial was not looking forward to trying to placate Bananach. She grew less patient by the year, pressing for more violence, more blood, more destruction.

“War is not what’s best for our court,” Irial said, as much to himself as to Gabriel. “That’s Bananach’s agenda, not mine.”

“If it’s not yours, it’s not the Hounds’, either.” Gabriel reached out and brushed Guin’s cheek. “Guin would agree. She wouldn’t support Bananach, even now.”

Three dark fey came out of the house; smoky haze clung to them as if it seeped from their skin. Mute, they took Guin’s body and carried her inside. From the open door, Irial could see that they’d already begun hanging black mirrors throughout his house, covering every available surface in the hopes that some lingering darkness would find its way home to the body, that some trace would be strong enough to come back to the empty shell, so Guin could be nurtured and heal. It wouldn’t: she was truly gone.

Irial saw them in his street, filthy mortals with so much lovely violence he couldn’t reach. That will change. “Find them, the ones who did this. Kill them.”

The previously blank space around the oghams on Gabriel’s forearm filled with scrolling script in recognition of the Dark King’s command. Gabriel always carried out the king’s orders with the intent plainly writ on his skin—to intimidate and to make clear that the king willed it.

“And send the others to bring some of Keenan’s fey for the wake. Donia’s too.” Irial grinned at the thought of sullen Winter Court faeries. “Hell, bring some of Sorcha’s reclusive faeries if you can find them. Her High Court’s not good for anything else. I’ll not sanction a war, but let’s start a few fights.”

At nightfall Irial sat on his dais looking out at his grieving faeries. They squirmed, paced, and wailed. The glaistigs were dripping dirty river water all over the floor; several beansidhes still keened. The Gabriel Hounds—in their human guise, skin decorated with moving ink and silver chains—joked amongst themselves, but there were under-currents of alarm. Jenny Greenteeth and her kin stared at everyone with accusing eyes. Only the thistle-fey seemed calm, taking advantage of the fear of the others, nourishing themselves on the panic that pervaded the room. They all knew that the rumblings of upheaval had already begun. With the reality of a faery death, the inducement to resort to extreme measures was inevitable. There were always factions, murmurs of mutiny: that was status quo. This was different: one of their own had died. That changed the stakes.

“Move away from the streets”—Irial let his gaze slide over them, assessing the signs of disagreement, determining who would sway toward Bananach when she began rallying them to her cause—“until we know how weakened we are.”