Confessions of a Dangerous Fae (The Supernatural Spy Files Book 1) Page 11

  “I’ve had some,” I admitted. No use in trying to deny it. He might be cocky, cruel, and traitorous, but he wasn’t daft. “I’ve met other solitary fae. One of them was a pretty good fighter, and he taught me some tricks.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes flashed as he tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair. “You are still keeping secrets from me.”

  Surprise flittered through me. “And you’re still keeping them from me.”

  He leaned forward, power rippling off his body in waves. “And what secrets would you have me spill, Moira?”

  At the intensity of his gaze, my heart did a little flip. I wet my lips. “For starters, you could explain who those fae were who jumped us in the alley. They mentioned a cauldron. What’s that all about?”

  He regarded me carefully for a moment. “The Gundestrup Cauldron.”

  I shook my head. I’d never heard of it. “The gund-what?”

  “Gundestrup.” He let out a heavy sigh and shut his eyes. “It is an ancient magical vessel, made centuries ago. It comes straight from Faerie itself.”

  Wow. There weren’t many things that still existed in this world that came from the fae realm. Most of those artefacts hadn’t made it through the portal. The fae had fled to the mortal realm when ours had been destroyed. Not everyone had made it, and very few items had been brought along. Faerie had come back to life now, thanks to the Morrigan’s reign, but most of the fae had stayed here instead of going back.

  “Okay.” My heart thundered in my ears. “What does it do?”

  “Regeneration,” he said, voice pained. “It has the ability to bring someone back from the dead.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say. Something along the lines of stealing a crown, growing an army, forging some kind of weapon that would never miss its mark. But bringing someone back from the dead? My mind churned. I didn’t understand how that had anything to do with the throne or the Morrigan.

  “So.” I glanced at the books surrounding us, my eyes flashing from one title to the next. One on Celtic items. Another on historical jewels. And yet another on the mythology surrounding metallurgy. These books were to help him find this cauldron. “Those fae in Barrie’s Close. They’re looking for this cauldron.”

  He nodded. “Some are members of this court.”

  I’d figured that much, especially with Warin poking around. “And...you’re looking for it, too?”

  “They’re looking for it because they wish to bring someone back from the dead.” His eyes went dark. “I’m searching for it to prevent them from doing it. Because of that, they want me out of the picture.”

  A strange fear flickered through me. “And who is it they want to bring back from the dead?”

  He let out a long, shuddering exhale. “Nemain, the fae who tried to destroy the Morrigan. The fae who murdered dozens of innocents. The fae who would enslave the humans of this realm if she had the power to rule. They want her back.”

  13

  I stared at Lugh for a long, long time without saying a word. My heartbeat frantically ran laps through my chest, and my ears filled with a strange, electrifying static-y sound. Nemain had pretty much been the devil incarnate. She had killed my sister-in-soul, had murdered her in cold blood. Elise was dead because of her. And she wasn’t the only fae she’d killed.

  The Morrigan—Clark, the Queen—had stopped her from destroying anyone else. And I had helped her do it.

  When Nemain had died, I’d let out an exhale of relief so long that it was as if my entire world had been altered forever.

  And now, members of this court wanted to bring her back.

  “You know her name,” Lugh observed. “And you look like you’ve been punched in the gut.”

  I lifted my eyes toward his, my stomach churning. “Let me get this straight. Some fae want to bring Nemain back from the dead, and you want to stop them. That’s why you’re searching for the cauldron. Not to destroy Clark yourself. You don’t want her crown?”

  He levelled his gaze, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “I may not want Clark Cavanaugh to be my Queen, but I wish her no harm. As long as she doesn’t bring an army to my gates, I will never make a move against her.”

  Oh. This conversation had certainly taken a turn. And I didn’t know what to do with myself. I sprang out of the chair and started pacing through the room, but got frustrated when all the random books blocked my way.

  I stopped suddenly, waving my arms around like windmills. “Why would someone want to bring back Nemain?”

  He leaned back in his chair, an eerily-calm expression on his face. “I imagine because they would like to destroy the Morrigan and all the peace she stands for. Nemain promised a rule over every creature, where the fae were the dominant species. Humans would be nothing but bugs beneath our feet. The vampires and the shifters would be snuffed out completely. This world would be ours.”

  An angry rush of adrenaline pounded through me. I’d thought when we got rid of Nemain, we made it clear to every other tosser who thought that way that they were wrong.

  “Who the hell is doing this?” I punched the air with my words. “I’ll find them right now and put a stop to this. Is it Warin? I thought I saw him sneaking around the cliffs, hunting for the hidden tunnel entrance earlier. He’s doing it. Isn’t he?”

  Lugh suddenly stood from his chair and loomed over me. “It isn’t Warin. I asked him to check the cliffs and make sure he couldn’t find it.”

  My mouth dropped open. “But...Saoirse said—”

  Lugh shook his head. “It isn’t him. She thought she had a reading that pointed to someone with red hair, but she said it was vague. Her prophecies are not always specific.”

  “Well, then we have to look at everyone else it could be. We have to—”

  He rounded on me, suddenly standing only inches away. “We?”

  At the strange intensity of his voice, I stopped my babble of incoherent thoughts. Taking a step back, I stared up at him. There was a hooded look in his eyes. A fierce electricity rippled across his skin. Not for the first time, magic sparked off his body, ricocheting against mine. I didn’t know whether I wanted to run screaming from it, or if I wanted to step closer and let it consume me whole.

  “How do you know so much about Nemain, Moira? Why are you so upset by this news? A solitary fae would have never had a confrontation with her. She was far too consumed by the Court.”

  His voice was steady and even, but it was dangerously soft.

  Swallowing hard, I took a step back, but he closed the distance within an instant. I was quickly realising that I had misjudged him. Everything I’d thought was wrong. He wasn’t working against Clark. He wasn’t trying to steal the throne. And his cruel apathy was just a show, probably for the very same people he was working against.

  We had somehow ended up on the same side...and I’d lied to him to get there.

  I had to tell him the truth, even as hard as it would be. The second I spilled my secret, he’d toss me out of this castle. And he would likely never let me help him find the real enemy. But I couldn’t keep going like this. He’d told me the truth. He’d opened up to me in a way I didn’t deserve. And now I had to do the same.

  I sucked in a deep breath and braced myself for his reaction. “I’m one of the fae who fought against her. I’m Moira Talmhach, a warrior fae in the Morrigan’s Court. I’m not a solitary fae at all. I came here to...well, I came here to stop you from getting your hands on that cauldron and killing my Queen.”

  The two words that whispered from his throat were the last two I ever expected to hear next. “I know.”

  “What?” I hissed the word and stumbled back. “What do you mean you know? You can’t know. You let me in your Court. You’ve...”

  I trailed off, and his wicked smile was my only answer. He knew?! All this time I thought I’d been playing him, but really he’d been playing me.

  Letting out a roar, I shoved at his chest. The ridges of his abs beneath my fin
gers were unsurprisingly firm. He stayed rooted to the spot, that wicked smile still playing across his lips.

  “Explain yourself,” I demanded. “How did you know? Why the hell did you let me inside?”

  “For one, I recognised you from that night at the Pack headquarters. I didn’t know you were one of Clark’s, but Saoirse did. She had a vision that saw you coming.” He leaned forward, tucked his finger beneath my chin, and tipped back my head. I swallowed hard, my anger battling a strange churning in my core. “And I let you in because I have no fight against the Morrigan. If she wants to spy on me, then so be it....” His grin widened. “Plus, I thought it would be fun.”

  “Argh!” I slapped his hand away from my chin and whirled toward the door. That was it. I’d heard enough. He had purposefully tricked me into thinking I was some sort of hostage in this place. For what? Some fun?!

  When I reached the door, I stopped to give him one last glare. “What about the blood contract?”

  “I have it somewhere safe.” He shrugged. “I can rip it in half at any time, and the spell is broken.”

  “So, you did all this to mess with me,” I deadpanned.

  “And you came here to spy on me. I’d say we’re even.”

  “Oh no.” I narrowed my eyes. “Just you wait.”

  And with that, I stormed out of the room and slammed the door.

  Despite my fury, I didn’t leave the castle. I returned to my freezing cold room and huddled beneath a blanket by the window. At some point, an apologetic Saoirse stopped by with my sword and cell phone and said I was free to return to London whenever I wanted. The blood contract had been destroyed.

  A part of me wanted to get the hell out, but my feet didn’t want to cooperate. They refused to carry me down the steps and toward the train station. Instead, I made a call to Clark.

  She answered half a ring into the call. “Moira?”

  “It’s me,” I said with a sigh, gripping the phone tight in my hands. It was good to hear her familiar voice.

  “Oh, thank god,” she said in a rush of words. “I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. I got your note. The raven said you were fine, but...I was two seconds away from shifting into a bird and flying up there to rescue you myself. What the hell is going on? What do those numbers mean?”

  I took a deep breath, half-afraid to spill the words and half-relieved I finally had the chance to confide in her. At least she hadn’t translated the code and sent a band of warriors up here to storm the castle. Lugh had given me my truth and my freedom. He trusted that I wouldn’t send an army straight to his front gates.

  “Everything is okay. Kind of. It’s a long story.” I nibbled on my bottom lip. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it. But I need you to make me a promise.”

  “Okay, now you’re scaring me again,” she said with a tense laugh. “What’s the promise?”

  “I need you to promise that you’ll talk to Lugh before you make any decision about his claim.”

  “Claim?” she asked suspiciously. “What claim?”

  And with that, I told her everything. Lugh, the Court of Wraiths, the traitors amongst them, and the quest for the cauldron that could bring back Nemain.

  “He was never the one who wanted to go up against you,” I finished. “He’s been trying to stop them.”

  “I see.” Her voice was hard. And tired. Very, very tired. I knew how she felt. The threat of Nemain was back on the menu again only two short years after we’d ended it. Not to mention that Clark was expecting her first child now. She had far more to lose than she had before.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked her as I eyed my sword. The freedom was mine to take, if I wanted it.

  “Do you trust him?” she asked.

  I thought hard. Did I trust him? Yes and no. He’d made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with Clark’s throne, but that didn’t change the fact he’d made his own court out of fae who didn’t want to be a part of hers. Some of whom were criminals. He could be cruel at times, but he could also be kind. And he was still hiding secrets. He may have opened up, but it hadn’t been completely.

  That said, I could hardly blame him for that. I’d been lying to him all this time myself.

  I blew out a breath. “I believe he’s sincere when he says he wants to stop the cauldron from getting into the wrong hands.”

  “Then, I’d like you to stay there and help him, if you’re up to it. I know how you must feel about the threat of Nemain...if it’s too much for you, I can send someone else.”

  Elise’s silver eyes flashed in my mind. My stomach turned. “No. It should be me. I’ll stay.”

  An old familiar nightmare haunted my dreams that night. Cloaked figures scuttled after me in the dark, arms outstretched to reveal thin, bony hands. They whispered words of terror, filling my soul with a darkness so profound that I swore I would never see light again.

  They wrapped their hands around me and pulled me to the leafy ground. Dozens swarmed me, pinning my arms against the dirt. They launched on top of me and squatted on my chest.

  Images swarmed into my mind. Blood, guts, gore.

  They poured their nightmares into my mind until they drove out everything else. All that existed within me was terror. And they fed on my fear.

  I screamed, but no sound came out.

  I was trapped inside the nightmare. Forever.

  “You’re still here,” Saoirse observed at breakfast the next morning. I’d taken a long hot shower to rid my mind of my nightmares, scrubbing my skin until every trace of the darkness was gone. I’d dressed in my borrowed clothes and padded down to the Great Hall, hoping to find the only fae in this place who might understand me.

  “You sound surprised.” I plopped into the seat next to her. The room was pretty empty. Most fae preferred to grab something to go from the kitchen for breakfast instead of dining in the formal Great Hall. I liked the arching timber beams myself. So did Saoirse, it seemed. “You didn’t see what I was going to do with your...” I made a circular motion around my head, indicating her prophecies, her visions.

  “I’m only half druid.” She buttered a slice of toast. “So, I don’t have unlimited access to visions of the future. I have to choose my questions wisely. And sometimes, my visions are hard to translate.”

  “And so you asked a question when I got here,” I said, nodding. Made sense. I would have, too.

  “Nope. I’ve known you were coming for weeks. I found out when I did a read when...well, when I did a read about Tyr’s death.” She cast a glance my way. “The fae who had the room before you.”

  “Oh.” So that was what had happened to the previous tenant. “How did he die?”

  She nibbled on her toast. “Good question. That’s what I was trying to find out, but the problem with my power is, it really only shows the future. All we know is that it had something to do with...the other stuff going on here. My vision seemed to suggest that you’d help. That’s partly why Lugh wanted to see what you’re made of.”

  I cast a glance around me at the fae in the hall. “Can you tell me what makes you think it’s related, or...?”

  “Tyr was on the warrior team. He was the one who found out about the...” She dropped her toast, glanced around, and then held her hands in the shape of a bowl. I nodded. The cauldron then.

  A picture was now forming inside my mind. Tyr, one of the warriors, had been looking into things for Lugh. He’d found out about the cauldron, most likely gaining too much interest from the culprits. In the end, they’d killed him, which probably meant he’d gotten close to finding out enough to expose them.

  So, Lugh had taken a trip down south to seek out the services of a werewolf skilled in finding magical objects, in hopes of stopping the killers before they got their hands on the cauldron themselves.

  And then I’d come along, crashing the party.

  “I want to stay and help,” I told Saoirse.

  She swivelled on her seat, turning
to face me, her purple eyes searching my face. “Lugh said you were very angry with him. I’d told him he was taking the whole thing too far, but he is Lugh, and he really didn’t know what kind of honour you would have, if any.”

  “He was worried about my honour?” A new flicker of irritation went through me. “And does he really think it’s honourable to commit treason against the crown? He’s made his own secret court.”

  She sighed. “He never meant for it to be treason. He meant for it to be a hidden place for those of us who don’t fit in anywhere else, who kind of want to hide from the outside world. Some of us have run from abusive situations. Some of us are former criminals, wanted by human authorities.” And then she pointed at herself. “Some of us have powers that others would love to exploit.”

  My heart ached for her, but it pained me even more how wrong she was. About everything. “Clark is a half-shifter. She was on the run for years. If anyone understands how you feel, it’s the Queen.”

  “I’m sure she does.” Saoirse dropped her eyes to the floor. “But she’s too far away to protect us. She has her own concerns down south. You don’t know what things were like here before Lugh came along and saved us. You don’t know what Athaira—”

  Her words ended in a choke, and ice went through my veins. Leaning forward, I whispered fiercely. “What are you talking about? What did Athaira do?”

  Her purple eyes peered deep into my soul. “I can’t talk about it.”

  Saoirse pushed up from the table, leaving her half-eaten toast behind. I jumped up and followed her toward the exit. “Where are you going?”

  “We have a team meeting with Lugh at half past.” She paused and gave me a solemn look. “You coming?”

  Ten minutes later, I stood inside The Royal Palace. We were in one of the many empty rooms, the lofted ceiling arching overhead, dark blue walls surrounding us.

  There were only a handful of us here. Lugh, of course, stood tall in the center of our circle. Saoirse and me, along with Warin and Boudica, clustered together. And, much to my irritation, the damn hobgoblin was here.