Page 92 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)

He watched with hatred as Malak turned and walked away, leaving Solrin alone. Nathan wanted to talk to Solrin, to convince him to stop this, to tell him that it would be okay if only he would see that it wasn’t too late to switch sides . But Nathan was only a shade.

He reached out and touched Solrin’s shoulder anyway, squeezed it, even though he knew Solrin couldn’t really feel him. “I’m not giving up on you yet,” he said, looking into Solrin’s eyes, into that drawn face that doubted.

That pull came again, the tug at Nathan’s spine, and he was twirled up and away, off somewhere else just as swiftly as he had been brought into the scene with Solrin and Malak.

He landed on a hill, the tallest amongst the fields outside the Gatehouse.

Oberon and Gwen were there, looking out at their troops.

They were both still just as sparsely clothed as before, their bodies flawless and unnaturally beautiful the way only fae could be, even in simple human guise.

They were so different from Malak, who Nathan always saw as made of stone and ice and cruelty.

They were made of something else, something warmer.

“It’s going to be close,” Gwen said, hand on her hip as she surveyed the army below them.

“Nathan will lead us to victory,” Oberon said plainly, no room for other possibilities in his mind. “He is more than capable. When the time comes, he will know what to do.”

Gwen nodded. “Many will die though, especially if he fails.”

“It is to be expected.”

“ Oberon .” Gwen turned to him.

“What, Guinevere ?” He met her gaze with a smile.

“You worry that the same mistakes will be made again, I understand that. You are not my wife, as so many believe, but a dear friend who has ruled by my side. And as your friend, I ask you to have faith. And don’t turn your nose up at that.

” He frowned since ‘turn up her nose’ was exactly what she did.

“It takes great faith to see darkness when it is hidden but greater faith to see light when it is buried. And it is not always faith in oneself.”

“Riddles.” Gwen shook out her long red curls, crossing her arms defiantly.

Oberon merely smiled wider. “Perhaps. But I have faith that Nathan will see the answer. Don’t hold onto your bitterness for the one you lost. Look what your love gave us.

” With the smallest tilt of his head, Oberon directed Gwen’s attention to the gathered incubi and succubae soldiers. “They are beautiful, powerful beings.”

“Don’t lecture me on the good that came from my tragedy,” Gwen said with something of a sharp tongue that Nathan was not used to from her.

“I know how beautiful and powerful they are. How ironic that one of my…children,” she smiled a little bitterly, “is destined to play so important a role. He loves Nathan with such abandon.”

“Yes.” Oberon nodded.

“He reminds me…of my son,” Gwen said, and Nathan understood why she was bitter, and angry, and a little sharper than usual.

“Your son lived a long life. Happy,” Oberon said.

“I know. But I wonder if this isn’t all happening now because I—”

“I was the closest to him, you know. If we want to start pointing out blame, dear, then it really begins there.”

“No.” Gwen shifted, glancing up finally to meet Oberon’s gaze again. “No one is to blame. I just hope…I hope he lives through this.”

“Nathan? Sasha? Or do you mean someone else?”

Oberon seemed to have touched on something there, but Gwen didn’t say anything more. Nathan had a good idea who that ‘someone else’ was.

In the next moment he was whisked away again, tumbling through the air until he landed within the camp not far below where Oberon and Gwen were surveying.

Incubi and succubae needed sleep too, but while there were heaps of winged and clawed creatures curled together, he saw Aloysha walking over to a small bit of empty space to meet his grandson.

Nathan stepped carefully around the sleeping sex demons, even if he was fairly certain they wouldn’t feel his step, and approached the pair as they began talking. He could see Charis asleep not far away, close to Cam and the twins.

Lindsey’s expression was solid, almost cold, appearing human before his grandfather who in contrast had not left his true form. “Of course I have faith in them,” Lindsey said.

“ Them ,” Aloysha sneered. “What’s them? I mean Nathan specifically. I may have led our people here, I see the good in this, but I want to be certain. Do you think there is a chance he would betray us again?”

Nathan almost punched the guy on principle.

What stopped him—besides the lack of impact a punch in this state would have—was how honestly affronted Lindsey looked on Nathan’s behalf.

“I doubted him as well, and he came back having planned everything perfectly to ensure no one lost their life, to hold off the battle until our side was ready. Now we have a chance to fight this war at our best. Because of Nathan ,” Lindsey stressed. “Sasha has every—”

“ Sasha ,” Aloysha sneered even more prominently than before. “We may have agreed to lift his banishment, but Sasha Kelly is a kinslayer and a deserter. He is hardly a character reference I trust.”

Nathan cheered to see how Lindsey’s hands tightened into fists, blackening, ready to defend Sasha the way he should have years ago.

“You think he would have left back then if he believed he had another choice? You think he would have killed his own family if it hadn’t been the only way? You know nothing about him.”

“ Mind your tone ,” Aloysha warned, tall and menacing in his true form when Lindsey appeared only human, something Nathan thought the white-haired incubus was maintaining purely to piss his grandfather off.

“Now is not the time for this. I merely asked your opinion about Nathan. I have your answer. We shall see the truth revealed tomorrow. To think,” Aloysha huffed, “that you would trust him so easily. We will watch our backs as much as we watch the dark fae in front of us. We’ll see tomorrow how trustworthy the seals and Nathan Grier really are.

Go to sleep, Lindsey. You are not only responsible for your own life, remember?

Watch over the one who was promised to you. ”

With that, something cold and disapproving lingering in the way Aloysha turned to walk back through the camp, he left Lindsey alone.

Nathan was allowed only another moment to watch Lindsey staring after his grandfather’s retreating back. He heard the brief, angry growl of “ Fool ” that Lindsey spoke before moving to join his sleeping wife, and then Nathan was taken up again, pulled farther along the troops to the seal camp.

Nathan was not surprised to find a handful of them still awake, probably never having slept or rested as they were instructed.

That young couple was dozing by the fire in the center, curled together and listening in to the conversation of those fully awake, which included a crotchety old seal Nathan really should have learned the name of by now.

He was playing poker in the dirt with several others.

There was a bottle of blue-label Johnny Walker whiskey next to them, half gone. Nathan caught the end of something one of them said about worrying that their great leader, Nathan Grier, might be leading them into a trap.

So good to know everyone was behind him, Nathan thought with a grimace.

“You watch it now, Jackson.” The crotchety seal waggled a finger over the top of his cards that Nathan could see were crap.

“Just because I’m technically retired doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still school you in proper manners.

Grier’s on the level. No doubt in my mind.

Got plenty of backers.” He slowly arranged his cards as if building something substantial, while Nathan could see that it was purely random.

“Even Oberon and Titania themselves. You want to try taking them on?”

A couple other older seals chuckled low and hoarse.

The younger seal, Jackson, shifted nervously then threw down his cards, folding. “I was just sayin’,” he grumbled. One of the other men was already out. The last folded too. The older seal won with a few sharp looks and a handful of nothing.

“Deklin was always a wild card,” he raised the whiskey bottle to his lips for a slow pull, “and Sasha is even wilder. You forget I was part of the men who took ol’ McPherson out after he killed the poor bastard and his wife. No sense in slaughtering fae who ain’t done nothin’.”

Nathan stumbled back. Sasha had been right all along about the man who killed his parents—retribution had indeed come calling, and from Deklin Kelly’s fellow seals.

“Now Nathan’s gone and pulled one over on the Devil himself. And I’m just fine with that. Deal ‘em again, Jackson.” He tossed away his winning hand.

Nathan couldn’t help noticing that the seals weren’t playing for anything but company.

Then he was off again, one last flyby of the assembled masses, right back through the doors of the Gatehouse, before landing a little off-kilter beside the makeshift beds where all those he cared about most slumbered.

He realized then that Walter was perched on top of the bar the way he used to so often perch in windowsills when only Nathan could see him, watching over them with a fond look on his face like he could stay that way all night.

It made Nathan want to get up, wake up so he could talk with Walter, with the others too. There hadn’t been enough time for everything he wanted to tell them. There hadn’t been enough time for anything.

“Prrp?” Wally called from Nathan’s feet.

He looked down. She hadn’t chirped loud enough for Walter to hear, but had stirred from her slumber and was looking right up at Nathan’s dream self.

“Walter can’t even see me, or Malak…but you can, huh, girl?”

She tilted her head at him. She looked briefly to Walter at the bar, but he seemed too lost in thought to notice her.

When she looked back, she stood up on her two feet—she only walked on all fours when she was a cat.

She raised one of her human hands palm up, and as Nathan watched, mesmerized, it started to glow a faint green.

The light focused into her pointer finger, and she bent over, writing carefully on the floor and leaving green marks in her wake.

When she was done, she’d spelled out the Gaelic word for Faith.

“Why do I get the feeling that before long you’re going to be able to talk too?” Nathan said, not even surprised that there was some wild magic in their mascot.

With an obvious smile on her furry face, Wally chirped at him before turning to snuggle back in by his and Sasha’s heads on the floor, as if to say…time to come back to bed, Nathan.

Standing there, Nathan thought of everyone he had been shown tonight.

There were so many more people and agendas out there than he had seen.

He thought of Ula and her friends. He thought of the people right here around him, and for a moment he fell prey to real panic, real terror, because this was happening.

He was leading a whole damn army against Malak.

If he failed, it would mean the end of everything.

Nathan clutched at a nearby chair, trembling from the weight of all that rested on his shoulders. “What am I supposed to do…?” he asked the room and whoever might be listening.

He did not expect the large, firm hand that came down to rest on his shoulder, a presence Nathan knew well, recognized easily now, and that carried with it an immediate sense of peace. “You’ll know,” said Dave’s smooth drawl, right there with Nathan, real and solid.

All Nathan wanted to do was turn around, feel that peace wash over him fully, but when he did, Dave wasn’t there, and Nathan wasn’t there anymore either. He was waking up, Sasha warm beside him, a slight crick in his side from sleeping on just a few blankets and a pillow on the bar floor.

Malak was coming, Nathan could feel it. It wasn’t yet dawn—whatever that meant without the sun actually rising—but it was time to face the day, even if half their soldiers were still sleeping.

Nathan wasn’t sure he knew what to do, but he had to believe in Dave and everyone else who had faith in him that when the time came he would figure it out.