Page 15 of Tempting the Fae Lord (The Gatekeeper’s Weakness)

Chapter Fourteen

The Gatekeeper

I haven’t known such fear in an eternity of nightfalls. Gale in the sorceress’s clutches. Gale fighting the death mage. Gale collapsed to the ground in pain, dark magic consuming him.

My heart cannot bear to see him in peril.

I would give my right arm to put the wicked sorceress six feet under where she belongs, from whence her cursed army hails. But not if it means ignoring Gale’s desperate pleas for her life.

So if I can’t have her, then the death mage will have to do.

I rush them both to the underground stronghold of the Vartija, Gale in one arm and the mage in the other. Their combined weight drags heavily on my wings and taxes my strength, but lingering rage powers me through.

“Are you well?” I ask Gale at my earliest opportunity.

“Fine, yes. You?”

Relief courses through me. “Fine.”

Gale touches my face. “Thank the stars. I was so worried. We all were.”

“How did you get here?”

He blanches. In a small voice, he says, “The gate let me through.”

“What? Impossible.” The gate doesn’t open willy-nilly for anyone. Only those of my bloodline have the power.

Only me.

I’ll deal with that later.

Inside, I set Gale on his feet and look him over. Despite his brush with the sorceress, he does, indeed, seem fine. But the mage is out cold, so I jostle him into a better position and stalk farther into the musty building. “Come along.”

“Where are we going?” Gale shuffles after me.

“To the old holding cells.”

“Cells? Like a prison?”

“Exactly like a prison.”

“But he doesn’t need a dungeon. He needs a healer. Look at him.”

If he doesn’t need a healer now, he will when I’m done with him. “He’s dangerous.”

“Very. But he wasn’t raising them of his own free will. She ordered him to do it. Something about a life debt.”

I stop. The rage inside me doesn’t want to hear excuses. It clamors for vengeance. “Everyone has choices. His have led him to this moment.”

“But we don’t know his story. What if it wasn’t his fault?”

I press my lips tight and hold back several nasty things I’d like to say. But not to Gale. Gale doesn’t deserve my ire. But this mage…

We continue along a dark corridor until reaching my destination. “The holding cells were designed to contain magical creatures. The bedroom suites were not. He’ll stay here until I make my final decision.”

Gale doesn’t argue.

I place the mage in the corner of a stone room with a stone floor and iron bars and little else. He works with his hands, so I bind them behind his back. I shove him into a seated position. He slumps sideways but doesn’t wake.

“Don’t hurt him.”

“Shush. I need to think.”

“But you don’t understand. You have to listen.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“Maybe Sonja had a point when she said you weren’t a good listener,” he mutters.

“You’re on a first-name basis with the fae now? What were you doing with her?”

“Well, before you showed up, we were having tea.”

I can’t be hearing this right. “Tea.”

“Tea. I didn’t know who she was, mind you. I was searching for you and found her instead.”

I need to sit down. “You could have been killed.”

“She was kind to me, Ez—I mean, sir.” He drops his gaze to the floor. “I wasn’t in any danger.”

“You were. You just didn’t know it.” I grab him and pull him to my chest.

He stiffens but, after a moment, relaxes into my hold and wraps his arms around my waist.

I press my nose into his soft hair and breathe deeply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you involved in this.”

“I know. But you’ve never been gone so long, and I was scared you were in trouble.”

“You needn’t fear for me, Mooncalf.”

He rubs his cheek along my jaw like a house cat. “I can’t help it.”

Though it’s a balm to my soul to have Gale in my arms, he shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t have crossed through the gate. Shouldn’t have put himself in danger on my behalf.

And yet I can’t be sorry he’s come. I don’t want to let him go. I’m petting his hair and relishing his presence when a stuttering cough comes from the mage in the corner.

We break apart.

“Don’t hurt him,” says Gale. “Please.”

I thrust a finger at the mage but focus on Gale. “He’s the reason I’ve been stuck here. He attacks me nightly with his wretched, foul armies of rot. You can’t possibly expect to demand my mercy.”

Gale moves to stand between us. “I do, though.”

Of all the frustrating entreaties he makes of me, this one has got to take the cake. “And just how do you expect me to get the answers I need without a bit of persuasion?”

“You could try asking him.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Get behind me, and I’ll consider it.”

He hesitates but eventually obeys. “I don’t think he’d hurt me. I’m not even sure he can in this state.”

“Let’s not take that chance.” I study the skinny man. Boy really. He’s quite young. A few years younger than Gale, perhaps. His dark hair hangs in clumps around his sunken face. He’s awake now, but not alert. His eyes are glassy.

Gale sidles up next to me. “He’s in really bad shape, sir.”

The “sir” sounds wrong from Gale’s lips. Too formal. Though he’s addressed me by that title his whole life, I consider letting him call me Ezra.

Perhaps I could be Ezra again.

For Gale.

Ezra wouldn’t torture this mage like I want to.

Torture would be easier. Faster. But the longer I stare at the boy, the less I want to hurt him.

His powers might rival death herself, but his body is failing him.

Half-starved and jaundiced, he makes a pathetic foe, bound and captured on the floor of this dungeon.

I turn to Gale. “All right. What do you suggest I do with him?”

He widens his eyes, brows high. “You could start by getting his name, maybe.”

I nudge the toe of the boy’s boot with mine to rouse his attention. “What are you called, kid?”

The mage blinks and focuses. He looks as if a summer breeze could knock him over. He looks terrified. “Petru.”

“All right,” I say to Gale. “Now what?”

“Erm, we could take him home with us? Eulayla will know what to do.”

“Let me get this straight. Your suggestion is to nurse him back to health? You did see what he’s capable of, yes?”

Gale shuffles from foot to foot. “But Sonja made him do it. She won’t be on the other side. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

His cringe tells me I won’t like the answer. “Well, I sort of taught her how to cross through the gate.”

Red flashes before my eyes. “You what?”

“I didn’t know who she was at the time.”

“All the more reason not to reveal sacred information about the portal.” I shoot a glance at the mage. “You. Stay.” Then to Gale. “And you. Come.”

I lock the boy in the cell and lead Gale away, far enough for us to speak without being overheard, but close enough to guard the dungeon’s exit. We end up in a small sitting room off the long hallway.

With a flick of my hand, fairy lights illuminate the stuffy chamber. Dust-covered lounges, a wooden game table, and an elegant harpsichord fill the space.

I point to a brown leather settee. “Sit. I need to know everything you told her and exactly how you got through the gate. Don’t leave anything out.”

Gale drops onto the cushion unhappily but doesn’t protest.

The story that follows is shocking.

I pace as he tells it, his voice wavering with nerves. He memorized my words, cut his own palm, and tried to recite them. When that failed, he made up his own.

And the gate…opened.

I don’t get the sense that he’s outright lying, but—“What are you not telling me?”

He gulps and twists his hands. “It’s weird.”

“All right.”

“It’s really weird, and you might be mad.”

What Gale doesn’t know is that even when he deserves it, I can never truly be mad at him. My anger finds no place to sink its teeth into Gale. He’s too precious for such a rotten emotion.

However, the fact that he’s worried about the possibility is concerning. “Just tell me and get it over with for both of us.”

He takes a deep breath. “At first, I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t even think about it. It just happened.”

“It?”

His cheeks redden. “The first time. When you left, I…” He wets his lips, settling his gaze somewhere over my left shoulder instead of my eyes.

“I licked your blood from the bars. I ate it off the snow like a crazed vulture. I couldn’t stop myself.

The urge came over me, and I couldn’t resist. I don’t know why I did it. ”

Shock drops my jaw. I hadn’t known. Oh stars, I hadn’t known. I close my mouth and think. Poor Gale. Not his fault. My fault.

“Afterward,” he says, “I felt—it’s hard to describe—I felt weightless and giddy and like I was floating all at once.”

“Euphoric. You felt euphoric.” My fault.

“Yes.”

“And so, what happened the next time you watched me cross?”

“I knew what to expect. I knew you would leave blood behind, and that I’d want to consume it, but that I had to save it.”

“Save it?”

“For the gate. I collected it in a little phial and used it when I needed to cross.”

Clever little thing. Clever, naughty, little thing, Gale. I cross my arms. “So it was my blood that opened the gate?”

“Actually, no. It didn’t open until I offered it my own, and, erm, argued and begged a little.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m not.” Well, I am a bit. At myself. But it’s too late now. What’s done is done.

“I’m sorry.” He sounds miserable. Like he let me down, although he could never.

I join him on the settee, sitting heavily at his side, guilt clawing at my ribcage.

I rest my hand on his knee. “It’s my fault.

I’ve given you my blood on too many occasions.

Always in such small doses. I thought. Well, I thought it would be fine.

But it wasn’t fine. I’ve enthralled you, at least a little. ”

He leans his shoulder against mine. “Sonja said that. She called me your thrall.”

“You’re not. Not wholly anyway. You maintain your free will. I’d never take that from you.” I value it far too much to do that.

“But what does it mean? Thrall?”

“It’s a vampire term for a human who’s so addicted to their blood they’ll do anything to maintain access. Not you, though. I never meant to come this close.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve never made a thrall, and I never will. I only know what I’ve seen from others. But…” I look him in the eyes. In his beautiful, stormy-green eyes. “I have given you my blood.”

“You have? When?”

Nothing about this is funny, and yet I chuckle.

“When you almost froze to death as a small child, when you nearly managed to get yourself eaten by wolves, when you broke your arm falling from a tree, when you caught fever and I was afraid, well, you were so weak. When you, when you, when you… But the first time, the very first time, you stole it from me yourself, you rotten criminal.”

“What?”

“Only little drinks, a tiny bit here, a drop or two there. My blood, along with bringing euphoria, speeds healing.”

“But I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t. I made sure you weren’t aware.”

“That explains a few things. Gaps in my memory. But I stole it?”

“Yes, as a small, angry babe on the night we met. You clawed your way out of the swaddle, into my shirt, and dug at my chest. So fierce you were. So furious at being stolen. Your tiny nails, sharp as razors, clawed at my skin until you drew blood. Then you licked it from your fingers. Not your fault. The scent would have been difficult to resist.”

He stares forward. “Smoldering ashes.”

“Indeed.”

“Sonja said I’m protected. She said you chained me. What did she mean?”

“She detected my scent on you. I didn’t realize it had gone that far, so much that you’d still carry my scent after all this time. But I would never chain you. Not in any way. Surely you know that.”

“Yes, but you thralled me by accident, right? How do we know—”

“We know because I’ve never drunk from you. And I never will. I cannot.”

He turns his gaze on me, burning a hole in my heart. “But what if I want you to?”

His offer stirs heat low in my body and makes my mouth water, but I cannot afford to let it sink in. “No, Mooncalf. You’ve had too much of my blood for too long a time frame. If I drink from you, we’ll be tied by the blood.”

Gale lays his hand on top of mine, warm palm covering the back of my cold hand. “Would that be so bad?”

“Yes,” I say.

He deflates and moves to draw his hand away, but I catch it mine.

“It’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not so terribly reluctant to bond with you.

This is no rejection you’re hearing, but you must understand.

There are no equal relationships between vampire and human.

For our…friendship to continue, you must remain free of my influence.

As you are. If we were to swap blood, you’d be compelled to do as I wish. Anything I wish.”

The meaning sinks in. He frowns. “So we can never—”

“Never.”

“But you can drink from Chester?”

“Because Chester has never partaken from me, though at his age, I’ve offered.”

“I see.”

“It saddens you.”

He nods. “I had thought maybe I wasn’t old enough or not big enough, but I always thought someday it would be my turn. But it will never be my turn, will it?”

I loathe dousing his hope. “No.”

Gently, he picks up my hand and turns it in his. Palm to palm, he interlaces our fingers. Warmth blooms between us. I squeeze.

He returns the gesture and catches my gaze. “What happens now?”

“That’s the question, isn't it?”

“Petru is suffering,” says Gale softly.

“I don’t want the death mage on the other side. Though magically gifted, he’s human and doesn’t belong in the fae realm.”

More selfishly, I think of my private cemetery. Those I’ve shared my live with, loved, lost, and buried with my own two hands. They’ve earned their peace. I won’t jeopardize that by bringing a death mage to their resting grounds.

“We can’t keep him in the dungeon, sir. He needs food and water. Rest. A proper bed. If you won’t let him cross, we should find an inn. I will care for him while you rest.”

I stare at Gale’s hand in mine. Why is he so hard to say no to? “This is a nightmare waiting to happen.”

“Maybe not.”

I shoot him a look.

“All right, yes. It probably is.” He lifts my hand to his mouth and presses a light kiss to my knuckles. “Please?”

Honestly, it’s embarrassing how fast I crumble.