Page 16 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)
“I love you, too, mi vida . You don’t have anything to worry about.” Diego kissed him softly. “Now, show me how to find this thing that’s not a place.”
With a soft sigh, Finn moved behind him and wrapped him close. Not that he sought an excuse to nestle his erection against that firm, denim-clad backside, but he wouldn’t complain about the necessity, either.
“Deep breath, my light,” he whispered as Diego closed his eyes. “Reach for me. Mind to mind. Feel what I feel.”
Diego leaned back against him, his hands covering Finn’s, and suddenly his brilliance nestled against Finn’s thoughts, so bright Finn forgot to breathe.
“You are blinding, my hero.”
“I’m sorry. Is there any way to tone it down?”
Finn chuckled. “ No, no, I only meant I have never seen you so clearly before. Now…reach with me. Between the worlds. Between the air and the magic. Between the smallest dust motes you can imagine and smaller still. Everywhere. As the magic is. You could cross the Veil through a space tinier than a gnat. Do you feel it? Can you push against it?”
“Yes, I…feel something. There’s a humming.
Almost a call. Pulling. Something just out of reach…
” Diego went stiff in his arms, then broke off with a frustrated cry and buried his face in his hands.
“I can’t. I can’t feel my way through. Damn it.
It’s like giving a Rubik’s Cube to a chimp and expecting him to figure it out. ”
“Did the word ‘can’t’ pass your lips again?” The rasping voice made them both jump. Morrigan stood before them with her hands on her hips. “Must I knock sense into you as before?”
Heart hammering, Finn shrank back a step so his anxiety would not transmit to Diego.
The sudden urge to shift to something small and flee nearly overwhelmed him.
When her cold, sharp eyes met his, he panicked and shifted to the black dog Diego liked so much.
Her disdain for him, her disgust over seeing him hammered at him like a hard rain.
He curled up at Diego’s feet, silent and unobtrusive.
Apparently too distracted, Diego answered as if nothing had passed between them. “I meant it. I can’t figure it out, how to get through. I wish you’d all understand. I’m not a sorcerer. I can’t do these things instinctively.”
Morrigan’s voice softened a hair. “If that were true, you would not be here.”
“But—” Diego fell silent a moment. “I suppose so. I can’t see hurling lightning at it randomly, though. Who knows what kind of damage I might do, here or in the outer world?”
“So. It is no longer the power you doubt, but your control.” She nodded and held out a clawed hand.
Finn shivered when Diego, wide-eyed and trusting, settled his hand on her palm. “ Be careful, love.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s…Morrigan.”
“She won’t hurt me, carino . Don’t worry so.”
“Why do you seek to cross?” she asked sharply. “Do you wish to desert us when we need you most, Taliesin?”
“Of course not.” Diego gave her a wry smile. “I just can’t help enough. There’s someone on the other side who might be able to. A woman who knows things most humans don’t understand.”
“Ah. A wise woman.”
“So I need to see if she’ll come here. And if I have to resort to seizures and lightning, then I guess that’s what I’ll have to do.”
“You think in large things, little man,” Morrigan went on. “Magic is not always so. Small things can be more powerful.”
“Like a virus,” Diego muttered.
A little warm ball of satisfaction nestled against Finn’s heart when Morrigan looked puzzled. He knew about viruses.
“But why me, at all? If the Veil was closed forever, if no one’s supposed to be able to get through, why could I?”
Morrigan let out a dry, hacking laugh. “You are what no one considered. The spells were laid, in an intricate web throughout the Veil, so no fae might break the strands.”
Diego bent to ruffle Finn’s dog ears. “ ‘Laugh to scorn the power of man; for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth.’ And still he dies. I’m the loophole, the thing unlooked for. Since I’m not fae…”
“Yes.” Morrigan nodded. “Humans had no more knowledge of magic. So we thought. And you…you, we thought lost forever.”
“So the spells didn’t take humans into account. I guess even a ten-thousand-year-old fairy queen can’t think of everything.”
The gods will have their jokes , Finn thought, though he kept it to himself.
“Since you fear the large, make it small,” Morrigan said again.
Diego closed his eyes and stretched out his palm. A blue flash crackled. The air hissed as a lightning ball the size of a mouse hovered over his hand.
“Smaller still. The tiniest thing you can imagine.”
Finn lifted his head to watch the lightning shrink. The hiss and crackle remained, lifting the fur along the back of his neck, but the ball faded from sight, presumably to the size of a virus.
“Now, Taliesin. Hurl it through.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do not think! Now!”
Diego’s forehead creased in concentration.
His chest heaved a few desperate breaths.
Then with a ferocious cry, he flung the miniscule lightning ball from him, not into the visible world but at the fabric of the Veil.
A thunderous boom shook the ground beneath their feet.
The wind of the Otherworld whipped and howled around them.
Diego would have collapsed to his knees without Morrigan’s arms around him.
There…oh, sweet goddesses…there…
A scene appeared as if painted over the surrounding woods, a circle of incongruous landscape no larger than one of Finn’s own canvases at home.
His heart ached. It was home, their snug little house crouched among the larches.
Finn surged to his feet, barking, drawn inexorably toward that other place.
Diego sagged against Morrigan, and the scene snapped shut, leaving only the woods of the Otherworld again.
“I couldn’t hold it,” Diego panted. “I got through, but I couldn’t hold it open.”
“You will need borrowed strength for that.” Morrigan laid him on the grass. “Sleep now. You will need all of your own strength, as well.” She passed her hand over Diego’s face, and his breathing evened out, his features softening in slumber.
Eyes colder than ice turned on Finn. “You.”
With a yelp, Finn scrambled back and shifted to horse to gain some advantage in height.
“Why do you linger here?”
“You know why, Morrigan. Please don’t torment me.”
“Thief.”
“I gave it back.”
“The orb was not yours to take.”
Finn shook his mane in agitation. “What do you want from me?”
“Liar.”
“Yes. I can’t help that.”
“Coward. Craven, sniveling coward.”
“No!” The protest came out as much whinny as word. “I am no coward!”
“You hide whenever battle is joined. You run when those who call you friend need you most.”
“I am not sidhe ! I could not take sides when I loved people in both courts!”
“You think you are the only one? And yet, others chose their loyalties carefully. Others knew where their obligations lay.”
“I’m not like you!”
“No. No, you are not, Fionnachd. And you do not deserve to be with him. Honorable, courageous warriors wish to throw themselves at his feet and he refuses them. Because of you.”
“He loves me.” Finn cringed at the whine in his voice.
“And should not. You only bring him pain, treacherous mischief-tempest that you are.”
“It’s not true.”
“Why did it take so long for him to return to his next life? Why is he so damaged this time?”
“Because of the humans who betrayed him, who tortured him and burned him alive.”
“Because of you.” She clacked her teeth impatiently.
“Do you think they would have branded him and whipped him and burned him if they had not come upon you with your cock up his ass? You who never saw any needs but your own selfish ones. You who found it easier to pretend you didn’t understand humans than to admit the danger. ”
“I tried to protect him,” Finn whispered. “I nearly died for him.”
“If you truly love him, as you say, you should go away. Let his heart break while he is among those who will soothe him. Let him have the honorable love he deserves.”
She stormed off, leaving Finn trembling so hard he thought he might shatter.
He shifted back to his own form and stretched out beside Diego to hold his hand while he slept.
It’s not true. All those things. I would only leave you if you said I must. If you showed me you needed something else, and even then… Please don’t ever tell me to go.