Hours ago, he’d insisted the MacKeltars leave the hall, get out of the castle—over their strident protests—persuading them it was wiser they be elsewhere, as Aoibheal would be furious when she arrived.
He’d kept Gabrielle with him. He would protect her against the queen’s wrath, however need be, but he didn’t want the distraction of vulnerable MacKeltars too.
A fierce gust of wind kicked up suddenly, extinguishing the fire in the hearth, then the air was drenched with jasmine and sandalwood, and Aoibheal was there, shimmering before them.
“Oh, God,” he heard Gabrielle whisper, awed.
“My Queen,” Adam said, rising instantly, bringing Gabrielle up with him, an arm around her waist.
Ah, yes, Aoibheal was furious. She was in high glamour, so terrifyingly beautiful that, even for him, she was almost impossible to look at, shimmering brilliantly, lit by the radiance of a thousand tiny suns. Though her form was essentially human, her body chillingly perfect, nude beneath her gown of light, there was nothing human about her. Pure power pulsed in the air, the presence of an immense, ancient entity.
“How dare you?” Her words reverberated through the great hall, steel striking off stone.
“My Queen,” Adam said swiftly, “I would not have taken such extreme measures were your welfare not at risk. Gravely at risk.”
“I’m to believe this is about me, Amadan? You would have me interpret your latest—and I must say by far greatest—act of defiance as a selfless act?” Mockery dripped from her voice.
She was using part of his true name, not Adam, but Amadan. Ah, yes, she was pissed. “It is about you,” he said. A pause. “Though if you were inclined to reward me, I would not be averse.”
“Reward you? What would I be rewarding you for? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you know that already humans have begun slipping through the fabric of place and time where the old magic lies fallow?”
“The dolmens have opened?” Adam was startled.
“Yes.”
“Well, why the bloody hell did you wait so long?”
She gave him such an arctic glare that he was surprised his skin didn’t ice. “How am I at risk? Speak. Now. Fast. With each passing moment, I grow more inclined to punish you further than hear you out.”
“Darroc has made an attempt on my life.” There. Face that, Aoibheal, he thought, and restore me to immortality as you should have months ago.
The queen stiffened. “Darroc? How do you know that? You can no longer see our kind.”
“I saw him,” Gabrielle spoke then.
Adam glanced down at her, tightening his arm around her. Her eyes were narrowed, her face was averted, yet she was actually managing to peek at the queen from the periphery of her vision. The queen had chosen high glamour deliberately, knowing humans couldn’t focus on it. But she didn’t know Gabrielle, he thought with a flash of pride; she was strong, his ka-lyrra.
Aoibheal didn’t deign to acknowledge her. “How?” she demanded of Adam.
“She’s a Sidhe-seer, my Queen.”
Aoibheal’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed.” She cast a raking, imperious glance over Gabrielle. “I believed them all dead. You do know that by the terms of The Compact that makes her mine.”
Adam stiffened. “She helped me gain an audience with you so I could warn you that Darroc is plotting against you,” he said tightly. “In exchange for acting as my intermediary, I assured her safety.”
“You assured? You had no right to assure anything.”
“My Queen, Darroc has brought forth Hunters from the Unseelie kingdom. There are a score or more in his service.”
“Hunters? My Hunters? You jest!” The breeze swirling through the great hall gusted, bitterly frigid, licking around him.
Adam’s breath frosted the air with tiny ice crystals when he said, “It’s no jest. It’s true. The second time he attacked, he didn’t bother to conceal himself or his Hunters. I saw them myself.”
“Tell me,” she commanded.
Speaking briskly, he told her all, from finding Gabrielle, to approaching Aine and her companion, to Darroc’s first attack and subsequent one.
“You saw all this, too, Sidhe-seer?” the queen demanded.
Gabrielle nodded.
“Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Watching the queen with that half-averted gaze, Gabrielle told her what she’d seen in detail, describing the Fae involved.
“And we both know,” Adam concluded when Gabrielle fell silent, “there’s only one thing Darroc could have promised the Hunters to sway their fealty from you.”