Kathryne Kennedy - Everlasting Enchantment

Gareth ground his pelvis against hers.

You are mine. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, you are mine. But I will have more than your body. I will have your heart. The whole of it. Not just the damaged bits and pieces.

Millicent began to shake. The tremor ran from her center and spread through her limbs as her release overtook her. And Gareth’s body responded to her pleasure, but his own release did not spread like a wave. It imploded inside of him, shattering his senses in a burst of ecstasy, making spots of light dance before his eyes.

He stilled, gathered his wits about him, and pulled away from her. Then sat for a moment with his head bowed in his hands.

She mewed. Some soft, sad noise that made him want to return to her. It would be so easy to stay. To tell her she had freed him, that her love had been strong enough after all. She would believe his words with her head… but he could not be sure if she would believe it in her heart. And he had a chance to make Millicent whole. He could tell her about his plans, about his hopes to bring Nell back. But if it did not work… no. He could not risk it. The disappointment might destroy her.

Gareth rose, dressed, and left as quietly as he had entered.

He did not look back at Millicent, nor did she make another sound to try to make him stay.

Perhaps she too understood that words were meaningless between them now.

He ran into the guard Bran had placed at the door during the tavern keeper’s absence. The man half shifted to jackal before he recognized Gareth, then moved aside. Gareth strode through the city like a blind man, his hand in his pocket around the bag of Nell’s ashes. He got lost several times on his way out of the tunnels, his mind distracted with thoughts of Millicent.

And ran into Bran at the top of Lady Roseus’s stairway. They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.

“You should marry her,” said Gareth.

Bran grinned. “I plan to… if she’ll have me.” He shuffled his feet, stuck his hands deep in his pockets. “And what about my Millie?”

“If she’ll have me.”

“We are a fine pair, old chap.”

Gareth grinned back at him. He suddenly felt lighter, as if his task wasn’t as impossible as he thought it might be. If a gruff bear could somehow manage to make a timid flamingo fall in love with him…

“Well, then.” Bran stepped to the side and they passed each other on the stairway.

Gareth did not see Lady Roseus as he strode through her house. Just the footman, who called for the carriage Gareth had left waiting. It had come with Hobover House. Indeed, he had several conveyances provided with his new estate. This coach had been kept up particularly well, with a coat of fresh varnish and smoothly oiled wheels. He ducked through the door and made himself comfortable, for he had a lengthy journey ahead of him to return to Ipswitch… and only Nell’s ashes, and memories of his encounter with Millicent, to keep him company.

Millicent had closed her eyes for what she thought had been just a moment, a delicious feeling of lassitude overwhelming her. And then she heard the door to her little room snick shut. She sat up with a start, blinking in the gloom. He had left her. After making love to her until she was so exhausted she’d fallen asleep, he’d just walked out without a word.

She glanced around the room in confusion. Perhaps she had only dreamed of him?

But she now felt fully awake. She could smell sour ale, could feel her hard pallet beneath her. She was still in the Swill and Seelie, where she had wallowed in misery for weeks. Her surroundings were too painfully real.

As real as the gentle ache from Gareth’s lovemaking.

Millicent hugged her shoulders. No, it had not been a dream. He had come to her. Had made love to her like a man starved for affection. Yet he had asked her to give him the relic…

She had thought it had been his way of saying good-bye.

For the last few weeks she had resumed her old life once again, determined to forget him. But she couldn’t. A head of blond hair would set her heart racing, and then plummeting to earth when she realized it wasn’t him. She would dream of him night after night… of his goodness, his courage, his gentle touch.

Millicent eavesdropped on every conversation she could, trying to find out what had happened to him after that fateful day. Talk flowed about the battle between Queen Victoria and the Duke of Ghoulston. The patrons of the pub relished the tales of Ghoulston’s blindness and eventual madness. But no one mentioned her enchanted knight.

Millicent dropped her arms. She knew the queen had taken him to Buckingham, but after that, Gareth seemed to have disappeared from aboveground. She feared the Master had taken the relic to the Hall, and trapped Gareth inside it forever.

But her knight had come to her. Somehow. Someway. And he still needed her. She had felt it in his kiss, with his every touch.

And she had promised she would never forsake him again.

Millicent surged to her feet. How dare that piece of metal try to tell her she wasn’t good enough for him? That her love wasn’t strong enough? So—so she couldn’t break the spell… who knew what sort of torture Merlin had intended with his curse? Perhaps he wanted to deny Gareth any happiness at all, and despite their different natures, she knew she could make him happy.

Her anger at having someone—or something— other than herself determine her fate, did what no persuasion could have. It made Millicent look at herself in a new light.

She had changed since she had first met Gareth. He had tamed her beast, had taught her about the value of charity and honor. She had been raised in the Underground, had learned to be selfish in all her concerns… and yet, she had still loved Nell. Millicent had taken care of her and risked her life for her.

Nell had died to help queen and Country.

And Millicent knew if she could ask Nell, the firebird would answer that she did not regret it.

So, what made a person good or bad? She’d always known the answer, but now embraced it fully within her heart: their actions. Not the cost of the clothing they wore, or the size of their home, or where they lived, whether in the grandest part of West London, or deep within the Underground. Even if they shape-shifted to a beast, their animal natures did not define them.

Millicent yanked open her door, strode into the pub and over to the bar. When she discovered Bran had left his room, she spun and poked a finger at the messenger sprite snoring on the counter. “Where is he?”

One translucent wing fluttered. “Eh, what?”

“Bran. Where did he go?”

Ambrose wobbled upright to a sitting position, screwed up his little pointed face, apparently trying to summon all of his brainpower to answer the question. Bran saved the sprite from further effort by striding into the pub, a self-satisfied grin on his face.

“Where have you been?” snapped Millicent.

“’Tis no concern of yers, little she-cat. What’s got ye in such a lather?”

“The dress.”

“Wot?”

“The ridiculous dress Lady Roseus loaned me.”

Bran scratched his head. “The one ye told me to burn?”

“Yes. Where is it?”

He folded his arms, raised a brow at her. “And what would ye be wanting with it, now? I seem to recall ye sayin’ ye’d never go topside again.”

Millicent scowled.

Bran laughed. “So ye’re gonna go to him, is that it? I think ye might surprise him, gel. Yes, I think it might come as a big surprise.”

He looked as if he kept some sort of secret from her, as if he knew more about the situation than he let on.

“You saw him tonight, didn’t you?” demanded Millicent.

“He might have popped in to give me his regards.”

“Stop teasing, Bran. This is serious. Do you know where I can find him?”

“What did he tell you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think ye’ll be in for some surprises yerself, Millie. And far be it for me to spoil them.” Bran strode to his room and returned with the bronze gown. “I meant to return it to Rose, but kept forgetting. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind ye borrowing it again. And I’m sure she wouldn’t mind offering ye a carriage to find yer knight.”

Millicent gathered the gown into her arms. So, Bran knew more than he would tell her, but he didn’t know where Gareth might be. She didn’t bother pressing Bran for more information; he could be obstinately tight-lipped when he wanted to be. And now that she had made the decision, Millicent could not wait to find her knight. “Does Lady Roseus know where Gareth is?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I know who might. That friend of yers, Lady Yardley.”

London appeared to get more crowded every time Millicent came aboveground. The sun hid behind gray clouds, and it seemed as if every maid and footman scurried to purchase their morning groceries before the clouds belched out their impending rain. Millicent turned her face away from the carriage window and closed her eyes. She really had no interest in the scenery, despite the astounding sight of a maid who carried her purchases on the humped back of a gangly beast and the footman who sported a small dragon curled about his neck. She wanted only to find Gareth.

After an interminable length of time, Lady Roseus’s carriage lurched to a stop in front of Claire’s peacock mansion in the West End… although the peacocks now appeared to be supplemented with gigantic purplish bluebells, which hung down from foot-wide stalks that surrounded the building. Millicent passed under an array of them as she walked to the front door, and the movement from her passage set them to tinkling as if they each possessed a clapper of crystal.