It landed almost on top of a mage's foot. He had been working with several others to try to get a net spell going, but at sight of the stone he stopped chanting and grabbed it, a look of disbelief spreading over his features. It looked like Seb hadn't bothered to tell anyone what he was planning to give away.
I reached for the man's magic and pulled with everything I had. I forgot that we weren't in Faerie anymore, forgot that that much force wasn't necessary against a human. He screamed and dropped to his knees, then collapsed and rolled down the loading ramp, the rune still clutched in his fist. I started for him, but hadn't made even a single step when a wave of magic slammed into me like a tidal wave, a raging torrent of it that threatened to bury me under its sheer volume.
I went down, gasping, unable to breathe, as it gushed inside, falling into that part of me that holds my null abilities. I lay there, waiting for it to stop, trying to swallow it as I always had, but there was too much. It kept coming until I thought I would die of it, until the world became nothing but wave after wave of sparkling power that I couldn't eat and couldn't control.
Someone grabbed my hand, but I couldn't see them, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe. I was being shaken, but I barely felt it. "Claire!" Finally, a voice, tinny and weak, cut through the glittering haze. "Claire! Can you hear me?"
I felt myself being drawn into warm arms, and knew without words whose they were. After a few more minutes, the haze lifted, and I could see again. All around us, light danced on the sides of the warehouse, ripples of it making endless kaleidoscopic patterns on the formerly blank walls. It looked like the reflection of water, only about twenty times as bright. I scrunched up my eyes, almost blinded, and behind me, someone started to laugh.
"I looked up your name," Heidar gasped out. "I was going to gift you with a new one, but I don't think I will now."
"What?" I turned to try to see him better, and the kaleidoscope shifted with me, splashing new, wildly shifting patterns everywhere. Tanet slunk over, still in dragon form, and put a paw over his eyes in protest. I finally realized that, for whatever crazy reason, the source of the light was me.
"It means 'shining one,'" Heidar said, tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks. "Who's glowing now?"
Conclusion
We finally figured it out. It seems that, when I tried to steal the mage's power, I accidentally also took the rune's. It was July 3, so I managed to get rid of it that evening by putting on an early fireworks display as far out in the woods as we could get. I almost died of heatstroke before then, muffled in ten layers of clothing, which still didn't do much to hide the searchlight the rune had turned me into. I'll never be able to complain about Heidar glowing again.
Nonetheless, I was glad to have the rune gone. No matter who had finally ended up with it, it would have been nothing but trouble. Heidar plans to tell his dad that it was a fake, which is what most Fey seem to have believed from the start. I don't know what Tanet will say. He left shortly after our little adventure, having had his opinion of the dangers of the human world strongly reinforced. I don't think I'll be getting a brotherly visit anytime soon.
Heidar and I talked it over and decided to stay in the human world for awhile. My motivation is pretty simple: from what I understand, my twin is far more likely to manifest in Faerie than here. And although Heidar keeps telling me that I will come to love my other half, I'd just as soon avoid another journey of self-discovery right now. At least until she loses some of her baby fat.
Heidar's reasons for staying are less straightforward. He says he doesn't want me back in Faerie until he can take some precautions against the Svarestri. They don't know as much about the human world as other Fey, so he thinks we'll have an advantage, should any show up here. But I think he's really trying to work up the nerve to tell his father that he's going to have a daughter-in-law who occasionally goes scaly.
I'm still eating tofu, even though my twin is heartily sick of it. At least that's what I've been blaming all these new cravings on. I haven't resorted to grocery shopping at the pet store yet, but steak is starting to sound really good. Rare steak, with pickles.
And maybe some hot sauce.
Mona Lisa Betwining
Sunny
Chapter 1
The moon was full and round in the sky, a perfect circle of illumination. It called to us, rose some restlessness within us. Sap rising is what they called it in trees. In humans, they called it spring fever. In the Monere - the children of the moon - it was simply the time for Basking, a time to call down the moon's rays and bathe yourself in the renewing light. Only Queens could call it down and share it with others. That was what I happened to be, a Monere Queen, albeit not the usual kind. Not only Monere blood flowed within my veins, although that predominated, three-quarters of it. The last remaining quarter, however, was human blood. I was what they called a Mixed Blood, the first one ever to be a Queen.
So much had changed in such a short while. Not long ago, I had been alone in a sea of humans, an ER nurse on the lonely island of Manhattan, crowded with people, only not mine. Now here I was in Louisiana, ruler of this territory, ruler of these people - more than four hundred Full Blood Monere constituents. Surrounded by my people. And yet still alone.
Moonlight silvered the room, large and empty. Gryphon's room, my Warrior Lord. The first man I had loved, the first lover I had lost. He was dead now, although not completely gone. He'd had enough psychic power to make the transition to demon dead. But he existed now in another realm, far from my immediate reach.
His scent still lingered along the pillow, on the clothes that hung yet in his closet. But it was faint, so faint now. Almost completely lost in the month I'd been gone when I had lost myself in my other shape, my tiger form, roaming the forest to escape my grief. Had I been purely human, I would not have smelled that last barely there musky fragrance that had been my love. It made me grateful then, in a sad way, for my far acuter Monere senses. But soon, acuter senses notwithstanding, that last whiff of him would be completely gone. He'd been beautiful, like a dark angel, a wicked cherub fallen from the sky, tumbled to earth. White, luminous skin, hair dark as midnight, eyes blue as a summer sky. Would his face soon blur in my memory's eye? Would that fade from me also with time, lost along with the hope of a living remembrance of him?