He sat in the high-backed leather chair in his study, pipe clenched between his teeth, puffing slowly on it. The smoke swirled down into his lungs and drifted in twin streams from his nostrils. Normally he could let himself relax here, but nothing seemed able to calm his mind this night.
All of his Menagerie had returned from Greece alive. That was the only saving grace of this mission, as far as he was concerned. Medusa would no longer endanger the world, but though Clay and the others had been the ones to capture her, Gull had murdered her. Though they might have had to kill her anyway, the callousness of it had been unsettling.
Nigel Gull had used him, drawn him in, and now, at last, everything had gone horribly wrong for the mage. Once upon a time he had been a man of quiet strength and dignity, but his ambition had been stronger than his nobility. The dark magicks that had twisted his flesh had tainted him forever, but Nigel had never understood that. All he had understood was the power that they had granted him.
Conan Doyle wondered if Nigel understood, now.
He doubted it.
To all appearances, Gull was on his own now. Those he called his Wicked were dead. Tassarian for the second time. The girl Jezebel had been a tragic figure from the moment she crossed Conan Doyle’s doorstep, doomed from the start, yet he would have saved her if he could have. Hawkins had been doomed as well. He had invited death constantly. It had only been a matter of who would play executioner.
But Gull might have other allies. Conan Doyle certainly had operatives that he kept in abeyance, old friends and acquaintances that could be called upon if the need arose.
Nigel Gull would be back.
At the moment, however, Gull was the least of his concerns. There was Danny Ferrick, who seemed too unstable for the work the Menagerie undertook, and yet who had nowhere else to go. He would have to adjust to what he was, or it would tear him apart. Then there was Dr. Graves. Conan Doyle had sworn to help the ghost solve his own murder, but thus far had been able to uncover precious little.
He knew he ought to concern himself with his allies. His friends. But such things seemed so small and petty in comparison to the threat of the DemoGorgon.
'There’s nothing you can do.'
Conan Doyle turned, broken from his reverie, to see Ceridwen standing in the open door of his study. Silhouetted in the light from the hall, she had never looked so beautiful and his breath caught in his throat. His eyes watered from tobacco smoke in his lungs that he could not exhale.
The Fey princess had showered, her blond hair still glistening with water. She wore only a thin shift the same blue as a robin’s egg, and the light from the hall caught the lines of her body through the translucent material. Lithe limbs, supple muscles, and the gentle, familiar curves that made him forget his heart was beating.
'Arthur?'
He blinked, the enchantment of her presence lifting, but only slightly.
'Yes?' Conan Doyle rasped.
Ceridwen entered the study, the fabric gliding over her body as she moved into the dim room. She crossed to the window, where the moonlight touched her as though it had longed to do so forever.
'You struggle with the rage you feel at Sanguedolce for having manipulated you. And the rest of us as well. But you resent him as well, because he belittles you at every turn.'
Had anyone else spoken these words, he would have been affronted. Would have denied the truth of them, even to himself. To Ceridwen, he only nodded.
'He’s a fool,' Conan Doyle rasped. 'His magick is so great that he believes himself omnipotent. No matter how powerful he is, if this DemoGorgon is what he claims, he will need all of the allies he can find.'
Ceridwen crossed to him, then. She took his pipe from his hand and set it on its stand, then moved his chair away from the desk and slid down to sit before him. Arthur went to stop her, but she only smiled softly.
'In his own way, regardless of what he says, he is preparing to defend this world. When the time comes, we shall see if he rejects assistance.' Ceridwen gathered his hands in hers and gazed up at him, and those violet eyes were all of the sustenance and comfort he had longed for. When he thought of the time they had lost, at what his stubbornness had cost them both, it crushed his heart.
'Meanwhile,' she whispered, drawing herself upward, the fabric of her robe sliding over his hands, 'you must focus yourself on matters at home. On the everyday darkness in this world, but also on the light. On the sunshine as well as the shadows. On your life, and the lives of this strange family you have gathered about you.'
Her hands caressed his face and Ceridwen climbed up onto the chair he sat in, kneeling so that she was astride him. Hope and joy and sadness swam in her eyes and she trembled as she bent to kiss him. Their lips brushed only lightly at first, reacquainting themselves, and then she kissed him deep and long.
His heart had seemed to stop before, and now it beat with such speed and vigor he thought it would burst. His own hands trembled as they slid over her back, tracing her body from the softness of her hair to the extraordinary spot at the small of her back where his touch had always made her shiver.
'Meanwhile,' she whispered, drawing her face back only inches from his, her profile illuminated in moonlight, her small breasts still pressed into him. 'Focus on me.'
Ceridwen began to undo the buttons of his shirt.
Arthur decided that, for this evening at least, the world would have to wait.
