dad and mine to let them come with me.
My dad managed to look disapproving without changing his facial expression, which was a neat trick. He didn’t insist I stay away from my Unseelie friends, but I knew he’d be a lot happier if I stuck to my “own kind.” If I ever start choosing my friends based on which Court they belong to, just shoot me.
“Alistair has suggested they come along,” he answered. “I hesitate to take the risk when they are both so young and untried.”
“Kimber’s a couple months older than me, and Ethan is the same age as Keane.”
“I know how you feel about Ethan,” he said with a little smile, “but … He and Keane may be physically the same age, but Keane is an adult while Ethan is still a boy.”
I knew what my dad meant, and when I’d first come to Avalon, I might even have agreed with him. But Ethan wasn’t quite the same since I’d rescued him from the Erlking’s clutches. He was still bound to the Erlking in ways I didn’t fully understand, and the ordeal had aged him. He was not the same carefree boy I’d first met.
“However,” my dad continued, “if Alistair is determined that they come along, I shall have to take them. I fear that if I refuse, he might send them after us anyway, and that would be far more dangerous for them.”
I was glad to know I’d have plenty of company, but I hated the thought that Alistair would put his political ambitions above his children’s safety. As ambitious as my own dad was, he was practically fanatical about keeping me safe.
“I don’t believe you will be in danger,” Dad said, “especially not when you are so thoroughly guarded. However…”
I felt the faint prickle of magic, and suddenly there was a pink faux-leather case, about six inches long, in his hand. He extended the case toward me, and I took it. I hadn’t a clue what was in it, and Dad ignored my inquiring look.
With a shrug, I lifted the lid, then almost dropped the case when I saw what was inside, nestled in a bed of red velvet: a gun. The logo on the underside of the lid said “Lady Derringer.”
“It’s only for emergencies,” Dad said. “I’ll teach you how to use it, but I certainly don’t expect you to need it. I just think we’ll both feel better if you have a mortal weapon available.”
Swallowing hard, I touched the ivory-colored grip, which had a picture of a white rose on it. Despite my dad’s reassurances, I didn’t think taking a gun with me into Faerie was going to make me feel safe at all.
The next morning was one of my regularly scheduled lessons with Keane, which meant I had to get up indecently early and couldn’t have any breakfast until afterward. Not unless I wanted to risk it coming back up while we sparred. If my teacher were anyone but Keane, I’d have expected him to give me the day off on the day before I left for Faerie, but I knew better.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, examining the new high-backed tank top I’d ordered from an athletic catalog. In the catalog, it had looked like the top might give me enough coverage to hide the Erlking’s mark on the back of my shoulder. It covered part of the mark, but not all of it. I sighed regretfully, then headed to the bedroom to pull a T-shirt on over the tank. It was easier to fight without the loose, comfortable T-shirt giving Keane something to grab on to, but I didn’t have a choice.
I opened my bedroom door to find that Keane had already arrived. He’d pushed the furniture in my sitting room to the walls and was rolling out the practice mats. I admired the view for a moment, because even if I didn’t like him
“You’re late,” he said to me without looking up.
“Good morning to you, too,” I responded, approaching him warily. Keane didn’t believe in giving me a warning before he attacked—he said my enemies wouldn’t do it, so
“We’ve had this discussion before,” he said as he finished arranging the mats. “I expect you to show up on time
I rolled my eyes at the rebuke. And, of course, that was when he attacked.
Despite his high-handed, annoying, and often painful training techniques, Keane was a great teacher. Not that I’d ever admit it to his face. Even though I’d let my guard down, I reacted fast enough not to take his punch in the face. My arm jerked upward like it had a will of its own, blocking the punch.
In a real fight, that block might have saved my life, because a blow that hard to my head might knock me out and would certainly at least knock me down. And in a real fight, I’d be thanking my lucky stars right now as I ran like hell to get away from whoever had attacked me.
But this wasn’t a real fight, so my reaction—very mature, I know—was to yell “Ow!” loud enough to burst a few eardrums. I knew in theory that Keane pulled his punches when we sparred, but it still hurt like hell when he made contact, even when I managed to block.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Keane said, even as he kicked out in an attempt to knock my legs out from under me.
This was the reason I hated him so much when we were sparring.
I jumped backward, avoiding Keane’s kick, and after that there was no time for complaining. Even if I’d had enough air in my lungs to make a complaint.
I knew I was getting better, knew that if I was fighting someone who wasn’t any good, I’d probably be able to get away, but I would never, ever come close to Keane’s skill level. Being the son of a Knight, he’d been taught how to fight from an early age. He’d even started to go through training to be a Knight himself, but he wasn’t Knight material. Not because he couldn’t fight well enough—I’m sure if he’d had the whole training, he’d be ridiculously good—but because he was too much of a rebel to accept the lifestyle.
The upshot of all this is that I almost never succeed in landing a blow, and despite knowing all the right moves, I could rarely escape one of his holds unless he let me. Frustration and I have become good friends. And like any friend who’s a bad influence, frustration sometimes made me do things that were, in retrospect, stupid.
Like trying to tackle my self-defense instructor.
There isn’t a single instance I can think of in which tackling your attacker is a good self-defense move. If you have enough distance to try to tackle your attacker, you have enough distance to run like hell and maybe get away. But since doing the “correct” moves never seemed to work, every once in a while I couldn’t stop myself from trying to catch Keane by surprise.
The problem is, even if I catch him by surprise, he’s bigger, quicker, stronger, and far more experienced than I am.
My tackle surprised him enough to take him down. Unfortunately, he twisted like a cat in midair, and somehow I ended up on the bottom when we landed. The landing knocked all the wind out of me, and while I was lying there trying to breathe, he landed a light blow to my face, demonstrating just how bad a position I’d gotten myself into. Not that I didn’t already know.
Escaping one of Keane’s holds when we were both on our feet was hard enough, but escaping him when we were on the floor with him on top was impossible unless he purposely gave me an opening. As soon as I managed to drag in a full breath, he gave me one of those openings, and I went for it.
Just because he left me an opening didn’t mean he was making things easy for me, so I had to work like crazy to get free. At the last moment, just as I was trying to triumphantly jump to my feet after slipping his hold, his hand closed on the back of my T-shirt.
I mentioned that the loose T-shirts gave Keane convenient handholds. He’d certainly taken advantage of it before. But I don’t know if the T-shirt was just getting threadbare from having been worn and washed too often, or if one of us was pulling harder than usual, or if it was just the angle of the pull. Whatever it was, there was an ominous ripping sound, and I lurched forward, caught off balance and by surprise.
Keane, with his Fae reflexes, managed to grab me before I hit the floor with my face, but I could feel the cool sweep of air over the skin of my back and shoulder where my T-shirt had torn. Right where the Erlking’s mark lay.
“What the fuck?” Keane asked in a horrified whisper.
