Careless Wishes Read online

“This is not her life anymore,” Raza growled.

  “Do you really think Seren's going to want to go back to ruling Fairy after all of this?” Killian asked.

  The plane got silent. Three intense stares swiveled toward me.

  “Well, it's not as if I really rule,” I said defensively. “You guys do most of that. I just help out occasionally.”

  “Help out?” Tiernan asked. “You're my queen. I need you on the throne beside me.”

  “To sit there and look pretty?” I grumbled the question.

  “Seren, you know that's not all you do,” Tiernan chided.

  “Yeah, but you could do without her for short periods,” Killian argued. “You've handled things all right with this weekly rotation. That left you without your queen for three weeks out of the month.”

  Tiernan grimaced. “I could manage but I'd rather not.”

  “Nor would I,” Raza grunted.

  Daxon remained silent. The other kings looked at him.

  “Daxon?” Raza asked pointedly.

  “What do you want for Seren?” Daxon asked Raza and Tiernan. “To rule Fairy? To be a mother to your children? Yeah, sure, I want similar things for her. But I want them for myself, not her. I want them from her. For her, I want far more but above all, I want her to be happy.”

  Tiernan and Raza looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  I leaned over and kissed Daxon. “That's one of the most romantic things you've ever said. Thank you.” Then I sat back and looked over at Tiernan and Raza. “But my happiness depends on all of yours. I know it was wrong of me to accept this mission without speaking to all of you first. We're a family now. You deserve a say in the big decisions that affect my life, and I'm sorry I didn't give you that. I won't do it again. If you don't want me working for the Councils, I won't.”

  “But you want to,” Tiernan concluded.

  “We've been over this.” I sighed and looked out the window. It was night again in India and the rapid time changes were getting to me. “Yeah, I'm enjoying this but I'm also remembering how hard it is. The anxiety. The strain.” I shook my head. “Then there's the new issue: being away from my children. I'm not enjoying that.”

  “Seren, we're not mad about this mission anymore, not since Danu gave it her blessing,” Raza said softly. “It's what happens after this is over that concerns us. But perhaps we can find a balance—a middle path.”

  I swung my head to look at him. “A balance?”

  “A way for all of us to be happy,” Tiernan elaborated.

  “That's what I'm talking about!” Killian waved his hands out toward the other men. “Compromise. None of us should have to sacrifice our dreams. Relationships are about give and take.”

  “Did he read a self-help book or something?” Daxon asked me dryly.

  “Come on, you know Killian by now,” I shot back. “He's just a good guy.”

  “Goddess save us from good guys,” Raza muttered.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Robert Gabriel Mugabe Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe was small as far as airports go. It had one distinctive feature—a control tower made of white stone with triangular designs carved into it. But we didn't spend a lot of time at the airport. Our plane landed a little after noon and was met by a train of SUVs—all but one full of extinguishers—and a few rugged trucks packed with hunters. I didn't see any witches, but they could have been riding with the extinguishers; the only way to differentiate them would be by their gear.

  Our driver introduced himself as Kevin Sloane. Once, I would have wondered how distantly we were related but now, I knew that I wasn't of that line and the Sloanes wouldn't claim me anymore. Especially not the woman I'd once thought was my grandmother: Head Councilwoman Briana Sloane of New York. She never liked me when she thought I was kind but after my true paternity was revealed, she decided to hate me. Now that Ewan, her son, is dead, I figured that hatred had blossomed into everlasting enmity.

  I'm a Kavanaugh through my mother but her parents are long dead and I've never met my cousins. Extinguisher ties are strange. The way the Five Families intermarried, it was likely that we were all related to each other by this point. But those connections aren't acknowledged or recorded—probably because they'd horrify anyone with a lick of sense. Can you say inbreeding? Instead, extinguisher family trees only go back two generations at most. You associated with your parents and sometimes grandparents, but that was it. You might have cousins you'd acknowledge but, generally, you aligned yourself with the family whose name you bore—the whole family. I was told that it has something to do with keeping us focused on the future and keeping pride in the individual families strong, but I think that's all poppycock. I'm going with the inbreeding theory.

  Whatever the case, my human IDs still have the name Seren Sloane on them. I couldn't bring myself to change them. I could have taken one of my husbands' last names but then I'd have to pick one, adding that headache to the issue. The guys understood why I didn't; they know my reasons. My surname is the last thing I have of Ewan. Something he gave me. Something that he was proud for me to bear in the end. Abandoning it now would feel like a betrayal. So, even though I was known as Seren Firethorn, legally—at least as far as Earth went—I was still a Sloane. Still Ewan's daughter.

  “What do you know about what's happened here, Extinguisher Sloane?” I asked our driver.

  “I haven't been to the site of the disturbance yet, Your Majesty,” he said with a glance at me through his rearview mirror. “But I've gone over the reports and have seen notable differences in the locals. I think you need to see them for yourself to understand.”

  “I've never been here before,” I protested as I watched the buildings pass by. “I wouldn't recognize any changes in the residents.”

  “I'll explain it to you when we get to Mbare. It's not that far.”

  At first, Harare looked like any other human city. We passed subdivisions with modern homes and a golf course with grass that seemed too green for the landscape. The people were predominantly darker-skinned and appeared both healthy and happy. But after awhile, we took a turn and so did everything else—a turn for the worse. A bleak marketplace stretched out on our left, stalls crammed together and shielded with black plastic sheeting. Most of them looked closed. The squat buildings here weren't modern or in good repair. Paint peeled off brick walls and faded signs hung forlornly.

  The further we went, the worse it got. Holes longer than cars and full of water pitted the roads. Our driver had to veer around them while avoiding cars coming from the opposite direction. And the garbage—piles of refuse were heaped in corners. It wasn't as bad as the slums of Delhi but it came close. Yet despite the refuse and disrepair, the people were happy. Beyond happy, actually. It looked like they were celebrating. I peered through my window, trying to find the cause for their good cheer but found nothing.

  “This is the suburb of Mbare,” Extinguisher Sloane finally began his report. “It's not the best part of town, as you can see. Zimbabwe has been suffering from extensive droughts and, of course, the poor are the hardest hit. The markets have dried up along with the water. Food is scarce enough that the situation has been deemed a famine. But yesterday, a man arrived.” He glanced at me in the mirror again. “A blond man with pale skin. A foreigner. He passed through Mbare and with him came the rain. The rain was of more note than the white man; it fell both gently and intermittently, allowing the dry earth to absorb most of it instead of merely pooling on the surface. It's being celebrated, as you can see, as an end to the drought.”

  “One rain does not end a drought,” Tiernan noted.

  “No, but the man was spotted again at farms outside the city. He brought more rain with him but not just rain. Where he walked, crops sprouted and instantly matured while equipment appeared out of thin air—equipment to harvest and care for the crops, including irrigation systems that this region desperately needs. He gave them everything they'd need to continue to care for the crops. Trucks are already distribu
ting the harvests.”

  “Dear Danu, he's feeding the hungry,” I whispered, my eyes tearing up. “How can that be wrong?”

  Killian gave me a sympathetic look. I knew the answer to my question but knowing that there must be suffering, and fighting on behalf of that suffering are two different things. I stared bleakly out the window at the joyous faces of the people of Mbare. They hugged each other and laughed as they opened their market stalls, preparing to sell the food that was on its way. I suddenly felt like the villain in a Disney cartoon. A girl with perfect hair and shiny teeth was probably on her way to stop us and save the day.

  “Are the animals seeking the raths?” Raza asked.

  “There are no raths in Zimbabwe,” Sloane said grimly. “But the wildlife, what there is of it, has been migrating West.”

  “No raths,” I murmured.

  “I thought that might be the case,” Tiernan said.

  “Yeah, but he's an extinguisher and he knew more about our raths than we did.”

  “Because he knows this region, Seren,” Killian pointed out. “Our planets are big and they have a lot of raths. No one can be expected to know them all.”

  “Yeah. Good point,” I conceded.

  “Did their migration start before or after the surge of magic?” Tiernan asked.

  “Shortly before, from what we can tell,” Sloane said.

  “So, they sense the build-up, not just the release,” Tiernan concluded. “Or they sense the power of the Cintamani.”

  “And what it can do,” Killian added grimly.

  “This is like hunting down Mother Teresa,” I muttered. “Or the fucking Dalai Lama.” I grimaced at my shirt.

  “Mother Teresa may not know better, but I'm pretty sure the Dalai Lama would,” Daxon mused. “He'd at least understand why doing good can sometimes result in evil.”

  “Actually, he'd probably say something like: there is no good or evil, only opinion,” Killian said in a Yoda voice.

  “The Dalai Lama is not a Jedi,” I said dryly but followed it with a chuckle.

  “That was my Indian accent,” Killian said dryly, then laughed when I looked horrified.

  “Killian's right,” Raza said, surprising everyone, especially Killian.

  “I am?” Killian asked, straightening in his seat. “I mean: yeah, I am.”

  “This is what Ladli meant when she said that only the purest, most enlightened soul can use the Cintamani properly,” Raza went on. “The rest of us are too mired in our opinions and attachments. We see suffering and deem it bad while the ending of it must be good. But what we don't see is how suffering can strengthen a race or even the world. A forest fire is destructive but it fertilizes the ground and clears the land for new growth. We can't see the good in that, because we're too invested in the trees—in the things in our present that we love. Who can turn away from a starving child? Who could see a man living in squalor and bless it as providence? No one but a god or someone with faith in something greater than themselves. We don't have to have faith to stop this man. But we do need to remember what his lack of faith is doing to the world. He believes that he knows best and that mistaken belief has already crippled Delhi. We have to look past our own flawed beliefs if we want to stop him.”

  “Good luck with that, Your Majesty,” our driver said. “These are the people I took a vow to protect and it's damn hard to accept that my actions might take all of this away from them.” He waved a hand out the window at the joyous humans.

  “It's easy to fight a monster or a madman,” I said softly. “But when the monster wears a pretty face and speaks words you can relate to, it's far more difficult to stand against him. My husband says we don't need to have faith, but he does and so do I. We have faith in Danu, who blessed this endeavor, and Killian and I have faith in Anu, who asked me to stop this man. Anu asked me to save his people and that's what I intend to do, no matter how much it hurts to do it.”

  “Well, prepare for it to hurt something fierce, Your Majesty,” Sloane said grimly. “Because he didn't stop at the commercial farms. He went out to the villages, to places where families have to grow their own food to survive, and he helped them too. No one knows his name but they're calling him—”

  “Please, don't tell me they're calling him a god,” I cut him off.

  “No.” Sloane grimaced. “Not a god. They're calling him a savior.”

  “Fuck me,” Killian groaned.

  “You need to remember, Extinguisher Sloane: the thief's interference will hurt these people in the end,” I said to our driver. “His wishes cause imbalance and the Cintamani then tries to correct the imbalance. In India, companies have gone bankrupt because the thief made a wish to help the poor and now, hundreds of thousands of people are out of work. He only traded one group for another—shifted fortune to favor the poor. So, what's the point of doing good if it means causing an equal amount of harm? Possibly even a greater amount of harm.”

  “I wasn't told about the businesses,” Sloane murmured.

  “Has anything negative happened here since the surges?” Raza asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Sloane said.

  “Then it's coming,” I said ominously as I went back to staring out of my window. “Maybe not for these people exactly, but it's coming.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  We drove out to the scene of the latest surge. On the way, we passed acres of crops ready for harvest. It was green for as far as the eye could see. Irrigation systems rolled above the crops on giant wagon wheels and people crowded in the rows, harvesting as fast as they could, some even stopping to shove freshly picked vegetables into their mouths. We drove past the farmland and into a small village. Tiny, ramshackle houses stood amid arid, sandpaper squares of land but behind each one, a garden overflowing with produce grew. People were in them, harvesting their bounty—some weeping in joy.

  “Keep an eye out; hopefully, he's still here,” Daxon said.

  We passed a few more homes, all of them with gardens and happy people. Then we neared one with only a bleak plot of shriveled, dead plants. A pale man stood at the edge of the sad remains while a family waited nearby.

  “There!” Killian pointed at the man.

  Sloane pulled over before we got too close—we didn't want to spook him—and the cars behind us followed suit. Once we were parked, everyone streamed out of their vehicles.

  “Take care of the humans,” Raza ordered some of the hunters as we rushed forward.

  The command had layers to it. Raza meant for the hunters to protect the humans but also wipe their memories of us. We couldn't leave witnesses.

  No one noticed us at first, especially since we approached so furtively. The potential garden laid several yards behind the house so the building provided us with some cover. Then rain started to fall upon the patch of earth, giving us the distraction we needed to make our final approach. The thief—blond, slim, and fair-skinned—didn't gesture or make any kind of show to accompany his miracle. He merely stood with his hands in his pants pockets, one likely holding the Cintamani, and stared at the muddy ground before him.

  A few hunters separated themselves from our group and headed for the humans while the rest of us ran for the thief. The remaining hunters flung out their hands and latched onto the rain with their Water magic, trying to stop it from falling. As impossible as that sounds, they should have succeeded, especially considering their number. But they failed. The rain continued to fall. Failure is not something a hunter has to deal with often and it perturbed these men, to say the least. They put more power into their magic, several of them coming to a stop to focus upon it, their hands extended and their expressions strained.

  The rain stuttered briefly but kept going and the ground it fell upon began to tremble. Green shoots sprouted and the watching humans gave amazed and grateful cheers. The cheering trailed away as three hunters stepped in front of them with glowing hands. Hunters are the only fairies legally permitted to alter human memory. Well, them and
the members of Royal Guards. The humans went still and their expressions went blank as the rest of us rushed past. Then the humans turned and walked into their home, gently herded there by the hunters.

  As we closed in, the thief finally noticed us. He looked over his shoulder and met my stare. Pale blue eyes widened in surprise.

  “You're hurting more than you're helping!” I shouted at him. “You have to stop!”

  His hands came out of his pockets as he turned and ran straight into the growing garden. In one of his hands, he held a softly glowing orb—a pearl.

  “Stop him by any means necessary!” Killian shouted.

  The rain was forgotten as all of the hunters cast their magic at the fleeing Sidhe. Raza's shirt tore as his wings appeared, but I grabbed his arm and shook my head. Wiping a few memories was one thing, but if he went Dragon-Djinn in the Zimbabwe sky, there would be an unknown amount of witnesses. He nodded grudgingly and put away his wings as he put on more speed. To either side of us, Daxon cast the Tromlaighe and Tiernan sent shadows spearing after the thief. I lifted my hand as well and called a burning ball of thorns to it. I was too far away to dream dust or star-cross him, I'd have to go with a more violent option. With him running, it would be difficult to call my Firethorns up around him so I had to go with the fireball. Not that my attack was needed. With all of the combined magic rushing toward the pearl thief, there was no way he could escape.