Their little part of the Glen was alive with movement and merriment. The Garridan clan had returned at some time during the night, quiet enough not to wake Niamh from her fitful sleep. She didn't quite know how she felt about that. They were here at Brishen's request, to help figure some way of keeping her from the Sidhe's eyes and grasping hands; she should feel grateful. But she didn't. She could not stop herself from imagining how terrible it would be if this bright, happy family got caught somehow between the Sidhe and their prize.

It was good to see Brish with his own, though. There always seemed to be a lot of laughter whenever she saw his family gathered together, the kind of laughter she remembered from her home. But intermingled with the pleasantness and the cheer, she seemed to feel their eyes on her as she moved among them, quietly wary. She was a danger, she knew that. The longer this went on without hope of release, the more dangerous it became to be around her.

They weren't keeping their visits to the night any longer. She was becoming more and more aware of Otherworld eyes on her every action. They dogged her steps, following her to and from the city, along the paths in the Glen. There was nowhere she could go to be safe from them any longer. They still had not broken through the wards protecting the cottage, and with the clan there, it was unlikely that they would, but still ... it was disconcerting, frightening even, to always be under those eyes.

It was too loud here. She couldn't hear herself think, and she needed to think, she needed to work out some way of doing this without putting all these people in danger. She needed to talk to Lilli, without Brish hanging on every word. There were words that needed saying, words she wanted him to hear if they couldn't stop this. Words she didn't have the courage to say to his face, and she knew even if she had that courage, he wouldn't let her speak them. He was so confident that they could win this.

She wished for that confidence as she ducked between the caravans, slipping out from the boundaries of the home she shared with her lover and onto the little used paths that would take her to Lilli's little patch of the Glen. Hopefully, the fiery-haired witch would be there, willing to talk. Niamh had not visited her at home before now; she hoped her friend wouldn't take it badly, having her privacy invaded for a little while.

It was then that she realised the Glen was quiet, too quiet. No birds, no animals, no sounds of the wind rustling the leaves around her. Looking up, Niamh felt a chill wrap around her heart. They were here. Waiting for their moment to strike, they had to have been watching all this time, and foolishly she had given them opportunity to take from her what she refused to give up willingly. She cursed herself for her idiocy, knowing the little control she held over the magic inherent in her soul stood no chance against full Sidhe.

So instead, she took to her heels, running headlong through the trees, hearing their taunts, their calls, their certainty that she would be one of them before the day was through. Bushes and low branches whipped past her face and hands, leaving bloodied scratches in her haste to find some form of protection. She was closer by now to Lilli than home, and so it was to the fiery witch's caravan she ran, whimpering under her breath from fear.

"Please, Lilli, please be there, please be there ..."

A flash of colour through the trees ahead of her, and she let out a cry of relief, recognising the wonderful sight of her friend tending her little garden in the morning sunlight. She lifted her voice to call to her friend, and they struck. The air around her seemed to solidify, holding her in place no matter how she struggled, stealing the breath from her lungs as she tried to scream for help, for anyone to see what was being done to her. Shapes, indistinct in the haze that seemed to have settled around her, flitted back and forth before her vision, which itself was growing dim as she struggled for breath. Something that could have been a clawed hand reached towards her, ripping her mother's protective pendant of turquoise from her throat. The leather burned as it stretched and snapped against her skin, but she was afforded the satisfaction of seeing the owner of that clawed, snatching hand jerk back with a howl of pain as the iron binding the gemstone burned skin that could not bear its touch. The little pendant that had done its job so well fell, unnoticed, to the forest floor.

Her lungs were burning, her mind too panicked at the lack of air, the certainty of death, to register that the Sidhe seemed to have other plans for her body. She felt the vague sensation of someone or something standing behind her, and gasped as whatever it was stepped forward, into her. There was a terrifying, agonising moment of tearing, grasping pain, and suddenly she was stumbling forward, free of them. She didn't take a moment to think, accelerating forward towards Lilli, who seemed blissfully unaware of the confrontation happening so close to her home.

But here came a fright of a far worse kind. She skidded to a halt in front of her friend, shouting for her to help ... and Lilli did nothing. She simply went on with tending her little garden. Niamh was nothing to her, invisible, voiceless, and in horror, she turned to stare back through the trees to where she had been standing.

Where she was still standing, caught in that magical trap, but the eyes that stared at her from her own face were not her eyes. They were the cruel eyes of one who intended this victory to remain so, a Sidhe who had taken possession of her body for one last action. As Niamh - or rather, her soul - watched in heart-breaking terror, the Sidhe within her body lifted in her hand a bone dagger, wickedly sharp in the soft touch of the forest sunlight. A soundless scream left both mouths, soul and body, as that dagger was plunged into her stomach, and Niamh knew real despair.

Knowing now that unless something was done fast, there would be no body for her to return to, for the slow lingering death of a body without a soul had been hastened by that malicious act, she turned back to Lilli, shouting, waving her hands, doing everything she could to catch her friend's attention. She was a witch, wasn't she supposed to know about the beings others couldn't see? Her time was running out, Niamh knew; the Sidhe would be coming for this part of her now, and she wasn't about to let them take her without at least a chase.

She ducked back into the forest, skirting around the gathered, gloating spirits, and fell into a run once more, dodging around the trees, through the bushes, barely aware that her fevered passage did nothing to the corporeal objects she pushed past. Her eyes lit, through the trees, on the gathered Garridans, on Brish standing among them, and she sped up further, fear and hope mixing to lend her strength as her pursuers drew ever closer. And she collided with something unseen ... the wards she and Brish had set against the entry of the Sidhe to their home.

A scream of denial left her soul's lips, and she pounded against that invisible barrier keeping her back from the one she loved more than anything in the world. Who would have thought that a soul could cry? But tears rolled down her cheeks, tears of fury and fear and pain, and again she screamed, trying to draw the clan's attention to her presence, to the fact that any moment now the Sidhe would have her. What they had come prevent had happened, and sooner than any of them had expected.

"Brishen! BRISH!"

Vice-like hands closed around her incorporeal body, pulling her back from the wards, away from the only people that could have helped her. She felt herself enfolded into weaves of magic so complex she barely knew where to begin in understanding them, and felt the last vestiages of her strength and defiance fade away. Her vision blackened, and she sagged in the grip of the Sidhe, her soul unconscious to the world for the journey back to the Land of the Ever Young, to T?r na n?g, the seat of power for the beings who stole her away.

The Garridans all worked as one, like a hive mind. There was no need for instruction, everyone knew what they were supposed to do, and did so without question or hesitation. Brish roamed the camp, giving directions when needed, helping, doing all he could to make sure things were properly prepared, which unfortunately wasn?t a lot.

He?d gathered that they were too late, from both Lilli?s silent warning, and the flurry of activity that had taken hold of the Garridan clan. Even his father was there, working with the excited, for lack of a better term, gypsies. Brishen rounded on Lilli as she approached, expression set heavily in a stern frown, locked jaw and all.

?Aye, I know,? he muttered under his breath. Brish, like his sister, shared that vain and prideful train of thought; no one struck against the gypsies? kin. It was something all of the Garridan clan agreed to.

?C?mon, Lilli,? he went on, freeing himself from her hold. ?This here?s yer specialty, nae mine. What d?we gotta do?? asked Brishen, willing and wasting no time in giving his more knowledgeable (about these things) sister control of the situation. Brish was just the entertainer, Lilli had the real magic.

The threads the Sidhe had woven were intricate, haphazard, and weakening with every passing moment, but Lilliana would follow them. She had to follow them. The injustice was something that rang deep, deep down in her soul. Not only had the Sidhe meddled in a life under the love and protection of the Garridan clan, her family and kinsmen, but this was the destructive hand of a family over an independent from their flock.

This was the unlawful, unwarranted, unwanted, devious and unmerciful abduction of an innocent... Blood did not make family, it made similarities.

The whirlwind of activity had stilled by now, and within those minutes of Niamh's spiriting, the clan had organized. The lover, the sister, and the mother; the stolen maiden?s saviors, what a fierce picture they made. For all three were painted along their faces and arms in ancient symbols; symbols of power, of protection, of transportation and deliverance. The blue, shimmering smear was composed of powdered topaz and sage, of clover and greater stitchwort; Herbs to see, herbs to disenchant glamor and influence of the sly Sidhe and the elder power. Figures of glorious old and magic they may be, but the Garridan witches prayed and worshipped to older things, things the Fair Ones themselves revered. The Goddess, the mother of all creation and time, and her Consort, these were the entities that outlived and outshined the Sidhe; timeless figures of fertility, power, passion, and parentage.

Who would they favor this night, the unscrupulous or the underdogs?

A five star point of fires encircled the caravan, with Lilliana, Brishen, and Melina forming a circle, hand in hand, in the center. Around each of their necks lay fresh circlets composed of rowan wands, each thin strand looped in and out in a symbol of infallible, ancient knot-work. No Garridan or McClae carried any object of foreign metal make or modernity. Each item and symbol they bore on their skin or around their bodies were things crafted from nature itself, taken with humble thanks from the living entity it had been knifed from. All these things were selected with care and deep steeped practice, for to stand against the Fair Folk was to invite an unrivaled trouble? All item but one.

It was a dagger of a very particular craft, hilted in rowan and ash, gilded with a spindling wind of iron and silver, mounted to a blade whose core held an iron straight from the shoe of Reaper?s steed. Death, literally and figuratively, surrounded this sharp blade; and it bayed for immortal blood. It was this item that lay tied against Lilli?s ripe hip, and it was this item they would bare on their journey through the ethereal.

?Come now? Come Mother, come Father. We ask ya? no? t?grace nor gif? yer children, bu? t?recognize them. Recognize their effor? an? their ardor?? Each pair of eyes in that circle of three glowed as if lit from behind, irises serving as odd, tiny filters of stained glass rather than soft, watery flesh. Unseen wind began to creep and curl, teasing hems and hair. It was Lilliana?s voice that spoke, but each set of fingers gripped fiercely, knuckles white and tense with power and determination.

?Recognize the difference b?tween wrong an? righ?, fer yer eyes know the truth where other?s do no?. We call now fer no favors o?power an? glory, bu? only t?be recognized an? observed? Fer t?walk a path o?truth an? fire, no more can be asked.? The very ground began to shift and sway with the fierce wind that drove up from the ground itself, the fires danced, and away the three went dissolved. The portal left in their wake was little more than a shimmer in the air, a vibration, a disturbance; but it was none the less real.

Niamh?s essence was the easiest to detect, but odd to follow, for it branched. Mid-spirit the trio parted ways; the eldest, Melina, stayed at the fork of the branch to keep the path? Suspended in the plane, guarding the spaces between. Brishen then took one path, while Lilliana spirited down the other; just where each would come out they were not sure, but both knew they?d find some part of their stolen Eire.

?Hol? on swee? lass? ? Came the buxom witch?s fierce thought as her body strained beneath the power of it?s flight through the ether. Then she felt it, a barrier to the land of T?r na n?g, the border between one land and the next; a sheer force of will and a mighty roar of her husky voice was enough to shatter it.

Such was the witch?s rage as she stumbled down onto some manner of physical plane, some manner of floor, and more specifically, the floor to the room that held Niamh?s spirit? Molten eyes blazed with all the fire of time?s creation, and for a moment Lilliana did not look out of place in her power amongst such Sidhe splendor.

But it was only a moment, for the flame bright woman's fury was not long ignored as her eyes fell to the fine, soft, stoic outline of her friend amidst the unearthly celebration.

The revelry around her was intense, filled with beautiful sights and sounds, the gay laughter of the Fair Folk as they celebrated what she hated the most about them, their selfish drive to own and possess everything and everyone they considered to be theirs and theirs alone. Hands reached out to her, voices calling to her to dance, to sing, to be one with their revelries. They did not understand the fury and defiance in their eyes, the patience in her to wait and resist until those she knew, those she loved, came for her. There was no doubt in her that they would, for though she did not wish them to take such a risk on her behalf, she knew that they would do so. She would do the same for them.

And so it was with mixed relief and fear that her eyes swept the raucous gathering and lit upon a blissfully familiar sight, of a friend landing lightly on her feet, fire-touched hair wild and eyes ablaze. For the merest of moments, Lilli could have passed for one of the Sidhe, so alight was she in power and raging fury. Niamh felt her heart lift at the sight of her friend, her eyes turning to search the rest of the Sidhe-touched crowd for the other, for Brishen. But though she did not see him, she could feel him there, holding her, close to her. It made no sense, and yet at another level, it made all the sense in the world.

At her side, the Fae Queen rose suddenly, her arms rising to call for a silence which fell with the swiftness of snowfall and the weight of a hammer. Golden eyes blazed as she turned her gaze onto Lilli, and every pair of eyes in the feasting hall turned to the fiery witchling, too. Suspicious, untrusting, this was the darker edge of the Sidhe. Mutterings ran the length of the hall, power crackled at fingertips, weapons cast and forged by fae hands were drawn. Niamh felt her fear increase a hundred-fold. Her silent call had brought a dear friend into the midst of an army with power beyond their imaginings.

She, too, rose to her feet, only to find herself held back by the iron grip of her guards. The Queen barely spared her a pitying glance before returning that golden-eyed gaze to Lilliana.

"So ..." Her voice was quiet, yet it filled the hall with volume; the sound of heat on a road, the sound of the smell of apples. This Queen's domain was Summer, and she knew well the devastation she could wreak if she was crossed. "Our newest sister has friends who miss her? How ... touching." Her laugh echoed harshly around the hall, punctuated by the slow tap of her heels on the polished floor as she advanced on Lilli inexorably. "You are too late to take her back from us, witchling of fire. Your power holds no sway over us here, within our own realm. Or do you seek to match me, perhaps? To crumble before the full heat of the Summer?"

There was the barest flicker in the air, and suddenly the heat intensified, sweat beading on Niamh's brow as she felt the heat strike deep into her. The guards on either side of her looked shocked, releasing her arms to let her drop to the ground, breathless and wilting under the Summer's touch. Blinking through a heated haze of sweat, she saw the King reach out to still his lady's attack, gesturing towards her. The Summer Queen's lip curled in a sneer, and the power relented.

"So you have found some way of keeping my newest pet anchored to that pathetic mortal coil of yours," she ground out, her eyes flashing angrily as her steps quickened in pace, advancing on Lilli with murder in her heart. "Perhaps your broken and mindless body will convince your interfering clan to keep out of the business of the Sidhe."

"No!"

Niamh's scream echoed through the fest-hall, stilling the risen hand of the Queen. Another moment, and that blow would strike. Under the full heat of Summer, who knew if Lilliana McClae could prevail?

The Summer Queen laughed in the face of Lilliana's harsh words, stepping back towards the place where Niamh was held captive by her followers. One wave of her hand, and the dark-haired reluctant soul was released to fall on her face, still weak from the onslaught of the fae power that had bolstered her friend so thoroughly.

"Your friend has courage, little one." The Queen addressed Niamh, turning to assist her to her feet once more. Another surge of that burning power, and Niamh felt her strength returning to her, able to stand once again under her own steam. "But it will not avail her." Another wave of that willowy hand, and Niamh saw that Lilli was at the centre of an ever increasing circle of cleared space. The Sidhe were obeying their Queen's unspoken command; the witchling was hers to deal with as she saw fit.

"Lilli ... ye shouldnae have come," Niamh pleaded with her friend. "Nae alone. Please, I cannae stand it if'n ye were tae die fer me -" But her pleas were cut short by another wave of that willowy hand, her voice stuttering into silence in the stillness of the fest-hall.

The Queen drew her newest pet into that circle of cleared space by the hand, with a grip iron-strong in it's gentleness. Her beautiful face, spun of unearthly gold and silver hues, was made ugly by the anger and hatred she cast at the apparently defenceless Lilli, the power at her command crackling at her fingertips. One finger uncurled, and a flash of silver fire lanced from that exquisitely pale hand, seeking and finding a home over the fiery gypsy's heart. Niamh screamed, but found her feet would not move, her body would not obey her, though she yearned to run to her friend's side.

Another lancing flash, and Lilli was lifted off her feet, thrown backwards into the crumbling stone walls of the Shining Court's abode. Another, and another, and still Lilli did not fight back. Niamh's eyes blazed with sudden fury, and she glared at the Sidhe woman beside her. It couldn't be more obvious that the Queen was toying with her friend, breaking down her body and will until even the power she possessed would trickle away and leave her defenceless. And in a sudden jolt of understanding, Niamh knew why. A soul such as Lilliana McClae's would make a fine addition to the court of the Summer Queen and the Wintersmith; warmth even in the depths of the cold season, a source of power for the height of the warm.

"Stop it, stop!" she raged, held in place by power not of her understanding, forced to watch as again Lilli's body was thrown about like a ragdoll for the amusement of the court. "I'll do anythin' ye tell me, jus' stop! Dinnae harm her nae more!"

But the Queen just laughed, turned away from her with a sneer. "You will learn, pet, that I do what I will, when I will it," she crowed triumphantly. "And not even the blessings of your higher Goddess and Consort may stop me."

But these words, perhaps, were too much, for there was a great rumble in the sky above and the earth below, the feet shaken out from many who stood around them, witnesses to a battle piteously uneven. And in that rumble, Niamh suddenly found she understood. The light of her mother, the Sidhe soul that had brought her into this mess in the first place, that was where the magic that had plagued her for so many weeks had come from. The pendant was no means to use it; it was a means to hide the user from the eyes of those who sought her. And yet, despite the care her mother's shade had put into the crafting of the turquoise and iron talisman, it was not the magic that had led the Sidhe to her. It was the higher power, one half of the balance that all things must maintain. It was the love that had prompted the making of the talisman that they had found, not the magic nor the Sidhe light itself.

"I have no patience for these games, witchling," the Queen was saying, and she turned her back onto Lilli's prostrate form, facing Niamh with that selfish glint of victory in her golden eyes. "If you wish my pet, by all means, come and take her ... if you feel you can."

Niamh felt the surge of power too late, suddenly caught in the iron grip of the Summer Queen's hands as the room around them faded into a swirl of magical energies, showy in their power. Horror coloured her heart as she watched the golden eyes of the Queen become grey, the auburn of her hair become dark and caught up in curls, the sumtuous gown she wore come to resemble nothing so much as the jeans and shirt that Niamh herself wore. When, at last, the magic around them faded, and the room returned to as it had been, there was a new complication to the mix.

Where before there had been but one Niamh, there were now two, identical in every way. And the Wintersmith's laughter echoing from his throne. "Well, then, my fiery little witch ... the game is set, the first move has been made. How will you answer this for our amusement?"

Niamh felt the world shudder as that iron blade struck, blue green blood gushing forth over Lilli's hands as the Summer Queen shrieked in pain and fury. The sky darkened above them as all around the Sidhe moaned and fell to their faces, each feeling keenly the blow of an iron blade into a soft fae body. The glamour remained on her for long moments as the blade twisted, and Niamh was left watching the unsettling death scene of herself as the Queen crumpled to her knees.

"Iron ..." The whisper raced about the court as the King rose from his seat to silence them. The game, though fair, was settled all too soon, and in a manner unwelcomed by those who watched.

The Wintersmith raised his hand for silence. "She has the right," he told them, in a voice as heavy as the snow, and as cold as the ice that covered it. "It is the iron that travels to all things ... Death himself has touched it. We hold no sway o'er this witchling." For winter knows well when the time has come for change, and ice will melt before the coming heat of summer's love.

There was another, pained shriek from the Queen as she slid from the blade, to lie twitching before Lilliana's feet. The sticky ichor of fae blood began to pool around her as her limbs curled in, silver and gold once more as the face of her captured pet faded from her own. Niamh found she could move once again, and as she made to return to her friend's side, she heard Lilli's words to the dying Summer. "Ya? will hur? no more, an? I take the consequences o?tha? upon m?soul.?

"Nae, Lilliana McClae, daughter o'Melina ... ye shall nae."

The gasp that tore from Niamh's throat at the sound of that voice was echoed around the fest hall as all eyes turned to those who had entered in the midst of the confusion. Five High Sidhe, male and female, exquisite in face and form, moved through the crowd, and the lower fae around them stepped back, lowering their eyes in wonder and awe. The men were tall and fair of face, flaxen-haired and strong, the epitome of the Sidhe's perfect being; the women small and delicately boned, dark and red haired. They moved with a supple grace few could hope to master, and their mere presence cowed even the pride of the Wintersmith to nothing. They were at once as one with, and apart from, this fest hall of revellers, for there was emotion within them as they looked on the pitiful scene ... compassion, regret, sorrow, the gifts of the Goddess and her Consort to a favoured few of the descendants of the Tuatha de Danaan.

But the face among them that Niamh's wide grey eyes locked to was that of the woman who walked in their midst. Small and dark-haired, her eyes flashed near silver with power and charm as she approached the mortal pair, standing together over the dying body of the proud and cruel Summer. Carwen, whose face haunted her daughter's dreams still, whose gift had protected her long enough to draw help to her side ... whose light resided within that same daughter's soul. She was a mere shade of her former self, yet she seemed to shine with hope.

She stepped out from between the High Sidhe who had accompanied her, those silver eyes flickering between Lilli and her defeated foe, before coming to rest on the incredulous face of Niamh, her daughter.

"D'ye know us, a stoirin?" she asked softly; and soft though that voice was, it filled the hall and the lands beyond.

Niamh swallowed hard, glancing briefly at Lilli before she answered, obeying the call within of the old stories from her childhood and beyond. "Aye," she nodded slowly, "ye are the Leanan S?dhe, the faery lovers."

Carwen nodded, her smile fond as she looked upon her mid-winter child. "Do ye ken why we have come?" When Niamh shook her head, at a loss, her mother's smile widened and she stepped back, to kneel beside the gasping, bleeding Summer Queen. "An eye f'r an eye, a stoirin," she said quietly, though there could be no mistaking that her voice was heard across the Land of the Ever Young. "As all this was meant tae come tae pass, so too were we meant tae witness it. Our Mother, she ye call Goddess and Lady, has sent us that what should have been will be again."

Niamh's hand sought Lilli's, uncaring that the blue-green fae blood slid warm and slimy between her fingers, only that she had some hold to the world she longed to return to. She had a nasty feeling she knew where this was going. Summer lay dying, and would die soon, unless another took her place ... and she'd be thrice damned if it was going to be her.

Carwen's hand touched gently against Summer's cheek as she went on, still soft, still unrelenting in her speech. "I was ne'er meant tae walk th'lands o'Eire," she murmured quietly. "I was chosen tae wear the seasons' crown, tae rule part o'the year as my sister had done before me. I didnae then comprehend the honour I was bid, and I fled, to Eire, to your father, my little bright one. Ye recall the comin' o'the Fair Folk tae your crib? 'Twas then the deal was made. A child born in midwinter, tae be a wife and Queen tae the Wintersmith in my place."

"Ye didnae ..." Niamh breathed, feeling the icy sting of betrayal deep inside. Her fingers closed tighter around Lilli's as she stepped back, unwilling to believe her mother's confession.

"I did." There was no room for argument with Carwen's tone, though that regret seemed to radiate from her. "Twas my pride and thoughtlessness brought this down upon ye, a stoirin, and for that I am truly sorry. Ye have a choice tae make now. Will ye honour my agreement, or will ye return tae those who love ye dearly?"

Niamh stared at her mother, aghast. What sort of a choice was that? If she did not honour this agreement, the seasons would falter; if she did not return, those she loved, those who had fought hard to regain her, would suffer pain at her absence. For a moment these confused, aching thoughts echoed through her mind ... and her eyes narrowed slightly. The Sidhe never offered a choice unless they knew the consequences of each. It was no choice at all, but a test. Leanan sidhe were the bringers of love from the world of fae to that of mortal man and woman, at the bidding of the Goddess and her Consort. They would not honour any agreement made that would sunder bonds of love created from their whims.

"Thank ye for the choice, but I'll be returnin' home tae my man, and my kin," she answered quietly. "I think 'tis time ye honoured your own agreements, ma."

Those silver eyes lit up in approval, but whatever Carwen might have said was lost in the sudden movement of bodies. The High Sidhe who had brought her gently pushed both mortal women aside, turning to surrounded the dark-haired sidhe and the near-lifeless Summer Queen. Power pulsed and thrummed from them. Hands reached out to draw Lilli and Niamh back from the group quickly, voices around them raised in praise and awe. For one long, agonising moment the power of Summer flashed out at all those gathered within, blinding them. Niamh fell back, sheltering Lilli's bruised and bleeding form with her own, until the light faded, and the High Sidhe simply melted away.

In their place stood Summer, but a different Summer Queen than she whose blood still stained the floor at her feet. Where before gold and silver had coloured her beauty, now hair dark as night and skin as rosy soft as peaches gave her light and life. And silver eyes that smiled upon all they surveyed, set in that beautiful face. Summer was reborn from love, an ages old agreement honoured. The Wintersmith stepped down from his throne to take the hand of his new consort, and it was strange to see the warm in his icy smile as he looked on her. The Sidhe gathered close around them, with murmurs of joy and amazement, the mortals forgotten in their haste to welcome the new Summer Lady.

Niamh gently pulled Lilli away from the press of people, and embraced her warmly, careful of her injuries. "I think 'tis o'er," she whispered thankfully, before a faintly worried frown touched her brow. "Please tell me ye have a notion as tae how I get back tae my own limbs?"

Never in her life to date did Niamh think she had ever felt more relieved to hear the laughing banter between a mother and daughter than she did as Melina came to fetch them back from the Sidhe lands. One last look over her shoulder to the mother she was now unlikely to ever see again, and Niamh was quick to help ease Lilli's battered body over that wavering threshold, her hand held securely in the protective grasp of her friend's mother. She breathed a low sigh of relief as her foot touched that solid RhyDin soil, and for a moment, all seemed well. But she should know by now, a straight-forward victory was not theirs for the taking.

Her body lay nearby, pale and bandaged in preparation for the re-entry of her soul to start the heart beating, the blood to moving once again. She felt a rush of something pass through her, her vision turning hazy, and to her horror felt herself stagger, no longer able to bear her own soul's weight. Thankfully for her, Melina seemed to understand what was needed, ushering the swaying, staggering soul towards her anchor to the world she loved, the body the Sidhe had so cruelly harmed. A single touch of fingers to that pale skin, and Niamh's soul vanished from view.

At the same moment, her body arched upwards, drawing in painful, gasping breaths. Grey eyes opened to flare in startled pain. Convulsions wracked the beleaguered limbs, more and more violent as each moment went by, and suddenly she stilled, falling back against her resting place with a thump. Her limbs lolled limply, her head rolling without support. One twitch, another ... and she moved no more. Surely this was not the way the story was supposed to end?

There was nothing. No answer, no moving of limbs. To the unknowing eye, Niamh lay still, pale in apparent death. No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest, Shakespeare had written centuries before, and this proved an accurate description of the limp woman lying small and unmoving. Her hand was cold in Brishen's grasp, her lips slowly turning blue as the oxygen those gasping breaths had drawn in stuttered and congealed in her lungs. The bandage at her stomach had become bloodied in her body's writhing convulsions, but now no blood oozed further, with no heartbeat to renew what had been bled.

Trapped within her own body, yet unattached to the love that had brought her back, Niamh screamed out her terror in silence. Every ounce of her will and power she lent to evoking the smallest movement, the tiniest clue that she still lived, trapped within a body that was so perilously close to death. Surely someone would hear her - so much power concentrated into the members of the Garridan clan, into the McClae witch who had saved her from the Sidhe - surely one of them must hear the frantic screams of a soul unbound but trapped.

Grey eyes opened slowly, to stare blank and unseeing at the unforgiving sky. There was no sign of the life that flickered within, no steady beat of pulse at her throat, no slow, tortured breath from her lips. Was this really the way the faery tale would end, in death and despair, after such efforts had been made to assure it was not so?

There, quiet as the whispering words of the unseen Summer ... a voice that called out, heart to heart, calling to the love that bound her to this plain.

"I dinnae call ye Silver-Tongue for nothin', f?orghr? ... dyin' woman in need of a handsome prince, right here!"

It shouldn't have worked. In all the worlds, there is nothing more improbable than the all consuming power of a lover's kiss. But when that lover has magic of his own, magic that is tied to his wants and needs, magic that can spark off the innate power of the deathly pale woman in his arms ... then that kiss has the power to do anything.

Niamh felt it like a pressure wave passing through her body and soul, capturing those parts of her that were lost and unbound, melding them once more. That which was sundered was no longer so in the instants of oblivion that followed the gentle press of Brishen's lips to hers. She felt her mind and soul return to take complete control of the body she had left behind what felt like an age ago, suffusing that body with new life that crackled to the touch for a single moment.

To those that watched, it must have seemed miraculous. The paleness of her face and formed became flushed once more with the rosy pink of her merry complexion, the lips turning blue now were dusky pink once again. Her fingers twitched, her body regaining some form of rigidity after the deathly loll and limpness of apparent death. But the magic that sparked between them still had one more trick up it's collective sleeve.

As the first gasp of new breath entered her lungs, a flash of light seemed to lance from her head to her toes, little feelers of crackling, spitting power wandering over her still quiet body, intent on a mission of their own. The bloodied bandage at her stomach was the destination of that moving mass of light, and under the watchers' eyes, the blood dissipated, leaving the bandage as fresh as the driven snow. There was no need for a genius to tell them what the combined touch of the lovers' power had done before the connection was broken.

Grey eyes that had been staring sightlessly at the sky blinked, and in that instant of darkness, they saw once again. Brishen leaning over her with that look on his face that said they were going to have a long, long, talk about all of this; Lilli, battered and bruised, blissfully alive, with that grin that told her everything was alright once again; Melina, Maddock, and all the gathered members of the clan standing around, watching anxiously to be certain nothing else was going to go wrong.

With a weak grin, Niamh pulled herself to sit upright, pulling the bandage from her waist without a second thought for the clean, undamage skin below it, and threw herself into Brishen's arms, holding on tightly as though any moment he could be the one snatched from her, planting a warm, lingering kiss to his cheek. And slowly, she began to laugh, the tensions and fears and revelations of the past day a fine shock and merry adventure rolled into one. But none of it mattered now. She was home.

And somewhere beyond the edge of hearing, touch, and sight, in the far away Land of the Ever Young, the Summer Queen danced with the Wintersmith, a dark-haired smiling nymph, who might never again care to remember the daughter whose life she had endangered and saved in the blink of an eye. For the seasons turn, and do not hold what a mortal would call a grudge ... for what treasures could mortality possibly offer to tempt or ensnare the Summer and her Court? What treasures, indeed ...