Both men shook their heads, and they looked at each other, something unspoken passing between them. Maeve realized they no longer held a tension toward one another.
Well, she thought, at least something satisfactory came out of that.
She needed both of them with their heads in the game; it would have made things difficult if they continued their squabbling. She pursed her lips. “Whatever the case, we have to come up with a plan, and we have to do it now.” They were within a quarter mile of Karst. “I won’t hear it about me being left out. I can make the potion. We know it works. Until we’re proved otherwise, it’s the only known weapon we can use against the Nyx.”
“And you’re sure you can replicate it?” Rodan asked.
She nodded. “I’m sure.” It required life. Just that. She would find more of it, stronger and longer lasting, if she was given enough time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Rodan
HE DIDN’T WANT TO LET HER OUT OF HIS SIGHT.
She bathed, dressed, and ate as soon as they returned to their tent. He provided everything for her, as always, and hovered nearby, attempting to anticipate her needs. She shooed him away at one point, a frown on her face. “I’m fine,” she said for the dozenth time.
He sank to the floor pillows near her. He wanted to touch her, to reassure himself again she sat there. Alive. Well. She took the healing potion, and the cuts on her lip, hands, and knees healed.
The Nyx tasted her, she said. They found something in her blood. Power.
She told him about her ‘potion.’ How she used her own blood as the catalyst. This proved his point: she wasn’t human. Sebastian must have suspected it, all those years ago, and now their greater enemy knew it as well.
For the Nyx posed a greater threat than Sebastian ever would. The foolish mortal. What had he been thinking, going to the forbidden continent? Had he not realized the threat? Did he ever go there himself?
“Rodan,” Maeve said, reaching over and touching his thigh. “Where are you now? You’re here but you barely said a word.”
He reached down and took her hand. “Two days, Maeve. Two days of not knowing if you were alive or dead.”
Her features softened. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “I should have known better than to let you out of sight with those creatures nearby. You were taken and there was nothing I did to stop it.”
“I wandered off. You searched for me. You found me,” she pressed. “You can’t keep watch on me every hour of every day for the rest of my life.”
He fell silent, and she shifted, so she pressed against him, her body a line of heat against his own. He wore his usual vest and loose shirt, the scale armor discarded soon after they returned. His arm went around her as she leaned into him, her head tucking into the crook of his neck. Her breath on his skin made him close his eyes.
“Maeve,” he said, his voice a croak. “There is something I need to tell you. Something I’ve been suspecting for some time.”
She pulled back enough to stare up at his eyes. “What is it?”
He swallowed, hesitating for a moment. “I don’t know how to say.”
“Say it,” she said, her voice soothing and gentle. “We don’t have time for anything else. I need to make the potion.”
Rodan nodded. He needed to talk with her. She needed to hear what he suspected—what he was sure he knew to be true about her. “Do you remember when you were attacked by Sebastian in the dream walking, and I healed you with the potion?”
She nodded.
“Then, on board the ship, and now, you were healed again. By the same potion.”
Maeve went still, her arms about his neck. “Wait. You said something about that potion. It was the only one which would heal any wound, but it needed—”
“Fae biology,” he finished for her.
She frowned. “What changed?”
He shook his head. “Nothing changed. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. From years ago, when you were with Sebastian, I understood you were a formidable woman. A spell crafter. A potion maker. I thought you were a talented human mortal, but you told me about the dream walking with the dragon, and—Maeve, you made a potion or crafted a spell the night before the duel, didn’t you? Something to weaken me.”
She bit her bottom lip and gave a slight nod, sliding off his lap to her own pillow. “I did,” she murmured.
“Neither of which should have been possible for you to do,” he continued. “Sebastian is only able to perform a dream walking because he’s spent three decades sitting on a throne I imbued with my own magic. He’s steeped in the stuff. But you? You were, what, fifteen, sixteen years old when you created the dream walking potion for the dragon? It would have been an impossible feat for a mortal, but for a Fae—”
“I’m not a Fae,” she snapped, moving further away from him. “Rodan, stop this. Please.”
“What do you know about your parents, truly?” She flinched, and his heart constricted at the motion, but he pressed on. “From what you wrote in your books, you have their names and little else. You have the records of your birth, but that is all which remains to you. You don’t have photographs.” He paused. “What if they were never your parents to begin with? What if your parents are other people? Other creatures? What if they aren’t human?”
“Impossible,” she said, a hard edge to her voice and a steel glint to her eyes. “I age like a human. I appear like a human. You,” she gestured at him. “Sometimes it is like your skin glows. Your ears are pointed. I look nothing like you.”
“Among my people,” he said, “there is a tradition for high Fae royalty to be raised in the human world. We would exchange our children for theirs, raise the humans with us, and return for our young when they came of age. In the meantime, a glamour was placed over the Fae changeling. An enchantment, actually, to stifle their powers and alter their appearance. Look.” Rodan ran a hand through his own hair, turning the black strands he touched into snow white. “Glamour is an ability all Fae are born with. Some of us can place glamour on others. Not all, but—”
“Stop,” Maeve commanded. “Stop it. This isn’t funny.”
He blinked. “I’m not jesting.”
“No one has come for me,” she said, and the depth of emotion behind her words startled him. “No one wanted me, Rodan. Not when I was a child. Not now.”
“I want you,” he said, voice quiet. “I came for you.”
She stared at him, and her cheeks flamed, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Please don’t do this.”
He tilted his head and said nothing.
“If I were dumped in the human world to be raised there, I don’t want to know my parents. Not after what was done to me. Not after all I faced. If—if I’m something else, I was abandoned, Rodan. Cast aside. At least now—at least I think my parents loved me before the accident.”
He pursed his lips, what he understood of his people’s history warring with his desire to protect her. “You took the potion, Maeve. It healed you when it should not have.”
She rose to her knees, looming over him. “You can’t know why that is. Maybe it has something to do with coming back and forth between my world and this one so often. Maybe because I—because I’m close to you.”
He shook his head, and her eyes narrowed. He pressed on, his heart thundering. “It is well known this potion only works when interacting with Fae biology, Maeve. We may administer it to another creature, via our mouths or through cutting our hands and cupping the potion to someone’s wounds, but it is our bodies it is meant to heal. No other.”
Maeve shook her head, her hair floating about her head. “You can’t. You can’t know. You’re guessing.”
“There is one way to tell for certain,” Rodan said, and lifted one hand.
She glanced between his hand and his face. “What? What is it?”
“I bond with you,” he said, his tone gentle as his heart galloped at full speed. “The bond
ing process does many things, up to and including breaking a glamour enchantment over you.”
She jerked back. “Are you serious? What if you bond with me and I end up being human? What then, Rodan?”
He shook his head. “You’re not. I can feel it in my bones. I know you’re not.”
“You suspect,” she spat. “There’s a big difference.”
He did not want to argue that particular point any further. “Regardless—what we face tonight is danger on a hitherto unmet level. Even if you’re human, Maeve, bonding with me will let you access far greater magics. Your potion will be stronger. Your ability to weave spells will only grow. Physically, you’ll be stronger and faster than you are now. It will give you the edge we need against our enemy.”
She fell silent for a long moment. “What happens, exactly, if I die of old age and you’re bonded to me?”
He swallowed hard and told her the truth. For a Fae cannot lie. We can stretch the truth and twist it to our liking, but we cannot lie, and I will not lie to her. “Most who lose their bond-mates die.”
“Most?”
“Some go mad.”
She shook her head, the motion fierce. “No. No. I won’t risk it.”
“Maeve—”
“That’s final, Rodan. I don’t care it might help now, what about your future? I—I can’t be the reason you die.” She leaned toward him and placed a hand on his leg. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t do it. Not for any reason. Not ever.”
He grasped that hand and squeezed. “I can’t promise it. I won’t.”
She clenched her jaw, and he saw a muscle jump along her cheek. “You’re a stubborn bastard.”
He nodded. “I see no other explanation for what you’re able to do. Even under a glamour, your power is strong. The Nyx tasted it, you said, and Sebastian and I have both puzzled it out. Pike must have, as well, but he may not know how to name it.”
She frowned and released his hand, leaning forward and pressing her head into his chest. “You still only suspect,” she said against him, her voice muffled. “Gods but you’re stubborn. I might be something else besides a Fae. Like something that can use magic but still grows old like a human. Still dies like a human. Why would you risk it?”
“I would risk everything to keep you safe,” he said, the words tumbling from his lips before he stopped them. He felt her conviction waver. He pressed on, “Not only safe, but powerful. Even if you’re not Fae, you will gain something significant from bonding with me. It can only help you, and help us, on this journey.”
She lifted her head, shaking it. “No. Uh-uh.”
Rodan opened his mouth to counter, but she pressed herself against him, her lips catching his. Her hands went to his hair, pulling him closer to her. He pressed himself against her, unable to do anything else. Her legs went to either side of his hips, and his hands fell to her waist, the movements quick and greedy. Two days of missing her, of not knowing where she might be. Two days, and he realized now his own feelings had grown far deeper than he imagined.
This was an attempt to distract him, to keep him from pressing his argument further, but he did not care at that moment. Soft and pliant in his arms, with the fresh scent from the bath suffusing his senses, he saw nothing, felt nothing, smelled nothing but her. He wanted to roll in the sensation.
The kiss grew long and deep, containing all the unsaid things from the days she had been gone. He poured himself into her. His longing, his fear, and that terrible, yawning emptiness. He thought, in darker moments, she might be lost to him. That he would never find her, only wonder what became of her as years turned to centuries.
He would not abide that thought.
His teeth grazed her lips, hungry for more. She made little satisfied sounds against him, and he moved a hand to graze her breasts and dip lower, seeking out the core of her, his gloves shifting to linen to better touch her with. She gasped and rocked against him when his fingers slipped under the band of her shorts and he gave her a single, slow caress.
Her hands were on him, finding him hard and ready. She stroked him as he stroked her, their bodies rocking together, and their mouths locked on one another. His motions echoed in hers, and they became faster, more frantic, as each brought the other to new heights of pleasure.
Her free hand dug into his shoulder, nails biting, and his into her hip, pulling her ever closer. Their kiss became frenzied, each of them breathing hard, until she broke away with a cry, her back bowing and her motions quickening on him, so he followed her over the edge.
Panting, she pulled back enough to look at him. “You’re driving me crazy,” she whispered.
His mouth split in a grin, and he caught her in a quick, hard kiss, pulling his hand away from her and wrapping her in an embrace. “Think of what else I might do to you, were I free of these gloves. Trailing heat and magic across your skin until you knew nothing but pleasure.”
She chuckled and pulled her hand away from him. “No,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you can do that with your gloves on. I believe in you.”
He let it go. For now.
They held each other while their hearts slowed, and he breathed her in. Her scent had faded so quickly from the tent in her absence, he became half-convinced he imaged it. But no matter how much honeysuckle and beeswax she left in her wake, pressing his nose against her skin was something greater. The warmth laced through it was a heady thing, the body underneath absolute perfection.
“We have to get Pike and come up with a plan,” she said against him, her face nuzzling along his own. “The Nyx will come again tonight, and we need to be ready.”
He held her tighter. He wished for his throne more than ever now, not for the seat and home he lost, but because he wished he possessed the power to keep her safe. To put guards at her disposal and make sure she stayed in the light, away from this pressing threat of darkness.
“I think I can make more of the potion,” she continued. “We need something which will draw them to us. If they’re scattered throughout the city, we’ll never get them all.”
He nodded and pulled away. She was right. They must focus on the threat. “Let me clean up, and I’ll get Pike.”
She nodded and they separated, both of them reluctant.
He changed again, cleaning himself as he did so. Maeve, dressed in his imperial colors of black and gold, studied the map of the area he summoned on their table. As he passed her to find Pike, she brushed a hand along his leg. He glanced down, his throat tight.
How simple it would be, to slip off the gloves when she’s not looking, and clasp her hand as I’ve done a hundred times before.
He couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Not without her permission, but the temptation lay there.
Something shifted in the two days she disappeared. He felt it, like a lightness to the air. He would look at her, and he wanted her above all others. She was strong. Steady. Brilliant. Loving. Everything he needed in a bond-mate. And he remained oh, so curious as to what hidden powers she held.
He turned away, intent on finding Pike.
How had he become so distracted by her? When this journey started, all his thoughts revolved around regaining his throne. It used to be his sole purpose. Now? Now, he wanted to protect her. To hold her. To share a kingdom with her. Her presence became a balm on the wound of empty loneliness he carried with him for centuries. He never realized how great the pain was until it lessened by her very being.
Was this what others went through, when they found themselves drawn to her? That she possessed the culmination of everything they ever desired in the world?
Was she really, only a Fae? Might there be something more?
From what he remembered, when a Fae child lay under the tightly woven glamour protecting them in the human worlds, their whole being remained hidden. There would be no way for them to work magic, or for magical creatures to sense and identify them. Yet the Nyx took her blood and deemed her worthy of assimilation. Would that make her something else, s
omething other than Fae?
What if she had been right, and whatever she was would grow old and die, like a human?
The thought tore at him.
Thousands of years weighed him down. Not his past, but his future stretching out before him like a vast nothing. What would it be like, if she did not share the path with him? Would he find someone else, or would he be consigned to solitary existence until something came along and dispatched him? He was no immortal. Someone might kill him, though it would be difficult. He could do the deed himself.
The thought made him shudder, but it somehow, now, remained less of a threat than the possibility of being without her.
So immersed in his thoughts, he did not realize he stood before Pike’s tent until the man poked his head out of the front flap. “Yes?”
Rodan blinked, coming to, wrestling the dark thoughts down into the recesses of his mind where they would fester until he became ready to deal with them again. “We want to talk with you. To plan for tonight.”
Pike nodded and said, “Give me a moment,” before disappearing back into the tent.
Rodan gazed up at the sky. Rigor and Tegal started their slow descent to the horizon. They, perhaps, held another five hours before the Nyx would be able to roam free again.
Would that be enough time?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rodan
THE HAIR ON THE BACK OF HER NECK STOOD ON END.
The marketplace fell dead silent except for the occasional whimper and cry of one of the children. She stood in between the row of stalls and the central pen where they placed all the kids. The pen contained about fifty of them, overall, and it remained a testament to how brave and afraid they were that they kept as silent as they did.
Most of the babes and smaller children stayed asleep, thanks to a potion she whipped up specifically for this occasion. The older children, though, the ones aged five and over, she gave the option of staying awake or going asleep. Many of them decided to stay awake, against her assumptions.
Catching Pathways Page 24
