by Eileen Wilks
"But you thought she would not object if you chucked rocks down her throat?"
Looked like the Ahk knew a rhetorical question when they heard one. No one said a word. So Cynna did. "I need rope. Now."
Chulak's head turned slowly. "Come here."
That did not sound good. Balking wouldn't help, though, and she wanted that rope. She walked up to his horse.
His hand shot out. A sledgehammer hit the side of her head, knocking her down. Dimly, through the roar in her ears, she heard him rumble, heard the charm whisper: "I do not like the way you speak to me."
She didn't quite pass out, but she wasn't fully there, either, as they discussed Gan's rescue—and the punishment of those who'd risked losing one of Chulak's hostages. Three of them lost a finger. One—the one she'd knocked out—lost two fingers. They waited for him to come around so he could chop them off himself.
While they went about their bloody business, Cynna distracted Gan from her plight by describing the way Steve had championed her. Her father sat behind her, propping her up. That felt weird, but it was a nice weird.
Finally they gave Steve a rope, and he hauled Gan up.
The former demon was scratched, bruised, and bloody. Her blood was red, as red as anyone else's. Her eyes were huge. "You saved me," she whispered to Steve. "You fought the Ahk to make him stop. He's huge and could kill you, but you fought him."
She lurched forward suddenly and clasped him around the knees. Hugging him.
Steve made a strangled sound and staggered. "Little too tight." He sought Cynna's eyes wildly, his expression pleading.
She smiled with the half of her face that wasn't broken and made a patting motion.
He got it. He bent and patted one bare, scraped orange shoulder. "Had to do something," he told her gruffly. "Dirty bastards. And you're one of us, right?"
The round, bald head bobbed in a nod. As suddenly as she'd latched on, she let go. She limped over to Cynna and threw her short arms around Cynna's shoulders, squeezing—which hurt. Gan was a lot stronger than she looked.
Fortunately, she let go quickly. She stared at Cynna, her ugly little face fierce. "I understand now. I understand."
Cynna didn't, but whatever revelation had come to Gan, it was important. So she smiled with half her face and reached out and squeezed one dirty, stubby-fingered orange hand. "I'm glad."
The Ahk wouldn't consider risking their horses by jumping the sinkhole, a sentiment Cynna heartily—if silently—agreed with. They had to find another route down. By the time they halted to make camp, they were in low, rolling hills, partly forested. And Cynna was dizzy with exhaustion.
The only reason she hadn't keeled over from pain was that she'd finally given in and used her no-pain spell a couple hours earlier. It was for emergencies only because it stopped pain completely, but also stopped the healing.
But the son of a bitch who'd hit her refused to stop, and falling off her horse wouldn't help her head much.
Of course, she probably could have told Chulak she couldn't stay on the horse any longer. He wouldn't have stopped, but he didn't want her falling off and damaging herself. He'd need her to find the medallion's trail again, so he'd probably have had one of his people ride behind and support her, the way they'd been doing with Daniel until today.
Turned out she was just stupid enough, just stubborn enough, to try to out-tough three hundred-pound bipedal rhinos who cut off their own fingers to show remorse for endangering their leader's possession. And then rode for hours and hours and hours without complaint.
Bastards. And she was an idiot, which was abundantly clear the moment she dismounted and cut the juice going to the no-pain spell… took three steps, and threw up.
Concussion. That's what Chulak's healer said, via her charm, when he checked her out. He had her lie down in her blankets and did a warm-hands thing, cradling her head, that made her sleepy. She had barely a second to think, oh, he's putting me in sleep, just like ,,. before she conked out.
That's how she came to sleep through the battle.
The next thing Cynna knew was another pair of hands on her face. These were cooler, the fingers long, the palms smooth. These hands stirred her awake instead of sending her away, cool hands that warmed her from the inside out.
She blinked her eyes open and looked up at dark, long-lashed eyes… full lips, parted in a small smile. Black hair with silver wings was pulled back, revealing a face so exquisite it stole the breath she'd just taken. Honey-colored skin and pointed ears… dazed, she lifted a hand but didn't quite dare touch him.
"Who are you?" she breathed. Her pulse pounded in her head. It hurt. The pain distracted her somewhat from the pulse pounding elsewhere, but not entirely. No, not entirely.
"Why, I am your prince, Sleeping Beauty," he said in a voice like fog and mist, a voice she could have listened to for hours. A voice with a hint of huskiness, as if he, too, felt the delicious stir of arousal. "Come to kiss you awake."
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Cullen shifted in the saddle. His horse stamped, protesting his restlessness. He told his mind to stop thinking. Like most minds, it disobeyed, throwing up possibilities, scenarios, nightmares.
Cynna wasn't dead, he told his mind. She wasn't. They had no reason to kill her and every reason to keep her alive.
His mind noted that people died in battle even when that wasn't intended. And this had recently been a battlefield, and a number of people had died here, judging by the stink of blood and death soaking the ground, even if the bodies were AWOL for some reason.
But not Cynna. The Ahk—may they all be damned to the lowest circle of hell—were warriors that even the sidhe respected. They would have protected their prize.
The Ahk had been among those who died here, though. And someone had tried to kill Cynna on the barge. Someone able to hire obab assassins to take care of a problem for them. Someone who didn't want her Finding the medallion.
In spite of his fear and urgency, Cullen didn't speak.
He didn't want to distract the two peering into the recent past. A pair of sidhe—male and female, but almost identical otherwise—stood in the center of the trampled, blood-soaked ground, holding hands. Their eyes were closed. The magic swirling around them was mostly purple tinged with gold. Now and then it dipped into a muddy brown.
It had taken days to get here—bloody, be-damned days, too many of them spent arguing, beguiling, manipulating while trying desperately not to be manipulated in turn. And probably failing. The sidhe prized subtlety, and manipulation was warfare at its most subtle. Given the centuries they'd practiced on each other, they'd developed it into an art form.
He'd been at a disadvantage in many ways in their delicate negotiations, but perhaps his chief liability was that they knew what he wanted. He could only guess at their goals. Being sidhe, those would be varied and shifting. In the end, the deal they appeared to make was simple enough. He would dance for them, and they would rescue Cynna.
The sidhe prized subtlety, but their passion was beauty in all its forms. Still, Cullen didn't fool himself. Being both lupus and beautiful made him interesting to them, but not interesting enough to risk their lives. He danced well, but their dancers were grace itself. No, his performance had been either a tangible excuse to do what they intended to do anyway, or a cover for what the Rohen liege truly wanted. Or both.
As for what Theil of Rohen really wanted… he glanced at the tall woman sitting so lightly on a horse the color of smoke, surrounded by members of her court. He wasn't sure—how could he be?—but he thought he'd guessed right. She wanted the medallion, yes, but even more important was making sure none of the other sidhe lieges in Edge obtained it. She claimed that the medallion was moving from one person to the next intentionally, that it was seeking its proper holder. She might be telling some form of the truth about that.
But Cullen thought there was something she wanted just as much. He had shields the sidhe couldn't break, couldn't af
fect at all—shields that maybe were entirely outside Theil's experience. He couldn't be sure of that, but he knew surprise, even shock, when he saw it. The first time Theil had tried tickling his shields, he'd seen shock in her eyes, however fleetingly.
He suspected she'd wanted badly to learn how he acquired such shields.
Not that she'd asked directly. The testing of his shields had been mild and gentle and constant, but she'd made only a single comment on them three bloody days after he'd been yanked to the court of Rohen. How amazing, she'd said with the small smile that was her usual expression, to find such shields on one from Earth. Did all lupi possess natural shields?
That question had, at last, tipped her hand. She knew the shields were an artifact, not a natural ability. Cullen wasn't sure how sidhe perceived magic. Not the way he did—he knew that much. Their awareness of it was visceral, or perhaps it comprised a sense for which he had no analogue.
God knew they were unlikely to explain, had he been foolish enough to ask. But Theil would have been able to tell the difference between an innate ability and craft, however sophisticated.
"Not at all," he'd answered Rohen's liege. "There is quite a story attached to my shields. Perhaps I will attempt to entertain you with it once we are on our way. There should be time for storytelling. Cynna is over a day's ride away."
"Perhaps a little less than a day," Theil had told him, smiling. "We travel fast when we wish to."
Cullen had known where Cynna was because of a map—theirs—and a hair. Cynna's. Bleached along most of its short length, dark at the root, it had clung to his shirt, riding with him through the miserable maelstrom of translocation.
Not his preferred means of travel at all. He'd damned near thrown up first thing upon arriving at Rohen's court. Sheer stubbornness had kept the contents of his stomach inside long enough for the nausea to fade.
Cullen supposed he couldn't blame all the delay on the sidhe love of indirection. It had taken him two days to set up the location spell, using that hair as a focus. And they had cooperated, giving him whatever ingredients he needed. Theera had even made a useful suggestion or two… probably laughing behind her beautiful gray eyes all the while. His spell must have seemed very crude to them.
Actually, they'd offered to locate Cynna themselves, using their doubtless more sophisticated spells. He'd politely refused. If he gave up the hair and let them find her, why should they take him along?
He didn't think Theil was behind the murder attempt on the barge, but he didn't know, not with certainty. He'd held on to Cynna's hair, and of course they'd made no attempt to take it from him. That would have violated the laws of hospitality—which were indeed laws among the sidhe.
Oh, he'd been treated well. Theera might have lied about the function of the charm she gave him—and it turned out that translocation charms were very few in number, but not as singular as Bilbo believed—but once he used it, he became an honored guest. Certainly not a prisoner. He could have left at any time.
They'd known Cullen wouldn't leave, not easily. Not while they could dangle the possibility of help for Cynna in front of him. Finally he'd become convinced that was all they meant to do—tease him with possible aid, keeping him away from her.
He'd requested a horse so he could leave. They'd promptly agreed, asking only that he take leave of their liege first. Courtesy being almost as important as beauty to the sidhe, he'd known that would be necessary. When he did, she'd expressed her sorrow at losing his company, mentioning that she had hoped to see him dance before they parted… that had led somehow to the comment about his shields, and an agreement. He would dance for her court; she would ride with twenty of her people to the aid of his lady.
Nothing was said or even implied about Cynna Finding the medallion for them. But she wouldn't be a guest on their land the way Cullen had been. No laws bound them once they left Rohen, and Theil's word bound her only to rescue Cynna. Cullen was grimly aware of that.
He'd worry about what to do next after they found Cynna. Which—please, Lady!—had better be soon. Or he was going to blow whatever reputation for courtesy he'd established. The urge to burn something, anything, was growing.
His horse stamped. He shifted his weight. Who would have thought he'd ever long for a mate bond? With such a bond, he'd know, dammit. Know where Cynna was. Know she was alive.
She had to be alive.
Cullen's crude little location spell had worked until Cynna left the mountains and entered Leerahan. Leerahan's liege had smeared something like a "don't see me" over his entire land—or that's what it felt like, as if he had spread a muffling blanket over the area, one that smothered Cullen's location spell.
But it wasn't hard to follow the tracks left by thirty horses. They'd done just that, trailing the Ahk, until they reached this spot. Where the Ahk had been attacked.
Finally the hand-holding twins opened their eyes. "We are sorry, liege Theil," said the female. "But—"
"—we can pick up only snatches of what happened," the male continued. "Leerahan oduelo lies thickly here. But we did see who attacked the Ahk."
"Leerahan, of course," his sister said. "Two sleeps ago. They cloaked their arrival and slit several throats before the Ahk were aware of their presence. Very odd for an Ahk war party to enter Leerahan, but perhaps—"
"—they thought they would go unnoticed. There are traces of a masking spell, not of sidhe crafting, as you no doubt are aware. Leerahan, of course, prevailed. The images are patchy after that—"
"—but we concentrated, as you asked, on the human woman. She left here alive—"
"—and willingly, riding with Leerahan's liege, he who is sometimes called Aduello."
"But we cannot mark their path in any way. That is too well hidden by the othatha."
Theil looked at Cullen, a trace of sympathy in her cool blue eyes. "Cynna Weaver is under a glamour, of course. Aduello casts a most lovely glamour, beautifully crafted. A human would have no defense against it. Unless, of course, she has shields like yours?"
Cullen shook his head. "No. But she's alive. That's what counts."
There was said to be one other defense against glamour. One that had nothing to do with shields, and everything to do with an old, old story, told in many forms… "We will learn soon enough if he holds her in a glamour, won't we? Assuming you continue to ride with me," he added politely. "You may believe Cynna no longer requires rescue, since it is sidhe who hold her now, not Ahk."
"Of course we ride with you. I prefer not to endanger my given word with assumptions. You understand there will not be a battle? I do not wage war on a brother liege."
"Battle is a broad word, liege Theil. Some battles employ physical combat. Not all."
Theera, sitting a magnificent white mare alongside her half sister, regarded him with sympathy verging on outright pity. Theera did not like him. "I hope you also understand that we cannot wrest your sweetheart from Aduello for you, if she chooses otherwise. Even if that choice is the result, in part, of a sexual glamour, we must respect it. Glamour cannot compel one to act against one's nature, after all."
"That's true," Cullen said sweetly. And left it at that, since the implication was that he'd broken free of Theera's glamour because desiring her was very much against his nature.
That wasn't precisely true. But neither was her spurious sympathy.
There might have been a hint of amusement in Theil's eyes as she turned her horse to the west. "We cannot follow them magically. Their horses left a trail, however, that…" She turned her head as one of her male sidhe called out softly.
Two riders came over the nearest low hill, pausing at its crest as if to make sure they were seen. One was male, with coppery skin and black hair that reminded Cullen of Benedict. He wore a suede jacket of the sort seen everywhere. The other was female and bundled up against the cold in what he could have sworn was L.L. Bean winter wear.
After that brief pause, they put their horses back into motion. The woman led a p
ack horse as well. No one else moved. As they reached the bottom of the hill, Theil spoke clearly, her voice raised just enough to be heard. "My sentry did not report your arrival."
"Your sentry is undamaged," the man said in Common Tongue. "I did not wish to be seen until now."
"You—" Theil broke off. Her eyes widened.
A second later, Theera gasped. About then Cullen caught the faintest wisp of a scent, one he'd never encountered before. One that made the hairs on his nape bristle.
The two riders steered their horses through the staring, motionless sidhe. The woman was human. Cullen was sure of that, though she possessed a Gift of a sort he'd never seen before. He had no idea what the man was, but he had power. Great gobs of it.
"Liege Theil," the man said courteously, "I would introduce to you Kai Tallman Michalski of Earth and offer you two of my names. I am known as Nathan Hunter."
The liege had her expression under control. "I greet you, Nathan Hunter and Kai Tallman Michalski. I would offer no discourtesy, but I am… extremely curious… about your form and your presence."
"I feel sure you have heard the tale about my form."
"Winter's hound," one of the sidhe whispered.
Theil stiffened. She gave the one who'd spoken a single glance. The man flung himself from his horse to kneel. "My apologies. I should not have… I did not think."
The man called Nathan nodded once. "Forgiven. My identity is not a secret among sidhe."
"It damned sure is to me," Cullen drawled.
Theil gave him a look that ought to have sliced him in two.
Nathan Hunter, however, had only a small, rueful smile. "Your kind never like the way I smell. I am not Challenging you, wolf. Stop bristling at me."
"You are delaying me, though. Never mind what you're called. What are you?"
The man exchanged a glance with the woman, and she spoke for the first time—in clear English with a slight Texas accent. "He's a hellhound. I know he doesn't look like one, but that's a long story, and we're running out of time. If we're going to save your Finder friend and keep Edge from falling into chaos, we need to get moving. Nathan?" She gave her companion an inquiring look.
