Beauty

by Sophie Oak

  “We will. Let’s feed her and let her clean up and then we’ll talk to her about our plans. And no dictating. Your ‘I’m the dominant one and you will obey me’ bit is going to get both of us in trouble. Let me handle her.”

  Lach frowned. “It should be easier than this.”

  “Women are never easy.” Dellacourt smiled. “They have all these feelings and shit. Of course they also have boobs. Gods, I love boobs. Kaj has the most sensitive breasts. Really, I can get her to orgasm just by tweaking her nipples the right way. Where did my consort go? Damn it, she’s shielding again.”

  Shim sent out his own little plea, a pulse of comfort for Bron. There was a little flare of panic from her, and then it was like a wall came between them.

  “What was that?” Lach asked.

  “I think our wife just learned how to put up shields of her own.”

  Roan started folding up his maps and locking down his tablet. “Well, deal with her. We’re going to have to take another route back to Aoibhneas. We ran into some of Torin’s men. They were tipped off to some odd behavior in the forest. Two men and a phooka.”

  Shim wasn’t going to be made to feel guilty about that. It had saved Bron. “Tell us when and we’ll be ready to go. Just know that Bron is our main responsibility.”

  “And your sister is mine.”

  There was an odd comfort to the fact that the vampire would protect his sister. Shim was just worried about who would protect Roan from Gillian.

  Shim hurried his preparations. He and Lach found some cheese and soft bread and fruit. The owner of the house was more than happy to provide for them. She spoke about how kind Isolde had been to her and all the villagers. And how they would all follow her now that her true identity was revealed.

  Shim was grateful, but the woman’s words also frightened him. He didn’t want Bronwyn caught up in the fight. He wanted her safe.

  “The sooner we get her out of here, the better,” Lach said under his breath as they mounted the stairs.

  “Her brothers can handle this fight.” It was their crown, Shim assured himself. Bron’s crown waited on another plane.

  Duffy’s eyes were barely open when they reached the door. Lach laughed a little and poked at their adopted brother.

  “I weren’t sleeping. I was just resting.” Duffy’s eyes came open. “I need me rest. I think I might have a vampire to kill.”

  Shim sighed. Fuck all. Duffy couldn’t be pleased about the engagement. “Brother, you knew you couldn’t marry her.”

  He shrugged and closed his eyes once more. “Always knew. Don’t mean I won’t protect her.”

  “Well, rest up. We move out tonight.” Shim opened the door and realized that Bron hadn’t waited.

  Bron was gone.

  * * * *

  Bronwyn promised herself that when she made it to her tower, she would change into good old peasant clothes. Her second-best dress was hardly making it easy to run through the fields. It seemed to catch on everything as though invisible hands were trying to reach out and grasp her and pull her back.

  She felt the tug of Lach and Shim. By now they had to know she was gone. The phooka had stayed behind to create a little chaos, but before he’d left her, he’d taught her how to throw up some mental shields. According to the phooka, she was wide open to the men she’d dreamed about most of her life.

  She pulled her skirt free of a branch. It tore. Just like everything else in her life right now.

  And she hadn’t even known it was real. They had spent their whole lives understanding that she was a real, actual living creature, but Bronwyn Finn had walked around thinking she was insane. And everyone else had thought she was crazy, too. And now they thought they could just walk in and take her virginity and her blood and cart her off to goddess only knew where.

  And that damn dog wouldn’t stop following her.

  “I don’t have anything to feed you.” She stared back at the animal. It was a pretty thing. She. For some reason Bron was pretty sure the dog was female. There was something delicate about its features. The dog, who might also be a wolf, sat back on her haunches as Bron found herself snarled in a bramble bush. “You don’t want to go where I’m going. So shoo. Shoo, dog.”

  The dog snorted, her muzzle lifting in a fashion that made Bron think she was laughing. And it didn’t move until Bron did, then the dog simply trotted along behind her.

  “Fine, but you’ll see. I’m going on a long journey.” She rounded the final curve and her tower was close. It was tall and dominated the countryside. It had been her home for almost four years.

  It had been her prison.

  “She didn’t care about me. Not really. I think that’s what hurts worst of all.” Bron watched for a moment trying to figure out if anyone was in the tower. She thought not. The phooka had claimed the others were all still in the village waiting for the best time to flee back to the Unseelie plane.

  The wolf sat beside her and gently nuzzled her hand as though asking her to continue.

  “You’re a weird wolf or dog or whatever you are.” She stood up and started to move. She only needed one thing really, but she would change her clothes, too. She needed the knife. She couldn’t leave without it.

  The wolf barked, an impatient sound. Well, maybe the phooka wasn’t the only strange creature she would meet today.

  “I’ve spent almost half my life with Gillian, and I just found out she never cared about me at all. Not the real me. She just saved me because she wanted me to marry her brothers. She told them to impregnate me so their claim would be indisputable.”

  The wolf growled low in her throat.

  Bron stopped and looked around for the threat. The courtyard was completely empty. Then she realized why the wolf had growled.

  “You didn’t like the sound of that. Did you? They used me. Gillian pretended to care about me and protected me from men only because she wanted me to be a virgin for when her brothers took me.”

  There it was again. The deep growl.

  Bron got to one knee. She wasn’t sure how, but this wolf understood what she was saying and seemed to deeply empathize. She was pretty sure no one else would. Everyone else would say that was what royals did. They traded their daughters and sons in exchange for treaties and alliances and land. Her own brothers’ engagement had been made in an attempt to bring Maris’s family’s great wealth of resources into the Finn family line.

  “I know I should have understood that any marriage I make will not be one of love, but I’ve lived as a peasant for far too long. I’ve watched the way they live and how many choose mates based on love and affection.” She reached out and stroked the wolf. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have a companion, even one who couldn’t talk back. “The real problem is that I’ve loved those men all my life, and I didn’t even know they were real. I loved them. Never wanted anyone else. And all they want from me is an alliance.”

  The wolf seemed to shake her head, but then she growled and got to all fours, the hair along her spine standing straight up.

  Bronwyn stood to face whatever was coming her way.

  Niall. He walked out of the tower, placing something in his pack. The guard had changed into what looked like travelling clothes, divesting himself of his armor and cape. He wore suede pants and a tunic, with boots covering his feet.

  He was quite the master of disguise. He looked like a peasant now and not a particularly dangerous one. He could likely make his way on the roads and survive by smiling and looking helpful and proclaiming, “long live King Torin.”

  Her memories of the day were vague and fragmented, but she remembered him. He’d saved her, and then he’d dumped her.

  He walked down the lane as though he hadn’t just stolen into her home and taken her things. The bastard had taken her knife. She sought her memory. In those last moments when she could still speak, he’d asked about the knife and she’d told him.

  “Calm down, wolf.” Bron put a hand on her new pet. “We should get answers
out of him before you eat him.”

  The wolf stopped and stared at her for a moment and then began to bounce up and down in apparent glee. Well, at least her new pet was on the same page. The wolf’s tail thumped against the hard dirt, and she watched her prey with anticipatory joy.

  Bron wished she had a weapon of some kind. Anything really but her brand-new husbands hadn’t seen fit to arm her. They had preferred her without her clothes.

  The feeling of their skin wrapped around hers assaulted her, and for a moment she could feel them. Their panic. It flared to life in her and she couldn’t breathe before she slammed the connection closed. She couldn’t afford it. No matter how nice it had been, she wasn’t going to allow herself to be used to gift the Unseelie royals with her brothers’ throne. Until she saw their dead bodies for herself, she wasn’t going to give up. She’d made up her mind to stand up and be the princess her people needed her to be.

  And that started by having a little chat with Niall.

  He began to walk toward the road. Bron took a step out, showing herself. At the very least she had the wolf by her side. It might make him think twice. She was going to have to come up with a suitable name for her pet since it seemed like the wolf was the only creature on the plane she could trust.

  Niall started and then stopped, staring at her. “Princess Bronwyn.”

  “Incredible jackass Niall.”

  The wolf seemed to snort.

  Niall’s face flushed. “Your Highness, there was nothing I could do. I was surrounded by Micha’s men. They would have killed me. I didn’t have an army.”

  She thought about what had happened in the square. It had seemed to be a nightmare at the time, but now she could start to process what she’d seen and heard. “Neither did the man who saved me. He didn’t have an army. He just had his brother.”

  Niall looked around as if expecting someone to show up. “Where is he? Who is he? It doesn’t matter, princess. We need to leave here. It was incredibly smart of you to get away and come looking for me. Your father is going to be very proud of you.”

  He’d had an incredible story concerning her father. “Why should I believe you about my father?”

  “Because it’s true.” He gave her a warm smile and walked far too close to her. “Princess Bronwyn, everything I have told you is true. Your father trained me to find you. He gave me explicit instructions. I’ve been searching since I became old enough to be a guard.”

  “If my father is truly a sluagh, then why didn’t he search for me himself?” It was impossible to think of her rigidly polite father as an eater of the dead. The sluagh were unshriven dead, dead who refused to move on to the after.

  “I believe his essence is tied to his brother’s and he cannot be free until his brother is dead.” Niall sighed. “I do not expect that you will understand any of this, princess. Just know that your father trusts me. Ask me something only he would know. He spoke of you so often. He made me memorize everything about you.”

  “What did he call me as a child?” It was a secret between the two of them. Or at least her father had told her so.

  “He called you his little pixie because your hair was so big he thought it looked like pixie wings when your nanny didn’t braid it. He thought your hair was half your body weight when you were a child.”

  Tears pricked her eyes. Little pixie. It was a sweet memory. “All right, let’s say I believe you. What does he want me to do?”

  He smiled, a self-satisfied look. “He wants you to follow me. He wants you to trust me. I’m going to take care of you. We’ll go to Sir Giles’s manse. He’s been looking for a person to rally behind ever since your cousin died. He’s tried several times to get ambassadors off the plane to talk to friendly vampire families. He will give us a safe place and he has a long history with the military.” Niall was silent for a moment and then seemed to come to a decision. “And he will see us properly wed.”

  The wolf put her head down and Bron groaned. “I am not marrying you.”

  “’Tis the only way, princess. We shall marry and I will take care of the political part of this. You will need only to be your sweet self and let the people see you. It is all that is required of you.”

  Her wolf growled and Bron understood the sentiment. “I want my knife back.”

  Niall stared. “There is no need, princess. I will handle everything.”

  “I don’t want you to handle everything. I want you to give me my knife back. And I don’t need another husband.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” His face flushed, his shoulders squaring.

  Bron would have sworn her wolf rolled her eyes. “It means that I find myself wed to the princes of the Unseelie. I doubt they would be happy to share their wife. But I find myself in a small disagreement.”

  “You can’t be married.”

  “Oh, yes, I can. I’m bonded to them. Trust me. I feel the connection. I think they both want to murder me right about now.” She’d felt their panic, and now even though she had her shields up, she could still feel the fine edge of fear and irritation. She wondered if they could feel her willpower.

  Niall huffed a little. “No one on this plane will recognize the marriage, Your Highness. They are Unseelie and obviously up to no good. We will wed, and our people will accept it.”

  “Niall, I am not marrying you. And I might not know my husbands very well in this reality, but I know they will take you apart limb from limb, or rather Shim will burn you to a crisp and then Lachlan will play with your corpse.”

  Not know them? How could she even think the words? She could be as mad as she liked, but she knew how they kissed and how they loved it when she wrapped her arms around them. She knew that Lach tended to take the lead, but Shim was the soft touch. Lach had always been more closed off, but once he opened up, he threw himself into everything with an almost wild abandon. The games they had played through their shared dreams when they were children had proven that. Lach would start by watching and standing to the side while Shim held her hand, but by morning Lach would run and play and scream with them. Shim liked stories. Even as they aged. As their dreams turned more physical, Shim still wanted to hear stories from her life and made-up tales.

  But that was in her dreams. Dreams, not reality. Reality was Torin killing half the plane. Reality was she was the last of her line still living on the plane, and she couldn’t chase after her dreams.

  Niall took a long breath. “It doesn’t matter. We need to get you to Sir Giles’s province. I sent word that I was bringing you.”

  “Did you? And how were you going to explain my absence?” As far as Niall had known, she was a heap of ashes in the town square.

  He flushed a little. “That’s why I needed the knife.”

  “You were going to find someone to take my place. I’m not sure my father would approve.” Of course she also knew how deeply ruthless her father could be. She doubted that becoming a corpse-eating ghost had softened him much. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too difficult to find someone with the Finn coloring. And if father taught you, then you could perhaps teach her how to do a halfway decent impression of me. After all, no one has seen me since I was a child.”

  He reached out for her hand. “I was doing what it took to secure the throne and get rid of Torin so your father has a chance to be free and your brothers a shot at coming home.”

  She avoided his touch. It wasn’t a horrible plan.

  “Well now you don’t need to. You have me.” Her course was set. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving them. She’d just discovered her Dark Ones, but the only thought that hurt worse than leaving was the idea of staying and discovering all the ways they planned to use her.

  Niall settled his pack on his shoulder. “You need to change. We’ll have to pose as husband and wife travelling to market or looking for work, but people will ask about that dress. It’s too nice to travel in, and it looks as though it got singed. Come on. Let’s go inside and get you ready. You can pack up som
e small items. It should be two days’ walk to Sir Giles’s.”

  He turned and walked back up to the tower. Bron followed. She knew she was placing a lot of faith in a man she barely knew, but her father sent him, and she would fare better with a pretend husband than on her own.

  “I’ll be quick.” Bron rushed up the stairs, already pulling at the ties of her dress. The wolf shuffled up behind her, utterly ignoring Bron’s command to stay. She opened the door to her small room and let the wolf in. “You only listen when you want to.”

  Bron quickly crossed to her dresser and pulled out travelling clothes. Suede pants and a big blousy shirt. Comfortable clothes.

  “I suppose you won’t let me eat him now. No one ever does.” A feminine voice had Bron shrieking.

  She turned and there was a naked female on her bed. She was slight, petite, and graceful with huge brown eyes and a mass of wavy, sun-kissed brown hair. And the wolf was nowhere in sight. A shape-shifter? A hag could shift.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’m not a hag. Everyone always assumes I’m a hag. Meg says I’m a werewolf which is much better than what Dante calls me. Shanimal. Silly name and a silly man.”

  Dante? “Dante Dellacourt? My cousin?”

  The woman smiled, a bright thing that lit up the room. “Your cousin, my husband. I think that makes us family, Bronwyn. Or should I call you princess? Your brothers are very informal.”

  Tears welled. Where there had been terror only a moment ago, a reluctant hope swelled inside. “My brothers?” She was talking to a naked wolf woman who claimed to be her cousin by law. It was all too much. “I find it very convenient that you suddenly know my brothers.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “I do not suddenly know Beck and Cian. I have known them for awhile now. At first I think Beck feared that he would have to slay me. It’s a good thing he did not try. I would have taken a chunk out of his hide. And Megan would have been very distressed. She likes me. She’s my cousin, too. It is good to have family. Although my family is very odd. I like you. You’re different. You seem to understand the necessity to be a bit brutal with your enemies. Which brings me back to my original point. I think you should allow me to eat that man. He is going to get you in trouble.”