“Oh my stars, even the cat knew.” Ani pushed Embor away, tumbling him onto his behind. Master Fey dug his claws into her thighs to hold his position.
“This can’t be right.” Tali threw up her hands. “What percent did the Seers give of Ani being your… Crackers, I can’t even say it.”
“High,” Embor said grimly, rising to stand between Ani and the others.
“He’s known for years,” Milshadred added, still watching her with a pleased expression. Ani realized the old woman had a depth of viciousness that wouldn’t be cured by revenge. “He knew long before your idiot sister ran off to Vegas. That’s why he chased her. He didn’t know which twin it was until she bonded to Jake. That left you, Ani. Think he was disappointed?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Embor barked. “Finding out it was Anisette was a reprieve.”
“If it had been me, I’d have had to off myself.” Tali jumped off the couch and started to pace. Ani couldn’t understand why her sister was so agitated. This didn’t affect her. “What if bondmates don’t like each other? I can’t imagine a more miserable life.”
“It’s not your life.” Ani blocked Tali mentally when she tried to make a connection.
“Don’t worry, Red. He can’t trick her now that she knows,” Milshadred said in a voice so sly and satisfied Ani wanted to shake her. “Guess he’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way and play nice. If he can. Anyone want to place bets on that?”
Nobody responded, not even Tali. Ani felt another tug on their bond and ignored it.
Embor pointed at the door. “Everyone leave us. Now.”
“No, don’t. I need to…” Ani pushed the cat to the floor with a wince as his claws yanked free of her skin. “Go.”
When she ran out of the building, no one stopped her.
Chapter Twenty-One
After she left, Embor had barely been able to concentrate on the planning session. His head throbbed, his muscles twitched and his conscience smarted. He didn’t miss the surreptitious glances, either. Everyone would love to discuss it, but the hunt for the Torvals took precedence.
With the team assembled, the rest of the operation should go smoothly. His relationship with Anisette wasn’t part of the operation.
Milshadred had stretched out on a couch for a nap. Talista, Jake, the cat and the Drakhmores who maintained the concealment shield were the only Fey still here. Talista and Jake would leave soon, to create the necessary spells.
Anisette hadn’t returned. Embor didn’t want to wait any longer to see her.
If his stupidity had ruined their chances, he’d still apologize to her every day for the rest of their lives. He’d do it in person, by message globe, on paper, by proxy—however she’d allow it.
If she didn’t allow it, he’d do it anyway. Why had he never listened to Skythia? To Gangee? To the laundress? He should have declared himself. It might have felt undignified to toss a proposition card into her stack, but at least she’d have had some idea he admired her. He’d been so submerged by his own needs, he hadn’t considered what she might need from him.
Talista noticed him readying to leave and handed him the coat Anisette had been wearing earlier. “Take this. If the mosquitoes haven’t carried her off, I bet she’s cold.”
He tucked the coat under his arm and studied Talista, whose only resemblance to Anisette was her coloring. This woman, despite some evidence to the contrary, knew Anisette better than anyone else.
“Can you tell where she is?” He’d checked outside. Anisette was no longer in the vicinity. This part of Alaska wasn’t as dangerous as others, but it made him uneasy to think of her alone and unshielded.
Talista’s gaze lost focus. “She’s not too far. Town, I’d guess. I felt her use her emergency tooth to transport. Can you find her without me? Jake and I need to check in with Cassandra and the kids.”
“Would she return to the Realm?”
“Nah.” Talista fingered the stain on the front of her shirt. “The Warran thing creeps her out. Crikey. I can’t believe some poor kid they tortured can force a bond. I’d rather Ani get with you than Warran Torval any day.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly. For Talista, that had been a compliment.
“You’re welcome.”
Jake latched the window Milshadred had used for her cigarette smoke. “For what it’s worth, I approve. Without reservations.”
“That’s because you men stick together.” Talista cocked her head to one side. “I have to ask, Embor. I understand why you kept it to yourself at first, but once you realized it was Ani, why in dog’s name didn’t you warn her?”
“I didn’t want to pressure her.” He cleared his throat. “We weren’t well acquainted.”
“You didn’t want to risk her telling you no.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” He’d intended to establish a cordial relationship before he shared the prophecy, and he’d failed. When they’d been thrown together, five years of wanting her had come to a head.
His desires had overcome him.
Talista lifted her chin. “I’d have told you no before and after we were acquainted.”
He raised an eyebrow, annoyed she found it necessary to voice such an obvious truth. “Clearly.”
“She ought to tell you no.”
Embor clasped Anisette’s coat tighter. “That’s for her to decide, not you. She told you that herself.”
“If you conned her into bed here, she can still reject you,” Talista said with some relish. “Sex in humanspace doesn’t mean you’re set.”
“She’s aware of that.” She’d mentioned it in the hotel, in fact. He was still amazed he’d refused, but it had been the right thing to do. However betrayed she felt now, it could have been worse.
“Plenty of fairies are happy without bondmates. I’ve never heard of someone ditching a prophesied mate. Maybe Ani can be the first,” she said cheerfully. “That’s one for the history books. Now that we have history books.”
He tried not to grit his teeth. It wouldn’t help his headache. “Thank you for the reassurance.”
“It’s your own fault. She’s never been interested in you that way. She was afraid of you.” Talista frowned. “She’d have told me if she wanted a card from you. We’re sibs. We’re like this.” She held up crossed fingers.
“Perhaps you don’t know her as well as you think.” Anisette felt some attraction to him. Whether she planned to heed it now that she knew the truth was the question.
“Oh, what, you know her better than I do? The only reason she yelled at me is because you’ve twisted her up,” Talista declared. “Ani never yells. Everyone likes her and wants to make her happy. Being nice is like her defense mechanism, so she doesn’t have to stomp around to make things happen.”
“Why do you sound disapproving? You’d prefer she be unkind?”
Fairy siblings, even more than human ones, had complex relationships. Talista seemed to harbor both admiration and resentment of her twin. He was familiar with that dichotomy, as it characterized his relationship with Skythia.
Even so, Talista was wrong about her sister. Anisette had more steel and passion than Talista realized.
She huffed. “I disapprove of what you’ve done to her. She keeps yelling at me when I didn’t do anything. I should kick you in the ’nads.”
“Hm.” Talista’s threats of violence often meant her rant was near its end. She didn’t sound as certain as her words indicated, and the fact Anisette had a private life seemed to be trickling through to her.
Talista jabbed at his chest. “Here’s what I know. You’re an uptight prick, and she doesn’t like you.”
“Tali, don’t be hateful,” Jake warned her.
“The kids aren’t here. I don’t have to be a good example.” Talista inspected Embor with a sneer. “I knew and loved Jake before we linked. You can’t just boink somebody and expect them to love you, even if the Seers told you to.”
“I do realize all this,” Embor said, his frustration grow
ing. “There’s no reason to list my missteps in courting your sister. I thought I had more time.”
“Courting. Is that what you call it? I’d call it manipulating her and dragging her into your political crap.”
“Seriously, Tali, lay off.” Jake shrugged into his jacket. “He’s not the enemy.”
“I just can’t believe he’s my future brother-in-law,” Talista said. “Not that I liked her other suitors. And with his shirt off, he… Well, anyway. I knew he wanted her. I just never thought he’d get her.”
“You think she’ll forgive me?” Embor asked, surprised.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Her heart-shaped face scrunched. “I thought she’d forgiven me, but she said something earlier that makes me wonder.” Her eyes widened. “She might hate us both. I blame you.”
“Ani doesn’t spend her energy on negativity,” Jake said. “She isn’t like the rest of us.”
“Yes, yes, my sister’s perfect,” Talista said with an eyeroll. “If only I could be more like Ani. If only I could keep a civil tongue in my head. If only I was nicer to people. If only I—”
“I wouldn’t change a thing about you.” Jake slipped an arm around his wife and joggled the pout off her face. “I just think Ani doesn’t hate either of you.”
“She could hate Embor.”
“She doesn’t.” Jake exchanged a rueful glance with Embor. “You’re blind if you think she does.”
Though Embor was curious, it felt absurd to ask Jake why he thought that. He hadn’t indulged in many romances since he’d become Primary, and he hadn’t discussed it much, either. The conversations in which his friends had chided him for mishandling Anisette hardly counted.
“It’s… I don’t want her married to a Primary. I want her to get away from Court. From all that mess. Since I left, her unhappiness has been like a little hole in me. I hate it for her, and I don’t know what to do.” Talista slipped away from Jake and pawed through a box of knit caps by the front door, surreptitiously rubbing her eyes. “If Embor loses the Primary seat, he can get off his butt and pay proper attention to Ani.”
“While I’m sure Em would enjoy the free time, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interest if the Torvals win the upcoming election,” Jake said.
“There are other candidates.” Talista shoved a fuzzy green cap onto her head that clashed horribly with her hair, her sweater and probably the world. “The Braithwaits are on the ballot. They’re just too modest to campaign.”
“They’re too decrepit to campaign.” To Embor’s surprise, Jake pulled him into an awkward hug. He slapped Embor’s back. “You’ll do fine, bud. Tell her how you feel.”
“Are you in love with her?” Talista’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “Good gravy, of course you are. It’s Ani. How could you not be?”
“I’m going now,” Embor said gruffly. “I’ll bring her back safe.” He wasn’t sure he was capable of answering Talista’s question to himself, much less out loud, but he suspected she was right.
He was in love with Anisette. How could he not be?
Embor eased the SUV into a parking slot at the general store. Its weathered board front looked unprepossessing, but there were enough vehicles nearby that someone might have seen Anisette.
The sentry at the repository had told Embor she’d stormed off through the hummocks, slapped mosquitoes and tripped several times before winking out. Anisette’s common sense would have sent her to town instead of some more-remote area.
A gravel road cut through the tundra and along the coast. He’d taken the truck to conserve transport globes. It shouldn’t be hard to locate her. Nome was not sizeable, huddled against the cold sea like a barnacle.
The store was next to a public area with a few statues, a welcome sign on a giant pan and a church building. He locked the truck and started looking. Bars, restaurants, stores, museums—he checked them all.
An hour later, he found her beyond Front Street, seated on a slab of granite and staring out at the sea. Wind blew constantly, cutting down on the mosquito density. The salty tang of the water was laced with a mineral overlay. In the distance, a few miners panned the surf with various contraptions and shovels.
Embor was so glad to see Anisette, he almost hugged her. Instead he stood beside her until she noticed him. Much of his rationale in keeping the information to himself had been about not rushing her. It wouldn’t do to start now.
Maybe the day after tomorrow. Things should have settled down by then.
She rubbed a nugget of gold between her fingers. A few strands of auburn hair danced around her face, and her cheeks and nose had pinkened with exposure to the sun.
She broke the silence. “They call these the gold sands of Nome.”
“They’re grey.” The beach had dingy sand, rock and debris. Weedy flowers sprigged between stones above the tide line.
“It’s metaphorical. See what I found? It took a second of magic, no more.” Anisette showed him the gold, dull and pocked. “Humans live very different lives. In the Realm, gold is for jewelry and decoration. It has no other value.”
“Would you prefer we were like humans?” In the past, fairies had been more barbaric, less respectful of free will. They’d mingled with humanity, squabbled amongst themselves and been generally uncivilized. He had no wish to return to that time.
“Humans have weak medicine.” She watched a man shovel sand into a box. “They war. They strife. They mistreat one another and die. They’re slowly poisoning their planet, and we’re doing nothing to help them.”
“This is all true.” Talista’s favorite political party, the New Expansionists, proposed a relationship with humans where magical, scientific and cultural exchange would elevate all races. Embor disagreed it could work. “But I sense an exception.”
“They have no prophecies.” She spoke, of course, of their future. “We’re so careful of free will, but they have more than we do.”
“They have no prophecies they know about,” Embor corrected. The Seers sometimes doled out percentages for the human side of the rings. “Even so, there are predictions it’s entirely one’s choice to heed.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. If they made love in the Realm, they’d be bonded for four hundred years, as their magic and lives mingled. The oldest surviving fairy was a seven-hundred-year-old woman whose lifespan had adapted to her younger bondmate. A sibling was part of you, but a bondmate was a soul’s complement—never a penalty, rarely a mistake.
Anisette knew this as well as anyone. Was she upset about his silence or did it run deeper? Was she disappointed? She had, after all, pointed out in the hotel that the sex would be non-binding, as if that were a deciding factor.
But instead of asking her if she thought she could ever love him, he broached a more mundane topic. “Would you like something to eat?”
This time of year, the sun glimmered in Nome’s sky past midnight. Bars and restaurants remained open to accommodate.
“I’m not hungry.”
Was there anything he could give her? “Are you cold? Your jacket is in the truck.”
She glanced up at him, squinting into the sun. “I’m very angry with you.”
“I know.” He lowered himself to a rock, the granite cold through his trousers. The wind wasn’t as buffety at ground level.
“You’ve known for so long.”
“Technically, I’ve only known the specifics for five years.”
She picked a yellow flower. “Long enough.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, issuing his first formal apology. “But this is why I couldn’t let things progress at the hotel.”
She plucked the blossom apart, her fingers nimble. “You shouldn’t even have kissed me.”
“Would you prefer that I could resist you?” He’d certainly like to be irresistible to her but had no idea how to go about being so.
Her cheeks reddened more than the sun and wind could account for. “You had no trouble resisting me for five y
ears.”
“On the contrary. I’ve been increasingly troubled.” Since she knew everything else, he had no reason not to lay everything out before her. “Take the gardens, for example. I shifted my schedule in hopes I’d cross your path.”
“Because of the election?” She yanked another flower out of the ground, roots and all. “Did your cabinet decide it was time for you to marry?”
“They mentioned it,” he admitted. “But I decided to pursue you a year ago for myself. I wasn’t very good at it.”
“A year ago?” She rubbed her forehead. “When I think over the past year, I can’t even… Oh my stars. I’d be sad for you if it didn’t involve me.”
“What would you have had me do?” The rare fairy received a bondmate prophecy. There were no rules for handling such a situation. Most Primaries were already married when elected, and the majority of Fey weren’t allowed access to the Seers. “If you’d been the one to receive the prophecy, how would you have told me?”
She opened her mouth and shut it again, her brow furrowing. “I’d have offered you a proposition card.”
“As I understand it, once you offer a card, the next move belongs to the receiver. If I didn’t accept your card, how would you have told me then?”
She huffed out a breath. “Probably in a note. With a checkbox. That I would have given Skythia to give to you. It doesn’t matter, Embor. I wasn’t the one who knew.”
He smiled, the sensation like ice breaking on a lake. “I wish it had been you. You’d hardly have managed things as poorly as I did.”
She drew her knees to her chest and laid her cheek on them, facing him. “Would you have wanted a card from me?”
Before he’d known about Anisette and Talista, he’d accepted few cards and had offered zero. The Thousand Kisses had unnecessarily systematized the way fairies handled courtship. “I don’t follow The Thousand Kisses.”
“But you know what a card means,” she said, her blue eyes meeting his.
“I’d take a card now,” he offered helpfully, patting his suit pockets. “I’m sure I have a paper and pen somewhere.”
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop making your dry jokes. I’m not at all pleased with you.”
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