Inked Destiny

by Strong, Jory

  He opened the door to the kitchen, allowing her to precede him. The moment she did, all motion and conversation ceased. Their wariness slammed into her, unmitigated by the smiles that quickly followed because of Eamon’s presence, tentative on several faces and forced on others.

  In a rush, the desire to escape into comfortable reality returned. Her gaze went to the outside world visible because of a service door propped open for a delivery.

  A boy stepped through the doorway, carrying a crate. Lost in thought, he didn’t immediately notice them, but when he did, his attention was solely on her and stark terror filled his features.

  “No!” he cried, dropping the crate. Fish spilled across the floor as he turned and fled.

  “Farrell! Stop!” Eamon ordered, and she felt magic across her senses.

  The boy—the changeling he’d told her about—only barely got outside before the door slammed shut.

  “I’ll go after him, Lord,” one of the kitchen workers volunteered.

  “No.” Eamon grabbed Etaín’s arm, turning her to face him. “Do not leave Aesirs.”

  Denial was her kneejerk response to his command, to the autocratic ruler who had replaced teasing lover. She remained silent, offering neither promise nor protest as the door he’d closed with magic flew open and then he was gone.

  As if summoned by Eamon’s absence, Liam was suddenly at her side, his arrival releasing those in the kitchen to go back to their tasks, though with fierce concentration instead of the easy glide and cadence they’d had moments earlier.

  The urge to bolt through the open door was nearly impossible to resist. She didn’t belong here any more than she did in the elegant dining area serving men and women she had nothing in common with—not even being human.

  Ignoring the Elves who were steadfastly ignoring her, she turned to Liam. “Why was he terrified?”

  Terrified enough to ignore Lord Eamon’s order, and she couldn’t imagine those he ruled often did. Scratch the surface and Eamon was more like Cathal’s family than Cathal was. She had only to look at Liam to know Eamon was capable of ruthlessness. Why else would he have an assassin serving him?

  “That’s for Lord Eamon to answer.”

  Liam’s response was a scrape over raw nerve-endings. I’m out of here.

  The compelling need to run and keep running increased with the first step, done in fuck-me heels that suddenly seemed meant to hobble her as thoroughly as the tight skirt and the lack of transportation. Panic swelled with the sense of being out of control.

  Until she’d been taken by the Harlequin Rapist, and then rescued from him, she’d lived life completely on her own terms, trusting in herself and her gift and confident in her ability to survive. Could she even leave, given Eamon’s command to stay?

  Her skin felt unbearably tight. It occurred to her that she hadn’t been back to her apartment in days, and as quickly as the realization came, she craved being alone in her own space, at least for a little while.

  Without a word to Liam, she headed for the public area, strategy rather than any desire to see and be seen. It’d be harder to stop her from escaping where there were witnesses—that is, if she could pass through the wards at all.

  Only those guarding the terrace could contain you if triggered, the Dragon’s voice whispered through her mind, the sound of it increasing her urgency to leave.

  Maybe once outside she’d consider herself a coward for not forcing herself to stroll through the restaurant as if it were hers, to imagine herself at Eamon’s side, or Cathal’s. She wasn’t foolish enough to think this was anything more than a temporary reprieve.

  The maître d’ stand came into view. Seeing the three women who’d just entered Aesirs only solidified her determination to leave this place she didn’t belong in. It’d been a year and a half since she’d had the misfortune of encountering the captain’s wife and daughters.

  Like piranhas zeroing in on some hapless living creature dropped into the water, they noticed her. Lips painted bright red tightened and eyes narrowed to accompany expressions of disdain that were really only polite masks for a voracious hate.

  Turning tail and heading in the opposite direction wasn’t an option. She’d never give them that much power over her.

  Liam moved ahead of her. Protection? Or merely to position himself to prevent her from leaving?

  She’d fight that battle after she dealt with the one in front of her, because there was definitely one brewing given the way the three women had moved to block her exit, forcing her to stop and interact.

  Twenty-two

  Still trading on your looks, I see,” Portia, Parker’s older sister, said, eyes making a sweep over the outfit then returning to stare at the necklace.

  Etaín touched the cool stone. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The maître d’ came out from behind his stand. “If you’ll follow me, ladies,” he said firmly enough to imply that patrons involved in unpleasantness would be escorted out rather than escorted to a table.

  The captain’s wife stepped into Etaín’s personal space, her voice a whispered hiss. “You’re dragging my husband and son through the mud with your antics and your association with gutter trash. I want you gone from their lives.”

  Etaín shrugged, refraining from pointing out that Parker and the captain were the ones who called her, who involved her in their cases. “Nothing new there.”

  “Oh but there is something new. If I tell you where your whore of a mother is, will you leave my family alone?”

  Anger and loathing poured off Laura. Visceral. Rabid. Fresh enough to give birth to hope. “Where is she?”

  “Agree to have nothing to do with my husband and son. No calls. No contact.”

  It wasn’t a promise Etaín was willing to give. It wasn’t an oath she could make without becoming foresworn.

  Her hands lifted, will and gift not entirely in accord. Inherent magic was nothing but a shimmering possibility in a span of time measured in heartbeats, a hush and stillness that disappeared in harsh, ruthless decision before either Liam or the maître d’ could stop her—if they dared.

  She shackled Laura’s wrists, inked eyes pressed to skin. Demand a sharp knife sliding through flesh and cutting into Laura’s mind. “What do you know about my mother? Where is she?”

  Bitterness engulfed Etaín. Fury and pain that weren’t hers and yet they became a part of her.

  What do you know about my mother? Where is she? This time a compulsion, a mental demand, and Laura had no protection against it.

  Standing in the memory, her hands trembled at receiving the text message. I’ve got something for you. Check email for the link.

  She rose from the chair where she’d been enjoying a cup of tea, pain splintering through her chest, sickening dread and a sense of betrayal battering against the walls of her heart. It grew with each step toward her private office, feeding a hate so intense and directed that it jarred Etaín, driving her out of the memory in self-defense against having the swell of it trapped inside her when she was its target.

  She was vaguely aware of Portia and her sister screeching, demanding she let go of their mother, their nails digging into her arms through the fabric of her blouse as the Elves allowed it, too wary to touch her themselves and no doubt hoping the humans would manage to break the contact and stop the use of magic in the process.

  Focus. Control. Eamon had taught her the rune for channeling magic away from her, but with a leap of intuition, she shunted Laura’s emotions into an imagined sigil and forced the memory forward, pulling back mentally as if she was a camerawoman capturing a scene instead of an actress living it.

  It was very like the slaughter she and Cathal had witnessed in the shared dream, except this time, as Laura sat down at the desk and logged into a Yahoo mail account using a made-up name, Etaín’s own emotions buffeted her, hope and happiness and anticipation.

  The sender hadn’t disguised what he was. The return address was a detective agency. />
  A click opened the email. There was no explanatory text, only the link.

  Surprise rippled through Etaín. It came with the whispered sense of destiny at seeing the date. The email had been sent on the very day she’d met Cathal and Eamon.

  Foresight. Her mother’s gift.

  For a long moment the curser hovered over the link, the hand that wasn’t her own leaving the mouse and returning, leaving and returning until finally opening the link. Shock came first, at seeing the captain with her mother in a time-stamped recording made a little over a week ago, and then came a hungry longing. The camera lens cut through glamour so there was no sign of aging. Her mother looked just as Etaín remembered.

  A heartbeat, a second one, and Etaín realized she’d paused the memory, freezing it outside of time, isolating it like a movie frame, like the sketches she’d always drawn upon waking from someone else’s stolen reality. Reluctantly she let go and moved forward, becoming aware of the backdrop against which her mother and the captain stood facing each other, hands clasped but bodies separated.

  This time the pain invading Etaín was her own. A fist of it around her heart as she recognized the shabby motel in Seattle, even the room number was the same, everything about it etched firmly in her mind and replayed over and over again, especially in those early years. She could still remember the vivid beauty of the scenery, and the excitement of traveling by rail instead of by bus, and the way her eight-year-old world had expanded in a burst of joy at meeting the man she was told was her father, only to be shattered when what she’d believed was a short visit became abandonment.

  At sixteen, she’d gone back to Seattle. She’d stolen a car for part of the journey and hitched the rest of it, sure there’d be clues, answers. Believing her mother must have left something for her to find because this shabby motel was the last place they’d stayed before boarding the train and coming to San Francisco.

  In Laura’s memory, her mother turned her head to look directly into the camera, jolting Etaín as though there’d been a shouted scream to pay attention. See but remain unseen. This was no accident. She and her mother had the same sixth sense about cameras pointed directly at them.

  An expression came and went, a dare Etaín thought. Her mother looked away, closing the distance between herself and the captain with a laugh, something that put a smile on his face as he enfolded her in a hug, the act triggering a rage in Laura that took her back to the day Etaín and her mother had shown up on the doorstep, humiliating her with the existence of a bastard child fathered by her husband.

  Curses flowed through Etaín’s mind as her ability to maintain the sigil funneling away Laura’s emotions failed, her reality submerged under another’s as she dressed for the function Isaac had bowed out of in order to spend time with his bastard, the spawn of a whore he’d probably picked up at a cop bar.

  It didn’t matter that they’d been separated at the time—or so he claimed. He’d shamed her by accepting the child. He’d angered her, disrespected her family by not demanding a paternity test, by refusing to even consider it.

  Hours late and the bitch hadn’t returned. Isaac hadn’t seen the obvious yet. Or hadn’t dared broach the topic but she knew what was happening. That slut wasn’t coming back for the child.

  If it were up to her, she’d call Social Services and have the girl taken to the shelter. But he wouldn’t stand for it.

  He’d pay for that. Not directly. She cared too much about their children to drive him away after they’d reconciled—even if he didn’t. But his little by-blow would understand she wasn’t welcome here, that she didn’t belong in their lives.

  At least Parker and the girls were visiting their grandparents, grandparents who were seething at learning of the child’s existence. Measures were being taken to put this behind them. Private detectives had already been hired to locate the girl’s mother and offer a monetary incentive to make this all go away.

  Stomping over to the bedroom safe she opened it only to remember the necklace she wanted was in the downstairs safe. Isaac had picked it up from the jeweler on his way home and put it there rather than make the trip upstairs with it.

  Spine stiffening she left the bedroom. The sound of the child’s laughter had her silently screaming with indignation.

  Her husband didn’t acknowledge her as she passed the entertainment room on the way to the den. She went to the safe and opened it.

  A manila envelope lay on top of the jewelry case. Her lips thinned, suspicion coming on a wave of hostility.

  Taking the envelope she opened it, nostrils flaring at the picture she pulled from it. Bitch. Whore. Slut.

  Whether it was the venom of the diatribe or the emerald green of the lake in the photograph, Etaín’s reality diverged from Laura’s. Her mother stood as if caught in sunrise or sunset, luminescent, heart-stoppingly beautiful in the same way Eamon had been when he let the glamour fall away as proof he wasn’t human.

  She stared directly into the camera, the fingers of her right hand touched the base of her throat, making Etaín aware of the collar-like necklace she wore. A message given the color of the water matched that of the Dragon? She couldn’t be sure of anything except that she was meant to find this memory.

  In a furious rip the picture was torn, then torn again and again and again until suddenly the destruction was halted by the captain’s presence. Angry words were like leaves caught in wind for Etaín, swept away without examination as the pieces of the picture scattered to the floor and she stared hungrily at them, seeing by the way they fell that there had been a second picture on the back of the first.

  Laura’s angry exit from that long ago scene forced Etaín’s attention away, drawing her fully into the memory again, the necklace she’d come downstairs for forgotten until she reached the doorway, then abandoned altogether in disgust at the sight of Isaac kneeling and gathering the pieces, bitter hurt filling her at knowing he meant to put them together and keep the picture.

  Etaín ceased using her gift, the need to see the second picture dominating her thoughts.

  “Take your hands off me,” Laura hissed, no less venomous for having some of her past erased, or at least Etaín assumed she’d stolen those memories with her gift. There was no way to know for sure without asking, and she was as ready to end the contact as Laura was.

  Freeing the captain’s wife, Etaín stepped to the side, noting the wall of Elven servers who’d kept what was happening hidden from casual view. Their expressions were carefully blank though she could sense their fear, not quite the stark terror she’d seen on Farrell’s face, but she suspected it would appear if she were to reach for them.

  They fled back to their duties the instant Laura and her daughters moved past Etaín, leaving a tight-lipped Rhys with his distinctive red-sun earring standing next to Liam.

  “Shall I escort you upstairs?” Liam asked, his voice the chilled dark of icy rain on a deserted road.

  “No.” She took a step toward the door and saw the Elves stationed there blanch. “I’m leaving.”

  “I don’t advise it. This is a perilous time for you.”

  “So I’ve been told. And don’t bother playing the Lord Eamon wants card.”

  He blocked her exit and immediately the eyes on her palms flared, becoming a weapon. His gaze flicked downward and back, cold ruthlessness the only thing in them. “You’re allowing magic to get the upper hand.”

  “I’m in control.”

  His smile was a merciless flash of white. “Openly stripping a human of their memories?”

  His gaze dropped to her hands, remaining there for a heartbeat before meeting hers again. “Threatening violence you have no true understanding of? These are the actions of someone in control?”

  Her skin dampened. Doubt crowded in.

  She dispersed it with the stiffening of her spine and a step forward, into Liam’s personal space. “Unless you intend to keep me prisoner here, move out of my way.”

  “The price you pay
for this may be your life.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” That particular threat was losing impact. Or maybe it couldn’t stand against the conviction her mother had left the memory for her, and more than that, a clue meant to help her survive the change.

  She’d never believe the captain was involved in an affair. Never. He was a man of too much principle.

  Her mother’s making contact with him on the very day Cathal and Eamon had come into her life was no coincidence.

  Peordh. Predestination. Her thought. Not the Dragon’s.

  “Move,” Etaín said, a direct order.

  “The consequences are yours to suffer.” But he stepped to the side and his yielding signaled the Elves stationed at the door to open it for her.

  She escaped, breathing deeply of air that smelled of freedom and possibility. Lifting her face to the sky, the caress of muted sunshine was soothing balm and sharp contrast to the wild hammering of her heart and the flood of riotous emotion that surged into her as she relived the stolen memory.

  The desire to see her mother again was a tidal-wave swell she couldn’t hold back. Why? Always why? Why did you leave me? Little girl pain at the core of a woman grown.

  This time, there was an answer. Sibilant Dragon’s voice validating what she believed to be true, expanding on it. Peordh. Destiny preordained. The righting of a wrong.

  The sigil representing servitude appeared, banishing stolen memory. Etaín rebelled against the thought of accepting it. And that rebellion brought renewed focus and determination, enough to hold back the trepidation and deeply engrained fear, a kneejerk reaction to her ultimate destination—the police station where twice she’d been held, and twice the barriers separating her reality from that of all the victims she’d touched had fallen away.

  Longing swept into her with the temptation to call Cathal. She wanted to hear his voice, wanted him with her, but reason dictated she go alone to see the captain. Or as alone as someone accompanied by a shadow-walking assassin could be, even if he’d apparently elected to watch her from a distance given his absence at her side.