Court the Fire (Son of Rain #3)

by Michelle Irwin

  I considered whether I should have warned her about the Rain operatives that were sure to be stationed at the airport, or whether I was right in my assumption that it would cause her extra concern. It was the one part of the plan that Eth had only a limited amount of control over—he’d greased some palms, but even he didn’t have enough reach to guarantee that a certain person would be at a certain gate at the right time for us to pass through. He trusted that between his bribes, my instincts, and the chain around Evie’s neck we’d be able to get through unscathed. If not, I had my piece strapped to my back and I’d get her out.

  Whatever the cost.

  When I saw that Evie was barely keeping it together, I was thankful I hadn’t told her about the risks just yet. I hated keeping it secret, but all it would do was stress her out; which would in turn increase my stress levels as I worried about her heated skin giving us away. Instead, I tried to distract her with soft touches and murmured assurances. It worked through the remaining trip and while I arranged the boarding passes.

  Once I returned to her from the check-in area, she was earning a few glances, partly for her outfit, but also because of her nervous fidgeting. She needed to belong, to think less of everyone around her—or at least give the air that she did—or we’d be in trouble. The elite did what they wanted, they went where they wanted, and they didn’t answer to the likes of a Rain wannabe posted as an airport security guard. Unless Evie could give that attitude, we’d be in trouble.

  Maybe I should have told her more? Guilt ate at me. The fact was, if she knew, she could have affected that air long ago—or she might have melted into a puddle of concern.

  I decided to do whatever it took to help her relax, and then I’d tell her the truth.

  “Let me get a good look at you,” I murmured when I approached her.

  When I was close enough to her, I lifted my hand and dragged my fingers over her shoulder, moving toward her chest until I snagged the chain. Ensuring my skin remained in contact with hers the whole time, I lifted the pendant out from underneath her shirt, moving it so that it was resting on top of her singlet. She let loose a sexy little sigh—her breath quivered as it released.

  My tongue crept forward, slicking along my bottom lip as I stamped down on my desire, and then I lifted my hand to tuck in a few loose strands of hair. I noticed, not for the first time, that she hadn’t rushed off to the ladies’ room to double check her cover when I’d told her it was okay. Whether that was because she trusted me more or just because she was afraid of another forced split between us, I wasn’t certain, but regardless, her trust made me happy.

  Now I just had to prove her faith in me was warranted.

  “Perfect.” I grinned at her.

  And she really was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AFTER I WAS happy that Evie looked the part, I confirmed that she still had her small weapon in her pocket. I was relieved when she nodded and murmured something about being lucky she trusted me. Although I had to agree with the statement, I hoped I wasn’t going to be facing her wrath and the loss of her trust when I admitted how dangerous the situation was.

  My pulse quickened at my worry over Evie’s possible reaction to my news. Instead of coming right out and saying it, I skirted around the issue. I told her that she needed to pretend she belonged.

  “You need confidence—arrogance even—more than anything else right now,” I said.

  She was instantly on edge, and her eyes darted from side to side. “Why?”

  “Because you’ll look out of place if you don’t look like you have everything under control.”

  “Out of place?” I could almost see her mind making the connections. Her eyes widened as her focus snapped back to me. “Are there Rain here?” she asked, her tone pitching with each word.

  I couldn’t deny it, nor did I want to. Her understanding had saved me a heck of a lot of explanation, although I could tell by the way her lips pressed together in a tight line that I still had some details to clarify—and maybe some excuses to make.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” If the look on her face, the set of her lips and the wide-eyed glare, hadn’t been enough to warn me of her rising irritation, the warmth surrounding me when her heat flared did the trick. It wasn’t less than I deserved, but it didn’t make it easier to cope with her anger.

  My fingers twitched with the need to comfort her, to soothe the fierce lines on her forehead. I just wasn’t sure whether the touch would only burn me rather than help. Instead, I used my words to convey my apology. “Because you would never have agreed to come here if I had.”

  “You’re damned right I wouldn’t have.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said, trying to get her to listen to my calm tones. I wasn’t stressed because I didn’t need to be. If I thought there was anything more than an absolute minimal risk for her, I would never have agreed to the plan. “There’s always a handful of Rain operatives working security at every airport,” I explained. “They’re easy to identify, and if they think that you’re Rain too, they’ll let us pass, even with the knife and the gun. Especially with them—it’ll seem out of place if we don’t have weapons.”

  “But won’t they know what I am? Won’t they recognize my phoenix qualities?” Her lips formed the word phoenix even though she didn’t make the sound.

  An involuntary chuckle left me before I could help it. To make the explanation easier on Evie, I’d called the Rain stationed around the airport “operatives,” but it wasn’t quite true. Most of the guards were actually Rain sympathizers, hopeful failures who had the desire to help, but not the aptitude or skills. Most of them wouldn’t be able to tell a wendigo from a werewolf if it was chewing them in half. I’d met some over the years that I doubted would recognize Evie’s phoenix qualities even if she had her hair down and flames dancing in her palms.

  Of course, they weren’t all that stupid, and if we were unlucky, we could end up with a shrewd sympathizer who would know what Evie was in a heartbeat.

  She was going to keep arguing, but I asked her one simple question. “Do you trust me?”

  After a deep breath, she nodded.

  I smiled at the faith she showed in me and led the way through to the queues to get through security. While we walked, I scanned the guards for signs of Rain sympathizers. When I saw two who wore the gold raindrop shaped pin on their jacket, I guided Evie into that line.

  Eth’s instructions came into my mind. He’d told the Rain headquarters nearby that there would be two elite operatives passing through posing as a honeymooning couple. It was the perfect way to explain why I was touching Evie in ways that would generally be considered inappropriate for two elite operatives, but it would also help the guards recognize us when I showed them the dove on the pendant around Evie’s neck.

  When I was certain it would draw the attention of the guard, I whispered to Evie to play along, and then kissed her the way I’d been dying to all morning. She relaxed into my arms and issued a small, wanton sigh that rushed through my body and made me wish we weren’t in the middle of an airport. The best part of it was it was in keeping with our disguise while also being exactly the distraction she needed at exactly the right time.

  The sound of a throat-clearing nearby pulled my attention from Evie, and I looked up at the guard with what I hoped was a winning smile. I did what I could to draw his attention to the chain around Evie’s throat, hoping that he’d been briefed on our “mission.”

  He called Evie forward to walk through the X-ray machine, and my nerves spiked for her. Although I was certain we’d be fine—I’d been in many worse situations before—I was aware how big a challenge it for Evie to be at an airport at all, let alone passing through a security checkpoint armed with a knife. My guilt skyrocketed. What had I done to her?

  “Looks like it’s down again,” the guard called to the other one with the Rain pin. They gave a quick nod of agreement to one another before the first guard called Evie forward for a manual
“scan” that he faked. A second later, he waved her through and then turned to me. Calling me forward, he once again pretended to run the scanner over me.

  “How’d you score an assignment like this with a partner with a rack like that?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Just lucky I guess,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Some people get all the luck,” he muttered.

  My lips twitched in response to the open jealousy in his voice. The truth was that he was right, I was a lucky sonofabitch to have Evie by my side.

  Once he’d ushered me through, I rushed to Evie—relieved we’d got through one more step in the plan to whisk her away from danger.

  EVIE WAS still nervous from the passage through customs and an apparent sighting of an unknown man at the airport that her body temperature was higher than normal—even for her.

  When she’d told me about the man, after we’d made it through customs and were waiting for the flight, I’d tried to catch a glimpse of him as well, but didn’t see anything.

  Because I hadn’t caught sight of him, I asked her to describe him. My initial concern was that it was a Rain operative who’d happened to stumble onto us, but I hadn’t met any that matched the description she gave. Not that I’d met every operative, but I knew the ones we needed to be most worried about.

  My worst fears were imagined when Evie said she’d seen him before. That he’d disappeared almost in front of her eyes then as well. There weren’t too many creatures that looked almost human and could do that. The ideas about what it could be—if not a human—played in my mind.

  In order to break the tension and distract us both once we were on the flight, I’d tried, and failed, to convince Evie that we should join the mile-high club together. I was half joking, but if she’d agreed, I would have been there in a flash.

  Instead, she turned back to me with a concerned expression on her face. “What if they don’t believe it?”

  I felt like I was half an hour behind in the conversation. Maybe she’d said more, but the thoughts of her and me squeezing into the small lavatory to see what interesting positions we could dream up had been distracting me. “What if who don’t believe what?”

  “Your family. The Rain,” she whispered before casting a glance over her shoulder, as if the flight attendants would come charging down the aisle with guns blazing at her words. “What if they don’t believe I’m dead? I know you said that’s what they thought, but won’t they eventually realize that I’m not?”

  “Probably,” I admitted.

  “Aren’t you worried about what they might do when they find out?”

  Part of me was, but only because I couldn’t lose her again. I didn’t care who or what I had to face to keep her safe; it would be preferable to that.

  “Not as much as I could be,” I said, hedging my concern.

  “Why not?”

  “Even if they realize you lived, even if they trace you to the hospital you stayed at, there’s a long trail from there to here.”

  “But what if Ethan—”

  I preempted what she was going to say and cut her off. “He won’t.”

  “How do you know that though? He lied to you about Louise.”

  It was hard to explain to her the relationship that I shared with Eth, but without any doubt I trusted him with Evie’s safety. I’d tried to explain it to her in the cab on the way to the airport, but it was hard for her to understand.

  I was positive Eth had been railroaded into the lie because Dad had set it up that way. If Eth hadn’t followed suit, if he’d contradicted Dad’s lie in the frame of mind I was in, it would’ve pushed me out the door that much sooner. He’d done what he’d thought would reunite the family the quickest, I was sure of it.

  Each time our family became fractured, Eth ran damage control. Now that he knew how good for me Evie was, now that he’d seen how much we loved one another, I was certain he’d do what he could to protect that. After all, Dad wouldn’t hate him for protecting my secrets as much as I would hate him for giving me up. I decided that rather than trying to explain it to Evie, I’d be better trying a different tack. “You trust me, right?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  I smiled. At least some good had come from all of the bullshit we’d had to face over the years. “I trust him.”

  “I just keep expecting someone to burst out from some hidden place and . . .” Her lip quivered as her voice trailed off. She dropped her head and stared at her lap. I was certain she was reliving all the times we’d been pulled apart.

  “Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll see.”

  The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Evie seemed to grow less nervous the closer the little plane icon on her in-flight entertainment system got to France. I didn’t remind her that there would be security at the other end and customs to clear; she didn’t need that added stress. Maybe I was lying by omission again, but I couldn’t ruin her mood.

  When we finally landed in Paris, her mood lifted substantially. I wanted to lean over and whisper, “Told you so,” but I refrained. Instead, I grabbed our bags from the overhead compartment and told Evie to be patient and let everyone else off first. I’d traveled by plane often enough to know about the lengthy lines and crushes caused when everybody rushed to get off all at the same time.

  The last thing Evie needed was to be caught in the press and have her stress levels rise. Eventually, we made it off the plane and into the customs line. When the guard at the express terminals spotted the pendant around Evie’s neck, she waved us through her counter, giving us the bare minimum of questions before releasing us into the main terminal.

  “Why was that so easy?” Evie asked me as we walked toward the exit from the terminal.

  “Easy?” The actual process from start to finish had been more nerve-racking than any other travel experience I’d ever had—with the possible exception of arriving in Gatwick after being on the run for months, uncertain whether there would be a garrison of Charles’s men ready to throw me into an oubliette.

  “It’s been bugging me since we left the states. I’ve seen it on TV, you know. The whole process of having to take off shoes and everything metal to get on the plane, and then emptying your bag for them to inspect everything when you get off. Dad warned me about the guards and how zealous they can be. I just expected it to be . . . harder somehow.”

  “You have a golden ticket. It allows you certain privileges.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You really don’t know?” I wondered if she really didn’t understand what she had around her neck. Her dad had recognized it instantly. Surely he’d warned her about what that symbol represented?

  “Don’t know what?”

  “The pendant you have, it’s special, even in the Rain.”

  “What makes it special?”

  “That symbol is only used under two circumstances these days, ceremonially and by certain families.”

  “Why?” she asked, almost reverently.

  “It represents the aristocracy for want of a better word. The elite families who have been members of the Rain for time untold.”

  It had been over two centuries since the dove carved like the one on the pendant had been the official Rain seal. Over time, operatives complained about the time it took to render it when under attack, so it was simplified and watered down until only the “M” shape, and the crescent moon remained. Of course, at the same time, the families who’d used the symbol for centuries refused to conform to the change and began to hold tightly onto the original as a symbol of their superiority and length of servitude to the cause.

  Before long, that dove symbol had become the symbol of the elite, marking those who bore it as coming from a lineage of Rain that stretched back farther than many could imagine. The split still existed, although almost all operatives—including the elite—now used the short-hand version for warning others about lurking danger.

  “Why do you have it then?”
she asked. “Wouldn’t you get in trouble for—”

  I was taken aback. It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed such palpable doubt in me and my abilities. It made me wonder exactly what impression I’d left her with after our last meetings. Did she think I was just some bumbling idiot who’d fallen for her? Did she think I was exaggerating when I told her I’d be able to keep her safe? Did she not realize just how ingrained the hunt was in every part of me and how I’d struggled with my emotions for her for that exact reason?

  She blinked as the knowledge that I was one of those whose blood was washed with the Rain from almost the time of Noah sunk in. I snorted at her dumbstruck expression. “I’m really not sure whether I should be insulted that you think so little of me.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, a little too quickly. “It’s just . . . It just surprises me that’s all.”

  “That’s why my family isn’t very sympathetic toward nonhumans generally. The years that the Jacobs’ line has served the Rain is exceeded only by the number of lives that have been lost in the service.”

  To my surprise, she moved swiftly and closed the distance between us, pulling me into her arms. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” I asked, wondering what exactly had prompted her sudden move. Not that I was complaining about the attention.

  “For seeing past all of that, for loving me, and allowing me to love you.”

  I frowned, certain I’d explained enough about her nature and what our first kiss had caused to make it clear that I had little choice but to see beyond what she was and what I was supposed to do about that. Obviously, I hadn’t done a good enough job, but I decided that was an issue for another day. Instead, I settled with saying, “There was never another choice for me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHILE WE WALKED through the airport, I kept an eye out for Zarita. It was only after I spotted her that I told Evie I’d arranged a lift. I’d avoided the topic of what would happen next because I hadn’t wanted to earn Evie’s ire. As I said the words to warn her, I didn’t make eye contact and hoped like hell she would understand.