by Jocelyn Fox
Tyr stiffened as he saw Mayhem. The dog responded in kind, going stiff-legged and alert. Vivian grabbed her collar awkwardly, reaching across her body with her good hand. She stepped one leg over the dog as she’d seen Ross do, straddling her and pressing her legs lightly into Mayhem’s sides.
“Do you want to try to make friends?” she asked Tyr, adjusting her grip on Mayhem’s collar. The dog wasn’t growling, but there was no mistaking her coiled posture.
Tyr lifted one eyebrow, glancing at his injured leg and then back to Vivian.
“Right. Limited mobility. Um…okay.” Vivian thought about trying to back Mayhem out of the room, but she felt like having a door closed in her face would upset the dog. Plus, she’d have to learn to get along with Tyr sometime…though Vivian would have preferred it been when Ross was present. She gritted her teeth. Trust her to think the situation was much simpler than it was…
“Mayhem,” she said firmly, getting the dog’s attention. “Tyr is a friend. Friend.” She shifted to stand beside May, still gripping her collar but walking forward slowly. She crouched down and put herself between Tyr and May. The dog’s eyes watched her with dark intelligence. Tyr silently offered his closed fist for Mayhem to inspect. Vivian became very aware of his closeness. He didn’t generate body heat as much as a human, she thought in the part of her mind still capable of logical conclusions. A strange cool current, not entirely unpleasant, thrummed through the air around Tyr. Her skin prickled as it washed over her.
Mayhem finished scenting Tyr’s hand and looked at Vivian.
“Friend,” Vivian repeated. She gradually released her hold on Mayhem’s collar, sitting close enough to Tyr that the shoulder of her injured arm touched his. “See?”
May delicately stepped over Vivian’s legs, staring intently at Tyr. Tyr gazed back, his gray eyes calm, until Mayhem sneezed and pressed closer, the tension leaving her body as she wagged her tail just once. In her enthusiasm, the dog jostled Tyr’s leg, and Vivian saw the spasm of pain that flashed over Tyr’s face. But before she had the chance to haul Mayhem back, the dog seemed to realize her mistake and adjusted her position. A smile curved Tyr’s mouth as he rubbed Mayhem’s forehead with two knuckles.
Vivian cleared her throat and shifted away so they weren’t touching anymore. “I think that went well, overall.”
Something like fondness warmed Tyr’s eyes as he switched to rubbing Mayhem’s chest. Vivian wondered if he’d ever had a dog during his centuries in the mortal world. She decided to ask.
Did you ever have a dog? She formed the words in her mind carefully, trying not to shout as she’d done at the beginning of her first conversation. Opening the channel between them felt like gently nudging an invisible seam apart.
Tyr glanced at her in surprise. His witch-light bobbed over his shoulder. She felt a little buzz of satisfaction that she’d been able to surprise him.
Here and there, yes, he said.
Are there dogs in your world?
Another flash of pain crossed his face, though it wasn’t from his physical wounds. Vivian bit her lip.
There are hunting hounds at the Courts, Tyr replied after a moment.
She waited silently. It seemed like he had more to say, and she wasn’t disappointed.
In the north of Faeortalam, there are the wolf warriors, he said. The ulfdrengrs.
Like Luca, she said, nodding and remembering giant, golden Kianryk. The magnificent wolf had made her a bit nervous at first, but she’d seen how he interacted with Luca and Tess.
Yes. He nodded once. But Luca is one of the very, very few survivors of a proud race of warriors.
Vivian felt a stab of pain at Tyr’s words, though she couldn’t understand why she felt the loss so sharply that it was a physical ache. She’d never met any of these wolf-warriors, at least not until a few days ago, and before that she hadn’t even known they existed. Farin’s words echoed in her mind. Paladin.
Tyr’s gaze sharpened and he stopped petting Mayhem, pushing the big dog gently but firmly aside when she whined low in her throat and nosed his hand. Vivian felt herself flushing – it was still easy to think too loud and transmit a stray word through the invisible string connecting her to Tyr. She almost severed the connection as embarrassment flooded through her.
Tyr shook his head. Do not be ashamed. You are capable of much more than the great majority of your kin that I have met during my time here. His eyes almost glowed in the shadows. Paladin. I should have seen it sooner myself.
A thrill of something like terror jolted through Vivian when Tyr confirmed Farin’s enthusiastic assertion. Part of her had wanted to write it off as the fanciful imaginings of an excitable little Fae – which another part of her understood that Farin was not, for all her fits of passion.
Tyr reached out, hesitated, and then laid his long-fingered hand on her shoulder, his touch moth-light. It is all right to feel fear, but do not let it turn you from a path that could be your true calling.
“My true calling?” Vivian repeated skeptically, her mind in too much of a whirl to reliably transmit through their telepathic link without shouting. Her shoulder tingled where he’d touched it. She heard the edge of panic in her voice as she stumbled on. “I own a coffee shop and this house. I want to be a writer. Those don’t count?”
Tyr only smiled enigmatically and shrugged, turning back to his book. Vivian waited for him to say something else, but he went very still, absorbed in reading, moving only to turn the page. Would he continue the conversation if she pressed him? Somehow, she felt that wasn’t the right answer. Her eyes felt like sandpaper. She leaned her head back against her bed and sighed, shutting her eyes for just a second.
She thought she dozed but she couldn’t be sure, because when she snapped back into wakefulness, Tyr sat in the same position, silver head tilted forward over the pages of his book. She surreptitiously swiped her sleeve over her mouth to make sure she hadn’t drooled and then stretched her legs, her feet encountering warm fur. Mayhem grumbled a complaint from where she lay at Vivian’s feet.
“I’m going to go to sleep,” she said scratchily.
Without taking his eyes from his book, Tyr reached up and dimmed his floating light with a deft twist of his fingers.
“Can you teach me how to make that?” Vivian asked, her words blurring into a jaw-cracking yawn.
Tyr nodded, again without looking at her. She smiled, thinking that now she understood Ross’s annoyance when she didn’t respond to a question, lost in the pages of a good novel. But she didn’t feel irritation at Tyr. It was almost…endearing. She had to remind herself that he was a centuries-old Fae warrior, because at that moment he looked like an eighteen-year-old undergrad lost in the vortex of fiction in a corner of the coffee shop.
She slithered up into bed. Tyr’s witch-light obligingly shifted so that it didn’t get in her way. With a sigh, she slipped her arm out of the sling, laying her wrapped arm over her stomach. Worry for Ross and Duke…and Molly, her mind added belatedly…faded as she drifted into a sleep spiced by some very interesting dreams featuring Tyr as one of her fellow students at the university, carrying books and walking beside her to class, no words necessary between them.
Something woke her when she was still tired. She lay in bed with her eyes still closed and tried to figure out what had so rudely pulled her from such intriguing dreams. Then she heard voices in the living room. With a groan, she opened her eyes and tried to find her sling in the dark. Her bedside lamp wouldn’t turn on, the empty click echoing fatalistically in the quiet room. She sighed and gave up on the sling, scouring the floor for Tyr’s shock of silver hair to make sure she didn’t step on him when she slid out of bed.
Mayhem already sat staring expectantly at the dim white rectangle of the bedroom door. The dog vanished into the hallway as soon as Vivian cracked the door open. Vivian followed at a more sedate pace, squinting against the light.
Ross, Duke and Niall stood in the living room, looking thoroughly the wor
se for wear. Sweat soaked Ross and Duke’s shirts, and even the unflappable Seelie Knight’s neat white-gold hair looked damp with exertion. Vivian scrunched her nose as she read the clock. The numbers didn’t make sense to her. It was almost four in the morning. She’d only been sleeping for about three hours, but the crew that had gone out to meet with Corsica had been scheduled to return shortly after Jess had taken the watch with Ramel.
“What happened?” she croaked.
Ross didn’t even have an affectionate comment about the disarray of Vivian’s hair, as she always did in the morning and in those moments when Vivian’s mane of red curls escaped her control in the Louisiana humidity.
“I hope you’re okay with watching Ramel for a while,” Ross said, her voice hot with repressed irritation. She stripped off her sweat-soaked shirt and stalked toward the laundry room. “Oh, and your car is dead.”
“My car?” Vivian winced. She hadn’t particularly loved the beat-up little sedan, purchased with money carefully saved from her high school job behind the counter at Adele’s. Before she’d inherited – before they died, her mind corrected her – her grandparents had ensured that she knew the value of a hard day’s work.
“We ran into some wolf things,” Duke explained, scratching his chest. “The force field around ‘em fried your engine.”
A little lightning-bolt of concern crackled through Vivian at Duke’s casual words. “Guess you took care of the wolf things?”
“Ross killed one and Niall got the other,” said Duke with a nod.
As more of her brain emerged from sleep, Vivian squinted at Niall. “You should sit down. You don’t look great.”
“We had to trek what…twelve miles?” Ross said, emerging in just her black sports bra.
Vivian tried not to eye Ross’s muscular abs enviously. Maybe her sword training with Farin could get her halfway to a six-pack, she thought. She shook off the stray notion and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly self-conscious of her oversized sleeping t-shirt. “That explains why you’re so late. What else happened?”
“Molly stayed behind,” said Ross, her dark eyes hard.
“With…Corsica?” Vivian tried to follow the logic.
“With the bone sorcerer,” Duke said.
“She believes she will learn conjuring strong enough to levy revenge against Queen Mab,” said Niall from the couch.
“Wait, she wants to learn from the bone sorcerer?” Vivian shook her head. The beginning of a headache sprouted behind her eyes, tugging at the tender nerves.
“She didn’t tell us much,” admitted Ross. “But what she did say wasn’t very encouraging.”
“Aren’t the bone sorcerer’s methods…evil?” Vivian felt like she was trying to simplify it too much but her brain refused to supply words longer than two syllables. She swiped irritably at a curl in front of her eyes.
“He uses blood magic,” said Niall. “In Faeortalam, the Queens have long had laws against this. But here, in Doendhtalam…” He shrugged elegantly.
“What, this is the Wild West?”
The Seelie Knight looked at her without any spark of comprehension.
“There are no laws governing what you can and can’t do in our world?” she rephrased.
“Not particularly,” Niall replied slowly. He really did look pale. “Travel to this world has been greatly curtailed since the closing of the Great Gate and the Accords. Any Knights sent into this world have always abided by the laws of their Queen, as their oath demanded.” The explanation exhausted him.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” said Ross. “And I’ve gotta figure out a ride for today.”
Vivian grimaced. Her faithful little sedan had been their sole vehicle after Corsica had gleefully blown up Ross’s truck in the Exiles’ initial attack on the house a few days ago. “I do too. Supposed to go over the books with Evie.”
“Ask her to send Alex over for you during the morning down time,” suggested Ross.
“It’s a long drive.” Vivian yawned. “But that’s probably the best solution.” She blinked, feeling like butter scraped too thin over toast. “I’m going back to bed.”
“When you get up again, wear your sling!” contributed Ross from somewhere in the kitchen.
Vivian didn’t dignify that comment with a reply. She glanced at the fading runes on the door. “We okay for the night?”
“I will guard the door,” said Niall, his eyes already closed as he sank back into the cushions of the couch.
“Okay,” said Vivian. Her headache started beating a drum insistently behind her eyes. She turned back toward her bedroom and then said over her shoulder, “Oh. Tyr and Farin say I’m a Paladin.”
“What’s a Paladin?” said Duke.
“The first in many centuries,” murmured Niall at the same time.
“And how did Tyr say anything?” asked Ross from the kitchen.
Vivian smiled as she opened her bedroom door. She could at least grab a few more hours’ sleep before Evie would be expecting her at the shop. She stepped over Tyr and crawled into bed, ignoring the flash of pain in her arm and the ache in her head as she drifted again into sleep.
Chapter 22
Flames crackled in the fireplace, but Tess still couldn’t seem to get warm. She’d slept for the whole day following that chaotic rendezvous at the Queens’ Pavilion. She only vaguely remembered Liam half-carrying her to her bed. He’d visited her after she awoke to tell her that it looked as though Calliea was going to survive. Moira had brought her food and sat with her awhile, mostly in silence. Even Robin hadn’t had much to say when he’d dropped in to check on her.
She felt a familiar presence in the passageway outside her chambers, and she sat up straighter in bed as the tapestry automatically allowed Luca to pass through. Kianryk bounded after him, and between the two of them they filled the room with tawny masculinity. They’d only been gone a few days, but she drank in the sight of Luca and her heart leapt as though they’d been parted for longer. He wore his hair in a tight braid, and a mantle of fur over his shoulders led her to think that they’d maybe even ventured into the mountains in the misty distance.
Luca stared at her for a long moment, his eyes wolfish. She shivered both at the intensity of his gaze and that peculiar feeling of cold that hadn’t left her since those moments in the pavilion. Without a word, he industriously stripped off his muddy boots and shed his travel-worn clothes until he wore only his trousers. He crossed the room in three long strides and then he was gathering her into his arms in the bed. She let him shift her, burrowing into the curve of his shoulder where she fit so neatly.
For the first time since the pavilion, the tremors of cold that wracked her body slowed. She sighed and pressed her cheek against his chest. The feel of his muscular arms wrapped around her and the sensation of his big, calloused hands against her bare skin elicited a response of comfort and rightness deep within her. It was almost as if she could finally relax.
“Your brother told me that you saved Calliea’s life,” he said into her hair. Though he kept his voice low and his words steady, his Northern accent came through more strongly, as it always did when he was upset.
She nodded into his chest, pressing her lips together.
He sighed. “Anganhjarta, there will come a day when you cannot save everyone.”
Her chest warmed at his special name for her. “You aren’t angry?” she ventured. Her voice came out frayed around the edges.
“Anger does neither of us good,” said Luca, but she could tell from the resignation in his voice that he had, at least for a little while, been angry with her. “But I do not think you understand your own importance.”
“What, I’m more important than Calliea?” She wanted to look at him, but she didn’t have the energy to raise her head from his chest, and he seemed perfectly content to just hold her as they spoke.
“In a way,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous,” she protested. “You’re saying that my life ha
s more value than hers?”
“Not more value,” he said thoughtfully, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Her purpose is different from yours. She is a warrior.”
“I’m a warrior, too,” Tess protested, even as she realized how childish she sounded.
“Yes,” replied Luca. “But you are also the Bearer.”
Her sigh sounded a bit like a growl. After a moment, she said, “So what is your purpose, then?”
He chuckled. “To run headlong back from the mountains when I hear of your harebrained self-sacrifice.”
“To warm me up when the fire can’t,” contributed Tess.
Luca kissed her forehead. “To speak truth to power and remind you that you are important.”
She sighed again and pushed the whirlwind of thoughts out of her head, instead focusing on the delicious feel of his big muscled body beneath hers. She didn’t have the energy to contemplate anything other than mental appreciation of his physique, but he never failed to reignite a kind of awe in her at his sheer strength and size. He rubbed her back in lazy circles as she wriggled closer. “You smell like wolf and trees.”
“Well,” he said in an impeccably logical tone, “I was out among the wolves and the trees.”
“How did it go?” she asked, rubbing her thumb against the tracery of golden hair on his chest.
“As it should have,” he replied enigmatically.
“That’s…good.” She supposed that meant that some sort of mating had taken place. How long did it take wolves to have a litter? She couldn’t dredge up anything from her high school biology courses.
“I should warn you,” he said in a low voice, “Vell is not particularly happy.”
“Because of things out there or because of things here?”
“I do not think she is pleased with the decision to launch a night strike against the Unseelie.”
