“Room service.” A male voice sounded from outside the door. It was deep, with a light accent, but it wasn’t the voice of Romany the Hunter. And what in the gods’ names was room service?
Lia spotted a sharp metal object on the writing desk—a letter opener, perhaps, although those she’d seen in Faerie were made of bone or wood. She grasped it and stuck it in her right trouser pocket.
Another sharp knock. “Ma’am, I have the late-night snack you ordered. Are you there?”
Perhaps Kirian had ordered food before the Hunter arrived? But no, Lia would have heard her.
Lia returned to her chair and perched on the edge, remaining silent. The only way to assure her safety was to stay put.
A rattling sound came from the door, and Lia’s pulse lurched as the knob turned and the door swung open.
The man’s gaze sought and found her almost immediately, and Lia’s breath caught.
Falconer.
She’d know him anywhere, even after ten years. The shiny chestnut hair had lost its paler strands and hung in rich, dark waves to his shoulders, the light above his head creating a halo. His eyes were more clear amber than the golden-brown she remembered, but he remained clean-shaven and strong of jaw, with full lips and a straight nose.
His body had changed the most. He was no longer the slender boy just growing into manhood, but was fully a man. Not just a man, but a Hunter, with powerful shoulders beneath his dark-brown shirt with leather cuffs. On his left hand, he wore the large stone ring of the Prince of Autumn and, in his heavily gloved right hand, he held a knife.
Falconer closed the door behind him and walked slowly toward her. The anvil from her father’s forge could be sitting on her chest, for all Lia’s difficulty in drawing a breath. She willed her legs to move enough to position herself behind the chair. As if a flimsy human armchair could repel the Captain of the Fae Hunters.
“Hello, Liandra. It’s been a long time since we’ve met.” Falconer’s voice was deeper than she remembered, deceptively soothing.
“I’m sorry, your highness, but we have never met.” He hadn’t known she existed. They surely had never been introduced.
“Maybe not, but I remember you just the same. You stood underneath a tree in the square near the edge of the Autumn Palace grounds, a tall, skinny girl with such an arresting face.”
His gaze traveled from her face to the tight sweater that felt ready to burst, then down to the tight trousers. She closed her eyes, willing herself to drop dead. What he must think of her...and yet, he’d remembered her.
When she opened her eyes, she gasped at how close he’d gotten. Almost to the front of the chair. She hadn’t sensed him moving.
“You’ve grown up to be quite beautiful, Lia—isn’t that what that horrible girl called you that day? Lia the Tin Princess?”
Lia backed up farther, until her back pressed against the large glass window overlooking the city. “I can’t believe you remember that. I was so embarrassed.”
“You blushed.” His look wasn’t angry, just intense, and Lia didn’t know how to interpret it. “Most women of Faerie don’t blush, you know, even at such a young age. Fae women are born with their womanly wiles already in place.”
She laughed before she could catch herself, then cut it off abruptly. He was very good at making his prey feel safe. Probably right before the kill. Or the rape. Or both. She’d grown up hearing stories of the Fae Hunters.
“You don’t agree?” He raised an eyebrow, amusement—amusement!—dancing in his amber eyes. How dare he be amused by her, when her life was about to end? The anger fueled her.
“On the contrary, your highness. I imagine that to be quite true of the women in your class. I am not of that class, however, as you well know. I am the tin man’s daughter.” And she’d been brought up in innocence, she now realized. Even naïveté. “How did you find me?”
Maybe she gave off more magic than she thought, or he was that skilled at the Hunt.
“Funny thing, that. When my lieutenant, Romy, got back from returning Princess Kirian to Faerie, he mentioned her striking jewelry. Maybe made by the daughter of the metalworker I’d just been asked to find, who’d given a pretty bauble to the queen.”
Falconer moved around the chair, his gait slow and smooth and predatory, until he stood before her. Despite her height, she still had to look up to meet his gaze. The strength of his faery magic was unlike anything Lia had ever felt. It wrapped itself around her like the embrace of a lover, or so she imagined, yet he had not touched her.
When he did, placing his strong, ungloved hand on her shoulder, she shivered—and not from fear. It must be his magic. Surely she couldn’t still be attracted to the man her childhood heart had longed for, especially when he stood before her with a knife and, along with his kind, a reputation for brutality.
But with his gentle squeeze of her shoulder and the hand he slid to her neck, Lia closed her eyes and reveled in the touch of his fingers on her skin, the caress of his magic around her, the scent of him.
“You are a dangerous woman, Liandra.” Falconer’s voice, soft and low, came from nearer still. When she opened her eyes, his mouth was an inch from hers, then his lips were pressed to her own.
He tasted of whiskey and magic, and when he pulled away, Lia wanted more. “How can I be dangerous, when you hold all the power, your highness?” Her voice sounded like that of the breathless twelve-year-old from so long ago, but that girl had never experienced these feelings. This physical longing to touch and be touched. She burned from it.
“Faulk. That is my name.” He leaned closer again. “Say it. Say my name, Lia.”
If she did, perhaps he would kiss her again before he killed her. “Faulk,” she said softly.
His kiss was harder this time, deeper, longer, and when he slipped his tongue into her mouth, stroking and plunging, it was not a retruvian eel she thought of but the hardness that pressed against her through Kirian’s trousers. It was a promise of what could be. With his hand, he tilted her head to give him access to her neck. She could drown in him. She was drowning in him.
“How can I ever give you back to Florian?” he whispered, almost as if to himself.
But Lia had heard it, and it was the douse of cold water she needed. He planned to take her back to the Prince of Summer, who would kill her, or worse. Because there were worse things than death.
Without thinking, she slipped the metal letter opener from her pocket and reached around Falconer as if to embrace him.
Even as he brought forth a sweet sigh from the pressure of his lips on her throat, Lia mustered all the fear and anger she’d built up in the past day and plunged the metal blade into his back.
7
FAULK WAS SO SCREWED. He’d lost himself in this woman, with her mix of vulnerability and lushness. He had to taste her, had to touch her.
Her lips and skin were as sweet as he imagined, and he couldn’t stop himself from pressing his hard length against her in soft bursts of pressure as he kissed her. Tentative at first, she’d returned his kisses, matched his urgency, even slipped a hand around his waist until....
A piercing fire entered his back, turning to ice as metallic poison spread across his shoulders and down his torso into his legs. The room tilted, and he found himself on the floor looking up at a vision with golden hair and wide-set blue eyes, cheeks wet with tears, hands holding a blood-covered knife.
“I’m sorry, Falconer, but I can’t go back to Faerie,” she whispered. The knife bounced once when it hit the carpet near Faulk’s head, and on his cheek he felt a splash of his own blood, or maybe her tears. Then she disappeared from his vision and Faulk couldn’t even lift his head to see if she’d left the room. He thought so.
Damn it. Of all the amateur, stupid-ass moves. Some Fae Hunter he was.
With effort, Faulk slid his hand toward his pocket and managed to pull out his phone in its rubber case. Each movement seemed to take an hour and further drained his flagging energy. He man
aged to press a finger on Romy’s speed dial and hoped his friend wasn’t still balls-deep in the youngest Princess of Winter. Kirian and her sister Tamara had reputations.
“Hey boss. Where are you?”
“Kirian’s hotel room. I’m—”
A black shutter closed over his vision.
FAULK AWOKE TO THE stench of burning flesh. It took another couple of seconds for him to realize the burning flesh was his own and hurt like hell.
He tried to move, but couldn’t. He was on his stomach, stripped to the waist, and tied down like an animal ready for the brand.
“If you don’t stop moving I’ll burn off more than the poison and you’ll never sire an heir. Don’t think I won’t do it, neither.” A woman’s voice. An older woman. A no-nonsense, got-no-use-for-stupid-men woman who sounded suspiciously like the healer from the Realm of Autumn. She had raised both Yuri and himself after their mother died giving birth to a sister they’d never know.
He tried to turn his head enough to see behind him. “Vanoli?”
She pinched his ass, and not in a flirtatious way. Hard enough to hurt. “Who do you think it is? At my age, being dragged across the veil at this unholy hour by that ruffian Romany, only to see that the greatest Fae Hunter of the last three ages—or so he’ll tell you himself—has gotten stabbed in a hotel room by a letter opener.”
Faulk groaned as she continued to apply the burning end of the healing stick to his wound, drawing out and destroying the poison, which eventually could have killed him. It would at least have crippled him for a long time.
He finally grew aware enough to realize he lay on the bed in the French Quarter hotel room where Lia had stabbed him. His shirt had been removed and both arms were stretched up and tied to the posts on either side of the headboard by faery rope.
“Romy!” he bellowed, and glared when the grinning face of his best friend came into view. Romy squatted next to the bed.
“Why?” Faulk asked, and rolled his eyes in the direction of Vanoli. The Hunters had their own healer, so why bring the old woman who’d brought him into the world and treated every cut and scrape he’d had growing up—and there had been many.
“I wasn’t sure what happened to you, what with us getting retrieval orders from both Christof and Florian in one day.” He spoke in little more than a whisper, although Faulk knew the healer’s hearing was sharp despite her age. “It seemed safer.”
Faulk gave a short nod and closed his eyes. He trusted the healer assigned to the Hunters, but not in the way he trusted Vanoli. And what if she told his brother? Yuri wouldn’t interfere with Hunter business, and Faulk would survive a little sibling teasing.
“Who did this, my lord?” The old woman, done burning his skin to a charred state, now spread a cooling balm over it, and Faulk’s muscles began to melt into the bedding. “The feud between the Princes of Summer and Winter has grown worse, I hear. Does this mean you have chosen a side?”
Faulk’s brother had left the decision to him. Yuri loved the finery and ritual of court life, but had no talent for warfare or political alliances. He would throw the power of the Autumn Court behind whomever Faulk chose.
“I’ve made no decision.” Nor would he, unless forced. The Hunters worked for the good of all Faerie, not for one high-season prince over another.
She finished her work in silence. Romy untied Faulk’s wrists and sat at the hotel room desk, but didn’t speak. Nor did Faulk.
“Well, it’s obvious you two important men have things to discuss you don’t wish the poor old healer to hear.” Vanoli grasped Faulk’s shoulders and helped roll him to his back with such vigor she almost spun him to the floor. She obviously hadn’t thought much of being dragged over the veil at—Faulk glanced at the bedside clock—5 a.m. “So I’ll find my way out. Try to get stabbed during decent hours next time, eh?”
She snapped her case shut, donned her gloves, and hustled toward the door. Faulk jerked his head in her direction and Romy nodded, following her out. He could hear her fussing all the way down the hall, which the hotel guests probably wouldn’t appreciate either. He wouldn’t leave her to cross the veil alone, however, and he could rest while Romy was gone.
The healing balm made him sleepy, but it couldn’t erase Lia from his mind. Not the way she’d stabbed him in the back—literally. He couldn’t blame her for that. After all, he’d been there not for a night of passion, but for a capture and arrest. He’d been there to retrieve her and return her to Florian, the man who’d frightened her enough that she had run away from everything familiar.
Still, she’d stirred something in him he couldn’t explain. She wasn’t a classic beauty, true, but those perfect women of Faerie had always bored him. She was still a virgin, if Florian spoke the truth, which made Faulk’s behavior even more inexcusable.
She had responded to him, though. She’d sighed under his touch. She’d mingled her tongue in a dance with his. Her heart had sped up at the feel of his hardness against her. She had wanted him.
Right up until the moment she’d shoved the knife into his back. Not even a knife. A fucking letter opener, by the gods.
The door clicked with the sound of the handy tool Romy had developed to break into hotel rooms, a tool they seemed to use often. He came back in and stretched out on the bed next to Faulk, who moved farther away.
“Do you mind? I’m healing.”
“Yeah, about that.” Romy rolled to his side and propped on one elbow. “Vanoli’s gone, so now you can ’fess up. How’d you end up with a letter opener in the back? Who did it?”
Faulk considered lying. He could say he’d been surprised by one of his enemies while searching the room. He could say a human had taken him by surprise in the hallway. New Orleans was rife with human criminals.
He and Romy had never lied to each other, however. If there was one person on either side of the veil he could trust, this was the one. He wouldn’t cheapen that trust.
“Liandra did it,” he said.
Romy’s mouth twitched. “Liandra. The metalworker’s daughter who’s never set foot outside of Faerie. Stabbed the Captain of the Fae Hunters in the back with a letter opener.”
“Yes.” Faulk stared at the ceiling, an unfamiliar hot sensation creeping across his face. “She sneaked up on me.”
“Bulltripe. And what were you so busy doing that the fair maiden was able to stab the vicious weapon into your back?”
Faulk closed his eyes. “I might have been kissing her at the time.”
He let Romy laugh for a solid minute before he finally interrupted him. “When you get through braying like a barn animal, help me consider what the hell I’m going to do.”
One look at Faulk’s face and Romy stopped laughing. “What do you mean, what you’re gonna do? You’re going to hand the job off to me like you originally planned. I’ll find Liandra and take her to Florian. End of job. End of story.”
Faulk’s hand shot out and jerked Romy toward him by his collar. “Don’t go anywhere near her. Do you understand?”
Romy tugged himself free. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He studied Faulk a few moments before understanding smoothed out his features, and anger morphed into worry. “You want her. You want her for yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want to be anywhere near that woman again.” Liandra was hazardous to his health, and it had nothing to do with her mad skills with letter openers. “But I also can’t in good conscience turn her over to Florian.”
He shared Florian’s plans for Lia once the prince got her back to Faerie.
“Damn.” Romy flopped back on the pillow. “That’s brutal, and confirms a lot about Florian that I already suspected. You can’t get in the middle of this, Falconer.”
“Florian has no more power than I.” At least not yet. As long as Sabine lived on as queen, they were equals. At least technically.
“Not now, but he has the mix of faery magic required to rule the kingdom, so there’s a fifty percent chance he w
ill be king. Then, he’ll have more power and plenty of time for revenge. Even now, it’s said he is closer to the queen than Christof.”
“Only because he kisses her ass and Christof keeps to his own counsel.” Still, as much as Faulk would like to brush off Romy’s warning, his friend was right. Florian was not an enemy he could afford. The time might come when he’d have to choose sides, but not now. Not yet.
“Well, let’s at least get out of here before someone finds us. Maybe things will be more clear after a few hours of sleep.” Faulk struggled to sit up and had to wait a few seconds for the room to stop spinning.
“You sure you’re up to the walk?” Romy held out a hand and hauled Faulk to his feet.
Praise the gods, he stayed upright. “The fresh air will help.”
On his way out, Faulk glanced into the small bathroom. “What’s that?”
Romy turned on the light, went inside, and came out with a fine woven basket. “This was definitely made in Faerie; the work’s too beautiful. Leave it, or take it?”
Lia had fled her home with a basket, Florian said. Cursing his own sentimentality, he walked into the hallway. “Bring it.”
Romy insisted on making sure Faulk didn’t stumble off a curb and crack his head open, so they reached The Hunt Club together. While Romy unlocked the door, Faulk took the basket, slinging it over his arm like the world’s tallest, surliest maiden.
Romy stopped before the door was open an inch, pulling a knife from the scabbard on his belt with his gloved right hand. “We have company.”
Faulk’s instinct was to step in front of his friend, but he let Romy push him back and lead the way. He wouldn’t be up to full strength for another few hours, so there was no point in being stupid. Make that more stupid than he’d already been.
They stopped inside the door, and Faulk squelched the urge to march over to his safe, pull out the loaded human pistol he kept hidden there, and shoot the Prince of Summer with a nice bullet forged of cold iron. Florian sat at the bar, smoking a foul-smelling cigar and drinking Faulk’s most expensive whiskey out of the bottle.
The Consort: A Fae Hunters Novella (The Fae Hunters Book 1) Page 5
