Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

by Sarra Cannon

  The tunnel darkened after Thom filed in after them. The solar-powered lights crackled on and added a low buzz to the tunnel—the only other sound besides their breathing.

  Heath started walking.

  “What do you mean someone burned out?”

  “The tunnel-keeper used to maintain the tunnels using his magic,” Thom said. “He’d keep them lit and prevent them from collapsing. With us spreading out so much and needing to travel all over the globe, there got to be a point where there were simply too many tunnels for one Sídhe man to keep up with. He literally burned out. Had a nasty shock while pushing some light into one of the farther mounds. Now, they’re all solar powered and come on when a person of Sídhe descent is in a tunnel.”

  “We call people like him keys,” Heath said. “You need a key to either lock or unlock a mound. Once they’re unlocked, any fairy can open them. Being a key isn’t a common gift.” He turned right at the fork instead of his usual left. He’d planned on taking them straight to the palace, but he had another errand in mind. “And since it’s one that tends to run along family lines, I suspect you might be a key of a very specific lineage.”

  “What?” she asked his back.

  He grinned again. Seemed to be a habit where she was concerned. He wasn’t sure why he derived such joy from rendering her speechless. He could think of some other ways to do that, too, and those would require far less clothing. It was a wonder he hadn’t gotten her naked yet. He hardly recognized himself for his control as of late. “If my hunch is right, you’ve got an eccentric crackpot for a grandfather.”

  “Huh,” Thom said. “Which would mean her mother was—”

  “Shit. It certainly would.” Heath stopped and turned to face Simone. “Does your mother have red hair, love?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Why?”

  “Indulge me.”

  “Well, yes. At least, it was red the last time I saw her.”

  “Shit. Hestia had to have known. Why didn’t she tell me?” Heath shouldered the door open and climbed out of the tunnel.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Plenty,” Heath and Thom said in unison.

  Chapter 8

  “Go away!”

  Simone had never been more pleased in her life that a man refused to open his door. Given the thugs standing outside it, she couldn’t blame him, and she was really in no urgent hurry to meet the man who may or may not have been her grandfather. She had enough family members treating her like dirt, and she was in no rush to meet yet another.

  “It’s Prince Heath,” her own special thug called out.

  “Heath? What do you want?”

  “Need to ask you a question.”

  “About what?”

  “About a fairy.”

  “Last fairy anyone asked me about had to run away.”

  “Same fairy.”

  “What’d she do now?”

  Heath looked down at Simone. “Nothing recent.”

  The door opened a crack, and a grass green eye appeared in it. Green as her mother’s eyes, and with the same unusual clarity. She didn’t realize her mouth was hanging open until Thom nudged her chin upward.

  “Whaddaya need to ask, Prince?”

  “Could we come in? It’s a mite cold out here.”

  “Didn’t tidy up.”

  Thom sighed. “Then could you come out? We won’t hold you up. We just need a moment of your time. It’s a yes or no proposition.”

  “Why can’t you ask from where you stand? I hear you well enough.”

  “What does he possibly think you’ll do to him?” Simone whispered.

  “He’s understandably wary,” Heath whispered back. “After his burnout, Mum gave him quite the hard time. He wasn’t on her good side even before that because of all the rancor between her and his daughter.”

  “Rancor because of what?”

  He shrugged. “The usual shit women argue about.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

  Heath leaned against the wall adjacent to the door and crossed his arms. “I really do need you to open it. Come on out and take a good taste. You can’t do that with me standing here, I assure you.”

  “So go away.”

  “I will. After we’ve concluded our business. If it incentivizes you any, strike a bargain with me. What are you in want of at the moment?”

  “Besides you going away?”

  “Aye, besides that. And ask me for something I can actually give you. Even I have my limits.”

  “Hmm.” That one visible eye narrowed. “Let me close off the tunnel nearest my cottage.”

  “But then it would be quite difficult to access you if we need to.”

  “That’s the point. Sick of people dropping by asking me to open a tunnel this way and that way, knowing full well Rhiannon would have my skin if I did it. Lazy bums can travel the long way, just like everyone else.”

  Heath grunted. “Fine. That is something I can grant you permission for. Do it after we leave.”

  The eye disappeared, and the door opened into darkness.

  A man of average height for a human, with half of his exposed, pale skin covered in what looked like burn scars, stepped onto the mat.

  Simone couldn’t stop her gasp. The left side of his face was pockmarked and disfigured, as well as his neck and what she could see of his arm. The injury that had caused the scars had to have been very painful.

  She turned to Heath. “You couldn’t fix that? Help him?”

  “I could have if I were near enough. It would have just been a transfer of energy to boost healing, but I wasn’t in the realm at the time. I didn’t even hear about the accident for three weeks. There wasn’t much I could do by then except siphon off a bit of his pain.”

  “I still have pains,” the keyman said.

  “I imagine you do, Fergus.” Heath pushed off of the wall and walked behind Simone. He gave her a little nudge toward the man he’d called Fergus.

  “Who is this?”

  “You tell me.”

  Fergus narrowed his good eye again. The other one seemed to see well enough, but the skin around it didn’t move as much. It just flexed, doing half the job it was supposed to. “Tastes like cinnamon.”

  Heath chuckled. “Aye, I guess she does.”

  Simone scowled. Just what was it that they were tasting?

  “Cinnamon and what else?”

  “Cinnamon and…Katie.”

  She looked back at Heath. “My mother’s name is Katie.”

  “I thought it might be.”

  “How old are ye, lass?” Fergus asked. “My Katie’s been gone for nigh on eons.”

  “Eons?” Just how old was her mother? If Heath was a hundred and seventy, could her mother be much beyond that? How long did fairies live? “I…I assure you, I’m the age I look,” she said.

  “Ye could be a thousand and look like that. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Has she been gone that long?”

  Fergus rolled his gaze up to the sky and clucked his tongue. “So hard to keep track nowadays. Less than a thousand years, for sure.”

  “There’s a huge gap between my age and a thousand years. Could you possibly narrow it down a bit?”

  “When was the temple destroyed?” Thom asked Heath. “That happened during their fight.”

  “Whose fight?” Simone asked.

  “Katie’s and Rhiannon’s.” Fergus huffed. “And that was seven hundred years ago. A stupid fight over a stupid thing.”

  Seven hundred! She had a mother who was at least seven hundred years old?

  “Aye, my father is stupid enough,” Heath said in a mutter, and then turned to Simone. “Apparently, Mum found out that my father had your mother in his gaze before they hooked up. She didn’t care that nothing ever happened or that they weren’t fated to be mates, only that your mother had caught his attention in the first place.”

  “How did she find out?” Simone’s mother wasn’t the kind of w
oman who’d flaunt herself. She was so damned timid around men in general. Even when she met with Simone’s dad to trade off custody every two weeks after their divorce, she could barely look the man in the eyes. Simone never learned why they’d divorced, only that they’d never seemed particularly compatible.

  “I’m certain some old trollop put a bug in Rhiannon’s ear about it.” Fergus sighed. “Where is me Katie?”

  “Last I heard, she was exploring the world.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sounds like her.” He pushed his lips into a crooked smile. Charming, in spite of the sag on one side. “Are there…others?”

  “Other what?”

  “Children? Did Katie have others?”

  Simone opened her mouth to say no, but perhaps there had been others that lived and died long before she was born. She had so many things to ask her mother…if she ever caught up to the woman again. “I was raised as an only child. If there are or were others, I don’t know about them.”

  He looked at Thom, then Heath. “Why’d you bring her here? Certainly, she wasn’t the quarry in one of ye’r hunts. Haven’t ye royals tortured me enough? Are ye going to put her in the stocks for some petty thing? What’d she do? Look at ye’r sister sideways? Criticize ye’r haircut?”

  Or lack thereof.

  Heath chuckled. “No, not at all. She’s my wife.”

  Fergus’s good eye went round as a saucer. “So, ye are trying to kill her. Death by ghastly mother-in-law. Why in the bleeding hell did ye bring her here if ye weren’t so keen on getting rid of her?”

  Getting rid of me? She gaped.

  “I figured she should see the place once.”

  “No offense, Prince, but ye’ve got a touch of insanity about ye.”

  Simone agreed.

  “Aye. I’ll freely admit that on most days. Thom and I were going to take her on our little jaunt through the castle, but perhaps you’d like to look after her for a bit while we take care of business. Won’t take an hour. In and out dash and then we’ve got to hit to road to make a flight.”

  “An hour’s all I got?”

  Heath’s nod came slowly. “For now. I’m sorry.”

  Fergus poked one rheumy finger at Heath’s shoulder. “I don’t know what the gods are playing at putting the two of ye together, but if you let anything happen to her, Prince, I’ll try to kill you me self. You’ll probably do in me before I get close, but so help me, I’ll try.”

  Heath nodded again. “I know, old man. I know.”

  Heath and Thom stroke toward the mound, leaving Simone with the fairy who was apparently her grandfather. She turned to him, shy for once, not sure what to say or do. His stare managed to be assessing without being critical, but she couldn’t shake the discomfort. What did he expect of her? Want from her?

  “Would ye like to come in and have some tea?” he asked. “Water’s already on. And I’ve got some cakes. Not as good as me wife used to make, but…well, no matter.” He gestured toward the inside of the house.

  “I’d love some tea. Haven’t had any in a while. I make mostly coffee at the motel I run. It’s what the guests want.” The guests who weren’t fairies, anyway. The best she could tell, fairies weren’t morning people and didn’t care what was in the pot.

  “Oh, then ye’re in for a treat. I’ve got some good stuff. Darjeeling. None of that nasty Earl Grey shite.”

  She stepped into the little stone cottage and let her eyes have their fill, but there was too much to take in all at once. “I hate the way it smells,” she said softly. There had to be ten lifetimes of knickknacks lined up along the walls—in curio cabinets, on open shelves, and on the tables. “The tea, I mean. It’s cloying, like perfume.”

  “Aye, it’s the bergamot. Hate the smell me self. Reminds me of that harpy on the throne. She cares for it a great deal. Ach, I can’t believe ye ended up with her as a mother-in-law.” He closed the door and shuffled toward the corner where the fireplace and cookstove were situated.

  “Well, Heath and I aren’t technically married.”

  “What is this technically ye’re yammering about?”

  “I mean, there’s been no courtship. No relationship, to speak of. No engagement, and certainly no ceremony. I’ve known him for less than a week, and for most of that time, he was unconscious.”

  “Bah.” Fergus waved a dismissive hand and grabbed a potholder from a hook near the stove. “Sídhe don’t do all that. If he says ye’re his, ye’re well and truly stuck with him.” He took the kettle off the stove and poured water into a waiting teapot. White china with delicate pink peonies painted on the side. It didn’t seem like the sort of practical teapot a gruff fairy like him would use every day, but nothing about the cottage suited him in that regard. Curious.

  She cleared her throat. “And…how do you feel about me being well and truly stuck with him?” Obviously, the man had his doubts about all the royals, Heath included, but he had opened the door. That had to count for something.

  He set the kettle back onto the stove and made a noncommittal wave of his hand. “Ye could do worse.”

  “That’s not exactly a vote of confidence.”

  He shrugged. “Along with the title comes some security, financial and otherwise.”

  “I’m more concerned about my physical security. I get the feeling Heath’s mother isn’t going to welcome me into the family with open arms. That is, assuming I want to be welcomed. I’m not convinced I do.”

  “Aye, sure ye don’t.” He set out two mismatched teacups with saucers.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t know me. You can’t judge me.”

  “I know ye’re Sídhe. Half, at least, and that counts for something. Prince Heath is going to get under ye’r skin like a persistent fungus and ye won’t be able to keep yeself away from him. Wait and see.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Oh, I won’t be needing to hold it long. What do you take in ye’r tea?”

  “Milk and sugar.”

  He nodded and served her a cup. “Tell me about yeself. Where’d my Katie leave ye?”

  “North Carolina. In America. I grew up in a city called Charlotte, at least until my parents divorced when I was thirteen. Then Mom and I moved around from one small city to the next over the next five years. Whenever our lease came up for renewal, she’d decide to pull up stakes and we’d move a couple of towns over. Just because we could.”

  He grunted. “Katie’s always had a touch of the wanderlust, but that doesn’t sound like her usual tricks. She had to be moving around like that for a reason.”

  “Well, whatever it was, I doubt I’ll ever know it.” She took a sip of her tea. Sweet and fragrant, but not overpowering. Perfectly brewed, just the way her mother used to make it. The memory seemed to encircle tight metal bands around her lungs and heart that squeezed out that debilitating feeling of abandonment she’d struggled with for the past six years. She kept lying to herself and saying her loneliness was for the best if it meant no one else learned of the curse. No one would feel compelled to render aid. No one else would feel the burden. She was a martyr of her own making, and it was tiring.

  “What do ye do for a living?”

  She let out a breath and rubbed her bleary eyes. “I run a motel. Not my choice of a gig, but I kind of got saddled with it.”

  “What do ye mean?”

  “I stepped into an inherited curse. I have to run the motel until someone else takes over or until the terms are met. Apparently, the only reason I was able to leave was because of Heath. His sister is there right now. She’s stuck there until we get back.” Matt was there, but as Heath’s second cousin, she wasn’t sure if he counted as related enough to stand in.

  Fergus sank slowly onto an overstuffed wingback chair and heaved his feet up onto the ottoman. Just like everything else in the house, the pieces didn’t match. The ottoman had striped fabric and dark, ornately carved wood, and the chair had faded fleur
-de-lis and simple legs. “Inherited curse? Not from me Katie, I hope.”

  “No. From my father’s side. His mother pissed off Hestia.”

  Fergus grimaced and set his saucer on the small, round table beside him. “She’s one ye don’t want to get on the bad side of.”

  “So I’ve learned. She won’t undo the curse, but claims she tossed Heath to me so I’d have some respite from it.”

  “Did she, now?” His green eyes sparkled with mischief as he rubbed the sparse scruff on his chin. “She must like ye.”

  “If that’s liking someone, I don’t want to see what hatred looks like.”

  “For a goddess, that’s pretty close to showing favoritism, if ye’d ask me. But, when the gods make plans, they never do it expecting it to pay off in just one way. They want to reap the rewards two, three times over.”

  “What could she possibly get out of saddling me with Heath?”

  “No, no, not saddling ye with Heath, but saddling ye with each other. No offense, as I’m certain ye’d make a lovely companion. I’m speaking in general terms.”

  She put her hands up in concession. “No worries. I know my attitude and copious amounts of baggage make me less of a catch than I might have been otherwise.”

  “Baggage? I don’t follow.”

  “Sorry.” She got the feeling Fergus didn’t spend much time in the modern world. He had to be decades behind, just judging from his ill-fitting sixties-inspired attire. He looked as though he still took fashion cues from the Beatles in their Abbey Road phase.

  “Hang ups,” she said. “Past traumas you carry around in your subconscious that effect everything you do.”

  “Aye, yes.” He nodded. “We’ve all got plenty of that. Can’t avoid it if ye live as long as I have. But look, ye’ve got something he needs. He’s got something ye need. Whatever the result of one satisfying the other, Hestia somehow benefits.”

  Simone set down her empty teacup and stared at the leaves stuck to the bottom. If only she could read her fortune in them. Perhaps they’d give her some clues about what she was supposed to be getting out of all the upheaval. “I think Hestia is holding some sort of grudge against Rhiannon.”