by Cat Marsters
The wolf bared its teeth. It looked like it was grinning.
“What the hell?” Kett said to it, and the kid with the sword chose that moment to become a hero, launching himself at the wolf. But the wolf, moving with such easy grace he looked as if he wasn’t really bothered, rolled to one side, swiped at the boy’s leg and brought him down. Pinning him with his front paws, he took the whimpering boy’s sword arm in his teeth and shook it.
The boy screamed and dropped the sword. Kett kicked smartly at the hilt, making the blade jump into the air and spin over. She caught it by the hilt, pleased she could still pull off that maneuver.
In the sudden silence, the third boy stared at Kett and the wolf.
“Please give me a reason,” she said, aching to cause him pain.
“Don’t hurt me,” he whispered.
“Why not? You hurt her.”
“I didn’t! That was Will!”
Kett shook her head. “And now you’re ratting out your friends. Seriously, kid, you’re a waste of space.” A movement to her left caught her attention, and the gleam of amber eyes flashed in the darkness. A lion, nearly five feet tall at the withers. Dark’s Nasc twin.
Kett smiled. “Relax, kid. I ain’t gonna hurt you,” she said.
The kid relaxed.
“But he might,” Kett added, and Dark stepped into vision.
Willifus peed his pants.
“Excellent,” Kett said. “Let her go.”
The kid did as he was told, and the girl ran to hide behind Kett as Dark swatted the boy with one huge paw, knocking him to the ground and holding him there as footsteps sounded on the terrace.
“Kett, Kett, Kett,” Bael said, surveying the scene as he sauntered down the nearest set of steps toward her. “You really know how to make a party go off.”
“Yes, and thanks for your backup,” she snapped, as guests crowded onto the terrace, all of them looking down at her and whispering.
“What do you call that?” Bael gestured to the wolf, who was sprawled across the apparently unconscious body of the swordsman. He gave her a doggy grin.
“That’s you?”
“That’s Var. My twin. You didn’t think I was going to rush off for help and leave you without backup, did you?”
Baelvar. Man and wolf. Somehow, that didn’t seem quite right.
On the terrace stood Kett’s father, shaking his head at her, and then Tane was pushing his way through. When he caught sight of the shivering girl trying to hold her dress together, he cried, “Giselle!” and leapt to the grass.
Of course she has a name like Giselle, Kett thought sourly as the girl moved out from behind her, into Tane’s arms. Beautiful, lissome girls like her were never called Agnes or Doris.
She even cried prettily, clinging to Tane as he draped his jacket around her and stroked her glossy hair.
“Are you all right?” he asked tenderly, looking down at her, and she nodded tearfully. Kett bit her lip, because her brother had clearly seen the scratches on Giselle’s exposed breast and now appeared to be trying to work out whether mentioning it would be helpful, or if he was going to get a slap for noticing her bare breast in the first place.
“Go and take her to Nuala,” Kett said, because her unflappable stepmother was, in addition to being a princess, a qualified doctor, and Tane nodded and steered the fragile Giselle away.
“Thank you,” he called back to Kett, who nodded, surprised to be on the receiving end of anyone’s gratitude, and Giselle stopped, ran back to Kett and threw her arms around her.
“Thank you,” she sobbed. “You saved my life.”
Kett, who still had hold of the whimpering Willifus, looked down at the girl with slight distaste, which made Bael and her father laugh.
“Yeah, well, get Tane to teach you some self-defense, yeah?”
Giselle nodded and went back to Tane, who received her as if she was something precious, and Kett felt a pang because no one had ever looked at her like that, and nor were they likely to if she was the one standing there holding a youth who’d just pissed himself.
“Ain’t ever dull with you around,” Tyrnan called down, and she scowled at him as Willifus looked up and recognized his host.
“Sir!” he cried, and Kett rolled her eyes. Was it inbreeding, she wondered, or was the kid just destined to be thick? “My lord, this…harpy assaulted me!”
“No she didn’t,” Bael said. “She kicked your ass.”
“And that harpy,” Tyrnan said, hands in his pockets, “happens to be my daughter.”
This time Kett swore the wolf laughed.
“Where the hell is Tanner?” Tyrnan said, looking around. “I swear to gods, why the hell do I bother to invite the captain of the guard?”
“He got called back to the ngardaí,” said a young man with a garda badge, muscling his way through the crowd. Kett figured he was Eithne’s boyfriend Verrick. “I’ll take them.”
Tyrnan wavered. On the one hand, he didn’t approve of Eithne having a boyfriend, even if he was a garda. On the other, he clearly didn’t approve of Willifus being present at his party.
He pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket and handed them to the young garda, who took them wordlessly and leapt down to cuff Willifus’ wrists, ignoring his protests that it was inhumane to cuff an injured man.
“Should have thought about that before you ripped her dress,” Kett said. “Your mate with the sword, he got a permit for it?”
“He doesn’t need one,” Willifus said. “His father is Lord—”
“Don’t give a fuck who his father is,” Kett said. “He still needs a permit.”
“I’m going to need a coach or a cart, and some rope, unless anyone has any more handcuffs on them,” said Verrick.
“Sure,” Bael said, taking a set out of his pocket, and Kett tried not to stare. “I guess we’ll have to improvise later, sweetheart.”
Kett was glad it was dark, because she didn’t think she’d ever live it down if she blushed.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, her headache back again, and thought wistfully about the screaming hot sex she should have been having. Catching Bael’s eye, she wished, just for a split second, that she could fold herself into his arms and be held, like Tane had held Giselle, but that was stupid because no one had ever held Kett like that in her life. And anyway, it was pathetic, needing to be rescued like that. She could take care of herself.
And besides. She didn’t want Bael to hold her. She was supposed to be distancing herself from him.
“Oh now, this just isn’t fair,” came Chance’s voice from the terrace. She appeared with the light behind her, lending her lovely features an angelic glow, and withdrew from her bag a set of handcuffs. “Nobody told me the real party was out here.”
Kett caught the handcuffs and stared at them. “Am I the only person here who doesn’t carry these around with me?”
Wisely, no one responded. Kett cuffed the last of the boys and handed him into the carriage that had been brought ’round as Verrick climbed up into the driver’s seat.
Chance, her pretty nose wrinkling as she regarded the boys who’d attacked Giselle, glided to Kett’s side and murmured, “Can I have a word, darling? In the house. Private business.”
Kett nodded wearily and started toward the house, then stopped, swore and turned back to Bael. “Private business” was probably going to involve talking about Koskwim, and she couldn’t let him in on that. There were heads of state who didn’t know about the Order—she couldn’t tell one feckless Nasc about it.
“Bael,” she said, and he turned to her, handsome in the darkness. “Will you go with Verrick to the Free Hospital and keep an eye on these three until he gets someone else in to chaperone them?”
Bael narrowed his eyes and she was sure he was going to protest, but then he surprised her by nodding easily. “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll see you later. Are you okay?”
“Five by five,” she said automatically.
He kissed her
cheek, which stunned her into silence, and hopped up onto the seat beside Verrick. Var leapt into the coach, Bael reached back and shut the door, and a whimper came from inside.
“Don’t, you know, kill anyone,” Kett said, and he just laughed.
Feeling suddenly very tired, Kett trekked back up to the terrace, cutting ’round past the ballroom and entering one of the salons flanking it. Chance caught up to her, Dark padding along beside her with his tail swishing.
“Tane’s girlfriend’s very pretty,” she said, and Kett tried to remind herself that this was no reason to hate the girl. “Pity she doesn’t seem to have a clue about defending herself. Perhaps you and I can give her a few lessons?”
Kett shrugged and led them into what Nuala was probably calling the Slightly Purple Drawing Room. As she was closing the door behind herself, it swung open again and she spun to see Striker, striding into the room and sneering at everyone.
“Oh good,” she said flatly. Nothing like a psychopath to make a party go with a swing.
“Kett!” Chalia cried, wandering into the room. “Look at you!”
“Yes, I’m wearing a dress, I have breasts, get over it,” Kett said, slamming the door and debating whether to lock it. Her parents and siblings knew about Koskwim, and several of the guests were members of the Order, but she couldn’t risk an innocent member of Elvyrn society wandering in.
Assuming there was such a thing as an innocent member of society.
“What?” asked Chalia. “No, not the dress. You got laid.”
“Recently,” Striker said, looking her over.
“In the minstrel’s gallery,” Chance added, and when Kett stared, she clarified. “I swear to gods, I just happened to glance up.”
“Great,” Kett said. “Now that we’ve discussed my sex life—”
“Sweetheart, I’m just glad you’ve finally got a sex life,” Chalia said.
“You wanted to talk about—”
“I know, three years,” Chance said, appalled. “Which reminds me.” She turned her beautiful eyes on Striker.
“No,” he said warily.
“I haven’t even asked you yet!”
“Still no.”
“Striker,” Chance said, pleadingly. “Dad, please.”
Kett and Chalia gaped at her. Even Dark, still in his lion form, looked stunned.
“You never call me that,” Striker said, staring at his daughter.
“It’s true,” Chalia said, seating herself prettily on a chaise. “Since she was a baby, she called him Striker.” She grinned. “Except she couldn’t pronounce her T’s or R’s very well, so it sounded more like psycho.”
“Always said she was smart,” Kett muttered.
“Striker,” Chance said, scowling beautifully and burying her fingers in Dark’s long mane. “Have you seen the enchantment on Kett?”
All eyes turned toward Kett, who squared her shoulders and glared back at them all. Striker sauntered over, ran his fingers half an inch above her skin and frowned.
“Like a net,” he said. “Dense. Tough. Interesting.”
Kett waited for someone to say that sounded just like her, but no one did.
“It’s been on her since Nihon,” Chance said.
“What’s it do?”
“You can’t tell?” Kett asked, surprised as much as anything.
Striker gave her a narrow-eyed look and closed the distance between his hand and her shoulder.
Then he jerked it away as if he’d been burned and stared at her.
“What?” Kett asked.
“That—” He touched her again, shook his head. “Bad mojo, pet. And you’ve had it on you before.”
“No I haven’t,” said Kett, pretty sure she’d remember.
“Yes, you have. For eight years.”
His pale eyes were steady on hers as she tried to figure out what the hell he meant. Eight years of being unable to change her shape? Ever since she could remember, she’d been able to—
Ever since she could remember.
Memories that only started when she was eight years old.
Chapter Ten
“Heavy net,” Striker said. “Locks you in one shape. One form. Like your normal human form or—”
“A stone statue,” Chalia said. Chance and Dark exchanged glances, and Kett realized they’d probably never been told the story. Hell, Chance hadn’t even been born at the time.
But Striker had been the one who’d discovered Kett festering in her own anger on Koskwim. He and Chalia had uncovered the whole story of what happened to her as a child.
“This—this is the same thing that trapped me as a kid?”
Striker nodded slowly. “Penny-a-word enchantment.”
An enchantment. The kind of thing anyone could do if they knew the words. Enchantments nearly always came with an “undo” clause. But you had to know the right words for that too.
“So…the reason I couldn’t lift it is because I didn’t know the words?” Chance asked.
“No, the reason you couldn’t lift it is because you’re an ungrateful, self-denying idiot who never learned how to use her magic,” Striker said.
“So how do we remove it then?” Chance asked, but no one replied because Striker made a sudden movement, as if pulling something off Kett.
For a second she thought he was going to take her skin with him, and then…
Then she was free.
If Kett had ever worn a corset, she’d have compared the experience to shedding the restricting garment and being able to breathe freely. As it was, it felt to her like climbing out of a vault and breathing fresh oxygen, or curing a long-standing injury.
“Gods,” she gasped, almost moaning as blood seemed to flow properly through her veins for the first time in a month. “How do you stand it?”
“What?” Chance asked, and then blinked as Kett’s skin sprouted fur, then scales, turned blue and then green, grew feathers and rippled with change.
“Being stuck in the same shape all the time, it’s like suffocating.” Her mind reeling with relief, Kett moved to unfasten her dress, then thought better of it and just changed her shape to undulate out of the silk, watching it flutter to the floor as she stretched her naked body. Her bones snapped, her muscles stretched, her blood roared, and then she dropped to all fours and watched her hands become paws, felt thick fur grow, flexed her claws and swished her tail.
She paced, stretched, then backed up and went into a running leap, changing mid-air into a horse, landing on unshod hooves and whinnying with joy.
“Show-off,” Striker said, lighting a cigarette. Kett narrowed her eyes, took another leap and this time turned into an eagle, snatching the cigarette from his lips and wheeling round the room with it in one clawed foot.
“Bring that back,” he said, a rather bored threat in his voice, “or I’ll shoot you.”
Kett circled lazily then turned herself into a gryphon and landed on the card table by the window. She flowed to the ground as a snake, gripping the cigarette in her tail, then rose up and turned herself human again.
Unselfconscious, feeling invincible now she was back to her old self, she crossed the room and put the cigarette back between Striker’s lips.
“Don’t get cocky,” he said.
“Me?” Briefly, Kett entertained herself with the idea of morphing a cock, but dismissed it as an idea best explored in private. Now she could change her shape again, could shift into anything, could look like—
“Are you done now?” Striker asked, and Kett smiled as she stepped back into her dress, feeling invigorated, feeling like herself, feeling better than she had since before that damn tiger ripped her leg open.
“Thanks, by the way,” she said to Striker, who just shrugged. To Chance she added, “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“About the enchantment on you,” Chance said. “I thought Striker might be able to lift it. And now,” her lovely eyes sparkled, “you and Bael have something in common.”
&
nbsp; Abruptly, Kett’s happiness morphed into a mallet and smacked her on the head. Her smile vanished.
“Don’t you want to have something in common with him?” Chalia asked. “He’s gorgeous, Kett. And he clearly adores you.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Kett said automatically.
“He’s your mate,” Chance pointed out.
“No, he’s not. There’s no such thing as mates. Not for me.”
“But—”
“He’s confused. That’s all. He thinks I’m—”
Her words snapped themselves off. He thinks I’m his mate. Someone I’m not.
What if he thinks I’m someone else?
She could change her shape again. She could make herself look like anything she wanted. It took practice, of course, and if she wanted to make herself an exact replica of something new or someone in particular, it was incredibly difficult.
But it was possible, with practice, to change her human appearance. To look like someone else. Bael’s words came back to her…
Well, you could have sex with someone else. If you’re my mate, that should be impossible.
“Kett,” Chalia said warningly, exchanging a look with her daughter.
“You’re right,” Kett said. “We do have something in common now. I think…” They’d need to be somewhere else, somewhere she wouldn’t run the risk of meeting someone she knew who might blow her cover. “Keep this quiet, yeah? I’ll tell him myself.”
And then they’d go away. Back to the ranch, maybe, or to wherever Bael lived. Yes. Where he had friends or whatever. The more witnesses the better.
She smiled suddenly. “You know what?” she said to her aunt and cousin. “This changes everything.”
* * * * *
The Free Hospital was crowded and noisy, the staff sullen under their jolly Yuletide hats. Bael didn’t blame them. The place was depressing as hell. After the third person snapped at him that animals were simply not allowed in the hospital, he merged Var with himself, helped the young garda frogmarch the three miscreants through the hospital and waited with them until a couple of gardaí who were actually on duty could come to take watch.
When the one called Willifus complained, Bael broke his other arm.
