She never hesitated. “Always. I don’t suppose that means you want to try some sort of kinky alfresco sex?”
“Later.” he laughed. Sword in hand, he held her tighter and stepped closer to the tangled wall of plants.
She stiffened, unwilling to go anywhere near the seething mass of greenery; then she took a deep breath and moved toward them. A dozen plants—blue-trumpeted daffodils, anaconda vines, and sticky-leaved sundews among them—sent stems shooting toward her. One touch, one stroke of Meena’s skin, and they died. A mangrove plant pulled one root from the ground. It stretched into a long red finger, veered around Meena, and homed in on Leonidas. He spun her in front of him, and the instant it touched her flesh, it blackened and drooped. A moment later, the whole plant toppled into the jungle, and anaconda vines swamped it.
As King of the Fae, he valued her plant-killing power above rubies and gold. As her lover, he was lost. She’d save his people, and once he sorted out this mess with her mother, she might aid Mordred and the Elves. Always assuming Elizabeth Sybil forgave them.
He hated that he’d have to take her to the Fae court first. It meant he’d have to spill family secrets the court had guarded for years. Confessing his origins and his curse to Meena would be bad enough. Worse, it might make the queen dowager relive all the humiliations King Herodotus had piled on her.
Meena would hate their strict etiquette and endless formality. Besides, it would crush the life her out—just as surely as she’d have suffocated in an anaconda vine’s grip—if she watched him flit from one woman’s bed to another. After finding her, it would definitely destroy him. For now he’d think only of the present and concentrate on finding her mother.
Chapter Thirteen
“Querida, you have more power than you think. Or perhaps you are too modest to show your strength,” he teased.
“Me?” Meena faltered. “Power? No way. My mother abandoned everything when we fled to the human world—but if I’d possessed even a spark of magic, then we could have stayed.”
He thought a moment. “Is that why you fear the Witches? Did they threaten you in some way? Is that why you and your mother live in Whitby rather than the otherworld? Whatever they said, you should always remember that you are the greatest prize either the Fae or the Elves could possess. You have it in you to stop the incipient famine threatening our races. I swear we’d combine forces, and war with the Witches to keep you safe. Elves’ blood, if the Witches ever discover how weak Mordred’s bloodline is, they’ll turn on him too. It’ll be genocide.”
She tried to turn away, but his firm hold on her hips kept her close. Rather than get into an undignified tussle, she blushed and settled for a half truth. “You’re right about the Witches wanting me dead, but genocide?”
“We Fae bond with war dragons,” he told her, “and it boosts our strength, but the Elves come way down the bottom of the magic stakes. Once they were strong enough to appease the Witch council, but they’re getting weaker, and no one knows why. See? There’s no such thing as good Witch. The fact they want you dead proves that. Are you up for a lesson in otherworld politics?”
His curse forced him to fuck a different woman every four weeks, but he was in no way a chauvinist. Everyone, male or female, young or old, added something to the Fae culture—but they needed to relax their stifling grip on the old ways. As king, his duty was to care for them above all else. Then he’d met Meena, and his worldview changed. Nothing, neither his duty nor his people, was more important than protecting her.
He watched her eyes glaze with concentration, so he told her more about otherworld species than the Witches ever had. Obviously he was filling her head with new ideas. “The Lykae, Vampire, and ogres are magic, which means they can’t wield it. They can flash from place to place, but that’s about it. The Witches tolerate them because of their magical origins and savage fighting skills. They judge everyone and everything by the strength of their spells and enchantments. If they could, they’d obliterate anyone who fails to meet their high standards.”
He kept rubbing her back, anything to keep his hands on the woman he loved. The woman he’d lose when the month was up. Just looking at her turned his dick as stiff as a poker, and they had a cross-country hike coming up.
APART FROM THE fact that they wanted her dead, some of Meena’s best friends had been Witches. They were kind to small children and never hurt cute, furry animals, but they’d turned on her like rabid dogs. Not that she blamed them. The Witch Council was strict, and consorting with someone who lacked magic was courting trouble. The council had judged and condemned her without even giving her a hearing. Not that she could have mustered much of a defense. Goddess, maybe her friends weren’t as heartless as she’d thought, and even wondering about that made her feel better.
Leonidas dropped a tender kiss on her neck. “Mordred blames the Elves’ failing powers on the last battle with the Lykae—the one he never wanted to fight. He hadn’t stamped his authority on the Elves back then, and some idiot killed the Lykae king. His Son, Caleb the Cold, took a terrible revenge and almost wiped the Elves off the face of our world. Now the Witches want to do the same.”
“Are the Witches truly that evil?” Meena asked, unwilling to think so badly of the people who’d raised her. It hurt that, much as they’d filled her childhood with hugs and laughter, they’d turned on her like jackals the instant her weakness showed.
His lip curled into a sneer. “Apparently they’ve appointed themselves the magic police. They’re blackhearted and evil. According to my father, they hide beneath beautiful glamours, but underneath they’re hideous creatures covered in pockmarks and warts.”
She thought about Hansel and Gretel or Snow White’s wicked queen. They were stories to terrify children, but he spoke as though their every word was true. The truth crushed her, but she still held her head high, ready to take on the world—Witches and all—to save her mother.
With a full-on, dimpled grin, he turner her to face him and as he held her, he stroked a gentle rhythm on the small of her back. “I love your sharp tongue and sparky ways. You know that, don’t you? However, the Elves will have a different opinion.”
Meena leaned into Leonidas’s hand as he massaged her spine, but she didn’t speak. She couldn’t, not when he told her the Elves would reject her—even though her magic could help solve their hunger crisis. Add in that he loathed the entire Witch nation—her included—and she felt sick. She longed to tell him everything, but how could she when he’d hate her for it?
He ruffled her curls with one hand and maintained his comforting massage with the other. She wanted him to steal a kiss, but he turned her toward him and rested his forehead against hers. “The thing is, the Elves won’t react well if you stand up for yours. I told you they treated women badly; I just didn’t say how badly. If we encounter any of Mordred’s warriors, you should act as though you’re my well-trained pet. You must appear submissive and servile, or they will punish you. I will fight anything and everyone to protect you, but without my powers, even I cannot take on an Elf legion alone.”
“Your pet,” she repeated. “Submissive and servile? Damn it, Leo, I’m a twenty-first-century woman, not some macho idiot’s sex slave.”
He grinned again, laugh lines crinkling around his emerald eyes. “However, since our lives might depend on it, could you pretend? For my sake? Please. If it helps, I’d only ever want a sex slave as beautiful as you.”
A beautiful sex slave? Her? To hell with that. Much as she loved the way compliments dripped from his tongue, she was the equal of any man, Elf, or whatever. Leonidas not only expected her to act like his obedient little doggie, but he condemned her entire race, her sex, and her intelligence all in one breath.
She never doubted he’d fight to protect her, especially now that she could kill his rampant man-eating weeds, but he wanted a 1950s Stepford wife to hang on his every word. No wonder he was always pushing her behind him when she wanted to stand at his side. She’d bite he
r tongue until they rescued her mother, but if he wanted her to clear his country of carnivorous plants, then she’d be making some changes in his time-warped Fae world.
She wanted to grab his shoulders, stare into his eyes, and shout, “Hello, Witch here! No glamour, no warts, and damn it, no magic. Except, apparently, the highly desirable ability to kill plants.”
Who’d have thought her reverse green fingers would ever count for anything? But it didn’t change the facts. She was born a Witch—one who’d longed to come into her powers—but if he discovered her origins, he’d despise her too. The truth stretched between them like a chasm she was too scared to cross, but she hated misleading—lying to—her prejudiced Fae warrior.
Even though they’d turned against her, the way he condemned Witches killed something inside her. Hekate and her hounds, he hated everything she was meant to be. If she hadn’t been such a monumental failure, she’d have already taken her seat on the Witch Council. The purple streaks in her hair would have ensured it.
Yet the things he said about the Witch Council made a sick sort of sense. Maybe the Witches really did want to rid the otherworld of creatures without magic. They’d certainly wanted rid of her. Everything seemed topsy-turvy, but this was a mess of her own making. She should have been honest with him from the start. Okay, that wouldn’t have helped rescue her mother, but it would be one less problem to deal with.
She’d grown up around Witches, played hide-and-seek with them, even sneaked off to an illicit moonlit party and gotten drunk with some of them. They couldn’t all be evil, could they? Almost, almost, she could feel sorry for this Mordred Arthington and the Elf nation—then he went and kidnapped her mother. They could starve for all she cared. At least Lipstick would keep them away from all that food their human stodges had collected. Give him half a chance, and their dragon would eat it. Then it hit her. Maybe the Elves were trying to supply their army and take over the mundane world. Starting with Whitby—her adopted home. No way. Too many people, even that empty-headed teenager who cost her the job in the Goth store, would get hurt. For the first time, Meena realized the mundane world mattered as much to her as the otherworld.
She took the coward’s option and stayed silent, but deceiving Leonidas sat like a lead weight on her shoulders. When she wrapped her arms around his waist, his chocolate-and-chili essence was intoxicating. “I don’t understand. Even if the plants die when they touch me, how can I stop a famine? Don’t you need green-fingered farmers to do that?”
“Because, querida”—his aloof persona evaporated as he swung her around—“you can push back the plants. Our dragons will scorch them, but you can hold them back long enough that we can reclaim the land.”
See? Now that he knows I’m Agent Orange personified, he’s willing to keep me a while.
He pointed at the damp ground. “Look at the tracks. I’d guess about twenty men waited here to escort your mother, but they only have one single ox cart to transport her. The foot soldiers will make slow progress, and with any luck we’ll catch them before they reach Mordred’s stronghold.”
Still shocked that she possessed any magic—even the plant-killing sort—Meena took his hand and took a tentative step down the road. On either side of her, mandrake plants toppled, and vines withered. She’d wanted to move mountains or have the power to cure sickness, but draining the life out of the touchy-feely greenery didn’t impress her much, whatever Leonidas thought.
She loved how he stayed close by her, sword in hand. Then she realized he must be worried in case her newly discovered magic failed. She’d wanted to do something witchy and wonderful with her life. Instead, wow, she’d become Meena the jungle killer.
The past half hour had been…anticlimactic. Not the big revelation she’d dreamed of. What if Leonidas liked her plant-killing abilities more than he liked her? Now that she was a weed deterrent par excellence, he called her a prize. At least he hadn’t rejected for it, but she wished he’d valued her for herself, not for the way she desiccated a few overambitious weeds.
Deep down, nothing had changed. He was still the oversexed Fae who’d promised to give her more pleasure than chocolate ice cream. And he had—but that didn’t mean she could keep him. He’d already told her she was too different to share his life. No promises, remember? She’d known that from the start, even accepted his definition of their future, but she’d wanted to be more than a transient lover who’d popped in and out of his life.
Meena had no idea how long they trekked after the Elves, but her face felt taut and sunburned. Her arms matched the red of her short-sleeved corset top. And still she kept walking.
Because they’d hastened through the portal, they hadn’t had a chance to collect supplies. Right now she’d give her right arm for some bottled water and a plaster to cover the blister her pump had rubbed on her heel. More to distract herself than because she craved conversation, she asked, “Why can I do magic? That pair back in Whitby, the eyes-and-ears guys, covered our farm in Fairy dust. I get that it blocked your powers, but why didn’t it affect me?”
Leonidas never broke stride, just continued steadily on after the soldiers. “Your cloak and gloves covered every inch of your flesh, even your hair and hands. The dust couldn’t settle on you to nullify the power you hold inside.”
“See?” She gloated. “Being a Vampire wannabe was a good thing.”
He grabbed her hand and dragged her to a standstill—not that she was complaining about a moment’s rest, but his next words made her wince.
“The only thing worse than a Vampire is a Witch. Both would kill you as soon as look as you. Never forget that they are both the scum of the earth.”
That’s it, Leo. Rub salt into my wounds.
Chapter Fourteen
Meena wanted to tell him there were good Witches as well as bad—her mother, for example—but silence seemed the best option. Then Leonidas was off again, walking with a metronome rhythm she found hard to match.
Her body protested his pace, the sun blistered her arms, and her heel bled. Her mouth felt like a desert after a sandstorm. She tried not to think of cold, clear water dampening her dry lips and trickling down her throat. Sparkling or still? Iced or aired? Any way would be good. She pictured herself opening the cap and taking a tiny sip…savoring. Maybe she’d pour it over her sunburn and let it cool her skin, or maybe she’d tip it down like a waterfall. Best of all, she could pour it on Leo’s broad chest and lap it up like a cat. Who’d have thought a simple bottle of water had such possibilities?
She needed to toughen up and keep moving, but she’d give anything to sit down for a couple of minutes and enjoy some shade. Leonidas alternately cajoled and encouraged. She dropped her head, stared at her feet, and kept walking despite the pain in her heel. Life became one agonizing step after another, but she’d keep going. She had to.
Finally he gathered her in his arms and held her against his chest. He carried her as though she weighed less than nothing, and she silently thanked this month’s issue of her favorite magazine for her latest short-lived diet.
She closed her eyes and rested a moment, but she refused to be a millstone around her warrior’s neck. So much for independent and freethinking. She crumbled at the first obstacle. “Put me down. I can manage.”
“I know you can,” he encouraged. “Relax, querida, it’s no effort for me to help. Your foot is bleeding, and darkness will fall soon. There’s a wayfarer’s hut about a mile ahead where we can snatch a few hours’ sleep. Of course, my woman might have to clear it of invading flora first. I will deal with any fauna that ventures too close.”
Rats as big as cars? Tree snakes? Too weary to think about them right now, she replayed the way he’d called her his woman. Yeah, she really liked that. As she nestled against Leonidas’s chest, she ran a gentle finger over the ridges of his ears. He inhaled sharply and upped the pace.
Meena must have dozed as she curled into his chest, and then she jerked awake. When Leonidas stood her on her feet, sh
e staggered slightly and kept a tight grip around his neck. Part of her wondered who’d sandpapered her throat.
He chuckled as she leaned against him. “Time to wake up, sleepyhead. Once you’ve worked your magic, I’ll let you stroke my ears.”
“Why would I do that?” she croaked. Then she remembered his pleasured moan when she’d brushed her fingers over their tips before she’d closed her eyes for an instant. “Hekate, I fell asleep. I’m so sorry. How far did you carry me? And have we much farther to go?”
He was strong and powerful, a warrior who’d face anything to keep his world safe. Apart from her plant-killing mojo, she was…a liability. No wonder he’d wanted to leave her behind.
Leonidas was her safe harbor in a carnivorous world, but he looked worried. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he told her, “Even the track’s inherent magic is fading. However, if you use your anti-green fingers to clear that bank of vines and scarlet flowers, we can soon rest and eat.”
Eat what exactly? Her tummy rumbled as she passed too close to a tiny red orchid. The damn thing sent a flurry of barbs in her direction, but they wilted before they made skin contact. Killing them didn’t feel too bad after all. And if that was a hut beneath those vines? If it was, it had better come with plumbing. The flesh-eating blooms swayed with hypnotic beauty, but what the hell was that dissolving in a giant pitcher plant? It might have been a rat once, maybe—but even its stinking remains were huge. She screamed when a nearby mandrake shot out a red root and looped around a red-patterned tree snake that had ventured too close. As it pulled it in, a maw opened in its stem.
Leonidas grinned and tossed his dagger into the snake’s eye. “Go do our thing with the plants now I’ve skewered our supper.”
Curse of the Fae King (Scattered Siblings) Page 10
