He could see Hughes’s expression out of the corner of his eye. The manager’s usual dignified expression had given way to openmouthed fascination. Tiago scowled at him. Then he heard a sound. He had eased Niniane onto the sofa, grabbed the Glock and was striding down the hall before either Niniane or Hughes could react.
Someone knocked at the door as he approached.
“What,” he said without opening it.
“The hotel physician is here.”
He stood to the side and leaned over to peer through the peephole. The hotel security/undercover cops were standing back from the door, in sight of the peephole. Between them stood a slight, intelligent-looking male who carried a bag. Even through the door Tiago could pick up a whisper of magic about the man. The doctor was a witch.
Hughes had come to the door as well. Tiago pointed to the door. “Verify this guy,” he said.
The manager took a look through the peephole. “That’s Dr. Weylan, the one I called. The hotel has had him on retainer for several years now.”
Tiago opened the door, gestured the doctor in and shut and locked the door behind him. Then he pinned the doctor to the wall with one hand around his throat and introduced him to the Glock.
“Here are the rules,” he said. “No second chances. I’ve been on battlefields for far longer than you’ve been alive. I have performed triage and I am very familiar with medical procedures, including magical ones. You do not want me to misunderstand anything you do. You do a single thing that seems off to me in the slightest way, and you’re dead. And I won’t lose a single moment’s sleep over that decision. Got it?”
Paling, the doctor nodded. Hughes stared at Tiago, and from the living room Niniane exclaimed, “Tiago!”
He raised his voice as he snapped, “Let’s revisit, your argumentativeness. There’ve been two assassination attempts in less than thirty-six hours. You won’t let me take you back to New York, so it’s shotgun justice until we have a safe base of operations established.” He said more quietly to the doctor, “You got that?”
“Actually, I do,” said the smaller man. Tiago eased his hold on the human male’s throat. Steady, sharp eyes met his. The doctor gave him a tight smile. “You’ve made your point. Let me do what I came to do and treat my patient now.”
Tiago took a deep breath and stepped back. He had lived a long life by trusting his gut. His gut told him that Hughes was for real, and that through the years the human doctor would have proven himself to the five-star hotel and its customers many times over.
Tiago’s gut also knew that anybody could be gotten to, through bribery or coercion, through family or lovers held hostage or through religious or political beliefs. That was why he followed so closely behind the doctor as the human entered the living room, knelt beside the sofa and introduced himself to Niniane as he opened his bag.
Like Tiago had said to Niniane, life wasn’t logical. It was often filled with uncertainties. At that moment he knew just one thing for sure.
That little manipulative sex kitten was not going to die tonight.
The fate of anybody else remained an open question.
* * *
Niniane huddled under the blanket and looked at her surroundings with a dull gaze. The hotel living room seemed unobjectionable enough. There were chairs, the sofa, tables, a flat-screen television, all the obligatory elements, but her exhausted mind seemed unable to absorb any details.
She had a weird kind of infection, she decided. Someone had tried to stuff an extra dimension in her head, and it didn’t fit. Too-loud noises came and went. Her vision flickered around the edges.
Her knife wound hurt. The light was too bright and her eyes hurt. Her skin hurt, breathing hurt—hell, even her hair hurt. She felt like she barely had enough energy to lie on the sofa and live.
But whenever Tiago was near she seemed to have plenty of energy for arguing with him. It must be God’s way of telling her how wrong he was.
She opened her eyes as three men entered the room. Hughes showed that he was a man of discretion, as he caught her eye and gestured that he would go to the kitchenette. She nodded in thanks to him. A slender human male knelt on the floor beside her, opened a medical bag and smiled at her. Tiago hovered just behind him, his dark face grim, and his murderous obsidian eyes tracked the human male’s slightest movement.
She turned her attention back to the man kneeling beside her. His intelligent face was creased with kindness. “I’m Dr. Weylan,” he told her. “It’s quite an honor to meet your highness, but I’m sure we both could have wished it was under better circumstances. I hear you’ve been having a challenging couple of days.”
“You can say that again,” she said. Exhaustion kept her voice faint. Then she glanced pointedly at Tiago and rolled her eyes at the physician as she added, “And somebody tried to kill me too.”
The doctor’s eyebrows shot up and he laughed, while over his shoulder Tiago glared daggers at her. “Okay,” Dr. Weylan said. “I’ll explain everything I’m going to do before I do it. The first thing I want to do is to put my hands on you and give you a magical scan. I want to put one hand on your forehead, and the other one close to where you’ve been injured. Have you had one of these scans before?”
She nodded.
“Good, then you know it might tingle a bit but it won’t hurt. It’s just going to give me information while you tell me all about what happened to you. All right?”
“All right,” she said.
He laid his hand lightly against her forehead, and after asking her, he placed his other hand against her side near the knife wound. The look in his hazel eyes grew intent. “Go on now, tell me what happened,” he encouraged.
She sighed. “If you saw that stupid viral video, you know pretty well what happened. My cousin said he wanted to take me out to dinner. Then he and my two other attendants attacked me, and I got knifed. I cleaned the wound as best I could, but it’s awfully deep. It must have gotten infected.”
The doctor nodded. The room fell silent as he concentrated. After a moment, he pulled his hands away and smiled at her. “I’m glad to say you’re quite a lucky lady, your highness. The wound is deep, and if the entry had been at a slightly different angle, your lung would have been punctured.”
She looked at Tiago. His dark gaze met hers. If anything, he looked deadlier and grimmer than ever, although his hand was quite gentle as he reached out to tug at a lock of her hair.
The doctor went on, “And you’re right, of course. An infection has set in. It will be simple enough to cleanse once we’ve gotten rid of some cloth fibers that are trapped in the puncture. You’re suffering from shock and blood loss, but otherwise, you’re quite healthy. I would like to set up an IV drip to help replenish your fluid levels—”
Tiago stirred. “No IVs,” he said. “No injections. Not without having all your medical supplies tested first.”
The doctor had frozen while Tiago spoke. Weylan continued, without having ever looked away from her gaze, “But barring that, I will strongly urge you to force liquids. Everything you need I can do in the privacy and safety of this suite. I can put a local anesthetic charm near your wound, and I have an extraction spell that will flush the wound and expel the fibers within ten minutes or so. It will feel strange, but it’s much less painful or invasive than physically probing into the wound itself. After that, I can either cleanse the infection with a spell or prescribe a course of antibiotics for you to take.”
“Which is better?” she asked. No matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open, they drifted shut.
“It’s six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other,” he told her. “The cleansing spell is quick and efficient, but it takes a system by storm. You would feel pretty weak and exhausted for a couple of days afterward. The antibiotics take more time, but they don’t leave one feeling quite so mowed down.”
She forced her eyes open again and looked at Tiago. “Maybe the antibiotics,” she said. “So I can get back on my feet faster.
”
“No,” Tiago said. He bent over her and took her hand, lacing her fingers with his. His hand was huge and enveloped hers. “You will have all the time you need to convalesce, and the world will wait for you. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You are perfectly safe.”
She gave him a blank stare. Perfectly safe. She had no idea what that meant.
She closed her eyes. “Do whatever is best then,” she said in a listless voice.
There was a pause. The doctor pulled down the blanket, pulled up the loose outer shirt and folded back the camo T-shirt. His touch was gentle and efficient. She could tell the moment the local anesthetic charm was laid on her stomach. She sighed with relief as at least some of the pain eased.
She kept her eyes closed and listened without interest as the men talked.
“She’s going to lose more fluids when I use the extraction spell. I don’t like her level of dehydration. What can I do to convince you that the bags of saline solution I have are safe?” the doctor asked Tiago.
The Wyr warrior said, “Do you have more than one IV needle?”
“Yes.”
“Use one on yourself. After five minutes, you can transfer the rest of the bag to her.”
“Fine, done.” Weylan raised his voice. “Scott?”
The manager hurried into the room. “Yes?”
“Would you please get some towels from the bathroom?”
“Certainly.” After bringing in an armful of towels, the manager disappeared again.
She flinched as a warm hand came down on her forehead and smoothed back her hair. Tiago’s hands were much larger than the doctor’s, rougher and more calloused. She rested her fingers on his muscle-corded forearm. He thrummed with so much latent Wyr Power he felt like a current of electricity wrapped in a tree trunk.
She opened her eyes briefly to see that he had knelt by her head. He was bending over her while he watched with a sharp raptor’s gaze as the doctor removed the sodden dressing and wiped the puncture wound clean. The doctor had to work with care as he had attached his right hand to a bag of saline, which he had hung from a picture hook on the wall.
Tiago continued to stroke his fingers through her hair. It felt so good she might have nuzzled his hand just a little bit. He murmured to her, “You’re no fun when the stuffing’s been knocked out of you, your listlessness.”
Did that require an answer? She sighed.
“You’re like a rubber ball with no bounce,” he said. He cradled her cheek in one large palm. “A worm that’s lost its wiggle.”
A worm? “Oh, please, the hyperbole.” She put a hand to her forehead. “It’s too flowery.”
Somebody snorted nearby. The doctor said, “It’s been five minutes.”
Tiago told him, “You can use the IV on her. That bag only.”
“I understand.”
The doctor inserted the needle into her left hand, which was closest to the wall, taped it into place and hooked her to the IV. Then he tucked rolled towels along her side and cast the extraction spell. She made a sound and clenched her right fist.
It was instantly swallowed in Tiago’s larger grip. “You all right, faerie?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. She opened her eyes and gave him an unhappy look. “It just itches deep inside where things aren’t supposed to itch.”
He frowned and asked the doctor, “Can you numb her any more?”
The doctor was busy blotting the bright trickle of blood and fluid that had begun to spill from the puncture wound. He shook his head. “Not without resorting to medication. And I’m not injecting myself or anybody else without good reason.” He looked up at her. “This is as bad as it gets. I promise. It’ll be over with in just a few minutes.”
“All right,” she said in a flat voice. She shifted her legs in an effort to get more comfortable.
Tiago began to stroke her hair again. She stilled, and everything inside her focused on the warm comfort he offered. He met her gaze and said, “Guess what you get for being such a good girl at the doctor’s?”
She was still flush with fever, and she hated the itchy-crawly feeling deep in her wound. She didn’t want to smile at him. She didn’t. One corner of her mouth lifted. She asked, “What?”
He crinkled at her. “How about some pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream?”
Her eyes brightened. “You promise?”
“Of course I do.”
Her smile deepened. A dimple appeared in one cheek. “Well, now that you’ve promised I guess I’m getting pancakes whether I want them or not.”
Even as she said it, she knew it was true. A certain knowledge settled deep into her bones. She may not know Tiago very well in some ways, but after decades of living with and interacting with Wyr sentinels, in other ways she knew him intimately. Once he set his mind on something, nothing would stop him. Once he gave his promise, he would never give up, never stop, until he had achieved whatever it was he said he would do. It might be infuriating at times, but it was something she could rely on, wholly and completely.
“Oh, come on, faerie. You’re just being cranky.” His white teeth flashed in that hard, rugged face. “You know you still want them.”
A miserable, lonely and unsettled part of her eased into something resembling peace. She turned her cheek into his hand.
A look came into his dark eyes, a new expression she couldn’t decipher. He stroked her lips with his thumb and stared at her like he had never seen her before.
Another knock sounded at the door. Hughes said, “I’ll see what they want.”
Without looking away from her, Tiago ordered, “Don’t open the door. Don’t let anybody in.”
“No, sir.”
Reality was trying to intrude. She didn’t want it to. She wrapped the fingers of her free hand around his thick wrist as her forehead crinkled. Holding her gaze, he whispered, the barest thread of a sound, “Shh.”
Hughes returned. “The Dark Fae delegation is demanding to see her highness. They’re denying your right to protect her and threatening war with the Wyr.”
FIVE
She tensed. Tiago tapped her nose with a forefinger. “Wrong response,” he whispered to her. “Remember, the world waits for you. Okay?”
She took a deep breath and made herself relax. “Okay.”
Tiago turned, his demeanor calm and unhurried. “Hughes, what an asinine thing to tell a hotel manager. They can throw as much of a fit as they like, as long as it doesn’t get them past the stairwell doors. Understand?”
The manager swallowed and nodded. “The floor’s been searched and evacuated. There are two guards at each stairwell door, and the elevators have been locked down for now.”
“Good. That’s how things stay” He turned back to her. “How is it going?”
She said, “The itching has stopped.”
“Excellent, and the wound is no longer draining,” Dr. Weylan told her. “That means the extraction has run its course. I’m going to close the puncture with just a few stitches and bandage you up. Once I cast a quick cleansing spell, you can get some real rest.”
She nodded, and the doctor was finished in no time. She put out a hand to stop him when he would have cast the cleansing spell. Tiago scowled, but she ignored him as she asked the doctor, “I’m already feeling shaky. I would like to get cleaned up before you cast that spell.”
He smiled at her. “Good idea.”
She had barely made a move to sit up when Tiago was there to slide his arms under her shoulders and knees and lift her upright. He hooked the IV bag onto a finger and carried her, still wrapped in a blanket, through the nearest bedroom and into its bathroom.
He set her on her feet with care. She turned and reached for the IV bag. He held it out of reach. “Stop it,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
Feverish color touched her cheekbones. She frowned at him. “I don’t think so. This is the end of the line for you, cowboy.” He opened his mouth to argue, and
she told him, “There are some things a girl likes to do on her own.”
Amusement danced in his dark eyes. “There’s nothing you could do that I haven’t seen an army of uglier, hairier people do thousands of times before.”
“That may be,” she said with dignity, “but you haven’t seen me do any of it before. Please don’t argue with me on this one, Tiago. I’m tired and I hurt all over, and I want to go to bed.”
His mouth tightened, but he nodded. He checked the back of the bathroom door and hung the saline bag on the hook he found. “Don’t lock the door,” he told her. “I’ll be right on the other side.”
Who knew that the Wyr warlord’s real animal form was a mother hen? She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine. Get out.”
He shut the door.
She debated the possible merits of another shower while she used the toilet, but she simply didn’t have the energy to figure out how she might work that with the IV needle in the back of one hand. Instead she washed her face at the sink and brushed her teeth with the complimentary supplies.
There was so much to do, so much to plan for and an entire political minefield to maneuver, and the simple act of getting clean was almost too much for her. How long would Tiago stay to help? He had promised he would stay until she wasn’t sick any longer, but what did that mean? Would he leave after she slept and he had seen her into safe hands? That was the reasonable thing to expect.
She was shaking again and feeling irrational as she opened the bathroom door. Tiago was leaning against the wall just outside, arms crossed as he waited for her. He straightened when the door opened. She asked, “Can you help me get this bloody T-shirt off?”
He took one look at her distressed face, and his expression softened. “Of course I will.” He put the toilet seat down and guided her to sit. Then he knelt in front of her and stroked her hair as he looked with concern into her eyes. “Is it the T-shirt that’s got you upset?”
Her gaze fell away from his. She shook her head and her lips trembled.
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