A Tale of Two Kingdoms (Knights of Black Swan, Book 6)

by Danann, Victoria

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Hawking.”

  “Elora.”

  “As you please. His Highness, The Prince of Scotia Fae, has charged me with the honor of seein’ you and your automobile safely to Charlotte Square. I have been licensed to operate vehicles in this country for a dozen years countin’ and have no’ a single crash to my name.

  “Now, if you, madam, will oblige me with the keys, we shall undertake the journey south and I will endeavor to be pleasant company.”

  For a few beats she debated which might be worse, finding her way back to Headquarters via a seemingly endless series of bloody roundabouts or making conversation with Duff’s stuffed shirt. She handed over the keys and got in the left hand side of the car, which meant that she was not driving.

  As they left the airfield behind she turned to Innes. “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Certainly no’.”

  “So you’re not just Duff’s lawyer?”

  “He’s close as can be with my younger brother. Watched him grow up.” Elora nodded. “So. You’re human, are ye?”

  “More or less. Hybrid you might say.”

  “And you married an elf.”

  “I did.”

  “Well, there’s no accountin’ for taste.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  When Duff settled on a plan that involved a getaway by private twin engine plane, he’d been thinking only in terms of logistics. It wasn’t until they were at cruising speed that he realized that his beautiful new plane was more than a great escape. When it came to honeymoons, it was a stroke of genius. The close quarters of the cockpit and the cocoon environment of the plane made it feel like nothing existed except the two of them.

  Song could not keep her eyes off him. Or her hands for that matter. Every few minutes she reached over to rearrange a lock of fine dark hair, not because it was out of place, but because she wanted the touch between her fingers.

  Likewise, he was having a hard time believing that he was making away with a prize beyond measure and that any time he wanted he could look over and be zapped by electric blue eyes that had haunted him for more than a year.

  Of course Song wanted to hear everything, how it had all come about, where they were going, what they were going to do, how long it would take to get there, and so on and so on. Since they had a little over two hours, he recalled as much detail as possible.

  “So. Do you like strawberries?”

  “To eat? Aye. To grow? ‘Tis to be seen I suppose.”

  The weather stayed clear for their landing in the Faroe Islands. Duff was instrument rated, but nice weather is always nice and that’s just a fact. The guest house had left word that they would send a car to pick them up and the wait wasn’t long. Song pulled out a pink overnight bag while Duff grabbed a backpack and paid the hangar fee.

  A fiftyish man picked them up in a Range Rover that had seen better days. As they got in the car Duff said, “Thank you for comin’ for us. I’m Dougal and this is my wife, Shannon.”

  Song looked surprised, but said nothing. She realized that, while she had certainly had her bouts with celebrity and her rows with paparazzi, it was probably nothing compared to what Duff had been put through. This was, for all she knew, the first time in his life he’d ever experienced being out in the world without being recognized as his Highness.

  A quick and surreptitious glance at his face confirmed that suspicion by virtue of the dreamy, contented expression he was wearing. She supposed it could be partly due to the fact that they were together, which warmed her all over.

  The Faroes were everything he’d said. Breathtaking. Otherworldly. Like an outpost of the universe. The perfect place for a couple in self-imposed exile to spend a first night together.

  They pulled off the road and drove toward the guest house, standing alone on a cliff and colorful as a Scandinavian book cover. The driver asked if they wouldn’t like to stop in at the kitchen for a little warm lunch before they settle in at the cabin.

  Duff looked at Song, who swallowed, remembering that she hadn’t had breakfast. “Maybe just a bit of soup?”

  He grinned down at her. “Have all the soup you want, Shannon.”

  After some hardy seafood bisque, they were shown to the cabin at the rear of the property. The hotelier had laid a nice fire while they had lunch and his wife had brought over a variety of sumptuous European-style snacks.

  The cabin was understated, charming in a roughhewn sort of way. It had minimal bath facilities, but elegant white on white striped sheets on the bed, which the hotelier’s wife had turned down as if she had anticipated their desire for a fireside nap.

  Mr. Eskildsen set Aelsong’s overnight bag down, said to enjoy their afternoon, to let him know if they needed anything, and mentioned that dinner would be around six.

  After he left they stood staring at each other for a couple of minutes. A cloud cover had rolled in, graying up the day. The only light in the room was coming from the fire.

  Duff had his backpack resting over one shoulder. He let it drop to the floor and pulled the zipper down the front of his jacket. Song’s eyes followed the movement of the zipper like a lion watching a baby zebra wander away from its herd. He let the jacket drop on top of the backpack.

  Her jacket fared a little better as it landed on the worn overstuffed leather chair that sat directly behind her thighs. Duff pulled off his ankle boots and dropped them. Song sat down in the chair to remove her Eskimo glugs. He pulled them off for her, which made her giggle. The giggle turned into a squeal when he picked her up out of the chair, wrapped her legs around his waist, and fell on the bed with her under him.

  Duff looked down at Song smiling as his mouth touched hers and had just the briefest moment to experience the satisfaction of finally being with her before the fever took him, took them both.

  The good-natured love play that led them to the bed turned serious the minute their bodies lined up with each other in full contact. Both of them had believed themselves to be sexually experienced, but neither had felt the hunger of channeling a gender’s primal role at elemental force. Once ignited, the power surged into a control of its own.

  They tore at each other’s clothing and would gladly have shredded it with their fingers had it given way. The natural progression of mating, denied for so long because of families and politics, took on an aberrant desperation that neither of them expected or were prepared for. They were both past the point, physically and emotionally, of touch being enough to ease the seasons of denial that had seemed to drag by endlessly. Their bodies had signaled recognition of mates and had punished their spirits for separation.

  Now their bodies were in complete control and would be denied nothing. In an effort to cleave to each other and become one, they pulled hair and squeezed flesh with fingers. They clawed with nails and scraped with teeth. They cried from joy and from release and they cried in mourning for the time they’d been forced to spend apart.

  It was not a violent coupling, an expression of need that transcends a human notion of marriage. It was survival. Mate or die.

  Duff rode through the waves of three orgasms without pulling free of Song. One release was shortly followed by the crescendo of another arousal until all of their energy and most of the afternoon had been claimed. When their breathing began to even out, they rolled onto their sides facing each other, still sweat slicked, still entangled.

  Song’s hair was a mess of Medusa ringlets. Duff reached up and shoved a damp lock away from the side of her face and smiled.

  She thought that the gray light of late afternoon coming through the high windows made his eyes look almost purple. They were mesmerizing. And they came with the dark fae that was hers. She traced the masculine line of his jaw with her fingertips. “Let’s stay here forever and call it home.”

  He drew her in a fraction of an inch closer. “Where’er we’re together from now on, ‘tis home.” She shivered and that action was met with a reaction of concern on his brow. “Do no’
move. I’ll be right back.”

  He rolled away and walked to the hearth, where the fire had all but died away. He stacked logs high enough to make it roar and as it began to rekindle he glanced over his shoulder and grinned.

  “There. ‘Twill be toasty in no time.”

  Leaning the poker against a stone edge, he turned to start back toward the bed, where he planned to crawl in for a renewed snuggle with his bride. Song had not pulled the covers over herself, but had, according to his instruction, stayed exactly as she was. When the prince turned and saw Aelsong’s reclining nude form, he gasped and, for a heartbeat, froze at the sight.

  He turned back to retrieve a candle from the mantel above the hearth and lit it with a kindling stick. When he reached the bed, he slowly ran the candle over Song’s body from one end to the other, holding it aloft to hover inches above her skin for his close inspection.

  “Fae’s gods. Please tell me I did no’ do this damage, beauty. ‘Tis nothin’ less than sacrilege.”

  “If you’ve desecrated my body, Duff Torquil, then find me guilty of the same crime. Just turn that bloody candle ‘round on yerself.”

  He looked down, then withdrew the candle for a closer look at himself. After confirming that his body bore similar marks, scratches, bruises, and love bites, he looked up and laughed.

  “Tore me up proper, did ye? Well, I’m glad to see you got your own licks in then.”

  He set the candle held in his right hand down on the bedside table while he absently rubbed his chest with his left hand and shook his head. Song’s eyes were immediately drawn to the fact that his nipples pebbled with the contact.

  “’Twas the furthest thin’ I had in mind for the two of us to be doin’ together today. I was thinkin’ about a layover here in these tiny islands in the middle of the Iceland Sea and nothin’ to do but spend a lazy afternoon beginnin’ to learn about my mate.” As his left hand had begun tracing a slow circular pattern on her thigh while he talked in soothing tones, her lips had parted further and further. His eyes ran up her body from the invisible circle he drew and stopped when they made contact with hers, which caused her breath to hitch. His brows furrowed into a scowl when he heard it. “You’re no’ afraid of me now, are you?”

  Song stared at him with wide blue eyes. The Hawkings had a purely physical gift for hiding a world of sins behind a look that could easily be mistaken for innocence by someone who did not know them well. And Duff Torquil had a lot to learn about Aelsong.

  She laughed in his face as she lunged at him and pinned him underneath her. “No’ sure yet. Are you afraid of me?”

  Looking up at her blinding smile, he could see the twinkle of mischief behind the illusion of dewy innocence. He knew he was looking at a woman that wouldn’t frighten or cower easily. The Fates had given him a match. Someone to be with not merely because of the insistence of biological pairing, but someone he could love as well.

  “Afraid of bein’ without you. Ever again.” He pulled her down into a kiss.

  “What was it you say you had in mind that the two of us would be doin’ together today?”

  “Oh that.” He grabbed her arms and rolled her under him so fast she swallowed a squeak. “’Tis better demonstrated than explained.”

  The prince of Scotia Fae proceeded to lovingly minister to each and every insult to his mate’s body with tongue and kisses and sweet murmurs of love.

  CHAPTER 7

  Thursday night Storm and Litha carried on a silent conversation at dinner while Rosie intermittently pushed food around her plate. She hadn’t really expected that Glen would respond to her ultimatum and, perhaps on some deep core level she might have known she wouldn’t have respected him if he had.

  In some ways, having been born with her parents’ education and memories, Rosie was both knowledgeable and wise. In some ways though, she was as immature and inexperienced in how to manage life in the world as any twenty-year-old. She was too proud to admit that she’d made a mistake by proclaiming a high stakes, winner-take-all tug of war with Glen over his career choice, didn’t know how to admit that she’d been wrong and back away from her actions, so she’d determined that she was going to dig herself further into the sinkhole.

  Rosie put the fork down and sat back. She looked between the two other people at the table, closer to the physical age of peers than parents. Her eyes flicked to the clock one more time.

  “I have something to tell you. I need to go away for a little bit.”

  “What do you mean ‘away’?” Storm hadn’t wasted any time slipping comfortably into the role of father and nothing about the unusual character of their situation seemed to deter him.

  “I mean I’m going to take a break from what I’m doing.”

  Storm choked out a laugh. “Take a break from what you’re doing? And what is that? You aren’t doing anything.”

  “Storm!” Litha’s tone was full of reproof.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  Litha stared at him, angry because she was afraid he was hurting Rosie’s feelings and wanting very badly to be able to argue the point. The fact that he was right didn’t make him more endearing at that moment. Sometimes being consistently right was his most infuriating quality. This was one of those times.

  Oddly they really had never gotten around to discussing what Rosie might do with her time. In the beginning every day of her existence was a new miracle, right up until those daily miracles were overshadowed by a missing father and a look-alike under house arrest. While everybody was thinking in terms of hour to hour, everybody forgot to talk to Rosie about what she intended to do with her splendid array of abilities and inconceivable list of possibilities.

  Rosie wasn’t accustomed to the challenging accusation of paternal disappointment and had flushed pink in the face, either from anger or embarrassment or humiliation. It was impossible to tell.

  Storm narrowed his eyes. “Does this have something to do with Glen?”

  Rosie’s eyes jerked to Storm’s so quickly that she might as well have shouted yes. “Glen is no longer part of the picture where I’m concerned. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m going to be gone for a while. You’re not to worry.” She looked at Litha. “If there’s an emergency, Lally will be able to find me.”

  She kissed Litha on the cheek and gave her a hug. Litha looked a little stunned, but patted her forearm and stroked her hair once, twice. Rosie approached her dad, who sat stiffly. She bent to kiss his cheek and hug him in the same manner. When she put her arms around his shoulders, he melted. He pushed back the chair, stood and put his arms around her.

  “Do I need to kick his ass?”

  She put her arms around his waist and shook her head. With her cheek against his chest, she said, “No. You went right to the heart of the problem. All I want to do is be with Glen and I tried to force him to feel the same way about me. Maybe, if I spend a little time away… Maybe I need to think about doing something myself. I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, Rosie.”

  And she was gone.

  As Storm’s empty arms dropped to his sides his mind presented him with a snapshot it had taken on a day when he’d been fourteen years old. He was in the car with Sol, pulling away from his parents’ house. They stood together in the shallow front yard holding hands and watched him drive away. His limited post-pubescent understanding had registered the look on his mother’s face as sadness, the sort that would be forgotten by the time she reached the kitchen and started thinking about what to make for dinner.

  Now he knew that look wasn’t something so inconsequential as sadness. It was the face of loss as devastating as the discovery of a missing limb. He made a vow to himself that he would replace the years his mother lost with time and attention. Never too late.

  He turned to Litha as his mind replayed part of the earlier conversation. “Who’s Lally?”

  Rosie had waited on a tabletop boulder on a windswept mountaintop of Prescient Dimension where she went when she nee
ded to contact Kellareal for longer than usual. She explained that she wanted a change of environment, where she could take a break from her life and rethink the direction of things.

  She knew she’d pushed things with Glen, but she also knew that, despite her feelings and desires to the contrary, the relationship wasn’t serious and wasn’t going to be. Not for a while. He’d made his decision. He was going wherever Z Team went and at least she had enough pride to know she wasn’t going to follow along like a camp whore. Even if he’d let her. Which he probably wouldn’t.

  So she’d take a lesson from that and maybe look for a little adventure of her own while she was young. While she was young.

  The breeze that blew her wild hair back from her face grew a little softer. Kellareal appeared to float down from the sky wearing a long white robe that billowed around him, arms outstretched as if inviting embrace, and landed in front of her soundlessly. She knew he would want to be congratulated on the theater, so she clapped. He bowed.

  “Lally. How long do you think I’m going to live?”

  “You called me for that?” He picked up a pebble, sat down beside her, and threw it out over the canyon overlook. “We may have to rethink your summoning privilege if you’re going to abuse it, young lady.”

  “No, that’s not why I called, but since you’re here…”

  “Well, your elemental side is very long lived, meaning eons. Your human side is cursed with short life under the best of circumstances. Then there is the issue of fragility, the moment to moment uncertainty, the… risk, if you will, of being human. I tell you, it causes me to marvel constantly at their courage. Living under those circumstances, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t just curl into a ball and hope for sudden death to put an end to the suspense.”

  “If they only knew how cynical real angels sound, you would never get your own TV shows.”

  “Hmmm. No doubt.” He grinned. “But a few feather sightings would bring them right back around.”