She grimaced. “Sometimes they’re not so far off. The bitch of it was that it was started by the clan elders. The ones who should’ve known better.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” she said flatly. “Killing each other off. Going after whole families. And the night fae were behind it—working with the alpha, my uncle Leron.”
“I thought you fada have as little to do with the fae as possible?”
“It’s…complicated. It was an alpha challenge that set off the Darktime battles. But it turned ugly, and the night fae helped it along—whipping up people’s anger, encouraging revenge killings—so they could feed on the darkness. And my SOB of an uncle let it happen. Hell, he encouraged it. To him, it was all about power.”
She heard the tremor in her voice and took a deep breath. Now was not the time for her to dwell on Leron. The man was feeding the trees in the dark Appalachian forest where she and Adric had buried him—and she had more important things to worry about, like the fact that Corban had apparently shared the secret of the earth fada’s quartz with more fae than they realized.
“Can this Lady B really force Corban to shift?” she asked Fane.
He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I don’t know. We’re not exactly friends. But you heard her—she seemed sure of herself, like she’d done it before.”
“Well, right now, he’s too weak to shift. I don’t care how strong she is, you can’t force a shift on a fada that low in energy. If she tries, she’ll kill him.”
And it wouldn’t be an easy death. A fada caught between shifts died in agony, a monster made up of body parts from both the human and the animal.
“I hope you're right. You don’t want him shifting and telling her you’re in the castle.”
Her mouth twisted. “If she doesn’t already know.”
He straightened. “What do you mean?”
“That man with her? He’s how I got through the portal. He was on a motorbike and I followed him.”
“Hell. Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”
“I didn’t think he saw me, but now I’m not so sure.”
“That explains why the goblins were out. That was Jon. He and his twin Krysten are Lady B’s right-hand people. They’re always with her. We have to assume they know you’re in the castle.” Fane scraped a hand over his hair. “God’s balls. I’m not sure if it would be safe for you to leave even tonight.”
“Then maybe I should stay until tomorrow night?” Despite everything, her heart lurched at the chance to spend another day with Fane. “Unless,” she added, “I’m a danger to you.”
“No. She can’t enter this room without my permission. But—” He shook his head.
“What?”
“She’s not the only problem here. I’m afraid the king will find out you’re in the castle. We can only hide you from him so long.”
“Then I’ll leave tonight like we agreed.”
He blew out a breath. “Let’s think on it—maybe I can come up with another plan. Meanwhile, I’ll get us some breakfast.”
Marjani hesitated, and then nodded. Her stomach was still tight from her encounter with Corban, but when you spend half your life hungry, you learn to eat when you can.
Fane left and she bent forward, elbows on her knees, fingers interlinked.
“Damn you, Corban.” She closed her eyes, but all she saw was his too-thin body and mangy fur.
No, damn it. I fucking refuse to feel sorry for him.
He’d tormented her and Adric when they’d been forced to move into Leron’s den after the death of their parents. As an adult, he’d supported his father right to the end, even when it became clear that Leron was the worst sort of alpha, tearing the clan apart with his petty feuds and killing any who opposed him. Marjani’s own parents had been forced to spend years apart, fighting on separate continents as mercenaries to enrich Leron.
At first Marjani had felt bad for Corban. As the eldest, he took the brunt of Leron’s heavy hand. Nothing he did satisfied his dad. But Corban had turned around and beat on his two younger brothers and Adric.
Later, after Adric bested him in the challenge for alpha, Corban had pretended to support him while secretly working against him.
She touched the sharp iron dagger in her boot. It had an ivory handle and a sheath of thick leather to protect her from the iron’s poisonous effects. The iron switchblade worked in a pinch, but the dagger was her weapon of choice against a fada or fae.
She was a killer, an assassin. She could slip into that creepy tower and slice Corban’s throat in under a minute.
You can’t, Jani. You might as well send up a signal announcing there’s a fada running loose inside the castle.
What a fucking irony. She’d come to Iceland to kill Corban, and now that he was almost dead, she couldn’t just leave it be. Because why the hell would she endanger herself for that prick?
Rising to her feet, she paced across the small room.
An earth fada could kill himself with his quartz. You simply directed all the energy into your heart, speeding it up, making it beat harder and harder until it broke. But Corban’s quartz was too weak. Maybe he could’ve killed himself at the beginning, but he’d waited too long.
She’d tried to send him some energy, but without touching him, very little energy had been transferred. She was a soldier, not a healer.
She fisted her hands and brought them to her forehead, breathing hard. She’d promised Fane just to look—and she had.
If she went back later to do more, that wasn’t breaking her promise—was it?
Because if she left without putting her cousin out of his misery, she wasn’t any better than him.
14
Fane returned with two cups of coffee and a steel box holding fruit, granola, nuts and skyr, the Icelandic version of yogurt. Jumping up, she took the coffee from him while he set the box on the little table. One cup was nearly white with cream, the other black.
She eyed the coffee with cream longingly, but her mama had raised her to be polite. “Which one do you want?”
“Your choice.”
“You sure?”
His lips twitched. “I prefer my coffee black. The cream’s for you. I had a feeling you’d like it.”
“You guessed right.” She handed him the black coffee and took a sip of her own milky-brown brew. Perfect. Her eyes slit with pleasure.
“Have a seat and I’ll make you a bowl of granola.”
“You don’t have to wait on me.”
“Jani. Have a seat.”
She sat back down and watched as he spooned the skyr into two bowls of granola, sprinkling nuts on top. He handed one to her and took the other chair.
“I heard some people talking,” he said. “The goblins have been called off. That’s something, anyway.”
She nodded. “Do you know how long Corban has been in the cage?”
“A week, maybe more. But in your world, that’s close to a month.”
“What do you mean ‘in my world’?”
“Time runs differently here. Sometimes a day is a day, and sometimes a day is ten days. But I was here a month ago when Lady B threw him in the cage. Before that, he was her lover.”
“Her lover?”
He nodded. “For over a year. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe she just got tired of him.”
Marjani shook her head. “I thought Corban was smarter than that.”
“She’s a beautiful woman, and when she amps up her glamour…” Fane spread his hands. “She can have just about any man she wants.”
She slid him a look. She had to ask, even if she didn’t like the answer. “What about you?”
“Me?” He snorted. “I prefer my balls attached to my body, thank you very much.”
She nodded, her cat quietly satisfied. For some damn reason, it was feeling possessive about this man.
“I wish—” He shook his head.
She ate another mouthful of granola.
“Maybe”—she looked down at the cereal, suddenly bashful—”you can look me up the next time you’re in Baltimore.”
Then she forced herself to meet his eyes. Because her—bashful? Adric would split a gut laughing.
But Fane was unlike any man she’d ever known. He was older, cultured. As polished as that diamond in his earlobe. Hell, the man even dressed better than her.
Still, he’d been sending some very definite signals. Last night he’d all but said he’d like to fuck her.
“Maybe.” He looked back at his granola. “But I don’t get there much.”
Well, there was her answer. She’d read his signals wrong. But she couldn’t leave it alone. “What about Evie? Don’t you ever visit her?”
“Every few years or so. She’s better off without me.”
She frowned. She couldn’t understand a father feeling like that. “I bet she doesn’t think so.”
He finished his coffee and set it on the small table between them. “Trust me, she is,” he said in a tone that didn’t invite further questions.
She took the hint and fell silent, concentrating on her breakfast. When she finished the granola, she reached for a peach. It was small but perfectly formed. The first bite sent a tart burst of flavor into her mouth.
She gave a hum of pleasure. “That’s so good. It tastes like it was just picked.”
“We grow them here.”
Fane’s gaze was on her mouth. Her heart sped up.
“In Iceland?” she managed to ask.
“There’s a huge conservatory on the south side of the castle. The king invited a couple of dryads to live here when their trees were young, and they’ve grown up in the conservatory. They grow things year-round—fruit, vegetables.”
She nodded and took another bite of her peach. Dryads were famous for their green thumbs.
Fane was still looking at her mouth. Her lips tingled. She swallowed the bite. “What?”
He leaned forward. “You have peach juice—here.” He touched the corner of her mouth, brushing the juice away with his thumb.
“Thanks.” His eyes were so beautiful with that dark fringe of eyelashes, like a clear pool surrounded by lush vegetation.
Cool fingers caught her chin.
She stilled. In the past year, no man but her brother had touched her.
The fear was there, but her hunger for touch was stronger. Fane took the half-eaten peach and set it on the table, then stood up, drawing her with him.
She raised her eyes to his. He was a good foot taller than her. He might not be a fada, but the man had muscles. In a bare-handed fight between the two of them, he might just be able to win.
She braced herself for a wave of panic, but her cat gave a happy little rumble. It wanted to rub up against him, roll in his grass-green scent like catnip.
And even the human part of her recalled how he’d held her last night when she’d needed it.
“We have some time to kill.” His husky voice vibrated in her body.
“Yes.”
He trailed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “I know something bad happened to you.”
She growled, a harsh, feral sound. Knowing her anger was misplaced—she wasn’t pissed off at him, she was angry at the men who’d attacked her—but unable to help it.
“What do you know about it?”
“Hey.” He stroked her nape. “Fine—we won’t talk about that. But I’m going to kiss you, all right?”
“I—” She moistened her lips, and his eyes tracked the movement. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated miserably. “I haven’t been kissed for so long. Not in that way.”
“Why don’t we take it slow? If you don’t like it, just tell me to stop and I will. Any time—you just say the word.”
All the spit left her mouth. But it was only a kiss. She trusted that when he said he’d stop at any time, he would.
“All right,” she whispered.
“Mm.” His hum of approval was almost a purr. He gathered her closer, one arm around her waist, while his other hand kept up those soothing strokes on her nape. “You’re so beautiful.”
She traced her fingers over his high cheekbones, touched his full lower lip. His jaw was covered with dark, grainy stubble. “So are you.”
“You think?” He chuckled—and then his mouth touched hers. She stiffened, but he merely brushed his lips over hers, soft and easy. His breath was coffee-scented.
He traced his tongue over the seam of her lips and she closed her eyes. He touched his mouth to each lid, and then continued to her earlobe where he sucked the small gold hoop into his mouth along with the lobe. He gave it a nip, and when she gave a shiver of delight, licked his way up the rim of her ear before bringing his mouth back to hers.
A glow filled her, a warm, easy sensuousness that she floated on like a summer river, afraid to dive deeper.
Afraid even to think about it for fear it wouldn’t last.
His tongue slipped into her mouth, sliding along her still closed teeth. She opened them and swayed closer, and he swept inside. Her tongue rose to meet his, and for the first time in forever, she was kissing a man.
Wonder filled her, mixed with the warmth.
He gave a sexy growl that sent tingles up her spine and raised his head long enough to say, “You taste like peaches.”
Then he slanted his head and gave her a deep kiss. The kind a man gives a woman he wants to take to bed.
She rose up on her toes to get closer, fingers digging into his shoulders.
The position put her lower belly against his erection. He pressed against her, hard. Insistent.
She stilled. Not pulling away, but not participating any longer either.
He loosened his grip on her and lifted his head. “That’s enough, I think.” He pressed a last kiss to her forehead and set her away.
Her eyelids lifted slowly, reluctantly.
A smile tugged at his mouth. She felt a slash of hurt—he found this amusing?—until she saw how his eyes had darkened to midnight.
“Best not to start anything we can’t finish.”
She gulped. She longed to tell him she wanted to finish it—but she didn’t. Not really. It was enough for now that she’d kissed a man without freaking out and going clawed on him.
Her mouth trembled around the edges.
“Hey, it’s okay.” He tapped her nose.
Her cheeks heated. She clenched her fists and blew out a breath. Both Adric and Suha, the clan healer, had told her repeatedly that she had nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn’t her fault she’d been kidnapped and drugged, then forced to submit to the four men in the den. They’d even smashed her quartz so she couldn’t shift or draw on its energy.
There was no way she could’ve stopped them. Four against one just wasn’t fair.
She knew this—in her head, and maybe even in her heart.
But sometimes the shame still threatened to swamp her. She was a trained fada soldier and her brother’s second. She’d helped Adric win control of the clan against impossible odds. More importantly, she was a Gifted strategist, someone who could plot things out so far in advance it was almost like she could predict the future.
So how in Hades had she got caught in Corban’s fucking trap?
Fane turned away. She sent him a sad look, but his attention was on the white mist forming in his palm.
A fae message.
Marjani tensed. She edged closer, trying to read it, but the black words scrolling over the mist were in a language she didn’t know.
Fane’s jaw hardened. The mist dissolved, and he slammed the side of his fist against the wall. “Bloody hell.”
“Something wrong?” Uneasiness prickled her scalp even though she knew there were a hundred reasons why Sindre might send Fane a message, none of them having to do with her.
Until he turned, face set. “King Sindre requests the honor of your presence.”
&nb
sp; Her stomach lurched. “Me? He found out I’m here?”
A curt nod.
“But how?”
His gaze slid from hers. “I told him.”
“You told him?” She desperately searched his face. “But why? I thought—”
“Haven’t you figured it out?” A self-mocking smile curled his mouth. “I’m his spy, love. He sent me to watch you.”
“His spy?” She took a step back. “You’d give me to them? Put me in one of those fucking cages?” Her voice rose. It felt like all the air had been sucked from the room.
She swallowed and tried to take a deep breath.
But it was too late. Her cougar awakened. Her claws slid out and a furious growl ripped from her chest.
Fane stiffened but did nothing to defend himself. “No. Not in a cage. That’s Lady B’s thing, not the king.”
She stalked toward him. “You’re dead,” she said in a thick, barely human voice.
He spread his hands. “You can tear me to pieces, love, but Sindre still wants to see you.”
The cougar didn’t want to hear that. It tried to force the change on her, but she maintained control—barely.
But both of them wanted blood. She retracted her claws and reached for her iron dagger. In the next instant, she had Fane backed up to the wall, the knife at the sweet spot over his carotid.
The iron seared his skin. A blister formed at the point, and the scent of burning flesh filled her nostrils. His throat worked, but he remained silent, gazing back with those fucking sky-colored eyes.
“You didn’t have to bring me inside the castle.” Her voice was harsh with her cougar’s rasp. “You could’ve opened a portal and let me out.”
“Would you have left?”
No, but he couldn’t have known that. Not for sure. She glared at him without speaking.
“And besides,” he added, “the goblins would’ve caught you. They were hoping to flush you out. The minute we moved away from the wall, they’d have been on us, and you’d be in a cage right now.”
She sneered. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because you can scent a lie.”
She scowled. But he was right—his scent had the clean bite of truth.
“This way,” he said, “you have a chance. The king is old, and frankly, a little bored. Even a spider eventually gets tired of spinning webs. If you interest him, he won’t let Lady B get hold of you.”
Charming Marjani Page 9
