I nodded, careful to keep my mouth wide. Slowly, gently, he reached inside. I tensed.
What had I been thinking? A stranger was digging around in my mouth.
I froze and wrapped my arms across my front, doubting my decision, picturing all manner of grotesque outcomes. Could my heart be pulled out through the throat? Was an ex-angel heart even normal? But I couldn’t get away. He had me pinned between himself and the chair.
I tried to speak around his fingers.
He retracted his hand and retreated one step. “Are you well?”
“I wasn’t.” As I studied him, my nervousness drained away. He had stopped the moment something had changed. It mattered. “It’s better now, though.” Then I opened my mouth wide once more, and Arún came close.
He grasped the cap between his index finger and thumb. He wiggled the mic back and forth until it popped off the tooth. The procedure was quick and painless.
As soon as the mic came free, I hunched my shoulders, pressed my hands against the arms of the dining room chair, and pulled away from him.
“All done.” Prize in hand, he held the spy tech up for me to see and winked. He put the mic next to the earpiece and placed both near the base of the candlesticks. “Don’t forget them when you go.” He squeezed my hand and laced his fingers in mine.
“How will I get back to the church? Jason will be worried. He’s kept me alive since you left me there.” I worked to untangle my fingers from his.
At my churlish tone, Arún’s eyes widened and his expression hardened. A muscle flexed in his cheek, but he opened both hands and then stood. A moment later, he smiled, once again charming.
“Stay for dinner, at least,” he said. “I have a surprise for you afterward.”
Food sizzled in the pan behind him. With a dismayed “Oh,” he pushed his shirt sleeves up past his elbows and dove toward the stovetop. He swiped a stainless-steel pan from the burner and held it up. “It’s a delicacy from home. It took three years to trap this one so I could feed it to you for our first meal together.”
The importance of his words settled like lead weights in my heart. “How long have you been planning this dinner?”
He set the pan back on the stovetop and shrugged before he tucked his hands in his pockets. “I hope you enjoy it.”
I grimaced but thought of the sourdough hot cross buns. Arún might not be able to compete with those, but everything else Jason had fed me had been simple. Cheese, bread, water. The steak in that pan stirred a chorus of growls from my stomach. It would be nice to try something new.
I liked new. Especially when it came to a big-shouldered Fae.
Arún certainly had much more to offer me than Jason did. While he was busy saving his hunt from getting scorched, I let my eyes wander down his frame. “I’ve never had… it… before. First time.”
My gaze traveled back to his face, and I jumped. He’d watched me look him over. He wore an unreadable expression, and my heart fluttered in my chest. “Uh…” I sucked a nervous breath between my teeth and tried to flash a smile. “I’m sure it will be delicious.”
“Oh, it will be,” he said. “No matter what I eat for dessert.”
23
No Quarter Given
Arún
I hadn’t meant to bare my soul.
But my soul had other ideas, and the rest of me kept egging it on.
Woe watched as I cubed a yellow squash and tossed it over the Rakenbuck steaks, sizzling in the pan next to me. Questions played across her face. I don’t think she realized how transparent her thoughts were, even without the semi-accurate telepathy.
I washed my hands for the umpteenth time, nervous about how Woe would take my nonchalance. I wanted the night to be about her, about us, without having to worry about fated lover malarkey. But she’d guessed at the bond, the prophecy, and she’d withdrawn from me, mulling over the information.
Maybe I wasn’t as stoic as I thought I was. At least not where she was concerned. I hadn’t known how to act. I made two plates and took a seat across from her.
Then she’d asked about the accomplice that I had found preying on little girls in an alley. When I scanned his memories, I recognized Woe and Hannah. I experienced Hannah’s last moments, and I believed this was why Woe had been banished from heaven.
I needed to know. To hear it from her own mouth.
“Woe—” I said at the same time she started to say my name.
She smiled then and ducked her head so that dark strands of hair fell over her face. I longed to bury my hands in her tresses.
“Go ahead.” I stirred our supper. Maybe it would be easier if she started.
When she looked up, her chin quivered. “You blame the bond for the dead bodies, but what made you kill for me? Why did you kill them?”
“They threatened you.”
She shook her head. “Not that one. The one…” She swallowed. “The one with the note.”
“For Woe.” I whispered the words.
She whispered them just after me and shivered. She curved forward as though shrinking away from something I couldn’t see.
“I caught him, doing evil things, and I showed him my wings. I only meant to frighten him, but he fainted. While he was out, I browsed his memories. I found you… and Hannah.” My hands became fists. Honesty made the most sense. I would never have her trust if I shied away from truth.
“What else did you see?” She leaned forward. Hungry for my next words.
“I saw Hannah’s last moments. Through his eyes.” His memories played as though they were my own, and my eyes burned, dry heaving. “My fury burned his synapses, and his mind died. It was not my intention. When I left, his compatriots killed his body.”
Her mouth fell open, maybe shocked by the passive simplicity of what happened. I hadn’t actually hunted him down, but the detestable ate their own.
“Was she the reason for your fall?” I laid my hand on her forearm, and my finger grazed the softness of her inner wrist. I dipped forward, trying to get her to look at me. “Woe?”
Beneath my fingertip, her pulse raced, and when she lifted her chin, tears streamed down her cheeks. She sucked her full bottom lip into her mouth, chewing on it until all I could think about was how her lips might feel against my own.
“I…” She began.
“Take your time.”
She nodded, staring at the wall, searching for something before she could go on.
Waiting, I studied the curves of her face, awash in grief so strong that it would make our weeping fountains wail with the ache of it. She wore stately sorrow, draping her cheeks.
This.
This mortal woman. Her tears could mix with those of my people, and my people would love her for the depths of emotion, magnificent beyond the scope of any known Fae maiden. I would find none to compare.
When I acknowledged this, fire coursed through my veins, and desire burned through me. If nothing came of our bond, I swore my fealty to her. She was my queen, and she would decide my fate. I would joyfully accept her friendship, even as my flesh longed for her.
She took a deep breath and captured my hand with her free one, lacing her fingers between my own. “I killed for Hannah, too. Much like you, I balanced the scales.”
“Innocence demands it.” I kissed her hand, and we sat, both made raw by the depths of feelings that overwhelmed us.
She drowned in grief. I already drowned in love.
The moment passed slowly. Until finally, she eased her hand from mine and shifted her plate. “I am made weary by death,” she sighed, taking a sip from her water goblet.
“Then I swear to you now.” I waggled my eyebrow at her. “I shall never die.”
24
The Truth
Woe
“Tell me about your home.” I licked the remains of the golden sauce from my fingers. I wanted to lap up every drop. The mystery meat had been as incredible as everything else. The company, more so.
Arún chuckled a
nd wiped his hands on the napkin. He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “Did you know you just ate the traditional engagement meal for Fae couples?”
I choked on my water. “What?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t hold you to it.” He raised one eyebrow and tilted his head. “Yet.” He brushed his palm across my thigh.
I pressed my lips together. He was determined. It would be easy to get lost in his fantasy world. “I still don’t get why you call me ‘my Queen.’”
“Because you are my Queen,” he answered without answering.
I groaned. “Please. Don’t do that. I don’t understand anything.” I disliked his ambiguity. Much worse than extracting information from Jason. Arún would be better at the kissing. At least, he’d better be.
A blue glow exploded over him and extended over me. “I will show you,” he said. “Do not be afraid. It is only a vision. They will not be able to see us.”
And then we flew together through a foreign realm. The scenery changed from tropics to treetops to lush, rolling hills, but everything was green. Arún’s voice sounded close to my ear. Thousands of Fae people passed beneath us, some lit in a magical glow in a myriad of colors.
“This is my world,” he said.
The flight halted before the mighty stone gate of a sprawling castle estate. “This is my home,” he said. And we flew through rooms upon rooms, furnished and decorated in silks and linens and fabrics I did not recognize. In one, threads of light in a spider web lace created floor to ceiling curtains. Arún showed me his room, his parents, his world, and everything in it.
But in the final room, a woman wept in the corner. Shadows hid her. There was no living thing, only darkness. “This is my sister. She hides away to wait for her death.” Sadness filled Arún’s voice. “A blight has been sent against us. Thousands of our women die from it every day, and we have not had a wee babe born to us in a millennium. My people are dying. The blight took her womb and her wings.”
The vision blinked out. We were once more in a fancy apartment in New Haven City. Dinner had been cleared and the dishes done.
Arún leaned toward me, his gaze intense. “The Seer, my grandmother, prophesied that I would find the healer of our land in the human realm, but that she would not be human. She would be fallen.”
“And my name?” A tingling sensation climbed my body. Something like panic.
“Later, in another vision, she asked and heard your name echoed back.” He reached forward to his water goblet and his pectoral muscles flexed. As handsome as he was, maybe I should be flattered.
He went on talking about his family and his world.
On the outside, I smiled and listened. But inside, my heart twisted. Everything that we could have had together vanished. I was a box to be checked off his list, a prophecy that must be fulfilled. I wouldn’t play along. I couldn’t. Not with Jason. Not with Arún.
Clearly, his seer didn’t know much about fallen angels. Or maybe they should blame the vision translator they had. I’d been thrust into the center of something I could not help. And Arún would soon know the truth.
Somebody should have told him. I didn’t know if I could. I wanted his dream too much.
I couldn’t be his queen or the savior of the Fae world. No matter how badly I wanted it, I would never give Arún a child. It was a physical truth of my anatomy. It wouldn’t change. I thought of Hannah. How much I had loved her, and the reality made my heart twist.
An hour later, Arún asked, “Ready for your surprise?”
Arún pushed his chair back from the table. His question reminded me of his earlier, now-forgotten promise.
I place my linen napkin on the table. The weight of truth was heavy on me, but I wanted the beautiful evening to continue. It had been my first comfortable conversation, and we’d talked most of the night away. He knew what I was and treated me like I was a capable creature.
“I think that was the best meal I’ve ever eaten,” I said.
And I meant it.
I’d only been mortal for a little while, but the steak and sides had been the most delicious meal I’d eaten as a mortal. I couldn’t figure out why Arún shouldn’t be my choice.
He pulled my chair back from the table. When I was on my feet, he took my elbow and guided me until I was one step in front of him. Then, his hand brushed the small of my back. The move felt so intimate. The body language of lovers. Every place he touched, my skin tingled until my pulse was a dull hum in my brain. I leaned backward into his hand.
Arún stretched his other hand out in front of him. “Please,” he said, indicating that I should go in front of him, but he kept his hand at the small of my back.
He tucked an errant strand of hair behind his ear. “He’s this way.”
His nearness fuddled my mind, and it was some moments later before his words registered.
Arún had said he, not it.
He led me to the only door off the great room. His bedroom. The words fluttered in my mind and forced everything else out as we stepped across the threshold.
Once in the bedroom, the color scheme changed drastically. His bed was dressed in mossy green silken sheets. Bits of driftwood, shells, rocks, and leaves decorated every shelf. I walked along the shelves, exploring, touching.
When I turned around, his gaze traveled from me to the bed and back again.
My heart knocked about in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. This was such a bad idea. If he asked me, I didn’t know if I could say no.
But Arún didn’t come any closer and busied himself taking geodes from his shelves. He placed them on the floor in front of a blank space on his bedroom wall, until six palm-sized pieces were connected in a ring, arranged in a star-like shape.
The clusters of crystals inside each half-geode lit up in a different color. The colors linked together to form a white light that illuminated a doorway within the blank wall space.
I asked, “Is the door always there or do the rocks make a portal?”
“It’s always there, but never seen.” He swiped a key from the shelf and grinned.
When Arún unlocked the door, a putrid smell assailed my nose. It wasn’t quite crude oil, but close.
I hesitated, but he tugged me into the room.
I stepped from a plush city bedroom into a prison from the Middle Ages, the cell shaped more like a corridor than a cube. Bits of sticks and straw littered the stonework floor. A massive door showed another cell across the way and let distant sounds of merriment in. Above us, a light burned above a clay urn. But rather than a flame, it glowed with bright yellow magic.
“A light-stay spell,” Arún said. He led me deeper into the chamber.
A rustling came from outside the door, and a gruff voice barked, “Who goes there?” A helmeted guard peered in, angry eyes over a wide neck.
Arún gave a dismissive wave. “Tell no one I was here.”
“Oh, my apologies, sir,” the guard slipped quietly away.
I raised an eyebrow.
“We’re in the dungeons of my castle. This was the only place I could be sure this evil wouldn’t escape again.”
We were in the Fae world. Arún’s kingdom.
A moan captured my attention. I could barely make out the figure seated on the ground, outlined in purplish starlight, positioned within the only illuminated patch in the room.
A tattered shirt hung from the stranger’s shoulders in torn strips. Scars crisscrossed the skin of his bare back and fresher wounds wept bloody trails. Ripped jeans cinched his too-thin waist. Stringy black hair hung in a curtain that shielded his face.
I tried to stay in Arún’s shadow but tugged on his hand. “Did you do that to him?”
Arún didn’t answer―maybe he didn’t hear me―but poked the captive’s side with his loafered toe. “Stand up,” he barked.
The man glanced behind Arún. When he saw me, he scrambled across the stones as far as his chains would allow.
“He brought you
to watch,” he said, whimpering. The sound was a déjà vu.
A rainy night…
I stiffened at the words.
The rattle of heavy chains filled the air, and the prisoner lumbered to his feet. He hadn’t missed the straightening of my back. Bound at his wrists and ankles, his actions awkward but practiced. His movements stirred the stench of rotting things, lurid things. How long had he been here?
“Sire,” the oily word slid across my skin, and a creeping chill followed. I shivered, but kept my eyes averted. Whatever this guy was, I didn’t want it on me.
Arún watched the exchange before he squeezed my fingers. “He is yours.”
“Mine?” The idea repulsed me as I didn’t own anyone.
Arún held up the key that unlocked the door.
Out of place, a low whine came from the prisoner. He cackled. “She doesn’t understand.”
Arún tucked the key away and let loose a stream of curses. He punched, and the hook connected with the other man’s jaw, knocking him to the ground. A harsh stream of syllables and sounds in Arún’s own tongue brought forth blue magic from the air. A webbed net formed over the now-prone prisoner. The spell-strings popped and danced like electricity as it moved from Arún.
The net settled over the captive, and his whole body seized. Yet he made no sound beyond strained grunts.
I yanked on Arún’s arm, desperate to put an end to the pain. “Stop, stop. You’re hurting him.”
Arún tilted his head as the glow disappeared. His brows furrowed. Two white slashes rose across the prisoner’s forehead. “You want him to hurt. I heard it in your dreams.”
I pressed my lips together and squeezed my eyes shut as I searched my brain. “Why? Why would I want him to hurt?” Not another life on my tally sheet. Not another.
Arún’s voice was low when he said, “He helped murder Hannah.”
Those four words exploded in my heart and opened a yawning canyon that threatened to consume me.
Woe for a Faerie Page 14
